Short Version:
Filth, filth, and more filth. Sheila Dikshit. Fireworks and flying. Bjorn Borg, Sara Ulmer (or not). And some more filth.
Long Version:
We'd checked out of the hotel in the morning, leaving our bags securely stored there while we explored the city. When we arrived back at the hotel, we found our bags still in our cleaned but not-yet newly-occupied room. So we washed the worst of the black filth off our feets in the blue bathtub, then tried to wash the blue bathtub clean of the transferred filth, then gave up and went up to the rooftop restaurant for one last delicious foods experience.
The city was alive with fireworks as we ate. The sky became extra-hazy as the smoke joined the general Delhi smog. Sheila Dikshit was mercifully absent from dinner, having been a persistent presence throughout this second Delhi visit; she'd appeared on billboards and in newspapers, and on signs at multiple buildings - including her house. Sheila wasn't the creepiest creeperstalker of the day though; that dubious honor went to the utterly mad-looking short man in the shiny purple tracksuit. He was first noticed on one of the Metro trains, staring balefully about with his bizarrely protruberant eyeballs. His long hair was held in place by an elasticated towelling headband, like Bjorn Borg wore during his heyday. In fact, this guy kind of looked like Bjorn Borg, only about two feet shorter, and with huge googly eyes. And Indian. So not really much like Bjorn Borg at all. Apart from the headband. He was lost from view during the crush of exiting the Metro train, and neither of us gave him another thought.. until he strode briskly up the escalator behind us, planted the crown of his beheadbanded head into the small of the Puppetback, and then stood still, leaning into the contact like some kind of domesticated animalian enjoying contact with its human. It was odd behavior, but he didn't murder us violently, or non-violently, and for that we were grateful.
The fireworks didn't let up all through the evening, and were still lighting up the night as we made our way to the airport around midnight. A good day in the Hindu calendar for weddings, we were told, and we saw a number of festive events still underway as Sunday rolled into Monday and we rolled towards aeroplanic departings, past trucks towing other trucks, and broken down cars being pushed by worse-for-wear wedding partiers. The airport hadn't changed much, although there was some queue chaos at passport control that could have used the attentions of a uniformed, moustachioed, stick-wielder, and a Departure Gate security lady took undue and really irritating extra interest in the contents of Puppetbag and Puppetpockets.
And then we were off, and eating, drinking, and sleeping our way to London, where we bought coffee so disgusting we abandoned it nearly untouched. Vile filth, and not in a good way.
We then hauled our travel-weary selves onto a plane full of the Spanish schoolgirl Tae Kwon Doe team, whose manager looked like a more haggard version of Sarah Ulmer, and went to Barcelona.
Thursday, February 16, 2012
Wednesday, February 15, 2012
Rickshaw Madness
Short Version:
Rickshaws, queues, touchy-feely security guards. Oh, and a really impressive modern temple.
Long Version:
Sometimes the tiniest, most cheerful, cheapest-price-quoting rickshawman is also the most determined, and the fastest, and the best-tipped. Our miniature smiler responded with gusto to our exhortations for more speed, despite the pair of us weighing about as much as the luggage-laden family of six that occupied one of the other rickshaws that we passed en route from the Metro to the Akshardam temple complex.
Akshardam, like Jama Masjid, was recommended to us as a must-visit. We really should have listened to the bit about going first thing in the morning, though, because by the time we arrived in the early afternoon there was a MASSIVE queue for the pre-entrance cloakroom where every imminent entrant had to divest themselves of all electronics, on pain of ejection and (probably) a beating and some burning in hell for eternity. And then there was an even MORE MASSIVE queue, controlled by a series of person-held rope barriers which led us through a gate, eventually, and on to...
Another queue! This one led to a security search that included an inordinate amount of genital manipulation.
An hour or so after arriving, we finally made it in to the complex proper, where we wandered through the ten gates that symbolize things, and through some buildings with info about the complex's construction, and on to god's footprints which were, as Nene said, "...much smaller than I expected."
The main building was awesome. HUGE, and completely covered in intricate carvings that took over 300-million man-hours to execute. There were people, and animals, and gods and goddesses (many of whom had sizable upstanding breasts. Maybe that's why so many men were staring at Nene's chest). There were also elephants galore; all the way around the outside of the lower tier was a carved frieze depicting elephant-human relations through the ages. There was a lion v elephant fight. There was a goat standing on an elephant. There was a hare which had fallen over, and a rabbit with an erection, and an elephant with seven trunks and four tusks named Airavata.
There was a queue at the Boot House. We'd had enough lining up for one day, so left our (now rather ratty-looking) sandals next to a wall atop a roll of astroturf and set off up the wide stairway of white marble and into the main building, which was just as awesome on the inside as it was on the out. Intricately-carved walls and especially ceilings were intense, and impressive.
Back outside, we meandered away from the main building and along a series of covered walkways towards a large open area. Suddenly, gates slammed shut just behind us loudly and emphatically. There were no other people in the section of walkway we were in. It was like we'd walked right into some supervillain's trap. Having no choice, we walked onwards. More gates closed in our wake. We reached the open area - a large, step-sided pool area, with terraced stone seating for thousands. More gates closed, herding us to our left. Uniformed persons lurked in the shadows. Any minute now, we thought, some chap with his undies outside his pants is going to leap out and cackle maniacally at us.
Somehow, though, we found ourselves back at the main concourse, near god's wee feets marks. We eventually deduced that the area we were in was the location of the regular evening lights-and-fountain show that we'd not bought tickets for, and that the crew were most likely clearing the space prior to allowing the paying punters in.
Dusk was closing in as we made our way across a bridge over a lotus-shaped garden and into the foodcourt area, where we bought and ate delicious foods before viewing a statuary and some bats on our way out of the complex. Electronic goods retrieved, we found a rickshaw, and then found OUR rickshaw, which meant, of course, that we had to have a rickshaw race. Once again, the wee grinner somehow managed to get enough force out of his foot-long legs and broad toothy smile to mash the competition, despite having a hefty Puppet passenger, and there was a significant lag before the normal-sized rickshawman and Nene pulled up. Tiny rickshawman was very proud, and rightly so.
Rickshaws, queues, touchy-feely security guards. Oh, and a really impressive modern temple.
Long Version:
Sometimes the tiniest, most cheerful, cheapest-price-quoting rickshawman is also the most determined, and the fastest, and the best-tipped. Our miniature smiler responded with gusto to our exhortations for more speed, despite the pair of us weighing about as much as the luggage-laden family of six that occupied one of the other rickshaws that we passed en route from the Metro to the Akshardam temple complex.
Akshardam, like Jama Masjid, was recommended to us as a must-visit. We really should have listened to the bit about going first thing in the morning, though, because by the time we arrived in the early afternoon there was a MASSIVE queue for the pre-entrance cloakroom where every imminent entrant had to divest themselves of all electronics, on pain of ejection and (probably) a beating and some burning in hell for eternity. And then there was an even MORE MASSIVE queue, controlled by a series of person-held rope barriers which led us through a gate, eventually, and on to...
Another queue! This one led to a security search that included an inordinate amount of genital manipulation.
An hour or so after arriving, we finally made it in to the complex proper, where we wandered through the ten gates that symbolize things, and through some buildings with info about the complex's construction, and on to god's footprints which were, as Nene said, "...much smaller than I expected."
The main building was awesome. HUGE, and completely covered in intricate carvings that took over 300-million man-hours to execute. There were people, and animals, and gods and goddesses (many of whom had sizable upstanding breasts. Maybe that's why so many men were staring at Nene's chest). There were also elephants galore; all the way around the outside of the lower tier was a carved frieze depicting elephant-human relations through the ages. There was a lion v elephant fight. There was a goat standing on an elephant. There was a hare which had fallen over, and a rabbit with an erection, and an elephant with seven trunks and four tusks named Airavata.
There was a queue at the Boot House. We'd had enough lining up for one day, so left our (now rather ratty-looking) sandals next to a wall atop a roll of astroturf and set off up the wide stairway of white marble and into the main building, which was just as awesome on the inside as it was on the out. Intricately-carved walls and especially ceilings were intense, and impressive.
Back outside, we meandered away from the main building and along a series of covered walkways towards a large open area. Suddenly, gates slammed shut just behind us loudly and emphatically. There were no other people in the section of walkway we were in. It was like we'd walked right into some supervillain's trap. Having no choice, we walked onwards. More gates closed in our wake. We reached the open area - a large, step-sided pool area, with terraced stone seating for thousands. More gates closed, herding us to our left. Uniformed persons lurked in the shadows. Any minute now, we thought, some chap with his undies outside his pants is going to leap out and cackle maniacally at us.
Somehow, though, we found ourselves back at the main concourse, near god's wee feets marks. We eventually deduced that the area we were in was the location of the regular evening lights-and-fountain show that we'd not bought tickets for, and that the crew were most likely clearing the space prior to allowing the paying punters in.
Dusk was closing in as we made our way across a bridge over a lotus-shaped garden and into the foodcourt area, where we bought and ate delicious foods before viewing a statuary and some bats on our way out of the complex. Electronic goods retrieved, we found a rickshaw, and then found OUR rickshaw, which meant, of course, that we had to have a rickshaw race. Once again, the wee grinner somehow managed to get enough force out of his foot-long legs and broad toothy smile to mash the competition, despite having a hefty Puppet passenger, and there was a significant lag before the normal-sized rickshawman and Nene pulled up. Tiny rickshawman was very proud, and rightly so.
Tuesday, February 14, 2012
No, YOU'RE a Manus
Short Version:
Metro, mosque, moustaches
Long Version:
That Delhi's Metro is awesome is a fact which may already have been mentioned more than just once.
It caters for folks from all walks of life, and endeavors to level the playing field a little bit for those that fortune/genetics/the gods have not favored by posting signage (mmmmm... delicious signage) instructing travellers to give up their seats for the disabled and the elderly. Given the seethingness of Delhi, and the enormosity of the population, and the dog-cannibal struggle for survival and/or advantage in which all those millions of people are engaged on a daily basis, you'd be forgiven for expecting the seat-donating uptake to be low.
And you'd be right, except that the aged and the crippled know this is the case, and are fighting the fight on their own behalf (because realistically no-one else is going to do it for them):
They're not even a little bit shy about asserting their gammy right to seatedness.
A number of times we witnessed wrinklies, crazy people, and limping broken husks demand - and receive - a seat. Standard practise seemed to be:
1. Select target seat/sitter
2. Approach at high/low/gnarled speed
3. Issue high-volume request for seat while staring at sitter.
4. Repeat #3 while continuing to approach until sitter's resolve crumbles beneath the weight of attention and disapprobriation and shame and the knowledge that failure to move is likely to result in a lap-full of someone with dubious bladder control, and moving along occurs
The different Metro lines are identified by color. We rode mainly on Yellow and Blue Lines, and rode on them enough that we got to know the more intelligible of their announcements by heart. Somewhat surprisingly, the announcements were not uniform across the lines: the Blue Line woman was much more polite than her Yellow Line counterpart, politely yet authoritatively asking travellers to "Please stand away from the doors." Yellow Line Lady, on the other hand, bluntly demanded action: "Stand away from the doors."
We rode both Yellow and Blue Lines to get from our hotel to Chawri Bazar Station, which is the closest station to the Jama Masjid mosque complex. Not so close that the tuk-tuk drivers were prepared to offer the stoopid Westerners reasonable fares to get there, though, so we walked, down narrow streets past people performing their morning ablutions at roadside faucets, and the streets became narrower, and stinkier, and the people more and more downtrodden, and we started to wonder if maybe we should have just paid the 50 rupees, and then suddenly we were there, at the base of the flight of stairs leading up to the entrance arch, where a man who didn't use words took charge of our shoes, and another man gave Nene a robe to wear during our visit; a very fetching lime green one, with flowers printed on it.
The Jama Masjid complex was pretty awesome, with domes and towers and arches galore. There was a pond in the middle of the square, in which people and pigeons bathed faces, bodies, teeth, and beaks. The water was a similar shade to Janine's robe, so we weren't tempted to join in. We did, however, join the flow of people - mainly tourists - towards the southern tower, which on can climb. For a fee.
Before we got to the tower, though, Nene was conned into paying for taking photos of a small girl - largely through the girl's evil Fagan mother administering a beating (to the girl, not to Nene) for allowing an non-earning photo to have been taken.
And then we were into the tower, hard on the heels of a group of punks from some Baltic state, and hauling ourselves up the unevenly-spiralling red sandstone stairs, worn smooth by the passage of untold thousands of feets. At the top, a traffic jam. And massive views out across the domes of Jama Masjid and away into the hazy distance. Birds of prey wheeled in massive flocks around ghostly structures. Leaving was difficult, and not just because the stairs were blocked by upclimbers.
Once we'd reached the ground, returned the lime green draping cloth, reclaimed our shoes, and eaten our stolen samosas on the stairs, we set off into what turned out to be a veritable maze, replete with locked gates that were sometimes open and public ablutions blocks where we did wees as others showered*. This led us eventually to the market between Jama Masjid and the Red Fort. Lots of tacky crap was for sale. Lots of tacky people haggled for cheaper deals on tacky crap. Lots of jostling, lots of no-personal-space. Lots of had-enough-time-to-leave.
At the Red Fort, we joined the enormous queue, and waited patiently for all the thirty seconds it took an alert guard to spot us and hustle us away to our own, special, no-other-people, fifty-times-the-price queue, where we in turn were hustled by some fat lady who pinned Indian flags to us and demanded money to support the orphans. She really wanted more than ten rupees out of us, but we're cheaper than we are proud, and we didn't believe her orphan story anyway. Screw you, fat lying flag-pinning lady!
The coolest thing about the Red Fort is probably getting up on top of the massively thick walls that surround the place. We don't know for sure, because we weren't allowed to go up there. We looked at old buildings, and at empty canals and ponds. Basically a disappointing monument to faded glory. Why people list this as one of the top things to do in Delhi we'll never know, unless someone tells us.
* = In separate stalls. We weren't the showerheads.
Metro, mosque, moustaches
Long Version:
That Delhi's Metro is awesome is a fact which may already have been mentioned more than just once.
It caters for folks from all walks of life, and endeavors to level the playing field a little bit for those that fortune/genetics/the gods have not favored by posting signage (mmmmm... delicious signage) instructing travellers to give up their seats for the disabled and the elderly. Given the seethingness of Delhi, and the enormosity of the population, and the dog-cannibal struggle for survival and/or advantage in which all those millions of people are engaged on a daily basis, you'd be forgiven for expecting the seat-donating uptake to be low.
And you'd be right, except that the aged and the crippled know this is the case, and are fighting the fight on their own behalf (because realistically no-one else is going to do it for them):
They're not even a little bit shy about asserting their gammy right to seatedness.
A number of times we witnessed wrinklies, crazy people, and limping broken husks demand - and receive - a seat. Standard practise seemed to be:
1. Select target seat/sitter
2. Approach at high/low/gnarled speed
3. Issue high-volume request for seat while staring at sitter.
4. Repeat #3 while continuing to approach until sitter's resolve crumbles beneath the weight of attention and disapprobriation and shame and the knowledge that failure to move is likely to result in a lap-full of someone with dubious bladder control, and moving along occurs
The different Metro lines are identified by color. We rode mainly on Yellow and Blue Lines, and rode on them enough that we got to know the more intelligible of their announcements by heart. Somewhat surprisingly, the announcements were not uniform across the lines: the Blue Line woman was much more polite than her Yellow Line counterpart, politely yet authoritatively asking travellers to "Please stand away from the doors." Yellow Line Lady, on the other hand, bluntly demanded action: "Stand away from the doors."
We rode both Yellow and Blue Lines to get from our hotel to Chawri Bazar Station, which is the closest station to the Jama Masjid mosque complex. Not so close that the tuk-tuk drivers were prepared to offer the stoopid Westerners reasonable fares to get there, though, so we walked, down narrow streets past people performing their morning ablutions at roadside faucets, and the streets became narrower, and stinkier, and the people more and more downtrodden, and we started to wonder if maybe we should have just paid the 50 rupees, and then suddenly we were there, at the base of the flight of stairs leading up to the entrance arch, where a man who didn't use words took charge of our shoes, and another man gave Nene a robe to wear during our visit; a very fetching lime green one, with flowers printed on it.
The Jama Masjid complex was pretty awesome, with domes and towers and arches galore. There was a pond in the middle of the square, in which people and pigeons bathed faces, bodies, teeth, and beaks. The water was a similar shade to Janine's robe, so we weren't tempted to join in. We did, however, join the flow of people - mainly tourists - towards the southern tower, which on can climb. For a fee.
Before we got to the tower, though, Nene was conned into paying for taking photos of a small girl - largely through the girl's evil Fagan mother administering a beating (to the girl, not to Nene) for allowing an non-earning photo to have been taken.
And then we were into the tower, hard on the heels of a group of punks from some Baltic state, and hauling ourselves up the unevenly-spiralling red sandstone stairs, worn smooth by the passage of untold thousands of feets. At the top, a traffic jam. And massive views out across the domes of Jama Masjid and away into the hazy distance. Birds of prey wheeled in massive flocks around ghostly structures. Leaving was difficult, and not just because the stairs were blocked by upclimbers.
Once we'd reached the ground, returned the lime green draping cloth, reclaimed our shoes, and eaten our stolen samosas on the stairs, we set off into what turned out to be a veritable maze, replete with locked gates that were sometimes open and public ablutions blocks where we did wees as others showered*. This led us eventually to the market between Jama Masjid and the Red Fort. Lots of tacky crap was for sale. Lots of tacky people haggled for cheaper deals on tacky crap. Lots of jostling, lots of no-personal-space. Lots of had-enough-time-to-leave.
At the Red Fort, we joined the enormous queue, and waited patiently for all the thirty seconds it took an alert guard to spot us and hustle us away to our own, special, no-other-people, fifty-times-the-price queue, where we in turn were hustled by some fat lady who pinned Indian flags to us and demanded money to support the orphans. She really wanted more than ten rupees out of us, but we're cheaper than we are proud, and we didn't believe her orphan story anyway. Screw you, fat lying flag-pinning lady!
The coolest thing about the Red Fort is probably getting up on top of the massively thick walls that surround the place. We don't know for sure, because we weren't allowed to go up there. We looked at old buildings, and at empty canals and ponds. Basically a disappointing monument to faded glory. Why people list this as one of the top things to do in Delhi we'll never know, unless someone tells us.
* = In separate stalls. We weren't the showerheads.
Sunday, February 12, 2012
Waxy Scoop Denial
Short Version:
No, I'll keep my earwax thanks. Shopping. Old things. New things. Special dance, special ink, special drink.
Long Version:
A man tried to sell us his services as a deep ear-cleaner. He had a metal scoop on the end of something akin to a chopstick. We declined. He insisted. We declined. Repeat. Eventually, he set off in search of more amenable dirty-eared whiteys. Of course, this being India, one of his competitiors had moved into the breach before we could say "Jeepers, what a persistent earwax-scooping chap that was!"
We declined all de-waxing services, and went shopping.
Hooray.
Although it's not every day that Evil Indian Robin Williams tries to sell you a carpet made from NZ wool.
We skipped the original shopping complex we'd been aiming at in favor of one which:
a) came more highly recommended by various locals, and;
b) did not have a massive protesting crowd of hat-wearers outside.
After shopping, the National Museum beckoned. Because museums have hands.
We'd read that there was stuff at the National Museum, and that the National Art Gallery was next door for once we were done museuming, so we found a tuk-tuk and tootled off. Tootled is possibly not the most appropriate word for what we actually did - it's a good word for what you expect a tuk-tuk to do based on how it looks, but the actual experience involves much higher g-forces and a LOT more adrenaline than tootling does. Especially when the route goes through one or more of the large roundabouts that punctuate Delhi's major roads.
The museum itself had, as promised, a lot of stuff. 200,000 items, apparently. We weren't allowed to see some of it: there was an ejection of a Puppet from the Restricted Access library, and a number of galleries - including the musical instrument section - were closed for redevelopment, which was a pain in the nethers. Having said that, we still saw a lot of stuff, some of it vastly aged (various Harappan artefacts, dated to around 3000BCE), some of it just plain vast (a 5-storey, intricately-carved war chariot), some vastly cool (a tribal tiger hammered from silver). Many ancient statues of gods and goddesses. Some of the goddesses had vast breasts.
Back at the main entrance hall, we were admiring a statue of Shiva Varanam (Shiva as a dwarf) as a final farewell to the museum when we heard music from a side room. Poking a head through the door (past the ubiquitous smiling, armed, uniformed, moustachioed guard) we saw a stage, with colorfully-dressed dancing people upon it. We slipped inside, and took up station towards the back of the room*.
Unlike the Dilli Haat dance, where the same four people performed a series of long pieces, this recital was more of a barrage of short dance numbers, each performed by a different group or soloist. And each dancer was extra-special, because this was an International Disability Day performance that culminated in a truly grand and epic final number in which all 20+ dancers took the stage more-or-less at once, and danced more-or-less in unison, or at least near each other. Many dancers appeared to have been paired so that a more-competent could lead a more-pliable through the steps. The overly-excitable guy who started doing star-jumps and hooting earned a talking-to from the conductor, which calmed him down enough that he was able to take his place alongside the twisted dwarf girl for what appeared to be a tug-of-war against a girl with Downs, using a tiny girl instead of a rope.
Post-applause, we slipped away, and took a tuk-tuk to the park, where we watched the sun set huge and orange in the haze-laden sky. We were passed on the way by a new Lamborghini Aventador**, which slowed down for a red light just long enough for us - and everyone else nearby - to ogle it before it roared off through the still-red light and away into the distance.
Hungry, we found ourselves amid a streetfood festival. Great combo!
Then we found a pedestrian underpass beneath the busy street, where unlicensed tattooists of dubious qwality were drawing on people. Being inky and pakeha, we were of as much interest to them as they were to us, so we chatted for a while before heading on, to the undies store where we found some undies, and then to the Imperial Hotel, where we gatecrashed an embassy shindig, blundered through the middle of the high-faluting 1911 restaurant, and settled gratefully onto comfy barstools and were served politely and efficiently by impeccably-groomed staff wearing Raj-era uniforms. We ate chips and peanuts from hefty crystal tumblers, and drank cocktails which cost more than our usual total daily food and beverage spend. Lucky we got into those peanuts!
* = Not that the Dilli Haat experience had taught us to position ourselves for a quick and unobtrusive exit in the event that it became necessary or anything
** = Want one? They cost Rs3.69 crore. That's 36.9 million rupees, or USD$750,000.
No, I'll keep my earwax thanks. Shopping. Old things. New things. Special dance, special ink, special drink.
Long Version:
A man tried to sell us his services as a deep ear-cleaner. He had a metal scoop on the end of something akin to a chopstick. We declined. He insisted. We declined. Repeat. Eventually, he set off in search of more amenable dirty-eared whiteys. Of course, this being India, one of his competitiors had moved into the breach before we could say "Jeepers, what a persistent earwax-scooping chap that was!"
We declined all de-waxing services, and went shopping.
Hooray.
Although it's not every day that Evil Indian Robin Williams tries to sell you a carpet made from NZ wool.
We skipped the original shopping complex we'd been aiming at in favor of one which:
a) came more highly recommended by various locals, and;
b) did not have a massive protesting crowd of hat-wearers outside.
After shopping, the National Museum beckoned. Because museums have hands.
We'd read that there was stuff at the National Museum, and that the National Art Gallery was next door for once we were done museuming, so we found a tuk-tuk and tootled off. Tootled is possibly not the most appropriate word for what we actually did - it's a good word for what you expect a tuk-tuk to do based on how it looks, but the actual experience involves much higher g-forces and a LOT more adrenaline than tootling does. Especially when the route goes through one or more of the large roundabouts that punctuate Delhi's major roads.
The museum itself had, as promised, a lot of stuff. 200,000 items, apparently. We weren't allowed to see some of it: there was an ejection of a Puppet from the Restricted Access library, and a number of galleries - including the musical instrument section - were closed for redevelopment, which was a pain in the nethers. Having said that, we still saw a lot of stuff, some of it vastly aged (various Harappan artefacts, dated to around 3000BCE), some of it just plain vast (a 5-storey, intricately-carved war chariot), some vastly cool (a tribal tiger hammered from silver). Many ancient statues of gods and goddesses. Some of the goddesses had vast breasts.
Back at the main entrance hall, we were admiring a statue of Shiva Varanam (Shiva as a dwarf) as a final farewell to the museum when we heard music from a side room. Poking a head through the door (past the ubiquitous smiling, armed, uniformed, moustachioed guard) we saw a stage, with colorfully-dressed dancing people upon it. We slipped inside, and took up station towards the back of the room*.
Unlike the Dilli Haat dance, where the same four people performed a series of long pieces, this recital was more of a barrage of short dance numbers, each performed by a different group or soloist. And each dancer was extra-special, because this was an International Disability Day performance that culminated in a truly grand and epic final number in which all 20+ dancers took the stage more-or-less at once, and danced more-or-less in unison, or at least near each other. Many dancers appeared to have been paired so that a more-competent could lead a more-pliable through the steps. The overly-excitable guy who started doing star-jumps and hooting earned a talking-to from the conductor, which calmed him down enough that he was able to take his place alongside the twisted dwarf girl for what appeared to be a tug-of-war against a girl with Downs, using a tiny girl instead of a rope.
Post-applause, we slipped away, and took a tuk-tuk to the park, where we watched the sun set huge and orange in the haze-laden sky. We were passed on the way by a new Lamborghini Aventador**, which slowed down for a red light just long enough for us - and everyone else nearby - to ogle it before it roared off through the still-red light and away into the distance.
Hungry, we found ourselves amid a streetfood festival. Great combo!
Then we found a pedestrian underpass beneath the busy street, where unlicensed tattooists of dubious qwality were drawing on people. Being inky and pakeha, we were of as much interest to them as they were to us, so we chatted for a while before heading on, to the undies store where we found some undies, and then to the Imperial Hotel, where we gatecrashed an embassy shindig, blundered through the middle of the high-faluting 1911 restaurant, and settled gratefully onto comfy barstools and were served politely and efficiently by impeccably-groomed staff wearing Raj-era uniforms. We ate chips and peanuts from hefty crystal tumblers, and drank cocktails which cost more than our usual total daily food and beverage spend. Lucky we got into those peanuts!
* = Not that the Dilli Haat experience had taught us to position ourselves for a quick and unobtrusive exit in the event that it became necessary or anything
** = Want one? They cost Rs3.69 crore. That's 36.9 million rupees, or USD$750,000.
Saturday, February 11, 2012
Travel Tip #32
A travel tip you may find useful should you ever venture into Asia...
The retractable hose thing by the toilet is actually a toilet-brush replacement, not a handheld bidet. That's why the water is cold, and the water pressure very high.
The retractable hose thing by the toilet is actually a toilet-brush replacement, not a handheld bidet. That's why the water is cold, and the water pressure very high.
Leafy Secret Pr0n
Short Version:
We go to market and are impressed by some leaf-based pr0n and a dance.
Long Version:
We'd read somewhere that Dilli Haat was a must-see while in Delhi; a massive open-air market with a ever-changing population of stallholders from all over the (blimmin big) country purveying a variety qwality wares at very reasonable prices.
So we went.
Mildly confused en route to the Metro by... well, many things, actually, but most were just standard Delhiisms (roadside urinating next to food stalls; beggars and filth; walled compounds in which clean people lived, guarded by heavily-armed and -moustachioed men... that sort of thing). The non-standard confusion source was more-or-less musical: more when it sounded like devotional song; less when it sounded like angry grrrrl hardcore punk. Or possibly the other way around. Confused? Us also.
The confusion didn't wane when we reached Dilli Haat, either: the red carpet had been rolled out through the front gate, and a large group of men in old-style crimson-and-white quasi-military garb were parked outside playing music on an assortment of instruments including huge drums with black rubber skins that were being struck with what appeared to be fish-slices. Other, similarly-clad chaps danced energetically. People - some of whom were fat - watched.
We paid the nominal entry fee and snuck in to the market area through a gap between the entrance wall and a potted plant at the edge of the red carpet. Inside we found many, many stalls, most of which sold either pashminas*, fabrics, or carpets. Some sold furniture or artworks. None sold anything we wanted.
And it really wasn't a particularly large space.
We kept looking for the hard-to-find gateway to the other part of the market that we knew must be around somewhere, but to no avail. Even assuming that the area which had been filled with a stage and many rows of seats was usually filled with stalls, either our concept of how big acres actually are in the real world is way off or the thing we'd read about the scale of the market was inaccurate. Possibly both.
We blundered into the fringes of a slightly odd, televised, and massively-photographed opening ceremony replete with persons of obvious importance** ceremonially cutting a ceremonial ribbon, and then found some interesting stuff at a stall with a stallholder so friendly that not only did we learn a heck of a lot about palm-leaf etching processes, history, and market forces, but we also had to be photographed with the artist, and with his guru, and his brother. His art was pretty cool, especially the pictures with small shutters that opened to reveal not one but two hidden pictures, depending on which way you opened them. Generally the main picture was a Hindu religious scene, the upper hidden picture animalian, the lower a graphic representaton from the Kama Sutra. One of us spent quite a while peering intently at this divinely-sanctioned smut before realising what it was she was staring at and turning bright red, drawing gales of laughter from artist, guru, brother, and Puppet alike.
We bought a painted coconut inner and headed for the exit, via the foodstalls.
Delicious snacks procured, we were about to park ourselves on a low stone wall beneath a tree for massive consumption when we heard snatches of music, and saw action around the stage area. We meandered over, found seats in the small section that wasn't reserved for media, VIPs, or VVIPs, and watched the madness unfold:
Prologue:
Speeches over, dignitaries hustle away.
Musicians begin warming up in earnest, or hand-butchering small animals, not sure which.
Dancers start limbering up at the sides of the stage. There are three women - two dressed identically in blue and silver, the other in gold - and one man. He looks like Heath Mortlock circa 1991 en route to a costume party dressed as Louis XIV. In non-Mortlockian terms, that means that the chap had funny hair and a pleasant smile, and was dressed in a shining gold outfit that included tights.
Dance#1:
Music starts.
Dancers take the stage.
Man and gold woman strike a series of static poses, many of which include his flute. Did I mention that he has a flute?
Blue/silver women dance around them.
Man looks quite pleased with himself.
Music stops.
Dancers look slightly surprised.
Dancers leave the stage.
Dance#2:
Music starts.
Dancers take the stage.
All dancers have augmented their outfits with ENORMOUS peacock tail-feather fans.
All dancers are active; no more static poses from man and gold woman.
Man produces what appears to be a deep-dish pizza tray and spins it on one finger. For a long time.
Man looks quite pleased with himself.
Still spinning the pizza tray, the man puts his finger inside the tray near the edge. Yellow petals spray out. This is actually pretty cool.
Man looks quite pleased with himself.
Petals gone, man ditches pizza tray.
Feather-waggling dancing around occurs, from all four dancers. For a long time.
Rag-wearing and somewhat grubby chap with a rusty old bicycle ute appears, starts removing the potted plants from the front of the stage. He manages to swipe about half of them before someone in authority cottons on and makes him stop.
Feather-waggling dancing around continues.
Women leave stage.
Man drops to knees and spins around in circles. For a long time.
Man leaves stage.
We snuck away while the dancers weren't there to be offended.
The fruit stalls near our Metro station seemed to have multiplied throughout the evening, to the point where they were now choking the road, as was the long queue outside the liquor store, where the most common purchase clutched in the hands of those leaving the store appeared to be one single can of beer.
Back at the hotel, we washed our feet and ate delicious foods before falling asleep in our incredibly comfortable bed. All of those things were very much needed.
* = Scarves, basically, although many places also sold scarves, so there must be some difference, the subtleties of which are obviously beyond somePuppet
** = Sheila Dikshit, bane of Paul Henry. Keep your mind peeled, you'll meet her again soon.
We go to market and are impressed by some leaf-based pr0n and a dance.
Long Version:
We'd read somewhere that Dilli Haat was a must-see while in Delhi; a massive open-air market with a ever-changing population of stallholders from all over the (blimmin big) country purveying a variety qwality wares at very reasonable prices.
So we went.
Mildly confused en route to the Metro by... well, many things, actually, but most were just standard Delhiisms (roadside urinating next to food stalls; beggars and filth; walled compounds in which clean people lived, guarded by heavily-armed and -moustachioed men... that sort of thing). The non-standard confusion source was more-or-less musical: more when it sounded like devotional song; less when it sounded like angry grrrrl hardcore punk. Or possibly the other way around. Confused? Us also.
The confusion didn't wane when we reached Dilli Haat, either: the red carpet had been rolled out through the front gate, and a large group of men in old-style crimson-and-white quasi-military garb were parked outside playing music on an assortment of instruments including huge drums with black rubber skins that were being struck with what appeared to be fish-slices. Other, similarly-clad chaps danced energetically. People - some of whom were fat - watched.
We paid the nominal entry fee and snuck in to the market area through a gap between the entrance wall and a potted plant at the edge of the red carpet. Inside we found many, many stalls, most of which sold either pashminas*, fabrics, or carpets. Some sold furniture or artworks. None sold anything we wanted.
And it really wasn't a particularly large space.
We kept looking for the hard-to-find gateway to the other part of the market that we knew must be around somewhere, but to no avail. Even assuming that the area which had been filled with a stage and many rows of seats was usually filled with stalls, either our concept of how big acres actually are in the real world is way off or the thing we'd read about the scale of the market was inaccurate. Possibly both.
We blundered into the fringes of a slightly odd, televised, and massively-photographed opening ceremony replete with persons of obvious importance** ceremonially cutting a ceremonial ribbon, and then found some interesting stuff at a stall with a stallholder so friendly that not only did we learn a heck of a lot about palm-leaf etching processes, history, and market forces, but we also had to be photographed with the artist, and with his guru, and his brother. His art was pretty cool, especially the pictures with small shutters that opened to reveal not one but two hidden pictures, depending on which way you opened them. Generally the main picture was a Hindu religious scene, the upper hidden picture animalian, the lower a graphic representaton from the Kama Sutra. One of us spent quite a while peering intently at this divinely-sanctioned smut before realising what it was she was staring at and turning bright red, drawing gales of laughter from artist, guru, brother, and Puppet alike.
We bought a painted coconut inner and headed for the exit, via the foodstalls.
Delicious snacks procured, we were about to park ourselves on a low stone wall beneath a tree for massive consumption when we heard snatches of music, and saw action around the stage area. We meandered over, found seats in the small section that wasn't reserved for media, VIPs, or VVIPs, and watched the madness unfold:
Prologue:
Speeches over, dignitaries hustle away.
Musicians begin warming up in earnest, or hand-butchering small animals, not sure which.
Dancers start limbering up at the sides of the stage. There are three women - two dressed identically in blue and silver, the other in gold - and one man. He looks like Heath Mortlock circa 1991 en route to a costume party dressed as Louis XIV. In non-Mortlockian terms, that means that the chap had funny hair and a pleasant smile, and was dressed in a shining gold outfit that included tights.
Dance#1:
Music starts.
Dancers take the stage.
Man and gold woman strike a series of static poses, many of which include his flute. Did I mention that he has a flute?
Blue/silver women dance around them.
Man looks quite pleased with himself.
Music stops.
Dancers look slightly surprised.
Dancers leave the stage.
Dance#2:
Music starts.
Dancers take the stage.
All dancers have augmented their outfits with ENORMOUS peacock tail-feather fans.
All dancers are active; no more static poses from man and gold woman.
Man produces what appears to be a deep-dish pizza tray and spins it on one finger. For a long time.
Man looks quite pleased with himself.
Still spinning the pizza tray, the man puts his finger inside the tray near the edge. Yellow petals spray out. This is actually pretty cool.
Man looks quite pleased with himself.
Petals gone, man ditches pizza tray.
Feather-waggling dancing around occurs, from all four dancers. For a long time.
Rag-wearing and somewhat grubby chap with a rusty old bicycle ute appears, starts removing the potted plants from the front of the stage. He manages to swipe about half of them before someone in authority cottons on and makes him stop.
Feather-waggling dancing around continues.
Women leave stage.
Man drops to knees and spins around in circles. For a long time.
Man leaves stage.
We snuck away while the dancers weren't there to be offended.
The fruit stalls near our Metro station seemed to have multiplied throughout the evening, to the point where they were now choking the road, as was the long queue outside the liquor store, where the most common purchase clutched in the hands of those leaving the store appeared to be one single can of beer.
Back at the hotel, we washed our feet and ate delicious foods before falling asleep in our incredibly comfortable bed. All of those things were very much needed.
* = Scarves, basically, although many places also sold scarves, so there must be some difference, the subtleties of which are obviously beyond somePuppet
** = Sheila Dikshit, bane of Paul Henry. Keep your mind peeled, you'll meet her again soon.
Sunday, February 5, 2012
Asshat Bypass
Short Version:
One fat dwarf, two skinny moustaches
Long Version:
Sometimes, we're as bad as the next traveller; leaping from our seats to rescue our carry-ons from the overheads only to stand, bent uncomfortably, in the aisle while strangers without recourse to other behaviours frot and be frotted as the ire, along with the temperature in the no-longer aircon-enabled aircraft cabin, builds and builds until finally there's movement at the front of the damned machine where the wealth-gluttons have been basking, and then eventually you get to walk forward two paces before you're halted by the couple with three under three who had decided to be patient but have reached the end of their tethers pretty quickly and are failing to merge into the aisle with elegance or efficiency, but at least you no longer have what was hopefully the corner of a suitcase pressed firmly into the back of your thigh, and eventually you get to try for a smile and manage a grimace in response to the cheery farewell from the uniformed peon who's almost as keen to see the back of you as you are to be off this damned plane and into another queue at immigration control.
Arriving at Delhi for the second time, though, we stayed seated and carried on reading. For ages. And then the voice on the intercom announced that we were still waiting for the stairs to be brought to the plane, and we were smug, and turned another e-page.
Off plane, onto bus, into terminal building, past visa-on-arrival* counter and on to Immigration, where we tried not to stare at the moustachelets on the upper lips of the two friendly young chaps manning the desk as we chatted about cricket. All went swimmingly, apart from the whole "Oops, we've lost an entire container of luggage somewhere" thing, but they found it eventually and the spectre of having to share underwear abated, and we were picked up by a nice man from the fancy hotel we'd booked ourselves into and driven past all of the chaos and carnage of Delhi - including a fat dwarf - to the oasis of calm amidst the madness: Shanti Home Hotel.
When we researched places to stay in Delhi, we did note that pretty much every review of the place mentioned that it was "a little out of the way," or words to that effect. And they weren't kidding. But it wasn't THAT far to the Metro, and after a delicious butter chicken lunch at the hotel's well cool rooftop restaurant, we set off to walk to the station in the face of mild horror and bemusement on the part of the hotel staff. We learned pretty quickly that it was further than it looked on the map, and we learned which bits of which streets were smelliest, and where the footpath was missing sections, and where the people did wees (definite correlation with the stinkspots), and we only got lost once and didn't get freaked out much at all.
And then on the train, a miniature Sikh gave up his seat so we could sit.
* = Also known as The Asshattery Desk
One fat dwarf, two skinny moustaches
Long Version:
Sometimes, we're as bad as the next traveller; leaping from our seats to rescue our carry-ons from the overheads only to stand, bent uncomfortably, in the aisle while strangers without recourse to other behaviours frot and be frotted as the ire, along with the temperature in the no-longer aircon-enabled aircraft cabin, builds and builds until finally there's movement at the front of the damned machine where the wealth-gluttons have been basking, and then eventually you get to walk forward two paces before you're halted by the couple with three under three who had decided to be patient but have reached the end of their tethers pretty quickly and are failing to merge into the aisle with elegance or efficiency, but at least you no longer have what was hopefully the corner of a suitcase pressed firmly into the back of your thigh, and eventually you get to try for a smile and manage a grimace in response to the cheery farewell from the uniformed peon who's almost as keen to see the back of you as you are to be off this damned plane and into another queue at immigration control.
Arriving at Delhi for the second time, though, we stayed seated and carried on reading. For ages. And then the voice on the intercom announced that we were still waiting for the stairs to be brought to the plane, and we were smug, and turned another e-page.
Off plane, onto bus, into terminal building, past visa-on-arrival* counter and on to Immigration, where we tried not to stare at the moustachelets on the upper lips of the two friendly young chaps manning the desk as we chatted about cricket. All went swimmingly, apart from the whole "Oops, we've lost an entire container of luggage somewhere" thing, but they found it eventually and the spectre of having to share underwear abated, and we were picked up by a nice man from the fancy hotel we'd booked ourselves into and driven past all of the chaos and carnage of Delhi - including a fat dwarf - to the oasis of calm amidst the madness: Shanti Home Hotel.
When we researched places to stay in Delhi, we did note that pretty much every review of the place mentioned that it was "a little out of the way," or words to that effect. And they weren't kidding. But it wasn't THAT far to the Metro, and after a delicious butter chicken lunch at the hotel's well cool rooftop restaurant, we set off to walk to the station in the face of mild horror and bemusement on the part of the hotel staff. We learned pretty quickly that it was further than it looked on the map, and we learned which bits of which streets were smelliest, and where the footpath was missing sections, and where the people did wees (definite correlation with the stinkspots), and we only got lost once and didn't get freaked out much at all.
And then on the train, a miniature Sikh gave up his seat so we could sit.
* = Also known as The Asshattery Desk
Goodbye Kathmandu!
Short Version:
Goodbyes, monkeys, firepit peepings
Long Version:
We got to bid a second farewell to Ganga and Uzir, which was just as well, really, cos the wee gifts we had for them had been left in our locked-away bags in the hotel there for the duration of the trek. We all promised to write, which we haven't done, and then Uzir went to get supplies for his family for the winter, to be hauled three days' walk home on his back.
Ganga came with us to the Monkey Temple.
We took a tiny taxi down narrow, more-or-less cobbled streets, eventually piling out at the foot of one of the steepest sets of stairs we'd ever seen. Also, one of the longest. And the most heavily beggar-enabled. One rather young woman brandished an unimpressed infant aggressively. Others insisted that we needed one or more of their trinkets. We disagreed.
At the top, we saw many Buddhists, many of whom were little old ladies. Nepali ladies do little and old quite well. They seem compelled to add gnarled and twisted into the mix, though. There were many Buddhist holy things in many buildings, fantastic views out over smoggy Kathmandu, and monkeys galore;
- big monkeys
- small monkeys
- fighting monkeys
- monkeys eating offerings the wizened old ladies had made to the gods in exchange for more/less/different health/wealth/happiness for themselves/spouses/children/humanity. Many of them had raw-looking butts (the monkeys, that is, not the old ladies, almost all of whom were wearing butt-covering drapery).
We spent some time wandering around the temple complex, including a side-trip through the attached monastery and some minutes marvelling at the three enormous golden Buddha statues, and the hundreds of little old gnarled and bent ladies gathered at their feet for a multi-day prayer extravaganza, and then we made our way along the outer wall to the square where the taxis were congregated. Roughly duplicating our path was a young pregnant woman, clad in jeans and jandals* and a rastafarian hat. She had a perpetual sneer on her face, spat on the ground several times, and seemed to be a little bit angry; she was almost snarling as she spoke to her companion, an older woman. It was just like being in Whakatane.
And then back to Thamel in a tiny, slightly smelly van. Coffee and cake and goodbye Ganga and then we bought art and ate a celebratory Thai dinner on a rooftop patio in the light of a big, really smoky firepit and a lot of decorative light-strings until the power went out and we just had the firelight for watching the other diners and especially the group of dangerous-looking young men and their companionable companion; a young woman in a skimpy leopard-print outfit who looked like she'd just stepped out of a music video from some Nepalese Hall & Oates equivalent.
Sated and happy, we politely declined the services of the Transformers Armada-stickered taxi and walked home. Packed. Paid the bill. Slept poorly. Breakfasted in the lobby, taxied to the airport. Submitted to multiple security checks. Watched military squad doing physical training alongside the runway under a big, red, haze-obscured rising sun. Submitted to further security searches. Boarded plane. Managed to not actually soil selves when plane nearly ran out of runway. Ate tasty omelette while staring at phenomenal Himalaya views.
Omelette good. Views better.
* = Flip-flops, for Amerikaaners and CandidaAlbicansans and folks from the Disunited Queendom. Thongs for Orstralianuses. Slippers, apparently, in Hawaii, and Hawaii chappal (Hawaiian slippers) in India and Pakistan. Japonki in Poland, because they originated in Japan. Vietnamki in Russia and Ukraine, because... they originated in Japan? Clam-diggers in Texas, because everything's weirder in Texas.
Goodbyes, monkeys, firepit peepings
Long Version:
We got to bid a second farewell to Ganga and Uzir, which was just as well, really, cos the wee gifts we had for them had been left in our locked-away bags in the hotel there for the duration of the trek. We all promised to write, which we haven't done, and then Uzir went to get supplies for his family for the winter, to be hauled three days' walk home on his back.
Ganga came with us to the Monkey Temple.
We took a tiny taxi down narrow, more-or-less cobbled streets, eventually piling out at the foot of one of the steepest sets of stairs we'd ever seen. Also, one of the longest. And the most heavily beggar-enabled. One rather young woman brandished an unimpressed infant aggressively. Others insisted that we needed one or more of their trinkets. We disagreed.
At the top, we saw many Buddhists, many of whom were little old ladies. Nepali ladies do little and old quite well. They seem compelled to add gnarled and twisted into the mix, though. There were many Buddhist holy things in many buildings, fantastic views out over smoggy Kathmandu, and monkeys galore;
- big monkeys
- small monkeys
- fighting monkeys
- monkeys eating offerings the wizened old ladies had made to the gods in exchange for more/less/different health/wealth/happiness for themselves/spouses/children/humanity. Many of them had raw-looking butts (the monkeys, that is, not the old ladies, almost all of whom were wearing butt-covering drapery).
We spent some time wandering around the temple complex, including a side-trip through the attached monastery and some minutes marvelling at the three enormous golden Buddha statues, and the hundreds of little old gnarled and bent ladies gathered at their feet for a multi-day prayer extravaganza, and then we made our way along the outer wall to the square where the taxis were congregated. Roughly duplicating our path was a young pregnant woman, clad in jeans and jandals* and a rastafarian hat. She had a perpetual sneer on her face, spat on the ground several times, and seemed to be a little bit angry; she was almost snarling as she spoke to her companion, an older woman. It was just like being in Whakatane.
And then back to Thamel in a tiny, slightly smelly van. Coffee and cake and goodbye Ganga and then we bought art and ate a celebratory Thai dinner on a rooftop patio in the light of a big, really smoky firepit and a lot of decorative light-strings until the power went out and we just had the firelight for watching the other diners and especially the group of dangerous-looking young men and their companionable companion; a young woman in a skimpy leopard-print outfit who looked like she'd just stepped out of a music video from some Nepalese Hall & Oates equivalent.
Sated and happy, we politely declined the services of the Transformers Armada-stickered taxi and walked home. Packed. Paid the bill. Slept poorly. Breakfasted in the lobby, taxied to the airport. Submitted to multiple security checks. Watched military squad doing physical training alongside the runway under a big, red, haze-obscured rising sun. Submitted to further security searches. Boarded plane. Managed to not actually soil selves when plane nearly ran out of runway. Ate tasty omelette while staring at phenomenal Himalaya views.
Omelette good. Views better.
* = Flip-flops, for Amerikaaners and CandidaAlbicansans and folks from the Disunited Queendom. Thongs for Orstralianuses. Slippers, apparently, in Hawaii, and Hawaii chappal (Hawaiian slippers) in India and Pakistan. Japonki in Poland, because they originated in Japan. Vietnamki in Russia and Ukraine, because... they originated in Japan? Clam-diggers in Texas, because everything's weirder in Texas.
Wednesday, February 1, 2012
Visa-on-Arrival = Arse-Biscuitry
Short Version:
Visa shenanigans. High foods are odd.
Long Version:
Even the long version is a long story short:
NZers visiting India are eligible for (required to obtain) visa-on-arrival.
It's a pain in the arse
Everything has to be handwritten in quadruplicate by many men, it takes so long that your bags are likely to have been blown up as unattended potential bomb-type items by the time you get through, and it can only be used for one non-transit (ie leaving the airport) entry to India.
In any given year.
So visiting Delhi on the way out of Nepal was a great idea, right up to the point where we decided to skip the flooded Bangkok and go to Delhi on the way TO Nepal as well, unwittingly blowing our one chance at being allowed in to India.
Luckily, there's a potential solution: Obtain a Transit Visa from the Indian Embassy in Kathmandu.
Unluckily, they might decline our application. Or they might not. It will depend on... things.
And the only way to find out? Wait for several hours then give them some nonrefundable moneys then wait some more hours.
********
Hours waited, moneys paid, more hours waited... visas acquired.
********
Then we spent some more hours looking at art. Especially pictures of dancing skeletons, and a fat blue man with fire facial hair and varying numbers of arms and corpses and severed head adornments.
And then we walked up eight flights of stairs to a rooftop restaurant where everything was served scarily flattened, crumbed, deep-fried and garlic-flavored.
Everything.
Including the pineapple and apple fritters, and the banana.
Visa shenanigans. High foods are odd.
Long Version:
Even the long version is a long story short:
NZers visiting India are eligible for (required to obtain) visa-on-arrival.
It's a pain in the arse
Everything has to be handwritten in quadruplicate by many men, it takes so long that your bags are likely to have been blown up as unattended potential bomb-type items by the time you get through, and it can only be used for one non-transit (ie leaving the airport) entry to India.
In any given year.
So visiting Delhi on the way out of Nepal was a great idea, right up to the point where we decided to skip the flooded Bangkok and go to Delhi on the way TO Nepal as well, unwittingly blowing our one chance at being allowed in to India.
Luckily, there's a potential solution: Obtain a Transit Visa from the Indian Embassy in Kathmandu.
Unluckily, they might decline our application. Or they might not. It will depend on... things.
And the only way to find out? Wait for several hours then give them some nonrefundable moneys then wait some more hours.
********
Hours waited, moneys paid, more hours waited... visas acquired.
********
Then we spent some more hours looking at art. Especially pictures of dancing skeletons, and a fat blue man with fire facial hair and varying numbers of arms and corpses and severed head adornments.
And then we walked up eight flights of stairs to a rooftop restaurant where everything was served scarily flattened, crumbed, deep-fried and garlic-flavored.
Everything.
Including the pineapple and apple fritters, and the banana.
Alarming Developments
Short Version:
We explore Pokhara, which doesn't agree with one of us. Bus action!
Long Version:
Nene's alarm went off at 0600. Nene did not wake up.
Waking up in a psychedelic room was disorienting. The bright green, bright yellow, and bright orange walls were a bit much. And it was REALLY weird to not be getting out of bed into a cold morning, pooping into a hole in the ground, and then walking for several hours.
Instead, we ate delicious foods then went back to bed.
Later, we found espresso, and it was good.
Later still, we ate more pizza, window-shopped for art and random stuff, saw Honey Hunter bicycles, and ate more delicious foods in a place oddly dominated by Western women dining solo, or in large groups.
Then we went home, where Nene slept through about ten hours of Puppetvomiting. Then she was awake for a day of solo exploring while Puppetnapping occurred, interspersed with Puppetwatching of televised sports* and unintelligible local comedies.
Eventually, we left Pokhara, on a bus labelled Tourists Only! that was full of locals, including two young women who transferred on mid-intersection from a taxi labelled Anis & Menis, which was is just about the best taxi company name ever. We had the best seats in the bus; front pair on the passenger side. Excellent views out past the heavily-populated control cabin to the outside world. Unfortunately, the excellent seats we had weren't actually ours - we'd not realised that there were allocated seats, and had just sat in the ones we liked best. Luckily, the couple who were supposed to sit there waived their rights to the seats, and we stayed there for the rest of the day, which is how long it took us to reach Kathmandu, despite only stopping a couple of times; breakfast at 0930 at a place with the most foul-smelling urinals in the world; lunch at a riverside place with a curry-dominated self-serve buffet arrangement. Our bus ticket came with a lunch voucher. For a different establishment. They didn't seem to notice or care.
The bus-wranglers herded us all back on the bus, and we went up, and up, and up. Past the black polythene urinal we'd visited on the way out, then over the pass and down into the Kathmandu valley, where before long we hit the first of the slumburbs on the outskirts of the city, which became one lengthy passage through a grim landscape full of people and animals and stink. At least in the Kathmandu slums they had people picking through the trash in search of interesting stuff, which made for a lot less vile fume action than in the nastier outliers of Pokhara, where the piles of trash were on fire. Of course, Kathmandu stinks worse as it is.
And then, before we knew it, we were ejected from the bus into the seething city. All the conditioning we'd acquired in Delhi seemed to have evaporated during the weeks we'd spent in the wilderness, and being surrounded by hordes was a bit disconcerting, but a taxi to the International Guesthouse sorted that out, and then it was food and sleep o'clock, right up until 0430, when Nene's alarm went off.
Nene did not wake up.
* = Replays of old cricket matches between random countries, including a full ODI series between SAfrika and Orstralia. It's quite disconcerting falling asleep watching a cricket match, then waking up to find that, in what is apparently the same match, the score has changed in a way that is not possible
We explore Pokhara, which doesn't agree with one of us. Bus action!
Long Version:
Nene's alarm went off at 0600. Nene did not wake up.
Waking up in a psychedelic room was disorienting. The bright green, bright yellow, and bright orange walls were a bit much. And it was REALLY weird to not be getting out of bed into a cold morning, pooping into a hole in the ground, and then walking for several hours.
Instead, we ate delicious foods then went back to bed.
Later, we found espresso, and it was good.
Later still, we ate more pizza, window-shopped for art and random stuff, saw Honey Hunter bicycles, and ate more delicious foods in a place oddly dominated by Western women dining solo, or in large groups.
Then we went home, where Nene slept through about ten hours of Puppetvomiting. Then she was awake for a day of solo exploring while Puppetnapping occurred, interspersed with Puppetwatching of televised sports* and unintelligible local comedies.
Eventually, we left Pokhara, on a bus labelled Tourists Only! that was full of locals, including two young women who transferred on mid-intersection from a taxi labelled Anis & Menis, which was is just about the best taxi company name ever. We had the best seats in the bus; front pair on the passenger side. Excellent views out past the heavily-populated control cabin to the outside world. Unfortunately, the excellent seats we had weren't actually ours - we'd not realised that there were allocated seats, and had just sat in the ones we liked best. Luckily, the couple who were supposed to sit there waived their rights to the seats, and we stayed there for the rest of the day, which is how long it took us to reach Kathmandu, despite only stopping a couple of times; breakfast at 0930 at a place with the most foul-smelling urinals in the world; lunch at a riverside place with a curry-dominated self-serve buffet arrangement. Our bus ticket came with a lunch voucher. For a different establishment. They didn't seem to notice or care.
The bus-wranglers herded us all back on the bus, and we went up, and up, and up. Past the black polythene urinal we'd visited on the way out, then over the pass and down into the Kathmandu valley, where before long we hit the first of the slumburbs on the outskirts of the city, which became one lengthy passage through a grim landscape full of people and animals and stink. At least in the Kathmandu slums they had people picking through the trash in search of interesting stuff, which made for a lot less vile fume action than in the nastier outliers of Pokhara, where the piles of trash were on fire. Of course, Kathmandu stinks worse as it is.
And then, before we knew it, we were ejected from the bus into the seething city. All the conditioning we'd acquired in Delhi seemed to have evaporated during the weeks we'd spent in the wilderness, and being surrounded by hordes was a bit disconcerting, but a taxi to the International Guesthouse sorted that out, and then it was food and sleep o'clock, right up until 0430, when Nene's alarm went off.
Nene did not wake up.
* = Replays of old cricket matches between random countries, including a full ODI series between SAfrika and Orstralia. It's quite disconcerting falling asleep watching a cricket match, then waking up to find that, in what is apparently the same match, the score has changed in a way that is not possible
No More Walk!
Short Version:
We walk from Syauli Bazaar to Naya Pul. We stop walking.
Stats:
Total Walk Time Day 22 = 1:30
Cumulative Total Walk Time = 104:00
Beer Time = 7:00
Long Version:
Syauli Bazaar Morning:
It's the last day of trekking, and we sleep in, partly because we don't really want the trek to end, and partly because we're buggered from yesterday.
Fishtail looms, bathed in sun, above the dining room where we breakfast on a tasty omlet and some delicious banana pancakes.
One of the serving-wenches has a ridiculously squeaky voice.
Our "big cups" of coffee come in glass handles, more usually associated with beer-quaffage
The reception counter sits atop a glass-fronted cabiinet. There is a random assortment of junk in the cabinet:
- a plastic dog with a waggy tail. It is old and dirty*
- a blender jug with lid
- an assortment of juice cans, no two alike
- drinking straws
- candles
- envelopes
- a can of tuna
- more drinking straws
For 21 days Uzir uncomplainingly carried all our crap, and even though we paid him to do it, it seemed just a wee bit unfair.
The whole village turned out to watch and laugh as we set off, then, with two big duffel bags strappeed to the Puppetnoggin. There may have been some complaining. There was certainly only six minutes of Puppetcarry.
Nenecarry followed, and lasted eight minutes.
Then we were back to normal, with a newfound appreciation not only for Uzir's efforts carrying our 25kg load, but also for his 105kg record effort.
Sunny Saturday means many people about; working in the fields, walking the road, building haystacks. There were also some strange nutcases around; one guy threw rocks at us from atop a cliff, another wandered past carrying a sickle and with a "seeking-victims" look on his face.
We hit Biranthanti, and specialty shops started to appear (we'd had only limited-goods general stores up in the hills). By the time we reached the outskirts of Nayapul, there were stores selling beauty stuff, shampoo and other hair stuff, hardware, electronics**, and random junk. There were also geese with bandit masks made of rooster-comb***
And then there were buses, and taxis, and we waited a bit while Ganga did some negotiating, and then the four of us and all our stuff somehow managed to fit into a Suzuki Swift hatchback. The driver had spider-web graphics on his gloves, bells and medallions and other crap hanging from his rearview mirror, and pictures of Hindu gods all over the place. And he drove really blimmin fast on really shitty roads, somehow managing to not run over any of the people and cows and other vehicles executing random-seeming manoeuvres, including the motorcycle cop with the enormous gun.
We drove past a store signed "Grossery" and then we reached Pokhara, and our hotel, and our room, where each wall was a different colour and the bedspread had lime green and bright yellow flowers, and where there was a bath in the bathroom. And then we went out and ate pizza and drank beer and said our farewells to Ganga and Uzir at a lakefront restaurant with a balcony overlooking a park where an elaborate festival of some sort was underway, and we did some reminiscing about the trek, and then they set off for Kathmandu and we wiped a tiny tear from each of our eyes and then had a nap before heading out to wander the streets of Pokhara.
Pokhara's lakefront district is similar to Thamel in Kathmandu, only less intense. We wandered aimlessly, looking at stuff and warding off sales attempts. Eventually, hunger spoke loud, and we stopped to eat delicious foods, including fried cashew nuts, tandoori chicken, and a wonderfully-flavored malai kofta which had, instead of cylinders of potato drowned in the sauce, two large Madonna-tit-shaped piles poking out like model volcanic islands in a thick brown ocean of tastiness. It was good that the foods were delicious, because the service was terrible (although that may have had something to do with the 20+ Orstralian teens who ordered just before we did).
Oh, and they played Joan Armatrading on the stereo. The whole album.
When asked to play something good they turned it down a bit.
Waking in the middle of the night to the sound of someone climbing the stairs to the third floor of the hotel, going in to the room next to ours, urinating, then leaving again was kind of odd, as was the discovery that the ceiling of our room had glow-in-the-dark stars and moons and planets on it.
* = Nothing wrong with old and dirty
** = Basically just selling shitty old TVs
*** = I assume not actually made from rooster combs. That would mean the geese were mugging roosters for their hats, and then fashioning them into supervillain eyemasks. Which is possible but unlikely.
We walk from Syauli Bazaar to Naya Pul. We stop walking.
Stats:
Total Walk Time Day 22 = 1:30
Cumulative Total Walk Time = 104:00
Beer Time = 7:00
Long Version:
Syauli Bazaar Morning:
It's the last day of trekking, and we sleep in, partly because we don't really want the trek to end, and partly because we're buggered from yesterday.
Fishtail looms, bathed in sun, above the dining room where we breakfast on a tasty omlet and some delicious banana pancakes.
One of the serving-wenches has a ridiculously squeaky voice.
Our "big cups" of coffee come in glass handles, more usually associated with beer-quaffage
The reception counter sits atop a glass-fronted cabiinet. There is a random assortment of junk in the cabinet:
- a plastic dog with a waggy tail. It is old and dirty*
- a blender jug with lid
- an assortment of juice cans, no two alike
- drinking straws
- candles
- envelopes
- a can of tuna
- more drinking straws
For 21 days Uzir uncomplainingly carried all our crap, and even though we paid him to do it, it seemed just a wee bit unfair.
The whole village turned out to watch and laugh as we set off, then, with two big duffel bags strappeed to the Puppetnoggin. There may have been some complaining. There was certainly only six minutes of Puppetcarry.
Nenecarry followed, and lasted eight minutes.
Then we were back to normal, with a newfound appreciation not only for Uzir's efforts carrying our 25kg load, but also for his 105kg record effort.
Sunny Saturday means many people about; working in the fields, walking the road, building haystacks. There were also some strange nutcases around; one guy threw rocks at us from atop a cliff, another wandered past carrying a sickle and with a "seeking-victims" look on his face.
We hit Biranthanti, and specialty shops started to appear (we'd had only limited-goods general stores up in the hills). By the time we reached the outskirts of Nayapul, there were stores selling beauty stuff, shampoo and other hair stuff, hardware, electronics**, and random junk. There were also geese with bandit masks made of rooster-comb***
And then there were buses, and taxis, and we waited a bit while Ganga did some negotiating, and then the four of us and all our stuff somehow managed to fit into a Suzuki Swift hatchback. The driver had spider-web graphics on his gloves, bells and medallions and other crap hanging from his rearview mirror, and pictures of Hindu gods all over the place. And he drove really blimmin fast on really shitty roads, somehow managing to not run over any of the people and cows and other vehicles executing random-seeming manoeuvres, including the motorcycle cop with the enormous gun.
We drove past a store signed "Grossery" and then we reached Pokhara, and our hotel, and our room, where each wall was a different colour and the bedspread had lime green and bright yellow flowers, and where there was a bath in the bathroom. And then we went out and ate pizza and drank beer and said our farewells to Ganga and Uzir at a lakefront restaurant with a balcony overlooking a park where an elaborate festival of some sort was underway, and we did some reminiscing about the trek, and then they set off for Kathmandu and we wiped a tiny tear from each of our eyes and then had a nap before heading out to wander the streets of Pokhara.
Pokhara's lakefront district is similar to Thamel in Kathmandu, only less intense. We wandered aimlessly, looking at stuff and warding off sales attempts. Eventually, hunger spoke loud, and we stopped to eat delicious foods, including fried cashew nuts, tandoori chicken, and a wonderfully-flavored malai kofta which had, instead of cylinders of potato drowned in the sauce, two large Madonna-tit-shaped piles poking out like model volcanic islands in a thick brown ocean of tastiness. It was good that the foods were delicious, because the service was terrible (although that may have had something to do with the 20+ Orstralian teens who ordered just before we did).
Oh, and they played Joan Armatrading on the stereo. The whole album.
When asked to play something good they turned it down a bit.
Waking in the middle of the night to the sound of someone climbing the stairs to the third floor of the hotel, going in to the room next to ours, urinating, then leaving again was kind of odd, as was the discovery that the ceiling of our room had glow-in-the-dark stars and moons and planets on it.
* = Nothing wrong with old and dirty
** = Basically just selling shitty old TVs
*** = I assume not actually made from rooster combs. That would mean the geese were mugging roosters for their hats, and then fashioning them into supervillain eyemasks. Which is possible but unlikely.
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