Tuesday, October 31, 2006

Orange is my favorite color

So we went to this village of the family Nori is staying with. It was nice country living. Nori made friends with another cow.
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Warner helps Alex use a new experimental pharamone sleep enhancement system during the drive to the village. I guess it worked because Alex slept most of the ride. Alex and Warner are in the Dragons program that Nori was in last year.
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Oops... truck flipped over.
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We went to a crazy temple that was all cave like. No Balrogs were to be found, though.
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The bridge of Khazad Dûm.

Wow, this is like the gabillionth picture of me sticking my head out of a hole.
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Not just selling shawls. Anyone want to buy my tent? US$45. So far got an offer for 1500 rupees. Selling it for 2000 though. This is the tent I used on my trek in Manali.
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Puppy was interested but failed to meet my asking price.
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Should I buy this elephant for 2000 rupees? Let me know if you like it and maybe I can be convinced to buy it!
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waterbuffalo nearly runs me over but I got the shot in time.
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Why the long faces?
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Nori hiding from the camera again
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Went for a haircut and shav
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Banares is a very busy and crowded city, but space is always made for the waterbuffalo. They rule.

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Well, there's there's always more to tell, but that should give you the flavor of my past week. Until next time, this is the Intrepid Dr. Root aka Lost Buddha signing out.

Ohh... one more thing. Not sure what's going on here-- something not quite right about that green lassie I'm drinking....
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Warning: images not necessarily in order of events. Confusion may arise from viewing.

Playing batmitton in the street with the locals. I kicked arse.
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Saturday, October 28, 2006

Travel in style.

Well, there's much to blog but I've been a bit sick and bedraggled last few days after long bus and train rides from Manali to Delhi to Varanasi. But I will unravel the latest happenings in due time....

I left Manali on the 24th to meet up with Nori in Varanasi. Took a 17 hour overnight bus ride to Delhi and then six hours later took another 17 hour overnight train to Varanasi to arrive aton the 26th at 6:30am in Varanasi. The train ride was general second class or something like that. It was very cheap and I spent much of the time standing, squished among Indians. Early on during the ride I got stuck behind the train door which then was left open with me stuck behind it.
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I met a nice Indian guy, Suchin, who doesn't like his country and would like to move to USA someday where the people and culture are more sophisticated. It was very nice sitting with our legs dangling from the train. My way of traveling.
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The doors of the train were open most of the ride.
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First day in Varanasi the trio is once again reunited. Rachel and Nori walk ahead along the ghats on the Ganges river.
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There was a festival the second day where "Krishna" floated around in the water and then jumped in. You can see Krishna in orange supported by a log.
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Massive waterbuffalo rule the streets of Benares.
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Okay, more soon! I started taking Hindi lessons and might do an exchange where I teach English to an Indian and he teach me Hindi.

Sunday, October 22, 2006

Donkeys celebrate Diwali too (videos embedded!)

Diwali is the Hindu new year and while there weren't any big fireworks on display in Manali, there were plenty of small ones banging off the whole night making a riotous racket throughout the town. If a bomb had gone off no one'da known.

Me getting scared shitless when the little firecracker made a very unexpected and very big noise. I felt like a war journalist getting too close to a bomb suddenly going off.



Donkeys are a bit confusticated from all the commotion
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A man jumps out of the way as a firecracker goes off
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I saw one guy limping away after he was too careless with his fireworks. It was total madness. One group of kids were shooting bottle rockets through the streets.

Bottle rocket goes skyward
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Some people were dropping lit fireworks from the roofs of buildings and many people had fires on their roofs and were shooting fireworks skyward.

Where is the adult supervision? There was none to be found, just chaos.


I'm really surprised there weren't more injuries. I nearly got hit by a bottle rocket flying along, bouncing off the street, like a rogue, unguided missile.

The unruliness continues the day after.... Here a donkey eats celebratory flowers off of a taxi. Will the madness ever cease?
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~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

So not sure my next destination. I guess I'm gonna skip Daharm Salah for now as well as doing another trek. We were thinking of doing a longer trek in Pin Parbati valley, skpping the pass, just because Andrew says it's very beautiful. But perhaps it's time to move on, in which case I'll finally be coming to Varanasi Nori! Nori, how was the Diwali celebration in Varanasi?

Saturday, October 21, 2006

There and back again (big update, be patient)

Hey all my faithful blog watchers. Thanks again for tuning in over the past few weeks. I have to say I'm always a bit surprised to see many of you coming back for more. To show my appreciation to my blogwatchers, you are hereby rewarded with a larger than usual blog -- hope you enjoy.

The trek was very nice. 'Twas a beautiful and special land we tramped through. But we never made it over the pass. We had to turn back just a kilometer or two shy when Andrew, the British contingent of our trek, could not continue as he suffered a bad bout of food poisoning. But we've all arrived back with all limbs intact, whole and healthy.

Before the trek, we met a swiss couple whom we hung out with for a bit while trying to decide on a trek. After a few days in Manali, we finally decided to do the Hamta pass trek. But the day we were to leave it rained all day in Manali. Rain in Manali almost certainly means snow on the Hamta pass. We nearly didn't do any trek at all on account of this bad weather. But with some persisent cajoling on my part, the other two agreed. The tent we have is a three season tent (really a summer tent) and if it wasn't for the tarp we bought, we would not have been happy campers.

Bad weather moves in quickly and suddenly.
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gin rummy, poker, chess and tea keep us busy when it rains in Manali

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Vanessa tries to keep warm

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A caterpillar on the walkway to Manali.

Monkeys are not an uncommon encounter on the way to Manali.
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Ronen and I go up to Varshist for a day before we embark on the trek. Varshist is a very homey little village nestled in the hillside 3km from Manali. There are hotsprings where people wash their clothes and bodies. We didn't take a dip tho. Chess over lunch with a view of the village instead.
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HAMPTA PASS TREK
Okay, now onto the trek. Andrew is quite the chef and spearheaded our meals. Ronen wasn't too shabby himself and between the two of them we had two gormet meals a day. The first would be oatmeal with apples and raisins caramilzed in sugar and oil with cut up cashews or almonds topped off with some reconstituted milk. Lunch was usually a small snack of bread or nuts and dinner was pasta or rice with a "blinding" sauce. One night Andrew even bothered to make a rue, a cream sauced based on oil and flour with milk and cheese and spices. It was the dogs' bollucks. No photos of the food, though, sorry.

We started trekking up the mountain following a switchbacking road. We hired a horseman and two horses to haul all our food and baggage. I wanted to be a man about the trek and carry my pack, but I was outvoted by my peers who wanted to approach the trek with a bit more shanti attitude than I. My pack was needed on the horse to keep the weight balanced. You can see the horses on the right.
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It's not long before we are hiking through a construction site. This has to be the highlight of the trek for all.
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Finally we cut into the forest off the road and are suddenly plunged into the wild. We make use of a broken bridge to cross the river. The horses fjord the river.
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Mama sheep and her baby - I have a funny video of the poor sheep falling a little way down the side of the mountain. Poor thing- was funny tho. Dunno if the little bugger was alright, tho.
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Two eagles swoop in close and low to the mountainside and I found a large feather which I offered for Ronen's cap.
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Some cool dude in green.
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Camp, second night. We used the rock for shelter but I had come so prepared for cold weather I preferred to sleep with the shooting stars above me than in the protection of the tent.
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Approaching the pass
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Two horses scratch each other.
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A ferret!
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An inhospitable landscape. You can barely make out the horses in the second photo.
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One or two kilometers from the pass, we have to give up on our lofty goal and turn back. I appeared to be the only one really disappointed by this. Andrew is given protection from the pelting sleet by Ronen.
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Caught in bad weather again.
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We returned to the second camp again. Setting up camp in the rain does not rank as one of the funnest things in the world. I was always happy when the rain turned to snow, which it did often. It rained and snowed alot the second two days of the trek. A second attempt on the pass the next day is not possible as the horses do not have enough food. The continuous bad weather would have made it very challenging to reattampt anyway.

On the last night of camp it rains again and we setup in the rain once again. A couple hundred meters up it's snow instead of rain.

A fresh sprinkling of snow on the mountains.
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Our horseman Krishna cooks up some nice jipatis directly in the coals of the fire. Jipatis are a flatbread the same size of a pita pocket but without the pocket, made from flour and water (and sometimes a bit of oil).
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We came across a czech troop attempting the pass without the aid of porters or horses. Another porter we came across the next day was going up the mountain to warn another group not to attempt the pass as it was no longer possible with all the rain/snow.
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A wet and muddy return.
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You know the nearer your destination the more you're slip sliding away (we slid down the mountain as much as we trekked down it) here I'm "skiing" down the muddy slope. I fell a few times, once nearly to a disastrous end but managed to get my footing again at the last second.
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Pixagogo direct photo link for the visit to a week in my life. Hope you enjoyed it!