Everest (a.k.a Aunt Jamima)

After a week of RnR in Pokhara, Ryan and I headed to Sagarmatha National
Park, which contains Mount Everest. At 8900 meters, it sit well above
most of the mountains in the area, with exception to its direct
neighbor, Lohtse. The plan go on a route which crosses three large
mountain passes, everest base camp beig merely an off shoot. Although
we are fast hikers, partly due to our training on Annapurna but also
just because we tend to push it as hard as we can inspite of
ourselves, it turned out to much to do within our time constraint. We
elected to walk into Lukla, rather than fly in. Only 5% of trekkers do
this, because it is normally a 8-10 day hike full of massive ups and
downs, the biggest going over the top of a 3500 meter pass. It took us
5 days. Worn out and sore all over we took a rest day in Lukla, and
re-evaluated our plans. The problem was, due to cloud cover, getting a
flight back to kathmandu from Lukla was a sketchy proposition, people
can wait anywhere up to 2 weeks for a flight this time of year. With
impending visa due dates, and future plans, we wouldn't have much time
to wait around or a plane to take off, because if we were to wait to
long, our window for walking out (5 days) would close fast. Our plans
settled down to Everest base camp, Cho la pass (5300 meters of a
glacier), and Gokyo ri (a panorama view of all the mountains in the
region). It took us about 8 days to make all this happen, because of
our pace and acclimitization. Unfortunately a lot of the time was
spent with cloud cover, but that made the few clear days all the more
special. Everest base camp was more of a milestone, as you cant see
everest from that point. Cho la pass was likely one of the more
dangerous things I have ever done. The glacier was in full melt mode,
it was raining/snowing, falling rocks and ice, boulders that move
around while you walk over them, on top of the fact we were close to
18000 feet and 4 hours away from the last shack, in weather that no
helicopter would dare. By the time we made to the actual pass,
exhausted, wet and oxygen deprived, we found that the glacier had
melted away from the rock leaving a pool of ice water, a death pit if
you will. Surrounded by a thick cloud, we made the somewhat stupid
decision to make a dangerous route up the side of the glacier and over
a steep section where a fall meant a slide into the pool of death.
Ryan slipped on this section and had to lung toward the exposed rock
we were crawling over, luckily he was able to grab it with one hand.
This path lead to a cliff like rock face, with a small section that
could we just barely climb/jump down in sections. It wasn't until
after that we realized how crazy we were. We made it down to the next
guest house after a 14 hour day.

The next day we walked two hours in the wrong direction, and ended up
in an abandoned village, except for one woman to cooked us rice and
the. led us in the correct direction. Up until this point we had not
seen a glimpse of everest, the sole purpose of the entire trip, and it
was weighing on us heavily. Finally, with some incredible luck, we
made it up to the top of Gokyo ri around sunrise, just in time for a
perfect clearing in the weather, and we got an incredible view of
everest and full 360 view of the mountain range.

After all that we got a flight out from Lukla the day after we arrived, perfect.

annapurna circuit

The annapurna circuit trek was amazing. The pictures are only the tip of the iceberg, and dot really show the amazing scenerey we experienced over the coarse of walking 15 days. i met up with a friend that i had met in southern India, as we were both headed for Nepal, and it has been nice to have someone to do the treck with. We went from lush tropical valleys to barren passes up at 18,000 feet. Acclimatizing was not too much of a problem, as we took it at a reasonable pace, neither Of us had any real problem other than occasional headaches. We did learn that a person died on the high pass a few days before us, because he tried to go too fast. On the way down we witnessed the wreckage from a plane that crashed at Jomsom airport a couple weeks before, the pieces were all over the mountain. In the past i have complained about bus ride in india, but they have absolutely nothing on nepal. On these buses, I cant sit down, because there is literally not enough space for my legs, cant stand up, because my shoulders touch the ceiling, and the road does everything it can to keep you airborn, or smashing your head on some horribly placed object next to you. I end up either sitting in the isle with bags and farm product, standing in the door or trying to lean on something, for the 4-8 hour rides. On one particularly horrible ride, as we were packed in full enough that you cant move anything but your arms, I had no less than 5 people becoming sick around me, and spent most of the ride passing out and puke bags and then throwing filled ones out the door, giving away my own stash of tissues, and trying prevent this one woman from throwing up on my backpack more than she already had. We finally got to Pokhara, and relaxed for 3-4 days, before heading back to kathmandu. Yesterday I arrived in Lukla, which is home to the most dangerous airport in the world. This is the one that most people fly in in order to trek to or climp everest. My friend Ryan and I elected to walk in. The walk was full of excruciating ups and downs, which we did in 5 days, rather than the recommended 7-10. So far it has been cloudy, as the monsoon is rolling in, though still extremely beautiful, better than annapurna in my opinion. It is mind-blowing to be above 10,000 feet and in the clouds, surrounded by rainforest, walking past ancient looking stupa's and temples. Today we head out for another 15 days, we will go to everest base camp and some other peaks, although there is a pretty constant cloud cover, it stays at a lower elevation, so in a couple days we will be above the cliud layer, and should get some good views of everest

Well, I made it through most of the Vipassana. I say most because on the second to last day I came down with an extreme case of food poisoning. I had a horrible fever for an evening, and the next day began purging all the liquid in my body. I could not drink anything as it would immediately come back up, and I became so dehydrated I nearly passed out in the bathroom, although out of necessity, in order to maintain consciousness,  I was sprawled out on the floor. Lucky for me, a very nice guy from New Zealand dragged me to the hospital at 11 at night via an hour long bumpy rick-shaw tour, and stayed with me until I was better. Barely coherent I was put on an IV and drugged up for two days in the hospital. After that each of us had some time to kill, so we went over to a Tibetan monastery area and hung out in one of the most peaceful areas that I have ever been, while in India.

Unfortunately this was a horrific ending to my vipassana experience, and I cant yet think about the vipassana without connecting it with the sickness. Although the meditation retreat was very, very challenging, both physically and mentally, I believe it was a good experience. Although I can't quite say that I am ready to go back for another round yet. My knees felt ten years older, but I assume that had I made it through the entire ten days I would have come out in an extremely peaceful state and with a knew look at myself and that around me. 

After all I regained most of my strength I took a bus to Delhi and stayed for two whole days, despite what people say about the city. I actually found it a very interesting place, I think what ruins it for a lot of people is that it is the first place many people see on they're trip to India, and they have not become desensitized to all the crazyness. By now I have learned to ignore or see past much of the shit and noise, and I quite enjoyed my time in Delhi. They have an amazing metro system by the way, which at times can be very crowded, but works with amazing efficiency.

On the 10th of may I took a flight to Kathmandu, and after meeting up with a friend I met at the ashram, have been getting all the gear together to make a couple of treks. The plan is to trek for the next 5 weeks or so. We will start with the the Annapurna circuit trek tomorrow, which will take something like 17 days, and hit a high altitude of 18,00 feet. After this we will go for the Everest base camp trek, which may be a little faster due to our being acclimatized.

Below is a picture of street widening measures, basically they just come by and scrap off the entire front part of peoples buildings.

Me with my huge basket of drugs.

Pictures for a Tibetan monastery that I stayed at while I was recuperating. 

been busy

So I have been on the move recently. About 10 days ago I was in the very south of India, now I am close to Nepal. It started with a 44 hour train ride to Mumbai, in normal sleeper class, which is dirty how and crowded. During the day, people get on and invade all your space, and its not until 9pm that you get to lay down on your bed. The train went all the way to the east coast and then back to Mumbai, this is what happens when you do thing last minute in India. Most of the time, trains are booked months in advance, so getting tickets is an exercise in luck and timing. The day before the train goes, a bunch of cancellations occur and you have to hope you can get into the train station early enough to grab a ticket...

I went straight for Mumbai in order to catch a 4 day paragliding class. This was really fun, although bad weather rolled in which cut my class short, I was able to learn how to handle the wing on the ground and do some short "bunny hop" flights. The third day was too dangerous for beginners so I got a tandem flight, including some stomach churning acrobatics.

I booked a ticket for Dehradun which is the state Uttarakhand, from Pune. The early ending of my class allowed me enough time to visit my fried Aparna in Panchgani, which is a couple hours from Pune. We had been having a tough time scheduling a time to meet up, I ended up just showing up and saying suprise. This worked out great, I got a tour of where she works and we went and spent a day doing some sight seeing. I stayed in cool place called "eco-camp" which was basically a setup of army style tents right on the edge of cliff. It was a lucky find, most of the hotels were really expensive (well, in terms of normal prices here in India). After a few enquires at the expensive places I was finally directed to eco camp and spent about a fifth of what I would have. I learned that many people come to stay for months just to go paragliding, as it is right on the cliff, there is a nice little launch area.

I was lucky enough to be leaving back to Pune at the same time as one of Aparna's co-workers, so I had some good company for the trip. My flight wasn't until 6am the next morning and I was planning on spending 10 hours in the airport. He ended up inviting me to his house for dinner, which was Amazing. His whole family was there and they welcomed me and kept heaping food onto my plate until I couldn't eat anymore. I was planning on taking a rickshaw to the airport after dinner, but they wouldn't hear of it and set me up a place to sleep and drove me to the airport in the morning.

Yesterday I got into Dehradun, and will be attending a Vipassana, which is a 10-day meditation retreat. Basically it's this: No talking, no reading, no phones, no exercise, no nothing exept what you and your brain and guided meditation, 10 hours a day, starting at 4am. I read about it in a book at some point and got fixed to the idea, still unsure why, but I decided I must try it. I have talked to a handful of people who have done it.  I am more than a little scared, as it is supposed to be extremely challanging, and many people dont make it through. It is supposed to be an amazing experience and enlightening experience and every person I talked has said it was one of the best things they have ever done. Hope I can last.

Silence for 10 days starting now. Later.

Fort Cochin and Sivananda Ashram

After Munnar I took a public bus back towards the west coast to a city called Fort Cochin, which is an old europian colonial area in the state of Kerala in southern India. It was a wonderful break from normal India, clean, quiet, good food and solid buildings. I spent a few nights there just relaxing, drinking coffee, and trying to plan my next move.

I met someone who convinced me to go to an Ashram further south. I was hoping for some inspiration and interesting ideas, and it just fell in my lap. So all my other plans went out the window and I hoped on a train the next morning. It was about 4 hours of yoga each day, vegetarian food, some meditation and other things. It was a great experience and I feel in amazing shape physically and mentally. I stayed an entire week. Tomorrow morning I will get on a 44 hour train ride to Mumbai, which will be hell, the ticket cost me about 10 dollars...couldn't get anything better on short notice.

No pics i've been lazy, later.

Munnar

I took about 6 hours of public buses from Allephy to Munnar. I was
told that Munnar is the biggest tea planation in india, it is about
30,000 hectares, up around the 6000ft elevation in the western Ghats.
The bus's to and from Munnar were the most tiring bus rides I have
been on. You are on flat bench seats, packed with people, as the bus
takes the winding roads like a rally driver. You spend the whole time
holding yourself from sliding back and forth on the high speed turns.
The plants are as much as 120 years old, they have been maintained and
picked since the plantation started sometime in the late 1800's. Much
of the local community are pickers, who are housed by the plantations
and are paid by what they pick. Only the new leaves are plucked, and
of these there are 4 different quality levels, which are used for
making different types of tea.

Who wears bushy fox tails pinned to they're ass, outside of Portland

Indian beer tastes like they use water straight from the source, which by the way, does not mean rocky mountain fresh.

Im writing from a smokey bar straight out of what my tv i

imagination says is the 50's. Low light, dark wood, marble floor

tilling, etched glass and moody paintings. It's like an episode from

mad men, except replace the suited men with indians in collared shirts

and Lungi's.

Kanyukamari was a bit of a disappointment for me, I half expected it

but I went anyway, and spent two nights for no good reason. Kanyukamari
is at the southern most point in India, where you

can see the sunrise and sunset at the same location, of which i saw

neither. First morning the clouds where in the way, the second

morning, I assumed that the clouds were in the way rather than

checking. Now, normally here in India i have the strange ability to

leap out of bed early in the morning, without alarm clock, all bright

eyed and bushy tailed. Kanyumakari was the kryptonite to my newly

attained super power. According to a random Indian guy ( Im not going

to bother with checking anything, just repeating a

conversation), Tamil Nadu, which is the state i was in, is one of the poorest

in India. They have 12 hours of power cuts through out the day.

According to him, Ford or other big international companies come in

and steal all the power for they're factories, and since the politicians are corrupt, it

stays that way. They get they're power from a mix of nuclear and wind

farms. This means that instead of making due without power, everybody

and they're mother have generators, included the hotel i stayed in (

i think this is only in the tourist/busy areas). The noise

of muffled air-gas mixture explosions going on periodically through

out the night, can really start driving you crazy.

So this guy had on a large bushy

tail hanging behind him, you may have seen something like this before,

he was a tourists. The indians were shocked and confused, and every

person touched it and asked what it was, as if you need more attention

as a visitor. I just thought he should keep the weird at home, India has enough

of its own.

After kanyukamari i took the train back north to Kollam, I like trains far better

than the bus, until they get so packed that people are almost sitting on

your lap and shoulders. There was definitely one sitting on my feet,

and another leaning on me. When I got off in Kollum I decided to just

start walking, see what i could get myself into. After careful

reconstruction, my path looked something like this...

Three or so hours later I found my self at an unknown beach. Which had some

form of tourism, 10 years ago, now all that is left were skeleton buildings.

Normally you get inquisitive looks from locals, on my walk towards the beach i got a lot, i guess now I should

have read them as puzzled. I got to the water and sat on a wall, and

people started trickling over to talk to me. Before i knew it I had a

group of crazy, older guys had surrounding me with talk of what am i

doing, are you alone! am I married, how do you like the beach and can

we be friends. They were, on the scale of sober to fully inebriated, sweaty

and slow eyed. Next thing I knew they were driving me around, poorly,

in they're tuktuk crammed with 6, looking for a place for me to stay.

We were driving past places and turning around twice, climbing over

walls, and banging on doors, as they lead me around, attempting to hold hands

with me. By now I had cold feet, and the one place we found that i could stay the night wanted far

too much, to my satisfaction, giving me an excuse to catch the next

ride back to the city. This was of coarse a difficult idea to propose

to them, and my only savior was one of the younger guys was a very

sweet, empathetic well spoken and very sober man. He asked, you must

be a little uncomfortable, to which i nodded, and he guided me through

the storm, out. But not after the mobb, well meaning for sure, had me

sitting in three separate tuktuks as they bargained the cheapest ride

for me. Fun times, good memories.

So i got back the city, booked a night at a hotel, got some food and

went to sleep. Next morning (today) i booked a backwater boat ride to

Allephy. This was an 8 hour ride on the famous backwaters. The

backwaters are natural inlets from the sea which create a network of

waterways in the land near the coast. I travelled some 90km north,

occasionally powering over rocks and low water areas. The scenery was

very interesting, lots of small villages and fishermen in they're

gondola type boats. The edges were lined with palm and mango trees,

and I saw many egrets, eagles, king fishers and some mammal creatures,

very cool trip.

Few pics from Hampi and Holi aftermath

Hampi - Gokarna - Bangalore - Mysore - Varkela

The map shows my trip so far, last post I was in Hampi.

I mentioned that we were in Hampi for the Holi festival, which was awesome, it was an all out war with powdered and liquid dye. The main street was filled with people covered in colors from head to toe, drums and dancing. 

From Hampi we took a sleeper bus to Gokarna. The bus arrived at 3am, and with nothing else to do we ended up sleeping on the beach until guest houses started to open up. 

Bangalore was a busy mess, it was the point at which I realized that I am definitely in India. One of my travel companions ended up getting a small operation on an injury that she had been dealing with for a month or so. After this she took a flight home from Bangalore and the other guy, Alex, and I went to Mysore for a day, and then to Varkala beach.

Alex left for Germany yesterday, so now I am off on my own to Kanyakumari, the southern most point in India, where you can watch the sunrise and sunset from the same location.

What happens when you give one monkey a piece of banana.

In Palolem, the group I have been traveling with stayed next door to an older couple from Finland. They were very hard to understand. Partially language barrier, but I they were also quite eccentric. Most of our extended conversations were a mix of bewilderment and trying not to laugh. The guy would tell us stories about the 15 times he has been in jail for various drug convictions. Below is one of the more memorable moments.

Finish Guy: Incoherent sentence, vaguely something about India.
German Guy: "Im sorry, what?"
Finish Guy: "I've had a lot of trips"
German Guy: "To India?"
Finish Guy: "No LSD"

Oh yeah, so when you throw a piece of banana to a monkey on the street, from the second floor. Four more materialize out of nowhere and come screaming up towards you for more. Don't do it, its scary.

I am on my second day in Hampi, after taking a sleeper through the night. Sleeper buses in India are a bit like riding a bull while laying on your back. Its generally no fun, cant stretch out, its hot, there is 3000 pointless speed bumps on a 9 hour ride, and if you are not holding on, you can go rolling off the side of the bed when the driver decides to swerve around someone in passing.  The speed bumps send you head banging into the wall when the front, second and thirds sets of wheels go over.

Today was Holi, a big day of fest, which happens in a giant dye powder/water fight, which takes place all over the city. I would like to post pictures, but am not allowed to in this particular internet establishment. Ill try later.

cockroaches, cold showers and burning trash

Cold showers aren't bad when its hot as hell, and the cockroaches keep
to themselves. Here they deal with they're trash by burning it in
random piles usually early in the morning. Its odd if you wake up
early for some fresh air but instead you are surrounded by tiny smoke
stacks
and a haze of something you dont want to think about. Then a big ugly
cow comes to chomp on on whats left of the rubble.
They have had a hindu festival called Holi going on for the last few days. Other than drums and parades and
throwing colors, it also involves enormous amounts of fireworks at any
hour, random street closures, and not serving alcohol. Yesterday i was
sitting having some coffee in the morning with my back to the street,
and someone set off a 20 second string of large firecrackers right
behind me. Something like "the best part of waking up..." popped into
my head.

I am leaving for Hampi today with a guy and girl from Germany. Its a
nine hour bus ride through the night, we get in at 7am the morning to
start looking for a place to stay.

squat toilets and loose cows

Sorry for the delay. I arrived in Goa today after 4 flights and 30 or
so hours. After an hour ride from the airport, all i can say is that
driving in india seems to be a full on war, and it makes mario kart
seem like what it is, a kids game. The "oh shit" handle on the
passenger side if the taxi cab was extremely worn out. The driver
would squeeze between a moped with a family on it, and a truck coming
the other way, missing each by inches while driving on the dividing
line.

The first place that i stayed was Anjuna beach for which i booked 4
nights in a dorm, costing me 800 rupees, about 16 dollars.

Currently in the state of Goa there is a government election going on.
For some reason this means most places close around 11, so there is
not much of a night life. It also means there a lot of police
(compared to normal) roaming around.

So far, traveling alone has been anything but. I have found that it
actually takes more work be alone. In Anjuna I spent time with a cool
group of people that were at the guest house i stayed in. Two days ago
I met a group from Germany and we took public buses for about 70 km to
palolem beach. At about 10-30 rupees per bus it cost less than two
dollars. when you get to your destination. All you have to do is start
wandering around close to the beach and you find a room and pay 150
rupees(1.5 dollars) a night.

Italy

While Hanna was in Denmark we bought some cheap tickets to Italy and spent a week road tripping. Driving in Italy was a bit of a shock, the closest comparison I can make is that its like Mario Cart. There are pretty much no rules, it took a while to get used to but eventually I was racing along with the maniacal flow. We flew into Rome, grabbed the rental and headed for Florence. Somehow we made it onto the toll road with almost no cash, and there was not one ATM to be found at any of the rest stops. On top of this, I have had an extremely hard time getting any of my credit/debit cards to work in most of Europe. I was a little concerned about what was going to happen at the toll booth to get off the freeway. It ended up in a confused one way conversation in Italian where I got through the toll booth without paying 20 Euro, due to the growing number of rabid Italian drivers lined up behind me.

After a stay in Florence we headed to Venice. We had an extremely tough time find the hotel, eventually I stopped to ask for directions. After a store clerk and I spent some time looking helplessly at a map, an elderly man came by, whipped out his iphone, and then thinking about it for a second, handed it to me to figure the thing out. After some confusion due to language barriers he ended up driving  in front of us (he insisted and would not be denied) to show us all the way to the hotel, which was super nice, and one of our few good encounters with the Italians.

Venice was like being in a movie set, it was great. We had all day bus/water bus passes and just explored. Next we drove to Rimini, which is a beach town invaded by Russians. It was new years and there was a gigantic firework show. Finally we headed back to Rome where we spent the last few days seeing all the sites.

More pics here: https://picasaweb.google.com/103375821623178424943/Italy2012?authuser=0&authkey=Gv1sRgCIDXyPuD08mbVg&feat=directlink