May 9, 2008
And the answer to everyone's burning question: we're back.
re-lax
go, go google gadget
May 6, 2008
For the last few weeks internet cafes have been easier to find, cheaper and faster, and I´ve spent some time scripting (writing short computer programs). I appreciate that it´s escapism, and maybe I should feel a little guilty about using vacation time this way, but I don´t.
I recently discovered some Google Gadget resources, which allow anyone with a google account to create scripts using an online tool. Since I´m sitting at a different computer from day to day, it´s perfect. Here is a screenshot of a Gadget I made, which creates an interactive map of album covers from our Picasa Web Gallery:
Leah patted me on the head and said it's pretty. Anyone else have an opinion?
thinking about stars
April 30, 2008
We haven't done too much in Mendoza over the three weeks we've been here, other than going to the zoo (where, of course, we took lots of pictures), running and spending entirely too much time watching tv. It makes me feel so decadent. Courtesy of the public library and its (rather pitiful) collection of English books, my brain also managed to not rot completely, since I finally decided to take up one of David's favorite science writers.
living in a material world
April 30, 2008
It's been a tough year in many ways. We've each sustained unexpected injuries, which, if we or the situations had been different, may have ended the trip early. But we are in astonishingly good repair compared to some of our stuff. We've lost, ruined or damaged most of our equipment and because we're about to fly back, we thought it would be fun to share the list of everything so inflicted.
feeling like meat
April 27, 2008
No, this post is not about my shoulder. Although it could be, since having an injury to such a major joint does make me sometimes feel like a sack of meat and bones. No, my shoulder is healing well, but this post is about Argentina´s staple food: meat.
picture a day: mendoza, argentina
April 24, 2008
news
April 24, 2008
I shouldn't be, but I'm always amazed at how much easier it is to pay attention to what is going on in a country when we're actually there. Especially when we have access to a television and spend time using our pitiful Spanish trying to decipher the news: Buenos Aires has been covered in smoke due to farmers clearing grassland for grazing. Unrelated to the fires, but related to the strike that derailed our train journey (why yes, I am the daughter of a shameless punster), the youngest member of Cristina Fernandez´s cabinet, Argentina's first female president, is resigning. And he looks so earnest in the photo. Poor thing.
i can't wait!
April 23, 2008
We heard some very good news yesterday, from Taylor (Eleanor, to those of you who've known any of us for years) and Megan, her partner, my not-sister-in-law. I'm just so excited! Ah, to be an aunt: all the bonuses of parenthood, with none of the drawbacks.
glacial upload
April 15, 2008
You may remember the post about the scree field. Well, I haven´t had a fast enough internet connection to upload the video I took from the bottom of that valley until now:
out of place
April 11, 2008
I dislocated my shoulder. The morning we left for Mendoza I went running by myself. For most of the time I ran my intervals along some patches of grass near a culvert, but for the last few minutes, I was running back to the hotel on some broken sidewalk decorated with bits of trash and random debris. While dodging a crowd waiting for a bus, I tripped on a hoop of discarded wire and fell on my left wrist and shoulder. It took me a few moments to get up and look back to understand what happened. My wrist was scraped and my shoulder was clearly out of place.
carpa diem
April 6, 2008
First, a note to explain the title: in Argentinean Spanish, called castellano, the word for tent is carpa. This is in contrast to the word found in a small, used visual dictionary we picked up in Buenos Aires, which provides the español word: tienda. Not to be too simple, tienda is also, apparently, the word for a ¨shop¨ in español and castellano. How many words must be different before a dialect becomes a new language? Discovering a more (presently) useful word for tent has considerably smoothed communication.
right, left, right, wrong
April 6, 2008
From India through New Zealand, we spent the last six months in former British colonies. Not that we planned it that way. In fact, as embarrassing as it is to admit this, I was unaware that Malaysia was a former colony of any country, until we got there. (This is why you should read about the places you're going to visit before you get there. It saves you from some awkward conversations once you've arrived.)
picture a day: villa general belgrano, argentina
April 4, 2008
Itinerary for April 1, 2008:
I think this picture pretty much sums up what would have otherwise been a quiet day of reading in the tent.
retraction
April 4, 2008
I received an email from a friend that made me realize my last post is a little ambiguous. Especially if you lead a very busy life raising two precocious children while being in your most difficult semester of nursing school and so therefore have limited internet-reading time. We're not actually "home," yet. Instead, we're settled in a small village, Villa General Belgrano, enjoying the Argentine countryside while carping about overly touristed places. (Everything here in this faux-German village, where several of the residents are descendants of survivors of a wrecked German U-boat from 1939, is a tad twee.)
But we do, finally, have tickets back to the States. We leave Buenos Aires on the evening of May 8 and arrive in Los Angeles the following morning. Five weeks from now. I can't quite believe the year is almost over.
grande day out
April 2, 2008
All of the hotels and hostels were full when we arrived in Cordoba because, it turned out, there was a road rally for the three days we were there--possible the biggest rally in the Americas. Aren´t we lucky. Our fall back is, of course, to camp, so we bused out to the municiple campground, which happened to be near the road rally, and settled into the spacious grounds with it´s sad, decaying facilities. The next morning, I set out in some drizzling rain to buy food and fuel for the stove.
there's no place like home
April 1, 2008
Helena, who has decided to spruce up our posting by asking questions she wants answers to (feel free to ask any you want to know, too), tossed another one our way, asking if we miss "home," or if that word has meaning for us. I've thought about it for a couple months now, and here's at least a partial answer.
I don't miss home because I don't feel as though I have one to miss. When I'm talking to David and say something like, "When we're home we can...," I'm only ever refering to being back in the US. The US is "home" in the sense that it's familiar and we understand the subtext and undercurrents of every conversation/interaction, something that is easy to take for granted until you miss it by having that understanding impinged on in some way, like traveling. But, if based on that definition, the US is increasingly less and less a "home" because we miss out on so much pop culture and current events by being out of the country for extended periods and not having a television when we are there. Ultimately I think "home" is a state of mind, and one I can enter into, not quite at will, but almost anywhere, once we've been there a couple days to feel familiar with the area.
I do miss family and friends, though, both in the US and abroad. Missing people can be really difficult, especially because lots of people are terrible about emailing since everyone has their own lives to get on with. But even then, I don't get lonely in any real sense, because David is always around. Traveling with your best friend has the definite perk of assuaging loneliness. Especially since we talk, all the time.
striking out
March 28, 2008
We're both big fans of train travel, since trains are usually smoother rides and you can wander around somewhat on long trips, so Tuesday we bought two "tourist" tickets on the train out of Buenos Aires tonight to Cordoba. (The tourist seats are the cheapest they offer--bench seats in an open carriage. We were going to splurge on sleeper tickets, but there were no seats available in anything other than tourist class. That would be strike one.) We hit a snag when we arrived at the train station this morning to dump off our packs before heading back to the Fine Arts musuem, though. There is no train going tonight. Strike two.
This wouldn't be such a problem, except there are only two trains a week to Cordoba: Monday and Friday nights. And the very nice young man who translated for us (our Spanish being extremely poor to the point of non-existant), said they don't know if the train will be running on Monday, either, because of the farmers´ strike. It turns out that the strike has something to do with the train schedule. David and I aren't quite sure why, but the implication was that the train workers are joining the farmers in their protest. Strike three.
So we bought bus tickets, instead. And we're out.
well winded
March 27, 2008
It's easy to blend in Buenos Aires. It has such a big population (around 13 million!) and there are so many European descendants, that without hiking boots and backpacks, no one really takes much notice to us. That is, of course, until we speak. With no formal training in castallano (what Spanish is called here) conversations are sort of a verbal doubles ping pong game. For example, when buying train tickets, after a greeting, I toss out a word. The response is quick and muddled to my ear. Then, Leah says a Spanish word. Now, from a different direction, a new person helpfully responds with a quick phrase. My turn: I accidentally lob an Italian word into the mix. For the next few moments, the four of us take turns staring at each other. Without warning more words fly by and the volley continues for some time. Eventually with English, Spanish, French, Italian, crude drawings and pantomime, consensus is found.
Other than having awkward conversations, we've been doing what we love: walking. Our somewhat random routes take us to little fruit stands, pastry shops, parks, coffee shops, universities, libraries, supermarkets, dog parks, museums and internet places. We roam on broken sidewalks, pass professional dog-walkers, get dripped on by air-conditioners, pass flower vendors and squeeze past huge magazine stalls. And then, at the end of the day, we return to the San Jorge, a comfortable, little family-run hotel in the Palermo district, where we watch dubbed and sub-titled American TV series and movies. The pretense is, of course, to improve our Spanish, but really all this time in front of the set just leaves us bleary-eyed and wondering why television is so bad, why Homer's voice sounds so wrong and why most American TV series are either medical or detective soap-operas.
So in Cordoba, our next stop, we'll just walk around, forgo the hypnotic television experience and use the table tennis method. In the end, it does work and who doesn't like to break the monotony of their day with a game?
picture a day, special edition: international dateline
March 21, 2008
Itinerary for March 16, 2008:
Wake up in Christchurch and breakfast in the tent before the sun rises.
Toss the tent around while packing up.
Walk to the airport because you´re about to spend 24 hours either hanging around various airports or sitting on planes.
Continue reading "picture a day, special edition: international dateline" »
the problem of great expectations
March 20, 2008
Well, we´ve become quite quiet, haven´t we. New Zealand is not the best place to update a blog: internet access is rather hideously expensive and incredibly slow. And then backcountry camping for weeks at a time doesn´t really help. But most importantly, for us, New Zealand proved uninspiring.
I was more excited about going to New Zealand than any of the other countries on our trip (except when it involved seeing friends in Italy and India, and meeting family in Australia). But there´s such a gap between expecting something to be great, and having an experience that lives up to that expectation. Not that New Zealand isn´t lovely: the mountains are glorious and their national parks system, as run by DOC, is, if not the best in the world, really, really impressive. There is no park entrance fee, backcountry camping is allowed, there are thousands of trails, and you can get to all of the parks on public transportation, though that can be a tad costly.
But other than the parks, NZ is rather "iffy." The towns are unispired in their sprawling blandness, the food essentially English (so, boring), and the people are not nearly as nice as we had been led to believe. Not that they´re terrible, they´re just not as spontaneously generous as we´d thought they´d be. All of which is fine, except that we were "expecting" something rather different, and of course ended up disappointed. But the next place is always better, right?
picture a day: arthur's pass national park, new zealand
March 1, 2008
Itinerary for Feb 21, 2008:
Wake up on a high-altitude meadow an hour from the peak of Mount Avalanche.
Filter water...seriously.
Stop to enjoy the plant life.
Continue reading "picture a day: arthur's pass national park, new zealand" »
tandem scree skating
February 26, 2008
We spent a week backcountry camping in Arthur's Pass National Park and loved almost every minute of it. The part I didn't love came on the hike we did over Avalanche Peak, which included a 1km section of scree descent. If you've never dealt with scree before, it may not sound so bad, but an enormous field of rocks, from nickel-sized to large boulders, with no vegetation keeping them in place, is not fun. Trust me.
I have this absurd, irrational fear of falling. Not of heights, which I have no problem with, just falling. Actually, the fear is of landing and being in unbelievable pain, but "fear of falling" sounds better. Usually the fear isn't a barrier to what we do, even while hiking, but Arthur's Pass is pretty remote, the mountains are rather high, and there's a lot of hiking over the tree line, which means more rocks and less vegetation. And then there was the scree. So poor David, who'd never really had to deal with me in a panicked, irrational state, had to hold my hand the entire way down the scree field.
In the end, it was sort of fun, because once I realized that we weren't going to tumble to our deaths, moving down the scree was a lot like skating. Skating through rocks, it's true, but still skating. So I may let David renege on the promise I made him give at the top of the field that we would never deal with scree again. But probably not anytime soon.
sam's club
February 26, 2008
We spent a lovely, relaxing week-out-of-time at Mt Hutt, where we watched a lot of movies, I made lots of cookies, and we enjoyed being indoors while it rained. In addition to A Day at the Races, The Lake House and Shaft, we also watched the Lord of the Rings set. And it occured to us that Sam doesn't get enough credit. Sure, Frodo actually carried the ring, but if Sam hadn't been there with him, he would have absconded, been eaten by a spider, fallen to his death and starved. David thinks Sam should have just pushed Frodo into the bubbling lava when he wouldn't give up the ring, but maybe that's too extreme? At any rate, he's just so cute.
reinventing the wheel
February 6, 2008
Helena, a lovely, talented friend of ours, asked a couple of weeks ago if we were tired of "reinventing the wheel" every place we go. And I thought it might be a good thing to write about because, wow, yes I am.
Traveling is fun, a lot of the time, especially when we like the new place to begin with, but I'm tired of hefting my pack to get on and off public transport, and I'm tired of setting up and taking down the tent every few days, and I'm tired of always feeling just a little bit (or a lot) disoriented, as though the whole world is in on an inside joke, except the two of us. Not that I'm not still enjoying the trip, because I am, and I'm really excited to be in New Zealand. But I'm really tired. I feel as though any reserves of calm, or strength, or patience, or whatever else it is that helps me deal with awkward, annoying or aggravating situations, which, let's face it, happen frequently when traveling, have been completely depleted. Which is part of the reason I'm so looking forward to the next week, starting Saturday, when we're in the timeshare. We seriously plan on doing next to nothing (not quite nothing, since there are some "chores" we have to attend to, like repairing the poor rainfly of the tent which we've managed to rip unbelievably), and I can't wait.
At this point my only regret is that it isn't a two week break, instead of just one. I need a really long nap.
don't you just love kiwis
February 5, 2008
The only problem with relying on public libraries for internet access is that they serve so many people, time limits are enforced when using the computers. Which is a not very clever way of saying that despite our having lots more to say about Australia and meeting a very lovely set of relatives, we're off to New Zealand this morning. We're due to spend two nights in Auckland (on the north island) before flying to Christchurch (on the south island), where we'll spend another two nights before we wallow in the thrill of not having to pack up our tent every morning because the set of parents who didn't give us the generous gift of a new camera, instead gave us the generous gift of a week in timeshare. And you better believe we're not going to do a damn thing the whole time. Except bake and read and watch TV. Ah, the decadence.
picture pages
February 4, 2008
At last many more pictures from Australia have been uploaded--including a few more added to the end of the "Oz" directory. I know this may seem like too many photos to drop on you at one time, but come on, you weren't really that interested in what you were doing at work anyway, were you? Have lots of fun!
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aussie glossie
February 3, 2008
Australians have a wonderfully different way with some words and phrases. Here are few we've heard used/read:
Aussie - an Australian
barbie - bbq (okay, you may already be familiar with this term, but it takes on a new charm when said by a straight-faced Aussie)
brekkie - breakfast
Bridgie - Cape Bridgewater (along the coast, west of Portland)
bush camping - backcountry camping
bush walking - multi-day hiking
cbd - downtown (central business district)
dinkum - true
doona - blanket
echidna - skittish spiked-football looking ant-eater
g'day - hello
glossie - glossary (okay, i made this one up)
how ya going? - hi
icy pop - popsicle
lollie - lolly pop (and hard candy in general)
milkbar - food stall (?--we're actually still not sure about this one)
Oz - Australia
scroggin - gorp
spider - ice cream float
ta - thanks
thickie - milkshake
toastie - grilled sandwich
tucker - food
walking - hiking
wombat - an animal described as "a log with legs"
yank tank - a large American car
fly fu
February 1, 2008
Just in case you thought I was exaggerating about how bad the flies are in Australia, I want to draw your attention to the following photo:
And, yes, those are all flies waiting to bother Leah.
Now, just imagine two flies that coordinate their attacks. One flies on to the left side of your upper lip and then joyfully hops onto one of your teeth. The other fly lands on your right eyelash and then happily bounces between your eyelid and the inside of your sunglasses. And these types of antics can continue for hours.
You may not be surprised then that I have developed a new coping strategy that Leah has dubbed fly fu. As you might imagine, it involves quick movements. I usually lash out towards the flies with hopeful chops into the air. Rarely, slight contact is made with one of the flies, in which case I leave my arm outstretched, body tense, eyes quivering with rage and a serious look on my face. After a few seconds, my pose is fixed except for my eyes, which are following a new target, which starts me in motion again. This can go on for some time until I tire or my elbows begin to hurt from the repetitive motion.
I've experienced many obnoxious pests around the world, like mosquitoes and leeches, but Australian flies are by far the worst. Don't say you haven't be warned.
the world is your zoo
January 30, 2008
First encounters with animals in the wild are one of the great joys of travel, especially when travel involves getting out of the cities and into the parks and reserves. Australia has provided more than its share of beasts, like gray kangaroos, echidnas and koalas, just to name a few. Here is a very brief example of such an episode.
On the first day in Port Fairy we decided to stroll around the nearby Griffith's Island. There was a slight drizzle, which left us nearly alone on the track. A few minutes into the walk, the trail bent inland and it was here that we met a new (to us) animal.
It saw us and made a weak attempt to hide behind some convenient shrubbery:
Then, it pretended we weren't there and casually (read: awkwardly) reached backwards to graze:
Since this didn't work, it took on a serious look:
Then, after consenting to have several more pictures taken, it hopped off the trail.
It was a wallaby--a sort of small kangaroo, I learned later from the tourist information office. I returned to the island the next day and saw a few more. And, took this picture, which I have instructed Leah to show me if I'm ever feeling down:
The end.
bump in the night
January 28, 2008
Plenty of noises can be worrisome when you camp in the wilderness. Trees sway and creak; leaves flutter and rustle; lizards scamp and skitter; insects chirp and buzz; and birds, I've learned, can make every conceivable noise. On a dark night from inside the tent, these noises swirl in the imagination and seem more ominous than they would be in the full light of day. In Swaziland our first night, Leah and I were unsettled by the noises of what turned out to be the camp's pet ostrich walking around and inspecting our tent, but it sounded much scarier at two in the morning. So, as years pass, I've learned the best way to deal with odd sounds is to ignore them. If I can't ignore them, I wear ear plugs or pull over my ears my fleece cap, which muffles sound well. Then I comfort myself with the thought that small critters can't get through the mesh of the tent and big ones aren't interested.
I was reminded of all this on the last night of our Great South West Walk when Leah woke me up and said, "I hear an animal outside...close to the tent...I can smell it."
"What does it smell like?"
"Like an animal...who doesn't bathe very often."
"Is it me?"
Thoughtful pause. "No."
I rolled over, put my glasses on and pushed a flashlight to the front of the tent's mesh door. The rainfly door was unzipped and neatly rolled to one side. The light projected far into the clearing. The trees, picnic table and shrubbery were all revealed. Much closer, only about two feet from the mesh door, which would be under the vestibule were the rainfly to be closed, was a football-sized bump. It has no front or back and was bristling with spikes.
"It's an echidna," I said softly, charmed by the appearance of the gentle ant-eater, who, when frightened, hides under a cloak of spines.
"Where?" Apparently, Leah was looking beyond the lump and into the clearing. Maybe, she thought that we accidentally parked the tent behind a swell in the ground. Clearly, Leah was tired. Then she saw it, and we talked about how many we had seen (three) and how adorable they were.
The echidna sighed visibly.
So, we turned off the light and lay still. After a few minutes, there was a little noise, some crunching of dead leaves and some skittering noises. A few minutes more and now with the light on, we confirmed the echidna had made his escape.
I listened to the sounds of the forest for a few more minutes before drifting back into a deep sleep.
free day
January 28, 2008
As you might imagine, David and I spend lots of time together. And I do mean lots. Traveling together means that not only are we the other's only conversational partners for 99% of the time, we also have only each other to rely on each other when the inevitable difficulties of travel arise. Plus, we've mentioned we camp, right? So imagine spending all of your time with one person in a mesh enclosure 7x4.5 feet, at it's largest points. And then imagine spending all of your time with one person in a small mesh enclosure, while hiking for several days where not only are you together all of the time, but you don't even see other people. But we're extremely compatible, in most ways, so it really doesn't matter. And when it does, we take a break.
About six months ago, in Madagascar, we realized that there is such a thing as too much togetherness, even for us, so we took a half day apart. An it was such a nice change, that we've taken to repeating the day off every 4 to 6 weeks. Sometimes it happens naturally, like in KL, when I sat in a Borders for hours, reading guide books about New Zealand and David ran around exploring countless electronics stores comparing prices for our just-about-to-be-purchased camera. But today, after the 6-day circuit on the GSWW, we decided to formally take a break. And now I just don't know what to do with my day. I might go to (yet another) Borders and shamelessly read brand new books I have no intention of purchasing; I might go to the movies and see Juno; or, I might go to a cafe and order something decadently chocolate and feel vaguely guilty when I'm not able to finish it, wishing David were with me so we could have split it. There are just so many possibilities.
plot update
January 27, 2008
You thought we'd abandoned you, didn't you? No such luck. Instead, we've been trying to get some long-distance hiking in. But this time it was our luck that wasn't so good.
The Grampians were, indeed, beautiful, and the fact that the campsite serves as a feeding ground for at least a dozen kangaroos (plus babies!), habituated to humans, was a huge plus. David got lots and lots of photos, and not a few videos, which may even be uploaded, sometime we find a decent connection. (We've been relying on that almost-perfect institution, the public library, for our internet access, which works well, but has the disadvantage of time limitations and more security conscious systems.) The only downside to the Grampians is that having survived an enormous bushfire two years ago, the part of the park where you're normally allowed to go bushcamping is currently not open to the public. Sigh. But we did get some very nice day hikes in.
Through the vagaries of travel, we ended up in Port Fairy for a few days. It's a charming little coastal town that reminded us more of England than anything else, especially the little island that is protected because it's a bird habitat, which is very reminiscent of Farne islands off England's northern coast. But the birds were nothing, really, to the six wallabies who live there and let us take their pictures.
Dragging ourselves away from the wallabies, we eventually made it to Portland, home of the Great South West Walk, which we were interested in. We did a six-day circuit, not the whole 250 kms, along the coast, and discovered two things: one, we both have a latent, but powerful hatred for flies; and two, while coast lines are all very nice to look at for short periods, walking along them for several days in a row, with fierce sea breezes blowing and no trees or bushes to hide behind for cover, they're not actually our favorite walking terrain. But it was quite nice, really, and we saw two koalas up close, so who are we to complain.
decisions, explained
January 14, 2008
We had a terrible time deciding what to do in Australia, before we got here. I don't know if you've noticed, but it's a rather large country, being only slightly smaller than the US mainland. And there's an enormous desert in the middle. Plus, it has only about 20 million people, and public transport isn't especially good. So we fretted and debated and changed our minds endlessly, before we decided we would just see Victoria, the smallest of the continental states (they only have six, can you believe it?), which is densely enough populated to have decent public transport between towns, and has the added advantage of being the former home of David's grandmother, and therefore the perfect spot for some light genealogy. If you call trolling through ships logs light, but to each his own. Or something.
So, for the last week we've been in Ballarat, a smallish town in the Goldfields, the site of Victoria's 30-odd year goldrush. David's been busy making friends with the "gene-ies" in the Australiana research room, and I've been working my way through the library's new mystery collection. We've also spent entirely too much money on some movies, and I finally consented to see a doctor after enduring intestinal pain for a week. Of course it's a traveller's bug, which makes me feel silly for going, but better safe then sorry, right?
All of which is to say that we're now off to one of the other activities we did manage to plan before arriving: seeing the Grampians. Were we plan to do lots more bushwalking, and lots less reading.
picture a day: ballarat, victoria, australia
January 12, 2008
Rise early and wonder why our neighbors bother to camp at all.
Make cereal and milk in the campground kitchen.
Walk 45 minutes to the central district, Australia's phrase for "downtown."
Continue reading "picture a day: ballarat, victoria, australia" »
all the time flies
January 11, 2008
Leah calls them her admirers. They swarm us everywhere and mostly in groups. They are troublesome. They are flies. But, not normal flies. They may look like normal flies, but they're not. In Australia, there is something wrong with their tiny brains.
Often, it starts when a fly buzzes toward me quickly and lands on my lip or cheek or inside my ear or up a nostril or on an eyelash, or in some other delicate place. I swat at it. But, unlike flies with which I've previously had experience, when I wave it away, it adeptly flies over my hand and lands exactly where it was moments before. And, it's not alone. There are several in a group and slowly my swatting crescendos. Before I realize it, I'm flailing my arms in a fury, which can only end when I accidentally smack myself or slap my sunglasses askew. And, then the flies resettle to their decided place, tickling me with small movements. I curse and fume.
But not Leah, who must have a higher tolerance for these sorts of things. She manages to wave at the pests occasionally until they settle somewhere tolerable, and then ignores them.
It is a skill that I wish I could develop and one which in Leah I admire.
public perceptions
January 10, 2008
People we meet often have interesting ideas about what the US is like: Africans generally seem to think it's a land where streets are literally paved with gold and you're handed a car, house and a job once you arrive; Europeans comment on the apparent humorlessness of Americans and our tendency to only care about work; but Australians seem to think it's a very dangerous place.
We checked in to a BIG4 park (specifically, this one) and the very nice woman at the desk told us they'd had the CEO of KOA in two weeks previously, and then said he'd shocked them by bragging about how secure the KOA campgrounds are because they have security guards with guns and are surrounded by barbed wire whereas they (they park we had just come to) doesn't even have a boom gate. After a moment of stunned silence, I said it was much nicer to be in a place where you don't have to worry about how secure the park is, and then we moved on to payment details.
And then, apparently to confirm that Australians think the US is a scary, scary place to live, this morning I chatted with a 10 year old who's in town to play in some pee-wee tennis matches, or whatever the equivalent is, and her first question on learning that I'm from the US was, "Is it cool?," but her second question was, "Is it scary?" I answered "parts of it" to both, and so satisfied neither question, really.
It's always nice to know that American media so accurately portrays life in the US.
roos and toos
January 8, 2008
It was six in the morning when they came thumping through the gum tree forest--quickly crunching over dead leaves and branches. Because of the speed, my first thought was wolves were running toward us. (I was tired.) I was re-packing, sitting cross-legged inside the tent and Leah was standing by the mesh door. Before I could react, four large, gray kangaroos jumped into view about 20 feet from the tent. We must have surprised them too, since a smaller one glanced toward us and veered into another (mama and baby?) before they all corrected their course, and just as fast, they were gone. We smiled to each other, speechless for a moment. Now we were definitely in Australia.
Before this encounter it was difficult to remember we were on the other side of the world. Melbourne was flattish, hot, dry, and overtly Western--it reminded me of home, not just the US, but Vegas. Hidden in a few Melbourne streets there are even casinos! We spent a few days readjusting from Asia and rediscovering clean public spaces, gardens, museums, clean public toilets (with hot water, soap and paper!) and massive supermarkets. Then, we went for a hike in the woods--specifically, along the Lerderderg river in a state park of the same name. And, here's the thing, until we saw the kangaroos, we could have been in any arid forest in the western US. Although, in fairness, there were plenty of new animals to discover.
In addition to the large gray kangaroos, there were smaller, dark brown kangaroos. And early on, we starting seeing stocky, white birds flying over, but couldn't identify them. On the second day I finally saw one close-up, perched on a branch. It was a cockatoo. I wouldn't have been more surprised to see a pack of wild poodles run by us. I had naively thought that cockatoos were only pets. Turns out, they're found in the wild in large flocks and extremely noisy. It was beautiful to see them free. There were other parrots and bugs and a monotreme called an echidna, basically a spiked football-shaped mammal.
I could go on, but wouldn't it be more fun to just look at our latest pictures:
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| Oz |
once upon a time
January 7, 2008
People sometimes express surprise that we're able to travel together for so long. It can be hard: we have just each other to talk to, all day, every day. But we manage. Actually, we more than manage: we're quite compatible, all things considered, and when we're not so compatible, well, like most couples we've figured out how to bicker with the best of them. One of the ways in which we are compatible is that we're not terribly sentimental people, so it wasn't until we'd been separated while I was living in Morocco that we came up with "our song." David played it for me when he came to visit one time, and of course I loved it. It just fits us so well. In honor of our 11 years together today (I know, we can't believe it, either!), I highly recommend you find the song online to listen to. But if you can't, the lyrics are below.
Happy anniversary to us!
Since you been gone--Weird Al
(sung a cappella, in the style of a barbershop quartet)
Since you've been gone
Well, I feel like I've been chewing on tinfoil
Since you've been gone
It's like I got a great big mouthful of cod liver oil
Oh well, I'm feelin like I stuck my hand
Inside a blender and turned it on
You know, I've been in a buttload of pain
Since you've been gone
(Since you've been gone)
I couldn't feel any worse if you dropped
A two-ton bowling ball on my toes
(Since you've been gone)
It couldn't hurt any more if you shoved
A red-hot cactus up my nose
Since you've been gone
Well, it feels like I'm getting tetanus shots every day
Since you've been gone
It's like I've got an ice cream headache that won't go away
Ever since that day you left me
I've been so miserable, my dear
I feel almost as bad as I did
When you were still here
greetings, from the future
January 6, 2008
I hope you all had lovely holidays. We did. Mostly.
The "mostly" comes about because we arrived in Melbourne on Christmas Eve at about 8:30 pm. Not the best time to drop into a new place, what with everything closed, or closing, for the following day of inactivity. But Melbourne, a very nice city, has excellent transportation, so we were able to get the tram we needed out to the campsite and check in before they closed. It's such a relief, having some place to stay.
We spent the following day wandering around the informative and picturesque Royal Botanic Gardens, along with half of Melbourne's population, all of us there for a picnic Christmas lunch. It was lovely. And surprisingly cool. I'd been having visions of revelers passing out from heatstroke over their plum pudding, but it was probably only about 72, and I even needed my fleece in the shade.
New Years was completely different. We'd just hiked along the Lerderderg river, in the state park, back country camping (which is LOTS of fun, by the way), and, after four days of complete solititude broken only by worries about outsized spiders and marveling at nifty wildlife like kangaroos and numerous parrot species we'll tell you all about later, we emerged at O'Brien's Crossing campground at noon on New Year's Eve to the sounds people gearing up for their celebrations. We were so tired we were asleep by 10, so we missed the whole thing, but it was a fine way to spend the New Year.
We're now wandering around the goldfields, which is also fun, but we'll tell you more about that later, too.
interior shots
December 22, 2007
Before the camera quit, we did manage to take the following pictures in central Malaysia:
(If this slideshow doesn't work/play, try the link here.)
coffee roti
December 21, 2007
What sounds better than a hot, steaming loaf of coffee bread? Last Sunday morning, we were reduced to eating coffee bread for breakfast, because our usual place that serves roti canai was closed. We had impulsively bought the bread the day before at a supermarket, and, as I munched bread that tasted like it was made from coffee grounds, I missed roti even more.
In India, Uma told us roti is a generic word for bread. A special type of roti , called parota (especially in the Indian state of Kerala), became a favorite for us. Phyllo-like dough is stretched thin, folded to form layers and slapped down on a griddle and served very hot. In Malaysia, the same food appears as roti or more accurately roti canai (pronouced: rowtee chanai). It's usually accompanied with a sauce made from potatoes, lentils and spices.
It's not only mouth watering, but the preparation can be fun to watch. I took a very brief video of one energized roti roti maker in Kangar, Malaysia:
Next I'd like to find a recipe--I can't think of a better souvenir!
meet the gibbons
December 20, 2007
With the camera on the fritz, I've been struggling to capture some of what we experience on the trip. For example, at Perlis State Park, we returned to our camp and discovered our trash scattered. And then, we spotted the culprits flaunting their opposable thumbs by leaping away through the trees. I wanted this be a clear picture of one of the gibbons:
Pretty fuzzy. Well, so you can at least hear them chatter to each other as they alternated between jumping and stopping to stare at us, I recorded this with a part of the camera in working order:
sopedestrian.com/audio/gibbons--perlis_state_park_malaysia.WAV
losing focus
December 19, 2007
Our camera has not aged gracefully. For years, and even as early as the beginning of the trip, it shot quickly and produced sharp images. But lately it has turned on reluctantly, making a sort of sigh noise as the lens pushes out. It has also tired of uploading pictures. It has days when it stubbornly refuses and just spends a lonely day in it's case--usually, working it's way to the bottom of the bag. It took a turn for the worse during the monsoon, here in Malaysia. When news came that many trekking trails were closed, its pictures were cloudy and had a careless quality to them. Two days ago, during a rain storm I noticed a drop of water running down from the electronic sensor. Yesterday, pictures even in full sun has a blurred quality to them. Is the camera experimenting with a Manet style? Minimalism? Abstraction? No, sadly I must face facts: the camera is bored with the trip and must be sent home. I can't change it's decision. Hopefully, it's replacement will be made of tougher stuff.
milking
December 18, 2007
Reading this article in the Economist we bought for the flight to KL, I was reminded of what Martial, our guide, told us about the humpback whales that migrate up to Sainte Marie, Madagascar, to give birth. We were standing on the street in the one town on the island, telling him that we'd managed to see lots of whales while camped up on the west coast of the island. We'd been a little disturbed watching the tourist boats running around after the whales, but didn't think too much about it until Martial said that the calves have a hard time getting enough to eat. They need 600 liters of milk day, but they only nurse when their moms are still, or at least not fleeing before a horde of tourists, so as tourism increases, the calves are getting less milk than they need.
Something else to worry about.
experimenting
December 17, 2007
There's a great little snippet box in the guidebook we used for India, which is about the thriving film industry in Tamil Nadu, where, instead of the very pretty actors like those in Bollywood movies, the heroes are more realistic. And then the author of that box explains that by realistic, he means, "chubby and moustached." Which they are! It's hilarious, really, except, I imagine, if you're Tamil, since that's what the majority of the male population looks like. But since it was funny to us, I spent much of the trip giggling every time David would intone, "chubby, and moustached" after seeing someone who particularly fit the description. Naturally, David had to try his hand at the moustached bit, and this is the result:
I laughed uproariously and them immediately made him shave it off. It's just a little too icky looking. Besides, he's nowhere near chubby enough to really pull it off.
name it yourself: dabong, malaysia
December 16, 2007
When I saw this sign I translated it as, "No Dejected Cows!"
Anyone have an alternative?
the rains in spain fall mainly on the plain
December 15, 2007
but in Malaysia they fall mainly on us.
Silly us, it turns out monsoon season is not the best time to visit southeast Asia if you want to go hiking and camping. And we did want to. But after two and a half water-logged days in Tamen Negara, we gave up. With the help of a park ranger in T.N., Mike, an Aussie restoration ecologist (how cool does that sound), and the very nice ticket seller at the train station in Jerentut, we ended up in Dabong. We were trying to go to Belum Forest, which is on the west side of the mountains and so, theoretically, protected from the northeast monsoon rains, but at this rate I don't think we'll make it. There's no public transport over the mountain range, so we ended up in Dabong on the advice of the train ticket seller because "the students go there to climb the waterfall." Unfortunately, the path is really dangerous because of the rains, so Uncle, the extremely nice mountain guide who works at the information shack, warned us not to go. Instead, because the village is so charming, we stayed for two days, just because we can. Who says you can't travel without a guidebook!
Dabong is a tiny little village that has a train line, which is how we got there, but no bus service. There's a cute little rest house with 2 or 3 rooms, all of which were filled with wedding guests, except ours, of course. There are a couple of "restaurants," although I use the word loosely, so we didn't have to worry about food. It was really quite relaxing, all things considered: there are definitely worse places to be stuck, which is good, because we were definitely stuck.
The train service was suspended most of the time we were in the village, first because a train went off the track due to the rain, which actually left us in Gua Musang, an hour south of Dabong, but that's another story. The next day, after we made it to Dabong on an early train, train service was suspended because a train hit a buffalo (poor thing!). Uncle told us that as the rains swell the rivers and they flood, the buffaloes move up to higher ground, which includes, in this case, the rail line. The following day the trains were suspended going south because of a mudslide onto the track about two hours south of Dabong. And then, Wednesday, when we decided to try to make it north, the train station master wasn't sure when they would be running. After waiting around all day, an overcrowded train showed up at 7:20 pm, and we hopped on for Tanah Merah, supposedly a two hour train ride. Since it was the first train in a few days, though, and the tracks still weren't completely clear, it took us three, but that's okay. We made it eventually. And it wasn't even raining when we got there.
picture a day: dabong, malaysia
December 14, 2007
Starting before dawn on December 10th, we travelled from Gua Musang to a village of less than 300, called Dabong (don't worry: you only giggle the first few times you say this aloud.)
Grabbed a breakfast of roti from a family-run stand.
Wandered down streets, through backyards (inadvertently), and along village lanes.
don't you just hate pants?
December 13, 2007
David does. He's managed to create terrific holes in two pairs, now. He's such a show-off!
The first hole was really quite spectacular: he was playing soccer with the kids we were tutoring in Majunga, Madagascar, tried to steal the ball from someone else, fell, and split the left knee of his pants wide open. We mailed them home because we have great hopes of me learning to sew and he really likes the cut of that particular pair of pants, so if the stars all align properly, he may get a new pair. And if not, well, pants don't weigh very much and we had to send a box home, anyway.
The second pair of pants is currently at the tailors. We think. We actually dropped it off at a clothing store we'd stopped in to ask directions to a tailors, but one of the women there seemed to know what she was doing, and after confirming we wouldn't mind if the color of the patch didn't match the color of the pants, a dull gray, she told us to come back in an hour. This tear is across the upper thigh, and David managed it by sitting down. Ha! In fairness, we were both soaking wet after walking around in the monsoon and he was starting to sit down with his pants plastered to his skin when we saw them slowly edge open just above another seam. You'd think they'd make clothes last longer than three years of hard wear, but I guess not. In the meantime, I can't wait to see what color the patch is. I'm hoping for neon fuchsia.
muddy confluence
December 5, 2007
"But I'm not going to Uzbekistan," I said, in Delhi's international airport as a woman from airport security handed me the wrong carry-on luggage tag.
She shrugged and told me it didn't matter.
And it didn't matter. The airport was so chaotic, so poorly designed and so incompetently staffed that nobody cared. I slept for all but a few minutes of the flight and woke in Malaysia--thankful for many things, but in particular that I had my carry-on bag.
The city of Kuala Lumpur, KL, is big, modern and Western. Traffic is orderly, confined to lanes and almost never honks. People are cosmopolitan, polite and helpful. The city mixes Malay, Indian and Chinese cultures, and is chockful of American chain stores. While nominally Muslim, the massive shopping malls have the biggest Christmas trees I've ever seen. In the local language, Malay, Kuala Lumpur literally means "muddy confluence".
The last several days have been in this mix. We've toured the city: to the tallest building in the world, the twin towers of Petronas; to the biggest aquarium in the world; to the largest walk-in free-flight aviary in world, to a massive butterfly park; to huge shopping malls; to big bookstores; to restaurants; and so on. And, we took pictures:
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| KL |
Restlessly, we are now off to the Tamen Negara, which yes, means "national park" in Malay. After not hiking or camping for two months, we're going to soak ourselves in both over the next two weeks. And since it's the season for the northeast monsoon, soak may be the appropriate word. Or maybe, the word should be muddy.
what time is it?
December 4, 2007
We were wandering around the KL convention center food court after oohing at the sharks, fishes and what-not in the aquarium, when we came across a Starbucks. Seeing one wasn't too surprising (they really are everywhere), but I noticed on their specials board they were touting holidays drinks and I turned to tell David that I thought it was hilarious they were so out of touch with their local establishments as to try to sell winter holiday drinks in July. But just as I was opening my mouth I realized it is not, in fact, the middle of summer.
It's so warm here (and humid), and traveling leaves me feeling so out of touch with any sort of everyday life, that I've lost all sense of time outside how long it takes us to get from one place to another. Even after the Starbucks incident, I was surprised to see an enormous white christmas tree standing in the center court of the very fancy, very large mall we stumbled across yesterday.
And for all the wrong reasons: I should be surprised by the tree because Malaysia is predominantly Muslim.
from india with love
November 28, 2007
Some of my least favorite days while traveling are those when we fly. I'm not scared of flying, and my childhood tendency to be hideously sick while traveling is (mostly) conquered, but, ugh, I just don't care for flying. I feel wrung out and grumpy even after short flights. And since I do still have a hint of motion sickness, which is brought on by landings, I really dislike it when we have connecting flights. So, of course we have one today. We fly out this afternoon on a jumper to Delhi and then climb on board for Malaysia this evening.
When we first got to India, the two months we had here seemed, not long, exactly, but certainly lengthy. And now they're over. All things considered, despite not really enjoying the crowded, noisy and dirty cities, and battling some nasty cases of travel weariness, we've had a good time. We got to see Uma and meet her family, two enormous benefits to being here. Indians are quite nice, we've seen some great museums/temples/sites, and the food is just amazing. Really.
But now we're off. And I can't wait to get to Malaysia. It has some of the world's oldest national parks and after two months of not camping or hiking, we're ready to do lots of both!
bovinity
November 28, 2007
I've been told that cows are considered sacred in India. They can also be seen nearly everywhere. And not just in the rural settings: cows wander the streets of most cities, even some of the largest. They lumber onto sidewalks, into markets, partly up steps, into the gutters, and anywhere else they want. They lounge on the streets, eat trash from the sewers, and even when they're not around, leave impolite evidence of their domain. Rarely, have I seen roaming cows hit, whipped, or pushed, like other animals, and only then because they were eating fruit from a vendor's stand or about to cause massive property damage, like one I saw about to walk into a glass fronted store. Mostly, they are just ignored. Cows are symbol of prosperity. So usually, without the usual honking, traffic just veers around them. Hoofing through the streets in India, I have started to feel like a cow.
I don't feel precisely sacred here, but something near to it. I can't help but stand out as different. I'm often made to feel important, like in a supermarket when I, as a Western, don't need to check my backpack with security. Or, when security guards or service people dote on me, ignoring Indian tourists, in the expectation of a big tip. In the streets, I lumber, not with a hump of fat behind my neck, but a backpack hump. Traffic doesn't honk as frequently at tourists and, while I don't eat garbage exactly, I do occasionally eat the junk food aimed at tourists. Most disturbingly, I'm made to feel prized or as a symbol of prosperity. To stop me on the street or be briefly acquainted with me has an inexplicable importance. Is it simply racism? Or, is it that tourists are expected to have money, and I'm like a pigeon to be plucked?
Or, maybe, I'm misinterpreting Indian friendliness and hospitality. Maybe, I'm being too cynical and shouldn't utter complaints. Not being honked at is pleasant, and I don't like to check my backpack with security at the supermarket. So, being like a cow isn't always such a bad thing. Maybe, I should fall into the role.
Moo.
boxing
November 27, 2007
Often there is no need to be jealous of how we spend our days around the world. Today, we trudged through the Bangalore traffic and heat, bear-hugging a big cardboard box. We were trying to find a shipping company to send home pamphlets, books, bits of paper, clothes, a hefty bronze statue of Ganesha and some other souvenirs we've collected recently. First, we tried India Post, but were turned away because they don't accept packages in cardboard boxes. Unbelievably, they only ship international parcels that have been wrapped in a special mailing cloth, which can be purchased anywhere, except, as it turned out, at the two places that were specifically pointed out by a postal employee from in front of his workplace. Oh, (and here is the good part) the cloth must be stitched up by a tailor! (I have no idea how tailors were enlisted as postal inspectors around the country, but there you have it.) Of course, we did ask a tailor to sew up our junk and, while half expecting him to laugh, he calmly informed us that he couldn't and we should go to a tailor somewhere far away. We know it was far away because we tried to walk there, but got lost.
Somewhat bemused and more than slightly amused, we abandoned India Post and went to a shipping company called TNT. After only a little confusion about where we had to go--around the corner, down the street, take a left, look for a building just like this, around the corner again, up the stairs--we arranged to have our cardboard box shipped. Paperwork was filled out and the box was searched. A search which included handing around the bronze statue to each TNT employee, including a supervisor ensconced in a glass office. I was told these were important steps because customs and security officials were demanding and they wanted my box to arrive promptly and without problems. But in the end, why should I worry about problems, I saw our box inspected, sealed and heavily wrapped in tape, on which was prominently written: TNT.
roam shanti roam
November 27, 2007
We went to see Om Shanti Om this Sunday, and had a lovely time. The Hindi movie wasn't subtitled, a tricky subject in India, where there are 23 official languages (I kid you not), but since it was largely a spoof, however glamorously costumed, of Bollywood movies, we didn't really need the subtitles. Shahrukh Khan was adorable, guppy face and all (Irene's friend Mehali pointed out that anytime he emotes, he looks like a guppy), the clothes are fun and the songs even more exciting. But, at the risk of delving into territory Irene covers far more thoroughly and with better wit, I have to say that Farah Khan's second movie as a director reminded me of what the critics said about Ocean's Twelve: that it was too self-conscious for its own good. The title number is actually just an excuse to do a who's who in Bollywood, and all because they're friends of the star or director. It's fun to see, but at close to 10 minutes, goes on for a bit too long.
But the theatre was packed and we all had lots of fun. Even if David and I didn't understand the more detailed aspects of the plot.
matrimonials
November 26, 2007
You might not believe it if you watch a lot of new Bollywood movies since they love to have extravagant, almost melodramatic, and sometimes actually melodramatic, love stories, but arranged marriages are still quite common in India. So much so, that major newspapers like The Hindu have classifieds for parents looking out for prospective sons- or daughters-in-law. We discovered this fun fact a few weeks ago in Puducherry, where the Sunday paper was slipped under our hotel room door and we spent the next hour entertaining each other by reading some of the ads out loud. Naturally we then had to write an ad for each other:
US ATHEIST 32/173cm (176cm w/ hair not pulled back), too fair, indeterminate caste seeks issueless, innocent divorcee, prof, suitable groom, non-veg, looker. Call 01234-567890.
WELL BEHAVED, currently non-working engineer, 35/172, unknown caste, seeks like-minded partner. Employment no bar. Write: Box 124, Nowhere, No Country.
Think we'll get any takers?
picture a day: bijapur, india
November 21, 2007
After breakfast we walked to gol-gumbaz, one of the Islamic tombs in town
admired it from all angles
along with some wildlife
defunked
November 16, 2007
Lower your shakras. Relax your neck...face...nose. Raise your hands and interlock your finkies. Okay, our yoga instructor, Solaman, may say odd things with an even odder accent, but he's an excellent teacher. He demonstrates the poses well and adjusts each person during each pose when needed. The classes are small; this morning there were only five people. The Sakthi Yoga Centre is the covered roof of a three story building, and at seven in the morning a cool breeze moves across the floor. Despite the sore muscles, it's been a relaxing few days.
Coincidental with this relaxation, I've started taking pictures again. I don't know exactly the reason I stopped, or at least spent days without taking a single picture. (Just ask Leah how unusual this is.) There is the fact that photography was sometimes discourage at the ashram. (You are welcome to guess why they don't want pictures of residents who plan never to return to their former lives.) But, even after the stay, I didn't feel motivated. Maybe it was a string of cities that brought only traffic, noise, and pollution to mind. Or maybe, it was the general travel fatigue that Leah and I have been going through. Whatever the reason, and whatever the cure, the moment I walked on to the beach in Mamallapuram and saw a group of cows curled up to a colorful boat, I took out the camera and felt better again. Here are some pictures I uploaded yesterday:
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| Tamil Nadu |
Now I just need to figure out how to relax my nose.
hips don't lie
November 15, 2007
Having both survived a few weeks of severe travel weariness, we're now enjoying ourselves in Mamallapuram. It's a lovely little village on the southeast coast in Tamil Nadu, famous for two temples and a large-ish hill area of rock cuttings, all from mid to late 600 and early 700 AD. If you come, we enjoyed the rock cuttings on the hill more than the temples, which is handy if you're on a budget because the hill area is free while the temples cost a whopping Rs 250 per person (just over $6). The temples are nice, but they're pretty degraded and you can see most of the interesting stuff from the beach and the road.
But besides neat rock cuttings, we've also been enjoying drop-in yoga classes from Solaman at Sakthi Yoga. It's so nice to do yoga, again. Although it means we've also been wandering around town occasionally groaning because our hip flexors are sore, but that's a small price to pay for a fun class.
Tomorrow we leave for Chenni, formerly known as Madras, to catch an overnight bus to Hyderabad to meet up with Uma. Not content to spoil us, she's now recruited her parents. We can't wait!
lights and sounds
November 13, 2007
Last Thursday was Diwali, the Festival of Light. We were really excited, mostly because it's the only Indian holiday we knew about before arriving, but also because it sounds so nice. Traditionally, there are lots of oil lamps and candles lit, and now that electricity graces the world, strings of lights, usually white, are hung on buildings. It sounds so pleasant.
Apparently, however, electricity isn't the only thing to have changed how Diwali is celebrated. Firecrackers have made inroads, too. Instead of wandering around in the evening, admiring all of the lights in windows, we sprinted back to the hotel, covering our ears, as kids lit little bombs, the sole purpose of which appeared to be to deafen everyone within 20 feet. Imagine bangs loud enough to shake walls and make plaster crumble, going off every few seconds and you'll have an idea of what it was like. So, having confirmed that I've joined the old fogeys' club, it makes me glad we've missed the last several July 4th celebrations.
musth
November 10, 2007
David's mentioned our visit to the ashram, and I just cannot tell you how nice it was to be somewhere we weren't constantly being buffeted by the sound of horns and screeching tires/brakes. And the air was better and we could see green stuff like grass and trees! I felt better after just an hour, so you can imagine how chipper I was after six days. One of the disappointing aspects of the ashram's location, though, is that guests and residents are not allowed to wander in the foothills at random. As committed hikers, David and I were a little nonplussed by this. David joked that India has so many people it has had to shut off its mountains, as it has with some of its beaches. (Trust me, you don't want to swim in raw sewage.) We would have been even more upset, though, if we'd been allowed to camp in the foothills. I know, that sounds weird coming from us, but India, as it turns out, does not have a camping culture, so we left one of our big packs (for the record, I should confess that it was mine) full of our camping gear and a few other "unnecessary" items at Uma's, and have been traveling with just the daybags and David's pack. We feel so much lighter!
Anyway, as part of the program we took at the ashram, all 32 participants and several volunteers got to take a short hike up to a place where one of the streams created several pools. We had a lovely few hours getting wet and eating lunch. But, it turns out the real reason the foothills are forbidden walking territory unless with a guide is because of the elephants. Sometimes male elephants experience something called musth during which village people have been killed. And here I always thought of elephants as peaceful. Much to our disappointment we didn't actually see any elephants. Or tigers. Not that the tigers were a possibility, since they don't live in that area, but wouldn't that be neat? We would both really like to see tigers and elephants in the wild, but since camping in the national parks isn't really on, I think we'll just have to content ourselves with the specials we've been watching on the Discovery Channel. Ah, satellite TV--the only plus to having to stay in hotels all the time.
bussing
November 9, 2007
State buses in India are great. I don't mean aesthetically. In that sense they are sad, old, sheet metal enclosures that look as though they were disassembled by a ten year old and then reassembled by his five year old brother. The outsides are a drab off-white, sometimes with primary stripes, and uninspiringly, the name of the bus company, or its acronym, as the only thing written on the side or front. The buses' insides are painted an institutional green color, the same color commonly used for refrigerators sold in American in the 50s, or maybe it was the shade used for Medusa's blood in Clash of the Titans. The seats are usually wrought iron and vinyl, with all the comfort that implies. And, the noise; the horns are so loud, they make me nauseous. Anyway, disregard how they look, wear earplugs, like we do, and focus on what's more important for the roaming tourist: they leave on time, arrive on time, run everywhere and do so frequently.
In Kerala, the 3 hour bus trip we took from Trivandrum to Kollam left every 10 minutes! Where else in the world is this true? (In fairness, part of the reason may be that there are 35 million people in the smallish state of Kerala and many seem to live in a narrow corridor between the mountains and the sea.) So, when the bus tire noisily exploded, people just piled off the bus and, with the help of the driver, loaded onto the next bus that came along just a few minutes later. Really, the whole episode from the "bang...wap, wap, wap..." to riding away on a new bus didn't take more than 10 minutes. Then we took a bus to Fort Kochi, an overnight bus to Mysore and an AC bus to Bangalore; and, each was on schedule.
From Bangalore, there was no need to make reservations: a bus to Hassan was leaving when we arrived. We just had to hop on and pay the bus conductor. (Paying on the bus in normal and does not carry a surcharge, unlike the train system.) At a station, about an hour before our stop, the bus turned tightly around a corner and kissed the nose of a parked bus: three windows burst sequentially. Thankfully, nobody was hurt. (Actually, one man had a pin prick of blood on his index finger, but he seemed okay.) Most of the passengers filed out to inspect the damage, there was a few minutes of discussion between several drivers, and then we were off again. In many other countries, the same accident may have delayed the trip for at least a few hours. The police would have come, reports would be completed and everyone would stand around for a new bus to continue the journey. In India, the conductor just had to brush the seats clear of glass as our tough bus was on its way.
retox
November 7, 2007
Out with the good air...in with the bad air.
Fresh from our ashram experience, it's time to retox our minds and bodies. So, for the last two days, we spent time in a city of one something million people, Coimbatore. Most of the time we lounged around the hotel room watching stupid movies. (Since our full retox program is a proprietary secret of the So Pedestrian Foundation, I can't disclose all the films, but I can drop this title: Corky Romano.) When not in the room, we sprinted among the honking cars and pushed through puffs of automotive pollution. Chocolate chip cookies, pizza and other goodies were ingested. Energy was channeled through an overhead fan to bath us in recirculated, indoor air.
And, with our systems properly out of balance, today we continue to Salem, India.
outer engineering
November 6, 2007
In the last few years, Leah and I have enjoyed several different yoga classes in the US, and visiting an ashram seemed like it would be an interesting and new experience. So, for about the last week, we did just that. Using a guide book, the Lonely Planet South India, and the internet, we more or less randomly picked the Isha Yoga Center, roughly an hour from Coimbatore in the state of Tamil Nadu. From Hassan, we bused south most of the way there and chose to walk the last kilometer.
Some volunteers drove us the last few hundred meters and onto the grounds, which were sprawling, campus-like open spaces with green fields, trees, and building outcrops: "cottages", apartments, dorms, a group dining hall, practice halls, a conference hall, a home school, a day spa, a restaurant (under construction), a cafe/shop, a multi-faith temple (which resembled a Hindu temple more than anything else, since there was a linga in the middle of the main floor) and many more structures that couldn't be easily identified. Most of them were made of brick and steel or massive stones, carved or rough cut, and the whole flattish ashram was abutted to some beautiful, tree-covered hills, the Velliangiri Foothills. Shortly after arriving, we were lodged in one of the "cottages," a comfortable hotel-like room.
About a hundred, or maybe 1500, full-time volunteers live and plan to spend the rest of their lives at the ashram. (When talking with residents, the theme seemed to be that each gave dramatically different answers to the same questions, even simple or practical questions.) Central to their daily routine were "practices" and work. The practices involved, among other things, yoga stretches, vocalisations (like bird calls and barking), sitting in specific postures, praying and meditation. All residents worked--cleaned, cooked, taught, helped visitors, or performed office work or community outreach. All other actives, like for example, reading(!), were considered unnecessary and passively discouraged. The idea was that practices and work were part of spiritual enlightenment; why do anything else? Hmm (I raise a skeptical eyebrow.)
Two days after we arrived was the scheduled program called "Inner Engineering" and despite the title, which could politely be called cheesy, we agreed to take it. All we planned to do was relax, experience an ashram and maybe learn some new yoga. And, with few illusions about the world, I braced myself against a possible religious harangue. Less Leah and I, there were 30 people in the course--22 Indians, 5 non-resident Indians (3 from Australia, 1 from Ireland and 1 from the US), 2 Australian women, a Lebanese man, a Chilean man and a Saudi man. I expected a mix of mediation, yoga exercises, and just a bit of spiritual mumbo-jumbo. But after the first day, it was clear: the course was designed to take middle/upper class Indians and Westerns right from the stresses of their jobs and families and ease them into a healthier lifestyle and tack on a bit of psuedo-science and mediation, all of which were wrapped up in a specific practice we learned, which, when done, lasts about half an hour.
As usual, though, Leah and I don't fit the typical stereotypes. Are we stressed at work? No. Are we stressed with family life? No. Do we want to be doing something different with our lives? No. Do we have too much material baggage? Considering we're traveling with two outfits each, for a year, I'm going to again say, no. At any rate, I was told by a chatty resident that one of the strategies to make program participants realize how foolish their daily stresses are, was to use different stresses to "soften" particpants into accepting mediation. The first stress was requiring us to wake up early, at 6:00 or 5:00. Also, it was suggested we begin the morning with a cold shower (although there was hot water in our room) and eat a little pill of neem and turmeric (each tastes terrible) before the morning session. There were some yoga stretches and physical exercises. And, the food was good vegetarian fare with lots of fruits and vegetables, but meals were spaced oddly. There was no coffee or caffeinated tea. The problem with their plan for us, was that none of this was particularly stressful for Leah and me. All you have to do is stay at a Bombay budget hotel to experience most of those things. The style of travel we enjoy requires us to routinely wake early, eat strange foods at random times, and physically stress ourselves, because it allows us to experience the raw world. It's how we live.
I don't want to paint the wrong picture; the atmosphere was positive and friendly, the volunteers were helpful and cheerful. They continually asked me if I was okay, if I was sore from practice, or if I needed anything special. They also worked tirelessly to cook, clean, serve food and round people up for activities. They seemed to specialize in pleasant details, like sneaking into our rooms to leave bowls of jasmine by the bed.
The course was a combination of some (acutely irritating and boring) rhetorical lectures, videos, a few yoga stretches, small group discussions, forest walks, massages and high energy games. Thankfully, when the spiritual harangue did come it was quite meek and poorly handled. However, the program still fell short of expectations: there just weren't enough yoga stretches. Sadly, I will not continue the practice as prescribed.
In the end, and aside from the course, I found two fundamental difficulties with the ashram: everything the residents do is motivated from the selfish desire to achieve their personal enlightenment, and not because helping other people or a community is the right thing to do; and, idolatry is the backbone of the life there, like praying before meals, activities, or to Sadhguru, the founder of the ashram and guru for all of the residents, or a linga or several other physical objects. Both these things make it impossible for me to view the residents' smiles, volunteerism and life, in general, with anything more than pity.
Leah told me once some things are better to have done than to do. Isha reminds me of how true that is.
creative writing
October 30, 2007
I enjoy finding unusual spellings and translations when on the road, but don't always know how to work them into a post. For example, when checking into the Harsha Mahal in Hassan, I received a deposit receipt with the following notes:
- The right of admission is reserved.
- Room Rent will be applicable for every 24 hours or part there of.
- Lodgers should inform the management if more persons want to occupy the room than the mentioned in the register and obtain the permission and they will be charged extra.
- The managent is not responsible for any loss of the goods or valuables in the room.
- In case of loose of key the cost of lock will be charged.
- Please do not entrust cash to the room-boy or cleaner, in case if you are paid, the Management is not responsible for the same.
- The management is at liberty to open the door if the lodgers absent themselves without intimation and the management is not responsible for their luggages.
- If the lodgers cause any damage beloging to the hotel the same will be charged to their account.
- Room should not be used for illegal activities.
- Hot water will be supplied to the lodgers only between 6a.m. to 9a.m.
- Food service will be to the lodgers between 6-30a.m. to 10-00p.m.
Or, this sign:
When I find a way to work them into a post, I'll let you know.
sick of it all
October 29, 2007
I've spent the last two weeks being variously mopey, depressed, lethargic and cranky. I'm just no fun when I'm sick. Having waded through the body aches and fever, I now just have a nasty cough, but it's starting to get better, too.
What's marginally more interesting is how I've been dealing with it. I spent some time not liking India and wanting to go home. But I can't quite figure out why, which just makes me more depressed. And wow, is that a problem. So I've been trying to figure out why, when enjoying a year-long trip around the world, I have any excuse to be depressed, but I can't come up with anything definite. Certainly, it's no fun to be sick on the road: sometimes I would just love to be home, lolling in bed reading.
Or it could be that I'm travel weary. While we love traveling, six months is a really long time to be out. And we have six more to go. Then there's the fact that we don't have a home: we are officially homeless! Which is fine, most of the time, but the constant movement associated with travel, even when traveling as slowly as we do, is wearisome. Every day is a series of decisions about where, when and what to eat, but even if we really like the food, it's not as though we can just go "home" and make whatever we want: we're at the mercy of the local eating establishments and that's not always fun.
Along the lines of not being able to cook are the lifestyle changes that we're forced into while traveling. I haven't done yoga in months (I'm picky about my practice space); we haven't been running since Italy (believe me, India is not set up for runners--it's too dirty and polluted), and while I'm a big fan of Indian food, most of it is deep-fried, bad for my health and much worse for David's.
And then there's India itself. People are pretty nice here, something I thought was of paramount importance after China, but it turns out the physical environment is really important to me, too. Did you know India has over 1 billion people? Yeah, 1,000,000,000 people. So most of India is urban, even in the rural areas. There's not a lot of green around and who knew, but that has a serious effect on my mental well-being. Plus, there's the pollution, both on the ground and in the air.
At any rate, whether it's one of those things, or some combination, I have not been happy, lately. Which I realize sounds silly, but there you go. In an effort to make things better, we're changing how we're traveling: we're heading off to an ashram to force us to do yoga; Uma told us about idly, a rice-based breakfast that isn't deep-fried; and I feel almost all better. Now I just have to stop myself from being mopey.
picture a day: hassan & belur, india
October 27, 2007
Breakfasting on idly, fermented rice cakes...
Strolling the market to buy snack food...
Busing from Hassan to Belur...
nested vacations
October 27, 2007
For 5 days I did nothing that I normally do on vacation. I didn't write in my journal, read, take pictures, explore the city by foot, visit museums nor do any other tourist things. Instead, I focused on taking a vacation from the stresses found nearly 6 months into a year long vacation. I took a vacation within a vacation, if you will. It was an ideal setting: a friend's, Uma's, comfortable Bangalore apartment. And, Uma made the time even better, which included driving us around the city, showing us where to shop and acquainting us with great restaurants.
So, what did I do? I took hot showers (turns out: what I thought was a sandal tan washed away!), watched satellite TV; took a spinning class at a nearby Gold's Gym; ate American-styled pizza; went to the mall; sat in a coffee shop; and watched a fun movie, The Bourne Ultimatum, which I would have named The Bourne Penultimatum. As you may already know, I changed the website, and finished changes to two new Picasa albums:
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Also, since I'm sure you have extra time at work, check out the changes to the maps page. I even added a bonus chart at no extra charge to you. (No matter what I do, I'll always be an engineer.)
After all that I left Bangalore Friday morning feeling restored, if somewhat stunned to be back on the road.
mysore feet
October 19, 2007
Smack, bang in the middle of Mysore is a majestic old palace. It's the main tourist attraction in the city, and so it was for us today. But not before clearing some, almost endearingly classic, travel hurdles. We scrambled through traffic with some frantic head spinning and animated speed-walking. And then, walked around three sides of the palace complex before locating where visitors enter, dodged some jewelry and postcard touts with some side-stepping moves and paid the special foreigner entrance fee. And, yes, I felt special.
Inside, no cameras are allowed and, unusually, must be dropped off at the purpose built shack, where an expressionless man tosses them in a conical pile that must be his clever sort of filing system. Out of curiosity, I asked about camera phones and found out that these can be taken in, if switched off. (About a month ago, an Italian friend showed me a phone, which takes high-quality pictures at a resolution similar to a full sized camera, the thought of which made me smirk. Policies will never catch up with technology.)
Then we parted with our shoes--dropping them off at an open air rack--thus ensuring that the thousands of people walking through the palace every day keep the Public Health Department busy and ever expanding. Now don't get me wrong, I completely understand wanting to keep inside spaces clean, but the floor inside the palace was filthy. And, at one point, the tourist route leads outside the palace and into a temple. The connecting road is shared with cars, elephants and camels. (The animals were for children to take "Joy Rides!") Painfully, the road was littered with stones and other things not unexpected, like the things that usually drop from camels. We hobbled along with all the rest.
All in all, I'm glad to have gone to the palace; it had many beautiful things. Emerald colored glass plates with elaborate patterns formed a couple of the ceilings. A golden throne, statues, pillars and the carved doors were amazing. Inside the temples were various deities caged in nooks and a friendly holy man, who blessed each of us by turning a silver bowl upside down over our heads and sayings a few words. Outside there were gardens, towers, temples and more picturesque views.
But, as soon as we left, don't you know we made a bee-line for the hotel to wash and soak our feet.
sham cooking (and more!)
October 17, 2007
Monday, we spent the evening with Leena Sham learning to make masala dosas. Dosas are a very traditional south Indian food, though Uma told us they're from Tamil Nadu, another southern state in India, not Kerala, where we've been filling our bellies with them. But they're really good, wherever they're from, and David decided he just had to learn to make them. And guess what: it turns out we're missing a pressure cooker! Seriously, owning one would ease the way to making Indian food successfully. So we're going to buy one, though obviously not for the next six months or so. Another reason we had to learn to make them is because most Indian food in the US is Punjabi. Southern Indian food is much harder to get, so we'll just have to make it for ourselves.
In addition to learning to make dosas, which are the flat crepe like wraps, we also learned to make the masala, the spicy potato mix that is put in the middle of the dosas. Plus, we learned to make sambar, a sort-of-but-not-really-soup, coconut chutney, both of which are served with dosas, and banana lassis and Indian chai. These last two were sort of bonuses; they don't have to come with the meal, but they often do.
The lesson was lovely, especially since we got to eat the results, and we're hoping to be able to practice our new recipes at Uma's, when we descend on her in under a week. But we had another tasty food encounter in Kochi. We went to Dal Roti, a wonderful northern Indian restaurant (though not Punjabi), where the owner, a people person if ever there was one, has a website with recipes. The food there is amazing, Ramesh has an open kitchen for people to watch the prep work that goes on before lunch, and if you don't find the recipe you want on his website, he'll email it to you. You should really check it out. But you might want to get a pressure cooker if you plan on making any of the dishes..
picture a day: kochi, india
October 15, 2007
Up and out of the room by six while other tourists sleep...
stopping to smile at a hotel reminder on the way out...
in the cool air, walking around the morning fish auction...
settling in
October 13, 2007
Uma, a lovely friend from grad school and just the person you want to know when traveling in India, has called us twice so far, and chatted on-line the same number of times, just to check in and make sure we're doing okay. She's so sweet! Although it's funny to have someone so worried about us after traipsing around for so long. But there's nothing to be blase about while traveling in India.
We're both a little surprised it's been so "simple" adjusting to India. Mumbai, the largest city in India at close to 17 million people, is not exactly an easy place to come into. And with a population of just over 1 billion, set to take over China as the world's largest population in 2035, India can seem really intimidating. We've heard a lot of stories from people who find that while they want to love it, it's just too overwhelming and they end up somewhat scared. Or scarred.
And yet, we're fine. We love it! Admittedly the traffic and noise associated with it are not my favorite (why, by the way, do places where most people are pedestrians always have the worst support for them? There are no sidewalks here and with auto-rickshaws whizzing by every second, it's a little disconcerting.), but people are really nice and the food, as David pointed out, is delicious! I think part of the reason other people have a harder time adjusting when they come here is because they haven't visited other "poorer" countries. For many Westerners, India is the embodiment of the exotic and mysterious, but also a place where they expect to feel immediately at home, and the only non-Western country they may visit. But with so many different languages and cultures in one place, all competing, rather noisily for your attention, feeling at home is not going to be the first reaction.
(As a digression, I have to say it's really hard to call India poor, because while there are some very poor people here, and lots of them, the service level is also as high as in Western countries. It's like calling China or Turkey poor. Sure, they are compared to Europe, but not when compared to Malawi. Economists love to call them "emerging economies" and while I find that term faintly absurd, emerging from what?, an egg?, it does acknowledge a difference between the West, India and truly poor countries like Malawi. I think I prefer the term middle-income countries, though it's not really much better. But anyway.)
Since we didn't expect to feel at home, though, we do love India, and it's been very good to us, so far. All of which was summed up for us when we were at a painting exhibition and sale in Trivandrum, Kerala's capital. A very nice man, one of the painters, came up and started explaining the painting we were looking at. Then he asked where we were from and what we thought of India. When we told him we loved it, he looked surprised, which surprised me. And then he summed it up with a classic Hindu outlook, saying that we enjoyed it because we met people with love in our hearts, so that's what we get back. Karma, or is it dharma, at it's best.
partner perfect
October 12, 2007
You know how there are some things about the people who are special to you that you don't necessarily understand, but are so a part of their personality as to be quintessential? Well, David has many such qualities, and one of my favorites is his terminal geekiness. He showed a new sign of it yesterday by voluntarily browsing through, and then purchasing, a copy of Mathematics Today. That's right, he does calculus and trigonometry for fun. Isn't he cute?! And when I told him I was going to write about it, he tried to defend himself by pointing to the subtitle of the magazine and saying, "It's India's #1 Mathematics monthly." Now, seriously, how adorable is that?
picture a meal: trivandrum
October 11, 2007
Basic but clean hotel: 330 rupees. Visit to the zoo and a couple of museums: 85 rupees. Ordering something randomly from a dinner menu that makes everybody in a crowded restaurant crane their necks around to watch you: priceless.
rail with a view
October 10, 2007
In the last couple weeks we haven't had a whole day to relax or even slow down. Italy was wonderful, but sped by us: there was just too much to do. And I defy anyone to actually relax on a plane, especially an overnight flight, so I don't count those either. And then in Mumbai, what with Leah becoming a Bollywood star and all, we didn't have much to slow us down there, either. Oddly, the break we did get came at an unlikely time--while on the train down the west coast of India from Mumbai to Trivandrum, Kerala's regional capitol.
To cover the roughly 1,200 kilometers it was scheduled to be 31 hours on the train. (For planning I was thinking of this as 5 meals.) At the last moment we made the decision to buy the least expensive tickets: 3 tier sleepers without air conditioning. I was concerned that the AC car would be sealed up. And, we both know how to sweat, so that's not a problem. Occasionally, we both suffer from motion sickness and fresh air helps measurably. The open windows allowed a cool air to blow in and some fans mounted above circulated it. Basically, our car was quite comfortable, or at least more comfortable than our Mumbai hotel room, which also had no AC. But, it was more than just the breeze.
There was space--space to move or sit or walk around or stretch out and sleep. Everyone had there own bunk upholstered with thick vinyl. When we weren't sleeping, the middle-tier bunk folded down to form a back rest for the bottom bunk, which was a bench seat. And somehow, there seemed to be more seats than people even though the train was full.
The train was dirty, but still cared for. The floor was swept and the bathroom was cleaned periodically and a couple of times smelled lightly of flowery detergent. The next car back was a "pantry car" and there was a frequent flow of uniformed food servers with meals (flat bread and curry, dosas and rice with vegetables), snacks (like spicy, unsweetened donuts with yogurt) and drinks (Indian tea, coffee, water and sodas). And here is the surprising thing: the food was okay, tasty even, all things considered. (Of course, this is true only if you like Indian food. I do. In just under a week I've had so many good meals, my mouth starts to water when I smell Indian food.)
The other travellers in our car were friendly. Some asked where we were from or going. One expressed surprised that we were eating the Indian food on the train. We chatted for longer with a few, and others read quietly. The man in the upper bunk was reading, among other things, "Foreign Jobs Times" and, when I noticed this, I recalled reading about how many skilled workers from Kerala work internationally (often in the Middle East) and send money home. The man on the bottom bunk, Joseph, was going back home before leaving to work as a civil drafter in Bahrain at the end of the month.
As the trip progressed I notice the train was also home to a small community of wildlife. My favorite was the tiniest mouse I've ever see that occupied the floor and acted like a Wimbledon ball boy. If a small piece of food was dropped, say a peanut, and was considered "out of play", the mouse would dart across the floor, grab the food and clear to the nearest side. It was adorable, though possibly not fantastically hygenic.
It was in this atmosphere that I did finally relax, watched the green countryside slide past, read, wrote, chatted, slept and napped. In the end, the train was 7 hours late, but since that just meant more time to relax, it wasn't a problem. I might not really recommend such a long train ride as a way to relax, but it certainly served its purposes for us.
the joys of travel planning
October 8, 2007
In addition to the glamour of being made up and wearing an Indian outfit from the 1960s for the video shoot, we also had quite a nice time chatting with the other tourists, who are all on long trips, too. Gaby is from Australia (Melbourne) and Alex and Catia are from Germany, but just spent the year working/traveling in New Zealand. So we got lots of good tips on what to do and where to go in both countries.
Now we're thinking of working in New Zealand for awhile, which you can do really easily because they always need people to work on the farms. It's a program called wwoofing, in which you work for food and board, but there's no time limit, so you can do it just for a week or two and then travel some more. And, if we actually wanted to earn money, instead of just not spend any, we could pick fruit, for which they pay some amount per cubic meter of apples, which works out to about 200 NZ dollars per day. And last year, they were short 16,000 fruit pickers, so the government changed the laws so you can work, even on just a tourist visa. But fruit picking sounds like while it might be fun for the first half hour, it would just be tough after that. But maybe for a day or two? At any rate, if we wwoof we might stay longer in NZ, which would help finance the tacking on to the end of the trip, the addition of going to Wales and the sailing course in Italy. Though naturally this is all subject to our (very varying) whim.
oh, you know it
October 6, 2007
We're in Mumbai, and other than the fact that it's hideously humid, and also hot, it's quite nice. But who cares about the weather when the exciting news is that I got to be part of a music video shoot, yesterday.
They, being Bollywood in general, need Westerners every once in a while for some of the 900 movies produced in Mumbai every year, so they contact the cheap hotels and ask if anyone is interested. We actually thought we would be in a movie, not that it matters, but we expected to just be extras and only in a crowd scene for about three seconds. We actually talked about what we should wear. Can you believe it? We opted to wear our cleaner clothes, because they look a little nicer, especially now that the chocolate gelato I dropped on my yellow shirt has set in, but we needn't have worried. The other three women and I were the "backup" girls, which doesn't actually mean anything, except we were in a lot more of the scenes. And that they put make-up on us and put us in Indian outfits from the 1960s. Yup, the 1960s, because the "scene" we were in is set in "pre-time." Hee!
David and the male partners of the other women were supposed to be in it, too, but the whole thing ended less than perfectly because of a rather major time conflict. We'd all been told we'd be finished at 10 and some people had transport to catch dependent on that, so when 10 came we had to leave, but they weren't actually done with the shoot. I feel badly about that, but I'm sure they'll figure a way to work around it. David thinks they'll actually use the footage of us, since they were done with our scene anyway, but I have no idea. Not that it matters much, since I'm not really sure how we'd go about finding the video. MTV India, maybe? At any rate, the whole experience was quite entertaining and David got lots of pictures and some video.
cutting qatar
October 3, 2007
We're off today, to India. We were originally supposed to stop in Doha, Qatar, but then we found out that: 1) it's hideously expensive!, and 2) the visas are really complicated to get. So we decided to forgo the week we were going to spend there and add a couple days on to Italy, while still leaving early for India.
Italy has been lovely. Naturally. Although as always, I'm surprised at how much harder it can be to find internet places. I don't know if it's because everyone in wealthier countries has their own connection at home, or if the internet cafes are just really well hidden. The one we're using currently doubles (triples?) as an international phone center and barber shop. A fascinating combination! Actually, it's rather apropos: the center is owned/managed by ex-pats from the Indian sub-continent (Sri Lanka, I think, although I wouldn't swear to it), so we're getting an early taste of music and handbills.
picture a day: introduction
October 2, 2007
David had the brilliant idea that we should have a post of pictures from an entire day, and then since I'm never one to let something go, I suggested we do a series of them. So, assuming we manage to occassionally find an internet connection fast enough to upload photos, there should be lots of pictures every few weeks. So far we've got one picture-filled post for Assisi from last week (well, okay, a little before) and another one from Salerno, where we spent last Saturday. Oh, and, David's been busy with the pictures on Picasa, so you can take a look at those, too, if you feel so inclined.
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things i'd forgotten about italy
October 1, 2007
- public pools in every town
- women teetering over ancient cobblestone streets in high heels
- exactly how good the food is
- trains that are almost always late
- high usage of public transport
- cute Smart cars
- how much I love the name "Twingo"
- loud Italians
- picturesque views at every point
- laundry hanging out to dry from every window
- colorful apartment buildings
- street names like: Michelangelo; Dante Alighieri; Leonardo da Vinci
- church bells chiming all day Sunday
- long, thin plastic bags given out at stores for wet umbrellas
- how social Italians are
- wine with every dinner
- frizzante water
- ugly industrial complexes
- the smell of green everywhere
- how exquisite really good gelato is
- shops closing for 2 (or 3) hours at lunch
- long dinners and late nights
- going up to pay at the end of a meal
- close villages
- sweet digestivos
- the variety of colors for men's pants
- fresh parmesan accompanying pasta dishes
- aloof looking cypress trees
- red-tile roofs covering every house and apartment building
- forest-green shutters sprouting from every window
product review
September 30, 2007
It occurred to me that the bibliophiles and geeks among you might be interested in how it is using the eReader I talked about here. Although I just really want to talk about it since I was initially highly resistant to using one.
I was extremely sceptical when David first began mentioning the readers several years ago. I couldn't imagine giving up the feeling of holding a book and turning each page or flipping past several pages at once. And then there's the text. Who wants to read a computer screen? They're bad for your eyes, produce a lot of glare and they just look so fake. And the smell! I love how books smell and plastic just cannot compare to the lightly pulpy smell of paper. Reading is partly a physical pleasure for me and I balked at the idea of giving up any of that joy.
But eventually I stopped arguing because if well-designed, an eReader just makes so much more sense when traveling for extended periods. Of course, I also though the first generation of eReaders would be so expensive we wouldn't be getting one any time soon, anyway. But then I opened my graduation present and there it was. And I love it.
It does, of course, have its flaws. The software was clearly written by computer people and not by book people. I'm hoping the next generation includes a 'search' function and I want a better way of flipping through multiple pages at a time. Also, as the daughter of librarians, I want more ways of ordering my books and selecting them than just alphabetical by title or author, especially since Sony's programmers live in a world where you alphabetize by authors first names. But really, I do love it. With the technology (e-ink) used for the print, I feel as though I'm reading a cheap mass market paperback. The screen isn't back lit the way computer screens are, so the text actually looks like text. I've gotten over not having pages to turn and instead happily push a little silver button, and ultimately, I'm willing to compromise on the smell in order to carry around 327 books in something about as big as a trade paperback. The eReader is a pleasure to read and I am giddy about having so many books so readily available.
picture a day: salerno
September 29, 2007
For today's outing, we began by:
walking to the train station, admiring the views along the way
to arrive in Salerno and pick up a map
before stopping at Bar Moka for some coffee
to fortify ourselves for the marvel of the Minerva Gardens
with lots of plants
and a nifty medieval classification system.
Then we walked around
admiring the views
before walking some more
admiring urban gardens,
all while trying to find the museum of the oldest medical school in the West. We asked a postman, a policeman, two old women and two middle-aged men; got a ride from one of the men and his mom, before learning the museum has been closed.
So then we recovered with the juicest peach ever, along with some excellent pears
before visiting the main church
with some colorful mosaics
after which I decorated my shirt with chocolate gelato
and pouted on the boardwalk
consoled myself with making David pose while eating more fruit
and dog-watching
before heading back to the train
and a dinner of bufala
and olives
on the beach.
picture a day: assisi
September 20, 2007
First, we walked into town
paid homage to MTV
admired a vespa
had breakfast
drooled over pastries
admired Santa Chiara
oohed over a dog
climbed some stairs
ate some lunch
discussed hiking
wandered around
for quite awhile
said hi to a cat
watched some construction
contemplated some imagery
laughed at the little crime in Assisi
drank some spritz
consumed dinner
...and dessert
and discovered we really like opera (or at least some of Verdi's arias)
before walking back to the tent and collapsing.
sailing sickness
September 18, 2007
Sunday, I went north along Lake Garda to a tiny village named Campione, the Italian word for Champions, to watch a regatta. (Leah pretended to be sick and stayed in Desenzano, reading.) Campione is low to the water and squeezed between the lake shore and a set of massive, shear mountains. Wind from the Alps blows down the length of the lake and, due to the geometry of the mountains and narrowness of the lake near Campione, the wind speed is faster here (if you've special ordered the physics workbook that accompanies this website, this is Bernoulli's principle); it's a wind worshiper's paradise. I have friends who love to sail, or as the Italians would say, are sick for sailing. When I lived in the area, I enjoyed sailing on their boats, but yesterday I planned to just watch with a vague notion to hike up a gorge that splits the mountains for a better view of the race.
Almost the entire village which I remember was razed. Only the church and a handful of buildings remained. I found the sailing club and chatted with a friend. I was told the village factory, which was closed 40 years ago, actually owned almost all the buildings in the village, and decided a couple of years ago to level them to build modern apartments and a newer, bigger port. Before the race began I wandered around construction fences, backtracked several times, and finally, near the pedestrian bridge, found and started up a trail.
Two spruce trees were grown into an arch, framing the trailhead. Quickly, the path was steep and switchbacked, and several turns were punctuated with Catholic icons, statues and crosses in colored glass. On my left was a waterfall and a natural swimming pool in the gorge. Abruptly, the path disappeared into a long tunnel, which forced me to crouch as I walked. On the other side of the tunnel were the remains of a hydroelectric station. Metal catwalks networked around and over the dam. I picked a steep, rocky trail on the left. After some time, I was lead to the village of Tignale, which I skirted toward Monte Cas, a destination I chose randomly.
I'd been walking mostly up for two hours and the whole time I had the idea that I would suddenly appear at the edge of the cliff directly over the Campione port and sit and take the whole race in one view, but it was now clear that if I did find this spot it would be too high to see anything but moving dots on blue. Despite this I was in a great mood. The air was clear and sweet and the view: superb. So, I walked back and down to only about 20 minutes from the start and, next to a small, white statuette of the Virgin Mary watched some of the regatta.
Most of the competitors sailed skiffs called Laser 4000. Although, a few, including some friends, used a dinghy called ISO. Honestly, it was impossibly for me to understand the flow of action. I understood that boats sometimes seem to be going around yellow buoys, but each boat seemed to be in its own race, meandering back and forth. I loved it--sailing is a very peaceful sport to watch from a distance. And, big surprise, I took pictures:
 |
| Regatta |
I have to admit the sailing sickness is now starting to infect me. So much so, we have agreed to come back to Italy next summer for the sailing course taught in Puglia. (If you think of Italy as a boot, Puglia is the province which could be labeled the heel.) Of course, it's not just about taking the sailing class, but we get to see our friends again, enjoy the food, spend time on the sea, and (insert expansive Italian hand gesture here.) Ironically, vacationing on the Mediterranean Sea in the summer is commonly considered a cure, but in this case it may feed the disease.
overwhelming
September 17, 2007
We've met some of the nicest people on this trip: Recently, there was Claudio, who we met in Madagascar at Ankarafantsika NP, a fellow tourist with whom we spent a day and a half. Then there were the kids in Majunga. Sure we taught them some English, but they walked us all over town, shared lots of interesting information about Mad, and totally ignored their families to entertain us. And then Claudio, again. Do you know what he did? He left Mad a week before we did and when he found out Italy was our next destination and we were coming into Malpensa, he said, "I live 20 minutes away: I'll pick you up!" And he did! So we spent the weekend on Lago Maggiore, an enchanting spot between Italy and Switzerland, camping and hanging out with Claudio. Claudio also introduced us to his friend Mario.
Mario, in addition to being just a fun person to talk to, refused to let us ride the bus to the train station so we could get to Desenzano, where we used to live, saying that he'd drive us instead. And then he added an invitation to lunch at his house, but not before touring us around the (now defunct) hermitage of Saint Caterina, a sweet little church dramatically perched at the bottom of a cliff next to the lake. And lunch? It was fantastic. Mario's parents are Sicilian, plus they have a garden, so not only did we get really, really good Sicilian food (pasta with eggplant in tomato sauce, plus pork with a simple sauce of freshly squeezed lemon juice), most of it was from their garden, including the grapes and figs we had for desert that Antonio, Mario's dad, plucked off their respective vines and trees after we'd arrived.
After Mario dropped us at the station so we could get to Desenzano, which involved taking us an additional 20 kms out of his way since the first station had no machine or person from whom we could buy tickets and you do not want to be on the receiving end of a fine from the Italian train system, we spent the entire journey marveling at how nice Italians are. Their hospitality is truly something to experience. But then we got to Desenzano where our friends overwhelmed us with even more open, welcoming arms, as if that were possible. Alfredo took us to his dad's house for dinner Tuesday, where Maria, his stepmother, made the best homemade pasta (casoncelli--flat squares of pasta folded over a pork and cheese mix), served us two styles of succulently grilled pork (northern Italy is the Pork Zone, after all) and followed the meal with homemade meringata and liquirizia, a dessert aperativo made of black licorice. Que buono! I just wish we'd taken our own pictures of the food. But we were too busy eating.
So of course we're forsaking all of this to go south tomorrow. But even if it's different, Italian food anywhere in the country is bound to be excellent. Unfortunately this means that after three weeks of indulging, we might not want to get on the plane to leave. We'll let you know.
hollywood with mixed poultry
September 13, 2007
On the Air Madagascar flight to Italy, I paused at the first item on the small green menu card: a salad of mixed poultry. In the dish were vegetables, mayonnaise and chunks of baloney, or something. But, I didn't really care about the airline's food. After three months deprived of any media in my mother tongue, I was interested in the movies.
In the Land of Women and Spiderman 3 were listed to play, respectively, according to the glossy guide tucked into the seat before me. Temptingly, each film description was followed by a note indicating the English audio channel. But, it turned out there was no such channel. I tried to watch the first movie in French and then in Italian and then, somewhat desperately tried to lip read, before giving up and grumpily reading. I had more luck watching Spiderman in Italian, mostly because I could follow the action and make up the dialog, although possibly inaccurately, which allowed me to write this movie review:
Okay, first everyone in the metropolis loved Spiderman. Randomly, some black goo fell out of space. Then, Spidy got a Depeche Mode haircut, and so everyone hated him and he started wearing black outfits. There were a bunch of bad guys, aerial chase scenes and fist fights. A couple good guys became bad guys, and one of them changed back to a good guy. Possibly, he went through one more good/bad cycle, but it was difficult to determine. Clearly, the mix of characters was to show off the fast-moving special effects, which were impressive. On second thought: were some of the effects too fake looking? Or, would any depiction seem so, because I don't have enough context for flying through the air. Also, what happened to the comic book feel; the camera angles and lighting seemed different from the first installment. Back to the plot: there were more dramatic action scenes high in the sky, a bad guy became a good guy, a funeral and then dancing. Fin.
Spoiler alert: the previous paragraph may ruin the movie for you.
likeness
September 10, 2007
I'm in the middle of reading Jack London's Cruise of the Snark. Several of the passages he wrote about taking an around-the-world voyage in a sailboat resonated rather well, given some of the questions we've been asked about why we travel, so of course I thought I'd let someone else more coherently express what I feel.
Our friends cannot understand why we make this voyage. They think I am crazy. In return, I am sympathetic. It is a state of mind familiar to me. We are all prone to think there is something wrong with the mental processes of the man who disagrees with us.
The ultimate word is I LIKE....It is I LIKE that makes the drunkard drink and the martyr wear a hair shirt; that makes one man a reveller and another man an anchorite; that makes one man pursue fame, another gold, another love, and another God. Philosophy is very often a man's way of explaining his own I LIKE.
...The things I like constitute my set of values. They thing I like most of all is personal achievement--not achievement for the world's applause, but achievement for my own delight. It is the old, "I did it! I did it! With my own hands I did it!"
MAD101
September 8, 2007
Possibly this would have been more helpful when we arrived here, but we just had so much to learn! So, as we prep for Italy, today's class is a (very) brief summary of some of what we've learned about Madagascar.
- Mad is the 4th largest, non-continental island in the world: about the size of Texas and 2 1/2 times the size of the UK
- The Malagasy, Gasy for short, are a mix of people who originally came from the Malay peninsula about 2000 years ago via southern India and East Africa, and Africans from the east coast, along with more recent immigrants from the Middle East, India and Pakistan
- About half the population is Christian with a Muslim minority
- Gasy culture incorporates aspects of the traditional religious beliefs into daily life, including a focus on ancestor veneration and respect for secondary gods who live in trees, rocks and rivers
- Rice is the main staple although cassava is eaten in abundance
- Zebu, the Indian cows with a hump of fat on their backs, are an important status symbol and almost outnumber the 20 million citizens: one good-sized adult zebu cost 600,000 Ariary
- 1750 Ariary equals $1.00: Robert, the good chocolate bar produced using Mad. cocoa, is 2100 Ariary
- Lemurs are prosimians, only found in Mad, and there are 74 species, although new ones are found every few years
- 80% of the plant species in Mad are only found here
- There are 8 species of baobab in the world: Mad has 7, 6 of which are unique, including this one, of which these four trees are the last in the world
- Mad is the world's largest vanilla producer--90% of it's vanilla goes to the American ice cream market
- Of the 270 bird species in Mad, 109 are endemic
- David and Leah really enjoy most of what Mad has to offer
And now it's time to start thinking about Italy!
wandering on
September 7, 2007
We're in Ivato, a surprisingly pleasant suburb 12 kms from Tana, because it's home to the one international airport in Mad and we leave for Italy tomorrow at about 7 in the morning. This has caused some concern in our camp because it means we have to be at the airport by 5, and while David's a morning person that's early even for him. (We won't discuss my morning status except to say that I'm not at my most chipper before, oh, 10 or so.) Especially since we'll be walking the 1 km there. We could get a taxi, but David has a mental block against taking transport when the journey will take less time than it takes to get our bags loaded into the cab. Besides, we like walking! So, having scouted around and been told that there are no intrepid early morning muggers, we get to leave our hotel tomorrow at 4:30. Fun!
Actually, what should be fun and what we're really looking forward to is arriving in Italy. We've already arranged to have dinner with a friend when we get in, and the best part, it will be Italian food! Mad's offerings of sustenance are a little...slim. And three months is more than enough time to establish that there are only so many rice dishes you can have when the rice is plain and served with a small bowl of sauce and three pieces of gristly, yet fatty meat as an accompaniment. But it turns out three months is actually more than enough time to establish a lot of opinions about Mad.
We've really enjoyed our time here and already have plans to come back sometime in the future, but there has been a feeling of "senioritis" for the last few weeks. Partly it's because given the way we prefer to travel (slowly) and Mad's transport options (bad), we haven't quite been able to have the trip we planned. So there's been a slight feeling of killing time, lately. But the big part of it is that we've never traveled for this long. We've had longish trips, but we've now been out for about four months. That's a long time to wear the same two outfits, deal with situations that change daily and be homeless.
But with Italy comes some routine, since while we'll still be homeless in the same two outfits, we'll also be in a country we (sort of) understand. And the food is fabulous. Because, really, who could ask for more than pizza and gelato?
ariary to zebu
September 7, 2007
Here is your abridged glossary of useful Madagascar words and phrases:
ariary - local currency; the exchange is 1780 Ariary to 1 dollar. Well, actually, the old currency, the Franc, is still in circulation and valued at 5 Francs to 1 Ariary. For example, if you want to buy some bread products: (1) walk up to the vendor; (2) ask the price; (3) you will be told a number in Gasy; (4) look helpless; (5) the number will be translated into French; (6) try to translate the number into English in your mind; (7) assume the number must be in Francs; (8) in your head, divide the number by 5 to convert to Ariary, take some bread products and hand the vendor some bills; (9) divide the Ariary by 1780 to convert to dollars to realized that you paid 25 cents for breakfast; (10) eat your bread products, which are now cold.
malaki - quickly; what is yelled when lemurs are found the forest and you are trapped in foliage.
malama - slippery; what is said after you fall in the mud.
mura mura - slowly; what you say when mobbed by touts.
secondary road - a vast expanse of desert.
straw hat - locally made and of every color, type and brim size (including brimless).
taxi-brousse - bush taxi; french word for a jungle taxi; a metal enclosure faintly resembling a minibus, which, for long distances, 14 people must be pressed into; 20+ people for any time less than 4 hours. If you are comfortable in a taxi-brousse, it will not move, but wait until people have filled that comfortable space. There is no time schedule; only buses that are over full depart.
vary - plain boiled rice, served at every Gasy meal.
vazaha - foreigner; white person; usually yelled by happy, pants-less children, to the snickering of their older siblings.
zavatra mapitokiky - in the Majunga dialect, the phrase 'something funny' (which ironically, happens to be how I say the phrase.)
zebu - a ubiquitous type of humped cow originally from India; the french word for cow.
leah's teenage bodyguards
September 6, 2007
Leah flagged down a white SUV in front of Ankarafantsika NP. Two guys working for an import/export company agreed to let us join them for the two hour drive to Majunga. We tried to give them money, but they said they had to drive there for work anyway and that other people had been nice to them on the road, so now it was their turn.
Briefly, Majunga (officially known as Mahajanga, however like most cities in Madagascar the proper name is rarely used) is a large city on the northwest coast, boasts the biggest baobab tree in the country and has a long, newly re-built boardwalk (after a cyclone destroyed the old one), friendly locals, a sizable expat community and plenty of tourists, both Gasy and Western. With all the tourists you may think the setting is ideal, but it's not. It's scorchingly hot during the day and muggy. And, the sea looks unappealing in two opaque colors: brown and grey-green.
At the end of our visit to Ankarafantsika, you may recall, we met a group of teens in a summer program who had expressed interest in improving their English. Since we were on our way to Majunga next, we agreed to give some English lessons as part of their summer program. On our first day in Majunga we called Jules, one of the kids who has exceptional English, to set up teaching times. Jules and two of his friends, David and Rado, met us right away at the baobab (really, it's massive and unmistakable) and gave us a tour of the town.
They were so nice, we've seen them everyday since. Usually, they drop in at our hotel and we all walk around the boardwalk for a few hours practising English. Often, David and Rado walk on either side of Leah, so that each can hear her equally; they've named themselves her bodyguards. Leah and I learn about Madagascar, albeit from a teen's perspective. Before coming to Majunga, I never realized how little I knew about the WWF (the World Wrestling Federation). Apparently, an important figure in this drama, among many others, is a character named John Cena:
I first saw the name on the brousse ride to Toamasina. A young man climbed into the brousse wearing jeans, a black, John Cena T-shirt, a gold chain and a serious expression on his face. Undermining his outfit and expression was his Cinnabon sun visor. (Americans donate the most unlikely clothing and much of it ends up in Africa. Sadly, I am told that clothing is often donated to retailers, who sell the items to the poor. But, that's another post.) I noted the name at the time, since 'cena' is an Italian word, for 'dinner', if I remember correctly. Since then, we've seen lots of Cena clothing.
Along with WWF, Hollywood action films and rap music rounds out most of the teens' understanding of American culture. Which reminds me of two points. One, the dialog in action films is largely terrible. I appreciate this strays from the purpose of the genre, but with all that money couldn't there also be good writing? And two, rap music, on the whole, is terribly misogynistic and the 'slang' so thick as to be nonsense. But we translate as best we can, although, we include caveats and warn that vulgarity is often used by those who are unable (or unwilling) to express themselves in a less trite manner.
We taught on our second and third days here. There were around 15 students in class, each with a wildly different level of experience with English. We had them do introductions, played word games and tried to get them moving around and talking with each other so they wouldn't fall asleep in the heat. It was rewarding. But mostly, it was exhausting.
But we've had excellent teachers, who were nice to us in the past and now it was our turn.
dogged
September 5, 2007
There is an episode in My Family and Other Animals, a largely biographical account of Gerald Durrell's childhood in Corfu, in which he describes the weird behavior of the French consulate in Corfu who had a beautiful, plump and well-groomed Persian cat, and who was acting as a temporary French teacher while Gerry was "between tutors." Every 20 minutes or so, while in the middle of patiently listening to Gerry mangle conjugations, the consulate, who sat looking out the second-story room's window, would suddenly leap up, grab an air rifle he kept on the window-sill and fire. When he turned back to Gerry, he would be dabbing damp eyes and would sit silently for a moment before instructing Gerry in proper French pronunciation.
Gerry wondered if the consulate was carrying on a feud with the neighbors across the alleyway, but decided there couldn't be that many cousins and besides, no one ever fired back. After having his lessons violently interrupted for a few days, Gerry finally asked about the shooting. It turned out that the consulate, who adored cats, could not endure the sight of the mangy, starving strays all over the city. Since he couldn't possibly adopt them all, he shot them to put them out of their misery. (By the way, Durrell is only one of the best and funniest writers ever to grace the English language and I cannot recommend his books highly enough.)
The first time we traipsed over to Greece I was reminded of this story because I wished the consulate was still around. Greece must have millions of stray cats, all very badly off: flea-bitten, half-starving, mangle-eared, broken-tailed. They just all look so sad. The only difference with the equally numerous stray dogs, who look just as miserable and abused, is that you have to be a little wary when you see them roaming in packs. Nothing ruins a vacation like a round of anti-rabies shots.
Morocco wasn't any easier on the strays. My third week there, the driver from Marrakesh pulled in front of the hotel in Azilal where we were going to spend the next few weeks in training, ignoring a dog who'd been laying in the gutter, forcing it to move out of the way. As it did so, dragging its lower body slowly through the litter, it was immediately clear that it's lower back had been broken. I lost sight of it through the window as I burst into tears. And then there was the donkey with the broken leg who'd been left to die right outside my window. I managed to make a spectacle of myself in public by sobbing wildly over him, too, as I tried to get him to drink water from my bucket.
There are strays all over Mad, too, and it's heart-wrenching to watch them. I've realized I only need thirty seconds to decide if I like a city or village, based on how the dogs around act. Trotting briskly with head and tail up may not guarantee they're lavished with affection from the inhabitants, but it does mean the dogs don't live in fear. On Sainte Marie the dogs were all relatively well-fed and eager because of the tourists, but in Ihosy the dogs didn't have vacationing pet owners to ease their way. They slunk along the walls, trying to look in all directions at once to avoid the 10 year-old boys with rocks, tails tucked permanently between their legs. Ihosy was not a city I liked.
Pets, in the Western sense, are really a product of a large middle-class with the luxury of disposable income and excess time. In poorer areas a dog is "owned" if it's thrown the occasional scrap as a way of getting it to hang around acting as a quasi-guard dog and a cat may be fed once in a while so it will act as a mouser (though really, no one ever owns cats even in the West), but broadly speaking, animals are badly treated in poorer areas. But I wish they could all be as well-cared for as the old French consulate's Persian.
sweatin' in a saree*
September 4, 2007
*Previous subject lines for this post included: "How I Stank my way through India," later changed to the more geographically correct "How I Stank My Way Through West Bengal," and "Indian Bling."
It is already likely clear to everyone that neither Leah nor David is writing this post. Not only because of the geography and sartorial hints, but largely due to the fact that despite all their outdoor activities, we're all aware that neither of them sweat. They either glisten (Leah) or perspire (David). Instead this post was written by Irene, Leah's sister. Now usually I don't sweat either—I glow. However, most recently I did indeed sweat. Believe it or not Leah and David wanted me to write something about my recent trip to India. It's not as though they were dragging the bottom of the barrel for ideas or anything to keep the blog updated.
When Leah asked if I would write a post about my recent trip to India, I thought that since they will be traveling there in the near future, writing about what they can expect would be beneficial. I quickly discarded this idea for two reasons. The first is that they will be in southern India—in Bangalore, whereas I was in West Bengal (which is actually in the mid-eastern part of the country). As is the case with most countries, there are large cultural differences based on location in India—therefore anything I might have gleaned during my time in India would likely be less than helpful. The second reason is that they've traveled so often and to such varied countries that I think they'll be fine wherever they go.
So no, this post is going to focus solely on my meandering reminisces of my time spent in India. To start off, this was not my first trip to India. I actually was there for about one month four years ago. Last time I went with my friend Meheli who is Indian. We met in graduate school—I was going for my master's and she for her PhD. I clearly remember one of our first conversations dealt with me explaining (or trying to) what quiche was to her at the annual "get-all-the-students-and-faculty-together" party at the beginning of the year. Our friendship grew from there and we actually shared a house for a while until I graduated. Anyway, that trip was lots of fun—we spent time in Kolkata (still frequently called Calcutta even by those who live there), New Delhi (India's capital), Agra to see the Taj Mahal and Darjeeling to experience some much needed cooler weather and Kharagpur, the town where Meheli grew up.
I had always planned on going back. In winter. Four years ago I went during May and June. It was hot. Very hot. And very humid. Believe me when I say it was very hot and humid. One might say extremely hot and humid. And naturally it was one of the hottest summers they had had in about a decade. I do not enjoy hot and humid weather. Meheli and I talked over the next years about our next joint trip to India—where we would go and when. We were in agreement that it would be in winter. Despite professing complete agreement of this plan, she called me back in March to announce that she really, really wanted me to come to the reception held for her and Philip in Kharagpur—in August! Philip is also working on his dissertation and they've been together for a few years now. They decided to make it legal and signed papers (no one is allowed to even breathe the "m" word anywhere near Meheli) in May. Since her family and vast majority of friends could not make that, it was decided that a reception would be held instead. Did I mention this was in August? Not only is it summer in India then, it's also monsoon season. So while everyone (well, namely Ma, Meheli's mother) was worried about the heat, she was also incredibly concerned about the possibility of it pouring on August 4th.
It didn't. No, it didn't rain at all that day. Not one tiny drop to alleviate the heat and humidity that persisted all day. Truth be told, it was cooler this trip than the last. Not what I would call pleasant weather, but cooler. Last time I distinctly remember that after showering and slathering myself with talcum powder (my favorite was Icee Cold—it had the excellent addition of menthol), I would start sweating again within 2-3 minutes. This trip, however, it took 7-8 minutes before I started to sweat. Sorry, glow. The actual sweating did not occur until the actual reception.
As with most large celebrations—350 people were invited by the way—it was comprised of various opportunities to chat and stuff our faces. On the morning of the 4th, we all dressed in what might be called our second best outfits (all having been previously approved by Meheli as being acceptable attire) and trotted down to one of the guest houses that are located on the campus of the India Institute of Technology (IIT). IIT is where Babba, Meheli's father, taught for many years as a professor of geology. And while I don't completely understand this—the campus also houses both the primary and secondary schools that Meheli attended. Anyway, we met in what I suppose could be called their banquet facilities. And proceeded to meet lots of people and eat good food. It was kind of a very long brunch—we arrived at the facility around 9ish and left around 2 pm. This was so everyone could nap.
Around 4pm people started getting ready for the evening reception. Again, we all dressed in previously approved Meheli sartorial apparel. In all modesty, I looked fabulous. Very, very nice. That just isn't my opinion either. A number of people commented on how lovely I looked. And, curiously enough, how well I wore the saree. That's right, I wore a saree. And I looked good. It's a beautiful saree—royal blue and burgundy with gold accents. Thankfully I had help dressing—I'm not sure I could have managed all the folds otherwise. Considering it's essentially one long piece of fabric, it's surprisingly comfortable to wear. I put my comfort in wearing it—and therefore my grace—in the fact that there was so much fabric. If it had been a mini-skirt or something similar that was the traditional dress, then we would have had a problem. But it covers a lot of your body, actually. There are a rather amazing range of sarees that can be worn depending on the occasion. Much of the difference depends on the fabric. From cotton to chiffon to different types of silk—there's a wide range of fabrics that can be made into sarees. Patterns also come in a wide range—though often the most elegant (and expensive) ones are those that seem simple. It further amazes me how easily women can move in them. While I admit that I wore mine with what I think was panache, since they are the traditional way of dressing throughout most of India, women perform chores in them as well. Including scrubbing floors, washing clothes and cooking—all tasks where I think excess fabric would be a hindrance, they handle with effortless ease. This excess of fabric did concern me a bit with my saree, but Chico, a childhood friend of Meheli's who helped dress me and arranged the garland of jasmine in my hair, ensured that it was not a problem. The first secret is that it is pinned at my left shoulder so that it stays in place and does not slip off the shoulder. She then wrapped it around my back and pinned it in place at my right hip. This second pinning is not always done—it usually hangs free, or is held to the body by the woman wearing it—but was done for me to ensure that it wouldn't bother me during the evening.
Wearing my silk saree (it is a particular type of silk, but despite Meheli repeatedly telling me what kind it is, I can't seem to remember the name of it), the evening started around 6:30 at the Technology Club, also on IIT's campus. I wasn't entirely sure what to expect, but I certainly did not expect to be confronted with two red velvet thrones placed side by side on a stage. But lo and behold, there were two high backed chairs that were covered with reddish/maroon velvet that had gold threading on a dais. There were strings of flowers—marigolds and jasmine and something else I couldn't identify strung in an arch over the chairs. Philip and Meheli then sat in the chairs and accepted well wishes and presents from guests who trooped across the stage. To make things even more interesting, chairs and small benches were set up parallel to the stage so that family and friends could sit and watch as other family and friends trooped across the stage.
There is little air conditioning to be found in India. It's only in the higher end hotels, restaurants, stores and businesses that can afford it. Meheli's parents do not have AC and while some of the campus does (labs, professor's and administration offices, etc.), the Technology Club does not. Granted there were several ceiling fans both in the throne room and in the banquet area, but frankly since around 350 people were invited, and it seemed that most of them showed up, the fans did little to cool things off. Plus, most people were wearing their finest clothes, which means silk. Added to that, it hadn't rained in a few days so it was particularly hot and humid. It was in point of fact, very hot and humid. Hence, I went from glowing to sweating in short order. I took a number of photos and it's rather easy to tell the order in which they were taken. By the end of the evening, the sweat stains are all the more prevalent, unfortunately. Still, despite the heat and humidity, it was a lovely evening and I enjoyed myself tremendously. But I'm declaring here and now that next time, I am definitely traveling to India in the winter!
With apologies to Irene for horning in on her guest-post, I feel compelled to point that David and I do sweat. Quite a lot, actually.
king of the birds
September 3, 2007
A long, long time ago, Madagascar was covered in forest. In the forest all kinds of animals lived: lemurs, fossa, crocodiles, snakes, lizards and birds. Everyone lived happily together, except the drongo bird who wanted to be more important than all the other birds.
One day there was a big storm and a bolt of lighting caused a fire in the forest. The fire spread quickly and the animals were all very worried. God asked the birds to put out the fire so the forest and all the animals would be saved.
The birds worked very hard: the big water birds scooped up water from the lakes and rivers in their large beaks and poured the water over the fire; the big raptors beat their wings over the flames, getting very close to smother them; and the little birds helped where the could, supporting the bigger birds and putting out the little fires before they could spread.
When it was all over and the fire was out the birds all flew down and rested after their hard work. All except the drongo, who flew up to heaven. The drongo said that he had put the fire out all by himself and saved the forest and all the animals. God was so grateful to the drongo for his hard work that he gave the drongo a little crown of feathers on his head to show that he was king of all the birds.
The drongo was very happy and flew back to the forest where he bragged that now he was king over all the other birds. The other birds where very angry that the drongo had lied and tricked his way into getting the crown. And that is how the drongo got his crown, and it is also why all the birds look down at the ground instead of up towards heaven.
living the wild life
September 2, 2007
On our first day at any new national park in Madagascar, Leah and I spend time slowly walking around, checking on hiking options, restaurants and food stands (if available), prices and generally just scout around, somewhat aimlessly. To the Malagasy our slow pace seems odd or amusing, but usually our slow style of travel works out well. And so it was at Ankarafantsika National Park:
Shortly after stumbling out of a taxi-brousse after a mentally battering 24 hours of travel, we set up our tent, looked around the park office for a while and set up our camp stove at a picnic table next to two huge and very different types of trees wound together. One of the trees was covered in short, brown, conical spikes; a tree, which a few days later, I dubbed a chocolate chip tree. Between the two trees hung five little white-bellied bats. After less than an hour, while enjoying lunch, a lemur (specifically, a sifaka) dropped onto the lower branches of the tree, apparently just so we could watch him eat some leaves and take lots of pictures. Then we saw the whole troupe, six sifaka including a month-old baby.
Most of our six days there it was like that. We would be sitting in camp reading, writing, or not really doing anything and the wildlife would drop in, walk by or fly through. We saw the lemurs everyday. And, watched lizards, insects and the birds. The variety of birds was stunning. It was several days into our time there I learned the slogan of the park is the "kingdom of the birds", and that somewhere around half of all the species of birds found in Madagascar can by found in this one park. (Although, only one species is endemic.) My favorite were the sickle-billed vanga. In groups of 20 or more would call, "ga,ga,ga" or petulantly cry, "wa-ann!" Leah's favorite were the hoopoe with mattock-shaped heads that would pick at the ground. And, in one circumstance they fanned out their "mattocks" and jumped around excitedly in a disagreement with a gang of grey-headed lovebirds. I was told they were fighting over food, but I knew it was a 50's-style-Hollywood turf war.
Of course, we didn't spend the whole time in camp. We drove in a park truck through a broad savanna to a multi-colored desert canyon; took a night walk, where we found an amazing little owl calling to his mate; and walked a botanical circuit that included an area covered with plants that produces strychnine.
Possibly, because it was closer to tourist season, or because the park was just off the main road from Tana, we met more Westerns than usual. We chatted with a Canadian masters' student, who was researching lemurs. Enjoyed talking with a northern Italian, who should be a professional photographer. And, on our last couple of days there, we struck up a conversation with a group of teens from Majunga, who were studying the park as part of a month-long summer program.
Oddly, due to our slow pace, other people seemed to come and go frequently. I wanted to say to them, "Don't forget to see the bats in the tree" or "Did you see the black collared lizards?" or "Did you find the bird watching tower?" But usually, before I could talk to them they had taken their one hour guided walk and were long gone. Oh well, I guess that can't really miss what they don't discover.
rioting colors
August 31, 2007
White-flashing fireflies; white-striped mosquitoes; brilliant blue, bright orange, electric pink and fiery red dragonflies; black-spotted iridescent turquoise-back, red-orange-bellied color beetles; neon-cyan fish; yellow and white striped triangular fish; black, blue, translucent and mottled-red crabs; pure green, red-eyed geckos; foot-long grey, white or black chameleons; flashy red-bellied song birds; orange-bandit-masked shore birds; white-shirted magpies; shiny, copper-coated lizards; hand-sized mahogany spiders; slimy, tan-swirled octopuses; burnt-orange-chested sifikas; white-flanked sifikas; slate-blue drogon birds; rich, dark chestnut coo coo birds; dirty white, dusty brown and black Indian cows; furry black-faced sifikas; fuzzy grey mouse lemurs; chocolate-brown forest rats; transparent jumping fish; mottled-red starfish; and, slick, black whales.
morning at camp--ankarafantsika np
August 30, 2007
The Swedes have left and it's a quiet morning. The guides have split themselves into three groups, each sheltered under one of the grass-thatched picnic areas. Three men are playing scrabble; two are playing cards; and two men and the three women are gathered with the guitarist at the kitchen area.
The caretaker continues raking the brittle, brown, dish platter leaves into piles while the wind scatters the piles from yesterday. The 4 year-old's mom has finished washing the breakfast dishes and is lying outside their tent in her leaf-patterned grey and red-ochre sarong.
The singing group breaks up as Olga and the other woman who can carry a tune wander off leaving only the enthusiastic, perpetually flat-pitched woman before the guitarist gives up. Olga lays down on a picnic table bench, chatting with the painfully thin caretaker.
A group of five small boys from the village next door wander along the cement path trawling for tourist trash. The caretaker's daughter is singing to herself and dancing to a rhythm difficult to follow. The 4 year old has disappeared into the red-brown park office building to receive attention from her dad.
The game groups disperse into the new one-room education center and Olga falls asleep. The caretaker, who's shy smile breaks slowly, has given up his futile task and is washing a shirt at the ablution block.
sneaky
August 30, 2007
You'd think we've have internet access for the last two weeks or so, but we actually just spent a little over a week at Ankarafantsika National Park. MovableType, the platform we use to post entries, has a really nifty feature named "scheduling" which allows us to pre-load posts, making it appear as though we have consistent access. Of course, this only works if we have something to say and have time to type it all in, which we did while in Toamasina, but it's something that we may start using more regularly. Depending, I suppose, on how much we have to babble about.
gauling
August 29, 2007
Although a few people we've met speak English well enough, language has been a minor problem here for me; in retrospect, I should have studied French in school, rather than German. (Even Italian would have been better considering the time I spent in Italy.) That being said, my French language skills are coming along--except listening, speaking, and general comprehension. Although, I do have an excellant, nasal "non" and can flap my arms with disinterest expertly in the French style. Mostly, I tend to stick with stock phrases and sagely nod and brightly say "d'accord" (the French word for "okay") when I don't know what is going on. Leah usually steps in at this point (she wisely did study French and had some time to use it in Morocco), to elaborate on my nodding.
tropical housing
August 28, 2007
One of the statistics I learned while obtaining my public health degree is that on average, indoor air pollution is 5 to 100 times worse than outdoor pollution. 5 to 100 times worse! I just can't get over that. My point in imparting this disturbing statistic is that while we were tramping across Sainte Maire, we camped in a couple of villages and I realized that most of the Gasy probably don't have to worry about the difference between indoor and outdoor air pollution.
Most houses in Madagascar that we've seen are made so there's lots of air flow from inside out and vice versa. There's a frame to the house made of tree branches that are just thick enough to be grabbed around without your thumb and middle finger touching. I really want the walls of the houses to be reeds, nice thick ones, because that's what they look like to me, but Martial, who among other things, is a botanical expert, assured me that the sticks are from a tree. So the walls are actually each a single row of tree branches thin enough that you could grasp four together. These are very carefully lined up vertically between the thicker frame tree parts and kept in line at the bottom by resting them on a thin piece of more or less flat wood. They're cut to fit, so they slot in at the top, just under another horizontal frame piece.
The roofs are all angled, due, I suspect, to the heavy rains that the country gets in various seasons. The covering is almost always rows of large fan palm leaves, carefully overlapped every two inches so there may be five layers at any one point. Sometimes the roofs are made of corrugated tin and sometimes they're a combination of palm and tin, but it's usually just the palm leaves, which are quite effective at keeping out even torrential downpours.
The houses are almost always just one room where everyone sleeps, stays dry and talks together. But not, to my surprise, cooks together. In the first village in which we camped we discovered that the kitchen is actually a separate, slightly smaller, one room house where the women of the two extended families that make up the village prepare the meals. Inside there was an unfinished plank wood table and four similarly rough-cut stools, a charcoal brazier for small dishes and the tea kettle, a free-standing cabinet of sorts where the staples of rice, cassava, oil and spice were stored, and a fire "bank" area where the main cooking was done. The fire area was large enough for three large pots to be going at once and had a three shelf rack built over it where the fire wood was kept. David expressed surprise at this arrangement thinking it might be dangerous, but Martial explained it was the best way to keep the wood dry in the humidity. Plus, it's good for smoking fish. (I am embarrassed to say i hadn't even though about it as a potential fire hazard, which is probably why I no longer have the pleasure of lighting our stove.) Even with all the wood smoke in the kitchen, there's still lots of airflow in and out, especially since doors, if installed, are always left open during the day, and frequently at night, as well.
Despite their non-air polluting benefits, you wouldn't really want to live in one of these houses. Partly because of bugs. With the inevitable spaces that allow airflow comes space for bugs and I am just not a fan of bugs moving around while I sleep. Especially on me. But more importantly, you wouldn't want to live in these houses because they only last for about four years. Can you imagine having to rebuild your house every four years? What a boon for construction workers, though.
And now, having finished this doubtlessly fascinating description of housing construction in Madagascar, may I encourage you all to go outside and enjoy the cleaner air. Unless, of course, you're in the U.S. where we've read that much of the country is on fire.
food or fuel
August 27, 2007
Eating in Madagascar has very little consistency; it's basically a throw of dice. There is so much variation that ordering the same meal from the same restaurant on two consecutive days may result in two different meals. And, not slightly different, but different enough to label one good and the other bad. It's disheartening.
Part of the trouble may be that we must often eat in varied circumstances: hotel restaurants, tourist restaurants, Gasy restaurants or Indian snack shops. Or, we eat street food, or picnic from the supermarket, Gasy market, taxi-brousse (people sell things through the windows when the brousse stops, or even just slows down), or cook with our camp stove. Each one offers completely different choices.
Hotel and tourist restaurants are vastly more expensive (6,000 Ariary - 12,000+ Ariary / about $3 - $6+ per person) and undeniably bland, or just plain bad, although they sometimes seem like the only option. To begin with the food is faux-western, prepared on request and takes hours to arrive, which, after a long day of hiking, is just annoying. It's not unusual for us to order food and then sit at the table and finish a package of crackers, correctly anticipating a one, two, or three hour wait before we are served. When the food does arrive, it would be charitable to call it boring. More than once I've order pasta, rice, French fries or an omelet and been shocked that the food had no flavor, no oil, not even salt. A couple weeks ago, I ordered spaghetti with tomato sauce. After several hours, I was given a dish of boiled noodles with no sauce, only the faintest tint of red. Leah and I questioned the manager.
"White people like very bland food, and if you want some exotic spices, like say, salt, you need to special order it," the manager replied. Maybe those weren't her exact words, but that was the gist.
This has become so maddening that Leah and I have sworn off tourist places for the remainder of the Madagascar portion of the trip, even if this means long walks into nearby villages or picnicking with little more than packages of biscuits.
Gasy restaurants can be more interesting (1,000 Ar - 2,000 Ar / $0.5 - $1). The foundation of most Gasy meals is boiled rice. A huge plate of it is presented in front of you, always with a fork and a big spoon. In a small dish to the side are tasty bits of beef, chicken, fish or, rarely, vegetables. Also present is a bowl of lightly flavored water to be added to the rice. Sometimes a drink made from boiled water at the bottom of the rice pot is included. The food can be good, but usually, especially for me, near the end of the meal, it feels as though I'm merely fueling.
Food only really starts to get exciting when we venture into the Indian snack shops or Gasy markets for street food, although much of the quick, hot food is deep fried: samosas; fried, battered bananas; and, fried, battered bread (Leah loves this curiously redundant food), just to name a few. There are also baked goods (including mufkash, a lightly sweetened rice flour cake/bread), soups, potato salads, cold noodles with vegetables, salads, sandwiches, brochettes and boiled cassava, to name a few more.
Supplementing all of this, we buy from individual vendors: fruits (pineapples, oranges, mandarins, passion fruits, bananas, papayas and coconuts), vegetables (tomatoes, green onions, garlic and corn), roasted peanuts, peanut brittle, wild-flower honey, donut holes and coconut toffee. And, from little shops or supermarkets we buy bottled water, yogurt, French pastries, breads, chocolate (made in Mad!) and crackers.
Finally, when camping there are lots of staples, vegetables and spices available, which is part of the reason we enjoy camping so much.
And now all this writing about food has made me hungry, so we're off to the market for another roll of the dice.
pleasure, perfected
August 24, 2007
For my graduation at the end of April, David continued his tradition of giving me the perfect gift by presenting me with an eReader. The reader finally harmonizes my two favorite pastimes: reading and travel. They've been out of sync until now because as much as I love traveling, I need to read. I just have to know that I have a book on hand. Since it can be difficult to find books in English when we're traveling, it doesn't even have to be a book I would normally read, it just has to be a book I can understand and have the bare outlines of a plot. We've had trips where the space/weight limitation of carrying enough books for me to read has been too great and then I turn into a listless faintly pathetic figure. As opposed to usual.
But the eReader solves the space/weight problem: before we left Pittsburgh we downloaded 327 book onto it. 327! (It actually holds a whole lot more with the 4 gig card, but we ran out of time to put more on.) Most of the titles are copyright-expired books from Project Gutenburg, a really impressive endeavor to provide ebooks for free. So I have all of Jane Austen's books, some Agatha Christie, both of whom I adore, and then lots of classics.
I do have more contemporary works, too, though. Sony's site gave us a $50.00 credit when we signed up, so by a judicious perusal of their 'packs' I made out like a bandit. I have four Tony Hillerman mysteries, Asimov's Foundation trilogy, Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy, five historical romances (what, like you've never needed to read something completely frivolous to relax?), and a David Sedaris book, for some non-fiction.
Now my only problem is that because I have so much to read, I don't always want to leave the tent. Maybe there's a book about that.
sour-pousse
August 23, 2007
Toamasina is a very flat, sprawling port city on the east coast of Mad. Main streets are broad and tree lined. And, refreshingly for large cities, the pollution does not overwhelm. This may be because most people walk, bicycle, or pousse-pousse; there are thousands of pousse-pousses. Pousse-pousses (and, I hope I'm spelling this correctly) are a sort of rickshaw, brightly painted in yellow and red. Most are pulled by earnest men in flip-flops (although, many are barefoot), and some are powered by a bicyclist. A long trip seems to cost 2,000 Ariary, a little more than a US dollar. Not expensive, but used frequently, would start to become so. A Peace Corps teacher we met told us, we "shouldn't feel guilty, pousse-pousses were not hard to pull." Adding, I thought dubiously, "...once you get started."
As you may be aware, Leah and I prefer to walk, so we do. And, as we walk, we are followed, sometimes relentlessly, by the pousse-pousseists, to coin a word. They call, whistle, wave, follow, want to know if they should wait for us somewhere and sometimes just sit, looking vaguely forlorn, while waiting for business. At the market there are dozens competing with each other. In the heat of the day, they sleep stretched back in their cart with the handles resting on the ground. I appreciate that pousse-pousses allow cleaner air, provide jobs and are convenient. So, on our first day, after initially repelling them and trying to walk without a map to the hotel ourselves, we took a pousse-pousse.
Not surprisingly, I felt guilty. I sourly hunched forward in the cart with my elbows on my knees and my hands propping up my head. There I was, perfectly capable of walking on my own, having a person tote me around. The other day I saw an exceptionally big, tall Westerner being dragged around by a Malagasy man at least two feet shorter. And, I started thinking, even if they provide jobs, they are terrible jobs and too many people are doing the same terrible jobs--what Leah would refer to as 'under employment', although you would have to ask her to explain that special economic term. (Leah posted about 'under employment' from China last year.) And, there are far more waiting for work than working. Pousse-pousses are not the answer to unemployment. And, while they allow cleaner air, so does walking.
So, I no longer feel like taking pousse-pousses and thought you should know why.
tired of being admired
August 22, 2007
Mel Brooks is a genius, especially in his earlier work. We're quite devoted to Blazing Saddles, a really brilliant satire on racism, in which Madeline Kahn, as a beautiful and entrancing German bar hall performer, sings an ennui-filled song about how she's tired of being admired. David suggested I use the song line as a post title when I said I wanted to write something about being "othered" in Madagascar, and it just fits so well.
We don't blend here. I don't generally have a problem with this since blending is not something I'm good at. Hell, I've only ever blended in Austria and the Netherlands, but David has been used to blending. He blended in Italy, Greece, Morocco and Turkey, so when we first got to Swaziland where everyone else immediately picked up on the fact that he wasn't a native, he had a bit of a shock. Three years later, he still hasn't quite recovered.
What bothers him most is the special treatment we get. There have been several instances in multiple countries in which we've gotten away with breaking the rules just because somehow as white people we're assumed to be special. Never mind that we broke the rules because we didn't, or don't, speak the language, the fact that we don't get called on it really irks David. People in Africa often let us cut in lines, wait on us first and just generally treat us as though we're privileged.
Sometimes I like the special attention. While exhausting, the time this photo captured is one of my favorite memories of Madagascar, so far. We spent a happy half hour talking to each other in mutually incomprehensible languages; proved that everyone has white palms; and that yes, my whiteness extends at least up to my knee.
(David had a slightly less controlled attempt to verify that his whiteness covered his whole body when he had to wave the shower wand at several impish faces peering in at him through a hole at eye-level while he was showering at Ranomafana NP campsite. I was relieved the kids had all been called away when it was my turn to get the grim off.)
Being visibly identified as 'other' works both ways, though. We're targets for all of the people who assume that just because we're white we have fistfuls of cash to fling around and charge us more. This is annoying, but not as bad as having three out of every four kids demanding money, candy or a pen. It's not so much being asked that I find aggravating, but the fact that some irresponsible tourist in the past gave a kid something and created a culture of dependency. David's gotten so tired of saying 'no' all of the time that he wants to get t-shirts printed up saying: I am not your bank, candy shop or stationary store. This would be great except someone would probably ask for it since t-shirts are something else thoughtless tourists have given out in the past.
I am more ambivalent about being othered than David is. I hate the history of colonialism that has led to white people being viewed as special and I get a little weary of continuously saying, "No, thank you" to everyone we meet. But I made those kids' day when we held hands for a while. And when we walk through some rural village and I smile at a woman sitting outside her house cleaning rice in a flat reed-woven platter and she looks startled and then gives me a delighted, beautiful smile back, it makes me really happy. Happier, even, than enjoying Blazing Saddles.
familiar
August 21, 2007
I'm comforted by the sight of little green men. Not real men, you see, nor from my imagination. Let me explain.
Since the moment we landed in Madagascar, we've been surrounded by advertisements for the Indian Ocean Games. (Actually, its the Islands of the Indian Ocean Games, but that doesn't roll off the tongue so easily.) Almost everywhere there are billboards, posters and television spots for the games. Not that we've watched any TV; it's just that the volume of every set in the country is turned up to be easily heard from neighboring rooms, lobbies and several blocks down the street. A rhythmic ten second ditty associated with the advertisement for the games begins to replay in your mind after a while. Visually, the most noticeable feature of the ads are the little, green, fan palm-headed men rendered in a schematized fashion and engaged in various sports. Oddly, after several months of daily exposure, the sight of the little green men is familiar and sort of comforting.
All of this was brought home a few days after we arrived in Toamasina, when I found myself standing outside a bakery in the pouring rain, frustrated with my failed attempt to buy bread and the complex response in French from the baker, which I didn't understand. It was a common type of frustration when I'm found in a far flung part of the world and unable to speak any of the local languages. But then I noticed a poster for the games and slowly read each sport in my mind, assisted by a picture next to each word: volley ball, athetisme (track & field), basket ball, boxe, cyclisme, foot ball, halterophilie (weightlifting), karate-do, lawn tennis, lutte (wrestling), natation (swimming), petanque (boccie), tae kwon do and tennis de table. Gradually, I became comforted by the green figure in the middle of the poster (and, partly, from the illusion that I spoke French better than I actually do.)
Thus buoyed, I re-entered the store and bought the bread I wanted with my own particularly animated mix of broken French and pantomime.
ripped reparations
August 20, 2007
We have this tent from Big Agnes that we just love. It's almost perfect for us: the body is 90% mesh so it's great for hot-weather camping, humid-weather camping and star gazing. Plus, it keeps out the bugs. It's also a very light weight tent: a factor not to be underestimated when we have to carry it over mountains. David had his heart set on it because even though it's a three-person tent (we're big fans of extra space), it's only about 2 pounds.
The only downside to the tent is summed up by a notice printed in bold on the tag inside the tent body. Along with warning the user not to set the tent on fire, always a wise precaution, the notice states: Synthetic fabrics are damaged by overexposure to UV light. Well great, I've always wanted to have to camp indoors. But because shade's a little difficult to come by in desert areas, we've now experienced the damage done to synthetic fabrics by UV light.
On Nosy Nato one of the innumerable times I was futzing with the rainfly just after yet another drizzle, I noticed that the fabric just over one of the cinch points where we stake the fly into the ground had torn just above the seam for about the length of my forearm. It's actually just fine: I sewed up the area a few days ago with the white thread David put in the repair kit. (Don't ask, he somehow thought it was white that goes with everything, which looks great on the seam of my black pants I also stitched up.) David's now going to put a fluorescent-orange patch on and we should be just fine. And if not, I found out from the very nice people at Big Agnes that we can buy a new rainfly and have it shipped anywhere in the world. Oooh, mail while traveling!
toamasina update
August 16, 2007
Would you believe it: we went running this morning. I know, I know, after 2 months of only putting our running shoes on as a respite from our hiking boots or to let our feet recover from the sanding they received on the small islands while wearing our Chacos, I, too, am shocked that we used them in the way they're meant to be.
We're in Toamasina for about a week, Mad's largest port and second largest city, drying out from our exciting, but rain-saturated time on the small islands and taking advantage of a decent internet connection. So decent, in fact, that we've been able to upload some pictures, as well as update our location map. We're also using the connection to type in all of the posts we wrote during our island stint, so there should be about 7 or 8 backdated posts before we leave.
When we do leave we'll head northwest for a 2 week stay in Ankarafantsika NP (quite the mouthful, isn't it). In the meantime we'll continue to enjoy Toamasina's faded grandeur, which lends it a jauntily disreputable air. And of course, the possibility that we might go running again.
fruity experiments
August 13, 2007
On the brousse ride from Soanierana-Ivongo to Toamasina (really, the names here are impressive) the driver pulled over in desperate need of a coffee so as not to fall asleep. I was in equally desperate need to find a bathroom, so it was a welcome break for me. When I got back from the pile of huge dead palm leaves (despite my rather constant announcements to the contrary, the world really is your toilet), David was standing at a vendor's shack holding a nubby, thick-skinned, mottled green, irregularly heart-shaped thing twice the size of a big mango and trying to ask how much it cost in French. After handing over 500 ariary, about 34 cents, we piled back in the brousse with our new piece of food, having been assured that it was sweet and good, but with no name to give it.
We got to the hotel where we pulled the fruit out and asked the man at the desk what it was. he knew the name, but only in French and my I-can-get-around-but-can't-hold-real-conversations French didn't recognize it. Another man standing around was able to warn us that it had black seeds and we shouldn't eat them, but he couldn't supply the name in English, either. So we took it to our room and laid it on the little white wooden table. David pulled his knife out after we'd each tried to smell it and hefted it about a bit. He cut into it over the sink in case it was really juicy and exposed a creamy but fiberous white flesh with large black seeds. We each hesitantly took a bite: it was creamily sweet, but slightly tart, and I suddenly exclaimed, "David, it's your body wash!" Because it was. We were the excited tasters of a passion fruit. And I highly recommend it.
whales and chips
August 9, 2007
Upon arriving in the largest city on Saint Marie, Ambodifotatra, touts fell upon us selling whale-watching boat tours, which were priced in euros. Reflexively, we recoiled. (Not just in Madagascar, but around the world in developing countries, when prices are set in dollars or euros, it is usually because it is overpriced to the point that the amount in the local currency sounds ludicrous. And, it almost always is.) Later, we learned that whales must stop in order to allow calves to nurse (each calf must drink 600 liters a day), and motor boats disturb and relentlessly pursue the whales so the calves can't drink their fill. We were also told the number of whales is declining each year.
Saddest of all, whales are best viewed, not from a motor boat, but from the beaches, where they come as close as 80 meters. Thankfully, we didn't take a packaged tour. We stayed at a resort called Atafana. The people there kindly let us position our tent between two fancy bungalows. We spent the days relaxing, reading, doing laundry (an important part of camping), eating at the restaurant, walking to the nearby village and, of course, whale watching.
Everyday, we saw whales in the distance: massive black towers, which rose in the distance, hung for a long moment, then silently crashed, chipping the sea into two huge white splashes. We also often saw spouts of water. On four of our six days there whales came close. Close enough to easily reach with a Frisbee! Usually, it started with the barking of the resident dog. People shouted happily to each other. Near the beach 6 or 8 whales broke the surface, spouted, grumbled deeply, flapped their tails or smoothly undulated their slick back, sporting only a smallish, swept dorsal fin.
I don't, as a rule, watch my vacation through a video camera, so, rest assured, this video was taking from the hip, which is why it came out a little cattywampus:
For some time afterwords it was difficult to say anything that didn't sound truly inane. So we usually just stayed silent and enjoyed watching the water smooth itself out.
and they covered up the sun
August 9, 2007
Nosy Sainte Marie and Nosy Nato, nosy being the Malagasy word for 'island', are extraordinarily popular with vacationing Europeans. From July to September you can see humpback whales up from the Antarctic to give birth to their young because the calves don't initially have enough blubber to survive the frigid waters of home. In fact, from the beach at Atafana where we're camped, we've seen lots of whales. Not always clearly mind you, but we've seen countless sprays of water from blowholes as though there's an enormous creature just under the water's surface puffing on an outsized pipe. And tail slaps with their corresponding splashes of water. And four times, about a football field away, 8 enormous and stately creatures puffing and slowly arcing out of the water, letting it run off their great, slick, black backs before showing off the mottled white underside of their tails.
In addition to the novelty and excitement of whale watching, the two islands boast more traditional features of a tropical paradise. Nato is only 8 kms in circumference and it's possible to walk the entire distance on endless sandy beaches with the Indian ocean lapping at your feet. The land shelf around the island extends under the water for quite a ways so its a safe and pleasant swimming ground. Additionally, on the eastern side of the island, there are some small rocky outcroppings jutting out of the water near the shore, providing a safe haven for electric-blue tetra fish, mottled rock-red starfish, innumerable tiny hermit crabs and other tropical life we've only seen in aquariums.
Sainte Marie's coast provides more variety, since it's much larger than Nato: 50 kms long and 7 kms wide at it's widest point. It also provides more inland variation. Almost all of Nato is a sort of green jungle of overgrown coconut palms, mangoes and mangroves. Sainte Marie has all of that, but also has two different rain forest types--tall and short--and a drier forest as well. On our hike across the island we sampled fresh coconut juice, sugarcane wine and ate our fill of just-knocked-down coconut meat. We're missing mango season by two months, but there are bananas falling off their trees, jack fruit, bread fruit and papayas, most of them just waiting to be plucked and split open. Vanilla, cinnamon and lemongrass are all grown here, providing rich, gorgeous smells whenever you walk past. As for activities you can hike, kayak, deep sea fish, watch whales, swim or sit and stare at the ocean, trying to decipher the tides. Paradisaical really. Except one thing: rain.
As an enormous joke on the part of the weather gods, July and August are also the rainy season for the islands. For the country as a whole this is winter and in most areas winter means its dry. But Mad has several regions, each with their own weather pattern. And the pattern for the northeast, including the islands, is cyclones from January through March, rain and slate-grey clouds in July and August and sunny and dry the rest of the year.
It has rained several times every day we've been here. It's poured every night. The clothes we were wearing when we landed at the airport were soaked through about 20 minutes after we arrived and it took fully four days and a lucky few hours of sun to dry them. David's hat has officially breached the mold barrier and we've taken to washing already wet clothes with no hope of drying them just to restart the mildew clock. When it's not raining it's indescribably humid. Even in the tent, where we're quite waterproof, it's still clammy. And the sky is an almost unrelenting grey cover of clouds. Every afternoon for about 30 minutes the clouds will thin and we'll be teased by the possibility of the blue sky reaching the sun, but it rarely happens.
So go ahead and be jealous of our tropical living, but rest assured it's not paradise. At least not quite.
transports of delight
August 4, 2007
Martial, our guide for the next three days, motions for us to join him in the back of a white pickup truck. Throwing the packs in and clambering over the side by heaving ourselves up on the top of the rear right tire since the truck is missing its fender, we try a new transport type.
In populated but poorly served areas people with their own trucks will take passengers. You have to stand in the back; there are no seats and frequently no handholds. The truck bed is filled with whatever else is being carried: sacks of rice, a spare tire, some tools and empty 1.5 liter water bottles. But it's cheaper than the official transport. This truck has a simple frame that's been welded on at the height of the top of the cab, running back, parallel to the sides of the truck bed, but it's broken in half at the back and each side sags down almost touching the tail gate. David will rip several layers of skin off a spot on the back of his hand climbing out.
David and I get the coveted, slightly safer, positions at either corner just behind the cab and then we're off. Racing along with our legs behind the cab and everything else exposed to the wind. Besides the three of us there are two other men in the back, plus the driver and a friend who came into town with him and an elderly man too slow to steady himself in the swaying back, seated in the cab.
We drive past three kilometers of palm-thatched huts, built two feet off the ground in case of high waves and the cyclones that come every year between January and March. The driver honks lightly in warning to the people walking on either side of the narrow strip of smooth black asphalt. Most of the people stop and watch the truck go by and I can see surprise on many of the adults faces at the two vazaha (white people) in the make-shift taxi-brousse. At one spot we cross a small concrete bridge, twice as long as I am tall built over a wide stream flowing into the ocean. On the land side of the bridge women are washing the family clothes, children are splashing around naked in the guise of washing themselves and a man is throwing water up onto his gleaming white truck. We're going fast enough that I tear behind my sunglasses, feeling exhilaratingly unafraid as I wave to the small children who put their hands up and beam.
We round a slight curve and the truck has to slow because there's a knot of people in the road. The driver sounds the horn and people look up, start to part and make for either side, but it's a slow process with more than 50 people. As we squeeze through the opening of people we see another 100 people to the right in a small clearing, some standing, some sitting. The women are singing and clapping their hands and the men are all smoking, talking to each other. Martial tells us it's a turning festival, "Four years after a man dies his family comes back and wraps his body in new cloth and celebrates his life with a big festival." We've heard of the ceremony in Betroka where we stayed for three days waiting for transport south to Fort Dauphin, but there the Bara, the local tribe, hold the ceremony seven years after the initial burial. Ancestor worship, brought with the Malagasy from the Malay peninsula about 2000 years ago, is still strong.
The huts thin out and there's nothing but greenery on either side. Grass on the verge, then thick, tough ferns giving way to the trees overhanging the road: mangroves, mangoes, bamboo, bananas, several palm species and others we can't identify. We have to duck and dodge the suddenly lethal looking palm leaves turned into long jagged knife blades at 40 km/hr. On our left the waves skirt the road and on the right, towering over the trees is a cliff of slick, broken, black rock.
We climb up a little away from the coast. We slow down and then stop at a solitary hut with a woman outside breastfeeding a small toddler. The old man in the cab gets out very slowly and starts shuffling towards her. We've pulled away and are out of sight before he makes it to his home.
Just as I wish we could keep going David spots a sign to the left for Atafana where we plan to stay after our hike and I pound on the cab roof to get the driver's attention. And then we climb down, awkwardly, trying not to fall flat on our faces while Martial manages with much more grace. A state of affairs that will continue for the next three days as we walk on paths through the jungle, slick with rain.
olfactory outlet
August 3, 2007
It started with the "scent tour." We stopped by Ralia's shop on Nosy Nato to buy a tea cake and he started opening up various bottles for us to sniff, pounding the ends of dried sticks to smell and crumpling leaves in his hand to inhale. The essential coconut oil made me hungry, the cinnamon intoxicated David and we both exclaimed over the dried olive leaves used for tea before being enraptured by the vanilla midway through its drying process. By the time we continued on our way to the beach we were both a little giddy from the scent overload.
After that experience we didn't think our noses could be any more delighted, but they have been. On a walk across Sainte Marie, Martial pulled fresh versions from trees and bushes of the dried concoctions we'd inhaled at Ralia's. Dried cinnamon smells pleasant and cosy, but with a small branch of fresh cinnamon you can't breathe deeply enough to satisfy the urge to suck up all of the scent. David tried but ended up somewhat lightheaded. The fresh lemongrass, olive leaves and cloves leaves were similarly intoxicating. But it was the sweet, heavy perfume from the pointed white flowers of the arabica coffee plant that made me wish I could fill a bathtub with them and soak for hours. I'm sorry that the Internet is so thoughtlessly deficient as to not have a mechanism to share scents, or we'd intoxicate you, too.
picture a day: assisi
August 1, 2007
We walked into town
paid homage to MTV 
admired a vespa 
had breakfast 
laughed at a sign 
drooled over pastries 
admired Santa Chiara 
oohed over a dog 
climbed some stairs 
ate some lunch 
debated hiking 
wandered around 
for awhile 
said hi to a cat 
watched some construction 
contemplated some imagery 
laughed at the police 
drank some spritz 
consumed dinner 
...and dessert 
and discovered we like opera (or at least some of Verdi's arias) 
before walking back to the tent and collapsing.
meditating gyrations
July 31, 2007
We adore walking. True, we also enjoy the play on words suggested by our site's name, but we really do love being pedestrians. And as equal opportunity enjoyers of any walking activity, we're also big fans of hiking. There's a peaceful, almost meditative state of mind I can only achieve hiking. Well, or listening to music while staring out at the desert on a souq bus in Morocco, but the hiking is easier to get to. Usually we prefer hiking just the two of us; comfortable enough to appreciate the silence, but also able to natter on about anything and everything. (That would be me when not in the meditative state.) But in Mad most of our hiking has been done with guides.
The national parks here have very strict rules about only being able to enter a park with an official guide, though oddly these rules differ from park to park. At Ranomafana we were assigned a guide by the park officials; at Isola we were besieged by men offering to act as guides, official or faux, with the ANGAP official looking on in amused disinterest; and at Andohahela the park officials are the guides. But in any case you can't go in any park without a guide.
Since maps are either non-existent or laughably bad in this country, and the guides are all licensed, having had to pass a test about the ecology in their area, tagging along behind a guide is hugely informative. They spot lemurs, lizards, birds, stick insects, point out interesting and weirdly shaped trees and bushes and caution about the poisonous plants, leeches ad scary-looking, but harmless, spiders. So we've been quite happy to hike with a third person when out in Mad. Even if it means I miss out on my meditation.
plane notes
July 28, 2007
I don't recall much about the flight from Fort Dauphin to Nosy Sainte Marie, but I do remember it was preceded by an extended period of primitive camping or otherwise severely limited accommodations, which explains some of what I wrote in this excerpt from my notebook:
I'm flying with my face pressed to the plastic before the window, studying the mountains and rivers, wondering why some parts are green and mottled with trees and others are arid, and the steward brings the food trays. I select a cheese sandwich (in the French style with butter on a baguette.) Leah prefers the aisle seat; there is an empty seat between us. (How very strange? Maybe less than half the seats are empty. "Why didn't we trawl the runway to pick up more passengers, like the taxi-brousses?" I quip to myself.)
The sandwich has a paper napkin around it and then the whole thing is wrapped in plastic. I unfold the plastic and then unfold the the napkin, which I hold up. It has a border of square dimples and an elaborate design of schematized flowers, leaves and hearts. Something spontaneous and strange happens. I pull my shoulders up and together, and swallow a trill of personal laughter. I'm amused with the frivolousness and elaborate absurdity of my napkin. I have the urge to wipe my hands on my sleeve, rather than the napkin, and then casually urinate in the empty row ahead, rather then in the empty bathroom nearby. (Public urination is all too common in Madagascar and out of necessity I now urinate the way everyone else does.) As fast as I am entranced, it breaks and I consider the change in my sense of mores. I turn to Leah and notice she has carefully wiped her napkin of crumbs and squirreled it into the pocket of her day bag, which holds precious bits of Kleenex. What has happened to us?
whirlwind
July 27, 2007
We've just posted a plethora of back dated posts and you're welcome to read as many, or as few, as you'd like. There are some fun stories, though, either way.
Tomorrow we leave Fort Dauphin for Isle Sainte Marie, about 900 kms northeastish of here. We plan to stay there for about two weeks, during which time our internet access will probably be nil. So plan your leisure reading at work accordingly.
passing the bucks
July 27, 2007
In a few days we'll have been out of the States longer than any previous trip we've taken. And yet we've been in Madagascar for less than half our stay here. We'll have been here five weeks this Sunday, but we have six more weeks from this Saturday. Time seems to pass in a different way when traveling. We end up quite isolated, operating in a small space consisting of finding food, lodging and transport. And with little access to news sources, the outside world really fades away.
This all came up because we did a big money count last night, checking that we have as much as we thought we did and trying to plan how much we'll spend in each country. Our daily allowance is roughly $30 total. Not much, especially for two people, but the fact that we love camping helps enormously. And fortunately hiking is cheap no matter where you go. We will, of course, go over our daily allotment in some places. Italy, Australia and New Zealand will be burdensomely expensive, but then its cheap here and we hope to recoup in India and Argentina. Malaysia seems like it could go either way: we could blow our budget or save a lot.
But with 294 days left (don't ask: David is always and forever an engineer and he just knows these things) not only is the trip going well, but we're set, more or less, for the next forty-two weeks. Wow.
oh sugar, sugar/we are but a moment's sunlight
July 25, 2007
For the trip from Andohahela National Park back to Fort Dauphin, Charles and Jean, our two fairy godmothers who work in the park, secured two seats for us on the twice-weekly taxi-brousse. We had planned to hike out, as we'd hiked in, but then I crippled myself for a few days, so that seemed less like a good idea. I resembled one of those old women you see in pictures, hunched over half-way at the waist, leaning heavily on a staff, shuffling along, but only for about two days and now I'm almost all better. But remember to do your yoga so you too don't make every muscle in your lower back seize while squatting down to get into your tent. But I digress.
Because the park is 8.5 kms up a rutted dirt track, the taxi-brousse was not a proper passenger van. The passenger van taxi-brousses only go on roads that are (mostly) paved. They have four rows of passenger benches seating three people to a row, plus two more people up front by the driver. They can be relatively comfortable, but children don't count towards the total number of 14--indeed you don't even pay for children under the age of 5--and depending on how little trafficked the route is, and/or how much the driver is willing to bribe the gendarmes and police at their separate, ubiquitous check points, more people will be crammed into the brousse. On our way to Fort Dauphin two weeks ago, I counted 24 passengers, not including infants. So much for a 'proper' taxi-brousse.
The taxi-brousses that travel off the primary paved road have to be able to maneuver through holes the size of small houses and over ruts of a similar dimension. The one in which we rode from the park was a full-size truck with the back converted into a seating area with three rows of benches facing forward and two half benches facing each other into the center of the truck bed at the tail gate end. All made out of rebar.
Naturally we started out squashed against each other in one of the half benches with our feet up on bulging bags of rice. Once we reached the paved rode we stopped at the nearest village to swap out a tire so David and I got out to watch. I think we might have felt better if we hadn't. The incoming tire was bald and held on with only three of its six lug nuts. But we welcomed the chance to readjust our vertebrae.
While we were standing about, smiling at the small children gawking at the weird foreigners, the driver came up to me and said I could sit in the front since he knew I "didn't feel well." So I rode the rest of the 50 kms in the relative comfort of the cab, growing unaccountably teary listening to the driver's tape of American songs from the 60s, sitting next to a beautiful young woman who was emphatically pregnant. I was worried all our jostling might send her into labor, but I haven't practiced my doula skills. And if we shared a mutual tongue, I'm sure she could have told me some stories about real back pain.
charles' charges in the undecided forest
July 25, 2007
Only a mad gardener could have designed the valley in which we camped for the last five nights. There was a huge diversity of flora: water plants with leaves as big as bath towels; fan palms; tall, slender rainforest trees with only leaves at the top; tall tubular cacti covered in fleshy green ovals, each hiding a thorn; pretty trees that dropped spiked balls, which when dried reveal barbed thorns (I dubbed them painful velcro); split personality botany, which grows a thick tree trunk and halfway up bows down to the ground becoming a vine; pad cacti, similar to the ones, with which I grew up; and much, much more. The fauna was just as impressive: butterflies, lemurs, ducks, sunbirds, lizards (one with a black body, white spots and a shiny copper-colored tail). Best of all, each night hundreds of egrets loudly arrived, squalking and pecking at each other, until they were all spaced equidistant to each other, pretending they hadn't just squabbled like a huge, grumpy family and then slept. The gardener's results were sublime.
The area is called Tsimelahy in Andohahela National Park (recently made a UNESCO world heritage site) and properly termed a transitional forest, the confluence of rainforest and spiny desert. Our tent was pitched in a purpose built clearing with fire pits and stone paths. One short path led to a natural swimming pool about 150 meters in diameter and was flanked by gently sloping waterfalls. The soft roar from the falls was heard from every point in camp (and some distance beyond) in a slightly different way. It was paradise and the (nearly) perfect place to repair and recover from extented travel.
Leah needed the repair more urgently, since on our first day there, without apparent cause, she suffered disabling back pain. She lay flat either in the tent or on one of the shaded picnic benches by the pool, only moving to inch her way with a makeshift cane back and forth and to the bathroom--I offered to carry her, but she absolutely refused and it probably would have hurt her more, anyway. At length, she recovered with time, yoga stretches and hot compresses made from the boiled bark of a special tree that one of the friendly park rangers, Charles, collected from the forest. (Charles carefully explained to us that he was responsible for everything in the forest, which for the moment included us.)
Charles and another ranger, Jean, led me to see lemurs one morning before they woke and left to forage for the day. The six lemurs, balled in three pairs for warmth, were adorable, mostly white fur with black or brown caps, black ear tuffs, palms and faces. Some had faint red-brown-orange patches on their chests. On the walk back, Charles picked mountain oranges and gave me four. Their scent was so good they seemed fake.
At the end of the week and with our food supplies nearly depleted, Jean carried Leah's pack back to the entrance, in case she had any lingering problems, where Charles had arranged for seats in a taxi-brousse to return us directly to Fort Dauphin for our flight on Saturday to Isle Sainte Marie.
Kudos to the mad gardener.
ploughing through
July 18, 2007
We have a friend, Alfredo, who loves to sail. He loves everything about sailing: he waxes poetic about famous boats and races held decades ago; gives detailed lectures on sailing's technical aspects; and in fact teaches a one week course on sailing in southern Italy every summer. All of which makes me wonder what he would have thought about our 12 km pirogue trip to the coastal fishing village of Evatra, through palm lined canals and lakes.
One of the aspects of life in poorer countries that will always amaze me is peoples' ingenuity; not having ready-made goods requires that you create them yourself. The pirogue we used is a hollowed-out trunk of a Eucalyptus tree, large enough to hold five people. The left side bulges out in a greater curve, which Ernesto, the captain, counterbalances by carefully seating everyone, staggering us so I'm the only one sitting in the center of my wooden plank of a seat, in the center of the priogue. Which leaks slightly, so I periodically hear Ernesto using a cut-up plastic water bottle to scoop out the excess water, dumping it over the side. And then there's the sail.
Instead of a custom made sail, the sail hoisted on the pirogue is made of two empty 50 kg bags of Pakistan Long Grain White Rice Reap No: 2-1-91-1022. The bags are each cut lengthwise down both sides and then sewn together on one long edge to create a square. A square of untrimmed raveling edges, hoisted up by blue twine onto a two meter branch cut from a tree, curving slightly towards to top with a convenient 'Y' over which the twine runs. The twine is tied around the front plank, the first paddler's seat, to keep it secure. And it works beautifully, other than the fact that Jean, the first paddler, has to use his paddle to hammer the mast into its hole every twenty minutes or so. But when the wind picks up we plough through the water, sliding past palms, birds and at one point, a small crocodile. I wish Alfredo had been there to enjoy it with us.
trying to go south
July 13, 2007
Follow this plan to go about 300km from point A (Isalo NP) to point H (Fort Dauphin) on public transportation through some of the deserts of Madagascar, the fourth largest island in the world:
A - Beginning from the village of Ranohira close to the entrance to Isalo NP, take the two hour taxi-brousse ride to the town of Ihosy. Spend the night to get an early start on the long ride south. Do not be alarmed at the family of five crouched in the shadows beneath your hotel room window. The father, who grips a lethal looking spear, is the night watchman. Sleep well.
B - The next morning arrive at the bus station promptly at eight. When the bus finally leaves at noon be comforted that your wait has secured the two coveted fronts seats, which provide a sliver of additional space and a clear view of six hours of desert mountains and scrub plains. Also, enjoy your experience six hours of pot holes, wash-boarded road, and washed out four-wheel dirt tracks.
C - Spend three days in dusty, but not unpleasant, Betroka (pronouced Be-TRU-ka) telling everyone you meet who asks, mystified, why you're there, that you are trying to get to Fort Dauphin. And, listen to your neighbor, too scared to leave the hotel, tell you about cattle rustling, bandits and the guy who had his arm shot off down the road 10 days earlier.
D - Buy tickets for a bus. When the buses all show up full, get a refund and resign yourself to two more days in Betroka. While Leah is at the food market the next morning and you are reading the end of a mystery in the hotel room in your underpants, find out from each hotel employee, your neighbors and several passersby, who burst into your room one at a time, that your refunded ticket was sold to a four door mini-truck going most of the way, labeled "African Development Fund", owned by five people who dislike their own comfort. And, you have five minutes to pack and leave.
E - Suppress the memory of riding in a mini-truck for 15 bruising hours along more bad "road." Enjoy the 10 minutes of paved road in the middle of nowhere.
F - When the price of a room for a night in Amboasary is expensive enough to make the driver snort with laughter at the greedy hotel owner, accept the invitation to pitch a tent in front of a school room in which the African Development people spend the night.
G - The next morning, switch to a taxi-brousse for the last 75km and 4 hours, filled to record-setting capacity and which has live chickens hanging upside down from the roof and over the windows. (I have pictures of this, in case you don't believe me.)
H - Arrive at Fort Dauphin's dusty bus station and walk the hilly, relaxed town desperately trying to see the ocean. When you do finally see water, stop in the middle of the road and gape your mouth towards the ruggedly beautiful beaches.
Congratulations, you have reached Fort Dauphin, the launching points for a pirogue (a type of small canoe) excursion to the tiny fishing villages of Evatra and a week at Andohahela National Park!
socializing, with lemurs
July 8, 2007
We spent a surprisingly social weekend at Ranohira, the village 3 kms from the entrance to Ihosy National Park last weekend. I worry sometimes that we seem insular as a couple and so hard to approach, especially since neither of us is great at accosting complete strangers. But accost them we did; we even stalked them.
We arrived Thursday afternoon after an extra day spent in Fianar while I recovered from a mysterious and fleeting stomach bug. Somewhat to our dismay, we were besieged by men offering to be our guides, instead of being assigned one, as happened at Ranomafana NP, the weekend before. We decided to spend a day reconnoitering and also give David a chance to recover from the cold I'd given him (completely unrelated to the stomach indisposition).
Friday morning, while dithering in front of the map at the ANGAP office, one of our would-be guides mentioned there were two Peace Corps volunteers in town for a month to teach English during their holiday break. One of them even lived in Betroka, a town we were anxious to find more information on, since we wanted to travel through there on our way to Fort Dauphin. David promptly decided we should make use of my Peace Corps ties for the information. So we set about our stalking. We weren't terribly successful. In fact, after asking all and sundry without finding the volunteers, it was Kate and Shelby who found us, with the question: are you the people looking for us? We spent a very pleasant few hours in their hotel room and made plans to meet for dinner after their hike.
Back at our tent for what we thought would be a lazy afternoon, we met Ada, who'd just taken the bungalow behind the area in which we were camped. A Canadian teaching at a business college in the Emirates, Ada proved willing to hike with us the next day, so we bought our park tickets and made arrangements with Daniel, who was to be our guide, to meet at 7 the next morning. Back at Chez Alice, where we were staying, we shared the shaded picnic area with Joon, a travel writer for a Korean paper based in Seoul. The four of us shared a pineapple and oranges while we swapped Madagascar travel stories. We did the same at dinner with Kate and Shelby, though they clearly had more, and more interesting stories. We went to bed at a shockingly late 10 (the sun rises and sets at about 6), tired, but pleased.
Saturday was lovely; hot and sunny enough to thoroughly enjoy the swim in the natural swimming pool we hiked to. It was also cool enough that after our hike across the plateau from the pool, amidst the scrubby brown desert in between boulder-strewn mountains that reminded me of central Utah, we shivered in the shade of the narrow canyon on our way to the blue and black pools. David and I swam again, using a 30 foot waterfall as a masseuse by standing underneath it and letting it pound our backs. Ada decided she'd had enough cold water at the first pool and Daniel lounged on the rocks smoking. He probably thinks all the swimming is silly, anyway.
On our way out of the canyon towards the campground 2 kms from the park entrance, we encountered a troupe of ring tail lemurs. We'd gotten close views of a troupe earlier, on our water stop at the campsite before plunging into the canyon. The lemurs have become habituated to humans at the campsite and there were brown lemurs hanging about as well. One of them was cheeky enough to try stealing some food being set out for a group staying overnight. She was shooed away, but not before she snatched a package of biscuits.
The troupe of ring tails we met on the trail struck me as especially funny. The ring tails are the lemur type most people are familiar with and they look exactly like their pictures. This troupe was walking on all fours, rather like a line of cats, with tails twice the length of their bodies. Sauntering up the middle of the path towards us, they looked for all the world as though they were on their own guided hike, there to gawk at the bizarre primate species that doesn't have enough sense to use their opposable thumbs to leap to the safety of the trees next to the path. But we do have enough sense to have taken several pictures.
notes from the fianar brousse station
July 5, 2007
Gare routiers, French for bus station, in developing countries are always the most depressing places. You get the chic travelers who travel on public transport because a car is just beyond their means for long distance travel, or because the car they do have has to stay in town with the rest of the family, but you also get the poorest people. Beggars, both old and very young; transient-looking men with little else to do but drink and hang around, which makes them slightly unstable.
There's a homeless woman here at the Fianar routier with nine children, all boys and all about the same age. The youngest is probably about three and the oldest eleven. She looks like a sort of demented incarnation of a den mother. I think only two of the boys are actually hers, but who knows, maybe as they get older she simply exhibits less maternal feeling.
There's a man too, who's either drunk or somewhat developmentally disabled, who tried really hard to pick a fight with another man hanging around. He seems to have some of the other men who actually work for the companies watching out for him because they let him get somebody's bags out of a taxi and toss them up onto a waiting bus.
There are countless vendors, some selling practical things for travel like small tea cakes, oranges, water, but there are others selling thing that seem incomprehensible given the context. Large sets of pots, mugs, cheap trinkets, flashlights that probably don't turn on more than once. The sunglasses and watches sort of makes sense: you might get people to buy the sunglasses for themselves on a long trip during the day, and possibly you'll get someone to take the watches as a gift for whomever they'll meet at the end of their journey. But it still seems odd.
The child beggars are the saddest. The sweet-looking 10 year old with a coat at least five times too large for him. It covers his fingertips by a good three inches, is a washed out peach, very tattered and flattened quilt weave, so old and worn its as thick as a new t-shirt. His pants hit him mid-calf and he has no shoes on his dirty feet, toughened by constant tramping over filthy cobblestones, cracked asphalt, all littered with urban debris.
The woman with the nine boys sends them out to beg. Or they just know that life is better with some cash, so they go out themselves. But when she finally goes out herself and gets to me, she looks older than I expect.
And then there are the kids begging with even younger kids on their backs. A young girl, probably 8 or 9, just came to the window asking for biscuits or candy. She had a toddler girl tied to her back, for all the world as though she were old enough to do so. And maybe she is.
close encounters for the third time
July 3, 2007
Each step was calculated. I moved my boot sideways and over a mossy branch, steadied by gripping a bamboo stalk as thick as a waterbottle (it sounded like a waterbottle too, although, I'm told the water inside is toxic.) I limboed under a thin thorny vine. I watched a dozen or so small worms work their way around my boot and up my pants' leg. I looked around at the overwhelming variety of green and brown colors and textures. Spiders, butterflies and other strange creatures went about their business. I moved on. A vine pulled at the camera pouch, "take more pictures." Another vine pulled at my waist, "don't go." I pushed on.
This was my third hike through the Ranomafana rainforest, rather than on a path, on the "natural way", which was really a steep groove made of a mixture of mud and dead leaves. I stopped when some things tumbled onto my neck and down the back of my shirt. I swipped at the back of my neck and hat several times and tried to balance myself on the slope. Then, my English-speaking Malagasy guide, Adrian (spoken with a French accent), turned, pointed to my leg and said, "now David, don't panic."
My first hike was on Saturday, Leah and I walked together with Adrian in the lead and a scout, Jimmy, who ran ahead to track lemurs. When found, Jimmy would call back to Adrian, which he did soon after we started, and I learned a new Malagasy word, malaki (quickly). And, we ran through the rainforest, onto a broad path and then abruptly up a slope with many vertical stalks of bamboo sparsely spaced, which allowed in more sunlight. With the warm sun, humidity and my panting, my glasses fogged. My boot hooked a low vine and I looked too closely at the forest floor momentarily. When I arranged myself and looked up there were Golden Bamboo lemurs making great leaps from stalk to stalk.
Some bamboo was waving to departing lemurs and others bowing slowly to additional weight. Jimmy's call drew other scouts, who called to their guides and other tourists. We watched for some time while Adrian whispered facts about the lives of this endangered species. Although, he didn't need to whisper; all the tourists blundered through the forest. A man with a big camera fell backwards onto his butt into a clump of trees. I guess all primates in the area enjoyed the spectacle. Later in the day, we saw Red-bellied lemurs, a groggy nocturnal lemur (Small-toothed Sportive lemur) in a tree and a troupe of Milne-Edward's sifaka (another species of lemur). And, there were spiders, stick bugs, cameleons and an overwhelming variety more.
That evening we went on our second hike and first noctural walk. We each had a flashlight and stayed on a clear path to a purpose-built picnic table in a clearing. Jimmy found Brown Mouse lemurs jumping through and licking the trees not far from the clearing. Adrian kept a spotlight on them for pictures. Leah stared at the lemurs, then straightened her back, never taking her eyes from the lemurs, said in a clear, serious voice that the lemurs were too cute and she was taking one home. They were cute.
Leah had had a cold for several days and Sunday morning it had advanced to the point that she couldn't go on our scheduled hike. Adrian had to walk 7km early in the morning to meet us at the park entrance, so I couldn't cancel without feeling badly. Leah could use a quiet morning anyway, so I went without her. And, so now, on my third hike, I found myself crouched in the rainforest with Adrian telling me not to panic. I furtively demonstrated non-panic, as best I could. I asked if the worms were the object of his concern, but not is those words. He said, "worms live in the ground; those are leeches." But that wasn't what he was woried about: apparently, I was standing next to a poisonious shrub, which I was warned not to even brush against. I shifted my concern, memorized the long, pointed leaves arrayed in a spoke pattern and passed carefully around it. I tried to brush my boots off and tried not to think about whatever fell down the back of my shirt.
A little farther on Jimmy called and I stumbled along again. When we arrived, there were guides and scouts everywhere, but oddly, few tourists. Jimmy directed me into a steep area of dense trees and pointed. At eye-level and only a few feet away was a Greater Bamboo lemur clutching the top of a bamboo stalk, which he was eating. It had a white radio collar with antenna pointing out. Apparently, this species was less worried by humans, so I stared transfixed until he finished eating.
Adrian, Jimmy and I returned to the campground via the Riana waterfall to check on Leah (thankfully, she was already feeling better), where I rambled about my day, showed her pictures and, of course, my leech wounds.
you've got to move it, move it
July 2, 2007
Many people, when we mentioned we were coming to Madagascar, either asked if it was because of the movie, or started singing the song from the movie for us (thank you, Irene). I found this funny since I hadn't actually associated the movie with the country at all. But it gave me the idea of showing it to "my kids," the Somali family I've tutored for the last three years, as a perfect last visit with them, so when we watched it the first week of May I paid closer attention. And I have to say, the animators didn't do too badly.
You remember the baby lemur in the movie, the one who's left out for the four interlopers from New York to find, and eat if they feel so inclined? The one who bursts out wailing in fright? Well, it turns out they're not babies, they're brown mouse lemurs and they're just adorable! They're nocturnal, lick the tree branches for insects with quick, slightly guilty looking dabs of their tongues, dart from tree to tree very swiftly and weigh 45 grams. (David tells me one penny weighs 5 grams, so do with that information what you will.) We managed to get quite a good video of them, so you may even eventually see them, if we ever manage to upload it.
Our video of the fossa is less clear, but it doesn't matter because the best view we got of it couldn't be captured. We were in a small clearing with about 15 other tourists and their guides, all whispering, hoping to see the nocturnal fossa, all looking at one opening in the surrounding jungle. Adrien, David and I were off to the left of the group and Adrien was explaining that there are three sizes of the fossa. We were hoping to see the medium-sized one, about the size of a well-fed cat. They eat insects, lizards and small lemurs if they can catch them. The big fossa are about the size of a well-built spaniel, but they have a much larger territory hunting for lemurs, which is why they're the villains in the movie. As Adrien was relating all of this, we noticed movement just to the left in front of us and a fossa poked his head through, looking at all of us like an actor checking out how full the house is before the curtain opens. He pulled back and then reappeared a minute later, this time where expected, looking like a sleepy and self-satisfied cat.
We went to bed a few hours later feeling quite satisfied with our night's viewing, as well.
bomb fete
June 27, 2007
Monday night Leah and I were treating ourselves to a couple of small chocolates (a pre-birthday celebration for Leah) and coffees from the Hotel Colbert when we heard a series of quick, chest-thudding explosions. Several people dashed outside, including a waiter. Naturally, we followed. Outside we saw the start of the Independance celebration one day early: huge, high fireworks were being launched from a nearby lake. From edge to edge the streets were crowded with friends, couples and families. Small children teetered in warm clothes (it's been chilly, especially at night) with neon, flashing lights or paper lantens bigger than their heads. We watched for 20 minutes or so and then we started making our way back for dinner. Briefly, we were stuck in the middle of the crowd, and then popped into an Italian restaurant. We had a tasty dinner, returned to our hotel, the Raphia, and slept to the loud sounds of firecrackers.
For the holiday proper, the following day, it was relatively low-key. There were still random firecrackers, but the mobs were gone, and since almost everything was closed, we spent the day reading in the hotel. When we did venture out, it was to say "bonne fete" ("happy holiday" in French, the most widely spoken second language) to random people and stroll through the fair on Independence Ave. The fair, clearly design for the Malagasy (the proper name for people from Madagascar) children, had a little train; race cars; trampolines; a "high wire", where scared kids stumbled along suported by a climbing harness; card games; roulette, or something that looked just like it; and, lots of other games.
It wasn't until today that we've been able to run some trip errands, like going to tourist information or the national parks office or buying maps from the bookstore. We plan to head south tomorrow to the Ranomafana national park. Although it may take two days depending on the transport and the roads.
something a little different
June 25, 2007
I've been nervous about going to Madagascar for the last few days: butterflies in the stomach nervous. I was telling David it's because I always worry before we go to a poor country. I've wanted to work in Africa for so long that before going I'm afraid something will make me not like it and then what will I do? If something happens that I just can't deal with, if the poverty suddenly seems overwhelming and I don't know how to cope, then everything I've planned to do since I was about ten becomes meaningless.
For some reason the fear about coming to Madagascar has seemed worse than before Malawi or The Gambia. It's probably because of the guidebook, which, while the author clearly adores the country, is full of dire-sounding warnings that I've blown out of proportion. It's written for people who've never travelled to Africa, or poor countries, something I should have realized.
At one point, sitting on the plane while David tried to figure out somewhere nice to be for my birthday, to make up for being in China last year, feeling as though the butterflies where practising their most acrobatic moves, I started paying attention to what was being shown on the screen at the front of the cabin. It was clearly a documentary about Madagascar with host of the zebu, hump-backed cows; men in old, worn clothes using a hammer and chisel for some masonry work; and village scenes of children smiling nervously at the camera. And I suddenly remembered a conversation with Papa and Eleanor in Inverness during which we discussed feeling different from those around us and how that made us feel. I went off, in that way I do, about feeling different and it being something that travelling has allowed me to come to terms with. One of the things I love about travelling is even though the act of travelling makes me different, it also makes me realize how similar everyone everywhere in the world is. Even with radically different cultures, value systems, ways of earning a living, I have yet to go somewhere and think, "I don't recognize these people." At least in some way; because we're all very similar in our interactions with family and friends. And seeing the five minutes of the documentary let me see the Malagasy as people, instead of imagining them as something 'other.' Something to be nervous about.
All of which is to say: we're here, and it's lovely. Tana, the short name for Antananarivo, Madagascar's capital city, is much like other large African cities we've seen. As soon as David realized that the "bus" we were waiting for to take us from the airport was a bush taxi, all of his nervousness left him. We definitely know how to do bush taxis. The ride is was lovely, though squashed. There was playing between bus drivers about who could pick up more passangers, which was quite funny. Getting directions to the hotel we'd picked couldn't have been easier: we kept stopping people on the 2km walk to make sure we were going in the right direction, and everyone of them was very nice. Even if they hadn't the faintest clue how to identify our position on the map we held out.
We plan to do a very rough circumnavigation of the island, heading south down the east coast, going north up the west coast and then taking a break at a tiny island off the north east coast before heading back into Tana to fly out in 11 weeks. We're mostly going to the national parks, so internet access will be necessarily spotty, but we'll write when possible. And after all the nervousness, I can't wait to get going!
ambling forth
June 23, 2007
I stole the post title from the village name "Ampleforth." I was convinced, somehow, that its name was "Ambleforth," which just seemed perfect, especially since we had to walk two and half miles to it from our campsite outside Helmsley. But then we arrived and I noticed the "p," which makes it not nearly as much fun, I think.
At any rate, we're ambling onwards. Today sees our removal from London to Madagascar, with a brief stopover in Italy to change planes (and cities, but whatever). We plan to be in Tana, the capital, for at least a few days, but we're not sure about internet connections so it might be awhile before we write again. Or it could be all of 24 hours. Whichever, I'm sure you'll be dying to hear about our first lemur sighting, so we'll take good notes.
dear abbeys
June 22, 2007
After returning the car in Newcastle last Thursday, we saw Leah's parents off at the airport and continued south to Durham, England.
Durham's nearest campground had all the joy that can be experienced by pitching a tent 3 feet from an 8 lane highway. Although the people there were friendly. For example, to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the caravan club, the camp owners invited us, and anyone else who happened to be staying there that night, to sample some hard cheese and wine so sweet I thought I was at a Bar Mitzvah. Our retired neighbors were friendly too. They had us over for tea and cookies, after seeing us struggling to put up our tent in the pouring rain. Leah had a pleasant conversation with Jill and I heard from Brian about all the problems in England: drugs, the EU, the central government, the local government, Labor, immigrants, etc. Leah left happy and I did not. Very early the next morning we started looking for a way to leave Durham county.
Logically, heading south towards our eventual flight from London seemed like a good idea, but no one could explain to us how to get to Yorkshire. When asked, each person's eyes would get wide and they would stop in thought, their head would tilt up, and eventually answer that they didn't know a way to Yorkshire by public transport. In the end, we took a train for 30 minutes and were there.
York was wonderful, if crowded. It put us in mind of Venice, where most people in the city are tourists or natives who rely on tourism almost exclusively. And, the thing is, it was still a great place to be. We visited the small art museum (a large section was closed); walked the medieval walls; ate pasties and pizza; gawked at the minster; and roamed through the streets. We pitched in the village of Naburn, just 15 minutes by bus from the city center. Our tent was at the top of a mowed hill overlooking a low field, and further on a lock on the river Ouse.
Saturday, our first morning in Naburn, the Ouse flooded. Water covered most of the lock machinery and spilled into the neighboring field and far into the low land on the opposite side of the bank. Parts of the campground were also flooded. I spent some time watching trees and other flotsam floating past on the very swollen river. I spoke to the camp owner and found that the river floods often, although mostly in the winter. The water comes from the mountains 40 miles away. Our tent, by the way, wasn't in danger.
An hour and a half north by bus, was the picturesque village of Helmsley with a fully stocked deli, a used book store, post, bank, bakery, co-op, everthing, really, except a campground. The nearest was 2 1/2 miles away, which would would be fine, but with infrequent bus service and unpleasant walking due to a large section of the walk along a main highway with almost no margin, our moblity ended up as an awkward combination of both. Waiting too long for buses, walking part way along the highway and cutting through wet fields of grasses and flowers, we followed the less used public paths. But, finally, we made it to the ruins of the huge Rievaulx Abbey. With electronic audio guides in hand, we wandered the grounds for hours, and all the hassle was worth it.
Yesterday, we bused from camp to the closed Byland Abbey ruins; walked to the tiniest village, Wass; enjoyed lunch at the only commerical structure in Wass; bused to York; took the train to London; and used the Tube and a bus to finally arrive at a campground in London. Yes, it is possible to find an inexpensive accomodation even in the most expensive of European cities. But only by spending a small fortune on transport.
pastoral living
June 22, 2007
I've read dozens of novels set in rural England and have enjoyed the descriptions of rural life with small villages where everyone knows everyone else. Because of the age of most of the novels, though, I'd assumed that life no longer existed and instead, like the US, village living had turned into either suburban living or the villages were dying out. Both and neither of these things happens to be true.
You can still experience village life, and very pleasant it is, too. Most of our camping in both Scotland and England has been in, or near, small villages. Places where everyone smiles and says hi, asks us where we're from and where we're going, and mostly, places where people apologize for and explain the weather. It turns out April got May's weather and May, as well as June, has gotten all the rain that should have come in April. David's already mentioned camping in the rain, which is awkward, but not really a problem, but I find the British need to apologize for their weather hilarious. They're very polite, the British. It's one of the only countries we've been to in which the natives are more effusive if their politeness than we are. Korea, of course, being the other country. The Scots, in fact, are so polite that I feel as though they're competing with each other to have the last, good, word. At the end of one shopping exchange I overheard, the two people involved progressed from, "Thank you, Thanks, Bye, Cheers, Cheerio" before the young man walked out the door and got in the last, "Ta." The buses are even polite. Instead of reading "Not in Service," they all read "Sorry I'm not in Service."
But there are some things the British seem to do less well, including designing sinks. I recognize that indoor plumbing was a novelty for a country where the buildings are so old and so many of the pipes are on the outside, but how this leads them to continue, several decades later, designing sinks that are almost impossible to use, I'm not sure. The sinks in the hospital where Papa spent far more of his vacation than he would have liked, were so small you had to move your upper body into all sorts of contortions to wash your hands. Sort of like the mating rituals of some of the larger and more colorful birds, but with slightly less purpose in the end. What makes it especially odd is that we have yet to find sinks where the faucet is a pleasant mingling of hot and cold water. Instead, you get to push either the hot handle, so you scale yourself, or the cold handle, where you freeze. Of course, the cold water comes in quite useful when you have to stand with your hand under it for several moments because you've just scalded it using the hot push-tap.
helen and the three bears
June 17, 2007
Once upon a time there were four American bears visiting Britian. They were of the common variety ursus touristus and would have stayed inconspicuous in their touristing, except the Papa Bear's knee seized with an infection and he ended up in hospital near Hadrian's wall. Poor thing. We'll leave him there, though, because his story is quite different, full of humorous and disturbing accounts of fellow patients in the orthopedic ward and the intricacies of the National Health System, which this author is not able to fully comment on.
With the Papa Bear in hosptial there were only three bears left: the Mama Bear, a David Bear and a Leah Bear. Now, these three bears were somewhat at a loss as to where to stay while the Papa Bear was in hospital until they talked to a nice woman named Helen, who told them they could stay on her farm. This was perfect because the Mama Bear had read lots and lots of books about the English countryside, but never gotten to stay there, and because the David and Leah Bears preferred more rural living anyway.
So, the three bears quickly settled into a comfortable routine, spending most of the day at the hosptial with the Papa Bear or in the nearby town running various errands that presented themselves. The evenings were spent at the farm, each in their own chair in front of the (gas) fire, reading or chatting, each in their own chair at the breakfast table, and each in their own seat in the car. The routine was so well established after two days, that the Leah Bear even scolded the David Bear for being in 'her' chair when she came into to read one night. But then the Leah Bear was always quick to set up routines.
The three bears would have conceivably continued in their very pleasant routine except the Papa Bear was finally cleared to go home. This was not quite what was planned, since the Papa Bear and the Mama Bear were supposed to continue traveling until early July, but the Papa Bear's doctors thought he should be on antibiotics for a long, long time, and that it would be easier for everyone if he were at home. Plus, even though the Mama Bear liked her Mama Bear chair in front of the (gas) fire and her Mama Bear chair at the breakfast table and even her Mama Bear seat in the car, and she really liked having the David and Leah Bears make her dinner every night while she read, she wanted the Papa Bear to be better. And, at the rate she was buying books her travel money was going to run dangerously low before she got home.
So, the Papa Bear and Mama Bears flew home, even though their luggage didn't, at first, and the David and Leah Bears continued on their way.
The End
pitching unfit
June 12, 2007
For the first two weeks, Leah and I camped in the Scottish wind, cold and rain. Setting up the tent in the drizzle is tricky. No matter how (or how fast) it's pitched, we're upright puddles when we finish. But, free of our rain gear and inside the sleeping bags, it's warm and dry. We sleep wonderfully, lofted on our Thermarest sleeping pads. In the mornings, I love waking to crisp air and birdsong. That is, until I flap open the tent's rain fly, pasting it to itself with water, and realize it's still raining, the wind has displaced the tent stakes, which in turn has slackened the tent enough to allow water to slowly dribble inside. And, there is really no experience quite like folding up a wet tent, and cramming it, without a hint of ceremony, into a backpack.
Don't get me wrong: we love Scotland. It's beautiful with green rolling hills, neatly parsed farms, placid cows, cliffs, burns, glens, birds, wildflowers and millions of sheep methodically ripping up grass with jerks of their heads. The best part, as far as we're concerned, is the public access to footpaths. Footpaths ramble all over the country and, the public's access to footpaths cannot be prevented, even if the path winds through private property--it's the law! How enlightened. Numerous times, I've heaved myself over a stile (a word the Scots use for a set of step over the wall of a field) to find that I was sharing the field with sheep, cows and, in one case, the backyard of a cottage complete with children's playset.
charity begins in your closet
June 12, 2007
David loves to point out that "reduce and reuse" come first in the "reduce, reuse, recycle" mantra, so we keep to those two as much as possible to limit our environmental impact. We don't own a car; we use rechargable batteries; we use the library instead of buying books, or when we do buy, we buy used; he bought me an eReader as a graduation present so I won't have to forever be buying, or carrying, books around as we travel; I made the ultimate sacrifice during school and stopped printing out articles I had to read on paper, and just read them on the computer; we recycle everything we can; and we give clothes and household items we don't need/want anymore to Goodwill, so someone else can get another use out of them. Aside from our jet fuel use, we do pretty well, but in terms of reusing, we have nothing on the Brits.
There are secondhand shops on every high street, essentially "main" street, in every village we've been in. Oxfam's shops I had read about researching them for various school assignments, but there are also secondhand charity shops for the British Heart Foundation, Cancer Research UK, various animal shelters (local and national), as well as numerous individual shops that benefit specific local needs, often medical, but not always. There are so many shops, apparently, that they've wiped out the nation's supply of secondhand goods. We've seen signs posted in dozens of shop windows along the lines of, Needed: Ladies trousers. Or, Small furnishings in good condition needed. If it gets much worse, maybe the US and UK could get an exchange going whereby people trawl landfills for the perfectly good items Americans throw away and then ship them to Britian for re-sale. Not only would we help relieve the growing American landfill problem, but British charities would make lots more money. Of course it might be easier if US institutions just started the same type of programs. Just think, instead of selling plastic bracelets or ribbons, the American Heart Association could motivate everyone to clean out their closets and houses and make a mint at the same time.
the birds
June 11, 2007
After nearly a week in or around the hospital as visitors, we decided to shorten yesterday's visit and drive off to tour the Farne Islands.
Two hours later, we and 14 other passengers were happily climbing on to a small boat for a 2 to 3 hour tour of the Farne islands including 1 hour to explore Inner Farne island by foot. Smiles withered in the first few minutes of rough chop; it was cold, foggy and the boat heaved up and down and in all directions. Thankfully, after only 15 minutes the boat slowed to a comfortable drift. The first set of tiny rocky islands was filled with seals--representatives of the grey and common variety lounged on the rocks and each other, poured themselves into the sea or popped curious heads out of the water nearby. The captain's border collie paced frantically, pausing frequently to bump a passenger aside to lean over the edge and whimper at the seals. Leah thought the dog was trying to "herd" the seals. It was adorable.
The boat paused and sidled to the rocks several times, and the tour director made informational comments. After the seals, there were birds. Lots of birds. Birds on every ledge and in every nook; the rocks were arranged vertically into small cliffs and topped with bird "muck" as the tour director called it. It was breath-taking, both the visual spectacle and the considerable pong.
We alighted on the island of Inner Farne and were greeted by two cheerful National Trust money-takers, who wore broad brimmed hats and were decorated in bird muck as though they were painters that had been in a paint fight because the Off-white paint had been mixed too thinly. Further on the path, we were attacked by a mass of Artic Terns. Hitchcock couldn't have imagined it better: dozens of people waving hands and umbrellas over their heads, cinching hoods, ducking, walking stiff-legged quickly to cover, or ambling slowly, oddly enjoying or accepting their fate. I tried to wave a hand over my head (as instructed) and received a snap at my finger that I thought had drawn blood (it didn't). By the end of the hour my strategy was set: when I went through the Tern areas, I tightened the hood of my rain jacket and with my head down I moved swiftly through. Right before I left, I receive two hard pecks on the head. Leah four. Marilyn six! It would be easy to be upset with the Terns, but I couldn't. The Terns were laying eggs and we were on their island walking by their nests. Maybe, the birds were hopeful that with a few more knocks on the head, people would realize this. And, in that sense, I agreed with them.
If it wasn't for the Internet connection I have now, at this point, I would conclude with some pictures I took of Guillemots, Eiders, Shags, Razorbills, Puffins, a lone Oystercatcher and all those Gulls.
hitting (h)adrien's wall
June 8, 2007
The family trip, until Sunday morning, was going quite well. It was awkward, and probably hilarious to outsiders, trying to get all seven of us to agree on anything. Not, oddly, because we disagreed, but because we were all so desperate to be agreeable, no one would make a decision or state an opinion. But everything was quite pleasant and we were thoroughly enjoying Scotland and having a good time, until Papa's knee seized in the middle of the night.
Being descended from some Scots, he decided to "tough it out" (he's insanely stubborn and didn't want to inconvience us), so we drove out of Scotland to England to look at Hadrian's wall. Except we only got to Haltwistle, the nearest village with an information center before driving out to the wall, when Papa realized the pain just wasn't endurable. We ended up about 10 miles away in Hexham, at the hospial (Haltwhistle's apparently being too small to have an x-ray machine), where the ubiquitous "they" of the medical world decided he probably had an infection in his "new" knee (replaced in October). So Papa got to travel by ambulance to Wansbeck hospital, about 15 miles outside of Newcastle, Sunday evening, and he's still there. They've opened him up and flushed the knee and he's on course for 6 weeks of antibiotics. It's a staph infection and they have no idea if the antibiotics will kill it all, but everyone seems pretty sanguine. Hospital people are currently facilitating medical transport home, which would provide for a nurse to accompany Papa, though we're unclear on all the other details. It might be early next week that he goes home, which is what the doctors want, but who knows what the insurance will throw back next.
In the meantime Irene, Eleanor and Megan have taken the second of two cars we rented, back to Edinburgh to catch their flights Wednesday and yesterday. The poor things have jobs, if you can believe it! Mama, David and and I are comfortably ensconced in a cottage in the middle of someone's farm (sheep, mostly), which is run through this really neat program called Farm Stay. We'd enjoy it more if we weren't at the hospital most of the day, or if Papa were able to come back with us, but we've spent three very pleasant, peaceful evenings in the living room in front of the gas fire, reading our books and callously drinking Papa's whiskey cream liquor. If only it didn't take a hospital stay to slow us all down.
hill walking, or trying to
May 21, 2007
If you explored the fancy google maps feature David added to the right sidebar, you might have noticed that for our first week we were projected to walk the Great Glen Way, which runs from Fort William to Inverness along a couple of large lochs (lakes), including Loch Ness. We were going to do it "backwards" but whatever--it's the same walk. You should never trust projections, though. At least not ours.
Before leaving for Scotland on Tuesday, we decided to hike half of the Southern Uplands Way (SUW), instead of the Great Glen Way. The SUW is puported to be less trafficked, cover more varied terrain and be more of a challenge. We love hiking and only really seem to get to do it when we travel so this seemed perfect. The Scots, and our feet, however, thought otherwise.
We started Friday morning along the coast at Portpatrick, in blustery weather. Then we turned inland, climbed up and down stiles trying not to distrub shaggy sheep and curious, but shy lambs, and the sun came out. It was lovely. At least until we realized we hadn't sufficiently broken in our new boots and so our feet were aching. We cut the day short, only going eight miles to Stranraer, a cute little port town where we lolled around happily while our feet recovered, though the weather didn't.
While lolling on Saturday, we made the fatal mistake of telling the woman at the Stranraer tourist information center (TIC) about our plans. She promptly said we wouldn't be able to even cover the ground we wanted to, and because halfway along the SUW the terrain is very rural, we wouldn't be able to find transport to Edinburugh in time to meet the family Thursday morning. It turns out she was wrong, but since we didn't know that we ended up restructuring our plans to do a series of smaller hikes in the Dumfries and Galloway area, which we currently doing in Moffat. These have been lovely. Tomorrow we're off for the "long" short walk, thirteen miles on John Buchan Way, which will leave us in Peebles in time to spend the night and then head to Edinburgh Wednesday.
and we're off
May 21, 2007
Our lack of posts before leaving was not because we didn't do things from April 15 to May 15, but rather that we did too much. So, to shorten it up, but still cover some ground, here's a list of things we learned and feel should be passed along.
1) You will receive a 59 out of 60 on your Sanskrit final and feel quite pleased with yourself. Deservedly so.
2) If you're graduating with two graduate degrees, each from a different school, you're guaranteed that both ceremonies will take place at the same time, forcing you to choose one, a decision you will instantly regret when you learn of the speaker for the other ceremony.
3) Five people will fit in a small studio apartment for two days, but only if they're closely related.
4) Two days is not enough time to see a gaggle of "new" relatives. It is, however, more than enough time to learn to detest the humidity of northern Florida.
5) Two hairless chihuahuas do fit in a bird cage. Walking past them in the RV park on your way to the bathroom will excite them into a frenzy, making you glad of the silly birdcage.
6) You will be amused to read a sign at the RV park proclaiming: Do not wash pets in bathroom sinks.
7) After seeing the chihuahuas, you will understand the necessity of the sign.
8) Mudbogging, an activity in which bored teenagers drive their parents' cars through fields of mud after rain, is popular in both rural north Florida and western Pennsylvania.
9) Korean BBQ and coffee with friends are the perfect way to end three years in Pittsburgh.
10) Three hours are not enough to spend with a first cousin once removed you haven't met before. Especially when old family photos are involved.
11) You will cause your sister to have several panic attacks when she sees how much you're leaving with her.
12) She will have several more attacks having five people stay in her one-bedroom apartment for five days.
13) Peace Corps creates such a strong bond, Sharon is willing to drag her unsuspecting boyfriend down from New Jersey by train just to spend the evening with you. And go to the zoo the next day, but that's just for fun.
14) Tours of the capital are most interesting when given by a long-time family friend who works as a legislative assistant for the president pro-tem of the Senate.
15) You will panic, dropping off you passport the day before you're supposed to leave, when the woman at the Madagascar consulate appears to have forgotten that she promised a 24 hour turn around time on your visas.
16) You will be vastly relieved, picking up your passports five minutes after the consulate opens, when the same woman hands them to you with no delay, admonishing you to have a good trip.
17) No matter how hard you try, even knitting at inappropriate times such as while standing in REI talking to Caroline, or starting to bind off using the light of passing cars to see as Irene drives you Dullas for your flight, you will need just half an hour more to finish a baby blanket you started in January, which is already four months late. Damn the thesis, anyway.
18) No matter how much you plan otherwise, packing will always happen at the last minute.
19) You will not have enough time to call everyone you want to before leaving. This will cause guilt and regret.
20) The time to prepare for a long-term trip is finite.
first stepps
May 21, 2007
Excited to begin our big trip and just hours after landing in London, we spend five hours on a train, alighting in Glasgow in the evening. The skys were grey and spitting, so we bundled up and walked around for supplies and then boarded another train to a campground that we had found in a guide book, which we hastily borrowed from Irene in the drop off zone of the airport in Washington. (Yes, your image of our frantic departure is correct.)
Stepps, a quiet suburb of Glasgow, was only 10 minutes away. Just after setting off from the train station, a nice man (unsolicited) directed us to the campground. He was just the first in a seemingly endless string of pleasant, funny and helpful people we've met so far. He also recommended a "watering hole" called, and I'm not making this up, the Wee Pub and then ambled off to get a refreshment from the same. We continued with his directions and were soon stretched out in our comfortable tent listening to the pattering rain.
Later that evening, and just out of a freshly assembled tent, a huge Great Dane bounded toward me and a man yelled, "Hola!" The dog smelled an offered hand and walked off uninterested. I started talking with the man and discovered that he was Spanish, named Hacho (sp?--the H is silent, right?) and worked in Glasgow, although I was told there was no work that day. His wife, Goi (short for Goiatz), was the manager of the camping section of the caravan park. The dog was named Chaos. Apparently, Hacho thought I was Spanish because there were many of his compatriots in Glasgow for a big football game. Hacho and Goa were pleasant and we chatted for a few mintues before heading off for dinner.
The walk to dinner was drawn out, due to the spread of the town and the scarcity of restaurants. Eventually, with help from two women at the Ironing Basket, we ended up at the Buchaner Inn Cafe or something and had a filling, if generic, meal before returning for a hard sleep.
End of day one.
flexitarianism
May 20, 2007
I don't eat meat in the U.S. for sustainable reasons. It takes something like ten times the amount of land to produce one gram of meat protein versus one gram of grain protein and at the current population growth rate, coupled with the industrialization of large countries like China and India and the fact that as people have more money they traditionally consume more meat, not eating meat is a very, very small way for me to stem the tide of overuse of available land.
But I do eat meat when we travel. It's too hard to be a vegetarian in most countries: it doesn't make sense to probably 99% of the world. Plus, it's hideously rude to refuse meat when we're being fed by people for whom meat is really expensive. So, as our friend Helena said, I'm a flexitarian.
All of which is to say that now we're traveling again, despite the fact that I could be a vegetarian in Scotland fairly easily, I'm back to eating meat. The reality of this was brought home by the fact that I tried some of David's haggis and thought it was quite good. Who knew?
battered haggis and chips
May 19, 2007
And so it is recorded: it's tasty.
jules verne did it faster, or: around the world in 365(ish) days
April 11, 2007
About three months ago, David and I "celebrated" our 10th anniversary. We would have celebrated it, without quotes, had we remembered it, but it wasn't until 10:30 at night that David interrupted himself and said, "Wait, isn't today our anniversary?" I replied that it couldn't be, because 5 hours previously, sitting down at the computer, I thought, "I have to remember our anniversary is on Tuesday." I have no idea why I suddenly thought we started dating on the 9th and not the 7th of January, but I'm guessing after a decade of remembering not just your own stories, but someone else's too, your memory suddenly deserts you.
David suggested that in order to make up for our forgetfulness, we should celebrate for the entire year. That suggestion very quickly morphed into traveling for the entire year, so here we are: planning a round-the-world trip starting May 15, and returning sometime next May, or maybe June. We can't actually buy return tickets until we've been gone for a few months because airlines only put their schedules up 10 months in advance, a fact I find somehow incredibly amusing.
Those of you more inclined to explore websites in your free time may noticed the added Map and Calendar feature on the right sidebar. David's been working within Google's applications to do all sorts of neat things, both for this trip and for previous excursions, so you can poke around to your heart's content, but in addition, here's a brief itinerary of the RTW.
We leave May 15 for London, where we don't plan to stay, but will scoot up to Scotland for a week of hiking and camping. Then my entire family will join us in Edinburgh and we'll travel together for 2 weeks. Then the poor saps who have jobs will return to the states, while those of us who are gainfully unemployed (retired or otherwise) will travel in England for another 2 weeks, before David and I callously leave Mama and Papa to their fate and head off to Madagascar at the end of June. (I'm so excited!) Then we go to Italy to see friends for a couple of weeks before leaving for Doha, Qatar, for a week. We have no idea what we'll do here, but it should be fun! Then it's off to India for two months and Malaysia for three weeks before arriving in Australia the day before Christmas. We're currently stuck there, because of the airline schedule posting problem, but we plan to stay for about 6 weeks before going to New Zealand for another 6 weeks and then to Argentina for about 2 months.
Happy anniversary to us!
mind the gap year
February 28, 2007
With two-thirds of the main flight tickets in hand, here is a small map of our next big trip:
Otherwise known as our year-long East Coast, England, Scotland, France, Madagascar, Germany, Italy, Qatar, India, Malaysia, Australia, New Zealand, Argentina and West Coast trip. Phew!
pondering peregrinations
February 14, 2007
Last summer, as we started to think about the this summer and where to go, David suggested doing something different and biking through Scotland. We talked about biking through England off and on, so this seemed like a neat way to sort of do that, but also go somewhere new. Through a series of birthday emails to Mama in July, the plan turned into a family trip, so all seven of us are meeting in Scotland at the end of May for two weeks. Exciting! And nerve wracking.
Biking through Scotland as a means of transport, though, we realized was not something we're really equipped to do. Though our skill level (well, my skill level anyway) is no where near some friends of ours, we vastly prefer mountain biking to road biking. Plus, Scottish drivers are widely reputed to be 'daring,' not something we're interested in experiencing on narrow roads with no shoulders to move to for safety. So, we started the inevitable discussion of what to do with the rest of the summer months.
I say inevitable, because our trip plans go through at least half a dozen iterations before we decide on whatever it is that we're really going to do. Much of the time we end up doing something else for somewhat practical purposes. Last summer we didn't go to Cambodia and Laos, our original plan, because it was monsoon season and the roads all get washed out. For people who rely on public transport to get around, no roads creates a bit of a problem. And then we didn't go to Mongolia, because we thought it would be too expensive: they don't really have roads, so we'd have to hire a 4x4 and driver, which is a bit out of our budget. China and Korea, then, became places we were interested in, but also could reasonably travel through.
So, for this summer's plans, after ditching the "biking in Scotland" idea, we thought we'd go hiking in the Alps, since we'd be in Europe anyway and hiking is something we love doing. That quickly morphed into having to go to Italy to see our friends there, too. And then David suggested hoping over to Morocco, since we'd be 'in the area' and visiting my host family from Peace Corps days. In the end, though, we realized that this will be the last time before I have to get a job, so we might as well do something really different. So we're going to Madagascar.
Madagascar has all sorts of things in which we're interested. 80% of the plant species on the island are only found there; lemurs are cute, and only found here, all 50 species of them; they have 109 endemic bird species; and all of this in national parks and reserves where we can camp! Plus the people, who are generally thought to have arrived only about 2000 years ago from Indonesia/Malay. So while some of what we see will be vaguely similar to what we're familiar with from Mozambique and Malawi, there will also be enormous differences.
