TravelStream™ news feed for member imapilot on TravelPod's free travel blogs service http://www.travelpod.com/syndication/rss/imapilot en-us Copyright ©2009 TravelPod.com Sat, 05 Jan 2008 23:35:56 -0500 http://www.travelpod.com http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/imapilot/india-nepal-07/1192455540/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/imapilot/india-nepal-07/1192455540/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/imapilot/india-nepal-07/1192455540/tpod.html Sat, 05 Jan 2008 23:35:56 -0500 Northern India and Nepal, the roof top of the world. The people, the food, and the Himalaya!

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Kathmandu, Nepal

After 2 weeks up in Nangi village we had a day back in Pokhara enjoying luxuries such as a shower with hot water, and food options which didn't involve potatoes and daal. With stable electricity, a TV, a clean bed, our own bathroom, and a rat count of zero, our $8/night hotel suddenly felt like the Ritz!  I also took the opportunity to toss myself off a hilltop on a paraglider flight.  Lots of fun! We launched into weak lift, and the instructor worked the house thermal for a while until the lift was strong enough to let me try. Quite a different kinesthetic feedback from hang gliding, think I prefer having a nice stiff wing above me, but lots of fun in any case. At the end of the flight my pilot asked if I wanted to try acrobatics? sure!  He wrapped the paraglider into a steep spiral dive, us whizzing around in the harness much like a ball on a string, impressive both how fast we spun and came down.  Rested and re-provisioned, we started the week ride back to Kathmandu via the Terai,  the flat hot plain which leaves the Himalayan foothills and slides into India, across an arbitrary border drawn up by the British Raj in the mid 1850s.  From Pokhara to Butwal, the first town out of the hills in the Terai, there are several major ridges to cross, and as we cranked our way up the first one, already dripping sweat in the early morning heat and humidity, we realized that what with the volunteering and bike problems, we had only biked 3 days in the entire preceding month.  And the leg muscles were definitely letting us know.  At least we're back to good fresh samosas and such to break up the pain.  We also started to encounter Maoists, or at least, we assume they were Maosists. Mostly kids, not armed, no uniforms, but they'd set up a simple, informal road block, and collect a "small, voluntary contribution". The first set of kids told us the money was going to the town football team which had made the play-offs. This was accompanied by a rather lot of giggling however, and later excuses were less creative, so assume they were simply doing some fund raising for the Maoists. That night was spent in a small hotel in a very small town; a small enough town we figured this was probably the only hotel, and didn't bother to look further.  The hotel restaurant seemed to be cooking up really good food on arrival, but when we went down to eat an hour later, there was nothing being served. So we got out the books, and the headlamps - the electricity being rather on the spastic side, and read, and waited, and read, and after a while a bunch more people showed up, and we were served some good daal bhaat. This sort of thing happens a lot in small restaurants which serve a (single) dinner, and expect us to understand what time that is.  Leaving town the next morning we were chased down by a British chap named Ian.  Turned out he was also bike touring, but heading to Pokhara having been able to come in from India. He and his wife had spent the night at the other edge of this small town, also under the impression they were in the only hotel in town, and spotted us biking away as they finished breakfast.   We traded contact info, found their website (http://bigbiketrip.whereareyou.net/) and actually met up a week later in Kathmandu to swap bike stories.  Day two was a lot more hills, up and over the next ridge, and finally dropping into Butwal. At this point, the words "Hot", "Really F*ing HOT" and "holy sh*t it's HUMID" start showing up in my diary on a rather regular basis.  Our hotel room included a swamp cooler, but I have NO idea why they even sell these in a climate where the humidity rarely drops below 98%  Food was good though, being close to India, and there were even with some southern Indian dishes. Of course, there are some down sides to being back in "India"; horn abuse has increased, as has the number of homicidal bus drivers, especially since the Terai highway is actually smooth enough for the buses to get up some speed.  But we applied the old Indian maxim "Looking before stepping into traffic is a sign of weakness" and fit in just fine. From Butwal it's 200km across the Terrai to where we head into the hills again, and I was determined to simply hang on and survive in the heat, humidity, and noise.  Easier said than done; our clothes were completely sweat saturated within minutes of getting on the bike which lead to some pretty nasty chafing.  Then too, I had figured that the Terai would at least be flat as a pan, but wrong again; someone parked a 1000 ft climb in the middle of the first day.  Somewhere in there I sweated out my last electrolyte and figured that this couldn't possibly be healthy.  We were biking past the Royal Chitwan National Park (sorry, scratch the Royal, they've been trying to eliminate that word), supposedly a great place to ride elephants while looking for tigers, but we had little interest in spending any more time than necessary down in the heat and pressed on. Passed a long, low-sleep night in Naryandgarh contemplating some of the great questions of Nepal such as "why must the trucks blare the @#!#$! horn going through town at 3AM??" Another day across the Terai in the heat and humidity, but no big hills, and met 2 Swiss bikers just out for a few weeks.  This day went much better; we treated ourselves to the nice, quiet hotel just outside of Hetauda, and, for the second day in a row, arrived shortly before the heavens started dumping water. Finally it was time for the climb we'd been dreading since reading up on the topography in Lonely Planet:  2100m (6900 ft!!!!) of climbing straight up and over the pass - the most climbing we've ever done in a single day!  Fortunately we rose ahead of the heat and stayed that way. The terrain was quite beautiful, sparsely populated, and, as a very nice change from the past week, there was very little traffic. We stayed ahead of the heat but no such luck on the rain this time and spent the last couple hours of climbing getting intermittently soaked, biking in and out of rain and  dense clouds. Crossing the top we were supposed to be in prime location for "best panoramic view of the Nepali Himalaya", but it was solidly socked in the entire time, visibility as low as 50m, so fantastic panorama of .... white.  But we made it to Daman before dark, and stayed in our most basic Nepali hotel this trip; a small room, outhouse out back, bucket for washing on the end of the porch, and simple, cold daal bhaat for dinner - hardly the way to reward ourselves after the climb. Daal bhaat is the standard Nepali dish; white rice, watery dal soup, and some sort of curried veggie on the side.  It's easy to fill up on, and they keep refilling your plate as much as you like, but it's hard to get fat on daal bhaat.  One last day of biking to Kathmandu, lots of down on the usually crappy asphalt; I've reached my limit for this trip of  roads which have the right frequency and magnitude of bumps to feel like I'm getting punched in the kidneys, and will be sorely disappointed if the roads in Japan aren't very very smooth. Speaking of which, we, met a Japanese guy coming up, very lightly loaded, and who insisted on taking a picture of us. A few km we met a Swiss couple grinding up, with even more gear than we have!  Traffic was mostly light and going the other way; the holiday of  Dasain had just started, a 15 day festival in which Nepalis leave the cities droves to be with family in the country, and on day 10, there are great sacrifices of goats and chickens. Down down, back into the lush heat and rice fields,  until we reached the main highway to Kathmandu.  Sadly our optimism for the highway being "not that busy" was based on experiencing it with the road blocked by a strike last time, and it turned into a final 3 hours from hell in stinking exhaust, blaring horns, grinding back up to the Kathmandu valley.  Ah well, always need to have something to put on the "never every need to do that again" list and my lungs should recover by Christmas. 2009.   Somewhere in that climb a big SUV went by with the "Heifer International" logo.  Heifer is an aid organization which embraces the "teach a man to fish" philosophy by giving out not money, but animals.  That said, it's gotta be pretty tough to be an optimistic Heifer representative in the midst of festive goat and chicken sacrificing.....We were psychologically beat at this point, too much noise, confusion, heat, humidity, etc. but determined to see Kathmandu. We had two long days in Thamel, Kathmandu, stocking up, and trying to see the sights, but in the end were just too burned out on noise, crowded streets, more noise, touts and more noise.  Have to go back to appreciate all the temples and such in Kathmandu. At least the air was clean since the "extra late and wet" monsoon season was still cleaning the air.    Given our burned-out-on-this-area problem, it was only fitting that our final departure was a bit of a boondoggle. It started with the hotel; we pointed out the bicycles, how they took up lots of space, how we needed a BIG taxi to the airport, and how their hotel airport shuttle van would be perfect, and how we'd love to use that at 11am next morning. They said fine and wrote that down.  Next morning comes, van is gone. We grumble, point out bicycles, and tell them to find a cab. They find the smallest micro-hatchback they can, without even a roof rack; NOT going to work. We start to get worried about missing the flight - traffic around Kathmandu is unreal.  Note to Nepali drivers:  the road is NOT the same as a parking lot.  Yet they all come to a halt in the middle of the road, leave the truck there, the traffic piles up, everyone honks, and then repeats the process when it's their turn.  Anyway, much flailing of taxi finding, flaming of tempers, escalating time and prices, and eventually we end up in a pickup truck, our stuff in back getting drenched in the downpour. Meanwhile, a bystander in the lobby has pointed out that I need a LOT of Nepali Rupees (and only rupees) to pay the airport departure tax. Shit, I just used those up except for the now very expensive cab fare. Taxi driver speaks no English, so after some mostly-fruitless gesticulations, I jump out when we're passing a few blocks from an ATM, sprint there and back, catch up to the taxi in the traffic and off to the airport. (Note: I knew there was an ATM at the airport, but didn't count on it, and, sure nuff, it was broken, score one for the cynic).  The fun continues at the airport; departure tax paid, we try to check in and area told that e-tickets are not used at all in Kathmandu. We point out that their computer was stupid enough to sell us an e-ticket, so that this is not our problem, and we most definitely will NOT be buying new tickets. Voices raised again, managers summoned, and after a half hour of arguing we're foisted off on another airline, with a baggage surcharge, but no other damage.  Arriving in Delhi we knew we were back in India almost immediately after de-planing. We're wayyyy out in the middle of the ramp, acres and acres of empty concrete as we all pile into the bus.  Soon as the last person is not quite in, or the door closed, the driver guns it, the bus lurches off nicely timed to hit both potholes in the ramp, and cut off the luggage truck - the only vehicle in sight.  Arriving at the terminal, the doors are now on the wrong side of the bus necessitating a full turn around. With acres of empty concrete still available, the driver cuts the turn too close, has to back and fill, but at least manages to cut off the same luggage truck again! Welcome back to Delhi!  Enough of that, on to Japan!MK
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/imapilot/souther_japan/1196137560/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/imapilot/souther_japan/1196137560/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/imapilot/souther_japan/1196137560/tpod.html Fri, 30 Nov 2007 09:42:49 -0500 A final month of our around the world adventure in the cleanest, neatest, and most expensive place we can find!

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Denver, Colorado, United States

Final blog from this wondrous trip.Already back for over a week.The US, clean and familiar; Africa, so long ago, already a dream, India fading fastThe memories live on, jogged by the picturesA bubble in time, a separate life, a great privilege to be able to take so much time to go and to see, try to understand, and then come back. And now, hardest of all, to try to keep that, somewhere, somehow, as normal life resumes.It was quite a trip, an amazing trip, an experience worth every penny, yen, lira, euro, and rupee spent.  Every day a new place, new sights, more pictures, more memories. And just when we'd be getting a handle on how to find water, where to sleep, what to eat, and how the currency works, we'd cross a border and start learning all over again.  Most of the time this is great fun, although what oft gets overlooked in the rosy spectacles of recollection is that traveling is work, sometimes a lot of work. Moving every day, the need to get up, pack everything up, get on the bike, and set off for a full day of the unknown, can be a lot of work. Especially the unknown bit; perhaps what we miss least being off the bikes is not spending all day every day wondering where we'll be tonight. Will there will be a place to camp? With water and a toilet? Will we need a hotel? Can we even find a hotel?? And if so, will it be in budget? clean enough?  For a while, this is a fun game, part of the adventure, part of the challenge. But when the excitement wanes, and the challenge becomes the routine, then it's time to go home. Over the last 9 months we have been baked, dried, drenched and fried. Exhausted, elated, hungry and sated.  We've crossed forest and desert, plains and mountains. We've been sand blasted, mud caked, sweat soaked, sun baked, and, on rare occasions, clean and dry. We've camped in parks, camped alone, camped with gypsies and camped with truck drivers.  Traveling so slowly, by our own power, we placed ourselves in a position of vulnerability, reducing the gap between ourselves, and the people we travel among. And in all of the trip, never once was this vulnerability exploited, quite the opposite really; we have been the recipients of amazing hospitality from Kilimanjaro to Miyazaki.  Our bikes have been broken, fixed, patched, re-broken, re-fixed, and re-patched. The riders, fortunately fared much better; in all of the trip, we were never seriously sick, never in an accident, never injured, never even crashed the heavily loaded bikes. It was an amazing trip for adjusting perspective.  It's easy to say "we're lucky here in the US", it's another thing to understand that there are much lower levels of poverty than having to drive an old car.  It's this rolling accumulation of perspective which affected me most by the end of the trip, both from what we saw, and how we lived. Four months in Africa put a very different perspective on Europe, and India, and then India to Japan.  The Germans we met in Japan were marveling how different it all was; we were marveling how similar to home it felt.  And always in the back of the mind the question "what keeps Africa from being like this?"Living on bikes means living simply, making do with as little as possible. My  kitchen was 2 pots, 2 utensils, 2 cups, a knife, and a single gas burner. My pantry was a stuff-sack, and today's vegetables from market.  My clothing? 2 shirts to change out when riding, one for sleeping, 1 pair of pants, 2 pairs bike shorts, 3 pairs socks and underwear, and a few warm clothes for the colder climes.  And yet in too many parts of Africa, India and Nepal, this amount passed for luxury. So many times we realized we had more on our bikes than the possessions in the houses we passed, and that's just quantity;  don't even think of comparing cost.  Now back in the stuff-centric US consumeristic society, there are so many choices.  Choices of clothing, what to wear?  Where did I put my other pants?  Why do I need the other pants if I can't even find them?  I go shopping for breakfast cereal, stand dumbfounded in front of a wall of cereal. "Can I help you?" asks the chipper Whole Foods staffer. "I don't think so, but thanks."  Think of the months in Africa when we set out with 5 days of oatmeal, rice etc. not sure when we could buy staples again. And now, the supermarket tells me I need whole grain organic crushed flax seed puffed wheat thingies high in isoflavosomethingerothers, a box of which can be mine, all mine, in exchange for some of those green printed paper things I carry in my pocket, and, in fact, nothing so substantial as paper, but a mere flash of electrons at the cash(??) register.  Culture shock sometimes takes on the palpable sense of drowning in stuff, too much stuff. And we still have two storage boxes in a warehouse, whatever the hell do we have in there anyway?Then there is the concept of money. By the time we reached our fourth or fifth currency, money in the physical sense, was a mere abstraction.  We had pieces of paper with numbers, and the goods necessary had other numbers, match the numbers, and exchange paper for goods, but sense of value had gone missing.  Yet, for all the abstraction, the influence of money was very, very real. So many differences in what we saw in daily life came down to simply a question of money.  The poor of Japan still enjoy a strong infrastructure, cheap electricity, clean water, clean food, access to well trained doctors, well equipped hospitals, and proper medicines; all of which are unfathomable in rural Africa. A tsunami in Malaysia kills over 100,000, overwhelms the government and infrastructure; medical care must come from outside the country. A tsumani in Japan bounces off the big concrete walls they build to block the ocean view.   It's a vicious chicken-and-egg problem; if the people have money, the government has money to provide infrastructure, health care, and education for the people, leading to higher prosperity of the people, and again more money for civil expenditures. The poor countries of the world fibrillate, no whole eggs, no functional chickens. Is it too late to start climbing up the boot straps?  And too often, the startings of a real egg, a real hope, is crushed when a few dogs in the 'government' embezzle the majority of the treasury and split for another continent.  So many good people in countries we saw, with such potential, but thwarted by governments ranging from inept to impotent, from non-existent to self-destructive.  Nepal could move forward if the government could just be stable for more than 12 months. India is moving forward, all billion+ of them, but the government teeters on the edge of collapse - a scary thought, such a large ship without a captain.And what is 'forward'?  Any good American will say "more like US".  And perhaps that was forward for many people, for a long time, but no longer. Africa looks to the East, to India and China for role models.  Zimbabwe is the first Chinese colony in Africa. One thing is certain at least;  everyone wants to work a little less, earn a little more, and at the heart of it, everyone, us included, just wants to be comfortable.  Somewhere along the line, the US confused "a little more" with "bigger", something I hadn't really noticed until returning to the land of jumbo coffee, bucket sized soft drinks, monster SUVs, and palatial mini-mansions.  This confusion seems to be almost purely American; the rest of the world either doesn't have the space, or doesn't share the American infatuation with filling it. So now we're back. Sorting through 10 months of accumulated mail, thinking about where to live, jobs, once again assuming our lives as productive citizens of a first world nation. Lives that will entail more complexity than living out of 4 panniers and a backpack, rising early every morning, pedaling all day, reveling in the newness of it all, and sleeping soundly at night.  Make no mistake; we were ready to give up the nomad existence; the comforts of home are very nice! But this sort of transition is not particularly easy in the best of times, and  returning to the first world these days, particularly to the US, is pretty difficult. The oceans are melting, we're changing the climate, it's too late to stop it, hang on for the ride, and it won't be fun, the media tells us.  Iraq moves closer to my generation's Vietnam by the day. The foreign debt is crushing, and China owns it. But this is meaningless to a citizen. More relevant to the traveler's brain, the US $$ is fast becoming worthless currency, making the sort of trip we have been privileged to take even more financially infeasible in the future. We live in a country of freedom and democracy, a role model to so many struggling nations, yet the approval rating of the current administration is under 35%  This is not something to be proud of. On the other hand, the number of countries we visited where the citizens really liked their system of government was.... none.  Of course, it's hard to stay optimistic even in the best of times with the media dribbling all the sensational bad news they can find into our skulls day after day. It's a wonder anyone watching CNN stays sane at all. Yessir, that bicycle looks mighty good many mornings after checking the news! The people of Tanzania survive quite well without a news pipeline, and are some of the most cheerful folks we've met anywhere. Very poor, but quite happy. Someone has probably looked into that already.  Quite enough philosophizing. In the end, we're grateful to have been able to take so much time out of the rat race, and remember how much more there is to life. I hope this irregular, personal news service has been at least entertaining for everyone else as well. cheers,MKP.S. Gretchen also has a very nice final blog with a bit of a different tone Final stats: = Total km bicycled:  14,0000  (8,400 miles)= Weeks spent out of the US:  42= Number of pedal revolutions: 5,000,000 (very much approximated!)= Number of countries:  14  (well, 15 really, but Slovakia was < 24 hours)= Pictures taken: about 10,000= Pictures actually saved:  4850= Pictures used in the "whole trip" slide show: 370  (man was that a difficult task)= Number of continents:  3= Number of countries which drive on the left side:  9= Number of currencies 11 (or 12 if you count the Namibian $, which is tied 1:1 with the Rand)= Number of countries where we could drink the water: 7= Highest mountain pass: Tagalang La, India, 18,380 ft = Lowest "pass" 44m (142 ft), Japan!  (why they labeled this a "pass" I don't know....)= Easiest place for English:  South Africa= Most difficult language barriers:  Japan, followed by Turkey= Number of times we resorted to Cipro to straighten out the digestive tract: 3 for Matt, once for Gretchen= Cheapest place to wander around:  Nepal= Most expensive country:  Japan= Most amazing hospitality: Namibia, and South Africa= Cheapest hotel room:  approx $3 (Tanzania, and Nepal)= Most smokers:  Turkey (Japan a close second)= Most alcohol:  Romania (Japan also a close second)= Least alcohol:  Turkey (Kashmir a very close second)= Most homicidal drivers:  India, Tanzania a very close second= Most amazingly polite drivers:  Japan= Number of times we ran out of food or water:  none.  but came damn close a few times.= Number of times a 'travel fairy' bailed us out of a situation which was getting bad fast:  3And just for fun, for the gear junkies, this is what all we broke:3 bike rims (rear wheels all, mine twice, Gretchen's once)2 bottom brackets (plus a pro-active replacement of the POS replacement done in Turkey)1 bike helmet2 bike bells (really)1 headset cartridge bearing (Gretchen's bike)1 headset completely replaced (mine, replaced very old headset with a newer, cartridge bearing set)1 rear pannier rack (wired together for the duration)2 bike seats (the original was totally busted + the replacement seat padding wore out and also had to be replaced)And along the lines of normal wear and tear, 2 chains & rear sprockets per bicycle, 6 inner tubes, quite a few patches, 2 sets of pedals and, amazingly enough, only 4 tires.  The Schwalbe Marathon XR are impressive, lasting 8000-10,000 km each, so we're just on the second set which still have some life left!  Amazingly, I only replaced two sets of brake pads in the entire 14,000km.  Aside from bike hardware, we wore out pretty much 2 full outfits each (2 pair bike shorts, socks, shirts and underwear), all of which were thrown out in Japan or shortly after arriving back in the US.   On the up side, gear which deserves commendations and kudos:Ortlieb Panniers.  Don't tour with anything else. Tubus rack. The Mountain Man Rack was quite good as well.  Blackburn Aluminum racks suck. MSR Hubba Hubba tentMSR customer service:  I wore out the dragonfly stove, perhaps a bit quickly using lots of car gas, and they replaced the entire stove body AND the pump, sending the replacement to Germany, for FREE. R2Magnesium handle bar grips - we bought these in Munich, and they are awesome for wrist comfort on MTB bars.
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/imapilot/souther_japan/1195027860/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/imapilot/souther_japan/1195027860/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/imapilot/souther_japan/1195027860/tpod.html Thu, 15 Nov 2007 04:11:03 -0500 A final month of our around the world adventure in the cleanest, neatest, and most expensive place we can find!

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Miyazaki, Japan

Koko is the word we hear most often when people are attempting to give us directions; lots of arm waving, finger pointing, circling things on the map, and saying "koko", which, it turns out, simply means "here".&nbsp; We've come to the end of this little adventure, here in Miyazaki Japan, so this will be the last of the regular blogs, with one more grand ultimo summary coming up in the near future. I hope ya'll have enjoyed the pics and thoughts, and now on to our regularly scheduled blog.We took the high speed train out of Kyoto back to Onomichi to re-join our bikes and finish up the trip.&nbsp; I was a bit worried about the bikes; there was a suspicious lack of bikes outside the train station, and in the end, very pressed for time, we had thoroughly locked them to a random sign in front of the station. Only as we were pulling out of the station did I look back on the other side of the tracks to see a HUGE bike parking lot. Ooops!!&nbsp; But Japan is a VERY low crime country, and our bikes were still sitting just as we left them.&nbsp;&nbsp; We stocked up on donuts for the next day or two, and then set about getting our usual bowl of udon soup for lunch. At the train station restaurant we promptly encountered a new obstacle to keeping ourselves&nbsp;fed in this country;&nbsp;instead of stumbling through lousy Japanese&nbsp;with a waiter,&nbsp;&nbsp;we had to go put money into a vending machine, punch buttons for what we wanted, and then tickets were punched out while telling the staff what had been ordered.&nbsp; After a couple minutes of staring at the Kanji characters for Kitsune Udon and Tuskimi Udon on Lonely Planet we decided there were a couple buttons on the machine close enough to what we wanted and gave that a go.&nbsp; It's a serious handicap being illiterate!! Got what we wanted for lunch at least, and then tried to avoid that setup for the rest of the trip. From Onomichi it was two half-days to bike into Hiroshima. Not the most pleasant biking - we were mostly on the coast, heavy traffic, lots of population, and Hiroshima is a BIG city now, 1.4M people or so, but the sprawl to the north-east actually isn't bad because the city is contained by a set of ridges (which, incidentally, is partly how it was chosen as the target in WWII).&nbsp; We had an afternoon to spend in Hiroshima, which is plenty of time to explore the&nbsp; Peace Park&nbsp; which is a very well done set of monuments, open space, and a museum, all just south of the famous dome.&nbsp; The museum is large, well organized, and filled with several thousand school kids.&nbsp; The museum also does an amazingly neutral job of explaining the events leading up to WWII, being very clear that Japan was a rather unpopular aggressor with its neighbors, and then pushing the conflict to the US.&nbsp; They explain at great length the state of the city at the time of the bombing, how it was chosen as a target, the devastation of the bomb and after-effects and have some very impressive artifacts including a set of stone steps which were permanently bleached by the explosion - except for a dark shadow where someone was sitting on the steps waiting for the bank to open.&nbsp; Coincidentally, the pilot of the Enola Gay died just a couple days after we had visited Hiroshima. Leaving Hiroshima we had about 45km of heavily trafficked, industrially developed coastline biking from hell until finally turning inland and crossing Honshu Island to the north coast. The route was not as violently hilly, or scenic as crossing Shikoku, and the weather had turned very fall like - cool, grey, but fortunately not raining.&nbsp; All the same, we had a very cold morning dropping out of the mountains into Tsuwano, a touristy town in the hills known for the 1100 gate Shinto Shrine, and.... carp. Really.&nbsp; The town a long time ago (1600's) was a feudal fortress and to prepare against siege, hit on the bright idea of interlacing the entire town with canals in which they raised carp as a potential food source. The town's population is now about 6,500, but there are about 65,000 carp!!&nbsp; We said hi to the carp, and then climbed up through the 1100 red Shinto gates to the shrine on the hill before heading on for a campsite about 20km away.&nbsp;&nbsp; Now, one would think that after 9 months of being on the road, we would have a good handle on where we are, where we're going, and how long it would take to get there. But the days in Japan have a nasty hook to them, and suddenly it's 3:30pm, which doesn't sound late, but sunset is by 5:30, which, when densely cloudy, means dark by 5:45.&nbsp; The map has contours, but not very good detail, so we find too late that the last 20km is not a cruise, but an uphill grind, at 8-10 kph, and suddenly bang, it's going to be dark before we get where we're going.&nbsp; Of course, the other catch is we seldom know exactly where we are going as we're simply looking for a good&nbsp;place to camp.&nbsp; One aiming point is one of the&nbsp;the frequent road side rest stops which are marked on the map. The&nbsp;nice ones&nbsp;are big, have a nice set of rest rooms, and a big grassy picnic area etc. so would make a good camping site.&nbsp; Today at 5:25 and we arrive at the rest stop, still 6km from the camping area (also on the map), and it's getting dark fast, but this rest stop is small, nowhere to camp, so we press on. At least the rest stop&nbsp;big local area map also shows there to be a camping area, so confidence in having a destination increases.&nbsp; Across rolling hills, getting very dark, and of course, the question of whether the camp site is really open. 5.5km later we find the turn (we can read the Kanji for camping now at least), and apparently, judging by the very interesting signs,&nbsp;there is a bug zoo / farm between us and the camp site. lovely. Lots of really big pictures of really big bugs.&nbsp; Japan hasn't had many bugs so far (although there are a LOT of big spiders, perhaps there is a connection here), but camping next to the bug park is not encouraging.&nbsp; As we turn, I look UP at the hilltop and a light up there and think "that BETTER not be it".&nbsp; It was.&nbsp; 45 minutes of mostly pushing the bikes up steep, slippery asphalt (wet, and lots of moss growing on it), we arrive at a completely deserted, closed for the season campground. BUT they left the bathroom open and the water on, which is all we need, and it's free! Sweeeeeet! Another morning of freezing as we drop into Hagi, and our first look at the Sea of Japan. Hagi is known for pottery, although not being a connoisseur I don't notice anything special on the large vases other than the fact that all the price tags are in excess of $1000!! The north coast is much less populated so we can once again enjoy riding the coastline. The first 25km are an amazing winding little country road, scarcely a lane wide in many places, and NO traffic at all, most excellent! We had hoped to treat ourselves to another Minshuku experience, but again, progress was slow, as the hills wore us down and as darkness fall fast, we were still short of anything big enough to have a Minshuku, but at least had a lovely camping spot on the beach. The park, I should point out, was so modern, it had a handicap wheelchair access ramp right down into the deep, soft sand by the waves.&nbsp;Go figure.&nbsp;We were in need of a break from the cold and damp of camping, so after a half day biking spent a nice day in Shimonoseki, the last city on Honshu, and next morning took the tunnel to the south big island, called Kyushu. The tunnel is split-level, the cars travel in the wide part, the pedestrians in the area below the cars.&nbsp; We struggled uphill to the car entry, only to be directed right back down to the waterfront where we found a user-friendly elevator to drop us 180 ft straight down for the pedestrian tunnel. As we started to ride through a voice yelled out "Walking!! Walking!!!".&nbsp; Apparently we were being watched. Another day of grey, but not wet biking and we spent the night in the town of Usa; apparently companies would register here in the 50's so they could put "Made in USA" on their products. Really.&nbsp; They had a nice park for camping at least.Saturday dawned grey, but still dry,&nbsp;and it was time for our last day from hell on the bikes; not that we set out to have these on any regular basis mind you. Late start after checking out a couple parks of ancient stone Buddhas, and then uphill on the Kunisake peninsula which has large temples, and larger hills all over the place. The rain started around 10:30, but for some reason, we were thinking it wasn't so far to Beppu, known far and wide for natural hot springs, so we put up with the rain knowing we'd be soaking in a hot tub before too long. The rain only occasionally let up to inhale before another deluge, and we took refuge at one of the temples for an hour where the resident monk took pity on us and served us tea and sweet potato. He spoke some English for a change, having spent a little time in New York state building a temple there. Then back on the road, dropping down, freezing, and then flat. then up. then more up. And suddenly as we were both bonking in the cold and the rain we suddenly realized we were nowhere near Beppu, 30km out still, with a lot of hills and stop lights between us and the hot tubs, and thanks to the pouring rain, it would be dark in less than an hour.&nbsp; This predicament pretty well defines "hour of need", and for the first and only time in Japan, a travel fairy stepped forward and committed a fantastic rescue.&nbsp; As we were about to jump back on the bikes to peddle like mad for an impossible goal, a large van pulled up, and offered to help.&nbsp;&nbsp;I should explain here that we&nbsp;have never felt so on our own as we have in Japan.&nbsp; In India we could always toss us, and our bikes on the first bus to go by, but in Japan, we know we're not allowed on the trains, or the buses, and the vast majority of people drive very small cars, and on top of all that,&nbsp;the language barrier is nearly absolute.&nbsp; So to have a VAN, big enough for 2 drowned rats and their full entourage of filthy, soaked panniers and bikes, pull up and offer to help, was absolutely amazing.&nbsp; It actually gets better. The driver, whom we shall call Gen, because that is his name, had passed us a half hour earlier and thought "gee, tourists never use these back roads, they look miserable, and are probably in big trouble even if they don't know it yet".&nbsp; He then went home, got the van from his work, and came back up to find us.&nbsp; He spoke some English, and his lovely wife Maya spoke a bit more.&nbsp; They gave us a ride the entire 30km to Beppu, and it was quite dark by the time we got there by car - bicycle would have been out of the question.&nbsp; On the way, he showed us the family business; a very elegant set of banquet halls, with a very traditional room, better decorated with Samurai armor and swords than most museums we've seen.&nbsp; And, one last thing to blow your minds, Gen is the sixteenth generation family manager of this business. Yes, really 16.&nbsp; So, thanks very much to Gen and Maya, we did get our hot tub soak in Beppu that night after all. After a cold beer and tofu steak no less.&nbsp; They were also able to shed some light on various mysteries of Japan during the drive. For example, there are slot casinos everywhere in this country. The most common, Pachinko Slots, is apparently owned by a North Korean. Most Japanese apparently don't known this, but Pachinko is probably a large portion of the money going into that country.... Leaving Beppu, we were down to 8 days in the trip. 8 Days is not very long, unless you're biking uphill in the rain. However, the weather gods had completed their vendetta against us, and we actually had the most fantastic fall weather for the rest of the trip we could ever hope for. We cut inland first, up towards Aso, and more days of massive elevation change (up to 5000 ft of climbing per day).&nbsp; The fall foliage was at complete peak with bright red Japanese Maple trees, and lovely little volcanoes in the background. One of them looked like a model of Rainier, without the snow. The landscape is very beautiful, but usually in a subtle sort of way, an overall impression of beauty, the curves, the lighting, the colors. It's not dramatic, stark beauty like, say the Canadian rockies. Perhaps this explains a bit about Japanese art styles.&nbsp;&nbsp; After a few days of this rather idyllic, but strenuous biking through the center of Kyushu, we dropped down to the coast and went through Miyazaki the first time.&nbsp; Miyazaki sits in a warm water current, has a balmy climate, and is surfing central for pretty much all of Japan. To drop straight out of chilly, New England style fall into Miyazaki is like biking from Maine to San Diego in a day - which really messes with the brain.&nbsp; We had a few more days left of cycling, so continued south, back along the coast down to Cape Toi, a local "most southern point", although hardly the most southern point for Kyushu, not to mention Japan, but it made a nice landmark where we could say hi to the wild horses (which looked like any old horses to me, but again, I'm not a connoisseur, and these didn't have price tags), and then head north again.&nbsp; And then it was time for our very last night camping. The site we aimed for turned out to be a medium sized sports park, and absolutely excellent! Huge playground equipment, and a big picnic area with sinks, running water, picnic tables, <i>and electricity! It says something about our lifestyle that this combination is now considered the "lap of luxury".&nbsp; A final day of biking, and rolling into Miyazaki for the second, and final time brings to close an amazing 42 weeks, 14,000km, 14 countries, over 10,000 pictures, and a lifetime of memories. And not a single serious accident, incident or predicament. Never did we feel seriously threatened, so to all those who told us we would be mugged, robbed, or killed for our spare tires, so there. And now it's time to go "home", which is probably Seattle. Already the nightly dreams have started where it's getting dark, and we have many km to go, only to wake up in a nice comfy bed. But already I feel like an hour or two of exercise a day is a piddling excuse for exercise and being inside for more than a couple hours at a time feels stuffy and claustrophobic.&nbsp; 10 months of living mostly outside is lousy preparation for going back to office land. Good thing I don't have a job!!&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;I expect some serious culture shock returning to the US.&nbsp; Japan should have buffered things a bit, although I'm wondering how long it will take for me to realize that all doors no longer slide open automatically. I AM looking forward to being able to read again. In fact, I'm wondering if I will have a serious case of ADD; right now my eyes grab anything&nbsp;written in Romanji / English;&nbsp;suddenly being able to read <i>everything may be a bit overwhelming!&nbsp; I'm also <i>really looking forward to being able to walk into a restaurant, and explain, using my words, what I want, and to have the wait person understand, and comply. I'll even do this in Spanish if necessary.&nbsp; As anyone who has spent&nbsp;some time out of their language knows, the usual scenario here is to give the helpful&nbsp;waiter a big dumb&nbsp;look, and do some charades, get asked&nbsp;some questions, respond with even dumber looks until they give up on us and our IQ and wander off to bring back something from the kitchen.&nbsp; As I told Gretchen the other day, in a memorable statement "I'm tired of being a moron", although it will naturally take a lot more than returning to an English speaking nation to fix that problem!&nbsp; In any case, I figure if the culture shock doesn't hit hard enough, visiting any major shopping mall the day after Thanksgiving should be sufficient for a terminal dosage!That's all from Japan!I do hope to write one more rambling wrap up in the near future, as much for my edification on tying up loose ends as anything elseuntil then,SayonaraMK
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/imapilot/souther_japan/1193492460/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/imapilot/souther_japan/1193492460/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/imapilot/souther_japan/1193492460/tpod.html Wed, 14 Nov 2007 19:22:52 -0500 A final month of our around the world adventure in the cleanest, neatest, and most expensive place we can find!

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Onomichi, Japan

Hello from Japan, land of huge bridges, long tunnels, and small cups of green tea.&nbsp; These last couple weeks promise to be nice biking on smooth roads, with good food, but with lots of hills, both on the roads and in the mind, and an occasionally stormy disposition in ourselves and the weather.&nbsp; We've been out of the US for over 9 months now, and so much has changed, so much more with us I think, than with the US. At least, every time I check the news, it's all politics and who died in Iraq, so apparently nothing has changed there. As for us, the roller coaster alternates between "only 2 weeks left!!!" and "ah hell, we still have 2 more weeks of camping, being illiterate, and biking all the time before we can go home".&nbsp; And that's just the present. We have no home to go back to, no jobs lined up, and while a change of lifestyle which includes being able to live out of more than 4 panniers and a backpack sounds lovely,&nbsp; it is also a beautifully simple lifestyle when everything we have is in 5 bags; we know exactly where it is, and what we're doing tomorrow (biking. duh.)&nbsp; So, as when any big project starts to conclude, the stress and the tempo both wind up.&nbsp; Philosophy aside, here's the blog from our first week+, and a LOT of pictures.&nbsp; Sorry about that, upload speeds are so fast! And the Internet cafe is clean, quiet, spacious, AND has free coffee! They're geared towards the hard core gamers who play for many many hours, to the extent that there are blankets, pillows, and a shower here. not kidding.&nbsp; Even about the shower - everyone knows that geeks would never shower in the middle of a game.&nbsp; We started the trip with the island of Shikoku, the smallest of the 4 big islands, and one of the most rural, so we figured this would be a nice quiet start.&nbsp; Among other attractions, the island is known for the pilgrimage of 88 temples, and the only undammed river in Japan. Really.&nbsp; The civil engineering in this country is out of control; apparently a lot of this has to do with politics and how rural areas get a pretty big say in budget, and therefore suck up lots of money into massive civil engineering projects essentially as make-work, economic re-distribution programs. This unfortunately results in massively over-built roads, an amazing number of unnecessary tunnels, and huge number of water control programs. Sometimes entire hillsides are covered in concrete just to stifle the mere thought of a land slide.&nbsp; On the up side for us, the roads are all fantastically smooth, and usually the gradient isn't more than 10% even in the steep hills. Japan has hills, a LOT of hills, the country is 75% mountainous, and the rest is coastline. Most people live on the coast, so it's a toss-up whether we'd rather stick to the flatter coast, or find the true, rural Japan, but have to push up some real monster climbs. First we needed a map.&nbsp; We couldn't find one in Romanji, but found the 1000\ series of maps to have a very good scale for biking. It is all in Japanese, we have no idea where we are going, or where we have been, we just follow the road numbers (in Arabic numerals, imshallah), and hope nothing in the legend we can't read was really important. The first few days of biking are actually a nice combination of both hills and coast. We start on the flats, and then head inland to mild hills, drop back to the coast for lunch at one of the 88 temples, and find, of all things, a nice little Indian restaurant. The owners (Japanese) had spent 3 years in Manali (where we were some weeks back), so we enjoyed a break from noodle soups, but it felt wrong to be eating Indian in Japan. And it cost about 5x more than any other Indian meal we ever had in that country!!&nbsp; Speaking of costs, one of the psychological problems with the \ (yen, pronounced "en") is that anything under 1000\ is a coin.&nbsp; That's anything less than $10! So, you go spend 750\ at the 7-11, and it's "pocket change" but you just spent $7!&nbsp; And I'm not kidding about the 7-11; this place is loaded with convenience stores, including 7-11. We eat a disturbing amount of food from them, but for a country where vegetarian eating in restaurants is very difficult, even the 7-11 sells tofu, hot damn!&nbsp; The country is also phenomenally addicted to vending machines. There is at least one Coke machine in every small town. And there are a lot of small towns. In bigger towns, there are just banks of vending machines, dominated by Coke and Pepsi, a couple local brands, some sell cigarettes (lots of smoking here), a few even sell beer!!&nbsp; Unlike the American counterparts, these machines have a lot of choices, usually upwards of 15 drinks, including many varieties of coffee, tea, and maybe a couple soft drinks in the bottom corner of the display.&nbsp; Many of the machines even have a hot selection of the coffee type beverages. I had to try this of course, and wondered if there would be a 20 second pause for the drink to be flash heated, but no, instantly pops out. So this machine is keeping cans warm and cold, side by side.&nbsp; How much of Japan's electrical budget goes into vending machines??&nbsp; Along with coffee on every street corner in machines, there are a lot of coffee shops - I know this because "Coffee" is one of the few words routinely in English.&nbsp; This is one seriously caffeinated&nbsp; country!The first night we spent at an official camp ground, arriving right around dark, as per our usual procedure when the sun sets so dang early (5:30 and earlier every day. sigh.) This place is ritzy, and costs it as well - $30 to camp!! Next day we buzz along much flatter coast. It's all very pretty, although not stunning; pretty, but not picturesque. More temples, more coast line, around the southern tip, back up the other side, and we decide to check out temple #27 for a possible camping spot. We've been told that we can camp pretty much everywhere; basically "gaijin" (foreigners) are not expected to know how to behave, so that gives us incredible amounts of leeway for being able to camp in city parks, country parks, and wherever we feel like, and no one ever blinks. They may come over and babble at us enthusiastically in Japanese for a while, even after they find out we don't speak more than 5 words, but no one has objected to any of our camp spots, from road side parks to on the beach.&nbsp; The temple camping seemed like a great idea, until we checked the contours and found 400m of climb (1300 ft!) in 3km!!&nbsp; We pushed the bikes 900ft up this impossibly steep slope and then found a little gazebo, bathroom with running water, and picnic table. Bingo! Another home for the night!&nbsp; We are rather Dependant on this sort of thing popping up faster than the sun drops down, which has bitten us hard a couple times so far, but we've also been pretty lucky most nights.&nbsp;&nbsp; A&nbsp; word about the 88 temples; the pilgrimage connecting them is about 1400km, which we are definitely NOT doing, but we see a lot of the henro (specific name for the pilgrims on this pilgrimage) walking the route on the road, anywhere from 10-30 henro per day. We thought this was a lot, although the book says "only a small fraction still walk it". I found this hard to believe, but in that last hour of pushing our bikes up to the temple, we found the other very large fraction as bus after bus of henro passed us. The occupants are still all dressed in the traditional white robes, and carrying the walking sticks when outside the bus, despite getting their asses carted, not walked, the 1400km.&nbsp; Seems like cheating to me, a pilgrimage should involve a little more hardship than having a seat mate with a runny nose. After the temple, we spent a night in Kochi, on the coast, in the middle of the island, where we met a couple German tourists, in Japan for a couple weeks.&nbsp; They are marveling how different it is in Japan, whereas, coming from India, we were marveling at how similar it is to Europe / US!&nbsp; It's a developed, wealthy country, lots of infrastructure which is under-utilized, not stretched past the breaking point, there are emission controls, you can drink the water and&nbsp; breathe the air, food is hygienic, and everything is expensive.Unfortunately for the Germans, they had found they didn't like Japanese food, and had seen enough temples already, so were killing time trying to find Italian restaurants before their flight home. Too bad for them, bring on the kitsune soba soup!From Kochi we headed for the the interior, cutting off the western coastal tip.&nbsp; This is when we found the hills, really serious hills.&nbsp; We had figured on rolling hills, and indeed, many of them were, including a gorgeous section of coast which dipped and swooped up and down sea level to 400 ft, around, and back again. This would be fantastic fun on a light racing bike, but our touring bikes are more like driving a race course in a UPS truck.&nbsp; While riding my racing bike, I can use words like "sprint" and "zip" and "zing", but sadly, the most accurate way to describe us pulling away from the curb is "wobble".&nbsp; And when it gets to long climbs, it's just serious&nbsp;grinding and plodding. Crossing Shikoku was a fantastically gorgeous day of bright sun, very small rural roads (finally found an unpopulated section of Japan!!), gorgeous forests with rushing rivers, and hellish 1500-2000ft climbs. We even found a down hill ski area at the top of the last hill, 3000ft AGL. Considering that we are at the latitude of LA, this is impressive!&nbsp;&nbsp; At the end of the day, we were 25km short of where we wanted to spend the night with 1.5 hours left of daylight, and that's when my front tire went flat.&nbsp; So I patched it with the last of some patch cement, blew it up, and it immediately went flat again. Bad glue. Open a new tube, patch it a again, blow it up, drop into the next small town to find food as we're very hungry; after all the easy convenience stores, we stopped carrying so much, and found out the hard way there are none away from the coasts, but even before we can do that, it's flat again! SOB!!!&nbsp; Gretchen goes in search of food, I pull the inner tube... and can't find a leak. I pump it up and watch. It goes flat again. I pump it part way, and limp down to Gretchen, who has both snacks, and all the spare inner tubes. I change the tube and blow it up. The fourth time.&nbsp; Eat snacks, discuss course of action, and meanwhile, the castle burns down, falls over and then sinks into the swamp - the tire is flat again. We take the advice of a local and find a Minshuku (rural inn serving full board) for the night. Price is 6500 yen, very reasonable with two meals, and the woman running it speaks some English. We have a fantastic night, traditional room with tatami (rice mat) flooring and futons. This is actually nicer for us than a western room; the futons are folded in a corner, much more space to use in a small room, pull them out for sleeping, we always sleep on a futon at home anyway, and the pillows are buckwheat, which is my preference at home as well.&nbsp; Dinner is fantastic, huge soup of noodles, veggies, tofu and mushrooms, lots of mushrooms.&nbsp; Breakfast is also great, and she even serves us a cooked&nbsp; egg. After breakfast we find out two things;&nbsp; the other guest was a Henro - he puts on the white outfit over his normal cloths, and that the 6500 yen.... was per person.&nbsp; I apparently don't hide the stunned look on my face fast enough when I go to pay (that is $115!!), and she feels bad about the misunderstanding and cuts the rate to 10,000 yen&nbsp;total, which, with two meals, is pretty good for Japan, but back to camping for us!&nbsp; In contrast, the next camp site is utter hell, next to a busy road, in light rain, but all we could find, especially since we wanted a roof for the forecast of rain. Japan is very green, very lush, and&nbsp; there is a very good reason for that. Despite being at the latitude of LA, the climate this time of year is much more like Seattle; many days don't break 65F, cloudy, living in Tupperware sort of thing.&nbsp; So we found this roadside park as it got dark, the other occupant arrived shortly; a local on a moped who obviously lived on the moped. In my less optimistic moods I notice that the only difference between us being a tourist rather than a vagrant is ethnicity.The final day before our Kyoto side trip is a fantastic ride of about 80km over a string of small islands. These have all been connected by bridges in the relatively recent past, and as such, all the bridges have bike lanes! In fact, we had massive, independent entrance ramps, huge sweeping ribbons of concrete up to these massive suspension bridges. There are 7 bridges, lots of islands, excellent signage for directions (until the last 10km when they leave you on your own), and it only really, truly poured buckets of rain for about an hour late-morning. We managed to hide from most of it in one of the many very nice highway rest stops, where it was raining so hard, all the street lamps came on and the staff came out to marvel at the downpour.&nbsp; At the end of all this is Onomichi, a not overly remarkable town, but a place where we stash our bikes, and panniers, and get on the Shinkansen (bullet train!) back to Kyoto. We didn't want to bike in and out of a major metro area, and you can't visit Japan without taking a high speed train trip, so this was a great combination, and our friend Andie Zengion who has been wandering around Asia met us there for a couple days.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; We bought "non-reserved" seats which on a Friday night meant standing room only. Here we are, traveling at 300 kph (180 mph), and we're standing like it's the subway!! But there has never been a Shinkansen accident, so it's the way to go. Considering the size of Japan, and the fact that airports are usually inconvenient to the city, and that there is no security at all for the trains, they are a much much more convenient way to travel than intra-country air for anything along the two main islands. But you won't save money, just time; the bullet train round trip ticket for the 280km journey was about $150. Kyoto is the old provincial capital of Japan, steeped in multi-thousand year history (something which boggles the American mind), and about the most popular tourist destination in Japan, especially in the fall when the red maples start to turn color with a bazillian and two temples, shrines and castles to take pictures of, get married in etc. etc.&nbsp; Most of the tourists are local, but way more foreigners here than the entire island of Shikoku. We even met a couple Italians at the youth hostel who were also traveling by bike, although they tend to bike a bit, work for a longer bit, bike a bit etc. We check out a bunch of temples, the maples are just starting to turn, the rain is just stopping, things are generally quite lovely, and it's a total mind-bend to be visiting an old classmate on the other side of the planet.&nbsp; One of the big sites is Nijo-jo castle, a small complex of buildings, with a nice big moat (with carp of course), and "singing floors" - the original lord who built the castle was paranoid about intruders, so the floors are made with a slight gap, and metal clamps (spelled "cramps" in the brochure, really.) which let out a little squeaking singing noise when you walk.&nbsp;&nbsp; Traveling around Japan now, it is a very developed country (I shouldn't call it Western, they really wouldn't appreciate that I think), so one can forget pretty easily, just how amazingly different the cultures were a mere 200 years ago.&nbsp; Compared to the castles in Europe, this was a nice building, but not so big, and there was no furniture at all. Just elegantly painted wall panels, nice gardens, bamboo roofs, all that stuff. No turrets, massive ball rooms with chandeliers, hugely grandiose furniture etc. etc.&nbsp; The first meetings of east and west must have been a fantastic shock all around.&nbsp; Along&nbsp; with castles, a modern funny collision of cultures is in toilets. The traditional is a squat toilet, which I rather prefer actually; it is more hygienic (no body parts touch anything), more ergonomic for waste expulsion, good for the flexibility, and there is no splashing to worry about.&nbsp; Most of the toilets are squat in the places we stay, but the more modern places have these super-scary toilets which have big, complex control panels which make photocopiers look simple. They make simulated flushing sounds, have heated seats (this is just wrong), the lids go up and down on their own accord,&nbsp; and there's a lot more buttons there which I don't even dare to touch.&nbsp; East meets West, hell, East watches Star Trek and builds a toilet!After a day or three in Kyoto one has seen all the temples one really wants to, and has had enough of the crowds, so back on the bullet train (definitely a good place to use words like "zip" and "zing") to Onomichi,&nbsp; and stock up at Mr. Donut before getting back on the bikes.&nbsp; The bread here is generally white, fluffy, and amazingly expensive, but the donuts are awesome with all the sugar and fat one expects from a donut. Great for pushing us up hills, and staying warm on days where it is 60F all day at 100% humidity with no sun.&nbsp; But that is for the next blog,Sayonara! (yes, that really is Japanese for "good bye")mkP.S. If Starbucks is any indication, we still have a lot more culture shock coming. I thought Japan would be a good buffer, and no doubt it is, coming from India to here was a major shock. But I just had a grande latte from Starbucks, and the thing was HUGE.&nbsp; Supersize me batman!&nbsp;&nbsp; Guess I'm used to drinking the mini-sized drinks like the rest of the world now, which I complained about so much, say, 9 months ago.P.P.S.&nbsp; It is now November 5th, and there is Christmas muzak and tinsel in this city of Beppu. Oy.
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/imapilot/souther_japan/1194331140/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/imapilot/souther_japan/1194331140/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/imapilot/souther_japan/1194331140/tpod.html Tue, 06 Nov 2007 00:39:32 -0500 A final month of our around the world adventure in the cleanest, neatest, and most expensive place we can find!

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Beppu, Japan

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]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/imapilot/souther_japan/1194331020/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/imapilot/souther_japan/1194331020/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/imapilot/souther_japan/1194331020/tpod.html Tue, 06 Nov 2007 00:38:11 -0500 A final month of our around the world adventure in the cleanest, neatest, and most expensive place we can find!

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Hagi, Japan

hagit hagi
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/imapilot/souther_japan/1192759320/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/imapilot/souther_japan/1192759320/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/imapilot/souther_japan/1192759320/tpod.html Tue, 06 Nov 2007 00:29:18 -0500 A final month of our around the world adventure in the cleanest, neatest, and most expensive place we can find!

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Tokushima, Japan

Hello from Japan!!!Quite the trip to get here. Nasty taxi snafu trying to leave the hotel, we asked for a big cab for 2 bikes, and all our stuff ,and they send the tiny little hatch-backs with a roof rack. Not gonna work. Find out too late that there's a departure tax - in Rupies and I just used up all my Rupies. Finally get a pickup truck to the airport, all our stuff in back gets drenched. Life doesn't improve at this point; we make it through security check #1 (this is just to get through the airport door), still in time (just) to catch the plane, and get stonewalled by the checkin agents who insist that Kathmandu never has, and will not, accept an e-ticket, despite the fact that their airline cheerfully issued us one 9 months ago. We have quite the row - they want us to BUY more tickets, we go up the manager chain, and eventually get put on another, later flight, but at least we're on. Kathmandu airport is one big room with chairs, no amenities, and a dull couple hours, but flight goes off only 1/2 hour late.&nbsp; Arriving in Delhi, we have just the quintessential Indian experience;&nbsp; we disembark way out on the ramp, and get on a bus. Bus fills up, driver slams the doors, and roars off just in time to completely cut off the only other vehicle on the entire ramp - a baggage tractor, and slam into a few good pot holes in the process. Driver then proceeds to get lost, wander around the large, mostly empty ramp area long enough that he can stomp on the gas and cut off the <i>same baggage tractor <i>again before arriving at our stop.&nbsp;&nbsp; But now he realizes the doors are on the wrong side of the bus - i.e. not facing the building. With acres and acres of empty concrete at his disposal, he swings a turn too close to a set of carts, has to stop, back up, and finish the turn with a few back and fill maneuvers. Priceless. Delhi airport is only slightly better than Kathmandu, there's a few snack shops while you wait, and wait we did, our flight being at 01:20. Once checked in, the security line was a full hour. This would have been marginally OK if we felt like security actually <i>accomplished anything at the end of an hour, but it's just a cursory check, and on you go. Asiana Air is <i>very nice (note to ATG people: the massive A330-300 has only a <i>single main flap element. Tell <i>that to IAI!), and then a stop-over in the Seoul airport. After Delhi, this was <i>increadible. It was a lot like Chicago without the crowds. Big, shiny, new, friendly, quiet and efficient. The drinking fountains have signs saying "drinking water, filtered and purified", whereas the Delhi airport had "Drinking Water" and a rusty sink with a grubby faucett, take your chances. And finally to Osaka, which is even shinier, spiffier, and no signs on the drinking fountains because everyone knows that the water is safe to drink.&nbsp; And then the smoothness ended. Osaka Kansai airport is on an island. Bikes aren't allowed on the road to the mainland, and it's getting late anyway. Bikes aren't allowed on the airport shuttle buses. The nice lady at information made us a hotel reservation in Wakayama, from which we'd catch the ferry to Tokushima on Shikoku island the next day, and sold us train tickets. We don't think bikes are allowed on the trains either, but it's worth a try. We re-assemble bikes, take the elevator up, enter the train station, cram into a slightly-too-small elevator down to the platform, and get on the train. That was easy. Then the people in uniforms arrive. We play dumb, they don't speak much english, but eventually they haul us off the train, and up to the superintendant's office. We take the tactic of saying "we have a ticket, and there's no other way off this island". They keep telling us it's against regulations, the bike must be "made small" and wrapped in a bag or tarp. We explain that our bikes don't get small - and this is true, with front and back racks, not much changes even if you pull the wheels off and fold things up like the Japanese are used to doing. After going back and forth for a while, they give up, throw tarps OVER our fully loaded bikes, and put us back on the train. excellent. Once on, no one bothers us. The Japanese are very rule abiding people. The rule says the bike must be wrapped, so the bike was wrapped, rule checked off, good enough. As we leave the final station 45 minutes later in Wakayama, the nice guy tells us that we aren't allowed to do what we just did. (I think, it was all in Japanese). Found our hotel, nice clean place, and took in the full culture shock of Japan:* So QUIET!!!! No horns. The occasional crosswalk, that's all* So CLEAN! No trash anywhere* First restaurant: remove shoes, shoe locker at the door. In fact, Japan is so clean, they just have you check your shoes in the shoe locker of the arrival airport, you won't need them again until going back to your own grubby country. Just kidding. * Can drink the water!* Public toilets! And they're clean! And Free! And have Toilet Paper!! (I think Nepal had one public toilet, tops, and you'd have to pay, and bring you're own TP)* Toilets are the only thing free though; the rest of Japan is <i>very expensive. Cheapest hotel possible is around $54/night. Meals in a real restaurant are at least $10/person, although the noodle shops are cheaper. The 2 hour ferry ride was $50 for us and bikes. * No English! And outside the cities, no Romanji! Can't find a map with Romanji names, so we're doing everything by geographical and character recognition. Yikes! And ordering food is a real challenge as vegetarians - there's fish in <i>everything! We have a sign now telling waiters that we're picky western vegetarian tourists, AND allergic to fish, thank you.* Standard Japanese breakfast: rice (of course), miso soup (fine), raw fish (oy), and a raw egg. really. We got them to cook the egg.* Stop lights! And people obey them!* Side Walks!!!! (The streets of Thamel were choked always with people, rickshaws, mopeds, cars etc. now we just have to dodge other bikers)* Big buildings! (Nothing in Nepal was more than 3 or 4 stories)* There's lots of elderly people out and about; something rarely seen in Nepal.* No belching black exhaust clouds! Our lungs can start to heal after the last 3 months!!That's all I've got time for, we're off around this island and others, hopefully it stops raining soon! (pouring this morning, else you wouldn't have gotten this)MK
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/imapilot/souther_japan/1193492340/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/imapilot/souther_japan/1193492340/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/imapilot/souther_japan/1193492340/tpod.html Sat, 27 Oct 2007 09:40:04 -0400 A final month of our around the world adventure in the cleanest, neatest, and most expensive place we can find!

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Matsushima, Japan

hi
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/imapilot/india-nepal-07/1191754800/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/imapilot/india-nepal-07/1191754800/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/imapilot/india-nepal-07/1191754800/tpod.html Mon, 15 Oct 2007 09:34:51 -0400 Northern India and Nepal, the roof top of the world. The people, the food, and the Himalaya!

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Pokhara, Nepal

Namaste! (The Nepali hello / goodbye),After the Dawn Till Dusk&nbsp; bike shop got us all working again, and we survived the heat to Pokhara, we had planned 2 weeks of volunteering with the Nangi school. We hadn't read up enough on the place since making the plan a year (!!) ago, and really didn't know what to expect. We just knew it was "about a 3 hour bus ride to Beni, and then a 7-10 hour walk". So we arranged to meet someone in Beni on Monday morning, and tried to get on the bus Sunday afternoon at 3. The bus went 20 ft, stopped, everyone trickled off, and they explained the road was closed for another strike, the bus might go at 6. We've seen enough buses off the road, on their side, off a cliff, etc. to NOT want to travel at night, so we got tickets for the 6am bus, figured that would be enough time to still do the trip in a day. However, while everyone tells you it's a "3ish hour bus ride", they all know that it's actually a 3+ hour <i>taxi ride, but on the bus, anything between 4:30 and 7 hours is fair game. Our bus trip was 5:30, to cover 90km, which included a mere 15 minutes of fiddling with the transmission, and for some reason the last 15km of paved road was closed, so the driver suddenly swung over the embankment onto the dirt road, which had switchbacks barely a bus-length long. We got there too late to hike up, so kicked around Beni for a day in the rain. Oh well, figured it could rain all it wanted today, and be nice tomorrow, right? Wrong. Tuesday dawned with a grey splash, like Seattle but much much hotter, but off we went anyway. The trail to Nangi is UP, 5000 ft pretty much continuously up out of Beni, before running a ridge and dropping into Nangi. At least the trail was a well used stone staircase; the soil here is clay, and when wet, slicker than snot on a doorknob. At our second stop, there was an umbrella for sale, which I almost bought, but refused on grounds of optimism. I'd spend the next week kicking my wet self for this mistake. Our hiking speed was good at least, and we arrived in Nangi early afternoon to meet the other volunteers, of which there were 6: Jonni and Laura from Finland, Tanya from Vancouver, Danielle from Quebec, and Jesse and Emily from Winnipeg. The volunteers live, cook, and sleep in two "round houses", built in the traditional way (rock and clay walls, thatch or slate roof), and 8 all in one place is an unusually high population, but that's just due to random overlaps of a number of schedules. On arrival, someone asked if we'd "seen a forecast lately?" A forecast?? The last time I saw a semi-accurate forecast was in <i>Delhi, not to mention the foothills of Annapurna! There wasn't much going on thanks largely to the rain. The school operates in the rain, but some students don't come, especially those with a 1-2 hour walk each way! So we hung out with the other volunteers, in a small space, and watched the rain. Most weather patterns we have encountered in the last few months have been quite short, so we figured a day, maybe two. Hah. Tuesday and Weds it either rained lightly, or rained harder. Thursday we saw the sun twice! but for 10 minutes each time. Then it got back to the raining lightly, or harder for another couple days. The locals called this "post monsoon weather". Post? What's "post" about it?? They did at least agree that the rainy season was especially heavy, and late this year, but, unlike everywhere else we've been they didn't blame this on global warming. And my boots were still wet a week after arrival. While we're sitting around watching the rain drops drip, I'll describe the village. Nangi is a small village with a big school, grades 1-12. This is quite unusual; anything past level 9 outside of a full city is very unusual, and pulls students from as far as a 6 hour walk in the surrounding area. For those students, there are student huts to live in, small wooden huts with a couple bunks and a cooking area. The kids work amazingly hard, and are also amazingly independent, especially compared to their US counterparts; the older kids cook for, and look after the younger kids, while doing their own laundry by hand at the outdoor water tap, and attending school of course. Try THAT with your lazy-assed American high school kids!! Anyway, back to the general description; a lot of what Nangi is now, is thanks to one very impressive individual named Mahabir Pun. Mahabir had been a locally educated teacher until he unleashed a flood of letters to American Universities asking for assistance in continuing his education so that he could, in turn, improve the quality of education in Nepal. After dozens of such letters, Dr. Skov at the University of Nebraska convinced that institution to provide a full undergraduate education to Mahabir assuming he could get himself there. Must have been one hell of a geographic, not to mention culture shock; from a small village stuck to a steep hillside at 7400ft, to the plains of Nebraska!! Anyway, Mahabir completed undergrad, and came back a few years later to do an education degree and then set about pushing the school at Nangi to be a much improved village school. The village has electricity, although the supply is flakier than a good French pastry, and around year 2000, the Aussies donated a bunch of old computers, and Mahabir started a computer lab. But even more impressive is that Mahabir eventually managed to connect to the Internet by building a series of wireless relays down to an access point. The Internet is even flakier than the electricity since every relay needs to have electricity to work, but that there is Internet at all is very impressive. It's definitely not fast enough that kids are soaking up western culture from web surfing, but they can do email. Speaking of which, now that we're off the road, and the relative income scales are much lower, the access to satellite TV is also much lower - and very obvious in the culture. Satellite TV is <i>everywhere in the more affluent areas, so not only are teens wearing cheap Britney Spears T-Shirts, they actually know who she is. As for us, way too many of the cheap hotels have TV as well - and we're talking the $5/night places! So we've watched a bit too much of the tube lately, from BBC to HBO. Which is a shame, since it detracts from the feeling of being somewhere truly unique and exotic, such as, say, Nepal. But I digress terribly. One of the many unique things about the Nangi volunteering experience is that it is free to the volunteer; in fact, better than free, as food <i>and lodging are both provided. I have never seen this for any other volunteering opportunity, and quite the opposite, many organizations now view the volunteer as a source of labor and capital, charging outrageous amounts of $$ (up to $2500 per person!!) for the privilege of visiting their cause for two weeks. Being able to offer free room &amp; board encourages long term volunteers, which is better for the volunteer and the school alike (a month should be minimum, 2 weeks were much too short). This system is all supported by donation, so if you're looking for a good cause, you can make a donation on the website! You won't find a more effective use of $$ (the only overhead is the fee to wire the money to Nepal), and you can even specify what you'd like the $$ to go for (school supplies, volunteer support etc.) This is not to say that the stay was perfect; our lovely round house had a thatch roof, and a wicker "ceiling" above our heads, which is perfect breeding grounds for critters. We caught 4 large, and 3 small rats in the 2 weeks we were there, and it's a never ending battle. Cooking for 8, and then 10 was also quite a challenge. In fact cooking at all was a bit of a change since I've gotten rather lazy in this regard in the last 2 months what with very good food very cheap everywhere in India and Nepal. The local produce is also rather limited in the "vegetables" department; lots of Dal (lentils), potatoes, and this time of year, really damn big cucumbers, but greens were limited to the mustard greens growing pretty much for us. Tanya's birthday came up in the second week, and in an amazing fit of creativity with limited resources, Danielle and Jesse scrounged some chocolate, and ghee and managed to make a "chapati plum jam cake" drowned in impromptu chocolate sauce. It was definitely unique!! Once upon the time there was solar hot water, but alas, that is no longer working. Not a big problem though, a bucket bath in the heat of mid day was plenty satisfying, and we had the advantage of being able to shower <i>inside the round house, which means we can take all clothes off. The kids (and most of the adults) all have to use an outdoor, public water tap, and they have perfected the art of bathing with clothing on. Like I said, the living was quite basic by western standards, but we had the Hilton compared to traditional accommodation. Another problem with the communal living for a week of rain in a small place is that we all got sick with upper respiratory infections; two minor (including Gretchen), four medium sick (including me), and two very sick (fever etc.) Luckily for us, the next 2 volunteers to arrive were doctors!One issue was finding things to do, especially in the rain. I took on the task of straightening out the library; they actually had a pretty good library all things considered, almost all donated books, and with a lot of them in the wrong place, this took a couple rainy mornings to sort out. We mostly did a lot of substitute teaching. Since we weren't about to be teaching accounting (there was a surprising amount of accounting classes), it was pretty much "teaching English" no matter what we were substituting for. This is OK the first few times, especially since the grade keeps changing, but after a while of talking about biking through Africa and that sort of thing, we tried to come up with more interesting classes, and to get more class participation. This is the tough one; getting the kids to talk is like pulling teeth, especially the girls. They all wear head scarves, and if you start even <i>looking in their direction, the dive under the obscuring safety blanket of fabric ("You there! Yes you! third nose sticking out on the 2nd row! Please guess a vowel for Hang Man!").&nbsp; Another difficulty is that the classrooms are absolutely devoid of visual aids; they are dark, simple rooms with nary a poster or other bright colorful learning aid. A standard US grade school room would look like a shopping mall Christmas display in comparison. So we played something like Jeopardy (give a definition, get them to guess the word), and Hang Man. I taught slang phrases in English (I mean, who would ever understand the phrase "making a pit stop" if they had to start with a literal translation?), and we explained the most likely phrases they would hear from a tourist ("could you please tell me where the restaurant is?" and that sort of thing). I also got permission to take over a science class for 3 days, and to teach Tai Chi, both in the second week, and this is where I started to feel like a 2 week visit is much too rushed. But first is was time for a weekend trip with Moti.The school week is Sunday through Friday, and Friday ends a little early so the kids who walk home for the weekend can get home before dark. Note that the Grades 11 and 12 in particular are in class a lot; 10am until 4, a break, and then some of them have night classes from 6-8! Anyway, we had hoped for a mini-trek to Poon Hill on Saturday, but the pouring rain put a damper on that. Sunday Moti, a seemingly harmless older guy who runs the (plant) nursery (re-forestation programme among others), offered to take us on a walk to "see the waterfall and the village of Ramche, just across the valley". So we all figured this to be a good chance for some fresh air after a week of being rained in. Little did we know that Moti is firmly in the "path less traveled by" camp of walking, and when it came time to see the waterfall, we were suddenly plunging down a very steep, wet, slippery slope, grabbing anything that didn't move for balance and trying to keep up with Moti who was cheerfully way down ahead of his, swinging around the little mini-scythe they all use around here! We get to the bottom, where there is one hell of a waterfall given a week's worth of rain all pouring out of the valley! It was on the way back up that the trouble started; Jesse wanted me to pose on a rock. I was stupid and tried to climb up from below, a little rock-climber move on a wet mossy rock, which ended badly with a backwards somersault, and a couple more backwards rolls, carefully protecting the head <i>and the camera before grabbing enough underbrush to stop myself. The only real casualty was the right leg, which I apparently managed to slam into a rock somewhere in the tumbling, and while all the damage was muscle, by the end of the day, I could barely walk. So much for teaching Tai Chi....Monday finally dawned bright and clear and what a view! We'd had hints, but the actual pure white Himalayan peaks were increadible! So clear, so bright, they look so close, not 20,000 ft higher, and a long walk away.&nbsp; By Tuesday I could sorta walk and after class Krishna (one of the teachers, and main liaison with the volunteers) rounded up as many students as he could find at 4:00 for a Tai Chi demonstration. Gretchen and I performed the Kwon Bup form, and then we held the first impromptu "class", with about 10 reluctant participants whom Krishna pulled out of the crowd. Now, Tai Chi is a "soft" martial art, and should be taught over a period of years, not days, and is very focused on breathing, centering, efficient use of chi (energy) etc. But I had 5 days of teaching teen-age boys, of limited English capability, and who probably would not be interested in spending a half hour on Ton Jon breathing exercises, so I kinda emphasized the martial aspects of the art, and how all those pretty hand motions are actually a block, and a throw to handle an incoming punch, and that sort of thing. After teaching the first few moves of the form, I told them we'd have class from 7-8 tomorrow morning, and figured that was the end of it. Next morning, 6am, I get up so the muscles can warm up. Wander around in the usual stupor, thanks to the usual lousy sleep I'd been getting with rats dancing the polka overhead all night, and eventually made some tea. Gretchen goes for a short walk to warm up, we assume no one will show up, and we'll just go through the form a couple times for fun, and then have breakfast. At 6:40 as I'm standing outside drinking tea, I notice about 8 boys down on the basketball court, and realize with considerable shock, that they are waiting for me. I figure why wait, toss back the rest of the tea, and limp my way down there. By the time we line up 5 minutes later, there's about 30 kids, and by 7am, as we're finishing warm-ups, there's close to 40!! Gretchen about passes out when she gets back from her walk, then grabs the camera. Each morning for the next 4 we progressed steadily through Kwon Bup; a form which typically takes 3-9 <i>months to learn. I'm not saying the kids were Tai Chi experts in 5 days, but some of them did really impressively well copying my movements, and looked actually not bad. I was both surprised and impressed!! The class also made a good impression on the village and the other teachers as well, should we go back, I'd plan on a month, and a much broader offering of the martial arts and Tai Chi. The other fun class was science. Danielle, another volunteer, had told me that the science curriculum was completely missing any experimental aspect, and I decided to fix this with a very simple experiment, since what I was really interested in teaching was the scientific method, and the fact that experiments don't always go as planned. So I picked an experiment which I knew would fail; We solved F1D1 = F2D2 for a simple lever system, solve to find the fulcrum location, but I picked small masses (1000g, and 500g), and a big piece of wood for the lever. The basic equation neglects the mass of the beam, which for this system, was NOT a good assumption and the resulting experiment was off by about 20% I was teaching 9th grade, where this level of physics was appropriate, and which turned out to be a good thing since the 9th graders were about the best behaved class in the school, and mostly had enough English to understand the teaching (I think.....). Anyway, hopefully it was instructional for them to see that experiments don't always work, and we then went and modified the equations to take into account the mass of the beam, and showed that this makes the math <i>much more complicated, which is another good reason that your standard merchant scale has fixed D1 = D2 so that the simpler equation applies. But this is all still really <i>boring even for attentive, well behaved 9th graders, so we then had a very short lecture on how the longitudinal stability of an airplane is also a lever-balance problem, and how the elevator works, and finished that up with a practical demonstration of building paper airplanes! The kids copy everything I do - copy everything off the board, and, in short order, had copied me making a paper airplane, and suddenly the room was full of paper airplanes! That definitely made me one popular teacher, although my condolences to whomever had the next period! So that was our teaching experiences. Other volunteers built things (Jonni had built, and was maintaining a sauna. Yes, the Finnish guy), Tanya taught massage, Danielle had kids do short skits, there was always work in the plant nursery and after G and I got tired of falling down the steep embankment to one of the buildings, we built a staircase. Two more volunteers arrived part way through; Deb and Gary Stoner, both doctors from Pennsylvania. Deb is actually part of the US board of directors for Nangi (a very loose organization), and comes for about 6 weeks every 2 years. This time her husband, an OBGYN came as well and spent a while teaching the local nurses who run the clinic most of the time, along with seeing patients. We learned some interesting things about medical health and the area. The most interesting was the that government is providing free Depo Provera (birth control) shots, and even more interesting is that the village women are actually using them. Most women here only have 2, or at most, 3 kids, and they are well spaced apart. Coming from India, and even other parts of Nepal, this is simply astounding. The birth control process does not usually succeed in such a rural setting, where children are the only real retirement pension. Gary also explained that a major problem is a uterine prolapse, a problem where the uterus starts to basically fall out of the body. This is partly due to the nasty ergonomics of carrying very heavy loads on baskets, supported only with a forehead strap, and partly due to number of pregnancies (?). In any case, it's a huge problem in Nepal, and scores of volunteer surgeons arrive every year to spend a week or two doing hundreds of hysterectomies. On the last Friday we were in the village, there was a "cultural exchange" with Beni, the "city" we had hiked in from.&nbsp; Now Beni is not small; it's a big town, not a village, and it's more or less the end of the road out fo Pokhara, but the idea of a "cultural exchange" with a place only 6 hours walk away seemed a bit of a joke. But no joke, with the Beni kids in one line, adn Nangi kids in the other, the differences could be seen from the other end of the school. Nangi kids wear pretty conservative dress, the girls in particular are very traditional. The Beni kids were wearing tight jeans, black T-Shirts, some were sporting sun glasses and/or ball-caps and visors, and a few were plugged in to the headphones.&nbsp; This is the difference between Nepali teens with and without access to satellite TV. (The internet in Beni is also horrendously slow, we tried it).&nbsp; The main part of the cultural exchange was a series of dances and musical performances. The Beni kids predictably did modern dance, with one or two exceptions, although, to be fair, they had one guy who did very traditional Magyar singing.&nbsp; The Nangi kids did a lot more traditional dancing, with some more modern thrown in at the end, but it was a pretty glaring example of "city slickers" meet the "country bumpkins".&nbsp; And at the end, Krishna pushed us all into the performance area as well.&nbsp; Jesse and Gary are both accomplished guitarists and singers with bands back home, so they performed nicely, and then we ALL got up and sang "Reshem Firiri", a Nepalise traditional favorite, and sang it horribly.&nbsp; But&nbsp; apparently they appreciated the effort anyway. It was definitely a good experience, and would recommend it to anyone looking to volunteer for a few weeks in the middle of very scenic nowhere. Great way to acclimate before trekking as well! There were a LOT of <i>really cute kids - but we didn't take any home, they have very strict laws about that sort of thing. And it was just bloody fantastic to be 6 hours from the nearest traffic, exhaust, or honking horn for 2 weeks! Our taxi driver on the way home was especially spastic on the horn, and made us appreciate even more the tranquility we had just left. Next up, we biked back to Kathmandu, the long way through the Terrai, will try to get that blog out tomorrow, but doubt will make it before we head to Japan!MK
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/imapilot/india-nepal-07/1190379240/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/imapilot/india-nepal-07/1190379240/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/imapilot/india-nepal-07/1190379240/tpod.html Sun, 23 Sep 2007 08:04:07 -0400 Northern India and Nepal, the roof top of the world. The people, the food, and the Himalaya!

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Pokhara, Nepal

Greetings from Nepal, the once forbidden Kingdom, home to the world'shighest mountain, and the fastest rate of governement change anywhere(6 years, 7 changes to the government, and no stability yet). WhenNepal is mentioned, most people, myself included, think of high snowymountains, yaks, Buddhist temples with those really long horn things,and, more recently, Maoists.&nbsp; Having failed to crack either theguide book, or look at the map before arrival, these preconceptionsremained intact for almost 24 hours after arrival before realitywandered in with a large blunt instrument.&nbsp;&nbsp; Mistake number1:&nbsp; Nepal is overwhelmingly Hindu, not Buddhist, although, to befair, the Hindus here have incorporated a lot of&nbsp; TibetanBuddhism, and even worship in the Buddhist temples.&nbsp; Mistakenumber 2: the climate would be comfortable thanks to the elevation. There's a lot more to Nepal than mountains, and turns out our firststint of biking was definitely in the "non-mountains" region. For thoseunfamiliar with the country; there are two main cities for trekking:Kathmandu (of course), and Pokhara, which is just south of the Anapurnarange(which is gorgeous by the way).&nbsp;&nbsp; We landed in Kathmandu, andthen biked the 200km to Pokhara. Somewhere along the way, I hadacquired the misconception that Pokhara was higher thanKathmandu.&nbsp; That was mistake number 1, mistake number 2 wasnot looking at the valley between them. We dropped out of Kathmandu(4600 ft elevation, and which had a barely comfortable climate) down aslow as 1500 ft into a sweltering, dripping, sweat drenched,sub-tropical climate, complete with brilliant green rice paddies, andbanana trees.&nbsp; If you've never been in the land of rice paddies,there is nothing else I've seen anywhere which matches the brilliant,extravegantly rich green of rice shortly before the harvest, it's anabsolutely amazing color; I'm surprised they don't actually glow atnight.&nbsp; And so that's all gorgeous and wonderful and such, butholy humidity batman!&nbsp; We suddenly found ourselves in the hottest,wettest environment we've biked in since eastern Zambia!&nbsp; Tenminutes into the day, and the shirt is completely drenched, and juststays that way. At night one huddles under the ceiling fan (thankBuddha they have these) and avoids moving as much as possible.&nbsp; Weweren't psychologically prepared for this, it's supposed to be FALLdammit!&nbsp;&nbsp;But I'll quit complaining now, it is gorgeous countryside, and midwaythrough day two of hot humid torture we suddenly saw high high up inthe clouds, our first glimpse of the real, high Himalayas oflegend.&nbsp; In northern India, we were surrounded by mountains, bigscree piles mostly, and rarely over 20,000 ft, while we were rarelyunder 12,000 ft.&nbsp; But here, we're down at 2000 ft, and looking upUp UP at brilliand, sharp, snow covered peaks topping out with Anapurnaitself at 8100m!! (26,500 ft).&nbsp; Awesome! Andcould they pipe some of that crisp, cold air down here please??There are currently a lot of logistical challenges to biking in Nepalat the moment, for example, petrol.&nbsp; Once again, we needed petrolfor cooking (although I'm not doing much, food is decent andcheap).&nbsp; Turns out that there wasn't any. Almost every petrolstation was stimply out, and shut down, but one had been taken over bythe police, and was doling out limited petrol to necessary causes(school buses etc.)&nbsp; I started talking with the entrance guards(petrol station had been secured with barbed wire coils), got past himto the next guy, talked for a while, got to his CO, talked for a bitlonger, and around the time I was going to give up, they relented andsold us 0.75L.&nbsp; The next challenge is strikes. Late in the firstday we came around a corner to find a line of parked cars. We followedthe line for four kilometers of stopped traffic, eventually getting thestory from another tourist near the front. There had been an accident afew days back, which the police had handled badly. The local hadresponded in a very very popular retaliation, which is to strike andclose the road. The other hapless tourist had been sitting at this spotfor five hours.&nbsp; The line broke up shortly after we passed him,and we pulled off for a break as 4km of traffic stopped in bothdirections got moving again. It was three medium-short days of biking from Kathmandu to Pokhara. Theend points are so touristy one can buy M&amp;Ms,&nbsp; real and fakeNorth Face clothing, and just about any other western product one canimagine. The middle is real Nepal.&nbsp; Coming from India, the culturelooks at first very similar. A few days and this illusion starts towear off. This is a much poorer country than India, although,ironically, the road was in much better shape than anything inIndia!&nbsp; The food is simpler,&nbsp; the dress is similar, but thepeople obviously have less of everything than their Indiancounterparts. Many many years of economic and political strife will dothat to a country.&nbsp; Interstingly, I had been prepared for thingsto be grubbier overall, but the cheap hotels in Nepal are very clean,much cleaner than their Indian counterparts. India take note - you AREallowed to clean the sink in the bathroom! &nbsp;While I'm wandering off on tangents here in Pokhara, the mind wandersback to Africa.&nbsp; Part of the unique flavour of this trip has comefrom how the last 7 months influence our view of the present. I wentinto India fully prepared to have no idea what to expect, AND somehow thinking there would be strong parallels to Africa. But in theend, the more I looked for parallels, the fewer I could find. India isjust ... not like Africa. The culture is just so different, and thecountry is so much richer overall (despite the intense poverty for somuch of the population).&nbsp; Every time I was prepared to find a"this is a lot like Africa" moment, it ended up being a "this is... notthat much like Africa, in fact, not at all".&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; But nowNepal IS triggering the "this is kinda like Africa" buttons. Thetropical climate had something to do with it, but there's also a slow,cumulative feeling of poverty of the soul that I haven't felt sinceAfrica. It's a feeling that comes from seeing so many people with toolittle to do. So many people desperate to sell just a few wood carvings/ weavings / trinkets (i.e. handicrafts which will collect dust), for adepressingly small amount of Rupees just to have a few Rupees to stayalive and put food on the table.&nbsp; Tibetan refugees, and Nepalis,so many many people, supply of labor and handicrafts FAR exceedsdemand, and when it comes time to sell these handicrafts which tookthem tens, maybe hundreds of hours to make, the final sale values theirtime somewhere just above worthless.&nbsp; This is a hard environmentfor me to be in, like Malawi, there's insane population growth, insanenumbers of children (although there's no missing generation of parentsdue to HIV here), too many people with too little to eat, and there'snothing I can do about it. I can't hand out money, or food, or pens tohundreds of children; the problem is so much bigger than a lousytourist. And for that matter, bigger than the government which takes inhuge amounts of foreign aid, unclear how much of which actually reachesthose in need. I'm feeling too lazy to put any pictures on this blog, it's more of apondering and reflection excersice.&nbsp; We were actually supposed tobe enduring another bus ride this afternoon, a few hours to Beni wherewe start walking in to Nangi village for our volunteer work. However,just as the bus was loading up, word came through that there wasanother strike, and the road was closed. Everyone got off and wanderedaround. After watching everyone get off, we eventually found someonewho spoke enough English to explain why, and that the bus might begoing at 6pm, or might not.&nbsp; Having seen one bad bus accident (andseveral truck accidents) during our bike to Pokhara, we were not at allinterested in a bus ride at night, and changed our ticket to 6amtomorrow morning. Hopefully we'll make it through before the nextstrike.&nbsp; The strikes are all local, and in fact, we were preventedfrom taking a taxi back to the hotel by yet another Maoist strike indowntown Pokhara. We were allowed through the first blockade becausewe're tourists and mostly exempt from the strikes. However, we werestopped by another blockade, and walked the last bit to thehotel.&nbsp;&nbsp; I guess if the road is still blocked tomorrow we'llhave to bike to Beni, although we were hoping to avoid that. Until next time, good night, and good luckMKP.S. Apogies if the line-break formatting in this blog is FUBAR -&nbsp;Travelpod is being exceedingly obtuse and I'm sick of dealing with it.
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