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Archive for the ‘Asia’ Category


Welcome to Delhi

In India on May 8, 2009 at 11:58 am

For the first time in 8 months I am finally warm.  I exited the airport around 11pm last night into 35 degree weather, not too hot, just right.  The flight was uneventful although all the airport employees were wearing masks, strange to see after only watching it on the news.  The hotel sent me a pickup and I wasn’t too sure I was going to get there after I jumped in the back seat and the front seat immediately fell off into my lap.  But 5 minutes later everything was fixed and the taxi stopped stalling.

Everyone says India is overwhelming and takes a few days to get used to the craziness of it all, but last night the roads were pretty empty and the neighbourhood I’m staying in (Pahar Ganj) was quiet when we arrived.  Apparently cows are banned from most of the city but I guess they didn’t get the news here as there seems to be one cow for every two tourists.  The traffic is the same as the Middle East which means you go when there’s a gap in the vehicles and hustle before you get pegged.  It’s loud and dirty and it takes a bit of steel to not feel rotten for ignoring every person who wants to talk to you or not handing money to every street kid who sticks his hand in your face.  So far I’ve had two tag-alongs, one guy who was quite nice but disappeared after a cop pulled him aside, and the other was a young girl whose face was badly scarred from burns.

I’m exhausted after two days of traveling to get here and maybe 6 hours sleep through all of it.  Spent a few hours walking around after finishing my first order of business which was to fix my glasses which I sat on on the plane and broke.  Within 20 minutes I’d found a shop and got new frames, can you do that at home?  May leave for Varanasi tomorrow if I can pull myself together and brave the train station.  I saw enough of Delhi last time and don’t need to do more.  Why does 40 degrees feel ok?

First view from my hotel room in the Pahar Ganj. Delhi

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Off Again

In India on May 4, 2009 at 1:58 am

It’s been almost two years since I went off to travel the way I like which is usually to a place that looks completely unlike the one I grew up in and might be a little dirty.  This time it’s India for a quick three weeks.  Unlike some tourists who pack it all in and see everything there is to see I’ve opted to check out a few cities and sites and take my time getting from one place to the next.  Partly because I like to get the feeling of a place rather than just the flavour, but mostly because I’m tired of having a too-packed schedule which doesn’t allow for any deviation from the intended path.  I have no itinerary other than landing in Delhi with two nights booked at a budget hotel sans a/c.  After that it’s up to whatever the train/bus schedules permit.

Last time I was there in 2002 I was finishing up my overland trip and we were getting around by the truck we’d traveled in from Turkey.  I was always with Jim and Arnout while we explored new places so unlike other travelers’ stories, I got around fairly easily and was never harassed by men.  That will probably be different this time as I’m off solo and don’t have a personal vehicle at my disposal.  I’ve been getting mentally prepped for this, checking out what traveling sites have to say and by far the biggest thing to be concerned about is how many times the locals try to take the tourists for a ride on the swindle system.  For example, every guide book says when you’ve booked your hotel make sure you tell your taxi/rickshaw driver where you’re going and don’t let him convince you the hotel’s been burnt down or it’s full or that it doesn’t exist or that there’s a riot in the neighbourhood and it’s unsafe.

When I was there before I had booked a plane ticket at a shop in one neighbourhood and had to back a week later to pick it up.  I asked the first rickshaw driver how much the trip would be and he quoted me 10 times the price, adding “There’s a riot in that neighbourhood today.”  Remembering what I’d learned from what everyone warned me about, I went to the next rickshaw driver who charged the same price and used the same excuse.  By the third driver I was getting ticked off and told him not to rip me off.  He said he’d take me up to the neighbourhood but not into it as it was unsafe.  When we got there, there actually was a riot in progress and it did look a little messy.

Whatever happens I’m looking forward to it all and will update my blog whenever I get the chance.  As a wise friend did a few years ago, I’ll use the correspondence to gauge my tolerance and happiness levels inspired by my travels.  It’s not the easiest country to travel in and it tests the patience of the most saintly person, but I’m sure there will be many more highs than lows.

First stop is Amsterdam for 20 hours and dinner with friends, and then it’s off to Delhi and the 45 degree heat that awaits…

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And About India…

In Asia, India on December 6, 2002 at 7:22 pm

Ok, this is the last report…

Well, I have very mixed feelings about India so all I can say is that it’s going to take time to process that whole thing.  What I can say is that it’s the weirdest place I’ve ever been.  One night we stayed at the palace of one of the now defunct maharajas and it was like paradise in the midst of poverty and everything dirty.  It was totally green, beautiful tropical plants, peacocks and parakeets and the occasional monkey walking around.  Then just outside the gates was the smell and pollution and a million begging people.

I think my favourite place of what I saw was Amritsar and the Golden Temple which was surprisingly serene for having about 10,000 people walking around.  The Taj Mahal was disappointing because it looked exactly like all the pictures I’ve seen although the single light hanging above the tomb of Shah Jahan’s dead wife was the most perfect picture of a broken heart I’ve ever seen.

The food was awesome as well.  In my attempts to lose some weight, I actually drank the tap water in the hopes of dropping the kilos the way everyone else in the truck has.  Well, all I can say is that I threw-up once and that was it.  Can you believe it???? Everyone I know who’s been to India has horror stories of visiting every bathroom possible and popping Imodium like it’s candy.  I actually try to get sick and have never been more regular in my life.  I was going to bring some of the water home as a weight-loss supplement for anyone who wanted it but that’s a useless idea.

On the other hand, I think that India is a good place for assertiveness training.  Perhaps it is more expensive than conventional seminars conducted at home, however, unless you learn to say NO!!!!!! extremely fast, you will be subjected to buying a thousand carpets you don’t need and being whisked away in a taxi to a million places you don’t want to see.  At first I tried being the polite Canadian and said, ‘No thanks, I really don’t need a carpet’, but after constant harassment and a quick temper, it eventually turned into ‘GET LOST!! I DON’T WANT YOUR STINKING CARPET/SAREE/ELEPHANT/CAMEL/TAXI!!!!’  I think if I had had PMS during this part of the trip I would have gone to jail for murder.

Anyways, now I’m back in Amsterdam after a long flight that involved a 2 second stopover in Kuwait city.  I am enjoying the first-world immensely and tomorrow I leave for England for a week before coming back here to meet my brother.  It’s been a good trip but I am tired of being a tourist and am actually looking forward to a regulated work-week.  I know, you can quote me on that after the first week back, but I realize that I need structure in my life to stay sane.

So thank you to everyone who e-mailed and kept me in the loop as to their lives while I was gone.  I look forward to seeing a lot of you over the next few weeks and can hardly wait to catch up.  If my stories of ‘when I was in …’ get too much, please shut me down – I’ll try and keep the reminiscing to a dull roar.

And for those I don’t see before January, have a very Merry Christmas, a great New Year, and enjoy the holidays!

And that is all, she wrote.

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The Word From Pakistan

In Asia, Pakistan on November 21, 2002 at 7:17 pm

Aren’t you all glad there’s only two messages left from moi?  I am, I’m almost at the end of my traveling rope and greatly looking forward to being clean again, especially after today’s pollution.  But back to the update…

Six of us jumped off the truck this past Sunday and headed north to Peshawar via plane.  It was a jumbo jet and since there were only 30 passengers, it was pretty much first class all the way.  On Monday, Cam, Jim and myself snuck on local transit to the off-limits town of Darra to see what we could see (read a longer version of the story here…).  As soon as we got off the bus, we were greeted by a town that went silent as soon as they saw us and started to stare intently at the tourists who shouldn’t be there.  On top of that freaky sensation, we could hear automatic rifles and pistols being fired off all around us as the makers were testing them out.  We ducked into a knife and brass-knuckle shop where I was examining an 8-inch stiletto knife when a local cop found us.  This was after one local told us that we needed a permit and it was ‘very dangerous to be here’.  The cop asked for our permit which of course we didn’t have and then proceeded to give us a tour of the gun factories and shops after we bribed him to let us stay.  Then he says ‘you want to fire gun?  No problem, you tell me you want, I bring’.  So we headed off to a valley behind the town where I guess the local firing range is and proceeded to fire off some rounds on an AK-47 and Chinese handgun.  I couldn’t figure out why there were no shells lying around until the 4 and 5 year old afghani kids materialized to jump at catching the ejecting shells.  Then we were hustled back into town where we had to wait in a secluded alley until the cop hailed our bus back to Peshawar and relative safety.  A very strange day.

Yesterday we hired Prince, a local Pakistani guide, to take us to the Khyber Pass.  It was a bumpy painful 2 hour ride in the back of a pick-up truck, enhanced by the armed guard we lawfully had to hire to keep the ruckus down in the tribal areas.  At last we were standing on the pass, looking at the Afghanistan border only 3 km away.  From a distance the country is stunning.  I guess I thought that since there is war that there would be a gunman hiding behind every tree and bombs would be exploding every 5 seconds.  Aside from that not being economically or socially feasible, the country is huge and there’s no way of seeing where the trouble is.  You won’t believe it but I actually turned down an opportunity to go to Kabul.  Peter and Eric, two of the guys I’m traveling with, headed there yesterday as it only took 4 hours to get the visa.  It seemed like a long way to go for only one day and the safety issue lay with my traveling companions, not the Afghans themselves.  We have bets on when and if we’ll ever see those two again.  So I stayed behind with the other guys and last night we took a first-class sleeper train to Lahore which is where we are now.

Lahore is overwhelming my senses, not to mention burning out my nose-hairs and melting my face like acid has been poured on it.  It’s loud, dirty, polluted, colourful, busy, and totally cool.  Only thing is I’m not ready for it after a night of train travel.  Tonight we’re doing the civilized western thing by going out for pizza and a movie while everyone else in the group is going to hunt down the stoned- Sufi dance-a-thon.

So onto India on Saturday which will be the last country on this part of the trip.  Yes, I’m happy it’s almost over.

And that’s it from Pakistan, I’d highly recommend it to anyone except my mother.  It is a wild frontier like country, the people are amazing as usual and the food is fantastic when you can get it.  It’s been Ramazan the whole time, which deserves its own message but you’ll never get it via e-mail.

One more message and I promise that’s it!!

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Disappointed…

In Asia, Pakistan on November 15, 2002 at 7:12 pm

Yes, I’m actually disappointed.  That’s because when we are finally in a dangerous situation, no one at home has bothered reading about it.  So here’s the story… (read a longer version of the story here…)

On Wednesday afternoon, we finally left Iran and entered Pakistan.  On Thursday we arrived in Quetta, 12 hours before the U.S. executed a Pakistani man who had killed 2 CIA agents in 1993.  He is/was from Quetta and his family lives only a five-minute walk from our campsite.  In anticipation of a violent outbreak, the police gave us extra security and warned us not to leave the campground until they had told us it was safe.  So yesterday we woke up to the sound of fighter planes flying overhead and apparently the police and army had a huge presence in the city.  In spite of the fears of violence, nothing happened yesterday and by last night a few of us were feeling sufficiently bored to hitch a ride into town with some men from the anti-terrorist task force.  The body of the man is being flown back to Quetta tomorrow apparently which means that the possibility for escalating tension becomes a bigger and more dangerous thing.  However, for those of you who know me, you know that this is exactly the kind of vacation I’ve been waiting for and I am definitely LOVING IT!

Pakistan is by far the weirdest and most interesting place I’ve been to thus far.  The transport trucks are completely decorated in coloured aluminum, bells, and chains so if you don’t see them coming around the corner you definitely hear them.  And when our headlights hit the front of the oncoming trucks, it’s like being sent to the circus or some crazy funhouse.  They also drive like they are possessed which is frightening at times since we are now on a single-track, deeply rutted highway, comparable to some mountain trails on the North Shore.  At any rate, Adam is the king of driving and we are still alive.  Unfortunately we can’t see much of the city but this afternoon myself, Arnout, and Jim are going in to see what we can see.

Jim with the driver of this beautiful truck. Taftan

I have tasted freedom in a very shallow sense.  For the first time in 3 weeks I don’t have to cover my head with a scarf.  When we were in the hotels in Iran, we didn’t have bathrooms in our rooms which meant that every time I wanted to wash my face, brush my teeth, or walk down the hall for any matter, I had to put my headscarf on.  Sometimes I made a dash for the bathroom with my head uncovered, but the way the local men looked at me made me feel like I was running around naked.  I also can wear pants again and although this sounds like no big deal, I can tell you that when certain laws are imposed on you, when they are gone it feels like you can breathe again.

That being said, Iran was really a great experience and I would recommend it to anyone.  We experienced no security problems and not one of us was in jeopardy at any time during the 3 weeks.  It’s too bad that Iran has been presented as a monster with zero tolerance for anything other than Islam because the people are incredibly friendly, hospitable, warm and welcoming.  We were often welcomed into complete strangers home and treated like we were family.

As for the rest of our time in Pakistan, 5 of us including myself, are planning to fly up to Peshawar tomorrow night for a few days to check out the Khyber Pass into Afghanistan, and to see if we can get access to the city of Darra which is where they manufacture every kind of gun under the sun.  We’ll then take the bus to Islamabad for a day and then down to Lahore where we’ll rejoin the rest of the group.  I think 7 days in this country is far too short, but I guess I can always come back.

This is not rush hour, this is the usual traffic backlog in any village en route to Quetta. photo: Eric Baxter

photo: Eric Baxter

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On the Way…

In Asia, Iran, Pakistan on November 13, 2002 at 7:09 pm

Sorry for the short message but it’s just to let you know that I am indeed alive.  At this moment we are waiting for our Pakistani visas to be issued by the most annoying consul yet.  If everything goes according to plan we should be in Taftan, Pakistan this evening.  By far this is the most exciting part of the trip and I am totally ready for whatever craziness and mayhem it has to offer.  I’m getting frustrated with trying to book a flight out of India, everything requires a faxed confirmation and other faxes of copies of copies of stupid things but I will be leaving Delhi around the 5th of December.

The time in Iran has been good although I am very ready to leave.  The scarf is oppressive in the heat and a pain when I’m trying to set up my tent.  On the other hand I have almost had my fill of army and guns and tanks and all that fun stuff.

We’re pretty much driving full-tilt during the day to make it to each city due to tribal conflicts and all that chaos.  We will be in those cities each night behind military compounds or secure campgrounds.  Once I reach India I’ll be phoning you from Amritsar so you can hear my voice and cry at the sound of the beauty of it 🙂

I’m loving this trip, can you tell?

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There Are Computers in Iran!!!

In Asia, Iran on October 31, 2002 at 7:03 pm

Yes, it’s true.  Iran truly is a progressive country and there are functioning computers.  In fact, the internet connections are probably the best here.  So in case you haven’t guessed, we are now in Iran.  Eric has put up some beautiful photos on the worldwidewandering.org site so have a look and be very surprised.

We crossed the border last Friday in one hour and ten minutes, a record for anyone who has ever tried crossing from Turkey.  That includes bringing Eric across who was taken into a private room for questioning but made it out alive after two minutes of ‘Hi – how are you, do you love our country?’.

So far we’ve been stopped a number of times by the police and military, but mostly because they have no idea what to do with us.  Tourism is so low because of 9/11 that we we’re only the second overland truck to cross into Iran through Turkey this year.  When the military spots us now, they are really at a loss as to what they are supposed to do.  However, they treat us with respect and are more curious about us than anything else.

One night we stayed at the Caspian Sea.  When the locals found out we were in the neighbourhood, they all showed up on their motorbikes just to look at us.  Some had never seen foreigners before so they just sat and watched while we ate dinner.  The next morning when we woke up someone had brought us fresh bread for breakfast.  This was after we had dinner with a French arms dealer.  Don’t ask me how we meet these people, but I have no objections to getting to know the types you only see in movies.

Anyways, we’ve been hanging out in Tehran for a few days and although it’s a big city, I haven’t done much sightseeing other than to visit the former U.S. embassy which is now affectionately known as ‘the U.S. Den of Espionage’.  It’s pretty interesting to see all the propaganda painted on the walls outside – it’s in total contrast to how the Iranian people really feel towards Americans.  They are always trying to reassure us that they love all North Americans and do not necessarily hold the same views as the government.

So now that I’m here, you’re all probably wondering the same thing – what’s the traffic like?  Haha, I know you’re more interested in the head scarf thing but I really do have to address the whole manner of driving here.  It’s the most chaotic thing I have ever seen in my life.  It’s the funniest game of chicken between pedestrian and driver – the pedestrian knows he’ll lose yet persists in standing there til the car swerves around him.  Today I tried to play the game and almost won against a Peugeot until Adam freaked out and pulled me back.  A red light at an intersection appears to mean that if the red light applies to you, quickly turn right or left into oncoming traffic.  All cars drive without the following three things:  headlights (hot pink do not count as you can barely see them), a clutch, and windshield wipers which is not such a big deal unless it rains like it did all day yesterday.  Arnout also pointed out that there is no such thing as sideview mirrors, probably because they’ve all been knocked off at some point.  I won’t even start on the phenomena that are motorcycles.

As for the head scarf, I actually do not mind wearing it except when I am pitching a tent.  Then it just gets in the way and nailed into the ground about 2 times before I start screaming and then one of the guys comes and finishes up.  It’s also a pain when you are in a hotel room without a private sink and must put the thing on to go outside to find a place to wash your face.  For the most part however, it’s not all that noticeable and one added bonus is that it catches the food that misses my mouth and provides a snack for later on.

So there you have it, about six days in Iran and I can’t find a single thing wrong with it.  I’m glad we’ve added an extra week on because there is so much to see and we probably won’t get to half of it all.  In fact, I’m willing to bet that most of you would actually enjoy it here yourselves.  Just stop watching the news and check out Eric’s website to see how beautiful it really is.

This Saturday is 7 weeks on the truck and we are all still getting along like best pals.  The only person I’ve had to punch thus far was a dirty old cab driver in Lebanon.

That is all for now.  Iran wants me to tell you that it loves you all!!

(check out more photos of the Alborz Mountain entrance here…)