The Taj! And Diwali!

November 12, 2015
Currently: Pondering my next big life goal... Pyramid of Giza? Burma? Petra? Namibia? The world is too big.

Writing this is a little surreal. Have you ever said you were going to do something, but that something always seemed out of reach or improbable in any sort of near future? Well the Taj was always that for me. A distant dream that I knew someday, somehow I would go see. But I did it. I've done it. It happened. To know that I've completed that life goal, I feel empty not having that almost-but-not-quite unachievable goal lingering in the back of my mind. The planning for this trip began twelve years ago and its culmination was always the Taj Mahal.

We had a jam-packed day in Agra, and it started with a sunrise over the Taj. Waiting in line at the gate was almost torturous! I distracted myself by guessing exactly how many minutes it would be until I realized my childhood dream. "Twelve minutes... no fifteen. Okay, definitely not more than twenty. Twenty minutes until I see the Taj!!!!!" I felt giddy walking through the main gate to the iconic view. When I finally saw it, it took my breath away. The haziness of the early morning couldn't diminish the dominating presence of the architecture. 

The Taj is another one of those tragic love stories. The Mughal king, Shah Jahan, ordered the construction of the Taj Mahal (translation: Crown Palace) as a mausoleum for his favorite wife. I was lucky enough to capture the sun rising out of the haze for some stunning photos. This place is so incredibly photogenic - no bad angles to speak of!

can't believe my camera took this photo!

the dedication of that stone inlay and carving design boggles my mind

classic reflection shot. and it's all mine!

After the Taj, we went to our guide's home where his family had prepared a classic Indian breakfast. In true Indian fashion, it was delish! I don't know if I can go back to a simple bowl of oatmeal in the morning. The curry was too spicy for me, so I improvised and made curry infused yogurt, which was quickly scooped up with puri. Weirdly enough, white bread with butter (it was seriously good butter) was the most popular part of the breakfast. Typical...

Afterwards, we continued onwards to a marble factory so we could learn why Indian marble is so precious. The marble is unique in that it is both nonporous and translucent. The translucent bit is really cool because if you shine a light on the stone inlays, they glow brilliantly. The process of inlaying stone and cutting and shaping the marble is almost unbelievable. They hand grind each near-microscopic petal for each flower. It takes at the very least months (if not years or decades) to put together any marble artwork. It definitely made me appreciate the work put into the Taj!

 that dot on his finger is a petal he's shaping

The second big tourist trap in Agra is the Agra Fort. This fort was built by Shah Jahan's (think Taj Mahal) grandfather, Akbar. Akbar is a really, really big deal. Like three wives and 5,000 porcupines...I mean concubines... big deal. He built five different palaces around India and this was one of them. The building is beautiful and holds so much history. Shah actually was placed under house arrest in this fort by his son for the last eight years of his life. An area within the palace is known as his golden prison.

a room in Shah's golden prison

We ended our day with a celebration of Diwali! Diwali or the Festival of Lights is the biggest celebration in India. Families give gifts, buy new clothes, decorate their homes with lights and candles, eat too many sweets, and set off fireworks in the night. It celebrates light over darkness, hope over despair, good over evil. And somehow, to top off this already perfect day, we managed to get our foreign selves invited into the home of a jeweler we had visited earlier in the day. His family gave us drinks, sweets, tons of sparklers, and an amazing hour of loud merriment. I found out that I kind of like causing ruckus in the streets. It was so special to have total strangers share their holiday with me. That Indian hospitality is back again!

sparkler frenzy!

no holding back with fireworks

November 11, 2015 is the day I officially fell for India. It began by fulfilling a lifelong dream and ended with a remarkable celebration of happiness, life, and generosity. India, you've given me the perfect day and I will forever remember it as one of the best days of my life! Thank you, thank you, thank you!

Lots of love,

Lena

Khajuraho (& Orchha): Oh... thoooose temples

November 10, 2015
Currently: Antsy, as I'm in THE city home to the Taj Mahal. Dream realized! Oh yeah, and it's Diwali. So add a lot of sugary treats and fireworks to that antsiness.

Let's add a little spice to this blog, shall we? I need to forewarn everyone and say these images are definitely not suitable for all ages and leave it at that. I highly recommend really investing some time into studying the pictures I post today. Some will be subtle. Others will not.

Khajuraho is the ancient capital of the Chandela dynasty, who liked to spend their time constructing beautifully articulate Hindu and Jain temples. Because of these temples' remote location, they were lost to the world until some Brit discovered them in the early 1800s. The temples are considered one of the seven wonders of India and are even more impressive on arrival. Case and point:

But what's really unique about these temples is their honest depiction of life in the 10th century through the sculptures. Our tour guide was the humble translator of these temples. He turned facial expressions, symbols, body language, dress, really anything you can think of into a story of everyday life. What I found interesting is that historians judge the freedom and quality of life within certain time periods by focusing on how women are portrayed. Hindu women have had varying levels of freedom throughout Indian history, oftentimes dependent on the influence of Islam in the region. Clues about education, literacy, and status are hidden in these sculptures. For this era, they tell a story of a modern woman; one that wears trousers, smiles, dances, even writes love letters. Chandelas knew how to treat their women!

Okay, enough boring history stuff already. I know why you're really reading this post. The real treat of these temples is the highly imaginative erotic carvings. No way to avoid them really. Those Chandelas did have a sense of humor about it too. Let me give you an example, so you know what I mean. Imagine two rows of four beautifully carved elephants facing each other. A closer look confirms that one elephant is looking off to the side with an amused expression on his face, clearly distracted. What, pray tell, caught his attention? You tell me.

Naughty elephant. Well here's a few more pictures of the temple, because I did end up becoming entranced by the temples' beauty, took way too many pictures, and I'm feeling indecisive. No need to read into the number of pictures I took...

just a little beastiality thrown in for good measure

Our crew then made the decision to head out of Khajuraho a day early to explore the amazing palaces of Orchha. This place is a little palace happy. We ended up exploring just the main Orchha fort complex, specifically the Jahangir Mahal and the Raja Mahal. The Jahangir Mahal is considered one of the finest examples of Mughal architecture. And, I got it at sunset!

Raja Mahal

Another palace outside the complex

 Jahangir Mahal

Just wanted to add a comment on a little something I experienced in both Khajuraho and Orchha called Indian hospitality. I met two Indians: Arman, a twenty-two year old math student, currently studying in Dehli but back in Khajuraho to celebrate Diwali with his family; and an nameless stranger, twenty-eight, who owns a little shop of trinkets and bought me a cup of chai tea in exchange for some conversation in the back of his friend's sweet stall. The conversation topics ranged from personal life stories to politics to favorite festival traditions. I know I've said this before, but I wanted to emphasize that these are the moments that are unforeseen joys of traveling. A small cup of chai and curiosity are all you really need for a meaningful and rich conversation.

I also got to dip my toes into a true overlanding experience by signing up to be a part of the cook group. Normally when you overland, you camp. A lot. India is a bit different for Dragoman since we stay in hotels the entire time with some camping interruptions. However, for our night in Orchha, we all cozied up together in a hotel's backyard and decided to make use of Daisy's cooking facilities to make dinner for ourselves. Rachel, Kerry, Elaine, and I all volunteered to get the ingredients. With the help of some young locals, we went around Khajuraho to grab fresh ingredients or a dinner and breakfast for eleven people. It was so much fun running around town and pulling everything together!

After our day in Orchha, the cook group got together to clean, chop, boil, and season our ingredients into a delicious meal of veggie pasta. The ensuing conversation sitting around enjoying our meal was by far the best part of the evening though. A few drinks encouraged the rowdy conversations and bouts of laughter that surely kept our neighbors up all night. We learned a lot about each other. Like for example, you should never let Rachel read your texts out loud. Just ask Emma. The morning meal consisted of Kerry's delicious eggy toast, bread and jam, pineapple, and watermelon. Overlanding is an experience and I'm glad we had that opportunity to experience it more authentically. I've already decided I need to give overlanding another try to get the full experience. Now...where to go...

Lots of love,

Lena

Varanasi: A City for Mystery and Madness

November 8, 2015
Currently: Tumbling along a twelve-hour truck journey to our next destination of Khajuraho

After Kathmandu, we took the newbies to Chitwan where I participated in a grand total of zero activities. As my almost halfway point throughout my trip, I took a little me-time to enjoy the Rhino Lodge, do some laundry, read lazily on the porch, and amble through the village. It was a great break from the constant movement that you sign up for when doing these overland trips, so I was grateful to have that time.

Onwards to India, our next destination was Varanasi, which is the holiest of the seven sacred cities for Hindus. To give you some idea, you could equate it to Mecca for Islam. Set on the banks of the Ganges river, Hindus pilgrim here to wash away their sins in the holy river water and cremate their loved ones. This river, however, is infamous for more than one reason. Its waters are so polluted that the fecal bacterial count is 100 million per 100 ml. Holy shit indeed! Despite the obvious state of this water, thousands of Hindus purify themselves every morning through a ritual bath. Because of the Ganges' reverence, it is unsurprising that the elderly and sick come to this city to die, because this city is the closest earthly path to salvation. Along the river, there are over 80 ghats, where bodies are cremated and ashes thrown into the river.

daily bathing/praying ritual

Our morning exuded this quiet sense of foreboding and gloom. We woke up for sunrise prayers on the river and to experience the ghats on a morning boat ride. Streets were oddly empty as we snuck through alleyways, making sure to avoid the dozens of sleeping cows. The eeriness of the morning only amplified at the riverside. We witnessed the soundless daily proceedings of the locals. With the creaking of the oars and the distant splashing and praying along the shorelines as our only music, we glided through the murky waters, passing ghat after ghat. The pollution haze dimmed the usual vibrancy of the morning sun, so the ghats slowly came into clarity with the passing minutes. The eeriness of fires and the rituals of a funeral were a perfect match for the mood. The spell of the morning finally broke with the sun overtaking the haze, spilling streams of orange across the Ganges. It livened up the sky and gave promise for another hot day in India. The tuk tuk (also known as the posh bike) ride was a reckless, stomach-lurchingly, good-natured race home.

the morning mood

a more famous ceremonial ghat

sunshine breaking through

One hot breakfast later, we took off in our respective tuk tuks to the Mother India Temple, which has a fascinating relief map of India inside.

A quick race took us to our next destination of a silk factory. We saw the life of the factory in its hand woven silks and its machine-made silk blends. The sad reality for these weavers is a mere 100-250 Rupees per day for their tedious work. The government has had to step in several times to preserve this art form from extinction. The best/worst part of the tour was the hour long sales pitch about the high quality of this silk compared to all other silk in India. It was a strange marketing pitch, since it used guilt in such a weird way. I tried to calculate out exactly what percentage of the sales the workers took home, considering how many artists were needed for the piece, how long it took for the artist to complete it, and the price of the artwork. However, I was excited after the pitch when I got to try on my very first sari. I crossed that off my India bucket list!

 the never ending sales pitch

sari style!

The rest of the afternoon was free time that Mike, Kerry, and I took full advantage of. We managed to find ourselves in the middle of the madness of a bustling local market alleyway. 

a glimpse into the chaos

After over half an hour, we finally worked our way to the Kashi Vishwanath Temple (or the Golden Temple). This temple, dedicated to Lord Shiva, is also necessary for Hindus to visit to achieve moshka or liberation. A widespread belief supposes Shiva himself blows the mantra of salvation into the ears of the people who die of natural causes at the temple. We then ended our evening with a walk along the ghats, since it really is the main attraction of the city. Once again the little snippets of conversation and ensuing laughs were the real treat of the evening. That and the contrasting peacefulness of the riverside from the earlier chaos.

Varanasi was not what I expected. And probably because of that, it was a definite highlight of my time here in India so far. I experienced the classic madness of Indian city life tempered with sacred Hinduism rituals shrouded in mystery. I can't wait for the continued surprises that lie ahead.

Lots of love,

Lena

That Nepal I Love

November 4, 2015
Currently: Missing the original Drago crew

Nepal, you are so bittersweet. I've officially finished my first of three legs (Kolkata - Kathmandu) in my epic adventure across India. I'm sad to see the original group leave. Right when you've gotten used to everyone's quirks, the trip ends. We had a brilliant time together and I'm going to miss the people, the stories, and the personalities. It's just a blip of time that you're together but you get to experience so much in that time that it always seems to be over too soon! I will say we got lucky and looking back, I know we'll all be nostalgic for Wolfie's grumblings and stories about 1967 in no time at all. Before they left we had some final days in Nepal to top off an already incredible trip!

First stop: Chitwan National Park. Or really, the town of Sauraha. 

found this cool map at our hotel

We're staying at the infamous Rhino Lodge, which has a informal resident named Roger that comes by to visit every once in a while. This place has some prime grass real estate going on. Roger doesn't seem to fussed about all the attention he gets. He just meanders down the street and chews his grass like the good rhino he is.

This place is pretty dang awesome. We get to see a bit of the rural life down here. The kids are crazy friendly and know approximately one English word: chocolate. Smart kids. We took a nice slooooooooow ox and cart ride around town and stopped at a local home. The mother was less than amused by our presence and it was kind of awkward standing around and taking pictures of someone else's home. There's always that fine line between learning about a different way of life and gawking at someone's home like it's on display at a museum. The kids were quite engaging though.

 the home we visited

 cutest baby water buffalo ever!

We polished off the day with a nice cultural show put on by the local Taru community complete with a dancing peacock. Definite highlight of the night for us. If you make it to Sauraha, I also highly recommend participation in the last dance of the show. Getting down with the locals is a surefire way to have some fun!

Cue a massive thunderstorm. Perfect to build that jungle-esque atmosphere... except that we planned a lovely canoe ride and nature walk through the jungle. With that rain, all the leeches came out to play. Now affectionately referred to as the leech walk, we saw few animals because of the overcast weather. We did have a fun experience of running into a rhino that almost charged us (three seconds I was almost positive I was going to die), inspected tiger poop (not what you'd think... I'll leave it at that), and crouched down to track down some deer (sneaky little buggers).

The afternoon was spent watching elephants wash themselves in the river and jeeping it on a short safari to see some more wildlife and the infamous 20,000 lakes. Which is really just one big lake. No tiger sightings but we did see eagles, storks, boars, Roger chewing away, tons of deer, and some monkeys.

elephant watching. more than a little depressing to see how little respect they have for these wondrous creatures

20,000 lakes minus 19,999 lakes

Roggie boy!

As an extra bonus, we also got to spend a night at the Royal Beach Camp set in the mountainside. This place was a slice of paradise and I took our day in the sunshine and proceeded to take an afternoon off to recoup and beach/pool it up. It was a much needed spa day for all of us!

Finally back to Kathmandu for the end of the first leg. We took a lesson from our first afternoon in Kathmandu and set off to explore the city, no plan or guide in hand. We ended up seeing a random sign for the Swayambunath (or the Monkey Temple for those unedumacated foreigners) so we took that as a sign (puns!) and headed off in that direction. At every junction, we would trade off asking a local for directions to make sure we were headed in the right direction. We couldn't get over just how friendly and helpful the Nepalese were. It was refreshing to say the least! After climbing what felt like dozens of stairs (and taking plenty of breaks to take pictures of the dozens of monkeys hanging around), we were rewarded with stunning views of Kathmandu valley and this amazing architecturally stunning temple. 

Kathmandu Valley

 this little guy wanted a baksheesh for taking his photo - immediately after this photo he ran right at me and grabbed my leg while I squealed - classic entertainment by the dumb blonde tourist for the locals

the Monkey Temple

It was quite the scene up there - music, people streaming everywhere, wafts of incense picked up by the breeze, rhythmic chanting in a back corner. We meandered back down careful not to miss the promising momo stand we found earlier. The momos lived up to their previous hype and we ended our tour with a farewell dinner at a classic Kathmandu steakhouse. I think some of the men had been missing that option, ever since arriving in India.

With that, it was farewells as the group trickled off to either home or further adventures. I just wanted to say thanks for an incredible time to all the wonderful people I've met along this first bit! This one's dedicated to you crazy fools.

I hope to run into these wonderful souls again someday. As we always said, the world is smaller than we think :)

Lots of love,

Lena

Just an Afternoon in Kathmandu

November 3, 2015
Currently: Devouring the final pages in The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga and enjoying a peaceful relaxing last day in Nepal.

Nepal has been so good to me. We flew into Kathmandu before heading down to Chitwan, and we made full use of our short afternoon there! A little group of us headed into Thamel, the main tourist district buzzing with dozens of artisan and trekking shops. With no real agenda, we meandered down back streets with the basic plan of getting lost on the way to Durbar Square. Peppered throughout the city, we saw little reminders of the earthquake in the cracked walls of buildings, makeshift tent communities, and swept together piles of rubble.

I'm glad I came into Kathmandu with few preconceived notions of how devastated the city would look. Other people on the tour were surprised at how normal the city looked. They were expecting much more wreckage affecting daily life in the city - few standing buildings, ruined roads, useless power lines, dust, grime... The list goes on. Despite the little reminders here and there, Kathmandu seems to have rebounded despite the media's claims of widespread devastation throughout the city. A majority of Thamel remains relatively untouched and the most extensive damage can be seen in the older buildings, the touristy historical ones.

When we hit Durbar Square, we were promptly approached by a naggingly persistent tour guide that informed us of the 1000 Rs (1 USD = ~104 Rs) entrance fee to walk around Durbar Square. Watching teems of locals streaming through the square, I was dubious of this as I'd never heard of this so-called entrance fee. Through a quick conversation with a guard, I was informed that all tourists were to pay a fee to help raise funds to restore the square to its former historically accurate glory. Pocketing those ten dollars, Mike became our unofficial tour guide and led us around some back alleys to work our way around the square to see it from different angles. The best decision all night, since we ended up stumbling upon the most incredibly delicious momos in Kathmandu!

street food at its finest

Mike had been in the city twice before and knew the little nooks and crannies. On a spontaneous side mission, we even managed to find a store owner that had sold Mike a picture of Dalai Lama way back in 2007. We ended up being shuffled upstairs into a small storage room with no lighting (the usual timed power outage) filled with stock piles of touristy merchandise. Unfortunately for Mike, the owner only had the original penciled drawing of the Dalai Lama and the artist wasn't willing to sell. Either way, we couldn't leave without a picture. Those Nepalese men and their love of Kerry's blonde hair and blue eyes!

The rest of the night was spent on more spontaneous decisions that some of us (...Kerry...) have a permanent reminder of! This is traveling. This is life. These stories and these afternoons are the ones you remember. They can't be planned or coordinated or even captured. They live in our memories and the few photos that serve as snapshots of the day.

More on the rest of my time in Nepal soon!

Lots of love,

Lena