tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15574594730097316692024-03-14T03:44:03.516+08:00Lucie & Rhys´s Honeymoon AdventureA weekly update on where we are in the world and what we've been up to.Lucie Kingdomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18320597530474698888noreply@blogger.comBlogger117125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1557459473009731669.post-27970785162388091642014-12-17T00:00:00.001+08:002014-12-27T22:02:53.046+08:00Week 117 - THE END!!!!!<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Now we’re home and we’ve had a chance to surprise both our families, I can finally stop dropping hints about a fictitious ski season in Austria. The last day of our trip took us from Belgium, back to the UK.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">We left the hotel in Bruges earlier than originally intended as we didn’t want to get caught up in any backlog resulting from the Belgian strike. As our hotel was next to the station, we were on the train and on our way to Brussels in no time. After a quick stop in the supermarket, we checked in to the Eurostar departure lounge for the last leg of our journey. Of course, our train was delayed but only by 30 minutes.</span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Going home, onboard the Eurostar, Brussels.</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Onboard we settled in to our seats for the short 2.15hr trip to London. As soon as we left the platform we popped open a bottle of Veuve - for months we’d been saying we’d have champagne on the train to celebrate going home.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">We pulled in to London, all smiles for being back in familiar territory and having made it from Hong Kong to the UK without stepping foot on a plane, before jumping on a train to Essex. We spent the next 4 days at my mum’s after surprising her at work, surprising my sister and her family and meeting our nephew who was born while we were away. Passing through Chelmsford on the way back to London we stopped at my grandparents to surprise them.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">We then had two days in London, hiding out at Karen’s house where we had a chance to surprise Rhodri, before catching a bus out to Wales.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">We arrived in Port Talbot on the 23rd December and had 2 nights to hide so we could turn up on Rhys’s parents doorstep on Christmas morning. Our friend Birdy was kind enough to put us up and keep our secret, waking us up on Christmas morning with presents and a cup of tea in bed.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Birdy drove us over to Rhian and Sean’s house early on Christmas Day to surprise them and to see our niece open her presents and to meet our other nephew who had been born while we were away.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Then we really were on the final leg of our journey to take us full circle, back to Rhys’s parents house. After surprising Ceri and Billy it was time for the traditional Christmas morning open house and the rest of the Kingdom clan popped around. </span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Full circle, Rhys back in Baglan outside his parents house.</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">After 116 weeks on the road it was good to be back, to see family and friends and to be in a house we knew and were comfortable in. It’s amazing how quickly you forget we’ve been away for so long, nothing has changed drastically, we’re just older and wiser. We’re ready to move back to London in the new year, we have jobs and a flat lined up and are looking forward to having our own place filled with our own possession and not having to pack our bags and sit on buses for hours on end. It’s been an incredible trip and the best start to married life we could ever dream of and our memories will be with us for the rest of our lives. We’ve met some amazing people along the way who made the trip what it was and who we will always remember - and who we have no doubt we will bump into again some where, some day. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Time to start planning our next adventure....!</span></div>
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Lucie Kingdomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18320597530474698888noreply@blogger.com0Baglan, Neath Port Talbot, UK51.619954 -3.814203000000020451.580514 -3.8948840000000207 51.659394 -3.73352200000002tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1557459473009731669.post-67652471877234478892014-12-17T00:00:00.000+08:002014-12-25T00:29:04.600+08:00Week 116 - Berlin, Cologne, Brussels, Bruges (Germany, Belgium)<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">After a 6 hour sleep in Warsaw it was time to pack up and check out. We were only in Poland in transit and didn’t have time to see any of the city. We took the Metro north to the bus station and found the platform. We had another long journey ahead, a 9 hour drive to Berlin. Again, we were surprised at the border when we weren’t stopped for any kind of passport check but the journey was on time and comfortable, arriving into Berlin at 5:30pm.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">We were picked up by our friend Monique at the bus station and beer in hand, jumped on the Metro. We met Monique in Ecuador nearly two years ago and again in Colombia and had kept in touch. We were lucky enough that she offered for us to stay at her flat in the centre of the city and she’s so easy going and chatty that it didn’t feel like it had been nearly two years since we’d last seen her, in fact we were talking so much we got on the Metro going the wrong direction and it took us 20 minutes to notice. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">After dropping off our bags and picking up some groceries for breakfast, we set out to a famous curry wurst stall a couple of Metro stops away. Ever since we met Monique, Rhys has been excited about visiting her in Germany to try curry wurst so it was top of the to do list. We joined the queue and made short work of the sausages before turning to the next stall, a Turkish kebab booth. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">We were surprised to find the extent of Turkish influence in Berlin and to learn that Turkish food has become a Berlin institution. At 5% of the cities population, the Turkish community there is the largest outside of Turkey and it’s really noticeable. In the 1960’s and 1970’s there was a labour shortage in West Germany and a deal was struck with Turkey, inviting immigrants over to fill the void, a lot of the families ended up settling there and staying.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">After the best kebab we’ve ever eaten, and with the left overs wrapped up and stuffed in our pockets, we wandered off to find a pub. Another noticeable thing about the city was the lack of bars, there are hundreds and hundreds of restaurants but finding a pub was hard and Monique hasn’t lived in the city long enough to know all the best spots. We ended up in a little wine bar with a huge bottle of wine that we shared while we swapped travel stories (Monique’s trip took her all the way from Patagonia to Alaska). We weren’t out late before walking back to her flat, looking forward to getting a good nights sleep after our long journey.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Monique skipped uni the next day to study from home so we left her to it and followed her directions out to the Eastside Gallery, within walking distance of her flat. The gallery is a 1.3km stretch of the Berlin Wall that has been left to stand as a memorial. The section of the wall is covered in graffiti works by internationally renowned artists but is in a bad state of disrepair with erosion and tagging covering the original works. </span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Painted section of the Berlin Wall in the Eastside Gallery, Berlin.</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">We were quite shocked with the sheer amount of tagging covering every inch of wall space throughout the entire city, it’s like nothing we’ve seen anywhere else and it’s a real shame to see brand new buildings covered in scribbles. The wall itself is a humbling sight, it stood for 28 years from 1961 to 1989, dividing Berlin and surrounding the West of the city, then part of West Germany. East Germany claimed it was built to protect it’s people from fascist ideas when in practice it acted more to stop mass emigration and defection from East to West.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">It started raining while we were out so we didn’t stay long before walking back to Monique’s where instead of studying she’d been sitting procrastinating. Along with the curry wurst, when we’d met Monique in South America, we’d promised to cook her Shepherds Pie one day and this seemed the perfect opportunity. While I prepared the meal to heat up later, Rhys cracked open the vodka. We ended up sitting around playing cards chatting until dark when we finally got ourselves ready to head out to a Christmas market.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">As we arrived at the Gendarmenmarkt the heavens opened and we ducked in to a hat stall to try on hats and wait it out, before finding a covered area to stand with a mug of mulled wine. It was a beautiful market, all lit up with fairy lights and surrounded by classical, columned buildings, the Concert Hall and the French and German Cathedrals. After a few mugs of warming mulled wine and hundreds of cheese, pate and saucisson samples (Monique’s great at getting samples!), we headed back to the flat for dinner with Monique’s housemate, Jutta. The shepherds pie seemed to go down well and instead of heading out we decided to stay in the warmth of the flat, playing cards and eating Monique’s homemade biscuits.</span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Rhys and Monique at the Gendarmenmarkt, Berlin.</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">We slept late again the next morning before sitting down with a map for Monique to give us pointers on where to spend our tourist sightseeing day. We left the flat together and first stopped at a Turkish market near Monique’s flat. Berlin was surprisingly cheap and we ended up buying yet more fabric. The food stalls looked immense but we’d had another enormous cheese, ham and fresh bread breakfast at Monique’s and couldn’t fit anything more in.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">After the market, Monique headed to work while me and Rhys went in to the city to tick off the main sights, the cathedral, the 1791 Brandenburg Gate, the government offices at the Reichstag (although we couldn’t get tickets to go in) the Victory Monument (which we climbed for views of the city) and the Holocaust Memorial, a city square filled with standing concrete slabs with a museum underneath. We’d thought to take in a museum or two but ended up walking miles and before we knew it, it was getting late and starting to get dark and it was threatening to rain.</span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Sculptures on the riverside by the Cathedral, Berlin.</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Me at the Brandenburg Gate, Berlin.</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Holocaust Memorial, Berlin.</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">We’d arranged to meet Monique from work so after a quick stop back at the flat we headed out to the main shopping street. Although we hadn’t left enough time to explore to see the lights, it was still very festive. Monique finished on time and we jumped back on the Metro to head to a Dim Sum restaurant on the outskirts of the city. Monique’s housemate was moving out the following day and had invited us to tag along to her leaving meal. The Dim Sum was delicious and Jutta and Monique’s friends were really friendly and welcoming. It was a shame that we had another early bus the following day and couldn’t join them afterwards for drinks.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">We jumped on the Metro back to Monique’s and climbed in to be just before midnight. The next morning we were up and out early with Monique popping out to say goodbye with promises of seeing us again in the near future. It was an easy trip back to the bus station (although Rhys was a little heart broken because we thought the trip to Berlin was our last bus trip and we’d be able to stick to trains from here on in, and then we realised the trains in Germany cost a bomb and we’d have to bus it and we assume Austria will be the same).</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The journey was long and drawn out and we were delayed by an hour and a half as there were road closures just as we got close to Cologne. Karen was flying in from the UK to join us in Cologne and typically bad timing, London airspace had closed the previous evening and we hadn’t heard if it had reopened in time for her flight. Luckily her flight had taken off. We’d rented an apartment through airbnb and Karen had managed to pick up the keys and get a couple of hours nap as she hadn’t been to bed since her office Christmas party the night before. She was fresh faced and ready to start the wine when we walked in the door and we spent a couple of hours chatting and catching up in the flat. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">We’d lured Karen to Cologne with promises of mulled wine and Christmas markets and just as night was falling we jumped on a train to the centre of the city, wearing our new Christmas jumpers that Karen had bought for us. Ró, who we’d completed the EBC trek with had been to Cologne a few days previous and we’d joked about her leaving a note for us somewhere to find. We’d received instructions, something about a run in with a priest, a EUR5 note and a Roman arch and were intrigued to see if the letter was still there. We couldn’t believe it when we found it, tucked in to a hole in a brick with a little present as a reminder of the trek. We had a quick walk around the cathedral market and took hundreds of photos of the gothic cathedral towering overhead, looking quite eerie in the twilight with some of the most amazing gargoyles you could ever imagine, before retiring to a German beer house for Kolsch and to excitedly read Ró and Una’s note.</span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Rhys posing with Ró's message at the Roman Gate, Cologne.</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Kolsch is a Cologne tradition, a really pale German ale served in tiny 200ml glasses by barmen who walk around with trays full of fresh beer and as soon as you finish a glass they replace it. We were all pretty tired so we didn’t stay for long and as soon as we got back to the flat, Rhys fell in to bed fully dressed while me and Karen stayed up chatting and making mini Christmas trees.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">We all slept late the next day and enjoyed breakfast in the flat. By the time we headed back in to the city it was lunch time. We started back at the Cathedral Market and bought tickets for the Christmas Market Train. The train drove a route with 4 stops showing us the best of the markets without us having to bother navigating around the city, and it was pretty funny sitting in a little train, in traffic, listening to Christmas songs when we could easily have walked it quicker - in fact we gave up on the train at the end. The first market it took us to, in the Old Town, practically joined on to the back of the Cathedral Market and was by far and away the best market with little log cabins and gnomes scattered across the roofs. </span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Cologne Cathedral in the daylight, Cologne.</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Old Town Christmas market, Cologne.</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Karen making one of her hundreds of purchases, Cologne.</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Rhys and Karen looking suitably festive on the Christmas train, Cologne.</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">We’d made an error in deciding to do the markets on a Sunday and it was hellishly busy, we could barely move and you didn’t stand a chance of getting close to any of the stalls. We managed to fight our way to the front of the mulled wine stall and Karen elbowed her way in to a meat on a stick grill.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Our next train stop was at the harbour by a chocolate factory by which point we’d had enough mulled wine to loosen the purse strings and Karen ended up with bags and bags full of Christmas goodies. We had one more market to visit, the Angel market in the New Town, which was pretty small and it didn’t take long to complete a circuit. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">By then we were cold through and ready for a sit down, retiring to an Irish bar to warm up. We ended up spending the whole night in the bar, only popping back out to the markets for dinner and sausages. After a night time sneak through an empty market, we jumped on a train back to our side of the city, or to what we thought was our side of the city. It was the wrong train and we ended up in the middle of nowhere with no cash and no idea how to get back to the flat. Finally we found a taxi and jumped in.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The next morning was another late start. After breakfast we had to hand the keys back and we took our luggage to the main train station to check it in to the amazing self service luggage machines. We then had the whole day to explore the city. Done with the markets, we decided to check out the inside of the cathedral and climb the bell tower. After hundreds of steps, we were ready for a sit down and ended up back in the same Irish pub. Karen had one thing left she wanted to do while in Germany, eat schnitzel. Not wanting to disappoint, we found a little restaurant and ducked in for dinner before it was time to collect our bags. Karen headed of to the airport for her flight back to he UK while me and Rhys waited for our train platform to be called.</span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-KyAbmCldwvc/VJroSWXhHSI/AAAAAAAACiA/Ppk4wV7lm2g/s1600/DSC08465.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-KyAbmCldwvc/VJroSWXhHSI/AAAAAAAACiA/Ppk4wV7lm2g/s1600/DSC08465.JPG" height="400" width="265" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Inside Cologne Cathedral.</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">We made our way to the platform only to be told the train was delayed. And then, that the train was only going one stop and wouldn’t be continuing in to Belgium, as Belgium was on a nationwide strike and no transport was running in the entire country. Apparently there have been strikes going on for a while but the train company didn’t think it necessary to email us to tell us our prebooked ticket was affected. We were told over the speaker to head to the bus station where there would be people to help us and a bus waiting. Of course, there was no bus and we ended up running around for 15 minutes desperate to find someone to help us. We ended up on a bus where our ticket wasn’t valid but they agreed to take us and settled in for the drive, expecting there to be some kind of replacement bus in Brussels to take us the rest of the way to our destination, Bruges. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">We arrived in Brussels to find the station on lock down. After walking around for ages while the clock neared midnight, we found a staff member who laughed in our face when we asked about a bus. Our first impressions of Belgium hadn’t been good. We had no option but to find a hotel for the night, despite already having one booked in Bruges. Luckily, as no one could get in or out of Brussels, the hotels were empty and we found a decent room for EUR64 for the night. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The next morning we woke to blue skies and as we were next to the station could hear the sound of trains running. Hopeful, we walked to the station and had to buy a new ticket to get us to Bruges. The journey was only an hour and we checked in to our hotel and were ready to head out and explore in time for lunch.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Our hotel was located a short way out of town but we’d picked up a map with walking routes highlighted that would take us around to see the main touristy areas and some of the many churches. Instantly we liked the place, it’s a pretty little town with cobbled streets and tall skinny buildings lining canals and waterways, a bit like Amsterdam but smaller. The historical centre is pretty compact and walkable and we spent a couple of hours wandering the streets, crisscrossing the canals and seeing some of the windmills on the ring road. The streets were filled with tourists and horse drawn carts with winding narrow alleyways lined with chocolate shops and lace makers, leading to towering church spires and beautiful squares. It truely was one of the prettiest towns we’ve been to.</span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-qmaxWC3KUTs/VJroTPSzs5I/AAAAAAAACiM/p7ku-Lnv9ko/s1600/DSC08507.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-qmaxWC3KUTs/VJroTPSzs5I/AAAAAAAACiM/p7ku-Lnv9ko/s1600/DSC08507.JPG" height="265" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Exploring Bruges.</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-2toSB-VFWfA/VJroTi9lLnI/AAAAAAAACiQ/XoXTt9JpBSk/s1600/DSC08633.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-2toSB-VFWfA/VJroTi9lLnI/AAAAAAAACiQ/XoXTt9JpBSk/s1600/DSC08633.JPG" height="265" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A typical street in Bruges.</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">After a couple of hours and a bratwurst at a Christmas market, Rhys wandered back to the hotel to chill while I carried on exploring for a couple of hours. As the sun started to drop I stopped at a tea room above a chocolate shop for an incredible giant mug of hot chocolate that came as hot milk and solid dark chocolate to melt in it.</span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-vQouRpEnhmM/VJroUbmPguI/AAAAAAAACic/g_wIedUBr-0/s1600/DSC08797.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-vQouRpEnhmM/VJroUbmPguI/AAAAAAAACic/g_wIedUBr-0/s1600/DSC08797.JPG" height="265" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Bruges on the riverfront.</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-BApLDfqcBLI/VJroT2vt9tI/AAAAAAAACiU/KXYIWuyzdi8/s1600/DSC08675.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-BApLDfqcBLI/VJroT2vt9tI/AAAAAAAACiU/KXYIWuyzdi8/s1600/DSC08675.JPG" height="265" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Bruges, canalside.</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">As we’d had a hard journey the previous day we decided to treat ourselves and after a bottle of fizz in a bar we wandered around until we found a Belgian restaurant with a great three course meal offer. Plates of delicious flemish stew and chocolate mousse later and we were content. Back out in the cold we passed the night market where everyone was in good spirits and we stopped for a final mulled wine before bed.</span></div>
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Lucie Kingdomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18320597530474698888noreply@blogger.com1Bruges, Belgium51.209348 3.224699500000042550.891377999999996 2.5792525000000426 51.527318 3.8701465000000423tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1557459473009731669.post-30037522787588701212014-12-10T00:00:00.000+08:002014-12-11T23:33:14.158+08:00Week 115 - Moscow, Riga, Vilnius, Warsaw (Russia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland)<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">We woke in our tiny Moscow room and wrapped up as best we could ready to face the subzero temperatures outside. We really weren’t prepared for the weather and had to wear two pairs of trousers, two T-shirts and two jumpers each. Once outside we walked back towards the city centre with the intention of visiting the Kremlin. As we hadn’t had a chance for breakfast, we spied a cheap deal in an American diner and popped in. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">By the time we reached Red Square, it was nearly lunchtime. The Aleksandrovsky gardens were closed for a military parade where carnations were laid at the tomb of the Unknown Soldier (where the body of a soldier who fought in the battle of 1941, that stopped the German advance on Moscow, is buried), so we circled around by the road to the Kremlin ticket office. Luckily we’d made it in time to buy tickets for the 12:30 slot at the Armoury and had to rush over to join the queue at one of the corner towers to pass through security. The Armoury chamber is a small museum housing an incredible collection of Tsar bling, from golden goblets to diamond encrusted thrones, ornate helmets and beautifully engraved weapons, with a small and slightly disappointing collection of Fabergé eggs. Our tickets allowed us an hour, wandering from room to room before it was time to exit and head over to the main Kremlin entrance.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The Kremlin is the heart of Moscow and the seat of the Russian government. It’s a walled citadel that houses senate buildings as well as a number of cathedrals, built over several centuries and in a mixture of styles. It’s all a bit strange when you enter as there aren’t many signs and no obvious route. We got shouted at by a guard for crossing the road not at a designated crossing point and decided to play it safe and head straight to the central square to see the golden domes of the 15th century cathedrals. We stopped to explore the Cathedral of the Assumption, the traditional place for the coronation of Russian Tsars, the Cathedral of the Archangel Michael, a burial chapel for the Tsars, and the Cathedral of the Annunciation, the Tsars private chapel. All were gloriously decorated with every inch of wall space painted and gilded.</span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-JQg9EzrzMvw/VIm2DXuwvnI/AAAAAAAACe8/5TqEFDyUuIg/s1600/DSC07432.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-JQg9EzrzMvw/VIm2DXuwvnI/AAAAAAAACe8/5TqEFDyUuIg/s1600/DSC07432.JPG" height="265" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Rhys and the Tsar Cannon, Kremlin, Moscow.</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-BhHoGpT6XnE/VIm2DAu0PEI/AAAAAAAACe4/XMMFwjemOaw/s1600/DSC07501.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-BhHoGpT6XnE/VIm2DAu0PEI/AAAAAAAACe4/XMMFwjemOaw/s1600/DSC07501.JPG" height="265" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Ivan the Great Bell Tower, Kremlin, Moscow.</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">We had time to stop by the Palace of the Patriarch (the head of the Russian church) and to see the 200 tonne Tsar Bell, the heaviest in the world, and the huge Tsar Cannon, the largest calibre cannon in the world, before heading back out to Red Square. Most buildings in the Kremlin aren’t open to the public and even those that were were eerily quiet.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The sun started to drop as we wandered over to Red Square, passed Lenin’s Mausoleum (although he didn’t seem to be home), to see St Basils Cathedral in the light and to wander around it’s mazelike corridors. As it was cold, we decided to detour through the GUM shopping arcade, a glass roofed pavilion containing row after row of high end shops before walking back towards the hostel. Popping out again later to brave the cold for dinner in a nearby pub.</span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-NvUhEeM_b10/VIm2LMWMOJI/AAAAAAAACgg/1X2mE7LeE5Y/s1600/DSC07536.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-NvUhEeM_b10/VIm2LMWMOJI/AAAAAAAACgg/1X2mE7LeE5Y/s1600/DSC07536.JPG" height="265" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">St Basil's Cathedral at dusk, Moscow.</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Walking around Moscow it’s clear that there’s a lot more money there than elsewhere in Russia, every other car is either a Mercedes, a BMW or a Maserati and the streets are lined with elegant boutiques and restaurants - average wages are 6 to 20 times higher than cities in Siberia. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">We had to check out of our room the next day but our bus wasn’t due to leave until late that night. We put our bags in storage and wandered over to see the Cathedral of Christ the Savior, on the riverfront. The route took us along side the Kremlin to a junction where we were stopped by police and sent back to walk the other way around the block where it was impossible to cross the road and we had to find a whole new route walking through a metro station - crossing roads in Moscow is a right palava, you either have to wait for 10 minutes for the traffic lights to change or walk miles to try and find a crossing point. The building is a 1997 replica of an earlier cathedral that had stood on the same spot, but that was bulldozed by Stalin to make way for a Soviet Palace, a project that never came to fruition. </span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/--vsWpEVHUuw/VIm2EFmULvI/AAAAAAAACfM/H9CMf9i-Q8A/s1600/DSC07614.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/--vsWpEVHUuw/VIm2EFmULvI/AAAAAAAACfM/H9CMf9i-Q8A/s1600/DSC07614.JPG" height="400" width="265" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Cathedral of Christ the Saviour, Moscow.</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">By this point, we were close to the Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts and decided to pop in to the 19th - 20th Century European and American Gallery. I was keen to see the collection of Impressionist and Post Impressionist works it held and although a lot of the rooms were closed, it was well worth the visit, and gave us a chance to thaw out in the warmth.</span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-yr0dwDGhGpw/VIm2EQHKc3I/AAAAAAAACfI/twgsA2VszII/s1600/DSC07625a.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-yr0dwDGhGpw/VIm2EQHKc3I/AAAAAAAACfI/twgsA2VszII/s1600/DSC07625a.JPG" height="265" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Rhys admiring a Monet in the Pushkin Galleries, Moscow.</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Our last stop of the day was ‘The Arbat’, a pedestrianised street that my guide book described as ‘one of Moscows best loved streets’ and that we thought would work to pass an hour or two. We were disappointed to find all it offered were rows of shops selling tourist tat at extortionate prices, stalls selling oil paintings and horrific caricatures and a few chain restaurants. We were getting hungry so stopped for lunch at a smart little grill before catching the metro back to our hostel, passing a supermarket where we bought cheap Russian vodka to take with us in to Latvia. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">We still had a little over an hour to waste before leaving to find the bus station and ended up in the basement kitchen, counting down the minutes. Finally, it was time to leave and we grabbed our bags and headed out in to the cold. We enjoyed Moscow, it had a real buzz and some architectural gems, random buildings on street corners and wide avenues punctuated by the Stalin ‘Seven Sisters’, giant Soviet style skyscrappers.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The metro got us to the bus stop with plenty of time. As it wasn’t a bus station, just a layby, we walked over to the bus companies office to check we were in the right place, then had an hour of sitting on a cold wall in the dark until the bus pulled up. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">It was a decent journey after we’d worked out how to make Rhys’s seat recline and the bus was of a good standard despite us having the only seats where the screens in the seat backs didn’t work. The further we got from Moscow and the closer to Latvia, the more windy the roads became. We were expecting a motorway but we found ourselves on rough country roads. We were both feeling a little queasy and ended up taking Rhys’s super strength sea sickness tablets and had both managed to sleep before we reached the border at 4am. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The border guards weren’t too impressed with Rhys’s passport for some reason but after a quick phone call and some discussion they signaled us through. Finally we were back in the Eurozone where our magical EU passports give us a right of passage. For the first time in two years and over 30 countries, we no longer had to feel apprehensive when crossing borders. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Back on the bus, we still had a fair old drive until we reached Riga. We arrived just after 9am and consulted our map for the short walk to the hostel. Tim was due to fly in to meet us after lunch and we took the opportunity to nap and freshen up in our room.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Rhys was still in bed when Tim arrived and bundled on the bed to wake him. It had been 8 1/2 months since we’d seen him last and we had lots of catching up to do. We cracked open a bottle of the Russian vodka and spent a few hours chatting in the comfort of our room before changing to head out in to Riga Old Town.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Our hostel wasn’t far from the city wall and it didn’t take long to find an Aussie Pub i’d read about that had great reviews. It was nearly dark when we went out and it wasn’t until we checked our watches that we realised it was still only 4pm. After a game of foosball and pints of cranberry beer and super sweet cider, we continued to find a new pub. The old town was packed with souvenir shops, boutiques, bars and restaurants and every hundred metres, the windy cobbled streets opened in to another square headed by a church with a towering spire, filled with Christmas markets and Christmas trees.</span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-ZzTCGOFjL50/VIm2FVJvPzI/AAAAAAAACfU/73PtpqmOmTc/s1600/DSC07634.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-ZzTCGOFjL50/VIm2FVJvPzI/AAAAAAAACfU/73PtpqmOmTc/s1600/DSC07634.JPG" height="265" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">St Peter's Church, Riga.</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">We had cups of mulled wine, peered into strange brews in huge cauldrons, chatted to a few locals (Latvian people are so friendly and they seem to like British accents) and found ourselves in a British pub where we ducked in to get out of the cold. By that point we were starting to get hungry and spent forever walking around trying to find a restaurant that was on the cheaper side but offered Latvian food. Struggling, we ended up at a pizza restaurant. Calling it a night, I jumped in a taxi back to the hostel. The boys followed me back shortly after.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The next day we were late to rise and only made it down to breakfast just before it was tidied away. The kitchen was hectic but the breakfast spread was one of the best we’ve seen in a long time (although a hostel buffet was below Tim whose preference was for a MacDonalds). We decided we should explore Riga a bit before going to a bar and headed in to the Old Town, map in hand to explore the twisting alleyways and the photogenic buildings, stopping to buy hot cider at the Christmas markets. It was much colder than the previous day and a light rain followed by freezing temperatures had turned the cobblestones in to treacherous passages. Tim had swanky boots on without an ounce of grip and spent most of the day literally skating down the roads yet I was the only one who actually managed to fall over, right in the middle of a square for the whole of Riga to see.</span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-ZRYTb_xJ80g/VIm2FmvRaKI/AAAAAAAACfY/PCux8u_fg_E/s1600/DSC07664.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-ZRYTb_xJ80g/VIm2FmvRaKI/AAAAAAAACfY/PCux8u_fg_E/s1600/DSC07664.JPG" height="400" width="265" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Rozena Street, Riga, where you can apparently touch both sides, but only if you have ridiculously long arms.</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-uQxOhSinRqE/VIm2GTLM4cI/AAAAAAAACfc/1iJQz788f84/s1600/DSC07706.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-uQxOhSinRqE/VIm2GTLM4cI/AAAAAAAACfc/1iJQz788f84/s1600/DSC07706.JPG" height="265" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Rhys and Tim with warm cider in Riga Old Town.</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">After leaving the Old Town, we wandered north to the Art Nouveau district. The city has the largest and most impressive showing of art nouveau architecture in Europe with more than 750 buildings adorned with gargoyles, nymphs and goddesses. We didn’t spend long in the area as the wind had picked up and it was starting to get too cold to explore. Tim popped in to a pipe shop and came out with a new cigar and after walking the length of Alberta Street, we circled back to Elizabetes and the KHL Sports Bar, in the basement of the Radisson hotel. After asking the hotel manager a couple of times where the door was we realised it had two names and was closed for 15 minutes. We braved the sleet outside and found a cute little coffee shop where Tim was manly enough to drink the espresso that arrived instead of my cappuccino. By then, the bar was open and we settled in to a nook with leather couches and a huge flat screen TV for pints of cherry flavoured beer.</span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Art Nouveau building on Alberta Street, Riga.</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">We watched some football and a bit of rugby over lunch before realising they didn’t have the channel with the Spurs game on and deciding instead to relocate to the hotels roof top bar, the Skyline. By then it was dark and the lights of the city, including hundreds of Christmas lights, were twinkling below. Tim went to the bar and reappeared with a bottle of Taittinger as a special treat. For a minute, we forgot how scummy we are at the moment and instead just enjoyed the light show in the classy bar with our glassed of champers.</span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-6X9mAu9nGm4/VIm2HPOI-nI/AAAAAAAACfk/3aPP89BRrUM/s1600/DSC07794.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-6X9mAu9nGm4/VIm2HPOI-nI/AAAAAAAACfk/3aPP89BRrUM/s1600/DSC07794.JPG" height="265" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Champers courtesy of Tim in the Skyline Bar, Riga.</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">We decided to make a stop back at the hostel to freshen up before walking back into the Old Town for an evening of bar hopping. To not make the same mistake as the previous night, we started by searching for a restaurant and ended up at a lovely traditional Latvian place. We’d arranged to meet a friend of a friend in town and were a little disheartened when they text to say they were in TGI’s, since we’d seen hundreds of beautiful little wine bars and pubs during our day time exploration. We weren’t in TGIs long before they called last orders and along with our two new Latvian friends we walked around the corner to a Cinema Bar, again, not one of the cute bars we’d seen in the day. We didn’t stay for long before we twigged our new friends had only wanted to meet us because being British, they assumed we had money and wanted us to treat them all night. Ditching them, we ended up in a British pub again, for a final drink before again, last orders were called and we realised the city was closing for the night. After a cold walk back to the hostel, we climbed in to bed at about 3:30am.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Tim had a 11am flight and was up and dressed and out of the hostel in no time, leaving a trail of promises to visit us in Austria in a couple of months. We’d had an epic couple of days but were tired and shaky from lack of sleep and excessive alcohol. Nevertheless, after breakfast, we checked out and wandered out to find a flea market that was highlighted on our tourist map. When we got there we were surprised to find rows of tatty market stalls selling mostly second hand TV remotes and old tools. We left quickly and walked to the Central Market, a much better find. The market is located in four adjacent warehouses that resemble aircraft hangars and is full to bursting with all kinds of food stuff, fresh fruit and veg, cured meats, smoked fish, cheeses, dried nuts and pulses and piles and piles of pickled, grated cabbage. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">By then it was time to walk back to the hostel to pick up our bags and head to the bus station. The bus left on time and this time our seat screens even worked. The journey to Vilnius was due to take 4 1/2 hours and when we left Riga the sky was turning blue, having been white and full of snow for the duration of our stay. We arrived 30 minutes early and hadn’t even realised when we’d crossed the border. We had a vague map to get us to our hostel and after a few wrong turns, found the main road leading through the Old Town. We’d booked a dorm bed to save a bit of cash and found we were sharing with an odd Russian boy. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">We were both pretty shattered and it was already dark when we arrived. We dropped off our bags and headed straight out to find somewhere easy for a quick dinner before bed.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">We were woken the next day by our strange Russian room mate and spent the morning drinking coffee in the common room. Just before lunch, we donned our coats, grabbed a map and went out to see what the city had to offer. Rhys came to Lithuania for his stag do and although they stayed in a different city, they spent a day in Vilnius, shooting guns and working up a thirst on a communal beer bike. Despite that (or probably because of that), Rhys didn’t recognise a thing in the city so it didn’t feel like he was just revisiting somewhere he’s already been.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">We walked to the Cathedral Square, near our hostel before climbing up the Gediminas’ tower on a hilltop at the south of the old town to see the view. It was a shame it was so foggy as there are literally hundreds of cathedrals scattered throughout the city and we could barely make half of them out. Walking back down towards our hostel, we made a photo stop at the red brick St Anne and Bernadine Church Ensemble, before finding ourselves in Uzupio. Uzupio is a bohemian area that, tongue in cheek, declared itself an independent state and posted it’s constitution on a wall in 9 different languages, listing things like ‘everyone has the right to look after a cat’ and ‘everyone has the right to celebrate or not celebrate their birthday’. Compared to the main road running through the Old Town, the buildings in Uzupio were more rustic and run down and we found a lovely little pub on the river for lunch.</span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The Bell Tower in cathedral square, Vilnius.</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-fpJLVHUNtBk/VIm2HytA89I/AAAAAAAACfw/qeYiPAQs8Yo/s1600/DSC07920.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-fpJLVHUNtBk/VIm2HytA89I/AAAAAAAACfw/qeYiPAQs8Yo/s1600/DSC07920.JPG" height="400" width="265" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">St Anne and Bernadine Churches, Vilnius.</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Walking back into the centre, we wandered along Literatu Street with some beautiful wall art, before passing the Town Hall with it’s rubbishy Christmas Market and the southern border of the Old Town at the Gate of Dawn. By then we were ready for some apple pie. We struggled to find a coffee shop with apple pie and settled on a shop with rows and rows of calorific cakes in an area known as the Ghetto with quaint cobblestone alleyways.</span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Walking through the ghetto, Vilnius.</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">We made one final stop at the Presidential Palace before deciding it was time to head back to the hostel to defrost. It was still in the minuses and we were starting to get fed up of being constantly cold. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">After a couple of hours in the hostel it was time to wake Rhys from his nap to head out for dinner, to a Lithuanian restaurant i’d found on trip advisor. The meal was great value and atmospheric, sitting in a brick vaulted basement, but the Zeppelins (potato dumplings) were extremely heavy and we didn’t stand a chance of finishing them.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The next morning we were woken by our strange room mate clunking around on the wooden floor in his clogs. Neither of us had slept particularly well and we’d hoped for a lie in before our hellish journey to Berlin via Warsaw. We spent the morning drinking coffee in the common area before stopping by the supermarket to pick up lunch and some dinner to eat on the bus. Leaving Rhys in the hostel, I rushed out to squeeze in a visit to the Museum of Genocide Victims in the 2 hours we had before we had to leave for the bus station. The museum is based in the old KGB/Gestapo building and I figured it would be educational to learn a little about the atrocities that happened there, sadly, the museum was closed, I spent a few minutes reading the names of Lithuanian’s who had been executed there on the memorial wall before heading back down the sweeping main shopping avenue Gedimino. With a bit of time left, I turned back in to the Ghetto to wander the twisting cobbled streets. The more time I spent in Vilnius, the more I liked it, the back streets being far more appealing and filled with small wine bars and cake shops, than the repaved high street that cuts through the Old Town.</span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Back streets of Vilnius.</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">It was an uphill walk back across town with our bags to reach the bus station where we boarded our 11 hour bus to Poland. We had to change in a small town close to the border but other than that the journey was painless and we arrived on time in Warsaw at just after 11pm. We took a cab straight to our hostel and checked in for the 6 hours until we had to leave again. It was a shame we couldn’t stay longer since the hostel, Oki Doki. looked right up our street.</span></div>
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Lucie Kingdomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18320597530474698888noreply@blogger.com0Vilnius, Lithuania54.6871555 25.27965140000003454.393536000000005 24.634204400000034 54.980775 25.925098400000035tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1557459473009731669.post-76960644983270833482014-12-03T00:00:00.000+08:002014-12-04T00:49:04.051+08:00Week 114 - Olkhon Island, Yekaterinburg, Vladimir, Moscow (Russia)<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Nikitas had managed to arrange for the minibus to collect us at 7am instead of 9:30am, to give us more time to make sure we crossed to the mainland and made our train. That meant that everyone else who was leaving that day (which was everyone but one person, as no one wanted to get stuck on the island if bad weather was rolling in), had to get up early too. We were given a packed lunch and bundled into the van, hoping that the ferry would run. The wind had been fierce in the night and we’d heard it ripping at the roof panels in our cabin, but it seemed to have died down. We still weren’t sure whether it would be enough, the previous day we hadn’t thought the weather was bad at all, nothing compared to some of the crossings we’ve done in other countries and this was a solid car ferry, not a creaky little Indonesian wooden boat.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">We drove passed areas of the lake where the ice had advanced a few metres compared to what we’d seen the previous day and suddenly it seemed perfectly reasonable that the whole lake would be completely frozen over in a month. When we got to the ferry there was a queue to board, our driver drove straight to the front and with in no time we were on board and setting out. We clambered out of the van to stand on deck for the crossing. It was absolutely magical. The mist was swirling on the surface of the water and the sun was just starting to rise turning the sky pastel shades of pinks, greys, purples and blues. It was possibly the coldest weather we’ve faced too. Without the sun up to warm us, everything hurt from the cold, fingers, toes, cheeks, even eye balls, it was easily -35C. The Siberian winter was quickly advancing.</span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-I659E36_fmI/VH88cTGp1VI/AAAAAAAACdI/j6I1NXkLBSA/s1600/DSC06890.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-I659E36_fmI/VH88cTGp1VI/AAAAAAAACdI/j6I1NXkLBSA/s1600/DSC06890.JPG" height="265" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Worth getting up early for, sunrise over Lake Baikal from the ferry with swirling mists.</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-xQhL7Z5sA-M/VH88cgfEk-I/AAAAAAAACeo/jsRGseA9IU8/s1600/DSC06920.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-xQhL7Z5sA-M/VH88cgfEk-I/AAAAAAAACeo/jsRGseA9IU8/s1600/DSC06920.JPG" height="265" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Sunrise over Lake Baikal from the ferry from Olkhon Island.</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Back in the van, we huddled together for warmth. Then the radiator kicked in, tucked under the seat in front of me. Before long I was baking. There’s something weird in the way Russian’s feel the need to overheat their indoor spaces when the cold outside is so brutal. You end up going from -30C to +30C every time you step through a door, it’s just so uncomfortably hot.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">We made it in to Irkutsk with 3 hours to spare before our train was due to leave. With Melanie, a french girl who’d been staying at Nikitas and had a later train, we jumped on a tram to the train station and dropped our backpacks in the cloakroom. We didn’t really have time to see anything of the city and instead perched in a cafeteria for a quick lunch. Saying goodbye to Melanie, we then had plenty of time to stock up on instant noodles for our 48 hour journey before weaving through the groups of soldiers leaving for their camps and finding empty seats at the station. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">We boarded our train only to find we’d be sharing our cabin with a Russian girl and what we presumed was her father. The cabin was ridiculously hot (the thermometer outside read 28C) and the guy had extremely smelly feet. It wasn’t as bad as our last cabin on the trip to Irkutsk but wasn’t far off. We read for a couple of hours, ate our noodles and tried to get some sleep. Although I slept ok, Rhys ended up taking sleeping tablets in the middle of the night that knocked him out until 11am the next day.</span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-LAg72s-kO9w/VH88c-gLgVI/AAAAAAAACdM/BPK1gprYDO0/s1600/DSC06927.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-LAg72s-kO9w/VH88c-gLgVI/AAAAAAAACdM/BPK1gprYDO0/s1600/DSC06927.JPG" height="265" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Freezing on a platform, somewhere on the TransMongolian.</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The two people in our cabin left us at Krasnoyarsk and a new man climbed aboard. He didn’t smell or snore and spent much of the day out of the carriage so we had a bit of space, the perfect room mate. The heat was oppressive though, there were Australians in the cabin next to ours and they were struggling too, everyone was walking about in shorts and with their shirts off. I tried to ask for the radiators to be switched off but got shouted at and the two lady attendants were quite intimidating and didn’t want to deal with any of us since we didn’t speak a word of Russian. We finally twigged we could insulate the radiator in our room by wrapping our blankets around it, bringing the temperature down a degree or two, but with the thermometre showing 29C, it was still way too steamy for comfort.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Just after we changed room mates, we passed the halfway point from Beijing to Moscow via Mongolia. Although the route took us through a region that had had more snow than in the east, it was a less harsh environment with forests and rivers and the odd village and engine repair depot. At some spots on the route, the snow must have been over a foot deep and it looked quite festive with the branches of the neverending pine trees sagging under the weight.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Rhys jumped off the train at one of the stops to run into a canteen to pick up some lunch, potato filled doughnuts and chicken schnitzels and we stood outside watching the attendants using axes to sheer off the ice that had attached itself to the undercarriage of the train. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">During our second night, the train passed in to the Baraba Steppe, 600km of track passing through bogs and swampland. At this point we were in spitting distance of the Kazakhstan border. The train continued through Omsk, Siberia’s second largest city and on to Tyumen, Siberia’s oldest town, founded in 1586 and now important for the nearby discoveries of oil and gas. In Tyumen, we had one last chance to stretch our legs and cool off in the snow, away from the stifling heat of our carriage.</span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Cooling off at a station on the TransMongolian.</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">300km before we reached Yekaterinburg, our destination, we left Siberia and entered the Urals. The train skirted through Talitsa, famous for selling watered down industrial strength alcohol as vodka, then finally we arrived in Yekaterinburg, the largest city in the Urals, 49 hours after leaving Irkutsk.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Yekaterinburg, originally founded to exploit the Ural regions mineral deposits, hit the headlines in the 20th century as the site of the murder of the Romanov family, the location of the U2 affair, and for giving the country Boris Yeltsin. The Romanov family was moved to Yekaterinburg and imprisoned there in a house in April 1918. On 16 July, the Bolshevik government decided the continued existence of the Tsar was too great a threat to them and ordered their execution. Nicholas, Alexandra and their 5 children were marched to the houses’s cellar and murdered, their bodies dumped in a mine shaft on the outskirts of town. The U2 affair followed in 1960, when an American spy plane was shot down and denied by the US despite all the evidence to the contrary.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">We jumped off the train, glad to be in the fresh air, and headed towards our hostel. After taking a wrong turn, we found the right block of flats where I had to ask a kind man with his kid to help us find the right building. The hostel was small but modern and would do for an overnight stop.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">By the time we were settled in, it was about 3pm and we didn’t have many hours of sunlight left. We were hungry from living on pot noodles and biscuits for the last two days and wandered in to the centre of the city to find an international restaurant i’d read about. We ended up ordering a feast and spending a couple of hours relaxing with a bottle of wine (or two). By the time we left to walk back to the hostel it was dark outside. Rhys has always wanted to walk across a frozen river so we wandered towards the water. Having checked there were foot prints on the ice (if the locals weren’t walking on it, we weren’t), we slid down to the river and trudged through the thick snow covering, zigzagging across the river to the bridge. We scrambled back to the road and wandered back to our room. Although it was early, there wasn’t a whole lot to do and we turned in for the night.</span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Rhys braving the frozen river, Yekaterinburg.</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">We stayed in our room until the noon check out to shorten the amount of time we’d have to spend in the cold waiting for our 6pm train. Leaving our bags in the hostel, we walked in to town to see the main sights. After crossing the frozen river again, we found a TGI Fridays, around the corner from the City Administration building, grateful to be able to order lunch hassle free from an English menu. We then walked the length of the pedestrianised street, lined with some bizarre and comical bronze statues, and through a small park with birds and squirrels with extra fluffy ears.</span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-2UW8c9Kgk74/VH88d0K0-VI/AAAAAAAACdg/yJgGLZJ5CKw/s1600/DSC07109.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-2UW8c9Kgk74/VH88d0K0-VI/AAAAAAAACdg/yJgGLZJ5CKw/s1600/DSC07109.JPG" height="265" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Ice fishing on the river in the centre of Yekaterinburg.</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Passed the dam of the city pond, we stopped for photos at a few small church buildings, a statue monument to the city founders and Sevastianov’s House, a green gothic style mansion. By that point, we’d reached the Church on the Blood, consecrated in 2003 and built on the site of the merchants house in which the Romanov’s were murdered, the family having been elevated to the status of saints.</span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-d7dEC_Lz_q8/VH88eLKBJfI/AAAAAAAACdk/v10DAmFu4Q8/s1600/DSC07209.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-d7dEC_Lz_q8/VH88eLKBJfI/AAAAAAAACdk/v10DAmFu4Q8/s1600/DSC07209.JPG" height="265" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Church on the Blood, the site of the Romanov murder, Yekaterinburg.</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">As the sun was starting to drop and it was getting colder, we hurried back to the hostel to collect our bags and head over to the train station. Yekaterinburg was a nice, cosmopolitan city but didn’t have a whole lot to offer tourists, we were glad we’d only decided to spend one night before moving on.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">For our last overnight train, we’d booked 3rd class tickets, having traveled 2nd class in each of the other Trans-Mongolian legs. We were a bit nervous to see what beds we’d been allocated and were happy when we boarded to find we had two bottom bunks facing each other. In 2nd class carriages, there are rows of cabins, each holding four beds, two up and two down. In 3rd class carriages, there are no cabins but banks of beds, set in groups of 6, 2 up and 2 down like in 2nd class, then another 2 parallel to the aisle by the window. The three bottom bunks in our area were taken as were most of the bottom bunks throughout the carriage but there was plenty of room and no snoring and no bad smells. It was bliss, we even had a window we could open when it started to heat up. We wandered why we hadn’t been traveling 3rd class the whole time, it was our best train experience in Russia.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Shortly after leaving Yekaterinburg, the train rolled passed the Asia-Europe border although as it was already dark, we couldn’t see the marker. Instead we spent the evening reading, watching TV and eating instant smash.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">It was a 26 hour journey and by lunch time the next day we were both getting bored. We’ve spent so much time on trains lately and there’s not a whole lot to do or see. Much of the landscape looks the same, especially since there’s a blanket of snow over everything and it’s dark for nearly 17 hours a day.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Finally, we arrived in Vladimir. We had a rough map to get us to our hostel but couldn’t find the main road and ended up walking up in to town, along the main street and then back down to the hostel. As with all hostels we’ve stayed at, it was more like being in a guestroom at a house with a family sitting in the common room watching you and making you feel slightly awkward. We showered and walked back to the main street for dinner. Completely unintentionally, we found ourselves in a British Pub and ate delicious plates of stroganoff before it was time for bed.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Although we’d only changed time zones by 5 hours in the last week, we were finding ourselves in bed early and awake by 7:30am, waiting around for the sun to rise so we could venture out and explore.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Vladimir is one of Russia’s oldest cities and until the 14th century, was the religious centre of the entire country. The main street is lined with churches and it took us a couple of hours to wander between them while the snow continued to dust the whole city. Leaving the hostel, we circled the Golden Gate, one of the only surviving remanents of the 1158 city ramparts, and continued to a view point, overlooking the Old Town. We zigzagged through town, aiming for any golden domes we could see, stopping at the Assumption Cathedral (built in 1160 and at that time, the tallest building in the whole of Russia) and the Cathedral of St Demetrius (a square cathedral, completed in 1197, covered with intricate carvings and with a small exhibition inside). </span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-qpzupnpnUuI/VH88erYO1xI/AAAAAAAACds/yhB9V-lIQqk/s1600/DSC07228.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-qpzupnpnUuI/VH88erYO1xI/AAAAAAAACds/yhB9V-lIQqk/s1600/DSC07228.JPG" height="265" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Walking through the snow, Vladimir.</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-RCg47KEeuBU/VH88exGHm3I/AAAAAAAACdw/RF1od7pGfL4/s1600/DSC07263.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-RCg47KEeuBU/VH88exGHm3I/AAAAAAAACdw/RF1od7pGfL4/s1600/DSC07263.JPG" height="265" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Rhys swinging from the lamp posts, Assumption Cathedral, Vladimir.</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-GSXClVd9iCI/VH88fI26TPI/AAAAAAAACd4/2udFaVofdNo/s1600/DSC07267.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-GSXClVd9iCI/VH88fI26TPI/AAAAAAAACd4/2udFaVofdNo/s1600/DSC07267.JPG" height="265" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">More snow covered parks, Vladimir.</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">We ducked in to the shopping plaza to escape the cold for a pricey canteen buffet lunch (smoked fish, urgh), then, after walking around the walls of the Nativity Monastery, we headed back to the hostel. Later than afternoon, leaving Rhys in the room with the vodka, I walked back in to town. The snow had covered the streets in a blanket of white and I didn’t have long until sun down. I stopped by an odd little antique shop and a few smaller, more run down churches before walking back to the other side of town, to the History Museum. As all the info boards were in Russian I had no idea what I was looking at but the attendants enthusiastically pointed me to certain displays and directed me around. </span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-OL0hKlMqBAc/VH88fjY9R-I/AAAAAAAACd8/iRMmW8e6bI4/s1600/DSC07291.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-OL0hKlMqBAc/VH88fjY9R-I/AAAAAAAACd8/iRMmW8e6bI4/s1600/DSC07291.JPG" height="265" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Anyone who knows us will know that a Vodka aisle is our idea of HEAVEN.</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">In search for a Russian flag badge for Rhys, I ended up in another museum that I didn’t even know existed. Upstairs in a chapel, there was a small display of the most beautiful lacquerware, little boxes painted with miniature scenes from fairytales in exquisite detail. I got so sucked in that I lost track of time and after walking through the crystal/cut glass section of the museum I realised it was getting dark outside and I had to rush to get back before Rhys started worrying.</span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-fzRWUNbmizs/VH88gPF7whI/AAAAAAAACeE/w0XDxwSccMo/s1600/DSC07343.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-fzRWUNbmizs/VH88gPF7whI/AAAAAAAACeE/w0XDxwSccMo/s1600/DSC07343.JPG" height="265" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Vladimir Old Town view point at dusk.</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">That night we went back to the main street where we’d spotted another bar that looked good for dinner. It wasn’t until we paid the bill that we realised it was a sister bar of the British bar we’d been to the night before. In addition to the beautiful churches in the town, it was worth a stop over for the delicious gastro pub meals.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">We had a lazy start the next day as our train wasn’t due to leave until noon. We’d bought ourselves some Heinz baked beans in the Spar the previous day and were excited to have a late breakfast at the hostel. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Leaving the hostel we had a long walk back to the train station, along slippery roads and through the centre of town. We had a fast train to Moscow and squeezed in to our seats for the short trip. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Once in Moscow, we jumped on the tube and followed the instructions to our hostel. After asking a kind policeman for directions, we eventually found the right building and checked in to our miniature room. As we only had two nights in the city and we were keen to visit Red Square to see it lit up at night, we popped out to grab some fast food before chilling in our room. Moscow was much warmer than Siberia at about -5C but it still wasn’t warm enough to just lose ourselves walking the streets without freezing.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">As soon as it was dark, we wrapped up wearing as many layers as we could without looking stupid (bearing in mind all our thermals were in the wash), and walked towards Red Square, about 20 minutes from our hostel. Immediately we both took a liking to the city with beautiful architecture on every corner. After walking along a shopping street, we emerged at a junction with the Bolshi Theatre and the Kremlin. We found our way around the corner and in to the Red Square, hemmed in on one side by the GUM shopping arcade, filled with expensive Bond Street stores, and on the other, by the Kremlin walls. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">We wandered through the unexciting Christmas market, feeling festive with all the fairy lights and baubles anging from the trees, before spying St Basils Cathedral, built in the 1550’s to celebrate the capture of Kazan by Ivan the Terrible. Although we’d both previously seen pictures and thought the cathedral was something of a Disneyland monstrosity, we were pleasantly surprised. Some how, it seemed to work with the towering gothic buildings surrounding it. </span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-K7gfdaYpndE/VH88gS4BdcI/AAAAAAAACeI/7eh5faNfHiM/s1600/DSC07397.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-K7gfdaYpndE/VH88gS4BdcI/AAAAAAAACeI/7eh5faNfHiM/s1600/DSC07397.JPG" height="265" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The lairy bbut oddly attractive domes of St Basils Cathedral, Moscow.</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Heading back towards our hostel, we stopped at a basement Irish bar (all the pubs here seem to be British or Irish themed), where we ordered a 800ml, giant sized Magners each. As we didn’t intend on having a big night, we re-layered up and went back out in the cold, before finding a nice pub near our hostel that drew us in by having a Tottenham scarf in the window. Rhys ordered a pint of Welsh Brains while I treated myself to a Strongbow before we called it a night and headed to bed.</span></div>
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Lucie Kingdomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18320597530474698888noreply@blogger.com0Moscow, Russia55.755826 37.617355.1838695 36.3264065 56.3277825 38.9081935tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1557459473009731669.post-51825153645837088152014-11-25T00:00:00.000+08:002014-11-25T20:43:34.587+08:00Week 113 - Ulaanbaatar, Ulan Ude, Olkhon Island (Mongolia, Russia)<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">After realising the Russian woman in our cabin wasn’t traveling with the man with verbal diarrhea, (it was the pillow over the head and pretending to be asleep that really gave it away), we managed to get a couple of hours of sleep before we arrived at the Mongolian border. The train pulled in and we sat at the station for nearly 4 hours.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Immigration was pretty straight forward and we had plenty of time to get out and stretch our legs on the platform. You could tell we were now on a train with Russian attendants, they were a little scary and intimidating and the man walked around in his pyjamas all the time grabbing us to tell us to get out the way and ordering us back to our beds. The border station was in the middle of nowhere and there wasn’t anywhere really to go. The most exciting thing to happen was the realisation that all the other train carriages had disappeared, as had our engine. We had been expecting to find black market money changers at the border and were disappointed to find there wasn’t anyone there to meet us, no money changers, no food carts, nothing.</span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-KhNFFG9bboY/VHR3UUC1DQI/AAAAAAAACbQ/irKN-aMJonI/s1600/DSC06193.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-KhNFFG9bboY/VHR3UUC1DQI/AAAAAAAACbQ/irKN-aMJonI/s1600/DSC06193.JPG" height="265" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Our lonesome carriage, abandoned at the Mongolian border.</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Finally, we got a new engine and rolled over the border to Russia. The immigration procedures were pretty straight forward again but with more intense searches of the train. Along with an English and an Australian couple from the cabin next to ours, we headed straight to the loo as you can’t use those on the train when in stations, and we had another 3 hours before we’d be moving on. It turned into a big drama since you had to pay for the loo and no one had any roubles. There was absolutely noting or no one around again apart from the odd Russian van driving passed and a sweet shop across the road.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">At last we were joined to another 3 carriages and we set off to Ulan Ude. It had been snowing and everywhere was white, the trees, the hills, the roads, the rooftops. We gazed out of the window, trying to keep distance from the smelly man in our cabin, as the train zigzagged over the Selenga River and skirting around Goose Lake.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">We’d spent most of the daylight hours sitting at border stations and it wasn’t long until darkness fell and people started getting ready for bed. Luckily for us, we were getting off the train that night. We rolled in to Ulan Ude, grabbed our bags and escaped to the platform. With all the strong lights the snow sparkled like glitter and although it was bitterly cold it looked quite magical, until I slid down the stairs. Unhurt, we continued and before long were at our hostel.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Immediately we could tell something was odd about the place. Our room backed on to a dirty common room with plates piled up in the sink and on the table and TV blaring. Our room had windows on two walls and no curtains so half of Ulan Ude could watch you getting changed and the shower room was some bizarre communal set up with a toilet in the middle. It felt more like a halfway house with strange old Russian men hanging around and walking in to our room looking for lighters. We popped to the 24 hour shop downstairs to buy our first bottle of Russian vodka and locked our door.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The next day we decided to have a chilled day. We stayed in bed late, found a breakfast cake and an egg had been left on the table for us, then ventured out to the central square to see a giant statue of Lenin’s head. The statue is 7.7m high and weights 42 tonnes and is one of the only tourist sites of interest in the town. We were a bit unprepared for just how cold it was and after walking around in circles a few times trying to find a supermarket, we walked back to the hostel, buying sausages, cheeses and breads on the way, for dinner.</span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-b7pc4khoSIw/VHR3Uvmjr6I/AAAAAAAACbU/_g-1mFx6S0Y/s1600/DSC06205.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-b7pc4khoSIw/VHR3Uvmjr6I/AAAAAAAACbU/_g-1mFx6S0Y/s1600/DSC06205.JPG" height="265" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The giant Lenin head, Ulan Ude.</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The next day we had to check out of our room at lunch but had 10 hours until our train was due to leave for Irkutsk. Not being able to bare the thought of sitting around the hostel we decided to don our thermals and head to the Ivolginsky Datsan, a Tibetan Buddhist monastery that is the centre of Siberian Buddhism. Although our hostel had given us the wrong information, a nice bus driver picked us up and took us to the bus station (an empty car park) for free and pointed us to the right bus. After changing to another bus in the village of Ivolga we arrived at the entry gate. The complex was a lot smaller than we’d imagined. Built in 1946, it’s pretty new and only took us about 20 minutes to complete a lap, spinning prayer wheels and entering a few of the buildings that were open. It felt like quite a journey for nothing too spectacular but considering how little there is to do in Ulan Ude it was a good way to while away a few hours.</span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-joWgmSMBKmw/VHR3U2YFaFI/AAAAAAAACbY/yoDq7URvNv8/s1600/DSC06223.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-joWgmSMBKmw/VHR3U2YFaFI/AAAAAAAACbY/yoDq7URvNv8/s1600/DSC06223.JPG" height="265" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">One of the buildings at the Ivolginsky Datsan, near Ulan Ude.</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Back in town we decided to walk along the pedestrianised street to the Virgin Hodegetria Cathedral. I’d hoped we’d pass some of the beautiful wooden buildings we’d seen elsewhere and from bus windows while I had the camera to hand but the buildings were modern. The wooden buildings have door and window frames carved so intricately that they appear to have lace cloth drapped over them. We found the cathedral, saw it was much smaller than we expected, peered in the door, took a photo of the golden bulbs mounting the white spires and continued to try and find the Trinity Church. It was -21C and every bit of exposed skin was hurting from the cold. We couldn’t find an easy route to the church and gave up to go back to the warmth of the hostel.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">It was as weird as ever at the hostel and we didn’t want to sit there in the dirty kitchen feeling unwelcome for the next couple of hours. We discovered a ‘lounge’ in the same building where you paid for the time you were there, had free coffee and biscuits, good music playing and fast wifi and settled in, returning to collect our bags and eat our left over sausage and cheese before going back to the lounge to wait for the train.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">We didn’t fall in love with Ulan Ude and other than giving us a chance to catch up on sleep there wasn’t a whole lot to do. The city is the capital of the Buryat Republic, a federal subject of Russia and it was interesting to be in a Russian city, with stereotypical Russian people with their full length fur coats, fur hats and boots alongside the Buryat people, a subgroup of the Mongols. The Buryat’s share a lot of customs with Mongolia (including nomadic herding and using gers for shelter) and speak a Mongol dialect. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The Russian Federation is made up of 85 federal subjects, 22 of which are republics that mostly represent areas of non-Russian ethnicity. The Republics have their own constitutions and their own official languages. The parliamentary assemblies of the republics have even enacted laws which are at odds with the federal constitution although Putin has tried to reduce their autonomy and impose the supremacy of the federal constitution (got to love Wikipedia).</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Finally, it was time to head to the station where our train was waiting on the platform. After a bundle at the door to get our tickets checked, we were allowed on and settled in to our carriage, for once being lucky enough to share it with a non-snoring lady. We settled in for a few too many drinks as the train rolled out of the station. Other than the heat (Russian train attendants seem intent on cooking you in your sleep), we slept ok, just not for long enough and before we knew it we were being woken to hand our sheets back in.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">When we reached Irkutsk, it was still dark. We had directions to take a tram to the minibus park by the central market and headed across the river and in to the city. We still had a couple of hours before the bus was due to leave and found a small coffee shop, to hide from the cold until the sun rose, where wet omelette was on the menu.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Finally it was light enough for us to find the bus park and check we could get seats. Passing a glove stall we realised we weren’t prepared for the cold and ended up buying super thick gloves (which with the state of our tatty clothes are probably the nicest things we own) and making a short lap of the food market to waste time. The bus had free seats and we were directed to settle in with our luggage on the back row. We’d hoped to nap on route but being over the back wheels on a bumpy road didn’t give us much opportunity. The journey went smoothly, taking 5 hours including a very scenic albeit short ferry ride over to Olkhon Island with the only scare being when the driver ordered us out of the bus at a loo stop and then disappeared, with all our bags and passports still on board. Thankfully he returned 20 minutes later. </span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-JGp4ChsIjUY/VHR3WX9ul4I/AAAAAAAACbo/927Z7ueOp-A/s1600/DSC06244.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-JGp4ChsIjUY/VHR3WX9ul4I/AAAAAAAACbo/927Z7ueOp-A/s1600/DSC06244.JPG" height="265" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Me at the ferry pier, heading to Olkhon Island.</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">By the time we reached the town of Khuzhir, a cluster of wooden buildings on the lakeshore, we were tired and ready to be in a warm room with a comfy bed. We’d reserved a place at Nikita’s, the most famous homestead on the island and in no time had our wish. We were taken to a separate building set away from the main compound, where there were about 10 rooms around a courtyard with their own canteen - the main buildings owned by Nikita seemed to be closed for maintenance.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Rather than explore that evening and bearing in mind we only had an hour or so left of sunlight, we relaxed in our room before dinner was due to be served. The food was far better than we’d expected, we had fish broth, fresh bread, dumplings, lots of beetroot and a plate of chicken and rice. Impressed, we went to bed with full stomachs, glad to be at an all inclusive homestay where we’d get to try some good Russian food.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Olkhon Island is the largest island on Lake Baikal. It’s about 70km long and 15km wide and is sparsely inhabited, only getting electricity in 2005. It’s a mixture of grassy steppes, woodland, sandy beaches and towering cliffs with views across the water to the rolling mountains on the mainland. For 3 months of the year, the lake is frozen up to a depth of 3 metres and you can drive to the island. As winter was only just beginning, we could see the ice starting to form but couldn’t drive across. Instead, we crossed by ferry and contented ourselves with peering at the icicles hanging from the cliffs and the small iceburgs floating in the lake.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Lake Baikal, known romantically as ‘the blue eye of Siberia’ is one of the world’s largest freshwater lakes and holds 20% of the planets fresh water. If every other source of freshwater were to dry up, the water held in the lake could still provide for the entire population of the world for 40 years. At it’s deepest, it reaches 1,637m and its about 400 miles long and between 20 and 40 miles wide. The lake is a UNESCO site and is ringed by nature reserves, but it is still threatened by factories flushing their rubbish in to feeder rivers and oil and gas pipelines nearby (there is fear that a pipeline might rupture as it’s an earthquake zone).</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">After a great sleep we had breakfast in our canteen before dressing in our thermals and heading out. As the hours of daylight are short there was no point setting an alarm to be up early. We had decided to walk south in the morning, return for lunch, then walk north in the afternoon. By the time we started walking it was gone 10am but the sun was still very low in the sky. Over the first cliff, we reached the Khuzhir pier and were stunned to see the ice covering the wooden structure. Inches thick and with thousands of delicate icicles it was beautiful. </span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-4HWTsAehMMQ/VHR3YzS0QzI/AAAAAAAACbw/rNaVT2Rn2PI/s1600/DSC06310.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-4HWTsAehMMQ/VHR3YzS0QzI/AAAAAAAACbw/rNaVT2Rn2PI/s1600/DSC06310.JPG" height="265" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The coast by Nikitas, Khuzhir, Olkhon Island.</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-DIiBQSV3aM0/VHR3Y5r7DFI/AAAAAAAACb0/s3A5QlMQYR8/s1600/DSC06332.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-DIiBQSV3aM0/VHR3Y5r7DFI/AAAAAAAACb0/s3A5QlMQYR8/s1600/DSC06332.JPG" height="265" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Rhys on the frozen Khuzhir pier, Olkhon Island.</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">We continued along the coast, following the frozen beach to the promontory to peer into the next bay, glad that the temperature was much kinder than it had been in Ulan Ude. It seems so bizarre to see the beach covered in inches of ice and you have to keep reminding yourself that it’s fresh water and in a month, the whole lake will be one sheet of ice. It was incredibly peaceful and we only saw a few other people as we walked. </span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-lxaFD7sjn-Y/VHR3ZXMlfWI/AAAAAAAACb4/1tkiTQvgYlg/s1600/DSC06372.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-lxaFD7sjn-Y/VHR3ZXMlfWI/AAAAAAAACb4/1tkiTQvgYlg/s1600/DSC06372.JPG" height="265" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Ice ont he beach south of Khuzhir, Olkhon Island.</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">At the end of our exploration south, we came across a frozen pond, about the size of half a football pitch. Rhys tested it out and as the ice was ridiculously thick, I followed. It’s the first time either of us has walked on a completely frozen pond like that. </span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-gizDIsbwF9g/VHR3dCiSqSI/AAAAAAAACcI/I3g2B4GPWj8/s1600/DSC06412.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-gizDIsbwF9g/VHR3dCiSqSI/AAAAAAAACcI/I3g2B4GPWj8/s1600/DSC06412.JPG" height="265" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Rhys braving the frozen pond, Olkhon Island.</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">2 1/2 hours later and we were back in our cabin and it was time for lunch, another Russian feast. We didn’t waste much time before we pulled our boots on again to wander north along the coast. Close to Nikita’s, was Shaman Rock, a rocky outcrop with a curving beach and spectacular views. We continued along Long Beach, as always, picking up a dog on route to accompany us. The scenary was breathtakingly beautiful and peaceful and was only disturbed by the odd snowball or us stamping through ice overhangs on the shore.</span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Srn7mO7YyAs/VHR3d1Qv-SI/AAAAAAAACcY/yMA6rdHAfgs/s1600/DSC06502.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Srn7mO7YyAs/VHR3d1Qv-SI/AAAAAAAACcY/yMA6rdHAfgs/s1600/DSC06502.JPG" height="265" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Shaman's Rock, Khuzhir, Olkhon Island.</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">By the time we arrived back in the village we’d been gone for another 2 1/2 hours. Before going back to our cabin we walked along the track that acts as the main road and found one of the only shops that had stayed open passed the high season. We bought a couple of litre cans of Tuborg (made for giants, Tim, you’d love them) and bought a treat for our dog.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Back at Nikita’s we tried to book a trip to the northern most point of the island for the following day, supposedly the best trip offering spectacular views, but it being off season and there not being many people around, when we were told the price for two people we balked and decided against it. Our dog found it’s way into the compound and followed us back to the cabin where it sat outside pining for us while the sunset turned the sky a bright fushia.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">After dinner we stole outside with pieces of bread for the dog and then just as we were starting to get ready for bed there was a knock at our door. A couple at another homestead in the village had called Nikitas, keen to go on the trip north the following day. Excited, we agreed and paid for our seats.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">We slept late the next day and rolled out of bed in time for a quick breakfast before the van arrived to collect us. We were delighted to see it was another UAZ-452 Russian van (although abit more road weary than our Mongolian one). We jumped in and claimed the best seats. The other couple were running late but finally we were on our way, bumping and rattling along the islands dirt tracks. There are no tarmac roads on the island and the further north you go, the worse the trails get. The van had no problems though and was sprinting up steep, ice covered inclines and swerving around trees onto the flattest paths, our driver was brilliant.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">We stopped 5 or 6 times over the course of the day, first traveling up the east coast, before stopping at Cape Khoboy, the northern peninsula of the island and returning along the west coast passing through acres of forest and kilometre after kilometre of windswept steppes along the way. We drove past Long Beach, where we’d walked the previous day and stopped at Crocodile Rock (that did really look like a giant crocodile) and other rock formations before reaching Khoboy, the most sacred part of the island. The whole island is considered one of the five global poles of shamanic energy by the Buryat people and there are coins, lighters and even spark plugs scattered around the rocky peninsulas. </span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-9kptf0ZVo74/VHR3guQk7II/AAAAAAAACcg/7qC8KS5s854/s1600/DSC06585.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-9kptf0ZVo74/VHR3guQk7II/AAAAAAAACcg/7qC8KS5s854/s1600/DSC06585.JPG" height="265" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Coastal view on the north coast road, Olkhon Island.</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-wDSj1OHUUd8/VHR3hEhtn9I/AAAAAAAACco/CZCy_h_s3RA/s1600/DSC06623.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-wDSj1OHUUd8/VHR3hEhtn9I/AAAAAAAACco/CZCy_h_s3RA/s1600/DSC06623.JPG" height="265" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Out in the snow, me and the north coast route, Olkhon Island.</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-wpmh1-U66tw/VHR3g-t8LtI/AAAAAAAACck/znu-6Y6IpEw/s1600/DSC06737.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-wpmh1-U66tw/VHR3g-t8LtI/AAAAAAAACck/znu-6Y6IpEw/s1600/DSC06737.JPG" height="144" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Rhys at Cape Khoboy, Olkhon Island.</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">After a picnic lunch in the van with delicious fish and our happy driver gesturing and pointing at things (it wasn’t soup, it was tea), we had a couple more stops before we began the drive back, along the islands spine and through the pine forest to Nikitas. As the sunset had turned the sky such a bright pink the night before, we asked to be let out at the top of the hill overlooking the village incase it was repeated. Sadly it wasn’t and by the time we made it back to our room we were cold through. </span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-HJlrc_dHeoQ/VHR3iiSe-8I/AAAAAAAACc4/utE1Dt_AVjg/s1600/DSC06807.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-HJlrc_dHeoQ/VHR3iiSe-8I/AAAAAAAACc4/utE1Dt_AVjg/s1600/DSC06807.JPG" height="265" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Frozen beach and the last stop of our northern Olkhon tour.</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The next day we were up and waiting for the minibus to take us back to Irkutsk. It arrived 30 minutes late and we were squashed in to rubbish seats. It took about 40 minutes to drive to the port where a ferry was just pulling in. Thinking we’d be across and back on the mainland in no time, we were surprised when our van didn’t move. 4 hours later and we were still sitting there. The ferry man had heard there was a storm coming in and didn’t want to sail. We were getting increasingly uncomfortable, cold and bored, and were disheartened when the 3 vans waiting made the joint decision to turn back to Khuzhir. Luckily, as the ferry wasn’t running, no new tourists could arrive and our room was empty and waiting for us. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">We’d missed lunch so we dropped our bags in our room and went straight to the shop, accompanied by our favourite island dog who was rewarded for her loyalty with biscuits. By the time we got back to our room, the sun had gone down. We had a few hours to waste with cups of tea and Russian vodka before dinner, then we headed to bed, hoping to make it back to Irkutsk the following day to catch our 4pm train.</span></div>
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Lucie Kingdomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18320597530474698888noreply@blogger.com0Olkhon Island, Irkutsk Oblast, Russia, 66613753.156667000000013 107.3836109999999727.634632500000013 66.075016999999974 78.678701500000017 148.69220499999997tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1557459473009731669.post-54916004448869970912014-11-19T00:00:00.000+08:002014-11-20T14:31:16.832+08:00Week 112 - Beijing, Ulaanbaatar, Semi Gobi, Terelj (China, Mongolia)<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Our train left Beijing just before midday to begin the Trans Mongolian leg of our journey. Excited, we dropped our bags in our cabin and headed to the front of the train to take some photos. The train was pretty empty and until we reached the China border we had the cabin to ourselves. We whiled away the hours reading, watching the world go by and enjoying the included, basic lunch and dinner in the dining cabin. From the craggy mountains around Beijing, the landscape flattened as we headed towards Inner Mongolia. We reached the neon lights of the border at Erlyan just before 10pm.</span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Waiting for the train to leave, Beijing.</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">After the guard collected our passports, the train started moving again and we found ourselves in the sheds. The Chinese railway system operates on standard gauge which is 3.5 inches narrower than the five foot gauge in Mongolia and the former Soviet Union. Once in the shed, all the carriages were separated and while we peered through the tiny window at the end of ours, giant hydraulic lifts raised the carriages and the bogies (undercarriage) were rolled out and replaced. After we’d been lowered back to the track, the train returned to the platform and our passports were returned. All up, the process took about 3 hours.</span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-YIFfu9qF5y8/VG2H8Urb2PI/AAAAAAAACZI/gDGWta574K0/s1600/DSC05297.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-YIFfu9qF5y8/VG2H8Urb2PI/AAAAAAAACZI/gDGWta574K0/s1600/DSC05297.JPG" height="265" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Watching the bogies being changed, Erlyan.</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The train left Erlyan and 30 minutes later we rolled into Dzamyn-Ude, the Mongolian border. Customs officials collected our passports again and after they were returned, we settled down to get some sleep. Just our luck that the guy who had joined us at Erlyan was a snorer and a fitful nights sleep ensued. At one point I had to wake him up to ask him to roll over and Rhys had to keep slamming the door to make enough noise to stir him. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The train continued through the night and when we woke we found ourselves in the Gobi Desert. Although the train tracks don’t pass the huge rolling sand dunes that you’d expect to see in a desert (sand dunes only cover 5% of the Gobi), the views were spectacular with vast, endless grassy steppes and sky of the clearest blue, seemingly brighter and crisper than normal. The Gobi stretches 1000km north to south and 2400km west to east and lies in the rain shadow of the Himalayas. The Gobi is a cold desert and it’s not unusual to see frost and snow on the dunes. We passed scattered ger, tents inhabited by Mongolian nomadic herders and herds of cashmere goats, sheep, really fluffy horses, cows and a few camels.</span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Train ride through the Gobi, approaching Ulaanbaatar.</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Rhys discovered a window near the back of the train that we could open to take some photos (the train windows were filthy) and we took it in turns to wander back there through the twenty or so doors that separate each carriage, passed the coal burners that heat the rooms and the water.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">We arrived in to Ulaanbaatar in the late afternoon and were collected from the station by our hostel, Sunpath. We checked in to our warm, cozy room and took warm showers before heading out to find a cash point and a mini market. It was much colder than it had been in Beijing and after a quick visit to the Sukhe Bator Square in the heart of the city, dominated by the Parliament House, we hurried back to the hostel. The city is the coldest capital city in the world with average annual temperatures of -1.4C (plunging to -30C in winter) but has 260 days of sun each year meaning it is crisp and blue rather than grey and miserable.</span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-ZptwGkyXCqs/VG2IBAC_WGI/AAAAAAAACZg/RvmtpNpfbtg/s1600/DSC05480.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-ZptwGkyXCqs/VG2IBAC_WGI/AAAAAAAACZg/RvmtpNpfbtg/s1600/DSC05480.JPG" height="265" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Parliament House, Sukhe Bator Square, Ulaanbaatar.</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">We’d booked into the hostel mainly because it’s tours get rave reviews and with limited time in Mongolia and knowledge that the roads and public transport are sketchy at best, we decided a tour would maximise what we could see. You don’t want to be standing by the roadside in the middle of nowhere, in temperatures below freezing, hoping a bus will come that for some unknown reason decides not to run that day.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">At 8:30am we were up, packed and ready to head out. We met our tour guide and driver and were excited to see we’d be traveling in a old Russian van, a UAZ-452. With 6 seats in the back we had plenty of room and the windows allowed us 180 degree views as we drove along the bumpy roads. The heater was roaring the whole time and we were toasty inside and made ourselves at home. The vans are favoured by Sunpath as they are extremely reliable and the drivers are constantly cleaning and checking them over. </span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-z8JrGnrEJiE/VG2IIJHZmzI/AAAAAAAACZs/cHnQpJkDaYA/s1600/DSC05503.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-z8JrGnrEJiE/VG2IIJHZmzI/AAAAAAAACZs/cHnQpJkDaYA/s1600/DSC05503.JPG" height="265" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Me and our van.</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Mongolia has traditionally had a strong relationship with Russia and Soviet troops were deployed to help Mongolia following the 1919 Chinese invasion. Soviet influence soon became dominant. Wealth was redistributed, the nobility exterminated, religion suppressed, and Mongolian culture denied expression (Mongolian script was even replaced with Cyrillic as in Russia). The Stalinist repressions in Mongolia climaxed between 1937 and 1939 with the execution of 3% of the population and hundreds of temples and monasteries were destroyed with metal statues shipped to the USSR for scrap. Although the Russian presence had helped Outer Mongolia obtain independence from China, the history and culture was being erased. In 1992 a democratic constitution was adopted and Mongolia’s relationship with Russia weakened. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Our guide told us that in the last 20 years, Mongolia has moved from a country of nomadic communism to democratic city dwellers with increased foreign investment, particularly in mines leading to less ground available to herders. Ulaanbaatar has changed dramatically. The population has increased and the city is now home to 40% of the Mongolian population (the total population of Mongolia is 2.8mil, just shy of the 3.1mil in Wales but the country is 75 times larger than Wales). In response to the population increase there has been a construction boom and apartment blocks are rising everywhere you look. With 4 power plants in the city and coal the main energy source, Ulaanbaatar has become the 2nd most polluted city on the planet (the first is in Iran) and you can’t help but notice the layer of smog that hangs on the horizon as you drive away and out in to the country. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Mongolia currently has very few tarmac roads and the government has recently revealed action plans to increase coverage to link more remote areas of the country. At present, there are only two main tarmac roads and we spent about 3 hours driving west along one of them. We stopped for lunch at a road side cafe and our guide ordered for us. It was delicious, a carb and meat heavy dish of beef, gravy, potatoes, pasta, bread, rice and cabbage, washed down with salty, extremely milky green tea. The food on our 3 day trip was to be one of the highlights. Having a Mongolian guide with us meant she could suggest local specialties for us to eat taking the stress out of ordering food when you’re unable to read the menu. As vegetables are hard to grow, the food revolves around meat and it’s all free range and incredibly meaty tasting, no part of the animal is wasted. For a country of less than 3 million people, there are more than 45 million animals.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">We had another 2 and a half hours to drive to camp, the last hour being off road and including a frozen stream crossing, but the time flew as we watched the majesty of the steppes rolling past from the van windows. As there are no trees it’s incredibly hard to gauge perspective and until you see a herd on a hillside as specks in the distance you don’t realise how big and empty the place really is. It’s easy to understand why Outer Mongolia has become a byword for ‘the middle of nowhere’, it’s a wilderness like you can’t even imagine. Despite there not seeming to be much about, there were hundreds of buzzards and falcons and Siberian hamsters running around. We even saw a couple of groups of vultures feeding on road kill. It’s only when you start noticing all the bones and skulls scattered around that you start to understand how harsh the environment is.</span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-PWkeG7G7Vgs/VG2IH-0sgkI/AAAAAAAACZo/1E7oveToZVs/s1600/DSC05619.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-PWkeG7G7Vgs/VG2IH-0sgkI/AAAAAAAACZo/1E7oveToZVs/s1600/DSC05619.JPG" height="265" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">View from the Ger camp, Semi Gobi.</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">By the time we reached camp the sun was getting low in the sky. We were staying in the guest ger of a nomadic family, a husband, wife and their 9 month old baby who was in a stroller tied up in the family ger so her parents could get on with their chores without worrying about her burning herself on the central stove. After tea with the family and an incredibly hard piece of dried curd to suck on, we were shown our ger. It was a 6 sided, round tent with conical roof. There was the main wooden structure, coated in felt, then a waterproof layer and then a layer of white cotton with patterned material hung up around the inside for decoration. In the centre there was a wood burning stove and 6 beds were arranged around the edge. The furniture in the gers reminds me of the gypsy style we have at home with bright coloured paintings.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">We didn’t have long to relax before we had to put on our thermals and mount our horses. It wasn’t quite the ‘ride’ we’d expected, more like a donkey outing on Brighton beach. We were walked around the scrub surrounding the ger and as the horses live wild, they’re a bit skittish and we couldn’t take photos of the surroundings incase it scared them. Back at the gers we swapped our horses for camels and were grateful to dismount, the wooden saddles were incredibly uncomfortable. The camels on the other hand were crazy comfy, wedged between the two fluffy humps, it was like sitting on a heated car seat. </span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-wccrlIUrORU/VG2IJ22ADQI/AAAAAAAACZ4/vGtZbuzm_-c/s1600/DSC05679.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-wccrlIUrORU/VG2IJ22ADQI/AAAAAAAACZ4/vGtZbuzm_-c/s1600/DSC05679.JPG" height="265" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Me on my camel, Semi Gobi.</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">By the time we returned to camp the sun wasn’t far from setting. We had a flask of tea brought to our ger and stoked the fire with more dried dung to warm it up. As the sun dropped, so did the temperature and it was bitterly cold, below -10C, not the best tent weather. We had mutton fried dumplings brought to our room for dinner and with nothing left to do after popping out to admire the stars for as long as we could bare the cold, turned in for an early night, huddled under three layers of sleeping bags and fully dressed.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">We had expected to be woken by the sun but hadn’t factored in how late it rises in the Gobi, (we experienced near on 12 hours of darkness) and instead we were woken by the local lady making up our fire. Once we emerged, we had rice pudding with more mutton dumplings for breakfast before walking out to the back of the camp to see the camels, who had frozen nostrils after a night in subzero temperatures. Our guide brought us some clothes belonging to the nomads for us to try, then we took some photos while the sun rose of the herd of sheep and goats, who had been rounded up to the front of the camp to keep them sheltered and safe from the wolves and then climbed back in to the van to head back to Ulaanbaatar, discovering the bottle of water we’d left in the van had completely frozen solid. </span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-2VeVVBsI3pM/VG2INmIM4KI/AAAAAAAACaA/ajIVbWeZ57E/s1600/DSC05863.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-2VeVVBsI3pM/VG2INmIM4KI/AAAAAAAACaA/ajIVbWeZ57E/s1600/DSC05863.JPG" height="400" width="265" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Frozen camel, Semi Gobi.</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-nBZhzwO4pEk/VG2IOcxZ1VI/AAAAAAAACaI/CJrDtHcxzRM/s1600/DSC05870.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-nBZhzwO4pEk/VG2IOcxZ1VI/AAAAAAAACaI/CJrDtHcxzRM/s1600/DSC05870.JPG" height="265" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The herd outside the gers in the early morning, Semi Gobi.</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-GzdH9GzvGrE/VG2IPv-_7CI/AAAAAAAACaQ/LI_0rfHqPgc/s1600/DSC05883.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-GzdH9GzvGrE/VG2IPv-_7CI/AAAAAAAACaQ/LI_0rfHqPgc/s1600/DSC05883.JPG" height="265" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Me and Rhys wearing the nomads clothes outside our ger, Semi Gobi.</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">As we’d driven the same road the previous day and it was just endless steppes, it was starting to get a little repetitive although still spectacularly beautiful and we spotted more foxes and gazelles. We stopped on route for lunch again, this time at a different stretch of roadside cafes, where we had hearty mutton dumplings. Unlike delicate Tibetan momo’s, these dumplings were heavy, juicy and very very flavoursome.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Once we reached Ulaanbaatar, we drove to the south of the city where we stopped by the river side at the Zaisan Memorial, built by the Soviets with panoramic views of the city to celebrate Russian-Mongolian co-operation in WWII. Our guide pointed out where the buildings used to finish and rolling hills started, now the memorial is surrounded by building sites.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Leaving Ulaanbaatar behind, we drove an hour and a half west to the Gorkhi-Terelj National Park, following the frozen river with kids skating, that runs through the city. An alpine valley crisscrossed by icy streams and lined with stunning, huge, rounded boulders. By the time we reached the park, the sun had dropped behind the mountains. We still had a few hours of sunlight and on our way to the ger camp, stopped at the much photographed Turtle Rock, which for once, actually did look like a turtle. Our guide pointed out a small crevice that we could shimmy through to emerge at the other side of the rock for views of the valley.</span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-SskxFvWmZY8/VG2IYz2TPHI/AAAAAAAACa4/D8aSL_tdf_4/s1600/DSC06127.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-SskxFvWmZY8/VG2IYz2TPHI/AAAAAAAACa4/D8aSL_tdf_4/s1600/DSC06127.JPG" height="265" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Turtle rock, Terelj National Park.</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Next we found our camp amongst the many camps in the valley and joined the family in their ger for tea and more dried curd. They had a three year old kid dressed up in local clothes and when he wasn’t dragging their cat around by it’s tail, he was trying to get us to play with him. When kids are tiny here they wrap them up against the cold, so they’re nothing but a bundle of fabric and they can’t bend their arms or legs, then, when they get older, especially the boys, wear traditional clothes and they look adorable. When you’re out of Ulaanbaatar, nearly everyone still wears traditional clothes but in the city western styles prevail and this has resulted in back and kidney problems as the clothes aren’t warm enough.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">We had some spare time before dinner and our guide suggested we take a walk up the hill next to the camp. Although the sun was low in the sky the view was still impressive and quite mystical and the walk allowed us time to collect wood for the fire in our room. Dinner of homemade noodle soup was served in the families ger then we retired to our own ger to read in the warmth of our beds. The temperature was no where near as cold as it had been the previous night and we slept comfortably.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The next morning breakfast wasn’t until 9am so we had some time to venture out to explore. The sun was just hitting the top of the valley when we wandered up to the top of another hill nearby with a huge round boulder teetering on it’s edge on the peak. We watched the sun come up with two dogs we’d picked up on route before heading down to warm up with breakfast rice pudding and tea. It’s refreshing to be in a country where they respect dogs, believing they get reincarnated as people in their next life.</span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-cwlWgWy0P3w/VG2ISJ0VEQI/AAAAAAAACaY/KeZpa11SaKQ/s1600/DSC06072.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-cwlWgWy0P3w/VG2ISJ0VEQI/AAAAAAAACaY/KeZpa11SaKQ/s1600/DSC06072.JPG" height="265" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Rhys by one of the boulders on the hill top near our ger, Terelj National Park.</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-H4l0_ePqc4I/VG2IT63-IlI/AAAAAAAACag/BCVd-CitZZU/s1600/DSC06078.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-H4l0_ePqc4I/VG2IT63-IlI/AAAAAAAACag/BCVd-CitZZU/s1600/DSC06078.JPG" height="265" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Rhys admiring the view, Terelj National Park.</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">We still had the full day before we had to head back to the city so our guide took us on the short walk to the Aryapala Buddhist meditation retreat. It was only a small building with a few prayer wheels but after our guide left us we had a few hours before lunch and decided to walk up the mountain behind the monastery. We were aiming for a crevice that looked like the easiest route but as there were no paths (Mongolian’s aren’t really into walking and you have to make your own way through the undergrowth), we ended up getting separated and it took us a while to regroup. Rhys made it to the top of the mountain while I waited below having come across a sheer rock face on the path i’d chosen. Lesson learned, next time, follow Rhys up the mountain.</span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-STN_Zox2HoI/VG2IWd7pVRI/AAAAAAAACao/YbK382RHk_U/s1600/DSC06091.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-STN_Zox2HoI/VG2IWd7pVRI/AAAAAAAACao/YbK382RHk_U/s1600/DSC06091.JPG" height="265" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Aryapala Meditation Retreat, Terelj National Park.</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-ktup_kp2xZ4/VG2IXLSptjI/AAAAAAAACas/MfdXxQYhXyo/s1600/DSC06119.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-ktup_kp2xZ4/VG2IXLSptjI/AAAAAAAACas/MfdXxQYhXyo/s1600/DSC06119.JPG" height="265" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">View of the valley from the mountain behind the Meditation retreat, Terelj National Park.</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">We hadn’t left ourselves enough time to get back to camp for lunch and had to apologise for being late, only for dinner to be served an hour and a half later than expected. The late lunch did give us a chance to watch the lady cooking, sheering off chunks of meat from a huge frozen slab with a super sharp cleaver. This camp was a lot more touristy than our first ger, with the family making money primarily from tourism compared to the animal husbandry of the nomadic family and being closer to the city the availability of ingredients for food and the standard of furniture in the gers (this was a permanent camp unlike the seasonal one in the desert) obviously benefited. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">After lunch, we packed the van and headed back towards the city, stopping at a huge shiny, silver, 40m tall stature of Genghis Khan on horseback (called Chinggis Khan by Mongolian people) topping a small but interesting museum building. The museum and statue were well worth the stop and were intended to be the centre piece of a huge complex but money ran out and now all but the centre feels like it’s been abandoned with cracked paving stones and overgrown grass.</span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Hn32hSiGiQA/VG2IamP9aQI/AAAAAAAACbA/-aHoLdYB4zQ/s1600/DSC06159.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Hn32hSiGiQA/VG2IamP9aQI/AAAAAAAACbA/-aHoLdYB4zQ/s1600/DSC06159.JPG" height="265" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Genghis Khan statue, near Ulaanbaatar.</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Once back in the city, we checked back into our hostel and said our goodbyes to our guide and driver. We cooked dinner at the hostel and spent the evening chatting to the three other people staying there, over a bottle of local vodka.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Having had a busy couple of days we had a lay in the next day, venturing out at lunch time to find the food court in the State Department Store. Ordering food was a stressful event and the meal was pretty mediocre. The best outcome of our trip was the discovery of a supermarket where we could actually buy enough ingredients to cook a proper meal that night, and of a BHS (that’s right, British Home Stores have made it to Mongolia). We collected our train tickets for the following night from a travel agency in town and wandered back to the hostel to get out of the cold.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">We had a night train the following day and luckily our hostel let us keep our room for a late checkout. We spent the morning watching TV and chilling in the lounge. After lunch, I walked to the National Museum of Mongolia which, despite a lack of info in English in some of the halls, was very well laid out with a particularly impressive collection of Mongolian costume.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">We ate dinner at the hostel before a free transfer to the train station. We boarded our train at 20:25 and found we were sharing our cabin with a Russian woman and a Russian man who I originally thought were traveling together. I was wrong and the woman was as exasperated as we were with the man who had some serious hygiene problems and hadn’t washed in a year and who had the worst case of verbal diarrhea i’d ever come across. He did not shut up for the entire 26 hour journey and when he wasn’t chuntering away, he was snoring. He didn’t seem to care that we couldn’t understand a word he was saying and was content to talk at us.</span></div>
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Lucie Kingdomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18320597530474698888noreply@blogger.com0Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia47.919999999999987 106.9200000000000747.749644499999988 106.59727650000008 48.090355499999987 107.24272350000007tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1557459473009731669.post-50007680289715601532014-11-12T00:00:00.000+08:002014-11-13T18:17:24.743+08:00Week 111 - Wutai Shan, Datong, Beijing (China)<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">After our manic night trying to find a bed in Wutai Shan, we treated ourselves to a lay in. When we did venture out, we realised just how closed up the town was. The season ended a week previously and it seemed like everyone had packed up and left. We waited for a shuttle and before long an empty bus pulled up to take us a couple of stops to the centre where we bought chairlift tickets and headed up to Dailuo Peak for views over the valley.</span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Qmt5oar0lTs/VGSCYDTbXkI/AAAAAAAACXA/iVQ7jPiR_Bs/s1600/DSC03858.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="265" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Qmt5oar0lTs/VGSCYDTbXkI/AAAAAAAACXA/iVQ7jPiR_Bs/s400/DSC03858.JPG" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">View from the chairlift to Dailuo Peak, Wutai Shan.</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Wutai Shan is a sacred Buddhist mountain range, with five peaks enclosing a small, grey, bland tourist orientated town, with a river running through. The area is thought to be the earthly abode of Manjusri, the Bodhisattva of Wisdom, and in the Ming Dynasty, Tibetan Buddhists, for whom Manjusri is important, starting arriving and building new structures in place of the hundreds destroyed in the 9th century official persecution of Buddhism. Now there are still over 50 temples in the valley and dotting the surrounding mountains, with a high concentration in the town itself. Since we only had one day we decided to concentrate on seeing the larger, most important sights in the centre. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">After Dailuo Peak and a wander around the temple at the top, we walked back down to the main road and headed north. We stumbled upon a newer, brightly painted temple where we were the only visitors, before walking further to a couple of striking pagodas in a disheveled complex. Turning back towards the centre and after an expensive lunch stop at one of the only places that seemed to be open, we found the white stupa of Tayuan Temple, shown on every poster of Wutai Shan, and walked around spinning the prayer wheels, before discovering the entrance to Xiantong Temple. Xiantong Temple was beautiful with huge buildings set around serene courtyards with the central halls painted with murals and filled with golden statuary and a small Bronze Hall cast and gilt in 1606 and weighing 50 tonnes. </span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-oG45chyU1Zc/VGSCXXAI6eI/AAAAAAAACW4/6cDqQ6qLG9c/s1600/DSC04050.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-oG45chyU1Zc/VGSCXXAI6eI/AAAAAAAACW4/6cDqQ6qLG9c/s400/DSC04050.JPG" width="265" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Tayuan Temple stupa, Wutai Shan.</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-AfRtwDbMQAM/VGSCX7fIoSI/AAAAAAAACW8/CAyT66klhG8/s1600/DSC04082.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-AfRtwDbMQAM/VGSCX7fIoSI/AAAAAAAACW8/CAyT66klhG8/s400/DSC04082.JPG" width="265" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Inside one of the temples in the Xiantong complex, Wutai Shan.</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-sDkaCk5YPT8/VGSCZ8_9LRI/AAAAAAAACXQ/t3HSHrD6JdM/s1600/DSC04116.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="265" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-sDkaCk5YPT8/VGSCZ8_9LRI/AAAAAAAACXQ/t3HSHrD6JdM/s400/DSC04116.JPG" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The Bronze Hall, Xiantong Temple, Wutai Shan.</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">By then, Rhys was tired and jumped on a shuttle bus back to the hotel. I wandered around a few other smaller temples in the centre before visiting Shuxiang Temple where the main hall was closed but the sounds of the monks inside chanting and drumming reverberated around the courtyard. Next, I decided to hop on a bus a couple of kilometres south to the Nanshan Temple. The bus dropped me at the side of the main road from here I had a 20 minute walk up a steep hill through the forest with no one around, it was incredibly peaceful. The temple was worth the walk, with steep staircases leading though stone carved arches to seemingly never ending courtyards with views across the valley.</span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-HGF4u9iYupc/VGSCaVADkLI/AAAAAAAACXc/361yCQK_z08/s1600/DSC04294.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="265" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-HGF4u9iYupc/VGSCaVADkLI/AAAAAAAACXc/361yCQK_z08/s400/DSC04294.JPG" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Nanshan Temple complex, Wutai Shan.</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">By the time I was finished at Nanshan the sun had dropped behind the Western Peak and it was time to head back to the hotel, struggling to find a shop open and selling anything but mushrooms to pick up pot noodles for dinner.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">We had the alarm set for an early start as we hadn’t been able to find reliable information for bus times online. We ended up waking up the hotel staff to refund our key deposit before walking the kilometre south to the bus station. We had a very cold hour wait at the station before the minibus left and in -6C temperatures, lost the feeling in our toes. Thankfully, they turned the heater on on the bus and before long we were roasting and content, passing through stunning mountain scenery and frozen streams, to Datong.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Once in Datong. We jumped off the bus and made our way to the hotel we’d booked. Although a little far from the centre, we were impressed with the room, considering our hotel in Wutai Shan was supposed to be 4 star, this place had a lot more going for it, including 24 hour hot water and a heater in the room.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">We were only in Datong for one night and for one reason, to visit the Yungang Grottoes. After getting directions to the bus stop using a translator app with the receptionist, we headed out to brave the cold. The bus took about 30 minutes and at the end of the line we wandered around until we found a ticket office. We then had to enter the complex through a brand new theme park-esque temple area. The grottoes date from the 5th century and contain upwards of 51,000 statues, the oldest collection of Buddhist carvings in China. </span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-ElhKsxvQiYM/VGSCadXI7TI/AAAAAAAACXU/Qqk_j1cIAvE/s1600/DSC04398.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="265" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-ElhKsxvQiYM/VGSCadXI7TI/AAAAAAAACXU/Qqk_j1cIAvE/s400/DSC04398.JPG" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Buddhist carvings in the Yungang Grottoes, Datong.</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Although not as big as the Longmen Grottoes, there were more larger statues, some set in niches and some inside caves. Out of the 45 caves open to the public (there were originally 252 caves), there were two that were particularly impressive, one with a 17m high golden Buddha surrounded by hundreds of smaller images with carved and painted surfaces, and one with a square pagoda you could walk around with every inch of surface carved and decorated and with more giant Buddhas in niches. </span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-9-Z3EHMGBUw/VGSCbehj30I/AAAAAAAACXk/Ai_u7c4GLIQ/s1600/DSC04445.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="265" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-9-Z3EHMGBUw/VGSCbehj30I/AAAAAAAACXk/Ai_u7c4GLIQ/s400/DSC04445.JPG" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Huge carved Buddha, Yungang Grottoes, Datong.</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Once out of the park, we caught a bus back in to Datong and having not eaten all day, were drawn to the stalls of fruit and cakes lining our road. We ended up buying bags full of goodies and spending the rest of the evening in our room snacking and enjoying the hot shower.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The next day an English speaking guest at the hotel wrote the name of the bus station we needed to head to in Mandarin for us to show to a taxi driver. Before too long, we were at the station and buying tickets for the next available bus to Beijing. We had an hour to wait, grateful that this time the station was heated, before boarding our coach for the 5 hour drive. Once away from the huge coal mines and chimneys that surround Datong, we drove along spookily dead modern highways, passed field after field of yellow, dry crops edged with perfectly straight, leafless trees and sandstone mountains in the distance. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The bus pulled in to the station and we followed the signs to the metro. Before long we were at the hotel. Rhys loves duck and we figured being in Beijing, a Peking Duck dinner should be on our to do list. A bit of research and we found a restaurant in walking distance of our hotel with great reviews and it didn’t fail to impress. It was a small restaurant with not much atmosphere on a back alley but the duck was delicious despite the screaming Chinese family next to us. Rhys finished the meal with the duck brain, considered a real delicacy.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The next day we decided to head over to the Forbidden City, one of the biggest tourist attractions in Beijing. The City was home to the Ming and Qing dynasties and for 500 years, entry uninvited was forbidden and punishable by death. It was a playground for the ruling classes. After queuing for 30 minutes with thousands of people to buy tickets we were herded through the main gates and into one of the huge courtyards that fill the complex. The sheer size of the place was impressive but we found it got quite repetitive with alley after alley of orange, green and terracotta walls punctuated by courtyards centred with huge halls. We probably would have got a lot more out of it with an audio guide but we just meandered through the maze of buildings and gardens, stopping at a clock exhibition and a treasures exhibition, trying to avoid the crowds for a few hours before deciding to head back to the hotel.</span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-muf28vHpExA/VGSCcPY2AHI/AAAAAAAACXs/gv2OVZ3Ntqc/s1600/DSC04512.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="265" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-muf28vHpExA/VGSCcPY2AHI/AAAAAAAACXs/gv2OVZ3Ntqc/s400/DSC04512.JPG" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Me in the Forbidden City, Beijing.</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-YiqYlhfmEnM/VGSCciIVK8I/AAAAAAAACX0/ft-wkmaZKFs/s1600/DSC04645.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="265" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-YiqYlhfmEnM/VGSCciIVK8I/AAAAAAAACX0/ft-wkmaZKFs/s400/DSC04645.JPG" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Posing by one of the many orange, green and terracotta walls, Forbidden City, Beijing.</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">For dinner that evening, we walked around trying to find a night market we’d read about. When we finally found the right street, we were a little disappointed, unlike Xi’An it was very regimented, all the stalls looked identical and were in purpose built carts and the food they were selling were more curiosities than good food, starfish, spider, snake and scorpion kebabs and overcooked meat and tasteless dumplings.</span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-XvzvR0BoLG4/VGSCc1NvqrI/AAAAAAAACX8/OQdcvdi0sw0/s1600/DSC04731.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="265" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-XvzvR0BoLG4/VGSCc1NvqrI/AAAAAAAACX8/OQdcvdi0sw0/s400/DSC04731.JPG" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Unidentifiable meat kebabs at the night market in Beijing.</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">It was Sunday the next day and i’d read about a weekend market that sounded like our cup of tea, we’d been talking about buying yet another vase and had enjoyed the time we’d spent browsing antique markets in Xi’An and Pingyao. We caught the metro south and found the huge market which took us hours to work our way around, astonished by the number of beads stalls and stalls selling nothing but polished walnuts. The walnut craze has been something we’ve seen everywhere we’ve been in China, they sell for stupid amounts of money and people buy them as status symbols, looking for perfect symmetry and age and then roll them in their hands to aid circulation. A vase had caught our attention early in the day but we were quoted £150 so left it to look elsewhere, when we couldn’t find anything we liked as much we headed back to try our bargaining skills, walking away with it for £40, feeling rather chuffed with ourselves.</span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-reA1g_qhBE0/VGSCd69KjXI/AAAAAAAACYI/cC3KN2fvZTE/s1600/DSC04793.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="265" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-reA1g_qhBE0/VGSCd69KjXI/AAAAAAAACYI/cC3KN2fvZTE/s400/DSC04793.JPG" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Browsing the antiques market in Beijing.</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">After stopping back in our room for the afternoon, we had tickets for an early evening acrobatic show at the Chaoyang Theatre. The show only lasted an hour but the time was filled with men tumbling through hoops, women balancing and twirling parasols with their feet, contortionists, 12 people on a bicycle and then the finale had 8 motorbikes in a cage, lit up and somehow managing to dodge each other.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Still talking about what we’d just seen, we jumped in the metro to find another restaurant i’d read about, Mr Shi’s, this time one of the highest rated dumpling restaurants in the city. It was in a lively area crisscrossed with hutongs (alleys) to the north of the Forbidden City with lots of bars and restaurants. When we arrived we were surprised to find it empty (until we realised it was the second restaurant and the original was few doors up), but again, my research had done us well and we ended up ordering a second helping they were so good.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">We had to collect our tickets to Mongolia the next morning and walked over to the CITS office. As most of it was closed for the APEC meet, we’d been given instructions to pick them up from a guy in finance who didn’t speak English. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Next, we walked over to Tiananmen Square. Although we’d been nearby when we went to the Forbidden City we hadn’t actually seen it. The Square is the world’s largest public square and is nothing more than a concrete grey expanse, with serious security, surrounded by Soviet style buildings with a giant poster of Chairman Mao at one end. Although visually it wasn’t very appealing, everyone has seen the videos of the 1989 army tanks standing off with pro democracy demonstrators and we felt we had to visit.</span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-cz3O5YT_NZA/VGSCeHzSfTI/AAAAAAAACYM/M4Go2e7wmUs/s1600/DSC04802.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="265" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-cz3O5YT_NZA/VGSCeHzSfTI/AAAAAAAACYM/M4Go2e7wmUs/s400/DSC04802.JPG" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Giant flower arrangement, Tiananmen Square, Beijing.</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-1pRNpUfUR_s/VGSCeaZat_I/AAAAAAAACYc/yiT80ZOoU8U/s1600/DSC04809.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="265" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-1pRNpUfUR_s/VGSCeaZat_I/AAAAAAAACYc/yiT80ZOoU8U/s400/DSC04809.JPG" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Guards, flags and a Chairman Mao portrait, Tiananmen Square, Beijing.</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Rather than spend longer in the centre, we then decided to take the metro out to the Summer Palace on the outskirts of town. It was nothing like the Forbidden City. Set around a large lake, there were pavilions, bridges and gardens with the southern bank lined with temples, palace buildings and intricately painted corridors. We made the error of circling the lake first so by the time we got to the buildings we were getting tired and only picked a few of the larger ones to visit.</span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-KLsI5XaPy8Y/VGSCfOeefmI/AAAAAAAACYU/dqAlORXt0yE/s1600/DSC04898.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="265" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-KLsI5XaPy8Y/VGSCfOeefmI/AAAAAAAACYU/dqAlORXt0yE/s400/DSC04898.JPG" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Me on one of the bridges by the lake of the Summer Palace, Beijing.</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-S9DK33k5Tb8/VGSCfg1m3RI/AAAAAAAACYg/rLvGVMf5wZQ/s1600/DSC04986.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="265" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-S9DK33k5Tb8/VGSCfg1m3RI/AAAAAAAACYg/rLvGVMf5wZQ/s400/DSC04986.JPG" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Pagoda on the southern bank of the lake at the Summer Palace.</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">We had another sightseeing day planned the following day, this time to one of the Seven Man-made Wonders of the World, the Great Wall of China. Although we’d initially hoped to get further out to less restored, quieter areas, as it’s a fair way from Beijing and not easy to get to in off season, we opted for a tour from the hostel around the corner from where we were staying. After a free breakfast, we boarded a bus and spent 2 hours driving out to the Mutianyu section of the wall. We paid extra to take the cable car to watchtower 14, to allow us more time on the wall and immediately knew we’d made the right decision. Far from being a busy touristed and overly restored stretch, the wall was quiet. Our guide had recommended walking west, passed watchtower 23, the boundary to the Mutianyu section, and passed the signs telling tourists not to go any further. From this point on, we were on the unrestored 700 year old wall and it was beautiful.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The first version of the wall was built during the Qin dynasty in 221-207BC, when China was unified for the first time, joining together smaller walls from previously individual kingdoms (the same guy who ordered the Terracotta Army for his tomb). The wall was intended for defense but performed better as an elevated highway. The wall was rebuilt and strengthened several times over the coming centuries and was eventually abandoned when the Manchu armies invaded. The tourist industry has saved it from turning to dust and there are sections that have been heavily restored with theme park-esque additions, for the domestic tourist industry. </span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Bo_1evJDHS4/VGSCgVXUBBI/AAAAAAAACYo/eyKXErGHIm0/s1600/DSC05001.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="265" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Bo_1evJDHS4/VGSCgVXUBBI/AAAAAAAACYo/eyKXErGHIm0/s400/DSC05001.JPG" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Rhys on the restored section of Mutianyu, the Great Wall of China.</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The section of wall we visited in known for it’s Ming Dynasty guard towers and mountain vistas with the wall snaking off into the distance, winding over craggy peaks. It was far more popular with westerners than domestic tourists so was free of shouting tour group crowds. After we passed the tourist-no-go signs, we found ourselves on a crumbling, overgrown path and at one point the wall became so steep and was covered in crumbling loose rocks that we practically had to climb on all fours. We set ourselves a target of reaching watchtower 29 in the limited time we had and ended up walking so fast, to ensure we had as long as possible on the unrestored part, that we made it all the way to 37 before having to turn back to meet our group for lunch. The view from 37 was the highlight of the whole section and well worth the hike.</span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-NDIRJbCOk0w/VGSCg85ctcI/AAAAAAAACY0/4Pit1b5aRK8/s1600/DSC05092.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="265" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-NDIRJbCOk0w/VGSCg85ctcI/AAAAAAAACY0/4Pit1b5aRK8/s400/DSC05092.JPG" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Me clambering up one of the unrestored sections, Mutianyu, Great Wall of China.</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">We had a decent Chinese buffet for lunch and a chat to some of the other people on our trip before boarding the bus again for the drive back to Beijing. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">As it was our last night in China, we’d already decided to go back to the hutong duck restaurant for dinner and were treated with pancakes as good, if not better than the first visit and with out the accompaniment of the screaming Chinese family we had the previous time.</span></div>
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Lucie Kingdomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18320597530474698888noreply@blogger.com0Beijing, Beijing, China39.90403 116.4075259999999638.352877 113.82573899999996 41.455183 118.98931299999997tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1557459473009731669.post-297872840900786692014-11-05T00:00:00.000+08:002014-11-06T21:02:24.846+08:00Week 110 - Luoyang, Huashan, Xi'An, Pingyao, Wutaishan (China)<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">By midnight our train had been 4 hours behind schedule, by the time we pulled in to Luoyang station it was 8 hours late. We’d been on the train for 20 hours with the only pro being we had our own cabin and an electric point. The full day of sightseeing we’d planned to squeeze into our 13 hour change over in Luoyang went out of the window.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Out of the train station we found a bus that took a ridiculously long time to take us across town to the highspeed station where we dropped our bags after some language difficulties in the left luggage room and jumped in a taxi. We still just had enough time for a quick run around the Longmen Grottoes before we had to be back at the station. Luckily the entrance wasn’t far from the station and a fast walk through 600m of souvenir shops and food carts selling nasty pancakes and we arrived at the ticket booth. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">As we were buying tickets Rhys realised he’d left his itouch in the taxi. Leaving me to go into the attraction as we’d already paid, he ran back to the taxi rank on the off chance it might still be there. I’m told lots of shouting ensued with the group of taxi men just laughing and telling him to go to the police if he wanted.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">While he was having difficulties with the taxi men, I had time to run around the site before it closed. The 1,500 year old grottoes are niches cut into the rock face along a 1 km stretch of the Yi River. Filled with more than 100,000 Buddha images, the site is considered one of China’s few remaining masterpieces of Buddhist rock carving. It was impressive to see with the star cave, the Ancestor Worshiping Temple, centered on a 17m tall Buddha with 8 other huge statues guarding him.</span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-BVl1u-ZuLHI/VFtu7IOO9GI/AAAAAAAACUg/5QUYZ93ZzH4/s1600/DSC02716.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-BVl1u-ZuLHI/VFtu7IOO9GI/AAAAAAAACUg/5QUYZ93ZzH4/s1600/DSC02716.JPG" height="266" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">View of the Longmen Grottoes across the Yi River, Luoyang.</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Leaving the grottoes we took a taxi back to the train station. Our bullet train left on time and reaching speeds of 305kph, we were whisked to Hua Shan where we caught another taxi to our guesthouse. We were dropped at the junction on the main road and after asking a few locals, found the right neon lit shop front that the rooms were behind. By that point it was getting late and having eaten at Luoyang station, we settled in for the night.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The next morning we woke early to catch a taxi to the ticket office where after a bit of confusion we purchased our extortionate entry tickets (all national parks in China cost a fortune to visit, this one was £28 for entry, bus to the cable car and cable car ticket). Although it’s possible to walk up to the North Peak, we opted to take the cable car to give us time at the top to complete a circuit of the East, South and West peaks before walking back down to Hua Shan village. </span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Me on North Peak, Hua Shan.</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Hua Shan is one of Taoism’s five sacred mountains and sees hordes of tourists visiting everyday to walk the trails, lined with pine trees and chain barriers covered in padlocks and strips of red material, with views of the valleys stretching out below. As the cable car ascended, we passed through a cloud and couldn’t see more than a couple of metres in front of us and were worried it might stay that way all day. Luckily, the peaks were above the clouds and we were rewarded with mystical scenes of mountains floating among the clouds. Even though we’d decided to skip most of the climb, we were still faced with hundreds of stairs and steep ascents to reach the other peaks, the South being the highest at 2,160m with the cable car only taking us to 1,615m. The further we got from the North Peak, the fewer tourists there were and we managed to get away from all the shrieking to enjoy the scenery. </span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Clouds at Hua Shan.</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">One of the biggest draws for us that took us to Hua Shan in the first place, was the Plank Walk on East Peak and when we got there, there was no queue and only a few people on the trail. It’s known as one of the most dangerous hikes in the world but since the introduction of harnesses, is perfectly safe. The path only stretches for about 50m and is a mix of niches cut into the rock face, steel bars fixed to the walls and planks of wood to balance on, with sheer drops of hundreds of metres to the valley below, just the kind of thing me and Rhys love to do.</span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-RE0Z-GRbuCI/VFtu8i2BAjI/AAAAAAAACU4/RoeTSUb9FOg/s1600/DSC02926.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-RE0Z-GRbuCI/VFtu8i2BAjI/AAAAAAAACU4/RoeTSUb9FOg/s1600/DSC02926.JPG" height="265" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Rhys balanced on the Plank Walk, Hua Shan.</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-7D-Sms4Rhus/VFtu9wSrcPI/AAAAAAAACVA/RC9uNUnM6KE/s1600/DSC02962.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-7D-Sms4Rhus/VFtu9wSrcPI/AAAAAAAACVA/RC9uNUnM6KE/s1600/DSC02962.JPG" height="265" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Rhys on the Plank Walk, Hua Shan.</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">By the time we’d walked back down to the village we were tired and our legs were shaky from all the steps, from North Peak to the gate there were over 3,000 and that’s not including the steps between the peaks at the top. We grabbed a late lunch and walked back to our room, getting a bit confused on route and walking into the wrong building first. After an easy, fast food noodle restaurant dinner, we turned in for an early night.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">We had a bit of a lay in the next day before our 10:30 train to Xi’An. We had booked in to a dorm at a top rated hostel and looked forward to being in one place for 3 nights. Xi’An is a walled city and was once the terminus of the Silk Road. It’s now a modern bustling city but tucked in amongst all the shiny buildings are narrow cobbled streets, pagodas and temples. We arrived at lunch and ate in the coffee shop at the hostel before walking south, passed the Bell Tower to the South Gate of the Walls. The 18th century Bell Tower is on a traffic island and originally held a large bell that was rung at dawn while a drum, at the Drum Tower further along the road, was sounded at dusk.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Once at the South Gate, we paid and climbed to the top of the wall where we hired bicycles to cycle a full circle of the old city. Built in 1370 during the Ming Dynasty the 12m high walls run for 14km and although they have been heavily restored, it gives a feel for how imposing the city would have been.</span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-vbD3u3CXa00/VFtu-o-qIHI/AAAAAAAACVI/G-md1j3yesU/s1600/DSC03173.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-vbD3u3CXa00/VFtu-o-qIHI/AAAAAAAACVI/G-md1j3yesU/s1600/DSC03173.JPG" height="265" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">View of Xi'An from the City Walls.</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-VK0e4VqcsIY/VFtu_JZ9ETI/AAAAAAAACVM/qkZWm95KwBo/s1600/DSC03187.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-VK0e4VqcsIY/VFtu_JZ9ETI/AAAAAAAACVM/qkZWm95KwBo/s1600/DSC03187.JPG" height="400" width="265" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Rhys cycling on the City Walls, Xi'An.</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">We walked back to the hostel via the Drum Tower and stumbled upon the entrance to the Muslim Quarter, an area of narrow, cobbled alleyways, full of souvenir and food stalls. After a few laps we headed back to the hostel, tired from another active day.</span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The Bell Tower, lit up at dusk, Xi'An.</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The next morning we took the metro south of the city walls to the ZhuQueDa Antiques Market, the largest in Xi’An. We’d decided we wanted to buy a blue and white vase while in China and hadn’t seen anything that really took our fancy in the souvenir areas. It turned out to be a great experience. Xi’An has quite a lot of Western tourists but all of a sudden we found ourselves to be surrounded by locals as we wandered along the road where stall owners had spread their wares out on blankets on the floor. We spotted a few pieces we liked and bargained as hard as we could with no Mandarin skills. It was only later, back at the hostel that we realised we’d missed the bulk of the market, but had still managed to spend 2 happy hours with the stall owners delighting in dealing with white people.</span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Traders at Zhuqueda Antique Market, Xi'An.</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Back at the hostel we had a quick turn around before heading out again to catch a bus to the train station. From there, we had directions to find the bus to the world famous Terracotta Warriors. The bus took about an hour and dropped us in a car park from where we muddled our way to the ticket office. After a rubbish 360 cinema, we ended up at Pit 1, the most impressive of the three open pits. We joined the masses and entered what looked like a huge aircraft hangar, built to protect the ongoing excavations. The sheer amount of warriors, all standing in rank in separate channels was staggering and it was interesting to see areas where they’re recovering and piecing together fragments of yet more statues. </span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Pit 1, Terracotta Warriors, Xi'An.</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Uk9oI0JS_NA/VFtvC3uqfXI/AAAAAAAACVw/cqY5pyZqW4c/s1600/DSC03314.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Uk9oI0JS_NA/VFtvC3uqfXI/AAAAAAAACVw/cqY5pyZqW4c/s1600/DSC03314.JPG" height="400" width="265" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The Terracotta Warriors, Xi'An.</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-H3Lsq2aiBBo/VFtvEuh5EaI/AAAAAAAACV4/WJC3XpG2yHs/s1600/DSC03344.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-H3Lsq2aiBBo/VFtvEuh5EaI/AAAAAAAACV4/WJC3XpG2yHs/s1600/DSC03344.JPG" height="265" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Lines of Terracotta Warriors, Xi'An.</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The other two pits held other figures, horses and chariots with Pit 2 having five soldiers in cases for you to see up close and the exhibition area showing soldiers where the colour with which they were originally painted is still visible and two solid bronze, half size chariots unearthed nearby.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The Terracotta Warriors are a life size army built by the first Emperor of a unified China, Qin Shi Huang, to stand guard over his tomb, he died in 210 BC. Although history suggests he was a tyrannical ruler, his achievements were great, standardising measurements, currency and writing, introducing a centralised government and greatly improving infrastructure by building thousands of kilometres of roads and canals.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">No one really knows why he ordered their creation, but for archaeologists, they offer a great insight into the world of ancient China, following their discovery in 1974 when a local farmer was sinking a well. For something so old it really is incredible to see the level of detail and realism in the warriors and it really makes you wonder what was going through the Emperor’s mind. It’s even more incredible when you realise how little of the site has actually been excavated, the tomb itself hasn’t even been opened yet, although they believe it was looted shortly after the Emperors death.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Leaving the Warriors and the stalls of dog and cat furs behind, we caught a bus back in to town and back to the hostel where, after trying a persimmon (squidgy tomatey fruit), we headed back to the Muslim Quarter with one of the girls from our dorm for a street food dinner. We walked up and down the alleyways sampling skewered meat, breads, tofu, noodles, stretched sugar candy, burnt sesames and pomegranate juice, a little off put by the sight of a skinned dog in a butchers, before it was time for bed.</span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Dinner in the Muslim Quarter, Xi'An.</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The next morning we’d booked on to a trip through the hostel to see the tomb of Emperor JingDi, a Han dynasty emperor who died in 141BC. You can’t get to the tomb easily by public transport so we joined two other people for a private car. Within an hour we were at the complex and we donned the obligatory plastic shoe covers and entered the museum. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">As at the Warriors, only a small portion of the site has been excavated so far, about 21 of the 81 pits that have been found surrounding the burial mound of the Emperor. The building has glass floors that allow you to walk over many of the pits peering at the slightly eerie doll sized terracotta figurines below - all missing their arms as they were originally made of wood and have disintegrated. Over 50,000 figurines are thought to be buried there including warriors, servants, eunuchs and domesticated animals. We sat through a random holographic short film and came out not really knowing any more than when we’d gone in but still enjoyed our visit. On the way out, we walked around the burial mound to the south gate of the mausoleum, taking in the sheer size of the plot, before getting back in the car for the drive back to the city.</span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Terracotta figures, Jing Di's tomb, Xi'An.</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">We were back in Xi’An earlier than expected and after lunch at a cheap Chinese buffet on our street, we walked to another antique market, at the Western Gate of the City Walls. This time it was an arcade of proper antique shops with real antiques and high prices to match. We wandered around pointing out pieces we liked before getting sucked in and buying yet another vase to add to our collection, fingers crossed that they all make it home without cracking.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Happy with our purchase we wandered back to the hostel where we had a couple of hours to relax before dinner. Although we intended to walk back in to the Muslim Quarter, we decided we couldn’t be doing with the crowds and instead I took Rhys back to the Chinese buffet where i’d had lunch.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Although we’d really enjoyed Xi’An and could definitely have stayed longer, we had a train booked to Pingyao the following day and took an early morning metro north to Xi’An’s highspeed train station where in three hours we found ourselves 486 km north. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">As always, the highspeed train station was in the middle of nowhere. We left the building and found a bus in the empty parking lot and asked the driver if he was going to the Old Town, showing him on a map. He said he was so we boarded and tried to work out how much to pay him. When we reached the outskirts of the town the driver told us to get off. We had no idea where we were and walked along a highway towards the city walls. When we finally found a road to cross through the wall we discovered we were at the southern entrance, our hostel was in the north. A 40 minute walk with our backpacks feeling ever heavier, we finally found the right place.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">We didn’t stay in the room long before wandering back to the main pedestrianised street to explore. Pingyao is an ancient walled town and is considered to be the best preserved in the whole of China, bursting with beautiful buildings, alleyways and courtyards. Founded in the Ming Dynasty, it wasn’t until the Qing Dynasty that Pingyao really began to thrive when it became the home of the first banks. The streets are all cobblestone and lined with lanterns. It’s pretty touristy but wasn’t crazy busy and we spent a couple of hours browsing the antique shops in the centre, laughing at the English translations of menus (stewed maternal grandmother anyone?) and eating strange egg wrapped meat parcels.</span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-evNesUbXx8E/VFtvIk-lq_I/AAAAAAAACWQ/4ZMiicyiSvI/s1600/DSC03604.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-evNesUbXx8E/VFtvIk-lq_I/AAAAAAAACWQ/4ZMiicyiSvI/s1600/DSC03604.JPG" height="265" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Browsing the shops, Pingyao.</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-5Y1YZnWrfWM/VFtvJWBlQaI/AAAAAAAACWY/krMh16_wQ8s/s1600/DSC03630.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-5Y1YZnWrfWM/VFtvJWBlQaI/AAAAAAAACWY/krMh16_wQ8s/s1600/DSC03630.JPG" height="265" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The main street with the City Tower in the distance, Pingyao.</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Back at our room we had a couple of hours to chill before dinner. The temperature dropped and we had to get in to bed fully clothed waiting for the central heating to be turned on.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">That night we wandered back into the centre, passed streets lined with lanterns, to find somewhere with English menus or pictures we could point at. Rhys had been craving sweet and sour pork so we found somewhere with it on the menu and ducked in, after being laughed at for trying to order rice we were a bit on edge and happy to be walking back to the hotel.</span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-hEE3-Zll4N8/VFtvJ_u7AFI/AAAAAAAACWc/axeJxercCL8/s1600/DSC03661.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-hEE3-Zll4N8/VFtvJ_u7AFI/AAAAAAAACWc/axeJxercCL8/s1600/DSC03661.JPG" height="400" width="265" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Lanterns in the centre of Pingyao.</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The next day we bought tourist tickets which permitted entry to 19 historic buildings within the town. The old city walls are only 6km in circumference (with 72 watchtowers!) so enclosing an area about a mile square and easily walkable. We spent the whole day walking up and down the main cross roads stopping at every building we came across included on the ticket. We visited many merchant houses, Government offices and the first exchange house, all with series of courtyards and basement safes. Pingyao was at the centre of Ming and Qing dynasty trade routes and after issuing the first remittances to put an end to the dangerous practice of carting huge amounts of gold and silver all over the place, the town became the centre of the banking industry. The restored buildings hold museums and artifacts from the towns, and key families, histories. And in case that’s not enough, there were a few temples just to top it off. </span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-EiKhGCl0SsE/VFtvKZu-i2I/AAAAAAAACWo/c8LtX1rcjSM/s1600/DSC03758.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-EiKhGCl0SsE/VFtvKZu-i2I/AAAAAAAACWo/c8LtX1rcjSM/s1600/DSC03758.JPG" height="265" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Rhys at one of the may temples, Pingyao.</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">By the end of the day all the buildings, although beautiful, were starting to look the same and we decided to stop for a coffee before walking back to the hotel to collect our bags.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">We had an evening train heading to Wutai Shan and walked around the city walls to the station. The train we boarded was crowded and we were grateful to have ticketed seats, although we were less happy about the amount of staring we attracted. We’ve been looked at and laughed at in so many countries for looking different but here it feels uncomfortable for the first time, the people we’ve come across are so rude and think nothing of shoving a camera in your face without saying a word of warning or just staring for hours without even a smile, and Rhys had a guy practically sitting on his lap trying to watch his laptop over his shoulder for most of the journey.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">We reached Wutai Shan train station which is actually 50km from Wutai Shan at around 11pm. We’d hoped the shuttle buses in to town might still be running and since there’s a real lack of any sort of information, hadn’t been able to find out otherwise. When we got there though it was clear we weren’t getting any further on public transport and ended up taking a taxi. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The roads were empty and the driver roared around the mountain passes at full speed until we reached the ticketing office and road block. To enter the Wutai Shan area, you have to buy a ticket and me and the driver ended up knocking and shouting at the kiosk until the lights came on and I was able to buy one. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The next piece of fun started when we arrived at the hotel we’d booked. The driver luckily knew where it was and took us straight there, but it was all locked up. We managed to wake someone who didn’t speak a word of English and we have no idea if he was a guest or the owner. Who ever he was, he practically threw us out of the courtyard miming that we couldn’t stay there and the taxi driver took it on himself to find us a bed for the night. We ended up at another, supposedly 4 star hotel that was twice our budget but the staff, when we woke them, were incredibly friendly and checked us in and gave us a warm room. We were so lucky to have the taxi driver we did otherwise we would have been at a loss and when the temperature is in the minus outside you can’t just camp out until morning.</span></div>
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Lucie Kingdomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18320597530474698888noreply@blogger.com0Wutai Shan, Fanshi, Xinzhou, China39.0825 113.562539.0825 113.5625 39.0825 113.5625tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1557459473009731669.post-43370442172573100972014-10-29T00:00:00.000+08:002014-10-30T18:48:31.088+08:00Week 109 - Yangshuo, Wulingyuan (China)<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">After an extremely bad nights sleep on the train due to a snorer in our carriage, we were woken at 5am when the ticket collector knocked on the door. We had 40 minutes of our journey left before arrival at Guilin station. It didn’t take long to find a bus waiting outside heading to Yangshuo and although we had to pay white person inflated prices we were happy to be on the final leg of our journey. An hour later and we pulled into Yanshuo. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">We were at the hostel before 8am and they kindly let us check in to our room where we took a quick shower and climbed into bed for a well needed nap. We were only woken by the cleaner knocking on the door and took that as our cue to head out to explore. First we needed to do laundry which our hostel offered free. We bundled our clothes into a machine before realising we had no idea how to work it, over an hour and a half of flicking switches and turning taps on and off with help from a kind lady, and it was finally ready to hang out. Luckily, we had the view from the roof top terrace to entertain us while we waited, and what a view it was. Yangshuo is an extremely touristy town located on a bend in the Li River and famous for the towering limestone karsts that fill the horizon in every direction, and we had 360 degree views from the hostel.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">When we finally left, we walked over to West Street, the main pedestrianised road with lots of alleys and smaller lanes leading off of it. The street is filled to bursting with shops selling all kinds of cheap and cheerful souvenirs, calligraphy sets, carved jade seals, polished rocks shaped like pigs trotters, sausages and cuts of bacon, and weird and wonderful sweets and jars of chopped chili, all intermingled with hundreds of bars and restaurants. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">After a lap of the town we grabbed a mango shake in one of the 50 different shops selling just mango drinks, all next door to each other, and walked down to the Li River. It was like a motorway with big boats bringing hundreds of tourists down from Guilin. We walked to the ferry port and back to town, stopping for Rhys to have his photo taken with a cormorant fishing bird. We had hopped to see the fisherman using their birds to catch fish but when we found out they didn’t do it anymore and it’s purely a show for tourists we decided against paying to see it.</span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-mYaituAzgfQ/VFIJ1whLVpI/AAAAAAAACSw/vt9BmG7-x-4/s1600/DSC01382.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-mYaituAzgfQ/VFIJ1whLVpI/AAAAAAAACSw/vt9BmG7-x-4/s1600/DSC01382.JPG" height="265" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Rhys with fishing cormorants, Li River, Yangshuo.</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">We sat on the roof terrace at our hostel to watch the sunset before wandering out again for dinner and found a cheap option on a side street with English menus where we could sit at a table on the roadside and watch the world bustling passed. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The next day we’d decided to attempt the walk from Yangdi to Xingping, drawn on every tourist map of the Yangshuo area we’d seen and detailed in the Lonely Planet. We were out of the hostel early for a bus to Yangdi where we found the pier and tried desperately to get someone to take us across the river to start the hike. The pier is mainly for bamboo rafts taking people down the Li River to Xingping and on to Yangshuo and they weren’t keen to take us the short trip across the river, offering us the trip for £9.40, to go literally 20 metres, the same price it would cost to go halfway to Xingping. After spending an hour trying to find a boat for a reasonable price and meeting a lovely Chinese guy and a Swiss woman, also trying to do the trip, we ended up agreeing on £8 each to take us a quarter of the way, missing out the first stage of the walk and combining the first and second river crossings that were part of the hike.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Once we’d agreed on a price we still had to wait for 45 minutes as there’s a designated time when the rafts have to be off the river for the big ferries from Guilin to pass. We were desperate to start walking by the time we actually set off. The bamboo raft was a bit of a disappointment, it was made of plastic pipes with motors on the back and although the views of the Li River were spectacular, the noise took away from it.</span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-q2kZ1ZbroiA/VFIJw0UIE8I/AAAAAAAACSo/azrDBwCOX4c/s1600/DSC01557.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-q2kZ1ZbroiA/VFIJw0UIE8I/AAAAAAAACSo/azrDBwCOX4c/s1600/DSC01557.JPG" height="265" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">View of the Li River from our raft, Yangshuo.</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Finally we were off the raft and on the path, along with Jesse, our new Chinese friend. We followed the trail for a couple of hours, along the riverside and through villages and orchards growing thousands of oranges and huge fruit that look like giant pears but are more like grapefruits. Although the karsts were impressive and seeing rural life was really interesting, there was the sound of boat engines and electric lines strung across every view.</span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-sAte6rpe2RQ/VFIJ332t7OI/AAAAAAAACS4/eB7XDeTyve0/s1600/DSC01623.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-sAte6rpe2RQ/VFIJ332t7OI/AAAAAAAACS4/eB7XDeTyve0/s1600/DSC01623.JPG" height="265" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Rhys walking through the orchards, Yangdi to Xingping.</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">We had one final river crossing, this time at an official ferry that cost about 90p before the final walk to Xingping. Having missed the turnoff to the footpath we walked along the road and although it was empty apart from the electric carts running people from the boat to the village, it wasn’t the most interesting part of the hike. All up, it was a very expensive walk for what it was but the scenery and company made up for it.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Just before we reached Xingping we came across groups of people holding up 20 yuan notes and taking photos. It took us a moment to realise we’d found the view that’s engraved on the back of the note and we joined the throngs to take our own photos. Continuing to the village, we were a little disappointed to find so much building work on the Old Street, detracting from the peaceful beauty of the place and didn’t stay long before saying goodbye to Jesse and boarding a bus back to Yangshuo.</span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-G_nptYNG24A/VFIJ_6q7JEI/AAAAAAAACTA/YL6iuYBqctg/s1600/DSC01709.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-G_nptYNG24A/VFIJ_6q7JEI/AAAAAAAACTA/YL6iuYBqctg/s1600/DSC01709.JPG" height="265" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">View of the Li River from Xingping.</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Having walked around 20km we were pretty tired and after a quick shower and turn around we rushed out to meet Barbara, the Swiss lady who’d joined us on the raft at the start of the day. She’d traveled the transmongolian the other way to us and had Mongolian money to change. We sat in a restaurant on our favourite pedestrianised side street and swapped travel stories before we had to leave her to try to buy train tickets.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Internet research had informed us there was an official train ticketing office in town despite there not being a train station and we knew one of the trains we were after only had a handful of seats left. Unfortunately the office was closed so we were left hoping the train didn’t sell out before we could get there in the morning. After dinner we walked back through the hordes of Chinese tourists who had appeared blocking the streets, although the town was relatively quiet in the day, at night it was heaving. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The next day our first stop was at the train ticket office where we managed to book most of our remaining China trains. Happy, we walked over the bridge and were offered a scooter for a cheap enough price that we agreed without a second thought. We consulted the map and headed south to Moon Hill, one of the karsts with a hole straight through. When we arrived, we were shocked to hear it cost £4 each entry and turned around, it was only looking at a guidebook later I realised they’d said £1.20. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Checking the map we decided we’d try to follow one of the suggested cycle routes that seemed to be marked as a lane on the map. It certainly started out that way but after we stopped at ancient Longtan Village, strewn with electric wires, and after a wrong turn and a nice local lady pointing us in the right direction, we squeezed between some sheds and, following spray painted red arrows, we found ourselves on a rock strewn footpath. We persevered for about a kilometre, Rhys doing a superb job balancing us on foot wide paths between flooded paddy fields until we decided we were being stupid and turned around. It was a shame because the Yulang River valley is undoubtedly one of the nicest, quietest places in the area but on a motorbike it just wasn’t feasible.</span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-2O614ko1r-E/VFIKKd57_MI/AAAAAAAACTI/UgO6wju164Y/s1600/DSC01801.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-2O614ko1r-E/VFIKKd57_MI/AAAAAAAACTI/UgO6wju164Y/s1600/DSC01801.JPG" height="265" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Orchards on the cycle route in the Yulang River Valley, Yangshuo.</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">We then decided to drive to the north of Yangshuo to the Yulang Bridge, bad choice. The roads were horrific and we spent the next hour and a half being rattled and shaken within an inch of our lives. By the time we got to the bridge we were pretty much done and if we were closer to home I think we’d have just taken the bike back. Instead, we found a riverside cafe and sat down to wipe off some of the dust coating every inch of skin. We watched a wedding dress photo shoot in amongst the throngs of tourists on much more relaxed bamboo rafts than we’d seen the previous day (actually being made of bamboo and not having motors), before climbing back on the bike to head back to town.</span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-ztNRWTbubJk/VFIKNmBRtDI/AAAAAAAACTQ/mdfzgqyKIRo/s1600/DSC01861.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-ztNRWTbubJk/VFIKNmBRtDI/AAAAAAAACTQ/mdfzgqyKIRo/s1600/DSC01861.JPG" height="265" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">View of the Yulang River from the Yulang Bridge, Yangshuo.</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Unluckly, but unsurprisingly, all the rocks we’d hit on the cycle path had cracked the faring and we lost £8 of our deposit. Tired and frustrated from a long ride with very little karst scenery, we walked back to the room.</span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-u5ZFaXBMuzA/VFIKUDig6jI/AAAAAAAACTY/EoqxUUKMlkU/s1600/DSC01900.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-u5ZFaXBMuzA/VFIKUDig6jI/AAAAAAAACTY/EoqxUUKMlkU/s1600/DSC01900.JPG" height="90" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Sunset from the hostel roof terrace, Yangshuo.</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">We had a train booked for 7pm from Guilin the next day so even allowing a couple of hours for a bus and finding the right waiting room at the station, we still had most of the day for sightseeing in Yangshuo. We’d initially thought to go to Guilin early as there are things to do there but were too caught up in the thought of a lay in. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">We ended up renting bicycles and heading south to Fuli, a nearby village, before deciding we didn’t want to follow a main road all the way and trying to find a cycle path instead. We couldn’t find the path and after a few wrong turnings and a random trail that didn’t really bring us out anywhere, we turned around and headed back. Rhys picked up some fast food for lunch and we stopped by the river before heading back to the ferry and further along the Li River bank. Deciding we were just riding for the sake of riding and not actually getting anywhere we turned back and returned the bikes. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">We had a couple of hours of the day left to waste before it was time to catch the bus back to Guilin. All up, I was impressed with Yangshuo, it was incredibly touristy but incredibly beautiful and the views from our roof terrace where among the best in town. We probably would have got more from the place if we’d planned it a little better and we didn’t even do the big draws that lured us in the first place, rock climbing and the cormorant fishing. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Once we reached Guilin we headed in to the train station, passed the very lax security checks and found the right waiting room with no issues. Our bullet train was spot on time and at a speed of 200kph we rocketed to Liuzhou from where we had an overnight train to ZhangJiaJie booked. Although not the most direct route from Yangshuo it was the best option to allow us a nights sleep. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">We dived in to a small local restaurant and ordered pointing at photos on the wall, fingers crossed we wouldn’t be presented with plates of unidentifiable animal parts (we saw braised dog on the menu in Yangshuo along with all manner of innards). Dinner sorted, we found the waiting room and with a few points and laughs at the whiteys in the train station, boarded the train. We shared our cabin with a Chinese couple who seemed really sweet until the lights went out and the guy started snoring like a rhinocerous. Bring on another night with no sleep.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">We were grateful to get off the train at ZhangJiaJie City and using detailed directions from a blog i’d found, we headed outside, passed the signs telling the ‘6 foot tall people to please go forward’, to the bus station where we then followed the signs for the ‘Pit Mouth’ and found a bus leaving straight away for Wulingyuan. One of the highlights of China so far, even more so than the stunning scenery, is the English translations.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">After checking with the other passengers by pointing to the map that we were on the right bus, we pulled in to Wulingyuan Village 40 minutes later. It only took 5 minutes to find our hotel and again, they kindly let us check in early. Despite the lack of sleep we were too excited to get to the national park to nap and we headed out to find the ticket booth. It wasn’t far away and before long we’d scanned our thumbs and were on a bus headed for Tianzi Mountain. As we’d had a hard night we didn’t want to do anything too challenging so started with a cable car ride to the top of the mountain. Straight away we were could see some of the sandstone pinnacles covered in subtropical rainforest that gave the creators of Avatar a basis for the planet Pandora.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">We spent the next hour wandering around the peak taking photos at the various viewing platforms before climbing to the top of a pagoda and choosing a path to head back down towards the village. </span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-D3k2_y_bUlk/VFIKaXbC-VI/AAAAAAAACTg/Knszg-IjyuY/s1600/DSC02015.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-D3k2_y_bUlk/VFIKaXbC-VI/AAAAAAAACTg/Knszg-IjyuY/s1600/DSC02015.JPG" height="265" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Mystical Avatar karsts through the haze, Wuilingyuan.</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-JH_5sxp_yQg/VFIKh1WUXOI/AAAAAAAACTo/WjB7HbFSrCk/s1600/DSC02070.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-JH_5sxp_yQg/VFIKh1WUXOI/AAAAAAAACTo/WjB7HbFSrCk/s1600/DSC02070.JPG" height="265" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Sandstone karsts in Wulingyuan National Park.</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-yRQjMfTPXBY/VFIKoUzMfrI/AAAAAAAACTw/yWqgoyvrhLw/s1600/DSC02091.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-yRQjMfTPXBY/VFIKoUzMfrI/AAAAAAAACTw/yWqgoyvrhLw/s1600/DSC02091.JPG" height="265" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Rhys in Wulingyuan National Park.</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">We ended up taking the popular 10 Mile Gallery route that’s also serviced by a monorail, a bit misleading as it was more like 3 miles but it took us passed some spectacular scenery and passed lots of screaming Chinese tourists - they must be the loudest nationality we’ve met so far, everything is said at a volume at least 4 times louder than it needs to be. 4 hours after we entered the park we were back at the entrance gate near our hotel.</span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-XQ9Fx71jxS4/VFIKvJgYbKI/AAAAAAAACT4/k0lPi4HvtF8/s1600/DSC02183.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-XQ9Fx71jxS4/VFIKvJgYbKI/AAAAAAAACT4/k0lPi4HvtF8/s1600/DSC02183.JPG" height="265" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The sun disappearing behind the mountains, Wuilingyuan National Park.</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The next morning we woke early to the alarm having intended to spend a full day in the park. A quick look out of the sky light and we changed our minds, we could barely see across the road it was so hazy. Although we knew the park was often clouded in fog and obscured views were the norm, the weather had cleared in the afternoon the previous day we decided to spend the morning at the hotel. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Just before lunch we realised we couldn’t wait any longer and a walk in the park would be nice even if we couldn’t see as much as we’d hoped. We headed to the bus station in the village and took a shuttle to the main entrance in ZhangJiaJie Village. Once in the park we were lured in to a food stall where Rhys bought cured ham on a stick and I got a bowl of roast potatoes. Satiated and ready to walk, we found the start of the Golden Whip Stream path and joined the masses. The trail was incredibly well maintained, a paved track that followed a stream, winding at the base of the tall pillars that towered overhead. As it was flat, it was one of the most popular for tour groups and there were hordes of them, all screeching and yelling. </span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-aHCv1aeKV50/VFILFaL81wI/AAAAAAAACUA/kcHZEeZD9bM/s1600/DSC02280.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-aHCv1aeKV50/VFILFaL81wI/AAAAAAAACUA/kcHZEeZD9bM/s1600/DSC02280.JPG" height="400" width="265" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Walking the Golden Whip Stream, Wulingyuan.</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">We were glad when we came to a junction that gave us the opportunity to leave the Golden Whip, just before the Zicao Pool. Crossing a bridge, we joined the Shadao Gully Trail and all of a sudden, the crowds disappeared. It was beautifully serene as we wandered along the moss covered pathway, listening to the sound of the birds and craning our necks to look up at the towers, until we reached the stairway to the upper level of the park. It took about 30 minutes to climb to the top where we found some deserted view points of the First Bridge of the World and a road leading to the Bailong Elevator, a major attraction of the park but a bit of an eyesore, a giant elevator fixed to the side of one of the towers.</span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Vj4i0rVxXfI/VFILFy-Z4ZI/AAAAAAAACUE/VXvcjEttGcE/s1600/DSC02344.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Vj4i0rVxXfI/VFILFy-Z4ZI/AAAAAAAACUE/VXvcjEttGcE/s1600/DSC02344.JPG" height="400" width="266" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Freestanding karst with First Bridge of the World int he background, Wulingyuan.</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">After walking along the road, we found where all the tour groups had been hiding, a collection of walkways hugging the edge of the cliff with views out into the valley, billed as one of the shooting spots for Avatar. Not wanting to miss out, we bundled out on to the platforms amid the shouting and screaming to peer through the haze at one of the most spectacular natural wonders we’ve seen in the two years we’ve been traveling.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">By this time it was 4:30pm. We had no idea what time the last buses ran within the park and had two options to get back to the entrance closest to our hotel. The first was to queue with the masses to use the elevator at a cost of £5 each, the second was to walk back down to the lower valley and rejoin the Golden Whip Stream at a point a little further than where we left it. We chose the latter option and estimated we had about 8km left to walk, hoping we’d cover the ground before we lost the light. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Although we’d lost the views in the dusky light, the monkeys had come out to play in their hundreds and when we reached the Golden Whip Stream we were treated with magical images of the towers silhouetted against the sky. At the bus stop, most of the people had already left and it wasn’t long before we were on board, as darkness fell, and out of the park.</span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-BRwe6dMHzWs/VFILHscvdTI/AAAAAAAACUQ/NOjjAUXNkiM/s1600/DSC02574.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-BRwe6dMHzWs/VFILHscvdTI/AAAAAAAACUQ/NOjjAUXNkiM/s1600/DSC02574.JPG" height="265" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Leaving the park at dusk, Wulingyuan.</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">As we reached our hotel the rain started. We ducked out for dinner, where Rhys mistakenly ordered inedible intestines, before heading to bed, legs sore from a decent 7 hour walk.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">We had to check out of the hotel the next day and had planned to catch an early bus back in to ZhangJiaJie to ride the longest cable car in the world and spend the day at Mount Tiamen. Peering out of the skylight we could see that the rain hadn’t stopped all night and was showing no signs of stopping anytime soon. Grateful we’d been able to walk in the park with only haze to deal with, we decided that spending £23 each to go up a cable car in the rain was a waste of time and money and instead hung around at the hotel until the early afternoon.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Still raining, we walked to the bus station and caught a bus into the city. Disappointed that MacDonalds was closed (atleast we can understand the menu there and don’t get charged tourist rip off prices), we headed through security and found a space on the floor, in the cold, for the 2.5 hour wait for our train. Then the train was delayed by over an hour and a half. Having wasted the entire day and getting cold from sitting on the floor, we jumped at the chance of paying £1.20 each to sit in the soft seating area when space became available. There were a lot of train delays and the station was heaving. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">When we finally boarded the train, we found our carriage and settled in. Luckily, we had the room to ourselves for the first couple of hours and for a change it was chilly so we could wrap ourselves in our duvets and get a decent nights sleep. Other than a visitor who decided to come and stay on one of the spare beds at 2am, and who got moved at 5am, we were alone and didn’t have to suffer with a snorer keeping us awake. Checking our progress as midnight we realised we were already 4 hours behind schedule.</span></div>
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Lucie Kingdomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18320597530474698888noreply@blogger.com2Wulingyuan, Zhangjiajie, Hunan, China29.34573 110.55043429.124247 110.2277105 29.567213 110.87315749999999tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1557459473009731669.post-16363696732957190772014-10-22T00:00:00.000+08:002014-10-26T12:01:02.969+08:00Week 108 - Hong Kong<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">We landed in Kuala Lumpur and were through immigration and checked back in, in record time. We had 5 hours until our flight to Hong Kong and headed straight to MacDonalds for a very early, 4am breakfast. Another couple of hours to kill in the departure lounge and we were on our way. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">We landed in Hong Kong, collected our bags and jumped on a bus into the city. We had to follow our progress from Lantau, over Kowloon and on to Hong Kong Island on the map since there were road closures for the protests. Luckily we got off at the right stop for the short walk to our hostel. After checking in to our tiny but perfectly formed room, on the 10th floor of a tower block above a Burberry store, we freshened up and headed straight back out, to walk to the agency we’d found who would help to submit our documents for our Russian visa applications.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">We found their office without too much hassle only to discover that the application i’d filled in online for Rhys had wiped itself, for the second time. Exhausted from a 36 hour day, we ended up in Starbucks to try and retrieve some of the information before scribbling all the details we could onto a new form for the agency to complete. We didn’t intend to use an agency but needed a letter of invitation and they wouldn’t let us buy one without using their application service too. Since Russian visas are notoriously hard to get, especially when you’re not applying in your home country, we were happy to have someone who knew what they were doing deal with the formalities.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">We were back at the hostel early afternoon but were too shattered to do anything other than enjoy the 24 hour electricity, fast wifi and hot shower, dinner was a pot of rice and chicken from the supermarket next door.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The next day we lazed in bed with a coffee before wandering out to explore the north coast of Hong Kong Island, the business area full of towering skyscrapers. Hong Kong is a Special Adminstrative Region of China and is made up of over 230 islands with four main areas, Hong Kong Island itself, Kowloon, the most densely populated area, the New Territories and the Outlying Islands. Hong Kong has an interesting history and was ceded to the British in 1841 ‘in perpetuity’. The Kowloon peninsula and New Territories didn’t pass into British command until 1896 and the population of the colony continued to grow as Chinese immigrants fled the 1911 revolution and the 1937 Japanese invasion. In 1984, the British agreed to give Hong Kong back to China in 1997, despite it only being legally obliged to return the New Territories, on the condition it would retain its free-market economy and social and legal systems for 50 years. The agreement guaranteed the right of property and ownership and the rights of assembly, free speech and association. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">We walked from our hostel towards the waterfront where we disappointingly found nothing but building sites and no actual access to the water. After a few photos through the haze across to Kowloon, we wound our way back and forth across the confusing walkways that zigzag over the main roads before reaching the exhibition centre where we had a quick detour as Rhys was sucked in by the promise of one of the world’s biggest electrical exhibitions. As we were signing up we realised how expensive it was to get in and left with nothing more than a free chocolate before giving up on a waterside walk and aiming back into the centre of Hong Kong. We stopped at a 7/11 where we bought sandwiches and found a park bench in the Hong Kong Park where we could sit by fountains and enjoy our picnic. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Rhys remembered an aviary from his previous Hong Kong visit and we followed the signs, passed some caged hornbills towards it. Having become keen bird watches on our travels we were in heaven and spent the next hour searching for birds from the raised walkway. After the aviary and all the walking we decided to call it a day and jumped on the tube back to our hostel in Causeway Bay.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">We had a couple of hours to chill before we were due to meet Katie, an ex-BDOer who I used to play football with in London, who has been living in Hong Kong for over two years with her husband Rhys. She met us in Causeway Bay after work and took us out to a restaurant, recommended by her food guru, where we caught up over plates of noodles, beef and pancakes and endless cups of tea. We made plans to see her again the next night before turning in for an early night, still exhausted from our all night journey from Nepal.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">We seemed to have managed to mess up our sleeping patterns and despite being tired, didn’t sleep until the early hours (helped by the 3 litre carton of red wine we discovered for £7 in the Welcome Supermarket) so weren’t in a hurry to get out of bed again when morning came. Around midday we decided we should make an effort to leave the hostel and trundled over to the south side of Hong Kong Island, to Stanley. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Famous for it’s market, we strolled between the stalls before seeing an oil painting of a rhino that we immediately fell in love with and ended up splashing out on after meeting the artist who was keen for it to go to someone who loved it (he was pretty intense). The market wasn’t all that, full of tourist tat, and we didn’t stay long before walking across the bay to the shopping mall and the supermarket to buy another picnic lunch to enjoy in the pavilion, a covered area at the end of a pier over the sea. </span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-d7u8qeMhkHM/VExvBSNQjdI/AAAAAAAACRA/oCY4Ui-7BiQ/s1600/DSC00754.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-d7u8qeMhkHM/VExvBSNQjdI/AAAAAAAACRA/oCY4Ui-7BiQ/s1600/DSC00754.JPG" height="265" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The beach at Stanley, Hong Kong.</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Stanley was really quiet and there wasn’t much of a buzz, after lunch, we walked around to the next bay where the only people on the beach were expats or white tourists and then we called it a day, catching a mini bus back to the north coast of the island with the driver pumping the accelerator so we bunny hopped all the way, passed Repulse Bay and Deep Water Bay, two of the nicest beaches on the island. 80% of Hong Kong is unspoilt green mountains and tropical forests, you don’t have to go far from the sky scrappers to find a patch of forest or a beautiful bay with gold sands and turquoise waters.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">That evening we met Katie again, this time in SoHo, near where she lives. To get there from the tube station we had to take the escalators, a brilliant method of moving people around the city, a street of moving walkways and escalators stretching for 800m, making it the longest outdoor escalator network in the world, to get people from one end to the other. The street itself is lined with bars filled to busting with expats. We could only gaze in the windows longingly at the people enjoying city priced pints of cider and glasses of ice cold white wine as we rolled passed.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Katie took on the tour guide role for the evening and led us up to the Peak, according to all the guidebooks, one of Hong Kong’s highlights. I don’t think we would have found the path to be able to walk it without Katie. Despite the humidity making it a hot and sticky climb the view from the path was worth it and when we neared the top we stopped to watch the short light show on the International Commerce Centre building over in Kowloon. Before walking back down we went up to the free public viewing gallery and walked a short way along the trail that loops around the Peak with views out over the city, with the lights all glistening below. Since the weather was really hazy while we were in Hong Kong, visiting the Peak at night was by far the best shout.</span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Z0DFaOVAhhg/VExvHz2DFvI/AAAAAAAACRI/6SBYV7B7q30/s1600/DSC00775.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Z0DFaOVAhhg/VExvHz2DFvI/AAAAAAAACRI/6SBYV7B7q30/s1600/DSC00775.JPG" height="265" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">View of Hong Kong from the Peak, Hong Kong.</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">That night after leaving Katie and heading back to our hostel, we tried to find a decent local restaurant with backpacker prices and failed miserably, ending up in McDonalds. The whole time we were in Hong Kong we really struggled with the food, there’s a great variety of restaurants but it’s not cheap and there’s not many small eateries that have English menus so ordering was a real chore.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">It was the same story the next morning. We stayed up late watching TV and enjoying the room and ended up sleeping in. Late morning we headed over to the ferry port, negotiating all the stupid walkways to cross the main roads only to miss the boat by a couple of minutes and have to wait 30 minutes for the next one. Finally onboard, we sailed to Cheung Chau, one of the outlying islands off the coast of Lantau. Suddenly we were in a rustic fishing village, only 20 minutes from the central business district but miles away in terms of lifestyle. </span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-jKyDWw6gp2c/VExvJQWGTyI/AAAAAAAACRQ/24VHFEJY5zc/s1600/DSC00787.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-jKyDWw6gp2c/VExvJQWGTyI/AAAAAAAACRQ/24VHFEJY5zc/s1600/DSC00787.JPG" height="265" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The harbour at Cheung Chau, Hong Kong.</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">We wandered along the waterfront peering in at the lines of seafood restaurants before choosing one of the cheaper options for lunch. Next, we tried to walk to the peak where we’d been promised views of the whole island by the guide book but after walking through a couple of estates, failed to find any sort of view point and headed back down. Rather than rush back to the mainland and with not much else to do, we settled at a little restaurant for cheap beer to while away the afternoon.</span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-qdAvbD3KVmI/VExvQooPufI/AAAAAAAACRY/_L88lUp-BV8/s1600/DSC00825.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-qdAvbD3KVmI/VExvQooPufI/AAAAAAAACRY/_L88lUp-BV8/s1600/DSC00825.JPG" height="265" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Fish drying at the market in Cheung Chau, Hong Kong.</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Just our luck that the ferry was they delayed by 20 minutes and we’d misjudged how long it would take us to get back to the Russian visa agency. We were due to pick up our passports and all going well, would find shiny new Russia visas in place. We ended up practically running to their office, worried we might not make it before they closed for the day and wanting to give ourselves time to reapply should we have not been successful. Thankfully we arrived and our passports, and visas were waiting for us. Our final visa of the trip.</span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-A0XsNRWidWs/VExvSm5UQVI/AAAAAAAACRg/Col5rlQjvlA/s1600/DSC00866.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-A0XsNRWidWs/VExvSm5UQVI/AAAAAAAACRg/Col5rlQjvlA/s1600/DSC00866.JPG" height="265" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">View of Hong Kong Island from the ferry, Hong Kong.</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">We found a chain restaurant for dinner with pictures on the menu, ordered and took a seat. It was only when we stopped and looked around that we realised that every other person in there had hotpots, we were obviously missing out on something special. Walking back to the hostel we passed Ikea and, as Katie had mentioned a weekend trip to Ikea was great for people watching, we ducked in. It was Friday night and it was amazing, it seems Ikea is a hot date spot and everywhere you looked couples were cuddled up on the couches and in the staged bedrooms, very, very odd, only matched by the rows and rows of people outside the Apple store selling iphones at higher prices from suitcases.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">I’d started coming down with a cold, probably the only person to ever get sick in a city where they antibac every surface every 15 minutes and after a lazy start to the next day we decided the time was better spent booking trains for Russia and Europe than exploring. Now we had our visas we knew what route we’d be taking to Austria and wanted to make sure we got the sleeper trains booked in advance. As the day wore on I began to feel rotten and we didn’t even leave the room for dinner.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">We’d made plans the next day to see Guy who used to be my manager at BDO in London and who is on secondment to BDO Hong Kong, where Tammy, another exBDOer, Guy’s wife, is from. We caught the ferry across to Kowloon and walked along the touristy Avenue of Stars, Hong Kong’s answer to the LA Walk of Fame. Leaving plenty of time we caught the tube up to Kowloon Tong where we were meeting Guy, Tammy and their 8 month old daughter Amelia, for dim sum. Amelia was quite possibly one of the cutest, happiest babies i’ve ever seen and it was great to catch up with Guy and hear about his adventures in Hong Kong. Tammy took charge and ordered an absolute feast, the food was delicious and a real treat for us, especially in a city where we’d been surviving on pot noodles and 7/11 sandwiches. We owe them one when they make it back to London.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">After leaving Guy and Tammy we caught the tube back into Kowloon where we wove our way passed a flower market, a bird market and a goldfish market before strolling along quiet streets, blocked off by the Umbrella Revolution protesters. The protests are incredibly peaceful pro-democracy rallies, in brief, it was started by students revolting against all candidates for the upcoming elections being pro-Beijing and subjective to Chinese rule - against the 1984 agreement with the British.</span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The bird market, Hong Kong.</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Rhys browsing at the goldfish market, Hong Kong.</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Umbrella Revolution road blocks, Hong Kong.</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">We walked along a few other markets selling everything you could imagine before reaching Temple Street, the location of a famous night market. We were there a bit early and everything was just setting up, by the time we arrived at the river front we still had hours before the 8pm light show where we’d intended to finish our day and instead took a boat back to Hong Kong Island, just as the sun was setting. </span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">View of the exhibition centre on Hong Kong Island from the ferry, Hong Kong.</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">We had one last full day left in Hong Kong and set the alarm to make sure we didn’t waste the morning. Although still not at early start, we were out and on our way to the start of stage 8 of the Hong Kong Trail, the Dragons Back. Hong Kong is crisscrossed with loads of walking trails and if we had more time we would have loved to have tackled more of them. The one we did do was only a short 8.5km stretch and only took 2 hours. Once off the bus, we joined the hordes of people climbing to the peak of Shek O and along the Dragons Back ridge line. The views were marred by the haze but for an urban walk it was still impressive. The crowds disapated after we climbed down from the ridge and we had the trail to ourselves for the second half as we walked through woodland. The path ended at Big Wave Bay, another nice beach with body boarders out enjoying the water, with only expats and white tourists in sight. We didn’t stay long before jumping on a bus back to the tube station.</span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Rhys hiking the Dragon's Back, Hong Kong.</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Having seen a market near the tube when we arrived that morning we thought we’d be able to find some lunch but a quick explore showed it was just fresh fruit and veg and uncooked tofu. Instead, we boarded a two storey tram that trundled at a very slow speed, stopping at every traffic light, back to Victoria Park and Causeway Bay. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">That evening we caught the tube over to the iconic Bank of China building where we’d heard there was a free viewing platform on the 43rd floor open until 18:00. We got there at 17:04, it closed at 17:00. Disappointed and at a loss with what to do with ourselves until the 8pm light show, we ended up walking along the ferry piers and stumbling across a British bar, selling all manner of ciders. Having not spent anything all day we were sucked in and spent a blissful hour or two sitting on the steps overlooking the water with a cider in hand as the sun set and the lights of the city started turning on. Eventually, we decided it was time to go and jumped on a ferry over to Kowloon where we perched for the light show. Although it wasn’t overly spectacular, it was so atmospheric to be out, sitting on the pier watching the city lights and we had a brilliant night. </span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-KT-BkDHh3Z4/VExwB85zr8I/AAAAAAAACSQ/6zafNUzarSs/s1600/DSC01186.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-KT-BkDHh3Z4/VExwB85zr8I/AAAAAAAACSQ/6zafNUzarSs/s1600/DSC01186.JPG" height="265" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Kowloon at dusk from the Hong Kong Island ferry pier, Hong Kong.</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Rhys waiting for the Symphony of Lights show at the pier in Kowloon, Hong Kong.</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">We ended the night back at Temple Street night market. We’d hoped to be able to find cheap street food but again failed miserably and ended up eating really bizarre and not overly enjoyable chicken from a random local restaurant before tubing back to ours.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">We left Hong Kong the next day. Just before lunch we took the tube to the Chinese border and entered the town of Shenzhen. We’d left ourselves way more time than we needed incase there were queues at the border and ended up wandering around a cheap shopping mall wasting time - definitely the place to go to buy fakes if you live in Hong Kong. We found a chain restaurant for lunch and bought snacks for the train before entering the waiting area where we had another couple of hours before boarding. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Finally onboard the train we were blown away, we’d treated ourselves to soft sleepers and had a four bed cabin with lace curtains, a power point, pillows and duvets and in cabin music. For the price, it was a hundred times better than Indian or Burmese night trains. We settled in and for the last couple of hours of sunlight, watched the world go by with the last of our carton of wine.</span></div>
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Lucie Kingdomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18320597530474698888noreply@blogger.com0Hong Kong22.396428 114.1094970000000321.9265115 113.46405000000003 22.8663445 114.75494400000004tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1557459473009731669.post-21855974848928221062014-10-15T00:00:00.000+08:002014-10-16T17:27:40.855+08:00Week 107 - Kathmandu, Chitwan National Park, Kathmandu (Nepal)<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">After breakfast on our hostel roof terrace, overlooking Kathmandu, we jumped in a taxi to the Chinese consulate to lodge our visa applications. We were there over an hour before the gates opened and were first in line. As it had been shut for a week we were expecting to see huge queues and with only a 1 1/4 hour window when they accept applications, we didn’t want to miss out. We were first at the window when the clerk opened her desk, only to be told the form, which we’d printed from their website, was an old one and we’d need to fill in the newer one, the exact same form with the same details but a different number in the corner. The mistake meant we had to queue for over an hour to get back to the front.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Visas in, we wandered back into Thamel. As we’d agreed we’d send another parcel home from Nepal we had a chance for some more souvenir shopping, another smaller thangka (this time a mantra), another yak wool rug, a cashmere scarf and some smaller bits and bobs. Back in our room we had some chill time before another visit to the coffee shop, Himalayan Java for coffee, cake and fast internet.</span></div>
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The next morning, we had a ticket booked for the journey from the tourist bus park to Sauraha, the gateway to Chitwan National Park. We were up early and had time for a chai before leaving Kathmandu. The journey was long winded as we retraced our route through the Kathmandu Valley, along the Trisuli River towards Pokhara for about 4 hours before turning off to Sauraha. As usual, the bus stopped for breakfast and lunch before pulling in to our destination. </div>
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The tourist bus park at Sauraha is a couple of kilometres from the village and the buses were met with hordes of hotel touts and jeeps collecting people who’d booked their accommodation. We had a reservation but there was no one there to meet us and no one would take us, we were quoted a price five times what it should be and they all laughed, so we picked up our bags and marched out of the park towards the village. We walked for about a kilometre, with people stopping to tell us we were going the wrong way while other people stopped to help us and give directions, our first impressions of the place weren’t good, blatantly being lied too while walking with backpacks in the midday heat isn’t the greatest experience.</div>
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Finally in the village we found a rickshaw who would take us the rest of the way, only to arrive at the hotel and be told they weren’t expecting us until the next day, they’d read the booking wrong. We sat outside waiting for a room to be cleared for us while being told of the tour options we could book through the hotel. Once in the room, we showered and walked into the village to check the prices at other tour agencies. Just as we left our hotel, in an army restricted area we spotted a baby rhino, living there as something had happened to it’s mum and he wouldn’t survive in the wild by himself. </div>
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Although the village is only small, the main street is tourist orientated and has lots of souvenir shops and tour guides. It’s nowhere near as commercialised as Pokhara and with its dusty dirt tracks and riverside restaurants it has a real charm. We spoke to a few companies and found one who was offering the same trips for significantly cheaper than at our hotel. We liked the guide and booked on for morning trips for the following two days. With our bookings made, we wandered to the river and perched in a riverside bar to watch the sunset while pied kingfishers swooped down into the water.</div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Sunset over the Rapti River, Chitwan National Park.</td></tr>
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The next morning the alarm went off at 6am. We dressed and walked into the village to meet our guide and his assistant before walking back to the river, past a group of hornbills, to wait for our canoe. We were on one of the first boats out and despite a very loud German man in the canoe next to us, we spent an enjoyable hour floating down the Rapti River, spotting kingfishers, storks, herons, peacocks and two kinds of crocodiles including a gharial with a long skinny nose. From the canoe we stepped into the national park itself. Chitwan is a protected area of sal forest, elephant grassland and water marshes and is one of the last places where Indian Rhino’s can be found. There are also Bengal tigers but we knew a tiger spot would be nearly impossible.</div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Canoe ride along the Rapti River, Chitwan National Park.</td></tr>
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We walked for about two hours through forest and grassland, skirting the river back towards the village. Although we didn’t spot any mammals, it not being the right time of year as the grass is too high, we saw plenty of foot prints and scat, the animals were out there somewhere. We stopped at a viewing tower where Dharma our guide told us stories from his 20 years of guiding, including getting charged and thrown, several times, by a rhino. Back level with the village, a canoe collected us and took us back to the bank where we wandered back to our hotel in time for brunch. </div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Walking through the long grasses, Chitwan National Park.</td></tr>
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We spent the rest of the day at the hotel, we took a long midday nap and sat out in the garden before walking back in to the village for dinner.</div>
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The next day we were up early again to head back to the tour office. On our way we were stopped by a local boy who asked if we’d seen the rhino and pointed us to the river bank. Too excited to miss the opportunity but running out of time before our 6am pick up, we ran to the river and joined the group of people watching a fully grown adult rhino grazing right by the village. He’d swam across the river in the night and napped in the grasses until day break when his snoring had drawn attention to him and word had spread. We would’ve loved to have stayed longer, especially to watch him return to the national park on the far river bank, but we had an elephant ride booked.</div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Indian Rhino grazing, Chitwan National Park.</td></tr>
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Indian Rhinos have only one horn and the best scientific name ever, Rhinocerous Unicornis. They are the world’s fifth largest land mammal measuring about 6ft tall and 12ft long, weighing up to 4,000kg and about 5,000 still live in the wild, 500 or so in Nepal. The population in Chitwan suffered, dropping by nearly a quarter, when the Maoist rebellion drew the attention of the military away from the Chitwan park border allowing poachers opportunities to trap and kill the animals. Since then, numbers have recovered and are on the rise.</div>
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We were 10 minutes late to the tour office but the jeep collecting us was 30 minutes late. Eventually it turned up and we squeezed in for the short drive out of town to the community forest. As the grasses in the park are about 7m high at this time of year you have more chance of seeing animals in the community forest and we’d decided to take an hour ride on a private elephant. Joined by another couple we climbed aboard and set off. It was an uncomfortable amble but riding an elephant is always going to be a good experience and we saw a couple of different kinds of deer, monkeys, kingfishers and a few mongoose (mongeese?!), no more rhinos though.</div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Deer in the community woodland during our elephant ride, Chitwan National Park.</td></tr>
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We had time for a chai and to buy some bananas to feed to the elephant before we were back in the jeep and back in town. After checking to see if the rhino was still there, we stopped at a small local eatery for breakfast and had the worst, oiliest eggs ever, before ducking back to the hotel, hoping for a quick shower. Nepal has electric shortages and there are always times in the day without electricity, the problem with our hotel was that the generator never seemed to work properly so we were often without light when it was dark or had no fan or water as the pump wasn’t on. We’d made a bit of a judgment error when we’d decided to treat ourselves to an aircon room since we only got a couple of hours use out of it each day. Even in Kathmandu, electricity shortages are a problem and the streets are full of traffic police because they can’t install traffic lights!</div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Our elephant enjoying her bananas, Chitwan National Park.</td></tr>
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We walked back into town at midday to watch the elephant bathing. Each day the elephants are supposed to be taken to the river to bath and for 60p you can join them. It just happened that all the elephants were busy when we were there and none were at the river. Disappointed, we walked back, stopping for lassi’s on the way.</div>
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We headed out again later and rented bicycles to ride the short distance to the elephant breeding centre. It was a hot, sweaty and very bumpy ride with creaky, wobbly bikes but the scenary was beautiful. We passed rice paddies, buffaloes grazing in paddocks, goats climbing every wall and lots of large, mud walled, thatched houses where the old men would be sitting outside chatting with kids running all over the shop. The ride was a bit longer than we’d expected and after asking for directions a couple of times we reached a small river crossing. Leaving the bikes, we hopped in a small wooden boat to be rowed over to the breeding centre.</div>
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There wasn’t much to see other than a row of stables, we arrived at around 3:30pm and the mum elephants were being led in from the jungle where they’d been out grazing, closely followed by their kids. Some were so tiny they could hide underneath between their parents legs. Our hearts started beating faster when one mischievous youngster turned away from the stable and started trotting towards Rhys. We wandered up and down the field watching the elephants for a while before heading back into the village, stopping to buy jungle honey on route.</div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-j4eEdv2rLSw/VD-NmwI2itI/AAAAAAAACQw/-FWPgK7oL-U/s1600/DSC00640.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-j4eEdv2rLSw/VD-NmwI2itI/AAAAAAAACQw/-FWPgK7oL-U/s1600/DSC00640.JPG" height="400" width="265" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Elephants at the Breeding Centre, Chitwan National Park.</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-jJjafWzZe0s/VD-Nlx26fUI/AAAAAAAACQo/qib2e2A7jTg/s1600/DSC00612.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-jJjafWzZe0s/VD-Nlx26fUI/AAAAAAAACQo/qib2e2A7jTg/s1600/DSC00612.JPG" height="265" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Baby elephant, Chitwan National Park.</td></tr>
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After some chill time at the hotel, we walked into town and ate a Nepali meal on plastic seats at the side of the street by candle light.</div>
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We’d decided it was worth setting the alarm for another early start even though we didn’t have a trip planned and our bus back to Kathmandu wasn’t until 9am. By 6am we were out walking along the river in search of crocodiles and rhinos. We didn’t have any luck and on the way back to our room stopped for breakfast. Walking back to the river after our meal we ended up finding a whole new path we’d never known was there. A local guy told us they’d seen rhinos that morning along the trail so we followed it as far as some elephant stables. It was the perfect place for grazing rhinos but by then was too late in the day and we had no luck. We spotted more kingfishers and crocodiles and enjoyed the walk, as we’d seen a rhino the previous day we weren’t too disheartened.</div>
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After a misunderstanding paying the hotel bill, we were finally transferred to the bus park where we boarded the bus for the final journey, the fourth time we’d driven along the Trisuli River valley. After a few stops for samosas we arrived in Thamel and walked back to our hostel. It was already late afternoon but we had some final chores to run, laundry to put in, paintings to collect, yet another parcel to send to the UK and a haircut and super powerful head massage for Rhys, I could barely stifle the laughter watching him in the mirror.</div>
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As it was our last night in Nepal, we decided to head to a Lonely Planet recommended momo restaurant for dumplings. We arrived 5 minutes before last orders and had a delicious last meal before wandering back to the room. </div>
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We had the full day before our 9pm flight and had hoped to do some more sightseeing. Just as we sat on the roof terrace to wait for breakfast, it started to drizzle. We were due to collect our passports from the Chinese embassy that morning and walked over, excited to have one more visa out of the way before returning to the hostel to wait out the weather. The rain didn’t stop and we ended up back in Himalayan Java for more coffee and cake.</div>
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We had a taxi arranged to collect us from the hostel for the ride to the airport and made it through security with plenty of time to kill. Our flight left on time and we began the first 4 1/2 hours of a very long night.</div>
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Lucie Kingdomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18320597530474698888noreply@blogger.com0Chitwan, Nepal27.529131 84.35420490000001326.6286905 83.063311400000018 28.429571499999998 85.645098400000009tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1557459473009731669.post-74182802478064940092014-10-01T00:00:00.001+08:002014-10-11T19:39:35.017+08:00Week 106 - Kathmandu, Pokhara, Kathmandu (Nepal)<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">We had yet another early start to get to the Lukla airport for our flight back to Kathmandu. The security check was a bit of a joke, not only did me and Rhys have to open everyone’s bags and answer everyone’s security questions, but the boys queue to the departure lounge flew through and the girls waited an age only to be rushed through when the flights started being called. We finally boarded our small propeller planes and were catapulted down the runway and into the air.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">As we flew through the valley I couldn’t take my eyes off the window where the mountain panorama passing by was spectacular. We hit small pockets of turbulence, not great for the bad flyers on board but overall the flight was gentle and before we knew it we were back in Kathmandu. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">In the carpark we boarded our bus and returned to the Tibet Guesthouse, sweaty and dirty after two weeks without showers, where we were booked in as part of the tour for another two nights. We had a slightly better room than during our first visit and after check in, we showered, changed and got our paperwork together ready for a trip to the China embassy. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">A taxi across town and we were met by a locked gate. We were expecting the embassy to be closed over Dashain and had only really bothered turning up to check the date that it would reopen. As always seems to be the case with us, we had fallen into another visa/national holiday situation, just this time we had enough flexibility to change our Nepal plans and still get the visa in time for our flight to Hong Kong. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Dashain is Nepal’s biggest annual festival and lasts for 15 days with businesses shutting for various lengths of times during the period. Thamel for instance, was eerily quiet and possibly more enjoyable since, although many shops were closed, you didn’t have to spend every third step diving across the road out of the path of a racing motorbike, rickshaw, car or tourist. The festival honours the goddess Durga who was victorious over the forces of evil where evil is personified as a buffalo demon. Thousands of animal sacrifices are made during the holiday and everywhere you looked in Kathmandu there were goats tethered to posts awaiting their fate. Once we left Kathmandu for Pokhara we would also see swings lining the roads, hung from towering bamboo structures to celebrate the festival.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">After our failed visit to the China embassy we retired to our room to catch up on sleep and admin. We had arranged to meet people from our trip on the roof terrace for a few pre dinner drinks and despite Ró abandoning us to spend time with her Nepali eyebrow technician, who happened to be visiting her family for the festival, we had a good but relatively subdued night, including a meal at a bizarrely empty Rumdoodle which is supposed to be one of the funkiest restaurants in town but was just completely dead apart from pretty much everyone on our trek who had found their way there.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">We had intended a blissful lie in the next day but our body clocks had been set to stupid o’clock in the morning and we were up early for breakfast in the hotel courtyard. We had another relaxing day, venturing out for a bit of shopping in Thamel and to the Garden of Dreams. We ended up splurging on a thangka, a superbly detailed Buddhist painting, a symmetric image painted on silk with lots of gold swirly bits. The Garden of Dreams was an oasis of calm, it’s a small green area with ponds and hidden gardens, part of a restored1920’s palace garden designed in the British Edwardian style where mostly expats and tourists relax with books in the shade. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">That evening we’d arranged to meet everyone on the roof terrace again for more pre-dinner drinks. As we had a group meal organised for that night to say goodbye to all the new friends we’d made while trekking, Ró (with some style help from Karlie) put on her best outfit, her yak wool blanket, she looked divine... We were collected from the hotel and driven to a traditional Nepalese restaurant where a lot of tour groups go. We all sat on the floor around our table and were served rice wine and delicious food while we were entertained with men dressed as peacocks and dancers. By the end of it we were all up dancing and playing the drums. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Back at the hotel we decided more drinks on the roof were in order rather than heading out to find a bar. We wandered out to find an open shop then Ró decided she needed another pashmina and we got sidetracked and lost everyone else (I came away with a lovely present, thanks Ró!). Next thing we knew, we’d bumped in to Furba, one of our sherpas, and ended up on the back of a motorbike to ride a block until we found everyone. By the time we got to bed we were a bit worse for wear (without spelling it out I think Rhys and Karlie will get the pun here even if Ró can’t figure it out...). </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The next day we headed to breakfast at 8:30am, the planned time for a farewell to Noemi, who didn’t turn up. We found her later still in her room, without a watch she had no idea what time it was and was in a rush to catch her transfer to the airport. We chilled in our room until the noon check out, despite the maid trying to rush us out at 9am, when we packed our bags and wandered across the road to our new hotel, a third of the price of the one we’d been in. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">We spent the afternoon with Bryce while Ashleigh was at yoga, we had lunch near Durbar Square then Bryce wandered back to the hotel while me and Rhys paid our entry to see the buildings. Durbar Square is at the heart of Kathmandu’s old town and is the location of the old palace, many temples, shrines and courtyards, mostly built in red brick with beautifully detailed carvings and bells everywhere. It was incredibly busy since it was Dashain and there were queues to get in to most of the buildings. We walked a circuit before deciding to call it a day.</span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-V8OBjg_XXLk/VDkUtddU_TI/AAAAAAAACPQ/n-zV4rfe3SA/s1600/DSC00418.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-V8OBjg_XXLk/VDkUtddU_TI/AAAAAAAACPQ/n-zV4rfe3SA/s1600/DSC00418.JPG" height="265" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Queues at Kathmandu's Durbar Square.</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-3MEkbPgNFVc/VDkUuG7fFiI/AAAAAAAACPY/-OTh79NfQxw/s1600/DSC00439.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-3MEkbPgNFVc/VDkUuG7fFiI/AAAAAAAACPY/-OTh79NfQxw/s1600/DSC00439.JPG" height="265" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Beautiful architecture in Durbar Square, Kathmandu.</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">That evening, after saying our goodbyes to Bryce and Ashleigh, we met up with Karlie and Ró who had had a pretty horrific day on a rafting trip that ended with them hitchhiking back to Kathmandu. We sat outside at a romantic candle lit restaurant with Ró wrapped up in a table cloth since her clothes were still damp from rafting. We were all pretty tired, Rhys headed home while we were finishing up in the restaurant and we weren’t far behind.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Me and Rhys had a 7am bus the following day, headed for Pokhara, a riverside town hemmed in by the Annapurna Massif, a 2,133m chain of Himalayan, snow capped peaks, one of which is Nepal’s only virgin mountain as it’s scared and forbidden to climb. We took a tourist bus and after a flat tyre and breakfast and lunch stops we finally made it to the town. We were expecting a pretty, atmospheric place set on the waterfront with spectacular mountain views. Instead we were presented with a town packed with tourists with a character lacking main street lined with western restaurants, souvenir shops and hotels. The mountain was behind the town and blocked out most of the time by the buildings and the lake front was a street away, the lake itself bursting at the seams with life jacketed tourists paddling in circles. </span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-BaLIL04bRWE/VDkUtoyHzBI/AAAAAAAACPU/SJf7cu7eEKM/s1600/DSC00459.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-BaLIL04bRWE/VDkUtoyHzBI/AAAAAAAACPU/SJf7cu7eEKM/s1600/DSC00459.JPG" height="265" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">View of the Annapurna Massif from our hostel, Pokhara.</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Luckily, we’d been recommended a hostel, Peace Eye, and despite being one of the cheapest options in town, it was brilliant, we had a bright airy room, hot water, roof top views of the mountains and great staff - it was only on check out that we found out they’d confused our booking and we ended up having a free upgrade, a real result considering they were fully booked and turning away a constant stream of people turning up without reservations.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">After exploring the town, we stopped for a warm sweet glass of wine to use the internet before finding a cheap Nepali restaurant near our hotel for dinner.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">We’d though to spend the next day hiking around Phewa Tal, a full day walk that would take us to the World Peace Pagoda on a ridge above the lake, with views across to the town and Annapurna mountains and on through local villages to complete a circuit of the lake and back to town. When we woke it was a little hazy outside and we couldn’t see the mountains so we decided instead to have a lazy morning. After a relaxed breakfast, we took a taxi into the main town, away from the touristy lakeside area, to the Gurkha Museum.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The Gurkha Museum was incredibly interesting and made you realise just how brave and hardcore the Gurkha battalions are. The museum followed their history from the Indian Mutiny to present day and it was interesting to find out that even now, the British have a recruitment post just outside Pokhara where hundreds of Nepali men go every year for the rigourous selection process that promises a very high wage and British army pension.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">After the museum we started to walk back towards the hostel through Pokhara old town. As it was still Dashain, most of the town was closed and other than a small temple, there wasn’t a whole lot to see and none of the Nepali vitality the Lonely Planet had promised. We ended up catching a taxi back to lakeside for a walk along the water front, a pedestrianised flower filled track, and back to the hostel.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The next day we had the same intention to walk around the lake but woke to more haze. As we only wanted to do the walk to see the mountain views we decided on another lazy breakfast instead. Just before midday we attempted to walk to the World Peace Pagoda. We followed the road out of town to a dam where we crossed the river on a hanging bridge and skirted the edged of small rice paddies. We were walking through small villages, with trails lined with rubbish and people washing in the streams. We found the start of the walk through the sal forest to the pagoda with the help of some local boys but after scrambling through the trees up slippery mud banks with no real path to follow, we realised it was more hassle than it was worth, the sun was out and the heat was oppressive. Instead, we wandered back to the hostel and spent the rest of the day sorting out bits for our Russia visas.</span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-d0qckQIHXaw/VDkUu_qrxbI/AAAAAAAACPo/QqDfnjIG3Uw/s1600/DSC00462.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-d0qckQIHXaw/VDkUu_qrxbI/AAAAAAAACPo/QqDfnjIG3Uw/s1600/DSC00462.JPG" height="265" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Phewa Tal, the lake in Pokhara.</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">We didn’t love Pokhara, it’s the jumping off point for a number of awesome treks and if we’d walked there i’m sure we’d have a different opinion of the place, we definitely intend to come back one day to hike but we were short on time as we had to return to Kathmandu to apply for our Chinese visas. It’s also has rafting, bungee jumping, parascending and all kinds of adventure sports that make it a big tourist draw but they were expensive and not really on our radar.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">We ended the week with another travel day, leaving Pokhara to return to Kathmandu. The journey took just under 7 hours with breakfast and lunch stops again on the way. Once in Kathmandu we checked in to our hostel, packed the laptops and walked over to Himalayan Java, a chain coffee shop that everyone had been raving about that had good coffee, naughty cakes and fast internet. Wandering out later that night for dinner we ended up in the Irish Bar, excited by the thought of pub grub, but it was so noisy we didn’t stay long and went to a quiet pub next door watching the cricket while we ate. </span></div>
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Lucie Kingdomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18320597530474698888noreply@blogger.com0Kathmandu 44600, Nepal27.7 85.33333300000003927.5875385 85.171971500000041 27.812461499999998 85.494694500000037tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1557459473009731669.post-47551391943396967902014-10-01T00:00:00.000+08:002014-10-07T00:53:05.530+08:00Week 105 - Dingboche, Lobuche, Gorak Shep, Periche, Monjo, Lukla (Nepal)<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Our Everest Base Camp trek continued and the week started with our second acclimatisation day, this time in Dingboche. We’d realised the weather was at it’s best in the morning and set our alarm to get up while the skies were clear. Before breakfast me and Rhys had already climbed to a stupa for views into the next valley and over to Lhotse (8,516m), while the sun started to rise and light up the tips of the mountains surrounding Dingboche. As always, we’d managed to collect a couple of dogs who escorted us to the ridge where we extended our pack to six dogs. We came across a lot of friendly dogs during the hike, the majority black and with thick hair to fend against cold nights in the mountains- to name a few, we walked with Fruit Loop, Plaster Cast, Marmite and Onion.</span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Pre breakfast exploration in Dingboche as the sun was coming up.</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Back at the teahouse we ate breakfast with the rest of the group before heading out in the cold for the walk to Chhunkung at 4,730m, the final stop before Island Peak, a one day hike further rising to 6,189m. It’s recommended that acclimatisation days are spent climbing to higher altitudes then descending to spend another night at the same level, Dingboche was at 4,440m. The trail took us up a steady gradient along the Imja Khola Valley, negotiating a path of loose boulders while we followed the river, crossing streams on stepping stones. The clouds had come in soon after we left Dingboche so again we missed out on the views, supposedly one of the most scenic side routes of the whole trek.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">We ordered lunch in Chhunkung then the majority of the group opted to continue a further 100m climb to a ridge that despite having no views would hopefully make the following day easier by giving our bodies more exposure to higher altitude. Apparently, through the clouds stood the world’s 5th highest mountain, Makalu (8,462m), one of the world’s 14 mountains that stand over 8,000m tall, 8 of which in Nepal. Although we were above the tree line, making loo stops harder to find, the floor was carpeted with tiny, delicate, beautifully coloured flowers, from bright reds to cornflower blues, pinks and purples.</span></div>
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After lunch we were all feeling pretty sleepy and the thought of facing the cold winds on the walk back to Dingboche wasn’t very appealing but as it was cold and down hill we made less stops and made it back quickly, only to find another group had moved into the teahouse. After 5 nights of having places mostly to ourselves, having to share the log fire was a surprise, i’d hate to think how busy they get in peak season.</div>
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We stopped in the common room to warm up with a flask of hot lemon before retiring to our room for a bit of peace and quiet. The reduced oxygen in the air really made you feel sleepy and it was a task to stay awake until bedtime, something we’d been recommended to do to help with the altitude sickness. For dinner that night Rhys ordered tuna pizza and was disheartened when it came as a cabbage, carrot, cheese and tuna mix, the ingredients for all meals were the same and variety in diet was limited to noodles, potatoes, rice or bread.</div>
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The next day we headed to Lobuche, a climb to 4,930m. The first 2-3hrs took us to Duglha along a gradual incline where we stopped for tea by a river raging with ice cold glacier melt, where we filled our water bottles with such dirty water we couldn’t bring ourselves to drink out of them - even iodine doesn’t kill everything. </div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Leaving Dingboche behind on route to Lobuche.</td></tr>
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We then had a steep climb to the Memorial Park which left most of us out of breath. Lynn had been struggling with the altitude and managed to rent a horse to carry her up the worst of it. The park is incredibly peaceful and has a number of stone memorials wrapped in prayer flags and with poetic epitaphs to honour people who had attempted to climb Everest and died in the process. It brought it home a bit, although the trip to Base Camp is a tourist hike, climbing Everest itself is a hardcore challenge and although not the most technical mountain in the world, taking it lightly can be fatal. </div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The walk from Dingboche to Lobuche.</td></tr>
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From the Memorial Park we followed a river along a mostly flat section to Lobuche. At this point I started to feel lethargic and nauseous and despite it being the easiest section of the day I didn’t get a chance to enjoy it. Once in Lobuche where we stopped for lunch, a flask of hot lemon and lots of water seemed to quell the sickness and I joined the rest of the group who were continuing on a short outing to a ridge next to the teahouse. From the top of the ridge we got our first close up view of the glacier and the snowcapped peaks that until then had only been in the distance. Talking to the sherpas we realised just how much the glacier has shrunk in the last 20 years, pulling back almost to Base Camp from Lobuche.</div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Rhys and Bryce resting by the glacier, Lobuche.</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">View from the ridge in Lobuche towards Base Camp.</td></tr>
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That night was a terrible nights sleep, I headed to bed early as I hadn’t slept well the whole trip, what with all the liquid you had to drink meaning you were up every hour in the night queuing for the loo. I was short of breath from the altitude and back to feeling nauseous.</div>
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The next morning I spoke to Gelu and decided to take Diomox (akin to taking sea sickness tablets while at sea) so I could enjoy the walk to Base Camp and up to Kala Pattar the following day. It was like a miracle drug, as soon as it hit my system I felt right as rain, by dilating your capillaries it enables your body to absorb more oxygen and so combats mild symptoms of altitude sickness. Most people in our group were already taking the drug from the start and by the end of it, only 4 people managed to make it all the way to Kala Pattar without taking it, Rhys, Ró, Ashleigh and Noemi. When you think about it, we climbed pretty high, baring in mind the highest mountain in the UK, Ben Nevis is only 1,344m and when we skydived in Australia, it was only from 4,270m.</div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A beautiful morning in Lobuche with view of our teahouse.</td></tr>
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I was glad to be feeling better and we headed out with a spring in our step to our final teahouse during the ascent, at Gorak Shep. It only took 3 hours following a trickle of a stream and we didn’t gain much altitude until the last kilometre or so which involved lots of short climbs and descents over loose boulders. Lunch at Gorak Shep was a welcome rest.</div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Rhys, nearly at Gorak Shep.</td></tr>
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Then, after lunch, we headed to Everest Base Camp and we couldn’t have planned a more special place to be spending our two year traveling anniversary (go us!) It was a long walk and with the return to Gorak Shep, made for a long day. Although we didn’t climb much, the path was rolling and we were constantly either climbing or descending. Suddenly there seemed to be a lot of people around and there were queues to get passed some of the narrower sections. The final part of the walk dropped down to the glacier bed where sections were slippery with black ice. </div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Me, nearly at Base Camp.</td></tr>
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Actual Base Camp itself was a little unimpressive, just a pile of boulders drapped with prayer flags with views of the Khumba Icefall, the hardest part of the Everest climb and the sight of the 2014 avalanche that claimed the lives of 16 Nepalese guides. From Base Camp you can’t even see Everest as it’s nestled behind other mountains on the Tibetan border, but you can see a couple of tents that mark the New Base Camp (the one for trekkers is the Old Camp, for the new one you have to pay thousands of dollars for a permit), it would be really interesting to see how busy the new camp is in spring when people are there preparing to climb.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">After 2 years of traveling, we make it to Everest Base Camp.</td></tr>
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As for a few facts, Everest was first scaled in 1953 by the Kiwi Sir Edmund Hillary and the Sherpa, Tenzing Norgay while on a British led expedition. Since then, more than 6,850 people have made it to the top (and there are thought to be hundreds of bodies still up there), some even solo and some without Oxygen (if you were flown directly to the top of Everest without acclimatisation, you’d only have a few minutes until you passed out from lack of Oxygen and died). Hundreds of people set out to climb the mountain each year and it costs an absolute fortune to do so (upwards of GBP£30,000 for the cheapest companies), the success rate to climb is only about 56% with a 10% death rate. </div>
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We stayed at the camp for nearly an hour. Our porters had followed us up with hot chocolate and cookies and we wandered around taking hundreds of photos and high fiving everyone. Although being there was the aim of our entire trek, we knew we still had a big challenge the following day to reach Kala Pattar. Of the 18 of us who started together, 16 had made it.</div>
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The sun had dropped below the mountains on the way back to Gorak Shep and the wind picked up. It was a cold walk and we moved quickly without stopping to prevent us getting too cold. By the time we reached the teahouse we were shattered and after a celebratory Mars Bar and hot lemon we took a nap before dinner. Most people had lost their appetites and forced down some food before turning in for an early night.</div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The walk back from Base Camp to Gorak Shep.</td></tr>
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The earliest start of the trek and we were up and ready to climb Kala Pattar, a small hill(?!) at 5,545m with the path starting directly opposite our teahouse. The diomox had led me to having the best nights sleep of the entire trek but Rhys had started feeling lethargic and nauseous and hadn’t slept much at all. He battled on through though. We were 15 minutes late leaving the teahouse as we had to wait around for everyone to get ready and were all wrapped up in our puffer jackets against the bitter cold.</div>
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The climb was the hardest part of the trek. There was a lot of loose gravel and rocks and ice in places where the sun wasn’t yet up to defrost it. It felt like we were climbing for ages and it was the longest up hill section of the walk. We took it slowly and made it to the top in 2 1/4 hours, just after the sun had risen over the peak of Everest. 11 out of the 18 we were hiking with made it and some of those who stayed at Gorak Shep decided to get an head start on the descent while we climbed. Again, we had hot chocolate and cookies at the top and were happy in the knowledge that from here on it was downhill all the way back to Lukla. </div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Everest before sunrise (the peak in the middle peering over from behind the closer peaks).</td></tr>
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As we were late getting up to the peak, we were also the last leaving and had the place to ourselves, the view was spectacular with the valley rolling out beneath us and Everest in front of us peering out over it’s neighbours. It’s easy to forget just how high you are when everything around you is over 5,000m, I can’t even imagine standing at sea level and having an 8,488m mountain tower over you.</div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Rhys at the top of Kala Pattar, 5,455m, champion.</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Our TnT trekking group at the top of Kala Pattar, Rex, V, Stan, Ró, Me, Rhys, Noemi, Kathy, Karlie, Ashleigh and Kathryn.</td></tr>
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The way down was warmer as the sun was out and before we knew it we were back at the hotel being served breakfast. Rhys took a quick nap and we packed our bags for the porters to collect for the descent. We still had a long day ahead of us.</div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Descending from Kala Pattar towards Gorak Shep.</td></tr>
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The return trail took us down to Lobuche where we stopped for lunch before continuing to Periche where we ended the day walking through sleet, glad to make it to a dung warmed common room where we ate dinner and stayed up playing cards. The evenings highlight was seeing one of the dogs we’d met on the way up run full pelt at us to say hello.</div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Walking from Gorak Shep to Lobuche.</td></tr>
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Our tenth day of walking took us down to Khumjung at 3,700m. We had a huge descent before lunch, taking us down hill over a kilometre before climbing 500m again to the teahouse. The start of the day had been cold, with no fire in the lodge and we’d had a late start while we waited for everyone to get their stuff together. We didn’t make it to the planned lunch spot and ended up eating in Tengboche, where we’d stayed and visited the monastery. We still had some down hill to go after lunch to reach the river bed but we were back in the tree line and the temperature had warmed up a bit. The final descent was steep as we wove between trees and yaks before we began our final climb of the day to Khumjung.</div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Our tired group heading down to Monjo.</td></tr>
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Khumjung was a beautiful little village and our favourite of the trek with a sacred craggy mountain towering over terraced plots and rows of stone houses. We followed a track passed piles of mani and small shops to a stupa on the far side of the village, opposite which we were staying. The common area had huge windows with views over town, the toilets were clean and the beds were comfy and warm. It felt like we were returning to civilisation despite the village being a little off the main trail. TnT, our trekking company is one of the only ones who stay there on the the return and even though it was just above Namche, there was hardly anyone else around.</div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Khumjung village.</td></tr>
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After a hot lemon me and Rhys wandered out to explore, swiveling at every step to try to see where all the yaks were from the sound of their bells. We didn’t get far before we were enticed into a shop selling beautiful yak wool blankets and scarfs and ended up making a few purchases. Although probably a little more expensive than in Kathmandu, at least you feel like your money is going straight to the source. We treated ourselves to salt and vinegar Pringles and watched men playing a local game flicking plastic counters across a chalked board into holes. Ró wandered out later and returned to show us her new Yak wool dress, a scarf that she planned to artfully wrap around herself to make an elegant evening dress for our final farewell meal, I was glad to be at a lower altitude else all the laughter may have caused a black out.</div>
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We only had a short walk ahead of us on day eleven but rather than walk directly down to Monjo, we took a scenic route. Our little group decided to do a bit of final yak wool blanket shopping after breakfast and were running a bit late to get back for the school tour so we had to fast walk through the gates to catch up. No kids were about so there wasn’t that much to see apart from a big Sir Edmund Hillary statue that made us realise just how much he’s done for the villages surrounding Everest, building hospitals and schools, helping create the national park, bringing in programs to replant after climbing groups cut down all the trees for firewood, not just sending money but really getting involved. </div>
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Next, we wandered up to the monastery, that although only small, held a Yeti skull in a locked cabinet. It was interesting to see, a cone covered in thick ginger hair giving off a strong wet dog smell but i’m doubtful whether it was real, even though i’m open to their existence. We stopped at a small hospital in Kunde, the next village along before descending to Namche.</div>
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Once in Namche we headed to one of the German bakeries for an expensive lunch, grateful to have something that wasn’t rice, potatoes or noodles. We then had some free time to finish off any shopping, more yak wool, yak bells, maps and T-shirts showing the route we’d just trekked. </div>
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By the time we left Namche we were all pretty tired and didn’t really fancy the 2 hour walk we had left to make it to Monjo. Nevertheless we persevered, crossing back over the high bridge and two lower bridges, zigzagging up the valley passed the hordes of people trekking now peak season had started, to our teahouse, passing the time planning a Utopian community where we’d move to Khumjung, wear nothing but yak wool and make moisturiser and protein milkshakes from berries and plants.</div>
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After a great nights sleep following a night time PJ party in Ró’s humongous room, we were up early for our last day of walking. We still had 5 hours of trail to cover until we reached Lukla and we’d forgotten how much uphill was involved. It felt like an extremely long day and the ridge behind which Lukla was tucked, never seemed to get any closer. Finally we rolled in to town, Rhys and Ró racing the last 200m to be the first back (Rhys won). We dropped off our bags, ordered dinner and headed out to an underground Irish Bar for celebratory drinks with Ró, Karlie, Ashleigh, Bryce, Noemi, Rex and Kathy. I think Ashleigh even found a new favourite tipple in the hot rum punch.</div>
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Back at the teahouse our guides had arranged a buffet Dal Baht dinner in a separate room along with our porters. Food was great and was washed down with a few more drinks. Lots of dancing followed as we thanked our porters and assistant sherpas in style and getting to bed, although not late was all a bit hazy.</div>
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Lucie Kingdomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18320597530474698888noreply@blogger.com0Lukla, Chaurikharka 56000, Nepal27.6856603 86.72780590000002127.6715998 86.707635900000028 27.699720799999998 86.747975900000014tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1557459473009731669.post-64378341193083638912014-09-24T00:00:00.000+08:002014-10-05T17:47:43.200+08:00Week 104 - Delhi, Kathmandu, Phakding, Namche Bazaar, Tengboche, Dingboche (India, Nepal)<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Leaving our hotel in Delhi we had a short walk to the airport Metro station. The train was fast and on time and before we new it we were at the airport and checked in. The flight was painless and the hardest part of the whole journey was trying to work out which queue we were supposed to be in to obtain our visa on arrival in Nepal. We were met at the airport by a representative from the trekking company (which we’d prebooked on Groupon, oh yes, some things never change) and had beautiful marigold fresh flower necklaces hung around our necks. Feeling like we were living the high life, we drove to the hotel where we’d be spending our first two nights in Kathmandu.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">We were given a dingy basement room and quickly realised that the rooms given to the tour groups using the hotel were tucked away at the back. Being next to the kitchen, the smell of curry permeated our room and with all the crashing about, we requested to move and ended up in a far better room at the front. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Once in the touristy Thamel area of Kathmandu, where every building is either a trek gear shop, souvenir shop, hotel or restaurant, we had some final purchases to make to prepare for the trek, dirt cheap hiking poles, water bottles, socks, hats and the like.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">We’d also been in contact with Mario again, our favourite Portuguese and as it turned out he was in town. We caught up over delicious but pricey pizza before calling it a night.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The next morning we had a tour briefing in the hotel lobby. Half of our group had arrived a day early and already had their meeting so we only met a few of the 16 people we’d be joining to hike to Everest Base Camp. We received very brief instructions and were issued with our duffle bags with sleeping bags and puffer jackets, followed by a surprise luggage weigh in. For the flight to Lukla, the start of the trek, we were only allowed to carry 14kg, 4kg of which was taken up by the jacket and sleeping bag, not leaving much room for snacks and 12 days worth of clothes. A bit concerned and a few tough decisions about what to bring and what to leave later and we had to rush back to reception to meet the rest of our group for a day of sightseeing.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Our first stop was at a Tibetan refugee carpet warehouse where we watched rows and rows of Tibetan women working at an incredible speed to weave beautiful rugs. Next, we drove out to Durbar Square in Patan, supposedly one of the finest collections of temples and palaces and displays of Newari architecture in Nepal. The majority of the buildings date from the 14th to the 18th centuries and there’s a mix of tiered pagodas, stupas and shrines. Our guide was nice enough but his English wasn’t great and there was a lot of hesitation and repeating himself so actually following what he was saying was difficult and we soon lost concentration.</span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Tibetan lady spinning wool, Kathmandu.</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Durbar Square, Patan, near Kathmandu.</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Wandering the streets of Patan, near Kathmandu.</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Next, we stopped by the ‘Golden Temple’ nothing at all like the Golden Temple we’d just visited in India but instead a small Buddhist temple with gold covering every surface. Interestingly, at the Golden Temple, the priest is a young boy under 12 who serves for 30 days before passing the duty to another young boy. Our next stop was at a singing bowl shop. Again, it was pretty drawn out as lots of people wanted to experience the healing qualities of the bowls. We’re a bit cynical and although we love the look of the bowls, we find it hard to believe that one that was hammered out on a full moon would really be any more powerful than any other and the steep price in the shop didn’t really seem justified especially with our tight budget. We ended up waiting outside for everyone to finish their shopping before wandering back to the bus. </span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The Golden Temple, Patan, near Kathmandu.</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">We made one last stop on the tour, at Bodhnath. We ate in the compound while getting to know some of the people we’d be spending the next couple of weeks with before completing a loop of the stupa, taking hundreds of photos of the prayer flags waving in the wind. Bodhnath is a centre for Tibetan Buddhism and the eyes of the Buddha gaze out at you, painted brightly beneath the golden central tower. The stupa used to be on the trade route from Tibet to Kathmandu and attracted traders praying for safe journey through the high passes of the Himalaya, quite apt for our group.</span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Prayer flags at Bodhnath, Kathmandu.</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Although the tour wasn’t done, we requested to be dropped back near the hotel along with two others. The trip was running late and we still had things to do before our early morning flight the following day and we’d arranged to meet Mario again for dinner. Knowing we would return to Kathmandu a number of times before leaving Nepal we didn’t feel rushed to continue the sightseeing.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">We finished packing and finally managed to get our bags under the weight limit before heading out to find Mario. He was running late too and after we’d given up waiting and he’d chased us down the street, we ended up stumbling across a tiny, dirt cheap little restaurant called the Momo Cave. It was like sitting in someones spare room with hardly any furniture and a young boy to serve us.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">We managed to get a relatively early night ready for the 4:45am start the next day to head to the airport. The domestic departures lounge was hidden around the back of a building site and when we got there it was still closed and our guides piled all our bags at the door. When you book a flight to Lukla, you don’t get a time and it’s done on a first come first served basis (from what we can gather) so it’s all a bit hectic.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The flight was incredible. One of the stewards at the airport had recommended we sit on the right of the plane and the views of the Himalayas were spectacular. A little 12 seater propellor plane with just one seat on each side of the aisle and a clear view into the cockpit. The flight was smooth and in no time we had arrived at Lukla, the highest and shortest commercial airstrip in the world, and the most dangerous. The airstrip itself is built with an incline to reduce the speed of the aeroplane on landing and to give an extra push to those taking off. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Once off the flight we congregated in one of the guesthouses in town, enjoying the last of our packed breakfast boxes before perching on a stone staircase where we could watch the planes arriving into Lukla, screeching to a halt before picking up new passengers and heading out again, appearing to almost be catapulted down the ramp and back into the mountains.</span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Lukla airport, the highest, shortest and most dangerous airstrip in the world.</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">After an hour or so, it was time to start walking. The first day was far from strenuous and we didn’t cover much ground at all. Having traveled independently for so long, suddenly being part of a group and being told when and where to eat and sleep and having to wait for people all the time was a little frustrating. Although i’d worried about our fitness levels prior to the hike it was immediately evident that we were able to keep up with the front of our group without any hassle. The frustration over the excessively long waits, when we’d start to get cold and disheartened was to become a bit of a sore point for the next couple of days, until the weather improved and the clouds lifted to reveal some of the most spectacular mountain scenery you could ever imagine and which we could happily while away hours photographing and soaking in. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The trek we’d booked on to was a Groupon special and for only marginally more money than it would have cost to organise independently, all the stress and hassle was taken out of the planning, we literally just had to turn up. For our group of 18 people we had two lead guides, Gelu and Furba, two assistant guides and nine porters to carry everything but our day bag essentials. The majority of the time, we walked with one of the assistant sherpas at the front who we bonded with after a few days and who, other than our nightly briefing, was our only real contact with a guide, it was a bit of a shame that his English wasn’t very good and we couldn’t really ask questions or learn much about our surroundings.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Our guides were Sherpas, probably the most well known of Nepal’s ethnic groups, their history tracing back to the days of nomadic Tibetan herders who moved to the Solu Khumba region of Nepal 500 years ago bringing with them Tibetan Buddhism, evident all over the countryside around Mount Everest through the prayer flags, beautiful gompas and carved mani’s with mantras praying for safe passage. With the increase of tourism in the Everest region after the Maoist rebellion, the Sherpa name has become synonymous with mountaineering and trekking.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The trek itself involved 12 days of walking, taking us from 2,795m in Lukla at the airport to Everest Base Camp at 5,300m and on to Kala Pattar at 5,545m, spending our nights at teahouses along the way. As the increase in altitude is quite marked, it’s necessary to take acclimatisation days to prevent altitude sickness so it takes about 8 days to ascend but only 4 to descend. Altitude sickness has claimed 200 lives on the trek in the last 40 years at altitudes of as low as 3,420m including two Australians recently who ignored advice and didn’t take time to aclimatise. In order to ensure we were all in health, each evening after dinner Gelu would take oxygen and heart readings for each of us to track any significant changes that could indicate we were having problems, fitness levels have nothing to do with how your body will react at altitude and there’s no way to tell if you’ll suffer or not until you get there.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The first day was only a short walk and saw us spending the night in Phakding at 2,620m. It wasn’t until we came to walk back to Lukla that we realised how much down hill there had been on this stage as we followed the trail along the Dudh Kosi Valley. We crossed some long bridges, fed noodles to the crows (there are crows everywhere), saw our first snow capped mountains and quickly learned to pass Buddhist stupas, flags and mani clockwise and to spin prayer wheels clockwise. Once in Phakding we gathered for a short excursion up to a monastery overlooking the village. As we started to climb (one of the steepest paths of the whole trail) the rain began and by the time we were at the top we were all wet and cold. Rhys took a nap before dinner then managed to sleep for a solid 11 hours waking up refreshed to start the second day.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Day two took us about 14km over long swaying bridges crossing the Dudh Kosi river and on to Namche Bazaar at 3,420m, where we were due to spend our first acclimatisation day. We spent lunch by the river side in Jorsale at 2,830m and entered into the Sagarmatha National Park (Sagarmatha being the local name for Everest). From this point on, as no animal could be killed in the National Park and all meat was to be carried up from lower levels, unrefrigerated and sitting around for who knows how long, most of the group opted to go vegetarian, I think Rhys found this part of the trip the most taxing and worse than the walk itself.</span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Buddhist stupas, manis and prayer flags on route to Namche.</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-bT1BsUkbwtg/VDEP0sMoCvI/AAAAAAAACJ4/swRiHRdw2Js/s1600/DSC08868.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-bT1BsUkbwtg/VDEP0sMoCvI/AAAAAAAACJ4/swRiHRdw2Js/s1600/DSC08868.JPG" height="265" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Bridges spanning the Dudh Kosi on the way to Namche, (we crossed on the higher one).</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Porters carrying twice their own body weight across the river.</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The teahouse we were in in Namche had a dark and dingy common area and after a few games of cards, most of us turned in for an early night, with Karlie and Noemi on Ró entertainment duty, taking her out for a midnight walk. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Namche was a decent size town and although we were in the shoulder season and a lot of the restaurants and bars were closed, there were enough souvenir stalls to get our attention. We’d see the contrast between the September and October trekking traffic when we returned during our decent and all were thankful we’d walked in shoulder season. Peak season might bring the best weather but it brings hundreds and hundreds of people and queues of up to an hour to even cross bridges, never mind the queues on the unstable paths when you reach Base Camp. We probably passed 100 or so other people on the trail at the same time as us, in October, numbers can reach 10,000 during the month and that doesn’t include those doing other hikes off the main trail and those climbing some of the smaller peaks, the most we had to wait for was a few yaks (or naks or even caks...) to walk passed carrying supplies to the teahouses on route.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">We spent our acclimatisation day in Namche doing a short half day hike to a higher altitude, stopping at a National Park museum, before dropping back in to town for lunch. We walked up past the Shyangboche airstrip to a hotel that supposedly had great views but the clouds were in and we weren’t rewarded. Brendan, one of only five boys in our group, had been ill before we’d started the trek and was starting to struggle. That night his oxygen and heart rate reading was scary and it was the last we saw of him. The following morning he was too ill to continue and along with one of our assistant guides, made the decision to turn back to Lukla (where the weather meant the planes were backlogged and it took him three days to get out). Fingers crossed he gets another chance and makes it to Base Camp.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">As we were back in Namche at lunch time, me and Rhys ducked out of the hotel to eat at a restaurant in town. We found it a little annoying that we were forced to eat at the teahouse where we were staying and that the tour company had failed to mention this to us in advance. Rooms are basic and dirt cheap but the price is dependent on you eating there and can quadruple if you eat out. We were happy to have breakfast and dinner there but felt a bit of variety for lunch wouldn’t go a miss and we had the best meal we probably had on the whole trip. We ended up going back to the same restaurant for hot lemon later with Ró, Karlie and Noemi to duck out of a rain storm and while away the afternoon after a short walk to another gompa and through a quarry full of carved mani (rocks covered with mantras and prayers).</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The food on the trip was, in general, decent but extremely carb heavy and all the menus were the same. You could have fried rice, fried noodles or fried potatoes with a choice of carrots and cabbage, nak cheese or eggs, with momos (stuffed dumplings) for a rare treat.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">By this point friendship groups had started to form and we spent most of our time with Karlie, Noemi, Ashleigh, Bryce and Ró, one of the funniest people i’ve ever had the pleasure to meet and who never failed to make the entire group laugh, I honestly don’t know who let her go to Nepal by herself when she can’t even make her own bed but am mighty glad she did. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Our fourth day took us to Tengboche, another short day covering only 10km which saw us follow the river valley, getting our first views of Everest’s peak in the distance, to a series of water turned prayer wheels before a steep ascent into the village. Far smaller than Namche, the group of teahouses at Tengboche were centred around a monastary but when we arrived the clouds had rolled in (a lot of the time we’d be late leaving in the mornings while we waited for everyone to get ready and it would mean we’d get to view points after the clouds were already in). </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">There was a ceremony at the gompa that evening so we wandered over and took seats against the walls to watch the monks bang on their drums and chant while being handed stacks of food stuff before popcorn was distributed to us in the wings. We stayed for about 30 minutes before leaving them too it, since we left Namche the weather was notably colder and we were wrapped up warm against the night chill, enjoying a yak dung fueled fire in the common area of the teahouse. I had a stonking altitude headache and the continuous drumming wasn’t really helping to calm it. I think most people suffered from the headaches at one point or another and they could get pretty bad, the best cure being to drink lots of water (you’re supposed to drink at least twice what you normally would when you’re at altitude), and to take painkillers.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The next morning we were woken early as the skies had cleared and we had breathtaking mountain views with Amadablam rising sharply in the foreground. There’s no better way top spend the morning than gazing out at the snow capped Himalaya before breakfast.</span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Ashleigh enjoying a beautiful start to the day, sun rise over Tengboche.</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-PiAtIyKxpYU/VDEP-vjSxRI/AAAAAAAACKQ/aY0qBiPBWgM/s1600/DSC09323.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-PiAtIyKxpYU/VDEP-vjSxRI/AAAAAAAACKQ/aY0qBiPBWgM/s1600/DSC09323.JPG" height="266" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Rhys and Ró making the most of a clear morning in Tengboche.</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-M7jokwqkcEs/VDEQDD-YJiI/AAAAAAAACKY/PkgiITCUxLI/s1600/DSC09361.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-M7jokwqkcEs/VDEQDD-YJiI/AAAAAAAACKY/PkgiITCUxLI/s1600/DSC09361.JPG" height="266" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Our trekking group, Ró, me, Kathryn, Alicia, Lynn, Stan, Noemi, Rex, Kathy, Ashleigh, V, Karlie, Natasha, Shirley, Erica, Rhys and Bryce.</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">After Tengboche, we continued our hike to Dingboche. The first hour or so flew by as we had clear skies and lots to look at as the sun rose over the valley, before we descended to cross the river again to Pangboche at 3,900m where we stopped for tea. Having seen the increasing price of bottled water (everything being carried in from Lukla in ridiculously big stacks balanced on ropes strapped across porters foreheads) we were extremely glad to have purification tablets. The trail continued to Shomare at 4,040m where we stopped for lunch and then on to Dingboche at 4,440m. That afternoon we climbed above the tree line and seemingly within metres the landscape turned to scrub, seperated near villages by stone walls.</span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-OJovr8FAnsI/VDEQFCawpeI/AAAAAAAACKg/lIDU0CmAUkE/s1600/DSC09395.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-OJovr8FAnsI/VDEQFCawpeI/AAAAAAAACKg/lIDU0CmAUkE/s1600/DSC09395.JPG" height="265" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Another spectacular valley view on route to Dingboche.</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-4GPfY3Fj1uk/VDEQJhg9p8I/AAAAAAAACKo/-EbbZVTWODg/s1600/DSC09412.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-4GPfY3Fj1uk/VDEQJhg9p8I/AAAAAAAACKo/-EbbZVTWODg/s1600/DSC09412.JPG" height="265" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Hairy yaks passing us on their way down the valley.</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-HIFZXB8975U/VDEQM0MWdaI/AAAAAAAACKw/Lny2MA_E-aQ/s1600/DSC09512.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-HIFZXB8975U/VDEQM0MWdaI/AAAAAAAACKw/Lny2MA_E-aQ/s1600/DSC09512.JPG" height="265" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Above the tree line, a change in scenary on the way to Dingboche.</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">It was too cold to do much in the evening with our teahouse on a ridge line and after dinner and cards in the yak dung warmed communal area, we turned in for an early night. The altitude was starting to show it’s affects and the cold was giving people bad coughs and sore throats. Sleeping was becoming more difficult and although the altitude makes you sleepy, you get vivid dreams and the extra liquids you have to drink mean you’re up several times each night limiting the amount of sleep you can actually get.</span></div>
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Lucie Kingdomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18320597530474698888noreply@blogger.com0Dingboche 56000, Nepal27.8923026 86.83144689999994627.878268600000002 86.811276899999953 27.9063366 86.851616899999939tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1557459473009731669.post-71481803384517597232014-09-17T00:00:00.000+08:002014-09-18T23:01:33.187+08:00Week 103 - Mcleod Ganj, Amritsar, Delhi (India)<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">We had arranged for a taxi to pick us up at 8am for the drive from Shimla to Mcleod Ganj. The roads were windy and we were glad we hadn’t opted for the night bus. After a couple of chai stops, we made it to Mcleod Ganj in just over 7 hours and checked in to our hotel. We were upgraded to a mountain view room and the panorama was stunning. </span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-bUYlvswuDR4/VBryAzm0YXI/AAAAAAAACHo/O5X6ZU-38Os/s1600/DSC07842.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-bUYlvswuDR4/VBryAzm0YXI/AAAAAAAACHo/O5X6ZU-38Os/s1600/DSC07842.JPG" height="265" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">View from our room, Mcleod Ganj.</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">We didn’t waste much time before walking the mile downhill back in to the centre. Mcleod Ganj is a small town and the village below, Gangchen Kyishong, is home to the Tibetan Government in exile and His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama, who claimed asylum in India following the Chinese invasion of Tibet in 1949, (the Dalai Lama left Tibet in 1959). It’s estimated that more than 250,000 refugees crossed the Himalayas to India and in Mcleod Ganj, you can’t walk 50 metres without seeing a monk or a string of prayer flags, the restaurants serve Tibetan food and the shops sell Tibetan handicrafts. Tibetan culture is being repressed in their homeland as they’re forced to assimilate into China, in India, the Tibetan’s are trying to ensure it’s not lost and forgotten. The Tibetan refugees are still fighting for the liberation of Tibet and being there makes you hope more than ever that one day soon it’ll happen. </span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-PhQt5BTONdo/VBryBe6rATI/AAAAAAAACHs/Hp5NbO2javU/s1600/DSC07872.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-PhQt5BTONdo/VBryBe6rATI/AAAAAAAACHs/Hp5NbO2javU/s1600/DSC07872.JPG" height="400" width="265" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Tibetan propaganda, Mcleod Ganj.</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-cEtyS6tu7oQ/VBryAxKjPDI/AAAAAAAACHk/hlXEdyEWRQ8/s1600/DSC07899.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-cEtyS6tu7oQ/VBryAxKjPDI/AAAAAAAACHk/hlXEdyEWRQ8/s1600/DSC07899.JPG" height="265" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Monks on the main street, Mcleod Ganj.</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">After exploring the shops for a while we stopped for dinner. Discovering it was Dalai Lama day and no Tibetan restaurant was serving meat, we ended up in a Punjab restaurant for Indian. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Rhys’s allergies were playing up the next day so we delayed our planned day hike and spent the morning at our hotel. We walked in to town for lunch and to visit the Tsuglagkhang complex which comprises the official residence of the Dalai Lama, the Tibet museum and an important temple. As we entered we found groups of monks of all ages, scattered around the Gompa, deep in debate, stomping their feet and clapping their hands to get their points across. We watched for a while before wandering upstairs to visit the temple and stopping at the small museum on our way out. That night we walked back in to town again for a Tibetan meal, lots of dumplings and noodle soup.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The next day we woke to good weather. We laced up our hiking boots and headed out towards Dharamkot, a village not far from our hotel. Having found a dog (Bruno) who we enticed with biscuits and who stayed with us all day, we turned off the main road to an unpaved track, walking up hill to a small temple where we stopped for chai with commanding views of the Dhauladhar Ridge. Continuing, we followed an uneven goat track to Triund, a ridge at 2,855m, where we stopped for more chai as the clouds began to swirl in, obstructing the valley views. On the way down, the rain started and after spending an hour hiding out under cover at a chai stop, we decided to make a break for it. Walking about 18km in total we completed the walk in about 5 hours (without stops). Considering we’d been warned to allow 7-8 hours i’m now feeling a little more hopeful for the Everest trek next week.</span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Uwoa4OjM9Eg/VBryIvC-j_I/AAAAAAAACH8/8oh2M9QBMnA/s1600/DSC07959.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Uwoa4OjM9Eg/VBryIvC-j_I/AAAAAAAACH8/8oh2M9QBMnA/s1600/DSC07959.JPG" height="265" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The hike to Triund, Mcleod Ganj.</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-txOcQmwPGVI/VBryJqKOmnI/AAAAAAAACIM/iDrLDwpzIU8/s1600/DSC08016.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-txOcQmwPGVI/VBryJqKOmnI/AAAAAAAACIM/iDrLDwpzIU8/s1600/DSC08016.JPG" height="265" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Rhys bribing Bruno, the hike to Triund, Mcleod Ganj.</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">We left Bruno at the turnoff to his house, sad to say goodbye, and headed back to our room to dry off and relax before walking back into town again for dinner.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">We took a bus the following day to Pathankot from Mcleod Ganj,a bumpy, uncomfortable 4.5 hour journey with beautiful valley views to take our mind off it. The bus dropped us at the terminal for the government run buses to Amritsar and we didn’t have to wait long until we were on our way for the final 2.5 hours to our destination. We’d descended from the mountains by this point and were driving through rice paddies and pastures.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Once in Amritsar we jumped straight in a rickshaw to our hotel in the Old City, weaving through chaotic streets and peering into the shopfronts as we went. As it was already getting dark and there’s only so much exploring you can do in India before all the noise and hustle and bustle starts to break your resolve, we opted for a quick dinner at a small vegetarian Indian restaurant, (in the Golden Temple area, all the restaurants are vegetarian to Rhys’s disappointment), peering in at the temple through the archway as we passed, before bed. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">We were primarily in Amritsar to see the Golden Temple and wanted to visit for lunch so were in no rush and treated ourselves to a lay in. We ventured out for a morning coffee before handing in our shoes at the cloakroom, collecting a headscarf to cover our heads during our visit and walking through the shallow foot baths to the entrance. The Golden Temple is Sikhism’s holiest shrine and was full of pilgrims, every Sikhi is supposed to visit and volunteer at the temple for one week in their lifetime. The complex was beautiful and the temple itself glistened in the centre, covered in gilded copper plates (the gold said to weigh 750kg), reflected in the pool of sacred water in which it stands. Priests inside the central temple chant continuously and it’s broadcast throughout the complex.</span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-AyyA2vyEweE/VBryJHteZHI/AAAAAAAACIA/ilnFWKYEpNw/s1600/DSC08094.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-AyyA2vyEweE/VBryJHteZHI/AAAAAAAACIA/ilnFWKYEpNw/s1600/DSC08094.JPG" height="265" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Storm clouds rolling in at the Golden Temple, Amritsar.</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">We walked a circuit of the courtyard admiring the temple from all angles of the marble walkway, before reaching the dining hall. In line with the Sikhism central principal of equality, everyone is welcome for a free meal, no matter what religion or nationality. We joined the crowds, collected a tray and cutlery and were led into the hall where we took a seat on the floor in long rows. Before we’d got ourselves comfortable, people began walking the line and depositing scoops of food onto our trays, we had dhal, rice, roti and delicious rice pudding. Considering all the clattering outside it was peaceful and quiet while we ate. The kitchen prepares meals for around 80,000 people a day and they have the process down to a fine art.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Once we’d finished, we rejoined the throng, handing in our used trays to the chaotic and crowded washing up assembly line where literally hundreds of people were passing the trays into huge sinks, ready for the next hungry visitors. It was a great experience.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The sky was beginning to darken as we finished our lunch and we took it as a sign that our visit was over and we should head back to the hotel and as soon as we walked in the door a heavy rain storm hit. We had a couple of hours to while away before it was time to head to the taxi stands for a trip to the Pakistan border.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">By 3pm the rain had mostly stopped so we made our way to the taxi stand where we had a ticket for a shared taxi to see the border closing ceremony at Attari. The border is only about 30km from town but with a chai stop and the traffic in Amritsar itself, it took us a while to get there. We parked up and headed off, me and Rhys being filtered into the foreigner queue to enter the border zone. Stupidly we didn’t think to take any ID and Rhys wasn’t carrying his wallet. They let me in on a soggy photocopy of my passport and Rhys somehow managed to get in using my drivers license. We took our seats and waited. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">As closing time drew near the music struck up on the Indian side and the women all clambered down to dance in the road, they looked like they were having a wail of a time. Officials handed girls huge Indian flags that they took turns to run to the Pakistani gate, it was like we’d stumbled upon a party rather than a border ceremony. The whole time, the Pakistani side was still and quiet, we could hear some music drifting over to us from their side but there was no dancing or flag running. </span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-rnwqkFwh-sU/VBryO5NL7BI/AAAAAAAACIU/tFLYMD00GjY/s1600/DSC08145.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-rnwqkFwh-sU/VBryO5NL7BI/AAAAAAAACIU/tFLYMD00GjY/s1600/DSC08145.JPG" height="265" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Crowds on the Indian side of the Pakistani border.</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">When the ceremony finally started, there was a lot of shouting, drumming, marching and incredibly high leg kicks from both sides of the border. The show was choreographed by both sides together and they mirrored each others actions, considering the difficult relationship between the countries, it was nice to see them collaborating. The gates were opened, the guards performed some stamping and waggling trying to intimidate the other side before the flags were lowered and taken in for the night. Border closed. It was a bizarre sight and very drawn out but interesting to see and it might be the closest we ever get to visiting Pakistan.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Back at the car we had time for a chai before we were due to meet the driver and leave. 30 minutes later and we were still waiting, as they separate out all the men and women, one of the men in our car had managed to get himself lost. Finally he turned up and, tired, we headed back to Amritsar. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">As it was late and we had a stupidly early start the next day we grabbed sandwiches to eat in the room and quickly popped in to see the temple all lit up at night before bed.</span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-8Aqdi8qFFTg/VBryO75_LyI/AAAAAAAACIc/tCINttmiFa0/s1600/DSC08226.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-8Aqdi8qFFTg/VBryO75_LyI/AAAAAAAACIc/tCINttmiFa0/s1600/DSC08226.JPG" height="265" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The Golden Temple lit up at night, Amritsar.</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The alarm went off at 3:45am and we rolled out of bed, dressed and finished packing to meet our 4am rickshaw to take us to the train station. We were booked on to a Shatabdi train again which is one of the nicer ones that serves breakfast and chai and biscuits. The journey took 6 hours before we arrived back in to Delhi. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">We’d spoken to a few people who had been badly conned on arrival in to Delhi and were half hopping someone would try it but instead we made it back to the hostel without any trouble. We checked in, dropped off our laundry and settled in for a nap. Leaving the room later than afternoon we finished up some shopping on Main Bazaar, sent yet another parcel home and ate Indian food in a roof top restaurant, far above the crazy streets below.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">We made the most of our last lay in before Nepal and missed the free hostel breakfast. Instead, we stopped by a roof top cafe for chai before walking to the metro station. We jumped on a train south to visit Humayun’s Tomb. We’ve done so much sightseeing over the last month that another action packed day wasn’t that attractive so instead we decided to pick one site to visit, another Mughal Tomb. Built in the mid 16th century, the red sandstone tomb towers 30m over a small, peaceful park. Away from the crowds of Delhi’s streets, we wandered around visiting some smaller tombs in the grounds before turning to the main tomb, a wonderful display of early Mughal architecture in a style that was later refined and influenced the design of the Taj Mahal.</span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-OHIWTku5k8Q/VBryPEhpxMI/AAAAAAAACIY/hvwfoZWqFGE/s1600/DSC08266.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-OHIWTku5k8Q/VBryPEhpxMI/AAAAAAAACIY/hvwfoZWqFGE/s1600/DSC08266.JPG" height="400" width="265" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Humayun's Tomb, Delhi.</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">After the tomb we headed back to Pahar Ganj where we stopped to grab Rhys a sandwich before hiding from the heat in the room. Leaving Rhys to chill, I wandered out again later for a final tour of Main Bazaar, dodging the cows and the hawkers to buy some hippy PJ’s for our Everest trek. We ended up at the same roof top restaurant as the previous night for our final Indian feast. Food in India has been immense and even though i’m not vegetarian i’ve skipped meat for the majority of meals because the choice for vegetarian food has been amazing and delicious. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">We’ll be ready to leave India to have a break from the chaos and the noise but I can’t wait to come back one day. It’s an incredible country with so much to see, every corner hides something intriguing and colourful. We’ve managed a month without being conned (if you exclude the Pushkar Passport) and Rhys has only been ill once, all up, a success!</span></div>
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Lucie Kingdomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18320597530474698888noreply@blogger.com0Amritsar, Punjab, India31.6339793 74.87226420000001831.5258238 74.71090270000002 31.7421348 75.033625700000016tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1557459473009731669.post-3685251372704370482014-09-10T00:00:00.000+08:002014-09-11T00:49:54.638+08:00Week 102 - Jaipur, Agra, Delhi, Shimla (India)<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The next day in Jaipur was another busy sightseeing day. Ali picked us up again in his autorickshaw, this time without Raja. We’d barely left our street before the rain started and pulled over to discuss whether we were making the right call heading out to Amber. We’d heard fabulous things about the Amber Fort and wanted to see it without getting drenched in the process. Thinking we could see the sky clearing on the outskirts of town we continued and by the time we reached the village the rain had stopped. The fort was huge, we were in awe.</span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/--WlTQWygM24/VBB6HmGprbI/AAAAAAAACE0/YzWPczhhJxQ/s1600/DSC06684.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/--WlTQWygM24/VBB6HmGprbI/AAAAAAAACE0/YzWPczhhJxQ/s1600/DSC06684.JPG" height="265" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Amber Fort, near Jaipur.</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Amber was the ancient capital of Jaipur state until Singh Jai built his new city in 1727. The fort was begun in 1592 and towers over the valley with the village nestled below and the walls and battlements drapped over the surrounding hillsides. After a few photos of the honey coloured facade from the river side, we climbed through the gardens, to the main gate, dodging elephants carrying tourists up the hill. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">We spent the next couple of hours wandering around the fort admiring the courtyards, latticed galleries, mosaics and carved relief panels. As there weren’t many signs we just lost ourselves, exploring tiny little rooms and mazelike corridors. We stopped for coffee and cake before heading back out to the rickshaw, just as the rain blew back in. We ducked into the ticket office to wait out the worst of it, where a strange man asked if he could touch Rhys’s beard (that beard is getting way too much attention!) then made it out to the rickshaw. Although we could see the Jaigarh fort on the hill above Amber, the weather made visiting it a bad idea. If we had longer in Jaipur and blue skies, we would have loved to spent a day walking the walls of Amber, there’s always next time.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">After Amber, and with an understanding of why everyone has been raving about the fort, we headed to the Elephant Village, not really knowing where we were going and what to expect. Rhys had a quick go driving the rickshaw on a quiet bit of road and then we turned into a small residential street. We pulled over and walked through a gate into a paddock where there was a beautiful elephant being fed. We wandered over to stroke her and watch, waiting for the manager to arrive. When he did, he started describing all these packages of things we could do with the elephants we weren’t really prepared for and didn’t have the cash for. We ended up giving a small donation before moving on to our next stop of the day, a drive by of the Palace of the Winds, Hawa Mahal.</span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-1SL-VCoHPPY/VBB6IE_dVBI/AAAAAAAACE4/3-b7J_Zca-w/s1600/DSC06628.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-1SL-VCoHPPY/VBB6IE_dVBI/AAAAAAAACE4/3-b7J_Zca-w/s1600/DSC06628.JPG" height="265" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A visit to the Elephant Village, near Jaipur.</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">It was a bit of a shame but our rickshaw couldn’t park near the Palace so I just hopped out and took some photos from the middle of the road, not really giving us a chance to admire the five storey, pink sandstone facade. The building was for the ladies of the royal household, where they could watch the city, hidden from view. Sadly we didn’t get a chance to go in to see the views from the roof but as the weather was still poor we were keen to continue on our way.</span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-CU1qdJevoSE/VBB6MCLCi8I/AAAAAAAACFA/p3SBhMZ4pZw/s1600/DSC06712.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-CU1qdJevoSE/VBB6MCLCi8I/AAAAAAAACFA/p3SBhMZ4pZw/s1600/DSC06712.JPG" height="400" width="265" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Hawa Mahal, Palace of the Winds, Jaipur.</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Our final stop of the day was at the Albert Hall, housing the Central Museum. The building and museum seem to have poor reputations, both in our guidebooks but there was a decent collection of tribalware, costumes, weaponary, sculptures, coins and wood carvings and although we were pretty tired and just had a quick walk around, we enjoyed it.</span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-97moowL1l3Y/VBB6evbSXoI/AAAAAAAACFQ/MwwIDVe78OU/s1600/DSC06738.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-97moowL1l3Y/VBB6evbSXoI/AAAAAAAACFQ/MwwIDVe78OU/s1600/DSC06738.JPG" height="265" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The Albert Hall, Jaipur.</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">We were back at our hotel in the early afternoon, having seen everything we wanted in Jaipur and glad to be out of the rain.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">After a beer on the rooftop we jumped in a rickshaw to the Peacock Rooftop Restaurant, a place that was recommended everywhere and where we hoped we’d be able to get Rhys some Western food since he was getting fed up eating Indian every night. We ended up at their second branch and were disappointed with the complete lack of atmosphere, having expected views and quirky furniture. We didn’t stay long and after our meal headed back to the room.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Our train wasn’t until the afternoon the following day so we had the morning to relax and run some chores. We got caught in a downpour when we popped out to get some passport photos for Rhys and spent the rest of the morning on the roof terrace enjoying a late breakfast.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Leaving Jaipur on a 3pm train, we headed to Agra. We’d only heard bad things about Agra, from tourists and Indians alike, so had really low expectations. We arrived after dark and took a rickshaw straight from the train station to our hotel in a gated area out of the centre of town. From the roof terrace of our hotel there were views of the Taj in the distance, strangely not lit up but sitting as a silhouette against the night sky. Even seeing such an iconic building at a distance was enough to get us excited and we ate dinner watching the Taj with lightening flashing in the distance.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Our first full day in Agra was a Friday and the Taj was closed to tourists, so we decided instead to hire a car and driver to visit Fatehpur Sikri, 40km west of the city. We were joined by another English guy from our hotel and headed out through the rain to the complex. We were caught in traffic and became the centre of attention with groups of people standing at the car window, peering in at us. Finally, we arrived at the fortified ancient city. Our driver dropped us at the rickshaw stand where we jumped in one to take us the last couple of kilometres to the entrance gate. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Fatehpur Sikri was a short lived capital of the Mughal empire. Built by Akbar, the city was only inhabited for 14 years from 1571 to 1585 before lack of water meant the capital was moved. First, we visited the Jama Masjid mosque, still in use today, which we entered through the huge 54m tall Buland Darwaza (Victory Gate). Inside the courtyard we circled the grand exterior buildings, being bothered at every step by kids and men trying to sell postcards and necklaces - it was the most we’d been hassled since arriving in India. Opposite the main gate we came to the white marble tomb of the saint, Shaikh Salim Chishti, a beautiful building with stunning lattice work stone screens and mother of pearl decorations.</span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-cd4WHFEZFb4/VBB6dfyiEPI/AAAAAAAACFI/EQvOhkgGKnI/s1600/DSC06834.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-cd4WHFEZFb4/VBB6dfyiEPI/AAAAAAAACFI/EQvOhkgGKnI/s1600/DSC06834.JPG" height="265" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Jama Masjid, Fatehpur Sikri.</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Leaving the mosque through a different gate, the Shahi Darwaza (King’s Gate), we walked to the palace complex, where after paying our entrance fee, we entered into a peaceful, hassle free complex. Akbar built three palaces, one for each of his favourite wives, one a Hindu, one a Muslim, and one a Christian. We visited ornamental pools, pavilions, halls and courtyards, marveling at the intricate carvings and the maze of buildings. It wasn’t too busy and the sun had come out so we enjoyed meandering around, taking photos and soaking up the atmosphere. Back in the car we drove back through another rain storm to the hotel where we holed up in our room for the rest of the day. </span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-kLdSunBKKTQ/VBB6eWhnwiI/AAAAAAAACFU/Qi3PND3lSg4/s1600/DSC06894.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-kLdSunBKKTQ/VBB6eWhnwiI/AAAAAAAACFU/Qi3PND3lSg4/s1600/DSC06894.JPG" height="265" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">One of the courtyards inside the Fatehpur Sikri palace complex.</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-R-TqI5uXQ3s/VBB6nCORuPI/AAAAAAAACFg/6c3450HwiW4/s1600/DSC06900.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-R-TqI5uXQ3s/VBB6nCORuPI/AAAAAAAACFg/6c3450HwiW4/s1600/DSC06900.JPG" height="265" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Inside the palace complex at Fatehpur Sikri.</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">We’d organised a rickshaw to collect us from our hotel at 6am the following day, having booked the driver for the whole day to see the sights of Agra. Although booking through our hotel was probably more expensive than arranging each trip as we went, it saved on a lot of hassle haggling every journey and meant we didn’t have to hunt for a rickshaw at 6am in the morning. The driver took us straight to the west gate of the Taj Mahal. We walked to the ticket office and just as we bought our tickets, the rain blew in and we spent 30 minutes hiding in a covered corridor hoping it would stop. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">It ended up drizzling for the entire time we were at the Taj and although that meant no photos with blue skies, it also kept the hordes away and meant we could walk around and enjoy the beauty of the place without fighting our way through streams of visitors - every year there are twice as many people visiting the Taj as that live in Agra itself. We weren’t disappointed, from the moment we stepped through the entry gate to the outer courtyard and were faced with one of the huge 30m red sandstone gates leading to the inner courtyard we were blown away. We wandered through the ornamental gardens following the watercourses, to the Taj itself. Taking off our shoes we climbed the raised marble platform to admire the white marble and carvings inlaid with semi precious stones. We walked through the central cenotaph before completing a lap of the building. </span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-YGzby9k-sYc/VBB61nKdK4I/AAAAAAAACFs/014Vzvdk_po/s1600/DSC07044.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-YGzby9k-sYc/VBB61nKdK4I/AAAAAAAACFs/014Vzvdk_po/s1600/DSC07044.JPG" height="265" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">View of the Taj Mahal, Agra. </td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-qXqs-4oVquk/VBB63XV2MWI/AAAAAAAACF0/VsjvHviWWj0/s1600/DSC07063.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-qXqs-4oVquk/VBB63XV2MWI/AAAAAAAACF0/VsjvHviWWj0/s1600/DSC07063.JPG" height="265" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The Taj Mahal, Agra.</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The Taj was built during the reign of Shah Jahan as a memorial for his second wide who died in 1631. The complex took 8 years and 20,000 people, from all over the world to build. Not long after, Shah Jahan was over thrown by his son, Aurangzeb and was kept captive in Agra Fort from where he could only gaze at the Taj from his window. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">We left the Taj through the south gate, emerging in the centre of Taj Ganj, the budget traveler centre of Agra, where the workmen who built the Taj set up home hundreds of years previously. We stopped at a roof top restaurant with views of the Taj for a breakfast banana pancake before heading back to meet our driver.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Agra itself was established as the capital in 1501 and fell into Mughal hands in 1526. Akbar, Jehangir and Shah Jahan all reigned from Agra before Aurangzeb moved the capital to Delhi in 1638. Although it’s a congested, dirty city, it has some beautiful buildings that were well worth visiting. We asked our driver to take us 10km north, to Sikandra, the sight of Akbar’s Mausoleum. Compared to the crowds at the Taj, the mausoleum was empty. We passed through a beautiful gateway to reach a courtyard, all built from red sandstone with white marble inlays and with antelope and peacocks grazing in the surrounding gardens - it’s crazy to see so many wild peacocks here.</span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-V5BQoU6RAWo/VBB68sckdcI/AAAAAAAACF8/rW1JyPUtV-c/s1600/DSC07094.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-V5BQoU6RAWo/VBB68sckdcI/AAAAAAAACF8/rW1JyPUtV-c/s1600/DSC07094.JPG" height="265" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Akbar's Mausoleum, Sikandra, near Agra.</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-8_WJzOqcTuU/VBB7lxu6fgI/AAAAAAAACGM/cShOdRu6854/s1600/DSC07157.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-8_WJzOqcTuU/VBB7lxu6fgI/AAAAAAAACGM/cShOdRu6854/s1600/DSC07157.JPG" height="265" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Inside Akbar's Mausoleum, Sikandra, near Agra.</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Next, we headed back in to town to the Itimad-ud-Daulah, the Baby Taj, another tomb, this time of a Persian nobleman who was minister to Jehangir and also his father-in-law. It was nothing like the Taj but did have some beautifully intricate carved screens and views over the Yamuna River. A short way away, we asked the rickshaw driver to stop at the Chini-ka-Rauza which was surprisingly quiet, yet another tomb, this one for the minister of Shah Jahan, built in the 1630’s. The tomb was once covered in bright blue mosaics and you can still see patches of the brilliant colours and designs. Beneath the tomb, on the banks of the river, temporary pavilions had been set up for some kind of festival and accompanying feast. We wondered down to watch the buffalo wallowing in the river and to see the people sitting around excitedly while huge cauldrons of food were stirred. </span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-f7MGxQ7mhOE/VBB7akA2IeI/AAAAAAAACGE/wrvNEgeqtjg/s1600/DSC07199.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-f7MGxQ7mhOE/VBB7akA2IeI/AAAAAAAACGE/wrvNEgeqtjg/s1600/DSC07199.JPG" height="265" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Itimad-ud-Daulah, the Baby Taj, Agra.</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Rh0bT8yl79w/VBB7vVD4glI/AAAAAAAACGU/mg4R-tmXw4E/s1600/DSC07209.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Rh0bT8yl79w/VBB7vVD4glI/AAAAAAAACGU/mg4R-tmXw4E/s1600/DSC07209.JPG" height="265" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Rhys outside the Itimad-ud-Daulah, the Baby Taj, Agra.</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-0iIUMPhrI6o/VBB8EoVMy2I/AAAAAAAACGc/S8auNGy3vb4/s1600/DSC07271.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-0iIUMPhrI6o/VBB8EoVMy2I/AAAAAAAACGc/S8auNGy3vb4/s1600/DSC07271.JPG" height="265" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Local boy showing off his buffalo, the riverside, Agra.</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Back at the rickshaw, we stopped at the Mehtab Bagh, a riverside park. Rather than paying to go into the park, having already seen similar ornamental gardens at the Taj, we walked along the side to the river front where we had perfect views of the Taj. As the weather had cleared the crowds had descended and we could see queues of people waiting to enter the building.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">We had one more stop on our to do list and drove back in to Agra to the imposing Mughal fort. The red sandstone building, on the banks of the Yamuna River, was begun in 1565 by Akbar with the most important additions made by Shah Jahan in his favourite white marble. Initially it was intended for military purposes but Shah Jahan turned it into a palace. Much of the building has been destroyed over the years and the majority is closed and used by the Indian army. Nevertheless, the section that was open for visitors was impressive with towering gates, huge courtyards, rooms covered with mirror mosaics and views out to the Taj. </span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-xoiCW5A65FI/VBB8O5F2x7I/AAAAAAAACGk/kXA3YMYy4HM/s1600/DSC07311.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-xoiCW5A65FI/VBB8O5F2x7I/AAAAAAAACGk/kXA3YMYy4HM/s1600/DSC07311.JPG" height="212" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Entrance gate to Agra Fort.</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">By the time we were finished at the fort we were tired and ready to head back to our room. Considering all the negative things we’d heard about Agra we’d enjoyed our stay and saw many incredible buildings. It may not be the kind of city you want to explore on foot but hiring a rickshaw for the day was the perfect way to see all the sights we wanted to visit.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">We’d paid for late check out on our room since our train didn’t leave until 9pm. After picking up a Subway on the way back to the room to satisfy Rhys’s Western food cravings, we chilled until the evening. Our rickshaw driver collected us and dropped us at the station. Suddenly there were white people everywhere, the train we had booked was the one used by day trippers from Delhi. The train was delayed 30 minutes and we arrived in Delhi just before midnight. We’d booked into the hostel we’d stayed in during our first visit to Delhi and walked the short distance through Paharganj.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">We were up early the next day to head back to the train station for the trip to Kalka. Having not had a full nights sleep we were pretty tired and grouchy. The trip was painless though and we were even served meals and drinks. Once in Kalka, we walked across the station to the Himalayan Queen, a toy train running through the mountains to Shimla.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">We’d seen the train on TV before we came away and always thought it would be an experience. We were expecting carriages a little more luxurious and got stuck with seats next to a frosted window restricting the view a little. Rhys moved to sit in the open doorway and after the first hour, the couple sitting with us moved to an empty booth leaving me with an open window and great views. The toy train is a British built narrow gauge railway that takes 5 hours to travel from Kalka to Shimla, passing through 103 tunnels and crossing arched bridges as it slowly creeps it’s way through the mountains hugging the hillsides. The ride didn’t disappoint and the time flew by as we spent the entire time soaking in the views.</span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-4VaNn4oB2pI/VBB8Zye1owI/AAAAAAAACGs/yw0zqUEaHds/s1600/DSC07537.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-4VaNn4oB2pI/VBB8Zye1owI/AAAAAAAACGs/yw0zqUEaHds/s1600/DSC07537.JPG" height="266" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Rhys and the toy train on route to Shimla.</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/--BM8WyG8lho/VBB8psyJ8iI/AAAAAAAACG0/r6TLhvw1zcI/s1600/DSC07610.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/--BM8WyG8lho/VBB8psyJ8iI/AAAAAAAACG0/r6TLhvw1zcI/s1600/DSC07610.JPG" height="265" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The toy train passing over a bridge on the way to Shimla.</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Once we reached Shimla we jumped in a taxi to our hotel. As soon as we got there we were a little disappointed, although they’d upgraded us to the honeymoon suite, the room didn’t have a view and the circular bed and mirrors covering every available surface, made it feel a little distasteful. The hotel had great reviews from Indian tourists, I guess we just have different opinions on interior design. We wandered out to find the elevator that ran from the lower road to the pedestrianised Mall and found a better hotel to move to the following day that, although over budget, had stunning valley views that made it worth it. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">As soon as we reached the Mall our impression of Shimla changed, our original hotel was in a local area, in the centre of a crazy bazaar. The Mall is a pedestrianised street lined with decent shops and heritage buildings that make it look like a British high street. Fines are handed out for smoking in public, spitting and littering and plastic bags are banned and along with the altitude of 2,205m and the mountain air, it’s clean and fresh.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Shimla was a sleepy forest village until the British discovered it and decided to turn it into the official summer capital of the Raj, moving the whole government here from Delhi, each year from March to October. The town became India’s premier hill station. The centre of town is based around the Mall and the Ridge, where everyone strolls all day and through the evening, with views of the valleys falling away to either side. We spent our first evening sitting in a western cafe eating delicious pizza, overlooking some amazing British era buildings, the Town Hall and Police Station, that look like they’ve been transported here from home. </span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-JspwKxt4fkM/VBB8_F4SnoI/AAAAAAAACHU/Jq_ZMJORI54/s1600/DSC07807.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-JspwKxt4fkM/VBB8_F4SnoI/AAAAAAAACHU/Jq_ZMJORI54/s1600/DSC07807.JPG" height="265" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">British buildings in the centre of Shimla.</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The next day we’d hoped to have a lay in in our extremely tasteful suite. It wasn’t to be. At 7am the water pump started and it sounded like some one was drilling into our head board. We were glad to pack up and leave, walking up the hill to our new hotel. Blown away by the view from our room, we set up camp and ordered a tea set to our room, popping out to a cake shop to buy a selection of chocolate, cream badness and biscuits, how British. We’d heard about the monkeys in Shimla being a little aggressive and sneaking in to open windows and jumped when one without a nose appeared at ours.</span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Ewu4nKOBEXg/VBB8rneWUXI/AAAAAAAACG8/8UzhkDoBjLQ/s1600/DSC07636.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Ewu4nKOBEXg/VBB8rneWUXI/AAAAAAAACG8/8UzhkDoBjLQ/s1600/DSC07636.JPG" height="265" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">View from our bedroom window, Shimla Hotel White.</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The clouds drifted in and the rain started just as we were getting ready to walk along the ridge. We waited but the weather didn’t improve so we ducked out and bought umbrellas before walking a few circles of the centre of town. Rhys stopped at a barbers and made the mistake of asking for his beard to be trimmed, the beard he’s been growing for months and was extremely proud of. He came out looking very trim and tidy, and very unhappy, it wasn’t at all what he was after, instead of a hipster beard, he’s now sporting a Dane Bowers/ carpet salesman look. The rain was still falling so we retired to the room, heading out again that evening for dinner. As it was Rhys’s Gramps’s funeral at home, we toasted his life while watching the sun set over the valley below. It was beautiful.</span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-DMaOzW0_gic/VBB8uIMvg2I/AAAAAAAACHE/VEzsb2g-maw/s1600/DSC07672.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-DMaOzW0_gic/VBB8uIMvg2I/AAAAAAAACHE/VEzsb2g-maw/s1600/DSC07672.JPG" height="265" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A toast to Rhys's Gramps, sunset from our room, Shimla.</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The next day we woke to slightly better weather and decided to make the most of it, heading out to admire the buildings in the centre of town and to try and work out the deal with buses to our next stop, Dharamsala. The bus office was closed so we stopped by a coffee shop with views down the valley. When we found out our only option was 10 hours on a local bus we hunted down the cheapest taxi we could find. At only £35 it seemed more than worth it to us to avoid the hassle.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Afterwards, as the weather was holding out and we still need to wear in our new hiking boots before next week, we decided to walk to the Viceregal Lodge on the outskirts of town. We ended up following a well signposted heritage route that took us passed some beautiful Victorian and mock Tudor buildings. Rhys stopped to try to take a photo of a monkey in the trees and ended up being grabbed and chased, the monkey’s here really are aggressive. We reached the Lodge in no time and were struck with how British it all seemed. The Lodge is more of a Scottish manor house, built as the official residence of the British Viceroys. We wandered around the gardens before joining a short tour to see the inside of the building, now used as the Indian Institute of Advanced Study. It was a beautiful place and well worth the walk.</span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-UBLPSEKwRXs/VBB88JhKDWI/AAAAAAAACHM/uAnl0U0l7kU/s1600/DSC07769.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-UBLPSEKwRXs/VBB88JhKDWI/AAAAAAAACHM/uAnl0U0l7kU/s1600/DSC07769.JPG" height="265" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The Viceregal Lodge, Shimla.</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">We walked back into town, stopping for Rhys to grab lunch, before heading back to the room. After Rhys’s barber nightmare you would have thought i’d have learned but I stupidly ventured out too and had a similar experience, coming back with a Pat Sharpe mullet, absolutely horrendous.</span></div>
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Lucie Kingdomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18320597530474698888noreply@blogger.com0Shimla, Himachal Pradesh, India31.1046052 77.173424230.9958092 77.0120627 31.213401200000003 77.3347857tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1557459473009731669.post-612123441819260292014-09-03T00:00:00.000+08:002014-09-05T21:05:44.455+08:00Week 101 - Udaipur, Pushkar, Jaipur (India)<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">We’d arranged an 8am pick up for the drive to Udaipur and were disappointed to be told it had been delayed to 9am. We hung around in our room waiting until it was time to leave and then we had a misunderstanding about how many stops we were going to make along the way. Finally in agreement, we set off. The first part of the journey was through flat scrubland and we alternated between watching the world go by and dozing. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">As the journey progressed the landscape started to turn more green and lush with evidence of the monsoon rains. Our first stop was at Ranakpur, a white, superbly ornate, marble, Jain temple at the base of the Aravalli hills (apparently, the oldest range in the world, predating even the Himalayas). The complex, with the main temple built in 1439, is considered to be one of the finest in Rajasthan and one of the most important in India. We wandered around in awe at the intricacy of the carvings covering every available surface. There are 1,444 pillars in the complex and no two are the same. </span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Ranakpur Temple.</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Intricate carvings inside Ranakpur Temple.</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Continuing along the winding country roads, dodging cows and herds of goats, our driver asked if we were hungry. We stopped at a little place with gorgeous valley views for a buffet lunch. It turned into the most intense meal I think i’ve ever had. The waiter watched over us through every bite, at one point he took a chapatti out of my hand and told me I couldn’t eat it and he’d get fresh ones and then he tried to give me a lesson in how to eat an aubergine, it was all very off putting and I was too scared to eat enough to get anywhere near our moneys worth. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Back in the car we passed through a heavy rain storm as we followed the hills to Kumbalgarh, a huge stone fort, perched on the hill top with stunning views down into the valleys (all but hidden by the rain clouds). Built in the 15th century, the fort was used by Mewar rulers as a place to retreat in times of danger. It was taken only once in it’s history, when the water supply was poisoned, and then the invaders only managed to hold it for two days. The fort walls stretch 36km making it the second longest wall in the world and it encloses hundreds of temples, palaces and gardens. There was a break in the rain as we arrived and we rushed to the highest point, the Palace of Clouds, to see the view, the wall snaking in to the distance and the cluster of temples and buildings around the gate where we’d entered. We had another downpour just as we reached the top causing us to duck into a building to wait it out and then, when it passed over we hurried back to the bottom before it could start again. We had time for a quick walk around a few of the temples before jumping back in the car. It was a shame our visit was so rushed as it was an incredible sight but at least we got the chance to see it.</span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">View from Palace of Clouds, Kumbalgarh Fort.</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-XH4dCu7fItw/VAmzBp_07UI/AAAAAAAACDE/auqEfs-emuQ/s1600/DSC05277.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-XH4dCu7fItw/VAmzBp_07UI/AAAAAAAACDE/auqEfs-emuQ/s1600/DSC05277.JPG" height="265" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Kumbalgarh Fort.</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">We arrived in to Udaipur just before sunset and walked the rest of the way, down the winding cobblestone streets, to our hostel. It wasn’t until they took us to our room that we realised how close to the lake and palaces we were. We had a corner room with floor to ceiling windows on two sides and could lie in bed watching the giant fruit bats swoop within feet of our room as the sun set over the Lake Palace.</span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Tumk4y7F4l0/VAmzCyJ_mKI/AAAAAAAACDU/2Cd1ictwaQA/s1600/DSC05338.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Tumk4y7F4l0/VAmzCyJ_mKI/AAAAAAAACDU/2Cd1ictwaQA/s1600/DSC05338.JPG" height="265" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Sunset view from our room in Udaipur.</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Udaipur has earned the moniker of‘Rajasthans most romantic city and I can understand why. The City Palace, which our hostel was next to, towers over Lake Pichola, one of four man made lakes, facing the photogenic Lake Palace that seems to float in the middle of the water. The city was founded in 1559 when Udai Singh took flight from the final sacking of Chittorgarh (he was the one who was brought up in Kumbalgarh fort). Although the old town itself is touristy with hundreds of places to stay, eat and shop, it’s easy to disappear into the cobbled backstreets where people perch on doorsteps chatting and the kids run about shouting and playing.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">After spending the first night at the hostel, eating on the roof terrace overlooking the lake, we ventured out to explore on our second day. We followed the lake edge, stopping at bathing and dhobi (clothes washing) ghats and taking in the view of the Lake Palace, before crossing a bridge for views of the City Palace. The temperature was bearable and the streets were much quieter than anywhere else we’ve been. We wandered back towards the hostel, buying a heavy rug on the way, where Rhys went to chill in the room while I went to the Bagore-ki-Haveli, a very strange museum. </span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-x7vd9Hlc0Pk/VAmzETFNy-I/AAAAAAAACDc/itddSYZAt6M/s1600/DSC05432.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-x7vd9Hlc0Pk/VAmzETFNy-I/AAAAAAAACDc/itddSYZAt6M/s1600/DSC05432.JPG" height="265" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The Lake Palace, Udaipur.</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The haveli was another former prime ministers mansion, right on the waters edge and although some areas had been beautifully restored, others held bizarre collections of puppets, the worlds biggest turban and sculptures of world landmarks made from polystyrene.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Back at the hostel we hid from the midday sun, heading out again in the early evening for a tuktuk ride to the cable car station. The cable car took us to the summit of a hill with views out over the lake. It was a spectacular sight and we could see a number of the other lakes in the area as well as the City Palace and Lake Palace and Jagmandir Island. Rhys was feeling a bit under the weather so we didn’t actually stay for sunset and headed back to the room. That night, Rhys was feeling worse and stayed in the room while I went out to a roof terrace with views of the lit up City Palace for dinner.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The next day, Rhys was still feeling too unwell to leave the room. I walked over to the City Palace to explore. The palace in Udaipur is Rajasthans largest palace, a conglomeration of buildings created by various maharajas (the City Palace actually comprises 11 palaces), surmounted with balconies, cupolas and towers. I wandered through the museum, through courtyards full of shiny peacock mosaics, rooms covered floor to ceiling with minature paintings and mirror tiles and mazelike passages (built to confuse intruders), passed collections of armory, weapons, silverware and palanquins. It was huge and pretty tiring but I still had a boat trip on Lake Pichola to get a better view of the Lake Palace and to visit Jag Mandir to do. </span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-lQtobS_9KfU/VAmzFOfJV7I/AAAAAAAACDk/hGGQGZyemhU/s1600/DSC05649.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-lQtobS_9KfU/VAmzFOfJV7I/AAAAAAAACDk/hGGQGZyemhU/s1600/DSC05649.JPG" height="265" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">View of the Lake Palace from the City Palace, Udaipur.</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">It was a long walk down to the Palace promenade where I found the boat pier, where after an awkward group photo with me in the middle like a celebrity, I got squeezed into the last seat on a boat heading out on to the lake. We circled the Lake Palace, built in 1754 as the royal summer palace and completely covering the 1.5 hectares of the Jag Niwas island, before stopping at Jag Mandir, the second lake island on which stood another domed palace, built in 1620 (thought to be the inspiration for the Taj Mahal), circled by elephant statues and gardens. I didn’t stay for long before jumping back in the boat back to the City Palace.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">By then, it was time to check on Rhys and I walked back to the hostel. After lunch on the roof terrace, overlooking the lake, I spent the next couple of hours going up and down the stairs to try and do the laundry. A quick visit to a nearby miniature painting shop and it was time for dinner. Rhys was starting to feel a little better and decided to join me.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">We had an early start the following day, checking out of our amazing corner room before the sun rose to find a tuk tuk to take us the train station. We had a 6 hour journey in an aircon carriage without seats together and with tinted windows restricting our view. Nevertheless, the journey was painless and before we knew it we were in Ajmer. We dropped in to the tourist office at the train station briefly to find out the easiest way to Pushkar and ended up getting a taxi. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Once in Pushkar, we checked in to our hotel and took some time to freshen up before wandering out to see the town. Much smaller than anywhere else we’ve been so far, Pushkar was also much dirtier, noisier and came with a lot more hassle, surprising since it’s a Hindu pilgrimage town. The stories claim that Brahma dropped a lotus flower on the earth and Pushkar appeared and the lake around which the town is clustered attracts hundreds of people a day to bath in it’s waters. It’s touristy and has a strange Israeli presence, for a not particularly nice town, it seems bizarre that so many Israelis now call this place home, all the restaurants even serve Israeli food. Although it was really interesting to see the hordes of pilgrims hustling along the streets, we were constantly dodging motorbikes with horns blaring, beggars and other people generally trying to make us give them money for nothing, spirituality has been truly commercialised in Pushkar.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">It started raining heavily that afternoon and Rhys was still recovering, so we retreated to our hostel roof terrace for pakora whilst watching the tortoises shuffle around and the staff feed the black faced langur monkeys and chase the red bottomed rhesus macaques with sticks. The macaques are a bit aggressive so they’re not welcome but it’s a bit hard to feed one monkey without feeding the other. The monkeys take over the rooftops in the evenings, treating the town as their playground and it’s amusing to watch them swinging about. We had Israeli food at another roof top cafe (oh how I miss hummus) before bed. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">We had a well needed lay in the next day before meeting up with one of the hostel owners cousins who ran a courier service. We’d decided we were carrying too much weight and a parcel home was called for. After climbing on the back of his bike and narrowly missing women and cows, we arrived at his shop and sent another 8kg of souvenirs home, crossing our fingers that it reaches it’s destination.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Next, we decided to walk down to the lake. Pushkar Lake is surrounded by 52 bathing ghats, stairways giving access to the sacred waters to the hordes of pilgrims so they can take ritual baths to cleanse their souls. While in town we thought it only right that we joined in and took part in a puja (prayer). We were separated and sat down with priests on the stairs by the water where the symbolism of each of the flowers, pigments, sugar and rice were explained, before we had to join in with some chanting, washing hands in the lake water and sprinkling it over ourselves, praying for the health of our family and good karma. Rhys said a prayer for his Gramps who passed away this week and threw flower petals in the lake. We made our donation, received our Pushkar passports (a piece of coloured thread around your wrist) and continued on our lap of the lake, returning to our hostel via Sadar Bazaar, the main street, lined with stalls and shops. </span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Pushkar Lake.</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">We wandered out again later that day to visit the 2,000 year old Brahma temple in town, one of only a handful of Brahma temples anywhere (Brahma being the Hindu Lord of Creation), and were caught up in the stampede that pushed up the marble stairs to the main temple. Although visually not very impressive, the piety of the people surrounding us was moving. We didn’t stay long and as we left the rains started to blow in. We escaped to a roof top terrace for lunch before hiding back in our room. We wandered back into town again to a roof top restaurant for dinner.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">We had an early afternoon train the following day from Ajmer, so, after a lazy start, we took a taxi from Pushkar to the train station where we dropped our bags in the left luggage room. We took a rickshaw through the windy streets to the end of a pedestrianised area leading to the dargah, the tomb of a Sufi saint, Khhwaja Muin-ud-din Chishti, and a Muslim pilgrimage site. We couldn’t take the camera in so had to take it in turns to wander through the main gate and around the complex. The dargah was built in stages, mostly in the 16th century and was a little haven of peace away from the bustle of the street, with people sitting around, seemingly doing nothing, everywhere. As you walk through the courtyards you come across a mosque, the tomb itself, and two huge iron cauldrons for offerings for the poor. As with the Brahma temple, it wasn’t visually impressive but was an experience to people watch.</span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-eZmORjG8e2A/VAmzIMXw2kI/AAAAAAAACD0/hBECz1qm1JU/s1600/DSC06031.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-eZmORjG8e2A/VAmzIMXw2kI/AAAAAAAACD0/hBECz1qm1JU/s1600/DSC06031.JPG" height="265" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Entrance to the Dargah, Ajmer.</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Our train left at 3pm and we arrived in Jaipur after dark, taking an autorickshaw to our hotel. We got chatting with the two boys who were driving our autorickshaw and arranged for them to collect us at the hotel the following day for sightseeing. We spent the rest of the evening on the roof terrace.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The boys were waiting for us at 10am as arranged. As we stepped out of the hotel it started to rain, and it pretty much continued on and off for the whole time we were in Jaipur. Jaipur is a very different city to those we’d visited so far, instead of the ancient twisty roads, this city had a more modern feel to it. In 1727, Jai Singh decided to build a new city, moving from the fort at Amber. It was built according to the principles set out in an ancient Hindu architectural treatise, separated into nine rectangular blocks where people of different castes would reside. Later, in 1876, the Maharaja had the entire city painted ‘pink’, earning Jaipur the nickname, the ‘pink city’ (which is definitely more of a terracotta than a pink).</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Our first stop, just as the rain started to subside, was at the Jantar Mantar, a peculiar site within the old city walls. Jai Singh was a keen astronomer and built a huge observatory in the centre of the city. As the sun wasn’t out and the instruments only work in sunlight we just walked around the massive structures without a guide, weaving between 27m tall sun dials and instruments for estimating when the monsoon would arrive and the timing of eclipses.</span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Hoye-J7yhn4/VAmzIxe81xI/AAAAAAAACD8/ERk77gPAcd4/s1600/DSC06074.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Hoye-J7yhn4/VAmzIxe81xI/AAAAAAAACD8/ERk77gPAcd4/s1600/DSC06074.JPG" height="400" width="265" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The sun dial in Jantar Mantar, Jaipur.</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Next, after Rhys stopped to sit with some snake charmers, we crossed the road to the City Palace, a vast complex of courtyards and buildings. The first courtyard was centred on the Mubarak Mahal (Welcome Palace) which housed a textiles museum and there was another interesting armory museum housed in the former apartments of the wives of the maharaja. We stopped to peer up at the Chandra Mahal, the seven storey residence of the descendants of the maharaja, before continuing into the Pitan Niwas Chowk, the highlight of the palace for me, a courtyard with four beautiful gates representing the four seasons.</span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Snake charmers, Jaipur.</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-cgKXzg6P3ZM/VAmzKmv9vhI/AAAAAAAACEM/aNiImmJE4LY/s1600/DSC06146.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-cgKXzg6P3ZM/VAmzKmv9vhI/AAAAAAAACEM/aNiImmJE4LY/s1600/DSC06146.JPG" height="265" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The City Palace, Jaipur.</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Me at one of the gates of Pitan Niwas Chowk, City Palace, Jaipur.</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Back at the rickshaw, the rain started again as we rode out of the city walls to the Royal Gaitor, the location of the royal cenotaphs (including that of Jai Singh). Again, just as we arrived the rain stopped and we had the place to ourselves, wandering around the intricately carved monuments to the the soundtrack of peacocks. It was incredibly beautiful.</span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-bNhdnKi8hQ8/VAmzN6zPCHI/AAAAAAAACEU/rotKia2eAms/s1600/DSC06227.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-bNhdnKi8hQ8/VAmzN6zPCHI/AAAAAAAACEU/rotKia2eAms/s1600/DSC06227.JPG" height="400" width="265" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Me at the Royal Gaitor, Jaipur.</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-NVNcbBXaHmM/VAmzOej-XzI/AAAAAAAACEg/gWhWjxae488/s1600/DSC06292.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-NVNcbBXaHmM/VAmzOej-XzI/AAAAAAAACEg/gWhWjxae488/s1600/DSC06292.JPG" height="265" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The Royal Gaitor, Jaipur.</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">We were talked into climbing the hill to the Ganesh temple, against our better judgment. As we made it to the top, where the temple was closed, the rain started again, with one umbrella to share we didn’t stand much of a chance. We squelched back to the rickshaw and agreed we’d make one more stop before heading back to the hotel to dry off.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Our final stop was at Galta and the Surya Mandir, otherwise known as the Monkey Temple. We bought a bag of peanuts at the bottom of the hill before walking up to the temple, with views out over Jaipur. It wasn’t the most beautiful temple but it was worth it to see Rhys reach for the peanuts only to throw them on the floor as he was mobbed by 30 or so aggressive Rhesus Macaques.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Back at the hotel we dried off before retiring to the roof terrace where we ended up chatting to a Welsh couple and a German guy, who we then tagged along with for dinner. We went to a small local eatery with the most amazing BBQ chicken. Rhys had been dying for meat having eaten vegetarian for the past three days and the food was delicious.</span></div>
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Lucie Kingdomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18320597530474698888noreply@blogger.com0Jaipur, Rajasthan, India26.9124336 75.78727090000006726.4592396 75.141823900000063 27.3656276 76.432717900000071tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1557459473009731669.post-54725471512067057952014-08-27T00:00:00.000+08:002014-08-28T21:38:10.651+08:00Week 100 - Bangkok, Delhi, Jaisalmer, Jodhpur (Thailand, India)<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">We had the day free while we waited in hope, with fingers and toes crossed, for our Indian visas to arrive, and decided we should spend it seeing some more of the hundreds of beautiful temples Bangkok has to offer. The city really is quite majestic, nestled in between the shopping malls, skyscrapers, tatty backstreets and traffic jammed roads there are little pockets of white buildings topped with the most beautiful green and gold roofs and adorned with incredibly ornate and sparkly window and door frames. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">After a delicious breakfast pastry in a bakery near our hotel, we set out to our first stop of the day, a giant Buddha statue that we’d seen in passing a week previous. Next, we walked towards a temple complex that we’d noticed from the bus window on our way back from Koh Chang, stopping on the way at a completely different and equally beautiful complex with a towering golden stupa. Wat Ratchanadda, the temple we’d seen from the bus, was huge, after walking through a garden with a buildings dotted around we reached the temple with it’s 37 black, metal spires, signifying the 37 virtues towards enlightenment, rising skyward at each level. From the top of the temple, we spotted the Golden Mount, and wondered how we’d never noticed it before, a golden castle towering over the neighbouring buildings, built on top of a man made, white hill. </span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The temple complex Wat Ratchanadda, Bangkok.</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">After walking to the Golden Mount and feeling suitably cultured for the day, we were starting to flag from the heat and humidity and decided to head back to the hotel. We had time to refresh and recharge before we had to head to the agency in Sukumvit, to see if our passports had turned up in any of the afternoon deliveries (when we called at 3pm they were still being processed but we had to try or face missing our flights the next day and spending £450 on new ones). We got there after a very long taxi journey, where the driver got fed up of the traffic and dropped us at a train station to finish the journey. Our passports still weren’t in and they were unsure whether the embassy was having printing problems and whether they’d even been able to print that day. They suggested we wait around in case there was a final delivery and 10 minutes before the agency shut, our passports arrived. Extremely happy, we headed back across town to the hotel.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Another quick turn around and cursing that we hadn’t even had a chance to use the roof top jacuzzi at our hotel, we were back out to Khao San Road to meet Mario for dinner. We wandered around before finally deciding on a street stall that turned out to be pretty mediocre. As we walked back to Khao San, the rain started and we dived into a bar to wait it out. Leaving the boys to their beers I went to the closest massage parlour for a heavenly foot massage, then as the boys hadn’t finished, I went back for an aggressive back, neck and shoulders massage that seemed to involve a disproportionate amount of elbow. Saying goodbye to Mario, and leaving him still in a quandary over where to go next, with a fast expiring Thai visa, we walked back to the hotel to try to get a decent night sleep before our morning flight. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The next morning we took a cab to Phaya Thai from where we caught the airport express train, arriving in plenty of time for our flight. After check in, we had an early lunch before it was time to board. The plane landed in Delhi early and the airport formalities went very smoothly. When we got to the arrivals hall, the driver who was supposed to collect us, wasn’t there. As we’d only turned our clocks back an hour we thought he was late, Rhys went to check outside and was barred from coming back in while I worked out the pay phone and called the hostel. Our lift arrived and it turned out we needed to wind our clocks back another 30 minutes. He wasn’t late at all. We settled in the car ready for the drive into Delhi feeling a bit flustered. And then the car broke down in a tunnel on the dual carriage way. The driver managed to start it again but another mile down the road and it broke down again, at traffic lights. The heat was oppressive and everyone was honking their horns angrily while we blocked the road. He tried to start it and even ran off to get more fuel (it wasn’t that), before another guy turned up from nowhere, tried to help him, and then agreed to take us the rest of the way to our hostel.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">By the time we found it, down a winding alleyway off of Main Bazaar in Paharganj, we were disgustingly hot and sticky. Turning the aircon up in ou room we cooled off before braving the heat again to explore the backpacker ghetto we were staying in and to grab some dinner. Initial impressions of Delhi were that it wasn’t as dirty or as in-your-face as we’d expected. I think we’ve been to so many cities that we’re abit desensitised and you hear such bad things about Delhi that you expect the worst. </span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Market square in Paharganj, Delhi.</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Our first evening in Delhi, after dinner on a roof top terrace, we hailed a rickshaw to take us to the Red Fort for the sound and light show. It was the slowest rickshaw in the world. At one point Rhys had to get out and walk as we were over taken by every other rickshaw in the city. Once out of Paharganj we started to understand why people always talk about the congestion, pollution and homeless people of Delhi. The traffic was shocking and there were homeless people curled up asleep tucked into every nook. But it wasn’t all bad and we rolled at snails pace past some beautiful buildings and arches until the walls of the Red Fort loomed. We entered the fort through the Lahore Gate and realised we had the place pretty much to ourselves and 30 minutes until the show started. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The sandstone fort was constructed between 1638 and 1648 and by the 19th century it was already much dilapidated. Mughal rulers, sapped by civil war had been unable to maintain the fort properly and then, during the First War of Independence in 1857, the British demolished the lesser buildings to make way for barracks and army offices. It’s impressive for it’s scale rather than for detailed craftmanship. After passing through the main gate, you find yourself in a covered shopping arcade called Chatta Chowk, from there we continued to the outdoor seating area for the light show, to listen to the history of the fort while the surrounding buildings were lit up with music playing. I thought it was great but Rhys was struggling with the heat so we left halfway through. Having learnt our lesson about cycle rickshaws we grabbed a autorickshaw to take us back to our hotel to bed.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The next morning we jumped on the metro and headed out to the lavish Akshardham Temple on the outskirts of Delhi, a huge, ornate Hindu Swaminarayan temple, inaugurated in 2005, made of sandstone and white marble. We were in awe as soon as we entered the complex, it’s beautiful with every surface covered with ornate carvings. From the Ten Gates, inviting goodness from the ten principal directions, to the Bhakti Dwar gate of devotion and the Mandir itself, reaching 141ft high and featuring 234 intricately carved pillars, 9 domes and over 20,000 sculpted figures, resting on a plinth carved with 148 life size stone elephants. The complex includes three exhibition halls that you can pay extra to visit. We went in the first, the Hall fo Values, that taught of the life of Bhagwan Swaminarayan through a number of rooms showing films, light and sound shows and robotic figures. I thought it was a great way to make religion accessible to modern generations. Rhys was getting tired from the heat and was ready to go so we skipped the other two exhibitions. After picking up our photos (we couldn’t take a camera in so paid to have some taken)., we headed back to our hotel. We had lunch at another roof top cafe before chilling in our room for a couple of hours to hide from the heat.</span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-KFuoC-rYvD8/U_8uU60ohjI/AAAAAAAACCY/p95rawvUFQc/s1600/DSC05498.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-KFuoC-rYvD8/U_8uU60ohjI/AAAAAAAACCY/p95rawvUFQc/s1600/DSC05498.JPG" height="265" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Our photo purchase, Akshardham, Delhi.</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">That night we had a night train booked. Originally, we’d managed to get one bed and one cancellation in AC2 which meant we could both get on the train but didn’t have a second bed confirmed, luckily we got the second bed. We had another slow trip through the Delhi traffic to the Old Delhi Train Station before waiting at the station for an hour for our train to leave. We boarded and settled in to our seats. Rhys had a curtained off bed that was ridiculously skinny and I had an open bed in a group of four with a window. The journey was pretty painless, apart from the man sleeping next to me who snored worse than a rhinocerous with a cold, meaning I got about 3 hours sleep. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">We arrived in Jaisalmer at noon the next day and were met by the hostel for a free transfer. There were another 4 people on our train staying at the same hostel, Dylans Cafe, and we sat on the roof terrace trying to catch the breeze, eating lunch and chatting. It was stifling hot, over 40C and we were grateful to get in to our air con room for a shower.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">After a couple of hours we headed back to the roof terrace for a drink with the others, before wandering into the fort. Jaisalmer is like something out of Aladdin, it’s the city you’d draw if someone told you to draw a desert city. There’s a massive fort that towers over the muddle of streets below like a giant sandcastle, with every building made from local sandstone. The first day we walked through the main gate and into the medieval warren of stalls and houses that fill every inch of space around the palace inside the fort wall. The fact that it’s still lived in makes it incredibly atmospheric with women disappearing around corners with their brightly coloured saffron and fushia saris billowing behind them, men riding rusty old bikes with their turbans piled high, cows at every turn and bright embroideries hanging on the walls.</span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Wandering the streets inside the fort, Jaisalmer.</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">View from the cafe, Jaisalmer fort.</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">After a circle of the fort walls, stopping to admire the view of the town below, stretching out to the sandy plains in the distance, with the horizon dotted with wind farms, we found a roof top cafe high above the main gate where we settled for a cold drink while we waited for sunset. That night we ate on our hostel roof terrace and watched the football on TV with the other guests before bed.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">We were up early the next day to beat the heat. Before heading back in to the fort area we wove our way through the maze like streets, being pointed the way by lots of happy locals, until we reached the Nathmal-ki-Havali (haveli being the Hindi word for ‘mansion’). We didn’t go in, just admired the carved exterior with a shop keeper pointing out differences between the left and right wings, carved by two brothers in competition. Our next stop was the Patwa-ki-Haveli with five interlinking buildings, built in the early 19th century by five Jain brothers who were jewellery merchants. We went in one of the privately owned sections for a pretty rubbish tour but spectacular views from the roof. We had one more haveli to visit, the Salim Singh-ki-Haveli, built 300 years ago and home to one of the Jaisalmer prime ministers. The building was a beautiful shape and the guide who showed us around (and who still lived there in the lower stories) was really informative.</span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-8fca9JjR6fc/U_8uAhECqjI/AAAAAAAACA8/PuZ4EYJ6D60/s1600/DSC04028.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-8fca9JjR6fc/U_8uAhECqjI/AAAAAAAACA8/PuZ4EYJ6D60/s1600/DSC04028.JPG" height="265" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">View of the fort from Patwa-ki-Haveli, Jaisalmer.</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-SooqkNGry6o/U_8uBmJfr8I/AAAAAAAACBE/fB0QE_Ig-PM/s1600/DSC04039.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-SooqkNGry6o/U_8uBmJfr8I/AAAAAAAACBE/fB0QE_Ig-PM/s1600/DSC04039.JPG" height="400" width="265" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Passageways within the fort, Jaisalmer.</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-a6ZpFewYRgw/U_8uCuiUytI/AAAAAAAACBI/Rfdc-DdnK1Y/s1600/DSC04065.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-a6ZpFewYRgw/U_8uCuiUytI/AAAAAAAACBI/Rfdc-DdnK1Y/s1600/DSC04065.JPG" height="400" width="265" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Salim Singh-ki-Haveli, Jaisalmer.</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">After exploring the havelis, we headed back into the fort where we stopped for a cold drink at another roof top cafe, before following the signs to the Jain Temples, an interconnecting complex of seven temples dating from the 12th to 16th centuries. The carvings were beautiful, with every inch of surface looking like honey coloured lace, and you could easily find quiet corners to admire the artisans work in peace with the scent of sandalwood swirling around. It was midday by the time we emerged so we took a slow walk back to the hostel to hide from the heat.</span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-pLkV0jVGims/U_8uILiGzAI/AAAAAAAACBc/KIPkDsckTkk/s1600/DSC04214.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-pLkV0jVGims/U_8uILiGzAI/AAAAAAAACBc/KIPkDsckTkk/s1600/DSC04214.JPG" height="265" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Inside the Jain temples, Jaisalmer.</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">That afternoon we’d booked on to a camel safari. We were picked up in a jeep with another English guy, and drove out into the scrub of the Great Thar Desert. Our first stop was at an oasis, not that pretty but cool to see how little lakes can crop up in the middle of somewhere so incredibly hot and dry (you can go seven years in Jaisalmer with no rain and while we were there, temperatures were in the low 40C’s every day and it wasn’t even the height of summer). Next, we drove to a small fort. Again, it wasn’t really mind blowing and we were more taken by the ruins of an abandoned village lying in it’s shadow. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Finally, we drove to camel point, where our camels and a dutch couple were waiting. We mounted our trusty steeds and strode out, caravan style, into the plains. I thought mine (i’m pretty sure it was called Noggin) was grumpy, but it had nothing on Rhys’s, Sala, the grumpiest camel you could ever imagine. We spent about two hours riding through the desert, spotting deer and mouse/rat things and birds, before we arrived at the sand dunes. There was no one else (one other jeep appeared in the distance later) and there and not a piece of litter in sight. Climbing down from our camels, we wandered through the dunes, taking photos and enjoying the view. It’s not like the Sahara with dunes as far as the eye can see but rather a small patch of dunes among the plains. </span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-KDte5IsX6LQ/U_8uJ-ucRyI/AAAAAAAACBk/RQymzjWLRe8/s1600/DSC04401.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-KDte5IsX6LQ/U_8uJ-ucRyI/AAAAAAAACBk/RQymzjWLRe8/s1600/DSC04401.JPG" height="265" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Our camels being grumpy, Jaisalmer.</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-HHxZpRBFvo0/U_8uKqLJTII/AAAAAAAACBo/ss_tMSpNB6U/s1600/DSC04519.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-HHxZpRBFvo0/U_8uKqLJTII/AAAAAAAACBo/ss_tMSpNB6U/s1600/DSC04519.JPG" height="265" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Me, enjoying a beer on the sand dunes, Jaisalmer.</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-JlNrgeTsJs0/U_8uLE_wJfI/AAAAAAAACBw/zZohBLpgV6s/s1600/DSC04566.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-JlNrgeTsJs0/U_8uLE_wJfI/AAAAAAAACBw/zZohBLpgV6s/s1600/DSC04566.JPG" height="265" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Rhys on the sand dunes, Jaisalmer.</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">We stayed for sunset before dinner cooked on the camp fire, then our jeep took us back to Jaisalmer in time for bed. Many people stay out but we were keen for a good nights sleep in our comfy air con room. Driving home with two Indians and Indian music blaring, dodging cows and goats, was one of those experiences where the memory will always make you smile.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The next morning we were up early again to dodge the sun and walked to the palace within the fort. There was an audio guide so I said goodbye to Rhys at the gate who whizzed around before having baked beans in a roof top cafe while I absorbed the information from the tour. It wasn’t as pretty a building as the havelis and temples from the previous day but was interesting to see. </span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/--hWCy5pc4Is/U_8uGLFfPoI/AAAAAAAACBU/O4ISRWkyI_Y/s1600/DSC04133.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/--hWCy5pc4Is/U_8uGLFfPoI/AAAAAAAACBU/O4ISRWkyI_Y/s1600/DSC04133.JPG" height="265" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The palace within the Jaisalmer fort.</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">We treated ourselves to a relaxed lunch in one of the posher heritage hotels in town before spending some time to cool down in our room, preparing for our evening train. We took a tuktuk to the station and found our seats in the sleeper class carriage, the cheapest carriage with open windows instead of air con and triple bunks. Luckily we had seats together by the window and, for the start of the journey, the train was empty and we whiled away the last hours of sunlight watching the desert landscape roll pass and talking to people who appeared at our window when we pulled in to stations. So far, we have a really good impression of Indian people, they’re very warm and welcoming, they’re keen to speak English and to say hello and they don’t generally want anything in return.</span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-DftGFvfYwqs/U_8uOBwv1GI/AAAAAAAACB8/w1imvaisDTU/s1600/DSC04827.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-DftGFvfYwqs/U_8uOBwv1GI/AAAAAAAACB8/w1imvaisDTU/s1600/DSC04827.JPG" height="265" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Rural train station on route to Jodhpur.</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">As the train passed through more stations we stopped to pick up more and more people until there were at least two people to each bunk and ten of us in our little carriage meant for six. The journey took 6 hours and with very numb bums, we were happy when we pulled in to Jodhpur at around 11pm. Then we had the fun of fighting our way off the train, climbing over whole extended families sprawled in the aisles and then tackling the station platforms that had entire villages camped out on them. In the main building of the station and in the forecourt, it looked like a refugee camp with people curled up asleep in every available space. I have no idea why they were there.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">We found a tuktuk straight away to take us to our hotel and, having warned the hotel we’d be arriving on the train, they’d stayed up late to let us in. The room was fantastic with a four poster bed although the water was off and the first thing you want after a 6 hour non-aircon train journey through the desert, is a shower. We freshened up as best we could with bottled water and fell into bed.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">We had a lay in before breakfast on the roof of our hotel. As we’d arrived in the dark we hadn’t realised just how close we were to the fort. Once we’d climbed to the roof terrace we were faced with the huge, solid walls of the fort towering over us and ate breakfast in awe with a Rudyard Kipling quote from 1899 running through my head “the work of angels, fairies and giants”. The old town of Jodhpur is a 16th century muddle of blue painted cube buildings, earning Jodhpur the name ‘The Blue City’. The views from our roof terrace were spectacular.</span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-4DP_jy-IXB0/U_8uPcgdI8I/AAAAAAAACCE/mzSfAUigGP8/s1600/DSC04895.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-4DP_jy-IXB0/U_8uPcgdI8I/AAAAAAAACCE/mzSfAUigGP8/s1600/DSC04895.JPG" height="265" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The fort, Jodhpur.</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">After breakfast we were excited to wander up to the fort and after a sweaty climb, through fly filled, cobble stone, cow filled, maze like streets, we paid our entry and collected our audio tours. The fort dwarfs the city, with walls that reach up to 120m tall and has a proud history having never fallen to invaders. We wandered a third of the way around before Rhys got fed up with the guide and just wanted to admire the buildings. We took off our headphones and walked around the rest of the site, wishing more of it was open to the public and having photos taken with locals. It didn’t impress us as much as Jaisalmer although the collection of palanquins and royal cradles were cool to see, and we didn’t spend long before heading back to our room to escape the heat.</span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-YaZ_cWIDRHY/U_8uQcIWaVI/AAAAAAAACCM/9dNxqhHa2Yg/s1600/DSC04963.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-YaZ_cWIDRHY/U_8uQcIWaVI/AAAAAAAACCM/9dNxqhHa2Yg/s1600/DSC04963.JPG" height="400" width="265" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The palace within Jodhpur fort.</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-MQcxje5FEao/U_8uU00FdnI/AAAAAAAACCg/swyhoAyRWjU/s1600/DSC04970.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-MQcxje5FEao/U_8uU00FdnI/AAAAAAAACCg/swyhoAyRWjU/s1600/DSC04970.JPG" height="265" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Jodhpur, the Blue City.</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">We ended up staying in our room for longer than we’d intended and only went out again at about 5pm. We walked to the clock tower and through the Sadar Market, enjoying watching the local people going about their business with stacks of brightly coloured fabrics and tables of fresh produce. We stopped for a makhania lassi, a super thick and sweet yoghurt, flavoured with saffron at a little local cafe where we were the main attraction. On the way back to our hotel, we saw a beautiful piece of fabric and spent ages looking through piles and piles of embroidery before buying a throw. We found a roof top restaurant for a delicious vegetarian dinner (yes, Rhys ate, and enjoyed, vegetarian) and listened to the mosques call to prayer bouncing around the old town.</span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-chAnUsaMRL4/U_8uUUsL54I/AAAAAAAACCU/awEAEWGa_KA/s1600/DSC04995.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-chAnUsaMRL4/U_8uUUsL54I/AAAAAAAACCU/awEAEWGa_KA/s1600/DSC04995.JPG" height="400" width="265" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The clock tower, Jodhpur.</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">So far, we love India, it is hot and tiring and can be dirty and smelly but the colours here are just that little bit brighter than anywhere else.</span></div>
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Lucie Kingdomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18320597530474698888noreply@blogger.com0Jodhpur, Rajasthan, India26.2389469 73.02430939999999326.0111289 72.7015859 26.466764899999998 73.347032899999988tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1557459473009731669.post-56613174774624352072014-08-20T00:00:00.000+08:002014-08-22T17:25:44.078+08:00Week 99 - Koh Chang, Bangkok (Thailand)<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">We checked out of our hotel in Bangkok and walked the short distance to the ticket office, near Khao San Road, where our bus was due to collect us for the journey to the ferry pier for Koh Chang. We hadn’t really taken the whole monsoon thing into consideration and chose Koh Chang as it’s part of the Trat Island group, near to Bangkok and the Cambodia border and neither of us had been there before. In August, Koh Chang is supposed to get the worst of the monsoon with 26 days of rain but we’d checked the forecast and decided it was worth a try.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The bus was extremely comfortable and the 6 hour drive passed painlessly. We took the 45 min ferry over to the island and then jumped in the back of a taxi truck to Lonely Beach, the main backpacker village on the island. Koh Chang is the second largest island in Thailand but is nowhere near as built up as the largest, Phuket. The mountainous interior is a national park, filled with jungle hiding waterfalls and wildlife. That’s not to say it isn’t marred by development and as the road passes through each town it’s lined with hotels, restaurants, souvenir shops and travel booths, all blocking the public access to the beach so that actually finding a beach can be a hassle. Lonely Beach is at the far side of the island and is one of the less developed areas. Off the main street, there are a few laneways lined with backpacker haunts, bars and cafes and a short walk from the village is a decent stretch of beach. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Since we have a busy couple of months ahead in India, Nepal and China, have spent a fortune on visas and flights of late and have grown a bit blasé about tropical beaches and snorkeling (particularly when it’s the wrong season) having been to some mind blowing places recently, we decided not to do any trips to the nearby islands and spent five incredibly laid back days, mostly in Lonely Beach.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">We’d reserved a room at Margaritaville, which came with shining reviews, for our first three nights and after arriving in the late afternoon, wandered out for a kebab to tide us over to dinner. We explored the village and walked over to the beach where we had a quick beer on a terrace overlooking the sea. Back at our room we took a couple of hours to relax and recover from the journey before heading out again that night to find a bar that i’m sure is heaving in peak season, but was dead as the majority of the village, where we drank free vodka buckets and watched Jackass.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The electricity tripped out in the middle of the night and the room became stifling. We rose grumpy and sweaty and only left the room to cool down. We didn’t go far and had an early lunch at a restaurant across the street while they fixed the fault. The electric went on and off all day and with it the water, and then when it did work we were only allowed the fan. After complaining, we received a 50% discount for our first night. For dinner we ended up at a Danish/Thai owned place eating mashed potatoes.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">We rented a motorbike the next day to explore the island. First, we headed south to Bang Bao, a fishing village built around a pier that is slowly being overtaken with souvenir shops and handmade ice cream shacks. After a walk along the pier to the light house we bought ice coffees and yoghurts for breakfast from the 7/11 and went to sit on a beach on the south coast to eat them. </span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-g6_3u42lAVc/U_cKmMZnSJI/AAAAAAAAB_k/47ymlJmFa3w/s1600/DSC03488.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-g6_3u42lAVc/U_cKmMZnSJI/AAAAAAAAB_k/47ymlJmFa3w/s1600/DSC03488.JPG" height="400" width="266" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Lighthouse at Bang Bao, Koh Chang.</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/--5VEYVjaG18/U_cKpLGLSdI/AAAAAAAAB_s/9KsCZjHLJn0/s1600/DSC03500.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/--5VEYVjaG18/U_cKpLGLSdI/AAAAAAAAB_s/9KsCZjHLJn0/s1600/DSC03500.JPG" height="266" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">View of Bang Bao, Koh Chang.</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-aWeAW8gUAtw/U_cKqJRUPtI/AAAAAAAAB_0/OJ24pUJBkCA/s1600/DSC03525.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-aWeAW8gUAtw/U_cKqJRUPtI/AAAAAAAAB_0/OJ24pUJBkCA/s1600/DSC03525.JPG" height="265" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">South coast beach, Koh Chang.</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Back on the bike we rode north along the west coast to the ferry port, stopping at a small chinese temple, with the intention of beach hopping back down to Lonely Beach, after lunch in an Irish Bar. Rhys wasn’t feeling great though, so we went straight back to ours without stopping and Rhys settled to watch TV in the room while I went back out on the bike to try and find access to the beach at Hat Kaibae, failing miserably I ended up at the beach in our village where I spent a couple of hours lying in the sun and reading.</span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-56-gWhverYY/U_cK0U-TuBI/AAAAAAAAB_8/cndiHtHtQYg/s1600/DSC03548.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-56-gWhverYY/U_cK0U-TuBI/AAAAAAAAB_8/cndiHtHtQYg/s1600/DSC03548.JPG" height="265" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Lonely Beach, Koh Chang.</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The next day we decided to move to a new bungalow complex. Although ours was brand new and nicely decorated it was expensive for what you got and for cheaper we got a pool, electric that didn’t cut in and out, light bulbs, a fridge and a TV. We grabbed a coffee by the sea before hanging out by the pool until our room was ready. Other than a short walk to the beach to paddle in the sea, we didn’t venture out again for long, spending the time getting everything organised for India and China. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">As the Premier League started that night we headed out to find a bar showing the games. After struggling, we ended up back at the Danish/Thai place where we set up base for the next couple of hours, celebrating Spurs first win of the season.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Our last day in Koh Chang was equally non-eventful. We woke late and continued with the planning while we had decent internet. We found a great cheap little cafe for lunch called Cafe del Sun with a pool table and ended up returning there again for dinner that night.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">All up, we probably didn’t make the most of Koh Chang but it wasn’t really the right time of year to be there. It was more somewhere we could stay, outside of Bangkok, while waiting for our Indian visas. We were incredibly lucky that it only rained over night and apart from intense humidity, we had great weather.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The next morning we left for the return trip to Bangkok. We jumped on a truck taxi back to the port, then a ferry, then a bus and arrived at our hotel just north of Khao San Road in the early evening. We’d found out that our favourite Portuguese, Mario was in town, having not seen him since Ubud in June, and we arranged to meet up with him for dinner and a few drinks. After street food we ended up at our favourite bar, drinking buckets, eating scorpions, adopting French men called Quentin and taking photos wearing stupid hats, oh how we love Khao San, and Mario. </span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-vfyWZ_ep5U8/U_cK99iq4JI/AAAAAAAACAE/QpAT7DM3_NA/s1600/IMG_0662.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-vfyWZ_ep5U8/U_cK99iq4JI/AAAAAAAACAE/QpAT7DM3_NA/s1600/IMG_0662.JPG" height="297" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Drinking buckets on Khao San Road with Mario, Bangkok.</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Having got in late we enjoyed a lay in, in our tiny hotel room (beautifully decorated and great location but no room to swing a cat). We had some final chores to run before leaving Bangkok and jumped in a cab to the main shopping street. We stumbled upon a decent sports store and found me some bargain hiking boots (hiking gear is really really hard to find in Bangkok) before taking a trip to the electrical mall and then the MBK centre. Back at Khao San we chilled in our room before street food dinner. Rhys headed back to the hotel and I did some final shopping on Khao San, getting caught in a tropical storm, before bed.</span></div>
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Lucie Kingdomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18320597530474698888noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1557459473009731669.post-26547212332901481852014-08-13T18:22:00.000+08:002014-08-14T18:32:00.999+08:00Week 98 - Kupang, Ubud, Bangkok (Indonesia, Thailand)<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">We woke early at a loss with how to spend another day in Kupang. We’d already spent time there while waiting for our Timor Leste visa application authorisation and had decided to go straight back to the town from Timor Leste to ensure nothing else could go wrong and we’d make our flight back to Bali. After twiddling our thumbs trying to get the internet to work in our room, we wandered down to the hotel restaurant for coffee overlooking the sea. Kupang is an odd town and is really spread out and although we stayed at a central hotel there was nowhere within a 15 minute walk where we could get breakfast, or lunch. As soon as it got to a reasonable hour we wandered in to town to buy some snacks then set up base at the Lavalon cafe, a magnet for every white person in Kupang that is actually pretty rubbish other than a nice sea view and decent internet. That night we went to the night market near our hotel for a BBQ fish feast. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">We had a lunchtime flight to Bali so booked a cab and headed to the airport after a morning coffee. The flight was almost on time and, after dropping and picking up passengers in Maumere and Waingapu, we arrived in Bali. Our first port of call was at the Nam Air office to follow up on Karen’s lost bag. Having been missing for nearly a month they were providing an appalling service and still hadn’t updated her on progress. We managed to get hold of a managers email address and were told they’d follow up again and get back to us the next day, suggesting a bag had been found and that they’d check to see if it was Karen’s and let us know. Feeling like we might actually have made some progress, we headed outside and jumped in a metre cab to Ubud, back to the hotel we’d stayed at during our previous visit.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">We arrived after dark, took novel hot showers and ate a gourmet meal at the hotel restaurant, enjoying the high level of service and the ambiance. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">We slept well but woke early with a morning of chores ahead of us. After a fantastic relaxed breakfast we rented a scooter and took our laundry to one of the only per kilo places we’d found in town. Next stop was an internet cafe to print out pages and pages of flight tickets, train tickets, hotel bookings and visa forms, preparation for the last four visas we’ll be needing before we get back to Europe. We rode back through the Peliatan area of Ubud to try to find the barbers Rhys went to last time but discovered it closed. Something was happening and people were milling about outside the temples, taking in offerings and socialising.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">On our way back to the hotel we stopped by BARC, one of only two charities in Bali that look after abandoned and mistreated dogs. We’d intended to visit last time we were in Bali and really wanted to check the place out. It was fantastic, the work they do is incredible, although of course they could use more funding and more space, their country sanctuary, for unadoptable dogs to live out their lives in peace, was recently closed by the government for having the wrong permits and they haven’t been able to afford to buy more land. We were shown around and spent about an hour asking questions and giving the dogs some TLC. They’re not all kenneled and run around jumping on you for a hug and a pat. There are plenty with skin problems and more than a handful paralysed from the waist down but with only a few exceptions, they’re all incredibly happy. </span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-_wCKKWa66PM/U-yO0utZtRI/AAAAAAAAB_A/RKP8WPrnG5g/s1600/DSC03446.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-_wCKKWa66PM/U-yO0utZtRI/AAAAAAAAB_A/RKP8WPrnG5g/s1600/DSC03446.JPG" height="400" width="265" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">In my element, cuddling dogs at BARC, Bali.</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">After our trip to BARC we headed back to the hotel to shower and chill before we walked back into town, through the Monkey Forest, to check out the shops. Since Karen’s bag was lost and she was taking home all our Indonesian souvenirs, we really wanted to replace some of our favourite pieces, a Balinese wood carving and some fabrics. After lunch in our favourite cheap wine bar with a cheeky lunchtime carafe of white wine, we walked through the market to find what we were looking for. Rhys wandered home to leave me looking at fabrics and I followed shortly after. We ended up back at the wine bar again for dinner.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The following day was our sightseeing day, to visit all the temples nearby that we’d missed the last time because of my foot. We were up early and headed out on the bike shortly after breakfast. Our first stop was at the 11th century Goa Gajah, the Elephant Cave, a buddhist hermitage with bathing pools. Quite a small sight with bathing pools and a cave that you enter through a carved demons mouth. Set in a nice patch of forest, it would have been lovely to follow the stream down to the next sight, Yeh Pula, a 14th century hermitage, but as we had the bike, we decided to ride to it. Again, as at Goa Gajah, we were among the only people there and it didn’t take long to walk to the carved rock face. The carvings were impressive stretching for 25m and showing, they think, scenes from the life of Krishna but it’s real appeal was its solitude, unusual for Bali.</span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Tt_Tewsvj0M/U-yOciWPt2I/AAAAAAAAB-Q/Flm_oJOgXHA/s1600/DSC03109.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Tt_Tewsvj0M/U-yOciWPt2I/AAAAAAAAB-Q/Flm_oJOgXHA/s1600/DSC03109.JPG" height="265" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Rhys at Goa Gajah, standing in the devils mouth, Bedulu.</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-id7DAp9k5zs/U-yOnP4UnXI/AAAAAAAAB-Y/f32Py65Abkg/s1600/DSC03152.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-id7DAp9k5zs/U-yOnP4UnXI/AAAAAAAAB-Y/f32Py65Abkg/s1600/DSC03152.JPG" height="265" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Me at Yeh Pula, Bedulu.</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Back on the bike we rode to our first temple of the day, Pura Samaun Tiga. We nearly didn’t go in as there was a ceremony in the building next door and we’d pulled up at a side entrance and didn’t think there was much to the temple. As Rhys didn’t have a sarong, I wandered in and discovered the main entrance, calling Rhys over to come in to explore. The temple was beautiful. As with most Balinese temple complexes there were a series of courtyards with grand entry ways ascending up the side of the hill. We wandered around soaking in the atmosphere and marveling at the carvings. Although quite modern, having been rebuilt after the 1917 earthquake, it was majestic.</span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-RmD4DWWeWpI/U-yOu9pOn8I/AAAAAAAAB-o/tJalKs2kapg/s1600/DSC03188.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-RmD4DWWeWpI/U-yOu9pOn8I/AAAAAAAAB-o/tJalKs2kapg/s1600/DSC03188.JPG" height="265" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Rhys at the entrance to Pura Samuan Tiga, Bedulu.</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">After our three stops in Bedulu, we continued to Pejeng only a short distance up the road. We had three temples to see in Pejeng, Pura Kebo Edan (Crazy Buffalo Temple), Pura Pusering Jagat and Pura Penataran Sasih. The first was by far our favourite. Although only small, we arrived just as they were preparing for a full moon festival to start that afternoon and the temple was filled with stacks and stacks of perfectly arranged, brightly coloured food offerings, including fruit, soft drink cans, cakes, whole cooked chickens and fish. While the women were busy preparing and making the offerings, the men were sitting outside surrounded by piles and piles of pork from a 300kg pig that had been slaughtered that morning, that they were chopping up and skewing to make into satay. Everyone was so happy and we were invited to return later to see the parade. </span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-GqiEJ_nCfvE/U-yOqGUw0yI/AAAAAAAAB-g/RwgdymZuhfo/s1600/DSC03218.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-GqiEJ_nCfvE/U-yOqGUw0yI/AAAAAAAAB-g/RwgdymZuhfo/s1600/DSC03218.JPG" height="400" width="265" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Offerings stacked at Pura Kebo Edan, Pejeng.</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-WL4Hxk4H1q4/U-yOw5vreWI/AAAAAAAAB-w/pk6NDh476uY/s1600/DSC03235.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-WL4Hxk4H1q4/U-yOw5vreWI/AAAAAAAAB-w/pk6NDh476uY/s1600/DSC03235.JPG" height="265" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Making satay, men outside Pura Kebo Edan, Pejeng.</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">After Pejeng, we had one more stop to make and followed the road north to Tampaksiring to call in at Gunung Kawi, one of the most important ancient sites in Bali. The tour buses had already arrived but as the site was so big it didn’t feel too crowded. We donned our sarongs, paid our entrance fee and continued to walk down the stairs into the vine strewn, tropical valley where we were met by two sheer cliff faces, across the river from each other, carved with rows of candis (shrines) in 8m high niches. It was an impressive sight. Each one of the 10 candi is believed to be a memorial to a member of the 11th-century Balinese royalty, but little is known for certain.</span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-EHKd6JrJAq8/U-yOzvxpzgI/AAAAAAAAB-4/OiKluDtVNso/s1600/DSC03326.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-EHKd6JrJAq8/U-yOzvxpzgI/AAAAAAAAB-4/OiKluDtVNso/s1600/DSC03326.JPG" height="265" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The rice terraces at Gunung Kawi, Tampaksiring.</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-9AoQ7vTfRyE/U-yO1_V2JQI/AAAAAAAAB_I/dXgjmtAKUS0/s1600/DSC03377.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-9AoQ7vTfRyE/U-yO1_V2JQI/AAAAAAAAB_I/dXgjmtAKUS0/s1600/DSC03377.JPG" height="400" width="265" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Rhys posing in front of some of the candi, Gunung Kawi, Tampaksiring.</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">After driving the back roads and stopping for some rice paddy photo opportunities, our sightseeing was done and we joined the traffic heading back to Ubud. We made a quick stop at BARC again to donate some cuddles, wishing we’d known about it so we could have volunteered there properly for a couple of days. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">We stopped at a hiking gear shop to start buying supplies for Nepal and between there and the hotel, I managed to lose our key. As we’d already returned the bike when we discovered the fact, Rhys ended up walking back to the shop to check I hadn’t left it there while I packed our bags ready to leave the following day. The rest of our afternoon was spent at the hotel relaxing, hiding from the downpours that are part and parcel of visiting Indonesia at the start of the monsoon season. The rain didn’t last long though and we popped out to finish buying our replacement souvenirs and for dinner at a liittle restaurant in Nyuhkuning, the village we stay in in Ubud, just south of the town proper.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">We were sad to leave Ubud the next day and as always, could have spent longer there. It might be extremely touristy but it’s incredibly easy to leave the hordes behind and get out into the countryside. Driving around the backstreets and through the nearby villages you see that it’s not all put on for show, the men really do wear sarongs and bandanas, buildings are decorated with stunningly intricate carvings and there are beautiful shrines peaking over walls absolutely everywhere. I wish we had more photos to show what it was like but I think you have to go to really appreciate it.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">We had a taxi booked to take us to the airport for our flight to Bangkok and arrived in plenty of time for a chilled airport experience. Our flight landed on time and other than confusion over which airport we were actually at when we landed (Bangkok has two airports, one a train ride from the centre and one a bus), we made it to our hotel, a short walk north of Khao San Road, backpacker central. As it was late by the time we arrived we dropped our bags and wandered out for delicious, cheap, pork and rice street food before heading down to Khao San. We didn’t stay for long and after walking a lap of the block, went back to bed.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The next day was an early start to head to the agency that the Indian Embassy has assigned with visa applications. We jumped in a cab only to find out from the driver there was a 4 day public holiday so we were nervous that the agency wouldn’t even be open. Then, just as we got close, I realised we hadn’t packed the wallet. The cab turned around and we went back to the hotel, then back to the agency across town, grateful at least that the national holiday meant the roads were quiet. Luckily the agency was open and was extremely efficient, we lodged our applications in about 30 minutes with the only issue being that the holiday meant the embassy was closed for 2 days. Visas should take 6-8 working days and we’d already booked a flight to Deli on day 9 which, with the closure, now became day 7. So fingers crossed we get lucky otherwise we’ll be booking new flights.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">After the agency we jumped on a train to take us to an electronics shopping mall to get Rhys’s laptop fixed again. Another day, another computer repair. We finally found a new keyboard that wasn’t quite right but would do the job, before walking around the corner to Centre World, the biggest shopping centre in Thailand, with a severe lack of maps or any useful signage. Eventually we found a little area of sports shops selling a handful of pairs of expensive hiking boots and agreed we’d come back if we couldn’t find any elsewhere. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Back at the hotel we had a couple of hours to do research for China and India before heading back to Khao San for street food and, of course, buckets. We got talking to an Irish couple of the table next to us and as the night went on were joined by more and more people. It was a great night and after eating a scorpion, buying rude bracelets and stopping at another bar to dance in the street on the way home, we’d had your typical night out on Khao San and were ready for bed (after Rhys had a midnight swim at the hotel that is).</span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-eNL_qQUR2Ro/U-yObNBax1I/AAAAAAAAB-I/HIZ2VzUK0hQ/s1600/20140811_223439.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-eNL_qQUR2Ro/U-yObNBax1I/AAAAAAAAB-I/HIZ2VzUK0hQ/s1600/20140811_223439.jpg" height="400" width="300" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Rhys enjoying the highlights of Khao San Road, Bangkok.</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">We were late waking the next day but pulled ourselves together for yet more shopping, this time at the MBK Centre which is more like market stalls inside selling everything under the sun, all of them fakes. We got long johns for Nepal and some other bits before Rhys spied a smart fake Omega watch that he instantly fell in love with and had to have. It looks identical to the real one but it about 99% cheaper.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Back at the hotel, we had some down time while the monsoon rains swept in before more street food for dinner. We did a quick lap of Khao San and booked a bus ticket to get us to Koh Chang the following day, before deciding to call it a night.</span></div>
Lucie Kingdomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18320597530474698888noreply@blogger.com0Bangkok, Thailand13.7278956 100.5241234999999713.2342916 99.878676499999969 14.2214996 101.16957049999998tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1557459473009731669.post-87066467385579872102014-08-06T00:00:00.000+08:002014-08-06T11:07:56.042+08:00Week 97 - Atauro Island, Dili, Kupang (Timor Leste, Indonesia)<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">We’d arranged for a pack lunch for our first full day on Atauro Island and were presented with a feast that we spooned in to tupperware boxes to take with us on our hike to Adara. Along with Chris and Michelle and armed with a hand drawn map, we headed out to start the walk which would take us over the central mountainous spine of the island and down to a beach on the other side where we’d heard there was good snorkeling.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">From Barry’s, where we were staying, we turned off the main coast road and headed in land. The road became progressively more rugged and broken as it wound up the mountain, passable only by 4WD, but provided us fantastic views of the coast below. Surrounded by the sound of birds and good company we continued, passed the turn off to Makadade, a village on the ridge, until we reached a small concrete bridge. Here, we joined a footpath that ran through the forest to the small village of Arlo, spotting flocks of parakeets and doves along the way. Once in Arlo, surrounded by papaya and casava plantations, a kind man pointed us in the right direction to continue, along the edge of the village, towards the coast. We were starting to tire by this point and were faced with a steep rock face that we scrambled down to reach the flat coastal plain. Another 45 minutes walking parallel to the beach and we arrived at Mario’s place. Mario works at Barry’s and had provided us with the map that morning. We’d expected the walk to take a little over 2.5 hours, it took 3.75 hours. <table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-aTI54oF0T18/U-GYoGt1mnI/AAAAAAAAB9E/RZdLzMT716M/s1600/DSC02723.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-aTI54oF0T18/U-GYoGt1mnI/AAAAAAAAB9E/RZdLzMT716M/s1600/DSC02723.JPG" height="265" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">View from the ridge, Atauro Island.</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Rhys, Michelle and Chris walking along the beach to Adara, Atauro Island.</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">We were warmly welcomed and settled at a table to enjoy our picnic, feeding the left overs to a skinny dog on the beach, before doning our snorkel gear and wading in. The wind was picking up and it was a little choppy but we stayed out for an hour or so, swimming out to the drop off and meandering back through some decent coral. It was hard to keep track of where everyone was with the waves but was still enjoyable and Rhys saw some kind of sea spider and a couple of lobsters. </span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A lovely spot for a picnic, Mario's Place, Adara, Atauro Island.</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">By the time we’d swam back to shore, it was time to pack up and leave to give ourselves time to make it back before dark. We asked Mario’s mum to call to arrange a car to pick us up at the concrete bridge (there are no roads on the west side of the island) and after buying her credit, we still weren’t too sure whether the car would be there or not. Faced with the thought that we might end up walking all the way back, we set out. Lunch and a swim had revived us and we covered the ground quicker than on the way over and made it to the bridge in a little under 2 hours. The truck turned up and happily we jumped in for the ride back down the mountain to Beloi.</span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-x-2BofdhJ3A/U-GY25gFRyI/AAAAAAAAB9Y/Fqo510oyRLk/s1600/DSC02832.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-x-2BofdhJ3A/U-GY25gFRyI/AAAAAAAAB9Y/Fqo510oyRLk/s1600/DSC02832.JPG" height="266" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Coastal plain on the West coast of Atauro Island.</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Chris and Michelle, tired and waiting for the truck, Atauro Island.</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">We started the next day with more snorkeling, back near the ferry pier in Beloi. Me and Rhys both thought the coral and fish were superior on this side of the island to the previous day and spotted another couple of lobsters including a pink and blue one and a Bicolour Parrotfish. We sheltered from the midday heat by our tent, reading and watching TV, before heading out again with Chris and Michelle after lunch, on a little outrigger boat that would take us to the outer reef. By then, the clouds had started drifting in, the tide was in and the wind had picked up so visibility wasn’t as good as it had been in the morning. Just as we decided to call it a day and feeling chilled through, Michelle spotted a porcupine fish. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Again, the next stay started with snorkeling by the pier in Beloi. The tide was out so we floated around less than a metre above the coral and saw a few smaller, brightly coloured fish we hadn’t seen before. After checking them out in one of the books in the communal area at the lodge, we headed to our tent to relax. Leaving Rhys to watch a film I wandered along the beach retaking some photos i’d taken the previous day with the camera settings all wrong, a shame as i’d seen a couple of kids spear fishing by the pier catch a small octopus.</span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-6oeHb3uajt0/U-GZGZUMYKI/AAAAAAAAB9g/pKfrfLphVYs/s1600/DSC02952.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-6oeHb3uajt0/U-GZGZUMYKI/AAAAAAAAB9g/pKfrfLphVYs/s1600/DSC02952.JPG" height="265" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">View of Beloi beach, Atauro Island.</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">We had thought to hire bicycles for the afternoon but the sun was hot and the wind had died down. We’d expected bad weather to be coming in and as a result the water taxi wasn’t running, but nothing materialised. Instead, after saying goodbye to Chris and Michelle who flew the 12 minutes back to Dili in a little 8 seater propellor plane, we wandered north towards Pala. We didn’t make it to the village and turned back before we lost the light. The road was new and incredibly dusty but worth the walk to enjoy the sweeping views of the ocean.</span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-h_Ehb2kqbc0/U-GZhGOBNcI/AAAAAAAAB9w/1GoiMHQHQbo/s1600/DSC03047.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-h_Ehb2kqbc0/U-GZhGOBNcI/AAAAAAAAB9w/1GoiMHQHQbo/s1600/DSC03047.JPG" height="265" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">View back towards Beloi on the road north, Atauro Island.</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-TtXkN-HLHkQ/U-GZkBOsi1I/AAAAAAAAB90/B1T4oHvPCfw/s1600/DSC03053.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-TtXkN-HLHkQ/U-GZkBOsi1I/AAAAAAAAB90/B1T4oHvPCfw/s1600/DSC03053.JPG" height="265" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">View of the Atauro coast line.</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">We’d planned to take the weekly ferry back to the mainland in the afternoon of the following day. We woke late and wandered over to the common area for a relaxed breakfast only to discover the ferry wasn’t running as a generator had broken down and the water taxi was due to leave in the next couple of minutes. We rushed back to the tent and threw our stuff back in our bags to make the boat. It cost US$45, significantly more than the US$5 the ferry would have cost. The ride back was smoother than on the crossing over to Atauro.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Once back in Dili we decided to walk from the waterfront back to the hostel where we checked in before heading out to try to book bus tickets back to Kupang in Indonesia. Expecting no issues as we weren’t leaving for another 3 days, we took a mikrolet across town only to find out all three buses were already fully booked. Worried and not wanting to waste even more time in Timor Leste, we ran back across town to another company that runs the route to West Timor only to find the office was closed. Starting to think that we’d never be able to leave the country we sulked back to the hostel for a couple of hours while we waited for the office to reopen in the afternoon. Luckily we managed to get tickets for the bus.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">We spent the rest of the afternoon at the Timor Plaza Mall using the internet and drinking coffee before heading back to the hostel for carton wine and cheap Indian. The hostel, being the only backpacker option in town, attracts a good crowd and has a great communal area where you can sit and swap travel stories and gripes. We could’ve traveled more in Timor Leste while waiting for our visas but just haven’t heard about anywhere worth the hassle, Mount Ramaleu, for example, near Maubisse, sounds like a lovely walk but there’s no transport to get back and it involves a 28km walk and then Tutula, the beach on the Eastern tip of the country is 8km from the nearest bus stop. It feels like to actually see this place you need your own transport but hiring vehicles or motorbikes is expensive, you’re talking US$35 a day for a bike. And so, we’ve ended up sitting in Dili, just waiting. I’m sure there are things to see in Dili but we’ve given up and the only museum we were interested in, the Resistance Museum, was closed Sunday and Monday, the two days we actually had time to explore.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">As we didn’t get to bed until late on Saturday night, we slept in on Sunday and other than a quick trip to Burger King for lunch, chilled at the hostel for the most of the day. Disappointed to find the museum closed, we walked along the waterfront promenade and found some fruit stalls and a decent supermarket before jumping in a taxi back to the hostel visiting our favourite Indian again for dinner.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">We sat around the hostel on Monday morning counting down the hours until we could collect our passports from the Indonesian embassy. Quite a few people had been waiting to lodge their applications and were turned away that morning after waiting 5 hours because there’s a limited number processed each day and the quota had been reached. Thankfully, our passports were sitting there waiting when we got there, shiny new Indonesian visa in place. I’ve never been so happy that we can leave a country and went back to the hostel to pack our bags in anticipation. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">I popped out quickly to check out some fabrics at the Tais market nearby but decided it was a little expensive and wandered back to watch TV and try to use the horrendously slow internet in the hostel. For dinner we bought some roadside roast chicken to have with salad and some bread at the hostel, we’d thought to go to the cinema to waste some time but it all seemed too much like hard work to get a night key as reception wouldn’t be open in the morning before we left to get our deposit back.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">We had to check in for our bus back to Kupang in Indonesia at 8am and after spending the last of our Timorese coins in the petrol station, we jumped in a cab to the depot. After an hour of waiting around, they finally managed to get everyone organised and all the luggage packed and we set off for the bumpy journey to the border. Our driver was far better this time round and we got given face masks for the dust. We stamped out of Timor Leste and went to join the masses to stamp into Indonesia. After 20 minutes of pushing we finally made it to the front to have our bags checked through customs and register with the police before we got back on the bus to continue the journey to Kupang. I won’t bore you with the details since I already wrote about the journey in reverse last week. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">We arrived in Kupang after dark, after a 14 hour journey and checked back into the same hotel we always end up at on the waterfront where, after tracking down the source of a high pitched squeal in the room opposite ours, we settled in for a good nights sleep.</span></div>
Lucie Kingdomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18320597530474698888noreply@blogger.com0Díli, Timor-Leste-8.5568557 125.56031430000007-8.6824712 125.39895280000007 -8.4312402 125.72167580000007tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1557459473009731669.post-85891648226569565002014-07-30T00:00:00.000+08:002014-08-02T15:01:06.935+08:00Week 96 - Kupang, Dili, Baucau, Atauro (Indonesia, Timor Leste)<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The Timor Tour and Travel minibus arrived on time to collect us at our hotel in Kupang at 5am. After 30 minutes of driving around town picking more people up, we ended up at their depot where we had to change buses. We dozed on and off for the first couple of hours until we reached Soe where we had a quick break before continuing north through Niki-Niki, Kefa and Atambua. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">As soon as we reached Soe, we started noticing the traditional lopo huts, circular thatched roofs that reach the floor with only a small arch for the door. The government has deemed the houses unhealthy and built new modern square concrete buildings for the Dawan people, who have then built new lopo behind them to live in. It was market day in Niki-Niki and a real shame we couldn’t stop to explore, there were hundreds of people in traditional ikats (sarongs) buying their weekly vegetables and chickens crowding around the road side.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">After another bus change in Atambua, we arrived at the border where we stamped out of Indonesia and climbed back on the bus for the short ride, over a bridge, to the Timor Leste border control. The Timor Leste side was far more modern and we were stamped and through in no time with our Visa Application Authorisation getting us our Visa on Arrival with no problem.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Timor Leste is the youngest country in South East Asia and has had a very turbulent history. A Portuguese colony until 1974, the country then went to war with Indonesia who invaded as they feared a left leaning government in Timor Leste would bring communism to their door. After Soeharto’s resignation in 1998, the new Indonesian president announced a referendum for independence and after terror attacks by military backed militia groups, the UN stepped in to help with the election. In 1999 the vote took place with a majority of 78.5% voting for independence. Killings continued with Indonesian forces on a rampage and the UN was attacked and forced to evacuate. Australia stepped in to help calm the situation and governance was handed back to Timor Leste in 2002.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Another bus change and we continued for 2.5 hours to Dili. Having had an easy journey so far, and having traveled for 10.5 hours already, the road from the border to the capital was surely built to test us. We were jiggled and jostled and tenderised with our driver hitting all the pot holes at break neck speed and we inhaled more dust than I care to think about. The road had been pretty scenic, following the coast and the sunset was beautiful but we’d had little opportunity to really enjoy it. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The bus dropped us at our hostel, the only real backpacker option in Dili and after checking in we began asking around about Indonesian visa applications, only to learn that the embassy would be closed the following week for Ramadan, not leaving us enough time to get our visas before it closed. Our intentions of getting back to Indonesia to see some of Sumba before flying back to Ubud went out the window. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">As we didn’t have the right passport photos, with a red background, we thought we’d try and get them done that night to speed things up in the morning. We heard there was a photo shop at the Timor Plaza Mall, on the outskirts of the city and that it shut at 7pm. Thinking we had 30 minutes, we jumped in a cab and rushed over there only to find everywhere was closed. We hadn’t realised we’d changed time zones and hadn’t wound our watches forward an hour. Tired from the days journey and getting grouchy, we tried to hail a taxi to take us back to the hostel. Failing that, we flagged a bemo (called a mikrolet in Timor Leste). The van was full of tiny kids and when we got out they waved us away when we tried to pay, a lovely end to a stressful day, although we think we gatecrashed someones family day out.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">For dinner we walked across the road to an Indian restaurant that we thought would just make do as we didn’t have the energy to walk further. It turned out to be a magnificent meal, the best Indian we’ve had in a long time and one that wouldn’t be out of place in London.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">We woke early the next day to make it to the Indonesian Embassy. After getting slightly lost and walking about a kilometre further than necessary, we finally found the right building and joined the few people already there, to wait for it to open. We were expecting to be given a number before dashing off to get the photos done and returning later to have our applications processed. Instead, after filling out the form, we were ushered inside to sit on a bench in a queue. We finally got our point across about still needing photos and the security guard let us out with promises that we could come back. The embassy only processes a certain number of visas a day and you have to get there early in order to be one of those.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">We jumped in a taxi back to the mall and had another 20 minutes wait outside for the photo shop to open. We were then told we had 45 minutes to wait for them to be printed. Rhys popped in to a couple of travel agencies to see how much it would cost to fly back into Indonesia, to get a Visa on Arrival rather than waiting for the embassy to process our overland visas, but we soon found out it was way too expensive. After buying some bread and beans in the supermarket preempting lunch at the hostel, our photos were ready. We jumped straight back in a taxi to the embassy and luckily were allowed back through the gate to lodge our applications. At this point, we were still hopeful our visas might be processed for collection the following day. Then, when we handed over the US$50 each, we were told they’d be ready on the 4th August, 11 days away. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Cursing our timing we walked back to the hostel a bit deflated, not helped by the grumpy owner who was very unhelpful and the girl who worked there who walked away mid sentence when we tried to sort out our room bookings. We didn’t really want to spend so long in Timor Leste and were keen to get back into Indonesia. Over lunch we studied Lonely Planet and spoke to a few other people who were waiting for their visas and formulated a plan. We would leave Dilli and visit Baucau and Atauro while we waited. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">We decided to head back to the mall to book our flight from Kupang to Bali, realising we were just going to have to skip Sumba and lose the money we’d spent on the flight from Sumba to Bali. The airline we were hoping to fly with had an office at the mall but their flight was 50% more expensive than booking with them online so we sat in the internet shop to book. Having had another trying day we treated ourselves to a carton of cheap wine and jumped in a bemo back to the hostel. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The Indian had been so good the previous day we ate there again then headed back to the hostel where we chatted with a Welsh/French couple, Darren and Olivier, who we’d met earlier and Kelly who was trying to do research on fair trade coffee for her MA. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Dili is a strange city, for a capital it’s pretty small and is a real mix of modern and run down with tarmac main roads leading to huge embassy buildings, crisscrossed with dusty dirt tracks lined with shacks. A lot of the prime beach front land seems to taken up by embassies and everywhere you look you see westerners who obviously work at the embassies and NGOs, roaring around in brand new white SUVs. It’s a bit unfair to say we didn’t like it as we didn’t really see much of it but our first impressions were that it was a bit bland. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">After breakfast the next day we put our big bags in storage and hailed a cab to take us to the bus terminal for Baucau. It was only US$2 more than using bemos and far easier and quicker. When we arrived at the terminal, a cross roads lined with shacks selling water and snacks, a group of about ten men descended on us asking us where we were going and trying to herd us onto their buses. We chose the bus that still had a couple of seats left and squeezed in, the seats were for some unknown reason, wet. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Shortly after, music with my favourite heart palpitation bass started and we wound our way along the coast towards Baucau. It was a little squashy on the back row but we had a window and we arrived 20 minutes early. The scenery was beautiful with rice paddies and rugged mountains on one side and the sea on the other, passing by traditional villages and groups of buffalo bathing in mud puddles.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">We got off the bus at what we thought was the end of the line, only to find out we should have stayed on the bus to get to Baucau old town. Luckily, a guy asked us where we were going and shouted for the bus to stop so we could climb back on board. We were the last people to get off the bus and they dropped us at the Pousada, once a place of torture but now a posh hotel. We checked a few guesthouses before deciding to stay at Melita where there was a seating area with views out to sea.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">We didn’t waste any time before heading out for lunch, to a Portuguese restaurant with an outdoor terrace before returning to our room to chill and play with the guesthouse dogs. Baucau old town is a few kilometres from the Indonesian built new town and has a bedraggled Portuguese feel to it with crumbling old colonial buildings and huge banyan trees providing shady resting points. We were full from lunch and decided against going out again for dinner, enjoying a pop mie (pot noodle) and playing cards on the guesthouse veranda instead.</span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-VLsn8aTJ2nc/U9yL4vCJsLI/AAAAAAAAB8Q/PhGhMOBflTg/s1600/DSC02645.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-VLsn8aTJ2nc/U9yL4vCJsLI/AAAAAAAAB8Q/PhGhMOBflTg/s1600/DSC02645.JPG" height="400" width="265" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Banyan tree shadowing the road, Baucau.</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">We had a well needed lay in the next day, only waking around 10am. We decided to head out to the beach and began the 5km walk. After asking a few people for directions and getting mixed responses we ended up asking in the Pousada who pointed us the right way. We started walking and about a kilometre down the road we came to a junction and guessed we must have to go straight. We walked for about another kilometre, with the road getting progressively worse and turning into a dusty, rutted track. Although the locals seemed to be saying we could get to the beach that way, we decided to walk back to the junction, we don’t speak Tetun or Portuguese and half the time we can’t even work out what language is being spoked. Portuguese is the official language but only the older generation seem to use it, then there are people speaking Bahasa Indonesian, then Tetun and then there are another 5 or 6 different tribal dialects. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Back at the junction we took the other road and continued to walk. We asked a few people who seemed to say we were going the right way and the road was more robust than the path we’d taken first. We followed it through a couple of villages to the sea, having a bit of a scare first when a coconut fell and nearly hit us and then straight after, a snake fell out of a tree and landed a couple of metres in front of us. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The response to white people is very different here to Indonesia, the older generations are friendly but the younger people can be rude and it puts you on edge, for instance, since we left Dili, i’ve had a boy intentionally jump in a muddy puddle to soak me, Rhys has been sworn at, a little girl slapped me on the back of my legs and a group of 4/5 year olds blocked our path and showed us knives asking for money. Then there are the other kids who blow you kisses and shout ‘I love you’ as you walk past, all up we felt a little unwelcome.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Once at the beach we were unimpressed. There’s nothing there apart from one little bungalow with rooms for rent and a few local houses. No where to buy food or drinks and no where to sit. The tide was in and the beach itself was overrated, Lonely Planet describes it as one of the nicest beaches in South East Asia, I don’t know where the writer has been but he’s really missing out if he thinks Wata B’oo is one of the nicest beaches. </span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-UtODC6yFlKc/U9yL4Ju9GsI/AAAAAAAAB8I/8H_ffx3Si9A/s1600/DSC02650.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-UtODC6yFlKc/U9yL4Ju9GsI/AAAAAAAAB8I/8H_ffx3Si9A/s1600/DSC02650.JPG" height="265" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Wata B'oo beach, Baucau.</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">As the tide was in and there was no where to sit we decided against sticking around and instead went to wait by the road for a mikrolet to take us back into town. There isn’t a timetable and they seemed to go every hour but we had no idea how long we had to wait and made ourselves comfortable on a log. We’d been waiting for around half an hour when a European Commission SUV pulled up and offered us a lift. We jumped in the back and in no time were back in town.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">After a slight misunderstanding and having bought a huge bag of about 20 extra chewy doughnuts for US$1, we spent the rest of the day at the guesthouse, watching TV, playing with the dogs and reading on the veranda before it was time for dinner.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">After a lazy start the next day, we wandered into the town to see if we could find an alternative restaurant, having eaten at the Portuguese place twice. Finding one with another outdoor area, we decided on an early lunch before walking down to the public swimming pool. The pool is run by the Pousada and is clean and surrounded by a flower garden. When we arrived it was quiet and after swimming a few lengths we chilled on the concrete loungers in the sun. Then more and more local kids turned up, squealing and shouting, ruining the atmosphere a little so we ended up back at the guesthouse with a bag of mandarins, a little bored and counting down the minutes until we could go for dinner. </span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-UqlsmOO2er4/U9yL4uxI-5I/AAAAAAAAB8M/gYvb35KsKaY/s1600/DSC02669.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-UqlsmOO2er4/U9yL4uxI-5I/AAAAAAAAB8M/gYvb35KsKaY/s1600/DSC02669.JPG" height="265" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Fruit and vegetables for sale in Baucau.</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">We were woken the next day by the kids at the guesthouse shouting outside our room, the whole time we were there we felt a little in the way and unwelcome and were happy it was time to leave. We caught a mikrolet to the bus terminal in the new town and jumped straight on a bus back to Dili, strangely enough, the same bus we’d caught on the way over. We had better seats and despite the blaring music, the journey went smoothly and we arrived back in a little under 3 hours. From the bus terminal we grabbed a taxi to our hostel where we checked into the dorm for a night.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">As always, we had a few chores to run and headed out to the Timor Plaza where, after a Burger King, we planted ourselves in a coffee shop for our first decent coffee in a long time and use of the internet. Darren and Olivier, who we’d met during our first stay at the hostel returned from their excursion to Maubisse and we ended up in the Indian across the road swapping notes and travel stories.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">We’d booked a water taxi for the following morning to take us to Atauro Island, 36km and a couple of hours from Dili, over a trench, 3km deep in parts. We were joined by Chris, a Canadian living in Java and Michelle from Switzerland. The boat trip started out relatively calmly but as we drew further from Dili the sea became rougher and by the time we pulled in to Beloi we were soaked and the captain had been sick off the back of the boat.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Luckily there was room available at Barry’s, the most popular place to stay on the island, an Ecolodge on the beach. We checked in to a tent, a bit more luxurious than it sounds, right on the beach on a stilted platform with thatched roof and proper mattresses. </span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-CCKE67XVGzg/U9yL67gUUsI/AAAAAAAAB8s/vBXNFq0xUcc/s1600/DSC03067.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-CCKE67XVGzg/U9yL67gUUsI/AAAAAAAAB8s/vBXNFq0xUcc/s1600/DSC03067.JPG" height="265" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Our tent at Barry's Ecolodge, Atauro.</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The island itself is fairly small, 25km long and 9 km wide, with a mountainous spine of limestone and volcanic rock, the highest peak reaching 995m. Historically, due to it’s isolation, the island was used by both the Portuguese and the Indonesians as a place of exile and was were the Portuguese fled to in 1975 for safety. Now the island is home to mostly subsistence fisherman and farmers.</span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-A4xm8IPpPv4/U9yL5jyWorI/AAAAAAAAB8g/01CPyg19XEo/s1600/DSC02959.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-A4xm8IPpPv4/U9yL5jyWorI/AAAAAAAAB8g/01CPyg19XEo/s1600/DSC02959.JPG" height="265" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The beach at Beloi on Atauro.</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">We arranged to meet Chris and Michelle after lunch and headed to the pier to snorkel. The wind was picking up and the waves were a bit choppy but we still spotted lobsters and some other interesting little fish we hadn’t seen before. After buffet dinner (meals are included at Barry’s) we turned in for an early night to lay in our tent listening to the wind, the waves and gazing at the stars though our mosquito net.</span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-BknqbQPCfhU/U9yL6fc1FrI/AAAAAAAAB8o/LI_OmIoiMj0/s1600/DSC02986.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-BknqbQPCfhU/U9yL6fc1FrI/AAAAAAAAB8o/LI_OmIoiMj0/s1600/DSC02986.JPG" height="265" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">View of Beloi from the pier, Atauro.</td></tr>
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Lucie Kingdomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18320597530474698888noreply@blogger.com4Atauro, Timor-Leste-8.2368705 125.57672869999999-8.48832 125.2540052 -7.9854210000000005 125.89945219999998tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1557459473009731669.post-54391306171897306212014-07-23T00:00:00.000+08:002014-07-28T13:22:12.535+08:00Week 95 - Kupang, Rote (Indonesia)<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">We woke to the alarm and took a taxi to the Timor Leste (East Timor) consulate where we needed to apply for a visa application authorisation letter, confusingly, not the visa itself but a letter that would let us apply for a visa at the overland border crossing. We were the first to arrive at the consulate on the outskirts of town and after checking in, realised that they only had a handful of visitors each day. We collected our application forms and realised we’d come completely unprepared and didn’t have the necessary bank statements and flight confirmations. We ended up walking miles to the nearest internet cafe, possibly the slowest internet cafe in the whole of Asia before jumping in a bemo back to the consulate to get out applications in before the deadline. </span></div>
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As we didn’t know what bemo would take us back to our hotel we ended up walking miles again to get to the ocean road where we finally took a bemo back to our room. As we still had plenty of chores to do, we ended up walking to Lavalon, a small bar on the water, to use the internet. Back in our room we made the most of having a flat screen TV and ended up having noodles in the room for dinner.</div>
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Another alarm woke us the following day. This time we jumped in a taxi to Tenoa Terminal where the ferries to Rote Island left from. We joined the surge of people pushing through the gates and bought tickets for the fast boat. Our allocated seats were right in front of the air con and it was so cold we ended up sitting up on deck in the sun for the short 2 hour trip to the island. As soon as we drew near it looked like paradise with the coast lined with stretches of white sand. </div>
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Off the boat, we chartered a bemo along with two other guys heading to Nemberala, the only real tourist base on the island. The drive took a bumpy hour before we arrived at Anugerah Surf and Dive Resort where we’d booked a room. Nemberala itself is a small village with one main dusty road running parallel with a beautiful white sand beach hemmed in by a stretch of reef where the waves barrel in creating a world renowned surf break. There are a number of resorts lining the sand, all catering for surfers or divers and all ‘all inclusive’ and there are hardly any amenities in the village outside of the resorts. It seemed to be quite unusual for non-surfers, non-divers like us to turn up, I have no idea why, the island is a paradise, palm tree fringed white sand beaches, deserted coves, wonderfully friendly locals and windswept vistas.</div>
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Our resort was fantastic, set back from the beach, a row of maybe fifteen bungalows facing a small restaurant where we enjoyed delicious Indonesian food three times a day, with a lovely pool, palm trees, hammocks and puppies and the best thing was no one was snobby unlike if you go to a dive hostel and don’t dive, the surfers at our resort were welcoming (albeit confused how we’d come to be there). </div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/--EdLlUZDSvI/U9XawqfSL4I/AAAAAAAAB60/pDYgMcpsBIc/s1600/DSC01548.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/--EdLlUZDSvI/U9XawqfSL4I/AAAAAAAAB60/pDYgMcpsBIc/s1600/DSC01548.JPG" height="400" width="265" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Rhys enjoying the pool at Anugeragh, Rote.</td></tr>
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After lunch on our first day we went for a walk along the beach. The bay is very tidal and shallow and at low tide you can walk out just over a kilometre to where the reef is, dodging the frames that carpet the floor for growing seaweed. The seaweed is collected each day and dried on racks and tables that line the back of the beach. Surprisingly, there’s no smell, just piles of bright green, blue, purple and pink rubbery seaweed everywhere you look. We wandered back through the village, enjoying the quiet atmosphere. Although the resorts are very westernised and there are beautiful Australian holiday homes in prime locations, the village itself barely shows any impact of tourism, in fact the whole island doesn’t. It’s like a trickle of western people make their way here but there’s no interaction, they stay at all inclusive resorts and wander from the waves to the restaurant to bed.</div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-mCjCwAoKYbI/U9XawypdztI/AAAAAAAAB6w/x_APmAQAUwo/s1600/DSC01660.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-mCjCwAoKYbI/U9XawypdztI/AAAAAAAAB6w/x_APmAQAUwo/s1600/DSC01660.JPG" height="400" width="265" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Seaweed hung out to dry, Rote.</td></tr>
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We spent the rest of the first afternoon on the beach, the tide was in so Rhys swam and when it started to go out again, he strolled along the beach and into the shallows helping the seaweed collectors and laughing at the pigs searching for a snack in the sand. We enjoyed a cold beer while watching the sunset then it was dinner time. As all the surfers were waking up at dawn, after a game of cards with Shar and Rachel, it was time for an early night.</div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-pyz-jJSdSYg/U9Xaw5hM2LI/AAAAAAAAB6s/yT5OqxPPiOk/s1600/DSC01798.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-pyz-jJSdSYg/U9Xaw5hM2LI/AAAAAAAAB6s/yT5OqxPPiOk/s1600/DSC01798.JPG" height="265" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Seaweed collectors on the beach by Anugerah, Rote.</td></tr>
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We woke the next day to the sound of building works and birds chirping and flying about our roof where they seem to have set up home. We ate breakfast as people started trickling in from the beach from their morning surf. The sun was shining so we decided to rent a motorbike to explore the island. Turning right at the main road (and cursing at the bike that kept stalling, due, we think, to watered down petrol, a result of the current petrol shortage on the island) we headed across the football field.</div>
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The road was tarmac for the first couple of kilometres and became increasingly pot holed and cracked until it turned into a dirt track. We stopped at each cove we came across, sometimes pulling up right alongside the beach and other times driving down even smaller tracks, through gaps in tumbling down walls and palm trees to reach the sand. The tide was out and the beaches were stunning, beautiful stretches of white sand that ran for miles, completely deserted except for the odd fisherman or seaweed farmer. </div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-QbnuueL37HA/U9XayK9cB3I/AAAAAAAAB68/Gv4xOVFoUsU/s1600/DSC01931.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-QbnuueL37HA/U9XayK9cB3I/AAAAAAAAB68/Gv4xOVFoUsU/s1600/DSC01931.JPG" height="265" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">One of the many deserted, white beaches on Rote.</td></tr>
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We continued past a troupe of monkeys swinging about in the mangroves to a concrete pier seemingly in the middle of nowhere. A short stop at a small seaweed village on an outcrop where they had a good giggle at the white people taking photos of their crop and their houses, before it was time to turn around and head back to reach the resort in time for lunch. The food was so good it seemed a crime to miss a meal. </div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/--_xWES34ayw/U9XaziuijfI/AAAAAAAAB7Q/ay4WneESXv0/s1600/DSC02054.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/--_xWES34ayw/U9XaziuijfI/AAAAAAAAB7Q/ay4WneESXv0/s1600/DSC02054.JPG" height="265" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Seaweed farmer drying his crop in the sun, Rote.</td></tr>
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The tide was in by the time we’d finished eating so we had a quick swim in the pool before heading back out again, the same way we’d been that morning. The longer beaches weren’t as pretty with the change in tide as the water was up to the line of drift wood and rubbish leaving only a trace of the sand we’d seen that morning. We ended up returning to one of the smaller coves we’d found where the tide wasn’t as pronounced, where we chilled for a bit before heading back for sunset on the beach again, dinner and bed.</div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-jT4QYjPt4gA/U9Xazew7EtI/AAAAAAAAB7M/MgoTUGmQ3HU/s1600/DSC02122.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-jT4QYjPt4gA/U9Xazew7EtI/AAAAAAAAB7M/MgoTUGmQ3HU/s1600/DSC02122.JPG" height="265" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Fisherman throwing his net, Rote.</td></tr>
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When we woke, the tide was on it’s way out and we decided it would be a good time to walk out to watch the surfers. Trevor lent me his booties and Rhys braved it in flip flips, which broke half way out leaving him to struggle over sharp coral with bare feet. We stood for a while watching the surfers, amazed at how perfect the waves looked, before heading back in for breakfast.</div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Shar returning from a morning surfing, Rote.</td></tr>
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We rented a motorbike again and this time turned left at the road. It wasn’t long before the tarmac ran out and we were riding down a single lane track and then a footpath, crossing dry river beds and sand dunes. As most people are here to surf, the locals don’t see many white people outside of Nemberala and everywhere you go, you get shouts of ‘Hello Mister!!!’ (no matter if you’re male or female) and people of all ages waving and running over to give you high fives as you ride past. </div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Kids waving at us as we rode passed, Rote.</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Rhys on the bike on yet another beautiful Rote beach.</td></tr>
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We didn’t get far before it was time to turn back to make it to the resort in time for lunch. That afternoon we took the bike out again, this time we took the cross island road, a decent tarmac road that lead back towards the ferry port. We reached the other side where there was another, huge concrete pier, covered in clay, in the middle of nowhere, but the wind was churning up the waves and the tide was in so the beaches weren’t anywhere near as attractive as on our side of the island. We didn’t stop for long before turning back. Rhys let me drive back and before long we were at Anugerah. After a quick go on the tightrope strung up between palm trees, Rhys took a nap in the room while I read on the beach watching the world go by. The wind had picked up so no one had gone out to surf that afternoon and everyone was milling about.</div>
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Trevor mentioned a football game in the village that was played each day and suggested we wander up with him. This was his third year at Nemberala and each time he came he brought more presents for the kids, footballs and bibs, and he was welcomed in to play with them. Rhys had a kick about with some of the smaller kids and we sat and watched the older boys play their serious game with the sounds of the church choir practicing in the background.</div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Football in Nemberala, Rote.</td></tr>
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We’d made the decision that day to stay an extra night (a good job since the ferry to the main land was suspended and had been since the day we arrived due to high winds in the strait), and had to use the internet to let the hostel in Dili know we’d be a day late reaching them. There is one internet cafe, only open at night for a couple of hours, located in the back room of the corner shop.</div>
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The next day we had a chill day and didn’t rent a bike. We had a lazy morning, after a slow breakfast chatting to people in the restaurant and playing with the puppies, Rhys watched TV in the room while I caught up on the blog. That pretty much took us to lunch time, yet another incredible meal with sashimi and salads and huge chunks of white fish, i’d recommend Rote and Anugerah to anyone, even if only for the food. That afternoon, Rhys went for a walk along the beach while I read, soaking up the sun and before we knew it, it was time for sunset on the beach, dinner and bed.</div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Sunset on the beach outside Anugerah, Rote.</td></tr>
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We had one full day left on Rote and decided to hire a bike again and pick our two favourite beaches, one to spend the morning on and one, the evening. After breakfast, we headed left at the main road, dodging between goats and piglets and ducking low hanging palm tree branches, back to the dry river bed that opened on to sand dunes gently fading out into the bay. It was low tide and the sea was a long way out leaving us acres of white sand beach to lounge on. As it was pretty windy and we couldn’t lay on the sand without being coated in it, we collected a bizarre selection of rocks, coral and pumice stone for a game of baules, which Rhys won. </div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">White sand beach with the tide out, Rote.</td></tr>
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We headed back to the resort for a swim in the pool and lunch before jumping on the bike again to drive right, to our favourite cove. As that morning, we had the beach entirely to ourselves except for one lone fisherman who wandered past. Another game of baules was in order before it was time to ride back for sunset. We played cards until dinner before turning in for the night.</div>
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We arranged to be collected the next morning by the guy who picked us up from the port 5 days previously. He arrived on time in his bemo and we jumped in for the ride to Ba’a. The fast ferry was running again, having been suspended for a couple of days due to the wind. We sat on the top deck and understood why it has to be stopped when the weather isn’t good enough, we were rocked about, although not horrendously and the locals were squealing and throwing up and when we arrived in Kupang we hit the pier creating a fair sized hole in the ferries upper deck.</div>
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Back on dry land, we jumped in a taxi to the Timor Leste consulate to collect our authorisation letters. When we got there, the gates were closed and there was a sign up saying the consulate wouldn’t reopen for three days, for no apparent reason. After a bit of confusion, they finally understood that we were only there to collect our letters and they’d been left in the security booth outside for us, it was our lucky day. We checked back in to the same hotel we’d stayed in before, although this time we got a room that smelt of wee, then wandered to the supposedly helpful backpacker hub of Lavalon on the beach to use the internet.</div>
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We struggled to find details of any buses running to Dili and started to worry, the supposedly helpful staff at Lavalon told us to get on a bemo but we had no idea where to, or where to get off. Eventually we speed walked back to our hotel and got a taxi to take us to the depot for one of the bus companies we’d read about on the few blogs we could actually find on the subject. There were only four tickets left and we quickly booked two before taxi’ing back to our hotel. </div>
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We spent the rest of the evening using the internet and sorting out all the chores that we couldn’t do without internet in Rote, over a beer at the Lavalon Cafe, the only place we could find with working internet. After returning to our room we found the aircon was making noises like a passing freight train so we fought to move rooms, apparently every room was full but after making a bit of a scene, one suddenly freed up. For dinner, we wandered to a small food court near our hotel for cheap and delicious BBQ fish, before turning in for an early night with the alarm set for 4:40am.</div>
</span>Lucie Kingdomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18320597530474698888noreply@blogger.com0Rote island, Indonesia-10.7386421 123.12390490000007-11.2379401 122.47845790000007 -10.2393441 123.76935190000007tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1557459473009731669.post-88063458382355467972014-07-16T13:51:00.001+08:002014-07-16T14:31:44.208+08:00Week 94 - Bajawa, Moni, Maumere, Kupang (Indonesia)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">We left the convent early to start the drive to Bajawa in the highlands. The road wound around the mountains through bamboo groves and rice terraces with roadworks everywhere - they seem to be in the middle of widening every single road on the island. We stopped for coffee at a row of wooden shacks overlooking a rice filled valley before continuing to Aimere where we stopped at a Warung to buy take away lunch.</span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Rice terraces viewed through one of the roadside bamboo groves, Bajawa.</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Coffee stop, Bajawa.</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Our next stop was at an arak distillery, just a small local family who made arak out front of their house. We took a brief look at the primordial process before tasting the three different classes of arak, dependent on the number of times it had been distilled. We ended up buying a bottle of the triple distilled, 1st grade arak before climbing back in the car for the short drive to a beach where we stopped to eat our picnic lunch. Washing his hands in the sea, Rhys discovered some bizarre looking critters that we later looked up in a crazy hippy womans dive book - glaucus atlanticus, commonly known as blue angels that shouldn’t be picked up as they can give a nasty sting.</span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Rhys and Karen with Fanny, practicing their arak faces.</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">We arrived in to Bajawa at a decent time and had a short break before Fanny drove us out to Soa, to the hot springs. We were surprised how nice the complex was with a couple of different pools and a small waterfall where the hot water cascaded into a cold stream below. We wallowed in the water for a couple of hours, being looked at by the locals, before heading back to the hotel. That night, after a couple of araks on the balcony and a chat with the crazy hippy woman, who Karen just loved, we walked into the town for dinner before another early night, only to be awoken by shouting as a group had gathered to watch the world cup game. </span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Rhys at Soa hotsprings.</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">We had another early start leaving Bajawa, after the crazy hippy woman had stolen Karen’s pancake, to get to Luba and Bena, traditional Ngada villages. Although both villages are close together, Luba is far smaller and less visited. Both villages had the traditional thatched roof, wooden huts with buffalo horns and jaw bones nailed to the front doors to show the families prosperity and both villages had stunning mountain views. Luba was our favourite though, just because it felt less commercial, only 4 or 5 tourists had signed the visitor book each day and the inhabitants were just going about their everyday life while we wandered around the central square. We spent an hour or so wandering around the two villages before continuing on our drive to Moni.</span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Lady sorting coffee beans, Luba.</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The approach to Bena.</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-uYCaIyGndH0/U8YZzPDdTcI/AAAAAAAAB50/lSigqsjWRXM/s1600/DSC01046.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-uYCaIyGndH0/U8YZzPDdTcI/AAAAAAAAB50/lSigqsjWRXM/s1600/DSC01046.JPG" height="265" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Traditional houses in Bena.</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">After a couple of volcano view photo stops, that afternoon we pulled over at Blue Pebble Beach where stone collectors were gathering the bluest stones for sale by the roadside. Then, just before we arrived in Moni we pulled over at a strip of road lined with fruit and vegetable stalls, where we bought ridiculously cheap passion fruit.</span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-gMpEMd3B9dU/U8YZrBKEYLI/AAAAAAAAB5k/u7Uco7eQijw/s1600/DSC01169.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-gMpEMd3B9dU/U8YZrBKEYLI/AAAAAAAAB5k/u7Uco7eQijw/s1600/DSC01169.JPG" height="265" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Blue stone beach, near Moni.</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Leaving Karen on her mini bed on the floor of our shared room, me and Rhys wandered out to explore Moni, it’s only a small place with one main road, so a walk through the village didn’t take long. We had the option of visiting another hot spring in town but as we had an early start we voted for a few drinks in the room and an early dinner instead. Stupidly we ordered arak cocktails to have with our meals. When they came out we couldn’t even identify the ingredients and they were so strong as to be undrinkable and only good for practicing our already near perfected ‘arak faces’. The only answer was to throw the drinks over the wall or in Rhys’s case, all over the floor.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The alarm went off at 3:45am to get us up, dressed and in the car for the 13km drive to Kelimutu. From the car park it was a short 1.5km walk up to Inspiration Point, the highest view point where we sat in the dark, shivering and huddled together for warmth, to await sunrise. We’d got our timing a little wrong and had an hour to wait. Sunrise was pretty and as it got lighter we could see the three crater lakes, all of different colours. Luckily, when we were there we had a bright turquoise, a black and a green (the lakes change colours and sometimes aren’t all that different from one another). </span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Kelimutu at sunrise.</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">We didn’t stay for long after sunrise as we’d already been sitting there for ages and started the walk back to Moni. Passing Fanny in the car park we continued along the road to try to find a short cut back to town. We missed the first two turnoffs but found the third which cut 6km off the walk and took us through the fields and through little villages full of tiny piglets and waving locals drying their rice, coffee and nuts in the sun (everywhere you look there are things drying in the sun, usually on sacks by the roadside or in fact on any area of flat space).</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">We passed a waterfall, balanced across rickety bamboo bridges and emerged on the edge of Moni. Back at the guesthouse we had banana pancakes for breakfast before showering and packing our bags for the last leg of our Flores road trip. Fanny needed a break a couple of hours in so we stopped at a little warung on a beach before continuing to Sikka, a weaving centre on the coast. As soon as we stepped out of the car an army of local women fell on us to show us their wares. It was all a bit hectic but we managed to buy some small runners that we’d been after. Fanny said later that they get angry when tourists turn up and take photos but don’t buy and the village chief has to get involved. </span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Ikat for sale, Sikka.</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">When we arrived in Maumere, Fanny had already called his friend to run us the last 25km to Waigete where we had accommodation booked. The entrance was down a rutted dirt track and we emerged at a collection of rustic bamboo huts on stilts sheltered by palm trees lining a grey pebble beach. Rhys and Karen instantly took a dislike to the place. It was basic, the mozzie nets were net curtains that didn’t quite fit the beds, the shower was a tap and bucket and the electricity only ran for 5 hours a night with no sockets in the rooms. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Karen had to repack her bag with all the tourist tat she’d bought in the last three weeks and all the stuff she’s lugging back to the UK for us and we sat in her room with a Bintang debating whether she was over the weight limit or not. Rhys collected fire wood for a fire that never happened and after dinner (where Rhys and Karen the meat eaters weren’t impressed that you had to order fish or chicken a day in advance), we ended up in bed at 8pm, the early sunrise start having taken it out of us.</span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Nxu6Xslun5s/U8YaFYhG2zI/AAAAAAAAB6E/E8XyIE3dmHU/s1600/DSC01444.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Nxu6Xslun5s/U8YaFYhG2zI/AAAAAAAAB6E/E8XyIE3dmHU/s1600/DSC01444.JPG" height="400" width="265" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Karen chilling at Sunset Cottages, Maumere.</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">We slept well with the sea breeze blowing through the huts and the sounds of the waves against the shore, and were up early for coffee and a pancake. We had a couple of hours to chill, Karen finished packing and we caught up on chores, before the taxi was due to arrive to take Karen to the airport. We’d decided the huts were too basic and after spending the last week on a boat, a desert island and sitting in a car, the decision was made to move and find somewhere else to spend the next 3 nights before our flight to Timor. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Karen’s taxi didn’t turn up and after a few phone calls the owner of the resort was unable to track him, or another driver down and ended up taking us to the airport himself. As we’d told him we were leaving to get a plane also, and not to find somewhere else to stay, we ended up going to the airport too, where we said our goodbyes to Karen, fingers crossed that her luggage wasn’t hugely over the weight limit. Karen is always great fun and we’re glad she’ll still be in London when we come home, it wouldn’t be the same without her.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Leaving the airport we got talking to a taxi driver who suggested a place he knew of a few kilometres from town on the beach. We thought it was worth a look and jumped in. He took us to a place called Blue Ocean. Although it was double the price of the first place we stayed it was brand new and very well done, little cottages set around a lovely garden and decorated with beams and lintels carved in Bena, the traditional Ngada village we’d visited earlier in the week near Bajawa. When we arrived there was a group of about 50 local women meeting in the garden and they were all intrigued to see white people making it a but awkward to sit out and we ended up chilling in the room. We walked to the main road and realised we were in the middle of nowhere and a bit limited on the meal front so we ordered home cooked dinner at our guesthouse and ate biscuits for lunch.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Once the meeting had ended and the ladies had gone home, we grabbed a beer to watch the sun go down over the beach, a decent stretch of black sand where you couldn’t really sit because of all the local attention. We ate grilled fish overlooking the beach, joined by the manager and two locals who sat and watched. It was nice to chat to them in broken english but a bit uncomfortable being watched.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">After breakfast the next day, we rented a scooter to ride in to town. Maumere isn’t the prettiest place in the world and doesn’t really offer much to tourists. After circling the town for a while we decided to head east to the Sea World Resort, a hotel we’d heard was nice and thought might make a good lunch stop. The resort had a nice beach and when we arrived, a group of ladies demonstrating ikat weaving. We ended up buying a few bracelets before taking a seat in the restaurant for lunch.</span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Ikat weaving at the Sea World Resort, Maumere.</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Back at our guesthouse, we had a couple of hours to relax before we rode back into Maumere to use the internet at a smart hotel in town. As it had begun to rain, dinner was served at our cottage which meant we could eat without being watched.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The world cup final was on at 3am the next morning although we’d been told it was at 2am. Despite having set our alarm, just after 1am there was a knock at our door, the guy whose house we’d been invited to to watch was waking us up. We mimed that we’d be there in a bit and went back to bed. At 2am we were in his living room and we had an awkward hour to wait until kick-off. Once the game started, more and more people turned up at his door, all the men wrapped in their ikat sarongs. We were struggling to stay awake and were glad when Germany scored in extra time (especially glad because I bet on Germany and Rhys had Argentina) as it meant we could go back to bed. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">We only emerged for a late breakfast just before midday. The weather wasn’t great again but we decided to head east on the bike to see if we could find any nice coves. We failed, it was pretty litter strewn and it was hard to find beach access. We ended up riding straight back to ours and picking up the laptops to head back to the smart hotel in town to catch up on admin. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Back in our room we had a bee problem and had to move to another room. That night the owner of the guesthouse, Ignas had prepared a special meal as we were staying for three nights. We had the most delicious sashimi along with a BBQ snapper and a glass of apple arak to wash it down. We stayed up to chat for a while before bed. Ignas is an extremely interesting and intelligent man, his guesthouse was beautiful and his plans to expand are brilliant, in a couple of years I don’t doubt The Blue Ocean will be one of the best places to stay in the whole of Flores. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The next day we had a flight booked to Kupang in West Timor. Ignas drove us to the airport, running out of petrol on route and then being reversed in to in the car park. He came in with us to translate at the office as Karen’s bag had gone missing somewhere on her flight from Maumere to Bali (and still hasn’t been tracked). The flight was pain free and we landed and jumped in a taxi to our hostel, supposedly the place to go in Kupang for backpackers. The hostel was horrible, luckily they didn’t have a record of our booking and directed us to their bar on the beach where they had some newer rooms. Again, no record of booking and the private rooms were full. We ended up walking around and found a decent place close by where we settled for the day.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">As it was my birthday we jumped on two ojeks (motorbike taxis) to take us into town to buy a few drinks to enjoy in the room and later that night, we headed to a nice restaurant that Rhys had spotted from the taxi on the way in.</span></div>
Lucie Kingdomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18320597530474698888noreply@blogger.com0Kupang City, Kupang, East Nusa Tenggara, Indonesia-10.1787573 123.59760570000003-10.428791299999999 123.27488220000004 -9.9287233 123.92032920000003tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1557459473009731669.post-47392510717598773802014-07-09T00:00:00.000+08:002014-07-13T16:53:12.566+08:00Week 93 - Sengiggi, Komodo, Rinca, Kanawa Island, Ruteng (Indonesia)<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">We were picked up from our hotel in Sengiggi at 8:30am on the dot and squeezed into a mini bus along with 7 other people for the short drive north to Bangsal. We were dropped at a cafe where, along with the 38 other people who had booked on for the tour to Komodo, including Grant who we first met in Java, we had a couple of hours to kill before our boat was ready to leave. Eventually and only an hour or so late, we were randomly split in to two groups and walked to the dock to board our boats. As there were so many people, there were two boats and of course we ended up on the smallest, tattiest of the two. Although at first we were a little jealous, we soon came to love our floating shed and it became our home for the next 3 nights.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">As soon as we boarded, Catherine, an English girl we’d met in the cafe, suggested we jump up to the covered top deck to choose mattresses before everyone else climbed onboard, a great call that resulted in us getting the end row where we could get some fresh air. The 19 mattresses were practically overlapping they were so close. We were a bit disappointed there wasn’t a larger area to sit on out in the sun but soon made the most of it and squished into the small area at the front, and Bintang in hand, our boat left port.</span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Our sleeping quarters on the boat.</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">We had some time to get to know some of the other people on our boat before we pulled up at our first stop at the northern point of Lombok. Hot and sticky from sitting on deck in the sun, we were all happy to have a chance to jump in the water and swim ashore to one of the more remote beaches on the coast. Although not the most beautiful, it felt pretty isolated. Before long, it was time to climb back aboard to continue our journey towards Sumbawa, the next island in the chain stretching from Sumatra to Timor.</span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-vz24kB67Sl8/U8JGAUA9hDI/AAAAAAAAB30/WA39hequFr0/s1600/DSC09751.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-vz24kB67Sl8/U8JGAUA9hDI/AAAAAAAAB30/WA39hequFr0/s1600/DSC09751.JPG" height="265" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Enjoying the sun and the view from the front of the boat with Catherine, Grant, Dan, Karen and Rhys.</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">We had lunch and dinner on the boat, both meals were vegetarian and involved an unprecedented amount of cabbage. As the evening drew in we pulled out the speaker and had music and beers on the front of the boat before deciding it was time for bed. As the crew navigate by the stars, while the boat is moving we couldn’t have the lights on and sitting in the dark while the sea started to get choppy wasn’t the most fun. Once we’d got to bed, all snuggled up on our sandwiched in mattresses, the sea started to get progressively worse, and worse, and worse. We were on the second deck but spray was coming in the side windows splashing our faces and feet and at one point all I could see out of the window were the waves uncomfortably close to my face. I spent most of the night lying there worrying about how we’d manage to climb out of the boat if it was to capsize (on our deck there were only little windows and a hatch leading to the lower deck).</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The next day we all woke feeling pretty tired, no one had managed to sleep more than a couple of hours. Nevertheless, we emerged from our beds ready for breakfast. The sea had calmed and the sun made everything seem alright again. Our first stop of the day was at Moyo Island where we swam to shore before a short hike that took us through the forest and across a couple of shallow streams to a waterfall. After climbing the fall (another, never in the Western world moment) we arrived at a deep hole about 2m diameter carved by a tumbling river where, if the desire so took you, you could climb a tree and jump from about 5-8m. Although the three of us skipped the opportunity we watched as others took part before clambering back down to the base of the falls and back to the beach. After lunch we had another stop. This time at Satonda Island. We jumped off the boat to enjoy the snorkeling before swimming to the beach and walking the short distance to the salt lake that filled the hollow interior of the island. </span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-7REX1DRh0vM/U8JF_7qwnrI/AAAAAAAAB3w/HmjJ4C6enLI/s1600/DSC09735.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-7REX1DRh0vM/U8JF_7qwnrI/AAAAAAAAB3w/HmjJ4C6enLI/s1600/DSC09735.JPG" height="400" width="265" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Me and Karen enjoying the waterfall at Pulau Moyo.</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Back on the boat and a few Bintangs later the waves starting picking up again. As the night drew in, sitting on deck trying not to get thrown across the floor became less and less attractive and me and Rhys decided to lie down on the top deck where the lower centre of gravity stopped the sea sickness from getting too hard a grip on you. Karen tried to stay up and managed to stick it out for a bit longer before deciding sitting in the dark, being thrown about really wasn’t fun and there was nothing for it but to have an early night. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">I don’t know if I was just extremely tired after the previous night (Rhys and Karen had napped for a couple of hours that afternoon), but I slept much better and didn’t feel like the sea had been anywhere near as violent as the first night. Rhys and Karen on the other hand said they felt like they’d been through a blender, both had sore muscles from being thrown about and tensing when it slammed into the waves. I think I just managed to wedge myself in and slept through the worst if it. I woke around 3:30am and spent a while admiring the blanket of stars that filled the sky outside my window before falling back asleep until after the sun rose. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The third day on board, we pulled up at the rear of Komodo Island and what better a way to start a day than by jumping overboard to snorkel a magnificent reef. We were all pretty tired from lack of sleep but the snorkeling was good enough to help us forget about it. Me and Rhys swam out to the drop off and followed it to the edge of the bay where we’d anchored. Happy with a few turtle spots we started swimming back towards the boat, then, in the depths, swimming level with me, I spotted the white wing tips of a manta ray. I shouted for Rhys before swimming along side and realising there were actually three rays. By the time we got back to the boat we were chuffed. </span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Snorkeling around Komodo Island.</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">View from the boat, Komodo Island.</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Our next scheduled spot was at Manta Point to try to find some more rays to snorkel with. The current was strong and one of our crew members jumped over to track down the rays before they’d let the rest of us jump in. We spotted a few swimming under and alongside the boat before finally being given the shout to climb in. It was all a bit hectic with our boat and the people from the other boat in the water together, all trying to swim against the current and stay with the rays. All up it was an incredible experience and something we’ve wanted to do for a while.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Lunch was served early as the crew predicted choppy weather ahead. Luckily, we missed the worst of it and circled Komdo Island to arrive at the visitor centre. We were paired with a ranger and split in to groups of 10 people. We had chosen to walk the longer route that would take us to the peak of three small hills. Before we even started walking we spotted a small three month old dragon hiding in the trees by the ranger station then when we reached the peak of the second hill our guide spotted an adult komodo dragon and shortly after we spotted another. They are incredible creatures, so prehistoric looking. The ones we saw were about 1.5 metres long and seemed pretty sedate. When dragons hunt they bite their prey infecting the wound with bacteria which takes about a week to kill the animal. The dragon will then eat the animal when it falls. A female dragon will guard their nests for the first three months and then will come back when the eggs hatch and eat their young, to escape, for the first 3 years of life, dragons live in trees until they become too heavy and move to the ground, hence the baby we saw in the trees at the ranger station.</span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Komodo dragon on Komodo Island.</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">By the time we’d left Komodo, we were all on a high, happy to have seen so much wildlife in one morning. The boat continued to Rinca island where we docked for the night. As we’d spent the last two nights travelling, spending a night in a sheltered bay was bliss. After getting mobbed by locals selling wooden komodo dragons and Karen making an impulse purchase, we opened the vodka, played charades (oh how crazy we are) and clambered aboard the other boat moored alongside to dance on their deck with a disco ball. When glowing plankton was discovered half the boat jumped overboard to swim. At 11:30pm we had arranged for a local boat to come and pick us up and take us to the nearest village to watch the France v. Germany worldcup game (and only Grant fell overboard in the process). Of the 21 of us onboard our boat, 17 went to shore. We ended up paying 25p for entrance to a little shed with a TV at the end. It was brilliant. By the time France had lost and we’d got on the boat back to our big boat we were shattered and ready for bed.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Our boat stayed moored until around 6am when we started traveling to Rinca Island. Having only had a few hours sleep most people stayed in bed until breakfast was served, toast pancakes, intriguing. Our first stop of the day was at Pink Beach, although not as bright as we’d expected there was a definite pink tinge with broken red coral mixing with the white sands. We chilled on the beach and made naked people sandcastles. Next stop was at the Rinca Island visitor centre, another komodo dragon national park. As they didn’t have enough rangers we ended up walking as a massive 40 person group which was a little ridiculous and gave us no chance of actually spotting dragons in the wild. We walked to a nice view point where the bays and islands scattered across the area were laid out in front of us and luckily saw four dragons prowling around head quarters (although Karen thought two were statues).</span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-8yVVuBE9uMo/U8JF2YBkNiI/AAAAAAAAB2w/1tpOuzC4QeQ/s1600/DSC00100.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-8yVVuBE9uMo/U8JF2YBkNiI/AAAAAAAAB2w/1tpOuzC4QeQ/s1600/DSC00100.JPG" height="265" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Hiking on Rinca Island.</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Feeling a little hot and sticky we were glad when we pulled into our next snorkel stop so we could get back in the water. It was a spit of sand encircled by reef. We swam to shore and walked over to the other side of the spit so we could float back to the boat on the current. As soon as we stepped in the water we were attacked by small white, angry, territorial fish. I’ve never seen anything quite as funny as a 6’6’’ Grant flapping his arms and jumping about as 4’’ fish attacked his ankles. The snorkeling was great and we were blown away by a huge cuttlefish, camouflaged against the reef. Back in the boat it was time to pack our bags and head to port.</span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Final stop of the boat trip, snorkeling with vicious fish.</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The boat dropped us in Labuanbajo at the western end of Flores. We said our goodbyes and walked into town. We had a reservation for bales on a small island and had to charter a private boat to take us there. We were left with an hour to use the wifi in a nice Italian restaurant while Karen got excited at having a menu and ordered a late second lunch.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Our boat to Kanawa Island took about an hour. As we approached we started getting excited, it looked amazing. The island is only small but only has one, rustic resort on it and no other buildings. We were dropped at the pier and walked to reception to check in. We were lead to our bales on the beach and immediately fell in love. This place was paradise. The bales were small structures, with thatched roofs and a double mattress on raised platforms. There were rolling bamboo blinds on all four sides and a mozzie net over the bed. Basic but perfect, practically on the beach with views of the islands across the bay. We were all so tired that by the time we’d checked in and eaten dinner we turned in for an early night.</span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-u5trDlzBxIU/U8JF9VOoKGI/AAAAAAAAB3c/mC-9yL2HKWs/s1600/DSC00551.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-u5trDlzBxIU/U8JF9VOoKGI/AAAAAAAAB3c/mC-9yL2HKWs/s1600/DSC00551.JPG" height="265" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Rhys arriving at Kanawa Island.</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-GKz8jTMLM58/U8JF6j8uG6I/AAAAAAAAB3Q/UT9U3x4gDl0/s1600/DSC00271.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-GKz8jTMLM58/U8JF6j8uG6I/AAAAAAAAB3Q/UT9U3x4gDl0/s1600/DSC00271.JPG" height="265" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Me at the bar, Kanawa Island.</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">After breakfast the next day me and Rhys went for a quick explore before deciding to jump in for a snorkel. The house reef was amazing and teeming with life with beautiful healthy coral. Over the course of the day and the following day we saw an eel, a slipper lobster, lion fish and a crocodile fish as well as hundreds and hundreds of other brightly coloured fish. </span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-t_fmV01tH4g/U8JGDggN4RI/AAAAAAAAB4E/JFMKGpkSVQA/s1600/GOPR1999.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-t_fmV01tH4g/U8JGDggN4RI/AAAAAAAAB4E/JFMKGpkSVQA/s1600/GOPR1999.JPG" height="300" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Lion fish, Kanawa Island.</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">We spent the first afternoon sitting on the beach soaking up the sun reading and watching the world go by. While we were lying there Karen noticed a fish swimming close to shore and we realised there were baby black tipped reef sharks swimming up and down the beach although they were too scared to let us get close to them. We were all having a brilliant day until Karen’s iphone fell into a bucket of water where it sat for an hour before she discovered it and tried but failed to resuscitate it in a bag of rice.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The next day Karen slept until midday while me and Rhys followed a track that took us up the highest point of the island with 360 degree views. We spent the rest of the day snorkeling and sitting on the beach until sunset when we took a couple of beers, along with Dan who we’d met on the boat from Lombok, and sat on a rock on top of the mountain. We didn’t stay up late and after dinner headed back to our bales. Lying in bed with the blinds up and the wind blowing in from the sea was so nice we didn’t want to stay up and waking up with the sun with views out to sea was incredible. Kanawa Island was one of our favourite places we’ve stayed since we’ve been away.</span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-LxhjN5YWWF4/U8JF6Xfb7vI/AAAAAAAAB3M/fEQUjWLtAkc/s1600/DSC00406.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-LxhjN5YWWF4/U8JF6Xfb7vI/AAAAAAAAB3M/fEQUjWLtAkc/s1600/DSC00406.JPG" height="265" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Me looking out from the highest point of Kanawa Island.</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-ZaMNh61p5dQ/U8JF6-IjyRI/AAAAAAAAB3U/q417cgdKZXQ/s1600/DSC00535.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-ZaMNh61p5dQ/U8JF6-IjyRI/AAAAAAAAB3U/q417cgdKZXQ/s1600/DSC00535.JPG" height="265" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Sunset view of our bale, yes, that's our bed, Kanawa Island.</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The free transfer back to Labuanbajo left at 8am the following day so we were up early to head back to Flores. We were very sad to leave Kanawa and could easily have stayed another couple of nights. When the boat reached port we spotted a guy with our names on a piece of paper. I’d arranged to meet a guy called Fery in town to be our driver for the next four days. Fery was ill and arranged for us to be met by Fanny (hee hee). We needed some time to check the internet and use the ATM so after packing our bags into the car we stopped in town to run our errands. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Fanny spoke great english and as a driver and not a guide was very forthcoming with information, pointing out different trees and explaining about Flores and the way of life there. The itinerary for the first day was quite straight forward and we had a room booked in Ruteng a couple of hours away, at a catholic convent. We stopped for lunch at a small warung and made lots of photo stops to see rice terraces as well as a stop for Karen to crack open some macadamia nuts at the sside of the road - which she excelled at. The one stop we’d planned was in Canjar, known for it’s spider web rice terraces. We pulled over at a small house where we were led to a view point at the top of a hill. Karen was courted by a boy with a dead rat as we sat down to admire the pattern of the fields. Once we walked back to the bottom of the hill we stopped for a coffee and some goreng pisang (fried bananas) with the family whose land we were on. It was great to have Fanny with us as he could translate and it allowed us much more interaction with the locals.</span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Me and Karen at the spiderweb rice terraces, Canjar.</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">We continued to Ruteng where the convent had a 9pm curfew so we had an early dinner in town before turning in for the night.</span></div>
Lucie Kingdomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18320597530474698888noreply@blogger.com0Ruteng, Watu, Langkerembong, Manggarai, Indonesia-8.6143650000000012 120.466499-34.1363995 79.157905 16.907669499999997 161.775093