Bangkok-bound

Well, you voted and we responded. We've got a ticket to Bangkok for late October.

It helped that all the Delhi-Hong Kong flights were sold out.

Buildings

Al-Azhar Mosque, Cairo. Built by the Fatimid Dynasty, 970 AD.


View from minaret. Al-Azhar Mosque, Cairo.


Burj Al-Arab (the Arab Tower), the world's only 7-star hotel in Dubai. There was so much humidity, and we were on a bus, so I couldn't get a better picture. The hotel is designed to resemble a sailboat. Rooms are $5,000 per night.


More buildings in Dubai.


Humayun's Tomb, Delhi, India. A fine example of Mughal architecture, 1592 AD.

McLeod Ganj

Yesterday we arrived in McLeod Ganj, home of the Dalai Lama and the Tibetan Government in exile. The travellers here appear to be a curious mix of young western hippy-types, Indian tourists, and Tibetan pilgrims. I'm not quite sure where we fit in, but I suppose into the hippy category! Jerome says "NOT".

This morning we visited the temple, where lots of monks and pilgrims were praying.

The main statue of Buddha, with food offerings of McVities biscuits and other goodies:


Monks on lunch break:

Hotels 2: Naggar

Finally it all came together (see post below) and we got hot water, good food, and a nice view, all in the Hotel Ragini in Naggar!

Jerome relaxes again, while admiring yet another nice view.

Hotels 1: Manali

I've never understood the fascination that some people have for hotels, and how much they are willing to spend on a bed to sleep in for the night. Really, isn't one Quality Inn just like any other? Of course, people like me stay at Quality Inns. Unless we're backpacking around the world in which case we stay where the Lonely Planet guidebook recommends.

Along the way, we've had some winners (Elif Star in Turkey and the Windsor Hotel in Cairo come to mind), and some losers (Safwan Hotel in Lattakia, Syria, where entering the bathroom was enough to make me gag).

In Manali, the Lonely Planet recommendation was the Sunshine Guest House. An old British Raj house, it was full of character. Jerome lit a fire in our room for the evening, and by day we sat on the veranda, admiring the view down the Kullu Valley while drinking gin and tonics. All this for only $8 a night!

The Sunshine Guest House from the gardens:



Relaxing on the veranda, British style.


The view, with some snow capped peaks in the distance.


However, we have a pretty consistent record of rarely achieving clean sheets, 24-hour hot water, and natural sunlight in the same hotel room. In this case, the sheets and pillows also appeared to be left over from the Raj era. Thank goodness for those sleeping sacks!

hill station location update

We spent three nights in Shimla, then took a local bus for 10 hours, which in fact rode more like a tractor without suspension and necessitated us both taking our first Gravols of the trip, to get to Manali. Manali was full of Israeli backpackers and drugs. It is also famous as an adventure travel launching point. After 3.5 months of travel, we are too lazy for adventure. We left Manali after two nights and moved for two nights to the pretty village of nearby Naggar. I'll post some photos when we get off Naggar's dial-up internet!

Please Vote

Hey avid readers -- we need help deciding where to go next. After India we only have 4-5 weeks left of traveling, and we want to use our time wisely. Right now we are debating between China (a very interesting place to visit) and Thailand (a very relaxing and beautiful place to visit). Please cast your vote on the now 'poll' application on the right hand side of our blog and, if you have time, give us your reasons in the comments section below this post. Thanks!

Head for the hills

After Cairo, Dubai, and Delhi all in a row, we needed to take it down a notch! So we made like the Delhiites (or like those British back in the day) when they want to escape the city, and headed for the hills. Shimla was the summer capital of the British Raj, and much of the architecture feels very British.

We (and a lot of cockroaches) took an overnight sleeper train to Kalka, where we changed to the very pleasant Shimla toy train. Another six hours and 96 km we were up in the clouds.

Is this England?



No, too many monkeys... They are everywhere in Shimla and they want your bag/food/glasses. A friendly local man got us some sticks for protection.

Delhi tour

We had three days in Delhi (one more than anticipated because we got on the wrong train Monday morning... I swear, it was the station's fault and we weren't just being stupid!). We spent much of the time eating dosas and trying to decide where to go next. On Sunday, we hired a car and a driver and did the super tour of the sites. We also let our guard down after three months of sucessfully avoiding forced shopping expeditions and were taken to an "art gallery famous in all of India" (aka, souvenir shop). A select few other places we visited:


The Raj Ghat. This black marble slab marks the place where Gandhi was cremated.


The Ba'hai Lotus Temple. Almost every western tourist we have seen in India looks really really dirty and haggard! This is only day 3 for us, so stay tuned.


The Qubt Minar tower, built circa 1200.

Later that evening, we treated ourselves to a meal at Bukhara in the Sheraton (not our hotel!), on the recommendation of my cousin's husband Paul, who's been to Delhi several times. Jerome declared the Peshawari lamb to be the tastiest piece of meat to ever cross his lips.

In India

We arrived in Delhi yesterday morning. It is pretty much just as I expected -- madness, broken by pockets of serenity. And the food is great!! There are also a lot of trees and greenery here after the Middle East. Today we saw our first real rain in two months.

Dubailand

We are in Dubai and it is crazy: a shoppers paradise, a building bonanza, a jumbo suburb on steriods, a hyper commodity world, a 5-star hotel explosion, a capitalist oasis in the desert, a sink for surplus petro-dollars, an architect's wet dream, a heaven on earth where lots of money seems to beget even more money. Incredible skyscrapers are going up everywhere and there are more malls than you can count. It makes you want to shop...or to go snowboarding in the indoor ski-resort in the Mall of the Emirates.

For background, read THIS.

Damascus catch-up: The Omayyad Mosque

A must see in Damascus is the Omayyad mosque, built by the Omayyad Caliph in 705 when Damascus was capital of the Arab Islamic empire. The mosque took ten years and eleven million gold dinars to build, and became an architectural model for hundreds of mosques throughout the world. The mosque has a large prayer hall and an enormous courtyard. The interior walls are covered with mosaic panels, made of coloured and gilded glass, portraying scenes from nature. The dome is greyish-blue, and is celebrated for its magnificence. The prayer hall contains a domed shrine venerated by both Christians and Muslims, the tomb of St. John the Baptist.

All the women in the mosque were having a good laugh at Caroline.

Turkey catch-up

Here are some pictures from our last days in Turkey, over a month ago.


In the south-east of the country is Mt. Nemrut, the centre of Antioch of biblical times. At the top of the mountain are these giant stone statues of the king, the gods, and other people.



The stone heads used to rest on top of these pedestals at the top of the mountain.

The famous site in the city of Urfa where the prophet Abraham did something with fish (can someone refresh our memory on how this story went?). There were tonnes of tourists here from Iran, feeding the very fat fish which still swim in these ponds.

Beehive houses in Harran, a small dusty town near the Syrian border, which is probably the second longest inhabited settlement in the world after Damascus.

At our last stop in Antep, we stumbled across an amazing museum of mosaics from the floors of the old Roman city of Zeugma. The city and its mosaics were going to be flooded by the Ataturk dam, but fortunately they were rescued and collected in the very impressive museum. This mosaic is the most famous and is called The Gypsy Girl.

baksheesh: egypt not all pyramids and roses

As I raise my camera to take a picture of Queen Hatshepsut's son suckling from a sacred cow at her temple in Luxor, a temple employee sidles up to me...
Man: "That is a cow."
Caroline: "Yes, thanks. I know."
Man: "Baksheesh now."


"Baksheesh" is part of getting around Egypt. It is a tip (or sometimes a bribe!) for services rendered. These can be anything, from having a door opened to being given directions. At first, we were getting pretty irritated at the constant demands for baksheesh, particularly since we were never carrying around the right change. However, after 2 weeks in Egypt, learning to hoard small bills like there's no tomorrow, and realizing that every other Egyptian is also a baksheesh target, we're settling into the swing of things. Now, when we anticipate someone is going to impose their help, we run away, or say "no guide", or if we actually want to have our elbows held by an 11-year-old while walking down a ramp, we'll slip him some cash.

Only a fraction of our Egyptian baksheesh experiences:

• Yesterday, we actually saw a man rush to close a door in a museum so that he could open it for us!
• In the tomb of Ramses III in the Valley of the Kings, the tomb attendant fanned tourists with a square of cardboard. "Hot. Fan. Baksheesh."
• We took a felucca ride with Mohammad and his two teenage friends in Aswan. Pleasant conversation ensues... Jerome asks: Are you the owner of the boat? Mohammad: No, the captain. Good captain. Baksheesh later. Jerome: Uh, ok. Mohammad: Do you want some hash?
• Security is quite high in Egypt for tourists due to several terrorist attacks in the last two decades. The tourist police are on duty at many hotels and attractions. I can only assume they aren't paid very well.... After booking ourselves on a Nile Cruise, one tourist police guy outside declared "Give me five money. Baksheesh." In this case we refused. What, for letting us walk by you? Give me a break! The next day we noticed he was cruising down the Nile with us, an AK-47 assault rifle slung over his shoulder. Another tourist police officer at the Red Pyramid near Cairo kept trying to force his camel into the field-of-view of our friend Andy's camera in order to demand his baksheesh. I don't feel very safe in this country.

Finally, two days ago our bad baksheesh karma came back to haunt us. We got a tour of the beautiful Al-Azhar mosque in Cairo from the caretaker and muezzin, Said.


Oh, crap. Our smallest bill is enough for a night in a (cheap) hotel room! We had to baksheesh the guy for every baksheesh we had avoided for the whole trip. He still asked for more. "For Ramadan." Sure. On the upside, Jerome was snatched aside and had the entire call to prayer sung just for him!

Giza again

We couldn't nick the golden mask at the museum (see below), but we can steal a few pictures taken of us by our Australian travel buddies.


This is the largest of all the pyramids.


Travel buddies thrilled just after finding a lucky horseshoe in the sand at Giza!

Face to Face With King Tut

Yesterday we had an experience that summed up one side of things in Egypt. We were in the National Museum in Cairo, viewing the iconic mask of "King Tut" -- the big and bright gold one, which is on every advertisement of Egypt -- when all of a sudden four guys in plainclothes approached the display case, heaved up the glass barrier, and grabbed out the mask! The Italians in the room made a tsunami-like movement towards the four guys either to figure out what was going on or to touch the mask themselves, which some of them seemed to accomplish. The guys holding the mask, now accompanied by one guy in some kind of uniform, responded by making their way quickly to another corner of the room and then put down the mask on another display case. At this point, we still had no idea what was going on, and by the looks of things thought that a heist was in the works. That wasn't the case however. Apparently the staff at the museum wanted to repair the glass exhibit case and decided that they should do so in the middle of the day and without clearing the room, taking precautions with the solid gold mask, and sending in more muscle than a few small and disheveled guys in jeans and T-shirts. When we figured out the situation, we decided to join in on the fun, and made our own rush for the mask and managed to see it face to face, without a glass barrier, for about 10 minutes.

Ancient Wonders Still Really Cool

Caroline at the Step Pyramid in Saqara, the very first pyramid and the oldest human-created structure in the world.


At the Sphynx and Great Pyramids in Giza.


"Look how big it is, and how straight the lines are!"


Caroline unknowingly providing perspective for the picture.

A few pictures from Aswan and Luxor

Temple of Philae, Aswan


Temple of Philae, Aswan


Big pharoah statue at the Temple of Karnak, Luxor.


Temple of Queen Hatshepsut


Exploring the hugeness of the 134 columns in the Temple of Karnak, Luxor.

Taking it up a notch or 5

From the Sinai we took a very fun and terrifying speed boat across the Suez Gulf and then caught a terrible 10 hour bus ride to Aswan in the far south of the country. Our plan was to take a sail boat up the Nile to Luxor but when we saw the dodginess of the "faluccas" we let our Australian friends talk us into a 5 star cruise on a Movenpick boat. We stuffed ourselves on the buffet for three days and saw a number of great Egyptian temples, with tonnes of hieraglyphs and columns. Roman and Greek architecture was clearly based upon and inspired by Egyptian design. The area around the Nile is very green and lush, and contrasts starkly to the barren deserts which surround the narrow strips of life along the river.