around the world in 180 days

We left Steve and Phuket yesterday, and flew back to Bangkok. Anna was awake the night previous with the dreaded stomach problems and last night didn’t go so well either. She’s taking antibiotics and meds for guardia (which don’t conflict and won’t cause her problems) in hopes to clear this out. If they don’t do any good, then it’ll be back to the hospital to tell the umteenth doctor about her embarrassing stomach problems. I’m hoping the meds will work.

It’s ridiculous that we, but more so Anna, get sick so often. We are as careful as possible with food and water and all that and it doesn’t make any sense that so many stomach illnesses should hit us.  What caused it this time? Who knows? Maybe it was from swimming in the lake 2 1/2 weeks ago in Pokhara. That’d be the right time frame for Guardia. Maybe it was from contaminated ice in our watermelon juice in Phuket. Maybe it was a dirty spoon, or maybe it was any number of other things. I can tell you that she’s awfully sick of being sick and I am too.

With luck, Europe will be better on that front. We booked tickets today, and are flying to Munich on June 11. We’ll spend the next five weeks in central/eastern Europe (Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Austria and Germany) before flying non-rev (thank you so much Steve) on NWA back to MSP in the middle of July. Since we’re flying non-rev (non-revenue, Steve can fly people on NWA for no profit, as long as he’s with them or they are going to MSP–it saves us hundreds of $), we won’t know exactly when we’ll be back until we actually get seats on the flight,  We’ll probably be flying out of Amsterdam, as NWA has three flights a day out of there. With a little luck, we might be sitting in first class on our last fight.

Before we fly to Europe, though, we feel obligated to see some of the “real” Thailand (as if the beaches aren’t real). We’re going up north tomorrow, to a place in the hills called Chaing Mai that is famous for being a lovely place to visit. As long as Anna’s stomach isn’t causing her trouble anymore, we’re planning on doing a guided trek through the forests to see hill-clan villages and probably be pressured to buy souvenirs from them. We’re also talking about doing a cooking class whilst up there, but of course, all this depends on Anna’s stomach. We’ll be flying back on June 10 to spend the night in the lovely Bangkok airport before flying off to Munich.

Nepal does everything it can to distinguish itself from India: it even has its own time zone, only 15 minutes ahead of India, just to be different. Still, with a billion people and by far the largest area on the subcontinent, it’s inevitable that there will be some cultural similarities and both India and Nepal are fundamentally conservative when it comes to sex and public displays of affection. There are not many places in the world that are more the opposite of that than Phuket.

The thing that bothers me the most is seeing men who must be 60 or 70 walking hand in hand with a girl that can’t be a day over 20. As long as the woman is making a choice to do that, I guess I don’t have a problem with it. I just wonder how many of the women are choosing for themselves and earning money for themselves. Most, I hope.

Other than that, we’ve not been up to much. We met Steve in Bangkok on Saturday night; he’d been traveling for something like 40 hours and was pretty wiped out. After a few hours sleep, we took a cab to the new Bangkok airport, which looks like a space station. We left Kathmandu airport, which is a third world airport in every sense of the world, and landed at this space age wonder in Thailand. I felt like an astronaut getting off the plane. Anyway, after a blissfully uneventful flight, we landed in Phuket and the relaxing began.

Steve’s been a good tour guide. He knows quite a few people here, so he took us around and introduced us. We decided to splurge and stay at the same place as him, which still isn’t too insanely expensive, and when we were registering, one of the receptionists said “deposit?” to the man checking us in, who replied, “this is Mr. Richner’s nephew. Deposit not necessary.” Repeat business is rewarded in Thailand.

But yes. Very different. It’s like we’ve been welcomed back into the modern, if not the western, world.

All three photos are from the day we crossed the pass; as you can see, we were lucky and had wonderful weather. Enjoy!

We’ve been in Kathmandu for a total of 6 days now, between the first time we were here and the last few days, and before today, we hadn’t seen any of the cultural sites here. It’s almost shameful, until I remember that we’re americans and the only culture in the world that matters is ours. We’ve been drinking plenty of coca-cola, so we’re cool on that front.

We decided we’d better visit Pashupatinath anyway, as it is one of the holiest sites in all of Hinduism. It is a temple complex dedicated to Shiva, the creator and destroyer god, and it is also the place where Hindus cremate their dead. It is in active use and in the hour and a half we toured the complex, four bodies were either reduced to ashes or set aflame. It was both profoundly moving and disturbing at the same time; the emotions that the sight of a charred and smoldering human arm stir up are complicated and difficult to describe.

Death in India and Nepal is something that is confronted, not something that is prettied up by a mortician and displayed in false grandeur. The family members of the deceased wash the body in the holy river and cleanse him or her of all sin. For a man, his eldest son takes a torch in his hand (for a woman, it is her youngest son–if a person has no sons, it is their spouse or other close relative), walks around the funeral pyre three times, and places the flaming brand, which is made of red sandalwood, in the deceased’s mouth, setting the body and the wood beneath alight. It takes about 2-3 hours to completely burn a body, with women taking longer than men. Once the body is burned, the torch bearer shaves his hair, eyebrows and beard and dresses in white for 13 days, a period of mourning for their loved one. A woman whose husband has died will never remarry, their bangles and jewelry burn with their spouse and they are not allowed to wear red ever again.

Much of the rest of the temple complex is dedicated to fertility. There is a long series of temples all containing representations of divine genitalia, that of Shiva and his wife, whose name I can’t remember. Couples who cannot conceive travel here from all over the country and smear a combination of milk, honey, butter, sugar and something else on the statues and then drink it, believing it will make them fertile. Infertility can be a big problem for a couple in a rural area: people begin to talk after a couple of childless years of marriage, and they don’t say nice things.

All in all, it was a great experience, if somewhat disturbing. Glad we finally made it out of Thamel and into the real Kathmandu.

My brother Matthew has been asking us to buy him a sitar while we are on the Indian Subcontinent for as long as he’s known we’d be traveling here. We told him that we’d look, but that it was unlikely.

But we looked. We looked in Delhi two separate times, both times when the temperature was over 45 celsius (110 F). I’m not a hot weather person and Lord knows that Anna’s not, but I don’t know how anyone is supposed to function in Delhi when it is that hot. As you walk down the street, you’re choked by the smell of human filth, automotive exhaust and incense, as if that might make a difference. To make our search more difficult, both times we were sick.

We went into a music shop one of the times and were attacked by a salesperson. I think we were the first potential customers they’d seen since December, when Delhi is actually tolerable. We told him we were looking for a sitar and he kindly showed us an instrument that Ravi Shankar might have been honored to play, with a price tag to match. See, we were in the wrong part of Delhi. Connaught Place is centerally located, with lots of shopping and hotels, but for bargains you need to go elsewhere. We tried to leave and the salesman blocked the door. Indian salesmen are either the best in the world or the worst, depending on your point of view.

So we decided to look in Kathmandu. Our first time here, we had more than enough to do getting ready for our trek and we only went into one shop. We got serious about finding one yesterday, visiting 3 shops and settling on a particular sitar in a particular shop. After a few calls home, we secured the funding and got the green light to go ahead with the purchase.

It took about an hour to get all the extra strings wrapped up at the music shop–it came with a complete set, which for a sitar means 18 strings. Next we had to ship it.

The sitar came in a hard case, which will be nice for Matthew (who is about the luckiest 17 year old in the whole wide world) once the sitar is back in the states, but which meant big bucks for shipping. All told, the shipping was more than the instrument itself. We sent it via Aramax, an internationally known shipping company I’d never heard of before. We watched the workers pack the awkwardly-shaped instrument for shipping for almost 2 hours. They wrapped everything in bubble wrap, wrapped the bubble wrap in cardboard and wrapped the cardboard in plastic, upon which they slapped “fragile” stickers and wrote the tracking number about 10 times. It was quite an operation. Anna went out to get snacks for everyone.

It is done now. Matthew gets a sitar, partially as a birthday gift from my parents and partially by his own funding and we spent all day getting it for him. I’m jealous. The instrument is an undecorated model, but it is still an absolutely breathtaking piece of craftsmanship. It is worth far more than we paid, even with the shipping. Matthew, you are not allowed to sell that instrument to anyone but me. Ever. No matter what.

Again, not much to update about. We’ve been in Kathmandu since Tuesday, when we took one of those always-fun 3rd world bus trips. We were on a tourist bus this time, which made things more comfortable. There was no livestock on the bus, no one on the roof and the bus stopped at tourist places to eat, not local roadside diners (which are scary–some of those places are super dirty). It made things less interesting, but better overall.

Since, we’ve done some souvenir shopping and not much else. Kathmandu has some of the best cultural sites in all of Nepal, one of which is one of the holiest sites in all of Hinduism, but we’ve yet to visit them. We’ve shamefully stayed hidden in the tourist quarter of Thamel and not yet ventured out. Today, however, that will change. We’re planning on walking to the site I mentioned above. Details to follow.

Other than that, we’ve been gearing up for our trip to Thailand. We’ve made reservations, booked airline tickets and generally gotten everything in place for a week on the beach in Phuket. It’s going to be quite a change from Nepal. Phuket is one of the major beach/party destinations in Thailand, so we’ll go from 3rd world to neon lights in 2 days. I’m looking forward to it, but I’m glad Steve will be there to show us around.

We’ve been relaxing in Pokhara for the last 4 days; tomorrow we take a bus back to Kathmandu. We’ve been hanging out with people we met on the circuit, which has been a lot of fun–Anna’s great conversation, but we both like to talk to someone else now and again. Everyone else left for KTM today, though, so we’re on our own until tomorrow.

Other than go out to eat with our trail friends, we haven’t done much of anything. We shopped for a few souveniers, took a boat out onto the lake one day and read a lot, but not much more. After 17 days of walking, it’s nice to have nothing to do.

Well, everyone out there in blog land, sorry for the long lapse in posts, but Anna and I are out of the mountains and back at an altitude you can reach in MN. I wrote every other day or so while we were trekking, so I’ll fill in a bunch more details in the next day or so, but I wanted to put something up without having to mess around with editing text.

The Annapurna circuit was awesome. We began at about 1000 meters (3000 ft.) and we climbed for 11 days, when we crossed a pass that was over 5400 meters, or almost 18,000 feet. It was 2,000 feet short of Mt. McKinley. The views were incredible. I’ll try to post some photos here in the next day or two, but it might have to wait until we’re back in Kathmandu. It took us a total of 17 days to reach Pokhara (the end point and where I am writing this from) with one day off (yesterday). We met a bunch of cool people and a few that weren’t so cool, but overall, we had a nice social experience.

As a hike, it was very different from what we’re used to. It was much longer, of course, but we spent every night in a guesthouse and ate all our meals at restaurants along the path. The only way in to most of these villiages is by foot, so everything we ate, was carried by either a Nepali or a donkey.

Being the only way to reach these villiages, we saw tons of Nepalis using the path for their everyday life. We met a schoolteacher bringing his class to another town for an athletic competition and we saw dozens of Nepalis carrying loads of produce to market, loads of food for us to eat, and loads of other goods to buy or sell. It was cool to be a part of their life, even if it was a small part.

There is an active Maoist insurgency in Nepal, which has prompted the state dept. of the US to warn all travelers to stay away. We traveled through areas of heavy Maoist activity at the beginning and at the end of the trek and encountered no problems. The Maoists used to inflict a “tax” on tourists passing through, but have announced an end to this policy. We had been told that the Maoists also required all trekkers to be accompanied by one guide or porter, which we didn’t have, but we found that this wasn’t the case. We encountered more independent trekkers than those with guides.

We’ve now got 9 days to relax before we fly to Thailand for, uh, more relaxing. My uncle Steve is meeting us in Phuket and has agreed to show us around, which we are both very excited for. It will be nice to get to the beach and just relax. I think we’d be ready for Fiji now as well. 17 days of hiking is a long time.

More details to come, if you want them.

We walked to Marpha yesterday, a town famous for its orchards, primarily apple, but also apricot and peach. All the hotels served apple pie and apple crumble, apple juice and apple cider and apple brandy, all of which Anna and I felt obligated to sample. Every one was delicious except the brandy, which tasted awful. Then again, I’m not much of a brandy fan, so maybe a connessiur would be more appreciative.

The hardest day of the trip is over; it’s all downhill from here. We crossed Thorung La yesterday, climbing from 4500 meters to 5400 meters, then descending down the other side to Muktinath, at 3800 meters. The whole day took us about 8 hours and by the time we reached the Bob Marley Hotel in Muktinath, we were pretty much wiped out. The mountain scenery was, of course, excellent, although by the time we crossed the pass, the mountains on the other side, the Dhaulgirli range, were wreathed in clouds and mostly hidden.