Notes From Abroad

Aung San Suu Kyi

2011-01-14T14:13:00.001-05:00

Here's an article I wrote recently about Aung San Suu Kyi's release and what it means for Burma. I visited Burma in 2007.

http://www.thailawforum.com/aung-san-suu-kyi-and-burma-democracy.html

Bocas Del Toro

2010-10-07T23:17:00.000-04:00

So Bocas del Toro does have an airport that supposedly flies to Panama City, but like the ferry, flights weren't running for some unknown reason. The main town on Bocas was pretty chill but not much going on. Unfortunately, you had to take a boat to get to the nice beaches on the neighboring islands and to get one for a reasonable price you had a to have a group. Looks like I got a late start on the day because they all had already left in the morning. I probably should've taken a tour. The island was actually pretty expensive. My dorm room was $10, boats were $20, and food wasn't cheap. Another strange thing was the supermarkets and bodegas were run by Chinese. Who immigrates to Panama? For better opportunity?

The boat I finally got took me to Isla Basiemento but for a cheaper price they dropped me off at the town and not the beach. They said it was a short walk across the island to Wizard Beach but in fact it was half an hour through mud that at times was a foot deep. I lost my flip flop at one point. The beach was pretty empty but nice.

Back at the hostel was kind of boring, partly due to the people there and partly due to not being able to buy alcohol until midnight. At a place like this its all about the people you meet. Finally midnight arrived and we went to Bar Iguana which was dead and then rockin Bar Condito. There we enjoyed horrible raggaeton and spanish music. The DJ did something I hate even more than raggaeton; he shouted over the music every 5 seconds. At one point they played a slow song to dance to: Beauty and the Beast. That's right, the Disney version. Pretty awesome night. At least we were on the water.

The next day it rained a lot but I decided to go diving in the afternoon anyway. $60 for 2 dives; a wreck and at Casa Blanca. Not great diving due to poor visibility. Later I had dinner with my friend from school and two annoying girls from the hostel, Kristin and Meg. Meg kept telling these stupid jokes that weren't even crack a smile funny. I mostly chilled that night with Stuart, an Aussie guy from the hostel. The bar there was packed but I crashed early because I had to be up at 6 am to get to Panama City the next day.

A Long Day of Traveling

2010-10-06T17:24:00.001-04:00

Apparently it was theoretically possible to make it from Monte Verde in central Costa Rica to Bocas del Toro in Panama in one day. I caught the 4:45 am bus down the mountain and then changed to a San Jose bound bus which got there by 12pm. For such a small country with "good roads" it still seemed to take a long time to get around. Of course, there's not one centralized bus station in the capital but something like six and so I had 5 minutes to get across town in a taxi to the bus station where my bus to the border was leaving from. If I missed that bus I'd never make it to Panama that day. Somehow I made it with literally a minute to spare after running around like a lunatic. The bus passed through Puerto Viejo which was supposed to be a party town on the beach. I was tempted to stay but pushed onwards to the border, 5 hours from San Jose. From the border I had to wheel my suitcase across a railway bridge. Another time I was happy to have a suitcase on wheels.

Once in Panama, according to the Book, I needed to take a boat from Chingola to Bocas del Toro but the sketchy taxi driver who wanted to rip me off on a taxi ride swore it wasn't running. The border guard also told me it wasn't running so I ended pouting and trying to bargain the taxi driver down from his ridiculous price for about 30 min before sharing the ride to Almarenta with another traveler who owned a place in Boca. In Almarenta I took a small, low to the water, speed boat to Bocas where I got totally soaked by water coming over the side of the boat. So did my suitcase. The town seemed pretty chill but it was dark so I made beeline for Mondo Jaitu Hostal, which got a great write up in The Book. It was a party hostal alright but it was really shitty too. I was happy to get somewhere where I could chill out and party for the weekend after spending 2 of 3 days in Costa Rica on the road. It just so happened, however, that it was some holiday called Matyr's Day so no one would be selling alcohol from that night at midnight until the following day at midnight. WTF, it was Friday night. In any case the hostal was having a party that night and had all you can drink for $15. I randomly ran into someone I knew from my Master's program, Shane, and his friend and around 2 am everyone from the hostal went to the airstrip next door to continue drinking. If you're sure an airplane won't be coming, drinking on an landing strip under the stars on an island is pretty fun.

Monte Verde

2010-10-05T12:41:00.000-04:00

Once I caught the ferry back from the volcano island in the lake, it was only 45 minutes on the chicken bus to the Costa Rican border. It was totally disorganized but there wasn't a wait., which I heard could be hours. You can't help but imagine the Central Americans could really help themselves by creating some sort of EU-style Central American Union to better allow the free flow of people and goods. Instead they fight wars over soccer (Honduras and El Salvador).

Once across the border I hopped a bus to Liberia, Costa Rica's second city. For some reason the police kept stopping the bus and I had to get off and have my passport checked no less than 5 times. It felt like a damn police state. They must've been looking for Nicaraguans. I also didn't have a seat. The other thing that struck me was that Costa Rica looked just as poor as Nicaragua even though it was supposed to be much more developed. Costa Rica is always held up as a success story and it gets way more tourism than its neighbors, but I guess it's still relatively poor. The bus station in Liberia looked nearly as crappy as the one in Nicaragua.

Now I was on my way to a place called Monte Verde but I was getting some conflicting information about how exactly I was going to be able to get there and my Spanish just wasn't getting it done. Thankfully I met a couple of Argentines who spoke English. I had to take a bus and get off at La Irma. This was literally the side of the road with only a gas station there but they promised me a bus would eventually come that was going to St. Elena, the town next to Monte Verde, and it eventually did. After 2 hours on a long and windy road I got to St. Elena and stayed at the Pension Santa Elena where I met a German couple Frank and Lana to while away the evening with.

The next day I was on a 6:15 am bus to Monte Verde for a guided tour of the cloud forest. Central America is full of the mysterious sounding cloud forests, which I never had heard of before Central America. It's just a forest that's at a high elevation. I think they made it up to get people to come to Central America. The Quakers had moved to Costa Rica for some reason, set up shop at Monte Verde, and then created the country's first ecological preserve. The park was nice...it was a forest...and it was raining. Very atmospheric...and wet. We saw the famous Central American bird, the Quetzal, from afar and the chicken bird, which I think is like a turkey.

In the afternoon I bought some of the famous Costa Rican coffee to bring back with me and then went on a canopy tour with Amanda, a Canadian girl I met. Basically they installed a zip line that goes through the treetops, from platform to platform. You go pretty damn fast and you always feel like you're going to crash into the next platform so it's a lot of fun. The longest one was over a kilometer. Since this was my only day in Costa Rica, I'd say the Canopy Tour made it worth it. You could spend a whole month in Costa Rica so I basically decided I only had time for one place that was not too off the beaten path.

Isle de Ometepe

2010-09-23T14:33:00.001-04:00

In Nicaragua, there is an island. In a lake. With two volcanoes. That was my destination after Grenada and seemed like maybe it could be the island of Doctor Moreau. I mean, it sounds like someone should really be doing genetic experiments on animals, people, etc there. I had to take the chicken bus from Grenada part of the way. No matter how old the chicken bus is, and it's usually pretty old because it's a decommissioned American school bus, they always seem to have good speakers so they can blast horrible music. I'm pretty sure those speakers cost more than the bus itself. In any case after 2 hours standing in the back next to a guy who was actually holding a chicken, I arrived at Rivas from where I had to take a short taxi ride to San Jorge and the dock for the ferry to Ometepe. San Jorge? Really? I'd love to know how many names of towns in Latin America are duplicates of San Jorge, San Pedro, San Carlos, or San Whatever. Asking for directions is fun when they're like "take the bus to San Jorge" and then I reply "but we're in San Jorge". "No, the next town is also called San Jorge".

The ferry dropped us off at the main town of Merida, which isn't where you'd really want to spend your time on the island. Unfortunately, the bus situation to where I wanted to go was terrible so I had to take a $30 shared taxi with Will, a philosophy PhD student I had met, and some other guy. The island was fairly underdeveloped with bad roads but a nice tropical atmosphere. An hour later, and two guesthouses that we decided we didn't like later, we arrived at our final destination: Hacienda Merida. This was a pretty chill place. Lots of hammocks, which for me is key, a dock for swimming, and a buffet dinner for $6, which was delicious. Not really much to do and the lights are almost all off by 10pm, but it was relaxing. They even had netbooks lying around for everyone to use (for a fee).

The next morning me, Will, a couple of Welsh girls, and an English guy, Daniel, decided to rent kayaks and go to infamous Monkey Island. Now this island was just a 100 sq ft patch of bushes and trees a 10 minute kayak ride from the guesthouse and we heard that the two monkey prisoners on the island were actually put there by the owner of Hacienda Merida so he could get people to rent kayaks and go visit them. Apparently they really want off that island because they were super aggressive if you got close to the island and there's no question they would jump onto, and well I'm not expert on monkeys, but I would suspect they'd hijack it and paddle back to the main island after killing you. Monkeys can kayak, right? Later on we were told that the lake had bull sharks in it, which apparently is plausible since a river from the Caribbean feeds into it. Our first reaction of course was bull sharks? Bull shit! hahahaha.

Back at the guesthouse we found another monkey chained up right outside of the guesthouse, which was sad, but it did allow Daniel, Will, and I to go play with it for about an hour. Let me me tell you, this was a cute, "Outbreak" monkey who enjoyed pulling our hair. That afternoon we had to go for a longer kayak ride to some marsh up a river that went in between the two islands. Very peaceful and we got a sunset and a nice view of the two volcanoes. The view made Will and Daniel decide to climb the active volcano even though it explodes every year. We attempted to figure out the odds of it exploding while they were up there. I was happy I decided to go kayaking during my one full day there anyway since the climb was supposed to be a l0 hour slog through the mud. Early the next morning I caught the speed boat to the ferry dock, instead of the 4am bus option, to catch the 7:30am ferry and onward transport to Costa Rica.

Grenada

2010-06-28T00:06:00.001-04:00

The Bearded Monkey Hostel in Grenada had horrendous facilities but a good atmosphere with a great open air courtyard. I got my own uncomfortable room but at least it wasn't a dorm. I bargained them down from $17 to $11 too. The morning after I arrived I went out to explore the town...and a new country. I came straight here from Managua, the capital, because like all the Central American cities it was supposed to suck and be dangerous. Grenada was a beautiful colonial town similar to Antigua in Guatemala except for much less touristy and it was on a huge lake. Grenada also seemed a lot poorer than Antigua.

I took a walk down to the Plaza de la Independencia and peaked into the Casa de los Tres Mundos and the Convento y Iglesia de San Francisco, but they really had nothing to offer. I then wandered down Calle La Calzada, which has all the bars and restaurants, towards the lake, where I realized I should've done the tour that takes you to see the thousands of Isletas in the lake but it was too late. I pretty much saw all there was to see in a couple of hours so I walked through what felt like the "real" Nicaraguan part of town to take my first chicken bus in Central America to the nearby village of Caterina. This little village had an awesome viewpoint of Laguna de Apoyo and Volcan Mombacho. Lots of Nicaraguan families came to hang out up there and blast their music on boom boxes. There was actually a DJ, but why ruin a perfectly enjoyable viewpoint by playing music so loud?

I got the real chicken bus experience on the way back when twice as many people as was reasonable crammed onto the bus and the guy next to me was actually holding a live chicken. It took two chicken buses to get back to Grenada for some reason. Back in town I had a pretty mediocre chicken, rice, and beans dish for $2 from what I thought was the most local place I could find. I decided at this point that I prefer Mexican food over Central American food and that I should just get Mexican food wherever I can.

To Nicaragua!

2010-06-23T13:36:00.001-04:00

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I spent a couple hours in Antigua one night trying to figure out what was the cheapest (and fastest) way to get to Nicaragua. I went around to a bunch of different travel agents and the cheapest I found was $100 for an 18 hour bus. Seemed expensive but what could I do? They picked me up at my hostel at 3 am New Years Day. When we got to the Guatemala bus station around 4 am they gave me the equivalent of $60 and told me to wait in line and buy my bus ticket. So in other words I paid $40 for a 45 min taxi ride from Antigua to Guatemala. I wasn't too happy about this but I should've realized I could've just gone to Guatemala City the night before myself and got my own transportation, but it was just impossible to figure out myself in Antigua due to a lack of information. $40 goes a long way in Central America.

The bus was fairly comfortable and I slept a lot. We passed through El Salvador and then Honduras and then into Nicaragua stopping for food at a gas station. Thank god there was an ATM giving out dollars so I could eat. Passing in and out of two countries wasn't too fun because it meant everyone had to keep getting off the bus and pass through customs. We didn't arrive into Managua, the capital of Nicaragua until 8 pm. It was dark but I wanted to get to Grenada that night. It's funny how I know I'm getting ripped off, I even asked the woman working in the gas station and she confirmed it. I have him take me to the place in The Book where it says buses are leaving to Grenada but no luck, they're closed. I start looking for hostels in The Book on our way back into town when the driver makes a phone call and of course, there's a bunch of minibuses going to Grenada from down the street from where the bus let me off. I'm sure the driver didn't know about them before. He did get $10 from me. The bus to Grenada costs $1 for me and $1 for my bag but they drop me off right in front of my hostel. I just hate arriving in a new country having no clue what was going on especially at night. I didn't even know what the exchange rate was at the ATM. That was a long day of traveling....there was much more to come.

Volcan Pacaya

2010-06-22T21:02:00.001-04:00

I woke up New Years Day feeling horrible but I went out anyway to get some lunch and see a little bit more of the city. I had a paspoosa and a chile relleno from a street vendor and then went into some yellow church which had a nice fountain in its courtyard. At 2 pm I got picked up to hike up to Volcan Pacaya. I didn't have enough cash because I forgot about the entrance fee that wasn't included in the tour price but the driver was a really nice guy and lent me the couple of dollars I needed.

Now this is an active volcano mind you. It was an hour and half hike to the lava flows and there were some pretty nice views along the way. Once we got to the lava flows I was blown away by what I saw. It was literally a river of lava like something straight out of the movies (think: Volcano starring Tommy Lee Jones and Anne Heche or Dante's Peak). I'll also accept Mt. Doom analogies. If I was going to destroy the ring of power, I'd come here. Beneath our feet you could actually see red lava flowing under the hardened magma which we were clamoring over. Once you got within 15 feet of the lava you could really feel intense heat. If you stood right next to the lava river you could only bear the heat for a few seconds. It was that hot.

There must have been 40 tourists gawking over the lava flows up there. I couldn't help but think how dangerous it was. Firstly, this was an active volcano so it could erupt at any time (which it did a few months later killing someone near the volcano). Secondly, the hardened magma was really uneven and some of it was loose. I slipped on loose rocks at one point. Another time I heard someone yell "get outta there!" when some girl fell. She didn't fall into the lava but she easily could've. It's not too often you can say "watch out, there's lava down there!". In a developed countries there's no way they'd let you get anywhere near the lava. Conservatives should want to live in Guatemala. There's pretty much unlimited personal responsibility. No government is going to tell you not to get too close to lava. A lot of people were roasting marshmallows which was pretty awesome. On the way down we lost a member of the group so we had to wait around for like half and hour and then it was totally dark so climbing down was quite a challenge. If that wasn't bad enough my cool, new Guatemala hat just flew off my head into the darkness.

Antigua

2010-06-17T11:44:00.001-04:00

Antigua is a beautiful colonial town and the tourist capital of Guatemala. They definitely keep it nice for the tourists and it's way overpriced for Guatemala, but it is pretty nice. After getting back from Chichicastenango I met up with Trevor and Seema in the main square in front of the central church. We went to a nice New Year's Eve dinner and then had some drinks back at Seema's hostel. After which it was getting close to midnight so we headed to the Parque Central with some warm beer to see the celebration and fireworks. After midnight we hit up Riki's Bar which had some live music. I was hanging out with some Dutch girl when I lost Trevor and Seema to never find them again. I headed home around 4 am but was actually feeling pretty sick. For some reason I booked a tour to climb the nearby Volcano for the next day.

Chichicastenango Market

2010-06-17T00:43:00.000-04:00

The trip back to Antigua from Lake Atitlan took forever and I was on one of those horribly uncomfortable minibuses. One thing I noticed in Guatemala was that all the children waved at us as we drove by. I mean, every kid was waving. Seems like they'd get bored after a while. I couldn't tell if they were waving at every car or only me but they never failed to do it. It was the afternoon of December 30th when I got back to Antigua and I was a little worried about finding a room for New Year's Eve. Antigua is the most touristy place in Guatemala but after a little while of wandering the streets I found a pretty basic room for $10 at Casa Shalom (I guess a lot of Israelis passed through). No atmosphere really but it was better than sleeping on the street.

That night I met up with two classmates of mine, Federico and Irina, the Argentine-Russian couple at SAIS with me. So international! We went to dinner at Riki's Bar and then had a couple drinks. Unfortunately, they were leaving the next day. I on the other hand was off to the biggest market in Guatemala.

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Chichicastenango was only two hours away but I think for the first time ever the travel time was actually less than what they told me when I bought my ticket, which was 3 hours. The shuttle there was expensive but otherwise you need to take 3 different "chicken buses". The chicken buses are decommissioned yellow American school buses that they paint and graffiti. That's how the locals get around. They cost nothing but people do actually take their chickens on them.

I randomly ran into Trevor at the market so we went around together. I was really happy I decided to go to Chichicastenango because Tikal and Antigua were not the "real" Guatemala. Obviously, when you're traveling you have to find the "real" [insert country here] or you're just some superficial vacationer on holiday. The "real" Guatemala was in Chichicastenango where women wear their traditional colorful clothing and come to the market from the countryside with baskets on their head to sell their chickens and turkeys and everything else. It definitely was not for tourists although there were a decent number of them there. This was by far the best spot on the trip to take photographs too. There wasn't much I cared to buy though except for a Guatemalan hat that I overpaid for and lost the next day. There was also an incredibly colorful cemetery behind the market on a hill, which was unlike anything I had seen before. It was supposed to be dangerous but Trevor and I went anyway and caught some Guatemalans performing an interesting ceremony. This would've been a nice place to spend the night but alas I had to go back to Antigua for a New Year's celebration.

Lake Atitlan

2010-06-11T19:10:00.001-04:00

The overnight bus from Flores to Lake Atitlan was decently comfortable but it was also an ice box. I was wearing a sweatshirt and shorts and I was freezing. I should've gone up to the driver and said "por favor senor, puede no rende el air conditionero?", but I didn't. I also don't think those words are right. I got off of the bus in Guatemala City at 5 am where I had to change but I was so groggy from the Tylenol PM I didn't know what the hell was going on. That's where they get you, when you're all disoriented standing with your bag outside of a bus station in the middle of the night. I agreed to pay 120 Quetzals ($12 about) to Antigua (only an hour away) because the minibus was leaving right away but I think the true cost was like a dollar or something but I would've had to go to another bus station. It worked out though because I met Trevor from Ireland and Seema from New York who I palled around with for the next couple of days.

Lake Atitlan was stunningly beautiful. It's a lake surrounded by volcanoes. Trevor, Seema, and I decided to pass through Panajachel and go straight to the small town of San Pedro on the far side of the lake via a ferry boat. Here was one time when I kind of wished I had a backpack since lugging a suitcase on wheels onto a small boat when there's not much of a dock wasn't that easy but still manageable. The boat ride was 45 min and quite pleasant. San Pedro actually reminded me of backpacker spots in Southeast Asia with its little guesthouses, sandwich shops, and even banana pancakes. I shared a room with Trevor for $5 a night at Hotel Lola which had a balcony with hammocks overlooking the lake. This place was heaven. 2 days wouldn't be enough.

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Trevor has probably been to more countries than anyone I've ever met. He's a teacher in London and takes an awesome trip every vacation he gets which as a teacher is a lot. I think he said he's been to like 70-something countries. Being a teacher seems pretty ideal for someone who likes to travel a lot. Seema also has traveled a lot and works for a consulting company in NYC, I think it was Deloitte. In any case, these are exactly the people I want to meet when I'm traveling. We rented bikes for the afternoon and went a little ways around the lake to some more towns with generic Spanish names like San This and San That. The people we passed on the way were a picture of rural Guatemalan life. Men working in the fields, women carrying things on their backs, and the general poverty that Westerners find fascinating. It was great for pictures but being on a bike made it difficult.

Back in town we passed by a man with all of his corn crop drying in the sun (is that something you need to do with corn?) and we stopped to take pictures of all the corn. He asked us if we had corn in our country. I was like "uh....yeah...but...only in the supermarket". Trevor compared it to Americans coming to Ireland and taking pictures of the cows like we don't have them in our own country. Another great interaction I had with a Guatemalan was when this woman outside of our guesthouse said "pan?!" every time I walking out of the guesthouse like she didn't recognize me. After the 7th time I had to buy banana bread from her. She continued to do it. I guess you had to be there.

Back in town we went for dinner at a little Israeli backpacker restaurant (so southeast Asia!) and then to a low key bar where we partied until 4am or so. Seema and Trevor were out early in the morning but I stayed until mid afternoon relaxing in my hammock before I caught a minibus to Antigua. I did not want to leave that place. I will be back.

Tikal

2010-06-06T19:40:00.002-04:00

Tikal was the largest pre-Columbian city in the Americas and is known as the "mother" of all Mayan ruins. There are over 4,000 ruined structures and it was abandoned in 800 AD. I decided to take a tour, with Boris, even though I hate them because I figured if this was the mother of all Mayan ruins then it might be nice to find out a little more information than the intro paragraph in The Book had to offer. The tour left at 4am because I guess you just have to get there for sunrise. Of course it was cloudy and rained for a bit in the morning so no sun. The people on my tour weren't terribly exciting except the French couple on their honeymoon, Claire and Tibeaux, who I had traveled with from Palenque. The annoying Australian girl didn't even like Indiana Jones....she was really the worst.

I prefer to explore ruins on my own because I find it much easier to get into the moment. When you're in a group of 20 it's kind of hard to do that. I get easily distracted by the random strangers in my group. Luckily the tour only went until 1pm so I had the rest of the afternoon to wander around on my own. I also like to listen to the soundtrack to Indiana Jones on my ipod and pretend I'm an explorer. If you're totally alone at a ruin it drastically changes the experience.

Tikal was spread out over a huge area but was totally consumed by the jungle. I love when things get "consumed by the jungle". It reminded me of Angkor Wat in that respect but there were no interiors to explore. What's amazing though, and somewhat hard to envision, is that the whole area was paved in stone and was a true city. Now it looks like a bunch of ruins scattered about in the jungle but during its heyday it was a marvel. When you climb to the top of one of the pyramids you can see the very top of 3 others peaking out above the treetops.

Actually, I have a great idea. When people visit ruins they normally think that they're generally in the condition they were found in by archeologists, but in fact they are reassembled by archeologists who believe they know what the ruins used to look like. If that's the case I think they should faithfully recreate the ruin from scratch at a site nearby and really try to make it look exactly like it did when it was first built. Wouldn't that be sweet?

After lunch nearby with the French couple and a quick look at the two horrendously bad museum's that were on site, I went back to the ruins on my own. The tour hit up the major ones but I went to some of the one's a little further afield which were nice and quiet. Then I laid down in the grassy field in the main ruin square for about an hour contemplating ancient Mayan civilization or dozing off. And so that was it for the ruins on this trip. Actually, I've probably seen all the major ruins of the world now: Egypt, Angkor Wat, Machu Picchu, and now the Mayans. I caught the 5pm bus back to Flores, took a dip in the lake, and then was on the 10pm overnight bus to Antigua.

The Road to Guatemala

2010-05-20T11:46:00.022-04:00

The boats going across the border

Apparently crossing the border from Mexico to Guatemala on your own is a real pain in the ass (so says The Book) so I took a package where they arrange all the transport for you. We left Palenque at 6 am on a minibus and stopped for breakfast that was a pretty big rip off and not included in the tour. I didn't have any money so I had to borrow some from a French couple on my bus. I hate it when you don't know exactly how much money to take out because you're leaving the country in a couple days. The best part of the euro is not having to worry about that in Europe anymore.

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The border wasn't too far and would've been much closer if it wasn't for those damn speed bumps. The reason crossing the border is difficult is there's no road that goes directly through. To get to Guatemala you need to cross a river on a boat which always makes a boarder crossing a little more adventurous in my opinion. Why isn't there a bridge going across this narrow river? I dunno. My guess is that in terms of immigration Guatemala is to Mexico as Mexico is to the US. On the other side of the river Guatemala was visibly much poorer in pretty much every aspect. Our next vehicle was a beat up old bus waiting for us near a few huts. We had to wait around for an hour for everyone else who was crossing the border to show up. Unfortunately, the person we were waiting for was this really annoying Australian girl who was on my tour in San Cristobal. At least there was a hammock.

The immigration checkpoint on the Guatemala side was nearly comparable to the ones I saw in Cambodia. It was a dusty shack in the middle of nowhere. From there it was another few hours to Flores, which we didn't get to until 5pm so in total it was an 11 hour journey. If I had had another day you can visit ruins along the way which would break up the trip better.

Flores is a town on an island in a lake that serves as the jumping off point for trips to the Mayan ruins of Tikal. It's quite nice actually although there's not anything to do. It's also expensive for Guatemala precisely because it's the jumping off point for Guatemala's biggest attraction. I ended up staying in a dorm room at Dona Goya's guesthouse. Some American college students were also in the room to annoy me with their idiocy. I had dinner with two French couples from my journey across the border and the annoying Australian girl.

Outside immigration control

Palenque

2010-05-15T11:19:00.001-04:00

I really love not knowing where I'm going for sure until I actually get on the bus going there. This time I got the last seat on the morning bus to Palenque which meant I wasn't going with my new friends from the hostel but at least I got to go when I wanted. Time is precious on this trip. No time for dallying.

I caught the 7 am bus from San Cristobol. Since I couldn't take the tour, which was full, I couldn't stop at Agua Azul along the way. A place called Blue Waters sounds pretty enticing but what're you gonna do. We were an hour late so I was in a rush to get to the ancient Mayan ruins of Palenque. Another fantastic Mexican ruin that I had never heard of but was incredibly happy I visited. It's interesting I ended up going to more ruins in Mexico (4) than in any other country I've been to. Who knew? This Mayan ruin is definitely less pyramidy than the others I had been to but no less impressive. It was more like a real discernible city than the other ruins which looked more like ritual temple cities.

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I got yelled at by a security guard who told me I wasn't allowed to use a tripod even though I told him I wasn't a professional photographer. Thanks for the compliment though, Mexican security guard. At Palenque you could climb all over the buildings and up the pyramids. I love that because I'm selfish and don't care about future generations. At the top of the pyramid I got some amazing views of the whole site.

That night I slept at El Jaguar (pronounced with a Spanish accent). It was a handful of bungalows in the middle of the woods. It was actually great. Very rustic, but I'd prefer having my own thatched bungalow to sharing a modern dorm room. For dinner I went to the only restaurant in the area and ate with Joshua, an architect from LA.

Spanish vs. Italian

2010-05-01T16:14:00.000-04:00

I can speak Italian (kind of) which everyone says is pretty similar to Spanish so I figured it'd be really helpful when I was in Latin America. Whenever I couldn't remember the Spanish word I throw out the Italian word. Hardly ever worked. They normally just stared at me blankly. One time I couldn't remember the Spanish word for bread, pan, so I used the Italian word, pane. The woman couldn't figure out what I meant. I mean, come on! It's one vowel at the end.

Wait a sec, the Mayan people are still around?

2010-03-29T23:43:00.008-04:00

I arrived to San Cristobal in the state of Chiapas via night bus at 6am on Christmas Day. I planned on spending two days in this lovely colonial town but then when I got to Rosco's Backpacker Hostel they said they still had tours going out that day even though it was Christmas. Actually, I thought maybe Christmas Day would be a big deal in Mexico since the people are very Catholic, but no. It seemed pretty normal out. Everything was open including the markets.

I decided to go see a traditional Mayan town in the morning. That meant I could sleep for an hour and half and be refreshed and energized to go, especially since the only bed they had was the top bunk in a 14-bed dorm; my favorite. The hostel looked like nothing on the outside but had a beautiful courtyard with fire pit on the inside and it was 6am and I was exhausted so I figured I'd stay.

I took a tour to the main Mayan town of the region, San Juan Chimal. I had always thought the Spanish killed all the Mayans but apparently the culture just got mixed up with Spanish culture and is still around today. They're Christian...sort of. Instead of Jesus, St. John the Baptist seems to be the main religious figure because he corresponds to the Mayan Sun God. It's like the Spanish missionaries came to the Mayans and said you are now Christian. The Mayans then responded, "Sure, whatever. St John the Baptist can be the Sun god and St. Paul can be the moon god. Happy? We're Christian."

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A lot of the Mayans actually spoke Mayan and not Spanish. They also wore interesting white and black fur tunics and cool cowboy hats. Unfortunately, they don't like to be photographed and you can get into real trouble by doing it. This was exactly the reason I bought that new lens with a 200mm zoom. Take that, Mayans. I got tons of photos of you and you never even knew it!

Like most indigenous people in Latin America, most of the Mayan villages are pretty poor. The town itself was mostly concrete and not that pretty but they had a lively market area and an interesting church. Inside there was hay on the floor and candles lit everywhere with what looked liked wax replicas of Saints around the nave. Unlike most other churches I've seen, actually.

On the way back to San Cristobal we stopped at a smaller Mayan town called San Lorenzo Zinacatan. Here we met a Mayan family that tried to sell us clothing they make and then showed us how they make tortillas. Fun fact: Tortillas are traditional Mayan food. Back in town I had a wander around the beautiful colonial center. Very touristy with Mexicans but nice. I attempted to go to the Maya Medical Center to learn more about Mayan culture but I failed. It got pretty sketchy fast outside of the center and there were no signs. Only one day in San Cristobal, but I was short on time. Onwards!

The Old Patagonia Express

2010-03-28T14:02:00.000-04:00

Normally I like to read a novel about the country I'm in when I travel, often by an author from that country. You're never more interested in learning more about a country than when you're traveling through it. I didn't know any famous Central American writers though (are there any?) and I already read '100 Years of Solitude' by Marquez last summer for Colombia so this time I picked out travel literature, 'The Old Patagonia Express' by Paul Theroux, a famous travel writer. The book is his experience traveling from Boston to Patagonia by train in 1979. Since between this trip and my trip through South America last summer I did most of his route, although not by train, I thought it'd be interesting to see what he had to say about these countries. He basically hates everyone he meets which is entertaining but he's a pretty good writer and I enjoyed the book.

Anyways, I came across some good travel musings by him I'd like to remember:

"Travel is not a vacation, and is often the opposite of rest." I think in the U.S. we often view traveling as a vacation and sometimes it is but backpacking through Central America is not the same as lying on a beach in Aruba. Traveling to see the world, its culture, its people is not the same as going to a nice resort on mountain or beach.

I particularly liked how he described the advantages and disadvantages of traveling alone. The romance of solitude. When you travel alone you're unencumbered. "Other people can mislead you, they crowd your meandering impressions with their own; If they are companionable they obstruct your view and if they are boring they corrupt silence with non-sequitars, shattering your concentration, with 'oh look its raining' and 'you see a lot of trees here'. Traveling alone can be terribly lonely. I think of evening in the hotel room in the strange city....so I go out and walk and discover the streets of the town and rather envy the strolling couples and the people with children."

Third World Country or the Bad Part of Town?

2010-03-07T12:27:00.001-05:00

DC is divided into 4 quadrants, NW, NE, SW, SE. I live in the NW, which from what I understand is considered to be really the only nice part of town. The NE for example is supposed to be a bad part of town, but I was there the other weekend to go out and yeah its definitely not as nice as NW but its not that bad either. I used to go to Harlem in NYC on a fairly regular basis too because I had a friend who lived up there for some reason and its also not nice but not that bad. Now consider what pretty much anywhere in a developing country looks like. It often looks like a war zone. Garbage strewn about, electricity and phone wires hanging down all over the place, giant holes in the sidewalk. It makes the bad areas of your average American city look like paradise (maybe not Baltimore). I don't know where I'm going with this. Be happy you don't live in a developing country?

Oaxaca

2010-03-06T21:10:00.001-05:00

I feel like I've heard of Oaxaca, but didn't really know where it was or anything about it. Turns out it's probably one of the nicest places in Mexico, a beautiful Spanish colonial town in the south. We stayed at Hostel Luz de Luna, which was pretty run down but had a nice courtyard. That's what I love about Spanish colonial towns. Houses look like nothing from the outside and then when you go in there's a beautiful courtyard. When I own a house I need to have a courtyard. The best was a sign in the bathroom that said treat your bathroom like it was your own. Sorry, but I don't put used toilet paper in the trash basket at home.

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Oaxaca has an amazing food market where all the locals (and a lot of tourists) go for lunch. You buy the meat from one stall and they grill it up for you carne asada-style and then you buy the vegetables from another and they grill them up for you. Pretty great. We went there for lunch and dinner. Lunch was way more lively and I discovered some new Mexican foods like enchamoles. Get this, it's like an enchilada but with mole, which Oaxaca is famous for. Did I mention I love Mexican food. I came back for lunch the next day and had some red mole.

That afternoon we went to Monte Alban, a pre-Columbian ancient city from 500 BC built on a mountain top. The ruins were less impressive than Teotihuacan, but the locale was much better. Back in town, the Zocalo, or "central square" in espanol, had a weird Christmas exhibit where the locals built little Christmas scenes out of vegetables. For some reason there was a long line to get really close when you could see everything from just beyond the rope. What a bunch of idiots! Apparently Christmas Eve Eve is a big night to go out in Mexico and the bars were hopping that night after the Christmas tree lighting in the Zocalo.

On my second day I went to the Centro Cultural Santo Domingo which was housed in an old monastery in a beautiful building with a museum. In the afternoon I wandered around the city soaking up the colonial atmosphere and taking pictures until it was time for my night bus to San Cristobal de Las Casas in Chiapas, another place I had never heard of until that day.

My Route Through Mexico, Central America, and Colombia

2010-03-01T08:21:00.004-05:00

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Instead of a Speed Limit We'll Use Speed Bumps

2010-02-16T22:52:00.000-05:00

I quickly discovered the reason why it takes so long to get around Mexico and Central America. Well, instead of speed limits, which they may or may not have, in these countries the government decided they'd just put speed bumps on all roads every 100 yards. The logic was it'll make people slow down. And I mean every road, including highways. They're big speed bumps too, so you really need to slow down to go over them. A lot of the time there weren't even any signs indicating them so the driver would just have to know one was coming up. Imagine taking a long trip on a highway and having to go from 60 miles per hour to 5 every couple minutes to go over a speed bump. Yes, it would significantly increase travel time. Idiotas!

Fried Grasshoppers in Puebla

2010-02-14T23:30:00.001-05:00

Following an early morning at the fantastic anthropological museum, which had great artifacts from the all your favorite Meso-American cultures. I hopped a bus a couple hours south of Mexico City to the towns of Cholula and right next door, the university town of Puebla. According to my friends, it's supposed to be the richest place in Mexico, which is totally shocking. I saw absolutely zero signs of wealth, in fact, it looked as poor as anywhere else I saw in Mexico. Most likely private wealth just doesn't translate into nice public spaces in Mexico because the government itself is so poor. There were probably really nice houses behind high walls somewhere.

We went to this local food market with my friend's Mexican friend Deanna after fighting through horrendous traffic. I got to try a new Mexican food unique to Puebla called a semita. It's basically a sandwich with avocado, chicken, chipotle peppers, ham, and cheese on a round roll. The market was also full of pinatas in all shapes and sizes such as Spiderman and Santa. I love it when a place really lives up to its stereotype like Mexicans going around hitting pinatas everywhere.

After lunch we went to Cholula's pyramid which just looks like a hill with a church at the top because its covered in trees and dirt. Not that impressive but apparently there is a pyramid underneath. At the top we had a fantastic view of a nearby volcano and I caught some kind of Catholic procession around the church.

After sunset it was time to try less delicious Mexican delicacies like fried grasshopper. The real question is if it supposedly tastes like a potato chip (it doesn't, it just tastes like crunchy) why not not be totally grossed out and just eat a potato chip. Less protein? I also had some kind of hot coffee like drink with something called rompopo. Not good. We crashed at Deanna's place for the night and ordered delivery tacos. Why don't we have delivery tacos at home, damn't!

The Great Pyramids of Teotihuacan

2010-02-10T19:39:00.001-05:00

Looking through the Time Out Mexico City at the hostel I saw a picture of Teotihuacan and decided even if I only have two days in Mexico City I have to go there. I knew there were pyramids near MC but didn't really know anything about Teotihuacan including how to pronounce it. It was only 40 minutes away but I had to go to the bus station first. At least Mexico City has a pretty good subway system and it's dirt cheap, something stupid like 14 cents a ride.

Teotihuacan was the largest city in the pre-Columbian Americas and one of the largest in the world with 200,000 people at its peak 1,500 years ago. You can tell when walking down Avenue of the Dead towards the Pyramid of the Sun, the third-largest pyramid in the world, which you can climb to the top of unlike the Egyptian pyramids and the ones in Chichen Itza. At the far end of the Avenue of the Dead is the Pyramid of the Moon, which gives you a fantastic view of the Pyramid of the Moon and the dozens of smaller pyramidal structures lining the Avenue. Great name for a main street by the way, if not a little morbid. They should rename Broadway in Manhattan to Avenue of the Dead.

These ruins are definitely some of the best I've ever been to and let me tell you I've seen some pretty awesome ruins in Egypt, Cambodia, and Turkey. It's impossible, but I always like to imagine what ancient ruins would look like during their heyday. Archaeologists generally restore parts of the ruins to give us a glimpse of what it looked like when they were originally built but I say why not just go all the way and totally reconstruct the whole city, paint and all, to really show us. I'd pay to see that. That night I got my wish and saw Avatar in 3D which was about as good.

Gordita is real Mexican food; not just something Taco Bell invented

2010-01-29T01:20:00.008-05:00

Mexico has beautiful beaches, an interesting culture, and a war on drugs gone horribly wrong, but clearly the best thing about Mexico is its food. Obviously we get tons of great Mexican food in the US like tacos, quesadillas, and enchiladas (burritos are tex-mex), but I got to try so many awesome Mexican foods I've never heard of before in Mexico City like sopas, floutas, and semitas. They even had a rotating kebab-type thing of pork meat called pastor to make tacos from. Interestingly enough there's no such thing as a hardtaco. Just because all Mexican food is basically some kind of variation of the same ingredients (salsa, meat, tortilla, cheese, chile, sour cream) doesn't mean its not awesome. Most cuisine in the New World is some kind of derivative of cuisine from elsewhere in the world except for Mexican food. Good work Mexicans!

While I was in Mexico I really just wanted to eat all day. There were street vendors everywhere selling every type of Mexican food for dirt cheap. Being able to get full was a horrible curse. Well maybe not since the food obviously isn't healthy for you and Mexicans are nearly as fat as Americans. I would totally live in Mexico just for the food. The highlight was definitely when I found out the gordita is a real Mexican food and not just something Taco Bell invented. I never did find a crunchwrap supreme though.

Mexico City

2010-01-28T03:03:00.008-05:00

Now I can't say I've heard much of anything good about Mexico City; only that it's massive, dirty, and dangerous, but it is the capital so I thought it might be nice to see it. To be perfectly honest I hadn't really heard anything about places in Mexico that weren't beach resort destinations, which is seems to indicate that Americans only go to the beach in Mexico. Mexico is a huge country with a long history and interesting culture though so it must have some cool places to visit and an interesting capital.

I stayed at a pretty bad hostel (triple bunk beds? come on now!) in the neighborhood of Condesa which was a pretty hip area with lots of bars and restaurants. The city was absolutely massive so I only saw a tiny portion of it - basically Condessa and the old historical center. Apparently most Mexicans never go into the poorer areas. Thank god there's a decent subway for getting around. It's dirt cheap and you only have to suffer through a non-stop parade of people walking through the subway cars trying to sell CDs of horrible Spanish music by blasting songs at unbearable loudness. I do mean non-stop as in one person after another with a boom box strapped to their back. If anything is noise pollution is this.

The first night I arrived I went to some hipster house party down the street from my hostel thrown by a couple of Mexican artists who live in this old house. There was trash dancing, a pinotta because its Mexico, and a ladder fell off the roof onto the crowd. I had fun. Also, a member of one of the biggest bands in Mexico was there hanging out.

Partying until 7am give me a late start for sightseeing the next day. I took a walking tour that was in Timeout Mexico City. Just love the old walking tour. Mexico City, or District Federal (DF), as the locals call it, is a riotous city just dripping with faded grandeur. You could tell the center used to be magnificent but had fallen on a rough century or so. All the old churches and buildings are pretty dilapidated. I checked out a cool food market, Mercardo San Juan, selling shark and Alameda Park where I bought an awesome watch for $10.

The Palacio Belles Artes opera house is probably the most magnificent building in the city. Connecting the Palacio to the main square or Zocalo was a big street with about 30 eye glass shops. Why are there so many? I don't see that many Mexicans wearing glasses? For some reason I thought I'd wait to buy new contact lenses in Mexico even though I knew they probably wouldn't be any cheaper. None of the 30 shops had the type I needed. The Zocalo was huge and had an ice skating rink in the middle for Christmas. I'm guessing most Mexicans have never seen snow before so I can't imagine they know how to ice skate but there it was. There was also some hideous Christmas decorations around the square. Once I crossed over to the area on the other side of square the buildings went from faded glory to run-down third-worldy pretty quickly.

At sunset I ventured to the top of what was once the tallest building in Latin America, Torre Latinoamericana, and what certainly has to be one of the ugliest, for a view of the endless city. MC has some great museums but I only had time to go to the Anthropological Museum which has great Mayan and Aztec artifacts and was awesome. All in all I saw Avatar in 3D and I didn't get killed so I had an enjoyable three days.

Chichen Itza

2010-01-25T15:53:00.003-05:00

I took a day tour to the pyramids and Chichen Itza on my third day in Cancun because simply stated I love ancient ruins. This was a pyramid complex built by the Mayans around 1,000 years ago. It was an expensive tour but I was happy I went considering how big and well preserved/reconstructed the site was. Unfortunately, they don't let you climb all over it like they do at Angkor Wat. I mean I know letting people climb all over the pyramids will ruin them for future generations but whatever, it's so much fun. The observatory and ball court were impressive as well (pictured). It'd be amazing to go on the winter solstice because at a specified time the sun shines over the side of the pyramid to make it look like a snake is running down the side of the main pyramid. I definitely could've used more time at the site but the tour had to stop at a sink hole to go swimming on the way there. I hate tours.

Latinoamericana Parte Dos: 12/16/2009 - 1/23/2010

2010-01-24T13:08:00.008-05:00

5 weeks traveling in Latin America starting in southern Mexico and finishing in Bogota, Colombia, 12/16/2009 - 1/23/2010. Where's Part Uno you ask? Well, that was last summer when I started in Lima, Peru and traveled to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil over 7 weeks. I'll write about that eventually. I'll make that the prequel and anyway its better to start closer to home to check out America's "near abroad".

We begin our story in Cancun, Mexico, that little patch of American beach resort over development on the Yucatan peninsula. This was only because flights from the US to Cancun are way cheaper than to anywhere else in Mexico including Mexico City where I wanted to start. So don't judge me! In any case, it was pleasant to start off the trip on a beach at a nice hotel, especially since I had just finished two weeks of paper writing and finals misery. Conversely starting at a nice hotel and then moving to the dorm room at a hostel can be difficult.

Cancun was exactly how I imagined it. Huge high rise hotels all the way down the beach. They block out the sun after 3pm. The water was an incredible light blue turquoise color and the beach was wide and stretched on endlessly although I prefer smaller crescent shaped beaches. No one was on the beach though, everyone congregated at the pools. For a few dollars more we definitely should've stayed at the Westin instead of the 4 star holel we stayed at. Might as well go big.

Downtown Cancun was the real Mexico - gritty, cheap, and dirty, and only a 30 minute bus ride away. We went into town for dinner normally to eat delicious tacos. The nightlife was a bunch of clubs along this strip. It was anywhere from $30 to $55 for entrance which included all-you-can-drink at the bar which wasn't such a bad deal but obviously expensive for Mexico. You basically had to pretend you were in the US because if you budgeted for Mexico forget about it. We had one big night at the Daddy O's club, part of the Daddy O's entertainment group. We went on the wrong night but I didn't care, I was getting shots of Tequila and dropping them into my beer. Why didn't someone stop me from doing that?

You Know You're In a Developing Country If....#9 and #10

2009-08-25T15:23:00.003-04:00

Here are two more sure fire ways to tell if you're in a developing country:

You can't put toilet paper into the toilet, you have to put the used toilet paper into the trash can next to the toilet. Apparently the plumbing that was put in probably less than two years ago can't take toilet paper in its pipes. Think about how disgusting that is just having used toilet paper with shit on it sitting all day in the trash can next to toilet stinking up the bathroom. Gross.

#10

No one ever has change no matter how small the bill you're paying with is. If you're a taxi driver you should really be able to break a $2 bill. And at the grocery store? I mean, come on!

Goodbye India, Don't Write

2009-06-29T00:12:00.001-04:00

My last day in India was spent in Delhi unfortunately, but there's actually some interesting things to see besides abject poverty and garbage. We found a slightly better guesthouse than the first one we stayed at but in the same horrible area near the train station. Our first stop was the Red Fort. Like most of the cool buildings in northern India, it was built by the Mughals. It doesn't appear like the Indians ruled themselves much prior to 1948. The structure itself was enormous and impressive but inside there wasn't really too much to see. Stephie got to pose as some more Indians' Western friend and I got to watch and laugh.

When its 100 degrees out and people on the street are constantly harassing you McDonald's is an oasis. Not only is it air-conditioned but it has clean, free, western-style toilets. You enter and you feel like you've entered another world. I can't say it feels like that when I enter a McDonald's at home.

Delhi is pretty big so generally you need to take a autorigshaw to get around but dealing with the drivers was enough to infuriate me. I understand that they automatically quote you some outrageous price when you ask them how much to get to whatever place but these guys would not bargain with you at all. I was willing to pay somewhat more than an Indian would pay because I know how it works but they would not come down at all. Even when they were quoting a price that was 5 times as much as it should cost. They just wouldn't play ball. There's tons of them around but after the 5th or 6th one you begin to lose your patience. Especially when one agrees to a reasonable price right away, you get in, and then he says first we go to my friend's gem shop. They would rather take an Indian person who would pay half as much as what you were ready to pay than take a tourist for less than some crazy amount they pulled out of their ass. Repeat this process every time you want to get somewhere and I was ready to strangle a rigshaw driver after only 2 nonconsecutive days in Delhi.

Humayun's Tomb was another fantastic example of Mughal architecture. Nice domes and gardens made it definitely worthwhile to visit. After we wandered around what surprised me as a genuinely nice neighborhood. It was the government district that the British built and the Indians kept it beautiful. For dinner we went to an upscale Indian restaurant recommended in The Book. It was filled with a tour group but the food was delicious. I actually felt comfortable eating meat there.

Following dinner we thought it'd be cool to check out a Bollywood film. It seemed like it'd be a worthwhile experience to see how Indians acted during a movie even though it'd be in Hindi. I don't think Bollywood movies are that hard to follow since they're musicals. Although, I could really see it making no sense even if I did speak Hindi. It was during the week but the theater was packed. In fact, the one movie it was showing was sold out. The weird thing was the theater was jam packed with Indian men for what appeared to be a romantic comedy. Zero women. Everyone was staring at us as soon as we walked in and then someone approached us to scalp his tickets. No, sorry India, I'm not scalping tickets to a Bollywood romcom, goodbye. We just went back to the hotel and went to bed since I had to wake up at 4am to catch my plane home to New York. Stephie was going to stay in India for another few days and work from the Delhi office.

So that was my 3 month odyssey from China to India (mostly) by land. It was definitely the most adventurous trip I ever went on and anyone who says I was just on vacation should read this blog. This kind of travel is not vacation. It took me nearly a year to finish this blog about the trip but that was mostly because I was lazy. I only had a month at home anyway before I had to leave for Italy to begin a year of study and a lot more travel, which I now need to start writing about.

Pushkar & The Secret Life of Cows

2009-06-25T01:35:00.009-04:00

We took a late bus from Jaipur to Pushkar because it was only a few hours. The bus was pretty shoddy as expected. At one point we stopped and of course everyone couldn't just file onto the bus and take their assigned seat which were on every ticket. They had to just stand around all excitable doing god knows what. They were so loud too. I couldn't help but finally shout out the window to the huge, noisy group "Hey! What's all the commotion out there? Just get on the damn bus and lets go already!". I was totally ignored. There's always so much commotion in India. Finally, 20 more people than should have been on the bus boarded so that it was wall to wall people standing in the aisle and we left.

We arrived at Pushkar late and there was absolutely no one on the street. It took a few wrong turns and feelings of despair before we found our guesthouse. The streets might've been devoid of people but there were plenty of cows around. I always thought cows slept standing up like horses but we saw at least two groups of five sitting on the side of the street sleeping and also staring at us. So this is what they do when no one else is around. They couldn't tell us where our guesthouse was.

We finally came upon our accommodation, Hotel White House, down a little alleyway. The guesthouse was really clean but our house was incredibly tiny. To make matters worse Stephie freaked out when she saw a cockroach in our bathroom and forced us to move into a different room, which was even smaller if that was possible.

The next morning we had a nice breakfast on the rooftop terrace where we met a cool Irish couple who we exchanged hilarious India stories with. After we set off to explore Pushkar. It was a small town built around a lake and reminded me of the holy city of Varanasi because there were ghats (stairways down to the water) and holy men all around the lake. We walked around the whole lake and visited a temple which took most of the day. On our way back to our guesthouse the street we needed to take became totally flooded up to our knees. There's really nothing more disgusting than a flooded Indian street. Not only is there tons of garbage in the street but also shit from the cows and dogs that no one cleans up. Probably human excrement too. So wading through the waters is disgusting but I wasn't about to pay that Indian with a donkey cart $10 to take me 100 feet. We opted to wade through but along the way the unthinkable happened. Stephie lost one of her flip flops. Gross! I didn't think we'd ever find it again but somehow it managed to pop up further down the stream of sewage. Disaster averted.

After we cleaned ourselves off at the guesthouse we grabbed our bags and went to catch the overnight bus to Delhi. This bus was a microcosm of India. There were places to lie down instead of just seats but I'm not sure that was a good thing. They were compartments with pads for us to lie down above the seats but they had been cut open somehow and just looked totally disgusting. Unfortunately we didn't have anything to put down on top of them. Of course, we stopped a number of times for Indians to make a lot of commotion and then board the bus with huge bags of rice with which they sat on in the aisle. We didn't sleep that well that night.

Jaipur

2009-06-24T17:38:00.009-04:00

Jaipur, the pink city, gateway to Rajasthan. We arrived at night and it took us a couple tries before we found a guesthouse that had space. We went to bed pretty early so we could get up early and do everything in one day. On our way to the old city some guy trying to sell me puppets followed us for at least a mile. I really didn't want them but he was so persistent and when he finally came down to a dollar for two I just couldn't resist. I'm so weak.

We did the suggested Jaipur walking tour that was in The Book. I just love the walking tours in The Book. It's nice to know what you're looking at. They should do one for every city. The city was much smaller than Delhi but managed to still be nearly as chaotic. Since we were now in the desert we got to see camels roaming the streets in addition to cows. We passed through streets filled with shops selling trinkets and we could see the artisans making little statues of Hindu Gods. I bought a statue of Hanuman, the monkey god and Stephie bought one of Ganeesha, the roly poly elephant-headed god. He's my favorite but I already had a nice brass one. I wonder if there's any live-action Bollywood films with the Hindu gods re-enacting some of their escapades. I'd love that.

We eventually made our way to the city palace which was a pretty impressive example of Mughal and Rajasthani architecture. It got to be pretty late in the day after the palace since we had to stop a few times to recover from the heat. We decided to do our best to make it out to the fort which was 11 km outside of town. We took an autorigshaw which aren't really made for driving outside of the city but it was absolutely worth the effort to get out there. The fort was fantastic. It's absolutely massive and was built on the side of a hill out of red stone. It was closing but the guard still let us in. I had a good time exploring the passageways. I wish we had got to the fort earlier in the day because you could really spend a long time there. It also made me wish I had time to see some of the other amazing forts that I heard were in other cities in Rajasthan. On the way out I got to see a bunch of black-faced white monkeys. Two all of a sudden turned into forty which got a little scary.

On the ride back into town we first stopped to view a beautiful temple that was in the middle of a lake and then our driver convinced us to stop at one of those silk shops. I knew the price we got was too good to be true. They always want you to stop at these shops for commission. Stephie ended up buying a silk duvet cover that was really nice but overpriced. She almost bought a purple sari until she realized she could never ever where it back home no matter how many times the salesperson said she could. Well, maybe at her Indian friend's wedding or on Halloween. No one besides an Indian person can pull off the sari. Any time I saw a white person trying to wear one it looked ridiculous.

I was telling Stephie that I liked our driver when she reminded me that he tried to get me to do the gems scam. He told me I could get valuable stones here and sell them back home for a lot of money. It's so simple I'd be a fool not to do it. I'm pretty sure that scam was mentioned in The Book's 3-page section on dangers and annoyances in Delhi. I guess I was so used to people trying to scam me in India I didn't hold it against him and just laughed at his pitch for it, which was hilarious. I can't imagine anyone thinking the gems they bought from anyone in India were real.

The Taj Mahal

2009-06-23T23:14:00.011-04:00

Here we were, Agra. It's only claim to fame is as the home of the most iconic building in India and one of the most famous in all the world. It was built as a mausoleum for a Mughal Emperor's wife in the 1600s. As soon as me and Stephie stepped out of the train station and attempted to find a autorigshaw the madness began. Apparently there's pretty cutthroat competition among autorigshaw drivers for tourists. A couple autorigshaw drivers began fighting with each other over which possibly could've been us. In the confusion we ended up with some driver who showed us his book of tourist recommendations, which I have to say is always pretty convincing. How could he get people from all over the world to write in his book, unless he was a great forger? If Tom from Canada said the driver gives great tours of Agra then how could we refuse a whole day tour for $15.

The first place he took us was across the river to what's known as the Little Taj. It's nice to start with something a little less impressive but still really nice. Afterwards we got to see local people doing local people things like washing their water buffalo in the river, washing their saris in the river, and just doing nothing on the side of the road. I didn't really see how washing dirty saris in the dirty river and then drying them on the dirty ground would make them clean.

Our guide then took us to a place across the river from the Taj Mahal where there was no one except for a boy and a herd of water buffalo, exactly what he promised. We expected not to be able to see the Taj without huge crowds of Indians so this was fantastic. I had high expectation for one of the most famous buildings in the world but I have to say I thought the tomb lived up to them. It was a stunningly beautiful structure. Hard to believe it was built over 300 years ago. The Emperor was going to build a second Taj Mahal in black marble for himself but unfortunately his son through him in jail before he could. On the way to the real entrance to the Taj where you could get up close we passed the red fort but opted not to go in since we were short on time.

At the Taj there were the expected mobs of people. In what seems to be a little unfair, Indians pay like 20 cents and foreigners pay $20 to get in. I could've spent hours just staring at the Taj. It would've been cool to come at different times of the day to see how the light plays off the exterior but at least we got to see it in direct sunlight where in shines brilliantly white. Stephie got asked to take hundreds of photos with random Indians. I was less popular. After the Taj we headed to the bus station and hopped a bus to Jaipur which was only a few hours.

Bargaining

2009-06-23T23:06:00.003-04:00

If you've ever been to a developing country you know nothing has prices on it and every item is up for negotiation. You need to bargain for everything. Sometimes it's really fun but after a few months it gets kind of old and you just want things to have a price on it, even if it's more expensive. Generally, you go to the market and you see tons of things you like but it ends up being the price that determines whether you'll buy it. In the West, usually you can just glance at the price and see it's higher than you're willing to pay and that's that. In developing countries there's no way to do that. There's no "I was just curious how much it costs". To enquire about the price is to enter into the bargaining process, which if you're going to get a price even remotely close to the real one, will take at least 10 minutes and involve you walking away multiple times and maybe having the seller chase you down the street. Sometimes you just don't have the time or energy to do that with every item you're kind of interested in.

The India Diet

2009-06-23T22:56:00.003-04:00

I managed to lose something like 20 pounds in 4 weeks in India. This probably because Indian food just made me not want to eat. And I love Indian food. For days I had no appetite. I wasn't sick, I just had no desire to eat. That's why I'd like to patent the idea of "The India Diet". Here's what it is: you get one curry direct from a little hole in the wall Indian restaurant per week. You have to eat the curry in a room heated to 100 degree. I guarantee you it's the only meal you'll want to eat all week. Bada bing bada boom, you lose as much weight as you want.

Dehli: The Worst Place on Earth

2009-06-18T12:49:00.003-04:00

I arrived in Delhi pretty groggy from the overnight bus ride. I'll tell you, that tylenol PM really knocks you right out. For my money it's as good as valium. I had booked a hotel in the Paharganj area ahead of time on the recommendation of someone I met. This was supposed to be the backpacker area but it was also, after Varanasi, the most disgusting place I had ever been in my life. That's quite an achievement because I've seen some real shitholes. And this was the capital. There was garbage and cow shit everywhere and filthy little kids running around the narrow alleyways. I decided on flip flops, which was a bad choice when its just rained and there's shit all over the ground.

My first stop was to pick up train tickets to Agra for me and my sister for the following morning. As I'm walking to the train station a guy calls to me and asks me if I'm looking for the government train ticket office, which I was. I said yes but when he offered to take me there I said no thanks because I figured he'd just want some money. He then said he didn't want any money so I followed him. He preceded to take me to a place that said official government ticket office outside but something wasn't quite right. Probably the fact that every little shop along the street said official government ticket office. How could that be? Also, the inside was clearly just a normal travel agent. Would the government ticket office not have computers? Possibly, but not likely. I just walked right out and found the real government ticket office which was in the train station. The Book said don't believe anyone on the street who will tell you things like the government train office burned down. I know the guy just wanted some commission for giving that travel agency business but its so annoying to have to assume every person on the street is lying to you when you're a visitor to a foreign country. Unfortunately that's the way it is everywhere in India. If you saw a tourist in your own country would you go up to him and give him false information just to make a buck (rupee)? Maybe you would if you were desperately poor.

Next up I was going to try and get silk duvet covers made for my mom and myself. Have you ever draped your naked body in silk? It feels pretty nice. I had to buy enough silk fabric and then go to the tailors and get him to make it. It was pretty cool to design the cover and pick out the silk I wanted but somehow I feel like it never really comes out exactly how you want it and then after they make it its too late to do much about it, just like with getting clothes made. In any case, the people at the silk place were pretty helpful and found a tailor for me.

After all that I thought I'd do a little sightseeing and check out the largest mosque in India, Jama Masjid. It was pretty impressive but I was too late to enter so I just wandered around the outside until it was time to meet my sister at the airport. I had given my sister the address of our guesthouse and told her to just take a taxi to it but once I saw how hard it was to find and how miserable the area was I thought it'd be best to meet her at the airport. They charge you money to enter the airport arrivals hall, which I suppose is to keep out the riffraff. There's a lot of riffraff in India. Stephie barely recognized me; apparently I lost a lot of weight from not eating in India and my hair was long and wild. I hadn't seen my sister in a year and 3 months so it was great to see her in of all places India.

Kasol

2009-06-18T11:59:00.008-04:00

Manali and Kasol were interesting places. There's marijuana plants just growing everywhere out in the open, including in a children's park, even though it's still illegal. You smell the weed just from being outside. The drive to Kasol was very picturesque. The valley's were very lush, unlike in Ladakh but nowhere near as stunning. Very pleasant though and good place to chill out for a while. We had a really nice guesthouse with huge rooms right on the river in Kasol. Apparently the Israelis love Kasol and Manali because we saw signs everyone in Hebrew and restaurants advertising falafel and other Israeli foods. We heard that the locals weren't too fond of the Israelis though becasue they were really loud and didn't treat them well. It was pretty quiet while we were there. I slept late and went on some walks in the area which was pleasant. At night we just chilled out. I had to leave after a couple days to take the overnight bus down to Dehli to meet my sister. The overnight bus was really comfortable though. Best one in India so far.

Another 20+ hour bus ride? Sweet!

2009-06-18T10:58:00.003-04:00

At 5 am or some ridiculously early hour the next morning me and some of my new friends from England, Kate, Jamie, and Edwina took the 2 day bus from Leh down to Manali. That was a rough ride. The bus wasn't horribly uncomfortable but the road was pretty bad and my stomach wasn't doing so well. It really wasn't the time for an upset stomach from Indian food. We were bouncing up and down like crazy so there was no way you could read. The ride was pretty scenic. We stopped a few times in places where there was no bathroom so we could use the bathroom. The highlight might have been when we saw the place where the Indians from down south on vacation come to see snow for the first time in their lives. They come and sit in this dirty filthy snow and take pictures and sit on sleds.

We got in late the first night to some mediocre hotel where our bus ticket included a bed in a tent outside of the hotel. The next day my stomach was feeling better so the ride was more enjoyable. We got into Manali in the afternoon but decided to go straight on another hour to another little valley called Kasol.

Motorcycle: The best way to travel

2009-06-14T13:54:00.008-04:00

The day after I returned from Nubra Valley Alex and I decided renting a motorcycle again would be a good idea. No more pathetic motorbikes that can barely move though. This time I was going for the Royal Enfield, a proper motorcycle. This was actually my first time taking out a real motorcyle. In the past I always rode motorbikes, which have engines with much less power. This was the real deal. Unfortunately it seems that each bike shifts gears differently and the rental guys neglected to tell me how this bike does it so I had trouble getting out of first and then I burned my leg on the tailpipe. Not the best start to the day but we eventually got going and visited some beautiful villages and monestaries in the region. Sitting on the veranda of a monastery overlooking the whole valley really the best way to end my stay in Ladakh.

Riding a real motorcycle was great too. Once you have that kind of power in your bike its hard to go back to a dinky 150 cc one. It really is the best way to see the countryside too. You're totally out in the open, no obstructions like in a car. I met some people who had rented motorcycles in Dehli and had driven all the way up to Leh and then were going over to Kashmir and then down again. Sounded like truly the best way to see such a beautiful part of the country. The only problem is I think you need to know how to fix bikes yourself because if your bike breaks down in the middle of no where you're totally screwed. In any case I need to do a big motorcyle trip at some point.

Nubra Valley

2009-04-16T15:26:00.008-04:00

Another day in Ladakh, another adventure. This time I was off to Nubra Valley which was on the other side of the highest road in the world. When I went mountain biking we just went to the top and then road back down. Now I was taking a 2 day tour to the other side which had a valley that was supposed to be pretty stunning and....it was. I had never seen anything like Nubra Valley. At the bottom of the valley was a desert with sand dunes surrounded by sheer rock and snow covered mountains.

It was a rough ride getting there. About 5 hours over poor roads and in an uncomfortable jeep but the views were spectacular. My tour group wasn't very fun as usual. I feel like whenever I do short tours like this my tour group always sucks. Its a crapshoot I suppose but I'd rather be on my own than with people who aren't fun. There were two middle-aged men from Denmark and Spain and then a couple of Indian girls from Dehli.

When we got to the base of the valley we hiked through the desert towards the village we were staying the night at. It was a short hike of about an hour but it was awesome climbing over the dunes and through some streams. The guesthouse we stayed at was fairly comfortable. Coincidentally the guesthouse I was staying at in Leh had the final book in the Bartimaeus trilogy in which I had read the first two at the beginning of my trip. I was devouring the book for the rest of the afternoon and then went to a mediocre in dinner in the tiny village with the Spaniard and Dane.

The next morning we left at 6am for no real reason. We went around the valley a little bit to see some Buddhist monastery and some hot spring that was apparently under construction. I don't even know why they took us there actually, you couldn't even go in. We got back to Leh early in the afternoon. A couple days prior I met a guy who was climbing one of the mountains around the area. It would've took 3 or 4 days and I contemplated doing it but opted for Nubra valley instead because I didn't think I was up for another big hiking trip. I kind of regretted not going though. Climbing a mountain around Ladakh would've been incredibly I'm sure.

Motorcycling in the Himalayas

2009-03-31T19:56:00.005-04:00

Now that I did mountain biking it was time for some motorcycle action. As if driving a normal car wasn't terrifying enough in India we all thought a motorcycle would be the best way to see the countryside. And it definitely is. I really can't think of any better way to see a place. Riding on a motorcycle you're totally out in the open with your view obstructed by nothing. Motorcycle trip across the world - there, that's my next big trip. I just won't think about that time I crashed a motorbike in Vietnam and cut myself up pretty good. I was young.

So the 5 of us rented motorcycles for the day and set off to check out some Buddhist monasteries in the environs of Leh. Great fun except the motorcycles didn't go that fast. I wanted to fly and sometimes it was a necessity to go faster and pass trucks in front of you. Also the gear shift wasn't working properly. Still, I just love riding motorcycles. And now that I've ridden one in India and survived I figure I can do anything. Wrestle a bear, be an astronaut, whatever. So we went to three monasteries, all Buddhist, all awesome. The second one was really amazing though. Perched up on a hill, it looked like Potala Palace in Lhasa. The view from it was spectacular. The whole region was amazing, snow covered mountains, rugged scenery with oasis of green everywhere. I could stare at it all day long.

The Highest Road in the World

2009-03-31T19:48:00.006-04:00

Up early for a bike ride on the highest road in the world. We took a jeep up a road through a mountain pass that was only built in the 60s and is apparently the highest in the world. It was narrow and windy to say the least, also scary when giant trucks need to go by and you have to pull off to what looks like way too close to the edge. At the top we were among the snow covered mountains so I had to buy gloves. Once you get to the top you we then got the bikes out rode them all the way down back to the town. I just hoped the Indian-made bikes wouldn't break apart on me. Amazing view of the entire valley and the best bike ride I've ever had in my life. The first part was wet and full of potholes so I had to take it slow but eventually the road was smooth and you could fly down enjoying the view as you go. Simply spectacular.

Leh

2009-03-22T13:48:00.007-04:00

Until recently Leh was probably one of the more isolated places on Earth. The roads, which were only built fairly recently are closed except during the summer due to snow so access is only via air. Even when the roads are open its a rough yet beautiful ride. I arrived exhausted around 5pm. I walked around looking for a place to stay for a while until I found a place that had a really nice garden sitting area. The room I had was tiny and had a disgusting shared bathroom and no hot water but it was only $5 a night and I was tired of walking around. I immediately befriended some people hanging out in the garden who I ended up hanging out with for the next week. We went to a cool place for dinner that had big fires to sit around and mediocre Italian food.

The next day I slept late recovering from my journey and then set out to explore the town. Leh was stunning. Not only was the backdrop of rugged scenery and snow-capped mountains beautiful but the city itself had a mountain with an old palace and a fantastic old quarter. I felt like I left India, which I wasn't unhappy about. The people are all Buddhist and look Tibetan rather than Indian, which is where they are originally from. The place is still pretty touristy but you get hassled a lot less. Randomly I met a girl who met a couple weeks previously in Kathmandu on the street. Even though I didn't know her very well when something like that happens in very unexpected place you feel like you're seeing an old friend. I met some of her friends and then went exploring the city with one of them, Naya, a Canadian girl. We went to the market and then around the old city. Naya then went to the beauty parlor and I went on a little hike up to the old Palace and then to the Buddhist temple further up the mountain. There wasn't much to see in the palace but it offered spectacular views of the city. Later that night I met up with Naya and my friend from Kathmandu for dinner. Not much nightlife in Leh so it was an early night.

The Road to Leh

2009-03-11T19:19:00.008-04:00

So I made it out of Kashmir in one piece and now I was on the road to Leh. The Tata jeep, as usual, was horrendously uncomfortable. Especially in the beginning when there were three of us up front. We were literally on top of each other. Not everyone was going to Leh though and some people got out pretty early and so I ended up having most of the front to myself. The ride was absolutely spectacular. Very rugged landscape. Narrow, cliff-hugging roads. I didn't sleep at all so I became pretty tired but I didn't want to sleep so I wouldn't miss any of the scenery. We left at midnight, stopped a couple times for breakfast and lunch and finally arrived in Leh around 5pm. A nice 17 hour ride but I was thrilled to be out of Kashmir and when the road is beautiful I can enjoy it.

Escape from Kashmir!

2009-01-21T08:46:00.005-05:00

We began the day with our own private jeep back to Srinigar, not the normal shared jeep with 17 people. Now that I think about it, there must've been a reason for that. On our way out of town there were 15 Saddhus (Hindu holy men) blocking the road for some kind of protest but they eventually let us pass when it was explained that we were foreigners. Once out of the city and on the main road (well there's only one paved road really) for some reason we turned down a dirt path and entered a village. On our way through we were blocked by a group of young men armed with bats and forced to turn back. This was the point at which we knew something was wrong which our guide wasn't telling us. The villagers looked angry.

Once back on the main road we saw a mob of people up ahead blocking the road. The jeep slowed down and before we reached the mob, our guide got out of the car and went up to the mob by foot, presumably to try and clear the way for us but it was scary seeing him go on his own. We knew at this point there was protesting going on for some reason and that people were no happy. The mob looked angry, as mobs tend to. Our guide came back to the jeep and said it would be ok. We slowly started driving through the crowd and they began to make way when all of a sudden some guy came running up, shouting and reached into the driver's side window, turned off the jeep and through the keys on the ground. Him and a couple other guys opened the driver's door and physically pulled the driver out of the jeep. Matt, Haley and I were sitting in the back and our guide was sitting shotgun. Some guy reached in through the passenger seat window and smacked our guide hard in the head with an open hand. Before we even had time to realize how dangerous the situation had become, calmer heads seemed to prevail and our driver was allowed back into the jeep and we were allowed to precede.

So we were foreigners driving through an unstable Muslim region during a period of unrest. Not a good situation. Now we really began to worry as we contemplated what was happening and to ask some questions to our guide. We all could've been beaten back there or who knows what. We were still a long way from Srinigar and had to pass another two mobs before we got there. I can tell you there's nothing scarier than an angry mob because you realize anything might set them off. You can't reason with them, especially if you can't even speak their language and you could tell they were angry and excited and looking for some one or thing to take out their anger on. The next two times we saw a mob up ahead on the road in the distance I was pretty scared. We passed through without incident but we didn't have any idea what to expect in the city, this was only the countryside.

During the ride to the airport, my traveling companions convinced me that my original plan to stay in city that night and continue on to Leh by jeep the next day would be "madness". What was I risking bodily harm for? Counterpoint: Leh was supposed to be really sweet. They were originally supposed to fly back to Dehli and I decided to join them. There's tight security at the Srinigar airport, unsurprisingly, and they require everyone who passes through security (a mile away from the airport itself) to have a plane ticket. I was able to pass even though I didn't have one because I was a foreigner but our guide was not. I asked him to wait at the gate for me just in case I couldn't get a flight out.

It was a mob scene (no pun intended) inside the airport. Apparently I wasn't the only one who was thinking get out of Doge. Once through security and inside the airport I went to each of 5 or 6 airline offices to see if they had any available seats going to Dehli. Nothing. I was screwed. I said goodbye to Matt and Haley and decided I'd hold off on panicking quite yet. Our driver was gone so I had to pay some other driver to get me back to the front gate where Bilal was supposed to be waiting. After looking around for 5 minutes around the front gate it was apparent Bilal wasn't there. I tried calling him on the driver's cell phone but the number didn't work. So now I'm completely on my own and its probably a good time to panic.

Luckily I hadn't gotten out of my new driver's car so I wasn't completely on my own. The only place I could think of going that might be safe was the boathouse we stayed in on Dal Lake when we first got to Srinigar. The driver said he knew a "safe route" through the city that would avoid the trouble and he'd drive me for $20, which expensive for India but seemed like a bargain at the time since I was desperate. He also said he knew of a driver who was going to Leh the next day. If that was true, then I was saved. We went to the driver who was going to Leh first. The streets of the city were mostly deserted and all the shops were closed but at certain intersections people closed off the streets and things were being burned.

We did find a jeep driver who said he was going to Leh the next morning. Instead of leaving at 6:30 am like normal he would pick me up at the houseboat at 4:30 am. In that way we could be out before people woke up and started rioting again. Next they escorted me to my houseboat. We had to abandon the jeep before we got to the crowds and walk to the lake. I was happy I wasn't on my own because we passed some mobs on along the way and a couple people had approached me. There was even a protest on the lake with people on boats. I used to my last money to pay the driver so now I had zero left to pay the houseboat family.

Once on the houseboat I finally felt safe and got some reliable information on what was actually going on. During partition in 1948, India asked the Maharaj of Kashmir, a Hindu, if he wanted to join India or Pakistan. The people of Kashmir, mostly Muslim, wanted to join Pakistan, but their ruler agreed to join India on the condition that Kashmiri land could not be sold to non-Kashmiris. That law is still in place today but a few weeks ago the government agreed to sell a plot of land to a Hindu Pilgrimage organization (lots of Hindus make pilgrimages to Kashmir). This set off the riots. The people called for a strike so anyone who opened their shop or was driving (like Bilal and our driver) was breaking the strike, and was who the mob was angry at, not us foreigners. We didn't know that at the time of course.

The owner of the houseboat told me the situation was really bad. Worse than he's seen it in a long time. He told me Bilal was a country boy and didn't know anything. Apparently 6 people had been killed and a couple grenades had been thrown at a protest. Tensions were running high. I told him what happened to us on the road and he said all it would've taken was someone to throw a bottle of alcohol on the hood of the car and light a match. Scary. Apparently we were pretty lucky.

I chilled out on the houseboat for the rest of the afternoon. A couple other Westerners were also staying there. Later in the day I got a call from my driver saying instead of 4:30 am we'd be leaving at 1 am. Later that turned into midnight. Someone was nervous. We left in a jeep caravan with about 5 vehicles. I shared the front seat very uncomfortably with some Indian tour guide. I felt like I was being smuggled out of a war torn country. It was a bit unnerving but we didn't have any trouble and made it out of Kashmir valley safely. So maybe Kashmir wasn't the best idea. That might've been the scariest experience of my life but at least it makes for a good story.

Pahalgam

2009-01-13T18:13:00.013-05:00

In the morning we left our houseboat on Dal Lake for Pahalgam. Another not so pleasant trip in that we walked to the jeep taxi station near the lake, hopped into the back to drive to another jeep taxi station outside of town and then I sat in the back for a couple hours. These Indian Tata jeeps are horrendous. There's the driver in front with two other people even though it can really fit only one more person up there comfortably. They'll be 3 people in the middle which is a normal back seat except uncomfortable because the back rest will be at a 90 degree angle. Then there's the back back which has two benches facing each other where they squeeze in another four people very uncomfortably. There's really no where to put your legs and you're too high up to see out the window properly and enjoy the scenery. Nothing like traveling in India.

Once we got to Pahalgam the jeep taxi dropped us off a bit far from where we were staying. Normally I don't mind a little walk but not with my heavy pack. Come'on Bilal! We stayed at the Brown Palace which wasn't nearly as nice as our house boat but it was decent. Pahalgam was pretty nice. Very green and lush. To be honest I feel like after the Himalayas and the Annapurna Circuit I'll be a bit hard to impress when it comes to mountains. There were some tall mountains but they weren't that snowy.

After we settled in we went for a couple hour walk to a nice meadow. The forest was filled with lush pine trees but also tons of Indian soldiers. So many in fact that I felt like I was in an occupied country, which I suppose I was. There were military camps all around the valley. Our hike took us through the forest and then too a beautiful meadow where there were lots of people hanging out. They even had my favorite thing to do: dress up in traditional clothes for pictures. I convinced Haley and Matt to do it too and I have to say those pictures are always hilarious. After the hike we walked through the town and then back to our hotel where we chilled out for the night

The next day since Haley couldn't really hike due to the toe she injured on the house boat so her and Matt didn't go on the hike. This meant it was just me and Bilal. I tried to take the opportunity to learn more about the Kashmir situation and got a little information but I might've been better off just going to Wikipedia. In any case the hike was beautiful. More valleys and pine forests. Great weather too. Bilal's a good guy. We stopped for tea at a small village on the walk home.

After we got back from the hike in the mid-afternoon Bilal asked me if I wanted to walk into town for some random reason and I went with him. In town all the shops were closed. It wasn't the weekend or a holiday so I thought it was peculiar. I asked Bilal to ask someone why the shops were closed (I really wanted an ice cream), but he just told me that the government said the shops had to close. Hmmmm.....very peculiar. When we got back to the hotel I went online and found out there were protests in Srinigar and 60 people had been injured due to the army reaction. Does that have anything to do with the shops all being closed? That's not good I said to myself and then asked Bilal if this would cause us any problems since we were going back to Srinigar the next day. He told us no. Don't miss the next blog post "Escape from Kashmir"! The most exciting one to date!

Kashmir...so this is what all the fuss is about?

2008-12-22T08:17:00.014-05:00

We arrived at our boathouse on Dal lake in Srinigar, the capital of Kashmir, in the early evening. Our guide, Bilal, was right. The boathouse was beautiful. I had probably the nicest room I'd had on my trip here. The wooden boat had wonderfully, intricate wooden carvings and nice furnishings. We even had running water that was hot, what more could've I asked for. Our hosts introduced us to Kashmiri tea. The best tea I've ever had. Apparently it's green tea with cinnamon and cardamon and some other awesome sweet ingredients. Fantastic. After dinner we chilled out and then went to bed early to recover from 36 hours of non-stop travel. Best nights sleep of my life.

In the morning we set out on a boat tour of Dal lake. It was a beautiful, clear, sunny day with no monsoon in sight. The lake had hundreds of boathouses or floating hotels with 3 or 4 rooms and names like The Manhattan and Broadway. The boathouses were arranged so the lake almost had a main street. The lake was like a town with people growing things on the lake and living their lives on the lake. It reminded me of Inle lake in Burma. The boat ride was perfect because it was nice and relaxing. We stopped at a little island and then at a huge Mosque on the shore where we ate lunch nearby. I had some good conversations with Matt and Haley and we arrived back at our boathouse pretty early so we all chilled out on our little garden.

The following day we went to a Hindu pilgrimage site which was a temple on top of a mountain overlooking Srinigar. That was an interesting experience. I had heard a lot about Hindu pilgrimages and they all sounded fascinating. The one-way road up the mountain was packed with cars and Hindu families making their pilgrimages to the temple. Imagine being a Hindu father and basing your decision on where to go on the family vacation on where you want to pray to Shiva or your Hindu god of choice. I read in The Book about the biggest Hindu pilgrimage in India which takes place in one of 4 places every 4 years. 100 million people go. 100 million! How can that many people all go to the same town? I read in August that a couple hundred people were killed at a Hindu pilgrimage site when the people got out of control for some unknown reason. We'd hope for the best.

The temple was built from stone and over a thousand years old. We had to wait on a long line to enter. When we got close the entrance the Hindus near us began to get a little rowdy. Inside there were some flashing lights and we walked around a circle while a Saddhu put a red dot on our foreheads and gave us a handful of what looked and tasted like rice krispies. Good stuff. I never will understand that religion. The view of Dal lake and Srinigar from the temple was outstanding. After some photo stops we headed back down the mountain.

The next stop were two Mughal gardens next to the lake. The sculpted gardens had lovely fountains and flowers. Good work Mughals (pronounced Moggles, not Muggles like in Harry Potter). It was great to relax in the garden but we kept getting stopped by groups of Indians who didn't seem to care where we were from but only wanted pictures with us. I don't mind one or two but we got stopped like every 5 minutes. It got pretty annoying. What are these Indians doing with these pictures of total strangers anyway? Do they put them in their photo albums and tell their friends about all the Westerners they know? At the second garden we walked around and took more pictures with Indians.

The last sightseeing stop was the old city of Srinigar. There was a pretty heavy military presence which I suppose in normal for Kashmir. The police wouldn't let us drive down certain streets and our driver seemed upset about something but we didn't know why. We eventually found parking at went to visit the old Mosque in town, had a wonder around, and then went back to the boathouse. The old city was nice but nothing that special really.

Worst. Travel Experience. Ever.

2008-12-06T13:26:00.004-05:00

At 8:30 am, less than 24 hours after I arrived in Shimla, I got on the "toy train" back down to Chandigarh. It's called a toy train because it's really small (shocker). Kind of cool though, but again I ran into the problem of a seat back at a 90 degree angle and so the last 2 (of 4) hours of the trip was horrible on my back. There was some nice scenery though and there was an American couple sharing my seat who met in the peace corps in Madagascar. I always love hearing peace corps stories because I always feel like I'd never be able to do it. Well, at least the ones in Africa where you're 100 miles from the nearest Westerner and all you eat is leaves with the villagers.

Once we got to the train station Bilal had us walk quite a ways with our heavy packs on and the oppressive heat that was present once we got down from the mountains. We waited around for a while, I think we were supposed to take a bus or something, but eventually we just took a taxi back to Chandigarh, since we were about a 30 minute drive outside. Why couldn't the taxi have just picked us up outside the station so we didn't have to walk so far with our bags? I'd soon learn it's better not to ask these kinds of questions.

At Chandigarh we discover that the bus company, er, some guy, didn't keep Bilal's reservations. We were meant to have a sleeper bus but now they were all full. Not a good omen for the start of the trip. Part of the advantage of having a local guide is that they don't get taken advantage of and know how everything works. I mean, I could've got screwed out of my bus tickets myself. We think that someone just paid extra to get the seats. So now our only option is a jeep. I can deal with a jeep but not overnight. I knew I wouldn't be able to sleep at all unless I took some of my tylenol PM but it was still going to suck big time.

We had some dinner but I still had no appetite whatsoever. I needed to try and eat something though for energy. My stomach wasn't doing so great either. Damn you India! At least there was a Westy (Western-style toilet) at the restaurant. So we were resigned to taking the overnight jeep. I was hoping they'd at least have headrests but I had my blowup travel pillow which helps. There weren't too many windy roads so I got a little bit of sleep and when we arrived in Jammu at 6 am I was really tired and out of it from the tylenol PM. You never feel well rested. We grabbed our bag and went to a hotel to use the bathroom and then decided to just grab the next jeep on to Srinigar. That's right we just took a jeep the whole night but now we needed to take another one. This one would only be 6 hours though. Only 6! Whatever, it'll be worth it, Kashmir is supposed to be amazing.

Well after waiting around in the jeep taxi area for about 30 minutes and switching jeeps 2 times (I was adamant about having a head rest) we were off. When we stopped for breakfast on the side of the road an Indian guy asked to take a picture with us white folk. You can spot the ones who want a picture with you from a mile away. They just have this look in their eyes. He came up to me and asked for a "snap", which is what all the Indians say when they want a picture. A pretty common occurrence but Matt was feeling ill and so wasn't really up for it. The guy apparently needed to have all of us in the picture even though Matt was throwing up off to the side. I kept telling him it would just have to be me but even when I told him Matt was sick, he wouldn't relent. What the hell, man.

Instead of 6 hours, it took 12 hours. That's a big difference especially when you got no sleep the night before, the jeep is horribly uncomfortable, and you've already been traveling a whole day and night straight. We were all pretty pissed but at least there was some nice scenery. Bilal claimed that we just happened to hit a lot of traffic, which was true, but then when I checked The Book it said it takes about 12 hours so I felt like he was lying to us. I was exhausted when we finally got to Srinigar. I never want to see another crappy Indian jeep again in my life. The end of the road did present a beautiful houseboat for our accommodation that night which made up for the trip somewhat. So we left at 8:30am the day before and arrived around 6pm the next day traveling non-stop the whole time. Worst. Travel Experience. Ever.

Have Your Indian Honeymoon in Shimla

2008-10-12T18:45:00.009-04:00

When the British Raj moved their capital from Calcutta to Dehli in 1911 I don't think they could've been totally prepared for summers with temperatures of 115 degrees. That's why they built a summer capital called Shimla, only a few hours north in the mountains. It was about a 5 hour public bus ride from Chandigarh to Shimla. The public bus was pretty miserable. I shouldn't have listened to my adopted Indian grandparents who said there'd be a deluxe bus whenever I showed up at the bus station. The bus dropped me off a ways from the center of town and of course all the taxi drivers wanted to rip me off. I wasn't in the mood so I held out waiting for who knows what. Eventually this Indian guy offered to give me a ride because his son was coming to pick him up. Extremely nice of him.

Shimla was indeed nice and cool. It certainly looked more British with some great colonial architecture. The whole town was built into the side of a hill with some great views of the area. The main promenade was off limits to vehicles, which I always like, but it was up a steep hill with my heavy pack to find a hotel. Indians love to come here on vacation and I could see why but this meant accommodation was harder to come by. A tout saw me with my bag and offered to take me to a hotel he had. Since the YMCA that was in The Book was full I decided to go with him. I was tired of walking around with my heavy pack and justed wanted a place to settle in. This would be a fateful decision as we'll soon find out.

The hotel seemed decent enough but it wasn't until after I checked in I found out that there was only running water on "alternate days". The proprietor claimed this was true at all the hotels in Shimla because there was water conservation going on but for some reason I doubted his honesty. No running water is usually a deal breaker but they gave me a hot bucket to shower with and I didn't feel like finding another place to stay. I'm not sure they understood the meaning of "alternate days" because the next day there still wasn't running water.

It started pouring rain shortly after I checked in so I started playing PSP on my bed when the tout who brought me to the hotel came in. He started asking me about my plans and told me how its been pouring rain in Manali and Macleod Gang, the two places I was planning on going next. Monsoon happened to to come a month early this year. Yay for me. Bilal was from Kashmir though and just so happened to be taking a tour up there leaving next day. Now Kashmir has had some violence in the past and isn't exactly the safest place in the world to visit. India and Pakistan fought to wars over the place. The tour also was going to cost $450 all inclusive for one week. Pretty expensive for India. But Kashmir was supposed to be incredibly beautiful and what was I supposed to do in monsoon weather for the next couple weeks. I told him I'd think about it and then went out to explore Shimla.

Shimla has some nice restaurants and shops and a generally pleasant atmosphere. I didn't see many other foreigners though, only Indians on vacation. There was a Dominos pizza which I decided I'd try for dinner. I had another decision to agonize over: whether or not to go on this tour. I'd have to cut out Macleod Gang or Manali, which I was reluctant to do since I'd heard great things, but on the other hand Kashmir could be amazing. Once I met the other two people going on the tour, a couple, Matt from London, and Hayley from New Zealand, I decided I'd go. They were cool and thought it'd be worth it. So I barely arrived in Shimla before I was off to Kashmir for better or for worse (worse).

Chandigarh - It's modern India circa 1950

2008-09-09T18:18:00.004-04:00

When India split with Pakistan during partition in 1948 the province of Punjab was divided and the provincial capital, Lahore, ended up in Pakistan. India needed a new one so they decided to build a modern city from scratch designed by a French city planner. Chandigarh was portrayed in my guidebook as modern India and I guess it was modern...by 1950s standards. It didn't really stay modern unless you still consider buildings made entirely out of concrete to be cool looking.

My next-door neighbors growing up were an Indian family and when I said I was going to India they put me in touch with some of their Indian friends who lived in India or had friends and family here. Aruna (the daughter) who's my sister's age put me in touch with her friend Maithili who lives in American but has grandparents living in Chandigarh. I've never met Maithili nevertheless her grandparents, which is why I was so touched they offered to put me up in Chandigarh. Especially on one days notice. I arrived in Chandigarh by bus (5 hours) from Amritstar still ailing from my eye injury so it was nice to have a home to go to.

Chandigarh is divided into sectors instead of neighborhoods with each sector a self-contained unit of some sort. Pretty modern, huh? You can be like "I live in sector 34" which is wear Maithili's grandparents lived. I also like "One of the drones from sector 7G is out of control!"

Maithili's grandparents were incredibly nice and spoke perfect English. The grandfather used to be a Admiral in the military but has been retired now for some 20 years. They lived part of a nice house in a very residential neighborhood, sorry, sector that I think is reserved for military people. The apartment was a good size and I had my own big bedroom and bathroom. I got in around 8 at night and they had a nice traditional veg Indian dinner for me. I didn't really know what had been told about me so there were a couple awkward moments when I wasn't sure if they knew I'd never met their granddaughter before. I went to bed early so I could get up and go sightseeing the next day.

My first stop was the rock garden which is supposed to be one of the most touristed sights in India. It was one of the reasons I wanted to come to Chandigarh, besides an attempt to see a modern side of the country. It was built by some guy who collected garbage and turned it into art. It's like an Alice in Wonderland type of place with rock people and animals, waterfalls and other interesting things. It was definitely a unique place and the story behind it is pretty cool.

Afterwards I went next door to the state courts which were supposed to be in a ultra modern building. By ultra modern I think they meant ultra ugly. This building was hideous in my opinion using ugly concrete mixed with uglier brightly colored plastic (see picture). I'm not impressed so far Chandigarh. The city isn't at all walkable but has a lot of green space which is nice. I checked out a museum on the construction of the city after where I did find the idea of building a city from scratch to be interesting. The museum of Indian art next door had some good stuff as well.

Following the museums I thought I'd check out Sector 17, the hip shopping district. The main drag had a promenade but besides all the low-rise buildings still being in concrete, most stuff just looked neglected. The town was built in the 1950s and that was it, it appeared it was never updated. I wondered around for a bit but didn't see many interesting stores so I just went and used the internet for a few hours before heading back to my abode.

I had another nice dinner with Maithili's grandparents. The grandmother showed me her shrine that apparently most Hindu families have in their walk-in closet. All my favorite gods were there like Ganesha and blue-skinned Shiva. She also worshipped this guy with an afro who's still alive but many Indians consider a god. I tried again to figure out what Hinduism was really all about but failed. We had another nice dinner and then I beat Final Fantasy 7 on the PSP before bed. I have to say, I never really did understand what was going on in that game.

The ugliest building I've ever seen

My Indian Grandparents

Dusty India and Contact Lenses

2008-09-09T06:16:00.006-04:00

Later that night when I returned to my hotel room and took out my contacts I realized how right that Indian man from Hyderabad really was. India is a very dusty country and some of that dust must've gotten under my contact lens and scratched my cornea. I had a similar thing happen to me before and knew it was bad when the pain was worse when I closed my eye. It was intense pain but there was really nothing I could do about it. I tried to sleep but was in too much pain. When I did get up in the morning I could barely open my eye. It was intensely red and almost swollen shut. I looked horrible. As I watched an episode of Life with Bonnie on Star World (apparently they import the best American sitcoms to demonstrate to Asians the American comedy genius of Bonnie) I tried to get my eye open.

Luckily I brought an old pair of glasses with me which I never ever wear except for when I run into problems like this one. The only issue was the prescription was way out of date so I really couldn't see too well. Also my eye was very sensitive to light so I had to wear my sunglasses on top of my regular glasses, which as I pointed out to my Dad when he does it at the beach, looks retarded. I knew the scratch would heal by itself so I just had to wait it out. Not being able to see nearly as well with my glasses as with my contacts sucked though. Especially when you're going around sightseeing.

I wore my glasses for the next few days and then made the transition back to contacts sooner than was probably advisable, but I ran into no further problems except for those few days of pain.

The Border is Now Closed

2008-08-18T12:30:00.003-04:00

In the afternoon I found up a shared taxi going to the Attari for the border closing ceremony at the India-Pakistani border which is supposed to be quite a show. It was only about a 40 minute ride there which I shared with in a cramped backseat with a Spanish and Swedish couple and an Indian family. The father of the Indian family was fairly amusing. They were from Hyderabad. The best quote from him was: "India is a very dusty country". That was pretty accurate I'd say.

The border was an absolute mob scene. There were thousands of Indians cheering and chanting "Hindustan something something something." There was stadium seating around the border gate and guard house and if it wasn't for the special VIP seating for foreigners we never would've even got close to the ceremony. Apparently this was indeed a major event. I couldn't believe that there'd be this many people every single day going to watch the border closing ceremony.

The crowd kept getting more raucous while they played Hindi pop music and then the ceremony began. The Indian soldiers lined up wearing their uniforms and funny hats and then one by one goose-stepped to the borders wildly swinging their legs up so high you think they might kick themselves in their own face. It was harder to see the other side of the gate where the Pakistani soldiers were doing something similar, each country trying to outdo the other. There was hardly any crowd on the Pakistani side though. They eventually took down the flag after much to do and marched back towards the crowd. It was actually more interesting just to see the Indian crowd watching and cheering. They loved it. It's interesting that such bitter enemies put on what's really a show like that. I was definitely glad I made the trip out there.

The Honking! Why won't they stop honking?!!?

2008-08-13T12:09:00.004-04:00

One of the first things you might notice when you get to India is the noise pollution. The biggest culprit is definitely people honking their car/motorbike/rigshaw horns...non-stop. I would say the normal state of people driving in India is the driver honking their horn. In other words, they're honking more than they're not honking. It's actually enough to drive you insane.

When I think about how much I honk my horn at home I'd say I've used the horn maybe 5 times in my whole life. In India, you honk when someone passes you, you honk when you pass someone else, you honk when you pass a cow. Is it really necessary to honk when you pass pedestrians that are on the side of the road. If they're not in your way, there's no need to honk. The best was when I actually focused on one motorbike driver coming down one end of the street and heard him honking literally non-stop until he went all the way down the street and then out of sight.

It's bad enough when you're walking around town but when you're on a bus it's even worse.

On my sister's second day in India we had to take a long bus ride. She turned to me after we got on the road and said "are you kidding me?" I replied, "what?" She then said "you haven't noticed that? The incessant honking? It's horrible. I can't even listen to music. Are used to it or something?" I thought for a moment and then said "oh yeah, it's horrible, but maybe I am used to it." I'd been in India for a month at this point. What was happening to me?!

The Golden Temple

2008-08-11T15:08:00.004-04:00

When I saw the picture of a beautiful golden temple sitting in the middle of a large pool in the front of The Book, I knew I had to go there, wherever it was. Luckily that temple happened to be in Amritstar Punjab, a province in the north. Home of the Sikhs.

From the train station I took a rigshaw to Sharma guesthouse. The only problem with the cycle rigshaw in a city with hills is when you sometimes have to get out and walk when going over a hill so the driver can push it up. That's convenience for you.

I stayed at Sharma guesthouse. It wasn't a very social guesthouse, just a bunch of rooms, but it was right near the Golden Temple. After a nice vegetable jalfrazi at a local restaurant I went to the temple. Once I deposited my shoes in the lockers and found a suitable head covering (something to do with the Sikh religion, whatever that is) I headed into the temple complex. The temple was nothing short of incredible. When you go inside you see a large square pool with a temple made of bright gold. All the Sikhs are walking clockwise on the walkway around the pool and some of them are bathing in it. At least it looked way cleaner than the Ganges.

Apparently the Golden Temple is the holiest place in all of Sikhdom. Sikhism seems to be a religion that's some kind of mix between Hinduism and Islam. All Sikh men wear those turbans you might have seen. The good thing is they're allowed to color coordinate their turbans with their outfit. You sometimes see some nice blues and reds and purples. They also can never cut their hair or even their beard...for their whole life. My god, it must get hot with that long hair and turbans on when it's 100 degrees out. Ok, that's about everything I know about Sikhism.

This might be the most beautiful temple I've ever seen (and I've seen a lot in my day). It was a pretty spiritual place to be and I'm not at all spiritual really. I walked around the temple a couple of times and then waited in line to go inside. The line was really long and all the Sikhs waiting had this food that they were giving out. I'm not sure what they were doing with it, giving it to their god perhaps? Inside the temple was just as beautiful as the outside with pretty inlaid patterns on the walls. Sikh priests were reading some scriptures and playing music that was then being played on the loudspeakers that were all around the complex, which I think really added to the atmosphere.

The temple is open 24 hours a day (and no entrance fee) so later that night I went back to see it all lit up. It looked fantastic and the best part: there were no crowds.

Indian Fashion

2008-08-11T12:11:00.003-04:00

I think it's a little sad but most people in this world wear Western-style clothing most of the time. Their culture's traditional clothes are still around but probably only worn on special occasions or to entertain tourists. Not so in India.

In India, from what I could see, something like 90% of the women wear traditional Indian clothing, which is the sari. The sari kind of looks like brightly colored pajamas worn with a scarf made out of silk, although I don't think they are all made out of silk. When I say bright colors, I mean bright. I'm talking almost neon greens, pinks, purples and every other color of the rainbow. No black, white, grey, or brown though. There's usually a pattern to it and the color scheme and pattern covers the whole body from scarf to pants. So maybe women in the West might wear a brightly colored top but their pants wouldn't be the same. It'd be too much. That's what makes India so colorful I think. It's almost technicolor. I think it's kind of nice that they wear their traditional clothes. The sari is a little too bright and pajama-like for my taste but hey, they look comfortable and they're very much a part of Indian culture.

I think in the cities you probably have less women wearing saris and more wearing Western clothes but I didn't spend that much time in the big cities because they're supposed to be not nice. The only other place I've been where the people didn't mostly wear Western clothes was in Burma. Here it was the men who wore longyis, long patterned fabric that they tied around their wastes instead of pants.

The other thing that struck me is that all the men wore Western clothing. So here you have the vast majority of women in the country wearing their traditional clothes and then the men all having gone Western. Why? The British probably had a lot to do with it I'm guessing but that doesn't answer why only the men and not the women would've switched. The other thing about the men's fashion was that they all dress in "business casual" clothing. Button-down collared shirt and slacks. It's like 100 degrees out and they're all wearing that. Sometimes with sandals, which looks ridiculous. Even if you're job is to break rocks by the side of the road the men are still all wearing business cas. If you like Western clothes so much, ever see us wearing shorts and t-shirts over here?

You Just Have to Go In With the Right Mindset

2008-08-10T15:38:00.003-04:00

"Far be it from me to question your stupid civilization and your dumb customs but..."
- Fry on Dr. Zoidberg's home planet during mating season.

The Train to Amritstar

2008-08-07T16:03:00.004-04:00

On my last morning when I had to go to the train station it was absolutely pouring rain. I mean torrents so much so that the entire old city was flooded up to my knees with water. I had to walk through it with my huge backpack and find the main road. I actually saw water coming up out of the sewers and couldn't help but think about all the animal shit and garbage I was walking through. The worst part was I couldn't even wash off before I got onto my train. Gross! Of course all the rigshaw drivers wanted to rip me off to get to the train station but I didn't have much a choice due to the weather. There weren't many around.

The train station was an absolute mess. People sitting on the floor everywhere, not to mention flooding there as well. I found my track pretty easily and then got on the next train but apparently that wasn't the one I wanted so I had to get off. Then some Indian was like "hey, they changed your track, it's now track 1." So I lug my bag all the way back to the main gate to find that wasn't true. Why would he lie to me like that? So then I went back and finally the train came about 20 minutes late. The problem was the station seemed so disorganized and there didn't seem to be anyone around who worked there that I could ask unlike in China.

I wanted some food but the only thing they seemed to sell on the platform was chips and whole cucumbers. No samosas. I decided I'd give the cucumbers a try. Maybe they put something on them to make them have some flavor. No dice. Just a normal whole cucumber that I guess Indians eat like it's a banana or something. Weird.

I had heard horror stories about taking trains in India. The scariest had to be the one where an Indian befriends you and then offers you some food. You don't want to offend them by refusing their offer so you eat whatever they give you. The next thing you know you wake up some hours later and all your stuff is gone. This was in the Lonely Planet so you have to figure it happens often enough that they'd put it in. So if The Book is saying don't trust anything anyone gives you on the train you probably shouldn't.

My first reaction when I got onto the train was this is horrible and I'll never make it 24 hours, but then I calmed down a bit and it wasn't so bad. The train was very old and dirty and dingy. At first this Indian woman in my compartment told me my bed, in addition to her own, was hers but then I showed my ticket to her and she was like ok. The other women in my compartment weren't very friendly but I chatted with some Indian lawyer from Calcutta for a bit. I settled in and read "Midnight's Children" by Salman Rushdie, which is supposed to be amazing since it won the Booker of Booker Prizes. I played PSP as well but once that died there was no charging it (for lack of a charger). I also watched some TV on my ipod.

Normally part of the reason I like to take trains is you get a chance to enjoy the scenery and on this trip I was passing through a lot of the country. The problem was the train was so old, including the windows which you could barely see anything out of. Essentially this was not an enjoyable train ride since the train was dingy and I couldn't even enjoy the scenery. I just needed to pass the time.

Probably the best thing about the train was people were constantly coming by selling food like samosas and some other Indian snacks. Someone even came around to take my order for lunch and dinner and then brought it over. My options was veg or non-veg. I went for veg. The food wasn't bad either. Although I kind of wished I had splurged to have a private compartment that had a door, mine had aircon but not even a curtain like I thought, the train ride wasn't too bad. The tylenol PM knocked me out pretty good so I slept for the whole night and arrived at Amritstar in the morning.

The Answer to My Western Guilt - Reincarnation

2008-08-06T16:23:00.003-04:00

Personally I don't believe in reincarnation...or do I? Hindus believe that you're reincarnated in a higher or lower caste depending on how you act in your life. If you end up as a Brahman, the highest caste, then you must've done something good in a previous life to deserve it. If you end up as an untouchable then you must've done something pretty bad. But, it's not certainly not random chance. I was thinking maybe believing in reincarnation would be a good why to assuage the guilt I feel at being born in a Western country and having all the opportunity for education and a good job that most Indians don't (700 million Indians live on less than $2 a day). Compared to them I'm rich and that's only because I happened to be born in a Western country. Well if I subscribe to reincarnation then I don't need to feel guilty. It wasn't random chance at all. I was born with the opportunities for advancement we have in West because I deserve it. I must've did something awesome in a previous life and now Brahma is rewarding me, comparatively. This is how the higher caste Indians view it. I mean, how else can you deal with the abject poverty you see all around you every day.

Don't Talk to Me

2008-08-06T16:22:00.004-04:00

Imagine if you were in a place where every time you went outside for a walk on the street you were constantly approached by strangers trying to talk to you, but you know they were only trying to talk to you because they wanted your money.

The most annoying thing in Varanasi (and India in general), was definitely the constant stream of Indians hassling you to take a boat ride or buy drugs. It was really ridiculous at times. One guy would ask you if you wouldn't to go on a boat ride, you'd say no, and then the guy right next to him who clearly heard the entire exchange would ask you if you wanted a boat ride. I guess the theory is if they just keep trying they'll eventually wear you down. The best though was as I walked by this Indian guy he just looked directly at me and said "what do you want?" You got to love that. I actually really wanted a Philly Cheesesteak but even that guy probably couldn't get it for me.

The best line anyone every used on me though was this guy who approached me with the standard "what country?" line and then asked if I knew who Goldie Hawn was. "The actress? Sure I know her", I replied puzzled. "What about her?" Apparently she came through town a few years ago or many times, I'm not quite sure. Anyways, the guy wanted to know if I wanted to come to his house and look at the picture of him and her. And then, of course, go look at his father's silk shop. I love silk, (doesn't everybody? it's so soft) but The Book said don't buy silk anywhere in Varanasi, it's all crap and they rip you off. So I replied, "no thanks, I'll just have to take your word for it, bro." Sure enough, later that day another Indian guy approached me and said "Hello, do you know Goldie Hawn?" Strange tactic.

The real problem is that they don't come up to you normally and just say "do you want to buy this or do you want to buy that?" I wouldn't normally have a problem ignoring someone if they did that to me but that's not what they do. They try and befriend you and always start off with some chit chat about where you're from and you don't get to what they really want until later on when you've wasted 10 minutes. What they really want is always your money of course. You should really just totally ignore any Indian who approaches you on the street but I just find ignoring someone who's talking to you to be the height of rudeness.

The Secret Life of Cows

2008-08-04T02:25:00.004-04:00

I think it's fairly common knowledge that in Hinduism the cow is a sacred, holy animal and is revered in India. Nothing can really prepare you though for hundreds of cows wandering aimlessly through an urban environment. Varanasi was the first example of this but you see them everywhere. Dehli is the capital and a really big city but there are still tons of cows just hanging out. Everywhere. Apparently, killing a cow carries a two-year jail sentence.

The question that piqued me the most though was where exactly are these cows going when you see them clearly headed somewhere in particular. I mean, do they think "hey, I think I'll head to that trash heap over Ranjit street this afternoon." I actually saw some Hindu kid touch a cow and then cross himself or something. Considering how holy they are it doesn't seem like they feed the cows very well since you always see them eating garbage.

The other question I had is why exactly is the cow considered a holy animal in Hinduism. Now, I don't claim to understand much about Hinduism but if I was going to have a holy animal in my religion, it wouldn't be a cow. Why not a tiger or monkey? Those are cool animals. Even a goat looks wise with it's beard.

The Holy City of Varanasi (Part 2)

2008-08-04T01:17:00.009-04:00

Our guesthouse was in the old city and was a couple blocks from the ghats (stairs that lead down to the river), particularly Manikarnika Ghat, which is the main burning ghat. This is where they burn bodies 24 hours a day. We walked down and got pretty close to the funeral pyres. I think I got a little too close because I actually saw a half burned body and it was pretty sick. I kind of wished that I hadn't got so close actually, but I was curious. They're just burning the bodies out in the open there. The area is all smokey. There didn't seem to be that much ceremony going on really although we did see processions of men carrying the bodies through the streets of the old city. The bodies at least were covered in shrouds. They don't let you photograph the burnings...unless you give some kind of "donation" and then some guy takes you to somewhere where you can photograph them.

The other thing about old city besides the filth and garbage was the wretchedness of some of the people you see hanging out there. Some of them looked like they were dying. And you know what? They probably were. If you're cremated in Varanasi then you're released from the endless cycle of reincarnation (or so the Hindus believe). So what you end up having is a lot of old people from all around India coming to Varanasi to die. Our equivalent is Florida except the only old age home I saw was a single decrepit dark stone room with no furniture. It was pretty horrifying actually.

So after seeing the burning ghat we walked down along the riverfront. The riverfront was about as dirty as the rest of old city but at least there was a septic river you could look at. You would think that this being the holiest part of the holiest city in all of India they could find some money to clean it up and make it nice, but alas that wasn't the case. There was some great people watching to be had with people bathing with their clothes on and some Saddhus hanging about.

We went to a travel agent where I got a train ticket to Amritstar. I decided to bypass Dehli since I heard it's awful and go straight up north. The other choice was Rishikesh but I heard that place is full of new age hippies, the worst kind. So Amristar was only 24 hours away. I opted for aircon 2nd class sleeper.

At night I watched the puja (prayer) ceremony that goes on at one of the big ghats. There were a lot of people there to see it but it was kind of boring. The weird thing was how many people were there just hanging out, sitting on the pavement. Large groups of Hindus just mulling about not doing much at all. Later in the evening I mostly hung out with Kinga and Federico at the rooftop restaurant at our guesthouse. There were usually some other people hanging around as well but no one that interesting really. It was a pretty cool place except for the staff who were very unfriendly. Then again, it did look like they just slept on tables there at night so who can blame them.

The second day I got up at 4:15 in the morning so I could go on a free dawn boat ride that the guesthouse offered. That was a nice perk I have to admit. There were a few other Americans on our boat. Sunrise is really when the Hindus come out to bathe in Ganges. There were thousands of people down at the ghats. Between all the colorful sarees I don't think I've ever seen anything more colorful in my life. Seeing it from the river was great because you could get a really good perspective of the ghats and just how many people were there. The adults and kids were all splashing around in the water. If I could've stopped thinking about how disgusting the water was it would've been cute.

The Holy City of Varanasi (Part I)

2008-08-02T16:36:00.007-04:00

In retrospect maybe Varanasi was a little too intense to be my first stop in India. Now, I've been to a lot of countries in Asia (something like 12 or so), but India was the only place I've ever been where I've suffered any kind of culture shock. Varanasi is so in-your-face its hard to explain. It's absolutely insane. I can't say it's a pleasant place to be but I'm definitely glad I saw it just to know that a place like this actually exists.

The first thing that strikes you is the religiosity of the people. The reason Varanasi is a holy city is because the holy river Ganges flows right by it. Hindus believe that it's good to bath in and some even drink the water (60,000 bathe in it per day per day!). The problem is the water is absolutely filthy because there's 30 sewers putting their waste into the holy river. The water is actually septic - no dissolved oxygen exists in it. Safe water to swim in should have less than 500 parts per 100 mL of faecal coliform bacteria and the Ganges has 1.5 million! Yum, feecal bacteria (thanks Lonely Planet Fun Fact Box). Why pollute the holiest river in your religion? Good question. Who knows, it's India. Someone told me if I ever fell in I should go to the hospital immediately.

Our first day in Varanasi I went out to explore with Kinga, the Hungarian girl and her Argentinean boyfriend. Normally I love old cities since I love any place with a deep sense of history, something we don't get that much of in the U.S. However, this old city was different. It was just....well... disgusting. The streets were more like alley ways and there's no vehicular traffic, only pedestrian because the alleys are too narrow. The streets are littered with garbage like I've never seen before. This is shocking because I've seen some other pretty dirty places in Asia. Cambodia isn't exactly a picture of cleanliness but this was way worse. Trash everywhere. What really made it horrible though was the cow and animal shit everywhere that no one ever cleans up. Cows are holy in Hinduism for some reason and so they're allowed to wander the streets freely doing whatever they please. Cows generate a large amount of shit...and it's gross. They really have no place in a city with narrow confined spaces. I knew about the cows in India but I didn't know there'd be so many other animals in the cities. There were also goats, monkeys, water buffalo, and lots of stray dogs. They all shit all over the place which then mingles with the garbage and creates a fun obstacle course for when you're walking in the old city.

Go to Hell Shanti Guesthouse

2008-08-02T13:39:00.005-04:00

The Shanti Guesthouse did indeed have a nice rooftop restaurant. Well, it wasn't nice but it was on a roof and it was cheap. The rooms sucked though. They were like cells and the windows looked out onto the hall. What can you expect for $4 though? Well, I expect a door that locks. We got in late the night before and the manager tells us we have to provide our own padlocks. What the hell is that? Who carries around their own padlock with them. It's bad enough that they use padlocks to lock the rooms in Nepal and India since they're such a bitch to get open and I usually have to spend a minute fiddling with it, but provide your own? I never saw any other place in India that made you do that. It was too late to find another place though and to go out and buy a padlock so we had to leave our doors open when we weren't in them.

The next day when we went out for the day I intended to buy a padlock for my room but I wasn't really in any rush because even though my door wasn't locked I never leave any valuables in it. I always carry them with me. Or so I thought. Apparently my definition of valuables are different than an Indian's.

I realized my room had been robbed the next morning when I wanted to charge something. I had the chargers to my two cameras (one DSLR and one pocket), ipod, PSP, and phone in a plastic bag to keep it dry in case my bag got wet. They took that bag along with a broken travel alarm clock and broken flashlight. Why would anyone steal chargers to devices they don't have? Why!!! (Why is a question I would often ask myself in India) These valuables are only valuable to me. How much could you sell that stuff for on the street in India. Can't be much I'd imagine. So now I was going to have to see if I could track down all the chargers to my gadgets in Varanasi of all places. I figured other people would have ipods so I could borrow their chargers and I wasn't using my phone but my Nikon and Pentax cameras and PSP would be really hard to track down chargers for.

I found a cycle rigshaw driver to take me to the mall which amazingly had a Sony store and air-conditioning but the Sony store didn't have anything for me. The highlights were watching an Indian family that was scared to get onto the escalator. I wish I had a video of it. Also, I ate at McDonalds and since they can't serve beef I had the Maharaja Burger. It was a chicken sandwich with some kind of Indian-style sauce but instead of chicken breast it was like ground chicken. Not that good really.

For the rest of the afternoon I went to these little electronic shops that never had anything I needed but suggested other places that might. It was like following clues and it took me all over town. Finally, at the last place we went I found a charger for my Nikon camera, which was what I needed most. Later I found an ipod and PSP charger in Amritsar.

I could barely believe I was able to replace that stuff. I figured I'd have to go to a big city like Dehli to do it. It was still a real pain in the ass and not a really good way to start India. It had to be people who worked at the guesthouse who stole the stuff because tourists would never steal chargers to devices they don't have. When I told the management at the guesthouse they gave me the impression they didn't really care which pissed me off enough to write to Lonely Planet and tell them how bad this place was. They actually got back to me and thanked me for my feedback and said they'd give it to the editor of the next edition. The problem with Lonely Planet is that everyone uses it and so once a hotel, guesthouse, or restaurant gets into it they never have to worry about getting customers again. People will keep showing up no matter how much their place goes to shit since it's in The Book and people trust The Book. The competition is fierce so places in The Book have a huge advantage because quality varies widely. I wanted to tell the owners lets see how many guests you get when you're not in The Book.

Are You Ready for India?!?! No!!!!!!

2008-07-31T16:31:00.007-04:00

There were a good number of people who decided to take the land route from Nepal to India besides myself although Daniel in Kathmandu promised me I'd regretit. And he was right. I got up early and caught the bus to the transfer point for the border. Crossing was pretty painless and we just walked across. I met this English guy, Argentinean guy, and a Hungarian girl who stayed at my guesthouse and since we were all going to Varanasi we stuck together. It's always nicer to be with other people when you have to figure out how to get from point A to point B and its not simple in this part of the world.

Once we crossed the border we found a bus going to Gorakhpur and from there we could hopefully catch a train to Varanasi. Some Nepali at a travel agency in Lumbini said there were no trains going during the day but for some reason you can't ever trust those people or they just have no idea what they're talking about. This is weird considering they're travel agents. This bus was pretty bad but it was only a 3 hour I ride. I love how the bus never has a departure time. They just wait until there are too many people on board and then leave.

We arrived in Gorakhpur around noon and quickly discovered there was indeed a train leaving at 2pm. We got unreserved tickets so we were a bit concerned about finding space. I just had this vision from the movie Gandhi of a train in India where there were people sitting in the luggage racks and on the roof. We ended up having no trouble getting seats but they were wooden benches where the back was at a 90 degree angle to the seat and after 2 hours I was in intense discomfort. The ride was supposed to take 5 hours but ended up taking 8. We kept stopping but instead of just picking up people and leaving we stopped at each station for like an hour. I was about to scream in frustration. Why were they stopping for so long? WHY!!!! I think the wooden bench was effecting me.

We got into Varanasi around 11 and took autorigshaws to our guesthouse. Autorigshaws are like Tuk Tuks in Thailand. Basically they're small three-wheeled vehicles (tricycles) which have a bench seat in the back for passengers and then the driver up front who will inevitable try to cheat you. We stayed at the Sharma Guesthouse since The Book said it had a nice rooftop restaurant but I ended up writing to Lonely Planet telling them about my miserable experience there. I'll elaborate in the next posting.

The Birthplace of Buddha

2008-07-31T15:34:00.003-04:00

Considering Buddhism is a major world religion you'd think Lumbini would be a more popular tourist attraction considering Buddha or Prince Siddhartha, was born here around 500 BC. The town itself was really one dirt street. Right next door was the huge area they've set aside for developing the birthplace of Buddha into a huge tourist attraction but right now there's not much there. Buddha's birthplace was just a stone slab inside a little building that had some ruins. Not really very exciting and there was hardly anyone around. It was also like a 1,000 degrees out so I was happy I had rented a bike and didn't have to walk around in that heat. They're in the process of building a nice canal and have given land to every Buddhist country (or country that has Buddhists) so that they can build a Buddhist temple in their country's style. Only a few have been completed so far but I think it's a cool idea especially since I've been to many of the countries and this way you can directly compare architectural styles. Thailand had a beautiful white temple. China had completed theirs along with Germany (didn't know they were Buddhist) and Korea's looked like it'd be nice when it was done.

I was pretty much finished seeing everything in Lumbini by mid afternoon so I headed back to my mediocre guesthouse, which paled in comparison to KGH, to use dial-up internet. In the process I ran into the 3 English girls from my rafting trip. That was a pleasant coincidence since I didn't know they'd be around here. I hung out with them for the rest of the afternoon and then we went for a dinner at some tourist place.

A Miserable Bus Ride

2008-07-31T13:25:00.002-04:00

Monday night I rushed to the bus station to catch the overnight bus down to Lumbini, a border town that's also the birth place of Buddha. There was no "tourist" bus that goes during the night but I thought it'd be better to not waste a whole day traveling. What a horrible bus ride (of many to come). Firstly, the bus was an awful local bus. You can barely believe that can make it down the street (and that there weren't any goats on it). The bus was pretty full, which means people are sitting in the aisle. Not only was it late to leave but it just 1 minute to outside the bus station where it then stopped for an hour. No exaggeration. I asked the guy sitting next to me what the hell was the hold up. He just shrugged his shoulders. During this wasted time people keep coming onto the bus to sell stuff to the passengers like corn, lighters that project porn onto a flat surface, flashlights, etc. I bought a $2 watch off some guy, which was convenient since my watch stopped working. It was a pretty crappy watch but it kept time unlike the crappy automatic watches I bought in China which stop if you stop moving to watch TV for an hour.

I took some tylenol PM, which was my best friend on this trip. Knocks you out better than a valium. Of course they stop at a rest area (group of huts on the side of the road that sell food) at 4 am and wake everyone up. When we finally got to Lumbini we weren't in Lumbini and instead in some other town an hour away. I concluded that I got ripped off on my bus ticket since it said Lumbini on it. I had to pay for a cycle rigshaw to the next bus and then take the local bus an hour to Lumbini. I was so groggy from the tylenol PM I really could barely deal with it though. That's the only trouble with it.

My favorite thing on all these bus rides is how they always try to maximize every trip. Once they leave the station they are always propositioning all these pedestrians on the side of the road. "Hey, you wanna go to Lumbini. No? Ok." I mean if these people wanted to go somewhere 10 hours away wouldn't they plan it ahead of time and need to pack a bag? It's not exactly a spur of the moment decision. Bu sometimes they do just hop on the bus from the side of the road as we slow down to ask them if they want a ride. Who are these people who take a 10 hour bus ride without any luggage?

Bahktapur

2008-07-28T16:09:00.004-04:00

Sunday I got up late and then chilled with some people at the restaurant. I caught the bus to Bahktapur, another of the valley's medieval towns complete with its own Durbar square. Back in the day each town had it's own king and they would compete with each other for a more magnificent central square. Bahktapur didn't allow motorbikes are vehicular traffic in its center, supposedly which is always appealing to walkers like me. The town was pretty similar to Pattan. I had a nice wander around town enjoying the alleyways and temples. I love these kinds of places. There's always something interesting to look at.

That night was my last night in Kathmandu. I went to Tom and Jerry's Pub with Daniel and Alex, a Canadian girl working in Bombay, and some others. It was pretty low key and my stomach was still bothering me from the day before. Later on we hung out on the roof of KGH again, which I love.

Monday was a good do nothing and say goodbye to Kathmandu Guesthouse day. I hung around the restaurant with Daniel and Alex most of the day and then we went for massages and then dinner back at the same restaurant. A nice relaxing day. It's hard to leave when you make friends somewhere you really like. When we found out Entourage was on at 8:30 I debated delaying my night bus to India for a day but decided it probably wouldn't be a new episode anyway.

Pictures here.

KGH

2008-07-28T15:04:00.004-04:00

When we got back to Kathmandu I went out to dinner with the English girls and two English guys who were on the rafting trip. I always get that it's good to be home feeling when I get back to KGH. We went to some Nepali place where I got a Chicken curry that I later regretted. Daniel told me there was a party that night at 1905, some bar/restaurant right outside Thamel. I went with one of the English guys. Daniel never showed up but Owen and Shirley did later on. The place was pretty cool since it was all outdoors and had a nice garden. The music was kind of weak but it was interesting watching all the Nepali guys dancing with each other on the dance floor. There was hardly any girls there. We stayed until around 4 am then I walked back with Shirley.

That whole night I could barely sleep and kept having to go to the bathroom, which sucked since for the first time I got a room without a private bath. It was only $4. So I kept having to get up and get dressed and then walk down the hall. Having a private bathroom is the one luxury I tend to afford myself. When you're sick you really appreciate it. I felt like I might have food poisoning or something although I never through up. On Saturday I basically just hung around Thamel, used the internet and wandered around. I didn't want to be too far from the bathroom.

That night I hung out with Daniel at KGH. We chilled with the Bhutanese girls we had met a few days before. It was really cool to meet people from Bhutan. I had so many questions for them since I only ever heard of the country a few years before and knew that it cost $200 a day just to visit the country. Bhutan had also invented the term Gross National Happiness and just had a transition from Monarchy to Democracy. Something Nepal went through while I was trekking. The girls spoke excellent English and were journalists at an English language newspaper. Actually they were playing hooky from work and just took off the week and came to Kathmandu. Later in the night we chilled up on the roof with a great view of the city.

I'm Jealous of Your Travels

2008-07-28T14:59:00.002-04:00

As you do when you meet people whenever you're traveling you tend to talk a lot about traveling and the places you've been. Whenever I meet well travelled English people I always feel like I've hardly seen anything. Many English take their gap year between high school and college and go traveling for the whole year. Then every summer, instead of getting internships like we do in the U.S., they go traveling for 3 months. Then after college they take another gap year and go traveling again for a year before starting work. If you do that you see the whole world by the time you're 23 or something. So these girls, who were 20, have been to almost everywhere it seemed. I know how much I love traveling because whenever I meet people who've been to places I haven't I get a little bit jealous.

The English girls spent months in Africa doing a caravan truck that goes from Nairobi in Kenya all the way down to South Africa. Sounds awesome but I didn't think Africa was safe enough to do something like that. Apparently you never travel after dark. Makes sense. They've also spent months in South America, the next place I'm dying to go. I never really thought much about going to Africa. I'd like to eventually go but it's lower on my list than South America for sure. But on this trip I've met a lot of people who've been and loved it. Well, at least I've been to more places than everyone at home and I'm only 26. Got to leave something to look forward to. Of course it's not a competition. 32 countries I've been to now, but who's counting.

White Water Rafting

2008-07-27T22:05:00.002-04:00

Thursday at 7 am I got a cinnamon roll from one of the many German Bakeries and headed to the rafting office. The river was called the Bhote Kosi and is the steepest river in Nepal. Our camp site was about 2 hours from the city but I wouldn't even call it a camp site. It had a pool and couches and tables and a bar even though we slept in tents that had beds. The question is why we had to leave at 7 am in the morning because when we got to the camp we just waited around for an hour and then had lunch and didn't get to the rafting part until around 2 or so. Better not to ask those kinds of questions on tours in Asia though. I had a pretty good group with an Australian couple and 3 English girls who were traveling together. They made for some good company since we actually only spent 2 hours on the river per day.

As for the rafting, the first day we did the southern part of the river which had grade 3 rapids which aren't that rough but is a good introduction to the river. I think the last time I went rafting was in New Zealand in 2004. It was still really fun and two hours was actually plenty of time to be in the river. The weather was a little overcast and the water was pretty cold but the rapids were exciting and we all had a good time. When we got back to the camp we hung around until dinner then hung around some more and played cards. Not really much to do. Right before bed we decided to take a midnight swim.

Friday's rafting was the real deal. This time we were doing rapids that were grades 4 and 4+/5-. Grade 5 is super difficult and Grade 6 is unnavigable so what we were doing is basically the highest your casual rafter can do. When your guide in your raft tells you paddle forward or paddle backward, you listen and you paddle as hard as you can otherwise you might be screwed. In these waters people drown. It was non-stop white water for the entire way so it was very exciting. There were two spots where we had to get out of the water completely because the rapid wasn't passable or too dangerous to try. No one in our boat went into the water but everyone in the other one did. It was a lot of fun and scary at times. I was sitting in the very front part of the raft because the men needed to paddle hard up there but there you have the biggest chance of going over. There were some times where we saw the rapid ahead and thought "Oh shit, that looks rough." But we made through all right and that was definitely up there with my rafting trip in New Zealand as the best one I ever took. Well, better than the Delaware river, for sure.

Patan

2008-07-24T11:52:00.002-04:00

Around the Kathmandu Valley, but not considered part of the city of Kathmandu are a number of beautiful, medieval villages. If I was impressed by the temples and old city of Kathmandu I was blown away by Patan. It's Durbar square was even more impressive than Kathmandu's. Durbar square has something like 10 temples in different styles, various stone statues and a palace. The Book has walking tours of all of the towns around the valley, which I love to go on whenever they have them. Walking is always the best way to familiarize yourself with a place, although you don't have much other choice in these towns. The only problem is in these old towns with narrow streets and alleyways it can be hard to know if you're on the right track. It's not like walk down 7th Street and turn right on 1st Avenue. I don't even think the streets have names here.

What I love most about Patan is how there are these narrow covered alleyways with small stooped entrances that open up on to these huge chowks (squares). There are beautiful old 3 story houses situated around them. The best ones were the ones that have these amazing temples inside and a water pump where all the women gather to collect water for the house and gossip. This can't have changed much in a couple of hundred years but I love the sense of community of living around a small square. In Durbar Square I went to one of the best museums I'd been to Asia. It had lots of Hindu and Buddhist artwork in a renovated palace but the difference was they actually explained everything to you, such as what the many arms and faces signified in the statues. It was also actually nice unlike most other museums in Asia.

The day wasn't without its bothers though. I met some Nepali guy who told me he's been to New York so we chat for a while. Of course, he isn't interested in me because I'm from New York but because he might be able to sell me something. I visit his painting store out of courtesy but don't want to buy anything. He follows me around and harasses me until I'm begin to get mad. I finally agree to buy a Tibetan singing bowl from his friend for $8. I'm weak. Why can't I buy anything from Nepal in Nepal, everything seems to be from Tibet. Later another young guy approaches me and wants to be my guide. I tell him I don't want one and then he gets angry and says "fine, everything for you and nothing for me." What is that supposed to mean? That I'm a rich foreigner and that I have to give some of my hard earned money to every single Nepali who asks and If I don't I'm a jerk?

Besides that it was a great day and I had a wonderful time exploring the temples and back alleys of Patan. It's amazing how these sculptures and temples that are hundreds of years old are just part of the everyday life for these people. They walk buy them every day, pray to them, and yet they're totally unprotected.

Pictures here.

The Fix Is In

2008-07-24T01:16:00.002-04:00

I had to get back from Bodhnath to pick up my India visa and on my way back the Nepali boys and I stopped at a grocery store to pick up some milk and coffee, which I had promised to buy for the boys' Buddhist monastery. Right before we went they tell me they want 4 powdered milks, 4 coffees, and 4 packages of bisuits. I'm think this might be too much but I don't say anything. We go into the store and they show me the biscuits, $3 each, the powdered milk, a whopping $12 per package. They wanted 4 of each so I guess they thought I'd spent $80 or something crazy like that. I'm a foreigner so I have an unlimited amount of money of course. I felt like I was locked into buying them something because I had already agreed to and they did show me around, but I couldn't buy all that. I told them I'd get them one powdered milk and one biscuit but that was it and I just went to the check out and bought it. I spent $15 which is a lot for Nepal and more than I wanted to spend.

I hand the bag to one of the boys and he takes it without saying thank you and is clearly pissed off at me and stomps off. We were sharing a taxi but he says they'll just walk home. The other boy clearly doesn't want to give up on me yet and starts pleading with me for one more powdered milk, begging me even. I said no and that that was all I could afford. They walk away and were both upset and didn't even say goodbye to me. Later on I found out why.

Apparently, as I was told by a fellow tourist later, there's an elaborate scam in Nepal and India which involves buying powdered milk for locals from a grocery store or shop. The scammer you buy it for then sells it back to the store for some agreed upon price. The shopkeeper gets to sell it twice and the scammer gets to keep the cash. Looking back I'm pissed I fell for it but it just seemed like buying milk and coffee for Buddhist monks would be a nice thing to do. Judging by their reaction to what I did get them it was clear they wanted more so they could get more money. Another way you know it's a scam is if they won't accept normal milk because normal milk spoils whereas powdered doesn't.

The saddest thing really is that I'll never trust anyone who approaches me in these countries ever again. It's always a scam. They see your skin and they see a dollar sign. It's unfortunate and the reason I chat with these young men who approach me is because I think getting to know the locals is part of the experience. But they're not interested in you, just your money. It's a real pity.

What Exactly is a German Bakery?

2008-07-24T00:00:00.000-04:00

I'm trekking on the Annapurna Circuit and in many of the tiny villages we pass on the way I saw signs for German Bakeries. They kept popping up in Nepal and then in India wherever a town was really touristy and got a lot of backpackers. What the hell is a German Bakery though? Have you ever heard of one? I haven't. Maybe a French Bakery, but German? Are Germans known for their bread or is this just one of those things where Indians think that Westerners like German Bakeries and that German Bakeries are everywhere in the West but in actuality they're not.

Kathmandu Valley

2008-07-21T10:53:00.003-04:00

After the movie I hung out with Owen, who is from Indiana and works in Kathmandu for a few months of the year for his family's company. Not sure exactly what he does but I think its manufacturing. In any case, him and Daniel are really cool guys and I basically hung out with them over the next week I was at KGH. It was nice to finally meet some Americans. Don't get me wrong, I love meeting new people from all of the world, and I have been but sometimes you just click with Americans right away and that's nice. We do after all, have the same shared experiences no matter you're from New York or Indiana, and those goes a long way sometimes.

The next morning I was up early to go to the Indian Consulate so I could marvel at the inefficiencies of Indian bureaucracy. I waited in line for around 4 hours so I could apply for my visa. Am I sure I want to go to India? I hope so!

On my way back to KGH after my visa app I ran into two young guys who told me they were studying to be Buddhist monks. I told them I was going to Bodhnath Stupa, the largest Tibetan stupa in Nepal, and they offered to take me. I've seen this before and told them I couldn't pay for a tour guide. This is where the twist comes in. They told me I didn't need to pay them but if I could buy some milk and coffee for their monastery. This was different and I thought to myself why not, I'll be helping out Buddhists and how expensive could milk and coffee be in Nepal.

After lunch they first took me to the most important Hindu temple in Nepal, Pashupatinath. Unfortunately, non-Hindus aren't allowed into Hindu temples, which I think is a pretty stupid rule. How do they know I'm not Hindu anyway, just because I'm not dark skinned? Maybe I converted. Actually, no one has every converted to Hinduism.

The guys, who were 18 and seemed to know a lot about Buddhism and the places we were going, were cool and I enjoyed their company. Despite not being allowed in the Hindu temple we could go to the river behind the temple where they burned bodies and a lot of Saddhus hang out. I love Saddhus, wandering Hindu holy men. I mean, who doesn't. They just look awesome with their dreads, face paint, and orange robes. All they do is hang around and smoke hash all day because apparently Shiva likes that stuff. The burning of the bodies is pretty sick but I wasn't that close to it.

Afterwards we walked to Bodhnath which took around half an hour. We got to walk through some interesting parts of the city as well. I like how in the middle of the city you'll have people farming vacant lots. Bodhnath was very impressive. A huge white Tibetan Buddhist Stupa. My favorite thing about Nepali Buddhism is definitely the eyes and upside down question mark that serves as a nose on all of their stupas. It just looks cool. This stupa was massive and we walked around it 3 times, as is tradition, saying padme om, the Buddhist mantra. Buddhism is such a nice religion. So peaceful, unlike some other religions I know.

Pictures here.

Back to Kathmandu

2008-07-17T08:50:00.002-04:00

I caught the early morning "tourist bus" back to Kathmandu which 7 hours and wasn't exactly "luxury" if you ask me. It was great to be back to Kathmandu Guesthouse (KGH). It was like getting back from a big trip and seeing old friends. Daniel, an American guy I met last time was hanging out at the restaurant and then Owen, another American guy, came back from work. To my surprise and delight the new Indiana Jones movie was playing and we all decided to go and see it. The Indiana Jones films have always been some of my favorites. In terms of classic adventure movies you just can't beat'em so after 20 years I was only worried the one would disappoint or the theater in Nepal would be garbage.

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull wasn't great but I thought it was entertaining and enjoyed it. It certainly wasn't The Last Crusade but I really didn't believe it would be. It's pretty tough to recapture that kind of magic. It was interesting that the theater just stopped the movie halfway through for an intermission (at least they didn't pause in the middle of a sentence, "Indy, I really...) and that Ai, this Chinese guy who went with us thought it was the best movie he'd ever seen, it probably was.

Pokhara

2008-07-15T15:10:00.004-04:00

The day after I got back from my big trek I had a nice sleep in and then went around in a daze at being back in civilization. I stayed at the lakefront in Pokhara which is really just a large village although its the second biggest city in Nepal. The lakefront wasn't right on the lake unfortunately but set a little ways back. It was basically the same as Thamel, travel agent, restaurant, guesthouse, fake northface shop, souvenir shop, repeat ad nauseum except for narrow winding streets it was just one wide street. It was nice but there was hardly anyone around. The lake was beautiful but it was hazy so you couldn't really see any mountains from the town around this time of year.

I knew I wanted to do some stuff today but I didn't know what so I just wandered around aimlessly for a bit. Finally I went into a travel agency (there's so many it's really hard to choose one) and booked a rafting trip and paragliding. Most rafting trips were off thoughsince it was the end of the season. After that I rented a motorbike and went around town. I hadn't rode one since Cambodia so it was fun to get back on. Cambodia doesn't have cows wandering the streets freely so I had to watch out for those.

First stop was the Tibetan refugee camp on the outskirts of town. I befriended some really cute Tibetan Refugee children there who showed me around town. Those refugees set up a nice little village there. On my way out some Tibetan teenager offered to ride with me and show me around town. We went to a cave that had some bats that were vaguely interesting and then the mountaineering museum which was cool and had some interesting info on the Himalayas. That night I met up with the French couple from my trek and had dinner. After I went to one of the only bars that gets a decent crowd and listened to live music with some Nepali guy who went to college in the US.

In the morning I went to go for paragliding, which I had never done before and was pretty excited about. The weather was a little overcast so the paragliding had to be cancelled. Not only that but my rafting trip also got cancelled because there wasn't enough people. Oh the disappointment. I signed up for a different rafting trip that was leaving from Kathmandu later in the week but paragliding was done. That day I wandered around for a bit and then rented a bike and rode part way around the lake. The lake was really nice and very peaceful away from Lakeside. A couple Nepali guys who seemed cool invited me to hang out with them later. Back in town I bought a fake north face jacket for $15. It better be waterproof unlike that crappy fake one I bought in China that wasn't.

At night I went to meet Ben and Lauren, an Australian couple I met on the trek, for dinner. After dinner I thought it'd be cool to go hang out with those Nepali guys. You don't get to know a country without hanging out with locals. They were hanging out outside some little bodega near the lake. There was like ten of them and we drank some local whiskey that wasn't horrible. I figured I'd have to and I paid for all the whiskey, coke, and chips we had. Around midnight they asked if I wanted to go to the bar we were at the previous night because their friend's band was playing. I needed to get up early to catch the bus to Kathmandu but I figured I'd go for a little. Right before we entered one of Nepali guys says they don't have any money so I'd need to buy them drinks. I figured I buy them one round and then I'd go. I didn't mind doing that. After an hour or so I tell them I'm leaving and one of the guys is like "can you get us one more round. please." I said no since I'm leaving and that one round was enough. Nope. Wasn't good enough for him. He practically begged me to get them one more round. He made it very clear that the only reason they invited me out in the first place was so I could buy them drinks. Unfortunately you really can't trust anyone in these countries and you always have to assume they want something from you, usually your money. The fact is you're a walking ATM machine to them. Maybe they're not all like that but must are and due to that you can't befriend any of them.

Pictures here.

Pop a Squat

2008-07-14T20:47:00.003-04:00

Walking around Asia you tend to see a lot of people just hanging out on the side of the road (I'll save a more in depth look at that for another post) but what strikes me is how they hang around. Often they'll be no benches or chairs so what the mostly young men do is just squat (similar to how they shit). They'll just squat there on the curb and chat and read the newspaper for hours. Have you ever tried to squat down low for more than a minute? It's incredibly painful. I've concluded they must have different muscles in their legs because I just can't figure out how they do it for so long.

Culture Shock: Hinudstan!

2008-07-14T19:37:00.002-04:00

On the final and, dare I say, most exciting installment of Tales of Interest: escape from Kashmir and India: the filthiest and most colorful place on Earth.

My first stop in India was the holy city of Varanasi. I've been to many countries in Asia now and pretty much thought I was immune to any kind of culture shock but India and in particular, Varanasi, was just madness. Let me paint you a picture: you're walking along the holy Ganges river where you see thousands of Hindus bathing in a river that I was told if I fall into I should immediately go to the hospital because it has a sewage content high enough to make it a septic tank. Indians are constantly coming up to you, literally every 5 seconds, and asking: "Boat ride? Hashish? Silk?" The best was the guy who just looked at me as I walked by and said slowly, "What do you want?" No wait, actually the best was the guy who came up to me and asked if I knew Goldie Hawn. "Uh, the actress? Sure, I know her", I replied. And then: "That's great that you met her, but no I don't really want to see the photo of you and her at your silk shop. I'll take your word for it, thanks though." Then later that day a different Indian came up to me and asked if I knew Goldie Hawn.

You're walking through the narrow, claustrophobic streets of the old city and all of a sudden the oppressive heat and humidity begins to get to you and you feel dehydrated. You know you shouldn't have eaten the meat last night but you did anyway and now your stomach is punishing you. You look down and realize the streets are filled with trash and that no one is cleaning up all the shit from the thousands of cows, goats, monkeys, water buffalo, and dogs that are wandering the streets freely. You notice an Indian lying on the ground who looks like he's about to die (he was, of course, since if a Hindu dies and is burned in Varanasi they're released from the endless cycle of reincarnation, which means people go there to die). The whiff of burning corpses from the ghat where they burn bodies 24 hours a day floats your way. "Oh God!", you exclaim, "India! It's too much!"

Imagine the most chaotic and overwhelming place you've ever been and then multiply it by ten. That's still not India because you can't imagine India. You have to experience it for yourself to really understand.

Practically all the woman wear traditional Indian dresses which are called saris and basically look like techni-color silk pajamas with a scarf. They love their bright greens, pinks, and purples. Almost all the women also have nose rings and where bindis, the red dots on the forehead. The men almost all have "child-molester" mustaches, dress in business casual clothes (button-down shirt and slacks when its 100 degrees out) and hold hands with each other in the street (a symbol of being BFFs).

Now a quick word on Hinduism since India is one of the most religious countries in the world. You have to be fascinated by a religion where an elephant-headed god is one of the most popular deities (out of 300 million). It's almost like if Greek mythology was still a practiced religion. You get great stories like how Ganesha got his elephant-head, which I'm sure you were wondering. Shiva, another god, and his consort, Parvati had a child with a normal head, Ganesha. Shiva left one day and told Ganesha to not let anyone in to see Parvati. Well some years later Shiva returned and didn't recognize his son and asked to be let in to see Parvati. Ganesha refused and so Shiva promptly cut his head off. Parvati came out and was like "oh my god, you cut off our son's head, you bastard. Fix it." Shiva asked for the first creature from the forest, which turned out to be an elephant, and there you go. So the moral of the story is...uh....don't cut off anyone's head unless you're sure they're not a family member. I also enjoy Sadhus, the wandering, possession-less Hindu holy men who wear orange robes and smoke charras all day. However, the guidebook warns you not to befriend any Sadhus you find wandering in the forest.

Right now India is like a furnace and most of the country is like 115 degrees, or something stupid like that, and rainy because of the monsoons. Due to this I decided to head up to the very north of the country where the Himalayas make it nice and cool. For some reason I decided it'd be fun to go with a tour guide and a couple other people to Kashmir, that Muslim state in India that was at the center of two wars between India and Pakistan, most recently in 1999. In short, there's a recent history of bloody violence there...but it's supposed to be really, really beautiful. And my guide told me it was fine and why would Bilal lie to me?

After 27 hours between a train and two different jeeps we arrived in Srinagar where we stayed on a lovely houseboat on Dal Lake. After a couple of days we went over to Pahalgam, an incredibly picturesque valley despite the heavy military presence that makes it feel like it's occupied by a foreign power.

On our last day in Kashmir we took a jeep back to Srinagar. On the road we see a mob of young Muslim men blocking the way forward. They look angry and some are holding sticks, but there's only one road so we don't have many options. When we got to the roadblock our guide explains that he's taking foreigners to the airport and they seem to decide to let us through when suddenly, some guy who looks really angry comes running over and reaches into the driver's side window and turns off the engine. A couple of men violently pull our driver out of the car and then someone on the other side of the car reaches in and hits our guide in the head.

At this point I yelled out from the backseat, "hey, how about that Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Those Palestinians, what a bunch of jerks." Cooler heads must have prevailed then because they let our driver back into the car and we were able to pass. We hoped we were out of the woods but we still had to pass another 3 roadblocks before we got to the airport. After that first one anytime I saw a large group of men in the street I got pretty nervous. I think being in the midst of an angry mob might be the scariest experience I've ever had since you have no idea how they're going to react and things can get out of control rather quickly.

The fun wasn't over yet though. I was planning on staying the night in Srinagar and then taking a jeep out the next morning. Since we had no idea what the situation was like in the city I decided I might be safer to bail and just take a flight to Delhi. Of course I wasn't the only person in town who thought it might be a good idea to get out of Dodge. There were no flights available. When I want back out to the airport gate my guide was gone even though he told me he'd wait for me just in case.

Now I'm thinking: "uh-oh, I'm all by myself in Kashmir and I have no idea if things have gotten way out of hand in the city." I had no choice though and I figured if I could just get to the houseboat I'd probably be safe. I found a taxi driver that would actually take me into the city for the right price. I made it to the houseboat with no trouble but things in town were very tense. Everything was shut and the locals were worried. 6 people had already been killed at protests and some militants had thrown some grenades. With some good luck, my taxi driver managed to find me a driver who was leaving the valley the next morning. Normally he leaves at 6:30 am but he moved our departure time up to 4 am, then 1 am, and then midnight just so we could get out of the valley before people got up and started demonstrating again.

For all the trouble in Kashmir and long journeys I finally got to the one place that made it all worth it: Ladakh. One of the last undisturbed Tantric Buddhist Cultures on Earth. 8 months of the year its completely cutoff by road from the rest of the world due to the high mountain passes being blocked by snow and the only way in is by flight. This is one of those places so beautiful its hard to believe it actually exists. After meeting up with my sister, Stephie, in Delhi we visited the Taj Mahal and went around Rajasthan the last couple days.

Well I see I've written a lot but I could write volumes on India, which I intend to in my new book, "India: What the Fuck?" Well tomorrow I fly home and my stint in Asia ends after more than one year. No more tales of interest but I'll keep writing in my blog, http://borgmania.blogspot.com. I'm sure some funny/interesting stuff will happen in Italy.

I'm going to have a get together this Friday, July 18th, so if you're in NYC drop by Piano's on the Lower East Side and say hello, and possibly goodbye since I'll be leaving for Italy on August 19th. For all you cats on Facebook I'll send out an event invitation.

-E
borgmania.blogspot.com

A Baby On Your Back

2008-06-19T09:56:00.002-04:00

You know how in the West parents usually put babies in strollers when they take them out. Well in Asia they just strap the baby to their backs using some kind of fabric sling. I find it to be much more practical and think how much easier it is if you have to use the stairs. Yep, when I have kids their going onto my back.

The Annapurna Circuit Part III

2008-06-18T07:57:00.005-04:00

On the way to Letdar, in what was a highlight of the trek for sure, my guide, Kamel, sold his pants for 4 worm-like insect creatures. He had previously told me that these things can sell for $1,000 per kg and said they had medicinal properties but he never told me what even though I asked. So here he sold his pants and kept laughing. Finally he told me the insects give you "sexy power".

From Letdar to Thurong Pedi (4450m) it was a short 5km and only took 2 hours. At Thurong Pedi everyone I had met so far was there so it was a social atmosphere and the place actually had heat and was comfortable so it was nice. In spite of the social atmosphere I just watched Heroes on my ipod all day since when I finished season 1 on mine I could start season 2 on San's ipod. I must've watched like 12 episodes on a 2 inch screen...all day. But it was nice to relax. The next day was going to be brutal.

We left Thurong Pedi at 5:30am and had breakfast at high camp, the last place you can stay before the pass. Luckily we had perfectly blue skies, no clouds at all. It was fantastic and I couldn't believe our luck. The hike up to Thurong La Pass was grueling. I had a slight headache the whole time and it was a steep climb up. At that altitude I kept having to stop to catch my breath. I didn't have much AMS though thankfully. A Korean guy at Thurong Pedi had it bad, headache, throwing up, no apetite, etc. We told him don't risk going over. At around 5000m my ipod started making a horrible clicking noise and figured it was game over, the harddrive was dead. It was working just a minute ago too. Apparently it was the alititude and when I got to the other side and came down a bit it started to work again, thank god. Travel without an ipod is miserable. I can't imagine it.

The hike up to the pass had superb views of the mountains around and the clear weather made it truly amazing. When I finally got to the top is was a cause to celebrate. I did it. Thurong La Pass - 5,416m, the highest I've ever been. We all took pictures at the top and then started the long descent. Climbing down is so hard on your knees, especially mine since I've had reconstructive knee surgery on both. It was a long climb down but in the beautiful weather and scenery I didn't mind it at all as was enjoying the fact that my ipod was still working. After 16km we got to Muktinah which was in a beautiful green valley. At the top there was nothing growing and here was crops and everything. Muktinah was a nice little town and we stayed at the famous Bob Marley Hotel. For some reason they love Bob Marley in Nepal. I have no idea why although I did see some marjijuana plants growing the trail as one point.

The next day Camal and I set out on our own for the first time in a while. From Muktinah on down there's a road all the way to Poukhara but I wanted to walk to Jomson, the next place and then see. We took the longer road to Jomson so we could pass through Kagbeini which was a lovely little town situated in a canyon sort of. We had lunch there and got to see the gateway to Mustang, a hidden Tibetan kingdom that requires you to get a $700 entry permit to visit. It seems so difficult (and expensive) to get to it made me really want to go. Kagbeini had a nice Buddhist temple and old section to wander around with Ben and Lauren. After lunch it was a long windy journey to Jomson. The worst part was we were on a road now and jeeps kept honking at us to get out of the way. There's something about being on a trail to places where the only way to get there is by walking or donkey, that's it. Now that there was a road I felt like why bother. I was tired and my feet had huge blisters. That and my hiking shoes that I rented were horrible. Once we got to Jomson (2720 and 19km) we just hopped into the back of a jeep and went a couple hours down the road, it's still a very bumby road to another village. The French couple happened to be in my jeep. Also in my jeep was a young Nepali guy who had gone to school in India. That night we shared a bottle of Apple Brandy and he talked a lot about partying and girls. He then invited me to stay with him and his family in Kathmandu. I thought it sounded great and like the kind of opportunity that only happens when you're traveling alone. I said yes but wouldn't be in Kathmandu for a few days yet.

In the morning I took the bus down to Tatopani, a hot spring. It wasn't much of a hot spring really, just a couple of pools next to the river. It was too hot for me to even go in past my legs and there was no one else there. The French couple came down and even though I was planning on staying the night I decided why bother and I caught a jeep and then a bus with them down to Poukhara. I had already sent Camal packing. He wasn't a great guide but hopefully he got the majority of money I paid to his asshole boss. He grew up in a village without electricity and they only had a road built to it a few years ago so the government could fight the Maoists, which seem to be very popular among the Annapurna Circuit villagers, you see flags and signs (hammer and sickle) everywhere. I really didn't need a guide but I was the only one on the trek I met who was by themselves and if I happened to break my ankle or have some other accident on my own it would've been real bad. So hopefully $200 for Camal.

I made it to Poukara that night and the first thing I did was go for a nice steak. I don't know where they got that steak since killing a cow carries a two year jail sentence but man was it good. I hiked the Annapurna Circuit (well most of it, I could've continued for another 7 days from Jomsom to Poon Hill but the main reason for going is the view and at this time of year it probably wouldn't have been very good) in 11 days and covered 131 km by foot with a heavy bag and horrid hiking boots. I think I can be proud of myself.

Pictures here.

The Annapurna Circuit Part II

2008-06-18T07:06:00.003-04:00

From Chamche (1385m) we set out around 8am and arrived at Danaque (2200m) around 5pm hiking 15 km. Again we didn't see any other tourists really except for the 4 who were at my guesthouse the previous night. The scenery was pretty similar as the last couple of days. Still beautiful but we only really got blue skies in the morning. Pretty quickly it clouded over so you couldn't see any of the tall mountains my guide told me were there. I stayed at a place called the Trekker's Hotel. No relations to the first trekker's hotel I stayed at. I can't tell you how many guesthouses were called Tibet Hotel or Himalaya Hotel.

The guesthouses all basically have the same printed menu, approved by the local tourism office. You basically have noodles, rice, momo (Nepali dumplings), and Dhaal Baat. Dhaal is just a lentil soup which is pretty tasty but the Nepalis literally eat it twice a day for lunch AND dinner, every day. I'm sorry but I don't care how good something is how can you eat it twice a day every day. It's insane. I understand if you're poor but clearly these people have other options because I can see the menu available. Most of them menu is just tourist food though. My guide was very clearly happy eating Dhaal Bhaat every damn day. Twice! The other thing was I basically went vegetarian on the trip since meat generally wasn't available. I had tuna a few times though. One time we had the option of having chicken if enough people wanted it - because they'd go out and kill one, but I decided I didn't want to see how that meal would turn out. At least you could get eggs because when you're hiking all day you could really use some protein. The other thing is you have to eat at the guesthouse you stay at because that's how they make their money. Everywhere I paid 100 rupees per night ($1.50) which isn't much. No on the food they're really charging a lot when you get further along. I know a lot of it has to be brought up by donkey or porter so there is extra cost associated with it but $1.50 for two eggs? That's expensive. Near the pass coke was over $2 and snickers $1.50.

The next day as I left Danaque I ran into the group of 4 who stayed with me at Chamje. There was a Dutch brother and sister, Gys and San. They were pretty cool as the Dutch normally are, and Daniel, an Australian guy who was extremely quiet and then a Japanese girl, Kara, who had been living in Canada for so long she had no Japanese accent whatsoever and didn't seem Japanese at all. She was kind of annoying. I basically stayed with this group until I went over the pass. It was nice hiking with some others not really for the converstation while you're hiking, because generally everyone goes at their own pace, but for when you're not hiking such as stopping for lunch or a short break. It's just nice to be in a group. I can't say it was the most fun group but that was it, there was no one else really on the trek at this time. At nights we all went to bed early and then got up early.

That morning we had some clear views of the snow covered mountains in the distance as we hiked up a steap section and then it clouded over. Getting that glimpse of the mountains though really makes you wish you had clear skies and could see them all day long. That's what it's like in October, completely blue. That night we arrived at Chame (2710m) after 14 km. The villages were mostly Tibet everywhere there were prayer flags strung out and prayer wheels, both very beautiful. You can spin the prayer wheels as you walk by. The people looked more Mongoloid or Chinese than Indian, whereas I normally thought of Nepalis as looking Indian.

The next day was 14 km to Upper Pisang (3310m). Against the advice of my guide we went to Upper Pisang instead of Lower, which provided a beautiful view of the valley. Again it was cloudy so we barely got a glimpse of the mountains. It would've been amazing if it was clear - again. There was a nice new Tibetan Buddhist temple at the very top of the village. Apparently the trek is also dubbed the "Apple Pie Trek" since you can get apple pies at pretty much all the guesthouses, don't ask me why. They're actually really good and are more like hot apple turnovers than pie. Great snacks and deserts.

Day 6 was a long one, 20km, and brought us to Manang (3540m), one of the biggest villages on the trek and where most people spend an extra night to acclimatize. At over 3,000 m it's starting to get high. Even though we're hiking and taking it slow, I remembered Mutzagh Ata and how faint altitude sickness felt. The hike there was hard with lots of going some steep hills but we did get some clear skies and good mountain views for part of it. Manang was actually like a real town. There were hotels with 3 floors and 15 rooms, real bakeries and even a movie theater (made out of a mud house - I watched Into Thin Air).

On our free day in Manang we decided to go to Ice Lake which was a long day trip. It ended up being a disaster. It was supposed to be 4 hours there and it might've been but my guide took us off the beaten track and so the going up was really steep and we had no idea if we were going the right way. Lets just say I didn't completely trust my guide. The views from high above would've been incredible but it was so cloudy that we couldn't see any of the snow covered parts of the mountains, which we knew were everywhere. We climbed and climbed until we were into the clouds and it got to be freezing cold. San and Cara turned back but Gys, Daniel and me continued until Gys and me decided it was pointless since it would've just been a lake up high with no view. I had a bad headache too. Daniel continued. So we went up 3 and a half hours and we knew we were close but turned back. The hike down was really steep as well but we were at least on a real path. Going down is always way harder on the knees than anything else.

On Day 8 we hiked 10 km to Letdar (4200m). The rest of the group decided to go on to the next town for some odd reason but I stayed at Letdar which was only two guesthouses on the trail, not much of a town. The hike there was great though since it was fairly easy and we had beautiful blue skies. Finally. The mountains were amazing and this was the reason I did this trek. I could stair and snow-covered mountains all day long. I mean, seriously, is there anything better to look at...except for maybe a beautiful naked woman. At Letdar there was also a cool Australian couple, Ben and Lauren, and a French couple, Marie and Guillame, and two Israelis. They were all good company and it was nice having some other people to talk to.

Pictures here.

That's Pretty Gay

2008-06-18T06:20:00.003-04:00

It's really common in Nepal and India for young men to hold each others hands while walking in the street. It's completely platonic as far as I know and has no sexual meaning. I know it's just a cultural convention and if I grew up with it then I probably find it totally normal but you have to admit it is pretty gay. Just imagine the picture in your head. I mean I really can't imagine holding hands with a male friend of mine for more than about 5 seconds without feeling incredibly awkward. It just seems like such a strange convention. I'd like to speculate that it's because India is an extremely conservative society and kissing isn't even shown in Bollywood movies. Lets say if you're not allowed to touch a girl until you're married then maybe you need other outlets. How about your own hand then?

Tales of Interest: 'O Great Mountain, I Beseech Thee. Smite Mine Enemies

2008-06-14T13:47:00.001-04:00

Sent: 6/14/2008

Previously on....Tales of Interest:

(Scene: Korgas, China-Kazakhstan Border Crossing. Translated from the original Chinese)
Me: I want to go to Almaty, Kazakhstan. What time is the bus?
Chinese Taxi Driver: No bus today. Bus Monday.
Me: But today's Friday. There has to be a bus today. There's supposed to be a bus today.
Chinese Taxi Driver: Border crossing closed. Holiday. You go Monday.
Me: Goddamn't. Why didn't anyone tell me the border was going to be closed before I took the night bus all the way here from Urumqi. Well what the hell am I supposed to do here until Monday. There's nothing here.
Chinese Taxi Driver: Get hotel 3 days.
Some Other Taxi Driver: There is train going today at 6pm from another border crossing far from here.
Me: There's no way I'm hanging around here for 3 days. How do I get to this other border crossing.
Some Other Chinese Taxi Driver: Take taxi then bus then taxi.
Me: Are you sure there's a train today there? You're not lying to me just so I'll take your taxi?

(Scene: Train Station, 350 km away at another China-Kazakhstan border crossing)
Me: Is there a train to Almaty today?
Attendant: No train today.
Me: I thought there was a 6pm train today?
Attendant: No.
Me: When's the next train?
Attendant: Sunday.
Me: Goddamn't. I hate you Chinese taxi driver. Is there at least an internet cafe in this shit hole?

(Scene: Uzbekistan Embassy, Almaty, Kazakhstan)
Me: How many days does it take to get a visa for Americans?
Worker: 10 working days without letter of invitation. And we're closed on Fridays.
Me: Goddamn't. What about with a letter of invitation?
Worker: One day.
Me: How long does it take to get a letter of invitation?
Worker: 10 working days.
Me: Goddamn't. I'm not hanging around here for 2 and a half weeks. Screw it, I'll just fly to Nepal.

So I made it as far as Almaty, Kazakhstan (which wasn't easy) and then had my central Asian travel plans foiled by outdated Soviet bureaucratic visa requirements for Uzbekistan. In any case Tibet is still closed to foreigners and traveling by land through Pakistan to India probably was never my best idea. I still blame the Chinese Communist Party and I have long memory. They will pay. Almaty was actually a very pleasant city but no one told me it's as expensive as Western Europe. Stupid Kazakhs with their oil and gas money. That Borat movie was incredibly misleading.

Anyways, Nepal has to be one of my favorite countries in Asia. The Kathmandu valley was fantastic and although I generally dislike large Asian cities due to their being overcrowded, overdirty, overhot and haphazardly built, I really liked it in Kathmandu. The old city had incredible Hindu and Buddhist art everywhere. And I mean everywhere. On every block there was centuries old sculptures, wooden window carvings and temples. Durbar Square could rival anything in Europe.

Basically all the tourists stay in the tourist ghetto of Thamel. There you have narrow maze-like streets comprising of trekking stores selling fake North Face stuff, travel agents offering trekking trips, souvenir stalls, and restaurants, followed by every thing I just mentioned again and then repeated ad naseum, in that exact order. It can be a bit much at times but I stayed at what was an oasis in the craziness, Kathmandu Guesthouse, one of the best places I've ever stayed at. The Beatles stayed there in the 1960s (or if you prefer, only a few weeks ago, Ricky Martin) and the place just has a great atmosphere where I met tons of cool people.

Almost everyone who comes to Nepal does some trekking in the Himalayas. They're almost twice as tall as those hills we call the Rocky Mountains. At first I figured on doing a 5 day trek but after talking to people it seemed like the Annapurna Circuit was the way to go. 12 days through some of the best scenery on Earth with soaring mountains of at least 7,000 meters all around. It wasn't exactly roughing it since you pass through small villages every few hours where you can stay for the night and buy delicious, delicious Coca Cola, Snickers and homemade apple pies. The highlight was the grueling hike up to and over Thurong La Pass at 5,416 meters (17,769 ft). At those dizzying heights altitude sickness is a serious concern, your head hurts and even ipods stop working. The second highlight was when my Sherpa sold his pants for 4 insects he said had great medicinal value. He later confided that they give you "sexy power".

On the next Tales of Interest: how the holy Hindu river the Ganges is actually a septic tank, militant Hindu monastic orders, and why I'm glad cows don't roam freely around the streets of New York (hint: they generate large amounts of shit and generally disregard the traffic laws).

-E

The Annapurna Circuit Part I

2008-06-14T07:15:00.007-04:00

I met up with Camal, my guide, at 8 am from Thamel we went to the bus station where we caught a micro-bus to Bissesar. From there we road on top of another bus to Bhulbhule since why walk when there's road. That was a bumby ride for sure and not really suited for buses I'd say. From there it was around an hours hike (4km in the rain) to Ngadi, our first stop for the night. There was no other foreigners in town. We stayed at the Trekkers Hotel.

The next morning we were on the trail by 9 and hiked until 6pm (16 km) when we got to Chamje. The scenery was beautiful but there were no mountains just yet. We basically followed the river, which we did for most of the trek. At Chamje we stayed at the Rainbow Hotel, which overlooked at huge waterfall. We basically saw no other tourists the whole day until we got to the hotel where there were 4 people. They didn't really sound that interesting so I didn't talk to them. This was kind of what I was worried about - not meeting any other tourists since it was the end of the season. Everyone back in Kathmandu told me I definitely would but since I didn't see any I was happy I got a guide and wasn't completely on my own.

As for my guide, he's my age and a nice guy but what I really wanted was someone who knew a lot about the region and could tell me a lot about Nepal and it's people without me having to ask. He wasn't that guide but he was pleasant enough and I chatted to him a little about customs in Nepal in between podcasts and music. I'm so happy I had a lot of podcasts left for the trip. Sometimes I just don't want to think anymore and need some distraction. A Word for Word Public speech series is great and is usually about politics and Bill Moyer's Journal is just fantastic. He covers things that should be causing crazy public outrage but no one even knows about. Anyways, listening to podcasts was a good way to kill time. Luckily a lot of guesthouses have electricity from hydropower.

In terms of roughing it this trek is definitely well-worn and heavily touristed, just not now. I couldn't believe how many guesthouses, and some you might actually get away with calling hotels, there were. Apparently during high-season, October-November, there are 200 tourists per day passing through. I couldn't imagine that many and during this time there were like 10 passing through per day. I think it would make the nighttimes a lot more social and fun but during the day it must suck to constantly be passed by other tourists. It was actually pretty nice to feel like it was just you and the Himalayan wilderness out there.

Pictures here.

Speak the English

2008-06-13T16:00:00.003-04:00

When I first got to Nepal I thought it was great that everyone could speak English. The taxi drivers, the waiters, the shopkeepers, some bum on the street. They all know English. It's great. It'll be so easy to get whatever I want. Especially compared to China where in most places no one can speak English. Not one word.

Then I realized that maybe everyone being able to speak English might have a downside. Harassment. When everyone can speak English and you clearly stand out as a tourist then you're a target, a walking dollar sign, and the locals see you and come up to you and start speaking English. It's never because they're curious or interested in you and want to have a friendly chat, they want your money. And because they speak English you feel like you have to put up with their bullshit and talk to them. They never will come out and say what they want to sell you or anything, they'll just come up to you and ask you where you're from and try to befriend you. I generally don't like to be too rude to locals but after the 5th person has come up and asked you where you're from on your 30 yard walk to the store you feel like you just can't put up with it anymore. No I don't want to go on a trek, no I don't want to go rafting, no I don't want to buy your drugs. Also, if you're walking by yourself you're a much bigger target. Makes me really miss China where no one harasses you because no one can speak English.

Ice Cold Coca Cola

2008-06-13T15:46:00.003-04:00

I don't know what it is but there's something about being in Asia when it's 100 degrees out that makes me crave coke like it's a drug. When it's hot out there's nothing I want more than an ice cold coca cola. And it comes in a bottle that you have to drink at a store so they can get money back for it. That's fun. So goddamn good. I don't even drink it that much at home. I usually go for Snapple or whatever brand new tea just came out.

A Little Slice of India (Hell)

2008-06-10T09:25:00.004-04:00

I got up early and was at the embassy by 815. Apparently, you're supposed to go the night before you want to apply for your visa to the embassy where you can get a number. The number determines where you are in line when they let you in at 830am the next morning. There's so many people waiting that if you don't get a good number then you might wait on line all morning and then they'll close at noon before you get to the front. I was able to get seventy-something which wasn't very good. The kicker and what really makes the whole process hell is that you have to suffer through the process twice. The first time you go to the embassy you wait in line all morning to send a Telex to your home country. They then confirm you're not a psycho killer or a terrorist within three days and then you go back in three days and wait in line again to actually apply for your visa.

The most ridiculous thing is that there are two lines, one for sending telexes and one for applying for your visa, but there's only one window there so the guy alternates dealing with you and very slowly at that. It took me until 1130 to finish. At least you can commiserate in line with other travelers. The process is so idiotic though it seems like they designed it to be more difficult.

After lunch I went I decided to do a walking tour of Kathmandu which is in The Book. At the beginning I met some Nepali student who offered to show me around. I figured why not but I knew I'd have to pay him. He was good company though and knew a lot. The Old City of Kathmandu was absolutely amazing. On just about every block you have old hindu temples, stone sculptures, and beautiful old buildings with lovely carved windows. The streets are narrow and full of activity and possibly the coolest part is you go through these tiny unremarkable covered passageways to big squares that have temples in them where people live around. I don't think I've ever seen so much art in a living city before. Everywhere you look the temples and sculptures are centuries old yet totally unprotected. The Nepalis just hang out on the temples watching the busy street life.

Durbar square had a heavy concentration of temples including a European-looking palace. The architecture rivaled anything in Europe really and was very impressive. Kathmandu is definitely one of my favorite Indian cities. The women all where colorful saris, like they do in India I'm assuming, and I love to see locals wearing traditional clothing.

I decided I wanted to do the Annapurna Circuit Trek which takes up to 18 days. Before I got here I 18 days of trekking sounded like 6 times as much time as I would like but trekking is the thing to do here and the Annapurna Circuit is supposed to be one of the best treks in the world. I thought about doing the Everest Base Camp trek but you have to take a $200 flight to Lukla and the ACT is supposed to be more diverse generally be a nicer trek. The next question was whether or not to get a guide. Everyone said that you don't need one but since it was the end of the season I was worried about not meeting anyone and being on my own for 18 days. At least the guide would be company and could give me some interesting information about Nepal and the trek. I agonized over the decision since it wasn't cheap, $11 per night, and I knew that guides in Asia generally suck and don't give you any interesting information unless you directly ask for it. In the end I decided to go with a guide since the company had a Dutch girl leaving with another guide on the same day.

Later that night I rented trekkinng equipment, hiking shoes, down jacket, hat and gloves from a shop and then met up with Becca and the Matts and some others they knew for drinks. A rather unexciting night actually. The next day I went to the Monkey Temple which is a huge stupa on a hill. I like the Nepali stupa's since they have eyes and a nose so it looks like it's watching you. I walked back to Thamel and then went to the Garden of Dreams to contemplate my decision to get a guide. How come I made the decision to go to Johns Hopkins in a heartbeat but I agonized over the decision to get a guide? I don't know why I do that. The Garden of Dreams was built by a Nepali in European style in the early 1900s but then fell into disrepair and was only recently restored. It's a really beautiful garden with a small cafe. Great place to come and chill out.

Later that night I met a couple of American guys, Daniel and Owen, who work in Kathmandu and live at the KGH. They were great guys and invited me to their friends going away party that night at De La Soul. I met a few other people traveling on their own and in Nepal there seems to be tons, which is great. There was Larissa, a Canadian, Cohen, a Dutchman, Shira, an Israeli New Yorker, some English girl. Strangely enough, I even met a guy who is going to SAIS in Bologna next year. The party was fun and Sabastian, the Italian guy who was leaving had a fake marraige to an Australian girl he liked. Those I-tals, so eccentric. Unfortunately I partied a little to hard* and couldn't get up to on my trek the next day. I was supposed to meet my guide at 11 am but knocked over my alarm clock and couldn't get myself together enough to find the time. My guide came by at 1 pm and I had to get myself together and go down and tell him I was "sick" and couldn't go but I'd be better by the next day for sure. What a mess. I went back to bed until 5 pm. When I got up I had dinner with Coen, found out lots of others from last night were sick all day too. I packed and then went to bed early for my big trek.

What To Do In Kathmandu

2008-06-10T08:42:00.004-04:00

The flight to Dehli was only a few hours and I got in by 9pm. I didn't have a transit visa but there was no problem since I had my flight to Kathmandu at 630am the next morning. They made me wait in a little area with uncomfortable benches. The only problem was there was no ATMs in this area and I had no Indian money to buy any food with. It was a hungry night with little sleep and a lot of episodes of Heroes.

At Kathmandu I got my visa on arrival which was a godsend considering who knows where I would've had to go if they didn't? Abu Dabi? The taxi driver took me to Thamel and the Kathmandu Guesthouse. Thamel can only be described at the tourist ghetto of Kathmandu. It really reminded me of the famed Khao San Road backpacker mecca of Bangkok except for instead of one road Thamel is a maze of narrow streets entirely too small for vehicles although they barrel down the streets anyway. It is literally tiny shop selling fake north face trekking gear followed by little souveniers followed by travel agency followed by restaurant selling tourist food, then repeat in same order ad nauseum. And I couldn't be more thrilled to be here. After being completely by myself and seeing no other tourists in Kazakhstan this was exactly what I needed. It's getting towards the end of the season but there were still plenty of other tourists around. I didn't really have any expectations of Kathmandu but it looked great. I normally don't like big Asian cities since they tend to be very new, ugly, dirty, over-crowded, have little greenspace, and have been built very haphazardly. Kathmandu though was different and seemed much smaller somehow or at least much lower.

Kathmandu Guesthouse was also exactly what I needed and looking back is probably one of the best places I've ever stayed at if just for the atmosphere. I got my own room with bath for $10 which sounded cheap after coming from Kazakhstan. I immediately met an American girl, Becca, who invited me to dinner that night with her American friends.

My first order of business was going to see how bad things would be getting an Indian visa. I thought since so many tourists go from Nepal to India it'd be easy but that, apparently, was not the case. I, having no experience with India, was completely off base. I arrived at the embassy at 12, which was after they close for visas. The guard told me to come back the next morning at 830am but a tourist described to me the painful process which I'll get to. That afternoon I wandered around Thamel checking out trekking companies but I really had no idea what I was after. Since I barely slept the night before I went for a nap after lunch and slept until around 7pm. That night I met Becca and Matt and Matt for dinner. They seemed like nice people and dinner was alright. After we went to Shisha bar near the hotel which has good live music.

Pictures here.

Ok, Lets Go See Kazakhstan

2008-06-07T05:14:00.004-04:00

After I organized my flight on my second day in Almaty I decided it's time to do some sightseeing. The Book had a nice walking tour of the city which I always love to go on. I say there's no better way to see a city than by walking around it. I was really surprised by how pleasant Almaty was. There was tons of green space, wide leafy boulevards, and lots of parks. You can also see snowy covered mountains of the Tian Shan range in the background which I think is a great backdrop for a city. I wandered down the streets and saw some interesting soviet style architecture and ended at some market that pales in comparison to the Chinese markets I've been too. The big park had a fantastic looking Cathedral in it.

The weirdest thing about Almaty has to be that there doesn't seem to be many taxis. What you do is just pretend like you're flagging down a taxi and then regular drivers will stop for you and offer to give you a lift. It's like hitchhiking but they want money. I did it a couple times and the people who stopped for me had decent cars and looked like they weren't in any great need of money. Seems kind of weird then that they'd want to take time out to drop me off somewhere.

So Almaty is a very pleasant city but it seems a little bit boring and there seem to be no other tourists around. I met a German girl when I first arrived and then a French couple but that was it. No one else it seems and the city is certainly not set up for tourists. No signs in English, not many hotels. It's places like these that make you feel lonely when you're traveling by yourself and made me worry the rest of central Asia might be like this.

That night I went to a hip cafe I pasted during my walking tour. It was pretty nice and they had English language publications to read. An ice coffee was like $6 though. I can't believe how expensive Almaty is. It's like 4 times as expensive as in the Lonely Planet from four years ago. Is it the oil and gas money? Everything is European prices it seems. I just wonder why I never heard anything about it. If they were rich you'd think there'd be some newspaper articles about it or something.

Wednesday was my final day in Kazakhstan. In the morning I got up and went to Independence Square and then the National Museum which was an absolute waste of time. Hardly anything there. In the afternoon I took the cable car up to a foothill overlooking the city. It was a bit hazy so you couldn't really see the mountains. The highlight was the bench with sculptures of the Beatles on it. Random. After I went back to grab my bags and head to the airport. Goodbye Kazakhstan, I'm sorry I ever came here but at least it's another country I can add to the list.

Now What?

2008-06-04T08:31:00.002-04:00

After I checked into my miserable hotel the first order of business was to go to the Uzbekistan Embassy and organize the next visa. When I got to the Embassy I discovered that if you don't have a letter of invitation then it takes 10 working days to get your visa and apparently they're closed on Fridays so that would mean like over 2 weeks. Americans also have to pay $130. Damn't! Now what? I really have no one to blame but myself. I should've checked online ahead of time but for some reason I just assumed that if the Kazakhstan visa was so easy to get they all would be. The book also made it sound easy. It's too late now to get a letter of invitation from a travel agent too because that would take the same amount of time. There's no way I'm hanging around in Almaty staying at that miserable hostel for 2 weeks.

So my options are to try to get the Krygystan visa which might be quicker and go there and then Uzbekistan or fly to India or Nepal. The problem is I don't even have my Indian visa which I definitely should've got in Shanghai when I knew that I might not be able to get into Tibet. So I learned my lesson. When you're dealing with these kind of countries always always get all your visas and everything ahead of time. They're not the kind of places you can go to spontaneously. With the help of a travel agent I found out that flights to Dehli are expensive but not outrageous like they were from Urumqi.

I met the college student who helped me in the afternoon for lunch at the university. I have to say, the girls in Almaty are absolutely beautiful. Maybe its just because I'm hanging around a university but it's incredible. You have Chinese looking girls, blond Russian girls and then those Eurasian looking Kazakhs. I definitely wasn't expecting this level of talent. After lunch I went to the Indian Embassy to see about a visa. It takes a whole week to get it but he said that if I stayed at the airport I didn't need a visa, which means I can get a connecting flight to Kathmandu. I've been hoping that if I went around Central Asia and then ended up back in Kashgar Tibet would be open and I could go there, if not, I would need to go through Pakistan to India. That is probably the height of insanity and a completely unnecessary risk. Not only that but who knows how difficult it'll be to get that visa. All these stupid countries and their stupid visas are killing me. Why don't they want people to visit. Tourism is people coming to you and giving you money.

After mulling it over for a day I decided the best option would just be to fly to Kathmandu from Almaty. At $450 one way its expensive but still the cheapest place to fly out of in the region. I'll have to spend from 9pm to 6 am in the Dehli airport. Damn you Chinese Communist party. This is all your fault and I'll never forgive you for it. I have a long memory too. Reopen Tibet! So it ended up taking me a week (3 days in Urumqi waiting for my visa and then 3 days at the border, and 1 day on the train) just to get to Almaty for 3 days. What a total waste of time. Thats a week I'd like back. At least I'm not spending $850 for a flight from Urumqi to Kathmandu. I'm sure I made up the difference in that week on hotel rooms and transportation. This is the kind of thing that happens I suppose on long poorly planned trips like this and you just got to roll with the punches.

The Best (or Wosrt) Laid Plans

2008-06-01T00:47:00.000-04:00

Sunday morning I got up and went to the train station down the street. I ended up only having to spend a day and a half doing nothing in that dusty, boring border town, which wasn't too horrible. There were a few decent internet cafes, which all of China seems to be pretty good about, although I never saw any in Shanghai. Those Chinese youths sure do like to go online. The worst part about the train was they made me pay for a full price ticket from Urumqi to Almaty even though I already did half the journey. That and the train ride was 20 hours with 4 hours at the border.

After a lot of waiting around to pass through customs I boarded the train and shared a compartment with two Chinese guys going to Almaty for business. They had a mini laptop to watch movies on and I had my PSP and ipod so we were a good match. We stopped on the Kazakhstan side of the border for about an hour where the train left the station to change rails and I thought I had missed the train and was screwed, the Kazakh guys all got a good laugh as I ran after the train. I met a Kazakh-Chinese guy who spoke really good English and chatted with him for a while.

We arrived in Almaty train station around 7 am and I took a taxi with those guys in my compartment to what I thought was a budget hotel listed in my 4 year old Lonely Planet Central Asia. There's no hotel there or any trace of what once might be construed as a hotel, just a dingy looking apartment block. Across the street there's a horrible looking hotel that wanted $36 for a room per night. Surely I could do better than that. With my impossibly heavy backpack (why on earth did I not just get a suitcase on wheels like I keep saying I should, why have all my possessions on my back when they could be "gliding effortlessly by my side") I set out for the Almaty Hotel listed in the book. Looks nice but full. Next I walk down one of the main streets looking for any hotel that looks reasonable. I might've enjoyed the walk down the wide leafy beoulevards on this beautiful day but my pack is so heavy I can't. There are seemingly no hotels around, no one can speak English and I can't even read the street signs because they're all in Acryllic Alphabet. I find another hotel listed in the book. I can't believe it but they want $90 for a room with shower. "Do you have any cheaper rooms?" I enquired. Well we have a room without a shower for $43. I took a look and couldn't believe they wanted that much for one of the worst rooms I might've stayed in on the trip so far. A single bed and no shower for $43? I blanched.

I'm getting desperate at this point. I can't walk around all day with my backpack looking for a place. I met a German tourist who had a newer Lonley Planet and I decided to check out Third Dormitory at a University right back where I was originally where the hotel didn't exist. I hopped on the bus and wandered around the University, but could not find the place and no one had heard of it. I found another small hotel that wanted $150 per night. What The Fuck. Finally I asked a student who spoke English and he offered to help me. He said he knew of a cheap hotel and took me to the first hotel I visited, across the street from the hotel that was no longer there. They had a dorm room (3 beds) with bathroom but shower outside, which I had to pay a dollar for every time I used, for $18. "Fine, I'll take it, I give up. I hate you Kazakhstan"

Are Chinese People Camels?

2008-05-10T09:56:00.001-04:00

Many small Chinese restaurants I've been to don't serve any drinks. When I go there I usually end up buying a drink at a nearby convenience store and bringing it with me but all the Chinese people there are just eating and drink nothing. Some of this food is really spicy too. I don't understand it really.

The worst part though is when I can't even find a cold drink. You go into the conenience store and the drinks are in the fridges but the fridges are all off. What the hell is that? They could save even more money by not even buying the fridges to begin with. Who doesn't want a cold drink? Warm soda? Are you kidding me.

Tales of Interest: The Westernmost Fringes of the Empire

2008-05-10T09:44:00.002-04:00

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Eric Borgman <ericborgman@gmail.com>
Date: May 10, 2008 9:41 PM
Subject: The Westernmost Fringes of the Empire
To: ericborgman@gmail.com

I left Shanghai about a month ago and headed West, where "the minorities are very, very wild and might kill you because they don't have the death penalty", according to a Chinese girl my friend works with. My first destination was Kaifeng, Henan Province, where a few centuries ago there lived a community of Jews. There was no evidence of this that I could see but I trust the Lonely Planet guidebook fun fact box over my own eyes. Next up was Shaolin Temple, the most famous temple in all of China, maybe you've heard of it. This was where Buddhist monks invented Kung Fu and where I took a whole day of training with a Kung Fu instructor who, to my dissappointment, looked nothing like the one from Kill Bill Vol. 2. He didn't even have a sweet beard to stroke while he laughed at my patheticness. Pictures here and here.

After Shaolin I followed the train line west to Gansu province on the Big Buddha trail. Maiji Shan, Luomen, and finally Mogao Caves at Dunhuang in the Gobi desert, where the Buddhas got progressively more impressive as they got older and bigger. I always love to go see giant Buddhas. What's the biggest Jesus I've seen? 20 feet? Pathetic. And in Judaism I don't even think we're allowed to make graven images of God. How are you supposed to prove your deserve to get into heaven (or reach Nirvana) then? Also, in Dunhuang were massive sand dunes that look like something out of the Sahara desert shown in movies. Pictures here.

Following Dunhuang I continued north until I finally reached Xinjiang Province, or "Western Frontier" in English. A region north of Tibet, populated by the Uigur (pronounced: Weeeegur) people who, just like the Tibetans, also want independence from their cruel, commie, Han Chinese overlords. In Turpan I could immediately tell this place was very different from China proper. Not only was it dustier than normal but some of the people looked me and you (you only if you're white). In Toyoq, a traditional Uigur village they made their houses out of mud and bricks, which is how I always imagined Afghanistan to look like. Pictures here and here.

In Urumqi, the provincial capital, my friend from Shanghai, Cole, flew out to meet me and we then went straight on to to Kashgar, the heart of Uigurdom in the Middle Kingdom. Kashgar is where you really feel like you've entered another country or part of the world. The Middle East to be exact. Everyone's Muslim, their langauge looks like Arabic, none of the older people speak any Chinese, and they all seem to really like the annoying Middle Eastern music you hear in movies. I think it might be worse than the Chinese pop music, which is hard to imagine without becoming physically ill. Pictures here and here.

As with all the other minority peoples in China, the Uigurs like to dance. We got to experience this firsthand when we were invited to a Uigur wedding in Yarkand. Not only is this place amazing for people-watching since all the older men have long white beards, shave their heads, and were those little Muslim hats, but you can take a donkey-cart to work, the live animal market, or wherever! I don't even know what I'm going to do with that sheep I bought. I'm such a sucker for a good deal.

We went on a camping trip to hike to the base camp of Mutzagh Ata Mountain (7,500 meters), which was off the spectacular Karakorum Highway that goes through to Pakistan. Everyone on the trip suffered from some form of altitude sickness, which I have to say is not at all pleasant. I got a horrible headache and hiking uphill was enormously difficult. Base camp was at 4,400 meters. The scenery was spectacular though and we were surrounded by picturesque snow-capped mountains and spent a night in a Kyrgysz family's yurt with their yaks. Pictures here.

Now I had basically reached the end of China. There was no where left to go. My original plan was to go south into Tibet and then cross the border into Nepal and then India, but Tibet is still closed to tourism. One-way flights to India or Nepal from here are outrageously expensive and the only other land route there is through Pakistan, you know, that notoriously stable Muslim country that loves America and Jews. Anyway, my new plan is to go north to the 'Stans in Central Asia and do a loop through Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and Kyrgyzstan before crossing the border back to Kashgar. By the time I do that I figure Tibet will be open and China will be a democracy.

On the next tales of interest: "What'd you mean the bathroom is anywhere you want?", why Chinese guys think its acceptable to look at porn in a public internet cafe, and how it's not so boring waiting 3 days at a border crossing when internet only costs 25 cents an hour.

-E

borgmania.blogspot.com

Are You Civilized?

2008-05-09T09:29:00.003-04:00

Part 1 in a multi-part series. Use this test to tell if your country or any country you travel to is civilized?

At the bus station, train station, bank, or any place where there are more customers than service personnel, do the people wait in an orderly line or do they crowd around the service window pushing and shoving to try and get served next? If it's the latter than said country is not civilized.

I Should've Learned More Chinese Curse Words

2008-05-09T07:38:00.004-04:00

I know that on the kind of trip that I'm on (and in the places I'm traveling to) you just have to roll with the punches and not get too upset about delays and false information but sometimes I just can't help it. Today was one of those days.

I really didn't want to spend any more time in Urumqi than was absolutely necessary and to get my visa required a 3 day stay, which was already way to long. The book says there's a direct bus to Almaty every day but at the bus station they said there was only two per week. They said there's a bus every day from Yining so Thursday night I took the night bus to Yining with the hope of just hoping on the daily morning bus to Almaty from there. (side: Every time I go to the internet cafe there's someone smoking right next to me with their smoke blowing right in my face. I hate it worse than when a Chinese person spits on the floor). When I get to Yining they said there's no bus but they can take me to Korgas, the bording crossing. I didn't believe them because I never believe Chinese people because either a) they don't know anything or b) they're giving you false information so they can get money out of you. In this case I have a feeling it was both. At the bus station the woman says there's no buses here to Almaty, which must be impossible, but says to go to some hotel, so I did. At the hotel she tells me there's no buses until Monday, 3 days from now. The prospect of spending three days in this crap town with nothing to do was enraging to me. I didn't understand why my book said there was a bus every day or 4 times a week and now they were saying there was none for 3 days. So I took a shared taxi to Korgas figuring once I crossed the border there'd be some kind of transportation to Almaty.

At Korgas my fellow passengers tell me the border crossing is closed for 3 days because it's a Kazakh holiday. This is where I began to despair. What the hell am I going to do for 3 days. What a total waste of time after I already wasted 1 day in Kashgar (my own fault for wanting to save money on a flight) and 3 days in Urumqi. I just can't accept it, so when the guys at the bus station told me there's another border crossing, the one the train takes, 350 km from here, I figured it's better than hanging around here and doing nothing. I should've known they don't know anything. Chinese people never do seem to know anything. Why would one border crossing be closed for a holiday and the other not be? Also, I knew there were only two trains per week, Saturday and Monday, going from Urumqi to Almaty, but I thought maybe there'd be more leaving at the border for some reason. Just a hope.

So what I had to do was take a taxi to a place up the road and then a bus to Bole and then another taxi to the border crossing. They told me the train left at 6pm. The guy said 30 rmb for him to take me to the bus, which wasn't very far. As always with shared taxis the car costs a certain amount and if you share it everyone going pays less. This asshole wastes my time driving around looking for people going to the same place and when we found two more people I told him I would pay less now that there's 3 of us. I told him 20 rmb which was still way to high. He doesn't really acknowledge me. When we get to our destination the bus to Bole is about to leave. I give him 20 but he doesn't accept and won't let me take my bags out of the trunk. I told him and the other guys around what was going on and the other guys seemed to agree with me but this asshole won't budge from 30 rmb (whereas the others in my car were paying 6 rmb). I was so pissed but my bus was literally leaving the lot so I had to give him the money and run. I really wish I knew some Chinese curses to use at this guy. Would've been useful in the fight we got into the other day too.

The bus ride was around 3 hours but we passed some truly spectacular scenery, such as an enomorous lake surrounded by snow capped mountains, which made the trip a lot more fun. At Bole I immediately got another shared taxi to get to the border. The train station looked pretty deserted from the outside so I wasn't hopeful. Of course when I get inside the ticket seller tells me there's no train until Sunday. While marginally better than Monday it's still a huge disappointment. Did that guy just make up 6pm for the train to get me to take his taxi? Well, at least it was a nice ride up here. I guess that's it and I'll have to wait in this shitty border town until Sunday morning. What's worse is I'm paying more for my hotel here (130 RMB per night) than I have anywhere else on my trip. If there's nothing to do here I might as well have a nice hotel room I suppose. At least there's an internet cafe here so I can while away my time. Sometimes I just can't wait to get out of China. Days like these are infuriarating to me. By the time I get to Almaty it'll have taken me a week. I just need to calm down.

"Why wouldn't I rip you off is the question"

2008-05-07T11:13:00.001-04:00

Unfortunately it seems like you just can't trust Chinese people to give you the proper price for something after you've already consumed it. I don't know why I keep doing it but I'll just order some food or use a service, probably because I know how much it should cost, without first asking how much. Afterwards they'll always want you to pay some ridiculously high price and you pretty much have no room to bargain because you can't walk away, you already used the service, ate the food, etc.

Today this happened to me twice in two hours so the second time I got so pissed off I refused to pay. At first I had some noodles at Nanshan Pasture, a place I took a Chinese tour to today (the only reason I did was because I was so bored and had nothing else to do). I asked how much after I ate my meal and she goes 20 RMB, which is way to high for noodles. There's no way a local would pay more than 8 RMB. I said I'd pay 10 RMB and they immediately went down to 15 RMB, which meant they were trying to rip me off because normally you don't bargain for food. I couldn't get them down past 15. Fine whatever, it's only a dollar.

After lunch I went on a horsride around the area and saw a frozen waterfall which was pretty cool. Since it was really cold I borrowed the horse guy's extra jacket. I asked how much since I figured he might want money but he didn't say anything so I thought since I was paying him 50 RMB he threw in the jacket for free. I know, I know. A Chinese person would never do that. After the horse ride I paid him 50 RMB and then of course said I had to pay some woman 10 RMB for her jacket. I said he never told me that and I'd give her 5. Him and his buddies refused but at this point I wasn't budging. Obviously it's not about the money, it's about always being taken advantage of because you're foreign. At some point you just get fed up. I walked away and met up with the rest of the tour group. They waited for me to ambush me again where I gave them the 5 RMB and walked away with some monk from Singapore who was on the tour.

On the one hand, I know those people don't have much money and selling horserides and lending people jackets and a tourist sight isn't a glamorous job but on the other hand if I let myself get ripped off by everyone while I'm traveling then I'd have no money. If they were just honest about the price from the beginning then it'd be fine.

To further put me off of Chinese tours, if that was even possible, when we got back to Urumqi we stopped at all the hotels we stopped at on the way out until everyone got off and I was the only one left. At this point they told me to get out and take a taxi back to my hotel. I told them this was bullshit since they took everyone else back to their hotel and said I was going to call my travel agent even though I couldn't then. After I couple minutes I told them to go to my hotel and they must've figured I wasn't going to get out so they took me to my hotel. Assholes.

The Wild Minorities of Western China

2008-05-06T07:39:00.002-04:00

A Chinese girl who works with my friend sent him an email that said: Be very careful out in Xinjiang. Some of the minorities there are very, very wild. They might kill you because they don't have the death penalty.

The sad thing is she's serious. I think a lot of Chinese people actually think like this.

2 (of 4) Boring Days

2008-05-05T03:41:00.004-04:00

Damian caught a flight back to Urumqi in the morning so now I was on my own again. The only problem was I've pretty much done everything in and around Kashgar that I wanted to do so now I had two free days to right this journal, use the internet, and read. And that's exactly what I did. Amazing how 4 hours on the internet can go by so quick. I took the night flight back to Urumqi because it was cheaper. I only need to spend enough time there to get my visa for Kazakhstan and then I'm out.

On Monday (Today), I went to the Hoja Tombs which were a few kilometers outside of town. The tomb itself was beautiful with lots of mismatched tiles on the outside. It really only took about an hour to see it and get my picture taken on a camel and now I'm all caught up in my journal. Now I got to post some pictures.

Tuesday I got up early to get my visa for Kazakhstan at their consulate in Urumqi. Outside the gates there was a huge mob of people waiting for god knows what. I figured they were locals so I just help up my American Passport and shouted "make way you filth, there's an American here". Just kidding of course. I did tell someone I was an American looking for a visa since I figured all the people couldn't be waiting for one. He brought me to the steps leading up to the gate but then the gatekeeper or the big fat woman there physically pushed me off the landing. Do I look like a damn local? I tried again and this time got the attention of the officer behind the gate who saw my passport wasn't Chinese and let me in.

Inside it was completely disorganized and I had no idea what I was supposed to be doing after I filled out my forms. I think I got a little taste of what's to come in central Asia. It's going to make China look like the most efficient place on earth. I was hoping my visa would be ready by tomorrow but it won't be ready until Thursday, which I means I need to spend an extra day here with nothing to do. I hope I meet some cool people or I guess I can just watch Rush Hour 3 six times at the hostel. The next decision was how to get to Almaty, by bus or train? Train takes about 6 hours longer but is more comfortable. After some investigating at the train station it looks like there are only two direct buses per week and leave Wednesday and Thursday. If you're going to only have two buses per week why have them on consecutive day? The next best option so I don't have to waste any more time here is to take a night bus to Yining and then catch a bus to Almaty. My last experience with a night bus with sleep compartments was in China and it was the worst travel experience of my life so lets hope for better luck here.