Manali

There are so many places we want to see in India, it would take years, but since we are only here for a month, we decided see the North and not spend our whole holiday frying to death. Summer in India is rough and is best spent in the cooler mountainous regions of the country. We bought some bus tickets out of the heat to Manali in Himachal Pradesh, our first venture into the Himalayas.

Our Bus

The bus ride from Delhi to Manali is a 14 hour over-nighter, so we splurged and spent an extra $8 for a fancy air conditioned bus. But even a fancy bus is no match for India's roads. Often times only half paved and one lane, going was slow, rough and loud. Sudden accelerations and dramatic stops meant that it was a constant challenge to stay in the seat, which was unnecessarily slidey. Instead of equipping the hundreds and hundreds of trucks on the roads with mirrors, the trucks are painted with warnings to other drivers to "blow horns" every time they pass, which makes perfect sense. I felt so safe every time our bus passed a truck, horn blaring, mirrors are so unnecessary. Manali is also about 6000 feet above sea level, so we spent much of the journey climbing steep windy roads. My stomach of steel was able to handle it, but other passengers were not so lucky. The sounds of retching passengers, interspersed with honking horns, made for a relaxing pleasant journey.

View from our Hotel

We arrived in Manali early in the morning exhausted and found a guesthouse with little hassle. When we awoke from our six hour nap, we were able to actually appreciate where we were. Manali is a tourist town, situated in a lovely Himalayan valley, which attracts a large amount of domestic tourists, excited to see some snow. The town itself is actually terrible, but lucky for the Western tourist, a small village, "old manali" about 3 ks from the main town has sprung up to cater to the backpacker headed deeper into the mountains. This was were we chose to stay, and it is quite lovely. Our guesthouse has a delightful restaurant in a garden that makes Delhi seem so far away. We've had some delicious food and relaxed quite a bit with some local apple wine and naps. Old Manali attracts a lot of hippies, we've seen more dreadlocks here than at the Mussle Inn in New Zealand, and a lot of Israelis, the pita I had this morning was better than anything I've had in the States. Today we wandered up from Old Manali into a Tibetan Village with fantastic views and many stray dogs and cows.

Village near Old Manali

New Delhi

Everything we had read in our guidebook about India, and especially Delhi, put us on our guard. We steeled ourselves for our arrival at the airport, expecting to be overwhelmed by con artists and aggressive taxi drivers. However, the hotel we had booked offered free airport pickup, and we actually had our easiest arrival in a new country yet.

This first car trip in the country brought our memories back to the lawless roads of China: lanes treated as suggestions, cars driving straight down a lane marker between two other cars, and everyone honking and passing each other with wild abandon. My first impression was that Delhi was a very dusty place. We passed run down buildings and hotels on the outskirts that looked like they would crumble at the first touch, and it had the feel of a place that had just been through an apocalypse.

As we entered the neighborhood of our hotel, the driving really got intense. Cars, auto rickshaws, motorbikes, and throngs of people all jostled for space in very small lanes; India shot to the top of my mental list of Countries I Never Want to Drive In.

Our hotel room was one of the better ones we had stayed in on our trip, with the bonus of a TV with two dozen Indian channels. We watched the wild dances and cliched villains of Bollywood, live footage of bearded Sikh holy men chanting in unison, melodramatic pop music videos, and of course, the World Cup. In one reality show competition that veered unpredictably from Hindi to English and back, two men were strapped onto large spinning wheels and given large milkshakes to drink. At the signal, the female contestants on both sides spun their man-wheel as fast as they could, until there was a winner (or loser; it was hard to tell): the first vomit, replayed several times in slow motion.

We took advantage of the first affordable room service we had ever seen to order dinner to our room. One of the staff members, mistakenly thinking we were still waiting to order, burst violently into our room unannounced, Kramer-style. It seems you should keep your doors locked in an Indian hotel. The dinner was excellent, and we went to bed pleased with ourselves for having a pretty successful entry into India.




Our success was very short lived. By the end of the next day, tempers were short, tears were shed, and at least one of us wanted to just get on a plane and go home.

When we actually went out into the Karol Bagh neighborhood on foot in the morning, it was an assault on our senses. The temperature was 110 degrees Fahrenheit, everything was covered in dust and dirt, the crowds were intense, we were overwhelmed by strange and powerful smells, and we had to share the small alleys with every manner of motorized vehicle. But we could have handled all of that; we were expecting it, and probably would have seen it as part of the adventure.

But what we couldn't get a handle on was the unwelcome attention. There was an unending stream of aggressive young men on foot or in auto rickshaws wanting our attention and money: "Where are you going?" "Come this way!" "Hello my friend!" "Where are you from?" "Taxi! Where are you going? 10 rupees! Where are you going??" Most would fall away quickly when we didn't answer, but many would follow us closely for several minutes. We are well practiced in ignoring these kinds of touts, but there was such an overwhelming number of them that we started feeling very harassed and claustrophobic. Delhi is an extremely confusing and pedestrian unfriendly city, but we couldn't even stop to look at a map or catch our breath. We skipped breakfast and lunch and retreated into an internet cafe for 3 hours, only leaving when hunger and the need of a bathroom forced us to. The one thing we had wanted to do that day was buy our onward bus tickets, but we failed; the bus company's website didn't work and their office was closed on Sunday. We visited the local bus station, but it was a disaster; shockingly dirty and fly-ridden, full of aggressive touts closing in on all sides, and all of the signs were in Hindi.

Our second full day in Delhi went much, much better. We got our bus tickets in the morning, took auto rickshaws and stayed off of the streets, and saw a couple of good sites. The first site in particular was excellent: the tomb of Humayun, the 2nd Moghul emperor, and a precursor in style to the Taj Mahal. It was a beautiful and very serene place.







We also visited the crumbling fort of Purana Qila. At both sites we noticed a ton of local people, especially men, lounging around in the shady grass. In India, there are foreign and local prices for tourist sites; say, $5 versus 5 cents. With tickets that cheap and Delhi being so totally unpleasant to be out in, it seems that locals use these ancient sites as places to relax. Not a half bad idea.


While killing time and looking for bottled water before our 14-hour bus ride, we stopped in a McDonald's. It's always interesting to see how cultural differences play out in the McDonald's of the world. This was certainly the first one that had a security guard doing bag searches on the way in. There was also no beef on the menu, and locally influenced food options like McAloo (aloo means potato). By the time we boarded our bus to Manali, we had softened a lot in our attitude to Delhi. But were still quite excited to get out as fast as possible and get to the mountains.

A Chinese Treat; Goodbye to Malaysia

After a rather uninspired and overpriced, but decent, Chinese meal at a food stall in KL Dan and I found ourselves wandering around the streets dreaming of the Chinese food we used to know. We had had good Southern Chinese food in Malaysia, but had yet to see any Northern or Interior food, which is what we ate when we lived in China. This kind of food is also very difficult to find in the U.S., people from those areas are less likely to immigrate out of China. We were thinking about heading back to our hotel for the evening when Dan spotted some magnificent Chinese characters in the distance, North West Food. We rushed towards the restaurant, could it be true? There was a newspaper article on the window that explained in Chinese the restaurant's specialty, big plate of chicken, which just happens to be our favorite meal in the entire world. We got very excited and jumped about, much to the amusement of the restaurant staff. We decided to dedicate our last day in KL to this restaurant.

We went to lunch early to get a head start. Dan dazzled the waitresses with his Chinese skills and we ordered one big plate of chicken, which is a whole chicken and noodles cooked in a spicy chili sauce with potatoes and peppers. We polished it off no problem. After a nap and recovery from our food coma we went back to the restaurant for dinner. The menu featured some noodle dishes that are impossible to get at home as they require noodle making skills that only northwest chinese natives possess. We ordered five dishes, and it was glorious. It was even the real Chinese experience, a group of men at the table next to us were binge drinking hard alcohol, playing loud games, yelling a lot and smoking. Ahh, nostalgia....

Kuala Gandah Elephant Reserve

One of our days in Kuala Lumpur was spent on a day trip to Kaula Gandah, an elephant reserve a couple of hours away. The organization here captures wild elephants that are living near developing areas and getting into trouble with farms and other nearby people. It then relocates them to areas like Taman Negara where they will be in less danger and have more space to themselves. The elephant reserve is home to a number of trained elephants that they use to help in the capture of the wild elephants, and it is also open to tourists who want an up-close elephant experience. Nissa definitely falls into that category, so the place was added to our itinerary.

The staff has set up a very structured afternoon for visitors. First we watched some of the elephants bathing and being cleaned in the river. Before long it was ready for their lunch, and we had the chance to hand-feed the elephants. Sure enough, it turned out to be peanuts.

Having an elephant's trunk roaming over your hand for food is a very strange feeling, and we couldn't help but laugh. Nissa was having a great time, and kept going back for more feedings.

Eventually it was time for elephant rides. The long was long, so we just had a quick one-minute saunter around the area before it was time to get off. Riding an elephant bareback was actually pretty uncomfortable, though really fun, so a short ride was perfect.

Finally, the last activity was swimming with the elephants. We mounted a large elephant from a platform, who after a command from the staff dropped to his side and threw us into the river. Baby elephants were in the river, but they were monopolized by the large number of children there, and soon it was time to go. The experience was probably not as intimate as we had pictured due to the larger-than-expected crowd, but we still had a great time.

Kuala Lumpur

We arrived in KL dehydrated and hungry, and with a bag of the most foul smelling sweat soaked clothes ever. We were ready for the comforts of the large city, but KL had other things in mind for us. We were planning on taking the monorail from the bus station to our hostel, which was pretty far away, but the monorail was shut down for "45 minutes" when we arrived. A helpful local showed us a newspaper article which stated that the monorail had broken down twice that week, once for over 12 hours. We didn't know when the 45 minutes had started, or when it would end, so we thought we would try to get a taxi. We had heard that taxi drivers in KL are notoriously awful, they over charge, won't use the meter and refuse to pick up passengers if they don't pay inflated prices, but we thought we would have a go. We were denied by all the taxi drivers when we asked for the meter to be used, the first time we have ever been turned away by taxis. It was actually pretty funny, and I respected the fact that they were upfront about ripping people off, it is worse when you find out about the scam when you are already in the taxi. We had no choice but to take the light rail, another public transport system, and walk a very long way to our hostel. We arrived very annoyed at the big city, but once we got inside our cool room, not quite ready to go back to the rainforest. Traditional house dwarfed by the Petronus Towers Big city, beware

We spent the next day mostly inside, we needed a short rest. We slept in, watched a movie and read. When it came time for dinner we decided to indulge and treat ourselves to Pizza Hut. Going to Pizza Hut in China was always a great cultural experience, and we wanted to see if it would be the same in Malaysia. In China Pizza Hut is fancy dining. Not quite so in KL, Malaysia is a little too developed for Pizza Hut to be high class and it has ventured more into the delivery based Pizza Hut that Americans know. But it still was nicer than an American chain, and had some distinctive Asian characteristics. In China we had loved the salad bar, Pizza Hut only allows patrons to go up to the bar once, so the Chinese would make giant towers of salad. It was an art form, we would watch women spend up to an hour on the tall towers, and then struggle to take them back to the table. They would never eat them all, it was all for fun. I had a great time making my tower, it wasn't as high as a Chinese woman's, but I'm still an Asian salad bar amateur. We had Chicken Masala pizza, which was actually really good. It was a little unnerving eating pizza with Burka clad women, but they like their pizza too I suppose. And of course, the Pizza Hut was Halal certified.

Don't worry, it is Halal!

The next day we set out for some exploring and somehow ended up wandering around a never ending maze of a wet market, where I saw a giant cows head, skinned but still intact, eyeballs and all. We should have known better than to eat at a food stall after walking through a hive of unsanitary conditions, but we had a go at a Malay stand and of course I got sick. We made our way to the National Mosque, which was huge, but off limits to foreigners, and went through the lovely Islamic Arts museum. Getting around the city though is quite the hassle, and transportation is terrible. It took us almost an hour to get from the museum to the nearest metro stop. We had to cross several parks, hop a fence, run across a freeway, go over an underpass, walk alongside a busy highway with no shoulder, run a gauntlet of fast moving taxis, go through a train station, down four escalators, past a bus station, swim through a giant cloud of bus exhaust, run along a mysterious path and across one last death trap of a road. We haven't been hit by a car yet, we almost lost Dan to a bus, but somehow we've made it.

Jury is still out on whether we like the city. During the day the traffic is terrible and the smog is uncomfortable. But, during the night, the city comes alive. Everyone is out and about, the temperature is perfect and the street food is wonderful. The beer is super expensive though, so KL's reputation as a party city didn't hold true for us. It is very diverse, people are nice and there is a lot to do. We began to spend more time inside during the day, and then would go out during the night, which is when KL thrives.

Taman Negara National Park

On Friday the 18th, we took a long bus and taxi journey to Taman Negara, a large national park in the middle of peninsular Malaysia. Taman Negara is the oldest rainforest in the world, 130 million years old, and we thought it would be a good first rainforest experience. Our last leg of the journey was a taxi ride, driven by a very small woman with bright pink lipstick listening to incessent techno music. The sounds of the jungle... She drove us past logging truck after logging truck, not a good introduction to a national park. We arrived too late to actually get into the forest, so we settled into our guesthouse and took the chance to cover all our clothes in high-powered bug repellent. Besides mosquitoes we were a little worried about leeches, which apparently don't like a good bug spray either. Our guesthouse was secluded in beautiful forest surroundings, and we soon realized the folly of leaving our clothes outside to soak in the repellent: I had to chase a large brown spider off of Nissa's pants. Many flying insects snuck into our room when the door opened, or attacked us when we used the outdoor sink, and a frightened gecko lived in our bathroom. Helpfully, an arrow on the ceiling of our room pointed out the direction of Mecca.

After a hearty breakfast of roti cani (a kind of bread) with bananas and honey at one of the floating restaurants on the river, we were ready to hit the jungle. We set out on a trail that led to a cave about 2 km from park headquarters, which smelled too terrible to linger at, so we continued from there to a spot on the river. Something about small quarters, getting knee deep in guano, and bats kept us from visiting the cave. We really enjoyed the morning of trekking. To our surprise we saw almost no other people on the trail, and there were some incredibly tall trees to gawk at. As we had heard, there was not much in the way of wildlife (the park is too popular and the trails too well-maintained). Just a lot of big ants and termites, flying insects, birds, and the occasional strange bug. By lunchtime we were a little disoriented and lacking in places to sit, so we had a modest packaged food lunch among the ants by a creek we stumbled upon.

By the afternoon, I had decided that trekking in the rainforest is fun for the first four hours, and increasingly not very much fun after that. We had gotten fairly deep into the forest, so by the time we got out, we had been hiking for about seven hours, or about 10 kilometers in very humid, insect-filled jungle. We were totally exhausted, and vowed to take it easy the following day. After two well-deserved banana milkshakes by the river, we were excited to relax in our room.

Unfortunately, we had decided to move to a more centrally located and much cheaper place. At $3 US per night, you get what you pay for. In the afternoon heat our 4-bed dorm room was like a sauna. Failing to find the sink, I asked the owner: "No sink here. It's jungle style, my friend!" No matter; we went out for dinner and would just come back to sleep, which turned out to be easier said than done.

When we got back at night, our roommates were gone but somebody had left the light on. Since the window was always open out of necessity and there was no screen, every flying insect in the nearest square mile had come into our room; the empty bed closest to the light had perhaps 40 bugs on it. It was high enough from the ground to keep out mosquitoes, but not a very inspiring sight when you're about to go to bed. We were also already tired from our battle with the cats; earlier, two stray cats had run into our room to play, hide under the bed, and bite all of our stuff. They were mangy and fearless, so I was really struggling to scare them out. Finally, Nissa enticed with them with a fun plastic bag, and when they left the room we shut the door.

Getting back to the bugs, we decided to just leave the light off for the night and let them leave. This seemed to be effective, though hard to tell in the pitch dark. I did find a cricket in my bed, and they are surprisingly hard to chase away, but I got rid of it. A roommate we hadn't met came in late and settled into the bug bed; we never found out if it was bug-free at the time, but we did hear him putting on a lot of insect repellent. I did finally fall asleep, only to wake around 1am to loud, obnoxious Dutch travelers in the room next door, who stayed up talking, laughing and possibly wrestling so long I finally had to get out of bed and bang on their door. That night and the next there were absolutely montrous storms outside, probably the biggest we have ever heard, and with addition of a loud gecko on my wall and the day's first call to prayer for Muslims at dawn, I didn't get too much sleep there. We have sworn off hostel dorm rooms for the rest of the trip.

On our second day of trekking, we headed for the forest canopy walkway, a series of suspended bridges high over the forest floor with decent views. Sounded like a fun way to see more of the forest and look for monkeys. We paid our small fee, climbed up the walkway entrance, stepped out onto the first bridge, and then suddenly remembered that we are both afraid of heights. The height was probably manageable, but we didn't realize how much the walkways swayed, so it didn't out to be as enjoyable as we had expected. But it was only appropriate, since one of our very first experiences together was a scary cable car ride at Hua Shan, China.

In the early afternoon, we were feeling energetic and decided to do one more "short" hike. We didn't realize it was a 4.5 km hike that was entirely up and down steep hills and filled with biting flies. When we got to the peak of the first hill, we were rewarded with great views, but mostly with biting flies. By the end of the day we had traveled farther and become even more exhausted than at the end of the first day. Upon returning to our hostel, there were 5 people in line for the showers, and we stood dripping with sweat in our towels for about 40 minutes. We were done with the rainforest, and booked our boat ride out for the next morning.

Native village that we passed, I took a sneaky picture

The butterflies were beautiful, one became Dan's friend

Not a lot of flowers in the rainforest, but these pretty red ones spring up from the ground

Dan is very sweaty

Enjoy this picture, I was bit by many flies to take it

The 2.5 hour boat ride down the river to the nearest city was beautiful, cool, and comfortable. Part of us wondered why we hadn't just taken the boat there and back and called it a day. We did actually really enjoy the rainforest, but we were overly ambitious and it took a lot out of us. And we didn't even see any leaches.