We're comin' home!

Teizeen:

In a little over 24 hours, we'll be back home to the fresh cold of early spring in the Pacific Northwest - a sharp contrast from India's summer season which just started and leaves us sweating after simply ascending a single flight of stairs. 

We've been walking around Mumbai a lot, despite the heat, but have discovered that the street-side sugarcane vendors sell fresh juice (no water added) for about 15 cents a glass, and they can be found every few blocks ready to refresh sweaty pedestrians passing by.

Ryan and I went started watching our budget the last 3 weeks or so of our travels, trying to see if we could get by on fewer Rupees a day and stock up on a slight surplus with which to splurge a little during our last few days in Mumbai.  Our careful budgeting earned us a night and dinner at one of Mumbai's premier music performance spaces, a comedy Bollywood movie, a fresh seafood dinner, and a day at Water Kingdom (which claims to be Asia's largest water theme park).

Water Kingdom was pretty big, but alas, not big enough for the number of Indian families who visit it on a Sunday.  The water park not only featured big slides, but also, very very big queues for almost everything.  There was one queue for a little tram that took you from the ticket counter to the entrance, another queue at the entrance to get in (they had to check that our bag's did not carry 'outside eatables'), another queue to get a locker in the changing room, another queue to rent lycra swimwear (T-shirts and long tights for women - no women were just wearing just a swimsuits out of modesty), and then a queue for each of the rides and slides.  We did, eventually, get to be in the water.

So, we've had our fun and it's time to come home.  We are both looking forward to being home now after 3 months of traveling, having to pack and re-pack our packs every 2-3 days, having to haggle for everything from taxi rides to souvenirs, dealing with touts, and not having any pedestrian rights.  However, we will miss bargaining, the cheap and tasty food, and simply not having many day-to-day responsibilities or having a fixed daily schedule.  I haven't cooked in 3 months!

We're both ready and excited to come home - but only after we've had a few more glasses of fresh sugarcane juice.  See you all soon!

Indian Cricket fervor

Teizeen:

Throughout India's ancient and more recent history around the time of independence, this large and diverse sub-continent has had a difficult time finding a unifying national identity.  The quest for independence was a unifying force, though even that led to certain divisions between Indians who spoke different languages, and those who followed different religions (e.g. Islam or Hinduism).

For the last 1.5 months, however, there has been a single and unifying force that has gripped the whole country's attention: the World Cup for cricket.  Cricket in India is the only major sport in India, and the World Cup happens only once every four years.  India last won the World Cup in 1983......and they won it again just 4 days ago on April 2nd 2011.

Cricket is not just a sport or a game in India.  It is an obsession that permeates across language, religion, and geographic lines.  During the World Cup games, small and large shops would always have their TV's inside tuned to the cricket channel - and crowds of people would gather outside the shop windows peering in to follow the game.  People on the streets had their mobile phones tuned to some cricket radio station that was updating them.  Security guards were listening to cricket on ther cell phones to entertain their evening hours.  Almost anyone you asked knew the current score for the game - even the small bhel puri (an Indian snack) beach vendor on Chowpatty Beach (in Mumbai). 

On the day of the final match, agaist Sri Lanka, the malls had giant screens showing the game and live drummers drumming after every good move made by the Indian team.  Cars on the streets were trailing large Indian flags out their windows, and people were getting their faces painted with the Indian flag.  Many shops closed once the game started.  And everyone had their fireworks ready in anticipation for the big win. 

In a country of over 1 billion people, most of whom seem to follow cricket, I felt like India deserved the World Cup simply because they all wanted it so bad, and there were so many people who wanted India to win it.  I just wanted to watch the whole country celebrate something they cared so much about - and they did. 

Ryan and I watched the last portions of the game from our hotel - and when India won, the hotel staff who were watching with us just couldn't wipe the smile of their faces.  There was genuine and intense satisfaction and happiness.  And within minutes, we heard fireworks outside on the streets coming from every direction.  And even though it has been four days now, the TV and newspapers simply cannot stop talking about it.  It has saturated the news completely.  And as the cricket captain said - this cup was won for the people of India.

Recent Photos

For those who have noticed a slightly extended absence of posts, we just wanted to let you know that we finally managed to post several albums with photos from Nepal, so check out the links to the left.

Annapurna Trek, Nepal

Teizeen:

We returned from 3 weeks in Nepal a few days ago.  We spent 16 days on a trek called the "Annapurna Circiuit Trek" which circuits around the Annapurna Mountain range with views of several 8000+ m peaks - some of the highest peaks in the world.  Below are some quick facts about our trek:

Total trekking distance: about 300 km (186 miles)
Highest elevation: 5416m (17,769 feet) at Thorung La Pass
Highest change in elevation in a single day: 1600 m (5250 feet)
Average hours walked per day: 6 hours/day
Number of days Teizeen was cold at night: 6 out of 15
Number of photos taken: hundreds, more than we are willing to admit
Who won the blister competition: Ryan (his blister's were way more impressive than mine)
Sickness: One cold each, not altitude sickness
Number of showers Teizeen took: 7
Number of showers Ryan took: 5
Number of 'hot' showers that went cold mid-way: 4 out of 7 (for Teizeen), 0 out of 5 (for Ryan)
Number of days walking in rain: zero

Enough of facts, let's get to the gritty details. 

We had one guide and one porter.  Having a porter, at first, felt a little bit elitist, and felt a little bit like cheating.  So, I spent the first few days of the trek pondering whether I could do this while carrying my own pack for 16 days - and I would alternate between "yes, I could do this with my own pack" when we were talking on flat or slightly downhill terrain and "no, there's no way I could" when we were on a steep uphill or downhill gradient.  And everytime I saw independent guideless and porterless trekkers on this well-travelled trail, particularly women, I would be inspired. 

We met many trekkers at the various 'tea house lodges' from around the world, chatting over dinner.  We met a family from Colorado with two boys (aged 10 and 12), who were in the midst of a year-long trip around the world!  Knowing how I had felt climbing up to Chame (one of the night stops) the night we met them, I was totally impressed with the boys' attitudes - this trek is in no way extreme, but it isn't easy.  If I was 10 or 12, I'd be complaining.

We saw avalanches - 3 within an hour on a single day, high up on the mountain slopes as the sun warmed the top layers of snow.  Cold fast raging rivers carrying glacial water paralleled much of our path, providing water to all the little villages along the way.  At each village, there was food of all sorts (Snickers bars, Nutella, beer, etc), being brought uphill by people or mules, up to high elevations - the cost of each of these items increased as we got higher and higher.

Porters.  Porters deserve a story of their own - especially human porters.  We saw porters carrying planks of wood about 10-feet long over steep terrain on trails that lined steep cliffs, manouvering with great skill.  Porters carrying stones, firewood, huge furniture, other trekker's gear, and our most favorite porter of all, the chicken-porter who was carrying a cage of a dozen or more chickens on his back!

The mountain views were some of the best we had ever seen - huge huge mountains that just don't look quite as big in photos as they did in real life. 

When we got to the big pass (Thorung La Pass, 5416 m), which was snowed in, a 6-hour uphill climb, and at an altitude where the air is much thinner, we found ourselves huffing and puffing every 10-20 steps.  My guilt about not carrying my own pack dissipated completely.  The winds were nasty, blowing hard powdered snow into our faces, stinging us like pin pricks so that we had to duck.  It was like getting a cold hard slap in the face every time a large gust of wind picked up.  My toes (under 2 pairs of socks and thick leather boots) froze to numbness, and we stopped in a small lodge on the way up to thaw them out with a nalgene bottle filled with boiling water.  And, my Marmot mittened gloves proved all their worth as my usually ultra-cold-sensitive fingers remained warm in their cosiness for the full ascent.  We descended from the pass into less wind and soon, warmth, and then, no snow at all within a matter of hours.  This was our longest day; almost 9 hours of walking up and down in a single day.

Now in the extreme warmth of the Varanasi sun, back in India, our cold mountain experience seems surreal.   We've got some remnants of our trek - blister scars, and slightly sore muscles still, as well as a little trimming of fat around our waists.  But the latter will be lost now that we are back to tasty oily Indian food....

Off to Nepal

Teizeen:

We leave for Nepal tomorrow morning from Varanasi, and we will be there for the next three weeks.  Other than 1-2 days in Kathmandu at the start and the end of these three weeks, we will spend most of our time in Nepal on a 16-day trek called the 'Annapurna Circuit.'

Since we will have no access to internet during our trek, you can follow our daily itinerary by following this link that details our daily trek itinerary: http://www.adventureaves.com/Annapurnacircuit.html

We will have the help of porters to carry our big packs, and we will only be carrying day packs with our water for the day and extra layers of clothing, etc.  Trekking in this region of Nepal is predominantly in the form of a 'teahouse trek', which involves staying in teahouses along the way (there are several scattered in this region, which is very well travelled), where food and accomodation is provided.  The teahouses are nothing fancy, more like huts I think, but it does eliminate the need to carry tents and food.  Our living quarters will not be heated (though the dining areas might be), we'll be sharing showers and toilets/outhouses with other trekkers, and electricity is not available at most of the teahouses.  So, it's like camping in a hut without a tent while carrying fewer things.

So, armed with plenty of extra batteries, a solar-rechargeable UV water purifier, warm sleeping bags, warm clothing, and plenty of other gear, we are about to embark on what will likely be one of the mose scenic and amazing mountain experiences we have had so far - and probably one of the most physically challenging experiences for me (in addition to potentially cold temperatures). 

You'll here more about how it really went in about 3 weeks, so stay tuned...

It's cold in Shimla

Teizeen:

Last night, we returned to Delhi from our hill top experience in the town of Shimla.  We spent the last five days here in temperatures in the low 40's (farenheit), or 5-10 (celcius).  We were going to spend 7 days, but the cold cut down our visit to 6, then 5, days - we changed our train tickets two times!  The day we arrived, we were greeted by hail as we walked around town with our large backpacks, trying to find a reasonable hotel (the one we had reserved turned out to be more expensive than we had thought, and further away from town).

Shimla was once the summer capital of British Viceroys of India during colonial rule, and after that, by Indian governmen officials, who took their clerk books and escaped to Shimla from the heat of Delhi for weeks at a time.

Ryan and I did the opposite: we escaped to Shimla from Delhi in the middle of the Indian winter, and it was cold.  And there was no central heating.  We could rent a heater for every night, but the cost of renting one exceeded the cost of purchasing one, so we decided otherwise.  We would envelope ourselves every night into our 15 deg F (-9.5 deg C) rated sleeping bags, which where our saviours at night.  The nights were warm once our body heat was trapped inside our sleeping bags, creating a warm cacoon.  Emerging out of our cacoons in the morning was the biggest challenge - we would poke our heads out into the cold room only to snuggle back inside like tortoises inside our shells, cautious to expose ourselves to the outside world.

We didn't quite make it out of bed till 10 or 11 am, eating 'breakfast' at noon at the Indian Coffee House down the street (with excellent and extremely cheap breakfasts - about $3.00 for the two of us). 

Though this picture I'm painting of Shimla may sound cold and grim, it was actually a really spectacular little town.  We could walk from one end to the other in less than half an hour, observing the street life around the bazaars, and not worrying about cars (no cars are allowed on the main roads).  Spitting, littering and smoking is banned around the town - so the streets were clean.  There were few to no beggers or homelessness - the cold makes that prohibitive.

There were no cows on the streets, but lots of monkeys (macaques) with naughty eyes trying to get at whatever scarps of food they could, showing off their expert climbing skills as they clambered from tree tops to buildings and slithered down water pipes.  One even got half way up my leg with its agile little hands!

Ryan enjoyed his daily morning ritual with the monkeys from our hotel window sill (the sound of monkeys was enough to get him out of his warm cacoon), where he fed them our fermented guava fruits, and dried dates, watching them scramble up from neighboring rooftops simply because of the sound of our creaky window opening, and the sight of his hand poking out with a piece of food.  He tried to fool them once by throwing out a non-food item, and they didn't budge.  These monkeys were smart.

The whole town of Shimla is perched on the side of steep hilltops, and vertical buildings are stacked in a terrace-like fashion - a structural feat, to say the least.  And in the background further north, was a magestic line of snowtopped Himalayan mountains visible when the morning haze had cleared.

We spent our days either walking around a lot (since this was the best way to keep warm) and trying to find warm places to eat and hang out.  We found a cosy little timber cottage-like restaurant where we sipped banana lassi's and played our first game of chess (the first for both of us).  The owner was a friendly middle-aged Indian man with kind eyes and good English, and we were so excited about this find, we vowed to return again the next day.  However, after 3 hours, when we were ready to pay our bill and leave, we found out that this friendly owner also charged a friendly cover charge for 'long sittings' in his cafe/restaurant!  Though the charge wasn't too high in American dollars, it cost us more than our night in the hotel for our drinks, snack and cover charge of Rs. 100/hour.  The cover charge was higher than the cost of using internet somewhere else for an hour!  We left, annoyed, not as much because we had to pay, but because he wasn't open about it when we sat down in the first place - his friendly cafe had turned out to be a little sour.

Nevertheless, Shimla was beautiful, even if cold.  But I'm glad to be back in warmer temepratures where I don't have to wait 30 minutes for my fingers and toes to thaw.  Growing up in warm places has left me unarmed with the right kind of blood to withstand the cold.  Our trek to Nepal is around the corner, coming up in a little over a week, and I am thinking of our 16-day trek in one of the majestic moutnain landscapes in the world.  I am both excited and eager, but also have a little bit of trepidation.  I hope that the spectacular views and constant movement of our bodies will make me numb to the cold. 

Before we head to Nepal, we still have 4 days in Delhi, and a long train ride to the city of Varanasi, which sits alongside the holy and mighty river Ganges. 

Indian Marble Madness!

Ryan:

Marble floors & staircases can be found in even the most run down hotels we have stayed at. The Indian state of Rajasthan apparently is well endowed with vast deposits and numerous varieties of marble. At ~$0.75/ft², marble flooring in India runs about 1/3 the price of the cheapest pergo flooring offered at a Home Depot back in the states.   

On one particular stretch of road from Kota to Udaipur, our bus drove through a ~20 mile stretch of back-to-back marble wholesalers.  Each wholesale yard contained literally hundreds of car-sized blocks of marble covered and aligned in formations that stretched to the boundaries of their property.

One of thousands of marble wholesalers between Kota and Udaipur

Through centuries of building forts, palaces, and places of worship, Rajasthanis in particular have become especially adept at extracting these deposits, as well as those of sandstones, lime stones, and granites (also plentiful in these areas).   


Near the border between Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh lies the city of Agra, former capital city of India during part of the Mughal Empire and home to the massive Taj Mahal.  The Taj Mahal was built by the Shah Jahan (5^th ruler of the Mhugal Empire and grandson of Akbar), as a mausoleum in honor of his wife Mumtaz who died giving birth to one of their children.

Many of the monumental buildings before and after it were constructed using locally available dark red sandstone.  Surrounding these monuments is a maze of dirty gray masonry buildings (3-5 stories tall) containing shops, residences and guest houses.  The white marble of the Taj Mahal (a special variety that comes from the Makrana region of Rajasthan) rises in surreal contrast against the dreary architectural backdrop of Agra - It is a massive building unmatched in height by anything else in sight (people look like ants against it), -Its symmetry defies the randomness of the surrounding township – And the white stones of its construction give it a light/faint cloud-like appearance that is augmented by its domes and spires (reminiscent of  a fairy tale castle).  In real life, it looks as it does in the postcards – like a painting against the sky – unreal.

The surreal fairy-tale like Taj Mahal - just like the postcards