Nepal wrap and India

NEPAL

After Bhutan we spent another week in Kathmandu waiting for our Indian visas. It was nice coming back for round two -Kathmandu seemed much more manageable the second time around. Our first full day back was great -the Maoists were protesting (as they do about once a week) and the party was forcing businesses (whether they supported the cause or not) to shutter their doors. Moreover, all vehicles, including public transportation and even bicycles, were forbidden from operating within the city. This made the otherwise lunatic streets of Kathmandu pleasantly palatable for an entire day.... we enjoyed a full day of walking about town, with thousands of others, free of the ever-present danger of being run down by a bus or auto rickshaw. As long as we gave the protesters a wide berth as they marched down the major thoroughfares, we were at no risk whatsoever of violence against our good selves.


Five days of bumming around Kathmandu earned us our visas, and we made for the Indian border. Along the way we made a detour for Lumbini, the birth place of Siddhartha Gautama, the Buddha. Nations from around the world have constructed Buddhist monasteries within a giant nature preserve there to honor the site; Thailand took the cake for the coolest, though by far not the largest, monastery. Within this preserve you can actually view the very spot where the Buddha was born. He wasn't around, but we got some good pictures...

INDIA
We had not initially planned to come to India on this trip, in light of its size, but somehow managed to talk ourselves into it. These things happen. Just the other day Tatyana popped up with "we really ought to check out Pakistan"... We thought better of it, but not for the reasons one might think. Visas were going to be costly, and after forking out $120 to get into India we decided the budget just wouldn't hold it. Next time...


We crossed the border at Sunauli and made our way by bus to Gorakhpur -what must be the dustiest town we've been to yet. From there, we took another bus (12 hours) to Lucknow -slightly less dusty, and an ancient Mughal stronghold. Here we began to encounter the first truly amazing architecture in India. After a few days the relentless heat drove us onward, and we took an overnight A/C bus to Agra, home of the Taj Mahal.

Agra is a relatively peaceful city. We stayed in the Taj Ganj district, a small community favored among backpackers and butting right up against the great outer walls of the complex. From the roof top of our guest house we could see quite a lot of this amazing structure, but felt compelled to fork out the $15 each to tour the entire facility the next day. Just incredible. The Taj Mahal is very slowly falling into disrepair as the many chemicals emitted from plants in the surrounding areas severely degrade its marble construction, but at 356 years and counting I would say its holding up quite well.


We watched the sun set beyond the Taj Mahal each evening, as the local youth emerged to their roof tops to battle each other in kite warfare. We sat in awe as these talented young men deftly controlled their simple square-foot kites to evade and attack the lines of their opponents (perched on rooftops as far away as two hundred meters), and were treated to several dozen "kills" over the course of our stay. In the narrow alleys below, even this tranquil neighborhood bustled constantly with the chaos of rickshaws, autorickshaws, motorbikes, cows, bulls, camels, dogs and people...

We have spent the last few days in Delhi. It amazes me that even in the middle of this major city, cows, bulls, and oxen still wander freely among the rickshaws and people... I can't begin to imagine where they are going, unattended, or where they reside in the evenings... But I've seen enough livestock on roof tops to know that their is always room somewhere. Its a shame that with all this great meat walking around, the Hindus don't make a concession or two and fire up the barbie... I could really use a steak. India is certainly a different animal than any other place we've been. Delhi has provided more of the impressive ancient architecture we've come to appreciate here; beyond that, it is a very large and busy city, and we're looking forward to heading East.

This evening we are taking the overnight train to holy city of Varanasi... the next posting should be really interesting...

Tatyana has posted photos to her facebook account. Follow the link below:

Comments

  1. AnonymousJune 18, 2009 at 7:53 PM

    yeah India! I'll be picking your brain on this one! yeah!!!!!!!!!!!!!
    David and Tracie (dot com)

    ReplyDelete
  2. AnonymousJune 24, 2009 at 10:58 AM

    Tanya & Tod,

    Your trip is amazing! I can't believe that girl that I met in Moscow in 1994 will explore the half of the World!

    Sasha

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Planning, Logistics and Keeping it Loose…

Image
When we tell people about extended travel (with or without kids) we get a lot of comments about how they can’t imagine the complexity of planning something like this.   The truth is that these type of trips are extremely easy to plan — that is, as long as you do as little planning as possible …. or as your personality allows.   We both love the adventure of ending up where we might least expect.  When we first started dating, our favorite thing to do on the weekends was to get in the car and just drive.  No reservation.  No destination.  We would put on some good music, pick the highways and roads on a whim and end up somewhere—sometimes nowhere—in California.  When we were tired of driving we would roll into a random hotel (way before yelp and reviews) and get a room.  Sure sometimes it turned out to be crappy and sometimes we would get into a town where no hotels had rooms.  But that was part of the adventure! This was basically our around-the-world trip.  We booked a fl
Read more

Stop 1: Tanzania

Greetings from Zanzibar... After a rough start in Dar Es Salaam we made our escape to Zanzibar, an island about 2 hrs away by boat, where we found a quaint little beach (Paje beach) on the east coast with white sand and deep green water. Paje is a small fishing village and we spent our days swimming in the Indian Ocean and our afternoons lounging with cold drinks as we watched families help the fisherman unload their boats. This was a perfect way to shake the last few years of work. Life here in Tanzania, is much slower than back home and we were both quick to adopt the phrase "hakuna matata" , meaning no problem or its ok. After Paje we made our way back to Stone town (the main town/port of Zanzibar) on the daladala - a bus or more like a truck with a roof over its bed. We thought we were getting great seats when we climbed to the little bench parallel to the cabin, but little did we know that in Tanzania there is room in the daladala for everyone. Within about 10 minut
Read more

The Boones Are Checking Out

15 and a WU. For those non-sailors among you, "WU" (pronounced "woo") stands for wake-up, and in 15 days and one wake-up, Tatyana and I will be trading in our suits for cargo pants.   As I write this, we have sold or stored most all of our furniture; Tatyana is presently snuggled up across a pair of deck chairs, sipping the last of the rum and wondering out loud how we can possibly distill our lives to an envelope of forwarding instructions.  But, with each passing day our apartment echoes a little bit louder, and the stack of boxes gets a little bit taller.  And on March 3rd, distilled or not, we're checking out. We've always talked about doing this, but always in vague terms and never anytime soon.  Then last Fall we had "the talk" -the one where Tatyana finally pins me down to a timeline on making babies, and--to both of our surprise--I don't freak out.   But, one great adventure at a time, and there is no way either one of us is going to co
Read more