We're in Arusha. That shouldn't be a huge deal, as we've been planning to be here today for months, but there were a few hours yesterday where it looked pretty likely that we would either:
a) never get here.
b) get robbed, and then never get here.
We got into Dar Es Salaam late on the 29th, and then woke up early on the 30th to get to Arusha on the inexplicably named Scandinavia Express (a 9 hour bus ride). Unfortunately, about 3 hours into the ride, the engine started making funny noises, and the driver pulled aside in a small village to "check things out" (read: disassemble the engine with a pipe wrench and a hammer). After putting it back together and determining that it was still broken (elapsed waiting time: 1.5 hours), he called back to Dar to get another bus sent to pick us up. Estimated wait: 3 hours.
5 hours later (total elapsed waiting time: 6.5 hours), a bus showed up to pick us up, but it wasn't an empty replacement bus, as promised. It was a full bus heading to a city in the opposite direction from where we were headed. No problem, the bus driver said, he'd just offload the other people onto minibuses when we hit the crossroads, then we'd be taken to Arusha in the new bus. No big deal.
When we got to the crossroads, however, and he told the plan to the people heading to the other city (Tanga), one guy decided he wanted to be the biggest jerk humanly imaginable, and refuse to get off the bus and onto the minibuses. Why? No idea. Maybe his shoes were too small, or maybe his heart was two sizes too small. In any case, he sat there and raised a huge stink for 2 hours (elapsed waiting time: 8.5 hours), until eventually the bus driver caved and decided to drive us to Tanga first, before turning around and driving us to Arusha, a 2.5 hour detour (total elapsed waiting time: 10.5 hours). We did eventually get to Arusha, but our driver was supposed to pick us up at 6pm, and it was now 4am, so we had to wait for about an hour before he finally showed up and took us to our hotel. Total lateness: 11.5 hours, on a 9 hour bus ride.
In the end, we made it without any serious incidents other than having to survive on melty Reese's Christmas Trees and a granola bar for a day, but I think the moral of the story is never ride on a bus that claims to be an express service from a geographic area 8000km from where you are.
We start our Kilimanjaro climb tomorrow, we'll post a summary when we're back in town on the 8th. Happy New Year!
Wednesday, December 31, 2008
Wednesday, December 24, 2008
Christmas in Switzerland
We've received quite a bit of flak for our less-than-impressive rate of posting lately. Sorry about that. Partly it's because we've just been relaxing in Europe, enjoying how easy it is to do everything. They have booths here where you can just walk up and buy a train ticket. Just like that! You don't need to fill out forms, or submit a request in triplicate to the Ministry of Transportation Control and Tourist Supervision, or anything!
The second reason we've been lax about posting is that we're now in Switzerland, and everything here is nine hundred times as expensive as anywhere else in the world. We took out 100 Swiss Francs (about $110 Canadian Dollars) from a bank machine, and it spat out a single $100 bill. We went to a teller at the bank to ask for small bills, to which he responded "That is a small bill."
Uh oh.
Internet cafes typically charge about $400 for the first hour, and after that they just start cutting off fingers.
As for Estonia, it was a pretty neat place. It's still a bit less expensive than western Europe, but it's all either really old and crumbly and cobbled and cool looking, or slick and shiny and high-tech. Fun fact: Estonians invented Skype!
Austria was fun too. We spent a few days in Vienna doing exciting things like laundry, and mailing parcels. We wound up spending a lot of time hanging out in Christmas markets, which are an amazing European invention wherein a bunch of people pick a nice looking square, put up a bunch of wooden shacks, and sell delicious food and drinks for the month of December. For some reason, there are also a lot of old hippies selling black-light candles, and foil paintings of wolves and dragons and stuff. They would be great in Canada, except most of the appeal is that you can get big mugs of hot spiced wine and cider, which would never fly in Ontario. There, they'd have to group all the alcohol vendors together and surround them with a big length of bright orange snow fence, along with people checking IDs at the entrance. It would kind of detract from the ambience. Here is a shot of Tallinn's Christmas Market (thanks Google Image Search!).
After that we went to Salzburg and visited a really cool monastery/brewery that Mal visited last time she was here (which definitely had more paintings of Jesus than any bar I'd been in before). Unfortunately, we didn't run into any Von Trappes.
We had a few days to spare between Salzburg and Zurich, so we decided to zip into Germany for 2 nights to check out Fussen, a small town most famous for being near a huge, awesome castle called the Schloss Neuschwanstein (again, props to Google for the picture).
Other than the castle, Fussen has lots of exciting things to entertain travellers. There's the visitor's information centre, which boasts a wide variety of attractive maps and pamphlets, the local bank, and many delicious restaurants and bars - conveniently open until 8pm for all you party animals! Other than the castles, the best part about Fussen is its city crest:
"Fussen: Come for the castles, stay for the weird three-legged crests."
Then, we headed over to Zurich. Our main reason for heading there was to visit a few people I'd met in Japan last spring. My former roommate/project partner Kaspar even offered us a place to stay when we got into town, which saved us enough money on hostel fees to buy a nice boat back home in Canada. He also served up a pretty mean breakfast. Thanks Kaspar!
We're now in Gryon, a tiny village in the Alps. We're booked in at the only hostel in town, the Chalet Martin, along with 58 other like-minded travelers. It's one of the best hostels we've ever stayed in, and probably the best of our trip so far. Think giant log cabin with leather couches and fireplaces everywhere, and also it's in the Alps. We went skiing today around the nearby town of Villars, which was amazing. Not only was the weather perfect, but skiing in the Alps is a very different experience than skiing anywhere in Canada. Here, the slopes run around, between and through the villages, so it's less like "going to a hill" to ski, and more just like skiing around the area. The lift system is integrated with the local transport too, so sometimes you finish a run in a town with no chair lift, only to be picked up by a cograil train and taken to the nearest lift. Very cool. Here's a reasonable approximation of the scenery, again thanks to some anonymous photographer whose picture I found online.
Alright, it's just about time for the traditional Christmas Eve dinner of frozen lasagna and Estonian liquor. Ok, we're saving the REAL traditional dinner for tomorrow. We've got a chicken monopolizing most of the hostel's freezer space that is just waiting to be delicious tomorrow afternoon. Yes.
Merry Christmas!
The second reason we've been lax about posting is that we're now in Switzerland, and everything here is nine hundred times as expensive as anywhere else in the world. We took out 100 Swiss Francs (about $110 Canadian Dollars) from a bank machine, and it spat out a single $100 bill. We went to a teller at the bank to ask for small bills, to which he responded "That is a small bill."
Uh oh.
Internet cafes typically charge about $400 for the first hour, and after that they just start cutting off fingers.
As for Estonia, it was a pretty neat place. It's still a bit less expensive than western Europe, but it's all either really old and crumbly and cobbled and cool looking, or slick and shiny and high-tech. Fun fact: Estonians invented Skype!
Austria was fun too. We spent a few days in Vienna doing exciting things like laundry, and mailing parcels. We wound up spending a lot of time hanging out in Christmas markets, which are an amazing European invention wherein a bunch of people pick a nice looking square, put up a bunch of wooden shacks, and sell delicious food and drinks for the month of December. For some reason, there are also a lot of old hippies selling black-light candles, and foil paintings of wolves and dragons and stuff. They would be great in Canada, except most of the appeal is that you can get big mugs of hot spiced wine and cider, which would never fly in Ontario. There, they'd have to group all the alcohol vendors together and surround them with a big length of bright orange snow fence, along with people checking IDs at the entrance. It would kind of detract from the ambience. Here is a shot of Tallinn's Christmas Market (thanks Google Image Search!).
After that we went to Salzburg and visited a really cool monastery/brewery that Mal visited last time she was here (which definitely had more paintings of Jesus than any bar I'd been in before). Unfortunately, we didn't run into any Von Trappes.
We had a few days to spare between Salzburg and Zurich, so we decided to zip into Germany for 2 nights to check out Fussen, a small town most famous for being near a huge, awesome castle called the Schloss Neuschwanstein (again, props to Google for the picture).
Other than the castle, Fussen has lots of exciting things to entertain travellers. There's the visitor's information centre, which boasts a wide variety of attractive maps and pamphlets, the local bank, and many delicious restaurants and bars - conveniently open until 8pm for all you party animals! Other than the castles, the best part about Fussen is its city crest:
"Fussen: Come for the castles, stay for the weird three-legged crests."
Then, we headed over to Zurich. Our main reason for heading there was to visit a few people I'd met in Japan last spring. My former roommate/project partner Kaspar even offered us a place to stay when we got into town, which saved us enough money on hostel fees to buy a nice boat back home in Canada. He also served up a pretty mean breakfast. Thanks Kaspar!
We're now in Gryon, a tiny village in the Alps. We're booked in at the only hostel in town, the Chalet Martin, along with 58 other like-minded travelers. It's one of the best hostels we've ever stayed in, and probably the best of our trip so far. Think giant log cabin with leather couches and fireplaces everywhere, and also it's in the Alps. We went skiing today around the nearby town of Villars, which was amazing. Not only was the weather perfect, but skiing in the Alps is a very different experience than skiing anywhere in Canada. Here, the slopes run around, between and through the villages, so it's less like "going to a hill" to ski, and more just like skiing around the area. The lift system is integrated with the local transport too, so sometimes you finish a run in a town with no chair lift, only to be picked up by a cograil train and taken to the nearest lift. Very cool. Here's a reasonable approximation of the scenery, again thanks to some anonymous photographer whose picture I found online.
Alright, it's just about time for the traditional Christmas Eve dinner of frozen lasagna and Estonian liquor. Ok, we're saving the REAL traditional dinner for tomorrow. We've got a chicken monopolizing most of the hostel's freezer space that is just waiting to be delicious tomorrow afternoon. Yes.
Merry Christmas!
Thursday, December 11, 2008
Summaries: Mongolia, Russia, Vodkatrain
After a 6 hour bus ride from St. Petersburg to Tallinn, Estonia (and a hearty breakfast of duty-free gummy bears), we've finished the Russian leg of our trip. We're now taking a few days to be lazy, lazy travellers in Tallinn before we start moving around again (Mal has dubbed this part of the trip "Restonia"). The old town in Tallinn is like something out of a fairy tale, or a movie, or a movie about a medieval fairy tale. We'll post a review of the city in a few days, but here's a foggy preview:
And now, here are some wordy final summaries of Mongolia, Russia and Vodkatrain (the company that booked our trip for us).
Mongolia: Our first real experience in Mongolia was in Ulaan Baatar. We were pretty excited to get there, partly because it has an exotic-sounding name, and partly because it is the answer to a trivia question ("What is the world's coldest capital city?"). The actual city was... interesting, but not the kind of place you'd want to hang around for long. It's incredibly smoggy for a city its size (around 1 million people), is apparently packed to the gills with pickpockets (we escaped un-picked, but our guide said she has been robbed several times) and, appropriately enough for the world's coldest capital in late November, was bitterly cold. Fortunately, the people who weren't trying to steal our wallets were extremely friendly. Once we got out of the city, things were much better. We went to a nomadic-style (but not actually nomadic) ger camp for a few nights, in some of the most spectacular scenery we've seen so far on the trip. The Mongolian countryside is the opposite of Ulaan Baatar - incredibly sparse, quiet and clean. Our 3 days of camping there were definitely a highlight of the trip.
The gers themselves were surprisingly warm and comfortable, with three actual beds (no sleeping on the floor for us!) in each tent, thick felt walls, and a roaring fire in the wood stove (except the one or two times when it went untended through the night, and we woke up to near-freezing temperatures). Here's a partial view of inside the gers. Three of our Vodkatrain travel companions (from left: Rich, Laura and Tim) are passing the time with some recreational card games and beverages.
As for the food, it wasn't nearly as bad as I thought it would be, though it did tend towards big, fatty portions of mutton, and deep-fried dumplings. We went out for dinner at a "Mongolian Grill" on our first night in the capital, which was pretty much the same as Mongolian Grills in Canada: a buffet of vegetables, meats and sauces that you combine yourself, then give to a guy who grills it all up for you. I have my suspicions about the authentic "Mongolian-ness" of these grills, though, since in most of Mongolia the closest thing you can find to a fresh vegetable is camel stew.
Overall: Ulaan Baatar - interesting, but not exactly a travel hotspot. Wilderness - fantastic and highly recommended. One final point though: it is immeasurably helpful to book with a tour company, or at least go with someone who speaks Mongolian. Otherwise, the language barrier could pose some pretty significant problems.
Russia: Our Russian experience really consists of three cities, plus a lot of train. Irkutsk is a good-looking city, though we didn't spend enough time there to really get a feel for it. Listvyanka, the nearby village on the shore of Lake Baikal, is a nice little town with lots of 19th century wooden houses, some dating back as far as the failed Decembrist revolt of 1825. Back then, a bunch of Russian soldiers and academics decided to rise up against Czar Nicholas I, but didn't succeed and were exiled to Siberia (fail!). Lake Baikal was even cooler than we were expecting. We figured our experience living on a great lake would have kind of jaded us to big bodies of water, but Lake Baikal has an edge on Lake Ontario in that it's surrounded by mountains, which make for some pretty cool scenery. There are some good hikes around town, and that's what we spent most of our time doing. We also took in a traditional Russian sauna (called a "banya"), which involves getting whipped with pine branches. Way more relaxing than it sounds, trust me.
We also hiked up to an old-but-still-functioning astronomical observatory on a hill. It was full of 1970's era scientific equipment, and kind of run-down, which was cool because it made it seem like something from a snowy version of "Lost".
Moscow mostly got covered in my last post, so I'll just reiterate that there are lots of really cool things to see there, and we even heard rumours that there are some restaurants in town where you can eat a full meal without having to auction off any internal organs on the black market to cover the bill.
St. Petersburg doesn't have the same quantity of iconic sights that Moscow has, but it is slightly cheaper, and it really raises the bar on all-around impressive architecture. We didn't see a single ugly building in downtown St. Petersburg during our entire stay. That, combined with the fact that it's full of canals, make it seem like kind of a near-arctic combination of Paris and Venice. The near-arctic thing is definitely noticeable though. This time of year, the sun rises around 9:30am, and sets by 3:30pm. Their tourism slogan could be something along the lines of "St. Petersburg in winter: hope you like architecture and darkness!". Oh yeah, there's also the Hermitage, one of the biggest, most ornate, treasure-filled museums in the universe. It was awesome.
As for the train, we've discussed it a bit in past posts, but I'll summarize it here: long days of reading, listening to music and playing cards, punctuated by meals of instant noodles, peanut butter and Snickers bars. The scenery out the window in Russia ranged from "trees" to "snowy trees" to "different kinds of snowy trees", but it goes by in a hypnotic kind of way, and we spent many hours just staring out the window. All in all, the time passes in a pleasant enough fashion, and it really is a neat way to cross about a quarter of the earth's surface.
Overall: Russian people are friendlier than the stereotype makes them out to be, but several other stereotypes are very true: tons of people wear big furry hats, people very rarely smile to strangers, and there is TONS of drinking (last week's Economist estimated that 30% of all male deaths in Russia are related, directly or indirectly, to alcohol). Still, we enjoyed the people and the food, which was usually hearty and delicious, if maybe not the healthiest in the world (mayonnaise is an integral part of just about every dish in the country). Our few experiences with sports and music events were super fun, and we can fully recommend KHL games or Russian afrobeat to anyone who finds themself in Moscow. Beyond that, the country is full of incredibly interesting history and amazing sights. If you can stomach the bureaucratic process of getting into the country (which is like a paper-based version of "The Eliminator" from American Gladiators), I'd say it's well worth a visit.
And finally...
Vodkatrain: I thought I'd include a quick review of our tour company for the train, in case anyone else is considering a similar trip. We booked our train through an Australia-based company called Vodkatrain. Basically, you pay them one lump sum and they take care of all your tickets and accomodations for the entire trip (plus a few meals here and there) and set you up with a group of fellow travelers, and a "honcho" in each city you visit. The honchos are usually local students who want a job that lets them practice their English. The honchos aren't really "guides" in the conventional sense, as there's no structured itinerary. They're mostly there to help with translation in tricky circumstances (like hailing a cab in Ulaan Baatar, or ordering food at a tiny restaurant in Moscow, for example), and to suggest the best things to do in each place, and the easiest way to do them. Our trip consisted of six people: Mal and I, two British girls named Sarah and Laura, an Australian guy named Tim, and another British guy named Rich, all in the 23-25 age group.
In total, we estimated that the Vodkatrain package cost about 30% more than we would have paid to do the whole thing on our own, which was DEFINITELY worth the amount of hassle it saved. There's nothing better than getting off a train in an unfamiliar, non-English-speaking city, bleary-eyed and disoriented, and being whisked onto a bus and taken directly to your hotel by someone whose job it is to make sure you have a good time. And that's not even taking into account the amount of time and stress it would have taken us to figure out things like train schedules, Cyrillic maps, and navigating the Russian visa registration process, which you have to do in every city, and sometimes costs money, but sometimes doesn't, etc. etc. There are places where fully independent travel is the way to go. Russia and Mongolia are not among them.
Final summary of the Vodkatrain experience: beyond a doubt one of the easiest ways to ride the Trans-Siberian railway and actually stop and see things along the route.
Well, that just about wraps up the Great Train Adventure portion of the trip!
And now, here are some wordy final summaries of Mongolia, Russia and Vodkatrain (the company that booked our trip for us).
Mongolia: Our first real experience in Mongolia was in Ulaan Baatar. We were pretty excited to get there, partly because it has an exotic-sounding name, and partly because it is the answer to a trivia question ("What is the world's coldest capital city?"). The actual city was... interesting, but not the kind of place you'd want to hang around for long. It's incredibly smoggy for a city its size (around 1 million people), is apparently packed to the gills with pickpockets (we escaped un-picked, but our guide said she has been robbed several times) and, appropriately enough for the world's coldest capital in late November, was bitterly cold. Fortunately, the people who weren't trying to steal our wallets were extremely friendly. Once we got out of the city, things were much better. We went to a nomadic-style (but not actually nomadic) ger camp for a few nights, in some of the most spectacular scenery we've seen so far on the trip. The Mongolian countryside is the opposite of Ulaan Baatar - incredibly sparse, quiet and clean. Our 3 days of camping there were definitely a highlight of the trip.
The gers themselves were surprisingly warm and comfortable, with three actual beds (no sleeping on the floor for us!) in each tent, thick felt walls, and a roaring fire in the wood stove (except the one or two times when it went untended through the night, and we woke up to near-freezing temperatures). Here's a partial view of inside the gers. Three of our Vodkatrain travel companions (from left: Rich, Laura and Tim) are passing the time with some recreational card games and beverages.
As for the food, it wasn't nearly as bad as I thought it would be, though it did tend towards big, fatty portions of mutton, and deep-fried dumplings. We went out for dinner at a "Mongolian Grill" on our first night in the capital, which was pretty much the same as Mongolian Grills in Canada: a buffet of vegetables, meats and sauces that you combine yourself, then give to a guy who grills it all up for you. I have my suspicions about the authentic "Mongolian-ness" of these grills, though, since in most of Mongolia the closest thing you can find to a fresh vegetable is camel stew.
Overall: Ulaan Baatar - interesting, but not exactly a travel hotspot. Wilderness - fantastic and highly recommended. One final point though: it is immeasurably helpful to book with a tour company, or at least go with someone who speaks Mongolian. Otherwise, the language barrier could pose some pretty significant problems.
Russia: Our Russian experience really consists of three cities, plus a lot of train. Irkutsk is a good-looking city, though we didn't spend enough time there to really get a feel for it. Listvyanka, the nearby village on the shore of Lake Baikal, is a nice little town with lots of 19th century wooden houses, some dating back as far as the failed Decembrist revolt of 1825. Back then, a bunch of Russian soldiers and academics decided to rise up against Czar Nicholas I, but didn't succeed and were exiled to Siberia (fail!). Lake Baikal was even cooler than we were expecting. We figured our experience living on a great lake would have kind of jaded us to big bodies of water, but Lake Baikal has an edge on Lake Ontario in that it's surrounded by mountains, which make for some pretty cool scenery. There are some good hikes around town, and that's what we spent most of our time doing. We also took in a traditional Russian sauna (called a "banya"), which involves getting whipped with pine branches. Way more relaxing than it sounds, trust me.
We also hiked up to an old-but-still-functioning astronomical observatory on a hill. It was full of 1970's era scientific equipment, and kind of run-down, which was cool because it made it seem like something from a snowy version of "Lost".
Moscow mostly got covered in my last post, so I'll just reiterate that there are lots of really cool things to see there, and we even heard rumours that there are some restaurants in town where you can eat a full meal without having to auction off any internal organs on the black market to cover the bill.
St. Petersburg doesn't have the same quantity of iconic sights that Moscow has, but it is slightly cheaper, and it really raises the bar on all-around impressive architecture. We didn't see a single ugly building in downtown St. Petersburg during our entire stay. That, combined with the fact that it's full of canals, make it seem like kind of a near-arctic combination of Paris and Venice. The near-arctic thing is definitely noticeable though. This time of year, the sun rises around 9:30am, and sets by 3:30pm. Their tourism slogan could be something along the lines of "St. Petersburg in winter: hope you like architecture and darkness!". Oh yeah, there's also the Hermitage, one of the biggest, most ornate, treasure-filled museums in the universe. It was awesome.
As for the train, we've discussed it a bit in past posts, but I'll summarize it here: long days of reading, listening to music and playing cards, punctuated by meals of instant noodles, peanut butter and Snickers bars. The scenery out the window in Russia ranged from "trees" to "snowy trees" to "different kinds of snowy trees", but it goes by in a hypnotic kind of way, and we spent many hours just staring out the window. All in all, the time passes in a pleasant enough fashion, and it really is a neat way to cross about a quarter of the earth's surface.
Overall: Russian people are friendlier than the stereotype makes them out to be, but several other stereotypes are very true: tons of people wear big furry hats, people very rarely smile to strangers, and there is TONS of drinking (last week's Economist estimated that 30% of all male deaths in Russia are related, directly or indirectly, to alcohol). Still, we enjoyed the people and the food, which was usually hearty and delicious, if maybe not the healthiest in the world (mayonnaise is an integral part of just about every dish in the country). Our few experiences with sports and music events were super fun, and we can fully recommend KHL games or Russian afrobeat to anyone who finds themself in Moscow. Beyond that, the country is full of incredibly interesting history and amazing sights. If you can stomach the bureaucratic process of getting into the country (which is like a paper-based version of "The Eliminator" from American Gladiators), I'd say it's well worth a visit.
And finally...
Vodkatrain: I thought I'd include a quick review of our tour company for the train, in case anyone else is considering a similar trip. We booked our train through an Australia-based company called Vodkatrain. Basically, you pay them one lump sum and they take care of all your tickets and accomodations for the entire trip (plus a few meals here and there) and set you up with a group of fellow travelers, and a "honcho" in each city you visit. The honchos are usually local students who want a job that lets them practice their English. The honchos aren't really "guides" in the conventional sense, as there's no structured itinerary. They're mostly there to help with translation in tricky circumstances (like hailing a cab in Ulaan Baatar, or ordering food at a tiny restaurant in Moscow, for example), and to suggest the best things to do in each place, and the easiest way to do them. Our trip consisted of six people: Mal and I, two British girls named Sarah and Laura, an Australian guy named Tim, and another British guy named Rich, all in the 23-25 age group.
In total, we estimated that the Vodkatrain package cost about 30% more than we would have paid to do the whole thing on our own, which was DEFINITELY worth the amount of hassle it saved. There's nothing better than getting off a train in an unfamiliar, non-English-speaking city, bleary-eyed and disoriented, and being whisked onto a bus and taken directly to your hotel by someone whose job it is to make sure you have a good time. And that's not even taking into account the amount of time and stress it would have taken us to figure out things like train schedules, Cyrillic maps, and navigating the Russian visa registration process, which you have to do in every city, and sometimes costs money, but sometimes doesn't, etc. etc. There are places where fully independent travel is the way to go. Russia and Mongolia are not among them.
Final summary of the Vodkatrain experience: beyond a doubt one of the easiest ways to ride the Trans-Siberian railway and actually stop and see things along the route.
Well, that just about wraps up the Great Train Adventure portion of the trip!
Monday, December 8, 2008
Trans-Siberian Railway, the conclusion
There are some things a civilized person never thinks they'll become, and "serial napkin thief" is one of them. And yet, both Mallory and I are now indisputable scourges to napkin dispensers worldwide. Our descent into nap-kleptomania started because Russia is cold (and therefore sniffly), and the supply of Kleenex/napkins is unsteady at best. Some days you may run into four or five establishments with well stocked napkin dispensers. On the other hand, sometimes you can go days without seeing a single one. As such, we've developed the habit of finishing our meals, looking furtively around the restaurant, and then stealthily pocketing as many napkins as we think we can safely get away with. I'm not proud of it, but that's the way it is.
Anyways, the trip from Irkutsk to Moscow went pretty smoothly. Start to finish, it only took 78 hours, not 96 as we'd initially thought. We were in almost-spacious four berth compartments, and we stopped at towns and cities every few hours which gave us a chance to stretch our legs and fill up on delicious piroshkies, which are big deep-fried pastry things filled with stuff. Part of the fun of buying them was the surprise of figuring out what kind of filling they had. We learned the Russian word for potato (kartofyel!), but for some reason they interpreted our "kartofyel peroshki" as "please give me a pastry filled with whatever filling you happened to have in the fridge this morning". Most of them were pretty tasty regardless.
We had 2 days in Moscow, and we used them to see all the big things people think of when they picture Russia (the Kremlin, St. Basil's Cathedral, the mummified body of Vladimir Lenin). The company we booked our train trip with (Vodkatrain, highly recommended) also arranges for a local student to act as a sort of guide/human reference book while you're in a particular city, and our guide in Moscow set up some awesome evening activities.
The first night, we went to a Russian Continental Hockey League (KHL) hockey game between the Spartak Moskva and the Moscow Atlant, which was awesome. Hockey crowds in Russia are intense. It's more like a European soccer game, with team scarves waving in the air and non-stop chanting/singing from the hardcore fans. We were cheering for the Spartak, partly because our local guide (Eugene) was cheering for them, and partly because their logo was a Roman Spartan soldier that looked eerily similar to another hockey team, and I liked that. The other team gets full points for logo quality though - a huge growling polar bear face in a giant purple and yellow explosion. The Spartak won 4-1. Hooray!
The second night, we went to check out a show that our guide recommended after hearing that I'm a big afrobeat fan. The band billed themselves as "Russian afrobeat/ska", and it was awesome. They had a total of six horn players, including one guy playing a Sousaphone, and their music was like afrobeat meets traditional Russian folk music, played as fast as possible.
We spent the rest of the time in Moscow trying to avoid paying $18 for a cup of coffee. Oh, also, the Moscow metro system is the most ridiculously ornate transportation network in the world. Almost every station in the city has at least six chandeliers, plus marble sculptures and gold leaf on everything else.
We're now in St. Petersburg, with one day left before heading to Tallinn, Estonia bright and early tomorrow morning. And then, for REAL this time, we'll post some pictures.
Anyways, the trip from Irkutsk to Moscow went pretty smoothly. Start to finish, it only took 78 hours, not 96 as we'd initially thought. We were in almost-spacious four berth compartments, and we stopped at towns and cities every few hours which gave us a chance to stretch our legs and fill up on delicious piroshkies, which are big deep-fried pastry things filled with stuff. Part of the fun of buying them was the surprise of figuring out what kind of filling they had. We learned the Russian word for potato (kartofyel!), but for some reason they interpreted our "kartofyel peroshki" as "please give me a pastry filled with whatever filling you happened to have in the fridge this morning". Most of them were pretty tasty regardless.
We had 2 days in Moscow, and we used them to see all the big things people think of when they picture Russia (the Kremlin, St. Basil's Cathedral, the mummified body of Vladimir Lenin). The company we booked our train trip with (Vodkatrain, highly recommended) also arranges for a local student to act as a sort of guide/human reference book while you're in a particular city, and our guide in Moscow set up some awesome evening activities.
The first night, we went to a Russian Continental Hockey League (KHL) hockey game between the Spartak Moskva and the Moscow Atlant, which was awesome. Hockey crowds in Russia are intense. It's more like a European soccer game, with team scarves waving in the air and non-stop chanting/singing from the hardcore fans. We were cheering for the Spartak, partly because our local guide (Eugene) was cheering for them, and partly because their logo was a Roman Spartan soldier that looked eerily similar to another hockey team, and I liked that. The other team gets full points for logo quality though - a huge growling polar bear face in a giant purple and yellow explosion. The Spartak won 4-1. Hooray!
The second night, we went to check out a show that our guide recommended after hearing that I'm a big afrobeat fan. The band billed themselves as "Russian afrobeat/ska", and it was awesome. They had a total of six horn players, including one guy playing a Sousaphone, and their music was like afrobeat meets traditional Russian folk music, played as fast as possible.
We spent the rest of the time in Moscow trying to avoid paying $18 for a cup of coffee. Oh, also, the Moscow metro system is the most ridiculously ornate transportation network in the world. Almost every station in the city has at least six chandeliers, plus marble sculptures and gold leaf on everything else.
We're now in St. Petersburg, with one day left before heading to Tallinn, Estonia bright and early tomorrow morning. And then, for REAL this time, we'll post some pictures.
Sunday, November 30, 2008
Trans-Siberian Railway, Part 2
The trip from Ulaan Baatar to Irkutsk was the shortest leg on our Trans-Siberian itinerary, so we thought it would wind up being pretty uneventful. Luckily we wound up being pretty wrong on that count.
First off, we had to deal with the epic bureaucratic train wreck (metaphorically speaking) that is the Russian border crossing. We didn't have to do much other than hand over our passports, but somehow the whole ordeal took ELEVEN HOURS, which would have been only mildly inconvenient except for the fact that the bathrooms on the train are locked during all border crossings. Eeh. We did eventually find a small pay toilet near the station which, at the time, rivalled the Taj Mahal for sheer beauty.
Eleven hours sitting still in a train compartment might have been pretty boring, were it not for the spectacle playing out in our car. Four of us (of the six doing the Vodkatrain trip) were in one compartment, and the other two were sharing a compartment with a woman who turned out to be a Mongolian smuggler. "Ooh," you're thinking, "a smuggler! She must have been trafficking all sorts of dangerous and exotic things across the border." Nope. She was smuggling salami and underpants. To evade the customs officers, she cleverly stuffed several large salami sausages behind the curtains, and hid one or two in the pillows of our fellow travellers. As for the underpants, she strapped them to her shins with packing tape and covered them with some conveniently baggy pants. The perfect crime!
Once the customs officers were convinced of her lumpy-legged innocence, she quickly gathered her wares and headed off the train, only to stop 10 metres from the platform and set up shop, selling underpants and cured meat to the hungry population of Naushki.
We finally crossed into Russia, and passed through a town called Ulan Ude at around 10pm, stopping for 45 minutes. One of our travel companions had a guidebook that informed us that Ulan Ude is home to the world's largest statue of Vladimir Lenin's head. How could we pass that up? The map in the guidebook made it look like we had plenty of time to get there and back in 45 minutes. Here is a word of caution: never ever trust maps in guidebooks. They are universally awful. We finally found the head (verdict: yep, it's big!), but only had enough time to make it back to the train if we ran the entire way. Mal and two others decided to turn back a bit early and delegate photo-taking responsibility to the more foolish among us (me being one of them). After a mad dash back to the platform, we all made it safely back on board with a few minutes to spare.
We got to Irkutsk and took off immediatley for Listvyanka, a small town on the shore of Lake Baikal, the world's biggest lake (by volume). Mal and I got made fun of for always making sure people tacked on the "by volume" part, because clearly the biggest lake by area (Lake Superior) is the proper "world's biggest lake". It was pretty awesome regardless, and we got to eat some freshly smoked omul (a fish that only exists in Lake Baikal) right on the shore. Delicious.
Internet time's up, more stories from Moscow!
First off, we had to deal with the epic bureaucratic train wreck (metaphorically speaking) that is the Russian border crossing. We didn't have to do much other than hand over our passports, but somehow the whole ordeal took ELEVEN HOURS, which would have been only mildly inconvenient except for the fact that the bathrooms on the train are locked during all border crossings. Eeh. We did eventually find a small pay toilet near the station which, at the time, rivalled the Taj Mahal for sheer beauty.
Eleven hours sitting still in a train compartment might have been pretty boring, were it not for the spectacle playing out in our car. Four of us (of the six doing the Vodkatrain trip) were in one compartment, and the other two were sharing a compartment with a woman who turned out to be a Mongolian smuggler. "Ooh," you're thinking, "a smuggler! She must have been trafficking all sorts of dangerous and exotic things across the border." Nope. She was smuggling salami and underpants. To evade the customs officers, she cleverly stuffed several large salami sausages behind the curtains, and hid one or two in the pillows of our fellow travellers. As for the underpants, she strapped them to her shins with packing tape and covered them with some conveniently baggy pants. The perfect crime!
Once the customs officers were convinced of her lumpy-legged innocence, she quickly gathered her wares and headed off the train, only to stop 10 metres from the platform and set up shop, selling underpants and cured meat to the hungry population of Naushki.
We finally crossed into Russia, and passed through a town called Ulan Ude at around 10pm, stopping for 45 minutes. One of our travel companions had a guidebook that informed us that Ulan Ude is home to the world's largest statue of Vladimir Lenin's head. How could we pass that up? The map in the guidebook made it look like we had plenty of time to get there and back in 45 minutes. Here is a word of caution: never ever trust maps in guidebooks. They are universally awful. We finally found the head (verdict: yep, it's big!), but only had enough time to make it back to the train if we ran the entire way. Mal and two others decided to turn back a bit early and delegate photo-taking responsibility to the more foolish among us (me being one of them). After a mad dash back to the platform, we all made it safely back on board with a few minutes to spare.
We got to Irkutsk and took off immediatley for Listvyanka, a small town on the shore of Lake Baikal, the world's biggest lake (by volume). Mal and I got made fun of for always making sure people tacked on the "by volume" part, because clearly the biggest lake by area (Lake Superior) is the proper "world's biggest lake". It was pretty awesome regardless, and we got to eat some freshly smoked omul (a fish that only exists in Lake Baikal) right on the shore. Delicious.
Internet time's up, more stories from Moscow!
Thursday, November 27, 2008
The Trans-Siberian Experience (so far)
It turns out our fears of a Blogger blackout in China were well founded. We couldn't figure out an easy way to get around the government-imposed block, so we just had to save all our stories up until now. But now we're in Ulaan Baatar with a train to catch shortly, so if you want interesting, well written stories and/or pictures, you're just going to have to go somewhere else.
Beijing was awesome. Maybe it's just that we headed there from Delhi, but it seemed like a modern, sparklingly clean metropolis with cheap, delicious food and at least a 75% reduction in scams and hassle. We did all the things that are practically government-mandated for tourists to do in Beijing, including an amazing 10km hike along a totally deserted stretch of the great wall, a trip to the Forbidden City, and a huge, incredibly delicious meal of Peking Duck, or, as it's known there, "duck". I've used that line like 6 times already in emails, sorry if you've seen it before. See above disclaimer re: post quality.
We met up with the other 5 people travelling with us on the Trans-Siberian railway (descriptions and pictures to be posted sometime soon), and then hopped on the train. The first leg was a one-night, 30-hour trip from Beijing to Ulaan Baatar, Mongolia. On its own, a 30 hour train ride sounds pretty long, but it's just a warm-up. Later this evening, we get on a 2-night trip from here to Irkutsk, Russia, and after that, we've got a 96 hour monster trip from Irkutsk to Moscow.
We were expecting Mongolia to be pretty cool, and it didn't disappoint at all. While the capital (Ulaan Baatar) is covered in a giant smog-cloud, filled with crumbly concrete block buildings, and apparently packed to the gills with pickpockets, we survived our one day here without incident, and even had a tasty meal at a Mongolian barbeque place nearby.
After that, we headed about two hours into the countryside for a 3-day camping trip, where we stayed in gers (traditional nomadic Mongolian houses), which were way more comfortable than we were expecting. The scenery was jaw-dropping and the weather was pretty mild for Mongolia (5 below during the day, 15 below at night). We went for a few hikes, climbed some hills, and got to visit a nomadic family for a few hours, to get a bit of experience with their way of life. About 25% of Mongolia's 3 million people still live nomadically, which is pretty impressive, given how much foreign influence the country has been exposed to (it was under communist control until 1990, and the Russians destroyed most of the cultural buildings and artifacts in the 1940's). That being said, most nomads now also own solar panels, satellite dishes and TVs, but if I lived in the desert I'd probably want some cable too.
We're off to go do some grocery shopping for the train to Irkutsk, more details and pictures will be forthcoming from Russia. Dosvidanya!
Beijing was awesome. Maybe it's just that we headed there from Delhi, but it seemed like a modern, sparklingly clean metropolis with cheap, delicious food and at least a 75% reduction in scams and hassle. We did all the things that are practically government-mandated for tourists to do in Beijing, including an amazing 10km hike along a totally deserted stretch of the great wall, a trip to the Forbidden City, and a huge, incredibly delicious meal of Peking Duck, or, as it's known there, "duck". I've used that line like 6 times already in emails, sorry if you've seen it before. See above disclaimer re: post quality.
We met up with the other 5 people travelling with us on the Trans-Siberian railway (descriptions and pictures to be posted sometime soon), and then hopped on the train. The first leg was a one-night, 30-hour trip from Beijing to Ulaan Baatar, Mongolia. On its own, a 30 hour train ride sounds pretty long, but it's just a warm-up. Later this evening, we get on a 2-night trip from here to Irkutsk, Russia, and after that, we've got a 96 hour monster trip from Irkutsk to Moscow.
We were expecting Mongolia to be pretty cool, and it didn't disappoint at all. While the capital (Ulaan Baatar) is covered in a giant smog-cloud, filled with crumbly concrete block buildings, and apparently packed to the gills with pickpockets, we survived our one day here without incident, and even had a tasty meal at a Mongolian barbeque place nearby.
After that, we headed about two hours into the countryside for a 3-day camping trip, where we stayed in gers (traditional nomadic Mongolian houses), which were way more comfortable than we were expecting. The scenery was jaw-dropping and the weather was pretty mild for Mongolia (5 below during the day, 15 below at night). We went for a few hikes, climbed some hills, and got to visit a nomadic family for a few hours, to get a bit of experience with their way of life. About 25% of Mongolia's 3 million people still live nomadically, which is pretty impressive, given how much foreign influence the country has been exposed to (it was under communist control until 1990, and the Russians destroyed most of the cultural buildings and artifacts in the 1940's). That being said, most nomads now also own solar panels, satellite dishes and TVs, but if I lived in the desert I'd probably want some cable too.
We're off to go do some grocery shopping for the train to Irkutsk, more details and pictures will be forthcoming from Russia. Dosvidanya!
Saturday, November 15, 2008
India Wrap-up
We've been inexcusably lax about posting lately, as we've changed our travel style from "slow and lazy" to "regular tourists" for the past few days. We arrived in Delhi on the 9th, and spent the time since then running around frantically getting to the last few cities on our To-Visit list (Chandigarh and Agra), as well as figuring out how best to ship a bunch of stuff home. Small souveniers: 3 hours, no problem. Sitar: 3 days, horrendous nightmare (but more about this in a bit).
DISCLAIMER: This post is really long. Feel free to read it in segments over the next week or so.
To wrap up Jodhpur, overall it felt like a busier, pushier version of Udaipur with no lake. The fort was pretty awesome though, and we finally got a picture of it.
We also got a picture of the turtle that lived at our guest house.
If you're not put off by the text-heavy post, here are summaries of Delhi, Chandigarh and Agra.
Delhi: in some ways, it's very different from the rest of India. It has expensive shopping, mind-blowing restaurants (including one called "Bukhara" that Bill Clinton once said was so delicious it made him wish he had two stomachs), and a shiny new metro that is fast, cheap, and easy to navigate. On the other hand, it also has the worst air quality of any city I have ever visited, just as many scams and pushy touts as anywhere else (if not more), and the most expensive hotels in the country. Overall, it was a mixed experience. Here's a short summary of some of our experiences, in case you find yourself in Delhi sometime in the near future.
Best food: Bukhara. Expensive even by North American standards, but they served up easily the most tender, delicious leg of lamb that I have ever eaten. The one let-down was their supposedly world-famous dal (lentil dish), which, at $15 for a small bowl, is about ten times as expensive as all other dal dishes in the country, and wasn't THAT much better. Runner-up for best restaurant: Veda. A super-hip North Indian restaurant in the old British city centre of Connaught Place that served extremely delicious fancy Indian food at less than a third the price of Bukhara.
Other food notes: We tried a bunch of fast food places, as towards the end of our time here (and I never thought I would hear myself say this) we were getting a little tired of curry. Most of them were pretty accurate reproductions of their North American counterparts, with one notable exception: no beef, anywhere. Not even McDonald's! Domino's and Pizza Hut both had good chicken and veggie pizzas, and KFC was pretty much identical.
Our hotel: The Pearl Plaza. One of the cheapest rooms in Delhi (at about $30/day) that didn't look like your luggage might be carried off in the middle of the night by an army of roaches. Clean and air conditioned, but with the pushiest service we ran into in the entire country (and that is saying something).
The sights: We went to the Red Fort, but it looked quite a bit like the other 3 or 4 forts we'd seen in the last few weeks, so we didn't go in. Forts are cool, don't get me wrong, but it's like "hey, more cannons". We went to the India Gate, and can confirm that it is indeed a large gate with the word INDIA written on it. Connaught Place is a neat area, with posh colonnaded buildings and fancy shops and stuff. Side note: we're becoming worryingly jaded about historic sights.
The last major thing on our Delhi to-do list was to get my &%*$#ing sitar shipped. The more I looked into it, the more I wished I'd decided on a tin whistle or something instead. The Indian Post refused to ship something so long (it's 5 feet by 2 feet by 15 inches). FedEx wanted like $14,000 to ship it. DHL wouldn't pack it. Luckily, fate swung in and helped get it done. On our train from Jodhpur to Delhi, we had a great conversation with a woman named Aditi, who was traveling with her son. After a few hours, I found out that she (conveniently enough) works for a logistics and shipping company. And she mentioned that before I told her I had something to ship! Otherwise, India being India, it would have been a bit too convenient. I told her my tale of woe and she agreed to help me get it shipped through her company. Not only that, she took the time to make sure I had a ride to her office in Delhi, and met with me a few times to take care of paperwork and stuff. If you find yourself in India with a sitar on your hands, and you have no idea how to get it home, I can highly recommend Interline Global Logistics. Aditi also gives out excellent restaurant recommendations. WARNING: Don't find yourself in India with a sitar on your hands. If you're heading straight home and you can check it as baggage, go for it. They're awesome instruments. But shipping a sitar from India costs several times more than buying the instrument itself. Had I known this a few weeks ago, I might be the proud owner of a nice tin whistle.
Alright, enough about Delhi, here are some quick summaries of the other two cities we visited this week.
Chandigarh: We went here for two reasons. First, it's home to the Nek Chand Rock Garden. Basically, a few decades ago this guy Nek Chand started building this crazy fantasy world in a government-owned but undeveloped plot of land, entirely made out of recycled garbage (old electrical wiring, broken ceramics, small bits of glass jewelry, etc.). He worked at it every day, and by the time the government found his garden, it was HUGE and crazy awesome. Rather than tear it down, they let him keep working on it, and turned it into a public park. It is easily one of the coolest places I have ever been in my life. Picture yourself, as a kid, trying to dream up the coolest park in the world. It would probably have giant stone castles, bridges criscrossing over each other, waterfalls, secret passages, and twisting walkways surrounded by fifty foot high cliffs. That's this place. Except this place also has hundreds of sculptures made out of recycled materials. It's amazing, and a strong runner-up for the best "tourist sight" we saw in India (see Agra for #1). Totally worth the trip to Chandigarh, but pictures don't really do it justice. That being said, here is a cool/kinda creepy army of garbage people.
The second reason we went there is because the whole city was designed by Le Corbusier, an early-mid 20th century modern architect. I'm not really a huge fan (read: he's more or less my least favourite architect in the world), but we went because we were curious to see how a modernist super-planned city would look in India. It was much more clean and spacious than the other cities we've seen, but the buildings were definitely designed by Le Corbusier, proving that North America doesn't have a monopoly on totally soulless architecture.
Also, all the neighbourhoods are called "sectors", which makes you feel like you're in a post-apocalyptic sci-fi movie anytime you need to get somewhere. "I'd like an autorickshaw to Sector 17, please."
Agra: We came here for the same reason millions of other tourists come here every year: The Taj Mahal. To be honest, there aren't a lot of other good reasons to visit Agra. It's dirty, and restaurants/taxis/shops are all WAY more expensive here than just about anywhere else in the country. All that makes the Taj Mahal stick out even more by comparison. It is amazing. A lot of famous tourist sights wind up being a bit of a letdown when you get there, for a variety of reasons. Maybe they don't look as cool in person, maybe they've been poorly maintained, maybe they're interesting in a "hmm, cool history" sense. The Taj Mahal, on the other hand, is just flat out one of the most impressive structures I've ever seen. It's so perfectly designed, so perfectly proportioned, that you feel it as much as you see it. There is no such thing as a bad angle to view it from. It just sits there, radiating epic-ness.
A must-see on a global scale. All this is even more surprising, since everyone has seen 100 postcard-perfect pictures of the Taj, so you'd think it would be a little bit spoiled. Nope. Walking through a dark archway and seeing it looming in the distance is one of those moments that brushes away all the bad experiences and challenges of traveling and replaces them in your mind with the cognitive equivalent of "wow". Just don't stick around in Agra too long.
Side note: we paid a rickshaw driver to take us around Agra a bit while we waited for the air to clear in the morning (it's super smoggy until well after noon there, and we didn't want our one trip to the Taj Mahal to be smoggy). On the way, we got an idea of the kind of nonchalance you would develop living in the shadow of one of the world's most famous monuments. An excerpt from his tour: "On your right, you can see some traditional farms growing eggplants, cauliflower, potatoes... over there is the Taj Mahal. On your left is some spinach!"
Final India Summary: Equal parts amazing, unique cities, incredibly friendly people, foul-smelling streets, non-stop tourist hassle, wealth, poverty, dancing, delicious food, constant fear of food poisoning, scams, questionable sanitation, tea, music, spices, and cows. It's like nowhere else on earth (in our limited experience), but we're excited to be moving on to something new.
Alright, we're taking off for Beijing tonight. At one point, I think the Chinese government had blocked access to Blogger from within the country, so it could be a while before we post another update, but we'll do our best! Failing that, we'll be in Mongolia in about a week or so, and we'll try and post from there.
DISCLAIMER: This post is really long. Feel free to read it in segments over the next week or so.
To wrap up Jodhpur, overall it felt like a busier, pushier version of Udaipur with no lake. The fort was pretty awesome though, and we finally got a picture of it.
We also got a picture of the turtle that lived at our guest house.
If you're not put off by the text-heavy post, here are summaries of Delhi, Chandigarh and Agra.
Delhi: in some ways, it's very different from the rest of India. It has expensive shopping, mind-blowing restaurants (including one called "Bukhara" that Bill Clinton once said was so delicious it made him wish he had two stomachs), and a shiny new metro that is fast, cheap, and easy to navigate. On the other hand, it also has the worst air quality of any city I have ever visited, just as many scams and pushy touts as anywhere else (if not more), and the most expensive hotels in the country. Overall, it was a mixed experience. Here's a short summary of some of our experiences, in case you find yourself in Delhi sometime in the near future.
Best food: Bukhara. Expensive even by North American standards, but they served up easily the most tender, delicious leg of lamb that I have ever eaten. The one let-down was their supposedly world-famous dal (lentil dish), which, at $15 for a small bowl, is about ten times as expensive as all other dal dishes in the country, and wasn't THAT much better. Runner-up for best restaurant: Veda. A super-hip North Indian restaurant in the old British city centre of Connaught Place that served extremely delicious fancy Indian food at less than a third the price of Bukhara.
Other food notes: We tried a bunch of fast food places, as towards the end of our time here (and I never thought I would hear myself say this) we were getting a little tired of curry. Most of them were pretty accurate reproductions of their North American counterparts, with one notable exception: no beef, anywhere. Not even McDonald's! Domino's and Pizza Hut both had good chicken and veggie pizzas, and KFC was pretty much identical.
Our hotel: The Pearl Plaza. One of the cheapest rooms in Delhi (at about $30/day) that didn't look like your luggage might be carried off in the middle of the night by an army of roaches. Clean and air conditioned, but with the pushiest service we ran into in the entire country (and that is saying something).
The sights: We went to the Red Fort, but it looked quite a bit like the other 3 or 4 forts we'd seen in the last few weeks, so we didn't go in. Forts are cool, don't get me wrong, but it's like "hey, more cannons". We went to the India Gate, and can confirm that it is indeed a large gate with the word INDIA written on it. Connaught Place is a neat area, with posh colonnaded buildings and fancy shops and stuff. Side note: we're becoming worryingly jaded about historic sights.
The last major thing on our Delhi to-do list was to get my &%*$#ing sitar shipped. The more I looked into it, the more I wished I'd decided on a tin whistle or something instead. The Indian Post refused to ship something so long (it's 5 feet by 2 feet by 15 inches). FedEx wanted like $14,000 to ship it. DHL wouldn't pack it. Luckily, fate swung in and helped get it done. On our train from Jodhpur to Delhi, we had a great conversation with a woman named Aditi, who was traveling with her son. After a few hours, I found out that she (conveniently enough) works for a logistics and shipping company. And she mentioned that before I told her I had something to ship! Otherwise, India being India, it would have been a bit too convenient. I told her my tale of woe and she agreed to help me get it shipped through her company. Not only that, she took the time to make sure I had a ride to her office in Delhi, and met with me a few times to take care of paperwork and stuff. If you find yourself in India with a sitar on your hands, and you have no idea how to get it home, I can highly recommend Interline Global Logistics. Aditi also gives out excellent restaurant recommendations. WARNING: Don't find yourself in India with a sitar on your hands. If you're heading straight home and you can check it as baggage, go for it. They're awesome instruments. But shipping a sitar from India costs several times more than buying the instrument itself. Had I known this a few weeks ago, I might be the proud owner of a nice tin whistle.
Alright, enough about Delhi, here are some quick summaries of the other two cities we visited this week.
Chandigarh: We went here for two reasons. First, it's home to the Nek Chand Rock Garden. Basically, a few decades ago this guy Nek Chand started building this crazy fantasy world in a government-owned but undeveloped plot of land, entirely made out of recycled garbage (old electrical wiring, broken ceramics, small bits of glass jewelry, etc.). He worked at it every day, and by the time the government found his garden, it was HUGE and crazy awesome. Rather than tear it down, they let him keep working on it, and turned it into a public park. It is easily one of the coolest places I have ever been in my life. Picture yourself, as a kid, trying to dream up the coolest park in the world. It would probably have giant stone castles, bridges criscrossing over each other, waterfalls, secret passages, and twisting walkways surrounded by fifty foot high cliffs. That's this place. Except this place also has hundreds of sculptures made out of recycled materials. It's amazing, and a strong runner-up for the best "tourist sight" we saw in India (see Agra for #1). Totally worth the trip to Chandigarh, but pictures don't really do it justice. That being said, here is a cool/kinda creepy army of garbage people.
The second reason we went there is because the whole city was designed by Le Corbusier, an early-mid 20th century modern architect. I'm not really a huge fan (read: he's more or less my least favourite architect in the world), but we went because we were curious to see how a modernist super-planned city would look in India. It was much more clean and spacious than the other cities we've seen, but the buildings were definitely designed by Le Corbusier, proving that North America doesn't have a monopoly on totally soulless architecture.
Also, all the neighbourhoods are called "sectors", which makes you feel like you're in a post-apocalyptic sci-fi movie anytime you need to get somewhere. "I'd like an autorickshaw to Sector 17, please."
Agra: We came here for the same reason millions of other tourists come here every year: The Taj Mahal. To be honest, there aren't a lot of other good reasons to visit Agra. It's dirty, and restaurants/taxis/shops are all WAY more expensive here than just about anywhere else in the country. All that makes the Taj Mahal stick out even more by comparison. It is amazing. A lot of famous tourist sights wind up being a bit of a letdown when you get there, for a variety of reasons. Maybe they don't look as cool in person, maybe they've been poorly maintained, maybe they're interesting in a "hmm, cool history" sense. The Taj Mahal, on the other hand, is just flat out one of the most impressive structures I've ever seen. It's so perfectly designed, so perfectly proportioned, that you feel it as much as you see it. There is no such thing as a bad angle to view it from. It just sits there, radiating epic-ness.
A must-see on a global scale. All this is even more surprising, since everyone has seen 100 postcard-perfect pictures of the Taj, so you'd think it would be a little bit spoiled. Nope. Walking through a dark archway and seeing it looming in the distance is one of those moments that brushes away all the bad experiences and challenges of traveling and replaces them in your mind with the cognitive equivalent of "wow". Just don't stick around in Agra too long.
Side note: we paid a rickshaw driver to take us around Agra a bit while we waited for the air to clear in the morning (it's super smoggy until well after noon there, and we didn't want our one trip to the Taj Mahal to be smoggy). On the way, we got an idea of the kind of nonchalance you would develop living in the shadow of one of the world's most famous monuments. An excerpt from his tour: "On your right, you can see some traditional farms growing eggplants, cauliflower, potatoes... over there is the Taj Mahal. On your left is some spinach!"
Final India Summary: Equal parts amazing, unique cities, incredibly friendly people, foul-smelling streets, non-stop tourist hassle, wealth, poverty, dancing, delicious food, constant fear of food poisoning, scams, questionable sanitation, tea, music, spices, and cows. It's like nowhere else on earth (in our limited experience), but we're excited to be moving on to something new.
Alright, we're taking off for Beijing tonight. At one point, I think the Chinese government had blocked access to Blogger from within the country, so it could be a while before we post another update, but we'll do our best! Failing that, we'll be in Mongolia in about a week or so, and we'll try and post from there.
Friday, November 7, 2008
Notes from Rajasthan
We're down to our last week (and a bit) in India, but we're going to try to cram three cities in between now and the 16th. We're heading to Delhi on a night train tomorrow evening, and then we're going to attempt day trips to Chandigarh and Agra from there. I say "attempt", because the train system here is usually on time to within a tolerance of plus or minus four hours. We're hoping for the best.
Udaipur was one of the more enjoyable cities we've been to so far, probably because we spent most of our time relaxing and taking music and art lessons instead of frantically sightseeing. The sights in India have been interesting, but they're usually packed to the gills and pretty expensive. Well, expensive by India standards, anyways. Like 4 or 5 dollars. Going to India early in our trip probably wasn't the best idea; we're now going to spend the rest of the trip in a state of outrage every time dinner costs more than $0.75. What do you mean you can't get a palatial hotel room made of hand-carved sandstone for $10 in Moscow? Unacceptable!
Anyways, the art and music lessons were awesome. I spent 6 days learning the sitar with Bablu, who ran a music shop down the street from our hotel. The sitar is one of the coolest sounding instruments ever, but playing it is like running your fingers along razor wire for an hour. I had some monster blisters for the first few days, and now I have a callous so thick I've lost all tactile feedback from the tip of my left index finger. But most importantly, I learned that riff from Norwegian Wood. Here's me and Bablu with some tablas (I also bought some tablas and took one quick lesson on them... I suck at tablas).
Walking around with a giant sitar case (which I've yet to figure out how to get back to Canada, incidentally) garners a lot of attention from people, including the receptionist at our hotel, who insisted that I unpack it so he could get a picture of himself looking all badass and playing the sitar like a guitar to use on Orkut, which is like Facebook, but popular here.
Our art lessons were pretty cool too. We sat on tiny chairs and painted elephants covered in jewelry, which was really cool, except when my legs fell completely and painfully asleep.
We also went to the City Palace in Udaipur (our one token bit of sightseeing there), which was a cool building with some neat artifacts in it. The one bit that was kind of mystifying was the portrait gallery, featuring paintings with all the refined technique and quality you would expect from a class of grade school art students who spent most of their painting time thinking of which games they were going to play at recess.
Also at the City Palace: a whole bunch of people who stopped to look at a monitor showing pictures of various parts of the palace, and taking pictures of the pictures. You are IN THE PALACE. You can take pictures of the ACTUAL THINGS. Maybe it was a really nice monitor or something, I didn't look. And yes, I'm aware that I took a picture of a guy taking a picture of a picture, to make fun of taking pictures of pictures.
One night we went out to grab a bottle of Indian wine (proposed slogan: "It's drinkable!"), and found this gem, which is just about my favourite liquor brand of all time.
Now we're in Jodhpur, which is dominated by a HUGE 500 year old fort right smack dab in the middle of the city. We've been here for 5 days, and even hiked up to the fort and wandered around it for a few hours yesterday, but somehow we've managed to completely forget to take any pictures of it. We did take some pictures of Jodhpur from the fort though. It's a neat looking city from above. Most of the houses in the old part of town (within the crumbling city walls) are painted blue, and the streets are about 18 inches wide and laid out like someone threw a bowl of spaghetti at a map, which makes navigation interesting.
That's all for now. We'll post our final India wrap-up and some impressions on Delhi and the Taj Mahal sometime between now and our flight to Beijing on the 16th.
Udaipur was one of the more enjoyable cities we've been to so far, probably because we spent most of our time relaxing and taking music and art lessons instead of frantically sightseeing. The sights in India have been interesting, but they're usually packed to the gills and pretty expensive. Well, expensive by India standards, anyways. Like 4 or 5 dollars. Going to India early in our trip probably wasn't the best idea; we're now going to spend the rest of the trip in a state of outrage every time dinner costs more than $0.75. What do you mean you can't get a palatial hotel room made of hand-carved sandstone for $10 in Moscow? Unacceptable!
Anyways, the art and music lessons were awesome. I spent 6 days learning the sitar with Bablu, who ran a music shop down the street from our hotel. The sitar is one of the coolest sounding instruments ever, but playing it is like running your fingers along razor wire for an hour. I had some monster blisters for the first few days, and now I have a callous so thick I've lost all tactile feedback from the tip of my left index finger. But most importantly, I learned that riff from Norwegian Wood. Here's me and Bablu with some tablas (I also bought some tablas and took one quick lesson on them... I suck at tablas).
Walking around with a giant sitar case (which I've yet to figure out how to get back to Canada, incidentally) garners a lot of attention from people, including the receptionist at our hotel, who insisted that I unpack it so he could get a picture of himself looking all badass and playing the sitar like a guitar to use on Orkut, which is like Facebook, but popular here.
Our art lessons were pretty cool too. We sat on tiny chairs and painted elephants covered in jewelry, which was really cool, except when my legs fell completely and painfully asleep.
We also went to the City Palace in Udaipur (our one token bit of sightseeing there), which was a cool building with some neat artifacts in it. The one bit that was kind of mystifying was the portrait gallery, featuring paintings with all the refined technique and quality you would expect from a class of grade school art students who spent most of their painting time thinking of which games they were going to play at recess.
Also at the City Palace: a whole bunch of people who stopped to look at a monitor showing pictures of various parts of the palace, and taking pictures of the pictures. You are IN THE PALACE. You can take pictures of the ACTUAL THINGS. Maybe it was a really nice monitor or something, I didn't look. And yes, I'm aware that I took a picture of a guy taking a picture of a picture, to make fun of taking pictures of pictures.
One night we went out to grab a bottle of Indian wine (proposed slogan: "It's drinkable!"), and found this gem, which is just about my favourite liquor brand of all time.
Now we're in Jodhpur, which is dominated by a HUGE 500 year old fort right smack dab in the middle of the city. We've been here for 5 days, and even hiked up to the fort and wandered around it for a few hours yesterday, but somehow we've managed to completely forget to take any pictures of it. We did take some pictures of Jodhpur from the fort though. It's a neat looking city from above. Most of the houses in the old part of town (within the crumbling city walls) are painted blue, and the streets are about 18 inches wide and laid out like someone threw a bowl of spaghetti at a map, which makes navigation interesting.
That's all for now. We'll post our final India wrap-up and some impressions on Delhi and the Taj Mahal sometime between now and our flight to Beijing on the 16th.
Saturday, November 1, 2008
Diwali in Udaipur
After finally saying goodbye to Calcutta (for real this time), we hopped on a plane to Jaipur, then pretty much immediately got on a train for Udaipur. It's a smallish city in the middle of Rajasthan, famous for having several giant palaces, a lake, a palace on the lake, rolling hills and, perhaps most impressively, for being the site of half of the 1983 James Bond classic "Octopussy". It's hard to forget any of these things while you're here, since there's almost always a fort or temple or lake within sight, and since every single restaurant in the city shows Octopussy at least once per day.
We got here one day before October 28th, which happens to be Diwali (one of the biggest Hindu festivals of the year). It's called the "festival of lights" (not to be confused with the OTHER festival of lights, Hannukah, which falls on a different day and is also Jewish), and thousands of small oil lamps and Christmas lights (or rather, Diwali lights) are traditionally lit in celebration.
Modern pyrotechnic merchandise has made things a little more exciting, and from sundown until 3:00 in the morning the whole city was in a constant state of explosion. It was really neat to see a city-wide, hours-long fireworks display, though after seeing some questionable lighting techniques and a few flaming projectiles landing in restaurants, I cringe to think of the Udaipur emergency room situation on October 29th.
There's a big family component to Diwali, and most people gather with their extended families to eat colossal quantities of sweets (and set off fireworks). Everyone seems to warm up, and the constant low-level tourist hassle (which has sort of blended into the background of India for us by now) turned into genuine friendliness for the whole night. The family who lives beside our hotel even invited us in to share in their celebrations (and, more importantly, their epic dessert mountain), so we joined them in their living room for conversation (and macaroons). Mallory thought to get a picture of me and some of the family members, but forgot to get in one herself, possibly because our brains were coated with a thick layer of fudge by that point. Seriously, so much food.
On Monday, we've got bus tickets to Jodhpur for 6 days. Once we're there and settled, we'll post about our recent souvenier-buying binge; I apparently have no innate ability to resist buying musical instruments, and Mal reverts to kid-in-a-candy-store mode when she's sat down in front of a big box of gems and minerals.
We got here one day before October 28th, which happens to be Diwali (one of the biggest Hindu festivals of the year). It's called the "festival of lights" (not to be confused with the OTHER festival of lights, Hannukah, which falls on a different day and is also Jewish), and thousands of small oil lamps and Christmas lights (or rather, Diwali lights) are traditionally lit in celebration.
Modern pyrotechnic merchandise has made things a little more exciting, and from sundown until 3:00 in the morning the whole city was in a constant state of explosion. It was really neat to see a city-wide, hours-long fireworks display, though after seeing some questionable lighting techniques and a few flaming projectiles landing in restaurants, I cringe to think of the Udaipur emergency room situation on October 29th.
There's a big family component to Diwali, and most people gather with their extended families to eat colossal quantities of sweets (and set off fireworks). Everyone seems to warm up, and the constant low-level tourist hassle (which has sort of blended into the background of India for us by now) turned into genuine friendliness for the whole night. The family who lives beside our hotel even invited us in to share in their celebrations (and, more importantly, their epic dessert mountain), so we joined them in their living room for conversation (and macaroons). Mallory thought to get a picture of me and some of the family members, but forgot to get in one herself, possibly because our brains were coated with a thick layer of fudge by that point. Seriously, so much food.
On Monday, we've got bus tickets to Jodhpur for 6 days. Once we're there and settled, we'll post about our recent souvenier-buying binge; I apparently have no innate ability to resist buying musical instruments, and Mal reverts to kid-in-a-candy-store mode when she's sat down in front of a big box of gems and minerals.
Friday, October 24, 2008
Darjeeling Wrap-up
We'll summarize our 11-ish days in Darjeeling, but first things first:
WE GOT OUR RUSSIAN VISAS!!!
It took a total of 5 weeks (3 weeks for processing, plus 2 weeks spent waiting for letters of invitation to be shipped from Siberia to Kolkata), and several trips to the Russian Consulate, but we are finally allowed to go to Russia. This is insanely good news since we already booked and paid for our trip from Beijing to St. Petersburg. Here's Mallory outside the consulate, looking suitably excited.
Now, back to the rest of our time in Darjeeling.
We spent one very early morning catching a jeep to Tiger Hill, the highest point near Darjeeling, to see the sun rise over the Himalayas. We got really lucky with our choice of day and not only did we get to see the closest stretch of mountains, we even got to see Everest (way off in the distance, but still, it was cool). The pictures make it look like a really serene, peaceful sunrise, but that's only because you can't see the 200 Kolkatan tourists standing directly behind us (we got there early to get a good spot). The best part of the whole thing, aside from the view, was when hundreds of other people started cheering wildly when the sun finally broke over the horizon. Yeah, go sun! Sunrise is number one! In your face, night time!!
We used another morning to take a "joy ride" on the Darjeeling Himalayan Railway toy train, a steam-powered, super-narrow-gauge train that follows tracks through a bunch of mountain villages between Darjeeling and the plains to the south. The tracks themselves are only about 2 feet wide, and don't look like the kind of thing that a sane person would try to run a train on. The ride was cool, full of equal parts "wow, great scenery" and "we are about to get hit by a truck" moments, since the rail line runs beside, and occasionally in the middle of, the main road through the hills.
Being the dorky engineer (and fan of crazy old-school technology) that I am, I was almost more fascinated by the train itself. It dates from the 1890's, and takes three people to run: one conductor, one guy manning the steam whistle, and one guy shoveling coal. Coal!
We also went to the zoo, visited the Himalayan Mountaineering Institute (which has Tenzing Norgay's boots from the first summit of Everest!), took a tour of a tea plantation, and ate lots and lots of momos (Tibetan steamed vegetable dumplings). Fun fact: The Darjeeling Zoo has the most profane parrot in India! I will spare you the details, but suffice it to say that someone with a good grasp of English obscenities taught this parrot exactly how to express its displeasure at passing tourists (ok, I can't be sure it's the MOST profane parrot in India, but I'm going to go with that until proven otherwise).
Mallory also got to celebrate her birthday in Darjeeling! Woohoo! We celebrated with a night out on the town (read: at one of Darjeeling's two pubs), followed by two days/nights at a posh resort on top of a hill just outside of Darjeeling (our room had TWO fireplaces!). We also went to see a Bollywood movie called Karzzzzz. The extra z's symbolize reincarnation, I think. It was in Hindi, and there were no subtitles. Still, we managed to follow along pretty well. Also, the poster has a dude playing a flaming guitar. Yes.
Here is Mallory with her birthday cake and ice cream.
Here's a quick round-up of recommendations in case you find yourself in Darjeeling in the near future.
Best restaurants:
-Kunga's: cheap and tasty Tibetan food, including momos and bhagthuk, a garlicky and delicious noodle soup.
-Hasty Tasty: best Indian food in town, for less than $2/meal.
-La Casse Croute (a.k.a. Hot Pizza Place): Surprisingly delicious pizza in an area not usually renowned for its accurate or tasty Italian dishes.
Best entertainment:
-Karzzzzz: it had dancing, reincarnation, revenge, a bald guy with a robot arm, and a sudden kung fu fight scene at the very end, for some reason.
-Joey's Pub: one of two bars in Darjeeling, it's a great place to meet other travellers. Just don't plan on partying too hard, last call is at 9:30pm.
Best hotels:
-Dekeling Hotel: alright, this is the only hotel we tried in town, but it was clean, well-maintained, comfortable, and cheap, at $20/night for a double room with "side mountain view" (note: side mountain view indicates that a mountain can kind-of, sort-of be seen from your window if you hang out of it on a rope or something).
Tomorrow we catch a flight to Rajasthan, in the hopes of seeing some desert palaces, and maybe taking some music lessons.
WE GOT OUR RUSSIAN VISAS!!!
It took a total of 5 weeks (3 weeks for processing, plus 2 weeks spent waiting for letters of invitation to be shipped from Siberia to Kolkata), and several trips to the Russian Consulate, but we are finally allowed to go to Russia. This is insanely good news since we already booked and paid for our trip from Beijing to St. Petersburg. Here's Mallory outside the consulate, looking suitably excited.
Now, back to the rest of our time in Darjeeling.
We spent one very early morning catching a jeep to Tiger Hill, the highest point near Darjeeling, to see the sun rise over the Himalayas. We got really lucky with our choice of day and not only did we get to see the closest stretch of mountains, we even got to see Everest (way off in the distance, but still, it was cool). The pictures make it look like a really serene, peaceful sunrise, but that's only because you can't see the 200 Kolkatan tourists standing directly behind us (we got there early to get a good spot). The best part of the whole thing, aside from the view, was when hundreds of other people started cheering wildly when the sun finally broke over the horizon. Yeah, go sun! Sunrise is number one! In your face, night time!!
We used another morning to take a "joy ride" on the Darjeeling Himalayan Railway toy train, a steam-powered, super-narrow-gauge train that follows tracks through a bunch of mountain villages between Darjeeling and the plains to the south. The tracks themselves are only about 2 feet wide, and don't look like the kind of thing that a sane person would try to run a train on. The ride was cool, full of equal parts "wow, great scenery" and "we are about to get hit by a truck" moments, since the rail line runs beside, and occasionally in the middle of, the main road through the hills.
Being the dorky engineer (and fan of crazy old-school technology) that I am, I was almost more fascinated by the train itself. It dates from the 1890's, and takes three people to run: one conductor, one guy manning the steam whistle, and one guy shoveling coal. Coal!
We also went to the zoo, visited the Himalayan Mountaineering Institute (which has Tenzing Norgay's boots from the first summit of Everest!), took a tour of a tea plantation, and ate lots and lots of momos (Tibetan steamed vegetable dumplings). Fun fact: The Darjeeling Zoo has the most profane parrot in India! I will spare you the details, but suffice it to say that someone with a good grasp of English obscenities taught this parrot exactly how to express its displeasure at passing tourists (ok, I can't be sure it's the MOST profane parrot in India, but I'm going to go with that until proven otherwise).
Mallory also got to celebrate her birthday in Darjeeling! Woohoo! We celebrated with a night out on the town (read: at one of Darjeeling's two pubs), followed by two days/nights at a posh resort on top of a hill just outside of Darjeeling (our room had TWO fireplaces!). We also went to see a Bollywood movie called Karzzzzz. The extra z's symbolize reincarnation, I think. It was in Hindi, and there were no subtitles. Still, we managed to follow along pretty well. Also, the poster has a dude playing a flaming guitar. Yes.
Here is Mallory with her birthday cake and ice cream.
Here's a quick round-up of recommendations in case you find yourself in Darjeeling in the near future.
Best restaurants:
-Kunga's: cheap and tasty Tibetan food, including momos and bhagthuk, a garlicky and delicious noodle soup.
-Hasty Tasty: best Indian food in town, for less than $2/meal.
-La Casse Croute (a.k.a. Hot Pizza Place): Surprisingly delicious pizza in an area not usually renowned for its accurate or tasty Italian dishes.
Best entertainment:
-Karzzzzz: it had dancing, reincarnation, revenge, a bald guy with a robot arm, and a sudden kung fu fight scene at the very end, for some reason.
-Joey's Pub: one of two bars in Darjeeling, it's a great place to meet other travellers. Just don't plan on partying too hard, last call is at 9:30pm.
Best hotels:
-Dekeling Hotel: alright, this is the only hotel we tried in town, but it was clean, well-maintained, comfortable, and cheap, at $20/night for a double room with "side mountain view" (note: side mountain view indicates that a mountain can kind-of, sort-of be seen from your window if you hang out of it on a rope or something).
Tomorrow we catch a flight to Rajasthan, in the hopes of seeing some desert palaces, and maybe taking some music lessons.
Sunday, October 19, 2008
Darjeeling Mail
We've been lazily making our way around Darjeeling for the last week, and it's been great, for the most part. We're still really enjoying the fact that you can walk down the street without acquiring an orbiting cloud of touts and salesmen. For the most part, it's a great low-stress place to spend a few days.
And then there's the post office.
We picked up a bunch of souveniers on our second day here, and decided to mail them home before we had to lug them around between cities, so we headed down to ship them off. We'd heard it's important to leave lots of time to ship things, but "How hard could it really be?" we thought to ourselves. Little did we know... Here is a visualization of the process of mailing a parcel through the Indian mail system:
The first sign that it might be an ordeal was when we walked in the door and saw that the sign marking the "Speed Post" queue was covered in cobwebs. Seriously, you can't make this stuff up. Not a good sign. Then we had to line up to have our parcels, uh... tailored. The Indian post office requires that all international parcels be sewn in linen.
To make this possible, there's a guy who sits in the corner of the post office at a tiny wood table, with a needle, some thread, and a big pile of linen cloth. For a fee of about a dollar per package, he will unpack all your things, rearrange them and wrap them in twine, and then provide a fine bespoke suit for your souveniers.
After it's been all sewn up, and you think you're ready to finally start actually mailing your package, he busts out the sealing wax.
Wax?
Yep, wax. Your package is then subjected to no fewer than two dozen wax seals along the sewn edges of its fine linen suit. At this point, I was pretty sure our parcels would make their way to Canada on the back of a camel, or in the hold of a galleon, or something.
Here's Mallory clutching her package after about an hour and a half of sewing and sealing.
Finally, once your package is completely sealed to the satisfaction of the Post Master, you get to actually line up and send it. Unfortunately, there's only one guy in the post office who does this, and he takes frequent half-hour breaks, without notice. When he does return, he moves with all the blazing speed of a glacier, even pausing to laboriously roll up his sleeves before getting down to the rough and dirty business of affixing labels and taking money. Mal sat in line for the better part of an hour before finally sending hers off.
Total time spent to ship two packages and 3 books: 3.5 hours.
This goes some distance towards explaining why we're spending so much time in India. You can't do anything spontaneously here. Shipping parcels is basically an entire day's worth of activities. Ditto buying train tickets. The whole country operates on its own logic and unhurried rhythm which, for the most part, is cool. Just not when it comes to mailing a package.
And then there's the post office.
We picked up a bunch of souveniers on our second day here, and decided to mail them home before we had to lug them around between cities, so we headed down to ship them off. We'd heard it's important to leave lots of time to ship things, but "How hard could it really be?" we thought to ourselves. Little did we know... Here is a visualization of the process of mailing a parcel through the Indian mail system:
The first sign that it might be an ordeal was when we walked in the door and saw that the sign marking the "Speed Post" queue was covered in cobwebs. Seriously, you can't make this stuff up. Not a good sign. Then we had to line up to have our parcels, uh... tailored. The Indian post office requires that all international parcels be sewn in linen.
To make this possible, there's a guy who sits in the corner of the post office at a tiny wood table, with a needle, some thread, and a big pile of linen cloth. For a fee of about a dollar per package, he will unpack all your things, rearrange them and wrap them in twine, and then provide a fine bespoke suit for your souveniers.
After it's been all sewn up, and you think you're ready to finally start actually mailing your package, he busts out the sealing wax.
Wax?
Yep, wax. Your package is then subjected to no fewer than two dozen wax seals along the sewn edges of its fine linen suit. At this point, I was pretty sure our parcels would make their way to Canada on the back of a camel, or in the hold of a galleon, or something.
Here's Mallory clutching her package after about an hour and a half of sewing and sealing.
Finally, once your package is completely sealed to the satisfaction of the Post Master, you get to actually line up and send it. Unfortunately, there's only one guy in the post office who does this, and he takes frequent half-hour breaks, without notice. When he does return, he moves with all the blazing speed of a glacier, even pausing to laboriously roll up his sleeves before getting down to the rough and dirty business of affixing labels and taking money. Mal sat in line for the better part of an hour before finally sending hers off.
Total time spent to ship two packages and 3 books: 3.5 hours.
This goes some distance towards explaining why we're spending so much time in India. You can't do anything spontaneously here. Shipping parcels is basically an entire day's worth of activities. Ditto buying train tickets. The whole country operates on its own logic and unhurried rhythm which, for the most part, is cool. Just not when it comes to mailing a package.
Monday, October 13, 2008
Darjeeling
We made the 15 hour trip from Kolkata to Darjeeling without any major problems, except for the last 3 hours which we spent squished in the back of a jeep with a very carsick lady from Kolkata who had some pretty severe stomach control issues.
Darjeeling is in the same state as Kolkata, but it's almost like being in a different country. Most of the residents here are of Tibetan or Nepalese origin, it's about 15 degrees cooler, it doesn't have anywhere near the same level of poverty as Kolkata, and the salespeople are perfectly content to let people browse without bombarding you with constant hyper-agressive sales pitches. Also, the city's surrounded by Himalayan mountains, so that's cool.
Here are some pictures from our last few days in Kolkata.
The street in front of our hotel.
A guy carrying a ton of plastic bottles. In general, people here seem to be really good at carrying very awkward loads.
One of the hundreds of statues of Durga, created to celebrate the 5-day long Durga Puja holiday. This was taken on Thursday.
On Friday afternoon, all of the statues were taken down to the river in big trucks filled with people and drums and dancing.
Then, they were paraded around at sunset.
Then, they were thrown in the river.
Our plans for the next few days involve steam-powered mountain trains, hiking up a few hills to check out the Himalayan views, and maybe a zoo (they have tigers!). We'll keep you posted.
Darjeeling is in the same state as Kolkata, but it's almost like being in a different country. Most of the residents here are of Tibetan or Nepalese origin, it's about 15 degrees cooler, it doesn't have anywhere near the same level of poverty as Kolkata, and the salespeople are perfectly content to let people browse without bombarding you with constant hyper-agressive sales pitches. Also, the city's surrounded by Himalayan mountains, so that's cool.
Here are some pictures from our last few days in Kolkata.
The street in front of our hotel.
A guy carrying a ton of plastic bottles. In general, people here seem to be really good at carrying very awkward loads.
One of the hundreds of statues of Durga, created to celebrate the 5-day long Durga Puja holiday. This was taken on Thursday.
On Friday afternoon, all of the statues were taken down to the river in big trucks filled with people and drums and dancing.
Then, they were paraded around at sunset.
Then, they were thrown in the river.
Our plans for the next few days involve steam-powered mountain trains, hiking up a few hills to check out the Himalayan views, and maybe a zoo (they have tigers!). We'll keep you posted.
Friday, October 10, 2008
So long, Kolkata
We're hopping on an overnight train to Darjeeling today, leaving Kolkata after an unexpectedly long two-week stay (as opposed to our initial plan of 3 or 4 days). First, it was Russian bureaucracy keeping us here while we waited for documents. Then we found out that a few million Kolkatans go on vacation at exactly the same time that we were planning to leave, and they all planned on taking the same train. We eventually found a ticket though, so we're off to the hills.
In retrospect, it was kind of neat to spend so much time in a place we really hadn't planned on seeing in any depth. I think we eventually got a feel for Kolkata city life beyond the touristy sights and restaurants. That being said, we also made friends with the owner of the tourist cafe around the corner from our hotel, where Mal ate about forty or so omelettes over the course of our stay.
The food here has been pretty great (omelettes included). Here are the highlights, in case you happen to find yourself in Kolkata looking for some tasty eats.
- Teej: an "upscale" ($8 meals) Rajasthani restaurant, serves intensely delicious vegetarian food.
-Blue Sky Cafe: the tourist cafe mentioned above. Good, cheap Indian and non-Indian food, super friendly service, air conditioning.
-Jalebis: deep-fried crispy dough swirl things, soaked in sugary syrup. Even more delicious than they sound.
-Kati rolls: the signature Kolkatan greasy street food. It's basically a roti (thin flatbread) coated on one side with an egg, grilled on a super-hot skillet, then filled with onions, spices and lime juice, rolled up and served. We don't have the camera with us right now, but here's a suitably delicious looking picture courtesy of Google image search.
In retrospect, it was kind of neat to spend so much time in a place we really hadn't planned on seeing in any depth. I think we eventually got a feel for Kolkata city life beyond the touristy sights and restaurants. That being said, we also made friends with the owner of the tourist cafe around the corner from our hotel, where Mal ate about forty or so omelettes over the course of our stay.
The food here has been pretty great (omelettes included). Here are the highlights, in case you happen to find yourself in Kolkata looking for some tasty eats.
- Teej: an "upscale" ($8 meals) Rajasthani restaurant, serves intensely delicious vegetarian food.
-Blue Sky Cafe: the tourist cafe mentioned above. Good, cheap Indian and non-Indian food, super friendly service, air conditioning.
-Jalebis: deep-fried crispy dough swirl things, soaked in sugary syrup. Even more delicious than they sound.
-Kati rolls: the signature Kolkatan greasy street food. It's basically a roti (thin flatbread) coated on one side with an egg, grilled on a super-hot skillet, then filled with onions, spices and lime juice, rolled up and served. We don't have the camera with us right now, but here's a suitably delicious looking picture courtesy of Google image search.
Monday, October 6, 2008
Happy Durga Puja!
Hello all! Today we realized we have spent almost two weeks in India and have only 24 pictures to show for it. And most of them are repeats of each other while we play with camera settings. In any case, here are a couple pictures and stories to keep you up to date!
This week is Durga Puja! It's pretty much the Christmas of West Bengal, meaning everything is closed and people are all on holidays visiting their family. It also means lots of cool sculptures which will soon get thrown in the river! Durga Puja!
The area we're staying in in Kolkata is quite central and the main place for tourists (young tourists especially) to stay while in the city. Sidewalks are lined with street vendors selling all sorts of foods, many of which I have not had the guts to try. The street vendors also sell random things, like the guy who sells flutes and follows us around playing the same riff over and over. Or the guy who sells collapseable laundry bags. Or the guy who sells old-fashioned lamp-posts.
We've also come across many many beggars with all different tactics, including one guy who held up a snake and said 'SNAKE! MONEY!'.
For a visual of our street, here is a picture Bryce took after we finished lunch one day near our hotel:
This guy is herding goats right on the main street. Mayhem!
We have been taking it pretty easy so far since the heat/humidity can be pretty daunting, but we have put the effort in to try to find interesting places to eat and drink. Prices range from cheap (1$ for a vegetarian thali) to "expensive" (10$ for fancy dinner and beer). The other day we went to a Rajasthani restaurant and Bryce got their thali for dinner. We were expecting maybe 3-4 dishes and some bread, but instead he ended up getting:
(and some bread). The best part was the bowl with the sweetened bread crumbs. I could eat TEN THOUSAND bowls of those bread crumbs.
We also took a bengali cooking lesson at a woman's house (done through a tour company) and it was by far the best food we've had yet. She taught us how to cook many dishes, including these awesome deep-fried bread things which we are definitely making when we get back to Canada. Here's the dinner we helped make:
We'll leave you with one last picture before heading off to buy some cookies for me (Bryce doesn't know this is the plan, but he'll find out when he looks here). This picture was taken at one of the few "sights" we have seen while here. If you look past the super cute tourists, you will see the Victoria Memorial in the background. It is a MASSIVE museum/gallery built in honour of Queen Victoria. I could have chosen a picture of JUST the memorial, but you can find those on the internet.
On Oct 10 we head to Darjeeling to beat the heat and drink fancy teas in the mountains. We'll try to take more pictures!
This week is Durga Puja! It's pretty much the Christmas of West Bengal, meaning everything is closed and people are all on holidays visiting their family. It also means lots of cool sculptures which will soon get thrown in the river! Durga Puja!
The area we're staying in in Kolkata is quite central and the main place for tourists (young tourists especially) to stay while in the city. Sidewalks are lined with street vendors selling all sorts of foods, many of which I have not had the guts to try. The street vendors also sell random things, like the guy who sells flutes and follows us around playing the same riff over and over. Or the guy who sells collapseable laundry bags. Or the guy who sells old-fashioned lamp-posts.
We've also come across many many beggars with all different tactics, including one guy who held up a snake and said 'SNAKE! MONEY!'.
For a visual of our street, here is a picture Bryce took after we finished lunch one day near our hotel:
This guy is herding goats right on the main street. Mayhem!We have been taking it pretty easy so far since the heat/humidity can be pretty daunting, but we have put the effort in to try to find interesting places to eat and drink. Prices range from cheap (1$ for a vegetarian thali) to "expensive" (10$ for fancy dinner and beer). The other day we went to a Rajasthani restaurant and Bryce got their thali for dinner. We were expecting maybe 3-4 dishes and some bread, but instead he ended up getting:
(and some bread). The best part was the bowl with the sweetened bread crumbs. I could eat TEN THOUSAND bowls of those bread crumbs.We also took a bengali cooking lesson at a woman's house (done through a tour company) and it was by far the best food we've had yet. She taught us how to cook many dishes, including these awesome deep-fried bread things which we are definitely making when we get back to Canada. Here's the dinner we helped make:
We'll leave you with one last picture before heading off to buy some cookies for me (Bryce doesn't know this is the plan, but he'll find out when he looks here). This picture was taken at one of the few "sights" we have seen while here. If you look past the super cute tourists, you will see the Victoria Memorial in the background. It is a MASSIVE museum/gallery built in honour of Queen Victoria. I could have chosen a picture of JUST the memorial, but you can find those on the internet.
On Oct 10 we head to Darjeeling to beat the heat and drink fancy teas in the mountains. We'll try to take more pictures!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)