Around the World in 210 Days

A House, An Inspector, and More

andrewalex — Sun, 29 Mar 2009 07:38:00 GMT

So we are continuing our journey, this time to a house. We began looking for a house when we came back to Austin last April/May--I can't believe we have been here for a year. Anyway, surprise, surprise (And somehow it really was a surprise), the bank wanted one of us to have a job before they would loan us money. After a quick game of rock paper scissors, Andrew was forced to get a job :) Alex put some of her networking magic to the test, and met up with someone who knew someone who needed an Andrew. Yes, yes, I know what you are thinking...who doesn't need an Andrew. Well it was hard at first, after going more than a year spending every day with each other, spending more than 20 hours a day with each other, having Andrew get a job was really tough. There were forlorn goodbyes, accusing phone calls when Andrew would call home around noon to hear a "suspicously" sleepy sounding Alex who had been 'looking for a job'. But Andrew found a good job with a good company, and in his spare time has shot two weddings and a short film. Anyway, with our apartment lease pending, having been burgled in March, and finally deciding that a bean bag does not constitute a spare bedroom, we have made the leap. We found a real estate agent, looked at 60 or so houses, and have finally found one. It is 2 stories, pretty generic looking, but hopefully it will be ours in two weeks. We will detail the process in the next few days and all the ins and outs of foundation, plumbing, and banking.

Believe it or Not...

andrewalex — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 06:00:00 GMT

We made it home alive. You might not believe it because we haven't posted in, oh, two weeks or so, but that is only because we have been becoming reacquainted with the country we call home. So, rest assured we will be posting our final posts soon, but until then, we'll be posting some of the oft-requested photos from the last half of our trip.

Gallery: Istanbul

andrewalex — Sun, 13 Apr 2008 06:05:00 GMT

(Formerly Known As Constantinopl)

The Traveling Curse

andrewalex — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 01:25:00 GMT

Where did we leave off?? Oh yeah, the crashed moped, etc. The next day we decided to do our third and fourth dive of the trip. We had heard that Chumpon Pinnacle was the best dive site and our diving company was going to Chumpon and White Rock again. (Alex thought we had gone to Green Rock and lost a bet involving 6 months of toilet clean, but in fact we did go back to White Rock). Our diving certification only allows us to go to 18 meters, but happily the dive company seemed to disregard this and in fact we went to 25 meters. Chumpon was pretty awesome, we saw trigger fish again, that our dive master had a nice rapport with (it included shaking his fins and relevant digits as the fish attempted to bite off his foot. Yes, he flipped off the fish, despite the fact that this is, as you may recall, the fish that has a reputation for biting off ears and fingers...) Anyhow, it was a great dive, we saw tons of fish, and two grey reef sharks. These are not small sharks, they are probably about 4 ft going on... 12. Anyhow the crazy people we were diving with were swimming TOWARDS the shark. Alex was having none of that though, she was flipping her fins upward. Anyhow because we went deeper on this dive, we had to wait longer (to reduce nitrogen levels) between the two dives, so we spent about an hour relaxing on the boat, eating watermelon and pineapple chunks, before our second dive. That afternoon we met up with the Swedes for a movie night (they returned their moped, and their damage cost 4000 baht!) For the rest of the week, we continued to watch the movies showing and relaxing at the beach or at our cabana's swimming pool. And yes, we were able to celebrate St. Patrick's day in style, with Italian pizza, Thai wine, and American music.

Our cabana wasn't very nice, as there was no mosquito netting and the screens didn't fit the window, so the room would swarm with mosquitos. Our daily routine included waking and taking a hot shower, covering up with sunscreen (which was exorbitantly priced) spraying heavily with OFF and leaving for 7-11. None of the 7-11's on the island had Big Gulps, so Andrew improvised by cutting up water and coke bottles and filling them with ice and purchasing 1.5 liter cokes. Then he would decide between a hot dog or a cup of noodles. It was a beautiful time :) After a week, the Swedes left for Ko Pangnan for the full moon party (a monthly occurrence where 8000 people flood the island to have a drunken rave), we passed but made plans to meet up in Bangkok. We stayed in Ko Tao for an extra two days and decided to forgo Ko Samui which seemed to be a largely commercialized island complete with Starbucks and McDonalds and instead headed for Ko Phi Phi. We bought a joint ferry/bus/ferry ticket from our favorite internet seller and left Ko Tao around 8:30 pm. (We realized right before we left that we had lost our towels, and later Andrew's glasses). The guide books warn that the tickets are sometimes not valid and you will find yourself stranded having to buy an extra ticket. The night ferry from Ko Tao to Surat Thani took 9 hours. It had a wide deck which had about 50 mattresses on each floor. We got a corner spot next to some nice German girls. After chatting for thiry minutes, we laid down and slept until the next morning at 6 when we docked.

After docking, we stumbled blearily outside and after waiting a bit were ushered onto a minivan which drove us three hours to Krabi, dropped us quickly and left. We arrived in Krabi around 9, expecting to take the 10am ferry to Ko Phi Phi. Imagine our chagrin when the woman at this station explained that our tickets were no good. There were about 8 travellers with us. After a long fishy arugment, the woman agreed try to put us on the 3:00 ferry. (She was allegedly waiting for the company that had dropped us off to pay for our ongoing tickets). She also sold us on tickets we would need to leave from Ko Phi Phi back to Bangkok which she sold for 50 baht less than everyone else.

With five hours to kill, we of course headed to a 7-11. It was our first 7-11 with big gulps. Alex was feeling pretty sick though, so Andrew was on his own with it. We returned to the travel agent, and discovered that the rest of the travellers were gone. We wondered suspicously whether they had somehow learned something that we didn't know, and looked at the travel agent with renewed suspicion. In any event, we were on the 3:00 ferry to Ko Phi Phi with return tickets two days later. We made it to Phi Phi, and promptly walked past the tens of shouting Thais with hotel signs. We picked up a map and used it along with some lodge names we had found online to search out our home for the next two days. After checking into our room, we ate dinner on the deck of an old sailing ship set into a hill. Luckily the food was not restricted to what you can catch on a ship, and our dinner was delightful.

Ko Phi Phi was beautiful. For those of you who don't know, it is two islands, one of which "The Beach" was filmed. We hadn't seen "The Beach," before but we fixed that at one of the restaurant showings. There was a reason we hadn't seen the movie... it was not good. But we did get to see cameos of the islands we were around, so it wasn't all bad.

The island is a popular place for diving and snorkeling, but as we got our diving done on Ko Tao, we chose to spend our full day in Phi Phi in true beach style; wading in the almost waveless light blue water, relaxing under the shade of palm trees, taking a "break" to get fresh fruit shakes, etc. After a day of kicking back, we strapped on our tennis shoes and climbed up to two of three viewpoints that look out over the island's main isthmus. At the top there was a poster showing the before/after shots of the tsunami, and it really is amazing how devastating that was. We enjoyed the trip up to the viewpoint probably more than being at the top. Along the way, we came upon cashew trees, something we'd never seen before. The trees held bright red and green pears, with cashew-shaped beans hanging from the underside. Such a bizarre food... we tried opening the bean to extract the cashew, but to no avail.

Later on our walk, we came across a field of baby palm trees that were growing out of coconuts. We'd never seen this, and although we were fully aware that coconuts come from palm trees, it's strange to think of them as the seeds of new trees. But there it was, and we liked it. As we walked on, we started to hear loud thuds. We looked up nervously, fearing that we would surely sustain concussions if hit by falling coconuts. We looked around and found that the source of the thudding was a man in the top of a palm tree shaking coconuts loose. As long as the falling was man-made, we figured we were safe. On the way back down from the viewpoint, we saw why he was kicking down the coconuts. He had placed a sharpened bamboo spike face up in the ground, and used it to stab the coconuts, ripping off the outer layer. It was really cool, and he was nice enough to let us photograph the process.

After our day in Phi Phi (pronounced "pee pee," which is why we decided to rename it "the place with the beaches and stuff"), we were ready to return to Bangkok, and air conditioned hotel rooms, for our last bit of world travels. Also, the Swedes were leaving in two days, and had promised again and again that our last night together we were to "party like rockstars." Despite our insistence that we were far too old for such shenanigans, the plan was set.

So the next morning we woke up and strolled the island until close to our 2 o'clock ferry to Krabi, where we would catch a night bus back to BKK. We played a few rounds of Beach Yahtzee and then our ferry pulled in. We threw on our packs and went to the dock. We pulled out the tickets we had purchased in Krabi (from the suspicious woman, mind you) and handed them to the ticket taker. He looked over them for a second, said something in Thai as he pointed to the travel agency's logo ("Krabi May Travels"), and then said to us "Sorry, these are no good. This company never pays us." ...What?

Just when we thought our travel glitches were coming to an end, just when we are three days from completing our journey... we were to be stranded on an island. Now, the fact that it was a tropical island with a 7-11 makes that sound less horrible, but we were unnerved all the same. Andrew lost his temper a tiny bit, and we asked him what we should do. He suggested buying new tickets, and fast as the ferry was about to leave, and we had no choice but to comply.

The new tickets were 350 baht, 50 more than we bought from Miss Crabby May, but at least we made it on board and departed. The one and a half hour ride was not a fun one, as we were absolutely stewing about the travel agency and had nothing to do but wait. Crabby May had told us she'd meet us on the pier and take us to the bus, but we thought if she had such a horrible reputation with the boat company our money was long gone. She probably ran off to spend our money in some place with palm trees and white sand.. hm. Anyway, we decided to try and call her and the couple next to us was nice enough to loan us their cell. Although we had three numbers, none of them worked, so we spent an hour of the trip trying not to be too obvious as we made plans to strangle Crabby May.

About 20 minutes before docking, the couple offered us their phone again, and Alex made the call (as Andrew was still steaming from the ears and was likely to "raise his voice" at her). She got through, and Crabby May was suspiciously accepting of the situation. She said someone would be their to get us and take us by her place, where she'd give us our money back. We were able to breath a little easier, and the last part of the ride was much less stressful.

Once in Krabi, sure enough a man was waiting for us. He helped our bags into a van and drove us to Crabby May's. We unloaded, and went straight to the counter. Crabby had our money in her hands, and within seconds we had our 700 baht back (which means she refunded us the tourist price on Phi Phi, as opposed to the price of tickets we bought from her). We were shocked, and thanked her as we boarded a van that drove us about three hours to Surat Thani, where we picked up the night bus (after loading up on food at the nearby 7-11, of course).

The night bus. Oh, the night bus. We'd heard such horrible things about the tourist night bus, which calls itself "VIP" and is supposed to be anything but. The worst part about them is supposed to be that they stow your bags a level underneath you (they're all double-deckers), and then as you sleep men allegedly go through everyone's belongings and extract cash, etc. In fact, some of the more paranoid conspiratists say they pipe sleeping gas in through the AC to ensure no one interrupts them. We think that would be a bit unecessary, as a 14 hour bus ride is bound to cause drowsiness all the same. Anyway, we had read and heard so much about them, even first hand accounts, and so were very careful about not leaving anything valuable in our backpacks. We kept our two prized possessions, the camera and the ipod, between us as we slept, and woke up at 6am, having arrived in Bangkok.

The ride was nice except for when we were passed by other VIP buses that had movies playing on their TVs. Ours had TVs but nothing was on them, and Andrew suspects that this must be why everyone says the VIP buses are horrible. When we got off the bus, the crew was already unloading the bags, and Andrew got stuck on the stairs as they finished pulling out the bags. When we finally found our packs, the bus doors were closing and the bus already pulling away. While Andrew tried to see if there was anything missing from his pack, Alex got the license plate of the bus, in a vain attempt to hunt them down if something was stolen.

Andrew quickly determined his bag had been opened, as the clips seemed to be arranged differently from when we handed it over, and the top pouch was emptied of its contents (mostly flu medicine and bandaids). We checked for the few remaining things of value, and they all seemed to be present. So it seemed we were only victims of privacy invasion, and we started walking to our hotel. A few minutes into the walk, as our grogginess wore off, we realized that the symptoms of our bags having been tampered with were not really much evidence, and when Alex mentioned that she had emptied the top pocket when we were packing, we decided it our bags had remained untouched. Who can blame us for the paranoia, though, after our experience with Crabby May?

Because it was 6am, our hotel did not yet have a room available, so we spent the morning with a McDonald's breakfast and some internetting. We secured our precious AC/TV room, and kicked back for a bit, watching the pirated movies channel. We spent the rest of the day roaming the shops, and met up with the Swedes for dinner. We found a great pizza joint and ordered some for carry out. We took the food back to our hotel room along with some 7-11 beers and had a great meal. We planned to meet up the next day to go to Siam Square, a shopping mecca in Bangkok, as we were in dire need of more shopping.

The next day, after dining on a luxurious free breakfast, we met up with the Swedes and went to Siam Square. We went into a huge mall and were shocked to find a Diary Queen. More curiously, Andrew had just yesterday been explaining the cookie dough Blizzard and how they must serve it to you upside-down. We ordered a couple and set off to explore the mall, which was, miraculously, almost entirely fixed prices. Being the bargain-hunters that we are, though, we sought out the floor full of small shops and hagglability. After shopping until our feet hurt, we went back to our hotel, planning to meet up with the Swedes for our "partying night."

We had dinner and then sought out a bar, but it turned out that although they talked the talk, the Swedes (well, half of them) were far too tired to "party like rock stars," and we ended up calling it an early night.

We said our goodbyes to the Swedes, although they are already planning a trip to Texas (to try Dr Pepper, of course). We went back to our hotel, planned out our next day's last minute sightseeing, and then watched a movie.

Big Gulps, Big Fish, and Big Scratches

andrewalex — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 12:40:00 GMT

Aw....the land of papaya and pineapple, and warmth, and hot showers, and beaches, and thai food, and cheap souvenirs, and really nice people, and happy hour specials, Thousands of 7-11's with big gulps...and....ok, we like it...ALOT. In fact, we have decided to stay for another six months......ok, maybe not, but we do like it alot.

We arrived in Bangkok on the 6th. We initially planned to remain in Kathmandu until the 13th, but were feeling the need for a beach, and happily Thai Airlines didn't charge us to change our ticket, so we left a week early. (Granted we paid a lot for it begin with), but we happily caught the plane and took full advantage of the free drinks on board. We thought we could drink enough to make the flight a loss for Thai, it didn't happen, but Andrew was happy to sample an after dinner brandy, as well as two rum and cokes. Alex settled for Rum and Diet Coke (the diet seemed like a better deal, because it costs more in the store) and a Heinekin. It was a GREAT flight. We landed in Bangkok around 6:00 pm and found our way to the backpacker district. Once there Andrew left the bags with Alex and headed off to find a hotel. We settled for a somewhat shifty hotel that was pretty cheap for the first night, and then hit the town.

That night we didn't see a food vendor we didn't like. In the interest of spreading our dollars far and wide, we had shish kebabs, pad thai, pineapple, and....wait for it...Mc Donalds!!! Yes, the Thai Baht menu is not as sweet as the Indian Rupee menu was, but the ice cream was great. After feeling completely stuffed, we left the McDonald's and ran into our Swedes. We are rather fond of these four girls, and had planned on meeting up somehow, so it was a happy time. We decided to go to a bar, where we shared 2.5 liters of Singha beer with the Swedes and had two fruit shakes for ourselves. We ordered watermelon and pineapple. Unfortunately they got our order wrong and one came out as lemon. When we discovered the error, we asked the waiter to change it. He took away the lemon shake, and brought the watermelon shake and a bill for three shakes. It was only for 40 baht more (30 baht = $1), but Andrew was adament that he was not going to pay for the first drink. It is an oddity that we have noticed more than once here, but if the waiter makes a mistake, they expect you to pay anyway. We've heard tale of people getting the completely wrong dish and being unable to send it back. Unfortunately, it took about thirty minutes, and a stupid bouncer wearing a police shirt (and tried to pretend he was a cop), but finally we got our forty baht back, and went to the hotel. The next morning, we checked into the D&D Inn, which is a great hotel, replete with TV, air conditioner, and free breakfast. We stayed in a good bit watching their cable channels, which...ran pirated movies. E.g. we watched the Bourne Ultimatum and for much of it, there was a head in the picture from an audience member. It's possible that Andrew was even more excited that it was pirated than that it was in English. The next day we met up with the Swedes before they left Bangkok. We ate lunch and shopped for most of the day, and bought a total of 4 Big Gulps (with ice).

After three days in Bangkok, we took a local bus to the seaside town of Cha Am. It was about 2 hours away from Bangkok, and we arrived with enough time to find a nice hotel (again with tv & aircon) and we spent most of the first day at the beach. Initially we were worried that there might not be 7-11, however, after walking five blocks and seeing the number of 7-11's, our fears were asuaged, and yes we did sample all of them. We even made a point to get a hotel within a few seconds walk of a 7-11, and when we went to the beach we were able to find our way back to the hotel by counting them (the place we liked best was 5 7-11's away). Since re-entering the land of cheap convenience store food, Andrew has had many craving for hot dogs, and our first night in Cha Am was no different. We made our ritual walk to the 7-11, Andrew ordered up 2 hot dogs, and headed to the condiment table to retrieve his mustard. Imagine his shock and horror when we discovered there was no mustard. Moreover, when he tried to use the opaque yellow mustard container, a blob of sweet chili sauce poured out. Rather than being a defeatist he tried the next two 7-11's. Finally, after all of them had said the mustard was finished, he came back to the hotel and decided he would just eat the hot dogs without the mustard. He seemed pretty happy nonetheless.

The next day in Cha Am, we spent at the beach. Unfortunately, we weren't very good at applying sunblock, and ended the day with very splotchy skin, and of course hot dogs. (This time with mustard as we visited a fourth 7-11). Cha am was a very nice sea side town, but we had diving to do, and islands to visit, so we caught a couple taxis to the bus station (the taxis were mopeds) and caught a bus to Chumpon. We arrived in Chumpon about four hours later, and only knew to get off because Andrew asked the driver. Unfortunately, the bus left us in the middle of nowhere with two Swiss guys. A local woman took pity on us and led us to the correct side of the highway and called one of her friends to take us to the pier in Chumpon (25 km away). Twenty minutes later when the friend arrived we all piled into the car and then asked for the price. 600 Baht! We explained that we would rather walk, thank you very much. (We weren't sure of where the "taxi" was going to take us anyway, since no one spoke English very well.) Anyway, after a bit of negotiating, we were able to secure the ride for 350 Baht, even though the Swiss were no help whatsoever. (Wat eez des? 400 baht eez gut price no?)

The car took us to the pier where we would catch the ferry the next morning, and we bought two tickets. The boat was for 7am, and we had to be at the office at 6:20, so we decided to stay at the hotel just behind the travel agency. Well, that and the fact that Andrew didn't find anything else within a comfortable walking distance, and the rooms were really nice. Air con and cable TV again, so we kicked back and watched movies. We also had dinner on a dock surrounded by Christmas lights, and it reminded us of a Dawson's Creek set.

The next morning we dragged ourselves to a truck that took us to the pier. We boarded the ferry and after some waiting were out on the open sea. The ferry was a little too air conditioned, so we went up to the deck to warm up. We weren't the first or only people with this idea, though, and the deck looked like a war zone- people laying everywhere, some on top of others, or on top of the pile of luggage. We squeezed into a small open space and enjoyed the sun for the rest of the ride into the island of Koh Tao.

Koh Tao, which means Turtle Island, is the smallest of the inhabited Samui Islands, and our scuba diving destination for Thailand. While on the boat, several touts showed us their resort/scuba center and we were able to get a feel on prices. We opted out of their services though, as the touts usually have overpriced and/or underserviced lodges. We talked to a travel agent in town and found a scuba resort with great prices, and a free taxi, and climbed aboard. The resort had very "basic" bungalows, the kind that make you feel like your camping, but at 200 baht on nights we'd been scuba diving, they suited our needs just fine. We even have a family of pet lizards that help us out by eating the mosquitoes that make their way into the room at night. Thanks, guys!

The next day we wandered the island a little, verifying a 7-11 within walking distance, and then went to the scuba shop and got fitted for our gear. It'd been two years since we dove, so we signed up for a package of four dives with a much needed refresher course. An example of how long it had been: when we were getting fitted, we were asked to try on some wet suits. After the instructor found fins for us to try on, he turned around and said quietly, "uh, the zipper goes in the back." We looked down and realized our suits were on backwards. Not only that but Andrew managed to put his on inside out as well, and still got it to zip up. After that, we were glad we had opted to take the refresher course.

The course was quick and painless. We went over the most basic skills that we were tested on in the certification course, and it included a mini-quiz of sorts. Afterward, we swam from the beach we were tested on to the first dive site, called the Japanese Gardens. It was gorgeous, and although the fish are cool, the plant-life is just other-wordly. There is one spiky black sea urchin that has a little blue and orange eye in the center that glows and flickers. It's really bizarre, and reminded us of the evil eyes we saw all around Turkey. But to see plants like this, that seem to have brains and everything (and some actually look like brains) is just mind-boggling. There are also little worms that look like colorful urchins and live in the coral. They provide quite a bit of amusement as when you brush your hand over the water they dart into the coral so rapidly at times you know you saw something move but couldn't tell what it was.

The next site we went to was called White Rock, and had a few more exotic sea creatures, including a very agressive fish called the Titan Triggerfish. It's a territorial guy, and has been known to take off divers' fingers and ears. Andrew didn't know this before hand or he would have renewed his warning to Alex about not losing digits. Best of all, perhaps, Alex didn't get seasick as she had when we dove before, and we felt great afterward.

A lot of the bar/restaurants on this island advertise a movie each night, one that is no doubt pirated, that you can watch as you eat or drink. A brilliant idea, so we decided to join in. We emailed the Swedes, as they were planning on making it to Koh Tao that day, and told them that if they wanted they could join us for dinner and a movie. About twenty minutes in they arrived, and Alex joined them in a quieter area. Andrew, already hooked to the film, opted to be anti-social and keep watching. After the movie, Andrew joined the conversation and we made plans for the next day. We had thought about renting a 4-wheeler so we could explore the other, harder to reach beaches, but the girls had rented mopeds and it turned out they were significantly cheaper. So, after Andrew test-drove one of theirs, we decided we could rent one and go out the next day in search of uncrowded beaches on the other side of the jungle.

The next morning we woke up and rented a brand new, shiny red scooter. Better judgement would have told us to find one with more scratches, but as we weren't planning on scuffing it up, we didn't think it would matter. The rental included a couple ping pong ball helmets, Andrew's with a fancy visor and everything. We drove off, wobbling back and forth. The girls are staying on the south beach and we are on the west beach, so we had a good 10 kilometer drive to their lodge to get used to the scooter. Judging from Alex's ever-tightening grip on Andrew's shoulders, it was harder than we thought to get used to the scooter. We met up with the girls and the six of us headed out on our three mopeds, intent on getting to a small beach on the southeast of the island.

Halfway there, we encountered a series of dauntingly sandy hills, but were able to make it up them no problem. The last big hill, however, was so steep and rocky that it was all but impassible, so we decided to park our scooters and walk from there. We walked down the other side for what seemed like forever, and ended at a very small cove with rocky sand and, unfortunately, hard coral all the way up to the water's end. So, relaxing in the water was difficult, as we were constantly getting stabbed by the sea rocks. We kicked back on our beach mats for a little before deciding to go explore other parts of Koh Tao.

We climbed- slowly- back up the hill and through the jungle. We found our mopeds, and the Swedes, sadly, had decided to return home. This was mostly due to the fact that they slightly resembled cooked lobsters. We bid them farewell, and started back down the dusty dirt hill to the main road. It was too steep and sandy at first, so Andrew idled down with it and Alex followed behind. After we came to a flat straightaway, we decided we could ride the rest of the way. Alex boarded and we set off. Everything was fine and dandy.

Then we crashed. There was a mound of dirt, not unlike a speed bump, that we made over with ease. Problem was, just past it was a build-up of very soft sand, so after going over the bump we sunk into the sand and dropped the bike. Luckily, neither of us had a scratch on us, but the bike did not fare as well. We had scratched the plastic underside on the right side. No big deal, we figured, as that part is bound to get scratched up anyhow. So we kept going.

If the mound of soft dirt was problematic for us, imagine our chagrin when the road began sloping downward again. The path was much harder than before and the slope not as steep, so we kept driving. After a bit, though, we had picked up too much speed going down a hill, and the sandy gravel got the better of us. That wreck was not nearly as quaint as the first, and when we were done with it we both had road rashes on our hands and feet and Andrew's back, and Alex's backside had sustained significant bruising. And once again, the bike got a pretty good mark as well. This time, the left brake, mirror, and front panel got scratched. The panel, which was red, had the deepest, and most obvious, scratch of all, although it was still only an inch long. After that, we determined the bikes would not be used on anymore up or downhill adventures. In fact, we were close to returning them right then, but opted instead to keep them for the rest of the day, sticking only to the flat, paved roads. We met back up with the girls at the beginning of the main road, and one of them had wrecked as well.

We all decided to drown our sorrows with sandwiches at a nearby restaurant, and then went our separate ways, planning to meet back up for dinner. We rode home, as carefully and slowly as inertia would allow, cleaned up our wounds, and took an after-wreck nap. We spent the rest of the day lamenting the scratches on the bike and wondering what it would cost us, but were still able to drive it over to the Swede's beach for dinner. Along the way, Andrew almost killed 12 people when he had to execute a turn, but he saved them all at the end by pulling sharply to the left. What a nice guy. Dinner was nice, too, but the impending doom of having to return the bike, let alone having to ride it home, was overwhelming, and even our Snickers Shake wasn't quite as tasty because of it.

When we finally headed home, it was again as carefully as we could manage. We decided to go straight to the rental shop and get it over with. The man there was quite the thespian, and had dramatic speeches to accompany his looks of sadness at the bike. He retrieved our contract and pointed out that normally the damages we caused would cost 4500 baht, but he would be okay with 2500. That is about $75, and we were not jumping up and down at the discount. In fact, we decided to haggle with him, as his reasoning for the high cost was that he had to "completely replace" the front panel. Completely replace? The scratch was an inch long. But yes, he claimed he always completely replaces the parts if there's the slightest mark, so that others can not make it worse and then "claim it was already like that." He stated this was all made clear in the contract, which Alex scoffed at. Surely we didn't sign something that said he could replace the part entirely for one scratch. Let us see the contract. ...Oh.

The argument about the illogical nature of his repair plans went on for half an hour, and by the end of it we had gotten him to ask how much we wanted to pay. Nothing, Andrew woud have liked to say, but we offered him 2000. Then, he backed down on his offer for us to name our price, and told us we owed 2500. We angrily reminded him that he had asked for an offer from us, thus commencing the bargaining process, and could not fall back on his original price. After some good, old fashioned hard-headedness, he agreed to the "lower" price (a little over $60), and returned our passport. But before we could get out of there, he told us we still had to pay for the rental. Another 200 baht. That was quite angering. We paid and left, but not before Andrew asked if he could keep the scratched front panel, as the guy had said that "it was worthless now." Turned out the guy didn't want to give it up, so we left, somewhat begrudged.

Since Richard never fails to complain about these lengthy posts, and since Daniel was reading our last one "like a TAAS article" (that was pretty funny, actually), we'll end things for there. We will say this, though: later, while walking by the evil bike shop, we saw what looked like red tape over the scratch. Andrew resisted the urge to push the scooters in a domino effect, but we have been sure to glare every time we pass. Next time we'll fill you in on our second set of dives, which included several sharks. Did one of us get eaten? You'll just have to wait and see.

The Trek, Week Three: Down & Out

andrewalex — Sun, 16 Mar 2008 16:20:00 GMT

2-27-08: DAYS 15 & 16

(Morning)

Lobuche (4930m) to Gorak Shep (5140m)

Well, it turns out that Diamox makes peeing as frequent and necessary as breathing. Diamox is a medicine that alleviates AMS symptoms by divulging the body of fluids, and the fluids have to go somewhere... Right before bed we took a second half dose, about 6 hours earlier than recommended, and paid the consequences. That night we had to make trips to the "toilet" (Eastern style hole in the ground) five or six times, and each time we were certain we would explode before we made it. Add to this the fact that we have to get dressed every time, all the way down to our hiking boots, and the fact that the floor in the bathroom has a thin layer of ice across it. It was a major pain.

The next morning, we woke up feeling somewhat better. We both still had headaches, but we were fairly certain they were from being dehydrated rather than above altitude. So we ordered a pot of tea and drank quickly. After that we felt much better, and decided that we could try to make it to Gorak Shep. Before we made it out of sight of the lodge, though, Alex was feeling a bit off. She thought it was actually the Diamox that made her feel queasy, but was able to keep walking. We took things really slow, and after three and a half hours (we were told it should take about two and a half), we started to realize just how hard it was to find the path. We could see Mt. Everest, though, so we kept heading in that general direction until a German couple emerged from what was apparently the right path, and confirmed where we needed to go. It was another half an hour before we could see the village of Gorak Shep, and that was after climbing up and down the side of a very sandy and rock covered glacier. Down in the valley to our side, the main glacier was covered in dirt on the top, but had solid ice waves swirling through the sides. It looked to us like coconuts; brown on the top and shiny white on the inside. We'd never seen a glacier before and wouldn't have thought it could look like West Texas on the surface. Very strange.

(Afternoon)

Gorak Shep (5140m) to Everest Base Camp (5300m)

After checking into our lodge, we ordered a quick bowl of Ra-Ra-Ramen and got directions to EBC. We left for it at ten til one, knowing that if we didn't make it there by three we'd have to turn around to get back before dark. We started by scaling several hills of sliding rocks. We determined that another path, down a valley of sliding rocks and then up another hill of sliding rocks... was a better trail to take, so we made the dangerous voyage to the other side. As we were climbing, a couple huge rocks tumbled down from the hill we were on, for no apparent reason. It was a bit foreboding.

We hiked for one and a half to two hours, and all the while we were on a ledge 50m above the glacier that EBC is on. At one point, though, the trail simply vanished. We wandered back and forth, up and down, but there was no good way down to the glacier. The closest thing to a trail that we found was on the steepest, most perilous pile of slidy rocks we had seen all day, and we made the decision that since we could see the base camp from where we were (it's just a flat spot of ice at the bottom of Everest), we would not risk our lives to actually stand on the base camp. Some might say that if we had, oh, not fired our guide, it might've been easier to make it, but we think that Tika would have gotten us killed for sure. Okay, not really, but we were happier to be without him all the same.

The walk back was surprisingly quick, and did not include any landslides, which was nice. We came back and parked in the sun room and chatted with the hotel guy. Next to us, four Swedish girls were having a conversation in, well, Swedish, so there wasn't much interaction with them. Later, though, the hotel guy turned up the dung heater and we all crowded around to warm up. The Swedes (who spoke perfect English, just like everyone else we've met... Americans are so lazy) turned out to be really cool. We had a very long conversation about all of the food we missed, which for us was mostly a reciting of the fantasy list we made, and Andrew's extensive preachings on how great Dr Pepper is. We found out that the Swedes have hundreds of varieties of licorice, including what they consider a delicacy; salty licorice. We weren't too anxious to try that one out...

DAY 16
Gorak Shep (5140m) to Kala Patthar (5500m)Last night we slept better than we probably have on the entire trek. We were toasty warm (too warm at times) and Andrew only had to make one trek downstairs to the restroom. It's funny because everyone we met said that it's hard to sleep at all at Gorak Shep, but we slept like baby yaks. Today was the day we were to hike up to Kala Patthar, before starting our trip back down.

Kala Patthar is a well-known destination for people who want to see Everest in at it's best. KP is a hill with a 5500 m peak that allows fantastic views of Everest. Many people we met along the way were planning to trek to KP and forget EBC altogether, because they complained that you can't see anything from EBC anyway. It's also popular to head off for KP in the wee hours of the morning so that you can watch the sun rise from behind Everest.

We opted out of the 4am trek to KP, because we knew that since we we'd be facing East and the sun rising from behind Everest, we wouldn't actually be able to get a good look at it. On top of that, hiking at 4am at an altitude of 5500 m sounds like a recipe for disaster. The kind of recipe that starts with "take a perfectly good set of fingers and expose them to __ degrees below zero weather..." Still, we did wake up around 6 and were on our way up the hill by 6:30am.

The trail up the hill was steep and split into multiple options. We did our best to stay on the less steep of them, but they were obviously more fit for yaks than foreigners. There were two plateaus along the way. We made it to the first, and could feel the nerves in our hands and feet deciding to take vacations. By the time we made it to the second plateau, our hands were numb and our feet had gone from painful to numb and back to painful. At that point, we evaluated our necessity to see Everest from up high versus keeping all of our fingers and toes. And as Andrew had already warned Alex that if she lost any digits he would be "so very mad," we decided that we would call it a morning and head back down. The second plateau was probably only about 75 meters from the peak, but we could see Everest just fine, took a few photos (as soon as we took our gloves off to take the photos our hands turned to ice) and then made our way, quickly and numbly, back to the ground.

On the way down, we were seriously worried about Alex's toes, and kept our minds off of it with visions of giant pots of hot chocolate and a dung-feuled fire. Thankfully, the Swedes were awake and downstairs already when we got back to the lodge, so the fire was nice and warm. We took off our gloves and boots and thawed out.

(Afternoon)
Gorak Shep to Pangboche
We're about to start our way down, and we are planning to make it to Pangboche today. It's a long way, as Pangboche is one stop away from Tengboche, but we think we can do it. The Swedes are planning to stop there the night as well, so we are going to go down as one big group.

...

We did indeed make it to Pangboche. It took us about 7.5 hours including a one hour lunch. Between us and the Swedes we were able to navigate our way back down the near trailess path.

Along the way, though, Andrew lost his red jacket rainshell (made famous in so many travel photos), which was "annoying." Luckily it was fairly empty at the time of it's departure, so all he lost was a chance to stay dry if it rains. But hey, we're almost out of the mountains and then we'll be in Thailand. Who has ever heard of it raining there?

2-28-08: DAY 17
Pangboche to Namche Bazar... BakeryLast night was soooo cold. We tried to share a single bed, but it dind't really work. We had five or six blankets, but as has been the case in most places, they are all made of some kind of super slick material that allows them to silently sneak off of the bed one by one until you are laying, uncovered and shivering, in near freezing temperatures. At about one in the morning, we tried pushing the two single beds together so the blankets couldn't leap off of the bed anymore, but it was impossible as the beds were the exact length of the room, apparently built into them.

Today we plan to trek again with the Swedes to Namche Bazar. We will stay at the same lodge as before, but there is a bakery across the street that is famous among the trekkers. They have a real pizza oven, among other delicious treats. And because all of the lodges require that you eat their food (or they can charge exorbitantly higher room rates), we are going to stop at the bakery, have lunch, and then check into our lodge. But for now, we are huddled around a fireless heater waiting for breakfast. Brr.

...

So today felt like it took forever. By the time we got down the Tengboche hill, we were seriously dreading the climb back up to Namche. It took about 5.5 hours total. When we got to the bakery, there was a sense of celebration as everyone cheered and hugged and, more importantly, ordered pizzas. We also orderd a chocolate donut and an apple strudel. Alex wanted to go ahead and order a slice of chocolate cake before the pizzas arrived, but Andrew convinced her it'd be better to "wait and see" if we'd be hungry after the pizzas. We weren't.

We are somewhat dreading the long walk tomorrow, but similarly looking forward to getting back to KTM (and hot showers... it's been... a while since we've showered). Tonight we might buy a few more cokes and just hang out. Tomorrow should be a long, long day, but how worthwhile to finally get there.

2-29-08: DAY 18
Namche Bakery to Lukla
Indeed, today was difficult. We started with breakfast at the bakery, which was nice except the bread was a bit undercooked... We bought an extra loaf to have for lunch so that we could get to Lukla faster, specifically because we wanted/needed to move our flight date up (as we were scheduled for the 4th). About 2 and a half hours into our trek, which was incredibly slowed because tomorrow there is a market and Namche and therefore every few minutes we had to "pull over" for a herd of yaks carrying RaRa, Alex came up with the brilliant (perhaps obvious?) idea to call ahead and arrange our flights for tomorrow by phone. It worked, but because Agni Air didn't put their phone number on our tickets, we had to ask the Swedes to let us talk to their carrier, Yeti Airlines, and procure Agni's phone number from them. It was a pain.

After that we were able to slow down, and slow down we did. It took something like 6 or 7 hours for us to get to Lukla, but getting there was so satisfying. We were done. We and the Swedes celebrated by stopping at a bar that had 30 minutes left in their 2 for 1 cocktail happy hour. We partook.

The music was hooked up to an ipod, and the bartender let us pick our own soundtrack for the celebration, which was awesome. We danced into the evening, still in our hiking boots, mind you. One of the Swedes, Malin, even donned her trekking headlamp, set to strobe, which completed the party atmosphere. Afterward, we went to the North Face Resort, whch would have been a nice lodge except for a peeping Tom who was busted watching one of the Swedes in the rest room and then mysteriously vanished... Anyhow, we're about to go to bed, and are very excited about getting up early for our flight "home."

3-1-08: DAY 19
Lukla to... LuklaWe woke up, paid up, and headed to the airport. The runway was quite terrifying to Andrew, as it wa built on a hill and on take off it was obvious that the only way to take off was to start the plane downward toward the cliff. Bleck. We got our boarding passes, checked our bags, and waited eagerly. The "airport" in Lukla is notorious for delays and cancellations due to weather, but after about two hours a plane from Yeti Airlines landed. The Swedes were quite ecstatic as it was their plane, and they proceeded to board and eventually take off. We were so jealous that they got off the ground before us, especially as we had all planned to go to a steakhouse in Kathmandu and dine on something other than spinach and rice. Before they left, though, they told us that they heard no other planes would be arriving because of bad weather in Kathmandu. Not a funny joke, we thought, but it turned out that was because they weren't joking at all. It was true, and after a couple more hours of staring out on the tiny, sloped tarmac with anticipation, we decided to roam around until our flight came in.

We waited at a lodge across the street from the airport, figuring it was close enough we'd hear a plane landing when it came in. The TV was on, and tuned into two pairs of Chinese women competing in a Swiss badminton tournament. It was worse than it sounds. Add to that the sinking feeling that we were indeed not getting to KTM today, and you can imagine the atmosphere in the room as the women swung silently and uneventfully at the birdie.

After a considerably depressing amount of time, we decided to assume we weren't leaving the ground today, and headed to a lodge that a Belgian guy we met in Lobuche had recommended. He had said it was nice and warm, and indeed it was. The owner was a nice lady, and she kept trying to find a movie for us to watch on the satellite channels. There wasn't anything good on, so we settled, and we mean settled, for a Vin Diesel movie called The Pacifier. It was horrible, but a welcomed dulling of the mind after the morning of grief. We were content to sit by the fire, watching bad movies until bed time, but unfortunately the power kept cutting out and the hotel owner's solution was to turn off the TV for gaps of time. We may never know why Vin Diesel had a duck that would take attack orders from him...

3-2-08: DAY 20
Lukla to Kathmandu!!
Yesterday afternoon, we were watching Saw 2 (fairly bad, but again mind-numbing in a good way), and decided to sneak out for a coke (again, the lodges would charge us if they knew we were buying food outside of their marked up markets). When we came back, the owner had switched the channel to some Bollywood film, and the most mysterious thing is that the power didn't cut out once the entire time. Later, though, when we once again helmed the remote, the power cuts resumed with such frequency that the woman eventually told us watching the TV would be impossible.

Anyhow, none of that matters now because... we are in the air!! Our flight "home" just took off and we couldn't be happier. Actually, Andrew has had an odd mix of exhilaration for heading back to civilization, and terror, as the plane we're on is smaller than Alex's minivan. The weather seems fine, though, and we should be in Kathmandu soon. While we were waiting for planes to land and pick us up, and Agni plane landed, picked up "yellow ticket passengers" and took off again. It was horrifying, and for a moment we thought we might have to make Lukla our permanent home. A few minutes later, though, a second, bigger plane landed and we were quickly ushered aboard. And although the plane had about 16 seats on it, we had a flight attendant who offered us cotton balls for our ears and candy for our mouths. That was nice. Now things are getting a bit bumpy, so we have to stop writing before we get motion sickness and throw up our complimentary sweets...

After the Trek...
Thus completes three weeks of serious trekking. After arriving to Kathmandu, we grabbed a cab to our hotel and promptly took the most delightfully hot showers. It would end up being probably two or three showers before we got all of the "trekking" off of us, but it was a great start. We also returned our rented sleeping bags, dropped off nine kilos (18 pounds!) of laundry to be cleaned, and went to our favorite bakery to pig out.

From then on, our time in Kathmandu consisted almost entirely of eating and shopping. Oddly enough, it's also felt like so much more of a vacation for us since we got back from the mountains. The Swedish girls were planning on going to Thailand as well, and booked tickets for a few days after we got back. We were jealous of their imminent beach prospects, so we went to Thai Air and moved our flight up an entire week, free of charge.

In the mean time, we finally had our celebratory dinner at a fantastic steakhouse called K Too with the Swedes. We started out with a bit of pre-dinner wine, and then enjoyed a wonderful Steak Bearnaise ("Don't get saucy with me, Bearnaise!"). We also did more shopping and eating, ate at K Too again by ourselves, and for good measure, met up with the Aussies Michael and Kim, to have one more steak dinner before we left. That night we told them all about firing our guide, and we shared our suspicions about how much Tika disliked them. It turned out they knew it from the start, as Tika had apparently made some fairly rude remarks to them in Bupsa.

We caught our flight to Thailand, complete with free drinks and in-flight entertainment (although it is arguable how entertaining a half hour of TV devoted to Beyonce's fashion really is...), and made it to beautiful Thailand in the evening. If the airport was to be of any hint, Thailand was going to be awesome. It was, we decided, the biggest and best airport we'd been in on the entire trip. It was ultra modern (including fancy blue ceiling lights!) and made us feel like we were truly back in civilization.

The Trek, Week Two: The Uprising

andrewalex — Sat, 15 Mar 2008 16:15:00 GMT

2-20-08: DAYS 8 & 9

Bupsa to Chublung, Chublung to Namche Bazar

Well, we are on our way to Namche, and we are going to make it there in 2 days instead of the 4 that Tika had planned. We sat down with him the other night and told him that after looking everything over, we wanted to speed up this leg of the journey. It wasn't just because "everyone else was doing it." We have to be careful about ascending to quickly as we could get "Acute Mountain Sickness," or Altitude sickness. So, although we are scheduled to arrive back in Lukla (the town with the airport that will fly us back to Kathmandu) on March 2, and our flight is for March 4, it only gives us a one day buffer in case we get sick and need to rest. AMS is really serious, and you can be climbing no problem and once you hit your "limit," you can suddenly get a splitting headache. At that point you have to descend and take a rest day, and you can try again if you feel better. Because we started in Jiri and have been climbing up and down between 2 and 3000 meters (most people start in Lukla, and it is almost all uphill from then on), we are hopefully a bit more "trained" for the higher altitudes, but there is still a good chance that we'll need to rest a day. Point is, taking that into consideration, it just made sense to cut out two extra nights when we were so low.

When we told Tika this, he was incredibly hard to deal with. He kept telling us that it was impossible, once even telling us we'd die if we tried to make it in two days. Now, as our guide, one of his main jobs is to make sure that we don't die, but honestly he was saying that in the sense that it was a long way to go and he thought it would be too tiring to do. We insisted that we wanted to do it, and his way of insisting that we shouldn't was to keep asking us "so, what do you want to do?" What do we want to do? We just told you! It was a frustrating dance we did that night, but it ended with Tika saying that maybe we would be able to make it. Our compromise was to tell him that if we got to his original destination point and were "too tired to go on," we wouldn't. Secretly, though, we knew that the annoyance we felt after that conversation could have fueled us to make it to EBC the next day.

And on that note, we have made an executive decision. Once we reach Namche, we are going to let Tika go. We're going to make it to Namche this afternoon, but we can already feel the effects of knowing we'll soon be Tika-less. Every step is just a bit happier. It's still a mixed bag though. At times we are delighted to know we are doing something to solve our problem, at others we know that he needs the money, has a family, etc, etc. But the bottom line is if he needed the money enough, he'd be doing a job worthy of it, and we've already warned him a couple times.

Yesterday, Tika was a complete jerk, too. He didn't say two words to us, and we know it was because he was bitter that we were taking such long days despite him. We have a sneaking suspicion too that he hates the Aussies. We imagine he thinks they're a bad influence on us. We're at lunch now, and Tika just started eating 15 minutes after we finished three bowls of Ra-Ra-Ramen (They have instant noodle soup here. It's like our Ramen, but they call it Ra-Ra and charge obscene amounts for it). This, after we told him we wanted to take a quick lunch because it was a long day. Well, tomorrow he can take 4 hours for lunch if he wants to... Anyhow, we think he's done, so we have about 4 more hours before we reach Namche, and before the "Great Liberation."

2-21-08: DAY 10

Rest Day in Namche Bazar

So we did what we had to do, and we are now Tika-free. He left this morning at about 8, five minutes after we came down for breakfast. The uphill hike to Namche was serious... we had to break 4 or 5 times, and at one point enhaled a pack of Coconut Crunchees. Along the way we kept feeling the nerves flare up about letting Tika go, and decided to do it as soon as we made it into our hotel. We both woke up feeling pretty bad, but it went well and was surprisingly quick. We gave him 2500 rupees to help get home and that was good as his first question after we told him was "How do I get back to Pokara (his hometown)?" That was a bit odd, as we had expected more of a fight, or him at least to ask why. That question didn't come until a bit later, and our answer was that we thought having a guide would be less stressful, but that it turned out to be much more. It's done, so that's a relief.

(Again, the mountain climbing episode of the Simpsons would give you a fairly accurate reinactment of how the firing went... except without the cartwheels)

Homer: I'm going to climb this entire mountain on my own!
Sherpa: Then technically, shouldn't you go back down and start all over?
Homer: Shut up! You are so fired.
(The Sherpas cartwheel their way down the mountain in delight)

Today we are hanging around Namche, getting acclimatized (it's the biggest town we'll see, so it's a very popular rest day spot... even if you're not sick you have to take a couple at certain altitudes). We bought some new thin gloves, but the most exciting purchases were an 80 rupee bag of mango candies, enough Snickers for the rest of the trek, and a pocket-sized map of the Lukla to EBC trek. The last was quite a liberating and symbolic purchase. We have been trying to figure out the best route, or rather the best places to stop so we acclimatize properly. Austrian Michael's guide just informed us that the path from Lobuche to Gorak Shep (the village from which you can reach EBC and Kala Patthar by day) is hard to find because it is on the glacier, which changes with such regularity that there's not really a set trail. That makes us a bit nervous, but we'll be okay.

In other news, Alex has become quite impressive at launching "snot rockets." Kelie taught us that term, and was promptly scolded by Alex. It's your basic plug one nostril and blow action, and it has become necessary as the price of tissues is ridiculous. Really it has saved us so much, and we can each use a single tissue for the day if we... do that. Andrew is proud of Alex's rockets, as his usually resemble "snot shrapnel grenades," which explode at the tip of his nostrils. Yep.

Today we also stopped by an internet cafe and spent an obscene 10 rupees per minute in order to let everyone know we're okay (yes, we care about you people that much). We had a few comments from our parents, and it reinforced how nice it will be to see everyone. We are definitely homesick, and are excited about coming home. But for now, we have a mountain to climb.

2-22-08: DAY 11

Namche Bazar (3440m) to Tengboche (3800m)

Fantasy Grocery List:
Ham, Cheddar, White Bread, Yellow Mustard, Hot Dogs, Hot Dog Buns, Pringles (Salt & Vinnegar), Chocolate Cookies and Chocolate Pudding (for Hande Pie), Brownie Mix, Walnuts, Toast Fixings, Nerds, Peeps, Sprees, Skittles, Giant Chewy Sweet Tarts, Fun Dip, Runts, M&M's (Yellow Bag), Dr. Pepper, Diet Dr. Pepper, Corn Dogs, Extra Yellow Mustard, Peanut Butter (Honey Crunch King), Popcorn, Twix, Jell-o & Mallow (for Popcorn balls), Pecan Pie Fixings, Powdered Donuts, Caramello, Chocolate CHIp Cookie Dough, Caramels, Butter Fingers, Brown Chocolate Lover's Chips Ahoy, CheeseIts, Chips and Salsa, Hot Chocolate, Pineapple Yogurt, Chocolate Ice Cream with Chocolate Syrup & Chocolate Covered Nuts (but not Rocky Road), Cinnamon Rolls, Orange Rolls, Pineapple, Bananas, Strawberry Plums, Guiness Lime Beer, Pop Tarts (Strawberry and Cinnamon), Corn Pops, Honey Combs, Cocoa & Fruity Pebbles, Frosted Flakes, Honey Bunches of Oats with Almonds, Chocolate Ice Cream like Klondike Bars, Salad Fixings with Ranch Dressing, Beef Jerkey, Oatmeal Pies, Strawberry Shortcake.

Fast Food We Need:
Spankys: Mozzarella Sticks, Onion Rings
Sonic: Rt 44 Drinks, Super Sonic Blasts with Extra Reece's but no whipped Cream, Cherry Limeades, Chili Cheese Coney with Onions, Tater Tots, Grilled Chicken Wrap, Burgers
Taco Villa & Taco Bell: Tacos, Drinks, Bean Burrito, Tostadas, Chalupa
McDonald's: Hamburgers, Fries, McChickens, & Milk Shakes
Whataburger: Burgers, Chicken strips, milkshakes
Subway: BMT (Foot Long), Meatball, Cookies, Club
Schlotskys: Salt & Vinegar Chips & Regular Originals (extra crispy, extra mustard), Smoked Turkey and Cookies
Arby's: RB Sandwiches (3-4)
Cici's Pizza (buffet, buffet, buffet)
Dominos: Pep & Green Peps
One Guys: Calzones

Okay, obviously we were craving quite a bit this afternoon... probably because the walk up to Tengboche was super challenging. Alex got a tad dizzy at one point so we stopped for a round of 20 Questions. Today was the first Tika-free hike, and it was mmmarvelous. We did start out hiking with Michael and Kim, which was nice as we didn't actually know how to get out of Namche in the right direction... but they split off to do a different trek after about an hour. We had another very exciting landmark half way up to Tengboche...

We were trudging up, step after step, the only sounds our labored breathing, the thudding of our heavy boots, and the clinking of our hiking poles... when we heard the jingling of cow bells. Exhausted as we were, we tried to hurry to the nearest off-shoot from the path to get out of the way of the hooves and horns (as these paths are not made for both man and cow to pass comfortably). Like in a really really slow action movie, we stumbled uphill towards a few boulders and made it out of the way just before a black, brown, and white yak trampled by. Our first Yak sighting!! Well, except for the mini-yaks we saw in the gift shops... it was very exciting. We've been sharing the trail with donkeys and cows, and even some cow/yak crossbreeds that Andrew calls Caks, but these were the first true yaks we had seen. They are covered in hair and have stubby little legs, long furry tails, horns, and craploads of cargo on their back. They're really cool.

We got to Tengboche just after 2 and settled in. We made our food fantasy lists and then went to the monastery here, because Andrew had read on the map that there were "yeti artifacts" inside. There weren't. There were five or six monks sitting in a very ornate and very cold room sipping tea and praying though.

2-23-08: DAY 12

Tengboche (3800m) to Pheriche (4200m)

Andrew just wanted to make a proclamation: I shall never eat Tsampsa porridge again. It's a sticky, grayish-brown blob. Yuck.

The good news in the food department, though, is that apparently we have crossed the altitude from which spinach cannot grow, so our days of eating boiled spinach with EVERYTHING (the Ra-Ra, the rice, the Dal Baht, even the horrible excuse for a pizza) are over. From here on out, it's pretty much potato dishes as far as we can tell, and we aren't complaining... much.

Anyhow, we made it to Pheriche and are staying in "the White Yak" lodge. This is another point where we are to take a rest day, although we'll probably move tomorrow 200 meters higher to another village, just to take another baby step upward. On our map, the walk from where we stopped for lunch to here was labeled as "flat trail." We'd been looking forward to that, but it turned out to be more like Death Valley. An expanse between two mountains of rocky, criss-crossing paths, boulders, and dirt. Even the mountain faces were a drab brown, and covered in purply-brown shrubs. Oh, and there was a seriously ominous fog that accompanied us into Pheriche. We just ordered a small pot of hjot chocolate and played a few rounds of Gin Rummy with an expedition worker in the sun room (a brilliant concept, the sun room, except when people are in and out constantly and the door handle is broken off on the outside...).

After dinner, we settled in to listen to some Harry Potter before bed, but after 20 minutes the ipod made some scary clicking sounds and died completely. It was very sad. We think it has to do with the cold weather, so we're going to keep it as warm as we can and try again once we get back to KTM. :(

2-24-08: DAY 13

Pheriche (4200m) to Dingboche (4400m)

This morning we left the White Yak and climbed over a few steep hills to neighboring Dingboche. The plan was to sleep here, a bit higher, and make a day trip to Chukung, where we had heard there were some nice ice walls to check out. This would've helped us acclimatize, as Chukung is 4700m high. An hour in though, walking up and into the wind got the better of us, and we decided that instead of looking at ice walls we'd prefer to look at a heater powered by the mountain's super-fuel; yak dung. On the way back to the lodge, we came across some grazing yaks, and Andrew tried to befriend one. Although he did better than with the sheeps in Ireland, the tuft of grass that he pulled from the ground was of no interest to the yak. In fact, they apparently know how to shake their heads no, and after the yak shook his head and giant horns the second time Andrew stuck the grass under his nose, Andrew gave up, and we went back to the lodge.

At the lodge we ordered a drink called "Seabuckthorn juice." It's apparently made from the thorny bushes that litter the mountainsides, and is supposed to have quite a bit of Vitamins A and C. We saw the berries... they are like really tiny, bright red cherries. The drink was bright orange and tasted like tangy apricot juice. Alex had joked that it'd be funny if it was just heated Tang, but after seeing the berries that allegedly make the drink, it definitely should not be orange and we have the increasing suspicion that it is indeed Hot Tang. So now, we plan to eat lunch and relax, write a bit, play a few games, and just take it easy.

(Later that day) Well, turned out that there was a Canadian couple downstairs at lunch, and they. Liked. To. Talk. In fact, they talked until 8pm, and then we went to sleep. It wasn't the worst thing ever, but they were anti-tourists ("we've never been to EBC...we tell everyone it's crap") and pretty negative in general. So although our bed is situated on the window sill (literally, part of the mattress is pressed against the glass), it feels nice to be back in our room.

2-25-08: DAY 14

Dingboche (4400m) to Lobuche (4930m)

Today was the day we've been worried about, because it's almost at 5000 meters, a threshold for most people to get sick at, and it is 600 m in one day. We stopped in Dughla for hot chocolate, and then took our sweet time up a rocky and windy 200m path. After that, it was just an easy walk through a valley, alongside a frozen river, to get to the "Sagamartha National Park Hotel." Fancy name, but it felt a bit like camping while surrounded with plywood.

We ordered lunch and hot chocolate, and drank until we realized we both had slight headaches, a sign that the altitude was getting to us. We took a half dose of Diamox, the AMS medicine, and dove under four heavy blankets and napped for the rest of the afternoon. Now we're back in the dining room warming up at the dung heater (the man/woman that takes your food order and cooks the food is also the one that uses their bare hands to load the heater when the dung gets low. Quite disturbing, but in a funny way). Andrew still has a pretty bad headache, but we hope that resting the rest of the evening will help clear things up. Tomorrow we are scheduled to arrive in Gorak Shep and also to continue on to Everest Base Camp, thus reaching our "goal." It's scary and a little sad to think that we can be so close, less than 24 hours from our destination, and we might have to turn around because of altitude sickness...

The Trek, Week One: An Uphill Battle

andrewalex — Wed, 12 Mar 2008 20:33:00 GMT

We are basking in the Thai sun at the moment, preparing to embark deep into the ocean on a scuba diving trip. But for now, we need to tell you about travelling the other direction...

If any of you have seen the episode of The Simpsons where Homer climbs the Murderhorn, this blog may be redundant. For the rest of you, however, the following is more or less a transcription of our journalings for the 20 days we were trekking through the Himalayas. Because we do not feeling like going to ConvertEverythingBecauseAmericansHaveToBeDifferent.com, we will be using meters. But, as many of you have already closed the window in face of the daunting task of mental conversion (and it does get daunting... rupees to dollars, meters to feet, kilos to pounds... ugh), here is a helpful hint: a meter is about the same as a yard, so multiply the meterage by 3 and you've got about the right number of feet. Since the journal starts during the trek, here is what we did leading up to then:

We arrived in Kathmandu on Feb. 10th, greeted at the airport by a smiling man in green- Tika, our trekking guide. We hired him online after reading good reviews, and emailed back and forth until we were fairly confident his English was at a comfortable level. We had been debating between two possible guides, but he seemed the friendliest so we went with him. He hung yellow flower lays over our necks as we walked to a taxi. So far a little touristy, perhaps, but not bad. Maybe he was the right guide to pick...

We rode into town and although Tika offered help with picking a hotel, we had just flown in from India and knew all too well that when you get help with hotels, you are being overcharged so the hotel can pay commission to the person that "helped" you. Anyway, we went to a hotel we had read reviews about and dropped off our bags. We discussed the plan with Tika for the next few days, as we were supposed to start our trek on about the 13th. As Tika was leaving, he asked in passing if we could give him a few rupees to help with housing and food, as we were not paying his daily rate until the trek started. Hrm... well, we didn't ask him to show up early, but we gave him a little bit and he seemed satisfied.

We were staying in downtown Kathmandu, in an area called Thamel. Thamel is a mecca of counterfeit North Face gear, and unless you're planning on summiting Mt. Everest (quite an expensive endeavor- an expedition to the top costs something like $50,000), the shoddy nepalese North Face gear should be good enough. So with that in mind, we hopped from shop to shop, collecting prices and creating a spreadsheet of the cost to quality ratio of each shop's items. After making the rounds, we went back and bought a nice heap of boots, jackets, gloves, hats, hiking poles, and rented a couple sleeping bags. Tika met up with us and offered his help, but again, having been numbed to "help" in India, we forced our ways in front of him to ask the salespeople questions before he could assist us.

We ended the night agreeing to meet up with Tika at 5am in order to get to the bus in time. Our plan was to hike to the Everest Base Camp via Jiri, a small village about 9 hours away by bus. It is an alternate and extended trekking route, as most people fly into the town of Lukla on a 16-seater plane, and make the trek from there. We had read that the long trek was full of beautiful things not to be missed, and welcomed escaping the loud honking of the city that had become our background music. Plus, Andrew was more than happy to take a bus and walk rather than hop on a prop plane that would no doubt be flying through fog and between mountains.

(That should catch you up to where the journal kicks off, so now... our Trekking Journal...)

2-13-08: DAY 1
Kathmandu (1317m) to Jiri (1955m)
Yesterday we loaded up our newly purchased hiking gear on our backs (well, mostly on Tika's...) and caught the "luxury"bus to Jiri. By luxury, we mean seats that had a 90 degree bend and the ability to lean forward but not back, windows that drift open as the road gets bumpy, staticky shouting fromt he radio (although with a laugh track, so we don't think it's propaganda), squealing brakes, an average speed of 2 (miles or kilometers per hour, take your pick), and two baggage handlers who handled baggage by climibg out the door (while moving) and using the window as a step up to the roof. Oh, and colofrul frill on the top of the front windshiled. The ride was up and down, swerved left and right, and made us both feel ill. Alex couldn't even listen to the ipod without getting the queasy reading-in-the-car feeling. Our queasiness wasn't too bad, apparently, because we saw two buses slow down long enough for a passenger to vomit out the window. Within two minutes of each other. Ew.

We got to Jiri and Tika "found" us a room. Part of us resents him for helping because we just gout out of India and never really needed help finding a room. And what we did need help on he doesn't: bargaining. Infact, we suspect he "helps out"the businesses we go to, probably with a discount for himself.

We met a Canadian/Nepalese couple, who were cool to talk to even though the Canadian mentioned that her guide got frostbite on the Annapurna circuit last week.. Andrew has already threatened that Alex better not let any of her fingers or toes fall off, or else. Tika showed us a map of the route we were taking, with our destinations circled along the way. It was very exciting to see, and we were ready to get going. We also were tired, though, so after dinner we went back to our swanky 100 rupee room and dove into our sleeping bags, which smelled like a thousand backpackers in the middle of the summer.

DAY 2
Jiri (1955m) to Shivalaya (1770m)
This morning we woke up at about 6:30, after a solid 8ish hours sleep. We dined on honey porridge (with extra sugar), and packed our bags. We left about 8, but upon discovering that Alex's sunglasses were broken (shockingly, Andrew's third pair on the trip were not) we made a couple stops nearby. The first shop had the most hideous "Judge Doom from Roger Rabbit" sunglasses. They were round lenses with metal contraptions that apparently stayed on your face by stabbing into your ear-flesh. Alex didn't try them on. It was kind of funny trying to explain why the second, plastic pair, wouldn't do either. We found some nice ones for 150 rupees, and bought a couple caps for the same. Because Andrew's head is so mammoth, we couldn't find a cap that fit, so we bought Tika a shiny new "Abidas" cap and Andrew borrowed his old one (which fit, oddly enough). Everything here is ridiculously small, by the way, because the Nepalese are ridiculously small. When Andrew was trying to buy hiking boots, most of the shop people just laughed when he told them his size. Sometimes they brought him their "biggest pair," which fit like baby booties, and always if there was a pair that fit, they were suddenly much higher quality and therefore more expensive.

Anyhow, our first bit of walking out of the village was on a road suitable for cars. We thought to ourselves, "If it's like this the whole way..." Then we ascended a hill trail that left us out of breath and sweaty. We thought to ourselves, "If it's like this the whole way..." In fact, about 20 feet up the hill, we had to stop and shed the extra two pairs of long johns, long sleeved shirts, and two jackets that we thought we would need. When we were down to T-shirts and hiking pants converted into shorts, we continued. We kept being passed by Sherpas who ascended the trail as gracefully as goats. Okay, by Sherpas we mean little old ladies and small children... it was disheartening at times.

We stopped at lunch at one of the smoky shacks on the side of the trail and had Dal Baht (Dal Baht is the national Nepalese dish: usually it is served with rice, boiled spinach, a potato curry, and a very salty lentil bean soup). Tika told us the cost of the dish before he even asked, and it made us even more suspicious (and angry) that he wasn't being truthful with us. The cook even had to ask him the price. Oh, and it took an hour to get the food, something the Canadian we had met warned us will happen every time we order anything other than instant noodles. While we were waiting on our food, we staretd hearing music in the distance. It turned out to be couple of teenage porters carrying craploads of stuff in back-baskets, with attached speakers. It was like a miniature parade (the kind you might see in Imperial, TX on the Fourth of July, except without the bubble gum).

The trail was nice and sparkly because of a very fragile crystal-y rock that is sprinkled over the dust. It was nice that the trail was so decorative, too, because it's hard to look up while walking on some parts of the trail. When we did the views were fantastic, though. The mist settles into the valleyts and highlights the peaks of the hills. It looks like that "Blue Mountains.jpg" wallpaper that comes with Windows XP. You know what we're talking about.

The candle is almost gone! We're in a guesthouse now. We were going to stay at the "Shivalaya Hilton" (no affiliation), but we passed because it had an Eastern style toilet. Turns out every place in this town does, so we're stuck for the night with a hole in the ground. Most of these towns have rolling blackouts (including Kathmandu), so we are on candlepower right now. When we got moved into the guesthouse, Tika told us the hot showers were nice, and free. Perfect combination, as we've heard later on it is far too cold to shower at all. So Andrew took him up on the offer first, and came back shivering, as the "hot" shower was more like "water straight from the river." Then Tika arrived to inform us that he was wrong, it is 30 rupees per "hot" shower. Grr.

2-14-08: DAY 3 (Morning)

Shivalaya (1770m) to Deurali Pass (2705m)

We just broke for lunch... and we're tired. We started at probably the lowest point we will be at on the trek, and when we stopped for tea about 400m ago, we could see our lunch destination: a smattering of houses at the ridge of a mountain. The last half hour was rough, and our clothes got soaked with sweat. As soon as we stopped, we realized we were no longer in the sun but inside a frosty cloud, so we had to pile on our winter gear. It makes us wonder what we'll do later on when we are sweating on the inside and it is snowing on the outside. Our solution for now is a big pot of lemon tea at the Lama Guest House & Restaurant. This morning our milk tea tasted like bacon grease, then our black tea tasted like firewood and smoke, so hopefully the lemon tea will be more of the fruit/tea flavor.

Although this last ascent was hard, it was also quite beautiful. It was a winding stone path (staircase) that was dug out of the mountainside, so that moss covered the walls that were waist to shoulder high surrounding us. We also crossed two creeks on bridges made of logs and wood planks, saw a water mill house, and, well, we're glad the rest of the day is down hill. One cool thing we noticed is that people run thick rubber tubes/hoses from the creks to their houses, where they curve over into pails, some with faucets (although the water pretty much always drips). It's a really smart system, but it makes you realize that the water is starting in the top of mountains... Alex claims it is something to do with ocean floor plates...

DAY 3 (Afternoon)

Deurali (2705m) to Bhandar (2190m)

The rest of the trek today was much quicker - only a couple hours and all downhill. We started again bundled in our winter stuff and shed it as we made it down to Bhandar. Once inside the guesthouse, we dove under our sleeping bags and spent the rest of our Valentine's Day listening to Harry Potter. Just as Dumbledore entered the room to start the big final battle, our battery died, so with our breath held we charged the ipod during dinner and breakfast the next morning. Our V-day dinner consisted of garlic potatoes and vegetable fried potatoes (very potatoey), a pancake, leamon tea, and our last coconut cookie for dessert (Along the way, you can buy goods at "tea houses," which are basically people's homes opened for business during the day. The best thing we found were coconut cookies, which come in a little yellow roll and are de-licious. Little did we know that the 20 rupees we were paying for them was a bargain compared to what we'd end up shelling out for the same thing a couple thousand meters higher up...). Oh, and during dinner we watched a Hindi soap opera, which was awesomely horrible. The camerawork was so bad... everytime someone said something shocking (which was every other line at least) the camera zoomed in on each character in turn to show their reaction, sometimes doubling back to important characters for second and third reaction shots. Andrew has dubbed it the "Hindi Zoom," and plans to use it in every film he ever makes.

2-15-08: DAY 4 (Morning)

Bhandar (2190m) to Kinja (1580m)

Over breakfast we met up with a nice Australian couple, Michael and Kim, that are doing a similar trek as us on their own (guideless). They had just taken the bus from KTM to Bhandar, and from the sound of it we were lucky to get off in Jiri and walk the way.

So far today has been mostly down hill. We just got into a valley much lower than we stayed in last night, and are headed for a village 400m higher than that, so we have an uphill battle ahead of us today. Two cool things we saw this morning: 1) a couple great waterfalls, not like action movie waterfalls, but the kind where the water cascades down from one jagged rock to the next. Very picturesque (although we didn't take any pictures, funny enough). 2) Bagh Chal: we stopped so Tika could grab some breakfast (why he didn't eat at the guesthouse like us we do not know) and three kids were playing a game on a stone table. They had drawn a 16 square grid on the stone and were using kernels of corns and stones as sheep and tigers. The game means "Moving Tigers, and it is like an advanced version of Checkers. Tika said he'll teach us how to play tonight. Speaking of... the other night we played a round of Gin Rummy. He knew pretty much how to play, and it turned out it was because they have a similar game. So we decided to learn "Nepalese Rummy." It's like Gin Rummy, except there is a joker, you must have at least one run, your discards should be messy (something we first witnessed in India... those guys don't know what a stack is, and don't know how to shuffle either), and, most importantly, if you are teaching the game, you can change the rules and/or scoring system in a way that is advantageous to you. Still, we're excited about learning Bagh Chal.

DAY 4 (Afternoon)

Kinja (1580m) to Sethe (2580m)

That. Was. Hard. We walked (at least) a vertical kilometer, and felt every centimeter of it. The big news, though, is that Tika and the guesthouse owner decided to charge us 100 rupees. We met up again with Michael and Kim from Bhandar, and ended up staying at the same lodge. Problem is they were only charged 50 rupees, (as we found out while thawing out around the stove-- because they convinced us to take a "hot" bucket shower... never again). Oddly, in Bhandar we were charged 50 and them 100. So now we have to confront Tika, because it is bothersome/infuriating that we are paying him to help us and it seems like he is trying instead to help the economy or something. Worst still, we didn't get to learn Bagh Chal. Pft.

2-16-08: DAY 5 (Morning)

Sethe (2580m) to Lamjura Pass (3500m)

The talk with Tika went well, we think. At least he seemed to be angry for us being overcharged, and promised to be on our side (after Alex's threats of finding a new guide). He also offered to go back and sort things out, but seeing as how we had already started climbing up, there was no way we were going to do it again.

After "the talk," things were quite pleasant, although tough. Andrew decided he needed a brunch break, so we stopped before the long stretch of Lamjura Pass. That area was really cool. While we were eating, clouds enveloped the mountain, and as we left, fog billowed up over the trees, across the trail, and down the other side. It went as fast as chimney smoke (in fact, Andrew swore that's what it was for a while), and disappeared when we got close enough. After abot 20 more minutes of serious uphilling, we came to the pass. It was gorgeous and serene. It was the first real snow covering we've seen yet. The pass wound around the side of the moutnain, dipping up and down much gentler than anything else we walked today. It was chilly, but incredibly peaceful.

DAY 5 (Afternoon)

Lamjura Pass (3500m) to Junbesi (2680m)

Our initial itinerary was to stop in Taktor, but as Junbesi was "only" an hour and a half further, we decided after lunch we could make it. Although it was mostly downhill, it was still a good workout. We walked through the rest of the pass after lunch, which was, as Andrew put it, very cinematic. It looked like a graveyard; black tree stumps covering the hillside, and ominous fog crawling across the muddy path. As we went downhill through a forest it seemed straight out of Lord of the Rings. The trees were tall and gnarled, and covered in an orangeish green moss. At times the moss formed lumps that looked like animals clinging to the trunks. It was cool.

2-17-08: DAY 6 (Morning)

Junbesi (2680m) to Ringmu (2700m)

Last night we did indeed learn how to play Bagh Chal. This morning, Alex's ankle was really bothering her, so she ditched her fake hiking boots and opted instead for flip flops with socks. This means that, from the ankles down, at least, Alex is very Nepalese.

Today has been nice and easy so far, and at times was reminiscent of a Texas canyon (the dusty path, that is... if you look out it's like nothing we've ever seen). We crossed a steel bridge that swayed and bounced about 40 meters above the river. It was a nice view of the river. Now, it's lunch time.

DAY 6 (Afternoon)

Ringmu (2700m) to Taksindu (3000m)

Did we say lunch time? We meant waiting another hour time. And the pizza we ordered was about as good as a pizza ordered in the Himalayas, where tomatoes are scarce and tomato sauce is considered the same as ketchup. After hour 2 hr lunch break, we trudged up, then down, to Taksindu. Not much else has happened... Andrew did just beat Tika in Bagh Chal though.

2-18-08: DAY 7

Taksindu (3000m) to Bupsa (?)

This morning was foggy and cold, and the path was muddy. And although we passed 30 or so donkeys, which were delightful to see, it gave us 30 or so more reasons not to slip in the "mud." After lunch was uphill, and it was a good, hard workout. Tika is getting on our nerves again, because he doesn't think we can make it from here to Namche Bazar in two days, even though everyone else in our guesthouse (including the Aussies) is planning to do it. Alex was pushing for this itinerary and Andrew disagreed at first, but after looking at Michael and Kim's map and talking to an Austrian (also named Michael) and his guide, we decided it was better than wasting two days along the way. We are about to sit Tika down and tell him we are changing the plans. He is starting to really get on our nerves...

Final Thoughts on India

andrewalex — Wed, 5 Mar 2008 10:09:00 GMT

Well we are writing this blog a good three weeks after we have been in India, so the senses have been dulled a bit, and none too soon. Rather than writing a funny list of the things we have learned in India, we wanted to give a sense of what it meant to us. To start with, it is probably first best to have the caveat...it is impossible to describe the place. Rather, this is a compilation of our impressions and the effect it had on us. From the moment we stepped out of the airport in Jaipur, at 4:30 in the morning, we were surrounded by people. Some people waiting to greet passengers from our flight, others hoping to give a ride to any unlucky enough to be alone, and the majority a mostly silent morass of people who have no place else to go. There were fires burning in various places, comprised of refuse of colorful paper and who knows what else. Everyone seemed to be wrapped in a blanket colored brown or grey, draped casually over their heads. There was no age that wasn't represented. There were kids whose age could have been 7 or 13. There was a uniformity to the way the people looked though...tired and dirty. We were initially approached by rickshaw drivers, but for the most part, at least that morning, we were simply observed as we observed.

People say you either love India or you hate it. For us it wasn't that simple. We didn't love it, it is too much to love. There are too many sad sights, too much poverty, too many children with no clothes, too much dust, too many starving animals, too many mothers pulling on your sleeve as they hold a wailing infant. To many kids gathered around us asking for a sweet or a pen or a rupee. It is not a place we could love. Similarly we didn't hate it....for the same reasons we just described, but also because the nicest people en masse we have met were in India. People that would welcome you to their home, people that get so uptight if you try to pay with a bill that has a slight tear, despite the fact that the bills were so worn at times as to be almost transparent. They would rather you not pay at all than have a bill with a tear in it. They get offended if you don't eat all the food they provide, they are worried that you don't like it. The same people that were in a seeming rush to get everywhere....there is nowhere we went that you didn't hear the ceaseless honking of horns on the rickshaws, yet as a train pulled into a town, you saw sooo many people doing nothing. Men sitting back on their heels in a posture that seems to defy gravity and joints, , some smoking cigarettes, some just observing, many drinking Chai, an intoxicating drink that we grew addicted to. The women worked that is certain, sweeping steps, cooking, always on the move, never sitting still. If we came to a festival in a street, we would see men milling about, holding hands, walking slowly, but we didn't see any groupings of women. You would see men more likely to hold and play with a child than you see in the US. Walking into a shop was a commitment. These people turn out the shop lights to save energy but as you walk in, the lights are flicked on, and their wares are displayed. Thirty pashminas are unfurled and dance around you before being thrown to the floor as another is reached for. Walking out of a store feels like an insult, the sad eyes of the merchant follows you. Soon we tried to avoid going in any stores. The electricity goes out often enough that candles became a mainstay at meals. The spicy food so amazing that it didn't seem to matter what you ordered so long as you ordered Indian food, it was going to be delicious. Cookies that sold at 5 rupees were delicious treats to go along with our 50 cent mountain dews. And always everywhere...dirt. Hotel rooms were assessed for less dirt, food places were assessed for more cleanliness, but even with all the dirt and all the trash that was everywhere, it wasn't a disgusting sort of dirt. It was more an inevitable dirt that exists because there are soo many people, sooo many animals. As you laid down in a bed at night, knowing that the sheet under you probably hadn't been cleaned in the last month, you didn't feel disgusting, you just felt as though it was too be expected. If you needed a shower, a bucket would be brought with steaming water, and you would mix it with cold water and you would remove whatever dirt you could reach and you would start over. It was just different.

At the same time, some days, as the sun came through the open windowless windows, we would just look at one another and dread stepping foot outside. We didn't want to have to tell the 400 rickshaw drivers where we were going, we didn't want to have to bargain for a better fair. We didn't want to worry about stopping to buy some crackers, because as soon as we did fifteen children would gather. We didn't want to see the dogs that limped around and nosed at the trash. We didn't want to see the children dressed in gray as they carried their burlap sacks to pick up the trash. We didn't want to be asked where we are from, and we didn't want to hear people say America is a good country. We wanted to sink into oblivion. We wanted to order food into our room, we wanted to turn on our TV and pretend that we were in the US. We wanted to ignore the fact that life isn't fair and that for many life will never be fair, and that we have been graced by having been born into a country where our life would not be like the majority of people from this country. We didn't want to hear one more Bollywood song, or see one more commercial which was incongruous with the life we were seeing each day. We didn't want to see that, but at the same time, our step lightened and we smiled as we saw a holy man who slept beside the road emerge from his sleeping bag and sit blinking sleepily beside his puppy and our hearts lightened as we saw him feed it a saucer of chai. We laughed as annoying school children engaged us in a conversation and it became apparent that they thought "Your name" meant "my name" or "his name" or "her name", and we saw the same 12 year old girls struggling with their english, rolling their eyes at the same antics of 12 year old boys.

Overall, when we meet travelers-- the kind of people that can work as mall kiosk salesmen for two years so that they can go travel the world for one year and then repeat, they are likely to say something like "you just have to go to India, it is so amazing." Well, we think it is amazing, but not in the same way Andrew would describe a good plate of curry. It is amazing in the way that it leaves you struck with such a mix of emotions you simply cannot make it clear how you feel. We think it is a place people should go, especially Americans, but not because the Taj Mahal is such an architectural feat (no, we didn't get around to seeing it, anyway). Because it changes you at least a little, and even though it may feel like a scar, it's a good change, and it allows a new perspective on life that may be hard to come by elsewhere.

We Kathmandid it!

andrewalex — Sun, 2 Mar 2008 11:15:00 GMT

Well, people, collect your bet money- we are alive and well back in Kathmandu and still have most of our fingers and toes.

And did we mention we are now paying 25 rupees per hour for internet!? Wow! This will still be a quick post as we have a lot of celebrating to do (that is, eating steak, drinking Everest® beer, etc). But soon we will post the promised final India blog, and you will be delighted to know that we kept detailed journalings of our 20 days in the mountains.

Hello from 3440 Meters

andrewalex — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 11:50:00 GMT

Or 11286 feet, for those of you still using that antiquated customary system.

We are in Namche Bazar, just a stone's throw away from the world's tallest... internet cafes. That is why they charge $10 an hour and also why this post will be very short.

We are alive and well, and as of tomorrow will be hiking for about 10 days up to the Everest Base Camp and back, so the next update should be around March 4th.

You may ask how the trek has been going so far?
Well, it's been cool, but it has its ups and downs...

Ha! That's an old trekker's joke. Anyhow, we are healthy, still have all of our fingers and toes, and the weather is looking much better than two days ago (when it was snowing from sunrise to sunset). And for your quick reading pleasure, here are two of our almost daily food purchases: A $1.50 Snickers bar (although in this village they are only 90 cents!) and for lunch a big ol' bowl of Ramen noodles, moderately priced at $0.90 to $1.25. Or, in American terms, about the cost of 15 packs of Ramen noodles. We've also been consuming mass quantities of coconut cookies, which come in packs of 16 and last about five minutes in our numb hands.

That's all for now, we hope everyone is doing well and look forward to waving hello when we return, provided we still have our hands.

Far from Om

andrewalex — Mon, 11 Feb 2008 20:53:00 GMT

So we have busted out of the ashram, and er...well India too, but that is for a later blog.

Before travelling to Rishikesh, we spent about 24 hours in Delhi. We had to pick up our tickets for travelling to Kathmandu in person at the office in Delhi, and we had to sample the McDonalds we saw nearby. By sample, we mean we had lunch and dinner there, and Andrew was forced to order at least one of everything on the 20 Rupee menu at least once. In fact after a two course meal: we had a Maharaja Mac, and a Veggie Pizza McPuff, and a strawberry shake, and a large fry, and two veggie burgers, and three chicken sandwiches (This is not an exaggeration), we decided we should go to an internet cafe. On the way back from the internet cafe, Andrews foot was run over by an over eager driver, well not really his whole foot, but the part that spills over his shoe, and if you know Andrew, you know it wasn't really the drivers fault, he has duck's feet. Anyway, after that experience, and a rather dodgy cup of tea at a hole in the wall (really...a hole in the wall), we decided we needed some more McDonald's to calm us down. We had booked a luxury bus earlier in the day and we had the day free from 2 until 8 at which point we were supposed to catch the bus. We decided to hang out at the McDonald's and play cards for a few hours (intermingled with additional orders of fries or shakes, or whatever). Imagine our chagrin when only an hour and a half into the card playing, and after only two sets of food orderings, the brilliantly mustachioed doorman / securitied guard told us that we would have to leave. We were able to keep playing after another order of Veggie Pizza McPuff and a large drink. Anyhow we ambled down the road to the place we were to pick up the luxury bus, (we ambled, b/c after eating that much food we couldn't have walked faster if we tried), we were appalled to hear that all the buses to Rishikesh had been cancelled and now at 8:00 we would have to go find a hotel and take a train the next day. We lifted our heavy bags, and went outside to catch a Rickshaw. A grumpy pair we were. The next day we took the Deredun Express and sat in the Chair Car...it was awesome!!! We were given tea twice, a meal, and biscuits, and water and newspapers AND there were plugs in the walls, so we were able to turn on the laptop!

Anyhow, we arrived in the town of Haridwar, a holy town. The town we needed to go to was 30 km away, so we fought our way through the general littany of taxi and rickshaw drivers until we found the local bus. We happily jumped on it (after being directed towards the right one by the enquiry booth) and paid our 18 Rupee fee and rode to the town of Rishikesh. That afternoon after being happily ensconsed in a hotel with a hot shower we reviewed several ashrams in the area and decided that we would stay in the ashram Yoga Niketan. It was a tough choice. The rules to the ashram were posted on the guard shack at the top of a very steep hill that we walked. They included:

The inmates must be in the ashram no later than 10 o'clock, when the gates will be locked.

The inmates must not use intoxicants, including tobacco or alcohol, or the consumption of garlic or onion.

The inmates must attend all meditation sessions (the first of which was at 5:30 am.)

No electronics may be used at the ashram.

etc.etc...

Anyhow, we met with the manager and were told to come the next day at 8:00 in the morning, which was a Sunday. We went back to our cozy hotel and wondered whether we were crazy to join the ashram and give up our freedom, our good food, and our electrical appliances. The schedule to ashram was:

5:00 Morning Bell

5:30 - 6:30 Morning Meditation

7:00 - 8:00 Yoga

8:15 Breakfast

9:00 - 11:00 Library (where one was to concentrate on books about meditation, yoga)

12:00 Lunch

2:30 - 4:00 Library

3:15 - 4:00 Lecture

4:00 Tea Time

4:30 - 5:30 Yoga

6:00 - 7:00 Meditation

8:15 Dinner

The next morning, we decided to risk it. What was 10 days? Rishikesh is also a holy town and the Ganges River runs through it. On one side of the Ganges, rickshaws and cabs are generally not allowed. The area where we were was next to a large suspension bridge that the rickshaws were not allowed to cross. The motorbikes and cows were though unfortunately which made for a noisy unpleasant crossing at times. People feed fish in the Ganges from the suspension bridge, (they are huge fish), they also wash from the water, collect the water in jugs, and Brahman people perform puja, which is a ceremony where they wrap thread around your write, while blowing in a conch shell, throwing flowers into the water, and muttering a littany of words which you repeat. We think this is supposed to bring you spiritual cleansing. Unfortunately, the only time we were engaged, the fellow asked about ten times and Andrew continually said no. Finally Alex broke down and said ok. After the Puja was performed and the fellow asked for a tip (usually 100 Rupees he said), Andrew was slightly less than sad to tell him that we only had 10 Rupees. When he said that wasn't enough, Andrew just shrugged and said that's why we said no thanks. Alex wondered whether her discount blessing was going to be taken away.

Back to the ashram...with our blessing secure and our 17 kilogram packs on our backs, we trudged up the 100 or so stairs to the ashram. We had forgotten to take our malaria pills the night before so we took them that morning on an empty stomach. These two things combined to make us feel queasy by the time we sat down to breakfast with our fellow ashram-inmates. The breakfast of chickpeas didn't improve the situation. After breakfast, we decided to skip the library and head into town as we needed an atm and the internet (spiritual inmates need money to pay the ashram after all). For lunch, we had a dal vegetable, salty lentil soup (which was missing the lentils), four chapati (a flat bread), and rice (two cups or more), and some kind of chopped salad. We were given a metal plate (with four compartments), a metal cup, and a metal bowl. The ashram workers would come by with a bucket of food and ask whether you wanted it, and later if you wanted it refilled. After everyone was served, but before anyone ate, we all chanted a mantra which was showing our thanks for the food, and the teachings. After each meal, we lined up outside of four sinks and washed our prison-style dishes. Breakfast soon became our favorite meal. The food alternated, but the lunch and dinner was essentially the same. Every three mornings or so though, we had oatmeal for breakfast, which we consumed as quickly as possible to get more of a refill (same with the chai which was served every morning).

Sunday turned out to be a good day to start at the ashram ,b/c there were no classes. Instead we got acquainted with the food and moved into our sparse but nice accommodations. The next morning we woke up and stumbled to meditation. Meditation was held in a dark room. There were stacks of pillows in the corner. As soon as meditation starts and after chanting three Oms, everyone is completely still for the duration of the class. (Not an ideal start for a beginner). An hour later we stumbled out into the cold morning, Alex's legs had gone to sleep about 13 minutes in and she thought about them for the next 47 minutes. Andrew, who had read about concentrating on a candle in the meditation booklet we were given when we checked in, had attempted to imagine a candle, when the candle became a pink striped birthday candle on top of a confetti colored cupcake. He decided that was cheating to decorate your candle and quickly removed the stripes. His meditation did not get better. We grumpily went back to our rooms and jumped under the covers for the next twenty minutes before we raced to the yoga class. The yoga classes were led alternately by two yoga instructors. One should have been in the military...he was was a bully. For ease of refernce we will call him Barky. The other was a very sweet soul, we will call him...Yogi (after the nice bear). Well Barky started us off with trying to bend backwards until we were at a right angle standing up. After he demonstrated, he would walk around the class, looking disgusted with the people who were bent at obtuse angles. He would waive his hands in unhelpful fashions and huffily say things like: Bend! or Try! He would also try to push people into positions their bodies rejected and grunt in annoyance when they fell over. We had the unfortunate position of being in the front of the class, so we were the object of much derision. Yogi on the other hand was a breath of fresh air. He was always very calm and smiling. His English was delightfully developed. Rather than saying Raise both of your arms, he would say Lift up your both arms, and he often confused toes and fingers, which led to very complicated pictures in your mind. He would end the practice with the usual three Oms (a divine sound), and three Shantis (peace). He would follow that with the following mantra: Peace, Peace, Peace. Everywhere, everytime, every place, peace. Peace for you. Peace for the world, Peace for Everyone. (there was something else here, but we can't remember it). Then we would rub our palms briskly place them over our eyes, bow and practice would be over. Before he left the room, he would thank everyone and say..."Keep Smiling, Keep Shining. (While smiling and tilting his head sideways). The first week we were in the ashram, he was the afternoon teacher and Barky was the morning teacher. The second week they switched, which made waking up early much easier.

Monday we went to the 3:15 lecture which was led by a Swami who looked to be about 85. He moved very slowly and couldn't seem to hear. The lecture was to be a time where you asked questions, and the lecturer would help you learn how to meditate better. Andrew thought this was awesome, when it was his turn to ask a question (there were only five of us in there which should have been a warning) he burst out with every question he had come up with in his first hour of meditation. In response, the Swami began to explain the meaning of the universe. When he checked the time and discovered he had ten minutes left, he decided it was time to teach us how to achieve perfection...he managed to do this in five minutes. By the end, we regretted not spending our time in the library and were no closer to expandng our minds than before. It did provide for an entertaining tea break though. There we met Marie, Luisa, and Alex. They turned out to be a breath of fresh air and gave us lots of good tips on how to meditate. We attended the afternoon meditation session which went pretty well. By Tuesday afternoon though, Andrew was begining to think that achieving Nirvana was not worth attending two hours of meditation a day, Alex agreed. We decided to stage a meditation in our room, we opted for a thirty minute session as opposed to an hour. It worked better for us, but by Wednesday we had abandoned all hope (well not really, we decided to hold off for a while though.) Anyhow the girls were really great. Luisa is a yoga teacher from London. Her fiance is studying languages in the mountains and she is hanging out in India for the next six months. She is an easy laugh and always game to get tea or a meal. Marie is a Swede and a fount of information about everything from Vipassana to Ayurveda. She was the quietest of the group, but the most free spirited. She also fed the cat her tea cookies (yes, we were jealous). (There were monkeys all around the ashram, they would often grab trashcans out of your hand and when there are that many monkeys, you essentially just give it to them.) Alex is also a Swede. She lived and worked in Delhi for six months and was spending a little over six weeks at the ashram. She is one of those people that you meet and you can tell that they have something in them that makes them more empathetic and insightful than the average person. (She was also a great card and dice player). The five of us had many a meal and laugh wherein we discussed the downsides of the ashram, particularly Barky and the upsides of card games, ayurveda, and any other topic that peaked our interest.

One of the things we laughed about was the frustration of chanting Om in the yoga classes. There was one woman who was tone deaf and her OM sounds like a dying cat. The worst one was the long Om-er. This guy seemed to store enough air for two Oms and would continue droaning long after everyone else stopped. It got so bad that the instructor began interrupting the Om with instructions to take another breath in preparation for the next OM. All of us theorized on the idetnity of the Om'er but it was never entirely clear. Our time in the ashram passed all too quickly, and we discovered that the rules were far more flexible than they appeared (we even dared enough to turn on our ipod inside our bedroom!).

As our time of incarceration came to an end, we decided that we needed to buy a ticket to get to Delhi. We went online and bought it. We were scheduled to go to Delhi on the 8th at 6pm. After ten days at the ashram, we turned in our dishes and checked out. We went back to our hotel, the Raj Palace and settled in for some relaxation. The entire time we were in Rishikesh, we frequented a restaurant called Topiwala cafe. They had cheap good food. Alex quit eating at the ashram after about day three, the monotony of having the same food made her skip lunch and dinner, but thankfully she had an entire jar of peanut butter left, and the cookies in India turned out to be almost as good as the cookies in Turkey, and only 5 Rupees to boot. After we moved to the Raj Palace, we started taking classes there with a lovely instructor who told us one time in response to our compliments of his class, that it is people that have good on the inside that find good on the outside. (We shudder to think what we have on our inside after our continual mocking of Barky). During the evenings we played card games with Lu and Alex. Alex taught us an awesome game called Signs. It involves the J, Q, K, A, and one Joker. It is really cool, like spoons with secret hand signals and codes.

The day before we were to leave Rishikesh, we scheduled some Ayurvedic massages. An hour long massage was only about $7.50. Andrew has never had a massage, and Alex has had plenty but has never liked them...these were no different. There's just something odd about being rubbed by a stranger. Particularly when you have very few clothes on, and you are in a curtained off room and there is an electric heater sitting nearby and there is a jar of oil and a matress and you....it's just weird. So feeling a little off balanced, and overly oily, we made our way back to the hotel for our last yoga class in Rishikesh. Doing the handstand was a little unnerving as we were still covered in oil, but somehow we managed. We said our last Hari Om, and went downstairs to have dinner with the girls who had come over to wish us good luck.

The next morning, in her ritualized check of tickets, an hour before we were to check out of our hotel, Alex discovered that to her chagrin the train tickets we had bought were for 6:00 am, and not the 6:00 pm we had anticipated. In fact, about the time we discovered this error, our train was pulling into the station in Delhi. It was a silly mistake that fortunately wasn't too expensive sense we were in India. It only cost us twenty USD to get new tickets. We weren't happy about it though. Nevertheless it gave us one last day in Rishikesh to enjoy the cows, the rickshaws, the Topiwala cafe, etc...etc... So now we are in Kathmandu. We spend the night Friday in Haridwar at a hotel that had TV with HBO, we were quite delighted to see that Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets was showing. We spent yesterday in Delhi at a coffee shop recommended by Lu and Alex, a park, and of course....Mc Donalds. We even splurged and got a hotel room with TV. We watched Hitch, played a few card games and ate some Chinese room service. One of the utensils that came with our food was a plastic fork from Delta airlines, that we are almost positive was one we left there some two weeks ago.

So now you are probably wondering what we have learned while in India. Far too much too put in this post, but we promise to update you as soon as we can. That may be a while, though, as tomorrow at 5 am, we are embarking on our 22 day trek to the Mt. Everest Base Camp. Should we find an internet cafe along the way, or if nothing else survive the 22 days, we will definitely have some blogs up. In a way we are sorry about going on another blogging hiatus, but then we think about all the times we have been nagged to post something, and we just smile as we lace up our hiking boots.

Until next time, keep smiling, keep shining.

Deserting the Camels

andrewalex — Wed, 6 Feb 2008 03:59:00 GMT

So it has been 10 days or so, and we have just left the comfort of the yoga ashram. But before we tell you what achieving nirvana is like, here are, as promised, our tales about camel riding.

We had departed from Udaipur, land of lakes, sunsets, and special Lassis, and took a "luxury" bus to Jodhpur. When we say luxury, we mean it is not one of the local buses on which people can be observed scrambling to climb onto the roof before it departs from its stop. We were not ready for that kind of travel just yet, so we opted for indoor seating on a nicer bus. It actually was a sleeper, with bunks above the rows of chairs and down the left side, but as it was a day trip and only five or six hours, we opted for chairs and Harry Potter.

Jodhpur isn't the most popular of destinations, and in fact is primarily used as a resting point before going to the guidebook-acclaimed village of Jaisalmer (centered around a wall-protected fort, named "the Golden City" because of the golden yellow stone used for the buildings, home of the Camel Safari... the usual). We actually learned we could take a train direct to Jaisalmer, but we had done a little searching on Couchsurfing.com and found a woman that seemed to be quite a good match for us from Jodphur. We wrote her and she promised us a place to stay, so we figured why not, we'll see what Jodphur (centered around a fort on a hill, named "the Blue City" because of the blue paint used for the buildings... the usual).

So when the bus rolled into the Blue City, we were greeted with the very typical throng of rickshaw drivers, salivating for our tourist rupees (read: aware that we have no idea how much it should cost to get from "random bus stop" to "hotel from guidebook"). We fended them off, swinging our bags at them like crosses at vampires, and ran across the street to a phone booth. We called our CS host, Kiran, and asked her, under the unbreaking gaze of a very determined rickshaw driver, how to get to her "place." She informed us she had arranged for us to stay at a guest house, which we thought was odd, but shrugged and let the eager rickshaw driver get directions from her.

The "guest house" turned out to be a gated-in, industrial-looking two story building that spanned the size of a big high school. A sign out front read, "The Institution of Hotel Management." Our driver spoke to the security guard out front, who unlocked the giant chain hanging on the front door and escorted us to our "room." The interior was several hallways surrounding a pigeon-filled courtyard, very much resembling a school. We climbed to the second floor and stopped next to a "classroom." Upon opening the door, we found a huge room, probably 50 feet long, that contained a Queen size bed, two full beds, three couches, two armchairs, a desk and chair, as well as a bathroom with shower that smelled sickeningly of mothballs and an attached changing room. It was bizarre. From what we could gather, it was some kind of training room for the students from The Institution. Perhaps for their "Furniture Feng Shui" Class, the final exam is to arrange some of the furniture within a cordoned off part of the room under a certain time limit. Or so Andrew hypothesized.

Apparently, though, this CS lady was somehow allowed to let people sleep their on the weekends. We shrugged, promptly deciding that although it was indeed "a place to stay," it was not what we were expecting and would be shortening our stay in Jodhpur to one night. With that, we took to the streets, catching a rickshaw to the area we had heard called "the old city." It was a giant market, and we walked up and down, "no thanks-ing" many-a salesman. We met a kid there who seemed quite eager to know our names and where we were staying (a popular question for the hotel touts, but Alex stands by the fact that he was not one...), and he showed us to a nice lake. He had his school bag with him and showed us some of his books and the English he has been studying. It was then that we were surrounded by boys aged 10 to 18, all smiling creepily and asking us our names in turn. It was a tad uncomfortable. After one of them teased the boy we were initially with, he decided to go and we thought it best to follow him away from the crowd.

The boy began teaching us Hindi as we walked through a neighborhood, and eventually stopped in order to write some of it down for us in his notebook. He wrote the English word, the Hindi word (in English letters) and then the Hindi word in Hindi letters. After filling a page front and back, he tore it out and gave it to us. We were just about to part when a friend of his came up, offering us a Hindi lesson book. Unfortunately, it was the English word alongside the Hindi squiggles, and was therefore not very useful. We tried to tell them they should find someone who can read Hindi to give it to, but the concept of not understanding their alphabet was far too much for them.

After he left, we did a bit of internetting, and as we were leaving the cafe, the owner gave Alex a jingly bracelet. Andrew glared suspiciously. We got some tea, and returned to The Institution. That night, after trying twice to call our host, we declared we were not going to see her at all, and decided instead of eating out, to scrounge up some food and spend the evening at home with our faithful TV, the laptop. Andrew went to three different snack shops, and came back with enough carbohydrates to kick off a marathon: potato chips, cookies, cookies, okay like four kinds of cookies, crackers, and a 2 liter of Mountain Dew (Yes, they have Mountain Dew. In fact, the MD bottling plant is located in Jodhpur... go figure). With our junk food laid out before us, we turned on our laptop and enjoyed several hours of carbs and Veronica Mars (thanks to Hande and Collette's very useful DVD program...).

The next day, we woke up with a bit of a junk food hangover, and went into town to visit the fort, but not before buying our tickets onward. One interesting point is that Jodhpur was the first place we didn't feel the rickshaw drivers were trying to pull one over on us. We would expect a trip should cost 20 rupees, and the driver would tell us it would cost 20 rupees. Very rare. Anyhow, we bought our tickets to Jaisalmer, and then went to explore the hilltop fort. It was really nice and had a fancy audioguide that included sound effects and music. After the tour, we ate at the fort restaurant and explored the old city one more time before heading back to The Institution. Back in the safe confines of the wierd classroom, we played games and watched a bit more TV, waiting for the time to catch the train. As it neared, Alex wisely suggested that they leave earlier as usual as there is always some hitch in getting where we are supposed to go.

The hitch this time, as it turned out, was that the nice security guard apparently wanted to make sure we felt safe in The Institution, and had bolted the giant chain to the front door. We were literally locked in. As Alex shouted from the crack in the door ("Hello? Hey! Let us out!" Etc), Andrew ran to throughout the building and found a way onto the roof as well as a seemingly sturdy pipe that lead to the ground. While contemplating with some excitement the possibility of scaling the building, Alex had managed to get the guard's attention, and he unlocked us. We left through the front door (aka the boring way) and made it to the train station with time to spare.

The night train to Jaisalmer was absolutely f-r-e-e-z-i-n-g. We woke up periodically (every two minutes) and were just unfrozen enough to shiver. It was cold. Everyone else on the train was snoring under inch-thick wool blankets, obvously much more accustomed to overnight-Indian-train-travel. We eyed them jealously, but eventually we were close enough to our destination that we gave up on deep sleep. A couple men (touts) approached us, flashing brochures about their hotels, and offering us free rides from the train station. As it was 5 am, we had no desire to trek around town on our own, so we agreed to go with one of them to their hotel. We crammed into a jeep with five or six Australians, and rode to the hotel. When we expressed fear for our bags falling off of the roof, the driver assured us that "the guy up there is holding onto them." Okey-dokey (and before anyone gets onto us for accepting a ride from a guy on the train, don't. Everyone does it, and if you don't have a ride, then you are assaulted by the drivers outside, each carrying a sign with the name of the hotel that will pay them a 10% commission for getting you in the door. It looks like some kind of riot that might occur at the Institution of Hotel Management).

The hotel was small and motel-ish. Nothing we didn't expect, and when he told us the room we were looking at was 100 rupees, we shrugged and ignored the less attractive aspects of the room. At five in the morning after shivering on the night train, nothing is more attractive than a bed- be it possibly full of bugs or not. After a good, long nap, we woke up, ready for the hot showers that were promised on the brochure and by the tout on the train. Alex turned on the water and sneered. It was by no means hot. Andrew got an employee in there (the tout as a matter of fact) and he asked us if we wanted it "hotter than this?" We glared (and as you may know, one does not want to be on the receiving end of an Alex glare). Hot? No sir, that is barely classifiable as tepid. He told us he would make it hotter, and asked us to wait twenty minutes. Twenty minutes later, the water was upgraded from almost tepid to a little warm, but it was still far from hot, so Andrew informed him we would be unable to stay. Yes, it may sound drastic, but we swore to ourselves that we wouldn't stay at a place that didn't have hot showers any more. After all, we will be trekking for 22 days in the mountains of Nepal, and word on the streets is that showering in the icy water is indeed a last resort for the smelliest of trekkers.

So we trudged through town with our luggage, ignoring the requests that we stop in a shop and check out some authentic camel leather hats ("No thanks, we'd really love to look, but we do have the entirety of our possessions hanging from our backs at the moment..."). We were steered left and right as we asked where the tourist office was, until one man informed us it was down the hill quite a ways, and we'd be better staying at his hotel, promising that he wasn't going to push a camel safari on us as so many other hotels will do. Quite a tricky fellow, but our backs hurt so we obliged him. He showed us a room, and told us that although he didn't have hot showers, he could provide as much hot water as we wanted for Indian-style showers. It went against our hot shower vow, but he matched the 100 rupee price, so we accepted. The room was small and cozy, much to our liking. We drank tea on the roof, at which point the man, Sunny, told us the rooms were warmer at his hotel because the roof was covered in "cow sheet" instead of cement. Hm... we didn't know what to do with that so we just ignored it.

At this point, despite his promise, he pulled out a small photo album of happy foreigners wearing turbans, smiling from the backs of equally happy looking camels. Okay, tell us about the safaris... And he did. After some amount of apparent brainwashing, we decided that the best way to spend our time in Jaisalmer was indeed a two night, three day camel safari into the desert. Who knows how or why we were convinced that we needed three days to truly experience the desert, but we were. But not, of course, before bargaining down the price and getting the night's stay in the hotel free.

After wondering if we had made a good decision, we wondered through the fort, and were told two or three times not to visit the palace. The people who told us this, locals, said it was 250 rupees a piece and there was nothing of interest inside. They were right about the price, so we decided they might be right about the contents, and we passed on it. Instead, we met an Australian couple who was looking for an ATM, and since we needed cash ourselves, we followed them across town to the nearest bank. Along the way, the man told Andrew that renting hiking equipment in Kathmandu is "as cheap as chips," which was quite a comfort. Because chips are pretty darn cheap.

On our way back to the hotel, we were lured into a shop full of really fantastic wall hangings. Although we informed the proprietor that they were two and three times out of our souvenir budget, we found one that we really liked, and he eventually accepted what we told him was our "top banana" price. It's a very nice wall hanging. The man was really nice too, and we had tea and nice conversation with him before leaving with our sparkly new wall hanging. We met up with Sunny, who had promised to take us by the Haveli and a pajama shop (No, we still aren't getting Turbans, Sunny). The haveli was pretty interesting, an ancient apartment complex of sorts with a very intricate exterior. It was fairly odd, though, to see at night, as the light nearby would turn on and off in ten second intervals(to conserve power?), and Sunny told us the strangest, least relevant story about an Indian Romeo and Juliet. Nice story, all the same. Afterward, he took us to what he called a garment factory, but looked an awful lot like the other clothing shops. A man showed us the pajama set, but since we just wanted the pants and he couldn't sell them separately, we left apologetically. On our way back, Sunny spotted a shop that sold pants separately, and after a bit of color selecting and a lot of haggling, we left, two pairs of pajama pants richer. The material was incredibly thin, and for a moment Andrew wondered what his mom would say, something along the lines of "I could have made you a pair of those for TEN rupees!" We went back to our room and tried them on. To our chagrin, they did not fit.

Here's a little known fact about Indians: they all have super skinny legs. Even the big ones apparently have the skinniest legs. And we, as Americans, do not. So although the waistline was no problem, our thighs threatened splitting the seams of the pant legs (okay, it wasn't that bad, but it definitely wasn't going to make our camel riding "more comfortable"). So, with Sunny out on an errand, we set off for the shop ourselves. We met up with Sunny half way, told him our plight, and he escorted us back to the shop. The man, with out blinking an eye, told us a refund was impossible. We told him they didn't fit, he showed us bigger sizes. Although the waists were indeed larger, the thighs were exactly the same width, but showing him this led no where. We asked if we could just have the money back and he refused. Why not? He shrugged, and told us "shop rules. It's my shop and those are my rules." This interaction continued for more than ten minutes, him insisting we take the "larger sizes," us insisting we take the money as the larger ones were not larger, and everyone (mainly Andrew) getting very agitated. We begged, we pleaded. He told us he wasted his time showing us everything and now we were wasting his time hassling him. Andrew told him all of our time would be much less wasted if he would hand us our money, that we would be gone in ten seconds, but to no avail. Eventually, a friend of the man's came in and talked to him for a while. He stood up, ripped the pants out of our hands, and threw our money into them. He muttered how he hated customers like us, Americans, and told us we better not buy pants anywhere else. We were ab-so-lutely fine with this, and happy to have won, although we did assist in besmudging the reputation of Americans (the man who talked him into refunding our money went on to explain that it is very unheard of to do, so it's possible we are a bit spoiled by the Wal-Mart style returns we are afforded, but hey- they didn't fit!).

After our victory, we had dinner at the hotel, and then played cards with Sunny and the hotel cook. It was a lot of fun, even though both of them were absolutely horrible card players. We taught them the game of Bluff that we learned in Jaipur, and Sunny busted out not one but three bottles of Rum, which he kept trying to serve to us long after we told him we were finished. As we went to bed, Alex felt a strong case of cold feet. Three days in the desert? Are we sure about this? But Andrew was already fast asleep, visions of camels lumbering in his head.

We woke up at 7:30, and met our camel safari companions, two Brit guys named Tony and "Tony's friend" (actually, his name was Robbie, but Sunny didn't know his name so we heard him referred to more as the former). We rode in a jeep-like vehicle for about an hour to where five camels were waiting eagerly for us. It did not take much observance for us to realize that camels are awesome. One of them had a plastic red flower tied to his reins, which looked ridiculous on top of his ever-smiling face. Their faces really are fantastic- in the same way that a hound dog always looks depressed, a camel looks forever in a state of bliss. And after looking at them so closely, it is very clear to us that they are somehow related to the giraffe. Mounting a camel is much like riding a bronco, it seems. You have to lean back in the saddle (after leaping onto it) and hold on for dear life as the camel unfolds it's back, and then front legs. You feel you will fall off the front end, and then the back, before settling somewhere in between. Steering is done much like a horse, except their harnesses are attached to their snouts by these gruesome looking peircings. Andrew got the reins to his camel, Raj (Prince), but the others were tied to each other and our three camel guides led them on. Andrew assured the others that steering wasn't too much different than not steering, as the camels follow each other single file. In fact, steering is just like being led except for you have the knowledge that if the camel were to take off in a sprint, there would not be someone there to stop it other than you.

The motion of the camel is humorous. Because of their long, lanky legs, it's a much bumpier, rockier, and more uncomfortable endeavor than riding a horse. In fact, it is much more like riding a broken coin-operated horse outside of Wal-Mart. It wobbles back and forth, thudding hard as it's padded feet find the ground. After ten minutes, you wonder why the pajama pants were ever suggested, as their kleenex-thin material surely would have eased the inevitable thigh chaffing. After a nice, quiet hour or so, and after Alex determined that it was not easy to read a book while riding (seriously), we made our "desert road trip" official with a few rounds of 20 questions. We rode for a couple hours into the desert, and when we broke for lunch, dismounting the camel made us feel like we were walking on the moon... drunk. Walking was no longer second nature, and Alex's fear that three days was too much came back to her quicker than flys to a camel's snout. The camel drivers made a fire and cooked us a blandly nice cabbage dal, with chapati bread, as well as some really delicious multi-colored (and deep-fried) chips, bananas, and "unlimited bottled water" (We had already lost track of the amount of times Sunny told us the bottled water was unlimited). Sunny showed up in the Jeep and joined us for lunch. He brought along another bottle of Rum, which was just a little too much for us in the middle of the day in the desert. We stuck to our unlimited water.

After a quick photo shoot in front of the Jeep (the Jeep driver loved taking pictures with it), the camel drivers packed up the camp while we watched (the "camp" becomes the saddles that donned the camels). Interestingly, the camels' humps were much less defined than every cartoon we've ever seen would have had us believe. We theorized that this was because they were better fed, and perhaps did not need to store up as much as say the wild camels of Aladdin or Dr. Seuss. We mounted once again for a slow, bumpy trek deeper into the desert. After some time, we came to a village which our drivers encouraged us to explore. It was divided into two castes: the gypsies and warriors. We were advised not to go into the warrior caste's section, as they were off limits to foreigners. It turned out that it was actually Sunny's village, and when he showed up (after apparently trailing us with the Jeep at some unseen distance) we were granted entry into the rich warrior part of town. What made it rich? Well, as Sunny pointed out, the buildings were made of imported Jaisalmer stone, and the ground was covered in "cow sheet."

Sunny was very excited to give us a dose of the "real Indian experience," so after having chai on the cow sheet floor, we retreated to one of the rooms and Sunny's sister pulled out a torture- er, make that makeup kit. She sat Alex down and informed through miming that she wanted to "doll her up." She pulled out a coal black mixture, like a tub of stinging mascara, which they use around the eyes on women and children. Alex dabbed the goo on as daintily as goo can be dabbed, but this was not enough for the evil makeup lady. She dug into the tub and slathered black mush across Alex's eyeballs, fogging up her contacts and causing her eyes to burn. After using almost a full bottle of our "unlimited water," we were able to get the contacts clean, but every time we tried to reinsert them, the goop resmudged her eyes. The entire time, mind you, this sadistic woman reiterated how beautiful she now looked with black eyeliner on her bloodshot eyes, and even added a dot on her forehead. At this point, Alex was quite sure she did not need three days in the desert.

We barely escaped the clutches of the eye-torturist, and rode head-on into the sun for the remainder of the evening. With the sun setting in front of us, burning our noses to a red almost as brilliant as Alex's irritated eyes... and forehead dot, we felt like we were getting quite an authentic desert experience, except without the mirages. We arrived at a stretch of sand dunes, in the classic Sahara desert style, and explored the hills, leaving footprints across the rippled sand. It was impressive how cool the sand turned as soon as it fell into shade, and we enjoyed the sunset on a soft cusion of cool sand before retreating to the campfire our drivers had built.

At this point Sunny arrived once again in order to see that we were still having a super-fun time. We were his family, after all. We told him yes, we were indeed having a super-fun time. His spirits were high. When he left to check on the food, we conferred and decided that we would be quite alright with calling our safari off one day earlier, and leaving with Tony and Robbie the next afternoon. It was for the best, as our scheduled train to Delhi was an hour after our safari was supposed to end, and we were already stressed about making it in time. Add to that two pairs of sore thighs and one pair of sore eyes, and we had almost had our camel fill (nothing against the camels-- they really are awesome). So we beckoned Sunny over and broke the news to him- We'd like to go home tomorrow. His head drooped. He put on quite an act of depression as he explained that he had already made plans for a 3 day safari, had already bought supplies for a 3 day safari, and already hired drivers... for a 3 day safari. We talked with him for 20 minutes, in which time he apparently forgot the English language, misunderstanding everything we said and saying it was simply impossible to go home early. Now, throughout the safari, whenever we saw Sunny, he was singing loud about how it "isn't about the money." We were his friends, his family, and he just wanted us to have a good time. The money meant nothing, sure everyone needs money, but we were his friends, etc...

So, it should come as no surprise then that the second we told him we would not ask for a refund of some of the money (on the condition that he give us a free night's stay in the hotel one more time), his hand appeared in front of us, ready to shake on it. Instantly, he went from depressed to exuberant, and was once again dancing to the shrill Indian singing that was blaring from the tape player he had brought.

But we never regretted that decision, and know it would have been far too much to go a third day. That night, the desert was cold, but we were given 7 blankets- 2 underneath and 5 on top, and were incredibly cozy. The moon was ridiculously bright as well, casting our shadows and keeping us awake if we laid on our backs. It was really cool. The next morning, we awoke to our favorite camel driver serving chai and biscuits, followed by jam and toast and some guavas that we threw in the bush after one bite. We mounted Raj and Rocket, and headed back toward civilization.

The ride home was quite nice, especially with the knowledge that it was a ride home. We stopped again for lunch, which was another bland-tastic dal dish, and then spent a couple hours lounging in the shade of a desert tree playing cards with the camel drivers. They were still horrible players, but it was a lot of fun. When they rounded up the camels for our last ride (at break time they remove the harnesses and all, and the camels are allowed to roam mostly free-- that is they have a rope attaching two legs so they kind of hop sometimes) they apparently realized that we were running late, so we were allowed to give the camels a few extra "ya!'s" and race them through the desert. It was a painful blast. We bumped and shook across the desert at surprising speeds for such dopey creatures, and took turns taking each other over. Sunny had told us our last destination was to be an "oasis," which we didn't believe, so we weren't disappointed when we arrived at a phone pole next to the highway which was to be the rendezvous point for the Jeep. We took a few last minute group pictures, hugged our camels good bye (would you believe they never spit once! They did gargle quite a bit, though), and rode back to the hotel.

We spent our last day lounging about, eating Italian, and generally patting ourselves on the back for not being on camels at the moment. We caught our train no problem, but not before Sunny bought us a beer and admitted to us that he did not even work at the hotel, but apparently rented out the rooms and then sold safaris to the people that stayed in them. What a fink. He rode with us to the train station and helped us find our seats. Sadly, the train cars were mislabeled, so there was a mass exodus between the two cars as people scrambled to get the very valuable space beneath the beds. We squeezed past a bunch of Spaniards and secured our bags, preparing for a nice long, chilly night ride to Delhi. It ended up being pretty comfortable, and we met some nice military guys who were fascinated by the concept of "love marriages."

Well, that's all for this novel, but next time we will tell you all about the yoga ashram and the Maharaja Mac. Yep, we finally found another McDonald's.

Patience is a Virtue

andrewalex — Sun, 27 Jan 2008 03:57:00 GMT

Hello all, we are in Rishikesh. We are spending the next ten days at an Ashram doing meditation and yoga, so we will not be checking in on email, blog or phone. We know everyone is dying to hear about our camel adventures, and if we have been fed opium naan (we haven't), but that will have to wait. Speak to you soon.

Things We Learned In Turkey

andrewalex — Mon, 21 Jan 2008 19:33:00 GMT

You’ve waited long enough…Here’s your Last Thoughts on Turkey:

Hande pie is not just a dessert, it’s a way of life….it can not be duplicated.
Celery roots are edible…who knew?
Small dogs are cuter (and quieter) when Collette is home
Christmas only comes once a year…so you need to invite Annie
If you ask Annie to bring everything you’ve missed for the last 3 ½ months, be prepared to carry her bags back to the apartment
You can buy and drink ½ a liter of wine for 1 Euro in Italy, you can buy and drink a liter of wine for 2 Euros in France, you can buy and drink a six pack of beer in Portugal for 2 Euros, but in Turkey the bottle of wine will cost you 3 YTL, and will be completely undrinkable. So opt for Cherry Soda instead.
The Hello Kitty in the market they are selling for 50 cents isn’t real.
Collette may think she is an American, but her driving suggests that somewhere in the family tree there was a Turk.
Starbucks is worth every Lira (and there are seven of them).
The best seat on the ferry is right next to the café, where you can catch the chai guy’s eye.
Simits…worth every kurus (and there are 50 of them).
If you’ve ever wanted to know what its like to live in a cave…you can stay in a cave hotel in Cappadocia…they throw in the authentic cold water for free.
Every carpet seller you meet will ask you where you are from….then they will tell you they know someone in California.
Don’t take the free tea that is offered in the shops…the extra bathroom visits cost 50 cents.
We use to think that the person who decided to operate parking lots was a genius…a 5*10 piece of concrete for 15 dollars a day…no, the Turkish bathroom people are smart, a hole in the ground for 50 cents a pee…paper is extra.
If carpet salesman start bragging about their world travels and insist you need visas for certain countries, don’t immediately assume they are full of crap.
The Indian consulate will give you a visa…but only you.
If the anti-DVD-piracy people ever raided Hande and Collette’s apartment…we’re just saying.
If you plan a visit to Turkey, you should plan to stay with Hande and Collette.
Bay means man, and Bayan means women…asking a police officer for Bay and Bayan could get you arrested. If you want to know where the bathroom is, ask for Tuvalet.

“Special” Lassi, Anyone???

andrewalex — Mon, 21 Jan 2008 19:31:00 GMT

After leaving the tigers in Suwai Modhupor we made a trip south to Udaipur via night train. It was there that we were drugged…but we will get to that later.

Upon arriving in Udaipur, we checked at the local tourist office, found out where the cool place to stay was, and hopped in an auto rickshaw. For the bargain price of 32 rupees, our driver drove us to a nice hotel, that is a hotel that if we booked in, he would get a 25 cent commission for. However, after we ferreted this information out of him, he assured us he would get the same commission everywhere, and that the hotel would charge us that much anyway. This is the game that the rickshaw drivers play and we are therefore forced to be their pawns, or perhaps their armless foosball men. Nevertheless, we left our luggage in the rickshaw and went inside. Our budget for the hotel was initially only 300 rupees. Which equals 7.50 or a 1/6^th of a Motel 6. The first hotel had a nice room for 400, but we weren’t sure that we were ready to up our budget by an entire 1/3, so we went back to our rickshaw and asked him to show us a few more hotels in that price range. Who was surprised when the next one he took us to was a 3000 rupee hotel? Not us. We rolled our eyes and asked him to take us to a “reasonable” hotel. He took us to another hotel that also had rooms for 400 rupees, but it took us 15 minutes of bargaining to get that, and then we decided we didn’t like the room as much, so we trekked back out to the rickshaw and asked him, with hanging heads, if he could take us back to the first hotel (don’t worry, we were not abusing him, we gave him an 8 rupee tip, which is equal to 25% and our first official tip in India).

Happily ensconced in our new hotel, with hot water from a shower head, and a flushing toilet – luxury, we quickly fell asleep for a four hour nap. We woke up around 1 in the afternoon and were absolutely starving, so we headed outside for a walk around the town. We had planned to find a restaurant that appeared to be clean and tasty, but exploring Udaipur preoccupied us, so it wasn’t until 5:00 that we stumbled across a restaurant. So before that, we walked through windy neighborhood streets and came to one of the four lakes that makes Udaipur “famous” on the guidebook circuit. Because it was a smaller lake and well out of the rainy season, the surface was mostly covered with mossy green specks. A couple people rowing toward the bridge left a very interesting pattern behind them: a line where the canoe cut through the moss, with alternating pock marks on either side where the oars had dipped into the water.

After crossing the lake, we came across a yard full of private school kids on their lunch break, which the boys spent playing cricket. You may recall our bemusement at the weirdness of rugby compared to American football, the same applies to cricket as compared to baseball. Rules are difficult to discern, but the boys playing still invited us to join in, despite our insistence that we had no idea how to play. Rather than join them, we perched on a concrete ledge to view the game. The ledge unfortunately we later discovered seemed to be second base. Amid the cricket game, younger children who weren’t playing crowded around us in typical fashion and began interrogating us with the: Where are you from, what’s your name, my name is, how old are you routine. It doesn’t matter how many times you answer the question, everyone wants to ask it for themselves…as well as shake your hand at least once. Most of the time, this is where the routine ends, but a couple of these kids really wanted to practice their English. After determining that we had no pens to give them, the boys started trying to get Andrew to hand them his sunglasses. When Andrew felt one of the boys reaching into his jacket pocket, we decided our position as the children’s cultural enlightenment for the day done. We started to walk away when the girls approached us. We have both determined that the girls are the smart ones (Sorry Richard). They really want to know who you are and where you are from. They roll their eyes at the silly little boys and overall just seem to be genuinely interested in chatting and less pen-hungry.

Once the girls’ lunch break was over and we were faced with the little hoodlums once again (no doubt skipping class to pick pockets for pens), we walked back across the bridge and remembered that we were starving. We walked past our hotel and found signs pointing to a “lush garden” restaurant on the lakeside. We walked through the doorway and decided that the rustic quality of the restaurant and the fact that no one was there didn’t bode well for the place. So we decided to skip it and turned to go, when the proprietor came through the hall behind us. He asked if we wanted to have tea, and explained that they weren’t cooking that day. We briefly glanced at one another and agreed to the tea. He sat us down at one of two tables that overlooked the lake. When we asked to wash our hands, he pointed to a trough of standing water. Feeling that the water was still probably cleaner than the kids hands we had shaken, we dipped in and wiped them off on our dirty pants. We sat at the table and enjoyed an hour and a half of conversation with Basit. He studied history, and was excited to tell us about Rajasthan, specifically what lay beyond Udaipur’s typical tourist attractions. When we got on the topic of food, we told him how much we loved Indian food and that we strongly wished to know how to cook it. He told us to come back the next day and he would give us a cooking lesson, including a trip to the authentic spice market. We thought that sounded much better than another day of looking at forts, so we happily agreed and traipsed home to dinner on the roof of our hotel. (This isn’t special to our hotel, everywhere we ate in Udaipur was on top of a hotel.) The next day, after sleeping in, we made a circuit over three of the lakes, in fact at one point we ran into Basit and he confirmed our cooking lesson. That afternoon around 2, we headed over to Basit’s for our Indian cooking lesson, hoping that we would get fed in the process. He sat us down at our table and asked us what we would like. Andrew ordered a lime soda and Alex a lassi. When we proved to be indecisive as to what type of lassi and what type of food, he promised a special lassi and good vegetarian food. He brought the lassi and lime soda out a little while later. The lassi is normally a combination of yogurt, sugar, and fruit. The lime soda was simply sparkling water with lime juice (alleged) and a glass ¼ full of sugar. This lassi looked different than the ones we had previously had, it appeared to have chunks of cinnamon and a mysterious fruit. Alex drank half of it before giving the rest to Andrew. When Basit rejoined us, the lime drink and lassi had been finished off, he sat two steaming bowls of food in front of us and two bread plates. He asked whether we liked the lassi and Andrew replied that it was good and asked what kind of fruit was in it. Basit replied that it was a special lassi, he said it was fruit and sugar, and I put marijuana in it.

At this we looked at each other in slight shock and laughed nervously. Basit left us to enjoy our lunch, (which was absolutely the worst Indian food we had ever eaten.) We were so shocked that we didn’t even get angry at first. We simply sat there quietly stunned. One might think we were angry about being drugged, aside from that, it was really the thought about what a “Special” lassi might cost us that preoccupied our minds. (It’s a 1.75 for those that are curious). You may also wonder why we continued eating food that 1) did not taste good, and 2) was from a man that had just drugged us….but if you are wondering that, you should know that Alex’s parents always insisted she clean her plate, and her dad reinforced the idea that if you are going to pay for something, you better get your moneys worth J ! Really, we only finished of one of the dishes, the other was really pretty awful and even Andrew’s hunger couldn’t drive him to eat it. We did shy away from the bread we thought might be the one that was cooked on cow patties.

So after all that, we bet you are wondering how the lesson went? Turns out, Basit thought that a lesson meant writing down the recipe. We weren’t too disappointed though, because we already know how to make bad Indian food, and we didn’t need a hands on course to learn it. We did get a trip to the spice market though. On the way back from the spice market, Basit bought us tea and offered to take us on a trip to the outer villages the next day on his motorcycle. (It’s not odd for three people to ride a motorcycle here, in fact it seems to be the family car). After we agreed, he said that we could pay for the petrol and perhaps throw in a gift for him if he was a “good” driver. By this time, the day had taken its toll on us, and we wearily agreed before saying goodbye. It was only later in our hotel room that we decided we needed some time alone, and we didn’t want to guess what a good driver costs. So Andrew trekked down to Basits and left him a note telling him that we were cancelling for the next day. It was with a sigh of relief and a little bit of guilt that we spent the rest of our night. Whenever we felt too guilty though we reminded ourselves that not only had he drugged us, but he charged us for it too! Share the love man….

The next day was free of Basit so we were able to do the touristy City Palace, look at a million miniature paintings and eat French fries. Altogether a fine day. We even stopped by Basits that night to tell him goodbye (and maybe get another special lassi J), but his restaurant was closed. With that, we packed our bags and caught a bus to Jodhpur. The second largest city in the state of Rajasthan. Oh, and next time we blog, we will have been on a 3 day camel safari...

Tigerless Tiger Safari

andrewalex — Fri, 18 Jan 2008 03:21:00 GMT

S’why does somebody go to Suwai Madhopur? To see tigers, of course. Well, to try to see tigers, that is. The train to S.M. took about three hours, and allowed us to see some of the Indian countryside, which is covered in yellow mustard flowers, farms, and a little dust. The train periodically stopped at what seemed to be the middle of nowhere, and the locals would board with trays of vegetables, peanuts, and chai tea. There are three classes of cars on the trains: First, Second, and Third (creative naming, huh?). Within each class, there are seat cars and sleeper cars. For this journey, we chose 2^nd seats, with air conditioning. The seats are wooden benches, on which three people may sit. The A/C is a network of fans (the kind you would see in old mechanic shops) bolted to the ceiling. Since it is winter here, the fans were unnecessary, and with the windows open it felt like early Fall. The weather here (so far) starts out very chilly, moves to pleasant, followed immediately by “really hot,” unless in the shade, and then dips back through pleasant before hitting really cold. It’s typical desert weather, we guess.

Suwai Madhopur is a small village that is within a rickshaw’s drive of Ranthambore National Park, which is the only place in India where you can still see wild tigers (we think). According to our guidebook, there are only 26 in the park, which makes the presence of the “Save the Tigers” posters understandable. We arrived on Monday afternoon, and quickly booked a hotel through the tourist office in the train station. They gave us a map of the town and told us what time to arrive to book a jeep/bus “tiger tour” of the park. 5 in the morning. They also told us how much the rickshaw there should cost, which is invaluable as there is absolutely no pricing system, and the drivers generally just quote a “high” price. That is, $2.50, as opposed to $1.25.

Armed with this information and a map to our hotel, we quickly set off in the wrong direction. After asking four, five, six men (they tend to clump together when foreigners walk up) we were told how to get there. Armed with that information, we found our hotel no problem. We checked in, happily noted the western-style bathroom (actually, Alex would not have done any checking in if it weren’t for the western-style bathroom…), and ordered a roll of toilet paper (only 25 rupees!). After our 2 hour arrival-nap, we walked into the heart of the village and explored the streets. S.M. was notably different from Jaipur. There was almost no begging (although definitely people living on the street), everyone seemed to be occupied. Either drinking tea or just sitting around talking. A few of the market booth owners would call out to us, but mainly it was just a friendly hello. We stopped at a stand with sunglasses (Since Andrew broke his second pair in Italy, and the sun is brighter here than anywhere we’ve been). Soon, a crowd of kids formed around us, and we decided to “look around” aka escape quickly. The market was full of small shops, primarily made out of tin (like big tool sheds on stilts). There’s no glass to be seen, or storefronts at all, for that matter. There are advertisements for lots of English-sounding companies “graffiti-ed” onto the buildings. Any actual graffiti is in Hindi, so looks more artistic, and for us is indiscernible from decorative scrawls. There are cows everywhere. Not just here, everywhere in India. They are considered sacred, so in S.M. people bring them fresh vegetables throughout the day. In Jaipur, the cows largely ate through the trash (alongside the goats and monkeys). Here, they ate from heaps of lettuce leaves piled in the center of the streets. In fact, the center of the streets are the cows’ favorite resting spots, and they lay all over, causing much honking. They also go to the bathroom everywhere, which isn’t too crazy, considering there are outdoor urinals for people on side streets. The cow patties don’t necessarily go to waste, though, as one of the local breads is baked by setting it on a flaming dried cow patty. Mm! Anyhow, we walked through the market and found another sunglasses stand, where Andrew was able to bargain half the price. He went from 100 to 60 rupees, and wasn’t going to take the 50 we were offering. Andrew conceded and pulled out all of our rupees. As luck would have it, we only had 50, so we apologized and began walking off (pretty much always has to happen before they will agree to a price, but in this case it wasn’t a bluff). So we got the sunglasses for $1.25, which is good considering Alex is sure they will be broken before Delhi.

We found a nice vegetarian restaurant, which isn’t hard as most all of Rajasthan (the state we are in. Did you know India has states? 26 of them, we think. We have sparse internet access, so feel free to Google it) is vegetarian, and we stuffed ourselves with cashew curry and something-masala (that’s an Indian food joke, as practically everything here is a masala—it means “mix”). We found our way home in the dark, and determined that our 4:30am wake up would require going to bed early.

Knowing it got hot during the day, we donned only our hooded sweatshirts and braved the cold as we walked to the rickshaw station. The ride to the park was foreboding as rickshaws have no doors and the wind that was whipping us caused us to shiver. We arrived at the booking office, where we were told we would be able to get seats on a jeep or open-top bus. There were 10 or so men standing around the jeep line. When we got into it, someone approached us and told us that there were only two jeeps and both were full, but they would be happy to put our name on a bus list and we wouldn’t even have to wait in line. Feeling a little suspicious, we asked them why anyone would be in the jeep line if they were booked. The guy had no answer and waved us off. We decided to risk being in the line. We got into line behind about four people. The line was not moving. After a bit, the guy in front of us asked if we were going on a jeep ride. We said that we hoped to and he explained that him and two friends were planning on renting an entire jeep (which seats 6 people plus a guide). They were going to fake the other three names, because there is a bizarre policy that you can’t rent a jeep with less than 6 people. Soon thereafter one of the government workers called Andrew into the office and gestured for him to talk to the men helping people at the window. It seems that the people at the window were primarily there to make sure no one was able to get to the window. The men told Andrew that without six people we wouldn’t be able to get a jeep and he returned to the line dejected. As we were about to hop into the bus line, the guy in front of us, Atul said that he would be happy to put us down on his ticket in place of two of the fake names. We agreed and he and Rajiv (his friend from Bombay, also in line) were able to secure a jeep and guide for the five of us. At this point it was almost six and we were freezing. The tour wasn’t going to start until 6:30 so the guide offered to pick us up at Atul’s hotel. Atul had a car which we happily piled into (yeah, yeah, we know…never get in cars with strangers and such, but it was FREEZING) and we went back to their hotel and had tea.

Atul works for the merchant marine, is from Northern India and just came back from a year’s study in the UK. Rajiv is from Bombay (home of Bollywood) and has been working on special effects in film for the last ten years. Atul’s friend Viloli was from Nagaland (sp?), which is in the mountains of northeastern India, and whose people have less Indian culture and kind of got “stuck” within the borders during some property settlement. She is about to start a new job in real estate in Delhi, a town she reviews as being “okay, but you get used to it after a few years.” So the three of them were a very eclectic sample of India: One from the North, one from the South, and one from the East—and they were awesome.

Our jeep pulled up around 6:30 and after walking outside, we realized we had been foolhardy to dress only in sweatshirts. Rajiv came to the rescue with a sweater for each of us. Even still the ride to the national park was far from comfortable. After our guide negotiated which trail we would take (there are seven trails and no one gets to choose a trail, but there seems to be a little influence that can be wielded) we were awarded trail number three. The drive in felt a lot like a scene from Jurassic Park as we road deeper into the jungle, past giant trees whose roots hung like vines from the branches. We drove through towering cement arches and our tour began. The goal typically is to spot tigers. This is done by looking for foot prints on the dirt trails that you drive on. Also the guide listens for warning calls from animals that may be preyed upon by the tigers. About an hour into the ride, we spotted a leopard finishing a lovely breakfast of what seemed to have been Deer TarTar. Apparently due to their nocturnal nature and shyness, although there are over 60 leopards in the park, it is rarer to see them than the tigers (although for us the tigers were the rare ones). The leopard paced back and forth scaring away the birds that were picking at the carcass and eventually lumbered away. The park was full of wildlife including different types of deer (one species called Sambar), antelope, and birds including hundreds of peacocks.

The ride was really wonderful, it was beautiful and peaceful and even though we didn’t spot a tiger we still felt like we were in a national geographic magazine. Afterwards we returned to Atul, Rajiv and Viloli’s hotel. They asked if we wanted to join them for breakfast so we happily agreed and headed upstairs to the rooftop terrace. We chatted for a couple of hours until it was time for us to check out of our hotel. Atul volunteered to drive us to our hotel and they invited us to store our luggage at their place as our train wasn’t until 11:35. Since we had no plans for the rest of the day we asked if we could join them as they explored the country side. They found a fort on our map of the town that seemed to be less touristic and was within a half hour drive. It took us through plenty of colorful villages one which had a pair of dueling cows. Atul was the best driver we have seen so far. Honking only once the entire time, despite the presence of camels, cows, tractors, motorbikes, and cars. We learned that the system for navigating doesn’t involve reading road signs, rather it just requires slowing down and uttering the name of the town we were heading toward and following their finger. We were explaining to them that we wanted to do a Vipassana (the meditation retreat), and they couldn’t understand what word we were using due to our pronunciation. Eventually they said “Oh Vi-Pas-sana” (compared to our pronunciation Vip-assana), later when they were asking directions, they had the exact same experience with the pronunciation of the fort we were going to. We were delighted, as it is hard to explain how even when you think you are speaking the language, they can’t understand it. It makes sense here, though, because as Atul put it, “every 100 kilometers, the language changes, the people change, the gods change…” In fact, there are hundreds of different languages in India, although less than 20 are officially recognized by the government.

We eventually pulled into a village and saw our destination on the top of the hill behind it. The ruins of a massive fort that stretched across the plateau of the hill. There was no obvious road there and it was hard to get directions to the base of the hill. Finally we happened upon a small boy (around 8 or 9—although he told us he was 20), he said he could show us the way by following him. When Atul asked how we could follow him if he was walking, the boy replied, drive slow. Instead, Atul invited him into the car and he showed us the way. (See if the boy will get into cars with strangers then surely it is ok for us to…when in Rome). Some boys were playing cricket at the base of the hill and about four of them abandoned their game to follow us up to the fort. The trail was steep and winding, built more for grazing goats than anything else. It made us a little nervous about Nepal, especially when Atul pointed out that the trek we are doing takes about 13 km per day and we were only hiking the equivalent of a city block. India is full of forts and we have already visited a couple, but this one had a completely different feel. It was abandoned as opposed to being a tourist destination. You enter under rotting wooden gates plated with rusted metal into a temple. (*Note, we didn’t have a water bottle and it was hot, so we all shared one that one of our companions had brought, it possibly saved our lives). Inside the exterior walls were paths leading to various decaying buildings including temples, kitchens, and water reservoirs. At one water reservoir, while we were discussing the undrinkability of the water a man and a boy descended to the water and filled up a couple of bottles, they asked if we needed any, and Atul replied (in Hindi) that we were foreigners and would be in trouble if we drank it. (*Note, earlier Vivoli had bought guavas and had us try them, although our guide book warned against eating fruit with skin on it, especially after being washed in Indian water, we thought what the heck, you only live once). The two rounded the reservoir and the boy offered us small white pumice-like pieces of candy. Vivoli explained that they are traditional sweets given at the temple after prayers, so we each took two and thanked him. They tasted like sugar mixed with butane gas (Andrew says anyway, Alex listened to her parents when they said don’t take candy from strangers). After the reservoir we found what was probably the king and queens quarters and was a still intact two-story building. It had a nice courtyard and steps to the roof that jutted out from the wall without supports from underneath. The eight of us spent an hour on the roof looking out over Rajasthan.

We stayed at the fort until sunset, the four boys having abandoned us an hour before. As we were descending at dusk, we happened to meet up with two goat herders and their flock. One of them rounded up a baby goat and let us pet it. We nodded graciously and he took that to mean we wanted to hold it. He handed the goat to Alex who held it as though burping a baby. It was not happy being held and cried like a baby to be put down. When Alex finally let it go it ran back to its mom, no doubt complaining about how the humans had abused it. We continued the trek down to the car accompanied by the goat herders and their flock. As we neared the car, we saw what must have been thirty village children had gathered near the car. As we approached they swarmed, shaking our hands and pressing inwards. We fought our way to the car and shut the doors. They pressed against the glass like monsters in a horror movie. Vivoli likened it to the paparazzi swarming a limo. We drove off and many of the children chased after us in a cloud of dust.

On the way home we stopped at a restaurant and had some Cauliflower Masala and Mutter (Chickpeas) Masala. We went back to their hotel and hung out until it was time to go to the train. Around 11 we said goodbye, and thanked everyone for a great day. Then Atul dropped us off at the train station. Our train was running late, so we sat on the platform for an hour waiting for it and listening to Harry Potter. When it arrived, the sleeper car we had purchased tickets for was at the other end of the platform. So we started walking briskly, which turned into a trot, jog, and then run as the train started departing from the station. We reached the door of our compartment and Andrew pushed Alex on and then was pushed on by the train worker himself. As it was after 12:30 at night, most people were already stretched out on their beds. After a little bit of confusion we found our sleeper beds which were on the top and hoisted ourselves up along with our bags. It was a tight fit, but after little sleep the night before and the early morning, we slept wrapped around our luggage which we had locked to the bed. As we didn’t know exactly when our stop was, we did have to wake up several times to ask when the stop was. Finally though we arrived in Udaipur, known as the city of sunsets because it has four lakes that are known to reflect the sun beautifully at dusk…but this will have to wait, as that is another day and another blog.

Welcome to India

andrewalex — Tue, 15 Jan 2008 21:03:00 GMT

We landed in India at 4:00 am. We were now 10 and a half hours ahead of New York time, and our bodies are still on French time. But we can’t complain, because a couch surfing host offered to pick us up in the middle of the night and offered to take us to his home.

The airport we flew into is located in Jaipur, also known as the pink city. There were probably 200 people on the plane, and another 200 waiting for them at the airport. We gathered our luggage, called our host, Sanjay, and went to wait outside. This was the first of many differences from Europe. There were probably 50 or so homeless people outside, but they weren’t sleeping despite the time, rather they were sitting and standing around talking to each other. It was fairly quiet, and the few men that asked us if we needed taxis did not pressure us once we told them no thanks. Soon Sanjay arrived, and recognizing him from his couch surfing picture, we happily piled into his car and were off to his home. There was little traffic, but judging by how he still straddled two lanes all the way home, it was clear that traffic would be interesting here. (They drive on the left side of the road… most of the time).

Sanjay’s house is really cool. There is a courtyard shared with the house below, and Sanjay and Anu (his wife) share the upper level with their four and a half year old daughter. There is one bedroom attached to the living room, and a second bedroom, the kitchen and bathroom are on the other side of the outdoor patio. The sink to the bathroom is outdoors between the kitchen and bathroom. From this and another house we have seen here, it seems common for an outdoor patio to be used as a den of sorts, where people take their morning tea and watch the kites flying. It makes sense when you realize that they basically live in the desert, and a breeze is welcome pretty much all the time. The houses in this area are only about 30 years old according to Sanjay, but they are very functional, featuring Indian Style showers, which consists of a shower which sprays cold water, and a bucket which is filled and then heated via an electric coil. So if you opt for the hot shower, you use a pitcher and ladle the water over you. If you opt for the cold water, you grit your teeth, and try not to breathe, although it can be quite difficult to so anyway. Our bedroom has a queen size bed in it, the refrigerator, and several cupboards. The mattress is similar to a one inch futon with wood planks underneath, but in actuality pretty comfortable so long as you don’t sleep on one side too long.

After getting to sleep around 4:30 am, we kept waking up to check the time. As it was our first day in India, we wanted to get a good start, but were simply exhausted from two nights sleeping in planes. We finally got up around 11:00, and Anu made us a wonderful cup of tea with biscuits. We talked with them for awhile, and they served us breakfast, which consisted of egg sandwiches, which were really awesome. Andrew declared that he liked them, which as you likely know, is no small feat. We met Sanjay’s friend Arun, and eventually they took us down to a cab stand so that we could go into the old city. Arun even did the bargaining for us, and got the ride for 35 rupees. (40 rupees is equivalent to one dollar). The cabs here are actually motorized rickshaws. Imagine a three wheeled scooter with a jeep canopy and roll bar. The cab ride into the old city lasted about 15 minutes, and felt like a video game. We darted in and out of cars, people, rickshaws, and goats. The driver would physically push people that were too close to the car to avoid hitting them. He honked so much that Andrew began to think it might be more efficient for him to equip his car with a horn that blew all the time and had a button to push when you wanted it turned off. The driver laughed uproariously as we chuckled at his mad honking. It was really fun, and quite impossible to describe.

The old city is what gives Jaipur the name the Pink City. The walls and buildings inside the city walls are almost entirely pink. The driver let us off right outside the bazaar, let us try to explain.

First, there is litter everywhere, but like little bits of paper, animal feces of all kinds, tons of dirt, and heaps of rotting vegetables which are often being sifted through by a couple of cows or dogs. But at the same time, there are women and men using brush-fashioned brooms to sweep the trash into piles, the litter is full of brightly colored objects. In fact, the whole town is colorful, mostly because of the vibrant saris the women wear from lime green to neon orange and electric blue. There are beautiful pillows, and rugs, and of course the ever-popular Pashmina everywhere.

Next the sounds. The first sound is the ever present blowing of horns, cars honk to show they are passing, cars honk if they get passed, buses honk at the pedestrians, rickshaws honk at the buses. Each store has its share of men whose job it is to get you browsing in the shops. They call out “Hello, would you like to come into my shop?” “Just to look, you don’t have to buy.” “Hello, hello, miss?” “Come see my pashmina, 50 rupees, sir, come see.” Then woman come up to you holding infants who are only clothed on the top half. We don’t know what they say, but we know they are gesturing for food, and indicating they have a baby. Then come the little children. Dressed in many layers of once-bright clothing, rubbing their bellies, they call out making the same gestures their mothers make. Their faces are dirty, and often they have scabs. Walking past a mosque as men were exiting, we also saw several people that were skin and bones begging from scraps of card board, the paralytic laying on the ground shaking uncontrollably.

We were heading towards what is known as the windy palace, a building made of lattice covered windows, constructed so that women of the day, adhering to the strict codes of conduct could watch the ceremonies without being seen. We reached the exterior first, which had no entrance, and were greeted by more homeless people laying at the foot of the palace, and several children that continuously begged for food. It was at that point, the chaos of the city became overwhelming and we wanted nothing more than to pay any ticket fee to gain access to a museum, and escape the evidence of the misery outside. We found the palace entrance and temporary respite from a poverty and desperation we had never comprehended, despite hearing of the stories.

We kept to the backroads as much as we could as we walked to the City Palace. We stopped by the observatory, which has sundial-esque star-gazing apparati. The City Palace had an exhibit on ancient textiles, weapons, and an art gallery with miniature paintings and giant rugs. Our favorite part was in the artists’ market, where every station had demonstrations of what they were selling. A miniature painter (in that he painted tiny pictures, not that he was very small) made an Indian woman on the back of our entry ticket with a squirrel-hair brush, and we watched as an older man wove a rug with impressive speed. A close second favorite in the City Palace was the visit from the monkeys, who crawled along the palace walls, hung from the roofs, and shoved each other in attempt to knock them to the ground.

After leaving the palace, we were ready to call it a day, and took an auto rickshaw back to Sanjay’s. We met up with him and then walked a few houses down to Arun’s place, where we met two American couch surfers who are staying with them (from Iowa). We all rode down to Sanjay’s jewelry shop, which felt suspiciously like we were being pressured to buy something, but two things kept us from being pessimistic. One, this man is letting us stay with his family. Two, we had seen quite a bit of poverty that day, and what is only a few dollars to us can mean so much more to someone here. Anyway, we had a couple beers (actually, it was one rather tall beer), and then went back to Sanjay’s, where his wife had prepared dinner.

The food here is fantastic. Although the guidebooks go on and on about the dangers of eating and drinking, we are happy to report that if you do get sick here, it won’t be because the food tastes bad. Every meal we have had so far, many of which were home-cooked, have been delicious, and vegetarian, as a matter of fact (Andrew wonders why American Vegetarian is so boring in comparison). After dinner, we retired to our room for the night, but not before brushing our teeth under the stars with a small amount of bottled water.

To our delight, the next day had much less to offer in the way of depressing realizations about the unfairness of life. We started off again with tea on the patio, and then met up with fellow couch surfers Austin and Phil to go to the Amber Fort, a fortress just a few miles north of Jaipur. Aron helped us bargain for a rickshaw driver for the day, and he agreed to take us to three forts, a palace, and the… monkey temple. We were excited about the Amber Fort because we had heard from our friends Tami and Brett that the best way to ascend to the top of the hill was via elephant. We arrived and sure enough, thirty or forty elephants, adorned with shawls, saddles, and painted faces were waiting for us. We mounted one and rode to the top. It was like a lumpy boat, rocking back and forth slowly, stopping once to “relieve” itself before carrying on. Along the way, men with souvenirs did their best to bargain with us before our elephant ambled away. It was a fun, unique experience, but at the same time made us want the elephants to stampede for freedom.

The fort was a labyrinth of stucco covered rooms, with giant steps and ramps leading to the different floors. There was a mirror temple, covered in dyed mirrors, and a nice guard that pointed out for us the structure that the soldiers used to hunt tigers from. After descending (on foot this time) to the rickshaw, we had to hunt for our driver. We split up, and Austin and Phil found him walking down from part of town. The four of us crammed into the back of the cab and he drove us to Naighar Fort, a second castle built on a second hill, that boasts the “largest cannon on wheels.” It was bigger than any we had ever seen anyway. We laughed at part of the description, which explained that it was “test-fired once, but due to good defences and the foresightedness of our leaders, the cannon never had to be used again.”

After sneaking away from a guard who was showing us the fortress in obvious hopes of getting tipped (we weren’t rude to sneak away, he would take us into a room labeled “dining room” and say “dees ees dining room”), we decided we were getting a little hungry. We made a few last stops in the fort, including the cannon foundry, where we learned they made solid cylinders and then bore out the centers to make the cannon’s barrels. We met back with the driver and unanimously agreed that instead of visiting the third fort on our agenda (popular because of its panorama of Jaipur), we wanted him to take us back into the city for lunch. He finally understood what we were asking, and before going back into town, he took us by the “water palace,” a palace that was apparently built in dry land, and then flooded so that it was only accessible by boat (and included water-locked horse stalls… don’t ask us how the horses got there). The raj and his princess would leave the palace we had previously visited, and come down to the water palace during hot days. A 10 year old boy impressed us with very good slight of hand magic tricks with a rock, which he was able to procure from Andrew’s nose. After that, we really did need to eat, so the cab driver took us to a location Phil and Austin had eaten at the day before.

We ate another thali (vegetarian sampler), which was delicious (and cost $2.75!). Because our friends were repeat customers, we were treated superbly, and fed refills until sufficiently over-stuffed. As we were packing the last few bites in, a mustached-man began making strange gestures to Austin. Sort of like we would gesture “smoking a cigarette.” Austin laughed him off, but a few minutes later the man walked by quickly and dropped something small, brown, and drug-like on the table. We instantly decided this could be nothing but trouble (aside from not wanting hash, the man could be in cahoots with a cop who would conveniently stop and search us outside the restaurant). Austin flagged down the waiter and asked him to take it away. The waiter confronted the mustached-man and kicked him out. On his way back, he apologized for him, and said that he was an “idiot-man.”

After lunch, we wobbled back to the rickshaw and were barely able to fit in. The next and last stop on our agenda was the monkey temple, a building built for and devoted to the Hindu monkey god. We had read that in the afternoons the priests of the temple feed droves of monkeys there, and needless to say were excited to witness such a thing. As we approached the road to the temple, we came upon bumper to bumper traffic, along with a never-ending row of people marching alongside the road to somewhere ahead. Some of the people carried banners, and loudspeakers along the road were blaring Indian music. We came to a road block and the driver told us there was no way through, we would have to walk four or five kilometers to the temple. We agreed to this and told him we would meet him in an hour and a half. We emerged from the rickshaw to the open-eyed stares of children. As we walked into the throng of people, it became very apparent there was some sort of festival going on. Men were selling cotton-candy-like snacks on long sticks, balloons, and foam parrots. Everyone was dressed in bright colors, and with the music as our soundtrack, it felt very much like walking through a film. We stopped to ask a police officer directions to the temple, and when we looked up, we were surrounded by curious, smiling kids. All of them were saying “hello!” and reaching out to shake our hands. More than we could count, probably 20 to 30, were eager to say hi. One boy who shook Alex’s hand was promptly smacked by his mother and escorted away, apparently the only one in the bunch that was not allowed to talk to strangers. We walked past a huge temple covered in lights, that was the apparent center of the festivities. There was a long, swerving line built outside the entrance, like that of an amusement park ride, and people were waiting, barefoot, to go inside.

It was here that we made the very exciting purchase of “monkey food,” (a plastic bag with nuts and round, white, bumpy things) and the kid that sold it to us pointed us down the road to the monkeys. We walked for a few hundred feet when we realized that we were being followed by two kids on foot, one kid on a bike, and a hobbling dog. The kids all said hello and asked us our names, and then followed a few feet behind us, whispering in Hindi as we walked. (Being followed is not that strange, everywhere we go, we have been primarily the only non-Indian people anywhere. Children here love to say hello and ask what our name is, the older children have learned enough to ask where we are from. The adults often smile and offer a friendly hello too.) When the kids had left us on our own and we came to a fork in the road, we were at a loss, but a few police drove by and pointed us on. We came across trees filled with bright green parrots (and baskets that are periodically filled with seed), other trees filled with large, black and white monkeys (not the ones we were going to see and definitely too big to attempt feeding), and herds of goats, cows, and donkeys. Oh, and one more herd of about six boys, who took turns shaking hands and telling us their names, then followed us to the temple gates.

The monkey temple was like a ghost town, with gates at each end, a small temple with a monkey god statue inside, and a stretch of grass leading up to an old, dilapidated group of buildings. The buildings indeed looked straight out of a western, or perhaps a war film. But these buildings were occupied by one to two foot tall monkeys, brown with small black hands. They were fantastic. They climbed the fences and walls with ease, poked in and out of windows, and were eager to see what we had brought for them. After some hesitation, we finally mustered the courage to bring out the monkey food. We both filled our hands with food and lowered them. It was not long before our hands were empty. Some of the monkeys (the bigger ones) took their time picking each kernel from our hand one at a time. Others, who were afraid of losing their stash, would swipe the entire handful with one motion and scurry away with what they could cram in their mouths. Some also were very gentle, grabbing hold of our hand with one of theirs, and then scooping mouthfuls with the other. One particularly picky monkey ate only the nuts, and left the spiky things for the other, less refined monkeys. There were too many to count, but aside from one moment where they all, for no reason, started grunting, they seemed really friendly. We also met the self-proclaimed “monkey man,” who took care of the temple and absolutely loved all animals. His favorite hobby seemed to be taunting the monkeys that he so loved by offering them a peanut but keeping a firm grasp on one end. Before we left, men and women began arriving with bags full of fresh fruit and vegetables, and the monkey man let us feed roma tomatoes to very eager monkeys. One of them leaped onto Austin’s back, and Austin’s only line of defense was to calmly hand him tomato after tomato until he had his fill. Overall it was an absolutely fantastic, ridiculously fun experience.

We rode back to Arun’s place, said good bye to our driver, and discussed our day with Sanjay and Anu. We showed Anu the food we had fed to the monkeys, and found out that it was not just “monkey food” at all, but a very delicious sweet snack. We tasted it and she was not playing a cruel joke, it really was tasty. The nuts were well, nutty, but the spiky things tasted like the frosting on Frosted Shredded Wheat. Any guesses who was disgruntled that the monkeys had eaten all of his/her snacks? Arun’s mom served us dinner, and afterward, we brought out our playing cards and taught Arun and Sanjay how to play Texas Hold’Em and B.S. Arun taught us their version of Bluff (in Arun’s version, two decks of cards are dealt out, and then one person chooses a number, e.g. Jacks, and puts all his/her jacks face down and says e.g. “three jacks”, then the next person may pass or also put down jacks. Because the cards are face down, it is possible to get 10 “jacks” on the table. If you think someone is bluffing, you yell out “bluff” and if you are correct they get all the cards, if not, then you get them) and then we rounded out the night by playing some very intense games of Spoons (actually, we played “Peanuts,” as we had some left over from when we used them as betting chips in poker). It was a great end to a great day.

On Sunday, we woke up later than usual, with out only real plan being to book train tickets to our next destination. Although we refused breakfast three or four times, Anu fed us rice and potatoes before we left for the train station. After getting a couple of our tickets (such a relief to be out of Europe and off of the Euro—four tickets worth 20 hours of travel cost us about ten dollars), we stopped by the internet café and then came back to Sanjay’s to start celebrating. You see, the 14^th of January is the Kite Festival, Maker Sakranti, where everyone stands on their roofs and flies kites. They call it “Big Kite day,” and the day before, this Sunday, is called “Little Kite day,” so a lot of people get in some early kite-flying. We climbed to Sanjay’s roof and his friend showed us the hilarious true meaning of kite-flying: kite-string-cutting. The kites are small, made out of tissue paper, and cost only a few rupees each. This means that you can afford to lose one or two, and therefore people attack neighboring kites with malice. Sanjay’s friend was so impressively precise that he cut three kites loose, searched the sky for a moment, and then said “now the pink one.” He sliced it free within seconds. The way they do it is by drifting their kites high up and out, and then crossing paths with another kite’s string. At the right moment they begin tugging on their kite so that it twirls rapidly, and the string acts as a saw blade as they pull it in. The result is the other kite’s string is severed. After this impressive mass attack, a pink and blue kite got the best of Sanjay’s friend. Sanjay asked us if we wanted to move to another spot to watch more, but Andrew told Sanjay’s friend that the pink and blue kite was still king of the sky, and with that, one more kite was sent up with a mission. It circled near the pink and blue kite, and then drifted downward, as if it had lost the wind. Suddenly, he yanked on the string hard, the kite soared upward and instantly severed the other’s string. Victory.

After a bit more kite-watching, Alex departed with Anu to get a facial and eyebrow threading at the “family beauty parlor.” When she returned, Sanjay drove the four of us to another festival that always happens on the 13^th with the Punjab caste, when they celebrate recent or pending marriages as well as new babies. The festival consists of music and a bonfire, and the one we went to was sponsored by the city, so it had a nicely sized pyre in the intersection of a street and an “up and coming Indian pop star” named Mahek (we think). She had what we could only describe as a musician’s worst nightmare. The mic would cut out, give feedback, or be too quiet, and more than once they would shut off the music in the middle of a song. Then came the flowers. For the festival, the area was decorated with plush yellow flowers on long strings. At first, people showered Mahek with flower petals and the occasional bud, almost like one would at the end of a great performance. Then people started pelting her with entire strings of flowers, more like tomatoes at the end of a horrible performance. She really stood her ground though, and was able to sing while dodging and batting down flowers, many times retreating to the back of the stage to avoid the onslaught. We felt terrible for her, and concluded that had this been an American singer, she would have walked away during the second song. On top of this, the event coordinators routinely walked on stage, one time while talking on a cell phone, one of the backup dancers almost picked a fight with a crowd member, and the news photographers kept stepping up on stage directly in front of her to take pictures of the crowd and the bonfire. One of our favorite parts was the group of kids that sidled up beside us. We later learned that the kids had apparently been goading each other to be the first to talk to us, and it was the littlest girl who mustered the courage first. They all said hello and we exchanged names (Although “Andrew” seems to be very hard for them to pronounce, so next time we’ll probably just go with “Skeeter”). Before we left, the little girl gave Alex a pink rosebud, and an older guy who called himself the “Indian Superhero” offered us the official snack of the festival; peanuts and popcorn.

We picked up a few beers on the way home, and spent the rest of the evening discussing the festivals and eating more of Anu’s fantastic cooking. The train ticket we bought in the morning is for a trip to Suwai Madhopur, where Ranthambore National Park stands. There is, we have read, the best chance to see the last of the wild tigers in India. No word yet whether or not they sell Tiger Food at the gate, but odds are that if there is Andrew will taste it before giving it away.

Day in Dubai

andrewalex — Sun, 13 Jan 2008 11:56:00 GMT

If you saw Annie's comment on her own guest blog (how vain), we are in India now. Before you hear about monkeys and mayhem, here is what we wrote at the Dubai airport while waiting for our flight...

Today was perhaps the strangest day of our travels. As many of you might realize, we left Istanbul yesterday evening, and had a 15 hour layover today in “Dubai” of the UAE. After explaining to Annie that due to our intensive efforts to plan our trip in India, we had failed to plan for a day in Dubai and thought that we might stay in the airport for the day, she insisted that we at least try to check out what might be the most ostentatious city on earth. We knew that due to the length of our layover, we would be able to get a free temporary visa. So after this conversation, Andrew began pulling up pictures on wikipedia of the man-made islands and we warmed to the idea of a visit. It was only then, that we discovered our airport was not in Dubai, but rather a twenty minute drive away. Rather than worry about it, we simply decided to ask the tourist office at the airport.

Our flight left Istanbul at 2 in the morning and arrived at 8 this morning. (There was a two hour time difference.) We stumbled sleepily out of the plane. We had 50 YTL left from Istanbul ($42 US), which we exchanged for 102 (AED) Arab Emirate Dollars. We’ve read that airports give some of the worst exchange rates, but it was only while standing in the passport control line that we realized we had paid approximately 12 dollars (US) more than we should have. Andrew, Alex’s absolute hero, went back to the exchange desk and demanded his YTL back, and….they gave it to him, even though he didn’t have a receipt!!! YAY!! But that’s not the strange part.

We decided to withdraw money from an ATM like we usually do, only the ATM wouldn’t take our card. So we headed toward the information desk with no money, but plenty of ambition. When the word tour confused the poor man, we were escorted back through security to the Duty Office, which looked nothing like a tourism office, but more like where we would be interrogated for smuggling. Still we spent 15 minutes waiting for someone to arrive and looking over the map of Sharjah that Andrew had pilfered from the information desk. Finally we decided we would go at it alone, with no money to buy things, and no information about where things could be bought. Really, if you have been following this blog very closely, it was an ideal situation for us, as not spending money is something we are quite adept at. We walked down the palm lined boulevard for 10 minutes until we came to an Oasis, actually a gas station called the Oasis. But, because they took credit cards, we were able to get some water and crackers there (for what we think equals about 90 cents). We happily carried on down the boulevard for another 15 minutes as taxis honked to see if we wanted a ride. We ignored them all, believing that we were only a few miles out of Sharjah, and knowing that we had eight hours to burn. The sun was shining, it felt like a beach resort, and we were having a wonderful time.

Just then, a car slowed down ahead of us and honked three times. We looked curiously at it and then each other and quickly conferred. We decided that we would happily take a ride if it was offered, (And no we weren’t hitch hiking). We hurried our pace and the guy in the car asked if we wanted a taxi. We still do not know why he asked if we wanted a taxi, but at the time we felt like we had been tricked by his plain white car. We backed away from the car, but then he explained the ride was on him. So knowing that we had no money, and therefore nothing to lose, we jumped in the car. We explained to him that we had no money, and he pulled out some 40 AED and tried to give it to Andrew. At this point, we were thoroughly confused…that didn’t go away throughout the day. We explained that we wanted to go down to the city center and he said that’s 15 kilometers away. Alex tried to get out of the car again, but the guy gestured for us to stay. We drove for awhile, and Andrew told him, his name is Amith, that we were going to go to the beach. A fair way down the road, at which point Alex was pretty certain she wouldn’t have been so happy walking, Amith slowed down and parked at the beach. Then he explained that he would wait for an hour and then take us to the city center. We tried to refuse, we honestly did, we offered to walk from there, but he explained that he was on a three day holiday and that he would be waiting when we were done. Again, we were pretty confused, the situation was just weird. He now knew we didn’t have any money, had offered us his, and was now acting as personal chauffeur. We spent an awesome thirty minutes at the Arabian Gulf. We got some nice photos including when Andrew waded into the water (Yes, it was cold). We sat on some rocks next to some fisherman and wrote in our journals, and marveled that instead of sand the waves watched up scores of coral and shells. The weather was perfect, and we were congratulating ourselves on our successful lack of planning and pondering what on earth the guy in the car was thinking, but deciding that perhaps he was just a lonely guy with nothing better to do. After this we headed back to Amith’s car and climbed in. He asked where we wanted to go, we said downtown Sharjah was fine, and he said Sharjah wasn’t that good and that we wanted to go to Dubai. Ok we said, and we were off.

Amith had told us earlier that he needed to exchange his car for a pickup truck at two o’clock, so he would show us Dubai and then drop us off in downtown Sharjah. On the way he told us that if the police asked, we were friends of his. This made both of us regret our decision to take him up on his offer of a ride. He explained that it was because there is a huge fine if citizens are caught performing the duties of cabs, so we would have to pretend to be friends of his, and he told us to call him “Mit.” Dubai’s skyline looks like something out of a sci-fi movie, and they are currently building what Amith said would be the tallest building in the world. He drove us through the city and out to one sky scraper that resembled a sailboat and took us into a shopping center that was full of delicious smells and a Starbucks. We were fascinated by the number of American restaurants including KFC, Hardees, Pizza Hut, Burger King, McDonalds, etc. Around 2:00 we left Dubai and he mentioned that his friend was waiting for the car. We told him it would be fine to drop us off and take care of that, reiterating for the 1000^th time that we could get a cab. (Bluffing of course as we didn’t have any money). Rather than driving to drop the car off, he took us to a vegetarian Indian restaurant that was simply amazing. We had a thali, which is a Sampler Platter served with Indian bread and rice and is essentially all you can eat. Before sitting down, Amith explained we had to wash our hands, at the hand washing station near the kitchen as they would be our main utensils. We had a moment alone and we quickly shared our suspicions, but decided the food smelled too good to act on them yet. Instead, we dug in whole heartedly, unfortunately right-handedly only, into the most delicious Indian food either of us had ever eaten. Tearing the bread one handed turned out to be difficult, but using the spoon was surprisingly the hardest. After what seemed like four courses, we got up to pay, and once more Mit took over and settled the bill. That voided our theory that he was doing all this for lunch on us.

Now that he was sufficiently late getting the car to his friend, he dropped us off downtown with the promise to return later and pick us up. He dropped us off in the middle of Sharjah at a store which had the lowest prices we have ever seen. It was called Gift Market, and all items were between 1 and 5 AED, or .36 – 1.50 US. To be honest, if we had had any AED we would have taken care of everyone’s souvenirs, with two for Spanky. We decided on a few items to purchase, but they wouldn’t accept credit cards for less than 100AED so we left the items there and went outside. Lulled by the shining sun, the nice breeze and the belly full of Indian food, we decided to sit out any more shopping and do some people watching.

Men here are dressed most often in long flowing white shirt dresses, some with pants beneath, some without. They have their head covered with a white or colored caftan that is held in place with rings. The woman are less likely to be dressed religiously, but those that are, sport burkahs or the head scarves we saw in Turkey. We’ve even seen kids wearing this attire. As we were lazily watching the people and pondering on the oddity of Amith, lo and behold there he was. He had finished early and come looking for us. He seemed worried that we were sitting down instead of shopping, so he took it upon himself to show us the mall we had missed out on. Finally sleepy and still overly stuffed, we explained that we would like to go to the airport. It was about five, and we had been told by the airlines to make sure and be back by six. So Mit walked us toward his truck, which was close to his office. It was then that it happened, he asked us if we wanted to see his office, we of course said yes and he opened the door. Inside were stacks and stacks of tubes of Silicone, some boxes of tape, and two desks. He asked us if we could illegally import the 12 boxes of Silicone into the US. We told him that unfortunately our bags were already pretty heavy, so we wouldn’t be able to on this trip…no just kidding. He showed us his office, and then we crammed into his truck (no back seat) and headed for the airport. The traffic was pretty bad, so not once, but twice he went the absolute wrong direction to take “shortcuts” which took us through the creepy industrial parts of Sharjah. It took 45 minutes to get back to the airport, but part of that was because he insisted that we stop for one more photo opportunity with him and a distant University.

When he dropped us off, it was as quickly as he had picked us up. He did not ask for anything but for us to call him when we make it to India. We shook hands and said goodbye. After checking in, we settled down to ponder the bizarreness of the day. We had expected at most to sit at the beach for a while, or maybe hitting up a McDonald’s. Instead we got a personal guided tour of Dubai, a fantastic lunch, and a new-found fondness for letting strangers pick us up and drive us to remote locations.

Annie's Guest Blog

andrewalex — Wed, 9 Jan 2008 18:43:00 GMT

Meraba!

Hello all! Guess where I am?? I’m HERE! I’m in the BLOG! Yes, I’ve made it to the other side, folks. I’m visiting Alex and Andrew in a small suburb of Oklahoma City, where we mostly watch “Nick at Nite,” sometimes read travel books, and once in a while write blog entries about our “world travels.”

So, lucky readers, guest appearance for you! I will be describing our week together in “Turkey.” To begin my journey, I packed up… Every. Single. One. Of Alex’s. Demands. Would you like a sample of what was in my many, many suitcases? The treats included: a box containing 30 full-size bars of assorted Hershey’s bars, two large bags of Hershey’s miniatures, a large book of ye olde English literature (“Of Human Bondage”), a book of crossword puzzles, two hooded sweatshirts, a bunch of Starbucks bottled drinks, 12 cans of Dr. Pepper, one large box of Nerds, one bag Starburst, one bag Skittles, two boxes Reese’s Pieces cereal, one box Honey Bunches of Oats, two board games (“Debate This!” and “Scrabble Scramble”), three boxes Boca burgers, 10 Peanut Butter Cliff Bars, two bags chocolate-covered pretzel Flips, three boxes fakey bacon (soy), a pair of shoes, a large bottle of sodium naproxen, four sticks of deodorant (definitely needed by your two favorite travelers), two jars of crunchy peanut butter, and popcorn ball ingredients (two bags of marshmallows and two boxes of jello powder), and… all right, all right, I relieve you of the duty of continuing to read this list, but please picture me like this from D.C. to Frankfurt to Istanbul: one five-foot redhead with two bags each over their fifty-pound weight limit, one backpack stuffed full, and one carry-on suitcase. I was what the locals call “a smyall, stryange pock muyle.” Silver lining: Alex and Andrew said that, in return for my beast-of-burden duties, I get the only souvenir now! Too bad, Spankster! Mine!

So, once the bags were unloaded, we began our adventures with a real, live, medieval castle. It was way scary because there were these high stone steps leading up to these high towers and the high steps had no barriers on the side, so you could just fall right over, ten stories down. Scary! And one of the towers had a big hole in the middle that led all the way to the ground, which was so far and dark below that you couldn't even see the bottom. It had plants and vines growing in it, and it looked so oh-super threatening. Alex and I were too scared to stand next to it, because you get a sick feeling, like you may lose your balance and fall in and ker-splat! So I laid down, with my feet away from it, and peeked my eyes over the edge. Andrew meanwhile stood on his hands to get his eyes closer to the hole and then did cartwheels around it. Later, when we were back home, Alex and I just had to think about looking into it to get that sick feeling again. Fun! The castle overlooked a big body of water, for which I have no name, so we’ll refer to it as “Big Turkish Water.”

Next, we went to some outdoor markets, where they sell all kinds of fantastic crap. Alex and Andrew like to pretend they bargain. Like, I wanted to buy 8 of these shishes (shish kebab skewers), which the guy said cost $2 each. Alex whispers conspiratorially to Andrew, “I think we can talk them down to $15.” They managed to swindle the Turkish into this deal, the sale was made, and, as we walked out, one salesman whispered conspiratorially to another, “Isn’t it cute when Americans try to haggle?” Earlier, a rug salesman tried to sell me a tiny Turkish carpet for $75. (Alex said I should not have boasted that I am “a way rich American lawyer looking to buy up everything I see in Turkey for any outrageous price you have the audacity to charge me...”) He told me “blue is sexeee color” and “pink is sexeee color” and “green is nice.” I passed on green. Actually, I passed on the whole deal. He said, all offended, “How much you want to pay? You want meshinmed for $20?” I was excited and was like, “What’s meshinmed?” “You know – meshin mayed. With a ma-sheen.” “Oh! Machine made?” I realized then they were not really offering me a $20 carpet, and I left. Outside the store, Alex and Andrew were happily chatting away with a very bad salesman (as he seemed to not actually be selling anything) who happened to be very knowledgeable about American movies. He knew every Tom Hanks movie, and claimed that “Apocolypse Now” cost $400 billion to make.

But, beyond silly salesmen, people are really nice here. When we go running, they all look at us curiously, but nicely. And guess what? They have free, outdoor gyms along the running trails! It's things like ellipticals, assisted weight machines, dip bars, inclined sit-up benches, etc., made of metal, like really sturdy, so people can just use them along the way. No wonder we’re fatsos in America! Nobody gives us free gyms!

I've learned a freaking ton of Turkish. I’m practically fluent, thanks to Alex and Andrew. I can say "excuse me" (pardon), "thank you" (tayshekular), "how much?" (ne kedar?), and count 1-10. I’ve also learned to say “very hot” (chok sijac), in order that I may properly describe the young Turkish men who serve the cute little glasses of tea on the ferries. All other words sound like "molekular" (like English molecular, but with a Turkish accent), so I can't remember any of them. Whenever a Turk says something you don’t understand, you just smile broadly, raise your pointer finger in the classic “a-ha” gesture, and exclaim, “Mo-LEK-ular!” as you rise to tippie toes in excitement. Then you hustle away. Job complete.

You know what’s amazing? I thought that, although people are the same everywhere (which is why you shouldn’t bother to travel), they don’t live the same. Like, it seemed only logical to assume that people are miserable and sad and poor everywhere but the U.S., Canada, Western Europe, and perhaps Japan. But, judging by Turkey, I’ve been lied to! (By “lied to,” I mean didn’t care to know anything.) It’s just like America (if we said “Mo-LEK-ular!” a whole bunch, or, more exactly, if the mentally slowish foreign visitors did, I guess). They’re all, you know, like, riding around in their cars, honking at everyone, on their way to the video rental store, after which they’ll pick up their kids from their private schools, and throughout the drive they’re thinking thoughts like how glad they are that their kids aren’t old enough to dress like the teenagers on the street that they’re passing by who are wearing striped stockings and Doc Marten lace-up boots and carrying satchels with patches screaming logos from Turkish rock bands and getting “REBELLION” stamped on their foreheads to indicate that they have rebelled in the manner appropriate for all teenagers worldwide (by wearing the items described supra).

Well, it’s 2:30 a.m. and my sad flight home from Okla – er, “Istanbul” leaves tomorrow morning. So… “Mo-LEK-ular!”