beijing with joon

Here we are at Tianamen Square. Behind us is the building with Mao's huge photo portrait on it. Look at that smog!!!

We went to a snack street where they have all kinds of strange things to eat, mostly on a stick (Beijingers seem very fond of food on sticks). They had scorpion, testicle, octopus, all kinds of weird stuff. Needless to say, I didn't try any adventurous foods because they're all animals, but here is a shot of Joon eating scorpion. He liked it.

The other day we visited the Great Wall. It was a lot of up and down steep wall. As you can see from the photo, it's in a beautiful setting- gorgeous mountainside and smog-free. We hiked 20 towers, about 3 hours of walking. It was a lot of fun but we were really tired at the end.

At the end of the portion of the wall that we climbed, there was a zipline that took you to the bottom of the hill (where there is a Hostelling International, by the way; always in the best locations!). Here's Joon zipping down.

We're staying in the Hutong district. I'm pretty sure hutong means alley in English. Beijing used to be all hutongs but a lot of them have been destroyed to make room for the super modern skyscrapers. The hutongs are cool because they give you an idea of old Beijing. Lots of small shops, homes, courtyards, and markets.

Joon goes home tomorrow and I follow the next day. It's been great to be in Beijing with him. It helps a lot to have another person you trust to try to figure out what is going on, especially when you have no clue about the language. A lot of people in Beijing do not speak English at all, and sadly I have neglected my roots and don't speak a word of Mandarin. Well, I can say hello and thank you...

I am completely ready to go home. I miss everyone and everything about San Francisco. I can't wait to be in familiar surroundings, speaking my native language and knowing the customs. Feeling like an insider, basically. My only fear is that after a week I'll start to miss the adventure of world travel. It has been a great trip, and I feel so lucky to have had the chance to see so many different countries and meet so many wonderful people.
Well, the next time you hear from me, I'll be stateside. Until then...

Beijing is pretty

Hi! I just arrived to Beijing yesterday. Here are a couple pictures I took when i first got here. They are all from the street/alley where my hostel is. I'm staying in the Dong Chen district, which is an historical Hutong (alley) district.
Up there are some candied fruits.
Here's the outside of a restaurant under construction on the inside.

A Chinese rickshaw thing?
Really cute public phones.
Here's the Sprite that accompanied my only Beijing meal so far. It was pizza, which to me seemed like a safe bet. They put it in the oven, all the bacteria gets cooked to death... right? Well, I was wrong apparently because I got a pretty bad case of food poisoning. I was up all night throwing up and doing other unpleasant things. It was doubly bad because I opted to watch movies on the plane instead of sleep a full 8 hours (I couldn't resist- it's been forever since I saw a movie or tv in English! Plus, you don't really sleep on the plane anyway) so I was super exhausted anyway, just from the travel. Today i stayed in bed until 3pm and slowly walked to the store to find Gatorade and crackers.
I'm feeling a bit better now and hopefully I'll be ready to hit the town tomorrow. On the ride to the hostel from the airport, I was surprised at how clean all the streets are. The air is also wayyy cleaner than the air in Kathmandu. There are lots of blossoms blooming and it just looks like a really nice city.
Well, I will write again in a couple days. Hope everyone is doing well at home.

Kathmandu Part 3

Here is a prayer wheel- as promised. This one is a big one (about 2.5 feet tall) and in the left of the picture, there is an inset in the wall with some cloth covering the top. You can see it, but there are a smaller prayer wheels. The Boudhanath stupa has many of these lining the wall along the outside base of the stupa. You are supposed to walk around it clockwise and you can spin the prayer wheels.
Hello! Yesterday I went to Boudanath, which is where the world's largest stupa is. It is really big and beautiful. It looks a lot like the Swayabunath stupa, only it's not on top of a hill, and the dome part is much larger. It's one of the holiest places in the world for Buddhists and there were many, many monks there. I joined them for a few laps around the stupa. A lot of the monks were elderly and it reminded me of mall walking because some of them were walking pretty fast, almost like they were trying to get exercise at the same time. They carried wooden beads with them and they were praying. It actually felt like a pretty holy place even to me, agnostic that I am. I think because everyone there was giving it so much respect. There were still restaurants and trinket shops around the stupa, but it didn't feel as touristy as some other places I've been to lately.
Today I visited the Royal Palace, which has just opened to the public as a museum about one month ago. The royal family was murdered there in 2001 and it was pretty scandalous. There are a lot of Nepali people who I've met who are really curious about the palace because it's been closed for so long. They don't let you take cameras in there so I don't have any photos, but it was a pretty impressive building. In the back of the palace, they had signs explaining where the royal family was shot or found dead, and this fascinated me the most. (I know, kind of sick but you have to admit that it's really interesting.)
The best part was that I met a group of four cousins in the line waiting to get into the palace, and they sort of adopted me and translated signs for me (even though the signs were also in English). At the end of the palace tour, we sat around in the grass and talked about stuff. They were really sweet and cute, especially because they were a family of teenagers hanging out together on a Saturday. They were just really genuine and kind and they made me realize that I am sort of in love with Nepalis. Some of the people I've met here have been so nice to me and just really gone out of their way to help me out, just because I'm a guest in their country. It seems like this is a characteristic ingrained in people and I hope that when people come to the US they find that we are that kind to strangers too.

Tomorrow I am leaving Nepal for Beijing, the last stop on my world tour. Joon is going to meet me in one week, and I'm so excited to see a familiar face and hear about home. We'll be there for a little over a week, then we head home (on separate flights, sadly). I'm pretty excited to see Beijing and try out their street food. Also, seeing the Great Wall of China has been a dream of mine for a long time.

Well, the next time you hear from me I'll be in another country... talk to you soon

kathmandu pt.1 and chitwan national park

There are about 8 million temples in Kathmandu, which is wonderful and beautiful- and confusing. The other day i went for a walk and thought i'd be able to find my way back, no problem because of all the temple landmarks, but i just got horribly lost in the rain (of course it started to rain) for an hour or so. Eventually I hopped into a cafe for tomato soup and momos (did i tell you about momos yet?) to wait out the rain.
The photo above is the house of the living goddess. According to the guidebook, Nepal has a living goddess who is chosen as a child and has to meet many requirements, including certain measurements of her face. When she hits puberty or if she loses a certain amount of blood, she ceases to be a goddess and just becomes a mere mortal and another girl is chosen to be the living goddess.

These two photos are taken in Durbar Square- it's a pretty big square with many temples. It's great for sitting and people watching because some of the temples are tall and you can climb up to the top of them, which i did in order to escape the rain and take these photos.


Ha- I thought this was funny. It looks like this is the place where Mischa Barton gets her hair styled when she is in Kathmandu.



OMG!!! Can we all just take a moment out of our day to appreciate how fucking CUTE this baby elephant is? Some people were feeding it cookies and I think it ate 4 or 5 packages of cookies in the 10 min. i was standing there.

I spent the last couple of days in Chitwan National Park. I had a pretty fantastic time. I was one of two people staying at the lodge and I got a lot of individual attention from the staff. They were all really great people. My guide was hilarious and he loved to speak American English. I taught him some slang and he taught me some basic Nepali.


Here's me with the baby elephant. Notice how uninterested he is in taking a photo with me. I didn't have any cookies.

The first thing we did was visit the elephant breeding centre. It was great to see pregnant elephants and their babies (obviously), but the life of the captive elephant is pretty depressing. There are some working elephants who carry tourists around the park- it's pretty much the only way you can get really close to wild animals like tigers and rhinos without risking your life. The sad thing is that they work so hard, and they have to be trained in a way that isn't exactly humane. There's a certain amount of cruelty that has to happen in order to "tame"(break the spirit of) an animal that is way more powerful than you. The mamas at the breeding center were chained up by their feet to a post. That alone is enough to break this vegetarian's heart.

Afterwards, we walked home through the village. The indigenous people who live in the area are the Tharu people. They live in huts made of elephant grass, mud and dung. They do a lot of farming- rice and wheat mostly, and...

marijuana! The stuff is growing everywhere, mixed in with the wheat or on it's own. My guide said it's not for everyday use, just special occasions.



There's an underground spring in the area and the water is pretty clean. Apparently the use of pesticides in the farms is gaining, and my guide said that in about 50 years time, the groundwater will be too polluted to be safe to drink. Here's a shot of water being pumped up to irrigate the rice fields.


A photo from my jeep ride into the park. Probably the dustiest 5 hours I've ever experienced, by the way. The jeep was open in the back where everyone sits and they haven't had rain in awhile. When I got out of the jeep I was covered in a layer of dust and my lungs hurt today from all the dust I inhaled. Gross.


The one-horned rhino! These guys are huge! way bigger than I expected. They can run 40km per hour, and if they get spooked they will charge you. We saw two on our jungle walk and got close, than sort of trotted away when it looked at us, then snuck back, then ran away when it started moving. I was questioning my purpose in the jungle as my heart was beating out of my chest.
When we got back home, my guide showed me a gnarly scar above his ribs where he was mauled by a rhino years ago.
These rhinos can only be found in Nepal and in one area of India that used to be Nepal. There back is really weird. You can't tell in the picture, but it looks like a suit of armor.

Today I took a bus to Pokhara. It was so beautiful! We drove alongside a big river most of the way, and of course it reminded me of California. Looks like the Trinity River up by Hoopa. Pokhara is a really pretty town. There's a nice lake and lots of mountains. A lot of folks start their treks from here.
I will email again in the next few days. I'm planning to stay in Pokhara 3 or 4 days, then maybe make my way back to the air polluted Kathmandu from which I will do a bunch of day trips.

Ellora "caves"

Hi, now I'm in Aurangabad. I took a 7 hour train from Mumbai which was hot and extremely uncomfortable. It probably would've been fine if I wasn't hemmed against the wall by a family of four. The mom and dad had seats, and their 3 yr old daughter pranced around on the fold-down tables and the baby laid/squirmed on mom's and my lap. They had redeeming qualitites though. They were extremely nice people and shared their food with me. The kids were just about the cutest kids I've ever seen in my life! (Cuter than Mexican babies, if you can believe that) Everyone was quick to smile, and even though we didn't share a language, we communicated well enough. Still, I am hoping on the way back to sit next to grown-ups.
So today I went to see the Ellora "caves". There are quotes because the caves are actually carved out of stone cliff faces. It was beautiful and amazing and extremely hot. It's really, really hot here. But I saw some nice stuff and took pictures to share with you all.

The first picture is me and a class of 4th? graders. The teacher saw me and made me stand with the kids so he could take a picture. Don't know if I've mentioned it, but I'm quite the oddity here in India. Everywhere I go, people stare at me and people ask me all the time if they can take their picture with me. I am not kidding! Unfortunately. It kinda makes you feel special, but it kinda makes you feel like a freak. Usually I say no to pictures, because they're always teenage and 20 something yr old men and I'm not really sure what they're doing with my picture (are they bragging to their friends that I was their girlfriend? Am I gonna end up on the internet?). It sounds egotistical and paranoid, but if you were a girl traveling by herself in India, you would understand what I'm talking about. Sometimes men and boys can be really rude and say some really gross things.
Anyway, back to the story. This is my first picture with complete strangers. I figured it was a teacher and his kids, so what the hell. Probably the first time they've ever seen a foreigner- sounds like a Kodak moment to me if I ever saw one.

Seven Buddhas supposedly in different poses.

This was cool. You can't really tell the height of it in the picture, but the buddha sitting is twice as tall as me standing. All the ribbed stuff on the ceiling is supposed to look like wood, and there are intricate carvings of stuff along the bottom of the ribs.

Whoever carved this one has never seen real breasts.

A picture of some of the caves from faroff with a dried up stinky pond in the foreground.

Lemonade stand outside of the cave area.

Weird random horse procession in the middle of the street. You gotta love India for moments like these.

I am here in Aurangabad for another day and then I head back to Mumbai to buy linen pants, drink city coffee, and watch Slumdog Millionaire. I was only in Mumbai for one night but so far I like it. The streets are wide and clean and people don't stare as much. When I get back there I will take lots of photos so everyone can see.

Udaipur Part 2

Fake Gladys.
Funny Hindi/English sign outside of a temple.
This is the guest house I've been staying at in Udaipur the last few days.
My pretty new hand- all the tourists get their hands henna'ed and it was just a matter of time until I succumbed. I'm happy to say though that I have not traded in my actual clothes for "tourists in India" clothes, like every other foreigner.
The peacock dance- I went to a Rajasthani dance thing. It was really cool. Hard to show how neat it was through a picture, but at least you get an idea of the beautiful Rajasthani clothes.
A temple thing decorated for yesterday's holiday (forgot the name, sorry).
Sign outside the Jain temple in Ranakpur. Please note that "revealing clothes" means any part of the leg and/or shoulders. If you wear shorts or capris, you have to rent a weird nightgown thing to wear over your clothes.
Inside the Jain temple.
Me and Pablo- a nice Spanish kid I met on the sleeper bus on the way to Udaipur.

Just a shot of a peaceful street in Udaipur.

Hello- I am still in Udaipur. It's my 5th day here but I am leaving on a night train to Bombay tonight. There are only trains to Bombay three times a week which is the real reason I have been in Udaipur for so long, although it is also very pretty and peaceful. I may have already mentioned it, but the town is wrapped around a lake which is pretty, kind of. The lake is half dried-up so there's a lot of smelly trash around the banks. If it were full, it would be really pretty. But it's only half-full, so it's ok.

I have done plenty while here in Udaipur. Mostly I have been laying around in the shade (it's really hot here) and reading. But- I have also explored the city far and wide on foot as well as scooter. That's right, I rented a scooter. I saw the shop and I went in to check prices- only 300 rupees (6 bucks) for a whole day of scooter! Then I thought about what a terrible idea it is to drive here because everyone here drives like a maniac. I still hadn't completely made up my mind when I got into the shop and the next thing I knew, I was scooting away. I got lost several times- really you could say that my adventure was just a series of getting lost. I got stuck in a traffic jam caused by a stubborn cow who wouldn't move out of the street. My hand started hurting because I haven't used a clutch in over 4 months. But it was fun! and I made it back to the shop in one piece.

Yesterday I took a day trip with a new friend to Ranakpur, to see the Jain temple out there. It is 3 hours away and in the middle of the desert. I didn't realize that there really is nothing else to see out there. The temple was pretty cool, though. It is made of marble and it is extremely ornately decorated with thousands of carvings of deities and animals and dancers. So pretty!

On the way home, I had the craziest bus ride of all time. I think something like this has to happen to everyone at least once in India. The bus heading back to Udaipur pulled up, and it was stuffed to the gills with people going to some festival. I managed to cram myself on there with five other people (not sure how) and we trundled off southward. I was being pushed in pretty much every direction, and my knees weren't lined up with my feet. At one point a little kid a couple of people away from me barfed because it was so hot and the road was windy. He couldn't help it but he puked all over some guys pants as well as the floor. These nice Indian ladies took a liking to me and kept talking to me in Hindi. I didn't understand a word that wasn't translated for me, but they were so nice and smiley. They invited me to their festival. I wish I could've joined them, but I was not about to get stuck out in the middle of the desert for the night.
After a while some guy passed out from the heat and all the bodies pushing. He looked like he was dead because his eyes didn't close and everyone freaked out, but they didn't stop the bus. Oh no! They stood him up and smacked him a couple times and eventually after some very interesting shuffling around, got him a seat.

Well, that is about it for now. More adventures in India to come later.

Oh yeah! If any of you faithful blog-readers wants something specific (and small) from India, send me an email telling me what it is so I can start to look for it. I haven't bought anything so far, because I can't really carry much, but I'm planning to start buying stuff in a few weeks when I'm around Darjeeling and Calcutta. If no requests, I'll probably just bring back a box of crap and let people choose from it. Sorry, but there is a lot of stuff here in India and while it is all cool to look at, almost none of it is actual useful in daily life. So anyways, let me know...

Pushkar & Udaipur

Holy Cow!

Here's a horse all dressed up for a wedding parade. There were at least two weddings every night. There is a big procession of people walking through the streets, clogging up traffic, with a group of young men dancing in the middle and lots of people walking around them, small boys holding weird lanterns plugged into a very loud generator at the back, a band and loudspeakers, and a serious man (the groom?) sitting on a fancy horse.

A big Hindu shrine in Udaipur (above).

Below: all shots from the city palace in Udaipur. Udaipur was the Mewar capital. The Mewars are the only part of India that never caved in to the British.

Sun God

In case you haven't guessed it, I'm in Udaipur now after a couple days in Pushkar.

Pushkar was a small little place with a holy lake and lots of western tourists. It was a pretty relaxing place to hang out. I got to meet up with my friend Jody, who I met in Varanasi. On our first day we walked up a big hill to the Sunrise Temple. The temple itself wasn't much, but the view of Pushkar was great.

Last night I took my first sleeper bus (kind of gross- smelled like pee everywhere in the bus) to Udaipur. Surprisingly, I managed to get a little sleep, despite the frequent stops with families jumping on and making a big raucous each time. I have been keeping myself going with chai tea all day and will probably crash soon.

I plan to be here for a few days, then I start the move southward to the heat and humidity.