Miscellaneous

I've been in Seoul for about a week now, loving the regular hot showers and home-cooked Korean food.

'Before' in Jaisalmer, India - I call it the Kung-Fu Master look.:


'After' in Seoul - it's the Ladies Who Lunch look:

I actually arrived at this department store before it opened and was one of the first people to go in. Sad, I know.

My original plan was to take many pictures of Seoul and do a Seoul post, but I have been extremely lazy and it's been below freezing in Seoul. Instead, I've been reading comic books online. I bought one month unlimited access membership, so I need to read a lot of them to make it worth it:

In an attempt to make this post at least remotely interesting, I am including couple old videos that never made it on here before -

Baby gorilla sliding down a bamboo tree in Volcano National Park, Rwanda:

View from tuk-tuk ride in Jodhpur, India:

'The Essence of Billy,' courtesy of Susan:

Nepal - Kathmandu

Aside from the fact that I can't get that Bob Segar song out of my head, Kathmandu has been a nice little break from the rigors of life on the road, as it is well set up for traveling with all sorts of cheap places to stay, eat and drink. I've managed to while away several days here doing not really much of anything, and it's been great.

Crowded market street:

Temple on Durbar Square:

Check this one out - it is a closeup of the wood carving on the temple shown above (made me blush):

Rickshaws waiting for customers outside a temple:

Temple guardian (and shoestore in the background)

So, it's back to what Jeeheon refers to as the 'full metal jacket cut'. It's too long to go into here, but let's just say when the lady pulled out a pair of those utility scissors with the orange handle, I knew I was in trouble. She eventually called in her husband, who quickly went to work with the electric clippers:

India - Varanasi

Whoohooo, I finally get to blog now that JeeHeon has retreated to the comfort of her parents' home in Korea. Of course it won't be as witty, or as good, but here goes.

Being a little travel fatigued myself, or maybe just lazy, I opted for the 1 hr. flight to Varanasi, as opposed to spending 15+ hrs on the train from Delhi. Varanasi sits on the Ganges river, and is one of the holiest cities in India. As a matter of fact it's so holy, that it's nearly impossible to get a beer, or any kind of meat, or any eggs, or onions, or garlic . . .

The men in orange are sadhus (Hindu holy men), and they are everywhere in Varanasi:

A couple of Hindu men having a sunrise bath at the river:

A brahmin priest (he wanted 50 rupees for my 30 second visit and picture -- I got away with 10 and probably still overpaid):

The Ganges riverfront also hosts India's other major religion - cricket:

Cycle rickshaw is the way to get around in Varanasi:

Sarnath, ruins near Varanasi and the site of Buddha's first sermon following his enlightenment:

A couple of monks at Sarnath:

Unfortunately, I don't have any pictures of Varanasi's most interesting site -- the cremations that are carried out on the riverfront. Every afternoon, the untouchable guardians of the cremation grounds prepare several large log fires and subsequently handle burning the bodies right out in the open. It's a fascinating site, but unfortunately, photography is strictly taboo, and I don't need that kind-of bad karma.

Travel Update

I was already suffering from a bad case of travel fatigue. Budget travel in India and losing my favorite grey, 'Castro' hat pushed me over the edge - I am going home to mommy.

Bill will continue on to Nepal on his own, then meet me in Seoul for the South East Asia portion of our trip. I will probably regret missing Nepal, but I realized that what imagined in my head to be Nepal is in fact Tibet (Yes, I am an idiot).

So Bill will be blogging from India and Nepal, and I will be blogging from Korea and Japan, if I can convince someone to go with me. Want to go to Japan, anyone?

India - Jaisalmer

We spent the New Year's eve on an overnight camel tour in the Thar desert, organized by our hotel in the town of Jaisalmer. The camels are owned by the hotel, but people from a small village in the desert care for the camels and run the tour (cooking, guiding, etc). About 25 people from the village came out to the desert to celebrate the New Year's along with 15 tourists. There was traditional music and dancing, and drum playing - well, the drum was actually a large empty water bottle. I counted at least 8 empty bottles of rum the next morning, so I am pretty sure people had a good time.

The woman in the sari (the only non-tourist woman present) is the daughter of the musician and sang for us. Initially she was very shy, but after some rum consumption, she was dancing and falling over people.
These are cenotaphs for past Maharaj's:

Jain temple:

Rule regarding entrance to the Jain temple:

This is my idea of camping:

We are definitely still friends with Susan - love her! Not sure about that Ben though...:

Special Guest Blogger - Susan

Ben and I were lucky to be a part of Bill and Jeeheon's early mid-life crisis adventure in India. In our group of four I was self-elected as the Environmental Director. After seeing (or smelling) the septic system I couldn't convince the group to forego bottled water and use faucet water with purifying tablets. So we were environmentally responsible in other ways such as seldom showering and wearing the same clothes for 3-4 days straight (underwear and socks not excluding). Ben was group selected as the Communications Director, Jeeheon was CFO and overall big boss and Bill was the Party Patrol. So our motley crew functioned very well together for two weeks. And we are all still friends!

Favorite parts of the trip: camel trekking and spending New Year's Eve in the desert (more to come from Jeeheon on our trip to Jaisalmer), boat ride on Pichola Lake in Udaipur, getting a beautiful lehenga tailor made for only $30, eating dosas, drinking orange Fanta and of course getting regular again after being sick!

Least favorite parts of the trip: sitting in vomit-encrusted seat on the 7 hour bus ride from Udaipur to Jodhpur, constant haggling over prices and rupees and getting the stomach ache from hell which knocked me on my bum for a day and a half.

We head home tonight back to the grind of NYC and say goodbye to Bill and Jeeheon. Good luck with your future travels, we love you guys!


The Fab Four in Udaipur:

This father-son team convinced us to buy a million pashmina shawls:

Bus ride from Udaipur to Jodhpur:

Fruit stand in Delhi:

Men in Delhi:

Vegetable stand in Jaisalmer:

Boys on the road to Jaisalmer who giggled when they thought Ben's name was pen (all the children beg for pens from tourists):

Village master and friend in Jaisalmer:

Great Thar Desert:

Street scene in Jodhpur:

India - Jodhpur

Our 'express' bus to Jodhpur made a stop every ten minutes. It was a weird scene in there, with the foreign tourists all sitting in the seats on one side and the locals squeezed in the sleeper beds on the other side. The 'Jain' bus in the background was our bus and it looks deceptively clean from the outside:

Meherangarh Fort and the blue houses of Jodhpur:

Old city Jodhpur. I love the auto rickshaw rides; it's like walking, except you are not actually making contact with the filthy street surface. My shoes will be burned at the end of this trip:

Hindu temple in the nearby town of Osiyan:

We had planned on taking an overnight train out of Jodhpur rather than spending a night there. So we booked one $20 room to use as luggage storage and to relax until our train time. We did not count on the train being sold out and us having to spend a night in Jodhpur. When we tried to get one more room at our hotel, the hotel was also sold out! 4 people + 1 bathroom + eating curries all day = :