Seth and Claire

Hello!

So now that Seth and I are both sick again, sitting in front of our hotel computer is pretty much the only option for after dinner ‘fun’ activities.  So here goes another post…

On the way from Agra, I managed to somehow get sick again (sleeper trains are a curse for me) but luckily this time I was able to walk to a taxi with only two ‘sit down’ breaks.  Seth stayed strong long enough to battle with our taxi driver in the sweltering 35degree heat and get us a direct ride to our hotel (which still took us 1.5 hours in a non-airconditionned car in the middle of the day…it was GREAT for my fever!) 

Next, moments after checking in, Seth decided to join the fun ‘delhi belly club’ – personally I think he felt left out, I’m pretty much a lifetime member.  Of course, always trying to ‘outdo’ me, he managed get it worse than me, landing him in the hospital early this morning.  (Luckily by this point I was feeling a bit better so could help him get there!)  But don’t worry, he is definitely on the mend now, after being given a cocktail of antibiotics, rehydration salts, and other undefinable ‘pink pills’.  He had a very high fever all night and when he started to hallucinate/radiate heat from 30cm. away I took him to the hospital.  But his fever is much less now and he is looking much better, and even ate some dinner.   

Taking him to the hospital in the dark at 5am was quite the experience.  Even in obviously desperate times, the taxi drivers still must be haggled with from their exorbitant demands.  We finally arrived, but the guy at hospital reception was fast asleep on the desk, and I wasn’t sure whether to wake him or not – there were a few other patients waiting just down the hall on some chairs.  I plonked Seth down on one, and as he spaced out, went searching for a doctor.  Rather hard to identify since they wear regular Indian clothes, but in all white.  Finally found one, who told us to ‘come back in a few hours’.  I battled with that doctor for awhile, then gave up and found another one who agreed to see him.  After all that, the doctor was brief, and 10 minutes later we were walking out with 5 kinds of medicine, and we didn’t pay a cent – no one ever asked us for money, maybe we missed something…?  By this point we were exhausted, and I wasn’t up to my usual haggling standards, so we caught an overpriced taxi back to the ranch, and slept for a few hours.

The good news, however, is that Mumbai is fabulous when you aren’t deliriously sick.  As Seth slept this afternoon, I took a little wander, and enjoyed finding an air-conditionned cinema playing western movies, a real McDonalds, and many people trying to boost my ego by telling me how great I’d be as an extra in a Bollywood movie.  Probably all crap, but hey, if I was feeling better, I might give it a shot.

We have some more recuperation time here, and as soon as Seth is feeling better, we are heading straight for Goa to relax on the beach and take a holiday from our holidays!

-Claire

So we left Varanasi, feeling good that we could still find our way around an Indian city and have fun (and we felt that much holier), and traveled back to the countryside.

An overnight train journey took us to Gwalior where we saw a fort at hyper-speed and were back on the train for Orcha in only 4 hours – and that included lunch!  Needless to say the Gwalior fort wasn’t all that great, mostly due to the screaming hordes of school children that were on a field trip to see the fort and the tourists within.

Orcha is a 16km tempo-ride (sort of a shared rickshaw) from the train station and we were lucky enough to share it with a fat, happy, bean eating and bean throwing Indian lady!  She made our day forcing us to eat copious amounts of peas and throw the husks at the other tempos!

Orcha was great.  After doing our laundry in the morning (a surprisingly gratifying activity) we visited the fort, went swimming in the river – skinny dipping actually – and then went to the old temple.  We are generally forted and templed out, but the ones in this town were so unpresumptious that we could help but to love them.  And the thing that really made our day was having a swimming-hole just outside of town all to ourselves, to lay in the sun and read.  No staring.  No conversations.  It was heaven!

The next day our whirlwind schedule took us to Agra.  This trip was one of our more ‘interesting’.  First off, we happened to share a sleeper compartment with the prince of a grand old estate and as we went deeper into conversation we discovered that this French student in Delhi had his own Lamborgini, houses and cars in Australia, Mumbai, and all over the world, as well as a plethora of servants.  Needless to say we got his number in Dehli and secured (hopefully) a place to stay with a train station pickup in a Lamborgini.

This distraction from the outside world caused us to miss our stop and travel an extra 45 min and 60 km past Agra.  Oops!  Thankfully, general tickets were available to get us back, giving Claire a luggage rack seat in the crammed open seating compartment.  For those of you who don’t know what “general ticket” means in India, it gets you a ride on one of 4 cars that contain 90% of the people on any given train.  Cheep and always available, it was our only option, and we were just lucky to be able to get on (and off) at the right times.

When we got to Agra, we took a rickshaw to our hotel, only to find out that they had given our room away.  Apparently reservations are good for a 2 hour window!  Luckily we ended up at a nice place with a view of the Taj Mahal, and a room with 2 double beds and a gymnasium sized floor.  So much space is something we haven’t experienced for awhile in this highly populated country!

After an incredibly long journey from Kathmandu (11 hours on the bus and 6 on the train), we got the chance not only to check out another night at our FAVORITE town, Gorakpur (see the post involving lots of puking and rudeness) but also we got to meet about 647 new ‘best friends’ on the train.  A milestone – we started saying we were married and pretending we spoke French.  Kind of got busted reading a poster written in English though, oops!  We had a lot more patience our first two months, but after awhile, answering the same 5 question over and over again, and getting stared at for literally HOURS in a row gets to be a bit much. 

So it was with relief that we checked into our lovely family-owned guesthouse overlooking the sacred Ganga in Varanasi, and we had a chance to unpack and relax.  Our first impressions of Varanasi exceeded our expectations, and while it was dusty, hot and busy, it had an incredibly spiritual and holy presence.

We walked down the ghats, which are stairs leading to the river, we were overwhelmed by the sheer amount of things happening – people washing clothes, bathing, burning their loved ones’ bodies, and praying.  The incredible thing is that this happens every single day of the year.  Some of the ghats had a very somber tone, while a few felt like we were at a mini-carnaval.  The interesting thing was that the cremation ghats were not somber at all – they had the busy feel of a marketplace as people bartered for the wood and services of the Untouchable caste members to handle the dead bodies.  If we hadn’t known what was in the wrapped cloths, we would not have immediately known that people were saying final goodbyes to their family members.  It really spoke to the power that people here feel is connected to this section of the river.

At the end of the day, we watched the beautiful sunset from our rooftop, and were entertained by the little boys playing with their kites.  It reminded us very much of scenes from the book ‘The Kiterunner’ as they fought each other and ran after the fallen kites.  However, we WERE in India and soon enough the romantical mood was broken by a bloated cow carcass floating up in the river and being attacked by a pack of ravenous street dogs.  As they tugged off one of its legs, we knew we were at home.  At the end of our stay in Varanasi, we were in love with the city and were well rested for the next ‘leg’ of our journey.

After much anticipation, we arrived in Kathmandu in the middle of rush hour.  We got a good view of the ‘automotive’ area of town while our bus waited in traffic with its engine off.  When it dropped us at the bus station (actually just a dirty street corner) we found a nice hotel and settled in for the evening. 

After our three days there, we had spent two of them doing chores and planning the next month of our trip, and only one day really ‘sightseeing’.  However, we didn’t feel like we missed out on much, in many ways the city disappointed us and we looked forward so much to returning to India.  At the end of a month in Nepal, we felt that the country really seemed to alienate us – in Nepal you are never a traveler, always a tourist.  There are special buses and every restaurant has a tourist menu with inflated prices and dulled down spices.  We did manage to get away from this a bit on our trek but it was never more evident than in the capital.  Kathmandu had some nice sights – we hiked up to a hill for a view of the city (covered in smog and haze), saw some gorgeous temples compete with resident playful monkeys, and stumbled across many hidden religious sites during our wanderings, but we missed the fairness of being able to haggle right alongside the locals and catch whichever bus we want.  Of course, Nepal does a few things the best: incredible bakeries (best chocolate cake ever in kathmandu, we went there every day) and more general politeness.  And it turned out to be quite the competetor with India in the ‘funny signs’ competition – when we entered the park to climb up the hill above the city, the sign announced that we would have to pay 20 rupees to walk on the path.  We felt relieved, because the same sign announced that if we happened to be riding an elephant, we would have had to pay 100 rupees.   

Overall, we did have a relaxing few days in the capital, but recommend the rural areas to the smog and busy nature of the city.  However, it did provide us with all the tools necessary to learn how to book our Indian rail tickets online (2 hours), plan our month and book said rail tickets (8 hours) and begin our search for accomodation in Goa over Christmas and New years (ongoing). 

Well after our long trek, we decided that we wanted to relax a little and head to the jungle.  Neither of us had ever gone on any kind of safari, so we didn’t really know what to expect.  We arrived at our ‘Unique Wild Lodge’, expecting, of course, some uniqueness and wildness.  I think the wildest animals may have been the tourists clambering over each other for photos of rhinos, but overall we had a great time.  The best part was our lodge was that it was all-inclusive, all you can eat.  Although I think the appetite Seth and I worked up over chasing animals and bathing elephants may have been a little surprise for the staff, and we actually ate everything they had a couple of times! 

First we checked out the visitor’s center and enjoyed a sunset by the river.

The next day we woke up early for a foggy dawn canoe ride down the river, checked out the elephant breeding center where there was a 4-day old elephant (so cute and wrinkly!) and then Seth helped give an elephant a bath.  Or maybe the elephant helped give Seth a bath, judging by the way Seth was tossed into the river!  One interesting thing I learned about elephants is that they drink about 200L of water a day.  And watching how much they pee, I can believe it!

Finally we got onto the back of a big elephant to go rhino hunting.  We saw some big crocodiles, wild peacocks, and a few rhinos, including a mother and baby.  We actually got surprisingly close to the rhinos, they seemed relatively unconcerned by the excited people on the back of the elephant – I think they were more interested in the delicious plants.

Later on we watched another sunset, had a beer to celebrate our hunting success, and called it a night.  Now we are off to Kathmandu!

How to describe a trek that was so long, so varied, and so incredible?  We started out expecting a wild and snowy land, with moments of exhaustion and cold.  While we did find a bit of that, we also found luxury guesthouses with hot water (!), incredible pumpkin curries and homemade local apple pie, soothing hot springs, and some very interesting people. 

We saw lots of interesting people and sights, including a 65 year-old man who carried a 65kg pack on his head day after day, and quite a few ‘chicken men’.  The reason for this madness is that these towns are only accesible by foot, so all goods have to be carried/donkeyed in for up to 7 days!  It made for quiet peaceful walking!

Day 4-7:  We began to climb higher, and rounded the hills to enter a large glacial valley, with our first up-close view of the most majestic mountains in the Annapurna range – Annapurna II, III, and IV, and Gangapurna rising to our left.  The air became quite chilly and the land less inhabited.  Although farming was no longer evident, the ‘donkey train’ ensured that fresh food was still available, and we discovered the homemade apple pie, which was INCREDIBLE.  Our guide was working out very well, being lots of fun and incredibly knowledgeable about where to find the best bakeries and local cuisine.  There was lots of local culture to see including a new monastary, and we met a few very friendly local people.

Day 8-9: After 8 days of buildup, we were finally nearing….THE PASS.  Being located at 5400M, the highest pass in the world, we found that the guides and other travellers really hyped up the difficulty and danger of this part of the trek.  The night before we made ‘our summit bid’ we stayed in a lodge full of sick and anxious trekkers popping Diamox and aspirin like candy.  We made serious waves in the crowd when we mentionned that we had skipped our ‘acclimatization day’ in favour of continuing towards the next apple pie stop.  But we figured that with the extra fuel, it would be a breeze.

(claire) Well, Seth annoyingly DID find it a breeze, more or less.  However, I did not.  It was probably the hardest physical day I have ever had, although I did make it over.  It took 4 hours of climbing to the top and the severe lack of oxygen made me take about a full breath to every step.  Seth took a funny video in ‘real time’ of my progress, but it definitely looked like someone put it in slo-mo.  But if I turned around, I would just have to try again the next day, and I sure wasn’t going to do that, so I pushed on.  I don’t remember a lot of the last hour of climbing, the top, and the first hour of descending.  I got a splitting headache and felt pretty dizzy, sort of in my own little world, and Seth luckily realized by the top that we would need to descend quickly.  Luckily it was a quick descent and I was feeling better in a few hours.  It was pretty scary though, and my body took a few days to feel normal again.  I was still proud of my determination and now I can be part of the altitude-sickness club with laura.  (it’s a pretty exclusive club!)

(seth)I would like to think that my incredible physical strength and determination was what got me to the top, but the reality is that it is more likely to do with spending time at high altitude before (although never this high).  The first hour in the dark reminded me of a series of paintings by one of my favorite artists.  As the sun rose behind the impressive Annapurna II and IV it looked like “The Domination of Light” by Magrite.  Truely beautiful and a fit distraction from the cold of -12C at 4500m.  After sun was up we found ourselves in a barren landscape dominated by rock and snow.  Whit little to look at and no altitude headache I pushed until I reached what I called ‘hypoxic euphoria’, a condition similar to ‘the zone’ that joggers experience, but occurs at only a walking pace.  We reached the top and sat in the tea house for some cookies and tea.  Strapped to the pillar was a small balloon with a red Canadian flag, left (I presume) by Justina and Lifa only 2 weeks earlier!  Claire was not looking good at this point and kept telling me to give Krishna more cookies. He was not disappointed and in no hurry to leave.  We snapped a quick photo and pretty much ran down the 1600m decent to Muktinath, where we enjoyed the hottest showers of our trek and local popped corn.

Day 10-12: The next few days were shorter, as we recovered from our climb.  We passed through the ‘windy valley’ which is absolutely the most reliable wind we have ever seen (every day at 10am on the dot the massive wind comes up).  In Marpha we tried some local apple brandy, and made another bakery stop (luckily we were walking everyday otherwise we’d probably be growing out of our clothes by now).  We also stayed in some nice hotels, and to our complete shock, one even had a REAL sit-down toilet.  After months of squatting to pee down a hole, we both stopped dead in our tracks at the sight of what seth termed ‘the butt-cup’.  We decided that in a country that doesn’t have sanitizer, we prefer the hole!

Day 13-15:  As our trek neared to a close, we finally got the chance to stay with a family.  We stopped for lunch at a lovely little cottage, and the warmth and friendliness of the 5 kids and parents, and the incredible lunch (fresh limes from the tree, cilantro, local rice, thick fresh dal, homemade chapatis) won us over and we decided to stay for the night.  Their sign did say they were a ‘guesthouse’ but in the end, we took the parent’s beds and the kids slept on the floor of the kitchen.  Well, actually it was only one room but with partitions.  It was a humbling experience as this family shared everything they had with us, and to watch a family of 7 living together in a house with no windows, holes in the roof, and at the same time living with such warmth and happiness and joy.  The little girl delighted us by picking up the chickens and trying to get them to ride the goat (which we soon began to help her with!) 

While sharing some whisky over dinner with the father, a heated exchange about the Maoists (who have signed a deal with the government here but show few signs of honouring it) resulted in the father tearing up and burning our Maoist receipt.  We didn’t think it was such a big deal at the time, because the Maoists are supposed to have stopped taxing trekkers, but on our last day we ran into some more Maoists who didn’t seem to ‘remember’ that fact.  Thank goodness for our sweet-talking guide, who convinced them to let us off with a 100 rupee ‘replacement receipt fee’…without him, things could have been much more expensive!

Our trek concluded with a climb to Poon Hill to watch the beautiful sunrise on the mountains.  Unfortunately, it’s proximity to Pokhara and description in the Lonely Planet ensured that we were not alone – at least 50 other people were there to make ooohhing noises.  Not exactly what we are used to (like in Garibaldi) but it was gorgeous nonetheless.

One note of caution: anyone planning on one day trekking in this region may want to do it SOON.  They are building roads like crazy, and there may be road access to most of the conservation area in as little as 4-5 years.  This will really change the feel, and as it is already touristy enough, it may destroy what little culture and peace remains.  We feel so fortunate to have been able to do it, but we certainly learned a lot about the effects of tourism during our time there, and the increase in people is sure to reduce future experiences.

Well after leaving Nirvana we have had quite the week!We saw a cool fort in Kangra and then set out on our train journey From Dharamshala area to Gorakpur.     The wait for our first train at the lovely stationwas a good start, but then the train was 2.5 hours late, which would cause us to miss our connection, a relatively pricey and rare 21 hour sleeper train.  We had to fork out for a cab in order to make it.  On the train to Gorakpur we met some…okay, TONS, of very very friendly Indians giving us high hopes for our arrival.

But then I felt the dreaded upset stomach feelings and knew my last 7 or 8 hours were not going to be good.  I had become so sick by the end of the train ride that I was only able to walk in 30M spurts across the station before collapsing on the ground amongst garbage and homeless people.  Lovely.  And quite the show for everyone.  Seth was wonderful and found us a room right in the train station, above platform 1, but while I was waiting for him to do this I was groped by some kid.  Adding to my good times.  Pictures were NOT being taken at this time.

Further memories of the next few days, in which we were cursed, were being meowed at and laughed at by 7 adult men while taking my first shaky steps after illness, arriving late at night at a closed India/Nepal border and staying the night in a bed that was LITERALLY crawling with bugs, and then arriving in Nepal at last to realize there was a strike and all roads were indefinitely closed.  Ahh…good times.

Luckily the roads reopened the next day and we splurged on a cab for the last 5 hours to Pokhara.  We truly appreciate the luxuries here, staying in our own little cabin by the lake, and preparing for our 16+ day trek around the epic Annapurna range which starts tomorrow.  We will be spending the next two-three weeks away from it all, in the presence of 7,000M peaks, stopping at natural hot springs and following what is termed the ‘apple pie trail’ (aka we are going to eat our way to heaven as usual).  And luckily, our lovely guide has told us it is ‘yak killing season’ right now…whatever that means. 

 Well somehow an entire week has passed us by here in Dharamshala.  Time slips by surprisingly quickly here, as our days are filled with hikes, cooking lessons, meeting new friends, and browsing art and bookshops.  However, we are feeling the need to get trekking in Nepal before the winter sets in, so we’ll be taking a sleeper train tomorrow night to the Nepal border. 

This town has been by far the most Westernized that we have come across, with real coffee in many shops and more white people than you can shake a stick at.  But it is also the current home of the Dalai Lama in exile, and so is a very interesting and politically charged place.  One night here we were eating some dinner in a little Tibetan cafe and began a conversation with some of the Tibetan guys there, and they told us of how they had been imprisoned and tortured.  We also saw a former Tibetan prisoner speak last night and visited the Tibetan history museum, a place that brought two of our friends to tears and really hit Seth and I hard.  This town seems to be a place of contrast, where life is laid-back and people are smiling, but at the same time, sobered by the fact that the majority of adult Tibetan people here have been imprisoned, abused by the Chinese government, have lost some of their family and friends, and have had to escape over the Himalayas to get to India, some dying in the process and others suffering amputations due to the frostbite.

On a lighter note, yesterday Seth and I hiked up to 3000 metres to a ridge called Triund, where we slept in a cave with some rented sleeping bags and foamy mats.  Two Israeli guys shared our cave, but they just had flimsy blankets and were freezing!  However, there were a bunch of people up there and we had a big bonfire, and so nobody died of cold.  It was great because at the top of this ridge there was also an Indian guy who would cook dinner for the hungry hikers, and he also made omelettes and tea in the morning.  I am really getting used to this ‘luxury’ trekking – you get delicious hot food even in the middle of nowhere!

A few more things of note before I sign off…first of all, I would like to point out that there are at least 5 German bakeries in this town, but so far no sign of any German people or even any decent baked goods.  Secondly, yesterday a shopkeeper asked me how long I had lived in India for – I’m pretty sure with my lady-suit and my new tan I am pretty much Indian!… And finally, we took a picture of the sign at the Dalai Lama’s residence, to illustrate the brilliance of the signage in this country.  You couldn’t find a road sign if you tried, and nowhere in this town is the way to his residence signed, but when you get there they make sure you know exactly how to proceed!

sidenote: for those who are interested (and know how!) the coordinates of our locations are being taken by Seth’s handy GPS machinery…and are posted on his page!

FYI: We added pictures to the last couple of posts so check it out (and Chloe you can ID our monkey)!

Well, for the last few days Claire and I have been living easy! We went on a trek just outside of Chamba and were waited on hand and foot for 5 days and 5 nights! On our first day in Chamba we talked to a trekking agency and were convinced to blow our budget for a few days and get out of the hustle, bustle and litter of the Indian cities.

We started the trek at a charming lodge called the Orchard Hut and after Claire got her measurements taken by a local seamstress in the small village (for her “lady suit”) we were off on the first day of our adventure. For the benefit of those who have not “trekked” before it is more akin to hiking than anything else.

Our porter and guide loaded up their 1980’s, cheap Jansport backpacks with 5 days of food, four sleeping bags, our tent and everything they needed (which was nothing), donned their casual shoes (guide) and rubber slippers (porter) and we headed off up the steep 1100m climb to our first night’s destination.
Things started out a bit rough, our guide came down with the flu on day one (typical, eh) and was taking frequent forays into the forest and returning looking feverish and distant. Still, with the mind set of a pack animal, he hefted his rucksack and gritted through the day without one complaint! The people here have the most incredible work ethic, it must get done, and whining will not be tolerated!

That evening we stayed the night at a hut owned by the company. A couple of important things happened here, for one, we discovered what it is like to be rich! Within minutes of arriving our bed was made and we were relaxing to the view with hot tea and the sounds of dinner preparation coming from the kitchen! The other was that we gained a companion…later named Jackie, a farm dog came out of nowhere and decided that we were far better companions than any of the animals in the area. He was with us everyday (even though we threw sicks and stones to ward him off) until we eventually had to abandoned him two days walk from his home when we caught the bus at the end of the ride :(

The next few days were spent hiking and being pampered. The days were spent enjoying the high meadows and grazing lands of the area. Sitting in fields, listening to shepherd boys play the flute, and hiking to temples built by hand surrounded cliffs, all the while carrying only our clothes and a sleeping mat. Every night we were served a minimum 2 course meal, with home made bread!

Once the trek was finished we spent one more night at the Orchard Hut and arranged to bus to Dharamshala the next day. Leaving at 9am we rode 4 public buses for a total of 9 hours, getting to our destination in the dark.

Dharamshala is the home of the Dali Lama and pretty much every Westerner in India! We had more of them around us last night in our restaurant than we have seen in the entire first two weeks of our trip… But more on that later.

We have endured the TERRIFYING bus ride, inches away from 300 foot drops the whole way, to Chamba, another small mountain town in the north of India.

The rest of our time in Dalhousie was wonderful, relaxing, and we celebrated our one-year anniversary there. Of course, there aren’t any nice, romantic restaurants there, but we did manage to have a good time, finding some some really bad contraband rum and drinking rum and cokes while playing some cards with the sun setting over the mountains, and then ending up at a little restaurant where about 30 people were celebrating some little girl’s birthday. They didn’t mind us being there and even gave us some of her birthday cake!

Well today in Chamba we FINALLY found pasturized milk. Now, I’ve always been a milk drinker, but since most of the milk here is ‘fresh’ (and therefore lethal for us white kids) we have not had any in almost two weeks. Today we found some safe milk for the first time, in a plastic bag at a convenience store. We snipped a hole in it, stuck a straw in, and just stood there in the middle of the hot busy street sucking it back. We polished off the hole bag in about 2 minutes, much to the amusement of our audience. It’s funny, I thought I’d miss my family and friends, clean water, and showers, but I am actually doing okay with all that (although I do miss you guys!). What I would kill for, (REALLY) are very simple things – a cold glass of milk, fresh fruit, and a salad. Other than that though we are finding that we are feeling quite at home here, its funny how the craziness wears off and everything seems more friendly and familiar!

Also, today I have been enjoying my first real clothing shopping experience. I have decided that I need some Indian clothing because it looks so comfy and beautiful, so I bought some lovely green material today and am going to get measured tomorrow morning by some random tailor lady in the countryside near here. She will sew it up for me into a ‘shalwar kumeez’, or a ladies suit. I promise to do a photo shoot after so you can all see it!

Other than that, we are departing on a trek tomorrow for 5 days in the himalayas, staying in huts for two nights and a tent for two nights. We have a guide and a porter (aahhh the life!). When we find somewhere that has a decent internet connection (from Dharamshala in a week) we will post it all – new clothes, monkeys, snowy mountains. Until then, hope you are all well!

– Claire