Africa

Well, it's been a while since my last post, but hopefully I've earned enough to pay for the current leg of my trip to Southern(mostly South) Africa. I actually got into Johannesburg ten days ago, but we've been away from decent internet for a while and I haven't gotten a good chance to post. Johannesburg was not quite as intimidating as I had been lead to believe. All of the "Armed Response" signs and barbed wire surrounding anything nice make you think that it must be the most secure city on Earth, but they tell me that's not the case. We stayed off the streets for the most part, only venturing out of the hostel to go for food and sightseeing(at secure locations). The Apartheid Museum is staggering. The determination of the Afrikaaners to maintain their way of life despite the enormous suffering it engendered is simply dumbfounding. It makes segregation in the U.S. look more like aloofness. We still haven't seen a lot of mixing between blacks and whites here beyond white owner/black staff, but I'm sure that it's not uncommon.

Our second day in Johannesburg we drove a bit out of the city to visit The Lion Park which is a kind of small wildlife park meant to simulate the game park experience for people who don't have a chance to leave the metro area. We wanted to make sure we actually saw some animals, lions especially. It was fun in a hokey kind of way. We got to pet some lion cubs, but they mostly just wanted to sleep. It felt a bit like an amusement park so we didn't take things qutie as seriously as we should have. In the lion enclosure, one of the lions--who are very habituated to people and cars--walked right up to our car. I could see it's pupil, which was cool. It then proceeded to open the passenger-side door using its mouth and tongue, which suddenly made the whole thing a bit more serious. Luckily Sharada was able to keep it from opening the door all the way and we drove out of the enclosure. The guard said "You must be careful, those lions are so playful sometimes."

After that we headed up north towards Kruger National Park for some time in a real game preserve. On the way we stopped in Makhado/Louis Trichardt(they change the name back and forth). We ended up staying at a B&B with a nice Afrikaner couple that was a bit out of our usual price range, but we had run out of other options in the guidebook. They were very helpful, going over the itinerary of our trip with a fine toothed comb. We went on a beautiful hike in the hills and saw some tropical forest and baboons. Their son and his family were visiting from Nelspruit, where we headed in a few days, and he has offered to let us stay for a while, which is where we are currently.

We moved on to the park, where we spent three days on a wilderness trail. We spent the nights in fenced in camp, to prevent the more dangerous wildlife from getting in. We weren't allowed outside the fence without one of our guides, who were very friendly and cheerful. They offered us the option to see beautiful scenery and somewhat less wildlife on a much harder hike, and since the guide, and other experienced park goers were for it, we went along as well. We still saw what seemed like quite a bit of game to me on the trail: a giraffe, two kinds of eagles, four kinds of antelope, dossies(which are somewhere between a cat and guinea pig but illegal to keep as pets) and probably something I'm forgetting. On the drive to the camp and the start of the hike we also saw hundreds of buffalo, dozens of zebra, several elephants, many more antelope, warthogs, bushbabies, monkies, baboons, and any number of birds.

One of our fellow trailgoers worked at a private game reserve/animal rehabilitation center on the road to Nelspruit, and he recommended we stay there, so we did. The guide book gave us horrible directions and we got quite lost and didn't get there until hours after dark, discovered that 'self-catered' meant 'bring your own pots and pans and can-opener', had some bread and cheese and went to bed. Our friend surprised us early the next morning saying he wanted to show us something, so we piled half-dressed into the jeep and he drove us into the reserve. We walked a bit through the bush and then he told to be very quite and pointed out a group of rhinos behind a nearby tree. We stayed still for what felt like hours because I am not used to crouching in a steathy manner and my legs were dying. Finally it stepped out of the trees, not more than fifteen feet away and he said "Take pictures." We did and then he yelled at it and waved his arms and the rhino scurried(if anything so large can scurry) into the bush again. "Don't they ever charge?" "Sometimes," and that was all he had to say about that.

Just then the clouds began to clear revealing what we hadn't been able to see the previous night--the spectacular mouth of the Blyde River Canyon. According to the guide book it is the third largest canyon in the word, after the Grand Canyon and another one in Namibia. It looks a bit like the Grand Canyon, vistas off to the horizon and preciptous cliffs, but the rocks are a bit different, more granite than sandstone and the area is much less arid so the side and floor of the canyon is covered in a dense semi-tropical forest. The other difference being that you can drive right in to the bottom of the canyon, which did, and the following day we drove along the rim down to Nelspruit, where Emile and Elane have been so kind as to put us up for a day or two until we head to Mozambique.

Hiking near Makhado/Louis Trichardt

On the trail in Kruger.

Sunset with Elephant, Kruger.

At the Moholoholo Animal Rehab Center. They get caught with drugs so young sometimes . . .

View from our Chalet in Moholoholo at the mouth of Blyde River.

View from "God's Window" near Blyde River

India Wrap Up

I guess I should finish off the India section of the blog, now that I've been home a week. When we last saw our intrepid heroes they were setting off from the hillstation of Munnar in the Western Ghats to the idyllic backwaters of Kerala. The bus ride was STEEP and winding, or at least I thought so. Our bus driver was largely unfazed and took every hairpin at the maximum possible speed. I had been under the impression that motion sickness could not be a fatal illness, but watching Sharada's face as it assumed various shades of green and purple made me think again. Eventually we did reach relatively flat ground, and some time after that a bus station. Somehow by wandering vaguely south we managed to catch the ferry for Allepey with approximately 3 seconds to spare.
The ferry ride was possibly my favorite part of the trip and at 10 Rs(20 cents) was definitely a bargain. We cruised along sleepy canals and lakes which were sometimes so full of flowering water plants that you literally could not see the water and it appeared as though we were sailing through a cloverfield in spring bloom. A cloverfield surrounded by palmtrees heavy with coconuts. They were also full of any number of birds, and--Sharada claimed--snakes. Also we got to see the most isolated rural landscapes of our trip as many of the houses and even farms along the route can only be reached by boat. Allepey--another contender for the "Venice of the East" title also claimed by Udaipur--was nothing particularly special. We left again in the morning for an all day cruise on a tourist boat to Kollam, where we also had no intention of staying. The tourist boat plied many similar canals, and while it was much more comfortable than the ferry, at 400 Rs it couldn't hope to compare on the cost/benefit scale. We saw any number of people dredging the canals, sometimes with a fanciful floating backhoe, but most with a canoe, a bucket and an impressive lung capacity. We also passed a plant where they apparently extract uranium from the black sand in the canals, sand in which I was to be covered for several days.





Upon arrival we immediately hopped in a cab with a tired-looking Indian couple and their two young children, for Varkala, which has one of the world's great beaches. Because our cabbie wasn't from Varkala he drove the lot of us around in circles for 40 minutes looking for our hotel and the Indians missed their train(I think) and had to stay there as well. I don't feel too bad because they stayed two days, as did we. We spent them being uber-tourists, lying in the sun, body surfing, and shopping for souvenirs. I had so much fun in the sun and salt water that I nearly collapsed from dehydration. I could hear Mom shaking her head and saying "too much fun."
We eventually made it Cochin via a second class train, which involved me sitting for 3 hours on the luggage rack above the seats. As luggage racks go, it was fairly comfortable. The only really uncomfortable part was when a food vendor spilled coconut chutney all over me and even worse, the dapper backpacker seated below me. By the time I had taken care of my personal chutney issues well enough to come down she had somehow managed to clean the chutney out of her lovely felt cap(with feather!) but I don't think she managed to forgive me.
Cochin was fairly nice, but frankly we were hot and oh-so-sweaty and tired and more concerned about our onward travel arrangements. Sharada and I split up--for the first time in two solid months--so that she could fly out of Mumbai, and I could fly out of Delhi. I was only on my own for about 2 days, but she has 11 before Pieter meets her in Thailand. It was strange, but I got used to it fairly quickly. I may have spent rather more time in the hotel room in Delhi than I would have if I had needed to justify my time to someone else.

Delhi was much more genial than our first visit, mostly because of Holi: the Festival of Colors, which I had forgotten about until a day or two before. Apparently it celebrates some Gods triumphing over other less righteous Gods and/or falling in love with each other, the accounts in the English papers varied somewhat. The point is that because of this momentous event from before time began every year on the 15th of Phalgun everyone goes out in the streets and tries to dye each other every possible color, which is incredibly entertaining. Think nationwide waterfight/paintball session. This is also the actual reason that it is celebrated, even by many non-Hindus, including me. At first I thought I might have missed the whole thing because by the time I made to breakfast I saw a lot of people, kids mostly, covered in dye, but no one dyeing each other. In fact this was more like the children of a certain age who absolutely cannot wait for Christmas, and sneak downstairs and open presents. Things didn't really pick up until noon. I decided that since I had more or less missed things, I would walk through Old Delhi to the Red Fort because we were so sad that it was closed last time. By the time I got there, a group of youngish men, who were quite drunk and/or stoned(certains types of marijuana are legal during the festival) had covered me head to foot in vegetable dye and tempura paint. Also a number of children had shot me with supersoakers full of dye and several young girls had hurled buckets of diluted dye onto me from roof tops. The upshot was that I looked like I had fallen into a spin-art machine.

At first I thought the fort was closed again, but in fact it was, like much of the city, just very empty because older people and women tend to stay indoors all day. It seemed to be a popular spot for non-participants, such as large muslim and sikh families, all of whom were well dressed and not at all covered in dye. You could say I stuck out a little. In fact muffled laughter(and uncontainable guffaws) seemed to follow me throughout the fort as well as calls of "Merry Holi". I got even more dyed on the way back to the hotel. After 4 showers and intense scrubbing my forehead was still a merry magenta hue while my back was a sickly teal. Luckily this did not present any issues when I had to board my plane that evening.

















Signing off for now, Eric.

49,000 Hectares of Tea.

Our mad dash across the south, from coast to coast continues. We've been moving on every day or, not so much because we dislike places, but because we run out of things to do. As unemployed people with no connections who don't really speak the language most cities offer a limited number of interesting activities, and the ones which have a broader selection are inevitably so touristy we can't afford to do most of them. We spent the better part of two days in Pondicherry, mostly waiting for it cool off, or for a bus. The humidity just drains the life right out of you. We've stopped asking at the hotels about hot water, partly because they always lie, and partly because we come back from the day soaked already. Pondicherry(Pondi) was a French colony until recently and still feels kind of French. The same way I can kind of speak French by speaking Spanish with an accent. The streets are laid out mostly on a grid and people seem to obey traffic cops, and there's sewers. And of course the occasional technicolor Hindu temple with a real live elephant inside(no pictures please), just like Paris. I got a sandwich on a baguette and fell in love with France all over again.

From there onto Madurai which has the most fantastic temple I've never seen. It has huge towers covered with a riot of brightly painted Hindu sculpture, which were completely covered with scaffolding, and palmfronds just to make sure that you really couldn't see any part of it. The inside is huge, and has long collonades with intricate carvings and bright paintings and again an elephant(camera died). It was very keep there and we ate a lot of dosas and uttapam(oothapan?utthapham? everyone spelled it differently), which are essentially Sharada's favorite foods. Then we had a nice bus ride through the plains and mountains where they seem to grow most of the world's spices and coconuts up to Periyar wildlife sanctuary. Didn't see much wildlife(one huge bison(guar, much better name), but the jungle was fantastic. Met some nice tourists on a much larger budget than us(they took a taxi 200 miles!) and saw some crazy Keralan dancing. From there we got(eventuallly) to Munnar, which is even higher in the mountains and grows tea, tea, and more tea. It's much cooler and drier here, and there's lot's to see, but again, we can only afford so much of it. It's very beautiful, and it looks like Switzerland, I think. In fact there is an Indo-Swiss dairy. Swiss cows look very buttoned-down compared to their anything goes Indian counterparts. The town is surrounded by 49,000 hectares of tea plantations which is probably a lot(I think we skipped hectares in the metric unit at school) all of which are owned by the Tata corporation, which is the biggest company you've never heard of, the make steel, autos, luggage, and lots and lots of tea, which is very picturesque when it's growing. My time is nearly up and I'm trying to cram as much in without killing myself as I can before leaving. Moving on again tomorrow, down to the seaside, which is meant to be fantastic, and then, back to Delhi and then back to the U.S. Crazy.

Trains, Planes, and Automobiles.

Everyone we've met in Nepal has been extremely helpful, with the exception of our driver. We booked seats in a jeep(along with 10 other people, but we rode shotgun) from Kathmandu to the Indian Frontier. We went on tiny one-lane(one and a half maybe) roads through the mountains, and saw some beautiful countryside. We stopped in a nothing town about 25 miles from the border, and the driver, who didn't really speak any English just unloaded everyone's bags and took off without a word to anyone that I could see. Apparently a general strike had been called all across the lowland provinces(apparently some rather tense negotiations are taking place regarding the new constitution, prime minister, etc.). No motorized traffic would be allowed on the roads. Luckily one of our fellow travellers spoke a bit of English and attempted to explain it to us. She also hired a horse cart to take the three of us across the border. The only motor traffic we saw were a number of ambulances headed the other way. "Is it dangerous?" we asked. She said "Oh yes." and laughed. Actually we didn't see any strikers and our driver took a secret back route to avoid roadblocks. When we eventually found the immigration official in India he thought the whole thing was quite humourous. He also informed Sharada and me that by the time we got back, we would probably be married. "Travel 5-10 years, then you married. This is not allowed in my country." This sounded rather menacing given that it really was his country to let us in or not. He extracted a $2 bribe, possibly on accident.

The hotel on the border was fetid and Sharada received a mind boggling number of mosquito bites, which at least turned out not to be harbingers of dengue fever or leprosy. She also discovered someone had gone through her bag while on the roof of the jeep and removed some money, some clothes and her phone. It's been a rough few weeks for her. She must have looked crosseyed at a cow or turned away Lord Vishnu disguised as a beggar.

One short 20 hour train ride later we were in Calcutta(Kolkatta), which was not at all how Mother Theresa had lead me to believe. I'm sure there are some desperately poor people there, and it's rather dirty, but this is India. Compared to Dehli it sparkles. No doubt the British had something to do with this, but they've not kept up with the cleaning. It feels rather like a European city that has suffered a sudden loss of economic activity and civic government(although people do stop at stop lights almost all the time--imagine). We spent most of the time looking at gardens and totally out of place british building and eating Bengali food. On to Madras, well actually Mamallapuram(that's the shorter, modern name) instead. We got in to Madras so early that we had nothing to do but go to the bus station, so we basically
skipped the 4th largest city in India. India is better in small doses, I think. We're on the beach and there's a lot of palm trees and stucco and stray dogs and it feels a bit like Mexico, but with more giant stone monoliths of Shiva and Vishnu.

Photos

Finally I may have a chance for some photos.

Obligatory Taj Mahal photo.

I think there may be something behind me.

Fun at Fatehpur.

Benares by night.

Sharada spots a rhino at Chitwan

Elephants in the mist.

Himalaya off the right wing. Everest is the one you can't see behind the clouds.

Cotton candy vendor at Katmandu's Durbar square.

Explosion of prayer flags at Swayambhunath.

Countryside near Kathmandu.

I'm at the TAJ! And everywhere.

I guess it's been quite a while since I posted anything. I'm sure there is a reason for this. Sadly I'm not equipped to post pictures just now. The city of Agra is probably the craziest in terms of traffic and touts and beggars so far, also really dirty and polluted. The Taj Mahal is theoretically surround by a "no pollution zone" where motorized traffic and so forth are not allowed, but the brick walls surrounding the zone are not high enough to keep out monkeys, let alone smog. It is quite an amazing building, but it is quite raucous for a masoleum. I would estimate that there were between 2000 and 5000 people there while we were visiting, mostly Indians(who get in for 10% the price we paid). The gardens are nice though, and most people don't stray into them. We also saw Fateh Sikri, an abandoned Mughal capital, which I thought was fantastic(pictures later).

We moved on to Varanasi which has a reputation for being hectic, but we were all feeling a bit rundown and didn't venture out too much, so it seemed very peaceful. Some at the next table at lunch remarked that it's "very holy--in a religious sense" which I suppose is true. On the river just below our hotel they cremate people in large pyres. This is supposed to guarantee a particularly auspicious rebirth. We took a boat trip down the river at night and saw some interesting Hindu ceremonies, the light was beautiful and we were mobbed by mayflies, which made me think maybe I need to arrange an auspiciuos rebirth. The river is very sacred and many people come to bathe in it here. Apparently the priests have to drink the water everyday, and since it's already run through over 1000 miles of Indian countryside, they are sick most of the time.

From Varanasi it's been a hard two days on local Indian busses, which stop every 1-5 km and take on more people. After about 20 km it seems impossible that more people can be taken on, but they are continually. The amount of baggage we're carrying did not make us any friends, because there is no stowage and we take up the same room as a family of 6. The bus on the Nepali side of the border was more roomy and could carry bags on the roof, but still became quite crowded. Our last bus was so crowded when we got on that we had to ride on the roof for about 30 km, which was an exciting experience. Finally, a short 38 hours after leaving Varanasi we arrived at our hotel in Chitwan National Park(Nepal). This is a journey of almost 250 miles, I reckon we made pretty good time.

Contrary to what we might have supposed it is quite hot here, and in fact the park is mostly Jungle. This morning we went on an elephant back Safari. We were hoping to see a tiger, but maybe we will have better luck tomorrow. We did see two rhinos, which was quite exciting. The jungle was beautiful in the early morning mist, but perhaps not ideal for wildlife viewing. The mahout(elephant driver) seemed determined to make his own way, and while the other elephants tread daintily along established trails, we crashed through the jungle crushing underbrush and occasionally whole tree up to 20 ft tall. Perhaps he was engaging in some kind of arcane silviculture or maybe he was just grumpy, but he would occasionally goad the elephant into thickets when there was a clear way ahead or cause it to trample and tear down trees which were not in our way. It was exciting to say the least. We still have this afternoon and tomorrow in the park, and I'm hoping we'll see a tiger, or at least some marsh muggers(related to crocodiles). After that, onto Kathmandu to complete our lightning tour of Nepal. I wish we had scheduled more time for Nepal, but we have tickets booked to head to Madras. Some day I shall have to come back when I have time to trek.

Udaipur

We've been moving around quite a bite lately, but we decided to take it easy with 3 1/2 days in Udaipur. The city is lovely, it has a hilly, Mediterranean feel to it, and it sits on a lake with two beautiful palaces in it the middle. The lake is higher than it has been in years, but unfortunately most of it is still not navigable and our hopes for leisurely boat rides have been dashed. However, the beautiful view from the cafe in our hotel is in on way compromised. Before Udaipur we had a day(almost) in Jodhpur, where there is a huge, apparently impregnable fort filled with an intricately latticed palace. You might recognize it from a number of films, including "The Fall" by Tarsim, where I saw and said, I'm going there. City that surrounds it is painted blue partly because of Brahmins and partly because of termites and mostly because it keeps things relatively cool. It was also my computer desktop in the months leading up to the trip, which I've tried to duplicate here. Jodhpur was actually the one place we sprang for the audio tour, so most of the antiquities and Historically Significant Sites have been somewhat bemusing. Anyone who is willing to answer our questions tends to have very limited responses to offer. Why is this city abandoned? Religion Troubles. Is that painting a hippo? It's very stylized. Why do they wear such outlandish moustaches? No reply. I must admit I am experiencing Cultural Heritage fatigue. Time to hop back on the train, and head out to Uttar Pradesh. I wish I had some pictures from our various bus rides through the country, because the scenery there has been some of the more interesting we've seen, but my tiny camera is simply not fast enough to capture the scenery as it whizzes by at what seems like 100 miles an hour and about 3 inches from our faces.