So far this year I’ve done a good job keeping my travel blog up to date. With that in mind I’ve got some catching up to do for the month of August.
Last August I did two road trips into the United States. The first one was Aug. 3-6 on a road trip to Montana. On that trip it was me, Warren, Travis and Richard. There we saw Glacier National Park and went to White Fish and Missoula.
The second trip took place Aug. 25-26. Dave, Brad and I did an intense all night drive to Seattle to check out the PAX convention.
Here’s a bunch of quick thoughts on my trip. This one’s pretty short but I really wanted to get something on the ol’blog.
The United States of America
Considering how close we are and how much culture we share, it was surprising how different the USA is from Canada. Not that the differences were large ones, it was more a ton tiny little ones that sort of added up.
Some obvious differences were the availability /cheapness of booze, miles per hour instead of km per hour and availability of new products (such as the infamous Dr. Pibb).
Perhaps more striking though is how different each state was from each other. Sure I only went to Washington State and Montana, but they both one had completely different characters. More than you expect for States that border each other in the same country.
One thing that always got me about the States are the huge civil structures that make up the road systems. The overpasses and bridges are mystifying in their size and ambitiousness. It would have not been fun to be around when they were first being built but now they make driving a much more pleasant experience.
Montana
It doesn’t take you very long to realize that Montana is a Red State. The billboards displaying the Ten Commandments and ease of access to guns tip you off pretty quickly.
That being said it’s still a pretty cool place. Glacier National Park is pretty awesome/treacherous drive that everyone should do sometime.
White Fish also introduced me to Pabst Blue Ribbon beer. At the bar it cost $1.50 a pint. That’s a sign that it’s going to be good quality. However, as bad as the stuff is, the tap which we bought it from must have had special powers because it hit Travis and I like a rock. All it took was one to go from being happy-go-lucky hiding from Richard and Warren so I could stay out later to falling on rocks and using all my will power to make it to the bathroom.
The whole justification of our Montana trip was so Travis could get some turn tables cheaper in Missoula. We succeeded in this task and I am now gifted with hearing Travis mixing pretty much every night. Good times.
Seattle
The drive to Seattle was a hardcore one. Seattle is 15 hours away and in order to avoid taking vacation time Brad, Dave and I took turns driving (though an extremely caffeined Brad some how managed to drive nearly the whole way going to Seattle).
Seattle is a pretty chill city. It’s like Vancouver but smaller and American. Another nice bonus is the fact we were able to walk around and see all the major sites in a day. Seattle also contains a bar filled with pin ball machines making the city 100 times cooler.
The reason that we went to Seattle was to attend the Penny Arcade Exposition or PAX. For those of you not in the know, Penny Arcade is a video game themed webcomic and the convention was good times. When I first walked in I got so over stimulated that I must have had some kind of a seizure running about seeing all the cool things scattered about.
The USA is pretty cool place to do a road trip in. With the ridiculously strong Canada dollar I’ll probably be making my way down there very soon.
Sunday, September 23, 2007
Wednesday, July 11, 2007
Tokyo, Japan
By the time I left Singapore I had been traveling with Kiran and Richard for over a month and a half… and Danny for like 4 days. However, all good things must come to an end and our group was split up for our final destination. Kiran and Danny went to Brunei while Richard and I went to Japan.
Richard had already been to Japan in January but he had gone with his family on a tour group. So he was excited to see Japan from a different angle.
We were in Japan from June 21st to June 25th and we spent the whole time in Tokyo. Trust me, 4 days is barely enough to even scratch the surface of Tokyo. It would take several lifetimes to fully explore the city,
The Most Populated City in the World
With 35 million residents, Tokyo is considered to have the worlds largest population. However, you wouldn't know it by how smoothly the city is run
It's actually a very interesting juxtaposition one sees a lot of in Tokyo. On one side Tokyo is crowded and the culture is super flashy, while on the side the people are quite civilized and everything is quite orderly.
For example, take the metro system (which, by the way, is one of the most extensive metros I've ever been on). If you get on during rush hour, the first thing you're going to notice is how crazy busy it is. Everybody is shoved together like sardines in a fashion similar to Mumbai. However, the second thing you'll notice is how politely the Japanese people squish each other. They actually line up to get on the train and let people get off before filing on. When in the train people don't even talk (even on their cell phones) in order to minimize the discomfort to others.
As expected, the people in Tokyo are extremely polite. Us Canadians have nothing on Japanese politeness. One uniquely Japanese trait is they tend to give each other a little bow for most transactions such as greeting, partings or anything involving money.
A event as plain as buying something from the 7-11 can involve you receiving 5 bows from the cashier.
1: A greeting bow when you walk up to the till
2: When you give them the items to ring in
3: When you give them the money
4: When they give you the change
5: A final bye bow as you take your receipt.
I noticed by the time I was leaving Tokyo I was giving everyone a little bow for most things.
Food
I am a big fan of Japanese food. Sure if you're a finicky eater in Japan you're screwed but if you can get over how odd most of it is, it's good eating.
My personal favorite Japanese food was Ramen. Ramen is a term applied to noodle houses that can be found all over Tokyo. Walk in order your meal (which generally consists of noodles mixed with something like an egg or vegetables) and fill up for less than 3 bucks.
The seafood is defiantly where you get the crazy stuff. Take for example one meal which consisted of prawns, 4 kinds of fish (salmon being the only one I recognized), crab and seaweed all served raw on top of rice. It was awesome. I felt like I had defeated the ocean and was now devouring it.
Even MacDonald's got into the crazy seafood act and offered such delights as a shrimp burger (I wasn't a huge fan).
Snacking and caffeine hits were also super convenient in Japan. If you were to lazy to go to one of the 7-11-esque stores you could find at every street corner, you could just go to one of the millions of vending machines scattered throughout the city.
We even had a chance to try some authentic Japanese sushi. It was good stuff and affordable.
Best of all, it was possible to get kebabs! It was the best moment of my life leaving the bar to see the streets filled with kebab stands.
I think I'm having a Seizure
It's a stereotype that Japan has a zany pop culture filled with bright colors and madness. Well I can officially confirm that it's all true and I'm confident that it broke my brain.
Not every street in Tokyo was completely filled with neon. In most streets the only neon you saw came from the local pachinko place (more on this later). But the streets that were filled with neon more than compensated for those lacking it. I felt over stimulated just glancing at the Shinjuku and Shibuya areas.
Japanese TV is similarly over the top. Not every show is super crazy, but none of even approaches our level of calmness.
If you ever want to kill 12 hours, go to a Tokyo toy store. There's so much cool stuff in there I can't believe that the Japanese haven't conquered the world yet. Be it little solar powered dudes made of corn or awesome boxing games, Japanese kids are lucky,
You know how there's some people who are completely obsessed with anime and manga to the point where it runs their lives. I'm pretty sure every third person in Tokyo fits this description. The shops selling anime and manga were huge and always busy. It was a very common site to see a 40 year old business man whip out a manga comic and start reading it on the train.
Video Games
We were able to see many cool futurist electronics but the thing that captured my attention the most was the arcades. Namely the size and popularity of the arcades.
In Canada an arcade often describes a dusty machine shoved in the back of a lobby in a movie theater. In Japan, an arcade refers to a five floor building filled with rows upon rows of games.
I was able to find most of my favorite classics, but the thing that captured my attention the most were the games you could only find in Japan . Take for example this awesome game that involved one sitting at a table with a screen in front. You would purchase cards and then move the cards on the table. The table would read the movement of the card and then move your players in the game. If this was in Canada I would play it every day.
Also cool was this large Gundam (giant fighting robots) virtual reality pod. Each player had their own pod filled with a huge screen (which filled your vision) and realistic Gundam control system. In order to play it you had to buy a card which would track your progress and allow you to earn upgrades. I of course had to play then and it was awesome.
The most popular form of "arcade" were pachinko places. Pachinko is a form of gambling (it's the thing with the little metal balls). Pretty much every block had one and they were often filled.
Gambling was actually pretty prevalent throughout Tokyo and it wasn't hard to find slot machines or electronic horse racing.
Green Space
Tokyo is considered to the be the city with the most green space in the world. At first this is hard to believe until you see it's parks. Each one is huge and filled with beautiful plants and often temples.
One of the most interesting Japanese culture experiences was in the park just outside Meiji-Jingu Shrine. We visited the park on Sunday by accident but were surprised by what we saw. The park was filled with various groups of people just chilling out or doing some odd activity. It should be noted that pretty much everybody was drinking heavily. The park was huge so the groups were fairly spread out.
Some of the activities we saw included dancing, juggling, dressing up in elaborate costumes that would put KISS to shame and playing music. My person favorite was a group who had brought a couple of mixing tables to the park and set up several tapestries. They even had candles and a dude was doing a good job mixing.
It was surreal.
Goodbye Asia
Tokyo was a great way to end our trip. It was different enough from Canada that it was still interesting, but relaxing enough that to be a good wind down from India. I had always wanted to go to Tokyo and it didn't disappoint.
I will probably have to go back to Japan again since I missed many of Japan's big sites (Mt. Fuji, Kyoto, etc.) but I'm glad we stayed in Tokyo .
I'm happy that we took two months off in order to go traveling. However for me, I think 2 months was enough for nonstop travel. While I'm capable of more (I wasn't feeling homesick), I noticed that near the end, I wasn't appreciating things as much as I should. Also I need to save some parts of Asia for my next trip.
Richard had already been to Japan in January but he had gone with his family on a tour group. So he was excited to see Japan from a different angle.
We were in Japan from June 21st to June 25th and we spent the whole time in Tokyo. Trust me, 4 days is barely enough to even scratch the surface of Tokyo. It would take several lifetimes to fully explore the city,
The Most Populated City in the World
With 35 million residents, Tokyo is considered to have the worlds largest population. However, you wouldn't know it by how smoothly the city is run
It's actually a very interesting juxtaposition one sees a lot of in Tokyo. On one side Tokyo is crowded and the culture is super flashy, while on the side the people are quite civilized and everything is quite orderly.
For example, take the metro system (which, by the way, is one of the most extensive metros I've ever been on). If you get on during rush hour, the first thing you're going to notice is how crazy busy it is. Everybody is shoved together like sardines in a fashion similar to Mumbai. However, the second thing you'll notice is how politely the Japanese people squish each other. They actually line up to get on the train and let people get off before filing on. When in the train people don't even talk (even on their cell phones) in order to minimize the discomfort to others.
As expected, the people in Tokyo are extremely polite. Us Canadians have nothing on Japanese politeness. One uniquely Japanese trait is they tend to give each other a little bow for most transactions such as greeting, partings or anything involving money.
A event as plain as buying something from the 7-11 can involve you receiving 5 bows from the cashier.
1: A greeting bow when you walk up to the till
2: When you give them the items to ring in
3: When you give them the money
4: When they give you the change
5: A final bye bow as you take your receipt.
I noticed by the time I was leaving Tokyo I was giving everyone a little bow for most things.
Food
I am a big fan of Japanese food. Sure if you're a finicky eater in Japan you're screwed but if you can get over how odd most of it is, it's good eating.
My personal favorite Japanese food was Ramen. Ramen is a term applied to noodle houses that can be found all over Tokyo. Walk in order your meal (which generally consists of noodles mixed with something like an egg or vegetables) and fill up for less than 3 bucks.
The seafood is defiantly where you get the crazy stuff. Take for example one meal which consisted of prawns, 4 kinds of fish (salmon being the only one I recognized), crab and seaweed all served raw on top of rice. It was awesome. I felt like I had defeated the ocean and was now devouring it.
Even MacDonald's got into the crazy seafood act and offered such delights as a shrimp burger (I wasn't a huge fan).
Snacking and caffeine hits were also super convenient in Japan. If you were to lazy to go to one of the 7-11-esque stores you could find at every street corner, you could just go to one of the millions of vending machines scattered throughout the city.
We even had a chance to try some authentic Japanese sushi. It was good stuff and affordable.
Best of all, it was possible to get kebabs! It was the best moment of my life leaving the bar to see the streets filled with kebab stands.
I think I'm having a Seizure
It's a stereotype that Japan has a zany pop culture filled with bright colors and madness. Well I can officially confirm that it's all true and I'm confident that it broke my brain.
Not every street in Tokyo was completely filled with neon. In most streets the only neon you saw came from the local pachinko place (more on this later). But the streets that were filled with neon more than compensated for those lacking it. I felt over stimulated just glancing at the Shinjuku and Shibuya areas.
Japanese TV is similarly over the top. Not every show is super crazy, but none of even approaches our level of calmness.
If you ever want to kill 12 hours, go to a Tokyo toy store. There's so much cool stuff in there I can't believe that the Japanese haven't conquered the world yet. Be it little solar powered dudes made of corn or awesome boxing games, Japanese kids are lucky,
You know how there's some people who are completely obsessed with anime and manga to the point where it runs their lives. I'm pretty sure every third person in Tokyo fits this description. The shops selling anime and manga were huge and always busy. It was a very common site to see a 40 year old business man whip out a manga comic and start reading it on the train.
Video Games
We were able to see many cool futurist electronics but the thing that captured my attention the most was the arcades. Namely the size and popularity of the arcades.
In Canada an arcade often describes a dusty machine shoved in the back of a lobby in a movie theater. In Japan, an arcade refers to a five floor building filled with rows upon rows of games.
I was able to find most of my favorite classics, but the thing that captured my attention the most were the games you could only find in Japan . Take for example this awesome game that involved one sitting at a table with a screen in front. You would purchase cards and then move the cards on the table. The table would read the movement of the card and then move your players in the game. If this was in Canada I would play it every day.
Also cool was this large Gundam (giant fighting robots) virtual reality pod. Each player had their own pod filled with a huge screen (which filled your vision) and realistic Gundam control system. In order to play it you had to buy a card which would track your progress and allow you to earn upgrades. I of course had to play then and it was awesome.
The most popular form of "arcade" were pachinko places. Pachinko is a form of gambling (it's the thing with the little metal balls). Pretty much every block had one and they were often filled.
Gambling was actually pretty prevalent throughout Tokyo and it wasn't hard to find slot machines or electronic horse racing.
Green Space
Tokyo is considered to the be the city with the most green space in the world. At first this is hard to believe until you see it's parks. Each one is huge and filled with beautiful plants and often temples.
One of the most interesting Japanese culture experiences was in the park just outside Meiji-Jingu Shrine. We visited the park on Sunday by accident but were surprised by what we saw. The park was filled with various groups of people just chilling out or doing some odd activity. It should be noted that pretty much everybody was drinking heavily. The park was huge so the groups were fairly spread out.
Some of the activities we saw included dancing, juggling, dressing up in elaborate costumes that would put KISS to shame and playing music. My person favorite was a group who had brought a couple of mixing tables to the park and set up several tapestries. They even had candles and a dude was doing a good job mixing.
It was surreal.
Goodbye Asia
Tokyo was a great way to end our trip. It was different enough from Canada that it was still interesting, but relaxing enough that to be a good wind down from India. I had always wanted to go to Tokyo and it didn't disappoint.
I will probably have to go back to Japan again since I missed many of Japan's big sites (Mt. Fuji, Kyoto, etc.) but I'm glad we stayed in Tokyo .
I'm happy that we took two months off in order to go traveling. However for me, I think 2 months was enough for nonstop travel. While I'm capable of more (I wasn't feeling homesick), I noticed that near the end, I wasn't appreciating things as much as I should. Also I need to save some parts of Asia for my next trip.
Thursday, July 05, 2007
Singapore
I have been in Calgary for about a week now so this blog is kinda of late. However, I managed to keep up with all my other travel blogs and don’t want to let this one slip through the cracks. So without further ado, here’s my blog for Singapore.
We flew from Mumbai to Singapore on June 15th and we left June 21st. The flight was surprisingly long and Singapore is in a time zone 2.5 hours before India. For the rest of the trip I never adjusted to the correct time zone (too many late nights).
When we arrived in Singapore we met up with our friend Danny who was in middle of his own Asia trip. Kiran and Richard were good travel buddies, but it was nice having someone new to liven up the conversation. He told us that all three of us independently mentioned the same thing to him the first day he arrived.
Singapore, Singapore
My first thoughts upon arriving on Singapore were, “How could this possibly be on the same planet as India”. The contrast was so great it took me some serious time to adjust.
Singapore is actually a unique little country. Located on an island in the south of Malaysia (but north of Borneo), the country of Singapore is literally one city (called Singapore) that spans the whole island. It should be noted that it’s not a very big island either; it’s smaller than Vancouver Island.
It’s not only its size that makes it unique in Southeast Asia but also it’s wealth. When Singapore gained independence after WWII, its politicians preformed a miracle. They managed to take a small British Port and transform it into a banking capital and port destination. Even though Singapore lacks natural resources, it still makes a ton of money off of oil refining.
Perhaps the most famous aspect of Singapore is the restrictiveness and harshness of its laws. Caning is a punishment and many crimes hold a death penalty (including most drug related offenses). Singapore is the place you heard about where gum is restricted (you’re allowed to chew it discreetly, but you can’t buy it in the country).
It’s because of these tough laws and wealth that Singapore is by far the cleanest, most organized place I’ve ever been. Everything runs on time and is orderly. It was a nice break after the chaos which was India.
Even though the population of Singapore is mainly made up of Chinese, Malay and Indians, the primary language in Singapore is English. Everybody speaks it and all the signs and markings are in English only. This makes it easy for a traveler to get around.
Shopping
If you can say one thing about Singaporeans, it’s that they love to shop. You can’t walk a block without finding a mall that will be packed at all times.
But these aren’t your standard North American malls. These are huge labyrinths of stores. The malls on Orchard Road are grand enough to dwarf any mall you’ve ever dreamed and inspire one to write epics about them.
It’s like being in a different reality where consumerism has taken a physical form in the shape of Orchard Road.
Needless to say, if you’re the type who likes to shop, Singapore would be for you.
The Sights
Singapore is not the type of country that has a lot of sights. It’s got a couple, but after coming from a place like India, it’s more the type of place to chill at.
The primary attraction of Singapore is the tiny island of Sentosa. Located off of Singapore it’s beautiful beach in a completely artificial kind of way. The beaches are just a little too nice and it’s loaded with tourist things to do. It’s still a pleasant way to spend a day though and the giant Merlion statue is so campy it rocks.
Singapore’s zoo is defiantly its primary attraction. It’s quite large and well sculptured. The best part of it all is the Night Safari, which is another zoo that is filled with nocturnal animals. It only opens after dark and it was a ton of fun wandering through its simulated jungle trying to spot animals.
For such a buckled down place, Singapore has a surprisingly thumping night life. It wasn’t hard to find cool bars and they were quite full. Most nights there I was up long past 4am.
Wrap up
Initially I wasn’t planning to spend much time in Singapore. The only reason we had scheduled such a long stop was Kiran wanted time to visit friends, Richard and I had been planning to do some day trips. However, my laziness and the charms of Singapore made it easy to find things to do for 5 days.
Next Time: Tokyo
We flew from Mumbai to Singapore on June 15th and we left June 21st. The flight was surprisingly long and Singapore is in a time zone 2.5 hours before India. For the rest of the trip I never adjusted to the correct time zone (too many late nights).
When we arrived in Singapore we met up with our friend Danny who was in middle of his own Asia trip. Kiran and Richard were good travel buddies, but it was nice having someone new to liven up the conversation. He told us that all three of us independently mentioned the same thing to him the first day he arrived.
Singapore, Singapore
My first thoughts upon arriving on Singapore were, “How could this possibly be on the same planet as India”. The contrast was so great it took me some serious time to adjust.
Singapore is actually a unique little country. Located on an island in the south of Malaysia (but north of Borneo), the country of Singapore is literally one city (called Singapore) that spans the whole island. It should be noted that it’s not a very big island either; it’s smaller than Vancouver Island.
It’s not only its size that makes it unique in Southeast Asia but also it’s wealth. When Singapore gained independence after WWII, its politicians preformed a miracle. They managed to take a small British Port and transform it into a banking capital and port destination. Even though Singapore lacks natural resources, it still makes a ton of money off of oil refining.
Perhaps the most famous aspect of Singapore is the restrictiveness and harshness of its laws. Caning is a punishment and many crimes hold a death penalty (including most drug related offenses). Singapore is the place you heard about where gum is restricted (you’re allowed to chew it discreetly, but you can’t buy it in the country).
It’s because of these tough laws and wealth that Singapore is by far the cleanest, most organized place I’ve ever been. Everything runs on time and is orderly. It was a nice break after the chaos which was India.
Even though the population of Singapore is mainly made up of Chinese, Malay and Indians, the primary language in Singapore is English. Everybody speaks it and all the signs and markings are in English only. This makes it easy for a traveler to get around.
Shopping
If you can say one thing about Singaporeans, it’s that they love to shop. You can’t walk a block without finding a mall that will be packed at all times.
But these aren’t your standard North American malls. These are huge labyrinths of stores. The malls on Orchard Road are grand enough to dwarf any mall you’ve ever dreamed and inspire one to write epics about them.
It’s like being in a different reality where consumerism has taken a physical form in the shape of Orchard Road.
Needless to say, if you’re the type who likes to shop, Singapore would be for you.
The Sights
Singapore is not the type of country that has a lot of sights. It’s got a couple, but after coming from a place like India, it’s more the type of place to chill at.
The primary attraction of Singapore is the tiny island of Sentosa. Located off of Singapore it’s beautiful beach in a completely artificial kind of way. The beaches are just a little too nice and it’s loaded with tourist things to do. It’s still a pleasant way to spend a day though and the giant Merlion statue is so campy it rocks.
Singapore’s zoo is defiantly its primary attraction. It’s quite large and well sculptured. The best part of it all is the Night Safari, which is another zoo that is filled with nocturnal animals. It only opens after dark and it was a ton of fun wandering through its simulated jungle trying to spot animals.
For such a buckled down place, Singapore has a surprisingly thumping night life. It wasn’t hard to find cool bars and they were quite full. Most nights there I was up long past 4am.
Wrap up
Initially I wasn’t planning to spend much time in Singapore. The only reason we had scheduled such a long stop was Kiran wanted time to visit friends, Richard and I had been planning to do some day trips. However, my laziness and the charms of Singapore made it easy to find things to do for 5 days.
Next Time: Tokyo
Friday, June 15, 2007
India Part 8: Final India Round Up
As I write this I am currently chilling out in Singapore. I don't think it's possible for a place to be anymore different from India.
Here's one last blog to round up my India trip. It's basically made up of random tidbit that I wanted to mention but didn't have a place for it in the other blogs.
The Chaos
India is like an assault on ones senses. Where ever you go, there's going to be a ton of people and their going to be doing a variety of different interesting things. Not only that, it's going to loud. There are going to be people yelling and horns bellowing all over the place. But you can't get distracted because your going to need to dodge people, vehicles and the odd dog/cow.
There's so many people and things happening all at once that it's pretty easy to get over whelmed. When we first got to India I found that I had to sleep a lot just to adjust to the madness.
But after about a week in India it was surprising how used I got to it all. Now it feels weird if we go anywhere and there's not a 1000 things happening at once. It's going to make going back to the suburbs in Calgary an odd experience.
Money
The India currency is called rupees. It's about 35 Rs. for every $1 Can.
I want to emphasis that India is really cheap. The flight to India probably cost more than 2 times the price of 40 days. I can definitely see why lots of hippies go to India. With the conversion you live there a long time for very little money.
One thing that surprised me is how little bartering I do. With the exceptions of autorishaws and some souvenirs, everything pretty much has a fixed price. This is nice since it would be annoying if I had to barter every time I wanted to buy a bottle of water.
The Touching
In North America we're very protective of our personal space. Sure we touch each other, but for the most part unless we're a couple we don't spend much time touching each other. The opposite of this is true in India as the culture does not seem to respect the personal space rule.
This is most evident when looking at men. There is no social stigma to men placing there hands on each other. Much to Kiran's dismay (and therefore my delight), it is quite common to see men holding hands walking down the street. It's not that there's anything sexual behind holding hands, it's just that they're friends
It should be noted though that this seemed much more predominate in Northern India. In Mumbai or Goa, it was much rarer to see men holding hands.
The Food
India has a huge variety of foods. To be honest though, I wasn't a huge fan of most of them. Not that I didn't like them, it's just that most of them generally did not appeal to me. By the end of the trip I was eating a lot of pizzas.
Two things were true of Indian food no matter where you went, they would be spicy and they would have a ton of carbs. By spicy I mean they would have a lot of spice, not necessarily hot spice though (even though hot spice was pretty damn common).
The spice actually added a lot to the vegetarian food. It was often easy to forget that you weren't eating meat.
Richard & Kiran could do a much better job describing the food of India then I ever care to.
The drinks on the other hand was something that I could get behind. There were two in particular: chai and fresh lime soda.
Chai is the fancy term giving to a blend of tea and milk that is often served sweetened. It was easy to obtain and cheap. It quickly became my caffeine hit of choice.
Fresh lime soda was even simpler. It consists of lime juice and club soda. It can either be served salty or sweet. I never thought I could enjoy a salty drink but fresh lime soda showed me the error of my ways.
Kiran and I loved the fresh lime soda so much that we bought these awesome lime juicers and plan to make our own in Canada.
Street Food
Now the food that one could buy off the street, I found that way more interesting. Here's a roundup of some of my favorites.
Sugarcane juice: They take a reed of sugarcane and grind it up. A juice comes out and they add ice and serve it to you. It is both sweet and refreshing
Pav Rhaji: They take tomato, potato, peppers, onions and water and mix it up on a wok. After a while the mixture becomes a fine paste. You then eat the paste with bread. It's actually really good and my favorite way to fill up cheaply in India.
Lasi: A sweet yogurt drink. It's usually blended with banana's or another fruit. Delicious.
Bhel Puri: Now this stuff is extremely elaborate for street food. It consists of multiple layers of rice, noodles, vegetables and sauces. The other thing about this stuff is that it is damn spicy. When I ate it I felt like I entered a form of delirium.
Religion
One thing that leaps out at you is how much religion is woven into everyday life. This is especially true for Hinduism, which most of the Indian population follows.
Hinduism is an odd religion because it's fairly different then what we're used to. It doesn't have a primary leader or even a primary book that outlines it. To complicate things further, it also has a huge amount of gods. However, each God is just an incarnation of an aspect of the primary god. So therefore, it doesn't matter which particular god you pray to.
Throughout India it's common to see random Hindu shines and temples along the side of the street.
One thing about Hinduism is that unlike western religions, it has no drive to convert others to it. For this reason Hindus aren't know for imposing their beliefs on others. Of coarse this isn't always true though. Like all religions there's going to be the radicals who make life difficult for everyone else.
Even though Hinduism is the predominate religion, it's still pretty common to see followers of Islam. No matter the city, you can often hear the Muslim prayers being played on mosque load speakers around prayer times.
Poverty
No matter how you look at it, there are lots of poor people in India. It's depressingly common to see families living openly in the side of the street with little or no shelter/possessions.
It's an odd site when contrasted against the wealth and comfortable living of many people in India. I now understand what the news means when it states that the very poor are not benefiting from India's economic success.
It also makes one wonder what can be done.
Autorickshaws
These are one of my favorite aspects of India. An autorickshaw is basically a little 3 wheeled buggy. It has a driver in the front and about 3 people can squeeze into the back.
Autorickshaws can come is slightly different sizes. Sometimes there's space for luggage/passengers in the back, sometimes there isn't. I've also seen them run on disiel, gasoline or even methane. Every so often you even get to see one that the owner has pimped out with lights, decals or a sound system.
Where ever you go your bound to see a lot of auto's, which makes getting around quite easy. Their cheap too (especially when split 3 ways).
Arranged Marriages
Of all aspects of Indian culture, I find arranged marriages to be one of the concepts most foreign to western culture. Here's a bit of info that I've gathered about them
First off they're a cultural thing, not a religious thing. All groups in India have arranged marriages.
Perhaps the most misunderstood aspect of arranged marriages, is that for the most part, the couple is not forced into the marriage. They have the final choice if they want to get married,
The way to think of arranged marriages is the parents are acting as the match makers. They try to find a mate which would good for their child and arrange a meeting. If the couple hits it off, a marriage is arranged. If the couple doesn't click, then they try again.
So I guess a lot of it has to do with how much you trust your parents to find you a good husband/wife.
Sports!
The sport of choice in India is undoubtedly cricket. It's extremely common to see kids playing it and any development in the professional league makes front page news. I even learned how to play it. Trust me, even though it looks like baseball, it's completely different.
Power Cuts
Random power cuts are a part of life where ever you go in India. It's almost expected that the power will go out for about 30 minutes everyday.
It's actually not as disruptive as you'd expect since everyone is pretty good at adjusting to it by now. Any vital things that require power usually have a handy back up generator to avoid problems.
The worst thing about the power cuts is that the fan/air conditioning is shut off. I don't know how anyone lived in India before these two inventions.
Language
Language hasn't been much of a problem. Due to the British influence, most people can speak some form of passable English.
However, that being said, Kiran's Hindi has made this trip way easier. Many of the minor difficulties can be quickly sorted out with much less hassle than if we couldn't speak the language.
This is especially noticeable when we are hanging out with other travellers. Kiran's ability to quickly sort out the issues with the waiters/buss driver/etc quickly makes him a hero.
Conclusion
India was an amazing trip. It was everything I expected and even more.
I was also surprised how problem free our trip was. Our only problem (getting the wrong train time) was completely our fault and easily fixed.
I enjoyed every city that we went, but I will have to say that Udaipur was my favorite. Not that the other cities weren't awesome, but I could have spent the rest of my summer chilling out at the roof top of our hotel.
Ok that's all for India.
Next Time: Singapore
Here's one last blog to round up my India trip. It's basically made up of random tidbit that I wanted to mention but didn't have a place for it in the other blogs.
The Chaos
India is like an assault on ones senses. Where ever you go, there's going to be a ton of people and their going to be doing a variety of different interesting things. Not only that, it's going to loud. There are going to be people yelling and horns bellowing all over the place. But you can't get distracted because your going to need to dodge people, vehicles and the odd dog/cow.
There's so many people and things happening all at once that it's pretty easy to get over whelmed. When we first got to India I found that I had to sleep a lot just to adjust to the madness.
But after about a week in India it was surprising how used I got to it all. Now it feels weird if we go anywhere and there's not a 1000 things happening at once. It's going to make going back to the suburbs in Calgary an odd experience.
Money
The India currency is called rupees. It's about 35 Rs. for every $1 Can.
I want to emphasis that India is really cheap. The flight to India probably cost more than 2 times the price of 40 days. I can definitely see why lots of hippies go to India. With the conversion you live there a long time for very little money.
One thing that surprised me is how little bartering I do. With the exceptions of autorishaws and some souvenirs, everything pretty much has a fixed price. This is nice since it would be annoying if I had to barter every time I wanted to buy a bottle of water.
The Touching
In North America we're very protective of our personal space. Sure we touch each other, but for the most part unless we're a couple we don't spend much time touching each other. The opposite of this is true in India as the culture does not seem to respect the personal space rule.
This is most evident when looking at men. There is no social stigma to men placing there hands on each other. Much to Kiran's dismay (and therefore my delight), it is quite common to see men holding hands walking down the street. It's not that there's anything sexual behind holding hands, it's just that they're friends
It should be noted though that this seemed much more predominate in Northern India. In Mumbai or Goa, it was much rarer to see men holding hands.
The Food
India has a huge variety of foods. To be honest though, I wasn't a huge fan of most of them. Not that I didn't like them, it's just that most of them generally did not appeal to me. By the end of the trip I was eating a lot of pizzas.
Two things were true of Indian food no matter where you went, they would be spicy and they would have a ton of carbs. By spicy I mean they would have a lot of spice, not necessarily hot spice though (even though hot spice was pretty damn common).
The spice actually added a lot to the vegetarian food. It was often easy to forget that you weren't eating meat.
Richard & Kiran could do a much better job describing the food of India then I ever care to.
The drinks on the other hand was something that I could get behind. There were two in particular: chai and fresh lime soda.
Chai is the fancy term giving to a blend of tea and milk that is often served sweetened. It was easy to obtain and cheap. It quickly became my caffeine hit of choice.
Fresh lime soda was even simpler. It consists of lime juice and club soda. It can either be served salty or sweet. I never thought I could enjoy a salty drink but fresh lime soda showed me the error of my ways.
Kiran and I loved the fresh lime soda so much that we bought these awesome lime juicers and plan to make our own in Canada.
Street Food
Now the food that one could buy off the street, I found that way more interesting. Here's a roundup of some of my favorites.
Sugarcane juice: They take a reed of sugarcane and grind it up. A juice comes out and they add ice and serve it to you. It is both sweet and refreshing
Pav Rhaji: They take tomato, potato, peppers, onions and water and mix it up on a wok. After a while the mixture becomes a fine paste. You then eat the paste with bread. It's actually really good and my favorite way to fill up cheaply in India.
Lasi: A sweet yogurt drink. It's usually blended with banana's or another fruit. Delicious.
Bhel Puri: Now this stuff is extremely elaborate for street food. It consists of multiple layers of rice, noodles, vegetables and sauces. The other thing about this stuff is that it is damn spicy. When I ate it I felt like I entered a form of delirium.
Religion
One thing that leaps out at you is how much religion is woven into everyday life. This is especially true for Hinduism, which most of the Indian population follows.
Hinduism is an odd religion because it's fairly different then what we're used to. It doesn't have a primary leader or even a primary book that outlines it. To complicate things further, it also has a huge amount of gods. However, each God is just an incarnation of an aspect of the primary god. So therefore, it doesn't matter which particular god you pray to.
Throughout India it's common to see random Hindu shines and temples along the side of the street.
One thing about Hinduism is that unlike western religions, it has no drive to convert others to it. For this reason Hindus aren't know for imposing their beliefs on others. Of coarse this isn't always true though. Like all religions there's going to be the radicals who make life difficult for everyone else.
Even though Hinduism is the predominate religion, it's still pretty common to see followers of Islam. No matter the city, you can often hear the Muslim prayers being played on mosque load speakers around prayer times.
Poverty
No matter how you look at it, there are lots of poor people in India. It's depressingly common to see families living openly in the side of the street with little or no shelter/possessions.
It's an odd site when contrasted against the wealth and comfortable living of many people in India. I now understand what the news means when it states that the very poor are not benefiting from India's economic success.
It also makes one wonder what can be done.
Autorickshaws
These are one of my favorite aspects of India. An autorickshaw is basically a little 3 wheeled buggy. It has a driver in the front and about 3 people can squeeze into the back.
Autorickshaws can come is slightly different sizes. Sometimes there's space for luggage/passengers in the back, sometimes there isn't. I've also seen them run on disiel, gasoline or even methane. Every so often you even get to see one that the owner has pimped out with lights, decals or a sound system.
Where ever you go your bound to see a lot of auto's, which makes getting around quite easy. Their cheap too (especially when split 3 ways).
Arranged Marriages
Of all aspects of Indian culture, I find arranged marriages to be one of the concepts most foreign to western culture. Here's a bit of info that I've gathered about them
First off they're a cultural thing, not a religious thing. All groups in India have arranged marriages.
Perhaps the most misunderstood aspect of arranged marriages, is that for the most part, the couple is not forced into the marriage. They have the final choice if they want to get married,
The way to think of arranged marriages is the parents are acting as the match makers. They try to find a mate which would good for their child and arrange a meeting. If the couple hits it off, a marriage is arranged. If the couple doesn't click, then they try again.
So I guess a lot of it has to do with how much you trust your parents to find you a good husband/wife.
Sports!
The sport of choice in India is undoubtedly cricket. It's extremely common to see kids playing it and any development in the professional league makes front page news. I even learned how to play it. Trust me, even though it looks like baseball, it's completely different.
Power Cuts
Random power cuts are a part of life where ever you go in India. It's almost expected that the power will go out for about 30 minutes everyday.
It's actually not as disruptive as you'd expect since everyone is pretty good at adjusting to it by now. Any vital things that require power usually have a handy back up generator to avoid problems.
The worst thing about the power cuts is that the fan/air conditioning is shut off. I don't know how anyone lived in India before these two inventions.
Language
Language hasn't been much of a problem. Due to the British influence, most people can speak some form of passable English.
However, that being said, Kiran's Hindi has made this trip way easier. Many of the minor difficulties can be quickly sorted out with much less hassle than if we couldn't speak the language.
This is especially noticeable when we are hanging out with other travellers. Kiran's ability to quickly sort out the issues with the waiters/buss driver/etc quickly makes him a hero.
Conclusion
India was an amazing trip. It was everything I expected and even more.
I was also surprised how problem free our trip was. Our only problem (getting the wrong train time) was completely our fault and easily fixed.
I enjoyed every city that we went, but I will have to say that Udaipur was my favorite. Not that the other cities weren't awesome, but I could have spent the rest of my summer chilling out at the roof top of our hotel.
Ok that's all for India.
Next Time: Singapore
Thursday, June 14, 2007
India Part 7: Mumbai
Of all the places in India, we spent the most time in Mumbai. We were the periods of May 28 to June 3, June 8 to 10 and June 13 to 15. So a total of 13 days.
There were a couple of reasons that we spent so much time there but thhe main reason was that Kiran was born in Mumbai and he wanted to spend some a lot of time there.
It also helps that Kiran's parents own a flat in Mumbai that we were able to stay at for free. That managed to save us a fair bit of accommodation money.
While were in Mumbai we were able to see the tourist sites, experience Mumbai living and hang out with some of Kiran's old friend.
Mumbai vs. Bombay
Most people are more familiar with Mumbai's old name of Bombay. Well it turns out that back in the 90's the government changed the name of Bombay to Mumbai.
The reason for this is that Mumbai is original name of this city and Bombay was the name the British assigned to it when they gained control. The whole name change is all about asserting that India is independent from foreign rule.
There's actually several things that have been renamed from their British names. Examples include the city of Calcutta being renamed Kolkata, the main train station of Mumbai having it's name changed from Victoria Termius to Chhatrapati Shivagi Terminus and my personal favorite, Prince of Whale's Museum being renamed Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Museum.
Monsoon Season
Due to the timing of our trip we hit Mumbai just before the monsoon season began. However, we still got some rain. For about half the days we were in Mumbai it would rain for about an hour. This rain could be good or bad. If it happened at night it would cool the night down. However, if it happened during the day, it would just make the day hot and humid.
Actually you could describe most days in Mumbai as being hot and humid. The temperature ranged between 30-35 degrees while we were there, but it was the moisture that killed us. Whenever, I walked for 5 minutes outside I would become covered in sweet.
For the time in Mumbai I was covered in a moisture. It made me long for the imposing deserts of Rajasthan. Sure it was hotter, but at least sweat would evaporate.
Mulund
As I mentioned before we were lucky that Kiran's parents still had a flat in the Mumbai suburb of Mulund. Mulund is pretty nice area and is basically a middle class suburb.
Kiran parent's flat was actually quite nice. It was two bed room flat with a living room, kitchen and all the things one would need. I was too lazy to cook myself, but Richard took advantage of the kitchen to make several meals.
Odd thing about Mulund is that is greatly resembled the suburbs back home. For example, there were several malls that were similar to the ones that one would find anywhere in Canada. It was strange contrasting this to the poverty we had seen in most of places we had gone.
One day while we were walking around Mulund when we saw a fire break out in a near by rubbish/recycling pile. It was interesting to see people react to the fire. It was also interesting to see that it took about 45 minutes for a fire truck to show up. Fire insurance would probably be a good investment for a flat owner in Mumbai
Trains
The one downside with staying in Mulund is that it's pretty damn far from downtown Mumbai, most tourist sites and the main train station. That meant that we had to brave the local Mumbai train system in order to get downtown.
Mumbai doesn't have a metro and it's road system is over crowded. Therefore the only way that most of the population of Mumbai can get around is one the train and trust me, it feel like each train has the complete city population on it.
Most trains are packed. Not busy day C-train packed, I mean sardine, people being crushed to death packed. Every part of ones body is being touched by someone else. People literally hang on the outside of the door frame to stay in the train.
The most difficult part of the train comes when the train stops. If it's your stop, you have to push with all your might to get out. If you want to get on the train, you have to push with all your might to get on. It should be noted that this happens at the same time with half the train pushing to get out and the other half pushing to get on. It's not uncommon to see a shirt ripped or similar event.
You have to be on top of your game if you want to get off. The first time Kiran took the train he wasn't close enough to the door at his stop. No matter how hard he pushed he wasn't able to escape the train and had to get off at the next stop.
Based on what train we caught it'd take anywhere from 45-90 minutes to get down town to the main train station.
Down Town Mumbai
If you look at a map of Mumbai you'll see that there's a peninsula located in the southern part of the city. It's in this area that most of Mumbai's tourist sites are located.
Richard and I spent a day walking downtown Mumbai and it really interesting. Perhaps the most apparent thing was the fact that most of the tourist area was made up of huge Victorian style buildings. Combing the huge buildings with the palm trees and plants of Mumbai, the area was quite beautiful.
We hit all the major sites such as the Gateway to India and Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Museum. It was a nice way to spend a day.
Old Friends
It turns out that Kiran had kept contact with some of his old friends from when he lived in Mumbai. This was a really great for us because we got hang out with them and experience what Mumbai was like for locals instead of just being tourists.
We ate a couple of meals at a family friend of Kirans and I tell you it was good cooking. I probaly ate my 3 days of food in one sitting there.
Kiran's other buddy is in his early 20's so he was able to take us to some of the cooler spots in Mumbai. This was a great break from the usual tourist hot spots. We also got to see how somebody our age would live in Mumbai.
Almost Done
Today is our last day in Mumbai/India. Tommorow we fly out to Singapore. Sometime in the next couple of days expect one last India blog (I promise).
Next time: India Roundup
There were a couple of reasons that we spent so much time there but thhe main reason was that Kiran was born in Mumbai and he wanted to spend some a lot of time there.
It also helps that Kiran's parents own a flat in Mumbai that we were able to stay at for free. That managed to save us a fair bit of accommodation money.
While were in Mumbai we were able to see the tourist sites, experience Mumbai living and hang out with some of Kiran's old friend.
Mumbai vs. Bombay
Most people are more familiar with Mumbai's old name of Bombay. Well it turns out that back in the 90's the government changed the name of Bombay to Mumbai.
The reason for this is that Mumbai is original name of this city and Bombay was the name the British assigned to it when they gained control. The whole name change is all about asserting that India is independent from foreign rule.
There's actually several things that have been renamed from their British names. Examples include the city of Calcutta being renamed Kolkata, the main train station of Mumbai having it's name changed from Victoria Termius to Chhatrapati Shivagi Terminus and my personal favorite, Prince of Whale's Museum being renamed Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Museum.
Monsoon Season
Due to the timing of our trip we hit Mumbai just before the monsoon season began. However, we still got some rain. For about half the days we were in Mumbai it would rain for about an hour. This rain could be good or bad. If it happened at night it would cool the night down. However, if it happened during the day, it would just make the day hot and humid.
Actually you could describe most days in Mumbai as being hot and humid. The temperature ranged between 30-35 degrees while we were there, but it was the moisture that killed us. Whenever, I walked for 5 minutes outside I would become covered in sweet.
For the time in Mumbai I was covered in a moisture. It made me long for the imposing deserts of Rajasthan. Sure it was hotter, but at least sweat would evaporate.
Mulund
As I mentioned before we were lucky that Kiran's parents still had a flat in the Mumbai suburb of Mulund. Mulund is pretty nice area and is basically a middle class suburb.
Kiran parent's flat was actually quite nice. It was two bed room flat with a living room, kitchen and all the things one would need. I was too lazy to cook myself, but Richard took advantage of the kitchen to make several meals.
Odd thing about Mulund is that is greatly resembled the suburbs back home. For example, there were several malls that were similar to the ones that one would find anywhere in Canada. It was strange contrasting this to the poverty we had seen in most of places we had gone.
One day while we were walking around Mulund when we saw a fire break out in a near by rubbish/recycling pile. It was interesting to see people react to the fire. It was also interesting to see that it took about 45 minutes for a fire truck to show up. Fire insurance would probably be a good investment for a flat owner in Mumbai
Trains
The one downside with staying in Mulund is that it's pretty damn far from downtown Mumbai, most tourist sites and the main train station. That meant that we had to brave the local Mumbai train system in order to get downtown.
Mumbai doesn't have a metro and it's road system is over crowded. Therefore the only way that most of the population of Mumbai can get around is one the train and trust me, it feel like each train has the complete city population on it.
Most trains are packed. Not busy day C-train packed, I mean sardine, people being crushed to death packed. Every part of ones body is being touched by someone else. People literally hang on the outside of the door frame to stay in the train.
The most difficult part of the train comes when the train stops. If it's your stop, you have to push with all your might to get out. If you want to get on the train, you have to push with all your might to get on. It should be noted that this happens at the same time with half the train pushing to get out and the other half pushing to get on. It's not uncommon to see a shirt ripped or similar event.
You have to be on top of your game if you want to get off. The first time Kiran took the train he wasn't close enough to the door at his stop. No matter how hard he pushed he wasn't able to escape the train and had to get off at the next stop.
Based on what train we caught it'd take anywhere from 45-90 minutes to get down town to the main train station.
Down Town Mumbai
If you look at a map of Mumbai you'll see that there's a peninsula located in the southern part of the city. It's in this area that most of Mumbai's tourist sites are located.
Richard and I spent a day walking downtown Mumbai and it really interesting. Perhaps the most apparent thing was the fact that most of the tourist area was made up of huge Victorian style buildings. Combing the huge buildings with the palm trees and plants of Mumbai, the area was quite beautiful.
We hit all the major sites such as the Gateway to India and Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Museum. It was a nice way to spend a day.
Old Friends
It turns out that Kiran had kept contact with some of his old friends from when he lived in Mumbai. This was a really great for us because we got hang out with them and experience what Mumbai was like for locals instead of just being tourists.
We ate a couple of meals at a family friend of Kirans and I tell you it was good cooking. I probaly ate my 3 days of food in one sitting there.
Kiran's other buddy is in his early 20's so he was able to take us to some of the cooler spots in Mumbai. This was a great break from the usual tourist hot spots. We also got to see how somebody our age would live in Mumbai.
Almost Done
Today is our last day in Mumbai/India. Tommorow we fly out to Singapore. Sometime in the next couple of days expect one last India blog (I promise).
Next time: India Roundup
Wednesday, June 13, 2007
India Part 6: Aurangabad
Aurangabad is a city located about 7 hours by train away from Mumbai. The city itself is rather underwhelming, not that it's a bad city, it just resembles pretty much any city in India. The only reason to go to Aurangabad is to visit the nearby caves of Ajanta & Ellora.
With that in mind, we arrived in Aurangabad the morning of June 11 and left the night of June 12.
A Slight Problem
The trip to Aurangabad wasn't completely smooth though. The evening of June 10th we were preparing ourselves to catch a train leaving downtown Mumbai at 11:30 pm. We were moving at a fairly leisurely pace, since it would only take an hour to get down town and we had lots of time.
It was only at 8:45 did we check the ticket and realize that our train was actually leaving at 9:15.
Quickly we leaped into action. It was too late to get downtown, but we could still catch the train if it stopped at a more western stop. We used all our travel skills, individual talents and resources with laser point precision to discover that the train was stopping at a nearby station. We were able to get to the station and catch the train with time to spare.
At that moment we were the kings of travel (assuming you don't consider the fact that we made the stupidest travel mistake possible and didn't double check our tickets till it was too late).
Ellora Caves
The first day Richard and I went to the nearby Ellora Caves. The caves are not caves in the classic sense, instead they represent temples that have been carved into the side of mountains. In Ellora it was possible to find Hindu, Buddhist and Jain caves.
The caves themselves were amazing. They were surprisingly huge and intricate. I can't even fantom the amount of time they must have required.
The centerpiece of the caves is the Kailasanatha Temple. The temple is caved completely out of rock and sits in a valley carved out of a mountain. It's larger than the Parthenon of Greece and is shockingly detailed. It's crazy how something that amazing is not world famous.
Daulatabad Fort
As part of the deal with the autorickshaw driver, he brought us to the nearby Daulatbad fort. To be honest I wasn't even going to bother with the fort unless the driver brought us there for free. I'm damn happy he did.
The fort itself was imposing. Sitting on top of a steep cliff it was surrounded by a moat and built in the European style. It was good hour of climbing to the top and walking through the poorly lit caverns.
Bonus History Fact: Back in the day Daulatabad was actually fairly large city with strategic importance due to it's central location in India. The city was so important that in 1327, the ruler of Delhi (and Northern India) wanted to make it his capital.
In order to do this, he tried to forcibly march the city of Delhi to Daulatabad. As you can guess the whole fiasco was a disaster and many people died.
Ajunta Caves
The next day we headed out to the Ajunta caves. The Ajunta caves were much farther than Ellora and we had to take a 2 hour bus (each way) to get there.
The bus ride was worth it though. The Ajunta caves represent about 30 Buddhist caves which have been carved into a horse shoe valley.
Personally I preferred the Ellora Caves but the Ajunta caves were better preserved. It was still possible to see the paint in many of the Ajunta caves.
That's about it for Aurangabad. We currently have 2 more days in Mumbai and then we're leaving India. Some time in the next couple of days I'll put my Mumbai blog up.
Next Time: Mumbai (for sure this time)
With that in mind, we arrived in Aurangabad the morning of June 11 and left the night of June 12.
A Slight Problem
The trip to Aurangabad wasn't completely smooth though. The evening of June 10th we were preparing ourselves to catch a train leaving downtown Mumbai at 11:30 pm. We were moving at a fairly leisurely pace, since it would only take an hour to get down town and we had lots of time.
It was only at 8:45 did we check the ticket and realize that our train was actually leaving at 9:15.
Quickly we leaped into action. It was too late to get downtown, but we could still catch the train if it stopped at a more western stop. We used all our travel skills, individual talents and resources with laser point precision to discover that the train was stopping at a nearby station. We were able to get to the station and catch the train with time to spare.
At that moment we were the kings of travel (assuming you don't consider the fact that we made the stupidest travel mistake possible and didn't double check our tickets till it was too late).
Ellora Caves
The first day Richard and I went to the nearby Ellora Caves. The caves are not caves in the classic sense, instead they represent temples that have been carved into the side of mountains. In Ellora it was possible to find Hindu, Buddhist and Jain caves.
The caves themselves were amazing. They were surprisingly huge and intricate. I can't even fantom the amount of time they must have required.
The centerpiece of the caves is the Kailasanatha Temple. The temple is caved completely out of rock and sits in a valley carved out of a mountain. It's larger than the Parthenon of Greece and is shockingly detailed. It's crazy how something that amazing is not world famous.
Daulatabad Fort
As part of the deal with the autorickshaw driver, he brought us to the nearby Daulatbad fort. To be honest I wasn't even going to bother with the fort unless the driver brought us there for free. I'm damn happy he did.
The fort itself was imposing. Sitting on top of a steep cliff it was surrounded by a moat and built in the European style. It was good hour of climbing to the top and walking through the poorly lit caverns.
Bonus History Fact: Back in the day Daulatabad was actually fairly large city with strategic importance due to it's central location in India. The city was so important that in 1327, the ruler of Delhi (and Northern India) wanted to make it his capital.
In order to do this, he tried to forcibly march the city of Delhi to Daulatabad. As you can guess the whole fiasco was a disaster and many people died.
Ajunta Caves
The next day we headed out to the Ajunta caves. The Ajunta caves were much farther than Ellora and we had to take a 2 hour bus (each way) to get there.
The bus ride was worth it though. The Ajunta caves represent about 30 Buddhist caves which have been carved into a horse shoe valley.
Personally I preferred the Ellora Caves but the Ajunta caves were better preserved. It was still possible to see the paint in many of the Ajunta caves.
That's about it for Aurangabad. We currently have 2 more days in Mumbai and then we're leaving India. Some time in the next couple of days I'll put my Mumbai blog up.
Next Time: Mumbai (for sure this time)
Friday, June 08, 2007
India Part 5: Goa
Last blog I mentioned that we were currently in Mumbai. We were in Mumbai from May 28th to June 3rd. From there we took a train to Goa. We were in Goa from June 4th to 7th and have now returned to Mumbai.
Since we are using Mumbai as a hub for the rest of our time here in India I'm going to wait till the last day to write a blog about it. So here's my Goa blog.
Goa
Goa is a state located on the west coast of India. Unlike the rest of India, Goa was never governed by the British. Instead it was Portuguese ruled until it joined the rest of independent India. This fact has caused Goa to be a bit different than the rest of India. Some of the most obvious traits are that the state is predominately Catholic and the architecture style is very Portuguese in style.
The fact that the state is Catholic actually some far reaching effects. The main ones being that beef and booze are easily available.
Now, Goa is world famous as a good party/beach destination. This is reputation that is well earned. The beaches are beautiful, there are bars aplenty and everyone is quite laid back. However, we had the unfortunate fact of visiting Goa during the rainy/low season. That meant there was not much partying and a lot more just chilling out, which wasn't that bad of a thing.
It should be noted that saying I went to Goa is a bit of a far reaching statement. It's like saying, "I went to Alberta" when I went to Calgary. There are several cities in Goa, but most (if not all) travellers head towards one of the beach towns that are located along the coast. The beach towns are pretty close together and each have their own flair.
We stayed at Baga beach which is apparently one of the busier beachs during high season. For us though it was pretty empty but there were still some people to chat with so it was a good place to go to during off season. The closest train station to Baga beach is about a 11-13 hour train ride from Mumbai.
Elections
When we were going to Goa, we knew that it was off season and the party scene was going to be affected. One thing we forgot to consider was the fact that we were going to Goa during the elections, which further reduced the party scene.
You may be wondering why elections would put a damper on the party atmosphere. Well it turns out that India, at election time, booze is either banned or restricted. But not because of it affects peoples judgement in determining their leaders. Booze is limited because it's the only to reduce the drunken fights that would otherwise take place around election time.
Baga Beach
The beaches of Goa rock. Each one is a bit different but the ones I saw consisted of basically the same thing. Sandy beach as far as the eye can see, huge waves and conveniently located beach shacks.
Shack is a bit of a deceptive term. The shacks are better described as a restaurant/bar located on the sand looking at the surf. Basically you chill at the shack all day and occasionally go for a swim/walk.
We were lucky that for 3 of the days we had nice sunny weather. It rained the last day, but it was nice sitting in the shack watching the rain, drinking beer and playing chess (Richard beat me but I was avenged by the shack owner).
I thought that my time in India had prepared me for the Goan sun. I was sorta right. The skin not covered by shirts was could handle the sun. Unfortunately I couldn't say the same about my back and shoulders. So now my upper torso is made up of either tanned or red skin. I don't feel too bad about the burn since even Kiran got his back burned by the sun.
Anjuna Beach Flea Market
One of the days we tried walking to the nearby Anjuna beach to check out it's flea market and get some souvenir shopping done. After getting seriously lost trying to walk there along the high way we grabbed a taxi and went to the market.
The flea market consisted of locals selling handicrafts along a road. These were people who made there living on this flea market, it was the last market of the season and there weren't any other tourists. It took all my bartering skills to avoid getting completely ripped off.
After 30 minutes of shopping all 3 of us had spent all our money and I had traded my watch. That meant we had to walk back. Luckily we stuck to the coast line and had a much better time not getting hopelessly lost.
Wrap Up
Goa was a great experience. Even though we got here during the off season I'm glad we came when we did. It was a great way to relax and it would have been painful to leave the beaches of Goa for the deserts of Rajasthan.
We spend the weekend in Mumbai then we head to the cities of Ellora/Ajanta to check out some awesome Budist caves.
Next Time: Ajanta & Ellora
Since we are using Mumbai as a hub for the rest of our time here in India I'm going to wait till the last day to write a blog about it. So here's my Goa blog.
Goa
Goa is a state located on the west coast of India. Unlike the rest of India, Goa was never governed by the British. Instead it was Portuguese ruled until it joined the rest of independent India. This fact has caused Goa to be a bit different than the rest of India. Some of the most obvious traits are that the state is predominately Catholic and the architecture style is very Portuguese in style.
The fact that the state is Catholic actually some far reaching effects. The main ones being that beef and booze are easily available.
Now, Goa is world famous as a good party/beach destination. This is reputation that is well earned. The beaches are beautiful, there are bars aplenty and everyone is quite laid back. However, we had the unfortunate fact of visiting Goa during the rainy/low season. That meant there was not much partying and a lot more just chilling out, which wasn't that bad of a thing.
It should be noted that saying I went to Goa is a bit of a far reaching statement. It's like saying, "I went to Alberta" when I went to Calgary. There are several cities in Goa, but most (if not all) travellers head towards one of the beach towns that are located along the coast. The beach towns are pretty close together and each have their own flair.
We stayed at Baga beach which is apparently one of the busier beachs during high season. For us though it was pretty empty but there were still some people to chat with so it was a good place to go to during off season. The closest train station to Baga beach is about a 11-13 hour train ride from Mumbai.
Elections
When we were going to Goa, we knew that it was off season and the party scene was going to be affected. One thing we forgot to consider was the fact that we were going to Goa during the elections, which further reduced the party scene.
You may be wondering why elections would put a damper on the party atmosphere. Well it turns out that India, at election time, booze is either banned or restricted. But not because of it affects peoples judgement in determining their leaders. Booze is limited because it's the only to reduce the drunken fights that would otherwise take place around election time.
Baga Beach
The beaches of Goa rock. Each one is a bit different but the ones I saw consisted of basically the same thing. Sandy beach as far as the eye can see, huge waves and conveniently located beach shacks.
Shack is a bit of a deceptive term. The shacks are better described as a restaurant/bar located on the sand looking at the surf. Basically you chill at the shack all day and occasionally go for a swim/walk.
We were lucky that for 3 of the days we had nice sunny weather. It rained the last day, but it was nice sitting in the shack watching the rain, drinking beer and playing chess (Richard beat me but I was avenged by the shack owner).
I thought that my time in India had prepared me for the Goan sun. I was sorta right. The skin not covered by shirts was could handle the sun. Unfortunately I couldn't say the same about my back and shoulders. So now my upper torso is made up of either tanned or red skin. I don't feel too bad about the burn since even Kiran got his back burned by the sun.
Anjuna Beach Flea Market
One of the days we tried walking to the nearby Anjuna beach to check out it's flea market and get some souvenir shopping done. After getting seriously lost trying to walk there along the high way we grabbed a taxi and went to the market.
The flea market consisted of locals selling handicrafts along a road. These were people who made there living on this flea market, it was the last market of the season and there weren't any other tourists. It took all my bartering skills to avoid getting completely ripped off.
After 30 minutes of shopping all 3 of us had spent all our money and I had traded my watch. That meant we had to walk back. Luckily we stuck to the coast line and had a much better time not getting hopelessly lost.
Wrap Up
Goa was a great experience. Even though we got here during the off season I'm glad we came when we did. It was a great way to relax and it would have been painful to leave the beaches of Goa for the deserts of Rajasthan.
We spend the weekend in Mumbai then we head to the cities of Ellora/Ajanta to check out some awesome Budist caves.
Next Time: Ajanta & Ellora
Tuesday, May 29, 2007
India Part 4: Udaipur and Jaipur
We have now officially left the state of Rajasthan. We flew out of Jaipur yesterday and are currently in Mumbai (Bombay). Here's our hijinks's in Udaipur and Jaipur.
Udaipur
So far the city of Udaipur is my favorite Indian city. Located beside a lake it doesn't get that hot and the city seems to have a great mix of old and modern buildings.
In order to get to Udaipur we had to take an 8 hour bus ride from Jophur. The trip was actually surprisely pleasant and we got to see a lot of the Indian country side. We arrived in Udaipur on May 21 and left May 24th.
Udaipur was the city used in the James Bond film "Octapussy". Haven't seen "Octapussy"? Well good news, every single hotel and restaurant will play it for you!
Bonus review of Octapussy (since I basically had to watch it): I forgot how awesome/dirty the old Bond movies can be. The action sequences are so campy that it is physically impossible not to love them. My favorite part is how the movie managed to fit in every Indian stereotype within 30 minutes.
Kite Flying
One day I chilling in the hotel restaurant. The restaurant was located on the hotel roof top and it had a beautiful view of the city. It was especially picturesque since it was possible to see the city palace, a temple and lake in one view.
Due to the closeness of the lake a gentle breeze is always blowing through the city. I looking upon the roof tops when I noticed that kids were flying kites. The led me to remember a conversation I had with Kiran a couple days before about kites and our failure to successfully fly them as childern.
It was at that moment that I decided that the most important thing in my life was to fly a kite off the roof tops of Udaipur.
I sprung into action and tried to find a kite. By the way, if you want to try something challenging, try describing a kite to shop owners who don't speak the same language as you.
After 45 minutes of looking I found a stall that sold kites. The kites were made up of tissue paper that was attacked to a light frame creating a diamond shape. The most expensive part of the kite was the string.
I quickly purchased my kite and bought it back to the hotel. The dude at the restaurant helped me tie it and I excitedly ran to the roof.
The kite was easily lifted by the wind and started to soar above the roof tops. Seeing the kite rise seemed to remove all my problems and made me care free.
I felt alive.
5 seconds later the kite took a nose dive onto a patio chair located on the roof. It was mangled and couldn't fly anymore. I was destroyed.
The next day I went and purchased 4 kites. I was going successfully fly one of these things or die trying.
Kiran and I took to the roof. The restaurant was slow so the two dudes who worked at the resturant were able to help us out.
Kiran and I tried the first kite. It quickly took a nose dive and was damaged.
The hotel guy rigged up the next kite and it was flying. It looked like it was going to make it high into the sky. However, it crossed the string of another persons kite. Our string was cut and our kite plucked out of the air.
Kiran and I attempted to fly our final 2 kites. One got badly damaged and the other got stuck on a distant roof.
It was getting late, but Kiran and I weren't giving up. We taped up our first damaged kite and set it in the air. It kept rising and rising until it was far above the city. At that moment, our lives were complete.
Jaipur
After Udaipur we headed to our last stop in Rajasthan: Jaipur. Jaipur is the capital of Rajasthan and located in the very east of the state.
To get to Jaipur we took a 10 hour night train from Udaipur. We were there from May 25th to May 28th.
Many tourists on a schedule don't go any farther that Jaipur since it's big, relatively close to Delhi and contains a pretty awesome desert fort. I think this is a shame because while Jaipur is cool, I thought the other cities we went to in Rajasthan had more charm.
Jaipur is often called "the Pink City" because the old city (where most of the tourist sites and shopping are located) is painted pink. Well it's more of an orange color, but pink enough I guess.
We hit up the city palace and the other sites located in the city. To be honest, my favorite part of the sites in the city was we finally got to see a snake charmer. It was cool.
The Desert Death Hike (again)
The major site of Jaipur is the Amber Fort, a huge desert fort/palace located on the outskirts of the city. This is main site for good reason since it's quite large and impressive.
After touring the palace we decided to hike up to the upper forts that overlook the city. It should be noted at this point that is it 2pm (high sun) and it was over 40 degrees outside. But basically it wouldn't be a summer unless we were involved in some form of a death hike through the desert.
The hike actually wasn't so bad. Sure I went through all my water in the first 10% of the journey and lost 10 pounds in sweat, but it was manageable. It was only a 45 minute walk up the hill and we were able to rest.
The fort on the top gave some awesome views and was filled with monkeys. So it easily made the hike worth it.
Star Wars
It should be mention that it's the 30th anniversary of Star Wars. So to celebrate I made Kiran and Richard watch episode 3 (one and a half times). Speaking for Kiran & Richard: It was the best moments of their lives. Any comments they may make later are nothing but lies.
Currently we are in Mumbai. We arrived here yesterday and are staying in a flat owned by Kiran's parents. We are going to be for the next couple of days till we're off to Goa.
Next Time: Mumbai
Udaipur
So far the city of Udaipur is my favorite Indian city. Located beside a lake it doesn't get that hot and the city seems to have a great mix of old and modern buildings.
In order to get to Udaipur we had to take an 8 hour bus ride from Jophur. The trip was actually surprisely pleasant and we got to see a lot of the Indian country side. We arrived in Udaipur on May 21 and left May 24th.
Udaipur was the city used in the James Bond film "Octapussy". Haven't seen "Octapussy"? Well good news, every single hotel and restaurant will play it for you!
Bonus review of Octapussy (since I basically had to watch it): I forgot how awesome/dirty the old Bond movies can be. The action sequences are so campy that it is physically impossible not to love them. My favorite part is how the movie managed to fit in every Indian stereotype within 30 minutes.
Kite Flying
One day I chilling in the hotel restaurant. The restaurant was located on the hotel roof top and it had a beautiful view of the city. It was especially picturesque since it was possible to see the city palace, a temple and lake in one view.
Due to the closeness of the lake a gentle breeze is always blowing through the city. I looking upon the roof tops when I noticed that kids were flying kites. The led me to remember a conversation I had with Kiran a couple days before about kites and our failure to successfully fly them as childern.
It was at that moment that I decided that the most important thing in my life was to fly a kite off the roof tops of Udaipur.
I sprung into action and tried to find a kite. By the way, if you want to try something challenging, try describing a kite to shop owners who don't speak the same language as you.
After 45 minutes of looking I found a stall that sold kites. The kites were made up of tissue paper that was attacked to a light frame creating a diamond shape. The most expensive part of the kite was the string.
I quickly purchased my kite and bought it back to the hotel. The dude at the restaurant helped me tie it and I excitedly ran to the roof.
The kite was easily lifted by the wind and started to soar above the roof tops. Seeing the kite rise seemed to remove all my problems and made me care free.
I felt alive.
5 seconds later the kite took a nose dive onto a patio chair located on the roof. It was mangled and couldn't fly anymore. I was destroyed.
The next day I went and purchased 4 kites. I was going successfully fly one of these things or die trying.
Kiran and I took to the roof. The restaurant was slow so the two dudes who worked at the resturant were able to help us out.
Kiran and I tried the first kite. It quickly took a nose dive and was damaged.
The hotel guy rigged up the next kite and it was flying. It looked like it was going to make it high into the sky. However, it crossed the string of another persons kite. Our string was cut and our kite plucked out of the air.
Kiran and I attempted to fly our final 2 kites. One got badly damaged and the other got stuck on a distant roof.
It was getting late, but Kiran and I weren't giving up. We taped up our first damaged kite and set it in the air. It kept rising and rising until it was far above the city. At that moment, our lives were complete.
Jaipur
After Udaipur we headed to our last stop in Rajasthan: Jaipur. Jaipur is the capital of Rajasthan and located in the very east of the state.
To get to Jaipur we took a 10 hour night train from Udaipur. We were there from May 25th to May 28th.
Many tourists on a schedule don't go any farther that Jaipur since it's big, relatively close to Delhi and contains a pretty awesome desert fort. I think this is a shame because while Jaipur is cool, I thought the other cities we went to in Rajasthan had more charm.
Jaipur is often called "the Pink City" because the old city (where most of the tourist sites and shopping are located) is painted pink. Well it's more of an orange color, but pink enough I guess.
We hit up the city palace and the other sites located in the city. To be honest, my favorite part of the sites in the city was we finally got to see a snake charmer. It was cool.
The Desert Death Hike (again)
The major site of Jaipur is the Amber Fort, a huge desert fort/palace located on the outskirts of the city. This is main site for good reason since it's quite large and impressive.
After touring the palace we decided to hike up to the upper forts that overlook the city. It should be noted at this point that is it 2pm (high sun) and it was over 40 degrees outside. But basically it wouldn't be a summer unless we were involved in some form of a death hike through the desert.
The hike actually wasn't so bad. Sure I went through all my water in the first 10% of the journey and lost 10 pounds in sweat, but it was manageable. It was only a 45 minute walk up the hill and we were able to rest.
The fort on the top gave some awesome views and was filled with monkeys. So it easily made the hike worth it.
Star Wars
It should be mention that it's the 30th anniversary of Star Wars. So to celebrate I made Kiran and Richard watch episode 3 (one and a half times). Speaking for Kiran & Richard: It was the best moments of their lives. Any comments they may make later are nothing but lies.
Currently we are in Mumbai. We arrived here yesterday and are staying in a flat owned by Kiran's parents. We are going to be for the next couple of days till we're off to Goa.
Next Time: Mumbai
Wednesday, May 23, 2007
India Part 3: Jaisalmer and Jophur
Currently we are in the desert state of Rajasthan. Rajasthan is located in the west of India and borders Pakistan. Due to it's location many trade routes used to run through it. That means that it used to be wealthy and many cool forts were built.
These days Rajasthan is actually one of the poorer Indian states, with tourism as it's major industries. It's a pretty big stop on any India trip. We have been here for a week and have been to 3 cities (we are currently in the city of Udaipur).
It should be noted that it is currently summer here in India. So it should come as no surprise that most people don't like going to a desert in the middle of the summer and we're here during the off season. This has actually worked in our favor.
Sure it's damn hot during the day, but there are much less tourists. Also, even the touts take a vacation in the summer so the hassle has been reduced.
This blog will cover our shenanigans in the cities of Jaisalmer & Jophur.
Jaisalmer
Jaisalmer is located in the very west of India. It took us a 20 hour train ride from Delhi to get there. However, it was totally worth it. We arrived May 16th and left the night of May 18.
Basically, Jaisalmer consists of a giant sand stone fort which with a small city surrounding it. 25% of the 50000 people in Jaisalmer still live inside the fort.
Our hotel we stayed at was a former mansion located within the fort. The building is 500 years old and it feels like it. Walking through it's dark corridors (and smashing head on it's low door frames) is like a stepping back in time (or the many desert themed video games I've played).
The only down side to our hotel was it lacked a/c. That meant that from noon to 4, it was going to be too hot to move.
Desert Camel Safari
The "thing" to do in Jaialmer is desert camel safari. So us, in our lust for experiences, decided that we must do a camel safari and May 17 was the day to do it.
The safari started with a 30 minute jeep ride into the desert. The group consisted of us 3 Canadians, 2 South Americans, 2 French and 3 Koreans (that we had met and hung out with the day before). There was also 4 guides.
By 9:30 we were on our camels and riding into the desert. We each had our own camel and mine quickly reminded me of a fact I learned in Egypt. Namely, I don't much like camels.
Actually it was amazing how much personality each camel had. For example, Kiran's kept running to the to the front of the pack, then stopping to eat. It would then eat until the guide caught up and told it to keep moving. Compare this to Richards camel which seemed more concerned with sniffing other camels asses than food.
Personally my camel was all about randomly biting other camels. This meant I had to keep jerking my camels head to stop him from biting the other camels.
It should be noted that the desert was not made up of sand dunes. It was actually rocky and filled with cacti and other desert plants. It's main property is that it was so damn dry.
We rode the camels in the desert until about noon, where we stopped in an oasis. Unfortunately this oasis was not the palm tree and pool of water I expected. Instead it was an area with a couple of trees and some grass. Cartoons have lied to me yet again.
We were at the oasis from noon to 4. The idea is to avoid the high heat of the day by hiding in the shade and eating a light lunch. Most people took this time to take a nap. Instead of taking a nap, I discovered that my sun screen attracts desert wasps.
Well, I didn't immediately realize that my sun screen was attracting the wasps. I was too busy frantically running and swatting at the swarm of wasps attacking me.
My first hour at the oasis can be summarized as follows:
1) I get attacked by swarm of wasps
2) I run and hide in the smoke of our guides cooking fire
3) The smoke scares the wasps away
4) I get tired of breathing smoke and think the wasps are gone. I leave the camp fire.
5) Repeat steps 1-5
On a hunch I covered myself with Richard's sunscreen. Within a minute the wasps left me alone and I was able to finally nap. Due to some miracle I was able to avoid being stung.
After 4 the day had started to cool down and we rode our camels for another 1.5 hours. During this time we made a stop in a small village. In the village a dude was able to sell us a cold Pepsi. Talk about cornering the market.
That night we stopped at a sand dunes. These were the first sand dunes we saw that day and they looked like a stereotypical desert. We ate our dinner and slept at the sand dunes.
Now I want to stress this: sure, sleeping in the middle of sand dunes sounds like a comfortable romantic experience, but trust me it's not.
There is no way you can understand the sheer amount of sand one must face if you sleep in the desert. You are completely covered. Of our dinner I'd say 5% of it was potato and the other 95% was sand. Of the air you breath, I'd say it was 100% sand.
If you made the poor decision and slept without a scarf covering your mouth, you were going to be ingesting your body weight in sand that night. The worst part was the morning when I woke up and my eyes were covered in sand. However, since every other part of me was covered in sand I couldn't clean my eyes. At that moment I was defeated as a man.
Well the sand part sucked, but sleeping out in the desert was actually a real cool experience. The sunset was beautiful and the dunes were glorious to glaze at. It was also interesting to see the desert life. Namely the 100's of scarabs running all over the sand.
We were sitting around the camp fire about to go to bed when we saw a scorpion. I tell you, seeing a scorpion among the sand then going and sleeping in the sand, adds an extra level of spice to the night.
That morning we took a 2 hour camel ride back to the jeep and went home. The second we went home the slow process of cleaning began. I think I'm still cleaning sand out of my ear.
Jophur
The night of May 18th we jumped on a night train to the city of Jophur. Jophur is another city with an awesome desert fort and is often known as the blue city. We were in Jophur May 19-20.
In Jaisalmer fort is more a place where people lived. The Jophur fort is more of a palace and is located on forebding cliff over looking the city. The walls in Jophur fort are also bigger and there was no way it was ever going to be conquered.
We spent our first day walking around Jophur and doing some light shopping. I also had my first lassi, which is a sweet, tasty yogurt drink. I give it 2 Vance thumbs up.
The second day we hit the Jophur fort. The audio guide was awesome and the fort amazing. It does a good job invoking the imagination of a desert warrior culture. The fort also puts one in the mood for some D&D.
The reason that Jophur is refereed to as "the blue city" is that a large percentage of of the houses are painted blue. The view from the fort of this blue city was absolutely sublime.
OK that's enough blog for today. Next one will finish up our adventures in Rajasthan.
Next time: Udaipur and Jaipur
These days Rajasthan is actually one of the poorer Indian states, with tourism as it's major industries. It's a pretty big stop on any India trip. We have been here for a week and have been to 3 cities (we are currently in the city of Udaipur).
It should be noted that it is currently summer here in India. So it should come as no surprise that most people don't like going to a desert in the middle of the summer and we're here during the off season. This has actually worked in our favor.
Sure it's damn hot during the day, but there are much less tourists. Also, even the touts take a vacation in the summer so the hassle has been reduced.
This blog will cover our shenanigans in the cities of Jaisalmer & Jophur.
Jaisalmer
Jaisalmer is located in the very west of India. It took us a 20 hour train ride from Delhi to get there. However, it was totally worth it. We arrived May 16th and left the night of May 18.
Basically, Jaisalmer consists of a giant sand stone fort which with a small city surrounding it. 25% of the 50000 people in Jaisalmer still live inside the fort.
Our hotel we stayed at was a former mansion located within the fort. The building is 500 years old and it feels like it. Walking through it's dark corridors (and smashing head on it's low door frames) is like a stepping back in time (or the many desert themed video games I've played).
The only down side to our hotel was it lacked a/c. That meant that from noon to 4, it was going to be too hot to move.
Desert Camel Safari
The "thing" to do in Jaialmer is desert camel safari. So us, in our lust for experiences, decided that we must do a camel safari and May 17 was the day to do it.
The safari started with a 30 minute jeep ride into the desert. The group consisted of us 3 Canadians, 2 South Americans, 2 French and 3 Koreans (that we had met and hung out with the day before). There was also 4 guides.
By 9:30 we were on our camels and riding into the desert. We each had our own camel and mine quickly reminded me of a fact I learned in Egypt. Namely, I don't much like camels.
Actually it was amazing how much personality each camel had. For example, Kiran's kept running to the to the front of the pack, then stopping to eat. It would then eat until the guide caught up and told it to keep moving. Compare this to Richards camel which seemed more concerned with sniffing other camels asses than food.
Personally my camel was all about randomly biting other camels. This meant I had to keep jerking my camels head to stop him from biting the other camels.
It should be noted that the desert was not made up of sand dunes. It was actually rocky and filled with cacti and other desert plants. It's main property is that it was so damn dry.
We rode the camels in the desert until about noon, where we stopped in an oasis. Unfortunately this oasis was not the palm tree and pool of water I expected. Instead it was an area with a couple of trees and some grass. Cartoons have lied to me yet again.
We were at the oasis from noon to 4. The idea is to avoid the high heat of the day by hiding in the shade and eating a light lunch. Most people took this time to take a nap. Instead of taking a nap, I discovered that my sun screen attracts desert wasps.
Well, I didn't immediately realize that my sun screen was attracting the wasps. I was too busy frantically running and swatting at the swarm of wasps attacking me.
My first hour at the oasis can be summarized as follows:
1) I get attacked by swarm of wasps
2) I run and hide in the smoke of our guides cooking fire
3) The smoke scares the wasps away
4) I get tired of breathing smoke and think the wasps are gone. I leave the camp fire.
5) Repeat steps 1-5
On a hunch I covered myself with Richard's sunscreen. Within a minute the wasps left me alone and I was able to finally nap. Due to some miracle I was able to avoid being stung.
After 4 the day had started to cool down and we rode our camels for another 1.5 hours. During this time we made a stop in a small village. In the village a dude was able to sell us a cold Pepsi. Talk about cornering the market.
That night we stopped at a sand dunes. These were the first sand dunes we saw that day and they looked like a stereotypical desert. We ate our dinner and slept at the sand dunes.
Now I want to stress this: sure, sleeping in the middle of sand dunes sounds like a comfortable romantic experience, but trust me it's not.
There is no way you can understand the sheer amount of sand one must face if you sleep in the desert. You are completely covered. Of our dinner I'd say 5% of it was potato and the other 95% was sand. Of the air you breath, I'd say it was 100% sand.
If you made the poor decision and slept without a scarf covering your mouth, you were going to be ingesting your body weight in sand that night. The worst part was the morning when I woke up and my eyes were covered in sand. However, since every other part of me was covered in sand I couldn't clean my eyes. At that moment I was defeated as a man.
Well the sand part sucked, but sleeping out in the desert was actually a real cool experience. The sunset was beautiful and the dunes were glorious to glaze at. It was also interesting to see the desert life. Namely the 100's of scarabs running all over the sand.
We were sitting around the camp fire about to go to bed when we saw a scorpion. I tell you, seeing a scorpion among the sand then going and sleeping in the sand, adds an extra level of spice to the night.
That morning we took a 2 hour camel ride back to the jeep and went home. The second we went home the slow process of cleaning began. I think I'm still cleaning sand out of my ear.
Jophur
The night of May 18th we jumped on a night train to the city of Jophur. Jophur is another city with an awesome desert fort and is often known as the blue city. We were in Jophur May 19-20.
In Jaisalmer fort is more a place where people lived. The Jophur fort is more of a palace and is located on forebding cliff over looking the city. The walls in Jophur fort are also bigger and there was no way it was ever going to be conquered.
We spent our first day walking around Jophur and doing some light shopping. I also had my first lassi, which is a sweet, tasty yogurt drink. I give it 2 Vance thumbs up.
The second day we hit the Jophur fort. The audio guide was awesome and the fort amazing. It does a good job invoking the imagination of a desert warrior culture. The fort also puts one in the mood for some D&D.
The reason that Jophur is refereed to as "the blue city" is that a large percentage of of the houses are painted blue. The view from the fort of this blue city was absolutely sublime.
OK that's enough blog for today. Next one will finish up our adventures in Rajasthan.
Next time: Udaipur and Jaipur
Saturday, May 19, 2007
India Part 2: The North
I meant to post this blog last week but unreliable Internet has thwarted my attempts. Anyways, we are currently in the city of Jophur located in the desert state of Rajasthan. I swear this is the last summer I go into a desert.
So here's my post from when we were in a cooler area in the mountains. Ah, the good ol'days when I could walk around at 2pm and not collapse from heat stroke.
Haridwar
So here's my post from when we were in a cooler area in the mountains. Ah, the good ol'days when I could walk around at 2pm and not collapse from heat stroke.
Haridwar
As I write this I am in the Indian city of Haridwar. We arrived May 10th and are leaving tomorrow May 15. Haridwar can be reached from Delhi in about 5 hours by train.
Haridwar is significant because it is one of the seven Hindu holy cities. It is located at the edge of the Himalayas where the Ganga river leaves the mountains.
Being one of the Holy cities it is expected that Hindus make a pilgrimage here and bath in the Ganga river. That means that the city is filled with Indian tourists. Especially now in summer since this area is cooler than the rest of India.
Haridwar is actually my favorite Indian city so far since it's laid back. Even when walking through the bazaar I'm amazed how little I'm hassled. Since most of the people here are tourists on vacation, I find people to be friendlier than in Delhi. It's been nice.
It should be noted that since Haridwar is a holy city, one can not get any meat or alcohol within it. That means I've now gone 5 days without meat, the longest of my life. Now unexpected thing is that I don't seem to miss it much. Indian food uses so many sauces and spices, it took me a couple of days to even remember that I'm not eating meat.
The Temples of Haridwar
Now being such an important location, the area around Haridwar is dotted with temples. While we were here we visited Mansa Devi and Chandi Devi temples. Now that was an experience.
The first thing one notices on the way to the temples is the amount of people trying to sell bags of items which can be conveniently offered at the temple. Each one of these bags contains rice, lace, a coconut and some sheets of paper.
The temples consist of several little shrines, including one which is set up to accept offerings (and donations). At this shrine a priest takes you bag and accepts the offerings.
The temples are located in hills above Haridwar, but are easily reached via a cable c
ar and bus service. So it is all really convenient.
ar and bus service. So it is all really convenient.
Perhaps the most significant impact that these temples left on me came from the visiting Indians. Namely I couldn't help but notice how for many Indians this was basically a family vacation and the kids/adults acted as it was. It funny for me to see how this holy pilgrimage can be compared to any random vacation a family takes in North America.
Oh it should also be noted that there were monkeys all around the temples. It was AWESOME.
Har Ki Pauri
Now the most memorable part of Hairiwar was Har Ki Pauri ritual. This takes every night along the Ganga river in a special area. Two hours before sunset people start gathering around the river to scope out a good seat.
Many people also obtain a leaf filled with flowers. Each one of these leaf baskets contain a candle to be lit at the correct time.
When the sun sets the ritual takes place. It is hard to describe but basically a several priest move torches above the river to the beat of a chant. As this takes place people light the leaf baskets and put them in the river. The whole ritual is quite enchanting to watch.
River Rafting
The Lonely Planet was really helpful in that it pointed us in the direction of an awesome adventure tours agent (Mohan's Adventure). Not only was he helpful in giving us things to do, he also was a cool guy who (and his brother) did the activities with us.
The most exciting thing we did was river rafting down the Ganga River. The rafting was good because it would be quick stretches of rapids followed by a good time to chill out. It gave us an excellent chance to enjoy the scenery.
The best part of the river rafting was for 2 kms we were allowed to jump in and float with the river current. It was good times.
Rajaji National Park
One of the advantages of Haridwar is that it is located close to Rajaji National Park. In order to explore the park we did both a jeep and elephant safari.
The jeep safari was cool because we got to see much of the park and some animals (like monkeys, deer and hogs) but the elephant safari was the best. Not only was it cool to ride an elephant (5 of us sat on the elephant) but we were lucky and got to spend about 20 minutes watching a herd of about 8 wild elephants.
It was an amazing experience and I learned a lot.
Rishikesh
Now this blog wouldn't be complete unless I mentioned the ashrams and the foreigners flocking to them. An ashram is essentially a temple where one can stay and meditate. This usually involves learning yoga, chilling out and experimenting with various substances.
While there are ashrams in Haridwar, the nearby town of Rishikesh is home to the most predominate ones. Some of you Beatles fans might recognize Rishikesh as the town the band disappeared to in order to find themselves. And as you can expect, since the Beatles did it, there are no lack of foreigners here staying at ashrams.
Next time: Rajasthan
Friday, May 11, 2007
India Part 1: Delhi and Agra
As I write this I am currently in sitting in an internet café in the Indian city of Haridwar. We have now been traveling for 10 days with 5 of them within India. So as you can guess, it’s been a pretty crazy 5 days.
Here’s a quick summery of our trip so far. I wanted to upload pictures but unfortunately the internet connection I’m using is a bit slow for that. Maybe next time.
The Flight
In order to get to India from Los Angeles it took one long flight. First we flew 14 hours to Taiwan. After a brief stop we flew another 5 hours to Singapore. After a 6 hour stop there we flew another 6 hours to Delhi.
While it was a long flight it wasn’t so bad because Singapore Air is the best airline ever. Nothing beats killing 25 hours by watching your choice of movie and drinking “Singapore Sling” cocktails.
India is 11.5 hours ahead of Calgary so I had some serious jet lag for the first couple of days. But I think I’ve finally shaken it.
Travel Buddies
So far the travel companions have been working out good. Kiran’s Hindi skills are especially useful. The only downside is that I’ve become extremely lazy. Whenever there is even the slightest bit of communication problems I just have Kiran handle it.
For example, if Taxi diver does not understand what I said, have Kiran give directions. Hotel worker not understand our request, have Kiran sort it out. Richard asking too many questions, make Kiran do the answering.
The Food
The food’s been ok. Deciding what to eat has been a bit tricky though. Each time I go to eat something I have to decide: 1) Will this make me sick? 2) Will this be too damn spicy to me? 3) (If meat) Am I sure this meat is from the animal I think it is?
So far I’ve managed to avoid getting sick (though the toilet and I have been spending a lot of time together). However, Richard wasn’t so lucky and he had to sit a day out due to sickness.
Spiciness on the other hand has been kicking my ass over and over again. Finally I think that enough of my taste buds have been destroyed that I can eat and enjoy India food.
Meat actually hasn’t been such an issue since most things are vegetarian. The strange thing is that I actually don’t miss meat. Unlike western veg foods, Indian’s actually make veg good.
Even the MacDonald’s has a largely veg menu. In fact it doesn’t even serve beef here.
Now beer is something which takes more effort to obtain than in other countries. Even when you do find it you have to be sure to read the label.
For example, the one time I attempted to get beer I went to the local beer stand and purchased a bottle of “10000 – Strong Beer”. It was only at home did I release that my “Strong Beer” was actually non-alcoholic and resembled tonic water more than beer.
The Driving
Indian driving is quite similar to Egyptian driving and I can tell you, I did not miss Egyptian driving what so ever.
India driving can be summarized in one word: chaos. Basically everyone is dodging each other trying to get down the street. You have to see it to believe it.
This is best represented by the one vehicle which is distinctly Indian: the autorichot. These 3 wheeled natural gas powered vehicles can be found weaving between traffic at all time.
Trust me. No ride in California can compete with the rush one gets from a ride in an autorichot.
The Heat
Holy crap it’s hot. The average temperature every day has been between 40-45 degrees Celsius. It’s a good thing waters cheap since I’ve taken to drinking about 4 litres of water every day to a avoid collapsing.
At this point I think the only thing keeping me alive is my hat and my spf 50 sunscreen.
A Country of Contrasts
Now it’s become cliché to refer to India as “A Country of Contrasts”. But there’s a good reason it’s called that because India is one messed up country.
It’s surreal to see the poor and old side by side with the new and modern. Take for example the place where we activated Kiran’s cell phone. The store was located at the back window of an old beat up house. The only way you would think it was a cell phone store was because it had a sheet of paper that said “Cell Phone Repair” taped to the wall.
Sights like these are extremely common in India.
Delhi
We arrived in Delhi on May 5th. If you look a map you will notice that Delhi is often marked New Delhi. That’s because Delhi is really two cities shoved together. Old Delhi is made up ancient (generally poor) areas whereas New Delhi is quite modern and contains all the business centers. So technically New Delhi is the capital of India but there is no clear border separating it from Old Delhi.
We stayed in the Paharganj area in Delhi which is located in on the supposed border between New and Old Dehli. Paharganj is the standard place for backpackers to stay since pretty much all the cheap hotels are located there.
On that note, if you’re wondering what happened to all the hippies from the 60s we found them. They’re at the Paharganj area in Delhi.
The cool thing about our hotel was a bazaar was located just outside so there everything was really convenient. It was also pretty surreal to leave your hotel and enter a street filled with people, dogs, motorcycles, autorichots, shops and even the odd cow.
However it also meant that we were going to get fairly hassled whenever we left our hotel.
While in Delhi we hit all the standard tourist sites. The Red Fort was most amazing because while we were there, a rain storm hit. We were standing in line to enter the fort when all of suddenly we were engulfed by a wall of dust. The rain started soon after as we crowded in the Red Fort. It was one of the most beautiful things I’ve seen to see the fort in the rain.
My other favorite sight was Qutub Minor which is basically an area made up of various ruins. It’s always fun to climb on something that is over 500 years old.
The Lotus temple, Jantar Mantar and Indian Parliament were also pretty bad ass.
Agra
Agra is a city located about 4 hours away from Delhi. Many of India’s most famous ruins are located there. In order to save effort we did a tour that left 6am and returned to Delhi at about 11pm. We did this on May 9th.
The main site of Agra is the famous Taj Muhal and I can confirm it lives up to the hype. I got goose bumps when I first saw it. It’s amazing how such it can have such a simplistic design yet be so intricate.
Other major sites were Sikandra (Akbar’s Tomb) and Agra’s Red Fort. Both sites were also awe inspiring. Any other country and they would be the countries most famous landmark. However, they definably come second when compared to the Taj Mahal.
Next Time: Haridwar
As I mentioned before we are currently in the Hindu holy city of Haridwar. It’s located about 4 hours by train north of Delhi and we’ve been here since May 10th.
We are staying here till May 15th and then we’re off to Jaisalmer. I’ll give a summery of Haridwar in my next blog post.
Here’s a quick summery of our trip so far. I wanted to upload pictures but unfortunately the internet connection I’m using is a bit slow for that. Maybe next time.
The Flight
In order to get to India from Los Angeles it took one long flight. First we flew 14 hours to Taiwan. After a brief stop we flew another 5 hours to Singapore. After a 6 hour stop there we flew another 6 hours to Delhi.
While it was a long flight it wasn’t so bad because Singapore Air is the best airline ever. Nothing beats killing 25 hours by watching your choice of movie and drinking “Singapore Sling” cocktails.
India is 11.5 hours ahead of Calgary so I had some serious jet lag for the first couple of days. But I think I’ve finally shaken it.
Travel Buddies
So far the travel companions have been working out good. Kiran’s Hindi skills are especially useful. The only downside is that I’ve become extremely lazy. Whenever there is even the slightest bit of communication problems I just have Kiran handle it.
For example, if Taxi diver does not understand what I said, have Kiran give directions. Hotel worker not understand our request, have Kiran sort it out. Richard asking too many questions, make Kiran do the answering.
The Food
The food’s been ok. Deciding what to eat has been a bit tricky though. Each time I go to eat something I have to decide: 1) Will this make me sick? 2) Will this be too damn spicy to me? 3) (If meat) Am I sure this meat is from the animal I think it is?
So far I’ve managed to avoid getting sick (though the toilet and I have been spending a lot of time together). However, Richard wasn’t so lucky and he had to sit a day out due to sickness.
Spiciness on the other hand has been kicking my ass over and over again. Finally I think that enough of my taste buds have been destroyed that I can eat and enjoy India food.
Meat actually hasn’t been such an issue since most things are vegetarian. The strange thing is that I actually don’t miss meat. Unlike western veg foods, Indian’s actually make veg good.
Even the MacDonald’s has a largely veg menu. In fact it doesn’t even serve beef here.
Now beer is something which takes more effort to obtain than in other countries. Even when you do find it you have to be sure to read the label.
For example, the one time I attempted to get beer I went to the local beer stand and purchased a bottle of “10000 – Strong Beer”. It was only at home did I release that my “Strong Beer” was actually non-alcoholic and resembled tonic water more than beer.
The Driving
Indian driving is quite similar to Egyptian driving and I can tell you, I did not miss Egyptian driving what so ever.
India driving can be summarized in one word: chaos. Basically everyone is dodging each other trying to get down the street. You have to see it to believe it.
This is best represented by the one vehicle which is distinctly Indian: the autorichot. These 3 wheeled natural gas powered vehicles can be found weaving between traffic at all time.
Trust me. No ride in California can compete with the rush one gets from a ride in an autorichot.
The Heat
Holy crap it’s hot. The average temperature every day has been between 40-45 degrees Celsius. It’s a good thing waters cheap since I’ve taken to drinking about 4 litres of water every day to a avoid collapsing.
At this point I think the only thing keeping me alive is my hat and my spf 50 sunscreen.
A Country of Contrasts
Now it’s become cliché to refer to India as “A Country of Contrasts”. But there’s a good reason it’s called that because India is one messed up country.
It’s surreal to see the poor and old side by side with the new and modern. Take for example the place where we activated Kiran’s cell phone. The store was located at the back window of an old beat up house. The only way you would think it was a cell phone store was because it had a sheet of paper that said “Cell Phone Repair” taped to the wall.
Sights like these are extremely common in India.
Delhi
We arrived in Delhi on May 5th. If you look a map you will notice that Delhi is often marked New Delhi. That’s because Delhi is really two cities shoved together. Old Delhi is made up ancient (generally poor) areas whereas New Delhi is quite modern and contains all the business centers. So technically New Delhi is the capital of India but there is no clear border separating it from Old Delhi.
We stayed in the Paharganj area in Delhi which is located in on the supposed border between New and Old Dehli. Paharganj is the standard place for backpackers to stay since pretty much all the cheap hotels are located there.
On that note, if you’re wondering what happened to all the hippies from the 60s we found them. They’re at the Paharganj area in Delhi.
The cool thing about our hotel was a bazaar was located just outside so there everything was really convenient. It was also pretty surreal to leave your hotel and enter a street filled with people, dogs, motorcycles, autorichots, shops and even the odd cow.
However it also meant that we were going to get fairly hassled whenever we left our hotel.
While in Delhi we hit all the standard tourist sites. The Red Fort was most amazing because while we were there, a rain storm hit. We were standing in line to enter the fort when all of suddenly we were engulfed by a wall of dust. The rain started soon after as we crowded in the Red Fort. It was one of the most beautiful things I’ve seen to see the fort in the rain.
My other favorite sight was Qutub Minor which is basically an area made up of various ruins. It’s always fun to climb on something that is over 500 years old.
The Lotus temple, Jantar Mantar and Indian Parliament were also pretty bad ass.
Agra
Agra is a city located about 4 hours away from Delhi. Many of India’s most famous ruins are located there. In order to save effort we did a tour that left 6am and returned to Delhi at about 11pm. We did this on May 9th.
The main site of Agra is the famous Taj Muhal and I can confirm it lives up to the hype. I got goose bumps when I first saw it. It’s amazing how such it can have such a simplistic design yet be so intricate.
Other major sites were Sikandra (Akbar’s Tomb) and Agra’s Red Fort. Both sites were also awe inspiring. Any other country and they would be the countries most famous landmark. However, they definably come second when compared to the Taj Mahal.
Next Time: Haridwar
As I mentioned before we are currently in the Hindu holy city of Haridwar. It’s located about 4 hours by train north of Delhi and we’ve been here since May 10th.
We are staying here till May 15th and then we’re off to Jaisalmer. I’ll give a summery of Haridwar in my next blog post.
Thursday, May 03, 2007
Los Angeles, USA
So far our long trip has been off to a great start. We arrived in Los Angeles the afternoon of April 30 and we're leaving late night of May 3rd. The flight from Calgary to LA took 3 hours.
Kiran, Richard and I have been getting along good. Of course this is only the low stress part of our trip. The real test will take place soon in India.
The City of Angles
The one thing we've discovered is that describing Los Angeles as a city is a bit of a misnomer. While there is a Los Angeles proper, it's more a collections of cities that have grown so big that there is no real border between each other. For example, to get to the "cities of Orange County" one never seem to cross any real borders.
We learned this really quickly trying to get to our hostel. We were instructed to get off our bus at 11th street of Hermosa beach. Us not knowing that that there were going to be several 11th streets got off at 11th street of Manhattan Beach. Luckily it was only a 20 minute walk to the next "city".
Our hostel in Hermosa is perhaps one of the most conveniently located places I've stayed due to the close proximity. There is are bars, supermarkets, beaches and anything else you could possibly need all within a block of our hostel.
One of the first things we noticed about LA is that there is definitely a smog problem. The whole city is covered in a permanently smog. This will be visible in some of the pictures.
The metro system is actually pretty good all things considered. Considering to get around in LA, you literally have to transverse the length of Southern California, it does a descent job. However, it still takes forever.
When travelling the metro one quickly realizes how ethnic most parts of LA is. It is not unusual to be surrounded with people from Latin and African decent. It is also not unusual for sign/announcements or ads to be both in English and Spanish, or just Spanish.
Hermosa Beach
We spent the first night exploring Hermosa beach. There we saw some pretty awesome houses, some awesome fishing and children's swings. We learned pretty quickly through wet shoes that the waves can get pretty damn high. We also couldn't help but notice how ridiculously close an oil refinery was to the beautiful beach. That smog is starting to make sense now...
Universal Studios
The next day we woke up early and headed to Universal Studios. It required a bus and 2 metro line changes. A one way trip took about 2 hours. Not bad considering the distance.
Universal Studios was pretty cool. The rides such as Jurassic Park and The Mummy were good but a bit tame. The highlight of the amusement park is definitely the rides that involve 3D effects such as Shrek 4D and Terminator 2 3D. Terminator 2 was especially impressive since actors interacted with the 3D effects.
The Waterworld show was cool, especially considering it's source material.
The studio tour was also surprisingly entertaining. It was cool to see some of the huge outdoor sets. One also gains much respect for filmography after seeing how those sets look in the movies.
Hollywood
After Universal Studios we headed to Hollywood Blvd. to see the famous walk of the stars. I tell you, there were a lot more stars than I was expecting. Since they give stars to people in film, tv, radio, music and theater, the blvd stretches a long way.
Outside Grauman's Chinese Theater one can find the stars hands and feet in concrete. Turns our Frank Sinatra had surprisingly small hands/feet. My favorite were the foot prints of C3PO, R2D2 and Darth Vader.
May 2nd, we head out to Disney Land. Since Disney Land is located with Orange County, we had to spend 2.5 hours each way on the metro. It was totally worth.
Disneyland
The thing that amazing about Disney Land is that once you enter the park, every single thing has been Disneyfied. The line ups to the rides are a sight in themselves. It's like entering some some crazy reality were everything is squeaky clean and there's a mouse on everything.
My favorite ride was differently the India Jone ride since so many crazy things were happening at all times. Though the animatronics on the Pirates of the Caribbean and Haunted Mansion were out of this world.
Space Mountain was also pretty cool in a retro sci-fi kind of way. It was also incredibly trippy.
It's a Small World ride lived up to the hype. However, if I ever hear the phrase "It's a small world after all" again, they're going to have to send me to an insane asylum.
However, for the "happiest place on earth", we sure saw a lot of crying kids. My favorite was when I was in a store flanked by two groups of kids crying because their parents wouldn't buy them a stuffed Mickey.
Today we're spending our last days in a western country resting up for the madness to come. It was a good idea to stop in LA, but now it's time for the exotic. Check back later for more of our hijinks.
Kiran, Richard and I have been getting along good. Of course this is only the low stress part of our trip. The real test will take place soon in India.
The City of Angles
The one thing we've discovered is that describing Los Angeles as a city is a bit of a misnomer. While there is a Los Angeles proper, it's more a collections of cities that have grown so big that there is no real border between each other. For example, to get to the "cities of Orange County" one never seem to cross any real borders.
We learned this really quickly trying to get to our hostel. We were instructed to get off our bus at 11th street of Hermosa beach. Us not knowing that that there were going to be several 11th streets got off at 11th street of Manhattan Beach. Luckily it was only a 20 minute walk to the next "city".
Our hostel in Hermosa is perhaps one of the most conveniently located places I've stayed due to the close proximity. There is are bars, supermarkets, beaches and anything else you could possibly need all within a block of our hostel.
One of the first things we noticed about LA is that there is definitely a smog problem. The whole city is covered in a permanently smog. This will be visible in some of the pictures.
The metro system is actually pretty good all things considered. Considering to get around in LA, you literally have to transverse the length of Southern California, it does a descent job. However, it still takes forever.
When travelling the metro one quickly realizes how ethnic most parts of LA is. It is not unusual to be surrounded with people from Latin and African decent. It is also not unusual for sign/announcements or ads to be both in English and Spanish, or just Spanish.
Hermosa Beach
We spent the first night exploring Hermosa beach. There we saw some pretty awesome houses, some awesome fishing and children's swings. We learned pretty quickly through wet shoes that the waves can get pretty damn high. We also couldn't help but notice how ridiculously close an oil refinery was to the beautiful beach. That smog is starting to make sense now...
Universal Studios
The next day we woke up early and headed to Universal Studios. It required a bus and 2 metro line changes. A one way trip took about 2 hours. Not bad considering the distance.
Universal Studios was pretty cool. The rides such as Jurassic Park and The Mummy were good but a bit tame. The highlight of the amusement park is definitely the rides that involve 3D effects such as Shrek 4D and Terminator 2 3D. Terminator 2 was especially impressive since actors interacted with the 3D effects.
The Waterworld show was cool, especially considering it's source material.
The studio tour was also surprisingly entertaining. It was cool to see some of the huge outdoor sets. One also gains much respect for filmography after seeing how those sets look in the movies.
Hollywood
After Universal Studios we headed to Hollywood Blvd. to see the famous walk of the stars. I tell you, there were a lot more stars than I was expecting. Since they give stars to people in film, tv, radio, music and theater, the blvd stretches a long way.
Outside Grauman's Chinese Theater one can find the stars hands and feet in concrete. Turns our Frank Sinatra had surprisingly small hands/feet. My favorite were the foot prints of C3PO, R2D2 and Darth Vader.
May 2nd, we head out to Disney Land. Since Disney Land is located with Orange County, we had to spend 2.5 hours each way on the metro. It was totally worth.
Disneyland
The thing that amazing about Disney Land is that once you enter the park, every single thing has been Disneyfied. The line ups to the rides are a sight in themselves. It's like entering some some crazy reality were everything is squeaky clean and there's a mouse on everything.
My favorite ride was differently the India Jone ride since so many crazy things were happening at all times. Though the animatronics on the Pirates of the Caribbean and Haunted Mansion were out of this world.
Space Mountain was also pretty cool in a retro sci-fi kind of way. It was also incredibly trippy.
It's a Small World ride lived up to the hype. However, if I ever hear the phrase "It's a small world after all" again, they're going to have to send me to an insane asylum.
However, for the "happiest place on earth", we sure saw a lot of crying kids. My favorite was when I was in a store flanked by two groups of kids crying because their parents wouldn't buy them a stuffed Mickey.
Today we're spending our last days in a western country resting up for the madness to come. It was a good idea to stop in LA, but now it's time for the exotic. Check back later for more of our hijinks.
Monday, April 30, 2007
Off to Travel the World
Well I’m officially done school and off to travel the world. The main destination: India.
Richard, Kiran and I have been talking about a huge backpacking trip and the time has finally come.
In total the whole trip will be about two months long and we have a lot of ground to cover. The complete itinerary is (all dates in local time):
April 30: Leave Calgary – arrive in Los Angeles
May 4 – Leave LA
May 5- arrive in New Delhi via Singapore
June 16- leave Mumbai (Bombay) – arrive in Singapore
June 21- Leave Singapore – arrive in Tokyo
June 26 – Leave Tokyo – arrive home!
So in total we will be hitting 4 countries this trip and a whole lot of time zones.
While I’m excited for the other stops India is the core of the trip. As it can be seen we have about 40 days to get from New Delhi to Mumbai.
Throughout the trip I’m going to try to keep the blog updated. So check in occasionally to see my hijinks. I think the following video best previews my experience in India.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-bAN7Ts0xBo
Richard, Kiran and I have been talking about a huge backpacking trip and the time has finally come.
In total the whole trip will be about two months long and we have a lot of ground to cover. The complete itinerary is (all dates in local time):
April 30: Leave Calgary – arrive in Los Angeles
May 4 – Leave LA
May 5- arrive in New Delhi via Singapore
June 16- leave Mumbai (Bombay) – arrive in Singapore
June 21- Leave Singapore – arrive in Tokyo
June 26 – Leave Tokyo – arrive home!
So in total we will be hitting 4 countries this trip and a whole lot of time zones.
While I’m excited for the other stops India is the core of the trip. As it can be seen we have about 40 days to get from New Delhi to Mumbai.
Throughout the trip I’m going to try to keep the blog updated. So check in occasionally to see my hijinks. I think the following video best previews my experience in India.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-bAN7Ts0xBo
Friday, April 20, 2007
Donkey Kong Board Game
Engineering students are notorious for their hijinks. Every year a plethora of costumes, toys and other junk is generated. But what happens to all the stuff that is to useless to keep and but not broken enough to throw away? Well in Mechanical Engineering it is stashed in a cabinet and quickly forgotten. That is until someone with too much free time decides to go through it.
Many moons ago I decided to investigate the contents of this locker of curiosities. I was shocked and entertained by many of its contents, however there was one item so awesome I can no longer keep it to myself. That is the Donkey Kong board game.
The year was 1982 and the Donkey Kong arcade game was dominating the quarters of a generation. Milton Brady decided to get on the action and pumped the board game out and the results were as expected: mediocre!
Let’s take a look at how good of a job they did transforming the arcade game to board game form.
It actually doesn’t look that bad.
The basic goal of the game is to reach the top and save the princess (surprise, surprise). On each players turn, they roll the dice to see how far their Mario moves. The spice of the game comes in the second action of a players turn. Each player gets to roll a dice to see how much they get to move a fireball or a barrel. Hit another Mario, send them back to the start!
The only defense against these sinister devices is cards. You get a card every time you land on a blue space. The cards offer you two forms of defense: jump or hammer. One destroys the obstacle while the other allows it to continue on its path of destruction.
The shining achievement of the game is the Donkey Kong. Where the rest of the game is shoddily put together, the designers went all out to make DK stand out on the game board.
Not only does he look cool, DK is functional. It’s been designed so when you to put a barrel in his left hands, the barrel magically is dropped by his right hand. This is perhaps mankind’s greatest and most unnecessary invention.
Now the question you probably asking, “Yea the DK gadget rules, but is it any fun?”. Well, not really. Jim and I tried to play it but we got bored reading the instructions. But dang, does it look cool.
However, the game itself is secondary. The most important aspect is the snap shot of Mario presented in the game. These isn’t the confident charismatic 2007 Mario that we have grown to love, this was Mario back in 1982. This Mario is fresh from the streets and desperate to prove himself. The Mario in this game knows that he only has one chance to defeat this monkey. One hit from a barrel and he’ll be spending the rest of his life fixing toilets. This is a Mario that has little to lose and everything to gain.
However, one can not help but ask some questions when playing this game. I mean we’re all familiar with Luigi, but what about the other Mario brothers? The game clearly shows them dressed in stylishly in yellow and blue; what of their fate?
In conclusion the Donkey Kong board game is an awesome blast from the past. I miss the good ol’days when a board game was created for anything even remotely marketable. I mean how long do we have to wait before we can see a “Gears of War” game? Those chainsaw-guns would make awesome power-up cards.
Bonus Donkey Kong Fun Fact: Back when DK was first created in Japan they needed a name for him. The programmers wanted to call him “Stubborn Ape” but weren’t sure how to say that in English. When they looked up these words in a Japanese to English dictionary, the dictionary listed “donkey” for “stubborn” and “Kong” for “Ape”. That’s why Donkey Kong has such a weird name.
Many moons ago I decided to investigate the contents of this locker of curiosities. I was shocked and entertained by many of its contents, however there was one item so awesome I can no longer keep it to myself. That is the Donkey Kong board game.
1982 Donkey Kong Board Game!
The year was 1982 and the Donkey Kong arcade game was dominating the quarters of a generation. Milton Brady decided to get on the action and pumped the board game out and the results were as expected: mediocre!
Let’s take a look at how good of a job they did transforming the arcade game to board game form.
Donkey Kong Arcade game
Board game (side view)
Board game (top view)
It actually doesn’t look that bad.
The basic goal of the game is to reach the top and save the princess (surprise, surprise). On each players turn, they roll the dice to see how far their Mario moves. The spice of the game comes in the second action of a players turn. Each player gets to roll a dice to see how much they get to move a fireball or a barrel. Hit another Mario, send them back to the start!
Use these to spite your enemies
The only defense against these sinister devices is cards. You get a card every time you land on a blue space. The cards offer you two forms of defense: jump or hammer. One destroys the obstacle while the other allows it to continue on its path of destruction.
The shining achievement of the game is the Donkey Kong. Where the rest of the game is shoddily put together, the designers went all out to make DK stand out on the game board.
Donkey Kong in all his glory
Not only does he look cool, DK is functional. It’s been designed so when you to put a barrel in his left hands, the barrel magically is dropped by his right hand. This is perhaps mankind’s greatest and most unnecessary invention.
Barrel in...
...barrel out
The mystery of DK reveled
Now the question you probably asking, “Yea the DK gadget rules, but is it any fun?”. Well, not really. Jim and I tried to play it but we got bored reading the instructions. But dang, does it look cool.
However, the game itself is secondary. The most important aspect is the snap shot of Mario presented in the game. These isn’t the confident charismatic 2007 Mario that we have grown to love, this was Mario back in 1982. This Mario is fresh from the streets and desperate to prove himself. The Mario in this game knows that he only has one chance to defeat this monkey. One hit from a barrel and he’ll be spending the rest of his life fixing toilets. This is a Mario that has little to lose and everything to gain.
Mario in 1982. You can practically see the desperation in his eyes.
However, one can not help but ask some questions when playing this game. I mean we’re all familiar with Luigi, but what about the other Mario brothers? The game clearly shows them dressed in stylishly in yellow and blue; what of their fate?
Four Mario Brothers?!
In conclusion the Donkey Kong board game is an awesome blast from the past. I miss the good ol’days when a board game was created for anything even remotely marketable. I mean how long do we have to wait before we can see a “Gears of War” game? Those chainsaw-guns would make awesome power-up cards.
Bonus Donkey Kong Fun Fact: Back when DK was first created in Japan they needed a name for him. The programmers wanted to call him “Stubborn Ape” but weren’t sure how to say that in English. When they looked up these words in a Japanese to English dictionary, the dictionary listed “donkey” for “stubborn” and “Kong” for “Ape”. That’s why Donkey Kong has such a weird name.
Tuesday, March 20, 2007
Stuff to Pack List
Back when I lived in Switzerland I used to have a “Stuff to Pack” List posted on my wall. Before I made that list I was constantly forgetting things (it didn’t help that I would often pack in the last possible minute).
I long ago lost that list. The purpose of this blog is to list on the internet so I will be able to reference next time I travel. This is a pretty idealized list for the most extreme travel places. Obviously you won’t need all this stuff for most trips. However, the way I look at it, it’s better to have a master list so you don’t forget things. So I present:
Books and documentation
Electronics
Clothing (and similar stuff)
Clothing (if going to warm place)
Clothing (if going to cold place)
Food
Toiletries
Other
Stuff to do before you leave
Make sure to leave someone at home a copy of your tickets, insurance info, hostel info, passport, visas or any other documentation you may have. If you lose this stuff this can be a lifesaver
Make sure everyone going has a map and directions to the hostel. It’s not uncommon for a travel group to be split up mid-transit
Establish some method of indicating to your travel partner that you are uncomfortable and need to leave the area. I know this sounds paranoid, but this can save you from imposing scammers later on.
Call your credit card company and alert them what country you might using there card in. Otherwise they may cut you off.
Make sure your internet password is only numbers and letters. This doesn’t apply for most places, but I’ve had problems typing a ‘&’ on a Turkish keyboard.
If you need to get vaccinations, make sure you do it well enough in advance so they can be effective.
I long ago lost that list. The purpose of this blog is to list on the internet so I will be able to reference next time I travel. This is a pretty idealized list for the most extreme travel places. Obviously you won’t need all this stuff for most trips. However, the way I look at it, it’s better to have a master list so you don’t forget things. So I present:
Stuff “Not to Forget” Whenever you Travel
Books and documentation
- Passport with needed visas
- Tickets
- Proof of insurance (including emergency contact info, make sure this is in your wallet and backpack)
- Travel guides and maps (make sure you have the place names in the local alphabet)
- Hostel/hotel info
- Disposable books/magazines for killing time
- Local currency
- Credit cards
- Money belt
- Notepad, notebook and pens/pencils
Electronics
- Ipod (including charger)
- Camera (including battery charger, extra memory card)
- Power converter
- Travel alarm clock (you be amazed how many people forget this)
- Watch (preferably a cheap reliable one)
- Head lamp (for hiking or reading in a dark hostel room)
Clothing (and similar stuff)
- Shirts, underwear, jeans (including stuff you can wear to a bar)
- Good walking shoes
- Flip flops (hostel bathrooms can be scary, trust a guy who’s had athletes foot)
- Towel!!! (Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy wasn’t wrong)
- Toque (even if you’re going to a warm place)
- Bathing suit (even if going to cold place)
- Sunglasses (remember snow is bright)
- A laundry bag to hold your dirt clothes
Clothing (if going to warm place)
- Shorts
- Sandals you can walk in
- Hat (bandana)
- Light jacket (preferably rain proof)
Clothing (if going to cold place)
- Warm jacket
- Mitts
- Waterproof walking shoes
- Long underwear (if it’s going to be really really cold)
Food
- Travel snacks
- Water
Toiletries
- Toothbrush, toothpaste and floss
- Hair gel
- Contacts
- Glasses cleaner
- Deodorant and other smelly stuff
- Soap
- Shampoo (and conditioner if you’re feeling saucy)
- Portable hand sanitizer
- Any medication or vitamins (Pepto-Bismol can be a lifesaver)
- Sunscreen (you can be burned even in winter)
- Insect repellant (if needed)
- Shaving razor
Other
- Daypack
- First aid pack (at the very least a pair of tweezers and bandages)
- Swiss Army Knife (remember to check in bag)
- Sleeping bag (depending on the places you’ll be sleeping)
- Travel Yoda (very important)
- Padlock (combo locks work best, make sure it's not too small)
- Postcards for home to give as gifts to people you meet
Stuff to do before you leave
Make sure to leave someone at home a copy of your tickets, insurance info, hostel info, passport, visas or any other documentation you may have. If you lose this stuff this can be a lifesaver
Make sure everyone going has a map and directions to the hostel. It’s not uncommon for a travel group to be split up mid-transit
Establish some method of indicating to your travel partner that you are uncomfortable and need to leave the area. I know this sounds paranoid, but this can save you from imposing scammers later on.
Call your credit card company and alert them what country you might using there card in. Otherwise they may cut you off.
Make sure your internet password is only numbers and letters. This doesn’t apply for most places, but I’ve had problems typing a ‘&’ on a Turkish keyboard.
If you need to get vaccinations, make sure you do it well enough in advance so they can be effective.
Sunday, March 04, 2007
Review Spectacular #2
Here are my quick thoughts on some of the random media I’ve consumed in the last couple of weeks.
Movies
Pan’s Labyrinth: Pretty good little movie. While I liked the way that the movie combined the more realistic and fantasy elements, I was disappointed that there weren’t more fantasy sequences. The movie really seemed to shine when there was something totally messed up happening and I wanted more.
I learned many things in this movie. For example, if you’re repeatable told not to eat anything in front of a creepy child eating monster, for the love of God, don’t eat anything!!
Ghost Rider: The true reason I wrote this blog is that I wanted to express some of my thoughts on the Ghost Rider movie. Now I warn you this is going to be filled with spoilers. But if your type of person who is worried about spoilers for the Ghost Rider movie, I think you need to re-evaluate your life.
This is a bad movie. I mean a really really bad movie. It’s the type of movie that makes you want to analysis the LA drinking water for brain destroying containments. It’s the type of movie that serves as an argument to become a hermit. With that said, I found it absolutely hilarious with how bad it is.
Here’s a 7 point summery of Ghost Rider
1. Villain Blackheart gets 3 henchmen starts to do something evil
2. Devil doesn’t like this. So he tricks Nick Cage to basically become his bitch (aka Ghost Rider)
3. Devil tells Ghost Rider to kill Blackheart
4. Ghost Rider kills demons
5. Ghost Rider kills Blackheart
6. Randomly mix in a lame love story
7. Movie makes $80 million
So as you can see the movie isn’t exactly Shakespeare. But I’m sure you’re thinking “Come on, this movie is called Ghost Rider. I don’t really want a deep plot”. Well not only is the plot simple it’s only half done.
For example, this movie contains the most lame demon killing I’ve ever seen. The first demon he hits with a chain, killing it. The next demon he whirls a chain around it, killing it. The final demon Ghost Rider appears to defeat it in a staring contest, killing it. I mean if they can’t think of an interesting method to kill a demon, maybe they shouldn’t be making the movie in the first place.
This movie contains some of the most cliché dialogue I’ve ever seen. Here’s the extreme hell fueled insult that Blackheart uses to intimidate the devil: “I will retire HIM [Ghost Rider] just like I will retire YOU, father!”.
That’s some intense stuff.
Ok I grow tired of talking about this movie. I will say though, Nicolas Cage did a good job making the movie fun to watch and the visuals were actually pretty good. To bad there had to be a plot too.
TV
The Office: This show is pure gold. I marathoned all the episodes in a couple of days and
I can’t get enough.
Video Games:
Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess: These days I don’t have much time for video games; real life keeps getting in the way. So when I do play them I try to avoid those that take a long time such as RPGs. However, for Zelda games I make an exception.
Twilight Princess is one fine game, possibly my favorite Zelda game. While the first 5 hours were sort of boring, the rest of the game more than made up for it. The thing I liked most about the game is that they played the formula a bit to make things interesting. Several of dungeons and items were quite different from the standard Zelda swag and it kept things spicy.
The element I loved about this game is that Link looked really badass most of the time. Even though the graphics weren’t the top of the line, there are a ton of scenes that I would have loved to take a screen shot of. It’s nice for once not having to play as kid Link.
Comics
Civil War: Warning there be spoilers ahead
I really didn’t like the way that this ended. It was too small and didn’t resolve anything. My problem with Civil War as a whole is that it never really rose above the initial argument. For example, how come none of the villains got involved? Also, how come the rest of the world isn’t reacting to the fact that the US just forcibly created an army of super powered soldiers that will do whatever their told or be arrested?
As a whole Civil War had some cool scenes but was pretty much pointless. If the act had just been pasted and there had been no resistance, the Marvel Universe would look the exact same that it does now? So what was the point?
Other
MacLean’s Magazine: On a whim I recently I subscribed to MacLean’s. I find that MacLean’s does a good job fleshing out some of the events that I often hear in passing. It also provides good summaries of events that I haven’t been paying much attention to (this weeks article on Conrad Black is a good example of this).
With that said I find that it has a tendency to sensationalize things a bit too much. When reading it one has to be sure to filter the articles in order to keep a clear mind on an event.
Ask A Ninja: Thank you internet for allowing things like this to exist. The premise is a simple one, 2-5 minute video where a Ninja answers any ninja related questions that one might have. The results though are brilliant. I won’t ruin any of them but you need this in your life (btw, it should be noted that you can find all the Ask a Ninja episodes on youtube for extra convenience).
Movies
Pan’s Labyrinth: Pretty good little movie. While I liked the way that the movie combined the more realistic and fantasy elements, I was disappointed that there weren’t more fantasy sequences. The movie really seemed to shine when there was something totally messed up happening and I wanted more.
I learned many things in this movie. For example, if you’re repeatable told not to eat anything in front of a creepy child eating monster, for the love of God, don’t eat anything!!
Ghost Rider: The true reason I wrote this blog is that I wanted to express some of my thoughts on the Ghost Rider movie. Now I warn you this is going to be filled with spoilers. But if your type of person who is worried about spoilers for the Ghost Rider movie, I think you need to re-evaluate your life.
This is a bad movie. I mean a really really bad movie. It’s the type of movie that makes you want to analysis the LA drinking water for brain destroying containments. It’s the type of movie that serves as an argument to become a hermit. With that said, I found it absolutely hilarious with how bad it is.
Here’s a 7 point summery of Ghost Rider
1. Villain Blackheart gets 3 henchmen starts to do something evil
2. Devil doesn’t like this. So he tricks Nick Cage to basically become his bitch (aka Ghost Rider)
3. Devil tells Ghost Rider to kill Blackheart
4. Ghost Rider kills demons
5. Ghost Rider kills Blackheart
6. Randomly mix in a lame love story
7. Movie makes $80 million
So as you can see the movie isn’t exactly Shakespeare. But I’m sure you’re thinking “Come on, this movie is called Ghost Rider. I don’t really want a deep plot”. Well not only is the plot simple it’s only half done.
For example, this movie contains the most lame demon killing I’ve ever seen. The first demon he hits with a chain, killing it. The next demon he whirls a chain around it, killing it. The final demon Ghost Rider appears to defeat it in a staring contest, killing it. I mean if they can’t think of an interesting method to kill a demon, maybe they shouldn’t be making the movie in the first place.
This movie contains some of the most cliché dialogue I’ve ever seen. Here’s the extreme hell fueled insult that Blackheart uses to intimidate the devil: “I will retire HIM [Ghost Rider] just like I will retire YOU, father!”.
That’s some intense stuff.
Ok I grow tired of talking about this movie. I will say though, Nicolas Cage did a good job making the movie fun to watch and the visuals were actually pretty good. To bad there had to be a plot too.
TV
The Office: This show is pure gold. I marathoned all the episodes in a couple of days and
I can’t get enough.
Video Games:
Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess: These days I don’t have much time for video games; real life keeps getting in the way. So when I do play them I try to avoid those that take a long time such as RPGs. However, for Zelda games I make an exception.
Twilight Princess is one fine game, possibly my favorite Zelda game. While the first 5 hours were sort of boring, the rest of the game more than made up for it. The thing I liked most about the game is that they played the formula a bit to make things interesting. Several of dungeons and items were quite different from the standard Zelda swag and it kept things spicy.
The element I loved about this game is that Link looked really badass most of the time. Even though the graphics weren’t the top of the line, there are a ton of scenes that I would have loved to take a screen shot of. It’s nice for once not having to play as kid Link.
Comics
Civil War: Warning there be spoilers ahead
I really didn’t like the way that this ended. It was too small and didn’t resolve anything. My problem with Civil War as a whole is that it never really rose above the initial argument. For example, how come none of the villains got involved? Also, how come the rest of the world isn’t reacting to the fact that the US just forcibly created an army of super powered soldiers that will do whatever their told or be arrested?
As a whole Civil War had some cool scenes but was pretty much pointless. If the act had just been pasted and there had been no resistance, the Marvel Universe would look the exact same that it does now? So what was the point?
Other
MacLean’s Magazine: On a whim I recently I subscribed to MacLean’s. I find that MacLean’s does a good job fleshing out some of the events that I often hear in passing. It also provides good summaries of events that I haven’t been paying much attention to (this weeks article on Conrad Black is a good example of this).
With that said I find that it has a tendency to sensationalize things a bit too much. When reading it one has to be sure to filter the articles in order to keep a clear mind on an event.
Ask A Ninja: Thank you internet for allowing things like this to exist. The premise is a simple one, 2-5 minute video where a Ninja answers any ninja related questions that one might have. The results though are brilliant. I won’t ruin any of them but you need this in your life (btw, it should be noted that you can find all the Ask a Ninja episodes on youtube for extra convenience).
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
