Oh The Places You’ll Go! (Travel)

Alive!

April 27, 2011
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We’re still climbing and crawling through the Himalayas, but for our 10th and last day, we travel by bus, not by foot. First Kesha was playing then Taylor Swift. Eminem was on for a few tracks too, but now classic Nepalese music is playing on the bus stereo as we wind, bump after curve after cliff, through the mountains. Winding around these parts of town, especially when you’re coming around a blind edge, honks blare to signal someone possibly coming from the other direction that you’re there too. Sometimes, when there is that other jeep or bus, you have to share a “lane” the width of a queen size mattress. A few times today, we sat parallel with another bus, during which the drivers seemed to have been yelling to each other, “okay, you scoot an inch”, “got it, now your turn”, then repeat, and all the while I could just pull the hair of the next-door passengers. We also passed waterfalls that had just a few planks built over their pool for us to cross. In those instances too, I felt like I could have reached my hand out to touch the water. Things along the road were nuts,

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Encounter with a Superhero: Baht-man

April 22, 2011
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“Here comes the bus!” Kumar said, as a pack of mules rounded the corner. Two days into our trek, we were sitting under a sheltered, family-style table waiting for the rain to pass, and these mules looked like wet puppies, trudging through the mess. We had stopped for lunch a convenient 20 minutes before the pour came, joining a few others- a Slovenian woman and her two porter/guides- at the tea-house restaurant. All three were charming and energetic, a perfect trio with whom to pass the raining time. Kumar and Gunnis were the names of the two Nepalese- Kumar speaking almost fluent English, and Gunnis not so far behind. The restaurant owner, who also joined our half-time party, had a comprehensive grasop on our language as well, being able to explain the housing loan market (16-22% interest) and the price of a college education (12 bucks a month for tuition, room and board in Nepal’s capitol city, Kathmandu). Wow on both parenthesis. After Greg and I finished our fried noodles and chicken curry, respectively, Kumar pulled out a volleyball he’d packed for the trek. We played a semi-game at the table, tipping the ball from one upright-sitting player to the

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Himalaya Bound

April 20, 2011
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We’ve been in Nepal, mostly just hanging around a small touristy town called Pokhora. Quietly set beside a soft green lake, the town has given us room for recuperation after an energy-stripping tour of northern India. We especially needed to the recoup because our next plans take us trekking through the Himalayas for the next 10-12 days. We were originally thinking of hiking to Everest base camp, but have come to find the Annapurna circuit, a route that encompasses the world’s deadliest mountain (50% death rate), is much more extensive in its scenery and terrain coverage, and is highly known- especially in the mountain man realm- as the greatest trek of the world. So Greg will just save Everest base camp for a stop on his way to the actual summit, and I will just read a picture book on it… One day in this lakeside town, Pokhora, we rented bicycles and road out of town towards a waterfall. I got a silly cruiser-type bike with a basket on the front and Greg got whatever form of a mountain bike the street renter had. Mine fared fine, but Greg’s first bike gave out on him halfway to our destination. One

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Like a Bird

April 17, 2011
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Under our guesthouse lobby’s refuge, I am guarded from a Nepalese rain shower. Habitually striking in the afternoon, the rain today has hardened to hail and leaves a gushing mote in place of the encompassing street. Thankfully, the crashing lightning held its temper until a few hours after we’d descended from being 10,000 feet in the plain air. Before this morning, I’d never been paragliding, or done anything of the sky-sport sort, so my expectations had no direction as we wound up a crunchy dirt road. Opposite to my experience, adventurous-since-birth Greg had already been skydiving, hand-gliding, taken pilots lessons and flown an acrobatic plane. He pretty clearly knew what was in store as I blindly prepared for an exhilarating first-time rush. Twenty minutes up the mountain, we arrived at the launch site. My Russian tandem guide, Victor, strapped me into the seemingly measly harness while reciting seemingly simple instructions. “Everything will be okay,” he also added. “You’re with me.” Nice to meet you, Vic, I think I trust that. I actually did surprised myself at how little my nerves were acting up as I ran off the side of a Himalayan mountain- my fate in the hands of a

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In India… It’s No Problem

April 14, 2011
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Yesterday at 7:15 pm, we boarded our slightly delayed train toward the border of India and Nepal. We were scheduled to leave at 11:45 am, so it was only just a 7-hour delay. “It’s no problem,” most of India would say. It’s a phrase they use often. Cows sharing the streets with cars, bikes and pigs? It’s no problem. Arranged marriage? It’s no problem. A 4 foot 8 tiny rickshaw man pedaling up hill with two not so tiny Americans behind? It’s no problem. You want to try to drive rickshaw, tourists? It’s no problem. You want to eat authentic Indian food that will put any mere mortal on his knees for two days? It’s no problem (no no, it no spicy). Food to go? It’s no problem (we will just wrap your oily noodles in newspaper and send you on your way). Have to go pee pee? It’s no problem (when there’s a wall, there’s a way). Oh, no wall around? It’s no problem (just drop your pants anywhere. Poo poo okay too.) One crazy thing in India never outweighs the next. We had an X-rated driver the other day who, after affirming Greg was my boyfriend (and not

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Red Dots and Blue Necklaces

April 12, 2011
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Today, opposite of Delhi-belly stricken and most miserable yesterday, was a relieving and wondrous day, unveiling India’s beauty at every holy cow-inhabited turn. The city of Agra, home to the Taj Mahal and former Capitol of India, is less crowded, polluted and hectic, relatively speaking, though still housing as many cows, pigs, goats and monkeys. A second sight aside from the Taj Mahal is the Agra Fort, where the Indian emperor lived before the British took control of the country. The Taj Mahal, built in 22 years, is perfectly symmetrical from every angle. Many an architect have come to disprove that fact and are slapped in the face by its repetitive truth. Made of marble and encrusted with semi-precious stones of onyx, topaz, turquoise and beyond, the monument was built as a commemorative token of the emperor’s love for the most beautiful of his three wives. In translating her beauty, the Taj Mahal is a flawless manifestation. Again, we white folk stood out in a crowd of Indian tourists and locals, attracting only smiling attention. In the midst of tourist hustle, we feel sometimes slighted, but once that barrier is passed, the Indian people have been nothing short of warm

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On our way to stardom

April 9, 2011
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People are absolutely fascinated by Greg and I. Most of it, I blame on our natural good looks; the other parts of it, I blame on being white. Okay, maybe the latter takes the lead. Either way, I expected a lot more westerners to be here. In our first 3 days of being surrounded by millions of faces, I could count on my head, shoulders, knees and toes how many of them were white. We got so many stares, some which seemed to turn into fixations. I thought for sure Angelina Jolie was standing behind me (to adopt a 19th baby) for the amount of time people spent looking our way. At a park Greg and I were sitting at, an entire Indian family (extended relatives and all) came up to us in awe. Only one of the women spoke very broken English. The others had intent stares, friendly ones of course, but also pensive and perplexed. It seemed they wanted to say or ask so much, and we felt the same. One of the kids really got Greg’s attention, or maybe it was the blue, blow-up ball the kid had. All the while they were playing, the boy mustered

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Buggin Out

April 8, 2011
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I am seriously trying to tough this one out here. I have always had this really big nightmare where a cockroach runs across my body when I’m sleeping. I honestly shiver hard just thinking about it, and I’m in the middle of sweltering India. So tonight, after a long, long day of sightseeing and absolute craze, we open our hostel door hesitantly. It isn’t the most appealing room, in fact, even Oscar the Grouch would call his garbage-can living quarters The Hilton compared to this room. We cringed as the dripping dirt became overtly apparent against the tacky pastel-colored walls. The florescent light, which flickered for seconds before turning on fully, lit up the crevasses where tiny bugs made their colonies, and it revealed sheets that were stained in more places then they were white. Greg stripped the pillow cases and ran them downstairs, hoping to swap them for a pair that wasn’t predominantly filthy. In the 3 minutes it was just myself in the hostel room, I’d never felt so disgusting and alone. When Greg came back, we sat on the edge of the bed- my head hit his chest and and it stayed there as I breathed in

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All you need is a good horn, good brakes and good luck.

April 8, 2011
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We woke up at 10 in India’s capitol city of Delhi. Our flight had landed at 3 am, so driving to our hostel, it was too dark to realize anything about the city. Our first mission that blind morning was to find another hostel. The one we were staying at was overpriced, relatively, and had annoying construction. The second one we picked was cheaper, though dirtier, and had no interrupting workmen. We dropped our bags and headed on our sightseeing way. We had made no plans, just as I’d done in Southeast Asia, so we had no clue where to start. A young, chipper man approached us and asked where we were from. He said he had many friends from America, too, and asked where we were headed. He seemed sincere so we told him our lack of destination, and Raj offered us advice to go to the government office of tourism, since the other travel agencies take advantage of non-Indians and bump prices up, up, up. He said, come this way, I get you taxi for Indian rate. A fourth of the price later, we were on our way. The spirited man at the tourist desk sat with us

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Luxury Before the Storm

April 6, 2011
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It’s about time I saw The Social Network. During the 11+ hour flight, I slept eight hours and watched this movie for two, of course enjoying every minute. A historic depiction behind the addiction I’ve been slowly, but very slowly, weening off since college graduation plus sly Justin Timberlake intimidatingly taking charge- what’s not to enjoy? It’s also about time any of the US’s airlines step up their game like Qatar has on Qatar Airways. We were not in first class, though with all the fine treatment we received just five minutes into boarding, you’d think we were front row on Air Force One. Getting handed a hot towel and a travel pack of a toothbrush and toothpaste, ear plugs, an eye mask, wet wipes, candy and an ultra-soft pair of socks, we felt fully pampered. The real kicker was that the plane, a Boeing 777 which could fit 300 people, only had 80 people on it, and we basically had the entire back cabin to ourselves. There were a few other people so it’s not like it was a honeymoon suite, but the emptiness allowed each of us our own row for sleeping, hence the 8 hours of shut-eye

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