Making our Way West

Since Varanasi, we have visited Allahabad (in Uttar Pradesh), one of the four holiest Hindu sites in India, where two of the holiest rivers, the Ganges and the Kumana, meet. It is the home of the Kumbh Mela celebation, where every twelve years on a very auspicious day millions of Hindu pilgrims bathe in the sacred confluence of the two rivers. The last celebration was recorded as having the largest number of pilgrims in one place ever in history- 70 million. Compared to Varanasi, Allahabad was somewhat of a retreat. While we truly enjoyed Varanasi, at the end of the week I was tired of the endless touts, the unclean streets and the wild roaming cows, dogs and goats everywhere. While Allahabad did have its share of stray dogs, it was pretty clean and calm for an Indian city. It is not a heavily visited place for Western tourists so we were able to wander the streets tout-free. We chatted with some friendly people and had lunch at an Indian cafe where Allahabad businessmen gather for a mid-morning chai tea.
After wandering around the city some more, we caught a 2-hour delayed train (quite typical in this country) to Satna, a stopover point for travelers heading to Khajuraho. As we got in a taxi to go to our over-priced hotel, after rejecting the driver's countless offers to drive us to Khajuraho, I eventually realized that paying the driver was one US dollar more than staying in the hotel for the night and we would save hours of travel the next day. So, at 10PM we paid the driver the equivalent of 21 dollars to drive us to Khajuraho, which was 2 hours away. He was safe, took us to a cheap restaurant for a late dinner and dropped us off at a decent hotel for the night.
We have spent our first day in Madya Pradesh and intend to explore more of this state over the next week. Khajuraho is a small town known for its millenium-old sandstone Hindu temples. The temples, while noted for their detailed medieval architecture, are best known for their erotic carvings. While the town built 80 temples a millenium ago, there are currently 24 in good condition over a 20 sq. km area, which is pretty impressive. We enjoyed our walk to many of the temples as we were frequently stopped to buy postcards or mineral water or sculptures or illegal drugs. After weeks of experimenting with different answers, we have found that the best way to ward off these vendors is to tell them we do not want it in Hindi, "Nahi Chahiye", or to say "Is it free? I will pay zero rupees." Both responses usually make us and the touts laugh and then they leave us alone.
I have been practicing Hindi whenever I can but my abilities are certainly limited. People really enjoy when we speak in their language and are eager to help us improve. Hope to pick up more of the language as the trip goes on.
Tomorrow morning, we head to Orchha, another town known for its erotic religious ruins. There we will greet the New Year before heading to Bhopal.

Learning Hindi in Varanasi

Varanasi

Here are S's thoughts on our last week:

today we are in varanasi, in central India. varanasi is basically the center of Hinduism, which is an exceptionally tolerant religion, so in some ways it seems appropriate to have spent Christmas here.

we've spent the last week taking intensive hindi classes. for those interested, what follows are a few notes on some of the languages we've encountered so far:

according to wikipedia, hindi is actually the 3rd most spoken language in the world after mandarin chinese and english. for a native english speaker, it's definitely not easy to pick up - when trying to learn hindi you will come to appreciate how closely related are english and the romance languages. ultimately though, english and hindi come from the same language family, as opposed to say Chinese, which is entirely different. for an english speaker, chinese has some advantages in that there are no tenses or verb conjugations, or gendered nouns and adjectives, which makes things a little easier. on the other hand, having no shared past, in addition to the tones there are all kinds of sounds that are not only very difficult for us to reproduce, but they are almost impossible for us to hear in the first place. i can't tell you how many times we'd be in a situation in china where someone would say a word or a sentence to us, and we'd try to repeat it back to them and completely fail. to our ears, we'd think we were reproducing the exact same sound - but to their ears it was like we were trying to say 'tree' and it was coming out 'dog'. so even with a roman alphabet transliteration of the chinese word, we still couldn't really make ourselves understood. and this doesn't even begin to take into account the difficulties of learning the chinese writing system, which surpass description.

you don't really have too many of these problems with hindi. yes, the writing script is different, but it's still based on a learnable alphabet. and yes, there are different sounds that are difficult to reproduce, most obviously the aspirated consonants and the nasal vowels, but at least we can hear the things that we are getting wrong. and being distantly related, you still have the same basic structures of tenses and conjugations (i go, you go, i went, you went etc.), so it's somewhat familiar. it also has all the same confusing aspects of the european languages like gendered nouns and adjectives and confusing irregular conjugations over way too many tenses.

the biggest difference is that hindi is a subject-object-verb language (I you love), as opposed to english which is subject-verb-object (I love you). more confusing is that with intransitive verbs you conjugate the verb based on the subject (as in english) but with transitive verbs you conjugate the verb based on the object (which you don't do in english). it has no prepositions, instead employing a very confusing system of postpositions - there are more of them and they are much more specific than in english. the syntax of the sentences is also much more rigid and specific. whereas in english you can say either 'yesterday, i went to the beach' or 'i went to the beach yesterday' without changing the meaning of the sentence, you don't have the same freedom in hindi, which is actually very difficult for an english speaker. there are also other issues like there is no verb 'to have', which is instead replaced by 3 non-verb constructions based on whether the thing that is had is a person, an object or an abstract concept. the upshot is that you can basically never translate sentences directly from english to hindi. so whereas when learning french or spanish, it's possible to correctly guess a spanish phrase based on your knowledge of english, that really isn't possible in hindi. in some ways this is good, because it forces you to start thinking in hindi right away, but in other ways it's bad, in that it precludes any intuitive leaps while learning the new language.

the week was intensive, and i think we picked up a lot, though we definitely need to practice. hopefully we get better over the next two months as we travel around the country. vickie made much more progress than I did, due to a better memory for vocab and a far greater willingness to practice with strangers.

anyway, we'll spend a day or two more here in varanasi, then head to allahabad. after that we will make our way southwest towards bombay.

Varanasi

S and I have just arrived in Varanasi, the holiest site for Hindus in the country. It is also a place of worship for Buddhists and Jains and it is one of the oldest continually inhabited cities in the world. It is a very spiritual place- many elderly or sick come here when they are dying because passing away in this place removes you from the future cycles of rebirth. While we have not seen it yet, Hindus are also burned on the banks of the rivers of the Ganges and their ashes are thrown into this holy river, which many pilgrims also use to cleanse themselves from evil spirits.
We took the non-AC sleeper last night from Kolkata to Varanasi and we both had restless sleeps, being awoken every hour by snoring, loud conversations on cell phones (even at 4AM) and chai-wallahs trying to sell tea and others selling snacks. Our train was 3 hours late and we pulled into Varanasi at 12:30. This evening at 6 we have our opening session for our one-week Hindi language course at Bhasa Bharati Language Institute.

Pinky and Mo

The Rocket and Dhaka

Today we visited the home of Pinky and Mo, two very kind and friendly Bengali sisters who truly welcomed us to their city. We met them at a popular intersection near their home and we spent 5 hours at their home eating, laughing, sharing stories and experiences and even more eating. Their mother cooked for hours to prepare over 7 vegetable dishes for us and 4 of the best Bengali desserts that are eaten during their religious holiday Eid. They were all so lovely and they have invited us to spend the national holiday with them tomorrow. Tomorrow is the 38th anniversary of Bangladesh's independence and we can already see the people showing their pride- many people have attached Bangladesh flags to their rickshaws, cars or are just waving them as they walk through the street.

Short Stories from Bangladesh

So much has happened to us over the last 7 days that it is difficult to know from where to continue.

Bangladesh is an incredibly beautiful country. As there are many lakes and rivers, the country is very tropical and green. There are palm trees and flowers in every direction and the slight humidity casts a haze over the country that makes it look somewhat magical. While the center of the towns are a little dirty, most of the country's land is very open, far-stretching beautiful farmland. As a new crop rotation for rice is beginning, many plots of land are flooded with water, a necessary step when cultivating rice. Despite being winter here, it is still quite warm and the evenings have a nice breeze that reminds me of the Caribbean.

On our second day in Bangladesh, S finally decided to get a haircut. We walked into a Bangla barber shop on Khulna's main avenue and S asked if he could get a haircut in English, also gesturing the cutting symbol with his fingers. They told us to sit and a man getting a shave in the shop told us in English that it would cost 100 takas, which was a dollar and fifty cents. The barber, without words, gestured his vision for S's new cut and, not knowing how to communicate anything otherwise, S shrugged and left his fate in the barber's hands. This haircut was the most elaborate I have ever seen- the man cut and styled for at least 40 minutes and then included a head massage, a full body massage, a shave and a beard trim. Since then, Steve has literally gotten 3 glowing compliments on his haircut every day.

All women here dress incredibly conservatively, with most women wearing head scarves and usually wearing a saree, which is 6 yards of fabric wrapped around the body several times and held with simple tucks in the fabric, or a salwar kameez, a loose fitting knee length tunic over baggy trousers. As not many tourists visit Bangladesh and the opinions of foreigners are still being formed, I purchased a bright pink and turuoise salwar kameez to fit right in here. While I still stick out like a sore thumb, many men and women have thanked me for wearing their clothing in their country.

Our day in the village with the BIWTC manager Firoz was absolutely amazing. We were the first Westerners in the village and we met all of his family, extended family and extended extended family. The village is 45 minutes outside of a town Gopalganj and a family of farmers on one plot of land generations ago has expanded to a whole village with hundred and hundreds of residents. As Firoz proudly paraded us around the town, he introduced us to every relative, explaining the web that connected them together. As we walked from house to house, we were followed by a group of about 15-20 children who continuously said hello to us, shook our hands, picked flowers for us and tried to jump into the foreground of every picture I tried to take. As immediate families normally have their homes built around a communal courtyard, when we walked in, the mothers ran to the kitchen while the grandparents smiled at us shyly and the children grabbed chairs for us to sit down. A minute of two later, the ladies emerged from the kitchen with a plate of snacks or a hot glass of milk and the family stood around us, commenting about us in Bengali. The women commented that I did not have a nose ring and asked if my dress was Bengali while the men played with S's hair and told him he looked great. At every house, our short-term hosts told us how happy they were that we came to their village and that we were enjoying their country. Firoz was also very happy that we were enjoying ourselves and his sister cooked us the best Bengali food we've had yet.

After we left the village that afternoon, Firoz arranged for us to take the 24- hour ferry ride from Khulna to Dhaka. We got on the ferry at 11PM and started moving around 11:30. When we woke up the next morning, we were back at the Khulna dock. The ferry manager explained that we were held back due to fog and that, as a certain part of the trip could not be done at night, there would be an additional 15-hour delay. That morning we were the only passengers in 1st class and Ashish, the 1st class supervisor, told us that passengers would not be getting on until the 2nd day. For the enitre first day, we had our own large private dining room, a spacious outdoor deck at the front of the boat and our own personal staff of 5, the last part being a little overwhelming at the end of the day. Ashish gave us a tour of the boat, took us to the control room to meet the captain, introduced us to the ship's engineers and called us from our rooms when there was great view.

Today, after a 55 hour ferry ride, we finally docked in Dhaka. We left with a pocketful of phone numbers and email addresses of people we had met on the boat that wanted to stay in touch and many more memories of incredibly kind, generous and welcoming people. A pair of sisters invited us to their home in Dhaka for lunch tomorrow and said they would also show us around the city. We are to call them in the morning tomorrow to make plans.

We got into Dhaka at 4PM and, as we were trying to get a rickshaw to our hotel, an English-speaking Bengali told us he would help, leading us through unfamiliar streets and finally bargaining with a rickshaw driver and telling him our desired destination in Bengali. The streets of Dhaka were very congested but not how you would think. There are not many personally owned vehicles so the streets of Dhaka and other Bengali cities are packed with rickshaws and 3-wheeled auto rickshaws. It is estimated that Dhaka has about 600,00 rickshaws on its city streets.

Today S also arranged a very nice belated birthday celebration for me. I am very lucky.

Khulna Division

Land of the Banglas

Three days ago, S and I got on a bus headed towards the Bangladeshi border town of Benapole. On the Indian side, a kind bus operator escorted us through Indian immigration and customs and, when we crossed over into Bangla territory, there were kind men every 5 feet pointing us in the direction of the immigration office. As we walked by with a smile, they all stopped us and asked, "What country?" and when we responded America, they shook our hand, held their hand up to their heart, and said thank you as we walked away. This is representative of the kindness and curiosity that Banglas have been showing to us over the last 3 days. Tourists do not come to Bangladesh and so people are incredibly friendly, curious and eager to ask you or share whatever they know how to say in English, which ranges from a screaming hello as someone passes on a rickshaw to an extended discussion about America, Bangladesh, politics and wealth. If we are stopped for more than 10 seconds on the street, the crowd surrounding us literally multiplies by the second.
As Bangladesh is a country full of rivers and canals, sometimes the most direct or most picturesque route to your next destination is on a boat through the country's waterways. When we first headed to the Bangladesh Inter-Waterway Tranportation Company (BIWTC) yesterday morning to book a 24-hour boat ride from Khulna to Dhaka, our early frustrations with the manager Firoz's poor customer service skills as we waited for 30 mintues in his office quickly fizzled away as he excitedly offered us tea, talked to us about his country and ours and asked us for our mailing address so he could send us letters in America. He repeatedly asked us to confirm that we would write him back and told us he was happy to have new American friends. He also asked about our 'relation' to each other, and if S had 'given me any babies yet', which is the standard set of questions asked after 'what country'. He wrote out a receipt for us and told us to go to another office to pick up our boat tickets the following day. When we arrived at the other BIWTC office this morning, the manager told us that the boat was cancelled due to fog and that we should go back to see Firoz. Our 5 minute, 15 cent rickshaw ride took back to the center of town where we walked to Firoz's office. On the way there, we were creepily followed by a crazy person who, after trying to come with us into the BIWTC office, was shooed away by the office guard. We sat down in Firoz's office, where he told us that he had been thinking about us all morning and was sorry that he could not call us himself with the news about the cancellation. We chatted with him and had some tea as we waited for the crazy person to go away from the front of the building. During this time, which wound up being about an hour, he invited us to visit his hometown with him tomorrow during the day for lunch. He lives in Gopalganj, a small fishing village 2 hours from Khulna that is known for its farmers that fish with river otters. We accepted his invitation and stopped by his office this evening, after our trip to Bagerhat, to confirm all the travel details. As he was away from his office when we arrived, he had stationed a assistant to keep watch for us and to call him when we got there. He quickly came after the call, treating us to more tea, more interesting conversation and fueling greater excitement about the visit to his village tomorrow.
We experienced more of the same during our day trip to Bagerhat, where we were quickly adopted by two Bangdladeshi college students, who insisted on calling us 'auntie' and 'uncle', a sign of respect for elders. They turned out to be excellent tour guides, taking us around to all of the town's historical mosques. They were exceptionally friendly, and extremely persistent about exchanging email addresses, mail addresses, and cell phone numbers, insisting every 10 minutes that we promise to stay in touch with them. Shuvo kindly requested that we write down our day full of 'memories' with them, so that we'd never forget them, because they surely would never forget us. This seemed slightly less weird when we later discovered that we were the first foreigners they had ever met. There are already countless other, shorter stories like these, and the stack of email addresses and mobile numbers is growing by the minute. We've been touched by the friendliness and hospitality of the people we've met here.

7 Days of Indian Wedding

Rukmini & Joseph's Wedding

We are currently at day 6 of the festivities for Rukmini and Joseph. While day 4 was the Hindu wedding, the other days have been filled with small ceremonies at the house of the bride's family. The house was beautifully decorated with marigolds wrapped around the staircases and hanging from outdoor patio. The floors were painted with red and white designs meant to symbolize blessings for the new couple and there were white lights everywhere, representing the couple entering the light together. On day 3, there was a dinner for the bride's last evening in the home. All of the bride's family and friends came over and many family members became very nostalgic about all the memories of Rukmini as a child. On the afternoon of day 5, there was a luncheon for Rukmini's last day in her parent's home before she moved in with her husband's family. There were private blessings given to the bride before she and her husband went off in a flower-decorated car towards the groom's home. Since then, the groom's side has been holding many parties for the couple in their home.
As the wedding on the evening of day 4 was being held at the army base Fort William, Rukmini's family had to go through all of this red-tape to get a security clearance for us foreigners to be able to attend. While they secured permits for us and we were supposed to travel in a specially marked car to the Fort, the security did not even check our permits or who was in the car and just waved us through. The wedding was held in a beautiful outdoor space decorated with dangling lights, colorful fabrics and more marigolds than one could count. The groom wore a dhoti, a rectangular piece of unstitched cloth, usually around 7 yards long, wrapped around the waist and the legs, and knotted at the waist, and a traditional scarf. Atop his head was a white-tiered hat that is traditionally worn at Hindu weddings. To begin the ceremony, the groom stood in the middle of the space on a pedestal and the bride's female family members circled the groom 7 times pouring water around him to purify the space. After the women blessed the groom, all of the bride's "brothers", brothers and male cousins, carried out the bride on a carpeted platform. As she was being brought towards the groom, her face was covered with two big leaves and, when she was brought before the groom, a white fabric was pulled over the two of them. S was given the honor of holding one of the corners. The bride was wearing a colorful red sari, was drenched in gold jewelry and had a large circular nose ring which was connected by a chain to her left earring. During this time, after the bride uncovered her face, the priest began giving blessings as the bride and groom exchanged floral garlands with each other several times. After these exchanges, the bride and groom were brought over to the mandap, a canopy where the ceremony was to take place. As the hour and a half ceremony was in Sanskrit, we clearly could not understand it but the ceremony was elaborate and full of tradition. Throughout the whole wedding, older women were blowing conch shells, meant to ward off evil spirits. The dinner was a non-veg, veg and Chinese buffet, complete with carts full of Indian sweets, and over 450 people came to celebrate this event. The wedding was dry but some male party attendees snuck into the parking lot for a glass or two of scotch.
Tomorrow is the last day of festivities and we will be attending their Christian wedding, held by the groom's side of the family. It will be at the Tollygunge Club, a very nice golf resort where S and I have been staying for the last few days with the Duttas. When we have not been attending the various different events for the wedding, we have taking golf lessons, playing some tennis and enjoying the calm of the club, which is in stark contrast to the loud and bustling streets of Kolkata.
We have had such a great time with the Dutta family and they have been so generous to us over the last few days. Many, many, many thanks to Rono, Shomik and Priam!!! They have also introduced us to all of their family, who have been as equally warm and kind. One of Shomik's aunt's is lending me a sari to wear for the second wedding.
After the wedding, the following morning Steve and I will be taking a bus to the Bangladeshi border of Benapole, where we will then head to Khulna to spend the night there. At this stage, we intend to spend around 10 days exploring Bangladesh.

Pre-Wedding Festivities

From Rumkini & Joseph's Wedding

The last 2 days have been amazingly fun as we have been celebrating the love-marriage wedding of Shomik's cousin Rukmini and Joseph. The Indian wedding is officially tomorrow but we have been partaking in pre-wedding events for the last 2 days. The most fun day was definitely yesterday, which started with mehndi (henna) hand painting for all the lady friends of the bride, her family, family friends and me. The palms and other side of my hands were elaborately painted intricate designs which, after hours of drying, have stained my hands a dark brown color. According to Indian tradition, the darker your henna is the more you are loved by your man, so I guess that means I am very loved. They also had different color bangles for the ladies to pick out to wear that evening with their saris or salwar kameez. I got yellow ones to accent the yellow and blue border of my saree. In the evening, we went to the bride's sangt, where all the bride's friends sing and dance in honor of the special day to come. As the bride and her friends have all been incredibly kind to me and have really welcomed me into their group, I performed in a dance with the bride's two oldest friends and her Turkish college friends. It was really fun and I was glad that I did not trip over my saree during the dance and fall off stage. S took a video and photos. Many of the guests were happy to see that S and I dressed in traditional Indian clothing. Before the party, the bride's friends helped wrap me in the 6 yards of red fabric, pinning it to ensure that my saree did not fall off during the dance. The last few days have been great and it has been really fun catching up with Shomik and getting to meet his family.
Today is conveniently a day off from festivities, which works out nicely because it is my 25th birthday. S and I are spending the afternoon together as the Dutta men visit extended family. While my birthday is not the same without my family and friends around to celebrate with, I am so glad that I have S here with me.

Kolkata

Kolkata is definitely a whirlwind of a city. The cars are always honking, the touts are out full force and the sidewalks and streets are completely overcrowded. Half of the time, people are walking in the street for one of two reasons: either the sidewalk is completely full of people and/or makeshift stalls or the sidewalk is full of rubble or loaded with trash. As homes around our hotel lack plumbung, there are wells every few blocks where the residents come out to cook, wash clothes, bathe and take care of other daily activities. When we get home after long days of exploring the city, we are covered in dust and enjoy the few hours of quiet in our small room where the paint is peeling. Despite the sensory overload, we are loving the chaos. The people are incredibly friendly, the food is delicious and we are bombarded with intense scenes of daily life here, which is quite exhilarating albeit exhausting. We have been to a cricket game, seen beautiful colonial architecture and walked through a narrow alleyway that was the neighborhood slaughterhouse! Last night we purchased a saree and a kurta for an Indian wedding that we are attending this afternoon. It will be day one of a five day affair and we are extremely excited, as Indian weddings are supposed to be amazingly festive and extravagant. The next blog will have many photos.

Additionally, I am happy to report that all of the photos from our trip are now uploaded on the web and are accessible through the blog. Once you get to the photo-sharing webpage you can see all of them!

All our love. We miss everyone at home!

Kolkata

Crossing the Indian Border

Raxaul, India

On Tuesday morning, our hotel arranged for a horse cart to take us to the highway 40 minutes away where where we were to flag down a bus going to the border town Birganj. We fortunately got the last two seats in what turned out to be a very crowded bus for 3 hours down to the border. We made many stops along the way to pick up passengers. Sometimes, we would stop but saw no one get on or off. We later realized that people were climbing onto the roof to sit, which is very common for buses in Nepal. When we arrived in Biganj, we saw two guys unloading 6 goats from the roof of our bus and then lead them towards the town's main road. The town was quite a sight- full of colorful trucks heading to India, food being cooked in outdoor stalls while dust swirled all around us. The streets were full of horse carts and rickshaws taking people to the border, the town has no taxis. We stopped for lunch and took our first rickshaw 4 km to the border. There was a crazy back-up towards the end of the trip so we gave our tired-looking rickshaw driver, whose right arm was in a cast, a 100% tip and walked across. When we got our departure stamps, the Nepali border workers marvelled at our 5- and 7-year Indian visas, saying "Bravo sir" to S. We crossed over the border bridge into Raxaul with many Indians and Nepalis. All were walking with a purpose, some barefoot, some carrying naked children and many staring shyly at us and we walked passed. The man at the Indian border very critically looked at our visas, questioning why a section had been crossed out. He fortunately believed us when we said the Indian Embassy in NYC did it, told us to give him 100 rupees and asked us for any small American bills or coins.
Walking down main street, we were bombarded by touts trying to take us on their rickshaws or to their friend's hotel. As we went up to Hotel Decari, one of the touts followed us and told the man at the front desk he brought us there so he could get a commission. After checking in, we walked to the train station, which was a mad house. There were hundreds of people sitting outside resting, eating and sleeping and there was a mob in front of the ticket booths. As women in India are allowed to skip the lines, I pushed my way to the front where a man finally told me to go around the corner to the upper-class ticket office. The mob was waiting for general seating tickets. The upper-class office was empty and the man easily helped us book two tickets for the next morning's 18-hour train to Kolkata (or Calcutta).
Yesterday morning, we arrived early to the train station and saw what the general seating actually means- if the cars are packed to the brim, you climb up on the roof. We saw women carrying little babies and even old grandmas making their way up there. While S and I were previously excited about riding general class, we both agree that riding on the roof of a train is a little too much. We had a peaceful ride in our first-class car and savoured every moment as that is the nicest we will travel by train in India for a while. I dozed off to sleep with deep-throated Indian men wandering up and down the cars selling "Chai, Chai, chai, coffee, coffee, coffee".
As today is Thanksgiving, S and I have checked into a mid range hotel, a splurge for us. We are staying in an 18th century colonial home with a large outdoor garden and very friendly and helpful staff. Our room is huge and we get complimentary breakfast in the morning. We got the last room in the hotel after the doorman and the man behind the counter told us the hotel was full. It was after we asked for availability for the next evening that they somehow found the room for us tonight. We had a delicious Thanksgiving day lunch-- 2 orders of rice, dhaal (yellow lentils), chapatti and vegetable curry in a crowded local restaurant for $1.30 total. We ate Indian-style, with our right hands. The challenge in eating this way comes when you need to tear the chapatti into bits with only your right hand. There is added difficulty because we are both lefties. S and I watch the other diners for lessons in technique.
Tonight we are going to a nice Italian restaurant to celebrate our 6 year anniversary, which is in 3 days. We thought we had to try to have some Western food on Thanksgiving.

One-Horned Rhinos

This afternoon, we took an elephant safari through the jungle. Riding atop an elephant is supposed to be one of the best ways to spot wildlife as the elephants hide the human scent. While the ride was quite bumpy because of the elphant's lumbering gait, we stumbled upon two one-horned rhinos drinking from a water hole. We followed them on the elephant for about 5 minutes. We also saw many deer, one which had just been killed by a tiger....fortunately missed that scene!

Chitwan Nat'l Park

After two days of exploring Patan and Bhaktapur, the medieval city-states of the Kathmandu Valley, we took a six-hour bus yesterday morning to Chitwan National Park, which is in the southern region of the country. At our stop along the drive, we picked up some samosas, curried potato and peas in fried rice dough. These have become our favorite snacks here in Nepal and, as they were so good, S ran to get more while I made sure the bus did not leave without us. We arrived in Sauraha, the town just north of the National Park, around 1:30 PM and checked into our jungle-themed cottage on a small and quiet street in town. We spent the afternoon sitting on recliner chairs by the Rapti River and watched the sun set. We had some good curry for dinner and drank tea until we could see thousands of stars in the sky. Our room had hot water which, at this point, was a wonderfully pleasant surprise.
Today we got up at 6 AM for a full day of jungle activities. We Started with a 7:30 canoe trip on the Rapti River in a dugout cotton tree canoe as the mist was rising over the river. We saw many different birds and, towards the end of the canoe trip, spotted a gharial crocodile. As our hotel specializes in ornithology, our guide took us on a 4 hour jungle walk where he pointed out many beautiful birds. We were hoping to see some rhinos in the forest but settled for about 5-7 rhesus macaques jumping around in th trees near us. This afternoon we are heading on an elephant safari which we have heard is where you have better luck seeing wildlife. Excited to ride an elephant and hope to see some jungle animals.
Tomorrow we head to the Indian border town of Raxaul, where we hope to catch a train to Kolkata the following morning. Hopefully we can get train tickets!

Chitwan Nat'l Park

Kathmandu, Nepal

S and I just arrived in Kathmandu, Nepal two days ago. It was very sad saying good bye to our wonderful guide at the Chinese border crossing and to also leave China. The border crossing is over the Friendship Bridge, a small path over a flowing river that divides the two countries. Despite the bridge name that represents kind relations between the two countries, we were hurried along the bridge by an army commander as several soldiers lined the bridge with big weapons. We changed our money on the black market, getting a pretty good exchange rate and hopped in a jeep with Brandon and Jill headed towards Kathmandu.
While just a river separates Tibet and Nepal at that border crossing, the regions feel quite different. As we crossed the bridge into Nepal, we came to a dilapidated customs office that is in stark contrast to the Chinese office on the other side, which is sparkling, shiny and new. Smells of curry wafted through the air and women walked around in colorful saris. Nepalis look much more like Indians and the local temple's blessing adorned the foreheads of all the local women as we walked through town. The drive to Kathmandu was also quite stunning. Our taxi wound through the mountains as the driver blasted America's most popular hip hop and R&B music from his radio. Since being in Nepal, we have surprisingly heard a lot of reggaeton. The villages along the drive were bustling with people, selling their produce, bright colored bubble coats, with the occasional cow roaming alongside us on the highway.
As we got closer to Kathmandu and left the mountains, the pollution haze became increasingly more noticeable and somewhat bothersome and the cars increasingly jammed the narrow streets, with rickshaws, bikes and motor carts whizzing by in all directions.
As the city streets are not named, it was quite difficult to find our hotel, as the address only indicated the neighborhood that our hotel was in. We are staying in Thamel, the town's tourist area, with many restaurants and shops selling anything you could possibly want. Despite being such a commercial hub, the buildings in the area are falling apart, electricity wires dominate one's eye view and power outages are frequent during the evening time. That evening, we dined at a very nice Newari restaurant with Brandon and Jill where colorfully dressed women performed traditional Nepali dances. During the last song, diners were in invited to dance with the performers and, after a tiny bit of nudging, I got up on stage, bouncing my shoulders and shaking my hips. The group got a kick of out it and the lead dancer dragged me into the middle of the stage to dance with her. Very fun!
Yesterday, we spent the whole day walking around central Kathmandu. We started the day at Swayambhunath Temple, one of the most important temples in the area. Monkeys surround the mini-temples and the long stairway leading up the hill to the holy area. A kind Nepali man attached himself to S and insisted on giving us a free tour of the temple in exchange for visiting his shop at the end. He blessed our foreheads with an orange vermilion paste and sprinkled marigolds in our hair in the complex's most important temple. I bought a very nice braided brass and copper ring for 50 rupees, or 65 cents.
We spent the rest of the day walking around Durbar Square, a complex of temples, squares, towers and shrines, built up during a competitive building boom in the 15th and 16th centuries between the three neighboring kingdoms in Nepal. The area is full of hawkers trying to sell you guided tours, Nepalis going about their everyday business and worshippers following carts carrying cows, Hinduism's sacred animal.
The food here is amazing and today we are going to get out of the tourist zone and wander through the backstreets of this capital city.

Border to Kathmandu Valley

The Friendship Highway

Tibet

The last 5 days of our Tibet itinerary were packed with drives over 5,000 meter mountain passes, turquoise-colored lakes and Tibetan villages with yaks and sheep grazing the neighboring fields. The icing was our visit to Mount Everest Base Camp, the base of the world's tallest mountain.
Our drive on the first day started from Lhasa at an altitude of 3,200 meters. As we ascended the neighboring mountains, we reached our first high mountain pass at 4700m. From the top of the mountain, we looked down at Yamdrok-so Lake, the third largest lake in Tibet. It was a deep turquoise color and the sun's glimmer on the body of water made it look otherworldly. We stopped for lunch in Nagartse and had some Tibetan staples, such as vegetable momo (vegetable dumplings with a spicy sauce) and butter tea (Chinese brick tea with yak butter and salt)
We then visited Pelkhor Chorde Monastery in Gyantse, which is home to the largest chorten in the world. Within the chorten are 108 chapels, with each one dedicated to a different protector of Tibetan Buddhism's 3 religions. As foreigners must always be accompanied by their guide while in Tibet, we were taken to delicious Tibetan restaurant.
The following day led us to Shigatse, Tibet's second largest city. As the police station in town closed by noon, we needed to leave Gyantse early enough to ensure that our guide could register us at the Shigatse station. This is necessary protocol throughout Tibet and there were frequent checkpoints along the highway asking for the guide's license and our traveling visa papers. We visited Tashilhunpo Monastery where we saw the world's largest gilded statue. As we were waiting for the main temple to open, our guide spoke very frankly to us about his disdain for the Chinese government. He was understandably quite angry and upset.
The third day, we took a side trip off the Friendship Highway to Mount Everest Base Camp (EBC). The ride to EBC was a bumpy 120 km dirt road. On the drive, we stopped at the top of a mountain pass to admire the Himalayan mountain ranges and got our first look at Everest. When we arrived at Base Camp, we were at 5200 meters and stayed in a hotel run by the highest monastery in the world, Rongphu Monastery. As the rooms lacked heating, we spent the evening in the nearby resturant, which was heated with a yak-dung stove, very common in Tibet. We had tsampa for dinner- the meal most frequently eaten by Tibetans. Tsampa is barley flour hand-mixed with butter tea to make large dumpling-like balls that are then ingested. That night, we slept under 2 comforters and 4 layers of horse blankets and were still cold.
Even though Everest was covered in clouds the following day, we still had a beautiful drive to the Tibetan bordertown of Zhangmu, a town at much lower elevation of 2000 meters. We were relieved to no longer be light-headed or winded after walking up a flight of stairs and spent the day reminiscing with Brandon and Jill about all the amazing sights we had seen on our Tibetan adventure.
Yesterday, we crossed the border into Kodari, Nepal and sadly said goodbye after 2 and a half months of traveling in China. We really loved our time in the country with a quarter of the world's population.

Lhasa, Tibet

It is an incredibly daunting task to try to summarize our 10-day trip in Tibet. As I was uploading photos yesterday, S started to write the blog and, after an hour of serious writing, the power went out on our block in Kathmandu and his work was lost. Here, I will try to capture the highlights of our trip but there will always be so much left unsaid or not fully explained.
On the night of the 8th, we boarded a 24-hour train to Lhasa, the capital of the Tibetan region. We were part of a 4-person group and were so delighted to be put together with Brandon and Jill, an American and Scot who were the best possible couple for us. The train was a wonderful first glance into Tibetan life- Tibetan women were wandering into our train car offering us Tibetan treats, such as yak cheese, sheep cheese, biscuits, and candies. They were wearing sheep skin dresses and had colorful ribbons tied into their very long braided hair, which was wrapped around their head. Dozens of women came over throughout the course of the day and we were very appreciative of their kindness. Halfway through the ride, all of the women started dancing and singing to Tibetan music, fillng the car with laughter and smiles. We have never experienced such a spectacle on a Chinese train before.
In addition to the cultural immersion, the train provided us with some of the most beautiful views I have ever seen. 80% of the train ride was over 4000 meters and the train also crossed over 3 mountain passes over 5,000 meters, the highest S and I have ever been.
To most Tibetans, they think of their province as a separate country from China- they have a different language, food, culture and religion than the 96% of percent of those on mainland China, which are the Han majority. In addition to all of this, they look completely different, with darker features, wind-burned cheeks and a Tibetan style of dress. When we got off the world's highest altitude train, we knew we were in a different world as our guide placed white prayer scarves around our necks and greeted us with the Tibetan "Tashi Delek".
The Tibetans are very religious and it is their tradition to make an anuual pilgrimmage to either Lhasa in the east or Mount Kailash in the west. Throughout our 4 days in Lhasa, we were surrounded by Tibetans from all over the province, circumambulating religious sites (called a kora) while spinning their prayer wheels, bowing and praying before the monasteries and offering gifts of melted yak butter to the temples within. We visited very beautiful religious sites, such as the Jokhang Temple, Potala Palace, Norbulingka Palace and the Ramoche Temple, but by far the best part was watching the intensity with which the Tibetans practiced their religion.
A stark contrast to the deeply spiritual pilgrims was the high police and army presence around the Tibetan quarter, especially around the religious sites. The army were posted in front of the Jokhang Temple and the other sites with their rifles cocked and were also patroling rooftops around the area. We were told that the number of armed forces strongly increased after the the riots in Tibet in March 2008. Beyond the intimidating presence of these officers of the law, there is also a strong control over what can be worshipped. Photos of the present or past Dalai Lamas are prohibited inside and outside the temples. All artifacts and artwork in the temples must be approved by the Chinese government before being installed. A Tibetan town's temple was recently burned because it was built without governemtn permission. Additionally, Tibetans worry for their safety when speaking about their struggles with the government. Most are strongly for their independence from China however, as the likelihood is close to zero, most hope for autonomy from the Chinese government. We met several English-speaking Tibetans who spoke of the Chinese government's desire to Han-ify the Tibetans. The government has offered financial incentives for the Han to migrate to the Tibetan region and open businesses. As a result, Tibetan businesses are pushed out for the Han to sell Tibetan wares to the pilgrims and tourists. Our guide told us that Lhasa was becoming very Chinese and told us he feared that his homeland would soon no longer be a place he and his community felt safe and comfortable. He told us that he wished to move to India but feared the consequences that the government would give to his family as punishment for his migration. Another woman we met told us that she felt "Tibet would no longer be Tibet anymore" as the Chinese are trying to squeeze out Tibetan culture and lifestyle. Our time in Lhasa was loaded with incredibly difficult and complicated conversations as we tried to understand the Tibetan perspective. It was very upsetting as we saw the tension and witnessed the suppression of Tibetan culture.

Chongqing

With a metropolitan area of 32 million people, Chongqing is probably the largest city you've never heard of. It sits on the scenic peninsula at the confluence of the Jialing and Yangtze rivers. The city is somewhat gritty, and certainly crowded, but we've been enjoying our time here. At this point we're pretty exhausted from our whirlwind tour of China so we've mostly been taking it easy here, walking around the downtown.

Tonight we are boarding a 24 hour train to Xining, capital of Qinghai province, basically in the physical dead center of China, although psychologically Qinghai is considered to be very deep into the wild west of the country. From there we will travel to south to Nepal, arriving in Kathmandu approximately on the 18th. In this part of the country the government requires foreigners to have a official guide, so we've found another couple to split costs with us on our guided tour. Our email access may or may not be restricted in this part of the country, so you may not hear from us until we reach Nepal.

Chengdu, Chongqing & Xining

Finally out of the Mountains

After our last three days of very long bus trips, we have decided that we will NEVER do this again. The morning we left Xiangcheng (day 2 of bus travel), we again could not get on the bus without some other driver making a joke about us, again causing the whole bus to erupt into laughter. It was not much more pleasant when the bus got going either. The bus was really crowded, dirty as people were throwing their leftover food on the floor and there was constant spitting and smoking. The bus ride was 14 hours and the seats were horribly uncomfortable. To top it all off, I was nauseous for the first four and a half hours of the trip. S was very supportive and the orange juice he got me made me feel a lot better. When we finally arrived in Kanding at 8 PM, we were surrounded by 15-20 touts outside the bus station trying to get us to stay in their hotel or wanting to drive us another 7 hours to Chengdu. We were tired and frustrated and, even as we followed one tout to a hotel, the others kept following us and slapping our bags to get our attention. The icing on the cake was the tout gave us a freezing cold room with no hot water. We woke up yesterday morning deciding that we needed to get out of the mountains and close this exhausting chapter of the trip. We got a 10AM bus to Chengdu and we were so relieved when we arrived in the Sichuan capital, swearing off long bus rides forever!
The last few days of traveling have felt more difficult than any other part of the trip. We both felt like people had been going out of their way to be mean or unhelpful to us. It felt very strange because we have found that the Chinese often go out of their way to help and are incredibly gracious. We brushed it off the first day but felt something strange was going on as we continued to see and feel it happening. When we were in Qiatou after Tiger Leaping Gorge, we met a French couple that told us that they had experienced hostility from the Chinese while they were traveling in the Northwest. Like the southwestern part we were just in, the northwest is home to a large percentage of one of China's ethnic communities. In both areas, there is a history of tension between the minority community and the Han Chinese. We believe that it is this tension that has been causing people to be sometimes unhelpful or aggressive towards us.
We are happy to now be in Chengdu and plan to spend a few days recovering from the long and difficult journey. Today marks day 94 of our trip and have been to 35 different cities/towns in China and 50 places in total. This morning, we got up early to visit the Giant Panda Breeding Research Base. We arrived during feeding time and so we saw the pandas during their most active part of the day, feasting on bamboo shoots and leaves. There were giant pandas as well as red pandas, which kind of look like raccoons, and we visited the nursery where were saw very small and adorable baby pandas. As Sichuan is home to spicy food, we had a fiery hotpot for lunch. As of now, we plan on spending 2 more nights here before heading off to Chongqing.

Sichuan Mountains

Stuck in the Southwestern Mountains

After Tiger Leaping Gorge (more on that later), S and I made the decision to travel overland via bus from northwestern Yunnan to Chendu in central Sichuan province. The book advertised this as a "5-6 day trip", involving several bus transfers, daily 10-hour bus rides and driving in the mountains at an average altitude at 3600 meters. It warned that sometimes the roads might be closed due to snow but we thought this journey would be a better way to see more of the country. The plan was to go from Shangri-La to Xiangcheng to Litang to Kanding to Chengdu. From our calcuations, we expected it to take no more than four days but we didn't really understand that this area is where you still see real examples of pure inefficiency.
We got on a bus yesterday morning at 7:30 AM from Shangri-La to Xiangcheng. The drive took the estimated 8 hours and we were surrounded by beautiful scenery the entire way- small ethnic villages and tremendous mountains covered in trees changing color along the winding dirt road we took. True to form, our driver was completely insane, chain-smoking the entire time and speeding around blind curves honking the car horn with all his might. It was legitimately scary as an accident would have sent the van tumbling down the side of a 3200-meter mountain. On top of that, we could not feel our toes as it was freezing cold until about noon. Even though we bought several more layers of clothes the night before, it still was not enough.
When we arrived in Xiangcheng, we tried to book tickets for the following morning to Litang but received conflicting information about whether or not the bus was still running to Litang and when the office opened. We decided to get up early the next day and try to get tickets for the 6AM bus. This morning, the driver kicked us off the bus after making a joke about us, making everyone erupt in laughter. He told us there were no buses to Litang, even though at least 5 people on the bus told us it was going to Litang. The nasty man told us to come back at 1PM to buy the ticket even though the ticket office was open. We went back to the "ticket office" at 12:30 and waited around with another 20 people for an hour and a half until the office finally opened at 2 o'clock. As the employee opened the gate, all the men rushed to the counter, shoving each other out of the way. They were waving money in her face and demanding tickets. I managed to squeeze my way through the mass of people as I knew the men would not shove me out of the way and was the second person to purchase tickets for the following morning. It did involve a fair amount of pushiness on my behalf but the idea of being stuck here for another day was painful. Tomorrow we head for Kanding, which was actually supposed to be the 3rd leg of our trip so we hope to get to Chengdu in two days and stay on schedule. By skipping Litang, we are avoiding what we have heard is the "most unhelpful bus station staff in the country". The bus ride should be at least 12 hours and we are driving at higher altitudes than before. Hopefully, our feet and bodies can endure the cold. We are very glad to have purchased all these warm clothes as we will be needing them over the next few weeks in China and Nepal.
Before this, we spent a day and half hiking Tiger Leaping Gorge, which definitely ranks as one of the best memories in China. It is 10-mile hike over a gorge that is sandwiched between two roughly 5,500-meter mountains. Over this part of the Yangtze River, there is a series of strong grapids that can be hiked down to. As tourist season is over, we basically had the entire hiking trail to ourselves. On our first day, we hiked up 900 meters on a winding trail known as "24 Bends" before arriving at a comfortable guesthouse with great food and where our room overlooked the mountains. On the second day, we hiked down to the middle gorge, which was swarmed with Chinese tourists, and then back up to Walnut Grove where the trail ends. The entire trail was picturesque. There were several waterfalls along the trail, locals tending to their mountain goats and the immensity of the mountains never stopped amazing me.
On another note, we were involved in minor car accident (no one was hurt) on our way to the gorge when our huge bus reared a small van cutting us off in the passing lane. It created quite a scene as all the locals came out of their houses and wanted to be eye witnesses for the police. S and I have already discussed numerous safety precautions to be taken should we be involved in future crashes. Hopefully, the drivers are less crazy in Nepal.

Tiger Leaping Gorge

China's Southwest

Kunming, Dali and Lijiang

Yangshuo was really amazing. Our last day there we hiked for 4 hours by the Li River, which was very picturesque. In town, there is a very popular light show directed by the guy who choreographed the 2008 Beijing Games' Opening Ceremony. When we looked into getting tickets the day before our hike, once the travel agent told us it was 130 yuan a ticket, we politely declined and started to walk away. She called us back and told us that she knew about some cheaper tickets for 50 yuan each. She vaguely explained to us that we would not be sitting with the show's audience but would be watching from a nearby mountain. She said a bus would take us to the show from the ticket office the following evening. It was pretty unclear but I really wanted to see the show so we got the tickets. When we showed up later on at the travel agent's office, there was no bus in sight and she was standing outside with two dudes on motorcycles. She told us to hop on and, as my driver zipped in and out of car traffic, I clutched on tight for my dear life. We passed the big tour buses parking by the show's entrance and went down several back alleys until we came to a big group of people standing by a well-lit desk. Steve's biker stopped and handed the woman in charge 50 yuan and she let us pass. We were led to a gate where there were many seats on a mountainside overlooking the left side of the stage. In the main seating section, there were about 30 Chinese people watching the show. Using his cell phone light, my biker led me down a path left of the "main seating area" to a "left wing" where there were two foldable chairs. We had our own special section and, though we were far away from the main stage, we enjoyed the show and the hilarity of the entire situation. Steve's biker stayed with us the whole time and kept informing us when a special part was coming up and insisting that we take photos. Before the show was fully over but after the main finale, the biker told us we had to leave and and we followed as all the other attendees on our side of the mountain were leaving too.

After that, we headed back to Guilin where we thought we were getting on a 6 hour train to Kunming in Yunnan province. A few hours into the ride, we realized we were really behind schedule and a nearby passenger informed us that the ride was actually 18 hours. We adjusted pretty quickly by purchasing some instant noodles.
Kunming was very beautiful. It was the first day in China that we had really clear blue skies and we spent the afternoon walking around the city. As it was Sunday, the city's largest temple was packed with worshippers and the nearby park had many music bands performing. The bands were so close to each other that each band was drowning the other nearby groups out.

From Kunming, we headed to the old town of Dali, a quiet city sandwiched in between Cang Shan mountain and Erhai Lake. The area around Dali is home to China's Bai ethnic minority. The older women wear traditional clothing, which I think looks very similar to ethnic clothing of the Quechua people in Peru. We walked through Dali's outdoor market where farmers were selling fruits, vegetables, chilis, old tires made into baskets, and traditional and trendy clothing. We even saw some dentistry being performed next to the fruit sellers. There were several dentists working in the market and I had to turn away when I thought a guy's tooth was about to get pulled. After the market, we took an afternoon trip to Xizhou, a nearby small town that has retained much of its old Bai architecture. All the children said "hello" to us as we walked by and we saw many farmers working on their land. We spent the next day climbing 1 km up Cang Shan, which had some amazing views of the entire area.
This morning, we left Dali for Lijiang, a 400 year-old town that has preserved most of its architecture. We spent the day walking through its cobbled-stoned alleys and had a leisurely dinner by the Yu River. We have one more day here before we hike to Tiger Leaping Gorge.

Rice Terraces and Limestone Peaks

Guilin and Dragon's Backbone Rice Terraces

We are now in Guanxi province in the South and have spent the last few days enjoying the gorgeous natural sights here. Two days ago we visited Dragon's Backbone Rice Terraces. They are high mountains about 2 hours away from the provincial capital, Guilin, that are covered in rice terraces. There are many paths through these mountains that connect the small villages where many minority Chinese groups reside. We stayed in the town Ping'an where the local women have very long hair that stretches to the floor. They tie it up using a combination of different wraps and buns that, from afar, look like a decorative hat. We spent our day there walking from Ping'an towards the next village, through the rice terraces, around lakes and over bridges. The sights were quite impressive and I am left feeling nothing but respect for the laborers who spent centuries constructing these terraces into the mountainside. Under one of the biggest bridges on our walk, we ran into a bunch of teenagers who were very friendly towards us. One guy proudly told us, "I am the Dong people" and invited us to a perfomance that evening in the village. The young girls were literally screaming "hello" to us at the top of their lungs and had black ash all over their faces. They were all smiling and laughing.
Yesterday, we spent 5 hours on three different buses to get to Yangshuo. It is very beautiful here and it is understandable why this is one of the biggest tourist spots in the south. The very small town, walkable in 5 minutes, runs by the Li River and is surrounded by breathtaking limestone peaks that jut out of the landscape. As it is low season, we are staying in a very nice Chinese business hotel for an affordable price.
The best part of Yangshuo is the surrounding area. Today, we rode our bikes 9 km to the Dragon Bridge, a 600 year old stone bridge over the Yulong River. As we were walking around the village, some woman approached us and asked, "Lunchie?" My first instinct was to say "no", as we had previously been continuously harassed to go for a bamboo boat ride and wanted to be left alone, but we were hungry and thought it was better than eating the unappetizing steamed corn offered by the vendors by the bridge. The woman led us down a few narrow alleys and through a straw storage room to a simple restaurant with a nice riverside view. We had an enjoyable lunch as we watched fisherman work in the river and heard the Chinese men on the bamboo rafts below us partake in a competitive card game. Trying to take a different path back, we rode through small rural villages on our way back to Yangshuo. Chickens and ducks crossed the path before us and little children poked their heads from their home to say "hello". Men and women carried bamboo satchels over their back filled with fruits and vegetables and bulls were led through the town by a rope strung through their nostrils. We were surrounded by rice farms and the amazing karst peaks in every direction. We were very lucky that today was such a gorgeous day as it has been raining for most of our time in China, making outdoor activities less desirable.
Tomorrow we are going for a 4-5 hour hike along a stretch of the Li River that is over a 1000 years old and supposed to be quite stunning. The following day, we will take an 8 hour train to Kunming in Yunnan province. We plan to spend a day or two there before heading to Dali Lijiang and Tiger Leaping Gorge.

Hong Kong and Macau

Hong Kong and Macau

S and I are excellent. We spent the last 4 days in Hong Kong and Macau. We spent our first two days exploring Hong Kong Island, which is the first modern city that we have seen that has not demolished many of its older parts. On the first day, we took a tram up to Victoria Peak for beautiful sights of the city and ate in the trendy SoHo district (the Mexican was disappointing), riding the world's longest escalator to get there. On the second day, we explored the city's traditional markets: dried seafood, traditional medicine, ginseng root, bird's nests (used for soup), antiques and fabric. Hong Kong is a beautiful city that certainly has a very different feel from mainland China. It goes beyond the English-named streets- the city is clean, efficient and diverse. There seems to be a coexistence between the old and the new in Hong Kong that feels natural. In Shanghai, the old parts of town were torn down to make way for big skyscrapers and, in Seoul, the old parts of town felt as though they were hidden away down back alleys. On our 3rd day in Hong Kong, we went to Hong Kong Disney World, which was something else. While it is not as big as its American counterparts, they had some decent live shows and S and I had our photos taken with Belle and Sleeping Beauty. Sleeping Beauty asked us what kingdom we were from. We spent the entire day there, eating Mickey Mouse-shaped ice cream and pizza, watching the parades, nighttime fireworks show and going on all of the rides. We enjoyed analyzing the "It's a Small World" ride, swirling around really fast on the teacups and Space Mountain, which got faster as the day went on. During our three nights in Hong Kong, we stayed in Kowloon, a very diverse neighborhood of Indians, Chinese and Africans who are all trying to sell you tailored suits, fake watches and purses. We stayed in Chungking Mansions, a huge complex in the center of the city known for its low-cost accommodations. We stayed in a closet room with no windows. It was certainly an experience. While it had AC, it would make the room freezing in 2 minutes, so we opted for the blistering heat instead of freezing to death. Also, we were able to find several bookstores that had great books about China, which are impossible to find on the mainland. We made sure to stock up.
We spend yesterday in Macau, the former Portuguese concession. The small city is known as the "Vegas of the East", with loads of casinos along the waterfront. There was beautiful colonial architecture and we spent the day walking through the side streets and visiting old churches, temples and government buildings. We had Portuguese for dinner.
We are now back on the mainland and planning on taking a train to Guilin this evening at 7PM. Crossing the border into China was refreshing. While we loved Hong Kong and Macau, there is something more exciting about the chaos on the mainland. Looking forward to explore the South over the next few weeks.

Have Uploaded Photos

Now that we are in Hong Kong, I have spent the last 6 hours uploading all of our China photos. They are all under previous blog entries. Hong Kong is great- too tired to write, as it is 2AM. Must get some sleep for a busy second day here.

The Joys of Golden Week

We had a crazy last 3 days. October 1st was the Communist Party's 60th anniversary. There was an all-day long celebration in Beijing that was on every single TV channel. There was a military parade, followed by speeches, songs, dances and quite an elaborate fireworks display. We watched parts of it on TV and I videotaped part of the military parade for later viewing.
On the 2nd, we couldn't book another night at our hotel because it is Golden Week here and couldn't find anything on the internet. We decided to walk around and, after turning down a side street, I walked into what I thought was a hotel. When I asked for a double room, she asked me if I wanted to buy it. When I told her it was for one night, the real estate agent told me to wait a moment. She called up a friend and she then told me that she had a room for two in a nearby apartment building for 150 yuan (24 dollars), which was much better than the 308Y some guy wanted to charge us at a dingy hotel up the block. We decided to take a look at it at and it was a really nice, large one bedroom in a huge Chinese apartment complex. We had a kitchen and big living room with a DVD player. It was the most wonderful treat. We spent the day at a nearby temple, having literally about 15 different groups of people ask to have their photo taken with us and another 10 take photos of us as they walked by. After that, we found a very cheap DVD shop and bought two to take home. We ordered in dinner and after spending 30 minutes fiddling with the broken DVD player, we got it to work. We had a very relaxing night and it was nice to stay in a place that felt like a home.
As a side note, I have recently become obsessed with the bubble tea drinks here. Yesterday, the 3rd, we took the bus to Yongding to see the roundhouses, which are either round or square, and were designed as a fortress and apartment building in one. They are huge and some can house up to 100 people. On the bus ride there, this man from Fuzhou started talking to us and told us he could get us into the roundhouses for free if we followed him. He was traveling with his wife and daughter to his parents' home for the mooncake festival, which was that day. Summarized nicely by Wikipedia, the mooncake festival is one of the few most important holidays in the Chinese calendar and is a legal holiday. Farmers celebrate the end of the summer harvesting season on this date. Traditionally on this day, Chinese family members and friends will gather to admire the bright mid-autumn harvest moon, and eat moon cakes and pomelos together. When we approached the entrance gate to the tulou town of Liulian, all the security guards were telling him that we needed to buy a ticket. He kept saying we were his friends but the security guards ignored him. After trying to sneak us in through back entrances and being caught everytime, we wound up buying the ticket and then he invited us to his home for the mooncake festival and said we could sleep in his family's tulou. His family was very generous to us. They gave us lots of fruit and snacks when we arrived. His daughter and her younger male cousin took us on a tour of the tulous. Keep in mind, they hardly spoke any English. We had a grand feast for dinner, with about 15 different vegetable and meat dishes on the table. The guy kept clanging my beer cup and saying,"Gan bei" and kept telling me to finish my cup. After I finished the not-so-cold glass, he would refill it and shout "Gan bei" again. After the 3rd glass, I covered my cup so he could not refill it but he poured through my fingers. The 4th time, I filled my empty cup with Sprite and he left me alone. After dinner, we played cards for hours and thanked them profusely for their generosity. We spent the night in one of their rooms in the tulou.
The next morning, we ate breakfast with them and they said they would take us to the bus station. Before the guy flagged down a bus for us to Longyan, he gave us an extensive tour of the tulous.
Now in Longyan, we are heading to Guangzhou this evening. As it is the national holiday, we could not book a seat on this evening's train. So, we have 9-hour standing tickets on the 11:45 PM train. S is excited about the train. I think it will be brutally painful but it will certainly be an adventure.

Xiamen and Liulian, Yongding

Heading to Xiamen

S and I decided to spend an extra day in Hangzhou. It is a beautiful city that has the tremendous West Lake in the center. It is quite a sight and we spent the whole day walking around it yesterday. Today, we spent many hours looking through the guide book and figuring out what the next two months will look like. We had originally planned to head to rural towns just south of Hangzhou and take 3 days to get down to the southern coast but today we made the radical decision decision to change our plans and to just head straight down. We were warned this afternoon that finding a train would be impossible, as October 1st marks the 60th anniversary of Communist China and begins the national 7-day holiday. Luckily enough, tomorrow morning we will get on a 22- hour train to Xiamen in Fujian province. We have plenty of reading material, a deck of cards and intend to head to Carrefour tonight to stock up on water, noodles, fruit, bread and peanut butter. I am very excited for this train ride experience although I am sure there will be points of boredom. We plan to stay in Xiamen for a day, visit the roundhouses in rural Yongding county, then make our way to Guangzhou, Hong Kong, then Macau. As we are traveling during the busiest vacation time of the year, our plans might be subject to change but we are willing to roll with it. If this evening is any indication, it will take about an hour of research to find a hotel within our price range. Looking forward to the challenge!

Suzhou and Hangzhou

Venice of the East

We are now is Suzhou, the "Venice of the East", which is a canal town about an hour outside of Shanghai. It is very beautiful and a nice break from the big city lights. Last night, we took a walk around the city and the canals and bridges were illuminated- very romantic. Also, in some of these public spaces along our walk, older women were performing these simple choreographed dances to music blasting from a boombox. A man rollerblading by us told us the women do this frequently "for healthy". Today we took a bus out to a smaller canal town Luzhi this morning and it was very picturesque with cobble-stoned streets, quiet alleyways and aging canal boats. We ate lunch in the modern part of town and, as I followed S out of the restaurant, he was stopped by 3 of the waitresses and they all posed for pictures with him. They kept giggling and showing him the pictures. Once they saw me, they took one with me but then went back and took several more with S. This evening we are having dinner with a girl ShuLu from Suzhou that we met through couchsurfing.
We had an excellent time in Shanghai and our hostesses Sarah and Becky were so wonderful . As a thank you for hosting us, we took them to this delicious vegetarian restaurant where they tried their first fake meat dishes. As we left their apartment, they gave us the little blue mascot for the Shanghai Expo 2010. The Shanghainese have a lot of pride about the upcoming expo- they say it is the 2nd most important world event after the Olympics. There are posters about the expo and pictures of blue man Hei Lu is everywhere. What they don't realize is that nobody cares or knows about the expo. Sarah and Becky say that all of their schools have countdowns to the event posted and the kids are working on projects about the expo.
Tomorrow we head to Hangzhou where we will visit the West Lake, a popular tourist destination for the Chinese, and meet some couchsurfers for coffee.

Shanghai

Yesterday afternoon S and I arrived in Shanghai after taking the morning train from Nanjing. We quickly dropped our bags off at the left luggage counter and took the train into the city center. We had lunch at a delicious vegetarian restaurant where we ordered lots of fake meat. We checked out the free Shanghai Museum, which had great exhibits on painting and jade. I skipped the gallery with roof tiles- can't look at roof tiles anymore, so sick of them. It is refreshing to be in a really big, modern city where you can get any type of food you want. We are staying with two English ladies who we met through couchsurfing named Sarah and Becky. They are our age and have spent the last 8 months living in Shanghai teaching English and learning some Mandarin. They are really friendly and have opened their homes to us.

Today we left the house at 7AM when the girls left for work. We walked through Renmin (People) Square and the pedestrian commercial strip East Nanjing Road. We stopped into a McDonald's for some time to look through the Shanghai tour books our hosts lent to us during our stay. I never thought I would say this, but McD's is a great place to go when you need to kill time because it is really clean and quiet. As we were looking through the book, we saw cute, young Chinese girls getting trained as workers. They were lined up in a row next to the counter and, as the manager walked by them, they all said, "Good morning!" They really freaked out the first Westerners that walked through their line. After that, we walked through the Bund to see all of 1920-30 style buildings. It looks like NYC's downtown financial district. When we sat down for a rest, we met a nice Chinese man, whose English name is Fred Li. I was interested in talking to him because he was dressed and kind of looked like my grandfather Paco- thin frame, big glasses, high-waisted pants. He was also a gentle soul. He told us that he wanted to be an engineer but had to become an accountant. He was a vegetarian and told us he thought it was just common sense. At that point, S got really interested in the conversation.

We found a great Sichuanese restaurant (spicy) to get some noodles and, on our way to this internet cafe, we met this artist who tried to scam us. He asked us if we were Jewish and, when we said no, he said that Jewish people were very smart people. He perked up when S said he worked at a bank. He kept asking us if we liked art and said his art was on display just across the street. When we said we needed to meet a friend, he became very persistent and kept repeating, "Come with me. 5 Minutes! You like to buy art?" We are going to try to see an acrobatics show while here and will spend tomorrow wandering through the French Concession and checking out some modern art.

Shanghai

Kind Employees at McDonald's

Last night, S and I got on the 9:30 overnight train from Kaifeng to Nanjing. Having spent the last 3 days in smaller cities and getting harmless constant stares and friendly "hellos" from everyone we walked by, I was excited to be in a big city again and not stick out as much. (It is exhausting to have people staring at you all the time and feel that you have to be friendly to all of them.) We arrived into Nanjing at 4:30 AM and jumped in a cab to the Fuzi Temple area, which is where a lot of hostels and hotels, according to Lonely Planet, are located. We normally don't like to stay places recommended in the guide book because they are more expensive and we want to see China ourselves, not through Lonely Planet's eyes. But it was too early and dark to be picky about accommodations. The cabbie dropped us off in front of some hotels, which were out of our price range so we started to use the guide book's recommendations. Of course, the directions and the map in the book were awful and we get lost and had no idea where the hostels were. The only thing open that early in the morning was a 24-hour McDonald's. We decided to go in and ask the employees for a particular street. Shortly after we asked the cashier, he called to his fellow employees in the back and, in a matter of moments, there are 4 guys looking at our guide book trying to help us. The manager sleeping in the corner also got up and started overseeing the matter. One of the guys, named Ming, asked us in English where we wanted to go. We pointed to a hostel in the book and he said he would call the hostel. After a several minute conversation on his cell phone, Ming told us to follow him. With the manager trailing behind us supervising the escort, the kind McDonald's employee led us on a 10-minute walk to our hostel and told us where we could get good veggie dumplings that S and I have become obsessed with. As we stopped in front of the hostel, Ming wrote down his phone number in my notepad and told us to call him if we had anymore questions. We can't see the rooms yet and so we are using their internet until 8AM.

Nanjing

Stories from Smaller Cities

We have spent the last 3 days in Sanmenxia, Luoyang and Kaifeng, smaller Chinese cities in Henan province that are not as touristed as some of the other places we have been.

On the train from Xi'an to Sanmenxia, an older couple walked over to our empty side of the car and started talking to us in Chinese. When we said we did not understand, which is one of the 3 things I know how to confidently say, the man and his wife sat down next to us and, for the next 3 hours, talked with us and tried to teach us Mandarin.

When we arrived in Sanmenxia, a city not in the guide book, we first tried to find accommodations by the train station. We figured we could pay a lot less, around 60-80 yuan (9-11 dollars), because the area did not have any tourists, The first room we were showed in one hotel was 120 yuan. It had 2 twin beds and a private toilet and shower. There were cheaper rooms but the manager said we could not stay in them. We thought we could do better than 120. At the second hotel, the room we were shown was 40 yuan. We were told there was no shower and, when I asked where the toilet was, she led us to an alley that was full of bricks and pointed down the alley. There didn't seem to be anything on the other side and the alley did not smell pretty. That was a deal breaker. At the third hotel, the room was bigger even though it looked a little dirty. We were told the shower was on the third floor and, though the bathroom looked like it had not been cleaned in months, we just decided to take it for 50 yuan (7 US dollars). Using that bathroom was a traumatizing experience and it certainly made us realize that we do have certain standards and semi- clean toilets is one of them.

On the train from Sanmenxia to Luoyang, the guy sitting next to us traded seats with a girl who spoke some, but very little, English. Her name was Cao Pei Pei and she was 23 years old. After chatting for a few minutes, she recommended a cheap and clean hotel that was in our price range. When we learned it wasn't close to the city center, we declined the offer. A few minutes later, she told us to move our plans for the day to tomorrow and invited us to her house. She seemed to be saying that her mother would cook for us and we could spend the night. S and I were not so sure but she was really friendly and decided that it might be cool to get a home-cooked meal. We got on the bus with her and she said she was calling her mother. After she made a few phone calls, she pointed to some blue and red building up ahead. We got off the bus and she said it was the hotel. As we couldn't really communicate that well with her, I assumed there had been a change of plans and that we would drop our bags off at the hotel and then head to her house. But something seemed weird. She walked into the hotel like she owned the place and got us a nice room in this business hotel for 50% off the rack rate. After she walked us to our room, she gave me a hug and said " bye bye" and left. We were very confused and we could only assume that her parents completely rejected her plans to hang out and, due to her limited English and wanting to save face, she was too embarrassed to say anything. We imagined the conversation went something like this, "No, you cannot bring over two American strangers that you met on the train. And I will not come home after a long day of work and cook for them and they most certainly cannot stay at our house. We don't even know them. What are you crazy?"

At the Longmen Caves in Luoyang, which was quite a sight yet overpriced, S and I decided to take a break and sat down by the river. There was some commotion behind us and, when I looked over, a man was holding his baby close to the ground and the baby was going to the bathroom in the street. They cleaned his behind with baby wipes, and walked on. This is a common sight in China as babies here don't wear diapers. There are slits in their pants that open from below the belly button to the top of their behinds. These are very common until the children are potty trained. We have only seen one diaper on a baby in our 3 and a half weeks in China. The child is just taught to tell the parents when they need to go to the bathroom and it happens, sometimes in public.

Kaifeng had an amazing night market. There were hundreds of stalls on the street, selling kebabs, bread, dumplings, soups, dessert and other snacks that we did not recognize. Most of the stalls were run by Muslims and they were selling kebabs with every type of meat, meat parts, fish and veggies you could imagine. The grossest looking kebab was one with bugs that looked like cockroaches on it. S and I ate dinner there one night, paying about $2 for the two of us- $1.15 for a plate of 35 veggie gyoza, 45 cents for a loaf of bread, and 40 cents for block of peanut brittle. We befriended the people who sold us the bread and went back several times to get more the following day. They were always veyr happy to see us.

Sanmenxia, Luoyang, Kaifeng

Taking It Easy

After a difficult overnight train from Pingyao on to Xi'an Thursday night, with the person in the bunk below me snoring and the music blasting from the train speakers from 6AM on, I have been feeling under the weather, with a stuffy nose and a slight sore throat. With the excitement of being in a new place, I ignored my sickness and S and I explored the city on our first day here, visiting the city's Great Mosque and eating in the Muslim Quarter. We have been eating lots of noodles, as they are the staple in this province. While we have been ordering spicy food, the taste here has been different from anywhere else we have been so far. It is more hot than spicy, with the heat leaving a numbing sensation in your mouth. The heat, I think, is closer to what you would get in a hot Indian curry. We are staying at a youth hostel and, at night, the restaurant area turns into a lively bar full of locals pounding down beers, smoking lots of cigarettes and playing drinking games. It also seems to be where some people from the immigrant African community come to play pool and drink also. It makes for an interesting scene and everyone here seems to know each other. Yesterday, we ventured outside the city and visited the Army of the Terracotta Soldiers, which is a 2200 year old tomb that houses over 8,000 terracotta soldiers, horses and chariots in army formation. It was built by the first unifier of China and is just about 2km from his tomb. The tomb took several decades to prepare by hundreds of laborers in 3rd Century BC and was built to protect the Chinese leader in his death. Interestingly enough, there were no historical documents of this tomb's construction or its existence so it was accidentally discovered by farmers building a well in the mid 1970's. There are 3 pits that have been excavated, with work still being done on the 2nd largest tomb. The largest tomb is quite remarkable, with rows and rows of soldiers in army stance protecting the tomb's entrance, followed by elaborate horse chariots. All the soldiers, horses and weapons are quite life-like and many of the soldiers have different facial expressions. Worth a look to check out images online. Today, I am enjoying doing absolutely nothing. I have spent considerable time on the internet and am thinking of renting a movie and doing some reading. I need to listen to my body and take it easy so I can get over this cold. I am sad not to be out exploring but I think this is what my body needs. S has been bringing me food in the room and being a good caretaker. This afternoon he is off to the Shaanxi History Museum, one of China's best museums, and then taking care of our train reservations for tomorrow. We continue to run into the same travelers at every place we stop and are getting a little tired of feeling like we are on the tourist trail. Tomorrow, en route to Luoyang, we will spend the day and night at a city that is not recommended in the guide book, Sanmexia. There aren't any sights there but we want to just check out a city that is not used to getting tourists and see what happens. If all goes well, we are going to try to do a lot more of this.

Xi'an