TravelStream™ news feed for member spudbraham on TravelPod's free travel blogs service http://www.travelpod.com/syndication/rss/spudbraham en-us Copyright ©2009 TravelPod.com Wed, 28 Nov 2007 19:27:40 -0500 http://www.travelpod.com http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/spudbraham/japan07/1195228380/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/spudbraham/japan07/1195228380/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/spudbraham/japan07/1195228380/tpod.html Wed, 28 Nov 2007 19:27:40 -0500 Part four : Japan

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Miyazaki, Japan

The inevitable question, "What does it feel like to be back?"  It's a sensory overload to have everyone chattering at you (and each other) in unaccented English.  After 9+ months of zero native English speaking people, it's overwhelming to have all the English conversation, radio, TV, newspapers and magazines.  Suddenly, I can understand what they want me to buy and I still don't want it.  I am surprised though, how non-strange it does feel to be back.  I though there might be an overwhelming wave of emotion on being back in Boulder or going back to my parents house in Madison for Thanksgiving.  But actually, it feels quite nice to be back in familiar places with familiar customs.  Unlike our whole trip, I know where the grocery store is and I'm pretty sure I'm not offending anyone by wearing shoes in my parents church.  It's good to be home.   Friends emailed me warning "Watch out for the culture shock coming back to the states."  This is not the first time we have come home from a third world country so I had a pretty good idea of what to expect from the transition from people having too little to people having too much.  I think because of my past experience it wasn't difficult to walk into my first Whole Foods, but also we had the consumerism of Japan to ease us into it.  Japan consumerism wasn't overwhelming either because it was all so new and different then what we had at home.  Also, I have to admit, I am enjoying being a full blown consumer again.  I'm tired of the same three shirts and two pants I've been wearing for 42 weeks.  I'm happy to be listing to what I want on the computer while tying these thoughts down.  However, I am freshly reminded of exactly how luck I am and each of you who are rich enough to be reading these computer blogs.  The only reason I have this laptop which I'm typing on is because I was born into a family who is rich enough to feed me, educate me and love me so I could grow up to the person I am.  If I didn't have a healthy diet while growing up or didn't have a safe place to sleep every night I couldn't have grown into the healthy person I am today.  We need to remember that so much of what we are able to do today is due to things that are our of our control.   Of course as happy as I am to be home there are aspects of our trip that I will miss.  We got to see new things and new people every day, you can't say that for cube life!  We got to see how they grow crops from Tanzania to Japan.  We got to see what school's look like from Malawi to Nepal.  We got to see religious customs in Hindu, Shinto or Christianity in various countries.  We wondered what the capitol of Zambia looks like and now we know.  Of course, I won't miss spending the majority of the day grinding up too big hills in granny gear wondering exactly why we decided to do this stupid old bicycle trip anyway.  Or, worrying about where we were going to sleep tonight, will it have water or electricity or a toilet.  Will it have all three?  But, I think for 9 months that was a pretty good trade off, exploring the world in exchange for having no idea what was around the corner. So, back we go to a normal life but now we have hundreds of beautiful memories and international friends.  I hope that you have all enjoyed reading my stories as I went along and hope that it has shown you that it's an amazing world out there and life is too short to spend it in cube land.
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/spudbraham/japan07/1195028580/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/spudbraham/japan07/1195028580/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/spudbraham/japan07/1195028580/tpod.html Mon, 19 Nov 2007 16:34:40 -0500 Part four : Japan

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Miyazaki, Japan

After enjoying the big city of Kyoto, we got back on the bicycles for the last two weeks of our bike adventure.  First big city was Hiroshima which has quite a nice park, memorial and museum for the August 6, 1945 atomic bombing.  I was impressed how neutral the museum was, reminding the viewers of Japanese provoking acts leading up to the atomic bombing while also pointing out the complete devastation that the atomic bomb created.  The museum talked about events leading up to the bombing, why Hiroshima was the chosen target and the extent of the damage at the time to places and people.  A very well put together museum.Leaving Hiroshima we cut west towards the Sea of Japan then down south across the Kanmon Striates (under the striates, through a tunnel!) and onto our last island mass of the trip Kyushu.  From there we hugged the east coast and got as south as the Cape Toi before having to turn around and head back up to Miyazaki.In Matt and Gretchen style, we got ourselves in over our heads on our way to Beppo which is along the east coast of Kyushu.  The hills were bigger then we though and it was raining (which, aside from being a bit unpleasant, slows you down.)  Just as we were finishing up our last break, hoping we could squeeze two hours of biking into the 1.5 of daylight a guy pulls up in his extra large van (quite unusual for this part of the world, they all drive tiny cars and trucks) and asks if we could use a lift.  Yes, please!  After loading our junk in the back of his van, he explains that earlier he saw us grinding up yet another hill and though, "Gee, they are quite far from any hotels and I hope they aren't planing on camping in this rain." so went home to swap his tiny car for the jumbo company van and set back out to see if he could find us.  If ever we needed a travel fairy, that was the day.  To get to Beppo we had to go through the city he lived in so he showed us the family business (reception hosting to which he was the 16th (!) generation) and we picked up his wife.  They were both quite friendly and helpful in finding a nice Minshuku for us to stay at in Beppo.  A good reminder of how friendly people are.After almost a month of enjoying the crisp air and fall colors of the hills of Japan, we arrived in Miyazaki, which reminded me more of San Diego CA, with its palm trees and beach sand, then the New England hills of Japan.  We spent a couple of days kicking around Miyazaki enjoying the last of the mochi treats and Hello Kitty shopping.  Nov 15 is Shichi-go-san which translates to "seven-five-three".  On this day three-year-old boys & girls, five-year-old boys and seven-year-old girls, all dressed in traditional kimonos and are taken to shrines by their parents to express their thanks to the gods for their good health and to pray for future blessings.  We were lucky  to be around the Shinto shrine and see these little guys and their parents.  So cute!So, that's it!  After 14,000km, 42 weeks and 15 countries we have reached the end of our little bicycle adventure.  We are flying back to Boulder CO where my aunt and uncle have stored our "not in the storage unit" stuff (thank you!).  We will be celebrating Thanksgiving with my family in Wisconsin then packing up the car and driving from Boulder to Seattle where we look forward to getting jobs so we can start saving money to go on another adventure!
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/spudbraham/japan07/1193548860/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/spudbraham/japan07/1193548860/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/spudbraham/japan07/1193548860/tpod.html Wed, 14 Nov 2007 04:15:09 -0500 Part four : Japan

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Kyoto, Japan

After spending two months in India and Nepal, we were bracing ourselves for a bit of a culture shock coming into Japan.  Indeed it was quite a change!  We have bike lanes!  No one honks at us!  We can drink the water!  The trucks have catalytic converter!  We can't read a single thing in the stores!  Yes, Hindu and Nepalese have non-Roman script but a lot of their food packaging and store signs were in English.  Now, there is some in the tourist spots but none on the roads less traveled.Of course the flip side to all of this organization and cleanliness is they have all sorts of rules that they dutifully follow.  Such as, no street vender's selling tasty treats.  All of our tasty treats come in monster packaging which makes getting your new CD and all of it's plastic wrap open a snap.  Or, the "bicycles are to be in bags while on the train or subway" rule.  The airport we landed in, Kansai, is on a tiny island.  You can either drive or take the train off.  Since it was mostly dark by the time we had organized ourselves we decided to try the train.  Knowing full well they wanted the bikes in bags but also knowing that even if we had bags for the bikes, having the bagged bikes + our bike-bag bag would make us unmovable.  We actually got as far as being on the train when an authoritative looking women in a smart hat jogged over and frantically started the 'you must get off' hand waving.  We tried to point out to her, again with the hand waving, that we don't have bags and even if we did we wouldn't want to use them.  Also, how else will we get out of the airport, if not on the train?  After much consultation she and her co-hat wearers agreed on throwing a big blue tarp over our bikes (first thing I though of when they brought out these brand new plastic tarps was 'gee, that would make a good roof to someone in Nepal') tying it down and calling that a bag.  Excellent, rule followed.  Off we go.We started our Japan leg biking around the Island of Shikoku.  It's famous for having the Pilgrim trail for "88 Sacred Temples of Shikoku".  There are indeed 88 temples and also pilgrims, or Henro, connecting them by car, bicycle or foot.  They say if you are to do them walking it will take you about 2 months, so that gives you a rough idea of how big the treck is.  We did see quite a few walkers, in their traditional white robes and much more practicable hiking boots.  They also take a walking stick with a bell attached, so you can hear them coming.  But almost everyone around here wears a bell of some sort.  It's amusing because almost all of the key chains have a bell on them, so everyone from Grandma to the punk teenager tinkles as they walk past.Bicycling in Japan is great!  There are usully lanes for us and if not, the cars are used to bicycles from the rest of their countrymen.  The views while rolling along are distracting from the aches of that dang bike seat.  Ocean beaches with rocky shores and fall trees are starting to change.  Camping has been relatively easy.  No one seems to mind if we pitch our tent discreetly to the side of the playing field and use the public toilet and sink.  We haven't even had someone come over to see what we're up to.  Again , that's a bit of a culture shock because a month ago the people we were around didn't even have money for a flushing town toilet, much less one that:s just for the baseball game once a week and any random white guy who comes along and plops their tent down.  Free camping keeps the hotel budget under control here as well.  Whooie, welcome back to western prices!  Here they have something called a Minshuku (Japanese family run bed and breakfast) which is way cooler then the Best Western.  In a Minshuku room, you have a small entry way where you take off your shoes.  You then step up onto a raised platform covered in tightly woven floor coverings called a Tatami mat.  The bed is a futon which you unfold moments before going to sleep.  The walls are the paper screens which you can slide back and forth instead of a swing opening.  The bathroom is down the hall so they provide you with a kimono type robe called a yukata that you can wear around the hotel.  Sometimes they also provide meals.  We stayed at one where we were given a huge pot of yummy soup made of seaweed, mushrooms, tofu, noodles and mochi (a pounded rice gooey substance) in a miso base.  For breakfast they had rice, egg and miso soup.We had worked out the timing to be in Kyoto when our friend, Andi, was also visiting.  We left the bicycles at the Onomichi train station and to an infamous bullet train into Kyoto.  Kyoto is a beautiful but big city with so many Buddhist Temples, Shinto Shrines, gardens and castles.  We barley put a dent in all of them with our puny two day tour.  I don't know much about Shinto religion, but I do know they love "home depot" orange!  Man, that stuff is bright!  The gardens were very nice and relaxing with some cranes swooping in for photo opps.  Their emperors castle looked nothing like the castles we know, a-la Walt Disney.  They actually look like really big and fancy Minshukus.  Which I guess makes sense, castles are just really big and fancy houses from days of yore.  It was really great to spend time with Andi as well, she's a great friend who we don't see very often.  It was a bit strange to see her in Japan, but when ever we'd pause to think about what we were doing in the last 9 months, it has been a bit strange.  Now that we have stocked up on pon donuts (made for that same smashed up rice goo, mochi) We're back on the bullet train to rescue our bicycles and continue south towards Hiroshima and our end city, Miyazaki.  It:s hard to think that we're almost done!
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/spudbraham/japan07/1195028520/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/spudbraham/japan07/1195028520/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/spudbraham/japan07/1195028520/tpod.html Wed, 14 Nov 2007 03:23:19 -0500 Part four : Japan

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Shimonoseki, Japan

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]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/spudbraham/sasia07/1192368060/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/spudbraham/sasia07/1192368060/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/spudbraham/sasia07/1192368060/tpod.html Tue, 06 Nov 2007 00:13:02 -0500 Part three : South Asia

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Kathmandu, Nepal

Dashain is a major Hindu Festival. It's a family oriented event where everyone goes home to see mom; a lot like Christmas. Our second leg of bicycling in Nepal had the roads packed with families in transit. The bulk of the people-flow was out of the Kathmandu valley, since a lot of the children-now-adults have left the smaller towns for the big city.  Of course there were plenty of trucks going our way, to keep us company on our side of the road.After two weeks of being in Nangi, we were twitching to get back on the bikes. South from Pokhara up and over two large hill passes brought us into Butwal and the Teria planes. Lonely Planet said the planes were perfect for bicycling "pool table flat". Not sure what their pool tables are like, because it definitely was not flat. Compared to the Himalayan mountains I guess it would be, but compared to Nebraska, it was rolling hills. Quite pretty though to watch go by, especially on the down hill bits. The western half was also a lot more wooded then I would have though. Not much farming but lots of forest and monkeys! The eastern half of our road was more farming and much more populated. We got to experience a bit more of the crowd generation that us and the bikes attract when we stop for a snack.  We haven't had this sort of attention since Malawi.  Turning north in Hetauda we got to go up and over one more Himalayan pass, Daman Pass at 8200ft of which we got to grind up 6880ft. Not too bad considering what we did in India, but still makes you feel like you did something at the end of the day.The city of Daman, where we spent that night, was quite basic which gives me pause to muse. Sometimes while bicycling through these poorer parts of the world it strikes me that we're a bit arrogant riding through these areas. Every day, they have to do their laundry at the village tap or well, wash their bodies and hair at those same taps (yes, in public, they wear a special bathing outfit), live in homes made of clay or mud with thatch roofs and cook over wood stoves. Even when we are staying in their villages for one night, our accommodations are always the best, by far, in the town. We have beds elevated off the floor and a tight roof. Plus, we also know that it's only a few short days till we bike into a bigger city and stay at a place with running hot water, in the room and fans to keep us cool. Those rooms in the city are $10 for us, but to them, that's a weeks paycheck, completely unrealistic. The contrast of us floating through their world on western bicycles on our way to western comfort hotels makes me feel bad.Regardless, we continue to enjoy traveling by bicycle because it does let us see people and their lifestyles that we never would otherwise. Kids going to school thrilled that there are two bicycles, with bells, on their street. (Everyone wants to ring the bell; we'll be in restaurants and the bell will be rung. Later that night, we're in the hotel room brushing our teeth and the bell would go off.) While bicycling, we get to see pink chicks, why are they painted pink? We get stopped in the middle of the road by a homemade sign with teenagers telling us that it's "a fund raiser for the football team going to India!" Hm, is that the home-team making it to nationals or the Maoists having fun with the tourists? Our guess is the Maoists, but with a clever way to confuse the tourists. But, these guys would stop everyone, even the truckers who you think would complain. Actually, you think there would be a lot of things the truckers would be complaining about. For starters, two weird-o bicyclists hogging the shoulder of the road. Or other cars just stopping in the middle of the road, hopping out to go have lunch, leaving the car there like the highway was a parking lot. Or my favorite, the guy who dragged a very large branch half way across the road and just left it there wandering off to have a cigarette. All the cars come to a halt then try to weave themselves into the oncoming lane to get around. Jeepers!A few more days in Kathmandu let us do a bit more sightseeing and shopping for the next and final leg of our trip, Japan! We did a self guided walking tour of Durbar Square, south of the Themal area and were quite surprised how much more crowded and crazy those areas are. The architecture was quite cool though, all of the traditional buildings and wooden carvings. So, now we're off to our last country and month of our little bicycle adventure.  Japan, a nation know for being orderly and neat, that's going to be quite a change from around here!
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/spudbraham/sasia07/1192065060/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/spudbraham/sasia07/1192065060/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/spudbraham/sasia07/1192065060/tpod.html Thu, 18 Oct 2007 21:12:19 -0400 Part three : South Asia

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Narayangarh, Nepal

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]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/spudbraham/sasia07/1191566880/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/spudbraham/sasia07/1191566880/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/spudbraham/sasia07/1191566880/tpod.html Mon, 15 Oct 2007 09:38:11 -0400 Part three : South Asia

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Nangi, Nepal

I know that most of you who read this are quite busy, so if you only read one part let this be it. Himanchal Education Foundation, http://www.himanchal.org/index.html, is a not-for-profit organization which is doing amazing things in the hills of Nepal.  Please, consider making an on line donation or snail mailing them a check.  Thank you!Way back in December we thought that after 8 months of constant travel we'd want to spend two weeks volunteering in Nepal.  Biking is a great way to see a country but being on the move all the time makes it hard to feel like you're developing relationships with the citizens.  We chose Himanchal because it sounded like an awesome location.  From Pokhara take a 5hr bus ride (or 3hr taxi) then it's a 6 hour hike up into the Himalayan hills.  A place with out honking horns!Trying to experience Nepal as the locals do, we decided to take a bus instead of a taxi from Pokhara to Beni where we were to meet Tek, our guide up to Nangi.  The bus was about 18hrs late due to a Maoist road closure, thankfully we knew about that so we went back to the hotel we had just checked out of, checked back in and got a good nights sleep.  The bus bumped and swayed for 5.5hrs on the narrow pot holed road.  It's mildly amusing that the 90km distance took us 5.5hrs on the bus where we could probably bike that in a day.  You get a lot more reading done on a bus, however.  Finally arriving in Beni, we met Tek, who decided that we might not be able to walk to Nangi that day so we'd spend the afternoon in Beni before heading up the following morning. Anyway, it was raining and who wants to walk in the rain? So, we kicked around Beni for the afternoon and tried to not eat too many samosas.The next morning Tek showed up at the hotel to take us to Nangi.  Sadly, it was still raining but we're Satellites, we like walking in the rain!  The path up was wonderful, it was stone steps the whole way. Yes, steps, it's stright up.  Amazing trail maintenance.  The hills outside of Beni are packed with people so those trails get a lot of use.About 6hrs later we were quite soaked with the rain still coming down, we splashed into Nangi. What a spot they have! It's a good size school with various classroom building, a library, a computer lab, basketball court, student houses (for the older high school kids who live in villages too far for a daily walk), a clinic, a hotel/restaurant (which has fresh donuts every day!) and two round house building for the volunteers to live in.  All with an amazing Annapurna range view when the rains clear (which they did after 6 days).  Tek dropped us off at one of the round houses where we met the other volunteers.  With us there, it was 8 volunteers, which was great for us because having had only each other for company and conversation for quite a while, the new people were fun to talk with.  Four of the volunteers were from Canada and two were from Finland.  Two more came while we were there, both from Pennsylvania, both doctors who spent their time in the clinic.  The eight of us ended up doing a lot of community eating which made me nostalgic for my LVC years.  Luckily there were a few talented chefs in the group who could be quite inventive with our generous but simple selection of food.  We also had a few talented guitarists who played everything from Ben Harper to "Red river valley".  What a treat to listen to live music!We stayed in one of the two round houses which are indeed round.  It was made of stone and mud with a thatch roof.  Six days of rain made it a bit musty but once the sun came out and things dried out a bit it was fine. Most of our work while we were in Nangi was sub teachers for English classes.  Sometimes I would go though a chapter in their text book, reading it out loud slowly so they could hear the pronunciation and having them work on reading it back to me.  But, because that was boring normal school work, we would play hangman which was sometimes tricky because you all know how bad of a speller I am.  Or, I would give them a definition of a word and they would need to come up with that word.  Matt gave (and I helped) a lecture on fulcrums (F1D1=F2D2) and demonstrated with a teeter totter scale, putting different weights on each side and moving the fulcrum around.  He then continued the demonstration with showing how an airplane is designed using the same concept.  Demonstrating that with paper airplanes was the next step and boy was that a hit!  We had paper airplanes flying all over the place.Once it stopped raining we taught a few Tai Chi classes.  A bunch of teenage boys were herded up for a first class.  We though the class was advertised as "Martial Arts" which congers up Jackie Chan moves which is not really what Tai Chi is all about.  So, we were stunned to see the next morning at 6:45am almost all of the boys were back!  To jazz things up a bit, Matt started with Hap Ki Do warm ups which has kicking and general jumping around then started teaching them Tai Chi.  The form of Tai Chi we know, Kwon Buup, is much more active then other sorts of Tai Chi, so that helped hold their attention. Remarkably we made it though the entire form in 4-30min sessions.  Obviously a lot of the details were glazed over, but for them to just be able to follow the feet and hand motions is impressive.  It took me over a year to learn the whole form.  The kids are excellent mimics.  Matt would simply scooch to the left 4" for better footing and all 30 of them would scooch with him. They were way more interested in the kicking, blocking and punching aspects of Tai Chi then the breathing and centering, but for teenagers at 7am, can you blame them?The women of Nangi have a community businesses which they call "Cottage projects" of making paper and from that very nice journals.  Some of you might remember that paper making was one of my jobs while working with LVC at L'Arche 10 (!) years ago.  So, it was great to see a different way to make paper.  These journals are very nice, the women take great pride in their work.  They sell them in bulk to distributors who then sell them both in Nepal and internationally.  On some of the rainier days, I helped them assemble them.  It was nice to sit in the work room which doubles as the community gossip room with all sorts of women and their babies coming in and out chatting and laughing with the other women who were working.  Nepalese is a beautiful language, it sounded as if they were singing a lot of the timeThe community of Nangi did a great job making us feel welcome.  Various teachers and town people stopped in regularly to see if we needed anything or just to say hi.  They would invite us to various school functions or community parties.  There was a school talent show were the Nangi kids were joined by the Beni kids and they performed both traditional and modern dancing.  We were snookered into performing a Nepalese folk song "Reshim Firiri" which we hope we didn't insult the locals by butchering.  They were very open to us asking questions on what life is like in Nepal and very entertaining with their stories.  Thank you Nangi for welcoming us into your community.Tek yet again drew the short straw to walk us back down to Beni.  Poor guy, we even wanted to go out the long way to see another cottage project where they make cloth out of stinging nettle.  That's a lot of work to spin the thread and then weave it.  The cloth is quite pretty though, when they are done.  Down down we went back into the heat and humidity of Beni.  Feeling that we had done our bus time coming up to Beni, we popped for a taxi on the way back to Pokhara.We spent another day gathering up supplies for our bicycle trip back to Kathmandu. That's an easy chore in a city that caters to backpackers! Matt also had a late birthday present and went paragliding, whooie!  We're taking the southern way back to Kathmandu, via Butwal.
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/spudbraham/sasia07/1190634900/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/spudbraham/sasia07/1190634900/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/spudbraham/sasia07/1190634900/tpod.html Mon, 15 Oct 2007 05:45:04 -0400 Part three : South Asia

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Pokhara, Nepal

After spending a few days in Dehra Dun, which is definitely not a western tourist spot, Kathmandu was a bit of a culture shock. The Themal area, the tourist neighborhood, is full of knock off North Face and Oreo cookies. We found an excellent bicycle repair shop which fixed my bottom bracket and did the final tinkering with Matt's rear wheel truing. To test the new parts we biked up to the Buddhist temple, Swayambhunath, where we got to watch their afternoon prayer. They chanted, banged on drums, blew reed instruments and had tea. We were amused that the younger monks, 10 years old, had Coke instead of tea.Trying to keep our volunteer date we saved the rest of Katmandu's sightseeing for when we swing back through at the end of our Nepal visit. So back on the bicycles, up and out of the Kathmandu valley and heading west along the Prithvi highway.  I though that Nepal would be more like Leh, high and dry, but it's quite a green forest and farmland with crop terracing on every hillside. It's also hot and humid, good thing I grew up in Wisconsin to prepare me for this sort of body abuse.  Oofph!  They've got bugs over here that would put an August cicada to shame. At first we though it was a motor whining or a buzz saw but now it's one of those thumb size beetles that makes a very loud noise.After wrestling in Northern India with the mountains, it felt quite nice to be moving relatively quickly again on the rolling hills of central Nepal. We have continued to find tasty curries or noodle soup for breaks and dinner giving Matt a break from hunching over the stove. The food continues to be quite tasty (metoe!) and ridiculey inexpensive. $5 for a typical dinner for two.Three days on the bicycles brought us into Pokhara with the Annapurna range looming and impressive 23,000ft above our heads. We spent a couple of days seeing the sights; old Pokhara, Lakeside district, World Peace Pagoda and the International mountain museum. Pokhara has the same knock off North Face and Oreo's but it's much more laid back and quiet.So, from Pokhara we're taking a bus to Beni and someone from Himanchal education Foundation, where we're volunteering for the next two weeks, will meet us and walk the 6 hour trail to Nanagi.
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/spudbraham/sasia07/1190133300/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/spudbraham/sasia07/1190133300/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/spudbraham/sasia07/1190133300/tpod.html Tue, 18 Sep 2007 12:39:12 -0400 Part three : South Asia

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Kathmandu, Nepal

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]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/spudbraham/sasia07/1189769220/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/spudbraham/sasia07/1189769220/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/spudbraham/sasia07/1189769220/tpod.html Tue, 18 Sep 2007 12:27:22 -0400 Part three : South Asia

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Dehradu, India

From Manali, we had two options to get to Dehra Dun.  One, take the main road;  it would be the better maintained road but lots of traffic.  Two, Take the back road; questionable road maintenance but little traffic.  Being the sort who dislike a truck bearing down one us leaning on it's air horn, we chose number two.  Sigh.Fresh out of Manali, we started this leg with a bang landing in a grubby hotel room right as it became unbikably dark.  We are not the sort to waste good daylight!  What the tiny town lacked in hotel, it redeemed itself in it's restaurant.  On our stint through Northern India we've been impressed how every tiny restaurant - Think picnic table and Coleman stove - can dish up an excellent Indian meal (for about $5).The next morning we were all set to take on Jalori La (10,600ft). That's so low, how hard can it be? It started out well, there were some steep bits but because we have turbo lungs it wasn't too bad. Then the angle was a bit steeper for a bit longer, then a bit more steep. So steep I could barley push my bicycle. Then, the road deteriorated and I couldn't push the bike by myself. We had hit an all time low, we couldn't move our bikes by ourselves.  We resorted to pushing each other up.  But, our travel fairy came through for us though! We were about to give up, ride back down to try to convince someone to drive us to the top when we turned a corner to see a nice guest house just as it started to sprinkle, which quickly turned into a downpour. Sweet! Next morning we finished wrestling the bikes up and over then aggressively breaking down the other side.A few days later we were continuing to bounce along towards Dehra Dun optimistically thinking we were 1.5 days out. Then we passed a sign saying Dehra Dun was 176km.   On these roads we can do 70km/day so that sign post was about a day longer then we thought.  That's a big deal to us!  Around that time, Matt decided to have a look at what was ticking on his bike and discovered that his back rim was cracked.  If he kept riding on that and the rim broke the the tire wouldn't stay on the bike and thus not pushable.  Lucky for us, we were near a store (they have become quite scarce recently) who had an English speaker who knew the bus schedule to Dehra Dun.  6hrs later on probably (hopefully!) the worst chicken bus ride of our trip we landed in a truck stop town with disgraceful hotels but redeemable restaurants.  Happy Birthday Gretchen.Next morning we took a far better and shorter bus ride to Dehra Dun and begin to figure out how we're going to fix the rim and get to Pokora Nepal in time for our two week volunteer date.  After a lot of foot work we weeded the options down to FedEx-ing a rim from the states to Kathmandu and take a combo of bus/plane to meet the rim there.  Our second ridiculously expensive bike repair!  I'm disappointed to miss out on Indian train travel  but it's something to look forward to on our next trip to India;  of which we hope to do many more of!Off we go to another country!  We are keeping a very close eye on the Maoists and what they are up to these days.  Crossing our fingers that they can keep the peace while we enjoy their beautiful country.
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