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

The streets of India

Teizeen:

So far, we have probably walked several miles on Indian streets.  We think we're averaging 5-6 miles a day of walking, and since we've been here for over a month, that comes up to more than 150 miles of walking so far.  Most of this (so far) has been amid bustling city streets, with people trying to sell us their goods, child beggars asking for spare change, and spectators staring at us from the sidelines.  We're also slowly becoming expert jay-walkers; you'll be waiting on one side of the road forever if you wait for the traffic to clear.  So, you have to weave through the traffic whenever you want to cross the road.

Most of the cities so far have dirty streets, scattered with litter, the odd roaming cow (and piles of cow poop to match), and skinny stray dogs curled up in odd corners.  I'll be frank: the streets are dirty, with wifts of poop and urine in many places.  There is no centralized wastewater treatment, so there are open sewers lining the streets, funneling liquid waste of all sorts downhill to the nearest river or stream.  Delhi recently had to close some of its water treatment plants (and water supply/delivery to several areas) because of high levels of ammonia in the river.  There are also obvious spots where men urinate on the side of the road.  We've become used to the dirty smelly streets now, watching our step and warning each other about the next pile of cow poop. 

So, when we arrived in Chandigarh (north of Delhi), the streets almost caught us by surprise: they were clean. Not only clean, they were straight, in a grid-like pattern.  We hadn't realized what we'd become used to until it wasn't there anymore.  There were trash cans, and underground sewers.  And now, we have come even further north up to Shimla, where there are state laws prohibiting littering (the fine for littering can be a hefty Rs. 5000 = $ 125 !!  There is also a fine for spitting, and plastic bags are banned).  There are also public bathrooms. 

I don't know about the history of Shimla's litterling laws and how they got implemented, but it seems like the city (and the state it is in) a model for the rest of the country.  However, the town is small, while most of the other cities we've been to are much larger in population, which makes the problem much more difficult to tackle.  Also, Shimla is perched amongst steep hillsides, making open sewers less feasible simply because of topography.  If there were open sewers here, they would be like mini-waterfalls!

Right now, I cannot see how the transformation from dirty streets to clean streets can happen in a country of this size.  It would require drastic behavior change from every individual who walks the streets: no littering, no spitting, no urinating.  When Ryan and I need to trash something while we walk the streets, we have no options.  We end up carrying our waste back to our hotel room's trash can.  But who knows where that end up; I haven't seen big dumpsters anywhere.  Individual efforts may be in vain until the whole system changes at a massive scale.  And when I say massive, I mean massive: some way to change the behavior of over a billion people who walk the streets of India, and one that treats the waste generated by them. 

I'm sure there are genuine efforts to do this in a country of this size, and I may not have the chance to experience the results during this trip.  Nevertheless, the magnitude of the problem remains immense.

Some new photos

We just uploaded some new photos from the last 1-2 weeks, including those of the Taj Mahal.  Check out the links to the left.

Are you Indian?

Teizeen:

Standing in the queue at the entrance to one of the great Rajput Palaces of Jaipur, I am about to pay the entrance fee (which is higher for tourists, and lower for Indian citizens), and I am asked, "Are you Indian?"  Which means, am I an Indian citizen?  Was I, or were my parents, or my grandparents born in India?

To reply "No" would deny my Indian heritage, and the answer would be received with confusion because of my obvious Indian-ness.  After all, I look Indian.  To say "Yes" would be easy, but I would be pretending in order to take advantage of cheaper entrance fees (they don't check you passport, so this is easy to get away with).  In addition, being and looking Indian goes hand-in-hand with speaking Hindi (especially in northern India), and my limited Hindi-speaking abilities would automatically expose my pretend-Indian character if I were to say "Yes, I am Indian."

And so, I often find myself telling the story of my heritage to the people I meet who look at me, assume that I am Indian, but then find out and are surprised that my Hindi does not quite pass the test.  I explain that my ancestors - 5 generations back - moved to East Africa (Kenya), and we have been there ever since, and that this is my first visit to India.  To counter my lack of Hindi skills, I proclaim my fluency in Gujarati.  In this way, they are suddenly impressed and somewhat enlightened by the fact that a local Indian language has survived for 5 generations in the far off continent of Africa. 

If we add my American husband to this mix of Indian-Kenyan-non-Hindi-speaking-Gujarati woman from Kenya, their enlightenment reverts back to confusion.  In order to explain Ryan standing by my side, I have to add an addendum to my heritage story to explain that my family and I now live in America. 

Inter-racial marriages in India are extremely rare and not condoned.  Responses to us walking down the street range from innocent curiosity to disapproving looks (the latter may just be my imagination since I don't really know what they are thinking).  We are often greeted with ominous stares from people who are either not shy about staring, who have never seen such a sight and are genuinely caught by surprise when they see us, or whose parents never told them it is rude to stare. 

However, it is difficult to know, without asking, what people really think of us.  I actually cannot stand being stared at, and because it makes it uncomfortable, I over-inflate what they are probably thinking in their minds (even though they haven't said a word to us):  I think that they probably think that I have diluted my Indian heritage by traipsing around with an American husband, and I am therefore no longer worthy of posing as an Indian and being allowed to pay cheaper entrance fees!

I am slowly getting used to the stares though, and have decided to either respond by (1) glaring right back at them, (2) asking Ryan to glare at them since they are staring at his wife, (3) giving them a big unexpected smile, or (4) keeping my eyes on the ground 24/7 so that I can't even know who is staring at who.  The latter option, however, might inevitably land me in a dangerous spot between rickshaw drivers, scooters, bicycles, cars and buses since pedestrians never have the right of way in India - so if I look down, I'm game to be sandwiched between a number of possible moving vehicles.

Teizeen's Kota family

Ryan:

We spent the last few days in Kota where Teizeen met some of her native Indian relatives.  If you followed our Kenya blog a few summers back, the food part of the experience was much the same as having dinner with Shafiq Uncle’s family: intense family pressure to consume unnatural quantities of super oily food.  Here in Kota, however, the family’s insistence to consume bordered on the annoying and resulted in physical pain to my abdomen and intestines.  It should be noted that my honeymoon with solid stool and stable stomach came to an abrupt end last week in Udaipur (the illness, I suspect, came from the cilantro we used in an otherwise excellent cooking class).  We let the family know ahead of time that I was not well but they did not relent.  As a result, I had a series of loud and embarrassing experiences with eastern style toilets. 

The houses of the family in Kota were, as they were in Kenya, shared communally by multiple generations - elders, the kids of the elders – and the kids of the kids of the elders (the youngest generations were bone skinny, getting progressively rounder with age, until becoming quite fat in their middle ages).  The basic composition of a house: kitchen, toilet room (eastern style), bathing room, and a multifunctional living area that covered dining, tv/entertainment, and sleeping.  

At a basic level, I found myself able to follow some of the Gujarati conversations between Teizeen and her aunts and uncles.  I could not, however, speak enough Gujarati to hold a conversation myself, and very few of the older generation spoke English.  The youngest members of the family had not yet learned English, were just beginning to learn English, or were too shy to exercise what English they had already learned.  For conversation, I therefore found myself leaning heavily on Moiz and Mustafa, two of Teizeen’s college aged male cousins (unmarried as of yet) with good English skills.  Moiz and Mustafa were fantastic hosts, shuttling Teizeen and I all around Kota and showing us the local sites.  Both had many questions for us about work opportunities in the US and Canada since employment prospects in India, even for qualified college graduates, were looking pretty grim.  Moiz’ brother had recently been granted admission to Canada, providing Moiz himself with hope to join them in a few years.  Mustafa, was still looking for opportunities. 

All in all, the family was mega-hospitable, welcoming, and never stopped reminding us that their home was also our home, and that the three days we spent with them were totally insufficient.  However, Teizeen and I are somewhat relieved to be back by ourselves continuing further north on our travels through India – we will be viewing the spectacular Taj Mahal by the end of this week after a brief visit to one of India’s more famous bird sanctuaries.