We woke up today at 5:45, packed our shit up real quick like, and bit the road! Our guide told us that we could just get started and he'd catch up, so we hit the trail! One thing that was quite startling was that the trail was mostly flat, if not at a nice down grade! This was quite different then the joke our guide had made a few days earlier about a Nepalese flat: where you go down for a while then up, down then up ( course this averages out to flat after a while :p ). But this was truly flat! What a day! We made it alway down to the first main "town" with out our guide or porter catching up with us (not so slow on flat ground after all!), but even though we didn't have our guide a dog from the village we were staying at followed us the whole way to the first town. We were expecting him to stop at some point, but he would just slink along and keep us company, I named him Vincent :p. Once we got to the main town we had to wait a few minutes there for the guide, then we continued on our way, only about 30 mins more, Vincent left us to our guide at that point (guess he knew we didn't need him any more!). After a short walk longer (short compared to the 5-7 we have been doing!) we were at the main road!! After a while our ride showed up, which we beat btw! And we were on the road to pokara, in the car we got a flight that was an hour and a half earlier arranged and enjoyed the sights...while not walking :p. We killed some time at a hotel in town with internets gettin caught up on what we had missed out over the last 8 days or so and then hit the airport for our plane! The security check through our check in bag was the silliest thing ever...basically jus open then at and peer into he top layer...then root around for a sec then call it good! With a shrug we entered the waiting room to await the plane. It was the same type of little plane we flew in on and dad and I made sure to grab seats on the left side so we could view the mountains as we left. While the cloud cover was very high we were able to spot fishtale, Annapurna south, and one other peak through the clouds...they were at the same height as us :p. 20 more minutes and we were on the ground and headed towards the hotel...what a great trip!! Now to enjoy Kathmandu for a bit longer and spend the last bit of time with my pops! We fly on the same plane to Bangkok tomorrow and then I hop away to visit clay :).
I'll post more of our crazy antics as the arise!
My advice...you must go trekking in the Annapurna region if you ever get the chance!! B-E-A-utiful!!!
Thursday, September 30, 2010
Trek day 8: Last full day!!
Well this will be our last full day trekking! We had originally planed to have a four hour hike on the ninth day then drive back to pokara, but we decided to go an extra hour or two today to make it farther south and then we'll wake up early tomorrow morning and make it into town with hopes of catching a much earlier plane back to Kathmandu!
The first part of our journey today was down hill for a bit and then all the way back up to the top of chomgrong! Down and then back up...as usual! To pass the time I decided to count the steps up to the top of chomgrong...what a long ordeal!! By the time I got to the top I was at 2088 steps (this was counting things that looked like real steps not just rocks that I had to step over...so it's rough...but around 2200 steps! Wow!). Needless to say it was quite a ways up! The rest of the valley was beautiful as usual...waterfalls and the like! We continued much of the day along the river that we have been following from the source since ABC...not too often to you get to see the birth of a river...at his point much of it is whet water and flowing quite quickly!! We stopped at one waterfall area before lunch and rinsed our faces and hands in the cool mountain water and I also found a sweet egg shaped rock...it might be marble but I'm not sure. Lunch was good...the standard macaroni I've been having for the last few days...and then back down the trail for a few more hours!!
Fantastic!!! Finally we arrive at a lodge that has hot water! Well maybe not exactly hot, but warm enough! The shower was a concrete room with mold and other moss growing in it, no lights besides a window in one wall, but it was the best shower that I can remember in quite a while!! At least 7days :p. This was also a good opportunity to don some new clothes, so my sleep and travels tomorrow will be quite comfy! After he showers dad and I settled in for the night, I finished my book and he got bit laptop and other things-a-chargin. Tomorrow we have just 2.5 hours to hike out and then a hour or so ride into town! Hopefully we will be able to catch an earlier plane and get almost a full day in Kathmandu before we have to fly out! This trek has been all ups and downs and amazing views all around! Many more times then once have I had my breath taken away form the sights, but I Juliet say it will be good to get out of the mountains for a bit and rest my weary legs :p
The first part of our journey today was down hill for a bit and then all the way back up to the top of chomgrong! Down and then back up...as usual! To pass the time I decided to count the steps up to the top of chomgrong...what a long ordeal!! By the time I got to the top I was at 2088 steps (this was counting things that looked like real steps not just rocks that I had to step over...so it's rough...but around 2200 steps! Wow!). Needless to say it was quite a ways up! The rest of the valley was beautiful as usual...waterfalls and the like! We continued much of the day along the river that we have been following from the source since ABC...not too often to you get to see the birth of a river...at his point much of it is whet water and flowing quite quickly!! We stopped at one waterfall area before lunch and rinsed our faces and hands in the cool mountain water and I also found a sweet egg shaped rock...it might be marble but I'm not sure. Lunch was good...the standard macaroni I've been having for the last few days...and then back down the trail for a few more hours!!
Fantastic!!! Finally we arrive at a lodge that has hot water! Well maybe not exactly hot, but warm enough! The shower was a concrete room with mold and other moss growing in it, no lights besides a window in one wall, but it was the best shower that I can remember in quite a while!! At least 7days :p. This was also a good opportunity to don some new clothes, so my sleep and travels tomorrow will be quite comfy! After he showers dad and I settled in for the night, I finished my book and he got bit laptop and other things-a-chargin. Tomorrow we have just 2.5 hours to hike out and then a hour or so ride into town! Hopefully we will be able to catch an earlier plane and get almost a full day in Kathmandu before we have to fly out! This trek has been all ups and downs and amazing views all around! Many more times then once have I had my breath taken away form the sights, but I Juliet say it will be good to get out of the mountains for a bit and rest my weary legs :p
Trek day 7: Back down to Sinwa
Today we have a down hill stroll back to the lovely village of Sinwa. While our trip from Sinwa up to ABC took two days (1.5 really) MBC down to Sinwa would be done in one. This is mostly because much of our trip today was down hill! And after just about two days of mostly up hill this was quite a relief! Snatching our last few views of the mountains as we walked south the weather got warmer and more of the lush Oregon-esk greenery began to appear all around. It was a pleasant day and good to be going town hill. Oh did I mention that we were happy to be loosing elevation?? It was quite evident on peoples faces as we passed them on their upward trudge at how tough that part of the trail was at that point! (who would have thought there would be so much up and down in the Himalayas!!) Dad and I however were all smiles and well wishes for those upwards Trekkers! Really though it was all area we had seen in the way up, so mostly we just got to "sit" back and enjoy the scenery and stroll down hill!
Tomorrow will be our last full day of trekking and a good 6-7 hours at that!! It's been a great trip so far, but I know that i am looking forward to a shower when we get back to Kathmandu (still no hot water). And it'll be nice to stay off my feet for some time once this trek is over :p
Tomorrow will be our last full day of trekking and a good 6-7 hours at that!! It's been a great trip so far, but I know that i am looking forward to a shower when we get back to Kathmandu (still no hot water). And it'll be nice to stay off my feet for some time once this trek is over :p
Trek day 6: ABC!!!
More up today, practically all up when it wasn't flat. We had about two hours to climb up to MBC (where we sleep tonight) and then two more hours up to ABC. Lucky for our porter he only had to carry our bag up to MBC and then got to call it a day! We still had two more hours left and that last hour climb to the "top" was defiantly getting to me, the thin air making my breath come quicker and there was a chilled wind that swept through the valley. The views up were even more amazing then the past days! The valley we had been climbing up northward since Sinwa had narrowed from the start of our trek today to only about 50meters across and we were now looking straight up at the mountains looming above! Fishtale was to our right most of the day till we got to MBC and then after that point we turned west into the ABC area others came into view! What continues to amaze me is that most of our journey today was spent about the elevation of Mt. Hood and yet there were still mountains covered in green trees all around us, which then had the much larger snow covered mountains above those! As we made our last trudge from MBC to ABC we began to become surrounded but those giant mountains in all directions! It was an incredible sight to behold but none so amazing as finally making it to base camp! Annapurna base camp is located smack dab in the middle of the Annapurna mountain range with a good 5 snow caped monsters towering over head and fishtale looming in the distance back through the valley we hiked up through. I'm not sure if it was the altitude, finally being at the top, or the breath taking view, I found myself nearly laughing with joy at reaching the top! While everest may be the tallest mountain in the world I'm not sure it can top the since of wonder at being in the midst of so many giants! We climb up to a good viewing point, snapped our pictures, and settled in for a while to just gape in awe!! Not too long after we arrived the clouds rolled in with full force and socked in the mountain ranges leaving nothing but a white blanketed sky above us...at this point we decided to walk back down the the base camp proper and get some lunch...maybe the clouds would clear up and we'd get one last view!? They didn't...but we were quite content with seeing it in the first place!!! 13,550 ft was the max elevation we made (highest I've ever been, heh) and from here it would all be down hill! Relatively. We walked back Down to MBC firths night (a shame we couldn't stay up at ABC, but we have a long day tomorrow so it's better to be lower I guess!). The walk down only took half as long as the walk up and we even ran into some more Americans (one an Oregonian who lives in Eugene!!). We chatted for a bit and then wished them well on their climb to the top!! Its nice to be a little lower in elevation now...and tomorrow we start our journey back towards Kathmandu (maybe a bot shower in 3 days too!)
Trek day 5: Northward and up! (halfway)
Today we head out from Sinwa and travel north through the mountains towards ABC. This trail would continue a standard upward theme (about 3000ft gain over all). The path lead us through the valleys leading north and pretty much a straight shot towards the center of the mountain range! Dad was wearing his Oregon Ducks t-shirt and to our surprise we ran into a group of three women from Oregon! They were chanting "Oregon" with surprised looked on their faces! I'm guessing neither of is were expecting to encounter other Oregonians up here in the Himalayas!! Turns out they were from grants pass :). Another thing this valley presented was even more waterfalls! I for sure have seen more waterfalls on these last few days as I have in the rest of my life together! It is quite amazing to see them, and usually just around each bend or several right in a line! The going was mostly up as I previously stated, but it was not quite as steep as other days and at the end our guide told us that today was probably the hardest day (though I still think the endless stair/rain day on the second was the hardest!). We made it just in time to the lodge as well! While the clouds had rolled in over an hour before and kept threatening at rain it would only let out a few drops then stop...however not more then 10 minutes to finally arriving the rain came down in full force!! Just in the nick of time :p. It was very cold at this altitude, especially with he rain so we bundled up in coats and sleeping bags for a bit before a nice warm dinner! Tomorrow we will make it to base camp! Hopefully the clouds will hold till we get there for the view :p
Trek day 4: Onwards towards Sinwa
Another sung morning (thankfully). With the clouds away as they have been the last morning we were able to enjoy the nice view of the mountains now looming close by over head. After breakfast we packed our stuff and headed out. Today the journey was along mountain sides climbing down and up. The downs don bother too much, but after taking stone steps down for 15-30 mins (or more!) it can even make the ups a bit more pleasant in my eyes. For once many of the areas we were traveling to were with in sligt, only they were across from one side of the valley we were on, and so we would have to go down and then travel back up the other side! I also realized that he old saying "up hill both ways" must really refer to once you walk down to the bottom of a valley :p. Through the valleys we passed many terraced corn fields and little farms. Once we rounded towards the second valley just past mid day we stopped for lunch then journeyed on a little further to chomrong which is probably the largest "city" in the area! It is trickled down across a mountain side and it probably took a good 20-30 mins just walking down stairs from the top! From chomrong we were able to spot sinwa, but again it was across valley, thus we still had another hour and half to do...finishing with a lovely uphill! Going down through this area we spotted some of he grandest waterfalls! Falling from high in the mountains, they were split into many streams which wove their way back into the grand fall! We spotted three like this and they were a sift to behold! After finally making it up that last hill we were quite pleased to rest at our lodge! One funny thing from our trek today is that my neck got sunburnt, but only on the right side because of the direction we were walking :p. After dinner the clouds seemed to have rolled in and the rain started in full force! Glad to be inside we listened to the rain fall and even observed some lighting strikes (oddly enough the lighting was below us...can't say I've seen this while not in an airplane!). Glad that the rain missed us during the day we hopped into our sleeping bags to get some rest! Tomorrow we head north towards ABC and towards about 3000ft of elevation gain!! Tomorrow is an up day :p
Trek day 3: Poon hill and beyond!
Today we started our day at 6am headed up to poon hill (heh) which is just outside of he village where our lodge is. The climb was about a thousand feet and it presented an amazing view of the mountain range infront of us! And a view we had too! Sure there were quite a few clouds in the sky, and headed for the mountains we wanted to see, but we lucked out for quite a bit seeing each mountain over time! It was about an hour hike to he top of poon hill, and for a bit we were worried that dad wouldn't make it up to the top before the clouds covered the mountains, so he handed his camera off to me and I sprinted up the hill! By the time I reached the top I was quite winded and sweating like a fish! Much like trying to get to the top of Hendrix as fast as you can non stop...but the view was worth it! (of course the top of this hill was twice the height of timberline lodge!!) I snapped away with the camera and after a while dad and the guide caught up and I wad relieved of the camera. After enjoying the view and resting a bit we returned to the lodge and picked up some breakfast before heading out for the second part of our day which was to be 4-5 hours (plus the 2 from poon hill made a total of 6-7 today!!).
The rest of the day was very pleasant!! The sun was out...if not some times covered by clouds, but it wasn't raining! Intact it was quite warm, back to t-shirt and shorts. The climbs today were nothing compared to yesterday even if at our highest point we came within 500feet of mount hood's height! With no rain filling in the valleys we were able to enjoy the great views(not being soaked to he bone was nice too). Our journey to our next guest house took us over one mountain ridge down through a valley with at least 20 or more waterfalls and then sweeping up another valet to the other side. One place where we stopped for tea actually had a bunch tables with goods set up for sale...dad made a Joe about the Annapurna mall :p. Though I'd rather not come into the mountains to buy something from Kathmandu then carry it back :p. Still no not showers at this guest house (no showers at all actually...) but also no western toilets...good thing I'm a boy :). But for now we relax drink tea and stay warm...it seems much colder when we aren't walking, but tomorrow we will finish the greater part of the Annapurna loop and head a bit north towards ABC!
The rest of the day was very pleasant!! The sun was out...if not some times covered by clouds, but it wasn't raining! Intact it was quite warm, back to t-shirt and shorts. The climbs today were nothing compared to yesterday even if at our highest point we came within 500feet of mount hood's height! With no rain filling in the valleys we were able to enjoy the great views(not being soaked to he bone was nice too). Our journey to our next guest house took us over one mountain ridge down through a valley with at least 20 or more waterfalls and then sweeping up another valet to the other side. One place where we stopped for tea actually had a bunch tables with goods set up for sale...dad made a Joe about the Annapurna mall :p. Though I'd rather not come into the mountains to buy something from Kathmandu then carry it back :p. Still no not showers at this guest house (no showers at all actually...) but also no western toilets...good thing I'm a boy :). But for now we relax drink tea and stay warm...it seems much colder when we aren't walking, but tomorrow we will finish the greater part of the Annapurna loop and head a bit north towards ABC!
Trek day 2: Rain rain go away!
We awoke this morning bright and early for breakfast and then headed out for our first full day of trekking! In the morning light we were able to see the full extent of the two waterfalls surrounding our hotel. The sight was beautiful, and fortunately dad managed to get a few pictures before the fog rolled in. Today's trek would be mostly up! In all we traveled 5. miles and gained almost a mile in elevation! In all we were told that we traveled 3500 steps! These steps were all stone and I can't imagine how long it must have taken to pave the entire trail! My dad equated our trip to being taller then the empire state building. I'm quite certain that I have never done that many stairs all at one time, every time that I hoped to be finished with the sets of stairs they continued to climb up and up ahead of me! The only thing that made the steps worse was the rain that set in...starting not long after we left the lodge with a drizzle and picking up to a very steady pour. At first this seemed nice because it took off some of the heat of climbing, but after a few hours of this I was soaked to the bone! From this point we still had 3-4 more hours of up hill in the rain :(. By he time we stopped for lunch we were only about an hour away from out next hotel, but the rest was very welcomed and some food in me before traveling was a nice idea too! The lunch was good, noodles and tea, but I drank the tea too fast and was half frozen from my wet clothes well before we left. Because of the chill I was more then happy to tackle the up hill battle to our lodge, even with the rain coming down outside. This last hour flew by, maybe because half of it I was pushing forward at a good pace just to warm up...and also probably because I wanted to get out of my soaked clothes!
At last!! Finally to our lodge...no hot water at this one either, but there was a fire and once out of my soaked clothes and into my patron pants the though of a hot shower was even put out of my head! I wrung the water out of my socks and underwear (quite a bit o water actually!!). And wrapped myself up in my sleeping bag with my slightly soaked book to warm up more!
This first full day of trekking was kinda lame because of the rain, but mostly because all of the amazing views I knew I was missing :(. Probably could have had a similar experience in Oregon, but hopefully it'll clear tomorrow!! If so we'll wake up early to catch the sun rise over the Annapurna range...if not...a bead start in the rain to our next lodge!! Time will tell!
At last!! Finally to our lodge...no hot water at this one either, but there was a fire and once out of my soaked clothes and into my patron pants the though of a hot shower was even put out of my head! I wrung the water out of my socks and underwear (quite a bit o water actually!!). And wrapped myself up in my sleeping bag with my slightly soaked book to warm up more!
This first full day of trekking was kinda lame because of the rain, but mostly because all of the amazing views I knew I was missing :(. Probably could have had a similar experience in Oregon, but hopefully it'll clear tomorrow!! If so we'll wake up early to catch the sun rise over the Annapurna range...if not...a bead start in the rain to our next lodge!! Time will tell!
Trek day 1: Kathmandu and away!
We started the day early to go out to Durbar square before we flew out to pokara. The square was filled sry many shrines and was all a bustle because of a festival that was going to take place there later that day. The festival was for the kumari which is a living goddess for the people. This was the one day in the year where she came out of her house and was paraded around! Sadly we would miss this because we would be trekking...but the square was bumpin! From there we zipped over to the airport and got onto a small porp plane...infact it was so small that the roof only allowed me to stay bent half way over. The flight was only 20 mins, so up and down, then we hopped into a van to drive to the start of our trek! The start of point had quite a bit less pomp than I was expecting...just a bunch of food shacks along the road and a set of stairs into a village we passed through...but we were on our way!! 9 days total...and we wouldn't see a car for over a week from now...the longest I've been on any hike thing...
We had our guide with us and also a porter to carry the pack with all of the stuff my dad and I had. At first I felt bad for our porter, but then I realized that he could probably beat me up the mountain with that pack on!! While mostly up hill, it wasn't that bad and the view was amazing!! Wonderful green terraced fields along the mountain side. At one point we came across a 5 tier waterfall cascading down the area! This was going to be an amazing 9 days! After about 3-4 hours of walking we came upon the lodge we were staying over for the the night and it was much more like a hotel the I was expecting! I guess I was imaging a hut or something in the open :p. There was even a bathroom and shower...though after some testing we discovered the hit water didn't work...oh well I've gone over a week with out a shower before and hell this was a Himalayan trek!! The lodge was also nestled between two water falls is quite a magnificent location! That night we were to fall asleep to the sound of water flowing...tomorrow our first full day of trekking!
We had our guide with us and also a porter to carry the pack with all of the stuff my dad and I had. At first I felt bad for our porter, but then I realized that he could probably beat me up the mountain with that pack on!! While mostly up hill, it wasn't that bad and the view was amazing!! Wonderful green terraced fields along the mountain side. At one point we came across a 5 tier waterfall cascading down the area! This was going to be an amazing 9 days! After about 3-4 hours of walking we came upon the lodge we were staying over for the the night and it was much more like a hotel the I was expecting! I guess I was imaging a hut or something in the open :p. There was even a bathroom and shower...though after some testing we discovered the hit water didn't work...oh well I've gone over a week with out a shower before and hell this was a Himalayan trek!! The lodge was also nestled between two water falls is quite a magnificent location! That night we were to fall asleep to the sound of water flowing...tomorrow our first full day of trekking!
Nepal of bust!
Dad and I can surely say that our time in India was great/interesting, but I think both of us are very ready to be done with this country and on our way to Nepal! We booked a room in new Delhi for our last night right the airport so we would have no problems on leaving (I think we were both worried that we still might encounter some complication that would keep us in India longer). The hotel swore up and down that it had wireless Internet, but when we got there we had to switch rooms three times before we could actually get the signal! Finally settled we killed the last of our time in India. The next day we headed to the airport, quite uneventful, besides our plane being an hour late and then gladly hopped on our plane for Nepal!! Hoorah! We had escaped India with our lives and I put that at a Delhi: 2 Brad: 2 !!! I'm fine with a tie if it means getting out with my life :p
So on to Nepal! From the first minute in Nepal I knew that I liked it already! The man from the hotel who picked us up from the airport was very friendly and spoke very good English (much better then almost all the Indians I encountered!). He told us about different trekking options about things going on in the city and was just overall very helpful!!! The hotel we were staying at was off of one of the shopping streets, so close, but out of the hustle and bustle! We spent our first night browsing around the market streets and enjoying the atmosphere. My dreds brought about much attention as usual with many people trying to sell me hash and the like on the street.
Our next day we spent a good portion of the beginning of the day looking into trekking options. Due to the weather all of the flights to the closest place to everest had been canceled for the past three days and there didn't seem much chance that we would luck out and make one the next day (three days of wait lost ahead of us!!!). So we decided on an Annapurna trek! After talking to several agents we found the best deal through a guy from our hotel Nakul. He not only managed a trek that got us to ABC (Annapurna Base Camp) but also to the loop around that area to see the area around!! the other guys were only managing to ABC and back! So with our trek all planed for early the next day we found dinner and got our affairs straightened out before we headed into the mountains for 8ish days!
What an adventure this will be!
So on to Nepal! From the first minute in Nepal I knew that I liked it already! The man from the hotel who picked us up from the airport was very friendly and spoke very good English (much better then almost all the Indians I encountered!). He told us about different trekking options about things going on in the city and was just overall very helpful!!! The hotel we were staying at was off of one of the shopping streets, so close, but out of the hustle and bustle! We spent our first night browsing around the market streets and enjoying the atmosphere. My dreds brought about much attention as usual with many people trying to sell me hash and the like on the street.
Our next day we spent a good portion of the beginning of the day looking into trekking options. Due to the weather all of the flights to the closest place to everest had been canceled for the past three days and there didn't seem much chance that we would luck out and make one the next day (three days of wait lost ahead of us!!!). So we decided on an Annapurna trek! After talking to several agents we found the best deal through a guy from our hotel Nakul. He not only managed a trek that got us to ABC (Annapurna Base Camp) but also to the loop around that area to see the area around!! the other guys were only managing to ABC and back! So with our trek all planed for early the next day we found dinner and got our affairs straightened out before we headed into the mountains for 8ish days!
What an adventure this will be!
Friday, September 17, 2010
Delhi-2 Brad-0
Well seems like every time we go through Delhi something lame happens...be it our train delayed 5 hours to all my shot stolen, lucky for me we're headed back there as I write this portion of my blog to try and get me a new passport :(.
Maybe I can win one point from Delhi...in the final count they snatched my digital camera, iPad, external hard drive (thankfully almost all of my pics from the trip were backed up on dad's laptop!!), both of my harmonicas, plane tickets for the last leg of my trip, my dad's zoom lens, my favorite set of pens + journal (can't replace that one :( ), over 80 panda express fortunes, plus a few misc things here and there (the saffron I had just bought for my ma and Darlene!). On the positive side of things it turns out my ma's insurance will cover me for everything besides the journal entries and the 80 fortunes (unless I can get a shit ton of panda gift cards to cover the meals :p). We also had to cancel our trip to Varanasi because as I stated above we are headed back to Delhi. For better or worse it's Friday today, so we have today to try to get my passport and then rush it over to the Indian-what-ever place to try and get a rush on an exit visa for the new passport (cause even with a new passport I can't leave this damn country now) and this exit visa could take up to 2-3 business days...good news considering we are supposed to leave on Monday at 2pm for Nepal...I just hope that after getting mah shits stoled I have enough karma now to have this paper work shit go smooth... After we do as much as we can today we'll take our taxi back to Agra at least and finish up what we would have done today tomorrow...so really we will only miss out on Varanasi (and see more o Delhi then I wanted to :p).
On a kinda ironic note, I think it's funny that I got my passport stolen on what was my passport birthday! For those of you who might not know, my passport has said that my birthday is a month early on sept. 16th not oct. 16th :p though I guess with my passport stolen it was no longer my passport birthday...still worst fake birthday ever!!
One of the first orders of business for us in Agra was to make a police report for aiding in gettin a new passport...cause it's not like they'll ever find my shit! Once we found the tourist police station we had a very interesting meeting with the head officer. He was a very nice man and seemed only to want to please, especially after hearing how the police at the train station in Delhi didn't do shit...he seemed very disappointed in this fact and made it very clear that his duty (heh) was to serve and help us and that tourist were honored guests which made them close to gods (neat!). He had me write out the police report on some carbon paper while he dictated what I should write, at one point even complementing me at how good my English was when I added in the words he was leaving out for full sentences! I told him it was my first and only language :p! We also got complementary chai while there, which for some reason we haven't found any where else (best chai in India!! So far...). So after our chai, long conversation about duty and me writing the police report we headed out to check out the Taj Mahal!
The Taj was the one thing that kept this day from the worst day ever! Mind you we had left manali at 4pm the day before and traveling for the last 20 hours while my bag was stolen...but the Taj helped brighten up my day! I would agree that this amazing compound is one of the wonders of the world! The building was built for this emperor's third wife...the most beautiful, and is made out of her favorite marble, and is white also because of her beauty. The taj is identical on every side and the marble work is amazing! Some of the prices inside are six feet tall with very intricate parade designs which if screwed up would just have to be discarded and started over! The four towers around the main building I discovered were built slightly leaning out so in case of earthquake they would fall away from the main building causing it no damage! One thing I though funny is that there is a mosque on the left as you approach the main building, and an identical building on the right that doesn't serve a purpose, but was built to preserve the symmetry of the overall compound :p. Truly though it is a sight to see, and just walking around on the marble floors 500 years old and feeling it's smooth surface under my feet was great, apparently they used many camel trains and over a thousand elephants to bring the marble from southern India, the only place this type of marble comes from in the world! I also learned that the emperor had plans to build a second black taj across the river that's on the back side of the first for himself and connect the two with a silver bridge! This was started but then stopped when one of his sons killed off his other siblings and imprisoned his father! Too bad, cause a black and white taj would have been even more incredible! This did cheer up my day a bit...then I got the news from my ma that my stuff should be covered by insurance so my brand new camera and other stuffs wasn't lost for ever! Still a rough day, but getting better...
All we had left to take care of was get a new passport picture taken, which was difficult because the government was having rolling blackouts over the city and the power dropped out just as my pictures finished printing...in a size too small for passport pics! So after dinner we had to come back, but with pictures in hand we headed back to the hotel to try to get some rest before our 5am taxi ride to the U.S. Embassy in Delhi...I'll fill in the rest after we go through those hoops!
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Good news everyone!! I've fixed the frozen...err Great news I have a passport and an exit visa all in one day!!! Well look at me acting like one of those fancy movies or tv shows where I give away the ending then go about telling you the beginning to end...
So Delhi has horrible traffic no matter what time it is...we arrived at the boarders of the city at around 7:30am and didn't make it to the U.S. Embassy until around 10am. This was partially due to the traffic and partially due to our driver not having a clue as to where to go and not understanding us enough to go to the American embassy! This second hitch is what got us to the place we needed to go second for the exit visa...great :(. After going to the Erin place and our driver stopping about every block to ask directions we finally made it to the embassy at around 10am...still 20 mins before we would have made it to Delhi had we chose to train it in! We had all the forms and things we needed for my emergency passport ready so we got the process started quite quick at the U.S. Embassy. Still this took about 2 and a half hours, but we were able to make it to our second stop by 12:45, just 45 minutes before their lunch break! While working on the paper work we discovered I needed a photo copy of my passport, which took me 10 mins of running around asking everyone where to get one with only answers of "out" or "outside" finally I discovered I needed to go down the road and cross a busy intersection to a shop that could do it...fun! While I ran and ducked through traffic dad filled out the forms for me and by the time I came panting back into the office we were ready to turn in the papers! After going to a few desks we had our papers marked up, signed, and stapled and were directed towards "in charge" which is apparently the person in charge...and the title above him on the wall...this guy was a stern looking older gent who upon finding out that we had to fly out on Monday informed us that Monday was a holiday so if we didn't get it done today we were basically up shut creek till Tuesday (my words not his). To top this off they needed to contact Trivandrum, our port of entry, which seemed to be very hard because it's "very far." Told to come back at 5 at closing to see if it would work. While we were hoping at most to get me a new passport and get that turned in for the exit visa before going back to Agra, then hoping that we could pick up the passport before the flight on Monday...we not had hope that we could finish every thing today!!
With a bit of relief we headed over to a mall to grab a bit to eat and forget out troubles a bit! We ended up finding a very nice posh mall (fun fact: posh stands for port out starboard home, because the britts knew there were nice sea breezes on the port side going to India and on the starboard side going back home...) and found a T.G.I.Fridays!!! and what a coincidence...it's friday :p. Relaxed we had some good ol' American foods and then picked up a well deserved cinnabon for the ride home! I don't typically like malls that much, but it was quite nice to be in some place with AC and clean to take my mind off my India troubles for a minute :p. When it was close to 5 we headed back to check on the progress of the exit visa. Man can these guys pull off a nail biting reality show style finish! We sat there for about 45 mins waiting to hear the news, each moment my fears for not making the deadline, thus missing our Monday flight out to Nepal coming closer to fruition! Finally at 5 we got up and asked the intimidating in charge man if we were in luck or not. He told us that we needed to wait for the security officer to return with our paper work to know for sure...we sat back down with the officer coming back into the room jus moments later! We asked if mine went through and he shook his head and made some sort of noise that I took as a "no," my heart sinks even more the when i discovered my backpack missing, when we look back at Mr. In charge he responds with a "Yes!!!!" wooohoooo!!! We bouncy back to desk 5, she stamps and marks up my paper work a bit more and back to Mr. In charge for one last signature and many thanks to him on our part!!! We had not only gotten a new passport for me, but also the exit visa as well! That's two different forms of bureaucracy in one day!!! In India no less! Dear lord, karma has slightly worked out for me today and hasn't totally screwed the rest of my trip!! Out the door we went before they could change their minds, take my newly aquifer passport, and lock me in jail to boot (I could only think the worse you know...) and back to our car off to Agra!! Sure we had a bunch of rush hour traffic to sit through, but all dad and I could talk about was our luck with this hail marry, last second half court lob for a win of a day!!! Maybe our luck has finally turned around...
Delhi-2 Brad-1
But then again we still have to come to Delhi to fly out to Kathmandu...guess we'll see if I can even the score...and I think I'll call it a point in my favor if I can just get on the plane :p
One full day in Agra tomorrow, and we plan to take full advantage of it...for now though I think we will sleep a little more easily tonight!
Cheers!
Maybe I can win one point from Delhi...in the final count they snatched my digital camera, iPad, external hard drive (thankfully almost all of my pics from the trip were backed up on dad's laptop!!), both of my harmonicas, plane tickets for the last leg of my trip, my dad's zoom lens, my favorite set of pens + journal (can't replace that one :( ), over 80 panda express fortunes, plus a few misc things here and there (the saffron I had just bought for my ma and Darlene!). On the positive side of things it turns out my ma's insurance will cover me for everything besides the journal entries and the 80 fortunes (unless I can get a shit ton of panda gift cards to cover the meals :p). We also had to cancel our trip to Varanasi because as I stated above we are headed back to Delhi. For better or worse it's Friday today, so we have today to try to get my passport and then rush it over to the Indian-what-ever place to try and get a rush on an exit visa for the new passport (cause even with a new passport I can't leave this damn country now) and this exit visa could take up to 2-3 business days...good news considering we are supposed to leave on Monday at 2pm for Nepal...I just hope that after getting mah shits stoled I have enough karma now to have this paper work shit go smooth... After we do as much as we can today we'll take our taxi back to Agra at least and finish up what we would have done today tomorrow...so really we will only miss out on Varanasi (and see more o Delhi then I wanted to :p).
On a kinda ironic note, I think it's funny that I got my passport stolen on what was my passport birthday! For those of you who might not know, my passport has said that my birthday is a month early on sept. 16th not oct. 16th :p though I guess with my passport stolen it was no longer my passport birthday...still worst fake birthday ever!!
One of the first orders of business for us in Agra was to make a police report for aiding in gettin a new passport...cause it's not like they'll ever find my shit! Once we found the tourist police station we had a very interesting meeting with the head officer. He was a very nice man and seemed only to want to please, especially after hearing how the police at the train station in Delhi didn't do shit...he seemed very disappointed in this fact and made it very clear that his duty (heh) was to serve and help us and that tourist were honored guests which made them close to gods (neat!). He had me write out the police report on some carbon paper while he dictated what I should write, at one point even complementing me at how good my English was when I added in the words he was leaving out for full sentences! I told him it was my first and only language :p! We also got complementary chai while there, which for some reason we haven't found any where else (best chai in India!! So far...). So after our chai, long conversation about duty and me writing the police report we headed out to check out the Taj Mahal!
The Taj was the one thing that kept this day from the worst day ever! Mind you we had left manali at 4pm the day before and traveling for the last 20 hours while my bag was stolen...but the Taj helped brighten up my day! I would agree that this amazing compound is one of the wonders of the world! The building was built for this emperor's third wife...the most beautiful, and is made out of her favorite marble, and is white also because of her beauty. The taj is identical on every side and the marble work is amazing! Some of the prices inside are six feet tall with very intricate parade designs which if screwed up would just have to be discarded and started over! The four towers around the main building I discovered were built slightly leaning out so in case of earthquake they would fall away from the main building causing it no damage! One thing I though funny is that there is a mosque on the left as you approach the main building, and an identical building on the right that doesn't serve a purpose, but was built to preserve the symmetry of the overall compound :p. Truly though it is a sight to see, and just walking around on the marble floors 500 years old and feeling it's smooth surface under my feet was great, apparently they used many camel trains and over a thousand elephants to bring the marble from southern India, the only place this type of marble comes from in the world! I also learned that the emperor had plans to build a second black taj across the river that's on the back side of the first for himself and connect the two with a silver bridge! This was started but then stopped when one of his sons killed off his other siblings and imprisoned his father! Too bad, cause a black and white taj would have been even more incredible! This did cheer up my day a bit...then I got the news from my ma that my stuff should be covered by insurance so my brand new camera and other stuffs wasn't lost for ever! Still a rough day, but getting better...
All we had left to take care of was get a new passport picture taken, which was difficult because the government was having rolling blackouts over the city and the power dropped out just as my pictures finished printing...in a size too small for passport pics! So after dinner we had to come back, but with pictures in hand we headed back to the hotel to try to get some rest before our 5am taxi ride to the U.S. Embassy in Delhi...I'll fill in the rest after we go through those hoops!
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Good news everyone!! I've fixed the frozen...err Great news I have a passport and an exit visa all in one day!!! Well look at me acting like one of those fancy movies or tv shows where I give away the ending then go about telling you the beginning to end...
So Delhi has horrible traffic no matter what time it is...we arrived at the boarders of the city at around 7:30am and didn't make it to the U.S. Embassy until around 10am. This was partially due to the traffic and partially due to our driver not having a clue as to where to go and not understanding us enough to go to the American embassy! This second hitch is what got us to the place we needed to go second for the exit visa...great :(. After going to the Erin place and our driver stopping about every block to ask directions we finally made it to the embassy at around 10am...still 20 mins before we would have made it to Delhi had we chose to train it in! We had all the forms and things we needed for my emergency passport ready so we got the process started quite quick at the U.S. Embassy. Still this took about 2 and a half hours, but we were able to make it to our second stop by 12:45, just 45 minutes before their lunch break! While working on the paper work we discovered I needed a photo copy of my passport, which took me 10 mins of running around asking everyone where to get one with only answers of "out" or "outside" finally I discovered I needed to go down the road and cross a busy intersection to a shop that could do it...fun! While I ran and ducked through traffic dad filled out the forms for me and by the time I came panting back into the office we were ready to turn in the papers! After going to a few desks we had our papers marked up, signed, and stapled and were directed towards "in charge" which is apparently the person in charge...and the title above him on the wall...this guy was a stern looking older gent who upon finding out that we had to fly out on Monday informed us that Monday was a holiday so if we didn't get it done today we were basically up shut creek till Tuesday (my words not his). To top this off they needed to contact Trivandrum, our port of entry, which seemed to be very hard because it's "very far." Told to come back at 5 at closing to see if it would work. While we were hoping at most to get me a new passport and get that turned in for the exit visa before going back to Agra, then hoping that we could pick up the passport before the flight on Monday...we not had hope that we could finish every thing today!!
With a bit of relief we headed over to a mall to grab a bit to eat and forget out troubles a bit! We ended up finding a very nice posh mall (fun fact: posh stands for port out starboard home, because the britts knew there were nice sea breezes on the port side going to India and on the starboard side going back home...) and found a T.G.I.Fridays!!! and what a coincidence...it's friday :p. Relaxed we had some good ol' American foods and then picked up a well deserved cinnabon for the ride home! I don't typically like malls that much, but it was quite nice to be in some place with AC and clean to take my mind off my India troubles for a minute :p. When it was close to 5 we headed back to check on the progress of the exit visa. Man can these guys pull off a nail biting reality show style finish! We sat there for about 45 mins waiting to hear the news, each moment my fears for not making the deadline, thus missing our Monday flight out to Nepal coming closer to fruition! Finally at 5 we got up and asked the intimidating in charge man if we were in luck or not. He told us that we needed to wait for the security officer to return with our paper work to know for sure...we sat back down with the officer coming back into the room jus moments later! We asked if mine went through and he shook his head and made some sort of noise that I took as a "no," my heart sinks even more the when i discovered my backpack missing, when we look back at Mr. In charge he responds with a "Yes!!!!" wooohoooo!!! We bouncy back to desk 5, she stamps and marks up my paper work a bit more and back to Mr. In charge for one last signature and many thanks to him on our part!!! We had not only gotten a new passport for me, but also the exit visa as well! That's two different forms of bureaucracy in one day!!! In India no less! Dear lord, karma has slightly worked out for me today and hasn't totally screwed the rest of my trip!! Out the door we went before they could change their minds, take my newly aquifer passport, and lock me in jail to boot (I could only think the worse you know...) and back to our car off to Agra!! Sure we had a bunch of rush hour traffic to sit through, but all dad and I could talk about was our luck with this hail marry, last second half court lob for a win of a day!!! Maybe our luck has finally turned around...
Delhi-2 Brad-1
But then again we still have to come to Delhi to fly out to Kathmandu...guess we'll see if I can even the score...and I think I'll call it a point in my favor if I can just get on the plane :p
One full day in Agra tomorrow, and we plan to take full advantage of it...for now though I think we will sleep a little more easily tonight!
Cheers!
Thursday, September 16, 2010
Fuck!
Backpack stolen from under my feet today at Delhi train station...passport, camera, iPad + more all gone...GREAT! G fucking G! Now I might be stuck in this damn country so long I might miss most of Nepal! Worst day ever!
Sunday, September 12, 2010
Shimla crazy taxi and the Manali roller coaster!
Well no I have missed two forms of transportation on this trip. The second was our bus from shimla to manali. Our bus was to leave at 8:30 am and we were told that the station was only a 10 minute walk from our hotel (told a 2 minute walk the night before >< ) and we discovered the hard way that it was quite more then that! By the time we got to the wrong bus station it was already 8:30!! So we jumped into the nearest taxi with all haste and speed off to the other bus staion! The taxi driver seemed to think that our bus was gone, so he speed off along the path to catch it!! After about 15 minutes of zipping through winding curves and narrow passes we finally caught up with a manali bus!!! Not ours of course! What had actually happened is we had some where passes our bus, very good driving...much like that game crazy taxi :p. After about a 15 minute watt our "bus" more like a passenger van pulls around the corner and we flag it down and hop in :).
This is where the manali roller coaster began, because soon after the road went to hell and we were bumping and bouncing all over! Mind you this was a 10 hour bus ride (well 9:30 for us once we were actually on the bus!). But man have I never imagined gaining so much air time while in a van! A few times I was close to hitting my head on the roof and it was a quite tall roof at that! None the less the scenery around was beautiful and the bumping was something that I was able to handle after a while...sort of rode them out like on a horse...or a camel as my dad would say from time to time "we could be riding camels now!" which was the other option besides coming up to manali! After the long ride we finally arrived in manali, and what a sight to see!! In fact it looks much like Oregon if you only look at the trees, breath taking!
Not much besides dinner was had our first night because we were a bit tired and it was already later on in the evening when we arrived. The next day we slept inca bit (whoohoo, got my own room again with big bed and comfy soft blanket!!) and hit up a coffee shop for bfast! After that we gathered our gear and walked up towards a temple in the forest that was made in the 1500's. The walk was night through the woods, all be it up hill. And the temple was small but serene, standing in the middle of large trees and completely made of wood besides a metal umbrella at the top! Not to mention that it was close to 500 years old...and wood! W also walked around in a nice forest preserve near the temple for a while the reminded me a lot of walking around at Hendrix park in Eugene :). After that we stopped at a nice italian restaurant for some really good pizza and a good slave of tiara misu (well good for India at least :p). After that we walked out to old manali, this walk was a bit farther...up hill mostly too, but still not too bad because the temperature here isn't that bad. On our way up we stopped at a place to get information of a canyoning trip we hope to do in the next few days, and then explored old manali a bit. They have one area where a natural hot springs comes in and they have bath houses and the like in the area...seems cool (or hot I guess!). We also stopped at a cafe where my hunt for a mango lasi finally ended! Nom nom nom, but maybe still not as good as mango milkshakes from Bali :p. After a bit of walking around there we made the trek back to our part of town, checking out beautiful waterfalls along the way and stopping by the river too! It's been a grand first day in manali and tomorrow we will probably go up to rohtang pass about 50km from here which is at a elevation of about 14,000 ft! Enjoy the pics and more to come :)
Kalka to shimla toy train...
500 year old forest temple!
Come on...don't destroy your mother!
Kinda looks like hendrix park yeah?
River!
This is where the manali roller coaster began, because soon after the road went to hell and we were bumping and bouncing all over! Mind you this was a 10 hour bus ride (well 9:30 for us once we were actually on the bus!). But man have I never imagined gaining so much air time while in a van! A few times I was close to hitting my head on the roof and it was a quite tall roof at that! None the less the scenery around was beautiful and the bumping was something that I was able to handle after a while...sort of rode them out like on a horse...or a camel as my dad would say from time to time "we could be riding camels now!" which was the other option besides coming up to manali! After the long ride we finally arrived in manali, and what a sight to see!! In fact it looks much like Oregon if you only look at the trees, breath taking!
Not much besides dinner was had our first night because we were a bit tired and it was already later on in the evening when we arrived. The next day we slept inca bit (whoohoo, got my own room again with big bed and comfy soft blanket!!) and hit up a coffee shop for bfast! After that we gathered our gear and walked up towards a temple in the forest that was made in the 1500's. The walk was night through the woods, all be it up hill. And the temple was small but serene, standing in the middle of large trees and completely made of wood besides a metal umbrella at the top! Not to mention that it was close to 500 years old...and wood! W also walked around in a nice forest preserve near the temple for a while the reminded me a lot of walking around at Hendrix park in Eugene :). After that we stopped at a nice italian restaurant for some really good pizza and a good slave of tiara misu (well good for India at least :p). After that we walked out to old manali, this walk was a bit farther...up hill mostly too, but still not too bad because the temperature here isn't that bad. On our way up we stopped at a place to get information of a canyoning trip we hope to do in the next few days, and then explored old manali a bit. They have one area where a natural hot springs comes in and they have bath houses and the like in the area...seems cool (or hot I guess!). We also stopped at a cafe where my hunt for a mango lasi finally ended! Nom nom nom, but maybe still not as good as mango milkshakes from Bali :p. After a bit of walking around there we made the trek back to our part of town, checking out beautiful waterfalls along the way and stopping by the river too! It's been a grand first day in manali and tomorrow we will probably go up to rohtang pass about 50km from here which is at a elevation of about 14,000 ft! Enjoy the pics and more to come :)
Kalka to shimla toy train...
500 year old forest temple!
Come on...don't destroy your mother!
Kinda looks like hendrix park yeah?
River!
Friday, September 10, 2010
On the subject of monkeys and trash.
The title of this post might be slightly deceiving...but these are two things that didn't really fit into any one post (most posts actually :p) so I decided to give them a little spot light...
Monkeys: who doesn't like monkeys? I've always loved them at the zoo's ive been to and they just fascinate me. One thing I really like about Simla and some of the other places that vie been to in India and Sri Lanka is that there are wild monkeys every where!! Maybe not in every locale and not as many in some areas, but seeing monkeys just roaming about un noticed by the locals, much like we wouldn't pay much attention to a cat in the street, is just awesome to me :). I've probably seen about 100 monkeys just going about their business today since arriving in Simla and a good 5 or so have been from my hotel window...just monkeying around :)
Trash: India is dirty...much of it any way...now don't get me wrong, vie been to many dirty countries and I don't really care that much. But these people just throw trash out all over the streets...and every where! I've been taught to never litter and I think I do a very good job of that, but here it's just crazy! On the toy train ride today through some of the most beautiful country sides I've seen...people just throw their trash out that fucking window! It's awful!! I mean...how can you feel proud of yourself when every action like that just goes to ruin all of the beauty around? It really is quite sad to me :( and it really grinds my gears!
And that are my two rupees on monkeys and trash...
Monkeys: who doesn't like monkeys? I've always loved them at the zoo's ive been to and they just fascinate me. One thing I really like about Simla and some of the other places that vie been to in India and Sri Lanka is that there are wild monkeys every where!! Maybe not in every locale and not as many in some areas, but seeing monkeys just roaming about un noticed by the locals, much like we wouldn't pay much attention to a cat in the street, is just awesome to me :). I've probably seen about 100 monkeys just going about their business today since arriving in Simla and a good 5 or so have been from my hotel window...just monkeying around :)
Trash: India is dirty...much of it any way...now don't get me wrong, vie been to many dirty countries and I don't really care that much. But these people just throw trash out all over the streets...and every where! I've been taught to never litter and I think I do a very good job of that, but here it's just crazy! On the toy train ride today through some of the most beautiful country sides I've seen...people just throw their trash out that fucking window! It's awful!! I mean...how can you feel proud of yourself when every action like that just goes to ruin all of the beauty around? It really is quite sad to me :( and it really grinds my gears!
And that are my two rupees on monkeys and trash...
A day of tale and a toy train too!
We took to the streets for our last day in Jaipur. While much of this day would be a travel day we knew that we had some time for exploration! Most of this was done through the old city (it's all pink and white!!!). On our way into the old city we stopped by Lasi walla (where walla translates to trader roughly, so Lasi trader!). This lasi stand had been in business since the 40's and was well known...in fact there were three other Lasi stands right next to it, some with the name Lasi walla even! They serve their lasi in terra cotta cones...the locals, after finishing their lasi just throw their cone on the ground and smash it! We decided to keep ours, though it mitt be smashed in the luggage already :p. While not mango, the lasi was very tasty and I haven't always been the biggest fan of the plain yogurt taste!
Any how...we walked with our lasi down through the old city. Mostly we just passed through street after street of vendors peddling wares from fruit and other foods to clothes and jewelry. Almost everything you can think of...besides electronics :p. The day was hot too! While we would have liked the sun and blue sky when at amber fort...we got clouds...then the sun the next day in town with nothing that we needed sun for to take pictures of, figures! The heat drove us to find some sort of cover, in the form of lunch! Very nice. After lunch we headed back to the hotel to gather our nags and head to the airport...much travel was about to begin.
We had a flight to new delhi, from there we had to make it to the train station for a train bound for Kalka. From there we hopped on a different train for Simla (also spelled shimla in places). The flight went off with out a hitch, however we were less lucky with our train to Kalka. This was an over night train that was supposed to arrive in kalka at 5am, and then we were to hop on the next train for Simla straight away from there. Sadly our train was about 4 and a half hours late into Delhi!! Every so often there would be an announcement saying that our train was 2 then 3 then 4...up to 5 hours late! We assumed that we would have no chance of making our connecting train to Simla, and maybe not even the next one out at noon the next day! Wh
Ile this though wasn't a very nice one...it was getting late and even getting on our first train would feel great! We could figure everything else out once we were in kalka! Finally at 2am our train arrived and we were able to board...an hour later we were sound asleep. Lucky for us our connecting train from kalka to Simla was more of a direct connection then we imagined, because most of the people on the second train must have been on our first train from delhi because the Simla train was held up by about 3 hours for us to show up!! Providence!! This last part of our journey, which would take us almost 24 hours of travel was on a toy train...no not a small train for children, but a train that was smaller and ran on meter wide tracks! It was a cute little thing, and it went back and fourth through the mountains, up switchbacks, through over 100 tunnels and quite a few bridges to boot! The mountain air was cool and refreshing, and the view was amazing! I've never been in a place that I could see pine trees and palm trees next to one another...also several types of cactus O.o!! Amazing valleys and mountains...terraced lands...some growing corn? Never seen corn terraces in my life :p. Along the way there were also many villages built on steep mountainsides, much like Simla is. After 5 hours we arrived at the train station...snagged a taxi and rode to the base of the hill that our hotel is on. The taxi couldn't take us to the entrance, because the entrance was after a shit ton of stairs up! There are no roads behind this place, so our only option is to climb, climb, climb!! Ojce finally at the top we ran into an interesting problem with our room. While we had reserved a room with 2 beds... Got a room with a double bed..."no, not one bed, two" we would tell the desk guy...and he would just repeat "yes, double" seems like we had a communication barrier...eventually we discovered that they only had rooms with one large bed...so we went about the long process of trying to get another room and figure out the price...after talking to his manager on the phone we ended up getting the second room for less than the first...kinda worked out. But man is the view amazing from the room!! This is one such example...
This is a HRD that my dad took out our hotel window...SWEET!
On our way to find some place to eat (I was starving too, with only one proper meal in the last day or so!) we walked along mall road, which most of it is nice shops and all closed off to the dangers of cats and motor bikes. One of the first shops we recognized was cafe coffee day, oh joy! Would make a tasty desert. We wondered around until our stomaches got the best of us and headed into a Indian/Chinese restaurant, ordered up a bunch of Chinese food and preceded to stuff our faces! We sat on an outdoor area overlooking one part of the valley and mountains in the distance and enjoyed the rolling fog and clouds (our elevation is higher then government camp on mt hood, so really we were higher then many of the clouds) while we ate our dinner. After leaving the beautiful scenery behind we purchased some snacks for our 10 hour bus ride tomorrow and headed back to the hotel for some much needed sleep!! A long day, but very nice over all, and Simla is a beautiful city with very nice people (no one bugged us to buy shit we didn't want or hassle us in any way) and also very clean!! Now it's time for a long awaited sleep :). More from manali!!
Me hanging out the window of the toy train
this is a public urinal in Jaipur (super public if you ask me!)
Any how...we walked with our lasi down through the old city. Mostly we just passed through street after street of vendors peddling wares from fruit and other foods to clothes and jewelry. Almost everything you can think of...besides electronics :p. The day was hot too! While we would have liked the sun and blue sky when at amber fort...we got clouds...then the sun the next day in town with nothing that we needed sun for to take pictures of, figures! The heat drove us to find some sort of cover, in the form of lunch! Very nice. After lunch we headed back to the hotel to gather our nags and head to the airport...much travel was about to begin.
We had a flight to new delhi, from there we had to make it to the train station for a train bound for Kalka. From there we hopped on a different train for Simla (also spelled shimla in places). The flight went off with out a hitch, however we were less lucky with our train to Kalka. This was an over night train that was supposed to arrive in kalka at 5am, and then we were to hop on the next train for Simla straight away from there. Sadly our train was about 4 and a half hours late into Delhi!! Every so often there would be an announcement saying that our train was 2 then 3 then 4...up to 5 hours late! We assumed that we would have no chance of making our connecting train to Simla, and maybe not even the next one out at noon the next day! Wh
Ile this though wasn't a very nice one...it was getting late and even getting on our first train would feel great! We could figure everything else out once we were in kalka! Finally at 2am our train arrived and we were able to board...an hour later we were sound asleep. Lucky for us our connecting train from kalka to Simla was more of a direct connection then we imagined, because most of the people on the second train must have been on our first train from delhi because the Simla train was held up by about 3 hours for us to show up!! Providence!! This last part of our journey, which would take us almost 24 hours of travel was on a toy train...no not a small train for children, but a train that was smaller and ran on meter wide tracks! It was a cute little thing, and it went back and fourth through the mountains, up switchbacks, through over 100 tunnels and quite a few bridges to boot! The mountain air was cool and refreshing, and the view was amazing! I've never been in a place that I could see pine trees and palm trees next to one another...also several types of cactus O.o!! Amazing valleys and mountains...terraced lands...some growing corn? Never seen corn terraces in my life :p. Along the way there were also many villages built on steep mountainsides, much like Simla is. After 5 hours we arrived at the train station...snagged a taxi and rode to the base of the hill that our hotel is on. The taxi couldn't take us to the entrance, because the entrance was after a shit ton of stairs up! There are no roads behind this place, so our only option is to climb, climb, climb!! Ojce finally at the top we ran into an interesting problem with our room. While we had reserved a room with 2 beds... Got a room with a double bed..."no, not one bed, two" we would tell the desk guy...and he would just repeat "yes, double" seems like we had a communication barrier...eventually we discovered that they only had rooms with one large bed...so we went about the long process of trying to get another room and figure out the price...after talking to his manager on the phone we ended up getting the second room for less than the first...kinda worked out. But man is the view amazing from the room!! This is one such example...
This is a HRD that my dad took out our hotel window...SWEET!
On our way to find some place to eat (I was starving too, with only one proper meal in the last day or so!) we walked along mall road, which most of it is nice shops and all closed off to the dangers of cats and motor bikes. One of the first shops we recognized was cafe coffee day, oh joy! Would make a tasty desert. We wondered around until our stomaches got the best of us and headed into a Indian/Chinese restaurant, ordered up a bunch of Chinese food and preceded to stuff our faces! We sat on an outdoor area overlooking one part of the valley and mountains in the distance and enjoyed the rolling fog and clouds (our elevation is higher then government camp on mt hood, so really we were higher then many of the clouds) while we ate our dinner. After leaving the beautiful scenery behind we purchased some snacks for our 10 hour bus ride tomorrow and headed back to the hotel for some much needed sleep!! A long day, but very nice over all, and Simla is a beautiful city with very nice people (no one bugged us to buy shit we didn't want or hassle us in any way) and also very clean!! Now it's time for a long awaited sleep :). More from manali!!
Me hanging out the window of the toy train
this is a public urinal in Jaipur (super public if you ask me!)
Wednesday, September 8, 2010
Jaipur: Cows, Camels, and Elephants oh my!
Jaipur is know as the pink city because the old city was all painted pink many years ago for the kings visit, it's been that way since! Our driver took us to two places today. The amber fort, which is a palace fort in the mountains behind the city and later the city palace. While cows walking around in the streets has become a very common sight on this trip, we noticed two different animals that are not so common in a city...camels and elephants? Not to mention there's monkeys jumping around on roof tops in the old city! What an interesting city this is :). The fort was amazing, large walls off in the distance all around and beautiful marble carvings and paintings. We even found a cafe coffee day on the way out of the fort!! These places pop up in the strangest places...but dad and I were happy for a cool and tasty break :p. After the coffee break we found a cobra charmer that I got to get a few pics and some vid with!! Check for a separate post...had tech difficulties in this one >< I'll have to post a bunch of pics on my photo bucket page, but here are a few.
Long Shot of the Palace
Walls in the distance
I liked this shot of the palace with the crossing stairs...
Elephant! They were used to carry the lazy tourists to the top of the fort...
Camels?
We also went to the royal palace here...though I didn't take any pics, my dad got a few...one of the neatest thing there...in my opinion was the weapons museum. They had a large collection of guns, swords and the like! Large guns that were mounted on elephants and camels (more like cannons!) And my favorite, katars! There was even a katar thAt had two small pistols attached to it! Super cool! They also have the worlds largest silver objects two giant silver vase that were made when the king of Jaipur traveled to england in 1902 for holding water from the Ganges river (holy water for bathing with every day why away from home). The vase both come to 5 feet 3 inches and each hold about 900 gallons of water!! After leaving the palace we crossed the street to a really neat outdoor observatory with many intestine astronomical apparatus, very advanced for being built between 1728-1734. One of which is the worlds largest sun dial!! Sadly there was no sun while we were there...infect after a while it started to rain, so we headed out on foot throughout the old city. Tons of shops along the street and very interesting sights, we were looking for a special lasi place to finally get a mango lasi, but sadly we had no clue where we were, let alone where the lasi place was, so we eventually headed back to the hotel to rest up a bit before heading out to dinner. We went to a great dinner place...but ater dinner dad had spoted an ice cream place just next door...Mango Sunday??? YES PLEASE!!! What a great day...tomorrow is our last day in Jaipur, but we've got til like 2pm before we need to head to the airport so explore a bit more we shall!
More on down the road :)
Long Shot of the Palace
Walls in the distance
I liked this shot of the palace with the crossing stairs...
Elephant! They were used to carry the lazy tourists to the top of the fort...
Camels?
We also went to the royal palace here...though I didn't take any pics, my dad got a few...one of the neatest thing there...in my opinion was the weapons museum. They had a large collection of guns, swords and the like! Large guns that were mounted on elephants and camels (more like cannons!) And my favorite, katars! There was even a katar thAt had two small pistols attached to it! Super cool! They also have the worlds largest silver objects two giant silver vase that were made when the king of Jaipur traveled to england in 1902 for holding water from the Ganges river (holy water for bathing with every day why away from home). The vase both come to 5 feet 3 inches and each hold about 900 gallons of water!! After leaving the palace we crossed the street to a really neat outdoor observatory with many intestine astronomical apparatus, very advanced for being built between 1728-1734. One of which is the worlds largest sun dial!! Sadly there was no sun while we were there...infect after a while it started to rain, so we headed out on foot throughout the old city. Tons of shops along the street and very interesting sights, we were looking for a special lasi place to finally get a mango lasi, but sadly we had no clue where we were, let alone where the lasi place was, so we eventually headed back to the hotel to rest up a bit before heading out to dinner. We went to a great dinner place...but ater dinner dad had spoted an ice cream place just next door...Mango Sunday??? YES PLEASE!!! What a great day...tomorrow is our last day in Jaipur, but we've got til like 2pm before we need to head to the airport so explore a bit more we shall!
More on down the road :)
Goa, going, gone!!!
Yes that's right folks, our relaxing time of fun in the sun in goa has come to an end. Only it wasn't ever that sunny... Goa was a nice week, if not really that eventful. I mentioned in my last blog post that it is currently the off season in Goa, so most of everything that isn't big enough to get traffic from the locals was closed and tarped up (to my surprise I've seen more blue tarps this summer then last summer in alaska's tarp village O.o). Part of the reason for the western hordes not being around at this time is because of the numerous rain showers still happening at this time of the year! While, as an Oregonian, I didn't let this bother me too much, it did hamper our activities a bit. A few of the places we would have voyaged to were either closed for the season, impossible to get to because of rained out roads or just not worth seeing when it was pouring down rain non stop. So in very relaxing fashion we...relaxed! We found a nice coffee shop called cafe coffee day, where we could get a tasty chocolate type cold coffee drink. We spent a bit of time in the pool each day (one of which while it poured buckets for about 30 minutes and almost over flowed the pool!) And then journeyed out to different restaurants in the area every night. On Saturday and Sunday we had the "pleasure" of experiencing the local night life at dinner with come good ol' fashioned karaoke! Sadly this was not the same as the nori bangs in Korea with the personal rooms...this was just the guy in charge of the karaoke singing what ever song that he wished to sing...if I ever hear "hello" by Lionel Richie again it'll be far too soon! (got that one sat and sun ><) dad put it bet saying that it was a classic karaoke song...which is to say a really shitty song :p. Since we were only a 10 minute walk to either of the towns near by we didn't ever use a taxi, just hoofed it where ever we were going, but boy are those drivers persistent!! My favorite was when we were seconds away from entering the restaurant we were headed to when someone would call out "taxi!?" ha!!
Dads been working on a nudibranch identification app for the apple app store while we've been on this trip and he managed a bunch of work time on that during our Goa down time...seems like he's nearing the finish line on that one, which is good for him...vacation and getting something accomplished!! This makes me feel like a lazy bum (which I don't mind too much) but I decided that it would be nice to have something to do in my spare time and travel times (besides doodle jump and peggle) so I hoped on the iBook store and bought the first book in the wheel of time sage by Robert Jordan. While i've read the first 10 books already I decided that with the finale coming up in a year or so that I'd start on a re read to catch my self back up on everything from the first 10 books before going on :). It's been really nice reading it on my iPad (nicer then I though it would be!) it's just a pain when your book's batteries die...or when the flight attendant on a plane as me to turn off my book :(.
When our stay in Goa was up we headed out from our constantly renovated hotel and hit up the airport bound first for Mumbai and then on to Jaipur! One funny note while passing through security at the Goa airport was when I forgot to empty my water bottle...the woman opened it up, smelled it, and then asked me to drink some! Seems like if I was up to something devious I'd just have to be willing to drink a bit :p or just pretend, heh!
Any how our journey was mostly uneventful. We found a cafe coffee day at the Mumbai airport and killed some time there...tasty! Once we arrived in Jaipur a man with am really sweet beard (the kind that has really thick parts on the chin and shaved in the middle) picked us up and drove us the the hotel. The town seemed alive and bustling, much more so then any other town in India so far. Can't wait for tomorrow to get out and check out the amber fort and the Jaipur royal palace!
Dads been working on a nudibranch identification app for the apple app store while we've been on this trip and he managed a bunch of work time on that during our Goa down time...seems like he's nearing the finish line on that one, which is good for him...vacation and getting something accomplished!! This makes me feel like a lazy bum (which I don't mind too much) but I decided that it would be nice to have something to do in my spare time and travel times (besides doodle jump and peggle) so I hoped on the iBook store and bought the first book in the wheel of time sage by Robert Jordan. While i've read the first 10 books already I decided that with the finale coming up in a year or so that I'd start on a re read to catch my self back up on everything from the first 10 books before going on :). It's been really nice reading it on my iPad (nicer then I though it would be!) it's just a pain when your book's batteries die...or when the flight attendant on a plane as me to turn off my book :(.
When our stay in Goa was up we headed out from our constantly renovated hotel and hit up the airport bound first for Mumbai and then on to Jaipur! One funny note while passing through security at the Goa airport was when I forgot to empty my water bottle...the woman opened it up, smelled it, and then asked me to drink some! Seems like if I was up to something devious I'd just have to be willing to drink a bit :p or just pretend, heh!
Any how our journey was mostly uneventful. We found a cafe coffee day at the Mumbai airport and killed some time there...tasty! Once we arrived in Jaipur a man with am really sweet beard (the kind that has really thick parts on the chin and shaved in the middle) picked us up and drove us the the hotel. The town seemed alive and bustling, much more so then any other town in India so far. Can't wait for tomorrow to get out and check out the amber fort and the Jaipur royal palace!
Tuesday, August 31, 2010
India! Dot, not feather.
We have been in India for two days now (few Internet options so I'm writing this all up at once and am posting it when in Goa). We started out very early morning in Sri Lanka (4:30am I believe). Our flight brought us into Trivandrum India on the southern most tip of the country. We didn't have very long in Trivandrum because we were catching a train for Kochi later that afternoon. With that being the case we hopped on my favorite form of transportation, the Tuk Tuk, and raced off to the train station to check in our train's status. From there we walked across the street to this really cool coffee shop that dad had read about in a guide book...think the leaning tower of pisa, bot smaller and made of brick. As you enter you walk upwards in a spiral with booths along the outside wall. It seemed to be the rush hour in there so we ended up spiraling upwards for what seemed to be much of the tower! Finally finding an open booth we tossed our bags in and ordered two cold coffees and two bottles of water. I also scoured the menu for anything familiar because we had not eaten breakfast and it was getting close to noon! (normally I'd only eat this late because I just woke up then O.o ) after finding nothing besides omelets and toast that I was familiar with I decided to be brave and order something called Bombay toast!!! You know what they call Bombay toast in America?? French toast!! Oh dear, and here I was worried I get some strange curry or something :p it was very tasty though, so my hat's off to the cooks in Bombay know what they are doing!!
After food and drinks we had killed enough time so we headed back to the train station and prepped for our train to Kochi. The rail system in India (from what I've seen so far at least) is farm more extensive then anything we have in the US, maybe because most people in the US fly now, but still! They have about seven different classes of train cars on e rail line that we are using mostly. First class, second class AC, second-class three tier (sleepers), sleeper class (which I don't think the is really room for sleeping, baggage...and a few more on down the line. So far we've had two second class AC sleeper cars. Our train from Trivandrum to Kochi we had two of the side sleeper seats. They are on the side of the train by a window in a sort of bunk bed style. The top bed we piled up with our luggage and the bottom bed can fold up into two chairs facing each other. We kept it on this set up because we didn't need to sleep (it was mid day after all! Plus our train ride was only 4 hours!). The train ride was nice, getting to see the country side and small villages on our way north.
When we arrived in Kochi we hopped into a jumbo Tuk Tuk (much larger then others I'd been in so far...and faster too!) and speed off to our hotel to drop off our gear. We explored around town a bit on foot, but it was late, so many of the shops were already closed. We found a neat looking chines restaurant and decided to give it a try (dad is really trying to stay away from the Indian food as long as he can...good luck with that one!). The food was great though! Fresh prawns, hot and sour soup and pork fried rice...nom nom! After dinner we headed back to the hotel for some sleep, the next day we would be leaving town, but later on so we were going to check out some forts and try to get a sim card for our wireless Internet card.
The next day I felt right at home...yup it was raining!! This basically spoiled any plans to see some of the forts in the area because we were going to have to take the fairy over to some near by islands where the forts were located...so we spent much of the day, in vain, trying to get a sim card for the internets! Pretty much every place that we went to for a sim told us some other place that we needed to go to to get what we needed. After mot too long it seemed that were on a wild goose chase! We finally found a smaller office for BSNL the large government run cell carrier which we wanted to get a sim from, but they informed us that we needed to go to the main office which happened to be much closer to our hotel then we currently were...great! So back track we did to the main office only to find out that they wanted a reference from India...cause I know sooooo many people from India! Grah! No luck there, the though now is to try when we are up in Goa...
The other exciting note for the day was our train tickets from Kochi to Goa...we were both wait listed! Oh yes, we were waiting for an over night train to Foa that we didn't even really have tickets for!! We had to keep checking back at the train station to see if we had cleared for our tickets...finally about three hours before our train was to leave we cleared!!! Wait...actually only one ticket cleared (something dad had joked about earlier...not so funny now!! :( ). The train people told us that the best thing to do was just get on the train and see if we could share one berth (seat). Great! While on the ride up to Kochi, only 4 hours, we had sat in the same berth with the bed up and two chairs facing each other...we had our bags stored up in the other berth! Now for the over nigh we might be stuck with all of our bags AND both of us stuck in one berth...fun :p.
So at the railways advice we hopped on the train, managed to push and pack most of our baggage under the seats and at our feet (and on our laps!) and settled in for what might be a really long ride! Finally when the conductor came around he looked at his book, flipped through some pages and got be a seat in the compartment over on the top! Providence! While not together at least we would have a bit more room! So I moved some stuff over to my bed and then we set up my ipad against the window, closed off our sleeping curtain and watched the new Star Trek movie on the ol' iPad-aroo! Quite a good movie screening and a nice time killer before bed time! After the movie finished I popped over to my top bunk and settled in for a "good" nights sleep :p (could have been worse, least I could lay down!).
So our train arrived at our station and we piled out...nice to be off a train for a while! We hopped into a pre-paid taxi that looked like a mini double slug bug and zipped off towards our hotel. When we arrived we started to notice that the busy season here in Goa is far from started. Our hotel, and most of everything else around here, seems to be in a state of renovation. It seems that November to the new year is their busier season here so much of every thing is either being repaired and spruced up, or is just trapped over and waiting for the season to begin again! This did have a positive effect however for our rooms because, even though my dad and I have individual rooms for this week here, they upgraded us both to rooms with large beds and more space!!! Wooo, living it large for the next week! Next we decided to head down to the beach...check out the waves and such (more surfing for Bradley Fish??). When on the beach we discovered some weird black lines of crud washing up on the shore...not know what this was we walked along the water for a bit before we noticed that it was depositing some weird oily substance on our feet :( from here on out we tried to avoid this area! We explored two different beach front areas, and while one of them seemed to have a few bars/restaurants open for the most part much of the beach front areas were also trapped up! Bummer...did I mention the two squalls of driving rain that hit us while on our journey up the beach?? Good thing we had just come from the pool and were wearing dirty shirts and swim suits :p. After our beach adventure we rested up a bit before heading into town for some din din! We found a nice Italian place, mainly because we were going to walk farther, but another rain squall hot with out us wearing swim suits, so we ducked inside for dinner. One really interesting sight I caught a bit of video of on my phone was a herd of cows walking down the street with sheets of rain pouring down...silly holy cows! After dinner we headed back to the hotel for a nice sleep in beds! Yay!
Our second day so far in Goa has been about as eventful as walking into town and finally working out a way to get a wireless Internet card for dad's laptop. Which is actually a bit harder then you would think, but after bouncing back and forth from shop to shop we finally came to one place that told us that they couldn't sell us the sim we needed in India and that we needed to buy on here...great! While this might have been a ploy to get us to buy the hardware too we decided to cut out losses and just go with it! And now we have the internets! Sure we only have a 3gb per month card, but that should do for email and blog posts and the like...guess I'll just have to catch up on all my web omits when I get a free wireless connection :p. Any how...here we are now...Internets again and ready to explore!! More to come...stay tuned :)
After food and drinks we had killed enough time so we headed back to the train station and prepped for our train to Kochi. The rail system in India (from what I've seen so far at least) is farm more extensive then anything we have in the US, maybe because most people in the US fly now, but still! They have about seven different classes of train cars on e rail line that we are using mostly. First class, second class AC, second-class three tier (sleepers), sleeper class (which I don't think the is really room for sleeping, baggage...and a few more on down the line. So far we've had two second class AC sleeper cars. Our train from Trivandrum to Kochi we had two of the side sleeper seats. They are on the side of the train by a window in a sort of bunk bed style. The top bed we piled up with our luggage and the bottom bed can fold up into two chairs facing each other. We kept it on this set up because we didn't need to sleep (it was mid day after all! Plus our train ride was only 4 hours!). The train ride was nice, getting to see the country side and small villages on our way north.
When we arrived in Kochi we hopped into a jumbo Tuk Tuk (much larger then others I'd been in so far...and faster too!) and speed off to our hotel to drop off our gear. We explored around town a bit on foot, but it was late, so many of the shops were already closed. We found a neat looking chines restaurant and decided to give it a try (dad is really trying to stay away from the Indian food as long as he can...good luck with that one!). The food was great though! Fresh prawns, hot and sour soup and pork fried rice...nom nom! After dinner we headed back to the hotel for some sleep, the next day we would be leaving town, but later on so we were going to check out some forts and try to get a sim card for our wireless Internet card.
The next day I felt right at home...yup it was raining!! This basically spoiled any plans to see some of the forts in the area because we were going to have to take the fairy over to some near by islands where the forts were located...so we spent much of the day, in vain, trying to get a sim card for the internets! Pretty much every place that we went to for a sim told us some other place that we needed to go to to get what we needed. After mot too long it seemed that were on a wild goose chase! We finally found a smaller office for BSNL the large government run cell carrier which we wanted to get a sim from, but they informed us that we needed to go to the main office which happened to be much closer to our hotel then we currently were...great! So back track we did to the main office only to find out that they wanted a reference from India...cause I know sooooo many people from India! Grah! No luck there, the though now is to try when we are up in Goa...
The other exciting note for the day was our train tickets from Kochi to Goa...we were both wait listed! Oh yes, we were waiting for an over night train to Foa that we didn't even really have tickets for!! We had to keep checking back at the train station to see if we had cleared for our tickets...finally about three hours before our train was to leave we cleared!!! Wait...actually only one ticket cleared (something dad had joked about earlier...not so funny now!! :( ). The train people told us that the best thing to do was just get on the train and see if we could share one berth (seat). Great! While on the ride up to Kochi, only 4 hours, we had sat in the same berth with the bed up and two chairs facing each other...we had our bags stored up in the other berth! Now for the over nigh we might be stuck with all of our bags AND both of us stuck in one berth...fun :p.
So at the railways advice we hopped on the train, managed to push and pack most of our baggage under the seats and at our feet (and on our laps!) and settled in for what might be a really long ride! Finally when the conductor came around he looked at his book, flipped through some pages and got be a seat in the compartment over on the top! Providence! While not together at least we would have a bit more room! So I moved some stuff over to my bed and then we set up my ipad against the window, closed off our sleeping curtain and watched the new Star Trek movie on the ol' iPad-aroo! Quite a good movie screening and a nice time killer before bed time! After the movie finished I popped over to my top bunk and settled in for a "good" nights sleep :p (could have been worse, least I could lay down!).
So our train arrived at our station and we piled out...nice to be off a train for a while! We hopped into a pre-paid taxi that looked like a mini double slug bug and zipped off towards our hotel. When we arrived we started to notice that the busy season here in Goa is far from started. Our hotel, and most of everything else around here, seems to be in a state of renovation. It seems that November to the new year is their busier season here so much of every thing is either being repaired and spruced up, or is just trapped over and waiting for the season to begin again! This did have a positive effect however for our rooms because, even though my dad and I have individual rooms for this week here, they upgraded us both to rooms with large beds and more space!!! Wooo, living it large for the next week! Next we decided to head down to the beach...check out the waves and such (more surfing for Bradley Fish??). When on the beach we discovered some weird black lines of crud washing up on the shore...not know what this was we walked along the water for a bit before we noticed that it was depositing some weird oily substance on our feet :( from here on out we tried to avoid this area! We explored two different beach front areas, and while one of them seemed to have a few bars/restaurants open for the most part much of the beach front areas were also trapped up! Bummer...did I mention the two squalls of driving rain that hit us while on our journey up the beach?? Good thing we had just come from the pool and were wearing dirty shirts and swim suits :p. After our beach adventure we rested up a bit before heading into town for some din din! We found a nice Italian place, mainly because we were going to walk farther, but another rain squall hot with out us wearing swim suits, so we ducked inside for dinner. One really interesting sight I caught a bit of video of on my phone was a herd of cows walking down the street with sheets of rain pouring down...silly holy cows! After dinner we headed back to the hotel for a nice sleep in beds! Yay!
Our second day so far in Goa has been about as eventful as walking into town and finally working out a way to get a wireless Internet card for dad's laptop. Which is actually a bit harder then you would think, but after bouncing back and forth from shop to shop we finally came to one place that told us that they couldn't sell us the sim we needed in India and that we needed to buy on here...great! While this might have been a ploy to get us to buy the hardware too we decided to cut out losses and just go with it! And now we have the internets! Sure we only have a 3gb per month card, but that should do for email and blog posts and the like...guess I'll just have to catch up on all my web omits when I get a free wireless connection :p. Any how...here we are now...Internets again and ready to explore!! More to come...stay tuned :)
Saturday, August 28, 2010
Last day in Sri Lanka
Today we traveled from Koggala back up along the coast by train to Colombo. The train route was quite pleasant, however all the second class trains were full so we were forced to cram into one of the third class compartments. While this wasn't that bad it was quite a bit rough trying to get all of our luggage and ourselves into one seating area along with three other people! Needless to say much of our travel around Sri Lanka were quite cramped! Never though that I would be wishing for the leg room of a coach seat on an airplane :p but at long last the train arrived in Colombo where we hopped into a tuk tuk for an journey drive (putter?) to our hotel...which turned out to be the newest nicest building in Sri Lanka that I've seen! It is certainly a nice way to spend the last few hours in the country. Great pool, full menu, and even queen sized beds for my dad and I! I think just one of these beds is bigger then both of the beds at our last place :p
Boy, the dinner we had here was great!! Defiantly up to par with the best place that I've seen in Sri Lanka :p any how off to bed real soon because we have to leave real early for the airport tomorrow, then off to India! Who knows when I'll be able to post again cause we have some travel days and such, but not too long after that we'll be in Goa on the beach for more rest in the sun :p
Ps: sorry I wrote these each day but didn't really have Internet to use!! More as the internets come and go!
Boy, the dinner we had here was great!! Defiantly up to par with the best place that I've seen in Sri Lanka :p any how off to bed real soon because we have to leave real early for the airport tomorrow, then off to India! Who knows when I'll be able to post again cause we have some travel days and such, but not too long after that we'll be in Goa on the beach for more rest in the sun :p
Ps: sorry I wrote these each day but didn't really have Internet to use!! More as the internets come and go!
More sun...more waves
The color of the day is red! Actually I think that red will be color of my next few days! I guess that's what I get for surfing for three hours without wearing any sunscreen :( some lessons you get to learn many times in your life. A bit more lobster colored I set out once again today for some more waves!! This time I was quite a bit smarter on both fronts how ever. First i picked up a bottle of 30 spf lotion and second I borrowed a body board from the lifeguard! While surfing isn't a strong point of mine, I fancy my self quite able at body boarding. The surf right out in front of the hotel was quite good with waves breaking well over my head at time made for quite a good time. This provided quite a bit better time then surfing because I was actually able to ride waves in! (what a novel idea :p). Also did I mention that I was well slathered in sunscreen?? Cause I was...you can be sure of that! Any how battling the waves to get out to a good surf spot and ride in was still quite tiring, but I kept at it for a good run, and not falling off the board every few minutes was a big plus!
After a day of surfing followed by a day of body boarding my arms were feeling the burn (in two ways I suppose)! Relaxation, pool floating, and naps were in order! The rest of the day was devoted to enjoying the ocean on our last day down south.
Dinner was Sri Lankan style food, which I was quite disappointed to discover not that spicy (I'm sure they tone it down for us westerners, but Italian night was spicier!!). None the less it was a good final dinner and back to the room for some well needed rest! Tomorrow we train it up to Colombo for our last day in Sri Lanka.
After a day of surfing followed by a day of body boarding my arms were feeling the burn (in two ways I suppose)! Relaxation, pool floating, and naps were in order! The rest of the day was devoted to enjoying the ocean on our last day down south.
Dinner was Sri Lankan style food, which I was quite disappointed to discover not that spicy (I'm sure they tone it down for us westerners, but Italian night was spicier!!). None the less it was a good final dinner and back to the room for some well needed rest! Tomorrow we train it up to Colombo for our last day in Sri Lanka.
Great surf does not a great surffer make!
After a tasty breakfast today we asked the front desk about a place where I could take surfing lessons. While the place where I could get lessons was about a hour away, there was a much closer place where I could just get a board and surf! I though to my self "self, i've already had surf lessons once in my life, sure i can remember most of that!" so I choose the option that was closer and got me in the water faster! We took a tuk tuk up the road to a rental place owned by a polish woman who spoke little English, thankfully our tuk tuk driver spoke enough German (as did she) to work out the deal for renting the board for a few hours...she stressed the fact that if I broke or lost this board it would cost about 600 euro (which I doubt the bowed was worth!!). But wee took it and hopped back on e tuk tuk for the surf spot. Now when I say we hopped back in the tuk tuk, what I really mean is we hopped in while I hung onto the board along e outside of the tuk tuk (better be careful with a 600 euro board hanging out of a less then 600 euro tuk tuk!!). Though I felt as if my arm was going to fall off, we managed to get to our surf spot no problem.
Now surfing is much more difficult then I remember...and by that I mean to say that I suck at surfing! None the less, I spent the next three hours or so fall ing off my board, missing waves, and plain having a good time :p. While my surfing graces weren't really with me today, I did have a very good time. Heck, I even managed to kinda catch some waves. All the while dad was videoing me falling over and over again! On the bright side it will make a great bloopers reel and a very good instructional video of what not to do :p. The beach was beautiful and the day nice and sunny so I can't really complain too much...well besides the fact that it was nice and sunny! For right now I mustn't lay on my back because of my lovely red sun tan! Oh boy that'll hurt tomorrow! Someone's going to be sleeping on his stomach tonight...and I'll give you one guess :p. All in all though it was worth it!
While I had planed on coming back to the hotel and body boarding a bit here I decided that more sun on my already red back was outrageous, so I just floated around in the nice cooling pool for a bit. Boy could I use some aloe! Who knows what we'll be up to tomorrow, but I hope its in the shade :p
More to come :D
Me hanging out with my surf board and Tuk Tuk!
Wipe out!!!
one of my better shots :(
Now surfing is much more difficult then I remember...and by that I mean to say that I suck at surfing! None the less, I spent the next three hours or so fall ing off my board, missing waves, and plain having a good time :p. While my surfing graces weren't really with me today, I did have a very good time. Heck, I even managed to kinda catch some waves. All the while dad was videoing me falling over and over again! On the bright side it will make a great bloopers reel and a very good instructional video of what not to do :p. The beach was beautiful and the day nice and sunny so I can't really complain too much...well besides the fact that it was nice and sunny! For right now I mustn't lay on my back because of my lovely red sun tan! Oh boy that'll hurt tomorrow! Someone's going to be sleeping on his stomach tonight...and I'll give you one guess :p. All in all though it was worth it!
While I had planed on coming back to the hotel and body boarding a bit here I decided that more sun on my already red back was outrageous, so I just floated around in the nice cooling pool for a bit. Boy could I use some aloe! Who knows what we'll be up to tomorrow, but I hope its in the shade :p
More to come :D
Me hanging out with my surf board and Tuk Tuk!
Wipe out!!!
one of my better shots :(
Wednesday, August 25, 2010
Sri Lankan Thrill Ride!
Oh dear! Today I went on the longest scariest thrill ride that I've ever been on...a 9.5 hour long bus trip from the center of Sri Lanka (Polonaruwa) to the southern shores (Koggala). Man oh man was this an adventure! We started out at 6:30am, heading into to town from our hotel. Once we arrived at the bus station we were directed to a bus that was headed to a town just out of Koggala where our hotel is located. Soon after our driver left us to catch our bus, that bus left. Herm, maybe a different bus we needed? Long story short we barely caught the correct bus because it not only had no name, but it was in a completely different area! Once situated on this bus (we got the last two seat, together thankfully!) it pulled away headed towards our destination! One thing you must know about Sri Lanka to really understand my thrill ride metaphor is that Sri Lankan's are the craziest drivers that I have ever seen! (For Casey and Court, that time I almost killed us coming back from the mountains...that was happening every 15 minutes or so!) But the way they drive is as fast as they can and swerving in and out of traffic lanes to get ahead of cars, busses, and motorcycles they deem too slow! Really, I think the center line is more of a suggestion then anything to follow! Also our bus driver seemed to be the most trigger happy horn honker that I have ever seen (heard I suppose). At one point I counted the times he honked up to 100, which only took a half an hour. And by honk I mean each burst of honks I would count as one (he would usually honk at least three to five quick blasts...and really long blasts if he was really annoyed with a slow motor bike). Averaged out, with 200 honks per hour (HPH) he must have honked his horn about 2000ish time in our long journey! Mind you this bus so packed much of the 9.5 hours that there were at least 3 to 10 people standing in the bus as our driver weaved in and out of the lane (which by american standards would have been a one way road, not two ways!). I remember one interesting moment where we were following another bus in the oncoming traffic lane passing not one, not two, but three other busses all while going uphill in a particularly curvy area! All we could see was the other bus, all the while our expert driver was blaring his horn :P Really this man was the best driver that I've ever seen...must have been an ex nascar racer or something! Really though, the train would have had much more leg room, but this experience was very exciting! I can say that I've never been in anything quite like that before! All in all after the long journey south we arrived at the closest bus stop to our hotel, popped out happy to be on solid ground, and only had a block or so to walk to our hotel. We did however enter through the wrong gate to find the hotel completely empty!!! Whaaaa? never fear though, because this was the other part of the hotel that was under repair...a short walk through that area to the next had us sipping welcome drinks and soon in our amazing room right on the beach! It didn't take long to hop into swim suits and col off after a very long and cramped day of bus travel! I'm quite sure that my dad and I were one of a very small group of westerners to take that form of transportation today, but it was well worth it once soaking in the pool overlooking some amazing waves! Tomorrow? Hopefully some surfing and wildlife...or something to that extent! More later...and pics to come of this great place!
Hill Top Ruin???
Today was our last day near Polonaruwa (which is the town near the center of Sri Lanka we have been at for the last few days). We started quite early heading to a rock top fortress called Sigiriya. Well less of a fortress and more of fortress ruins, but they were still amazing! The gist of it was that the king back in 450bc used this place to hold out in when the Indians came south to Sri Lanka to invade. The fortress is built on a giant hill rock thinger that made it very difficult to invade. The climb up boasted about 1500 stairs and those were the easy ones that they put in for us lazy tourist! Before that (back in the day) the stairs were just cut into the stone and were more like small foot holds! Two interesting features were the paintings of the kings ladies (about 500 back in the day, but only a few still remain) and the lion stair case, which was two giant clawed feet at the base of the main stairs. A few pics will be included at the bottom. After the long climb up we got a great view of the surrounding are, much like the king would have had to see where his invaders were attacking from. Though just brick foundation now, the rock top fortress must have been a sight 1500 years ago! Back down and back to the hotel we went...rest and relaxation before our long journey tomorrow to the south! It's been great up here though and hopefully just a nice down by the BEACH!!!! Oh YEAH!
The rock far away!
Two of the kings ladies! RAWR!
Lion Toes?
No throwing dad!
The rock far away!
Two of the kings ladies! RAWR!
Lion Toes?
No throwing dad!
Tuesday, August 24, 2010
Sri Lanka! Land of tea and cricket, but not cricket tea!!
We flew out of KL at about 6am and arrived in Sri Lanka at 7am, this of course was with the time change. A very strange time chance because Sri Lanka and India are about two and a half hours different from Malaysia. I have been all over the world so far in my short life, gut i have never been any where that was off of a time zone by some increment of 30 mins...very strange if you ask me!! When we landed we gathered out bags and started to look for the train that was to take us to the larger train station where we would ride to the town nearest our first hotel. Sadly this train has already left (WTF?? We got in at 7am...no more trains for the day??). With the train gone we headed in the direction of the buses to get us to the train station. The bus situation was very difficult with us riding one airport bus to some small terminal, then hopping on another to take us to Colombo fort, the train station we needed! This bus had one of the local tv stations playing, so at least we had entertainment (though none that we could understand!) the bus was also packed to he brim with people and always stoping to try to pick up more people, even those that didn't seem to want on! After the 45 minute ride into the train station (passing it once because we had no clue where the he'll we were going!!) we were ushered off the bus. Though our stoping place was still blocks from the train station, we cut our losses gathered our bags and piled into a tuk tuk (small motorcycle thing with three wheels and a carriage type thing on the back) and rode the few more blocks to the station. Once there we bought some water and snacks and waited for our train to arrive.
Once on the train we sat back and grabbed some shut eye, watched the lush green countryside pass by, and watched a few episodes of arrested development on my iPad. At time we spotted monkeys or peacocks out the window and we were stopped for a while an hour at one intersection. After the 5 hour journey we had finally arrived at our stop...somewhere in the interior of the island (like I'm really caught up on my Sri Lankan cities!!). There our driver picked us up and carried us off to our hotel. One thing I can say about Sri Lanka is that the driving ranks amongst the craziest that I have ever seen! Motor bikes and tuk tuk's swerving in and out of traffic passing busses and cars where the streets would only be one lane roads in the states!! It's enough to keep your blood flowing that's for sure! While most of the buildings that I had seen so far were either old looking rundown concrete buildings or just plain shacks/shanties, the Royal Lotus (our hotel) was probably the nicest building I had seen in the whole country! They greeted us with complementary mango drinks and sat us down in the lobby while our room was prepared. From there we could see the outdoor pool which over looked part of the reservoir (which is giant!! Also it was man made, but done so 1500 years ago with nothing but man power! Quite an amazing feet even by today's standards!). From here we got our room, took our dinner and hit the hay after about 14 hours of travel from KL. The next day we would wake early to adventure to some cultural ruins!
We headed out for said ruins the next morning at 8:30 after a tasty breakfast. The area that we are in currently is know as the cultural triangle here in Sri Lanka, because there are many ancient ruins and the like spanning from around 500bc and on...all in, yes you guessed it, a triangle shape! Some of these ruins we were going to see! Many of them were temples of old ruins of palaces of kings long past. What really surprised me was that most of the structures were made of brick. Obviously in 500bc there were not any explorers that spread the concept or plans for brick and mortar to the native people here, but still they developed the exact same methods that were developed in other parts of the world! Crazy huh? Many of the structures we saw were quite old, but still very impressive, especially for their age! Quite a few Budas were in many of the shrines and temples and one place even used to house a tooth of buda relic! There were also some very large stuppas and a few larger buda statues! We also saw the oldest color paintings in Sri Lanka which retained a good amount of color for being hundreds of years old!
After the ruins we returned to our hotel where I driver told us that he had arranged a jeep to pick us up in a few hours to go to the wildlife reserve for our elephant safari, oh goodie!!
The reserve was about a half hour drive away zipping between cars busses and tuk tuk's. Once we got there we picked up a park guide and started out on the bumps park road to ht center of the reserve. Thankfully we lucked out and got a jeep with four wheel drive and a skilled driver! The last few days had been quite rainy for what was supposed to be the dry season, so not as many elephants had come out, but we didn't miss them! On the way to the elephant areas we say tons of different types of birds, a few that were endangered too! One crocodile, a mongoose (Riki Tiki Tavi) bunches of cows, and then yes elephants!! Our first group of elephants was about 6 strong with a large male a few smaller females and even a smallish baby :) we (a bunch of jeeps housing many different onlookers) all crowed as close as the jeeps would drive us and snapped away with cameras and just stared in awe at these amazingly large creatures in their natural habitat. Soon we pulled away in search of more. Not too long after we found two more, a female and a quite agitated male. When this male started to stalk out way our drive promptly turned our jeep around for a better position to flee if the elephant decided to charge...and charge he almost did!!! Not at us, no that would be far too lucky! But he did almost charge at this jeep ahead of us...boy did we want to get that on film, but I guess for the safety of those people in the jeep it was probably for the best...but damn it would have made for a good vid! After leaving the agitated male to his own devices we found two more elephants before we headed back to the entrance. Both male, but one of them had tusks! Yes while african elephants are the ones know for their tusks, apparently Sri Lankan males can grow tusks too, but only about 5% of them actually have them...making this elephant very lucky and us very lucky for finding him! With our elephant safari fulfilled we headed to the exit of the reserve and back to the hotel. While on the road back we came upon an area where three of four jeeps were pulled off to the side. As we passed we noticed about 5 elephants just munching away at bushes in the jungle! We pulled over to watch for a bit! Kinda funny cause wee almost saw a comparable number of elephants just on the road as in the reserve :p
What a great finish to a great day...tomorrow: relaxing by the pool and getting some photo work done!!!
More soon...
Once on the train we sat back and grabbed some shut eye, watched the lush green countryside pass by, and watched a few episodes of arrested development on my iPad. At time we spotted monkeys or peacocks out the window and we were stopped for a while an hour at one intersection. After the 5 hour journey we had finally arrived at our stop...somewhere in the interior of the island (like I'm really caught up on my Sri Lankan cities!!). There our driver picked us up and carried us off to our hotel. One thing I can say about Sri Lanka is that the driving ranks amongst the craziest that I have ever seen! Motor bikes and tuk tuk's swerving in and out of traffic passing busses and cars where the streets would only be one lane roads in the states!! It's enough to keep your blood flowing that's for sure! While most of the buildings that I had seen so far were either old looking rundown concrete buildings or just plain shacks/shanties, the Royal Lotus (our hotel) was probably the nicest building I had seen in the whole country! They greeted us with complementary mango drinks and sat us down in the lobby while our room was prepared. From there we could see the outdoor pool which over looked part of the reservoir (which is giant!! Also it was man made, but done so 1500 years ago with nothing but man power! Quite an amazing feet even by today's standards!). From here we got our room, took our dinner and hit the hay after about 14 hours of travel from KL. The next day we would wake early to adventure to some cultural ruins!
We headed out for said ruins the next morning at 8:30 after a tasty breakfast. The area that we are in currently is know as the cultural triangle here in Sri Lanka, because there are many ancient ruins and the like spanning from around 500bc and on...all in, yes you guessed it, a triangle shape! Some of these ruins we were going to see! Many of them were temples of old ruins of palaces of kings long past. What really surprised me was that most of the structures were made of brick. Obviously in 500bc there were not any explorers that spread the concept or plans for brick and mortar to the native people here, but still they developed the exact same methods that were developed in other parts of the world! Crazy huh? Many of the structures we saw were quite old, but still very impressive, especially for their age! Quite a few Budas were in many of the shrines and temples and one place even used to house a tooth of buda relic! There were also some very large stuppas and a few larger buda statues! We also saw the oldest color paintings in Sri Lanka which retained a good amount of color for being hundreds of years old!
After the ruins we returned to our hotel where I driver told us that he had arranged a jeep to pick us up in a few hours to go to the wildlife reserve for our elephant safari, oh goodie!!
The reserve was about a half hour drive away zipping between cars busses and tuk tuk's. Once we got there we picked up a park guide and started out on the bumps park road to ht center of the reserve. Thankfully we lucked out and got a jeep with four wheel drive and a skilled driver! The last few days had been quite rainy for what was supposed to be the dry season, so not as many elephants had come out, but we didn't miss them! On the way to the elephant areas we say tons of different types of birds, a few that were endangered too! One crocodile, a mongoose (Riki Tiki Tavi) bunches of cows, and then yes elephants!! Our first group of elephants was about 6 strong with a large male a few smaller females and even a smallish baby :) we (a bunch of jeeps housing many different onlookers) all crowed as close as the jeeps would drive us and snapped away with cameras and just stared in awe at these amazingly large creatures in their natural habitat. Soon we pulled away in search of more. Not too long after we found two more, a female and a quite agitated male. When this male started to stalk out way our drive promptly turned our jeep around for a better position to flee if the elephant decided to charge...and charge he almost did!!! Not at us, no that would be far too lucky! But he did almost charge at this jeep ahead of us...boy did we want to get that on film, but I guess for the safety of those people in the jeep it was probably for the best...but damn it would have made for a good vid! After leaving the agitated male to his own devices we found two more elephants before we headed back to the entrance. Both male, but one of them had tusks! Yes while african elephants are the ones know for their tusks, apparently Sri Lankan males can grow tusks too, but only about 5% of them actually have them...making this elephant very lucky and us very lucky for finding him! With our elephant safari fulfilled we headed to the exit of the reserve and back to the hotel. While on the road back we came upon an area where three of four jeeps were pulled off to the side. As we passed we noticed about 5 elephants just munching away at bushes in the jungle! We pulled over to watch for a bit! Kinda funny cause wee almost saw a comparable number of elephants just on the road as in the reserve :p
What a great finish to a great day...tomorrow: relaxing by the pool and getting some photo work done!!!
More soon...
To Malaysia...hung over but early!!!
Kuala Lumpur. I have spent many summers in Malaysia, but I had never yet ventured to the main city...until now! The first day I spent there was only a half day. I arrived at around 4:30pm, which was two hours earlier because of missing my original flight in Seoul :p My dad was waiting for me with a big hug once I came out of the baggage claim. From there we took a train into town and hit up our hotel located in china town on peddlers street, a street that filled up with carts of any type of ware from about mid day to later in the night. We took a load off in our room and then headed out to grab a bit to eat...Chinese food!! That pretty much took up the rest of our night because I was beat from traveling and not sleeping the night before and we had an early morning planned for our only full day in KL!
Full day! Yes we started outa at around 8am, hitting up a large shopping center for some kryspie creams and more importantly free wifi! Dad called my grandma (his ma) and told her we had arrived safe and sound, and then I called up my mother dearest and chatted for the first time since I had left (but I emailed her already...don't worry!). After that we headed out to check out the KL petronas towers, which were up to a few years ago the tallest towers in the world, but thanks to stupid India they are now only the tallest twin towers in the world! Tall is only really a word though cause these babies were gigantic!!! We snapped some shits and then headed inside to try to catch a lift up the the sky bridge connecting them at the center. Sadly we found out that they only have so many tickets per day and those were already gone!!! What??? So lame! So we trotted over to the other side to get a few more pics from the right angle with the sun and all, then headed back to the mall to look for a mobile 3G thumb stick for wireless internets on the go in India! After finding what we needed we piped over to the golden screen cinemas to get in one last bit of western entertainment by catching a double feature! The expendables and Salt...both great movies and what's more American then an action packed afternoon! To pack more action into the afternoon we decided to go to the largest indoor theme park in Malaysia...conveniently placed in that very same mall!! Go figure...we also had a theory that it was the only indoor theme park in Malaysia, but why ruin a good thing right?? So off to cosmo's world we went! By far the best part of this "theme park" was the roller coaster which Wasserstein actually quite impressive boasting two cork screws and a loop! We must have rode the roller coaster about 5 times or so and there weren't many people in the joint so we could just hop on when ever! I even managed to shoot video of the whole ride from the front with my iPhone, so I'll get that on youtubes when I get a chance!! The other notable thing about cosmo's world was the first thrill ride that actually made me wonder if I was going to puke! This monster was called the DNA mixer, and for good reason! The ride was basically two rows of seats on a platform that lifted off the ground and then spun around really fast at varying angles really fast! I was actually the only person on the ride because dad didn't want to ride with me and the girl operating the machine had to go and buckle every seat that wasn't being used...all but mine, so when (to my relief) the ride was over the girl asked me if I wanted to go again...while I wanted to get as far away from the machine as I could, I did feel bad for all the work she had to go through for just little ol' me, so I swallowed my pride (and my lunch) and took another spin (literally)! The other down side of this ride was the bar in-between my legs to keep you in the seat...well on every single revolution of the cursed machine my junk got slam slam slammed into that bar over and over!! So not only did I feel as if I was going to loose my lunch I also though I might loose my ability to have children O.o by the time the ride was over the second time I was sweating! But back to the roller coaster we ran :p after we had ridden out the theme park till it was dark, we hoped back on the metro and went back to the twin towers for some brilliant night shots! With the lit up tower safely stored in our camera's memory cards we headed back to china town for our hotel rooms and only a few hours sleep for we had to continue our travels at 3am towards Sri Lanka!!
More to come :)
Full day! Yes we started outa at around 8am, hitting up a large shopping center for some kryspie creams and more importantly free wifi! Dad called my grandma (his ma) and told her we had arrived safe and sound, and then I called up my mother dearest and chatted for the first time since I had left (but I emailed her already...don't worry!). After that we headed out to check out the KL petronas towers, which were up to a few years ago the tallest towers in the world, but thanks to stupid India they are now only the tallest twin towers in the world! Tall is only really a word though cause these babies were gigantic!!! We snapped some shits and then headed inside to try to catch a lift up the the sky bridge connecting them at the center. Sadly we found out that they only have so many tickets per day and those were already gone!!! What??? So lame! So we trotted over to the other side to get a few more pics from the right angle with the sun and all, then headed back to the mall to look for a mobile 3G thumb stick for wireless internets on the go in India! After finding what we needed we piped over to the golden screen cinemas to get in one last bit of western entertainment by catching a double feature! The expendables and Salt...both great movies and what's more American then an action packed afternoon! To pack more action into the afternoon we decided to go to the largest indoor theme park in Malaysia...conveniently placed in that very same mall!! Go figure...we also had a theory that it was the only indoor theme park in Malaysia, but why ruin a good thing right?? So off to cosmo's world we went! By far the best part of this "theme park" was the roller coaster which Wasserstein actually quite impressive boasting two cork screws and a loop! We must have rode the roller coaster about 5 times or so and there weren't many people in the joint so we could just hop on when ever! I even managed to shoot video of the whole ride from the front with my iPhone, so I'll get that on youtubes when I get a chance!! The other notable thing about cosmo's world was the first thrill ride that actually made me wonder if I was going to puke! This monster was called the DNA mixer, and for good reason! The ride was basically two rows of seats on a platform that lifted off the ground and then spun around really fast at varying angles really fast! I was actually the only person on the ride because dad didn't want to ride with me and the girl operating the machine had to go and buckle every seat that wasn't being used...all but mine, so when (to my relief) the ride was over the girl asked me if I wanted to go again...while I wanted to get as far away from the machine as I could, I did feel bad for all the work she had to go through for just little ol' me, so I swallowed my pride (and my lunch) and took another spin (literally)! The other down side of this ride was the bar in-between my legs to keep you in the seat...well on every single revolution of the cursed machine my junk got slam slam slammed into that bar over and over!! So not only did I feel as if I was going to loose my lunch I also though I might loose my ability to have children O.o by the time the ride was over the second time I was sweating! But back to the roller coaster we ran :p after we had ridden out the theme park till it was dark, we hoped back on the metro and went back to the twin towers for some brilliant night shots! With the lit up tower safely stored in our camera's memory cards we headed back to china town for our hotel rooms and only a few hours sleep for we had to continue our travels at 3am towards Sri Lanka!!
More to come :)
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