Rajasthan, Rajasthan

After spending a lovely three days of food, culture, and fun with Tim and Odette in Delhi, we headed to Agra, home of the Taj Mahal. Our friend Bob also joined us and we all began our friendship with the Indian railway.

The train ride to Agra was interesting as two guys who were in the military and riding the train all the way down south (56 hours) shared our seats with us. There was also a guy from Kandahar, but communicating with him was difficult as the Indian guys had to translate and English was their third language, after Malayalan and Hindi. Agra was a pretty quick wake up call from the luxury of Tim and O's house in Delhi as the area we stayed in (just south of the Taj Mahal) was a bit outside of our comfort zone in terms of cleanliness and noise. The Taj itself was spectacular, as was the Agra Fort (both built by Shah Jahan, aka "Ruler of the World," at the height of the Moghul empire in the 1600's.) The whole city was delivered to us by our death defying auto rickshaw driver, LaLa, who only yields to cows, not bikes, not people, not cars, not camels, not even elephants.

Moving west into the fringes of the Thar desert, the capital of Rajasthan state, Jaipur (2.5 million people) was pretty big, overpopulated, and also a bit dirty. The main site to see there, Amber Fort, a 12th century monument, was pretty impressive though. The real highlight of our time in Jaipur was getting caught in an absolute downpour and taking refuge in a 4ft in diameter construction tube with about 30 other people, one of which was a University student who asked as about life in North American and shared a bit of the Indian perspective. Unfortunately, his take on American society and politics was not very positive, but hopefully we shed a bit of light on it. We also attempted to go to a Bollywood movie, "Sigh is King." The theatre was very glamorous, but the lack of subtitles made it hard to keep our attention for the whole two hours.

Next , we took the night train to Udiapur which almost felt like a different country because of its small size, laid back people, and general lack of pushy touts. We stayed in a beautiful old mansion with views of the lake where "Octopussy" was filmed. We had the opportunity to talk with more people, visit an active temple, and the town is a maze of winding backstreets that are interesting to explore. One of the highlights of our time in Udiapur was taking a cooking class with Vijay, a former Rajasthan swimming champ. He took us to his home about 5km outside of town where we had the pleasure of meeting his wife, 10 month old daughter, and nephew. We not only learned how to make 10 dishes, including the basics on spices and tea, but he also showed us his wedding album and explained a bit about the Hindi traditions and religion. We went home with full, maybe too full, bellies and a once in a lifetime experience.

Our next stop was Jodhpur for the weekend to meet up with Tim and Odette. We hired a private taxi to take us on the 6 hour journey and stopped at two incredible sites along the way. Kumbalgarh Fort was sent up on the hillside with a view over a rural valley. It is the starting point of the second largest wall in the world, after China, and is 36km long with 360 temples within its boundaries. Ranakpur is home of a magnificent Jain Temple built completely of marble with 144 intricately carved pillars and wall to ceiling carvings of religious figures and symbols. In some ways it was even more impressive than the Taj because the detail was amazing and so much to take in at once. Jodhpur was also a bit big, but the fort here as well as the history of the Maharaja is interesting. It was also great to spend some more time learning from Tim and O. Tonight we will take the 11:15pm train to our last stop in Rajasthan, Jaislamer, where we hope to take an overnight camel trek into the desert. All in all India is a whirlwind of culture shock so far that is both incredibly alive and fascinating as well as difficult at times. We will do our best to post some pics when we get back to Delhi on Thursday. Namaste.

Pictures Finally!

Here are our two Thailand albums. Unfortunately, we have not had the time to add captions, but you get the idea. 

Enjoy. 

Thai Pics #1

Thai Pics #2

Arrival In Delhi

We made it to Delhi and are happily enjoying life with our friends Tim and Odette. The end of our Thailand/Cambodia adventure was fantastic and it was hard to say good-bye to the land of many smiles, but we are excited to begin the next part of our adventure. 

 

Angkor Wat was incredible. We got a guide from 5am until 2pm, allowing us to see the sunrise and sweat our way through most of the major temple sites.  The fact that it is the largest religious building in the world was impressive and we were particularly taken with the "Tomb Raider" and the "Smiling Faces" Wats, but have to admit by 2pm we were over Watted and unbearably hot.  The trip back to Thailand was fairly painless except for the three hour taxi ride on a dirt road and some young backpackers arguing over who had the cheapest hotel room. I think a room for $1 in Laos won. 

Anyway, once we returned to Bangkok we stayed in new neighborhood, Sukhumvit, and explored the city be skytrain.  Surprisingly, Keith and I were both quite taken with the mall that had a fresh Thai food court and huge fish tanks for ambiance. We then took a night train to Chompon and a catamaran to Koh Tao (Turtle Island).  We fell in love with Koh Tao and spent 4 lovely days enjoying the beach and diving.   We stayed in a secluded bungalow with an awesome view of the bay and a private balcony, which proved to be a very romantic end to our time in Thailand.

 

Arriving in Delhi was an entirely new cultural shock, but we

 are living it up so far with great food and company.  Our plan is to head to Agra (Taj Mahal) and Rajastan first and then down south. We are truly working on uploading photos with Tim and O's help and hopefully we can deliver them to you in the next few hours. 

Cambodia

We have been having so much fun in Thailand that we have been doing a horrible job of updating the blog. That being said, I will do my best to recap the highlights of the last three weeks.

After riding rickety one speed chinese-made bicycles around the Sukothai ruins, we got back on the train for a 7 hour journey to Chiang Mai, the second largest city in Thailand. I was surprised to realize how commercialized the tourist industry in the city was, as seemingly every store front offered some sort of tour. We came prepared to do some sort of trek and eventually signed up for one. It turned out to be a bit of a disappointment as we were shuttled to a river valley that was teeming with elephant riders, brown water rafters, and several different groups of trekkers. After a pleasant 4 hour walk through the country side we arrived in "a hill tribe village", which was really 6 or 7 bamboo huts on stilts next to the river in which each group of 8 to 12 tourists slept, and adjacent to each was another small hut where a local family lived and cooked food for all the tourists. The "hill tribe village" was actually a tourist ghetto. The next day our guide and a few other locals built a bamboo raft for us to take down the river, back to our starting point. When Lauren and I, two Italians, and three Aussies got on with all of our luggage hanging from a bamboo triangle in the middle, the whole thing sank about two feet under water. Thus ensued a long process of then adding more bamboo and us getting back onto the raft only to watch it submerge again. We eventually headed down the swollen, rainy season sized river, with me on the back with a 10ft long piece of bamboo helping, along with two other guys, push us away from the rocks. It was really fun except for the knowledge that our expensive camera was about a foot from the water the whole time. When we reached the end of the rafting, we climbed onto some elephants and walked on a dirt road for about 30 minutes, and fed them bananas.

Back in Chiang Mai, we signed up for a thai cooking class that was fantastic. They took us to a local market to show us what everything was and then drove us out to the school/farm where we saw most of the ingredients of the dishes growing. We spent the day making 6 dishes each and stuffing ourselves full. To all of our Seattle friends, get ready for some thai food when we return. If you think it is good we may open the 9th Thai restaurant in Fremont.
We had a long travel day from Chiang Mai by airplane to Bangkok and immediately out to Trat, in the Southeast, by bus. Then we got a ferry out to Ko Chang to start some serious beaching. We met a Swedish couple (Fredrik and Anna) on the ferry ride and spent the next week with them. We stayed in a great place on the west side of Ko Chang that had beautiful, nice rooms, and a pool overlooking the ocean, plus free use of a motorbike. We spend most of our time on the island cruising around on the motorbike, exploring the beaches, hiking to waterfalls (the interior of the island steep with thick jungle), and visiting small fishing villages. We were planning on staying on Ko Chang, but the Swedes really wanted to find a boat to take us to one of the islands to the south (in the National Park). Fredick did the leg work of finding a fishing boat to Ko Mak and we made the 2.5 hour journey through an archipelago that reminded me a lot of the San Juans, except way hotter. Ko Mak was an island paradise except for one major thing, they only clean up the beaches during the high season, and we were definitely not in the high season. So unfortunately the beaches were littered with garbage, but on the up side the whole place was deserted and every resort that was open was offering discounts in excess of 50 percent. So we spent 3 days in a beautiful little bungalow on the beach (which thankfully, the resort cleaned up). Every night while we were on the island we experienced the most violent thunderstorms I have ever seen. It was as though we were in a hurricane, and then 10 minutes later it would be over. We wanted to stay on Ko mak forever, but our schedule and Cambodia were beckoning. We bid farewell to our new Swedish friends and boarded the speedboat back to the mainland.

On the bus ride to the Cambodian border I got to share the front seat with a buddhist monk who spent 2 hours practicing his English with me. It is somehow peaceful sharing a ride with a monk, even if you can't understand 90 percent of what he is saying.
At the border I threatened to call the immigration in Phenom Phen if the visa guys wouldn't give us visas for the official 20 dollars instead of there requested 1200 Baht (about 35 dollars). this was met with an appearance by the head agent and a lot of yelling. We eventually settled on 25 dollars under threats of them returning us to Thailand. After issuing the visas, the head man came outside and said he lived in Chicago for a time and said I should call him if I am ever there. Strange.

Then the taxi mafia engulfed us, explaining that there was no way to Phenom Phen (3 hours) without paying 100 dollars for a taxi. We noticed that two other foreigners had crossed the border and ended up sharing a cab with two guys from South Africa that live in Cambodia on a mining project. We had a great ride to the capital as the LPG system on the car froze up a couple times and heavy rains and a hell bent driver made death seem only entertainingly possible, not actually possible.

So we have been in Phenom Phen for a couple days, learning about Cambodia's tragic recent past by day, and drinking it off with the South Africans at night. We really like Phenom Phen, as large parts of it are beautiful, the people are super friendly, and it is all a manageable size with limited smog. Being shown around by a couple semi locals doesn't hurt either.
We leave for Siam Reap and the famous temples of Angkor Wat tomorrow, then back into Thailand for one last visit to the beach.

We have been trying to upload photos, but have been experiences technical difficulties, stay tuned though. Here are 5 pics we managed to get uploaded
http://picasaweb.google.co.uk/keith8denton/ThailandAndCambodia1?authkey=2URR0urIDys

Safe Arrival in Thailand

Well, we arrived safely in Thailand after a long, but surprisingly easy journey. In fact, I think we slept for almost 10 hours of our 13 hour flight to Taipei and the 4 hour flight to Bangkok was a breeze. So far we spent a day exploring Bangkok and visiting the famous Wat Phra Kaew that houses the Emerald Buddha and the Grand Palace. It was incredibly spiritual and a great introduction to Thai Wats (temples). The highlight of the day was taking a tuk tuk (motorized rickshaw) to the Wat. We negotiated a price of only 20 baht ( about 70 cents) if we stopped by a tourist agency and let them try to talk us into a package deal. We had to spend about 10 minutes chatting with a tour guide, but in the end we bought nothing and got a cheap fair to our destination. Our tuk tuk driver seemed a bit dismayed since he did not get a commission, but we kept our end of the bargain so we felt okay about it.

We are now in Pitsanulok (half way to Chiang Mai). We visited the Sukahothai Old City ruins yesterday. Sukahothai is the former capital of Siam and the 800 year-old ruins were amazing. We rented bikes for the day which was a great way to see the sites. This afternoon we are headed to Chiang Mai for 5 days or so and then on to the beach. We hope to post pictures after our trek in Chiang Mai.

Back in Seattle

So we have been in Canada for the last couple weeks and haven't been able to update our blog since they don't have computers up there yet, ha ha.




After hiking and fishing on Slough creek in the Northeast corner of Yellowstone national park with Seattle friends, Joe, Eric, and Kristin, we hightailed to Canada, crossing the border just west of Glacier National Park. Interestingly, the Canadian border guard didn't even ask to see our passports.




We then drove straight into Kootenay National Park, about 200 miles north of the border. We were a bit shocked by the exorbitant access fees to enter the parks and get backcountry permits, but in retrospect, it was worth it.




We pulled into a campground at about 7pm that had 300 sites but only about 4 campers. We soon found out that the campground was slated to be closed the next morning and there was no water or bathrooms. Seemed a small price to pay for having an entire section to ourselves, a much better situation than car camping in US parks. We awoke early the next morning to get to Banff and plan our stay in the surrounding parks of Kootenay, Banff, Jasper, and Yoho, which combine to make an incredibly huge wilderness area. We were happy to discover that backcountry permits for our chosen hikes, some of the most popular ones, were available.




We cruised out of town with clean laundry, permits for a five day and a three day hike, reservations for a B&B in Banff in between the two, and reservations for two nights in a cabin outside of Jasper after all the hiking, plus a night in Vancouver on the way back to Seattle. I have never done so much vacation planning in my life, but it definitely made everything more relaxing.




As we headed for a campground for the night to get our gear ready for our big hike the next day, storm clouds gathered and a few claps of thunder went over. I then won the award for best husband by negotiating the price of a 220 dollar cabin down to 100 bucks. (The parks campgrounds and lodges were surprisingly vacant everywhere we went). The place had a real fireplace and a claw foot tub, serious bonus points were earned for bug infested hikes to come.




After hitchhiking the car to the hikes endpoint we got on the trail (the Rock Wall Circuit in Kootenay) at about 1pm the next day and it was sleeting by about 1:20. It didn't last long and it was a beautiful 9 mile hike to the first nights campground through forest that reminded us of the Cascades back home in Seattle, virtually all the same plant species were there. I could go on for more than most people care to read about the rest of the hike, but suffice it to say, it was one of the best we have ever done. Over four passes, along a thirty mile, 2000 foot sheer rock wall, passed 1000 ft waterfalls, and underneath hanging glaciers, and around partially frozen lakes. It was also bug free until the last night which always keeps people happy. We even saw a little black bear.

After a tiring hike out through a huge burn from a 2005 forest fire, we hurried back to Banff and a waiting shower. We then went out for a dinner and movie date, very civilized. The next day we headed north up through Lake Louise, where I fished the Bow River to no avail in a 50 degree downpour (very Alaskaish, except less fish), and Lauren visited the famous lodge at the lake. From Lake Louise, we headed up the Icefields parkway, which soon made our hanging glacier from the Rock Wall hike look not so impressive. There are pretty much huge glaciers constantly in view in all directions, and then you come upon the Columbia Icefield which is a huge chunk of ice taking up the entire west site of the highway for a distance of ten miles or so.

The next day, while driving to the trail head of our next hike, which involved a 16 mile day, we decided that we had spent a lot of time in the woods and traded in one day of our hike for another day in the cabin outside of Jasper. The hike was beautiful, but not as impressive as the Rock Wall circuit. We hiked 8 miles in over a pass and spent the night and then retraced our steps the next day. Unfortunately, the cabin we hoped to spend an extra night in was not available, so we drove out of Jasper National Park and into Robson Provincial Park and found a campsite. It seems as though once you get out of the National Parks, most campgrounds in Canada are sandwiched between a highway and train tracks. It wasn't very peaceful.

The next day we went into Valemount and met Claude and Alke, the owners of the cabin. They had about 40 acres of land right outside of Valemount (an old mill town, new (sort of) tourist town), they have horses, a llama, ducks, chickens, and two very friendly dogs wandering their property. Our cabin was tucked away in a corner with views of the surrounding mountains. We spent two wonderfully lazy days barely leaving the property spending lots of quality time with the dogs. All too soon it was time to head back south, towards Vancouver and Seattle. The day we left we drove down through Kamloops and decided to take the scenic route down the Thompson river and through the Fraser canyon. That night we ended up at perhaps the worst campsite ever, as the highway 100 feet away had heavy truck traffic all night and just on the other side of that was an equally busy railroad track. We got up at 6AM and headed for Vancouver.

We had never really explored Vancouver and thoroughly enjoyed it, similar to Seattle but a bit different. The highlight was walking around checking out the dozens of cheap sushi places and picking one for dinner.

Then after a quick stop at duty free to pick up some scotch we were back in Seattle. And here we are until our flight to Bangkok leaves at 2:30 this morning.

We sent an album from snapfish with the full Canada pics this afternoon (from felizrica@aol.com)and you can also try this link: http://www2.snapfish.com/thumbnailshare/AlbumID=232645097/a=39097533_39097533/t_=39097533 We hope everyone is enjoying their summer, talk to you next from Thailand.

Ketchum, ID and Wind Rivers, WY Part 1

Left Seattle at around noon on July 1 and within 20 miles the check engine light came on. Auspicious beginnings....Thanks to Jenny K. and Bob V. we were able to check out the problem and find out it was no big deal. We ended up arriving at Silver Creek, south of Ketchum, ID at around midnight with enough time to set up the tent and get in bed by 12:30pm. We spent the next two days fishing in Sliver Creek and checking out Keith's old stomping ground. Thanks to Marlen and Dayna for a great dinner and shower at their place.

We arrived in Pinedale, WY on July 3rd expecting to head out on a six day backpack trip. After a number of bad reports about snow and bugs we still headed to the trailhead only to meet a couple in the parking lot who had planned a three day trip and were turned around by the swarms of bugs. They were the last straw in a series of bad omens so we decided to spend the 4th at the fabulous Lakeside Lodge and make a new a plan instead. Pinedale's fireworks weren't quite as high tech as Seattle's but watching them from our camping chairs in field of sage brush after a late night canoe trip was perfect. See pics of our awesome honeymoon cabin below.

After regrouping we decided to test the waters with an overnight in the Elkhart park region of the Wind River Range. It was incredible. There was very little snow and the bugs were hungry but bearable. See the video below of a view nearby our campsite. We are now back at the Lakeside Lodge and planning to brave the bugs for another two night trip in the Winds. Then we will be one our way to Jackson Hole. More to come and thanks for your comments. Keep them coming.