Man, that was a looong trip! 5 hours from Delhi to Hong Kong, 16 hours to wait in HK airport, 13 hours from HK to Johannesburg, 6 hours to wait in Jo’burg and 2 more to get to Cape Town. You make the maths… But here we are, on the last continent finally.
Cape Town's wharf: a nice place to enjoy a drink.
In Cape Town, we ended up in a brand new hostel, the Atlantic Point Backpackers, 10 minute-walk away from the cute wharf. The entire town was very quiet at this time of the year, one week after the World Cup’s final. You can tell it’s winter time here. The weather has been fantastic pretty much the whole week here, blue diamond sky at all time. It’s been a bit chilly but after the hell of India, it was good to have to wear the fleece again. Cape Town is a very nice city to live in. It is quite modern and it feels relaxed around here even though it does not really feel like Africa. It almost looks and feels like a Californian or Mediterranean city. Besides, all people we met there were very kind and always helpful whatever our question was. The sad thing around here is the large contrast between the rich Cape Town, the one which you see most as a tourist (new houses, buildings, pubs, restaurants, cleanliness, expensive, tourist tours, clubs, etc.) and the poor Cape Town. In downtown, there are lots of beggars and out of the city you can see from the highway thousands of small cabans, made of steel and woods, basically favelas-like areas, where those who do not benefit from the economic boom live.
After a bit of chilling out and organization we hit the road on Wednesday, direction Cape of Good Hope, one hour drive from Cape Town. Ron and I thought this was the southernmost point of Africa. It turns out it is not, instead it is the most south-western point. But it is much more famous for historical reasons relating to navigation and commerce routes than its counterpart, “Cape Agulhas”, the actual southernmost point. You get the best viewpoint over Good Hope from Cape Point, a few km away. Beautiful and huge beige and yellow cliffs, topped by pine trees and other local trees, being hit on a random beat by massive waves coming from the Atlantic makes the Cape a very scenic area.
Very scenic areas can be found on the coast of South Africa.
I thought some of these landscapes looked a lot like places back home, near Marseilles, “Les Calanques de Cassis” in particular, but you know you are in Africa when you see on the road the “baboon-warning” signs and when later you are surrounded by them in the Cape national park. People say you have to be careful as they are aggressive, although I’m pretty sure they would not be so if Humans had not disturbed their natural behaviour. In the past (but still happening), many of them were killed (the usual “I don’t know, I’m scared, so I kill” way so sadly common back in the colonization days) and nowadays some jackass tourists totally ignore the “Don’t feed baboons” signs. Yet, we found them pretty peaceful, walking along the road side and throughout the park. Once we saw this woman chasing one with a broom out of the park’s tourist office and the baboon kind of mocking her from the top of the roof where it found himself out of her reach. That was hilarious.
The two clowns are ready to dive.
After that, we kept going East along the coast stopping now and then to get a few shots, to finally reach Hermanus, a small city where most people who do shark-diving or whale-seeing, the main attractions around here, get some rest before their adventures begin. Ours was to start the day after in Gansbaai, the Great White Shark Capital of the World. This activity as well as whale-watching have become the touristy backbone of this little town. The waters off the coast of Gansbaai are a highway for the “Carcharodon carcharias”, better known as the Great White shark, and 8 companies offer the possibility to dive with “Jaw”.
In the morning we got the usual briefing before leaving with 25 other people (as I said: touristy!!) onboard their brand new boat. Excited we were! A 20 minute boat ride took us close to Dyer island, home to lots of seals, hence the large presence of sharks which feed on them. The sea was as flat as a pool table. We drop the anchor, the cage goes into water, the water is being filled with “chum” (a mix of mashed fish meat and oil which attract sharks), a visual bait (basically a big fish head) is thrown into the water at the tip of a rope and up we go to the upper deck of the boat to spot the first sharks. One minute later, the shadow of a giant 4.2 m great white with a scar on its right gill (a souvenir from an underwater battle), comes from nowhere and swims right under the boat checking out what was stimulating its olfaction. Adrenaline’s levels were high among us.
The first feeling is “this is so damn long and big”. Then, when it starts playing with the bait, it emanates a scary amount of strength from its body, its 3000-shiny-sharpy teeth mouth, neck and tail in particular. Spielberg thought it would take a 8-m shark to scare people on screen. In reality the sharks we saw of 2.5 to 4 m were long enough to totally discourage you to swim in South African waters, I tell you that. But we came all the way from India to swim with these guys. We can’t back off now (even less when we see that a 7-year old little girl was also gonna do it ). These fascinating animals were attracting us.
To our families: it doesn't look like here, but there actually was a cage in between us ...
So we went underwater … Of course there was a little something between them and us, called a “stainless steel cage”. We asked the boat leader if we would get a discount by diving without cage, but for some reasons he said that was not possible. Shame … So, for once, humans were in the cage.
We were up to 5 people at a time in the cage taking turns of about 10-15 minute each. We stayed at this spot for about 2 hours with 4 or 5 sharks swimming around the boat. Looking at this massive fin a few meters away, you really don’t wanna miss the cage when jumping into the water. Then, you wait a few seconds or minutes until a guy on the boat tells you “down” and down you go. Then, you’re there, in the blue, only a few cm from the surface, trying to avoid seeing the other 4 people in your field of view to feel “alone” with the predator. And here it comes, first a fuzzy shadow in the distance, then an animal getting bigger and bigger, clearer and clearer. The naive ideas about sharks that you have tell you that the Death machine is approaching. You start seeing the clear shape of the beast, distinguishing the top grey (or blueish sometimes) from the bottom white part of its body, its mouth, its teeth, its gills and more of these details up to the point that it is a few meters away from you and sometimes a few centimetres and that’s when you can see its eyes. It already felt amazing in Tahiti, imagine now! The eyes are not moving much so you’re not sure if it’s actually looking in your direction or not, but it surely feels like they’re staring at you.
Cape of Good Hope.
When you’re underwater holding your breathe (no scuba or snorkel) and they face you with their dark lifeless eyes, their fascinating designed-to-kill mouth, and their hyper hydrodynamic born-to-kill body, they don’t look as cute as “Bruce”, the shark of “Little Nemo” though When you are there, you know that you don’t belong to the waters.
Needless to say, we had plenty of opportunities to see them very close. Sometimes, the shark would jump out of the water a few meters away from the cage, trying to catch the bait. Some other time, it would end up smashing the cage with its huge tail after an attempt to get the bait. Thank God, the cage was not made of wood. Or the shark might even show up veeeeeeery close on your right while you were focusing on the big one going away on the left. This is when you don’t wanna have your fingers or feet out of the cage. Something which was reminded by the “one finger short” (We didn’t dare asking where he lost his finger) boat leader to Ron who was really into getting the picture of the one on the left. It would have been a shame to lose a finger, a hand or a whole arm 2 weeks before the trip The sea was getting more swelly which didn’t help us in keeping it steady inside the cage. We ended up many times with a foot sticking out of the cage.
We could have easily spent the whole day there and watching them majestically swimming in their world. Definitely better than watching any National Geographic Documentary show about shark, comfortably sitting on a sofa. That was a fabulous day and a very intense experience in which you gain so much respect for these creatures. Despite the big impression they make on you and the fear that they cause to your senses, you also feel like they are largely misunderstood. But, they did not seem to be waiting around until the cage breaks or something. It did seem to me to actually be a curious animal, almost playful. By now, these guys, some of the smartest fish on the planet, know that these baits are no proper food but they repeatedly go for it anyway every day. Could it be that they want to entertain us and improve their reputation?
Pretending to be smart ass wine connoisseurs.
It is true that they do look like they are ready to kill humans at any time but the figures speak for themselves, they don’t. Depending on the year, only 3 to 15 humans are reported to be killed every year by all kind of sharks, so even less by great whites. This is to be compared with for example the several thousand of death/year from lightning strikes or the 3000 drown people. Sure, humans spend maybe less time in the water than out in the nature during a storm but still, it feels like this animal deserves a much better reputation than it has. The “Jaw” series was great in its time. But people, those were fictions, movies, not reality! And you know what, humans kill between 50 and 100 millions sharks every year …
Anyway, after this breathtaking experience, we headed back to Cape Town, 2 hours-away and got there in the evening. The day after, we went around for some wine-tasting. Together with the Mendoza region in Argentina or South Australia for instance, South Africa has become increasingly famous for its wine production too. The sunny and hilly regions nearby Cape Town are densely populated with vineyards and make a perfect environment for vineyard growing. We went for the closer one, Stellenbosch. There, we visited the winery of Zevenwacht, Amani and Bergkelder, trying to remain sober as much as possible which was hard as they forced us to try 5 different wines in each place . Of course, for the sake of being polite it was hard to say no. Some of the wines tasted pretty good to us, some of them a bit too young or too spicy. We put an end to our “wine connoisseur” career even before it began when we thought some wine had the taste of strawberry and onions while it turned out it was aspargus and dark chocolate … But we did enjoy it very much, and now, both ron and I want to have our own cellar in our future houses.
We enjoyed plenty of sunsets on this trip. The ones in Cape Town rank high by their beauty.
The week-end came. On Saturday we went to visit the Table Mountains around Cape Town, basically a 1000-m elevated plateau which overlooks the city and attracts all visitors like us so that they can get their shot of the city from the top. It is quite a beautiful spot but we preferred the Cape of Good Hope, so if you’re on a budget you might want to spare the 160 rands to get their and back by cable car and go instead to Lion’s Head which is lower but for free. In the evening we had a sort of “end-of-trip” dinner near the wharf as we are not sure to have time to do so in Kampala or Nairobi. We had ostrich which turned out to be a delicious meat, very much like beef, and very tender and juicy together with a fantastic “Shiraz” from 2005 which was better than any of the red wines we had on the wine-tasting tour. That was expensive for our budget but not that much compared to a similar dinner in Europe (800 Rands for the two of us) and it was very much worth it.
On Monday we fly to Uganda. Gorillas, here we come! The trip is coming to an end. It feels sad, but “c’est la vie”.
Already before we left on our trip from Kathmandu in Nepal to Agra in India, we knew it was going to be a long and exhausting journey, with long trips in crowded and warm buses and trains combined with long waiting periods. We were right on all accounts. We just underestimated HOW crowded and warm it would be. After the early bus that took us from Kathmandu to the border between India and Nepal (complete with a chicken as we mentioned in the previous post), and the bicycle taxi and procedure at the border, we jumped onto a crowded bus that was going to take us to Gorakhpur where we would hopefully take the train to Agra. The bus was completely full and the seats were so small that we had to sit in the back on the seats that faced the aisle since we couldn’t fit our knees in the other seats. On the back row we were 6 people sitting in the narrow bus, and the bus kept on filling up with people sitting and standing in the aisle. It was still afternoon when we started the supposedly 3 hour journey and it became so warm in the bus I thought I would pass out at some points. Andsince we sat in the middle we didn’t feel the wind from the open windows. On top of that, our water ran out pretty early so it was not the most pleasant bus ride we’ve been on. But we managed to last.
The not-so-great bathroom of our hotel in Gurkahpur
Once the bus arrived in a crowded, dirty, smelly, humid Gorakhpurwe decided to head to the train station to try to get train tickets to Agra for the next day. At the station they told us they don’t sell tickets(!) for tourists, instead we had to go to another place which did sell them. Since we were very warm carrying around our big backpacks we checked into a cheap hotel close to the station. The bathroom looked like a well-used toilet at a night club at closing time. Apart from the dripping water pipe acting as a shower perhaps. And the “standing toilet.” The irony is that the hotel we took is supposed to be the best budget hotel in the area. It frightens me to think about how the other hotels looked like, if this was the best one.
We walked on the streets upon which big piles of garbage with clouds of flies were scattered. Right next to them were people selling food from small stands. And to our surprise the myths are true – there are cows walking around in the cities, on the roads etc. and cars and people just move around them. As you know, the cows are holy in India and are not allowed to be harmed or killed. We couldn’t find the ticket place at first, but a helpful man at a gas station sorted us out and let his driver drive us to an ATM. Nice guy! With his help we did find the place selling tickets, only to find out that there were no tickets to Agra until two days later. We were put on a waiting list and told to return the next day. After a spicy dinner and some chatting with some other backpackers we went to bed. It was very warm, despite the fan working full speed in the ceiling. The next day when we went to the ticket office we found out that there were no tickets left for the next day, or even week. Instead we had to get a train from a town called Lucknow to Agra. And to get to Lucknow we had to take a bus. OK, we found the bus station and among the chaos there we managed to get tickets to a bus with air condition which was leaving in an hour. It was the only AC bus for the entire day. Finally some luck! The ride to Lucknow was a big contrast to the previous buses. Once in Lucknow we had to wait 5 hours for the train to Agra. We spent it in an air conditioned restaurant section which we were shown to by local tourist police. They practically forced us to go in there.
Taj Mahal with the famous pond in front of it
Once we got on the train we found out that 2nd class ticket is a bit different from what we are used to in Europe. Crowded wagons with people sitting on the floors and bags and packages everywhere. Each free space on the walls were used to hang a narrow bench which was supposed to be the “bed.” 3rd class compartments must be a real adventure to travel in It was so warm that I could probably squeeze a litre of sweat from the t-shirt I used as a pillow. I could barely fit on the bench with my small backpack and camera. I didn’t get much sleep that night. We arrived early in the morning, later than the scheduled time – about 3 hours later – but that is always the case in India. We had met some other travellers on the train – Katarina and Suzanne from Slovakia and Holland respectively. They knew of a cheap place to stay so we joined them. In the endwe found one that was beter and had nice view of the Taj Mahal from the roof terrace. Finally our long journey from Kathmandu was finished after more than two long days.
Some enjoyed the cultural exchange at Taj Mahal...
...while some took a nap instead
Taj Mahal area at sunset
The following day it was time to see the famous Taj Mahal – which is a mausoleum for emperor Shah Jahan’s favorite wife. It was built in1632 to 1648. It happened to be a holiday of some sort so the entrance was free, which was nice. We took some standard photos of us in front of the Taj Mahal. We wanted to have a peak inside but the queues were winding around the Taj Mahal building – they were so long. So we cheated a bit and cut in line, and then again to cut in the queue to get into the mauloseum itself. Bad karma to us, but at least we saved a queing time of more than 3 hours. We also looked around in town. It is indeed very different from the life we are used to in the Western world. People selling all sorts of things, everywhere and try to get your attention. In the evening, there was a monsoon. We heard the storm and could see the lightning before it hit Agra. The winds were so strong they blew chairs across the roof top restaurant and the rain was so heavy you were soaked after running 10 meters in it. Couple that with a big thunder storm with lots of lightning and you have a pretty impressive show by nature.
Monsoon with ligthning storms over Agra
After a couple of days in Agra we took a train to Delhi. It was supposed to take three hours but ended up taking 6 hours We made it to the backpackers area in Delhi – the Old Bazaar – and found a decent and cheap hotel, although the rooms didn’t have windows so you felt a bit closed in. But they were restoring the hotel building which meant that the wall facing the street was gone in the hallways, there was just a big nothing. India never ceases to amaze. What was most important that night was to make it to a place that showed the final of the football World Cup. Turns out the bars didn’t care that it was the final and all of them were closed (the game aired at midnight), so we ended up watching it together with some people on a small tv in the hotel reception. Better than nothing, but too bad the Netherlands lost.
A busy street in Delhi
Delhi itself was not very impressive, we spent a lot of time on the internet and David got sick and was laying in bed for most of the time during several days. I went to visit some temples and the Gandhi museum with the girls which was interesting. They say that you need to spend some time in India to fully appreciate it, maybe that is true because we didn’t fancy it that much. The fact that we were only there for 10 days might explain it. But on Saturday evening it was time to go to the airport to catch the overnight flight back to Hong Kong where we had to wait 16 hours for the flight to Johannesburg, South Africa which is the next destination. It’s the longest we’ve waited at an airport, and I couldn’t really sleep on the uncomfortable seats although I was very tired since I didn’t sleep much on the flight to Hong Kong either. After the flight to Johannesburg we had to wait again at the airport for 5 hours to catch the flight to Cape Town. In the end, the journey lasted two days with a lot of waiting. Good thing we had books to read.
It was time to take on the last continent on our trip – the mystical Africa where a cavalcade of wildlife adventure awaits us: Great White shark diving, viewing the mountain gorillas and going on a safari. Read about it in the next post…
And here we are, Nepal, maybe the country about which we know least before coming, the one we don’t know what to expect, to see, to smell and to live.
We were surely not expecting this. Holy monkeys stealing in people's plate.
As said in our previous post, we were already amazed by the change of climate, geography and vegetation while going dowm from the roof of the world towards Nepal. By going further down into the Kathmandu valley, we also were fascinated by the atmosphere and the people’s way of life.
The country looks like a rainbow has fallen upon it and its heart beats 50 years in the past in some respect. All trucks and buses look like they are coming straight from a Tim Burton’s movie, Disneyland or the Hippie years, so colourful. They also sound like they are that old. If you go to our videos (see the newly created page), you will be able to hear it in a few of them. You will also be able to see the way of driving we had to experience for 4 hours ….
Let's hope our ride to India will not be on top of one of these buses.
People’s clothes, food, houses which we saw along the road to Kathmandy (and it was the case the rest of the stay) all follow the same rule. Colours everywhere. This cannot be describe so just check out the pictures. Of course this makes you in a happy mood … But in the very first hours, we felt pretty sad actually for this country. It looked sadly poor to us which is something to say after being in Tibet, the poorest province of China. It looked like a mix of Cambodia, South of China, Peru, Tibet altogether. Nepal ranks 144 out of 182 on the scale of Human development index.
Nepal ranks 144 out of 182 on the Human development index, so forget about Nintendo.
Barefoot kids with t-shirts that they probably wear all year long walking along the dirt road (asphalte is pretty unusual on Nepalese roads which makes the atmosphere very dusty), goats and (suicidal) chickens everywhere on the way, people working hard in the rice fields, carrying huge loads on their shoulders, trucks and buses rejecting a 100% pure carbon monoxide smoke, people packed on bus roof tops, muddy road sides which turn into landslides every now and then especially at this time of the year during the mossoon (we got stuck for quite a while as the narrow road to Kathmandy was blocked by one of them), and we could already smell and feel lots of of pollution and religion around here. So this was our first impression of Nepal after driving from the border to the capital.
We were not sure how long we were gonna stay and what we were gonna do in the country and our planning was driven by the indian embassy in Kathmandu which had to deliver Ronnie’s visa. In the end, we stayed in the Kathmandu valley for the whole stay. It came across our mind to go trekking (Nepal hosts 8 of the 10 highest mountains in the world, among them the Everest and the Anapurna as well as millions of acres of lushy vegetation, lakes, gorgeous-looking valleys, etc. in a few words, a paradise for trekkers) and also to go tiger-watching in one of the national parks. But, we had our dose of trekking and we also heard that spotting tigers was more common in some parks in India (which of course we’ll try later), so we limited our excursions to the very heart of the Kathmandu valleys which already kept us busy for the next 8 days.
Very pittoresque street of Kathmandu on Durbar Square.
We stayed in Thamel, the touristy/backpacker area of Kathmandu. Of course you have travel agencies, restaurants, money exchangers, and souvenir shops every meter. But Thamel remains quite a nice district. It is very lively in the day. The night is however dead in Kathmandu, everything closes at 10 or 12 and exceptionally at 2 in some bars, thanks to the world cup. It is also very colourful as the rest of the country and it is enjoyable to be walking along its busy streets for a few hours, the only annoyances being the street sellers selling anything, from some piece of clothes, jewelry or music instruments to Hashich, Marijuana or Coke. But we don’t pay much attention on those anymore. Thamel and Kathmandu in general are immensely packed but relatively small and the streets are extremely narrow so this gives to the city a more human dimension, than say, Beijing or even Ho Chi Minh City. It also gives the advantage that when you stay in Thamel you are one block away from everything you want. Except the touristy things but those are not that far and you can pretty much see everything you want in KTM in less than 45 minutes walk which is really rare in a state capital.
Nepal, the rainbow country.
The first 2 nights we had booked in the Silver Home hotel which had a dorm but the dorm was empty, it was on the 7th floor, there was no locker, the fan was not working properly, it was full of mosquitos and the internet was bloody slow. The staff was nice but that was about it. We changed later for a double bedroom (which was actually a triple bedroom we figured as a friendly cockroach which I found dead on the last day would come and visit our bathroom every night) in another hotel which was quite nicer but of course more expensive. As a matter of fact, this hotel had a very good internet connection and computers so we took the chance for uploading lots of videos which you can now watch by going to our video page (link in the upper menu). We probably spent 50-60 hours to do that, update the blog about Tibet and Nepal and take care of some stuff concerning our upcoming trips in Africa. You can imagine what the hotel staff thought of these 2 idiots spending so many hours on the net. We were pretty much the only guests in this hotel with another chinese couple as it is low-season around here because of the monssoon which also means that we got soaked wet a couple of times. The later being another one of these #$%!@&? experiences which is remembered as a fun memory when you think about it later lying down in your comfortable sofa back home watching weather forecast in Asia (unless you have thought for all the people suffering from it) …
Anyway, during these 8 days we basically watched all the football games remaining in the world cup, supporting the Netherlands of course, as Sweden was not qualified and France … Hum, and went to some temple and old-quarter-seeing.
On Friday night, we made sure we watched the quarter final: the Netherlands - Brazil. Oh boy, that was a hell of a game. It was really cool to be watching this in a pub loaded with Nepalese crowd. We made some friends there, who were even bigger fans of the Netherlands than we were, hitting the ceiling whenever there was a goal or a foul. The very same evening we went out (but not long as I said everything closes late) and we met a troop of French guys, doing an internship in the Kathmandu hospital. They are really nice, had very interesting stories to tell and we hanged out a little more with them the days after. Let’s keep in touch les amis ! It was very nice to meet you.
Ronnie sneakily trying to take a picture of a Holy man (this one turned into a business man as you have to pay for his photo)
We visited four main sites. Three of them being in KTM, and as I said, within walking distance from Thamel. On Saturday we went to Durbar Square, a UNESCO world heritage site, in Kathmandu itself. This is the beating heart of the city which hosts the palace where Kings used to live (no more kings in Nepal). Plenty of beautiful temples and courtyards of reasonable dimensions and original architecture. This small size makes it very nice for the temples are adapted to human dimensions and do not look too much like some sort of God-only worshipping places … and also because you can visit the whole thing is less than an hour.
The day after in the evening we went to Pashupatinath in the East of the city. This is definitely one of the most special places we have ever been to. It is a Hindu temple, the oldest of Kathmandu, but there basically …. people burn their dead… So when you get near it, you see and you smell plenty of smoke due to the ongoing cremations (done outside the temple so in totally open air visible by anyone, meaning that you actually do see the bodies burning even though parts of them are covered by straws and grass) being done at the feet of the majestic temple (built in honor to Shiva) and on the bank of the Bagmati holy river, also called the small Gange. Once the cremation is done, the ashes are being thrown into the water. You do see people bathing there or washing their clothes in the very same river and you see monkeys everywhere, running on the electric lines, around the cremation sites and the hundreds of statutes. Needless to say, you go through lots of feelings on this visit: sadness, embarassment of being there, glaucous, shock, fascination, feeling like a voyeur, emotion … hard to identify what you exactly feel.
Pashupatinath, the temple of Shiva, but also a cremation site. We only took pictures from far away of this place for obvious reasons of respecting the funerals.
But in the end, you gotta realize that this is natural to the Nepalese and it is THEIR way of saying farewell to their beloved. Amazingly enough the local guide who took us around was proposing us to take pictures. But for one we did not feel like it, and also it seems to us very disrespectful to do so, thus we did not. If that was not exotic enough, on the opposite bank of the cremations, just 20 m across, there is a ceremony every evening at 18:30 which is mix of happy dancing, praying and singing while the families of the dead are mourning on the other side. But those two events are decoupled and somehow the happiness of the ceremony balances out the heavy atmosphere emanating of the other bank. Finally, when you keep walking up on the hill of the ”happy” bank, you end up in a remote courtyard which we probably would not have found on our own without the guide. This yard is home to tens of holy men, called “Sadhu” having chosen the life of a wandering monk, which solely purpose is to find Liberation in the Hindu religion sense of the term (?) through meditation and contemplation. They basically own nothing else than 3 square meters in this courtyard, some blankets, very weary and old clothes and they earn nothing, so they eat what they are being given generously, said our guide. You surely have seen them before … on postcards. They are these Nepalese guys that have their face entirely painted, usually with very long hair and beird and colourful clothing.
David enjoying the view and a coffee in the very old, quiet and charming old quarter of Bakthapur.
On Monday, we went to visit Bakthapur. This is a small city which old quarter with its temples and old houses is still preserved. It kind of looks similar to Durbar Square in KTM and has three main squares to visit even though just wandering around its streets is worth the trip from KTM (only 30 minutes away). It is a very cute old district, again very colourful where you get to see a way of life totally different from Europe and the whole things feels very authentic. There were very few tourists and contrarily to Durbar Square in KTM we did not feel too much in a touristy place and finally stayed there for a few hours, just enjoying some coffee in some old cafes overlooking the squares.
Cows are holy but they still can't compete with the kids in dribbling properly.
We had also heard of a major Bouddhist temple, Swayambhunath, in KTM located on a hill where you can see thousands of monkeys playing around and living their life, which is why it is called Monkey temple. We went there on Tuesday and it is also very much worth the visit. The monkeys, which are everywhere, are funny, and is a never-boring experience, the temple itself is quite okay, and, most of all, it is interesting to get an overview of KTM from atop.
Nepalese food is not only colourful but is also pretty good and we have not yet been food-poisoned. Don't worry, India, here we come !
On all these sites, you could stay there for hours and just watch life, which is so drastically different from what we are used to, passing by. People, whether they are Hindus or Bouddhists, from a high cast or a low cast, are busy doing their own daily activities through the small streets, around the temples, praying, burning encens and candles, not even paying attention on the holy cows and monkeys walking and jumping among them. A world of wonders, a world of fantasy, a world where the Buddha was born, a surnatural world for our European eyes. Disney could not do better.
This guy was so young and tiny, it couldn't even climb the stairs on its own. A few seconds later, its mummy took it on its back.
On Tuesday night I witnessed the victory of Holland in a huge bar, appropriately called the Dome while Ron, feeling a bit ill, fell asleep in front of TV back in the hotel. Tonight, we’ll definitely watch the last semi-final game and after 3 hours of sleep we head tomorrow early morning to India by bus on a trip which will be a hell of one. Since they have no toilets onboard, let’s hope we don’t get the tourist’s most common illness on a trip…
We will try to put comments on most of the photos to give some more background. At the same time, the posts might be a bit shorter. Also check out our new page in the upper menu which has a linksto the videos we put up on YouTube (or go directly to http://www.youtube.com/user/DavidAgnolon).
After reuniting in Beijing and having a couple of days to recuperate from our separate adventures, we visited some not-to-be-missed sights such as the Forbidden city and Tiananmen square. The square is really big. As in really, really big. It is always interesting to hear the history behind famous places such as the Forbidden city and so we decided to get an audio tour (you walk around with headphones and a pre-recorded speech about the place you visit). I usually ask, as a joke, if they have Swedish as a language. Turns out that for once they indeed had it. I should have gone with English though, since the heavily accented Chinese-Swedish was hard to understand. The Forbidden city is pretty interesting and huge but somehow we were expecting more. It is not very diversified within the city wall. Or maybe are we just too exhausted of visiting temples and monuments. David joined Fred, his friend who lives in Beijing, for a last farewell party the day before flying to Lhasa in the memorable “Propaganda” bar in the student district. Consequences: no sleep until taking the plane at 7 am the day after, not great when over 50% of the people are struck by altitude sickness upon arriving in Lhasa. But everything went very smoothly.
Arriving in Lhasa and getting our "good-luck" scarfs
Then it was time to head off to the last place in China, namely Tibet. On the early flight we could see some of the peaks of the Himalaya range (Ron) unless you were sleeping (Dave). After a few turns here and there to avoid the mountains on final approach we touched down in the area of China that is still shrouded in mystery, at least in my book. I was expecting Lhasa to be an ancient city with dirt roads and small stone houses with monks giving you blessings as soon as you walk by. I should have realized, after 5 months of the trip, that places are rarely like you expect them to be. And sure enough, Lhasa turned out to be a fairly modern city with cell phones ringing everywhere (we even saw a monk stop his prayer in a temple and scramble for his ringing cell phone).
We were picked up by a guide from our tour company at the airport. Since we need special permits to enter Tibet (China is still careful not to let tourists travel on their own outside of Lhasa), we had to sign up for an expensive tour. First of all they wanted their money so we were taken to their office. Since we had taken a flight and landed in Lhasa, the altitude difference was 3490m compared to Beijing. We were a bit worried about altitude sickness, but we felt OK once we arrived and thought the rumours were not true. After climbing the stairs to the second floor of the tour company, I found that I could indeed feel the altitude as I became very dizzy and almost passed out. A guy siting in a chair in the office must have seen how pale-faced I looked because he offered me his seat right away.
Once finished with the boring details of paying a lot of money we got a ride to our hotel. It was quite fancy and not what we are used to, we feel more at home in tents and hostels. But it did have a TV which was good, since the World Cup in football was entering into the round of 16.
Potala Palace
The next day our guide – Lobsan(?) -met up. There was an American couple joining us on the tour. Ruth and Randall travel around the world in their own boat, currently anchored in Singapore or Malaysia. They had taken the train up to Lhasa a couple of days before and were a bit more used to the high altitude but still suffered from it. Lobsan took us to the famous Potala Palace. A huge palace built on a hill. It used to be the residence of the Dalai Lama until 1959 when the 14th DL fled to India. Today it is a museum. But the Chinese won’t allow any paintings or photos of the current DL. It contains over 1000 rooms, 10 000 shrines and 200 000 statues! Finally we got to experience some genuine, mystical Buddhism feeling in a temple/palace. We followed up that visit with a visit to the Jokahng temple in the heart of Lhasa in the afternoon. The Jokhang temple was founded in 647AD during the time of the Tubo King with the easy-to-remember name Strontsan Gampo It was a Buddhist holiday when we were there, so the queue was very long, but we cut in since we weren’t going to pray in front of the different shrines and statues. This temple is located in the centre of the old town in Lhasa and so we went around after the visit and took in the atmosphere. We also had a nice lunch on one of the restaurants. Yak Kebab, yeah! The military presence was very conspicuous in the centre of Lhasa where the tourist districts are. We could see soliders marching in groups around Barkor Street as well as positioned on roof tops. There were civilian unrest in Lhasa during 2008 where monks protested peacefully for the release of imprisoned monks. It ended in violence and bloodshed, and the Chinesee goverment has kept Tibet in a tight grip since then.
Ani Sangkhung Nunnery tea house
Experienced monks ask the young monks questions in this debate session
The first days of our stay in Lhasa we needed to take it easy to get accustomed to the altitude, so we spent most evenings watching football on TV and having a dinner somewhere. We also visited a nunnery, the Ani Sangkhung Nunnery tea house, in Lhasa as well as the Sera monestary where we got to watch a philosophical debate between monks. Young monks sit on pillows in a courtyard while older, more experienced monks (but still between 18-25) hammer the young ones with tough questions that they have to answer. The older monk stands in front of the young one and violently clap their hands together and “shoot” the question with their extended hand to the younger one to make them more stressed.
It was very interesting to watch and observe the daily life in Lhasa. Overall, I think the people in Tibet are very religious, which the long queues to the temples give testemony to, and there were quite a few monks and nuns around. Albeit they seemed to live quite modern lives with cell phones, discussions over some tea in restaurants etc. And why shouldn’t they? The world changes.
After a few days it was time to start our journey through the Himalayas from Lhasa to Kathmandu in Nepal. We stuffed our luggage as well as our guide into the back of the Landcruiser before heading to the first stop of the day – the Yamdrok Lake – one of the largest in Tibet. It provides a beautiful scenery, framed by the peaks of the Himalayas. At this point we were almost at 5000 meters and any walking made you instantely tired. The road went back down after this and we passed several glaciers, i.e. the Karola glaicer where desperate Tibetans tried to sell you everything from stones to tea, or simply begged. As soon as we came outside Lhasa we could notice the big decline in modern houses and facilities. The poverty is really striking. The Chinesee government has modernized Lhasa to make it look good to tourists, but the rest of the Tibet they don’t care as much about. We finished the sight-seeing of the day by going to the Pelkor monastery. David coughed up some money in order to be able to film and take photos inside the monastery. He got so caught up in his filming that he didn’t notice when a monk locked him in, in one of the rooms – the monk didn’t notice him sitting there and filming the inert statues for 3.5 minutes During the evening we searched for a higher meaning of life by meditating together with some monks on top of a windy mountain….or…we just watched football on TV, which some people (us) say could be just as meditative.
Some poor kids along the road, trying to get money
Woman and horse somewhere in the Himalayas
We saw countless Buddha statues and relics during these 7 days
The following day we continued the journey through dry valleys and rocky mountains. On our way we saw Yaks every now and then, looking for some eatable grass in the dry ground. We visited…that’s right…another monastery – the Tashilumpo monastery – which has the tallest Buddha statue in Tibet – 25 meters and is also the traditional seat to Panchen Lamas. They’re basically the top guys after the Dalai Lama in Tibetan Buddhism. The current Panchen Lama was just a kid when he was selected and was arrested by the Chinese together with his family. He is currently the youngest political prisoner in the world. If you want to know more about the in’s and out’s of Tibetan Buddhism I suggest you go to www.wikipedia.org or think about if you can’t do something more useful with your time. During these three days where we were going through the Himalays we spent most of the time in the car. We’d liked to do more trekking but time didn’t allow for it, and neither did our physical fitness
The day after we finally reached what was maybe the high-light of the trip – Mt Everest base camp. There is one on the Tibetan side and one on the side of Nepal. Although the Tibetan side might not be as crowded or touristy, it was really amazing to see Mt Everst. While driving there, the weather was rainy and the sky overcast. But we were in luck(!), the sky cleared up and the highest mountain in the world stood in all its might in front of us (actually still some 10’s of kilometers away, but it looked very close). The afternoon sun shone on the snow-covered sides and made it glow and stand out from the rest of the Himalayas, which were cast in evening shadows. David and I went bezerk with videos and photos. Some of them turned out OK and are posted in the photo and video section. At this point, we had gone from a 28 degree Lhasa to a 5 degree Mt Everest base camp that had a cold wind blowing on top of this. It was good that we had extra blankets for our beds.
Mt Everest
The Project-7 crew with Mt Everest in the background
The day after we drove the 4 km to the actual base camp, which in Tibet (China) of course was a military outpost. We fired off some more photos and headed back to the car to start the journey to the border town of Zhangmu. The last leg of this tour really impressed us, we drove on winding roads on sides of steep mountains covered with forest and hidden behind clouds. Again the climate had changed abruptly. Sometimes it was a good idea not to look toward the edge of the road facing the drop, it was too nerv-wrecking. Zhangmu is a town built on the side of a mountain. Basically it has just one road that winds its way downward toward the border-crossing. We had some dinner and went to check out the little town. After deciding to have a beer in a “bar” we enjoyed the view and felt uncomfortable as every time we took a sip out of the small glasses, the waitress filled them up to the brim again.
Part of the mountain road we drove on, through the spectacular scenery in the borderlands between Tibet and Nepal
The morning after we went to the border along the narrow mountain road. We had to wait for 30 minutes while the guys at a road-work, by the Chinese army, decided we could be let through (and that was only because there was a VIP behind us). We said goodbye to our guide and went through the border control. It went smoothly, even though David had overstayed his 30-day VISA period with one day. Ronnie was expecting to be able to make a funny video of David being led away by Chinese Military Police for a character-strengthening 5 nights in prison. Oh well, you can’t have everything. The tour had been nice, and with 7 temples/palaces/monasteries in 7 days, our temple quota has been filled for a while.
Once crossed the border we were in Nepal, but that is another post. Tune in next time, same place, same(ish) time!
). These fascinating animals were attracting us.
It was so warm that I could probably squeeze a litre of sweat from the t-shirt I used as a pillow. I could barely fit on the bench with my small backpack and camera. I didn’t get much sleep that night. We arrived early in the morning, later than the scheduled time – about 3 hours later – but that is always the case in India. We had met some other travellers on the train – Katarina and Suzanne from Slovakia and Holland respectively. They knew of a cheap place to stay so we joined them. In the endwe found one that was beter and had nice view of the Taj Mahal from the roof terrace. Finally our long journey from Kathmandu was finished after more than two long days.
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