Waving at Libyans

So my time at the Siwa Oasis was well spent. I did a whole lot of not too much and generally regained some of my sanity after the breakneck pace of the last two weeks.

The first day I hung around the room, reading and doing laundry in the sink (the glam aspects of the jet set lifestyle). In the afternoon, when the sun cooled off to just ridiculously hot, I rented a bike to see the sights of the town. The bike rental guy was at the mosque when I got there, so I sat down and watch Arabic Sesame Street until he got back. (Today’s episode was brought to you be the letters saad and hamza, and by the number ithnine…) The bike I got was a little old lady bike, with brakes that can best be described as ornamental, and off I went, wrapped up tight because of the strict dress code of the Islamic village. The bike made this repetitive rhythmic rattle-squeak-shake-squeak as I bounced along through the sand. Think Lawerence of Arabia meets the Triplets of Belleville. My first stop was the Temple of ‘Obayda, which lasted thousands of years only to be torn down by some bureaucrat in the late 19th century for housing stone. But I enjoyed scrambling up the ruins to try and get a better view of the desert beyond. (Come on, it does SAY don’t climb on the antiquities.) The next stop was the Oracle of Amun, where Alexander the Great trekked out to find out if he was a god (oracle gave him the nod). I figured, considering my recent run of good luck, and since I was in the neighborhood, to find out if I was a god. The oracle produced one small tail-less gray lizard. I’m still interpreting the results.

After my fun with oracles, I headed 5 km out the other side of town to watch the sunset, or, a more fun way of measuring distance, one-tenth of the distance between me and Libya. I got there before the sun was ready to go down, so I walked out into the dunes a bit, through the dry salt flats. A little strange, wind blowing over the dunes, the taste of salt in the air, hundreds of miles from the ocean. After the sunset I raced the coming darkness, and some little 9 year old punkass in a donkey cart that thought he was somethin’. I smoked him AND his donkey

Next day I similarly did nothing until late afternoon. Then I went out on a 4x4 to the edge of the desert. (You used to be able to go out into the desert, but the military closed it after some Italian hit a “landmine” coming across the Libyan border during a semi-sanctioned desert rally race a couple months ago. The “landmine” was likely an unexploded ordnance from WWII which litter the desert, and which the Italians dropped in the first place. So a guy from a country that decided it was in their strategic interest to bomb a town made out of mud brick, a week’s camel ride from anything, with no running water or electricity, is pissed off because he accidentally ran over one of the remnants and put a hole in his tricked out Extera? I am markedly unsympathetic.) Anyway, then we hiked out 2 km into the dunes to watch the sunset. 360° of sand. Nothing but sand. Not even a dead weed. Just sand and the huge hot sun sinking into the horizon. I was glad the guide knew the way back. We hit town just in time for me to jump on the 10 pm bus back to Alexandria and connect to the train to Cairo.

Where I was going to get the 10 am train to Aswan (of the big dam fame), but, oops, the guy in Alexandria was wrong, train is at 10 pm. So I have a day to kill in Cairo. I get some falafel and fresh mango juice to assess the situation. I have seen all the sights listed in the book with the exception of the “City of the Dead.” The City of the Dead is a former necropolis that was taken over by squatters in the late 80s. Forget Disney baby, this year we are taking the kids to the City of the Dead. The guide book says that it “teems with life.” Um. Times Square teems. Delhi teems. Ant hills teem. The City of the Dead has to settle for “being inhabited.” But, even with all that, and the fact that someone narrowly missed my head winging a dirty diaper out a second floor window, the mosques were nice and the view from the minarets incredible. The flat shanties and buildings of the City of the Dead spread out in the shadow of huge opulent mosques.

Which brings me to my current position, spinning my wheels until the train. Hope all is well!

Walking with Egyptians

Let me start by saying that I am in love, no, dare I say, yes, in RAPTURE with Egypt. It is one of the most interesting places I have visited and the people are unbelievably nice. Seriously. People are 99% more likely to offer me falafel that harass me about the United States. No one has given me any problems, either for being a woman traveling alone, or for being an American.

I am currently in the Siwa Oasis, in the middle of the desert about 35 miles from the Libyan border. It is really a bizarre place. Hours in the bus of nothing but sand, then all of a sudden, BAM! village lit up like a Christmas tree. I guess it is like when people describe coming upon Las Vegas in the Nevada desert. (I wouldn’t know. I am scared of states that don’t touch oceans.) I am out here hiding from tourism. I have been running around at a breakneck pace looking at the sites, so I came somewhere where there was nothing to see to relax for a while.

I have been in Cairo since I last spoke to you. It would take a week to run through everything I saw, but I'll give you the highlights.

Whirling Dervishes - I thought they were something my grandmother made up (Kristen Anne - stop spinning like that! You’d think you are a whirling dervish!), but they are real. Basically you spin around really fast for an hour, then you see God. I went to tourist show, so they were a little less concerned with seeing God, but man they sure spun around. With their huge colorful skirts flashing. At up to 100 revolutions per minute. To the point of tedium at times.

Citadel - A massive building on top of a hill (hence citadel) with some old defensive strategic importance, and some neat mosques. I thought that I was sufficiently covered, tee shirt and pants, but the two inches of upper arm I was showing was a problem. They were nice enough to give me a bright green floor length polyester cloak to wear. With the other tourists, walking around this richly furnished interior, we looked like a bunch of extras from a Harry Potter movie. Other highlights included the palace where one of the sultans invited all the major political figures in the land to dinner and desert, locked the doors and killed them. Gruesome but efficient. There was also the Rifa’ir mosque, which was significant it is where the Shah of Iran and the last monarch of Egypt are buried. For those in the know, Rifa’ir is the THE place this season to entomb your deposed despots.

Coptic Cairo - The Christian section of the city with elaborate churches and small winding alleys. The Copts are a sect started by the Apostle Mark back in the day. I don’t know much about their beliefs, but the churches make even the most ornate Greek Orthodox church look like a Calvinist meeting hall. The Hanging Church was a little disappointing, as it is no longer hanging. There was, however, a rather impressive synagogue in the area, but it is no longer used. It is interesting that religion was both the impetus to build this incredible building, and the reason for its abandonment.

PYRAMIDS - Okay, there is a reason that these bad boys are a wonder of the world. In - flipping - credible. Do you know how BIG these things are? Serious. The bases are bigger than a city block and they are about the height of a 30 story building. They let you run around the inside some of them. It is a little creepy inside (who'd a thunk that a 3000 year old tomb would be creepy inside?), but fun nonetheless. The passages are low (no more than 3 foot square) and you have to scurry around in them. Outside it is brutally hot and camels are eating whatever little vegetation they can find - when they are not toting tourists around. The Sphinx was especially cool. You don’t really think of it as being real, just a cultural icon people slap on things, but here it was. I was traveling with a Canadian I picked up in the Egyptian Museum (hey, can I see your Lonely Planet?), and he and I were on a bit of a budget for the adventure. Instead of hiring an expensive camel, or car, or horse to shuttle us between tombs, we walked and hitch-hiked, sometimes with nice air conditioned cars of Irish tourists, sometimes on the back of backhoes. You know.

Carpet “School” – After the pyramids and a couple of other sights in the area, the taxi driver wanted to take us, the happy couple, carpet shopping. We weren’t exactly jazzed, but he promised we could be in and out in 15 minutes and it might be neat to see the carpet school, so okay. The owner proudly showed us 35 or so underage children hand-knotting carpets, some as young as 8 or 9. Look honey, take my picture next to the slave labor. The owner explained that they were on vacation from school, learning the ancient art of carpet making. Yeah right.

Islamic Cairo - This is the old city, mosques, vegetable stands, men carrying hundreds of loaves of pita bread on top on their head on racks... I visited a few mosques here, including the oldest university in the Cairo, al-Azhar, which is still very strictly Islamist and made me wrap up, not too much unlike the mummies in the museum... I really liked this section of town. And no one hassled me or bothered me in anyway. I got a couple of looks when I went into a local restaurant, but I just sat in the woman's section and ate my kushari (it involves lentils and noodles) and drank my kakaday ( known as biisap in West Africa, it is made of dried red leaves boiled and sweetened. In the Corps, we used to call it African Kool Aid).

Yesterday I went to Alexandria for a few hours before connecting to the bus for the Oasis. Alexandria is like a different country. Cool, breezy, Mediterranean, filled with Greek and Roman ruins in addition to the hieroglyphs. I went to an old Roman theater, the catacombs and a museum (where again, things are labeled in either Arabic, French, English or Braille, but only one. Braille especially makes sense since everything in the museum is under glass.) Nothing too exciting.

So I am loving Egypt. It is a completely modern country, on par with maybe Vietnam or even Thailand. The street food is delicious. Who knew a race of people could come up with so many delicious ways to serve chick peas? And the best part is the juice stands on every corner. If I am having a frustrating moment, I just go to the corner, give them the equivalent of a quarter, and they give me a huge glass of mango juice. Then things are better.

Baby's first 'stan!

I am writing this from an internet cafe in Cairo where they are playing Usher loud enough to feel the bass in my spine.

So, as you have probably gathered from the last sentence I am no longer in India. The last few days were an insane mad dash. After getting marooned in the middle of no where, I (eventually) went to the city of Udaipur (only 22 hours by train and bus, during which time I subsisted on 300 g. of cashews, three fried things from the roadside, a glass of apple juice, some hard candies I bought for a rupee, and a bottle of mineral water. And I was actually developing bedsores on my legs from sitting for so long in the heat). Udaipur was in the province of Rajistan (my first 'stan!) and my kinda India. Men with big turbans and waxed mustaches, snake charmers, inlaid palaces, camels and elephants all over the place. This was it. Udaipur was the city of lakes and sunrises - interesting since the lakes were dry from drought and absolutely nothing was open before 10 am. But regardless, it was beautiful. I was staying in this old haveli of a hotel (like most things in India, older than my country). I had an old state room, done completely in inlaid marble with ornate ceilings and pillowed seating areas. I felt like a most honored member of the harem. And the scrumptious palak paneer at the rooftop restaurant was served with really fluffy delicious naan, just like on 6^th St, not some glorified chapti.

The sites were pretty - I could describe them, but in order to save both you and I time, just see the old Bond movie Octopussy. It was filmed in Udaipur and pretty much covers it.

The best part of Udaipur though is that it is known for its miniature paintings. Incredibly intricate and colorful paintings done sometimes with a single hair for a brush. I bought a bunch as souvenirs but also decided to try it myself (I would always get yelled at art school when I was younger for refusing to paint anything bigger than a liner brush anyway), and signed up for a class. It was quite a bit harder than I anticipated, but the teacher was impressed with my abilities, and asked where I learned to paint. I told him that my grandmother had taught me when I was small. Then he wanted to know if my grandmother had ever studied in India. Picturing my 80-something blond haired grandma sitting in her kitchen on Long Island, I told him I didn’t think so. He told me that I should check with her. Anyone who paints well enough to teach others must have studied here at some point. I told him I would drop him an e-mail if I was wrong.

After class, I wandered a few more of the sights, and checked out the famous Mor Chowk inlaided peacocks. And, at the museum at Bangore-ki Haveli, the world’s largest turban, encompassing all four known styles of turban tying. How can you argue with that?

After some shopping, I returned to Bangore-ki Haveli for the night dance show before heading out. The performers were off the hook. Given, the first dance was a little plain, and the one entitled “Happy to be a Virgin” did little for me on a number of levels, most were really something. They had girls that did this whirlie thing with big pots of fire on their heads. Then there was this guy who made his puppet juggle its head, and, call me simple, but I enjoyed that more than most Broadway plays I’ve seen. Then up comes the main event. A woman in a red sari starts dancing with a glass on her head, then balances a huge pot on top of it. Then she climbed on a pair of drinking glasses and danced around. She added another pot and danced on a deep serving bowl. Two more pots, and then hopping around on a bunch of broken glass. Two more pots, then dancing on a pair of upturned rusty swords. She eventually got up to eight big pots, but they didn’t make her dance around on anything else at that point. It was really fucking cool.

Then came a miserable overnight bus trip to Jaipur, the pink city. (The only pink I saw in Jaipur was the Pepobismo.) After getting hopelessly lost on a rickshaw, I arrived at my guesthouse at 8:15. At 8:45, I was at the tourist office signing up for a city tour with 25 Indian tourists. The tour was interesting, I learned everything I could have possibly wanted to know about the maharaja. We covered, at speeds that would make even the most seasoned package tourist’s head spin : Biria Mandir (a temple made out of really really white stone), the Sanjay Sharma Museum and Research Institute (where they had a Snakes and Ladders game from 1750), Jantar Mantar (the world’s largest stone astrological observatory – guess it had to be somewhere – which was a cross between getting stuck in an M. C. Etcher drawing and “Honey I Shrunk the Kids”©), the City Palace and Museum (which had a robe from the Maharaja Sawai Madhu Singh I, who was more than 7 feet tall, weighed more than 500 pounds and had 50 in chest. I am only 64 inches tall.), Jaigarh Fort (with the world’s largest cannon, fired only once, unsuccessfully), the Naharagarh Fort (which had a neat interior paint job), Amber Fort (If have to see one more frigging fort…) and the planetarium. I got a nice little thali lunch at the Naharagarh Fort overlooking the city - which was of incredible interest to my fellow tourees, who noted that they had never seen a white person eat India food. (Note to my countrymen : get out of the McDonald's people. Please.) This, of course, lead to the discovery that I could speak English, and encouraged two teenage girls to talk my ear off for the rest of the day about some of the world’s more intellectual pursuits, specifically which Bollywood actor was the hottest. They didn’t even know who Patrick Swayzee was. I must be getting old.

And then I went to dinner. After eating nothing but vegetarian food for a month in India and Nepal, in my last city before returning to Delhi to fly out, I decided to throw caution to the wind and get myself a tandoori chicken. It was so good, and the staff looked on somewhat bemused as I consumed an ENTIRE chicken all by myself, in less than 20 minutes. Stuffed, I returned to my room to sleep contentedly for 4 hours, at which time the food poisoning kicked in. The next 8 hours were uncomfortable to say the least. I tried to go shopping in the famous Jaipur bazaar when I was feeling a little better, but lasted about 15 minutes before I had to have the rickshaw take me home. For those of you that know that I secretly travel only to all these places as an excuse to go shopping will realize just how seriously ill I was. I had been kicked out of my room so I laid on my guesthouse couch for 2 hours, pouring sweat and writhing in agony, until it was time to get on the bus to Delhi. What better way to recover from food poisoning than by taking an 8 hour bus ride?

I arrived back in Delhi late and was too tired to brave the teaming masses to the guesthouse, so I took a rickshaw. Now everyone who travels in India has at least one story of one disastrous rickshaw rice with a driver who was high as a kite. I had been lucky, and with less than 24 hours to go, I thought my luck would hold out. Nope. This guy was playing bumper bikes the whole way, twice hitting something hard enough to knock me completely off the seat, and once turning the whole contraption on its side, spilling me and my backpack into the street. And, on top of all this, he tried to demand an extra 20 rupees. Not on my watch brother.

Next day, I did some last minute shopping and generally got ready to go. My favorite adventure though was dying my hair black. I decided that my faded strawberry blond 'fro would attract a little more attention than I wanted in the Middle East. So I went to Lucky Ladies Beauty Parlor and told them to dye it brown. I was thinking Cameron Diaz in “Being John Malkovich,” I got Cruella de Ville in “101 Dalmations.” The dye didn’t take evenly. I have stripes. Oh well. Hair grows back. You probably don’t want me to go into details about the ensuing bikini wax. That night I left I had pizza and beer (in true grad student style) with Vishal1 and Vishal2, two of my future colleagues at Harvard who are living in Delhi, before heading to the airport.

I got the 4:30 am flight to Dubai, UAE, which has the nicest airport ever. It looks like high class mall, with some airplanes. My gate was next to Sax's. I got my connection to Cairo, where Sarah, another future classmate, picked me up at the airport. One the way to their house, I looked out the window and remarked what a clean and well-organized place Cairo was. That one earn me a confused look in the rearview mirror. I didn’t care. I just sat in the back and chanted happily though somewhat insanely, “I’m not in Delhi anymore! I’m not in Delhi anymore!”

I am staying with her family here. They are spoiling me. I have all the good Egyptian food I can eat, a soft bed, A/C, the good life. Yesterday I hung around with Sarah and her cousin, smoked sheesha (TOBACCO MOM!) and went shopping. Today I went to the Egyptian museum. It has more mummies than an entire season of Scooby Doo, but nothing much is marked and things are stacked rather haphazardly. Except the King Tutankamen room. That was the coolest single exhibit I’ve seen in a museum anywhere. And the mummy room was cool too, if you go in for 6000 year old dead guys.

Sorry this is not that interesting, but I am watching the clock here, and it is hard to be funny and charming under pressure.

OH! Tigers and ARGH! India

So since you last left your hapless heroine, she has been on safari. Other than being on safari, she has been in a constant state of agitation, spending large amounts of time cursing computers and buses.

I left Varanasi by train to Jabalpur. The 13 hour ride was pretty uneventful for me. I napped, read my book, and ate. For the 10 year old boy sitting across from me, though, it was the most exciting thing that had happened to him EVER. There was a real live white person, just for him. He stared at me for 13 hours. I went to sleep, he was staring, woke up, same position, still staring. I’d give him a little wave now and then to let him know that I appreciated the attention. He’d elbow his sister every time I did something really special, like turning the page or going to the bathroom. (She was about 16 and not impressed with anything, much less me. I think it’s the age.) The real main event was dinner though. I didn’t use my chapti right when eating my daal. He almost fell off his bunk laughing. At one point another little boy came from the next compartment to watch too, but the first little boy chased him away. I was HIS white person and he didn’t want to share.

When I arrived in Jabalpur, it was late and I spent the night at a hotel that was run by a guy who definitely had the air of being the guy that knows the Guy. He offered to get me a train ticket to Udaipur when I got back from safari. It saved me the hassle of the train station, so I decided it was worth the commission, and agreed. That taken care of, I hopped on a rickshaw to go see Marble Rocks, Jabalpur’s main attraction, billed as “towering white marble cliffs and cascading waterfalls.” Right. I think that Central Park has more exciting waterfalls. My guidebook suggested giving the kids 10 rupees if they would swim the rapids, supposed to be a hoot. I gave some guy 10 rupees and he jumped in. And that was it. Hell, if I had better health insurance I would have done that.

But that’s okay, it is all part of traveling! Plus I was only 90 short miles away from Kanha National Park and tiger safari! What could go wrong? How long could it possibly take to go 90 miles? Answer : 8 hours. I almost had a meltdown. I was cursing like a sailor with toret’s for the last two hours. This was slower than Air Yako, which, for those of you who lived on the Ouaga-Ouahigouya corridor know, was routinely passed by ailing elderly African men with malaria on bicycles.

Tiger safari turned out to be a touch on the expensive side, but worth every frigging penny. Kanha was the setting for the Jungle Book, so you can imagine zipping around in a jeep through the forest and grasslands, chasing wild game. All I needed was my monocle and pith helmet and I would be all set. We saw wild peacocks, jungle dogs (which incidentally look exactly like my cousin’s pound-find Foxy. I think the mystery of what kind of dog that mutt is can be officially closed. I wouldn’t let him near any antelope though. It makes a mess.), wild boars, various hoofed things, and the main event, tigers. We saw an unprecedented 3 in a single morning, including a male cub. I got within 6 feet of the cub on the back of an elephant. Luckily Mom didn’t show up. We went back out in the afternoon, and, as my luck dictates, got caught in the first monsoon rain of the year. Flying around on the back of a jeep in the pouring rain isn’t all that much fun, but we did see two more tigers.

Back in the room, I was rewarded with, as always accompanying the first heavy rain of the year, a termite infestation. Hey guys! It’s raining! Let’s hatch! Quick! Quick! We only have a few hours to mate before our wings fall off and we become easy picking for every lizard in the park! Hurry! To the light! I heard there are chicks there! I smashed as many as I could, only to be rewarded with an infestation of black ants. I am not big on those bloody things either.

Now for today. I have had more fun at the orthodontist than today. I left the camp early in a jeep back to Jabalpur. The guy told me my train left at 12:30, so I paid $35 (more money than I spend on food in a week) to get back in time. A bumpy 4 hours later, I show up to claim my ticket. *sigh* Let me see if I can properly explain this. Instead of a 12 hour train ride to Udaipur, leaving at 12:30 in the afternoon, I got a 26 hour train ride to Jaipur, leaving at 7:30 at night. And there is a connection. The first train arrives at 9:00 am and the second leaves at 8:53 am. And I am on the waitlist for the second train. And Jaipur is 13 hours away from Udaipur. And the guy couldn’t possibly imagine why I wasn’t exactly pleased with his handiwork. So I am trapped in an industrial hellhole for the next 6 hours waiting for a train to take me to an even bigger industrial hellhole where I may or may not be able to get a train to someplace I didn’t want to go to in the first place. Gotta love India.

That’s my story. I hope all is well, and the next e-mail is really going to be boring because it will be all about me and a train/bus. Just warning you.

No wonder one horned Nepali rhinos are endangered...

Back in ol’ India. I am sitting in an internet café by the Burning Ghats on the Ganges River in Varanasi. As it comes closer to time for the 4 pm cremations, the groups of people carrying flower draped bodies to the river is increasing. They pass right by the door.

But first things first. After rafting, I got the bus the next day to Chitwan National Park in southern Nepal. The trip was only 160 kilometers, but it took 13 hours. The road through the mountains was built on what seems to me to be a seriously flawed premise. Instead of being cut into the mountain, they are kind of built onto the side. When the rains come, they wash out large chunks of the road at a rather alarming rate. Thusly, there is usually just one passable lane in each direction, leading to massive backups and frequent road rage. Reading only when stopped, I got through 125 pages of War & Peace.

When I got there I thought I would be thrifty and checked into a 75 cent room. During the 15 minutes that I stayed in that room, I counted 10 different SPECIES of spiders. The kicker was the palm sized wolf spider that thought it would be okay to take a shower with me. It was too big for me to confidently try to kill in one blow, and to just wait until it went away would certainly guarantee a sleepless night. I nodded, got dressed and moved across the path to the $1.50 room, which was cleaner and infested alternatively with geckos.

Next morning it was “jungle walk” time. This involved me, with my two guides, walking through the jungle, looking for wildlife. (They used to only require one guide, but a couple of years ago a guide was gored by an overprotective mother rhino, leaving the tourist in a lurch…) The idea is to sneak up on the animals and observe them. Unfortunately with me getting caught on every branch, briar and vine, we were about as inconspicuous as the Rose Bowl Parade. At one point we were walking through 9 foot high grass, which was filled with things aptly describes as two inch long biting horse flies having a bad day. There was a rhino walking around somewhere nearby because we hear it, but never did manage to get close enough to see it. We did, however manage to see an endangered long nosed crocodile, some monkeys, and a really big deer. Mostly running away. At top speed.

That afternoon I was a little more successful getting near some animals. First I got to play with Beauty, the town baby rhino. She was orphaned somehow (accounts differ on whether it was poachers or natural causes), and the town adopted her like a stray dog. She is the size of my sister’s Rav 4 and has the disposition of a golden retriever. When I first saw her, there was a guy sitting on her back using her as a stool for his card game. She didn’t seem to notice him. I went and petted her and took my picture with her. She didn’t really notice me either, but she did sneeze at one point so I know she was alive. When she is hungry, she apparently just walks into whatever is close by (restaurant, guide shop, book store…) and nudges things over until someone gets her some hay. Good life.

Later that afternoon I took an elephant safari to look for the endangered one-horned Nepali rhino. Man those things are dumb. You see, the elephants and the rhinos are homeboys, so the rhino don’t mind when the elephants come over, but the rhinos don’t notice the gaggle of camera toting tourists on the elephants back. We got within 6 feet of these big guys (and they are big). We saw two males, and two sets of mothers with their babies, one no bigger than a large dog. It was fun, even if we did get caught in the monsoon on the way back.

The next day began by 20 hour bus odyssey back into India and on to Varanesi. You make not believe this, but it actually got 10° hotter as I walked under the “Welcome to India” sign. I won’t bore you with rest of details, but it involved lots of me sitting on an uncomfortable bus and eating the ever popular “things fried in oil and bought on the side of the road, likely involving curry.” I spent the majority of the trip trying to get comfortable on the hard wooden bench seats. Towards the end of the trip I had so pissed off the old man in the seat in front of me, who was apparently tired of me flopping around like a sturgeon out of water, that he shouted at the occupants of a 3 man bench to move elsewhere so I could lay there and sit still for a while. I even got 2 hours of sleep.

I arrived at 4 am at the guesthouse and 5:30 found me on a boat on the Ganges, watching the activities on the ghats. Everyone had told me how dirty the water is and how there are dead babies floating everywhere in it. I can’t say I would drink it, but it wasn’t any worse than some parts of Long Island Sound. The ghats were buzzing with color and activity, people bathing, brushing their teeth, washing their clothes, being cremated. I was impressed.

I spent the rest of the morning trying to find the Golden Temple and the Gyana Vapl Mosque. I was eventually successful. I was especially interested in the Gyana Vapl Mosque because it is the one that radical Hindus want to raze. A train was firebombed and killed a few hundred people a couple years ago as part this. It didn’t look like much to me, but then again I don’t even think the Taj is impressive enough to justify wholesale slaughter.

The afternoon was spent in a nightmare of train planning. India has a lovely railway system, and no way to ever get a ticket on it. Trains are sold out weeks in advance. I got a ticket to a national park in the south, but literally every train out of there is booked for the next 3 weeks. Guess I am going to have to wing it with buses and, if it comes down to it, planes. Wish me luck! Right now, I am headed out in search of a sitar player and a decent plate of saag paneer.

I hope everyone is enjoying the start of the summer. It is 120 degrees here, and my room has no windows and a sickly ceiling fan.

Time out for : Fun with Indian Spelling!

Pick your favorite type of cuisine:

* Itayan
* Chinies
* Japanies
* Maxeca

No wonder one horned Nepali rhinos are endangered...

Back in ol’ India. I am sitting in an internet café by the Burning Ghats on the Ganges River in Varanasi. As it comes closer to time for the 4 pm cremations, the groups of people carrying flower draped bodies to the river is increasing. They pass right by the door.

But first things first. After rafting, I got the bus the next day to Chitwan National Park in southern Nepal. The trip was only 160 kilometers, but it took 13 hours. The road through the mountains was built on what seems to me to be a seriously flawed premise. Instead of being cut into the mountain, they are kind of built onto the side. When the rains come, they wash out large chunks of the road at a rather alarming rate. Thusly, there is usually just one passable lane in each direction, leading to massive backups and frequent road rage. Reading only when stopped, I got through 125 pages of War & Peace.

When I got there I thought I would be thrifty and checked into a 75 cent room. During the 15 minutes that I stayed in that room, I counted 10 different SPECIES of spiders. The kicker was the palm sized wolf spider that thought it would be okay to take a shower with me. It was too big for me to confidently try to kill in one blow, and to just wait until it went away would certainly guarantee a sleepless night. I nodded, got dressed and moved across the path to the $1.50 room, which was cleaner and infested alternatively with geckos.

Next morning it was “jungle walk” time. This involved me, with my two guides, walking through the jungle, looking for wildlife. (They used to only require one guide, but a couple of years ago a guide was gored by an overprotective mother rhino, leaving the tourist in a lurch…) The idea is to sneak up on the animals and observe them. Unfortunately with me getting caught on every branch, briar and vine, we were about as inconspicuous as the Rose Bowl Parade. At one point we were walking through 9 foot high grass, which was filled with things aptly describes as two inch long biting horse flies having a bad day. There was a rhino walking around somewhere nearby because we hear it, but never did manage to get close enough to see it. We did, however manage to see an endangered long nosed crocodile, some monkeys, and a really big deer. Mostly running away. At top speed.

That afternoon I was a little more successful getting near some animals. First I got to play with Beauty, the town baby rhino. She was orphaned somehow (accounts differ on whether it was poachers or natural causes), and the town adopted her like a stray dog. She is the size of my sister’s Rav 4 and has the disposition of a golden retriever. When I first saw her, there was a guy sitting on her back using her as a stool for his card game. She didn’t seem to notice him. I went and petted her and took my picture with her. She didn’t really notice me either, but she did sneeze at one point so I know she was alive. When she is hungry, she apparently just walks into whatever is close by (restaurant, guide shop, book store…) and nudges things over until someone gets her some hay. Good life.

Later that afternoon I took an elephant safari to look for the endangered one-horned Nepali rhino. Man those things are dumb. You see, the elephants and the rhinos are homeboys, so the rhino don’t mind when the elephants come over, but the rhinos don’t notice the gaggle of camera toting tourists on the elephants back. We got within 6 feet of these big guys (and they are big). We saw two males, and two sets of mothers with their babies, one no bigger than a large dog. It was fun, even if we did get caught in the monsoon on the way back.

The next day began by 20 hour bus odyssey back into India and on to Varanesi. You make not believe this, but it actually got 10° hotter as I walked under the “Welcome to India” sign. I won’t bore you with rest of details, but it involved lots of me sitting on an uncomfortable bus and eating the ever popular “things fried in oil and bought on the side of the road, likely involving curry.” I spent the majority of the trip trying to get comfortable on the hard wooden bench seats. Towards the end of the trip I had so pissed off the old man in the seat in front of me, who was apparently tired of me flopping around like a sturgeon out of water, that he shouted at the occupants of a 3 man bench to move elsewhere so I could lay there and sit still for a while. I even got 2 hours of sleep.

I arrived at 4 am at the guesthouse and 5:30 found me on a boat on the Ganges, watching the activities on the ghats. Everyone had told me how dirty the water is and how there are dead babies floating everywhere in it. I can’t say I would drink it, but it wasn’t any worse than some parts of Long Island Sound. The ghats were buzzing with color and activity, people bathing, brushing their teeth, washing their clothes, being cremated. I was impressed.

I spent the rest of the morning trying to find the Golden Temple and the Gyana Vapl Mosque. I was eventually successful. I was especially interested in the Gyana Vapl Mosque because it is the one that radical Hindus want to raze. A train was firebombed and killed a few hundred people a couple years ago as part this. It didn’t look like much to me, but then again I don’t even think the Taj is impressive enough to justify wholesale slaughter.

The afternoon was spent in a nightmare of train planning. India has a lovely railway system, and no way to ever get a ticket on it. Trains are sold out weeks in advance. I got a ticket to a national park in the south, but literally every train out of there is booked for the next 3 weeks. Guess I am going to have to wing it with buses and, if it comes down to it, planes. Wish me luck! Right now, I am headed out in search of a sitar player and a decent plate of saag paneer.

I hope everyone is enjoying the start of the summer. It is 120 degrees here, and my room has no windows and a sickly ceiling fan.

Time out for : Fun with Indian Spelling!

Pick your favorite type of cuisine:

* Itayan
* Chinies
* Japanies
* Maxeca

A Himelein and a Himalaya

I have always had a special affinity for the Himalayas. I think it goes back to grade school. Being that I was blessed with a name that rhymes with pretty much nothing, some of the kids took to calling me Himalaya, instead of Himelein. When I pointed out that this nickname would probably be better suited to a girl with huge breasts, my point of logic was met by annoyance among my classmates. Not to let their wit fail them, then next day I was dubbed “Hime-E-limer.” So in honor my brief childhood nickname, and because I seek out adventure wherever it may lurk, I decided to spend a week walking around the Himalayas. Despite all the complaining that may follow, the views of the white-capped mountain peaks were incredible. And I put no blame whatsoever on the mountains themselves for the altitude sickness, uncooperative stomach, head cold, blisters, aching muscles, and strike headaches that I suffered as a result of this adventure.

Day 1 (Pohkara – Jomsom – Kagbeni)

The first day I flew to Jomsom. I had to get up ridiculously early in the morning to get the flight, though when I got to the airport all I found were two bored security guards and some equally uninterested crickets. Eventually some more people trickled in and we took off. The brief 20 minute flight marked two firsts in my aviation history. One, it was the first time that I have ever flown anywhere with the intention of walking back, and, two, it was the first time that I really felt there was a distinct possibility that I might die onboard an aircraft.

The plane was a little 14 seat twin-prop jobby. There was no cockpit door and, of course, I sat in the front seat so I could watch out the windshield. The plane took off into the clouds and then, out of nowhere, huge mountains exploded closer than they had any right to be out.

[Editor’s note - in order to be classified as a mountain in Nepal, it must be taller than 5500 meters, or around 18,000 feet. That pretty much rules out most of anything in America, except Mt. McKinley and a couple of others in Alaska. Mt. Whitney in California, nope. It’s a hill. Colorado? Sorry, thanks for playing, but you’re all hills. They ain’t kidding here.]

The scariest part of the trip though was the landing. We banked sharply over one “hill” and cut in just before another to land on the “runway” (dry river bed). I felt my stomach climb up into my throat and I tried not to think of the Yeti airlines flight that had smashed into a “hill” a few days before in another part of the country doing the same maneuver. But I lived. The next step was to hire a guide-porter. (Yes, I finally got my sherpa. And would you believe those four toed bastards are unionized?) He was a sweet kid, about 20, and couldn’t speak English to save his life, but he knew the trail and agreed to carry my pack, so I was satisfied. The first day was cake, only 4.5 miles. The highlight was crossing a high suspension bridge over the section of the riverbed that wasn’t dry. It was about the half the length of a football field and about 50 feet off the ground. It was made of metal grating, heavy duty wire cable, and chain link fencing. The tops were coated in what I guess once were goats to keep you from cutting your hands. After the bridge it was only 20 minutes into the traditional Tibetan village. Traditional except for the ripped off 7-11 and “YakDonald’s.”

Day 2 (Kagbeni – Muktinath)

Oh the altitude sickness! I hiked up to Muktinath, which only took 3.5 hours, but my lungs decided to call it quits after 45 minutes. By the end I was sucking wind and sucking it hard. Even with all my inhalers, I could only walk 25 feet at a time before the spins sat me down again. My head throbbed. My fingertips were numb. Eventually I made it to the hotel, where I sat very still for an hour and a half. After a wolfing down some carbs, the guide and I took a walk up (will it never end?) to the temple complex. It was interesting enough but I was still fighting the spins. The skyline was breathtaking, but that sort of goes without saying. Back at the hotel, I found some other Americans to talk to for a while before they completely weirded me out. Now, admittedly, I am suspicious of brother-sister pairs that get along really well, but these two were special. They read Harry Potter aloud to each other and played an awkward to watch touchy-feely game of Snakes and Ladders. I had to go back to my room to lay very still again.

Let’s see, other less frightening interesting things that I passed along the way today that I am reasonably sure were not hallucinations due to oxygen depravation: caravans of donkeys carrying things tied places, all tricked out like circus ponies with mirrors and bangles and big headdresses, and men carrying stacks of 10 foot long railroad ties, secured only by a single strap across their foreheads. And, like I mentioned, it was incredibly beautiful.

Day 3 (Muktinath – Jomsom – Marpha)

I walked to Marpha, a little town with stone houses that is famous for its apple brandy. Apple paint thinner is a more appropriate description. And the walk was over 20 MILES. I don’t know if you all know this, but I am a wuss. I was hurting when I got there. And in order to numb the pain, I decided to start reading War & Peace (while I had someone else to carry my bag . . . .) The town looks like it would be cute in the high season, but most of the tourist shops had closed when I got there. I took a walk around the distillery though. You could get drunk off the fumes a full kilometer away.

Day 4 (Marpha – Tukche – Lete – Ghasa)

This was even longer than the day before. I didn’t count the miles because it would make me cry. One fun thing, though, is that as we were walking along, the guide kept asking people a question in Nepali. They would answer by tapping the back of their calf, somewhere between their knee and their ankle. I wonder what that is about, I pondered. Then we came to the river. Oh. He offered to carry me across, but as I was 4 inches taller and 20 pounds heavier, we would bother be swimming with the bilharzias if we tried that. I took off my rented boots (oh, and when you don’t own the shoes on your feet, it prompts a serious re-examining of previous economic priorities) and rolled up my pants and waded across. AGH! Who would of thought that Himalayan snow melt would be so damn COLD?!? But it was the one part of the day that my feet weren’t on fire. I had such bad blisters (again, don’t rent boots) that I limped most of the way that day. When I got to the lodge I “fixed” them. I’ll save you the gory details, but it involves a safety pin, a cigarette lighter and a lot of wincing.

Day 5 (Ghasa – Tatopani)

The walking was easier on my fixed feet. Today was uneventful, no rivers and less than 10 miles. The only fun thing was meeting the wandering mystic. He was a shoeless toothless old man with a wispy white beard, who wore a bright orange robe with a woven sash. His huge mound of gray dreadlocks were pilled on top of his head and wrapped in a lemon yellow cloth. I took his picture and gave him some cash (about 75 cents). I thought it was solely a jack the tourist thing, but he insisted my guide give him some money too (he was cheap and only gave 50 cents.) I chose wisely. The mystic told me that I would live to 85 while my guide was going to kick it at 70. That gives me complete license to live dangerously for the next 61 years. The mystic said so.

Day 6 (Tatopani – Ghorapani)

Hell. It was only 7 miles, but straight up a mountain. Pure hell. The only redeeming things that happened was successfully avoiding the Maoists in their prime stomping ground (I think that is largely because it was pouring and even Maoists have the common sense to say inside) and I saw what I believe to be a rare snow leopard. It was a little ways away and the guide didn’t think that I should chase after it to take its picture. There was a good chance that it was just a plain old mountain lion and it is not really worth being eviscerated by anything less than an endangered species.

Day 7 (Ghorapani – Nayapool)

Deliverance! Only 6 hours of walking downhill to the road, then sailing the last 35 km by bus back to Pokhara! Joy! I am getting off this MF-ing mountain. Or so I thought. It was a strike day. Which means that the Maoists allow no traffic on the roads. And I mean none. I waited by the side of the road for two hours and nothing. Not even a donkey cart or a bicycle. Nada. I asked why and found out that the Maoists just throw Molotov cocktails at your car, sometimes before, sometimes after, you get out of it if they see you on the road. I didn’t believe the guy who told me this, but he had the newspaper with pictures. And you could see the burnt-out metal shells when I did eventually get on the road.

~Brief interlude for a political message~

Now about these Maoists. Their strikes are crippling the country. Commerce is grinding to a halt and there are permanent strikes against the education and industry sectors starting this week. Also they have declared a “tourist strike” to begin on the 7th, where they will place all tourists in the country under an effective house arrests by shooting any Nepali that attempts to drive/serve/converse with them during the three day strike. (I will be making a run for the border to be in India by the time all this goes down, hopefully.) I know all this sounds crazy, but the king did dissolve the government a year and a half ago, and decided to just rule the place himself. So basically it is bunch of people shouting that their 18^th century outdated form of governance is better than the current 17^th century form of governance, and if anybody doesn’t like it, fuck them, let’s have a civil war.

~Interlude concluded ~

Today (Nayapool – Pokhara)

Today I made it back to Pokhara. I woke up at 3:45 am to hike 30 minutes to the road to split a car with some Dutch travelers I met. Of course the driver wasn’t there, but luckily we found his mom to go wake him up. The ride into Pokhara was amazingly easy, except for the fact that the back left tire almost fell off. We had to stop and remedy that situation. We even breezed through the normally difficult police checkpoint on the edge of Pokhara. I like to think this was because of the winning smile I flashed the guards, but, in reality, I think they were distracted by the homemade bomb they were trying to disable on the roadside and just waved us through.

I arrived in town at 6:15. At 6:30 I had signed up for a whitewater rafting trip that left at 7. By 7:15 I had dropped off my laundry, checked into the hotel, changed into my bathing suit, and was on the road again. The trip took for-frigging-ever because every vehicle in the country was on the road trying to get somewhere after the 3 day strike. Rafting was fun. They weren’t the biggest rapids I have ever been in, but I got to sit in the front so it made up for it. My boat had 4 little Dutch girls and a Belgian guy. We lost one of the squeakier Dutch girls over the side at one point. I considered it a prime example of Darwin’s theory in action, but the Belgian guy fished her out.

Oh, the trip back. Again I waited by the side of the road forever to get a ride. I chatted with a disgruntled Seattle tech guy in the midst of his mid 30s crisis while waiting for the bus. A bus. Any bus. Eventually a packed bus slowed to a stop. While there may have been no room in the inn, there was plenty of room on top of the inn. As I climbed to the roof and settled into the metal bars digging into my flesh, I saw the sign 109 km to Pokhara. 4 hours. Oh well. The roof was already inhabited by two Nepalis, some luggage, a kayak and two suspiciously happy German guys. I began to understand why when we stopped at a check point and one of them hopped off the roof to buy more beer. They gave me a beer and, for a while, it was one of those beautiful this-is-why-I-travel moments. Then it monsooned. It was still nice drinking beer with two crazy Germans on the roof of a Nepali bus in the Himalayas as the monsoon poured down, but it got a little cold after a while when we ran out of beer. I was happy to hit the check point back to town. Okay, that is all. Now I am completely exhausted. I have been up 20 hours and I still have to arrange a ticket out of here tomorrow. I apologize for any spelling mistakes or missed words, but I really am almost too tired to see.