longhaulers

gata loops and lahoul valley

beautiful lahoul valley.

Well…back in the USofA. Im glad i did that last post in India before we left. It’s so easy not to deal with trip stuff now that we are back.. we’re in such a different headspace now… it’s definately nice to be back in a comfortable and clean place, but it’s like “now what?” We are selling jewelry that we bought back from India at a Sat. swap-meet in front of a surf shop, I picked up some temporary work in a cabinet shop and sonja’s gardening, I’m trying to organize a mural that’s to be painted in a school near Seattle…etc..we’re starting to feel a bit gypsyish. life is not nearly as exciting as it was for the last 6 months, I’d say it’s almost more difficult to adjust to a slow pace from a fast pace then vice versa, but we’ve still got a lot to look forward to. There’s talk of leaving with Holly and Mike as they cycle from Seattle to San Francisco… so we’ll see.

anyway, here are some photos from the last month or so of our cycle trip in the Himalayas..in no particular order (get a hold of me if you want to see the full slideshow)..

a little landslide action.

yes, this is the road.

the amazing morey plains

sonja cranking up kinnaur valley

ki gompa, spiti valley

descent into kashmir

rainshadow riding

floating veggie market, srinagar, kashmir

back in dirty delhi

goodbye! thanks for reading!

 We’ve got about 5 hours before we head to the airport, so this trip is over!!! we spent the morning stuffing 6 months of accumulated purchases and junk into our bags and packing down the cycles. It’s near to impossible to get a bike box in Delhi so we focused on making our bikes into small tight packages..with the hope that baggage handlers recognize the bikes as bikes and handle them with care.

To recap the last two weeks as we made our way from Leh to Delhi: Read the rest of this entry »

Here we are in Leh, Ladakh. I was waiting to do a blog post when we got back to Delhi, but that’s still two weeks away and it’s better to do these things when the memories are still fresh (even if the satellite internet here is 4x expensive as Delhi)…but already the clarity of the last 3 weeks is fading as we’ve slugged around Leh-town the last 6 days. So, settle in this is a longish post…. Read the rest of this entry »

After nearly 5 months of travel and eating every meal at some form of restaurant, we’ve got a pretty good feel of what’s out there. most backpacker places have the same menus, often with spelling errors that make for a bit of entertainment:

snakes = snacks; chicken lever = chicken liver; veg dumb bling; vegtable dumpling; scumbled eggs = scrambled eggs…and so on…

But out of all the eating establishments, the GangaView in Rishikesh is superior to all. We discovered it when we were here for two weeks about two months ago. Now we are back and eating nearly every meal at this favorite. It’s kind of a ‘hole-in-the-wall place that’s shared by feral looking westerners and Indians alike. There’s not not much to say about their interior decoration…but they have real coffee!!…with ice cream or as a shot.. the most amazing fruit, muesli, curd and a delectible veg paneer fry at about half the cost of other places. All this and the morning paper.

We’ve been here for about 4 days now getting our India legs back and planning our next mission. We’ve got our bikes back and we’ll leave tomorrow; destination: Spiti Valley. Apparently there are no computers up there, and we’ll be lucky if even half of the road is paved and not washed out with landslides… Till about a month or so…

It’s such a nice feeling to wake up in the morning and think that all you have to do today is go for a walk in the mountains. That’s how we’ve been feeling for the last two weeks as we’ve treked a good 125miles around the Himalayas.

Read the rest of this entry »

Kathmandu is really quite crazy actually. it’s much busier and more polluted than I expected, but when are one’s preconceptions ever correct? There also seems to be more social ills, such as homelessness, alcoholism, and the most disturbing sight of street children huffing glue in plastic bags. Read the rest of this entry »

some pics. Read the rest of this entry »

It’s amazing where you can end up while travelling on spontaneity and last minute decesion making…it’s also amazing how fast the time here is going. it feels like i updated this blog a few days ago, but i think it’s been more like 3 weeks in actuality.  we’ve been busy little bees indeed. Read the rest of this entry »

We feel lucky to have escaped Gorkana…it feels as if we were sucked into a timeless vortex of sand, waves, palms, food and the best little hut in India. after a week passed we reluctantly forced ourselves to leave….but the moment we turned our backs on that crescent of sand and started pedaling the excitment of new things ahead was strong. Read the rest of this entry »

We’re about ready to say that our cycling in south India is over. We are in the most relaxing destination of Gorkana (cow’s ear) as of now..and plan to stay a while. We found a great little hut that’s a short walk to the wonderful kundle beach. the hut is nestled amongst a dry rice paddy, a coconut grove and a garden with eggplant, peppers and ganja…and rent is about $3.50usd/day! the beach is walk-in only and about 30min from town, there are 3 more beaches further south by foot, so plenty to explore! we feel we deserve a little r&r. in the last 31 days we’ve cycled over 2,000km…with 6 days off. the last 500km Sonja had ameobic dysentry and we both had bad bed bug infestations again. then the last day of riding, we both took slams when we hit a wet, oily patch of road in pre-dawn light. luckily we and the bikes suffered no serious damage. when we feel rejuvinated, we’ll cycle the remaining 160km to Goa and catch a train north.

We set out well before dawn from our dingy hotel room, which, located on a busy intersection next to the bus station, had meant sleeping with earplugs in an attempt to muffle the noise of blaring horns and labouring Read the rest of this entry »

In Tamil Nadu, with topography comparable to a pancake, we pedaled for 1000km in only one or two gears - it would have been quite possible to do it on a single-speed. But Kerala is quite different, for one there are hills! And hills can be summed up as: fun to go down, not to go up. This is the nature of hills. I think that cycle touring is a good analogy to life. There are difficult times (when yer pumping up a hill and getting blasted by diesel exaust) there are good times (flying down hills charged on chai and vadai’s), But most of life spent in the neither good nor bad, but in the flats of contentment. Kerala has been fun to cycle in though. The landscape is much greener and the roads are blessed with wide shoulders. The people are friendly and the food is good. Read the rest of this entry »

well, here we are…still kicking! there was a bit of a problem where i couldn’t log into the blog site to update, but all appears to be good now.

speaking of delays…we got a bit delayed there in mamallapuram, after i wrote the last post titled ’sickness’, it was my turn to once again get sick - with noctural runs for the Read the rest of this entry »

well it seems we’ve run into a little bad luck as we’ve both been pretty sick the last couple of days. it started with itchy bed bug bites in kolkata for both of us. i got a nasty cold on Read the rest of this entry »

eh?

well here we are in kolkata!

things here are crazy…more like total chaos, but of the kind that is really interesting and fun to be part of. Read the rest of this entry »

our week in bangkok is up. it was good. after 4 or 5 days we got tired of all the traffic and noise and such so we hopped on a train to Ayutthaya. We didn’t know what to expect of this town, we don’t have a lonely planet for thailand, but it turned out to be a really fun place with ancient and extensive temple ruins. we rented some crazily dilapidated bicycles and rode around (see photo).

we are now looking forward to going to a less tourist infested and even cheaper destination: kolkata! tomorrow we fly to india.

Well it was a long flight. Highlights include following a full moon from Seattle to Taipei, sitting next to a man with the loudest and most frequent sneezes i’ve ever heard, and meeting up with sonja who had spent 14 hours in the Taipei airport - she slept in the children’s play room.

Read the rest of this entry »

6 months of cycling around india, nepal, thailand, and more? commencing in 6 days. too busy to write now as i’m doing trip stuff, eating good n’ plenty’s and talking to sick peps (holly). stay tuned for the real stuff!