Beyond limits

Traveling is not always joyful; sometimes it really pushes your limits. The way to Kathmandu (Nepal) was definitely the worst experience we had over the past 3 months.
We started off by train from Kolkata after a whole day of sightseeing in extreme heat and dust. We were already dirty and smelly when we got on the train at 8:30pm. We traveled all night until we reached Patna at 7 in the morning. From there we took a bus somewhere close to the Nepali border. The closer we got to Nepal the worse the roads were getting. Lonely Planet did say that there were dirt roads, but I did not think they would be quite that bad.



After that bus we took a local bus for about an hour. For that whole hour everyone on the bus was facing us and staring as if we were aliens. Some of the local people even dared to touch us.
We crossed the border on a cycle rickshaw then we got on another bus and another last one which took us all the way to Kathmandu in only 11 hours, but by the time we got on this bus, it was already 6pm. We were tired, hungry, smelly and extremely dirty. We could feel the dust grains crush between our teeth, our lungs were getting muddy. I wasn't able to brush my teeth since the day before. I was irritated and I was fed up with the overcrowded bus. The first 2 hours of the bus ride I spent with my legs hanging out the window from knees down. Sleeping on the bus was impossible of course. Top the Mysure experience with serpentine next to huge frightening gorges and imagine it for 11 hours.



Just when I thought this could not possibly get worse, the passenger in front of me, pulled the window open next to his seat, pulled his trousers off, stuck his bum out the window and shat out of the bus on the go.
I was so confused with emotions, I did not know whether to cry or throw up. In the end I just laughed in desperation. "This can NOT be!!!" Thank God, I no longer had my legs dangling from the window...

The bus was moving but the dials of my watch did not seem to move accordingly. I thought we would never ever get to Kathmandu. It seemed never ending, but guess what!? We did get there at 5 am. The city was gray, dead and dusty. What would you expect a city to be like at 5 in the morning? All we cared about was to get horizontal on a still surface as soon as possible.
After a few hours of sleep, we left our hotel for a walk and stepped onto a wonderful, lively street full of little colorful shops, selling intricate Buddhist goods and trekking gear. Suddenly the torture we went through in the previous 33 hours seemed worth it.
:D

Parachute Man - Little Andaman

My travel companion, Zoli is an extremely friendly guy. He made friends with the hotel manager straight away on Little Andaman. Zoli is also a multitalanted guy, so the hotel manager was delighted to find out that Zoli had some engineering background.
"There is a scientist on the island! He could do with your help, I'm sure. Can I tell him, you are here?"
"Yes, of course!" - answered Zoli.

A few hours later the scientist was knocking on our door, holding a piece of paper and a pen. Rather shy, he started to explain that, since the age of 15 (now 45), his dream has been to fly like a bird! "I will success!" - he kept saying, with his broken English, "but why does my parachute spin?"

"Oh, dear!" - Zoli held his head, not even knowing where to begin tackling the problem.
Parachute Man had a 35 m2 rectangular piece of windproof material with strings tied to each corner. The strings he tied to his shoulders and wanted to catch wind while running.
"I can't run! Why??"
"Your parachute is too large!"
"I even tried using a propeller secured onto my back and riding a motorbike to help me take off, but my parachute just keeps spinning! WHY?"
"The strings must be of exact same length and there must be more than just four of them and the parachute has to have a different cut..."

Little Andaman's scientist was all ears, he was very excited to have found someone who knew so much about flying. He learned about different currents and about air pressure at different heights. He learned about the difference between parachutes / para glides and the way their size should be worked out for each individual. Zoli made someone extremely happy and lead him closer to success. There was so much energy and determination in our scientist, we grew fond of him in no time at all. He didn't know the impossible!

Next day we were invited for breakfast at Parachute Man's house. There further enlightenment had taken place, but most importantly Zoli made a strap, which would be much more comfortable to fly with. Due to the lack of materials to choose from, Zoli decided to make the strap out of kitchen towels. Luckily there was a sewing machine in the house, so the mission was completed pretty fast.

Parachute Man sat in his new strap, his face was glowing with joy, when he was pretending to fly while secured to the bars outside his window.



The next and very important lesson to learn was how to land. Zoli showed him what the right way of reaching the ground was and as a good student Parachute Man was practicing, practicing, practicing, not even taking notice of the neighbors gathering in front of his house. In his garden, from a pile of bricks he kept jumping obsessively because Zoli (the clever white man) told him how very important this was.

This was an extremely special experience for all of us. We've all learned something from each other to take away with us. We are all driven by our dreams and by accomplishing them, we move forward. That's the only way of moving forward, so accomplish your dreams, they are possible! Fight for your dreams, your day will come too. "I will success!"

He will success! Zoli will send him a second hand para glide. :)

Andaman Island

We spent 3 weeks on Andaman and Nicobar Islands = PARADISE!
First, we visited Havelock Island and stayed there for over a week. Hired a small motorbike and rode around the small island visiting the gorgeous beaches. Imagine narrow shady roads winding through the jungle… trees so tall that your eyes get tired by the time they reach the top… green everywhere you look and the sound of birds and insects until you reach the beach: turquoise blue ocean licking the glowing white sand. Crabs running around… sweltering heat and the warm ocean, so clean that you can see 3 meters deep easily. Just float in the salty water, be carried away by the waves. You know what I mean when I say paradise?
We went snorkeling (Elephant beach)and seen a whole new world. I was awestruck. I wanted to touch everything. With the corals I had no problem, because they stayed there for me to touch, but the fish!!!! Oh, they are really good swimmers you know. LOL! I didn't get to touch any. :( I could have held a jelly fish, but that one I decided to give a miss to.



Also went to Neil Island where we stayed 3 or 4 nights. This Island was only 7 km long, so we bicycled it around. There I really wanted to have a look at the famous sea cow who comes to a certain spot near the beach every day between 7 and 9, but it stood me up. Pity! Apparently there are only 5 sea cows left.

Our last place to visit was Little Andaman. This Island was opened to tourists only 2 years ago. The most wonderful thing about it is the people. OK, the Island itself is gorgeous as well, but the people are absolutely amazing. They are pure in their hearts. They love tourists for what they are. We were invited into their houses and was given food and delicious chai. Unlike in India, these people don't look at tourist as if they were walking wallets. There were tears in their eyes when we left the Island.
Last night we came back to Port Blair (the capital, where we take our flight to Kolkata) dolphins were swimming in front of our boat for a few minutes. Klara was very happy to see those creatures.

Our next destination is Nepal maybe with a stop in Varanasi.

Mysore

We managed to attend a wedding in Bangalore. The ceremony is looooong and interesting. The bride and groom keep throwing rice at each other! Beautiful Uttara, the bride.

I think our journey from Bangalore to Mysore is worth mentioning: We took a local tour bus at 6am after we stayed up late chatting to Kamal (the friend we stayed at) and doing the packing. I was dead tired, but I was hoping to get some sleep on the bus. Bad thinking! The bus was competing with the comfort of a horse carriage. I think it had no suspension at all. My head was bouncing on the headrest continuously. When I say bouncing I don’t just mean tiny bouncing, I mean my head doing at least 5 cm jumps away from the surface it was resting on. I managed to get used to being thrown about and went to sleep, but only until the bus went over a speed bump or something alike, which threw me in the air, scarring the s..t out of me. I landed back in my seat, got my breath back and the whole cycle of falling asleep with a bouncy head and being woken up by a speed bump started all over again.

We stayed in Mysore for only one night after which we headed off to Kochi.

Hampi

I’ve been looking forward to visiting Hampi very much and I must say; it didn’t disappoint me. It’s a small town and actually… a very flat one. The very first thing I noticed was that there were no houses taller than 1 storey. Very strange infrastructure when there is a problem of overpopulation and rowdiness in the country. Apparently this is the downside of democracy; unless people agree to have their small houses demolished, there will be no new houses and blocks of flats built instead, because at the moment there is no room to do so.
Hampi is a natural miracle to me. I do not comprehend how rocks so enormous could have developed in such a way. The whole area looks as if giants were fighting and left the scene scattered with huge rounded rocks all over the place in a complete mess. Otherwise Hampi is mostly known for it’s ruins of many stone temples. People here had plenty of material to work with. I realized that in India the most ancient cities were developed firstly where there was good building material for temples and only secondly where there was water. :) It gets very impressive when you find out that all constructing material (rocks) were cracked by pouring water in them through holes made with some very hard wood. I honestly don’t understand how this worked…





Boy, there are so many cows in Hampi! This is a cow heaven and they are beautiful. :) AND I managed to find out what they eat!!! At every street corner there is a concrete container where households and restaurants throw their greens and edible waste (this includes paper as well), however I haven’t seen this in any other city, so the mystery still isn't completely solved.
I was lucky enough to get involved in the celebration of Holy, which consisted of color fights all Monday morning. Wow, that was so much fun! It could have been much more fun if Judy was here with me instead of Zoli (he remained the only clean person in the town) but never mind. I might return one day…









I got covered in paint from head to toe in such a way that not even petrol would remove my greenness. Basically everybody gets different colored powder and tries to get it on as many people as possible. The color gets rather permanent when mixed with water. The color fun is accompanied with loud cheering and rhythmic drum beat and dancing. It's frenetic! I consider myself lucky to have been part of this, even if it resulted in throwing away one of my dresses.
Zoli didn’t build nice memories of this city, since he spent two out of four days going to the loo every 20 minutes. (I shouldn’t share this with you…) He hates me for not having stomach problems, for being able to eat tons of everything and for not even putting on weight. Let’s hope it’ll stay this way.
A little bit too late, but I found out the trick of washing off the paint. Funnily enough only tourists were walking around the Hampi still covered in paint. The locals were washed clean within hours after the event. Basically you have to rub some sort of oil or grease on your entire body to avoid dying yourself semi-permanently colorful.

















This is Lakshmi (the temple elephant) getting a bath just after sunrise. She cleverly blesses people with a gentle tap of her trunk on their heads when she is given a coin.

Bombay and Goa

Bombay:
We’ve spent only two days in Bombay and that was just enough to have a good feel for it and see all there was to see. It is really a city of extremes… Chowpatty beach is said to be toxic so swimming is not allowed, but people living in slums along the sandy shore are not bothered about this. People live in tents made out of ragged old rugs and any scrap they find. Just behind them, on the horizon, huge skyscrapers show signs of wealth. Without any concern for their surroundings, the slummies do their toilet wherever they are taken by the urge. This is apparently due to a general shortage of public toilets in the whole country. It’s a bit shocking to see crouching people on the beach, by the main road, on railway tracks… Oh well, what else to do when nature calls??
Bombay had some lovely buildings, but most of them were built by the British, so these buildings are not included in guided city tours unfortunately. The train station is one of these marvelous buildings, but that one is difficult to miss anyway, once you get here by train.






















Goa:

This is a 2 weeks stop in our trip. We visited Colva Beach for two days, but it was quite boring there so we moved to Vagator - Anjuna which is in North Goa and is much more exciting with all the hippie visitors and the huge markets full of intriguing goods on offer. There are parties every day, the food is delicious everywhere you go, the sea is warm, the sun is hot. There are cows everywhere, even on the beach. These are posh seaside cows, they are much better off than the city cows… I guess :)
We are residing at a lovely place called Paradise on Earth. It consists of many bamboo huts arranged nicely in a well maintained green garden. I picked a hut which wasn’t as wonky as most of them so that’s our home for now. I like waking up in the morning to see the sun penetrating the woven bamboo walls and casting sunny spots all over the interior. These are morning awakenings I will always remember. Goa is a place I will always think fondly of, because the people and the atmosphere makes me feel at home. I feel some sort of fulfillness and peace within, which I never felt before.

Here in Vagator all tourists ride motorbikes. We hired one as well, so it's easy to get arond. Here we don't wear helmets and can ride with just a thin t-shirt on. You can barely imagine how hot it is. :)

Leaving Aurangabad

We've been in India for almost 2 weeks now. Visited Delhi, Jaipur, Agra and are now in Aurangabad. This is an amazing place compared to what we've seen before. There is a place called Lucky Fruit Juice very close to the station. Yummm! I wish I could pack up the whole shop and carry it with me for the rest of my life everywhere I go. You must visit this place if you come this way, but not only because of the delicious milk shakes and food; Aurangabad is close to Ellora and Ajanta which is a must to visit when in India. Accommodation there is too expensive so most travelers chose to stop here and go on day-trips to see the caves in Ellora and Ajanta.
We are taking a night bus to Bombay tonight at 10:30, so we have some time to waste until then (no wonder I started a blog now)
In Bombay we will spend one night only, after which will head straight to Goa. That's where we will camp down for maybe 2 or 3 weeks. From there we will be able to visit Hampi and other wonderful places.

On a personal level:
I have withdrawal symptoms of dehuggidness. I miss the warm hugs of my friends, so I went back to my old ways of hugging trees. Indian trees are surprisingly good for hugging. I feel closer to my loved ones when I hug the trees that suck on the same earth my friends are treading on. :)

I'm also fed up with washing our clothes by hand every day. Zoli has injured himself quite badly when the train window has fallen shut right onto his middle finger. His nail went black straight away and will probably fall off withing a few days, so he can't wash his own clothes and probably wouldn't anyway... Last night I realised that I spent most of my time in the bathroom in this hotel, so next time I'll chose accommodation more carefully. The bathroom is priority from now! Also last night I realised that I don't have to HAND wash our clothes... I'll just put them in the bucket and I'll keep treading on them for an hour if i have to. While treading I can read a book. It's much better this way.

I'm off to have my last milk shake in this town!