RTW Trip – Page 15

sneaky sneaky…..

so, already i cant seem to access my website. i keep getting an error saying “access denied”.

myanmar day 1 [continued]….

at the airport in calcutta, while we were waiting for our flight to myanmar, caryn met this israeli dude who was flying to myanmar on our flight and hoped to get some info from my guidebook. when we got to myanmar, i ended up sharing a cab w/ him into town which was over 20km away from the airport. the cab driver got totally lost a bunch of times, and eventually had his tire blow out while driving. instead of pulling over to the side, he proceeded to change the tire right there in the middle of the street, and the israeli guy (who’s name i cant remember cause i’m *horrible* w/ names) and i went looking for a place to stay. it’s about 98 degrees here, and wandering around town w/ a heavy backpack wasn’t exactly pleasant. finally we found a place, left our stuff, and went hunting for food.

the streets of yangon (and apparently everywhere else in myanmar) are lined w/ outdoor “restaurants”. by restaurant, i mean they have a few rickety tables, tiny stools to sit on, and someone w/ a frying pan full of stuff… or sometimes, there’s no pan and everythining is just served as is.. cold. we pulled up to the first place we saw, and sat down, not really knowing what there was in store for us since there is no menu. the grinning and laughing cook asked us what we wanted and we pointed to a bowl that another customer was eating from. we got served something called “chop-chop” which is a chopped up fried egg roll with some sauce and cabbage. despite wondering about the health risks of eating food that has been sitting in the sun for possibly hours, i really enjoyed it. the bowl was small, so we ordered something else… noodles. the lady behind the counter scooped some noodles int a bowl, added sauce, cabbage, etc and then proceeded to mix everything together… with her bare hands that she didnt bother to wash as far as we could tell. as i watched her hands deep in my bowl of noodles, i decided that one thing was for certain, eating in myanmar isn’t for those obsessed w/ hygeine. the noodles tasted great.

the other thing that is *everywhere* i myanmar is tea. every single restaurant seems to have a kettle at each table and you just refill your tea cup as much as you want. people here drink so much of it!! cups and cups and cups of it in one sitting, and then sometimes have an empty water bottle filled w/ more tea so they can drink it later. the tea cups are in this little bowl filled halfway w/ water, and when you finsih your cup, you just throw it back in the bowl… and the next person grabs the cup, sorta rinses it about in the water, and then uses it. so basically, the cups you drink from are sitting all day in liquid that is part water, part leftover tea, part backwash, and has had people’s hands reaching into it all afternoon. and there’s no soap for the cups of course. it’s my fourth day in myanmar now, and i’ve been ok so far, but i’m sure that at some point while here i’ll end up sick to my stomach. just a question of time!

it was still about a billion degrees, maybe more, and part of me wanted to go hide in a place w/ air-con, but it was my first day in myanmar and i was too excited about seeing things, so i decided not to wait. after paying $2.50 for the meal, i went off to go sightseeing while the israeli guy continued to search for a room. one of the main things that myanmar is famous for is its pagodas. the whole country is filled w/ buddhist temples from big to small, most of them shimmering w/ gold. reading through the guidebook, it almost started to seem like pretty much the only thing to see in this country was temples.. which worried me a bit. would i get bored of seeing temple after temple? would they all just end up looking the same? well, that still remains to be determined, but as it was my first day, i hadn’t gotten sick of pagodas (called “payas” here) yet, so i set off to see my first one.

right in the middle of downtown is Sulye Paya a huge glittering temple standing 46 meters high. you can see it from pretty far away, and it’s definitely the main landmark in downtown. the temple was really beautiful and i spent some time just wandering around and looking at things, watching the monks and people pray, etc. one thing that i thought was interesting, is that a lot of the buddha statues had radiating halos next to their heads made out of LEDs. it looked like changing colored circles of light were throbbing from their heads. it was really odd to see something like electric lights used on something as old and traditional as a buddha statue. the first time i saw it, it struck me as kind of cheesy, but after seeing it more and more, i’ve really grown to like it.

eventually, i couldnt deal w/ the heat anymore, but i didnt want to leave, so i sat down under some shade and just watched everything around me. minutes later, a burmese guy came up to me and said that he was a student learning to speak english and wanted to talk to me to practice his english. alarm bells instantly went off in my head. in thailand, i was often approached by people who “just wanted to speak english” but after a few minutes, they ended up delivering a salespitch for a shop or a tour or some other crap. it was always insanely frustrating… you spend a bunch of time talking w/ someone, and feel like you are building up a rapport of some sort and are glad to have a new acquaintence, only to found out that the whole thing was fake and you were just being used. i wondered if this was going to be the case now, but i ended up talking to the guy anyway.

he ended up being a really cool guy. 23 years old and studying physics. we ended up going to a tea shop near the pagoda and talked some more and he told me all sorts of stuff about he country, life here, what to see, etc etc. tea shops are another really big thing in myanmar. they’re *everywhere*. they serve as much tea as you can drink, or you can order coffee etc. usually they’ll have a random array of prepackaged cakes and breads on each table that you can buy. also, if you know what they serve (no english menus) you can order some random food as well.

anyways, after hanging out for the rest of the afternoon w/ my new burmese friend, he suggested we go to a beer hall. once again, alarm bells began ringing in my head. i’ve read online that this can often be a popular scam: random local appears out of nowhere and befriends you; after spending some time w/ said local, you begin to trust them; said local takes you to a bar; you order 3 or 4 beers; bill arrives: surprise!!! each beer cost $150!!; when you protest, large men come out and escort you to an atm of your choice; you shell out large quantities of cash and feel like a chump. yeah, i know it sounds crazy, but it really does happen. so anyways, w/ caution, i accepted his offer to go to the beer hall. as i ordered i made sure to ask the price of each thing i got so there would be no surprises later. the beer hall had a “stage show” which consisted of a guy banging away on a keyboard while girls, one at a time, would come out and sing. i cant say that i was impressed with the entertainment, but the food and beer was *great*.

at 8pm, my friend had to leave since he had to catch the last bus back home. i stayed a bit longer since i still had food. a random man started talking to me in the bathroom and seemed really excited to meet a foreigner. later, as i sat at my table, he kept coming over and pouring handfuls of peanuts into my hand, and then eventually said that i should sit w/ him and his friend. he asked me if we had these “peanuts” in my country, and was surprised when i said “yes”. at first, he seemed like a really nice guy, telling me about his favorite music (madonna), and his children… but then he informed me that he comes to this stage show *every single night*. why? because he likes to stare at the girls on stage. he started trying to probe me as to which girls i thought were “sexy”, despite the fact that i told him that i had a girlfriend. as he started going on and on about how he liked american “sex position”, i realized that i should probably get going. as i was about to leave, he pulled out some bootlegged dvd’s which he said were korean pornography and told me that he could copy them for me if i wanted. at this point, i told him i had to leave. it was just too much. but before i could go, he invited me to dinner the following night at his home so i could meet his wife and 4 children!! wtf?! i told him i’d be busy, and hastily left…. i guess even myanmar has its share of weirdos!

so far so good!

i arrived in myanmar, and surprisingly, i’ve been able to log into my site and my blogg etc!! a local has befriended me and has helped me find a place that has good internet access!!

so.. here i am in myanmar, and what a change it is from india. even before i got out of the cab that drove me from the airport, i could tell that i was in another world from the one that i was in this morning. first off, when i walked out of the airport, i wasn’t attacked by a million taxi/rickshaw drivers as i would have been in ndia. instead, i was calmly talked to by just *one* person who directed me to a cab.. and even suggested that i save some money by splitting the cab w/ someone. i didnt have to haggle and fight over the fare in the cab either… instead, they just charged us a total of 5$…. for a ride that was 22km!! it was such a strange feeling all of this.. not having to fight tooth and nail every step of the way to get anywhere as i was used to while in india. could i actually relax now?? could i for one second put down my guard and not have to constantly worry that everyone around me was trying to rip me off or swindle me??

the cab ride itself was so different than any ride i’ve taken in the last 2 months. for one thing… myanmar actually has traffic lanes!! and people drive straight within the lanes instead of swerving all over and practically crashing into everything else on the road. and *gasp*… people actually stopped at red lights!!! for once i didnt feel like my life was at risk while on the road! the next thing i noticed was… myanmar is clean!! where were the huge piles of trash i was used to seeing all along the roads? there wasn’t any! not only did i not see any trash.. but i didnt see any beggars. not a single one during the ride to the hotel… and hardly any for the rest of the day. later, after the ride, as i walked down the streets, i didnt have people constantly grabbing at me asking me to buy things… no rickshaw drivers yellin at me… i could just *be*. all of this was such a shock. it was like i had been driving a car at a 100 miles an hour, having to constantly stare at the road and be alert…. and then all of a sudden slowing down to a crawl and being able to take a deep breath and just chill. ahhhhhhh. nice. i could tell that i was gonna like it here.

the next thing i noticed was the heat. it’s hot here. damn hot. ridiculiously and painfully hot… the guidebook even goes so far as to call it “intolerable”. even with the wind rushing by me as we drove, i was sweating bullets. i looked out the windows and watched the burmese peole stroll by on the streets. many of them had umbrellas to block the sun from beating down too much. at least 80% of the men i saw were wearing longyis which are basically an equivalent to a sarong (imagine a man wearing a huge towel made of thin fabric around his waist and you get an idea). this was the first time so far that i had seen so many men of any country wearing their traditional clothing. usualy, as far as i’ve seen, if anyone wears traditional stuff it’s the women: sarees in india, headscarves in the middle east, etc. most of the men from any country i’ve seen just wear western clothes: pants and shirts. not here though. longyis everywhere. and i can see why… in this heat, waering a thin longyi would defintely keep you much cooler than pants. another thing i noticed was that there were lots of monks wandering about wearing their red robes. and the toursists…. or lack thereof. looking out the cab window, i saw hardly any white faces. compared to so many other places, myanmar gets very few toursists, and it was very nice and refreshing to see a place that wasn’t jampacked w/ backpackers and didnt have a netcafe/souvenir shop/ guesthouse on every corner.

eventually i got a hotel room. my room is tiny. no really… i mean *tiny*. the room has a bed in it and that’s all beacasuse the whole room isn’t much bigger than the bed. there room is just 6 inches wider than my bed, and about 2.5 feet longer. that’s all. i couldnt even fit a chair in there if tried. luckily, there’s a fan hanging from the wall or else i’d fry. the cost of the room? 4 bucks… breakfast included. not bad eh?

….. i’ll write more about my first day in myanmar later….

no more thisisvlad.com for 3 weeks??

tomorrow, i’m getting on a flight to Myanmar… the country formerly known as Burma. it’s a country that i’ve been really curious about for a long time, and i’m excited to finally see it. it’s one of the least touristed countries in all of asia and therefore their culture has not been corrupted by outside influences. many people still wear their traditional clothing instead of the western styles that you see everywhere else in the world. the country is filled with beautiful buddhist temples and natural scenery.

i’m only going to be there for a short time, just two and a half weeks… and i’m going by myself. caryn is going to go see the famous temples of angkor in cambodia and spend some time in laos, and then we’ll reunite in thailand after we’re done. it’s gonna be weird and kind of sad to be traveling alone, buit like i said before, i think solo taveling is really important and definitely adds an interesting dimension to your trip.. so i guess i’ll endure the 2.5 weeks of solitude ;).

one other thing i have to mention about myanmar is that it’s ruled by an oppressive military regime. this government doesnt tolerate any kind of political dissent and is very strict about many things that go on in the country. the newspapers/tv/radio are censored. people aren’t allowed to discuss politics. there are no atms/credit cards in the country. and also, from what i’ve heard no one can use their own email. that’s right. no email. the only way to email anything is to go through a government run account, that is highly monitored. yahoo, hotmail etc are all blocked. i thought that maybe since my email is on a random unknown site, that it might slip by unnoticed, but just recently i heard of someone going there and not being able to use her email from her own private website. so… i dont know what to expect. i *might* not be able to post any entries for the next 2.5 weeks. i may aslo have no email contact. who knows… we’ll see!!!

goodbye india

after 9 weeks of traveling here, today is my last full day in india and it’s really sad to be leaving. i haven’t spent 9 weeks in any foreign country ever, and i’ve gotten quite used to being here. before i got here, i’d already done a decent amount of traveling, and i was starting to think that i was prepared for just about anything. but india is definitely unlike anything i’ve ever dealt with before, and is so full of chaos that traveling here is difficult even for the veteran traveler. it has public transportation that is so overcrowded and so rickety that it’s enough to break not only your spirit, but your back as well. it has an unbelievable amount of garbage that’s piled up everywhere on every single street, in every single train compartment, and in rural areas as well… not to mention the piles of cowshit that are everywhere you look. it’s full of poverty that confronts you from every direction and is way too difficult to bear. there’s so many things about india that make it an exhausting country to travel through, that i can definitely see why so many travelers want to get the hell out of here and never come back.

everyone says about india “either you’ll love it or you’ll hate it”. and despite all the things that i just mentioned, i absolutely *loved* india. looking past all the negatives, india has an incredible amount to offer. the country is huge and has every type of environment you could imagine: from sand dunes, to snowy peaks, to grassy plains, to jungles, to forests, to long stretches of beaches. india is practically a continent in itself, and each region within it, not only has different types of geography, but also an incredibly wide assortment of different architectural styles, and monuments. it’s a country of many religions filled w/ hindu temples, jain temples, mosques, and buddhist gompas.

cities everywhere are colorful and lively, full of palaces, statues, etc… always hustling and bustling w/ farm animals wandering the streets, people selling anything you can imagine, pilgrims on their way to religious sites, and the delicious smell of food wafting all around. and the food…. sheeez… the food is so incredibly deliocious. spicy, and well flavored, with so many different options to choose from. from the yummy creamy lassis, to the roasted tandoori chicken, to the crunchy nan bread, and the fiery curries… all of it was so good.

and of course, india wouldnt be india without the people who live here. deeply religious on one hand, dressing conservatively, and attending temple regularly.. but wildly exhubarent and jovial on the other hand. one thing about indians.. for the most part they aren’t shy or subtle! we would constantly have people coming up to us and starting up conversation, asking us everything from what country we live in to the amount of salary we made. so many people around us were always laughing and joking… i’d see grown men chasing each other around and pushing at each other like children.. and the crazy zany stuff we saw on tv that came from bollywood… is well…. both hilarious and udescribable. and the women were always so friendly too, and so colorful in their long flowing sarees.

if i had the time, i could write pages and pages about my thoughts on india, but unfortunately i’m kind of in a hurry. i’m incredibly curious to see what becomes of india in the future. it really seems to be a country at a crossroads. on one hand, it’s developing like crazy…the cities are growing, technology is expanding, lots of people are getting excellent educatiuons. on the flip side, in some ways it might be growing too fast, and there is unbelievable poverty as a result, and from what i’ve read in the papers, incredible corruption as well. only time will tell what direction this incredible country goes in. i only hope that some day i’ll be able to come back here again to see it.

the newspaper that saved me from being robbed

last night we took another one of thos agonizingly long train rides. we’ve taken so many of them over the last few months! anyways, the sleeper cart in the trains just has a bunch of bunkbed type things sticking out from the wall. caryn had the lower bunk and i had the upper. when we went to sleep, just to be on the cautious side, we locked our packs to the railing. i almost didnt bother to do it, i mean, i was sleeping with my legs touching the pack.. what could happen, right?? well, the last thing i did before going to sleep was read the newspaper. after finishing, i didnt know where to put the paper (indian trains have no garbage cans since the passengers just throw garbage all over the floor or out the window). eventually, i just tucked the paper under my backpack.

the next morning we woke up, maybe a half hour before our destination. i folded up the sheet i used, took my camera etc out of my pack, and unlocked the pack from the railing. then i jumped down off the top bunk and sat down w/ caryn. at this point, my pack was only like 3 feet from me… pretty much right over my head on the upper bunk. as i kept talking to caryn, all of a sudden, a newspaper flutter down and fell into my lap.

astonished, i looked around wondering where it had come from. caryn and i wondered aloud if it was the paper i had read the previous night… maybe it had fallen off the top bunk. i was just gonna leave it at that, but then, at the last second, i decided to stand up and thrown the paper back up there. that’s when i noticed…. my backpack was gone. i quickly looked around, and noticed my backpack on the top bunk of the next compartment over, right next to some guy, who immediately jumped off the top bunk and walked away. in the 5 seconds it took me to realize what had happened, the guy had already gotten to the end of the corridor and leaped off the train.

i couldnt believe it!! i was *so* close to having my whole pack stolen. this bastard, had apparently climbed into the top bunk of the next compartment, and just reached around the small wall, pulling my pack into his compartment. all this, *right* above our heads without us noticing. if the backpack hadn’t pulled the newspaper along with it, causing the paper to fall over the edge in the end, we never would have noticed. *so* easy to be robbed. to make matters worse, i had gotten out a bunch of cash the previous night that i would need over the next few weeks, so besides containing everything i own, the backpack also had about 500$ in cash.

i guess now i know just how important it is to ALWAYS LOCK YOUR STUFF!!

varanassi

varanassi is the one of the most holy places in all of india for hindus. people from all over the country come here on pilgrimages, mainly to bathe in the holy ganges river. because of this, the town has quite an interesting atmosphere.. very somber and religious on one hand but at the same time, there this huge sense of excitement in the air as people have fulfilled what for many is a lifelong dream. around town there is a steady stream of pilgrims walking around wearing towels and carrying little metal buckets full of water from the ganges.

we decided to go on a sunrise boatride on the ganges, since it’s supposedly one of the best ways of seeing Varanassi. when we walked down to the water, the sky was just barely starting to light up and it felt a little eerie to be down by the ganges in the semi-dark. as our boat slowly drifted from shore, we could see people slowly starting to come down towards the ganges. some little kids sold us some offerings candles, tiny candles surrounded by flowers in a little leaf cup that you light and set into the river. other people did this too, and it was really beautiful to see all these tiny twinkling fires floating down the ganges.

as we continued down the ganges, we saw more and more people coming down to the water to bathe. it was a really cool sight to see people engaging in this ritual. we even saw some foreigners take a dip. although it’s cool that they did it, i would *never* swim in the ganges. from what we read in thew guidebook, it’s one of the filthiest rivers ever. all the waste from all the toilets etc in town empty directly into the river. apparently it has a fecal conent more than 50 time over what is safe for bathing. but it doesnt stop there. not only is the ganges a holy place to bathe, but it’s also a very holy place to be creamated. every day, all day long, human bodies are set ablaze on funeral pires at the river. so the river is filled not only with poo, but with corpse ash. not exactly something that i’d like to swim in. our guide even told us that there are a lot of dead pigeons in the water, cause they drink the water, and just die on the spot. as we kept going down the river, our guide pointed out some of the burning ghats (where bodies are burned) where tons of firewood was stacked in huge piles. near there we saw a blazing fire, with a small group of people standing around it in mourning. fittingly enough, we watched as lots of jet black crows, slowly swooped around the waters.

people bathing

later that evening we came down to the waterfrnt again to see a puja ceremony that they have nightly. the ceremony involved lots of incense burning, ringing of bells, and small fires.

in the end, we only got to spend around 2 days in this very holy city. it was a shame not to stay any longer, but we had to go!

here are the rest of my photos from varanassi

finally some photos!!

i havent had much time recently to post photos into the photo gallery, but i finally sorted, labeled, etc a bunch of photos today. check them out!

here is the last set of photos from McLeod Ganj.

here are my photos from delhi.

here are the phototos from Vrindivan, Hare Krishna center.

here are photos of the Taj Mahal in Agra.

and last, here are a few photos from Bandhavgarh National Park… sorry, not tiger photos though!!

halfway?

ding ding ding!!

2 more months! now i’ve been on the road for 6 months. half a year!! it’s weird, back when i went on my one and a half month trip to thailand, i saw people who were traveling on year long trips and thought to myself how crazy it would be to actually travel for that long. it seemed pretty much impossible that i would ever get to do such a thing… and yet here i am, already on the road for half a year. this *might* be the halfway mark for this trip… unless we keep adding countries!

the main difference in the last 2 months as opposed to the other 2 month chunks of this trip is that i actually spent the whole 2 months in just one country. every other place we’ve gone has just been for a few weeks or so, but the last 2 months have all been in india. despite the fact that i havent been jumping around a bunch of different countries, i’ve still managed to do quite a lot of stuff over the last 2 months:

i’ve walked through streets filled with cows, goats, pigs, buffalo, and monkeys; i’ve survived unbearably overstuffed rickety indian buses; i’ve been stranded in small indian towns where no one spoke english; i’ve had people stare at me, ask for my photo, and even had someone ask me to autograph his hand; i’ve ridden a scooter around a small indian island; i’ve taken a “bucket shower”; i’ve seen hundreds of temples, both hindu and buddhist; i’ve hiked up a hill made up of 3,300 steps along w/ many pilgrims; i’ve seen some of the saddest poverty i can imagine; i’ve eaten an unimaginable amount of curry; i’ve learned how to eat without using my left hand; i’ve seen several forts and several palaces; i’ve seen a blue city, a golden city, and a lake city; i’ve taken an indian cooking class; i went on a village safari where i drank opium water and wore a turban; i’ve had some bizarre experiences from drinking special lassis; i’ve watched the sun set over stretches of sand dunes while camels paced up and down; i’ve been in a temple inhabited by thousands of rats; i saw Sting perfrom in Delhi!; i’ve spent 3 weeks living in the himalayas among tibetan refugees; i created a database for a tibetan monk; i was attacked by a monkey; i’ve lived in sub-zero hotel rooms w/ nothing to keep me warm except for hot water bottles; i’ve learned how to meditate and i learned about buddhism; i got to see the snow for a few days and saw monkeys, cows, and monks all trying to deal w/ the storm; i saw a man who was possessed by the tibetan oracle; i saw the dalai lama; i’ve bought clothing and games for homeless children; i wore a fake beard; i’ve stayed in a hotel run by Hare Krishnas; i saw the amazing Taj Mahal; i saw a wild tiger; and i saw human corpses set on fire in the most holy city of india.

phew… it’s been a busy two months!! anyways, as usual, once every two months i’m checking who’s reading this journal. if you’re reading, please post a comment in this post and let me know that you’re out there!

on the prowl

searching for tigers isn’t exactly as glamorous or action packed as it might at first seem to be. you spend a lot of time rushing around in jeeps and looking at trees. then you look at shrubs. then you stare at your watch for a while. eventually you have to struggle to keep from falling asleep since you had to wake up so early to get there… but still there’s always the chance, however slight, that you might actually get to see a tiger.. and that keeps you going.

we arrived in Bavnagargh national park after a long exhausting overnight train ride. the park is actually one of india’s smallest national parks, as it only encompasses 36 square miles of forest not far from the area described in Kipling’s “the jungle book”, but in that tiny area, there are allegedly around 22 tigers. even though we were completely drained from the train, we knew that we had very little time, so we arranged to go on a safari that afternoon, and then arranged a second safari for the following morning… just in case we weren’t able to see a tiger on the first one.

actually, the chances of seeing a tiger, despite the park’s tiny size, is actually very slim. lots of people go home dissapointed. there’s actually a sign in front of the park that tells you that you should try to enjoy your time in the park, whether you see a tiger or not. but the thing is, the only thing to do in the park is to search for tigers. that’s the whole point of going!! so of course you’ll be totally bummed if you dont see one. no doubt about it.

for our first safari, caryn and i sat in the back of a jeep with a driver and guide in the front. we rushed around from place to place, checked at a watering hole, etc but there were no tigers to be found. the other strategy that the driver tried was to just drive to random spots in the park, and shut of the jeep, hoping that a tiger might somehow walk up. hours rolled by. we did get to see a bunch of random deer, some cool birds, etc… but in the end, after 3 hours passed, we still hadnt seen the tiger. out of the 25 or so other jeeps in the park, it didnt seem like anyone else had spotted a tiger either.

we eventually went back to our hotel and had dinner at a nearby restaurant, all dissapointed by the lack of tigers. of course, it was to be expected that we might not see one, but it was still really lame. we ran into a french guy who was also frustrated. he apparently had already been on 2 safaris, and had finally seen one tiger that morning.. but had only barely seen some paws through the shrubs before the tiger ran off. we started getting kind of worried that we might leave the following day without any luck.

the next day we woke up at 5:30 am, and got a jeep to the park. by the time we got there, there was already a huge line of jeeps waiting for the park to open. morning time is a bit more structured in the park. whereas on the afternoon safaris, it’s kind of a freeforall, the jeeps on the morning safari are divided into 5 different groups, and each group can only search one section of the park. as soon as the gates opened, everyone raced in. for the first couple of hours we did pretty much the same as before… race around the park, or sit in the car doing nothing.

one tactic that they use to try to find the tigers is they listen and try to hear if the deer give a warning call… a sure sign that a tiger is present. if they hear this, the park guides will send in some rangers on elephants to try to find the tigers. the jeeps are limited to driving on the park trails and also scare the tigers somewhat, but the elephants can plow through the woods and go anywhere they please, and also are less disruptive to the tigers.

so, a few hours in, when we were starting to worry again that we might end up going home w/out seeing a tiger, we heard that the rangers thought they knew where one of them was and they were sending in the elephants. all the jeeps in our little group rushed off to the area and turned off their engines, silently waiting on the side of the road. eventually, we saw elephants crashing through the trees, ripping out huge patches of bamboo w/ their trunks for a midmorning snack. everyone in the jeeps waited in silence as the elephants went deeper into the forest. every now and then, we would hear the elephant riders yell to the jeeps saying that they saw the tiger or that the tiger was walking in a certian direction.

all of a sudden, our guide started pointing frantically into the nearby shrubs. “tiger!! tiger!!” i strained my eyes, but couldnt make out anything. the damn thing is too camoflauged! then caryn saw it. both her and the guide tried to point to me where the tiger was walking, and finally, through all the bushes and grass, i saw it…. a wild tiger. i cant even begin to describe how utterly excited i was. A TIGER!!! i couldnt believe what i was seeing. it was difficult to make out as it walked through the foliage, but it was definitely a tiger. less than a minute later, it was too deep in the forest to see.

we waited around for a while, and then tried another stretch of road. eventually we saw the same tiger one more time in the dense greenery, and then finally… for just 30 seconds or so… the tiger came out into full view. we could see the tiger completely unobstructed. it was so damn cool. according to the guide it was a female, about 3 years old. and then, as quickly as it had appeared, it was gone. at this point, some people are allowed to pay a crapload of money and then they get to ride an elephant into the shrubbery in hopes of seeing the tiger even closer. unfortunately, the park was about to close for the afternoon, so there was no chance for us to do so, but who cares.. we saw a tiger!!!

driving back to the hotel, we chatted excitedly about what we had seen. we felt so lucky to have actually seen a tiger. some people in our group had not gotten to see it, and other jeeps from other groups hadn’t seen tigers either. it so easily could have been us who had not seen one. we had no more time for safaris, and if it hadn’t been for that morning, we would have left the park all depressed. lucky us!!!

the Taj Mahal

there are a lot of famous places in india… sometimes it seems like every little thing around is famous to some degree. during our two months of traveling around india, we’ve seen our fare share of major monuments, but the most famous monument of all, the Taj Mahal, we ended up leaving till near the end of our time here. out of two and a half months in india, we’d end up seeing the Taj during our last week here. after a while, i was really starting to wonder what i’d think of the Taj. would i be all that impressed? i mean, was it really that much better than a lot of the other really cool places that i’ve seen??

well, when i finally go to see the Taj Mahal, i was completely blown away. it was so absolutely incredible. the whole thing is made of white marble and is gleaming white. it’s so impressive looking that it almost looks completely unreal, like it’s just a mirage floating there in the air. caryn and i spent several hours just walking around it and looking at it from all angles. the other really cool thing about it was that because of the sun reflecting off of it, as the sun sets, the Taj Mahal seems to be constantly shifting colors, from gleaming white, to shimmery golden, and sometimes to a deep dark grey.

the Taj Mahal is described in the book as being “the most beautiful monument ever dedicated to love” and so it seemed fitting that caryn and i would get to see it on March 9th, our anniversary. after the taj mahal, we decided to go out to a nice dinner. we went to a restaurant at a fancy hotel here named Amar Villas. when we pulled up to the place, on a bicycle rickshaw of all things, we started getting a bit worried that they might not let us inside. the guy at the gate looked at the rickshaw driver as if he was the scum of the earth, but then he let us in. the hotel was fancy… i mean *really* fancy. i felt pretty out of place hanging around there in my grubby tshirt etc.

the dinner was super good. i got a Thali dinner that came with a ton of different kinds of curries, all of them tasting really good. caryn’s dinner wasn’t as great, but the dessert she got was sooooo good!! the dinner ended up being crazy expensive though… especially for indian standards. the cheapest bottle of wine there was like 150$!! when i went to use the bathroom, the urinals had little tiny fuzzy mats that you stood on and everything was gleaming clean. it kind of made me a little sad in a way to see all of this. i thought about all the people that i has seen in town that day. the rickshaw drivers, the construction workers, the ticket collectors. this place was beyond their wildest dreams. their bathrooms weren’t clean,and they certainly didnt have little fuzzy mats to stand on… instead, these people just had a hole in the ground. for me, this hotel was way out of my price range, but i know that if i *really* wanted to stay there, i could afford it… but most people around here, they couldnt save up enough money to stay here even if they saved for several years. i would say that this is the kind of place they could only see on tv… but i doubt that too many of them have tv’s. of course, all of this is quite a generalization, there are plenty of indians who are well off, own tvs, stay in fancy hotels, etc etc… but unfortunately, there are so many others that i see on a daily basis, who dont.