San Francisco

The morning I left for Hong Kong, the car wouldn't start. We were already late and my family, miracle workers that they are, got it running just as I was starting to panic.

I was grabbing my bags and barreling toward the door when when my dad called, "Don't forget to say goodbye to the house." I raced back for a last lap through my room, the dining room, the kitchen. My parents had already sold the building I grew up in and, as I closed the door, I knew home would never be the same.

Five Things to Remember about Nepal

I fell asleep this afternoon because life after the trail has been that tiring. I mean, the only thing harder than boutique shopping is playing Scrabble, right? Well, my mom and I have played 35 games (?!) so far this month, so I definitely deserve a break.

It all started with a few days in Pokhara, a town that had great views of the Annapurna range but so much smog that we could barely see down the block for most of our stay. Instead of taking in the views, we spent our time shopping for jewelry and eating some of the foods we missed on the trail.

Stories from the Himalayas

I'm lucky enough to have spend the last three weeks hiking in Nepal with my mom and even luckier to have a mom who understands that yes, even though we are still here in this foreign country on an adventure, I want to shut myself up in front of a computer and write about it. 

The result is a longer blog post than usual, but even this doesn't do justice to the friends we made along the way, especially our excellent guide, Kapil. Many thanks to all of them.

After a few days in the town of Pokhara, Mom and I are now back in Kathmandu, playing tourists until our flight home. We'll arrive in San Francisco on April 3. Stay tuned to hear more about our post-trail Nepali adventures!

Stories from the Himalayas

What a bus ride! The sheer cliffs and sharp dips made the bus feel like a roller coaster run off its tracks and the dusty road turned the air into a sandbox. Personal space? Try explaining that to the guy practically sitting in my lap. There were as many people on their feet as in seats, all of them clambering to be near the door, many hanging out it, and while I was holding on for dear life inside of the bus, people were climbing onto the roof.

We're ba-ack!

We're in civilization! My mom's and my three week trek around Mt. Manaslu was amazing. We saw some breathtaking scenery (and the climbs took our breath away, too), made great new friends, trudged through a lot of snow, ate a small mountain of  dahl bhat (rice with lentils), and even managed to play a few (well, more than 20) games of Scrabble.

Although there were some hard hikes, my true challenge was remembering to write down recollections of the fun times we had. For the first time since about sixth grade, I actually kept a daily journal. I'm hoping to get some stories from the trail up on this blog soon, but I have a feeling it's going to take me a few days.

For now, we're safe and sound in Pokhara, Nepal's second largest city and eating as much delicious, non-trail food as we can get our hands on. We'll spend a few days seeing the sights here and in Kathmandu before heading back to San Francisco on April 3!

Manaslu with Mom

I'm in Kathmandu! We're talking about a town that has three main types of business: gear stores, book stores, and bakeries. What could possibly make this better?! Well, my mom arrived last night with a scrabble board and a box of chocolate chip cookies. Oh right. That. And then there's the small matter of trekking in the Himalayas...

We leave tomorrow morning for the 21-day hike around Mt. Manaslu, the world's eighth highest peak. I'm beyond excited to trek with my mom, even if it is going to mean losing a lot of Scrabble games. The government requires all foreign Trekkers in the Manaslu area to have a guide, so we'll also hike with a young Nepali guy named Kapil.

Seven Things to Remember About India

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India's been a whirlwind and an adventure and a chance to spend some quality time with my dear Dad, but here are some of the things that made me scratch my head:

1) Monkeys: They're all over, running on rooftops and defying gravity. We Americans are missing out.

2) Trains: After using the railways in the US, China, Thailand, and now India, I have to say that the ones here are great. The AC isn't on too high and there are electrical outlets. Swoon. Now, if only the train stations were just a little bit less insane.

Himalayan Traffic Jam (and Other Stories)

Really India? You managed to make all this happen in 24 hours?

It all started in a Jeep bound for Darjeeling, the famous British Himalayan Hill Station. I smelled rain and got excited for MOUNTAINS. Unfortunately, the driver got excited, too. If that was his rain driving, I shutter to think how fast he goes when he isn't being cautious. Luckily, we hit a Himalayan traffic jam: a one lane road with no shoulders and 10 cars trying to go each direction!

Calcutta on Strike

The old name Calcutta brings to mind images of wild times, excitement, and poverty. Possibly that's why the government switched to the more phonetic Kolkata in 2001.

But at Sealdah train station there, finding a cab was exciting enough. There were separate lines for prepaid and metered taxis but some lines were supposedly closed and it was unclear who, if anyone, was actually in line. There was another area for tuk tuks and no matter where I stood, all sort of drivers turned up to offer me overpriced rides.

Girl Talk on the Train

At the train station on the way to Kolkata (Calcutta), I caught myself thinking, "This would be so much more peaceful in China." Ladies and gentlemen, using "peace" and "China" in the same sentence is a symptom of insanity, and I was getting there. I was weary of tuk tuk drivers pretending to get to know me while quoting exorbitant prices, sick of touts sticking around long after the first "No, thank you." After almost 10 weeks on the road, I was also just tired.

It's amazing the difference a little girl talk can make. As soon as I met the women in my train compartment--two Indian engineering students and a German fellow traveler--I teleported to a slumber party. Everyone spoke good English (After years of English-medium education, the Indian girls' English was not only fluent but pretty.) and we spent much of the 20+ hour ride chatting, exchanging photos, and watching Vampire Diaries. I finally made some Indian girlfriends!

The Taj Mahal

"Make sure you marry someone who will build you one of those," my dad advised, looking up at the Taj Mahal. Ok, Dad. I'll get right on that.

I'm pretty sure he wanted me to skip the whole death while giving birth to the 14th child thing (and the polygamy), but Dad had a point. Shah Jahan must have been pretty into Mumtaz Mahal to build her this mausoleum. And had a lot of money and power and a really good architect. If anyone knows a Mughal emperor who needs a wife, send him my way.

Along the Ganges

The oarsman of our little rowboat steers the vessel so smoothly that I hardly notice us turning to avoid other boats.

As we watch dawn break over the Ganges river, he tells us that Varanasi is "the holiest place on earth... Always holy, 24 hours, Varanasi."

Maha Shivaratri in Varanasi

We stepped out of the cab and our driver pointed to a line of people that stretched around the corner and out of sight. He said everyone was waiting to get into the temple--the temple two kilometers away, that is. Welcome to Varanasi.

Sitting on the banks of the Ganges, Varanasi is always a bit surreal (It's a very sacred place to die, apparently) but the big to do today was Maha Shivaratri, the celebration of Shiva's marriage to Parvati. I've read that Hindus fast all day for this festival and then stay up all night, but my (very shallow) research hasn't turned up anything about ritual waiting in line.

We took the opportunity to get to know people. My dad, the master of (be)friending people before Facebook made it cool, started asking locals if he could take their photos. They loved it! It seemed like everyone was flagging us down and posing and chatting and laughing.

A Taste of the Slums

After three days of beautiful architecture in Udaipur and here in Mumbai, I was starting to wonder if we had teleported to Europe. And all the boys in white playing cricket didn't help.

Then, we went to Dharavi, Mumbai' largest slum. Toto, we aren't in Kansas anymore. Or Europe or China or Thailand or anywhere else.

Slums--technically, any areas where people live on government-owned land--house 55 percent of Mumbai's population.

But, walking around Dharavi with our tour guide, Asim, who grew up in the slums himself, the poverty wasn't as jarring as the moments when I forgot that we were in a slum at all.

(Not) Getting the Girls

It's Valentine's Day here in Udaipur (Supposedly India's most romantic city!), and I feel like an awkward teenage boy: I want to talk to girls, but they don't even know I exist.

Although every man in India seems to call out, "What is your name? Where are you from?" I could count my conversations with Indian women on one hand. Even at our friendly, welcoming guest house, the proprietress always refers us to her brother.

In fact, I haven't even seen that many women. At Delhi's subway security checkpoints, I would always breeze through the empty female side, only to spend ten minutes waiting for my dad to catch up. Sure, that's karma for all the long ladies' restroom lines I've waited in, but it's also disconcerting. Like most teenage boys, I clearly don't understand girls. They're especially scarce on the streets at night; could it be a massive slumber party? Where are they?

A Whole New World

I love Indian food. In Hong Kong, with cheap, delicious Indian restaurants near home and work, I ate more curry than wontons. And when I first got here, I kept wishing I had a bigger tummy, to fit in more chana masala and special dosa.

Had I maintained the pace, I would have gotten my wish (and lived to regret it) but a few days ago my appetite vanished. I'm not going to call it the dreaded Delhi Belly (this has been milder than food poisoning, with a faint fever) but it sure has slowed me down.

The good news is, that gave us an excuse to see the monuments around Jaipur slowly--and they're so majestic that it would be hard to see them any other way.

The Pink City

If there were a Princess of India Barbie (Oh, wait.), Jaipur would be her home, and not just because every building in the old city is painted pink. As a salesman here told us, "Jaipur is shopping paradise."

From shoes to shawls , craftspeople here make just about everything quintessentially Indian. My favorite was the bangle shops. How many bracelets does it take to fill all the walls in a room, floor to ceiling? A lot. And they're all sparkly, colorful, and handmade.

In fact, sparkly and colorful describes just about everything in India, especially the women. Whereas in most other Asian countries I've visited, Western styles have taken over, Indian women wear traditional clothes all the time, possibly because they realize their fashions are way prettier than anything we Westerners could dream up.

The Pace of the Place

Walking down the street in Old Delhi is like being at the starting line of a big road race, except everyone is hurrying in a different direction. And there are bikes, cars, street ovens, beggars, dogs, horses and cows in the mix (Amazingly, some of those animals are napping).

We've been in Delhi for almost a week and still, on the eve of departure, I feel unqualified to say anything about this city.

Delhi with Dad

Fellow travelers are always telling me how nervous their parents are. "I have to call my dad twice a day," they'll say. "My mom hasn't slept well since I left."

I smile and nod, but I have the opposite "problem." Far from worrying about my adventures, my parents are always trying to stow away on them. These are the people who rafted the Grand Canyon when one was pregnant and the other a few days out of appendicitis surgery (I'll let you figure out who was who), so I've still got lots to live up to when it comes to adventures.

Plan Ahead and Prepare

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Looking at hostels online, the ones in tourist areas always appeal. They're convenient! They're social! But then I arrive and I always wonder why the restaurants nearby only cater to foreigners. And then I complain a lot about not getting to have a local experience. I'm hopeless, aren't I?

This time, I decided that I would stay somewhere with local street food. I ended up in the center of Bangkok, where hundreds of stalls cater to office workers on their lunch breaks. Today, I had chicken saute, street coffee, and a tasty roasted banana. How great would it be to stop in a street stall for that pre-work pick-me-up instead of Starbucks? I'm jealous. (Although there are plenty of places to get Starbucks here. Don't you worry.)

Five Things to Remember About Vietnam

One highlight of this week: I drank weasel poop coffee. And liked it.

What's that? Well, they take coffee beans, feed them to weasels, collect the droppings, roast them, and then mark up the price. I'm no coffee connoisseur, but I'm not the only one who thinks it tastes pretty good. There's coffee everywhere in Vietnam, so they should know.

But you don't need coffee to stay awake in Vietnam. With my short visit over (I flew to Bangkok this morning), here are a few of the things I'll remember:

Learning About the American War in Vietnam

The sound of M16s and AK47s still rings above the tunnels of Cu Chi almost 40 years after the US pulled out of Vienam but these days it's tourists, not soldiers, firing as part of their visit to the 200 km of underground passageways that protected the residents of this area and allowed the Viet Cong to sneak up on US soldiersin their tents, seemingly appearing from thin air.

I hate to say this, because Vietnamese culture is fascinating on its own, but one of my main reasons for coming to this country was to deepen my shallow understanding of what people here call the American War. Between these tunnels and the War Remenants Museum in Ho Chi Minh City, I've gotten to see a very Vietnamese perspective.

Tet: Lunar New Year in Vietnam!

"Everyone is wearing pajamas!" my new friend Karina said when we arrived in Chau Doc, a town just across the Vietnam border. The matching, loose-fitting shirt and pants sets that women here wear truly look like nighties to our Western eyes.

Adding to the impression that this country is one big slumber party are the many hammocks that line the highways here: rows and rows of Pitt stop nap stations. I want to try one out, for the cultural experience, of course.

But if Vietnam is a slumber party, it's the kind where everyone stays up all night. There's been hardly a dull moment since I got here--and not just because we're in the midst of Tet, the lunar new year celebration.

Along the Mekong

You know it's a relaxed journey when the boat driver is not only steering with his feet on the wheel, but reading a book at the same time. The Mekong Delta may be the place where Vietnam grows most of it's rice (and Vietnam trails only Thailand in global rice exports, so that's no small feat) but you wouldn't have known it from the pace of our boat tour through the area.

The trip started in Cambodia and ended in Vietnam, but even the border crossing was relaxed: we pulled up in our tiny boat and grabbed lunch in the no man's land restaurant while we waited for everything to be ready. There was the small matter of one girl having the wrong visa, but even that problem disappeared with a $5 bill.

Last Day in Cambodia

Every country is different. Really. I'm not making this up.

After this last day of wandering around in Phnom Penh, here are a few off-beat things I'll remember about Cambodia:

1) They use US dollars. When I got my first handful of greenbacks out of the ATM, I thought they must be fake. The width felt wrong. The texture felt wrong. Were these money? (I think I've been out of the US a little too long.) But they were real and people really use them all the time. It's 4,000 riels to the dollar, and everyone wants to deal with small numbers, so they use riels for change and dollars for the big stuff. (Yes. That's my educated analysis of the Cambodian economy.)

No Smiling

Rather than no smoking signs around the Tuol Sleng Museum, there are no smiling signs, or at least, that's what they look like. But there is no need for a reminder not to smile here. As Security Prison 21, this former high school was the place where approximately 17,000 inmates met torture and death at the hands of the Khmer Rouge regime of the 1970s.

I spent the morning wandering past countless photos of the inmates and guards, which the Kmher Rouge took as part of its fastidious record keeping. Most striking was that the photos of the two groups were so similar. In fact, many of the guards later became inmates. Many were just children. Everyone was Cambodian.

Angkor Wat

A local tuk tuk driver saw me riding a bike around in the Temples of Angkor and laughed. "Tomorrow, I drive you?" he asked. "No thanks," I said. "But it's a long way." I wiped a few tablespoons of sweat from my brow, "Nope."

It was awesome. I've been to plenty of temples in China and now Thailand, enough to know that I prefer John Muir's cathedrals to brick and mortar buildings. But the Temples of Angkor, the crown jewel of Cambodia, are more than buildings. When was the last time you got a workout in church? This was an adventure.

Cruising through the vast grounds, I had to marvel at the scale of this place. Every one of the many temples I visited would have been a site worth seeing on it's own.

Chiangmai Continues

Tigers on Tuesday
"No eat him! No eat her!" the tiger trainer kept saying as Eric and I petted 19-month-old Sunflower, a full-sized tiger. At times I would look up and realize that, as I petted one tiger, there were two others within springing distance.

Of course, there was something unnatural about the harmlessness of these animals. If petting "tame" tigers in a center is safe and ethical, why don't people do it more often? I'm not sure, but tigers are magnificent creatures and I'm glad that I got the chance to get so close to them--and even more glad that they didn't eat me.

But petting the tigers wasn't even the highlight of the day. Oh no. That came later, when Eric and I spent a lazy evening listening to live music, sipping drinks, and chatting.

Elephants!

I'm always afraid to trust the people I meet when I'm traveling. Does the seemingly nice lady who comes up to me on the street really want to help, or is she just looking to sell me something? Will the "great deal" actually turn out to be a sham? Traveling though Thailand, I've been amazed to see how many people actually do want to help and really are just being friendly.

That's the way I felt about elephants. They're big! They're heavy! When the first one came bounding up to me this morning, I was cautious. But, within the first five minutes of Eric's and my Mahout (elephant rider) training course, I knew those guys just wanted to have fun. And eat bananas. Lots and lots of bananas.

Banjos in Thailand

One thing I've seen a lot of living in Asia: markets. I've seen regular Chinese markets, tourist markets, a high altitude Himalayan market, Muslim markets, livestock markets--I wasn't expecting that much from Bangkok's weekend extravaganza.

But Lonely Planet wasn't kidding when it said this was one of the largest markets in the world. The massive map showed stalls selling food, clothes, animals, animal feed, and even a tiny square marked "cock fighting." Eric and I thought we had seen most of it, only to check the map and realize that our hours of wandering had covered less than a third of the market's area.

And this market was different from other markets I've seen in Asia. Yeah, it had some fake purses, but there was also artwork, fresh smoothies, and cool T-shirts. Toursity or not, I was impressed.

Beach Days

"Sunset everday!" advertises one of the guesthouses near ours. "Really?" I want to ask, "Every day?"

But that's the point of life here on Koh Phangan, an Island in southern Thailand: when your routine is eat, sunbathe, swim, repeat, there's no need to do anything out of the ordinary. We did make an exception for massages, though.

Koh Phangan is the party capitol of the world, but with Eric on antibiotics (and finally feeling a bit better!) and me no big fan of drinking alone, we've been keeping to our quiet beach bungalow in the northern part of the island.

Lying on a beach may be fun, but it doesn't make for riveting reading, so I'll keep this short. More to come in the next few days as we head back to Bangkok an then on to some more cultural destinations!

Hello, Thailand!

I kept saying I wasn't going to Thailand. Everyone goes to Thailand, I said. All there is to do is sit on the beach and eat and drink and get massages, I said. I say the darndest things.

Luckily, I decided there are worse things than a beach vacation, and it might be, you know, fun. With my first bites of Thai curry, I was wholeheartedly eating any naysaying words. And then I had dinner again at a different restaurant, because the food here is that good.