To the Bottom of the Top of the World! (Part 1)

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Our 11:00 pm train leaving Varanasi arrived an hour and a half late, giving us what we thought would be the last annoyance that the country of India would have to offer.  We got in our "first class" berth that looked like it hadn't been cleaned in 5 years or so, and settled in for our overnight train ride to the India/Nepal border.  We arrived at around 6:00 am to the border town, and along with another couple of backpackers paid a taxi jeep to get to the Nepalese border.  The driver told us to wait 10 minutes, and in that time he managed to find another 4 people to stuff into the jeep.  It was not a comfortable ride.  After a bumpy 2 hour drive, and a promise to drop us off right at the border, the driver let us off in some random alley with no sight of the border to Nepal.  That was officially the last annoying thing that happened to us in India.  After finding the border and getting our tourist visas issued, we found Nepal to be an instant breath of fresh (but dusty) air.  People seemed to be nicer, and wanted to rip us off less than in India.  People still spit and horked on the streets, but at least the public urination was kept to a minimum.

We immediately got onto a mini-bus headed for Kathmandu, and enjoyed the bendy 7 hour drive through the beautiful mountains.  We met a local girl on the bus, who was nice enough to offer us a ride from the bus station to the area where our hostel was located.  The hostel/hotel was definitely a budget place, but turned out to be quite comfortable, and we spent the next 6 days enjoying the city, visiting the hundreds of mountaineering shops, and trying to figure out what was the best way to get up to Mt. Everest base camp!

We had met a nice and very energetic Aussie guy named Alex whom we decided to team up with for the trek, and he, with taxi, picked us up at 5:30 am from our hostel to catch our 6:30 flight to Lukla.  The flight into Lukla (our 10 day starting point of the trek), we had learned, was literally the most dangerous flight in the world, as it could only be made with a small plane (12 people), through the mountains, landing on a tiny little runway on a mountainside.  For those interested, google "Lukla Airport" for a better look.

We were lucky enough to actually leave that morning, as we had been informed that due to the fact it was monsoon season, flights had been known to be cancelled for up to one week.  The flight itself was beautiful, with lush green mountains all around, and high snowy peaks off in the distance.  We learned that a few people didn't even plan on getting off the plane, and just paid for the flight for the scenery itself.  As we saw the tiny strip of runway approaching, everybody on the plane held their breath until we had safely touched down, and clapped/cheered as the plane came to a stop only a few feet from the fence at the end of the runway.

We met the porter, Senji, we had hired, in the tiny building that was the Lukla Airport, and he brought us to a local café where we had breakfast and prepared for the first day of our hike.  As we only had hired one porter for the three of us, we decided that we would take turns letting him carry our packs (Alice and Dave packed together in one).  When we left the café, Alex tried to give his pack to Senji for the first leg of the journey.  Senji looked shocked and in broken English said "I am no porter, I am guide only and if you want porter you must pay extra".  This, naturally, was a shock to us as well, as this was not what we had agreed to with Senji's boss in Kathmandu.  We decided we would carry our own packs for the time being, and Senji said he would call his boss at the end of the day.  We were feeling India creep back up on us at that point.


The first three hours of the hike were pretty easy.  A little up, a little down, but we were excited and on fresh legs.  The altitude of Lukla was 2840 m, and our destination, Phakding, was 2610 m, so we essentially walked downhill until lunch. Because it was low season for trekking the paths were almost completely empty and were able to really enjoy the realness of the mountains. We passes many local Nepali people along the way preparing for the farming season, kids playing in the villages, mothers bathing their children in little basins outside. One of the things we loved the most was having the village dogs all to ourselves. They seemed to live for following trekkers up to the next town and back. On our very first day one of the dogs we named "Goldie" followed us for 4 hours!






At lunch we met up with a girl, Kat, who we had met in Kathmandu and decided that we would hike together with her and her guide.  It took a little convincing, though, as her creepy guide appeared to want Kat all to himself.  We decided that, although we were supposed to stay in Phakding for the night, we would carry on a little as we still had energy and it was early in the day.

We kept on until we arrived in Monju at 2835 m, a 4 hour hike that we were told by Senji would only take 2 hours. Along the way the sky was beginning to cloud over and we were becoming more and more tired as it was only our first day out. When we arrived at our guesthouse, Senji seemed to be pretty friendly with the owners, and it made us wonder why he was so insistant that we make it to that particular place on our first day.  We were happy, however, that we had made it through the first day, and enjoyed a nice dinner in our guesthouse by the river. It turned out that Senji had "no cell reception", and was unable to reach his boss to discuss the porter situation.


We woke up early the next day, as it was going to be a long one.  Our destination was a town called Namche Bazar, and at an altitude of 3440 m, it was going to be a lot of uphill climbing. Of course we ported our own bags again, and decided to not make too big of a deal about it until we spoke to the boss in Kathmandu.  The hike was absolutely gorgeous along the way as we walked through the trees. We had to cross the river every once in a while as we ascended and the only way available was to pass through long, high up, hanging bridges. We eventually made it to Namche Bazar, which was a beautiful village in the hills, even though it was covered in fog, around 2:00 pm. We also managed to have another dog-hiker join the group, and we named her Peanut.  She even stuck around until the next morning outside our guesthouse.  We checked into our guesthouse, the "Comfort Inn", and ordered our lunch as we were starving at that point.  Despite the fact that it had the official Comfort Inn logo outside, we learnt quickly that this was a fake, notably because it took 2 hours to receive our lunch!

After we had some food in us though, the four of us were in good spirits and spent the rest of the day relaxing, reading, and waiting another hour and a half for dinner.  And wouldn't you know it, despite the fact that Namche Bazar was the most populated and well established town on the trek, Senji was still "unable" to reach his boss!

The next day was an "acclimitization day", as we needed to get used to the thinner air and altitude.  We woke up early, grabbed our homemade hiking poles (and Alex's brand made one) and took a tough 4:40 am hike up to the Mount Everest view point, the reason we woke up so early was that the fog was meant to be minimal in the morning.  As we hadn't eaten, and hiked up 200 m first thing in the morning, this turned out to be quite difficult.  So much so that Kat had to stop and throw up along the way.  We all made it, though, but unfortunately weren't lucky enough to have good enough weather to see Mt. Everest.  After walking around the view point museum and learning about the history of the Sherpa's (native Tibetans that were the first to occupy the mountainous region) we hiked back down and had breakfast.  An hour or two later, we went for our second "acclimatizing" hike of the day, to the "Everest View Lodge"; a posh 5 star hotel where we were told rich tourists would take a helicopter in and spend $500 to stay for the night.  It was another tough hike, but it had some great views, and we passed what we were told was the highest airport in the world (which was really just a grassy field with a shack beside it), before arriving at the lodge. The sun was gleaming the entire time we were making our way up, but just as we were making it out to the view point the clouds quickly covered the sky and unfortunately, once again, we were unable to see Mount Everest, and this would become a reoccurring theme.  We did, though, spend $10 for tea, and had a nice afternoon relaxing at the lodge.


We hiked back down to Namche Bazar, and at that point decided to take "porting matters" into our own hands.  We headed for the only internet café that was open, and made our own phone call to Sunji's boss.  Surprisingly enough, he was available on the first attempt!  We explained the situation, and he told us that there is no way Sunji should be asking for extra money, and that he would call him at once.  After we had taken care of that little piece of business, we ventured back to the "Comfort Inn", had dinner, and met Roger, a solo (with guide) hiker from the U.K. and Alex and Jacques from Quebec, all of whom would become regular fixtures in the days to come. We all played cards, got to know one another, and hit the sack at around 8:30 pm, which was perfectly normal in Nepal.

The next morning, after having breakfast, we waited for Sunji to mention that his boss had called him and informed him he would be carrying a bag from now on.  To no one's surprise, he didn't.  So we politely informed him that we had spoken to the boss, and that his job was to be our porter.  There were no more arguments after that point.  We set out around 8:30 a.m. for a day that was to be filled with lots of ups, lots of downs, a few scary bridges, beautiful scenery and then a huge uphill at the end of the day.











Along the way we met Jay and Ebba, from Sweden, who were going it alone without a porter or guide, and were very friendly and fun. It turned out to be a very hot day, and we made the mistake of having a huge lunch with rice and potatoes, which made the 3 hour uphill after lunch very difficult.  We also had to cross many high hanging bridges, which for those of you who do not remember, was especially difficult for Dave. At the end of it all, we had hiked for 9 hours, and by the time we got to Pangboche, 3800 m, we were all gassed. Kat almost couldn't even make it the whole way, and was complaining the rest of the night of stomach pains and other altitude sickness like symptoms. We decided to take it easy and

 

treat the gang to a movie, despite the fact that laptop charging fees were like $5.00/hour, in an effort to cheer Kat up. Even though it was starting to get very cold at night, and the air was getting noticeably thinner, we all fell asleep before the halfway mark, and we learned the next morning that the movie night did nothing to help Kat feel better.

Thanks for reading, keep following for more,
With love from halfway up the Himalayas,
D'Alice

 

No-more-stay India!!

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*To our faithful readers.  We're sorry we haven't posted a new blog in over a month, but as the coming blogs will indicate, we've been very busy, and lacked internet.  This one is quite long, though, so that should make up for it a bit*



After celebrating our 2 year wedding anniversary in Hampi, we spent our last sunny morning on the rooftop for breakfast. We were sad to say goodbye to Rocky and the tranquil bedrock town, however we were excited to keep moving and ready to hit the heavily populated, narrow streets of the province of Rajasthan. We tried to book another comfortable 2nd class train but were unsuccessful and had to settle instead for an air conditioned Volvo bus for our 24 journey to Jodhpur, the blue city.



 

The bus was tight for room and lacked a bathroom. People would just holler for the bus driver to stop when in need, gathering groups of people to do their business side by side on the edge of the highway. We opted to attempt to drink as little water as possible and wait for the designated eating stops to use the dirty squatter bathrooms instead.

 

When we arrived in Jodhpur it was later than we had anticipated, but luckily we had a place in mind where we wanted to stay. Once again, the gates at this guesthouse were closed and we had to make a small ruckus to wake somebody up. They were happy to see us though, and we felt very welcome. The owner took us up to the top floor to show us the great view of the city and the very nearby and popular city fort. He offered us his best room, popular for filming Bollywood movies and housing famous people. Unfortunately the room was just a little bit (way) out of our budget, so we settled for a room on the bottom floor for 600 Rupees ($10).

 

When we woke up in the morning we went back up to the rooftop for breakfast and were able to see the same views from the night before in broad day light. Most of the city was painted in blue, a trend that spread across the city beginning from past aristocracy.

 

We took a short rickshaw ride through the labyrinth of tiny streets, weaving and honking our way through the human and animal traffic, and swerving around several cows eating garbage off the streets. Before we knew it we made it up 400ft to the entrance of the Mehrangarh Fort. It is one of the biggest forts in India popularly known for it’s intricate carvings and cannon ball imprints left behind from past war times. The fort is broken up into several eloquent rooms holding palanquins (elephant riding seats made for royalty), howdahs (carriages for the royal women), royal weaponry, art, musical instruments, costumes, furniture and old cannons while also offering a breath-taking view of the city. We even ran into an old man in costume sitting on a ledge in the courtyard smoking his opium pipe and offering his stash to us for a ridiculous price.

 

 There we met a couple of friendly Canadians from Montreal (Max and Shanee) and spent the rest of the day making our way through the fort with them, sharing travel stories and  listening to our detailed audio guides. We stopped by a dazzling white marble temple before lunch at a local Indian veg restaurant and ordered Channa Masala (chickpeas in a spicy curry tomato sauce) and a Thali set with Dal (something that tastes like spicy split pea soup), veg curry, rice, pickles and chapatti. Yum!

 

As the sun was finally loosing it’s strength, we made it to our last stop for the day, Mandore Garden.  It was  a once well kept garden a few kilometres outside of Jodhpur crawling with hundreds of black faced monkeys. Nowadays, let’s just say it was not very well kept. We watched the monkeys swing from the trees, pick gnats out of their baby’s hair, and fight over the bananas that were being fed to them by the locals.
 

On our last night in Jodhpur it rained so much that the thin and chaotic streets of the city became flooded with water and were impossible to walk through. We had plans for Max and Shanee to meet us on our rooftop for dinner and drinks and were afraid they wouldn’t be able to make it. Thankfully the streets drained out within an hour and we were able to enjoy a very late dinner with traditional west Indian music blaring from a near by local wedding.

 

The next morning we took an early and packed local bus into the desert for 6 hours, to get to Jaisalmer. It was a small dusty city on the border of Rajasthan and Pakistan, and we were going there to enjoy our long awaited camel safari. We checked into the Swastika Guesthouse, ironically recommended to us by our Jewish friends and set out on our camels the very same evening. Swastikas and Jewish stars are found all over India. For the Indian people they represent truth, compassion, tolerance and innocence. Our camels were very cute and friendly, and carried us along with our food and water for the excursion into the middle of the desert. After a nice long ride, we settled down at a small village, watched the sun go down on a nearby sand dune, ate dinner and drank chai with the village people. We slept under the stars on cots with sandy blankets and no shelter, hoping not to come across any scorpions throughout the night, but it was wonderful. It was such a simple and peaceful experience, and we were amazed that these villagers lived their entire lives out there with what we would consider nothing and were still so happy.
 

 

Our next stop was Udaipur. A city popularly known as the ‘Venice of the East’. It was quite beautiful with an exquisitely carved, enormous palace stretching right over the lake. Unfortunately, while we were here we were overtired and ended up in one of the dirtiest guesthouses of all time and weren’t in the best spirits. We did however visit the palace and walked through a series of courtyards, terraces, corridors and gardens. After enjoying another Indian Thali at a restaurant on the lake we decided it might be wise to keep moving and forgoe the night (and our money) in that awful guesthouse. So we booked the next bus outta there, not expecting what the next 24 hour journey had in store for us.

 

The bus looked as though it was 100 years old and had been continuously driving around the dusty streets of India with the windows wide open. It was a non A/C sleeper bus with double beds that you would never want to lie down in, let alone have any part of your bare body touch filthy carpet like covering. We were in complete disgust; already in the middle of a cranky day, knowing that we were going to be stuck in our little box of a “sleeper” for the next 24 hrs. The ride was just as horrible as we could have imagined. We were assigned the very last compartment in the back of the bus, making the already bumpy road situation even bumpier. At one point we went over such a big bump that it sent Alice flying up and smashing her head on the ceiling of the bus. Shortly after that, the bus went over another bump causing a huge smash and then the bus was stagnant for the next 2 hours. It was broken down. We almost decided to get out of the bus at that point to find some other (ANY other) way out of there but the sky was getting dark and we figured we would just have to suck it up and roll with the next 20 hours. We laid out some clothes to lay on and popped in our headphones, played some of our favorite tunes (we’re in love with the new FUN album) and got lost in another world. That is, until the bus stopped again at 1am for ‘dinner’. We had no desire to eat, we just wanted to be done with this bus ride from hell. We weren’t sleeping at that point, but if we were, we would have been woken up by bang after bang while the bus was getting the roof loaded up with sack after sack of G-D knows what. It sounded like the roof was going to cave in. On a happy note, we did eventually fall asleep (some sleepy time Gravols really helped with that) and by the time we woke up we were 1 hour away from our final destination. It was a new day, with a couple of freshly positive attitudes, and before we knew it the 30 hour nightmare was finally over.

 

 

We took a quick rickshaw ride to a hotel restaurant with some good Wi-Fi, A/C, and great breakfast and spent almost 2 hours relaxing and unwinding before heading to the great Taj Mahal. Besides Dave getting sent out of the security line twice to walk 15 minutes down the street in the blistering heat to lock away his lighter and our laptop before being let in, we had a very enjoyable time on the grounds. The gardens leading to the big World Heritage Site were well kept and nicely groomed, something really special to see in India.  The Taj Mahal itself was really impeccable with Persian architecture, built entirely from white marble and precious stones.

 

 

Good thing we were in better spirits today, because that afternoon we embarked on yet another bumpy bus. The bus driver took a 45 minute detour down a closed off street with pot holes everywhere. We were literally scared for our lives at several moments as the bus rocked from side to side, nearly tipping over. We made it however, by 9pm and checked into our very much needed swanky hotel in New Delhi. With A/C pumping, clean sheets a couple of good long showers and room service, we felt like brand new people.

 

The next day we set out to pre-book some train tickets to our last stop in India, Varanasi. We hopped into a rickshaw in search of the New Delhi train station, but ended up at the drivers friends’ travel agency instead. He tried to sell us on a package deal that was way over our budget and when we asked for 2 simple train tickets, he smiled and sent us out the door. It took us 4 hours to find our way to the actual train station because we sadly and very imbaracingly got suckered into this scam 4 times that day. When we finally made it to the train station (by foot) we new we had to find the tourist counter, but got veered away yet again by a man telling us the counter was under construction. He sent us into another rickshaw and directed us down the street to the “temporary” office. Our driver left the parking lot on the wrong side of the road and got pulled over by the police. Instead of just paying the small fine he began to argue with the policeman and almost ran him over several times in the process. When he dropped us off at yet another travel agent, we were livid, and went straight back to our safe haven hotel to escape the crazy scam-filled streets of New Delhi. We were so thankful to have stretched the budget on our hotel, and ended up booking the train tickets there, for a not so small commission fee.

 

We only had one day in Delhi left to roam around and explore. We didn’t see much, but spent a few hours walking around the dusty over populated streets around our hotel before our train ride out of there.
 

 

 

We arrived in Varanasi the next morning. Varanasi is nick named the holy capital of India, being the oldest and still inhabited in the world. We stayed at a hostel on the Ganges river right beside the ‘Manikarnika ghat’, built in 1302. It is a place where people all over India bring their family members to be cremated before being released into the river. It is believed that if your ashes are thrown into the river you complete the cycle of re-incarnation and are released to heaven.

 

 

 



The old city was a another maze of tiny, narrow streets that we would have never been able to navigate around with out a young ‘friend’ we made there. If you can picture the beginning scene of the movie ‘Slum Dog Millionaire’ where the boy is running through the narrow streets of Mumbai, you can picture us here. The kid led us through the small streets making quick lefts and rights, going through what seemed like peoples houses, pushing past people, cows, goats, jumping over puddles of mud, dirt and feces just to show us all the small temples scattered around the city. The kid made us laugh and was very knowledgeable about the locals and his Hindu culture, so  we invited him out to dinner with us. We had such a good time with him that when he asked us if he could show around again the next day we graciously accepted. He told us that he told his father about us and he wanted to meet us. So after running through the labyrinth style streets again we arrived at his uncles’ silk factory. They gave a us a quick tour of the factory where we could see the locals working at their finest in the small, dark and sweaty rooms behind their big silk machines. After our tour they invited us in to sit down for some Chai, and that’s when it happened.
 

 

The kid's uncle started pulling out sheet after sheet of duvet covers, pillow cases, scarves, saris, you name it. We were stuck, and pressured into buying their goods by the one and only person in India we considered to be truly genuine. We bought a couple of scarves, left our friend and his uncle behind, and spent the last few hours of our time in India at the train station getting stared down and asked to have our photos taken with a very sour taste in our mouths. We were more than ready to leave India.

 

From the most challenging point of our trip so far,

With love from the end of India,

D’Alice