Nepal and India

Full Photos Nepal/Darjeeling/Sikkim:http://picasaweb.google.com/snailhugger/NepalJan2010#

Full Photos India: http://picasaweb.google.com/snailhugger/India2010#

When I arrived in Nepal I discovered that their immigrations department has a new policy. You have to pay for your arrival visa in some currency other than Nepali or Indian rupees. They like US dollars or Euros so there was a money changer, but no way to actually withdraw money. They also require a picture, just because. I hate the Nepali bureaucracy because it is nonsensical, but at least the people treat you pretty nicely. They don't know why their government has these requirements either, but they are just cheerfully doing their job and they try to be helpful. This is sooo much better than India or the US. They held my passport and let me go out into the masses to use an ATM, but the electricity was off, so the ATM didn't work. Fortunately Yadab was there waiting for me, very excited to see me, and the first thing I did was ask him if he had the equivalent of 60 US dollars on him. That is a small fortune in Nepal. A local could easily live for a week on 60 bucks. Strangely he did have the money so I got myself sorted, photographed, and legally entered the country. We headed into Thamel, as tourists do. It was surreal to be back after only 8 months. It wasn't as cold as I thought it would be, about the same as New Zealand.
I spent the first few days just hanging about in Kathmandu and applying for an Indian visa (those bureaucrats are not helpful and I dislike them very much), which takes a week to process and you don't get to find out how much it will cost till the end. In the mean time, Yadab and I went on a short hike to Namu Buddah. We were going to take 3 days to do a nice little hike. The first day, we had a bumpy ride to our trailhead, just above the smog line, and hiked up through the orchards and terraced fields toward this incredibly huge (and expensive) monastery. The place was crawling with monks and they had their afternoon ceremony which we watched for a while. It got really long and boring though, so we left once we got tired of staring up at all the decorations on the walls and ceiling. The views from the monastery of the Himalayas were excellent!

Afterward, we continued our hike toward a town where we could spend the night. We ended up getting there quite late so it was a bit dark when we got shown our room. It turned out to be a real dump. The bathroom probably hadn't been cleaned in some years. There was a stockpile of other people's used soap in the bathroom, used water bottles in the room, and used condoms in the trash can. The food was not very good either. And then, some time around bed time, my stomach got angry. It got angrier and angrier all night to the extent where I was bent over with stomach cramps wondering which end the explosions would come from first. They never really did. I took some ciprofloxin and managed to throw up a bit but still didn't feel much better. I slept a bit, but couldn't bring myself to leave the room till noon. We decided to bag the hike and go back to Kathmandu. Taking a people shaker bus with horrendous stomach cramps is one of those things I never said I wanted to do when I grew up. It was really really painful, actually as painful as when I stuck that stick up my arm. No fun! I got back to Hotel Karma, where I always stay in Ktm. They put me in a room and I just laid around for a few days waiting for the cipro to kill my belly villains. I felt better sometimes, worse at others. I read a 600 page book. I finally got up the energy to go sort my visa out with the India consulate. I got to abuse their toilet a bit too. After a few days, I was generally feeling better, although not great, so Yadab and I decided to head out across the Terai toward Janakpur, Koshi Tappu Wildlife Reserve, and then across the border to Darjeerling and Sikkim. We had a thrilling jeep ride south from Kathmandu on winding roads to Hetuada and then we sped on to Dhalkebar dodging macaques on the roadway. On the people shaker bus into Janakpur, my stomach began to act a bit dubious again. I thought it was just too much rice. We strolled around the town a bit to find accommodation, food, and check out a few of the numerous temples people come from all over India to see. Janakpur is a shit hole. I say it is where the gods shat, that must be why it is so holy. The temples were ok, but nothing spectacular. The most interesting thing there was watching bus loads of Indian pilgrams stroll to temples barefooted and contemplate what they had stepped in to get there, and then watch them cook their chipatis on dangerous looking little gas stoves by their buses in the evening. They seem to sleep on the buses too. I thought I traveled cheaply!
That night, I discovered that I had not recovered from my stomach bug and stayed up most of the night writhing in pain praying for relief, but nothing would leave me. At this point I decided it must be amoebic since my gut was intermittently angry and not really responding to cipro the way it usually does. I started a course of anti-amoebic drugs. This seems to have helped but I really couldn't stomach much food for quite a while and riding buses across the terrai was a real challenge.
We gladly left Janakpur and traveled all day to Koshi Tappu. We stayed in another filthy little hotel and attempted to explore the wildlife park the next day. It is world renowned for its bird life – a major migratory stopover with additional resident birds, home to gangetic dolphins and all kinds of other amazing wildlife. It was a little bit of a let down though, because the forest officials wanted us to pay extortionist's prices for hiring a boat to go out on the wetlands and stuff. We had been given bad directions by people as we headed there too, so we were not really on the side of the park we wanted to be on, but there was a stupid strike so we could not get road transport to the other side either. We opted to just walk around on the flood control levee and watch for bird and wildlife through my binoculars. It was very foggy. I saw quite a number of birds, about 50 species I had never seen before, so I wasn't all disappointed. And the villages were interesting too, and we saw a tiny baby elephant with its mum.

Unfortunately, I was feeling wrecked from the tummy bugs and was now getting a cold. I didn't have a ton of energy and Yadab just doesn't get as excited about birds as I do, so we went back to our hotel in the early afternoon so I could get some rest. My belly was getting better and I was digesting my diet of ramen noodles somewhat normally, but my cold was getting worse and worse. We headed to the border the next day and dealt with a lot of crammed bus rides and one of India's finest bureaucrats at the border. He stamped my passport with the wrong date which caused problems later and he was a huge jerk. He got my cranky pants in a bunch. Nevertheless, we made it to Darjeerling that afternoon and checked into a chilly basic room with incredible views and a hot shower. Despite having arrived in more comfortable accommodation, my health crapped out. My cold had turned into an infection which I could feel moving into my chest and my lungs. Once again, I sent Yadab off to the chemist with a list of meds I would need to treat this and I spent the whole day in bed. This wasn't easy because I very much wanted to go outside and see the sites. To boot, Yadab didn't understand the difference between having a cold and having a respiratory infection. He couldn't seem to figure out why I would not just get out of bed and go out for the day. He didn't want me to just lay around. I wanted to lock him out so I could sleep.
The next day, I motivated and went to the Himalayan Zoo and Mountaineering Academy. The red pandas cheered me up quite a bit. I really love them! The zoo was surprisingly great and the mountaineering academy was great. It was started by Tenszing Norgay, the sherpa who climbed Everest with Sir Edmond Hillary. Anyone who climbs Mt. Everest is a little bit mad and probably superhuman in my book, but to see the gear these guys did it with....well they were ruthless thugs! It is just amazing! The boots alone looked like they weighed more than my pack.

We generally had a very nice time in Darjeerling, but the ultimate destination for us both was Sikkim. Yadab had never been, nor had I, so off we went to get permits (a walk all over Darjeerling with me spitting up my lungs) and then a long wait at the taxi stand for some Gurka Land demonstration to finish so cars would be allowed to use the roads again. I don't really understand why the demonstrators felt the need to foul up traffic in their own “Gurka Land”. There might have been a couple of local political affiliates that were mildly inconvenience by the strike, but everyone else who had their day stuffed up was already in support of the cause. People in this part of the world seem to love a strike and demonstration, they are just not very good at planning them in a way that may reach the notice of the target audience. Strange! In any case, we got to Sikkim. We went up to Pelling and met some good characters on the way, including a woman who works with Palestinian refugees in Lebanon and a Polish guy who thinks global worming is a farce. We enjoyed our days in Pelling, but for all the effort I made to get there, I really wished I was not hacking up my lungs and struggling to walk 200 meters, so I could have really gotten out to see the area. I had incredible views of Katnajuta from my room and we did make it up to an very old monestary and some palace ruins. I had to spend more time in bed than I preferred though. At least I got to catch up on a little bit of discovery channel. I watched this great special about king cobra conservation in India.

Next thing I knew, it was time to head down to Siliguri and catch a flight to Chennai to spend a little time tree touring with my legendary friend Yoav BarNess. It was hard to say good bye to Yadab. The poor guy had just spent 3 weeks with a sickly, cranky, often disappointed me. I don't think it was quite the holiday either of us had hoped for, but I guess that is life on the subcontinent. The worst part was that he ended up having to ride the bus all the way back to Kathmandu. I just can't imagine!
Yoav is doing a project that is funded by a Fullbright scholarship he was awarded. He is traveling all over India photographing, mapping, and collecting information about important individual trees (http://www.treeoctopus.net/india.htm ). A lot of them are temple trees, some are just really old, some are lone trees in the middle of cities, some are in the middle of crop fields, but they are all special, so he is doing this project to help people meet them. This involves traveling all over India in search of special trees. He has been at this for about 2 years and even took a Hindi language course to help out. I just tagged along for 12 days, but it was good fun.
When I arrived in Chennai, I was met by a sick Yoav. He had a fever. I was feeling quite a bit better thanks to the antibiotics but was still hacking to the extent where Indians (the people of the greatest phlegm producing country on earth) were staring at me with that concerned look on their faces – you know the one you would use if you saw an 8 month pregnant woman walking up a set of stairs with a limp and a black eye. We were fortunate enough to be spending the night with Rachel, a friend of Yoav's who lived near the beach on the south end of Chennai. She has a large fan cooled unit with beds with real mattresses, clean showers and toilets, bread, and her very own clothes washer!!! And she let us use them!!!!!! We both slept about 11 hours that night. After we woke, hydrated, and cleaned ourselves, we realized we were feeling surprisingly good, so we went on an adventure. Yoav needed to deliver a report for some forest inventory work he had done to a man at the Crocodile reserve down toward Mahabalapuram. This turned out to be Rom Whitaker who I had watched on the discovery channel's king cobra special. I was going to his zoo/breeding and snake venom collection facility. He and his partner and son met shared lunch with us and showed us around. They were such amazing people, full of fascination with their work, but operating with careful thought and consideration for the people and animals they are involved with. Gently and considerately engaging people with animals they typically fear and trying to help them understand why animals like snakes and crocodiles are important and worth keeping. This is not the Steve Irwin style of connecting the public with large herpetiles. I had met human jems! Rom has set up a facility where 500 families are supported through the harvest of snake venom for anti-venom production. These people were traditionally snake charmers and hunters. His facility gives them a way to continue using their traditional skill set in a changing India.

Late that night Yoav and I boarded an overnight train to Visakhapatnum. The train trip was a complete kerfuffle and late of course, but Vizag (as the locals call it) was more than we could have hopped for. Yoav had arranged to meet up with Vinod when we arrived. Vinod had recently moved to Vizag training to become a submarine engineer for the Indian military. He is a unique specimen. I have never met another Indian guy like him. He had mastered he arts of sarcasm and crassness and he was he was keen as to go advernturizing around the city with us. We had lunch, then went to the beach, where I found some intriguing critters on the rocks. This was quite the curiosity to the locals who weren't used to seeing white ladies and wondered what I was so excited about. The guys then dragged me off kicking and screaming (in joy) to a wildlife preserve area that was just a 20 minutes from the beach. We hiked around and tried to find routes up the numerous hills. Apparently you have to get let out of the well hidden but impenetrable fence that locks the main public use area from the rest of the preserve. We failed to do so but still saw some spotted deer, a few birds, beautiful forests, and lots of sneaky lovers holding hands.

We went back to the beach in the evening, had fresh juices, enjoyed the sunset and visited the local aquarium, which wasn't quite as cool as the monterey bay aquarium, but was still pretty fun. We spent the night in some crappy little hotel which was run by boys and thus never cleaned but the bathroom had been recently re-done so at least there had been fewer people dirtying it before I got there. Early the next morning we got on a train to the Araku Valley. We lucked out and got window seats for the scenic trip. We visited a cave and photographed a few heritage trees. After lunch, we decided we should head to Araku but there was no public transit so we would have to hitch. As we stepped out of the restaurant, I looked up and a little red car slowly passed by with two foreigners in it. I thought, crud, there went our best chance for a ride. Then the car stopped, and a man got out and asked us if we wanted a ride. I said yes! This was Wolfgang and his partner Barbara who made our day! They took us along with them to a few interesting stops, including a coffee field and a beautiful overlook. They had been traveling in India for something like 30 years. They were so interesting! Wolfgang is German and Barbara Danish. She actually has a degree in Indian studies. I can think of no better travelers to meet. We chatted about all manner of things over tea and then Yoav and I went to get a bus on toward Jeypur, but they chatted with us while we waited. They had such great insight about India and how things have progressed in the past decades.

We stayed in a pretty nice place in some town on the way to Jeypur and got some much needed rest. We did a little tree scouting and bought some juice and really nice cotton head scarves, then headed off to meet Shakeel who was another couch surfing contact. He met us as the train station in Jeypur and then helped us get a bus to his village about 2 hours away. He is from a Muslim family but grew up in the area, which is populated largely by the Gond people, one of India's under-represented tribal groups who was there before the hindus but now takes their place at the bottom of the caste system. They are farmers – mostly of rice and goats. Shakeel lives in a mud home in the village but he is very well educated and a man of the world. He has worked for several NGOs on community development and sustainable livelihoods programs. He has lived all over India and has been to Amsterdam. He has the unique ability to understand the alien culture that Yoav and I belong too as well as the mainstream Indian culture, and the Gond people's culture. And, he enthusiastically shared his thoughts and home with us!
Shakeel took both of us around on his motorbike to the nearby national park so we could see some giant old trees and the incredible limestone formations in the riverbed that divided Chattesgar and Orissa. He took us to a couple of limestone caves. One was frequently visited by religious people and inhabited by a holy or holey man (he had a very holey singlet) who showed us all the features including the shiva linga (literally god penis) that I was to put my hand on and wait for a drop to fall on my hand and make my wish come true. See the photo! The other cave he too us to was not open to the public and was amazing inside. It was about 6km long so we didn't explore the whole thing but we saw bats, crickets, geckos, frogs, and huge spiders in it. The formations were great and best of all, we were the only humans in the cave!!!

In addition to all this nature Shakeel shared with us, he took us to the local tea shop and translated so we could chat with the locals. Very few foreigners go here, ever, and few of them are female. I might have only been the 3rd or 4th foreigner woman ever here and probably the first from the US. The ladies had interesting questions for us, like what age we get married and how far we came from. I answered anytime between 18 and the time we die for the marriage question. As for how far, Shakeel translated that I had come 40 days by bus because these folks have no concept of a world map or the ocean. It was fascinating! The villagers – the Gond lend their name to the former super continent of Gondwanaland which was Antarctica, Australia, India, South America, and Africa but they have no concept of these land forms. The fossils that helped form the theory were found on their land. Their livelihoods are changing and so are their land use practices. Unfortunately this puts pressure on the nearby national park, which suffers from deforestation along the edges and over hunting. This situation goes on in part because the forest officers are easily bought off and because no one is really focused on this area. No foreigners come here. There are probably heaps of new species there, but it isn't on the scientific map. This is a blessing and a curse. Since there are no tourists, the system is not really valued for its biodiversity as many other places in India are, therefore the biodiversity is not a priority for locals or government officials. On the other hand, the lonely planet doesn't contain a chapter on it, so it is not crawling with tourist jeeps and expensive “eco” resorts. While it is not valued and conserved at the level I would prefer, I am so very grateful to the local people for leaving what they have, for the considerations they have made, and for graciously keeping this place as wonderful as it is so that I could see it. The glass is definitely more than half full! I hope my enthusiasm will help them see the other values of the park, not just as a place for resource extraction. I hope they keep it like a special secret.

It was hard to leave Shakeel's hospitality, but Yoav had his mission and I was along for the ride. We returned to the coast and traveled up to Gopalpur by Sea, a seaside place where Bengali tourists go for holiday. It was funky and the beach was covered in excrement, but we had a nice little roof top room and the views were great. We found one good place to eat and one bad one. We remained faithful to the good one for the day and a half we were there.

After regaining our insane desire to get on another bus, we headed up toward Bhubaneshwar passing Chilika Lake on the way. In Bhubaneshwar, we met with a turtle activist to learn about the local conservation issues and get our bearings. He was a big family man, involved in many things, and very helpful. He told us the turtles weren't breeding yet, but that we could go see Irawadi dolphins on Chilika Lagoon. We spent the night in Puri, a former hippy hang out which lacks the laid back luster of old. Now it is just an out of the way beach with really average food and over policed accommodation. We had a hard time getting to the lake the next day, but were determined as I was nearing the end of my stay, so we hired a rickshaw which was ludicrously expensive – over 10 bucks! We arrived in the afternoon, but the ride out was stunning and we made a few short stops to look at birds and water buffalo in the roadside wetlands and rice paddys. Once at the lake, we quickly arranged a boat out to see the dolphins. The boat man said we could also go see birds at the wildlife refuge the next day if we wanted. This appealed to me given my Nepal extortionist disappointment and my general love for birds, so we decided to stay the night. The dolphins were great, spectacular actually. We watched them for about an hour fishing, feeding, and playing with each other. We saw over 10 different individuals.
After dolphin viewing, we visited the local natural history museum, which was fabulous, then retired to our hotel for dinner and a much deserved rest. The next day, we got up early and headed down to the docks for our boat ride to the bird sanctuary. It took two hours to get out to it they said. We saw several cool birds on the way out as we navigated around prawn fishing structures. There were lots of terns and shags. I saw two sea eagles, a brominy kite, and an osprey. As we reached the edge of all the prawn structures, the boatman stopped and we could see the bird sanctuary island just another 2,000 meters away. I figured he had to fuel up, but he just sat there, and then offered us snacks. We asked him to take us to the island, but he refused. Combining gestures and Yoav's very basic Hindi, we determined the man was telling us the sanctuary was closed and he could not get within 2 km of it. I was disappointed to the point of devastation. I would have just walked off if I had been in a vehicle. I couldn't believe we had been taken 2 hours in a boat to within 2km of a closed bird sanctuary, and then they would expect to be paid for it! It was a painful return trip and then we went to find the boat man boss who had set the whole thing up. He had left town!!! We had to find a translator to tell the poor fisher dude that we would only be paying him half price for the trip as his boss had ripped us off and would have to accommodate any further expenses. Bleh!!!

We had lunch, hitched a ride on a tourist bus and went back to Puri where we found that the pizza place we had been so looking forward to eating at was not open, so we had a tea and then went back to Bhubaneshwar to wait for my night train back to Chennai. We had a nice dinner and reviewed our adventures, sure our paths will cross again before too long.
My train ride to Chennai was 20 hours and it wasn't late, but it still sucked, fortunately I got to hang out with Rachel once I arrived. I rested and spent my last day in India shopping for my allergy medicine (it costs 10 bucks there instead of 30) and getting a pedicure, then I flew back to Australia via Singapore. I flew with Tiger Airways which was like a typical filthy crowded Indian bus except it could fly. I had a day in Singapore so I went to the bird sanctuary which rocked my socks off!!! I really loved it.
Now I am back in Australia enjoying the cleanliness and blander food. I did a trip to Kangaroo Island and had my mom out for 2 weeks, but that will have to wait for the next blog post. I think I would get carpel tunnel :)