Greetings. This is Brian again. I know that I promised that Rebecca was writing the next one, but she didn't want to, so it's boring me...
Mt Abu, that hill station we were just heading to after our last posting, was a dive. I liked it; Rebecca didn't. It was full of holidaying Gujarati males. Minnesotans: it was like an Indian Wisconsin Dells; Brits: it was like an Indian Blackpool. Kitsch, photo booths, horse rides, a decent climate, lots of restaurants, and even a lake with cheesy plastic paddleboats for rent. Only two nights there.
Then: Jodhpur, our final stop in deserty Rajasthan. We loved it. Got an A/C room. Had makhania lassis (saffron-flavoured yogurt shakes) each day, I worked, Rebecca went out for takeaway lunches and fruit. Life was good.
We got back to Delhi just two days ago. Logistics: picked up our passports (they were at an embassy these last weeks), bought some cookware and housewares, posted a large box home, and...that's it. Mixed between all this, I got to see some cool new neighborhoods I'd never seen on my previous four visits to the city. It's a fascinating (if incredibly crowded/polluted/filthy) place.
Tomorrow bright and early, we fly to Leh. This is a Tibetan town far in the north, a region called Ladakh. When we arrived at our hotel in Delhi, the receptionist enquired our next stop (something that must be filled in each time you check into a guesthouse here). When I said, "Leh," he said, "No. You cannot. It's closed."
OK. So Leh is "closed." He was referring to the fact that all roads to Leh are snowed in for eight months of the year. Most travellers heading there go via Manali; the road this way takes 3-4 days from Delhi and usually doesn't open until June sometime.
Thus, Leh should be empty of tourists. And quite cold. We'll be showing up in the mountains in flip-flops, fingers crossed and recrossed that our shoes and warm gear (that we purchased before our trek in Nepal) are there - we posted this stuff to Leh once we crossed back into hot hot hot India several weeks back.
So, soon off for one last North Indian dinner, and an early night before a 4am taxi to the airport. That's it for now!
I (Brian) am writing this one alone. Rebecca's doing the next...
Okay, here we are in Udaipur, India's "most romantic city," southern Rajasthan. Yes, it's hot here. The lake, part of Udaipur's ambiance, is almost entirely dry. We see animals grazing there (even two elephants yesterday), and in the mornings and evenings Indian youth play cricket in what used to be lake. Gone is the Udaipur I saw 7 years ago - colorful women washing laundry and people bathing on the lakeside ghats, water everywhere.
All of this we can see from our lakeside room, which has nice ceiling paintings and stained-glass and A/C! Being off-season, we got a steal on the place. Still a splurge, but a reasonable one: Rs600/night ($14/9 quid). Mornings here, we alternate who goes out for a quarter-litre of fresh, cold milk from a corner shop 200m up the road. Then we sit on the divan next to our lakefront window, set up our bowls on the squat wooden table between us, recline on pillows, and eat our cornflakes (North India lacks the nice un-fried breakfasts of the south, so we've opted for this lighter option...ah, to have idli -fermented steamed rice cakes - again!).
And that's Udaipur for us. Since the city's a travellers' hub, it was a good place for us to swap books, replenishing our supply. Far from the tourist zone, we have a place we go for fantastic Gujarati thalis. The palaces, the lake - all secondary, I suppose, a nice backdrop but not a reason for being here.
Other recent destinations have been like this, too. In Orchha, we skipped the central sights. Instead: a walk, find an abandoned chhatri to climb, sit on the roof and watch riverside bathers and colorful kingfishers and bright green parrots, and vultures perched atop the other chhatris (temple-like monuments) surrounding us.
In Delhi: the procurement of train tickets, applying for Chinese visas (for later - I guess we won't be the whole half year on the subcontinent after all). In Agra: the Taj Mahal, of course. And it was wonderful. But too, we mixed in other things: I filed my US taxes, we found the best banana lassis (yogurt shakes) in India.
In Bundi, a slightly off-the beaten track destination in Rajasthan, we hung out for five days, spending our nights in an old haveli (mansion) converted to a guesthouse. There, I worked a lot on editing my book and we did walks in the early mornings when the weather was tolerably cool - walking up to a hilltop fort devoid of tourists (or ANYONE, for that matter), wandering alone among crumbled palace ruins amid pools and pavilions...bat guano, marble columns, paintings, tilework, stunted trees, metal-studded wooden gates still hanging from their original hinges. Very atmospheric. Lunches there in Bundi were mangos and almonds and raisins and grapes and bananas bought from the market.
These last few destinations have been good to us - 4-5 day relaxed stops instead of the relentless grind of the road.
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We are now past the halfway point of our trip. There was never any danger of a repeat of 2002 - when I departed the USA for "a year" and didn't ultimately return until the latter half of 2006. Maybe because I'm older, I don't know. Travel seems less monumental than it did then - not as heavy or life-changing. Fun, good - yes - I don't mean to downplay it at all. It's a great way to give you perspective, solidify desires...but in the end, travel is a temporary indulgence from which you know you'll return.
Rebecca and I continue to learn how to deal with each other (and with India). We get weary of Indians some days. There's a shirt on sale in Delhi that says, "No rickshaw, no hashish, no rupees, ..." The list goes on. A hundred or a thousand times a day you're approached, hassled. It can be so tiresome, but it's part of the whole experience. Dealing with it is a challenge, an opportunity.
Travel for us is more about adapting to a different type of life than about sightseeing: how best to fill a day, to enjoy life, to find the proper mix of movement and relaxation. We haven't kept up with the yoga - rooms too small, days too hot, or simply that we're too lazy? All goes up and down; two weeks ago, Rebecca was just barely tolerating India. Today, she's loving it more than me.
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For better or worse, life beyond the trip is never really far away. We still have to deal with logistics (Australian and US taxes, for example, and bank accounts and interviews), and we're still dealing with post-trip plans. In fact, just two days ago we had a celebratory dinner. I've been offered a spot at grad school for September, in a country Rebecca's never visited, a place that I went to once 15 years ago on one blurry day. So there's that - and soon (no decision yet made) maybe finally we can answer the question, "What are you guys doing after the trip?"
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That's it. Tonight is our last in Udaipur. We're taking a four-hour cooking class. We both absolutely love the food in India (aside from the slight tedium of all the North Indian deep-fried snacks), and are excited to learn a bit more! Tomorrow, we're off to Mt Abu, a 1200m/4000' hill station. Though not originally part of our plan, it was a heat-inspired decision; daily temperatures these last few weeks has seen temps of mostly 40-44C (104-112F). It's meant to be cool there.
We're excited! And not long after, we're heading into mountains once more. But that will be another story...
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"...the blessings of leisure - unknown to the West, which either works or idles..." (EM Forster)
Man, we're melting here. If I keep this update to the point, the following items are the main things on our plate right now: * Northern Indian food doesn't touch that of the south * Mangos are just coming into season * It's hot
Since our last update (Varanasi, where it was hot) we've generally headed west. To Chitrakut (just a night's stop to recover from a day on the bus), then another day on the bus to Khajuraho, where it was hot. We stayed there and visited its famous temple carvings - 10th century, lots of creative sex scenes including acrobatics and even animals. Then to Orchha, a small village with very little to do. Loved it here so stayed longer than any of our previous stops. It was hot here, too.
Then, off to Delhi. We had to visit some embassies to take care of logistics. Delhi was hot.
Today, we traveled to Agra. In the morning, we're going to drop by the Taj Mahal. It's pretty hot. In the evening, we're off on a night train into Rajasthan. Time for some good old Mughal palaces, hilltop forts, etc. Not sure, but my guess is that it will be hot there. We're slowing down our pace for the next couple weeks.
We got in to India okay- 3 days ago now. It's best to step back a month or so when we first departed...
From Darjeeling in India's northeast, we crossed into eastern Nepal. What awaited us there was a tortuous 18-hour ride through a night and half a day on bone-rattling roads to Kathmandu. We spent about five days there, procuring cheap imitation North Face gear that we'd need for our hike (our small backpacks are equipped for heat, not for mountains). When not doing that, we were wandering the city's winding, small lanes, chock full of little shrines and temples and surprises.
Then: Pokhara, the starting point (roughly) for what turned into an eighteen-day hike around famous Annapurna in the Himalayas. This was fantastic. For nearly three weeks, just mountains and fresh air. We went from 800m (2600') to 5400+m (17,800') and back again, with countless ups and downs in between.
The first third of the trip was mostly ascent, going from heat and green and rice paddies up to cold and brown and sparse vegetation. We hit Tibetan lands then, and ultimately snow. We crossed the high Thorung La mountain pass (after a 4am departure and headlamp-lit trudge up the mountain); bitterly cold and at times knee-deep in snow. Over the pass: more Tibet, then a long, long descent down the incredibly windy Kali Gandaki Valley, surrounded on all sides by towering, white-capped mountains. It was great fun.
Just shy of where we could have ended our trek (and once we'd lost all the elevation we gained), we ascended once more into the high hills. When we reached the 2000m village of Chhomrong, Rebecca paused to rest (umm, from a food-related illness), while I climbed briskly up to Annapurna Base Camp one day and came back down the next. After, we finally descended for good - one long day of walking followed by a two-hour bus ride back to Pokhara (sitting on top of the bus because the inside was full).
All in all, a fantastic hike. We generally walked long days, in part because we tended to only sleep in villages/teahouses that had friendly, smiling owners (which at times were few and far between). Most nights there were no mice in our room. Almost all nights we were asleep at 7pm or shortly after because it was f-ing cold and dark and there was nothing else to do but sleep. Rebecca's birthday was celebrated in the village of Tukuche, where we splurged and had pasta, rosti, cake, and purchased a bottle of cherry brandy made by a 70-year old woman at her rustic home/distillery.
We were ready to be done at the end, however. We'd based our budget on my previous hike in Nepal - 7 years ago. This stretched us thin...by the time we got back to Pokhara and paid for our sleeping bag rental and had a post-trek meal, we had just over 200 rupees left (under $3). My shoes mostly fell apart about ten days into the trek; I kept them together with shoelaces and bits of twine that we found along the trails.
So that's the hike. Something like 200 miles, with a couple miles each of ascending and descending. I lost 5 lbs, Rebecca 10. We're fit, though!
We spent just a day in Pokhara after that, both itching a bit to return to India. A new rule (dating to December) meant that we could not officially enter India within 60 days of our previous departure - try working that out when you have a 30-day Nepali visa. In lieu of visiting the Indian embassy in Kathmandu to sort this out and get special permission, we figured we'd just roll up at the border, deny all knowledge of the new rule, and see what happened. What happened was nearly two hours of baksheesh (bribe) demands, threats of sending us back to the capital (8 long hours - each way), and a lot of talking (mostly by Rebecca) - and we got in (without paying any "extra" fee).
Our hellacious journey continued. Three hours to Gorakhpur, then an overnight ride on fixed-blue-holey-vinyl-covered seats, five across, in a bus with neither shocks nor a speed limiter. We pulled into our destination - Varanasi - at 2.45am. Convenient. Averting roughly two thousand offers/demands for rickshaw rides, hotels ("my friend's/brother's"), and other imaginative and profusive hassling, we just drank chais, played cribbage, and sat on the bus station floor until just prior to dawn, then walked to the Ganges riverside and found a place to stay.
Since then: mayhem. Tiny alleys and big cows and running errands and getting happily lost and a bit of tummy upset. But it is good to be back in India again. Today's our third day here, and we haven't yet figured out when we'll leave.
Greetings. We're just back from nearly three weeks in the mountains. More on that will follow.
In the meantime, tomorrow we're up bright and early to catch a bus to the Indian border. Due to a recently introduced technicality, we're actually not allowed back into India without a special permit issued in Kathmandu (which we opted not to get). Fingers crossed...especially after our impending 5.15am wakeup and 7-hr bus ride to the frontier.
Off now to a post-Nepal celabratory meal. A lengthier email will be forthcoming once/if we arrive okay in India.
We're still in Darjeeling. It's been a wonderful retreat from the heat and chaos. As in most places we stay for over a day, we've developed a nice little routine: we have our favorite cafes/restaurants, certain walks we do each day, a place to get chai - all mixed among the things to "do". In this way, almost imperceptably a place becomes like a slice of home.
Speaking of home, we are still mixing in home-like tasks. I am editing my book, trying to do a little each day. Not a bad place to do it, actually: traveling here, I spend much less than I spent on the flat/food/utilities simply by living and doing "nothing" in Australia. I do enjoy the low cost of things here!
That said, India has changed somewhat since my previous visits in 2002 and 2003. Most noticeably, there's been a huge increase in domestic tourism - Indian tourists run rampant in many places. Accommodation has gone up 50% I'd say. Transport and food, perhaps 25%. I (Brian) am doing a better job this time around about learning more about the culture - gods and gurus and subtle differences between regions - and the food.
Today was the Holi festival, meaning that gangs of Hindus are out in force, smearing and throwing brightly-colored powder on themselves and passers-by. We're in a predominantly Buddhist region, so we've probably been less affected than if we weren't in the mountains (we escaped with colored faces, avoiding the full-body treatment).
Though in theory, we should have a spot-on view of Kanchenjunga, the world's third-highest mountain peak, it's been cloudy for five days straight here. We'll just have to imagine what it looked like - buy a postcard. We leave tomorrow for Nepal. 20-24 hrs to Kathmandu on an array of dodgy cramped buses. Should be fun.
