Nihao! (pronounced nee-how! right up there as one of the worlds perkiest hello's).
China is indeed under construction at a level that would be difficult to comprehend had we not just ridden through it, over it and under it for months. I've had it in my eye's, my nose, my mouth, my lungs and (at the risk of sounding like a school teacher on the edge) up-to-here!
After what was probably the swiftest, most orderly entry to a country ever (no one else was trying to get in) through China's pristine, quiet border and riding along a lovely quiet road devoid of traffic the reality of riding in China took a few days to hit us. China is truly a country of yin and yang, one day it can be all great and lovely, all smooth roads, buffalo and rice paddies, next day you're having you bum spanked on shattered concrete highways (not aided by trying to break in new brooks saddles), choking on black exhaust fumes with the only view through the smog of smoke belching factories and machinery grinding the limestone hills to rubble and cement dust...
... and as if that wasn't bad enough the ice lollies tasted like wood chip. For me if there is a hell, this is it.
On dusty, crusty days riding I sometimes thought China would like to be colourful... that colour would mostly be red, the rich red of the earth which formed the terracotta warriors; the auspicious red of ribbons fluttering from wing mirrors; the red of the ever present lanterns adorning houses and businesses; the red of the neckerchiefs on school children, not to forget the red of the flag of the communist, socialist, capitalist, not-quite-sure-what-it-is republic of China.
However, the colour of lowland China is mostly, sadly, grey...
...cement grey.
The trees are grey, the grass is grey, even the rice is grey.
The sky is grey with thick smog and the red lanterns are dimmed to slate with a veiling of coal dust. Freshly washed laundry which hangs out to dry on hangers and railings is coated in a steady mix of vehicle exhaust particulates and grime until it looks more like the rags you see hanging from the back pocket of a mechanic than clothing.
And by mid morning we too are coated in a layer of coal dust, cement dust and grit. Its been a grimy ride.
The China we passed through (a small section in the south east running from the Vietnam border to Shanghai in a straightish line, huge country for a bike and 30 day visa) was regularly dotted with open cast coal mines. Coal provides much of the countries power and small independent coal merchants set up depots for delivery and collection along the roadside. Much of the street food stalls also use coal briquette's for cooking. This means that for us, and the rest of the population whose homes line the roadside, regular visits by coal carting trucks with no tarp in use, blast through with coal dust blowing off in the breeze or with every pothole in the road (of which there are many). The homes are so caked in soot they made me think of Dickensian London, the villages could have been sets for an Oriental Oliver Twist.
The construction of China is on overdrive. The news in China is filled with positive finance stories, how much money is held in reserve, how China has been prudent when the western world was living it up and how they now will stave off unemployment by initiating home grown, government paid, civic improvement projects, so that when the world gets out of its recession, China will be not only insulated from the worst of the effects but will be bigger and better than ever... Cool.
But there seems to be little coordination for these improvements, the roads being resurfaced are already good roads (you can tell because the construction workers leave random gaps where you drop down from the lofty 6 inch thick layer of new tarmac to ride on sections of old, perfectly smooth, unblemished tarmac for a few hundred metres before bumping back up to the (not really) improved section). The beautiful trees which line the old road edges providing shade from the intense heat of the sun are being felled to widen the roads a couple of feet which seems nuts when the only traffic using them are the trucks hauling aggregates for the construction of the road.
Meanwhile college education remains accessible only to those who can afford the fees, much of the population remains illiterate and the housing being erected is the same communist block reinforced concrete styling that in 2 years time will be damp and mouldy from exposure to the elements and have red rusty stains dribbling down the front from the corroding security bars on the windows; and all those new concrete roads being laid will be cracking under the weight of the aggregate hauling HGV's they were never designed to support.
In China I hoped to discover a land of antiquity but the cultural revolution saw off much of that and subsequent modernisation and development has finished off nearly everything else. In its place is a land of harsh sprawling concrete and ugliness... I have never seen such a lack of beauty on such a large scale. Whether people are too scared to create anything of ascetic value for fear of any bourgeois backlash in the future (Mao even banned flowers in his day for being too bourgeois) or whether having been surrounded by such harshness people have lost their eye for beauty I don't know. The buildings being thrown up faster than you can blink are all of the same mould, reinforced concrete, cheap metal framed school type windows, maybe a bit of grey or brown zigzag tiling for decoration on the front, and in cities and suburbs ubiquitous bars on the windows. Nothing is built to last, what will they do when they run out of mountains for materials.
OK. So that was the bad bit, the good news is that despite this you can find beautiful things in China and for much of our time we did just that. If you were on tourist coaches you could zip around from the great wall to historic villages and possibly even be able to say, as one traveller did to me 'Well, I thought there'd be a lot more factories!' (stunned I tell you, stunned I was).
There are little pockets of old China hanging on in the countryside though you do need a bike to see them without embellishment, or your own wheels at any rate.
Amidst the concrete block housing, old horsehead gabled houses remain standing, ignored by peasants, who, during the cultural revolution engineered to do away with anything 'old', had more important things to do like growing food and keeping a roof over their heads. At times these pockets are a solitary home at others they are fairly substantial clusters, however, because they are not on the tourist circuit the homes are often dilapidated and crumbling with age.
Beyond these properties there are entire villages, including Little Likeng where we spent a lovely couple of days, which somehow remained relatively/miraculously unscathed. As a result rather than letting them crumble they have been saved as tourist destinations...'Visit Bygone China'.
Regardless of the motives in saving these villages (entrance fees are pretty hefty, as are the entrance fees to visit most things worth looking at in China, from villages to mountains) they are very lovely. Here you can see old buildings preserved and new buildings in keeping with traditional architecture, complete with paint jobs to make them look ancient, 'New - Old'. These villages are teaming with domestic tourists in tour groups which handily stick together in matching hats, so if it gets too much just step back from the main drag and you can experience quiet moments in old lanes with fluffy chickens pecking at the ground, and admire the golden carp we would pay a small fortune for back home to put in ornamental ponds in nets awaiting dinner time... goldfish for supper anyone?! James did, but he didn't realise til he saw them in their nets the next day, he looked sorry.
There are also arts and traditions which have survived modernisation. On the road we witnessed traditional fishing going on including the bizarre cormorant fishing though this has all but died out (probably a blessing for the cormorants). For those who don't know the cormorants are raised by the fishermen as little chicks and are trained to hunt for fish which is what a cormorant does best, however the fisherman do this by tying a piece of string around the cormorants neck so it can't physically swallow the fish, so once the bird has caught a fish both are reeled back to the boat, the fish retrieved from the cormorants beak and the cormorant heads back out again to fish some more...I assume the birds get fed well at the end of the day.
We were also surprised when riding along a quiet country road one day to come across a drive through open air theatre with a full blown opera in progress. Seriously this place was in the middle of nowhere, not even a tiny village nearby, the middle of the harvest and the place was packed with people on motorbikes, chatting and watching and happily munching on things on sticks. No one was taking money for the performance but the building was a permanent, specific structure, so I don't know how it was working but I'm glad it was. Chinese Opera is a pretty distinctive art form, the actors convey most of their intentions not only by talking and singing but through exaggerated facial expressions and the singing is, erm, very Chinese Opera. Its a great sight but can be a bit piercing on the ears!
A highlight of our trip (and a turning point as the landscape improved at this point) was a trip to Yangshuo. Yangshuo is karst limestone land (similar to that found in Thailand and Halong Bay, Vietnam). Although this scenery was nothing new to us as we have been riding through it on and off for months it was still stunningly beautiful and all the more so for coming in from the industrial landscape which precedes it. It was so lovely here I didn't want to leave, aided by the fact that we ate some of the best food we'd had on the trip and that we found a little restaurant where they would let us eat up on the roof top alone, overlooking the towns lights AND they had apple crumble on the menu, the memory brings a tear to my eye.
In Yangshuo we hired a tandem to pootle round the countryside for a day. I had a romantic notion of the two of us working together, bonding, chatting happily as the birds flitted through the fields and the rivers meandered through the rice paddies. It is actually a testament to James's overall easy going nature that we are still together today. If you love someone and you both ride a bike DON'T get a tandem. We discovered that we both have completely different riding styles, which is a shame because on a tandem you have to do exactly the same thing and obviously we both wanted to do the same thing, just as long as it was OUR thing. The tandem was also designed for really just ticking along on tarmac, however a slight miscalculation on the map had us off roading on the tandem equivalent of a gearless shopper bike down trails that everyone else was taking mountain bikes over. It was a treat. Lovely. I'll leave it at that.
Whilst in Yangshuo we splashed out to see Impressions, a sound and light show by Liu Sanjie, who did the opening for the Beijing Olympics. Truly amazing, fairy lights on an epic scale, the show is performed over a massive area, most of it on water so every little light (of which there were millions) was reflected and sparkling on the lake, with the karst peaks illuminated, there must have been hundreds of performers including very calm buffalo on floating piers. It made my face hurt from smiling.
From Yangshuo we hoofed our way to Ji'an so that we could catch a train to Hong Kong to extend our visas. A word on Chinese cities...they're all the same, you know where the centre is as they all have ornate lampposts lining the main strip which is great if you're new in town. Chinese towns and cities have all been swiftly modernised, they tend to have really wide boulevards with trees, shops to satisfy every need and cycle lanes (teeming with electric bikes...they're great but a bloody hazard, a granny nearly took me out on one as she was doing about 30km/h but riding like she was doing 2.5), there are central parks and squares where everyone congregates in the evening to dance and chat, sounding good? Considering most people in the countryside are still dragging around handcarts and threshing rice by hand you can see why everyone's moving in. However whilst it all looks nice and shiny, if you take a look at whats going on higher up you can see its still the same rag tag mix of concrete its just that a new facade has been put over the front of the old buildings to make it all new and shiny!
I loved Hong Kong. I'm a sucker for cities, I can feel the excitement build as I enter, I love the press of people, the lights, the possibilites. Hong Kong is where you get to experience the thrills of being in a really hot exotic country/vibrant city but still have the pleasures of home.
Hong Kong is a city designed to never let your feet touch the ground...literally.
At first we just thought it was hell to walk around but that's because we were trying to do it at street level, but the street is for smelly cars. The people ambol along on flower trimmed covered walkways above the traffic and noise, protected from the glare of the sun and monsoon rains. Admittedly much of the walkway system cuts through malls so its a shopahlics nightmare/paradise. But effectively you can cross from one side of the city to the other without ever touching the ground. Whilst in Hong Kong we were graciously looked after by Jo, a friend of 2 cyclists we met in Pakistan. Jo was just lovely, inviting us into her home and colourful life, making our stay on Lamma and Hong Kong both pleasurable and painful (oh lord the hangover). We also got to witness the fireworks to celebrate 60 years of the people's republic. Watching from the avenue of stars we got to view the huge display reflecting off the glassy surfaces of the skyscrapers making them shimmer like a hollywood A listers dress. But its not just the sparkle which makes Hong Kong, it also has some of the most beautiful, compact parks I've seen and, because its so hilly, stunning forests and beaches cover much of the land so there's no forgetting you're still somewhere truly exotic.
After Hong Kong our China trip seemed to feel better than it had initially. Admittedly we still passed through some mad max style landscapes and at one point we actually went right through an otherwise closed off expressway construction site which lasted for about 6km and at the end we had the motorway to ourselves, its a surreal experience to ride down the middle lane of a deserted motorway, the occasional bit of litter blowing through, all we needed was some zombies to complete the scene.
We road on quiet rods through patchwork paddy fields and villages time forgot. We visited the impressive Tengwang Ge Pavillion, one of those rarities that is in fact origional, surrounded by beautiful gardens in Nanchang. We also experienced a great afternoon drinking tea at a traditional tea ceremony. Making tea is more complicated than you could ever imagine.
Talking of tea, we cycled over a stunning mountain pass through lush tea plantations and old forgotten villages to visit the home of the most famous tea in China - Dragons well. It's named for the spring which waters the bushes which resembles a dragon. Dragons well grows on the slopes of the mountains rising from the stunning West Lake in Hangzhou and a happy day was spent wandering in the tea museum, sipping more tea, admiring the flowers and generally wiping out any further plans we had for the day. Its not a bad way to spend time. Hangzhou itself is a lovely city and has been a spot for Chinese contemplaters and holiday makers for centuries with good reason. It is also home of the silk museum, a visit to which had me knowing more about silk that I'd even considered though I had to actually enquire of the staff if silk worms survive the proccess of silk production...they don't, to get the silk of the cocoon the worms inside are either boiled or baked otherwise the silk would dissolve as the pupae metamorphosed... feel terrible about the silk I bought in Vietnam.
One of our last stops before leaving China was to visit the famed gardens of Suzhou. The gardens are impressive from their use of tiny spaces, constructed around properties, the gardens are interconnected with hallways which, along with the rooms of the houses, are fitted with windows which not only allow you to glance through to the next space but frame the views like classical paintings. The overall effect creates a maze of what feels like endless spaces from what is in fact very little. It was a fine closure to our Chinese expedition before our departure from Shanghai to Japan by ferry.
Overall China was definately an interesting country to visit. The contrasts between the polished to an idea of perfection tourists spots, the enormous cities and the forgotten countryside are extreme and telling. Some things were better than expected, we had thought that the trade in wild birds for cages would mean none in the wild, but we rarley saw a caged bird and the skies were not empty. However China of old is forever changed and you have to take it as it stands, neglected or theme parked as it is. The scale at which change is happening in China is awesome, who know's where it will be in 10 years time. I can only hope for something positive for the planet.
tx
Monday, 9 November 2009
Saturday, 15 August 2009
Vietnam
I write this in a state of excitement and anticipation as I await the arrival of the fabulous Gill landing in Hanoi for a 2 week holiday on saturday night. What a trooper, its the wettest of the wet season, its a 2 plane journey (or 15 months by bike), temperature's averaging 36 degrees, and she's bringing various bike parts, her boyfriend, chocolate and wine, as another long term cyclist said to me the other day 'it'll be nice to have friends', how very true.
But I'll reign it in and get on to Vietnam. In many ways Vietnam is picture postcard... woman abound in conical hats. I had a go at one myself as a girl pursued me on her motorbike to flag me down and give me one so I wouldn't continue to toast myself (oh how they mock me and my suntanned skin). I was both touched and grateful at the time as cycling up hill it keeps the sun out of your eyes/off your shoulders, it allows a bit of air around so you don't get a hot head AND it acts as an umbrella, really, what could be more useful in a country of blistering sun, exhuasting temperatures and torrential downpours? Well as it happens it was a right bloody hazard. It had to go when on one particular, though fairly typical, downhill the wind blew under (as it does) creating enough lift and movement to allow its aerodynamic properties to take over, whereupon it suddenly flipped forwards, fixed firmly in front of my face thus blinding me whilst hurtling downhill at approx. 30km/h...let that be a warning to you. I found this a surprising turn of events as Vietnamese women wear them everywhere including whilst riding bikes and never seem to have a problem...however they are cycling so slowly that I am stunned they don't fall off.
The country is also covered in wonderfully luminescant rice paddies. The beautiful sunlight reflected through golden green paddy fields is a sight I never tire of. I've watched films with paddy fields in the backdrop and wondered how they manged to make it look so intensely green and perfect, but that's just the way they are, rich, vibrant, glowing carpets of lush juicy green as far as the eye can see, dotted with the occassional conical hatted worker planting, thinning or pushing a bicycle along the raised verges that act as little walkways dividing the curved and patchworked fields. Add to this the sound of frogs croaking, the occassional water buffalo grazing or wallowing in rivers and you can* have idyllic riding conditions.
We have also spent some time mooching around in the tropical forests protected by national park status. A highlight (high being the operative word) was Bach Ma. Keen environmentally minded citizens of the world that we are we offered to test ride the road up to what was the old French hill station, which at the time of our arrival you could only reach by minibus (cycles 'prohibited'), to see if it was suitable for bikes thus doing our bit for sustainable travel.
WELL F*** ME! This was a mountain, 1256m, starting not much off sea level, over 13km. I really thought we were going to die. J had water running off him like he was standing in a shower. This was possibly the hardest cycling we have ever done, right up there with cycling over mount Nemrut in Turkey. It was so damned steep I had to ride partially hunched over my handlebars just to stop myself from pulling wheelies and keeling over the edge. For those who care to know it was an average climb of 10% though at times steeper. It took about 4.5 torturous hours. But hell the view was amazing. As for our experiment we wrote a report advising against anyone but a hardcore cyclist attempting it again...preferably without their panniers on.
I was surprised to discover though that Vietnam is not as lush and forested as my imagination, and the odd war film, had led me to believe. Pressures of a growing population (there is a 2 child policy in force though what that means in reality I'm not sure), a tradition of slash and burn agriculture still practised by the hill tribes, the unsustainable (and often illegal) exploitation of timber products, combined with the persistant effects of the liberal dosing of Agent Orange the Americans gave the country, has left most of the once lush forested hillsides naked and exposed, its soil eroding and silting up rivers and its wildlife hanging on by a thread, or sometimes not at all. Only by cycling through the mountains can you truly experience how vast this devastation has been, forest only now clings to areas of hillsides given the protection of 'National Park' but even there illegal logging and poaching continues. And I won't get started on the trade in endangered species, but it is a HUGE problem and not all that hidden either, where the average income is $1 a day though its no wonder people trap and trade wildlife valued at hundreds of dollars for food, pets or medicine. Vietnam has hardly any wild bears left at all as the vast majority (at least 2,500) are stuck in cages on bear bile farms the bile being used in Traditional Chinese Medicine despite there being many other ingredients which serve the same purpose.
Ok while I'm on one I'm going to quantify my can* of earlier...you can have idyllic riding conditions if only you could shrug off the 'We got horns n we're gonna use em' style of reckless, crazy driving which makes the Indians look cautious. Seriously, they drive on the right here...right up until they want to turn left that is (or actually when its just a bit inconvenient to go onto the right), then they move onto the left side of the road and cruise round into the left lane and gradually make their way back over to the right. Imagine 4 lanes of traffic all coming head on and no clear lane to carry on into, everyone just kind of races towards each other blasting their horns, he/she who blasts loudest/longest is coming through so you best GET OUT THE FECKIN WAY LADY!!! Coupled with the ol' give way to the right rule that everyone else in the world abandoned decades ago makes these roads the most unpleasant I've cycled on. J is still on the side of India being worst but for me Vietnam wins hands down. I actually got knocked off by a scooter the other day, fortunately I was going slowly as I'd already been cut up by a lorry veering from the outside lane across 3 lanes of traffic to turn off, I am fine by the way, I'm good at falling, something like a kung fu master.
But ever onwards another beautiful high point to Vietnam happened almost upon entry. We went to Tay Ninh to visit the main temple of the Cao Dai religion. The Cao Dai-ists have taken a little bit of everything, Buddhism, Islam, Christianity, chucked in some confuscian philosophy, mixed it up with a dash of the occult and communing with the dead for guidance, and served it up in temples decorated so fantastically you just want to believe. They're all vegetarian, spend ages singing and drumming whilst wearing great outfits and espousing non violence. What more could you want I ask you?!
My favourite town though has been Hoi An, some people aren't too keen as its really touristy but I quite like that as it means the attention we normally get, which at times is fierce, gets divided amongst lots of people and for a little while we become annonymous. It is also touristy for a reason, its incredibly beautiful. The town, once an old trading port has been declared a UNESCO heritage site. Its a laid back mixture of rustic builings and narrow alleys, with a lovely river front lined with food stalls and small restarauts. At night the streets are alight with the soft glow of oriental lanterns for sale, as well as sumptuous silks glittering from the multitude of tailors shop fronts (there's also an abundance of lovely shoes). Yep its all for the tourists but I loved it.
I also did my advanced diving not far from Hoi An on Cham Island, keen as I was after my Koh Tao experience. As part of this I dived to 36m (where things start to get a bit dark) and did a night dive...I thought this would absolutely freak me right out, as I'm none too keen on the dark on land, but I just loved it, loved it, loved it AND i saw sea horses! They had their little tails curled around whip coral like they were holding on in the breeze, shrimps and eels look pretty darned cool at night too but sea horses...happy, happy, happy.So basically apart from the above we have spent time riding and trekking through hill tribe areas, spotting widlife including outrageous caterpillars, crazy stick insects and rarer than rare langurs (though try as I might I am yet to spot a slow loris). We have cycled most of the Ho Chi Minh highway marvelling at the Rong houses, pot bellied pigs and propoganda along the way. We have sampled rice wine at a wedding, 'it'll put hairs on your chest' springs to mind, eaten festive foods which made James ill for 3 days and trapped us in a town the like of which I believe the phrase 'middle of nowhere' was made for. I have subsisted on a diet of bindweed and noodles for longer than I care to think about. I've learned to love vietnamese coffee (possibly the strongest coffee in the world) and didn't take much persuasion to love the bia hoi which is conveniently cheaper than water.
Our next 2 weeks will be spent touring Halong bay, Hanoi and Sapa as proper tourists with friends (yip!). Afterwards I'll be fitting good ol' Trusty with my newly delivered tyres, a brand new saddle and wearing my new padded pants, you have no idea the amount of time I spend thinking about, or trying not to think about, my bum. All being well and newly kitted up we will head north to China, Korea and Japan.
Ever onwards (with a new improved comfortable ride I hope).
tx
Thursday, 2 July 2009
Corruption and crispy fried crickets...the Cambodia chronicle
Cambodia is one of the most corrupt countires in the world, true to its reputation we got ripped off before we even got in by the Cambodian government border medics for a medical we didn't need which involved the physician looking in one ear to determine our entire state of health and lack of swine flu. Those doctors must be good. Crossing from Thailand into Cambodia was a bit of a shocker. We moved from relative affluence and sensible road conditions into the dusty Casino land that is the Poipet border crossing, blaring music and no rules driving. That said once we headed out along the road to Battambang Cambodia did improve, helped no end by the freshly tarmaced highway which prior to January had been a barely passable track of rubble.
Whilst I found Cambodia interesting it was not a country I necessarily enjoyed being in too much. It has a very dark recent history, someone did point out to me just the other day that everywhere has a dark past, too true but this was so recent and the current corruption and its effects so visible that every day it left a little weight in my heart.
From a practical point of view i.e. cycling, the only surfaced roads run around the Tonle Sap to Phnom Pehn and on to Vietnam. The road is straight and flat, you might think this makes for nice easy cycling but in reality its just dull, dull, dullity dull, dull, dull, oh hell its so dull. When you get a glimpse through the strip developement of ramshackle homes on stilts and naked children running around at the side of the road there is nothing but flatness as far as the eye can see. To get into the hills and villages you need to leave the tarmaced roads, which, it being the wet season, would have meant us carrying our bikes through knee deep mud along tracks, not an option which appealed as we can barely lift our bikes at the best of times. We did meet an American girl who had gone 40km along one such road, carrying her bike through knee deep mud, getting filthy, being taken in by villagers for the night, they killed a chicken for her, she gave them a photograph, then the next day she had to turn back along the same muddy road as there was no way she could get through. I have to say I am just thrilled that wasn't me, and not only because I'd have felt guilty about the chicken.
Cambodia is also a bit slim in the forest and wildlife department... if it walks, jumps, crawls, swims or slithers, its eaten. I'm not blaming the Cambodians here, when I was a child they were starving to death in their millions. However it does impact on wildlife, time and again we would pass stalls with live minah birds strung up by the legs for sale whilst there were none in the sky...really, how much eating can there be on a minah bird? For those who don't know the average minah bird is about the size of a starling, i.e. not very big at all. And the Cambodians have plastic sheet and strip light contraptions for catching all manner of minibeasts for frying in chilli sauce (though I've know idea how they catch the spiders, James reckons they're being bred for the pot...yum yum).
I learned a lot about the Khmer Rouge whilst I was there (considerable cause of my heavy heart) and it was disturbing to know that many of the people regularly smiling and waving at us from the side of the road had lived through the horrific hunger, torture and genocide (or were perpetrators of that genocide). If you ever want a snapshot of what life was like under the Khmer Rouge read "Stay Alive, My Son" by Pin Yathay, tis not a cheery tale but you'll get the picture. The current government is still one of the most corrupt in the world. The very wealthy few pay the powers that be to ensure they have a monopoly on goods and services (food imports, roads, national treasures etc) meaning they can fix really high prices on everything, however the average Cambodian earns such a tiny amount of money that they can never afford to buy anything, and the tourists don't hang around too long as it relatively expensive considering the relative abundance of its neighbours.
On the upside though the people of Cambodia have come through all this with their beautiful smiles always at the ready, possibly the smiliest people we've encountered to date, and the children, awwwwwww man, they were really cute, really, cutest children in the world, even in a bad mood you couldn't help but smile at them and their giggly cries of 'ello, 'ello, 'ellooooooo!!! At times we couldn't even see them as they'd be hidden in trees or bathing in ponds but we could hear them giggling and calling and so found ourselves just waving in the general direction of the cry and hoping we were seen. Aside from the heartwarmingly welcoming people of Cambodia, who treated us to smiles and waves all along the road the road itself was frequently fringed with beautifully abundant Lotus flowers which never fail to make me smile.
But on to the journey...we cycled from the border via Sisophon (little to comment on there) to Battambang which was a surprisingly lovely town where time was spent eating nice food, feeling sorry for the fish, frogs and other miscellaneous live 'foods' in the market and learning the finer points of Cambodian cookery, watch out for my veggie amok and spicy salad coming to a dinner party near you.
Whilst in Battambang we also hired some motorbikes (including drivers but sadly no helmets) to take us out along the dirt tracks to the killing caves and temples nearby. This is not something I would normally choose to do and for good reason, its a dark place which left me sad, empty and at a loss for words.
From Battambang we took a boat to Siem Reap, home of Angkor Wat. The boat trip itself, although conducted by a teenager with steering issues, gave us a good peak into the lives of people on the river and their floating homes, schools and shops. People punted from home to home selling fruit and veg, whilst others dressed in their finery were steered to wedding parties. They even had a floating water hyacinth craft centre, water hyacinths introduced to the area are blocking up the waterways at a worrying pace, as they do, so people using them to make stuff is just grand as far as I'm concerned.
Angkor Wat is THE attraction in Cambodia, infact I think many tourists only go to Angkor Wat, staying in five star resorts and so must come away with a really warped idea of what Cambodia is like. Anyway Angkor Wat is the centre piece of a huge complex of temples and palaces at the heart of the Khmer Empire of old. Angkor Wat itself I wasn't blown away by but this could have been to do with the renovation work and scaffolding which seems to dog most attractions I turn up to (I'm all for preservation and renovation though it does marr the view sometimes. I also went right at the end of the day so my brain was probably totally fried in the heat).
However Ta Phrom I just loved, the place has been swallowed by (and reclaimed from) the jungle, huge tree roots hug the ancient masonry, I just love it, the way nature just consumes humanities greatest with such elegance and disregard, blows me away it does, Ta Phrom is so atmospheric and beautiful, you can even escape the other tourists for a few moments by ducking through old passageways in which its easy to become disorientated but hey ho, I spend half my life disorientated, its not that great for navigating round cities but otherwise its a state I'm happy with.
After a bout of illness in Siem Reap we hoofed our way to the capital Phnom Penh stopping only to check out the spider snack capital en route but J bottled it and couldn't eat one (that time). Personally I love being veggie...'Nope, I can't eat that, I'm a vegetarian'. Brilliant excuse! Anyway it was an odd entry to a capital city, the closer we got the worse the road condition became, unusual as in most countries roads around capitals are pretty smart even if the rest of a country is falling to pieces but not Phnom Penh, and as you ride through the dust, grit and pollution the road is lined with brothels...there's nothing like a good first impression. Anyway Phnom Pehn is a weird one, it has prettiness and granduer in parts, you can promenade down the river and watch people doing some kind of dancercise which is clearly all the rage.Its main attraction though is the Silver Pagoda, temple of the Royal Palaces and the palaces themselves which were indeed very, very lovely. The other main place to visit (I'm not sure I'd call it an attraction) was the S21 prison camp, where Cambodians were detained and tortured. Alongside the killing caves we visited near Battambang this is the darkest place I have ever been. This will suck the light out of your soul. Prior to the Khmer Rouge's take over of Phnom Pehn this was a school but is now a museum to the horror that was their 3 years in power and the victims of the prison itself. The classrooms were converted to cells which have been retained as a have the torture devices the Khmer Rouge used and photos of the victims. All of these are disturbing but particularly so were the images of the many small children there, all scared, all killed yet meticulously documented. It was harrowing there's not much else to be said about it really, its crushing to realise how brutal the average human can be.
But despite its darkside, I'm glad I went to Cambodia, there is beauty and culture if you look for it, the people are just lovely (if partial to the odd grasshopper) and I learned a lot. It has a long way to go, and sorting out the corruption everywhere would be a good start (I saw a land mine charity building with hugely ornate electric lamps lining a road to an ostentatious building acting as its offices in the middle of NOWHERE, really if i was donating to that charity I'd be well pissed off, would they not have been better spending that money actually ridding the country of the land mines which injure and kill approx 30 people per month?!). Which in part sums up how I felt about Cambodia deeply saddened that people were screwing over other people for money and power, a daily reality for many the world over but somehow life moves on and somehow smiles survive.
tx
Whilst I found Cambodia interesting it was not a country I necessarily enjoyed being in too much. It has a very dark recent history, someone did point out to me just the other day that everywhere has a dark past, too true but this was so recent and the current corruption and its effects so visible that every day it left a little weight in my heart.
From a practical point of view i.e. cycling, the only surfaced roads run around the Tonle Sap to Phnom Pehn and on to Vietnam. The road is straight and flat, you might think this makes for nice easy cycling but in reality its just dull, dull, dullity dull, dull, dull, oh hell its so dull. When you get a glimpse through the strip developement of ramshackle homes on stilts and naked children running around at the side of the road there is nothing but flatness as far as the eye can see. To get into the hills and villages you need to leave the tarmaced roads, which, it being the wet season, would have meant us carrying our bikes through knee deep mud along tracks, not an option which appealed as we can barely lift our bikes at the best of times. We did meet an American girl who had gone 40km along one such road, carrying her bike through knee deep mud, getting filthy, being taken in by villagers for the night, they killed a chicken for her, she gave them a photograph, then the next day she had to turn back along the same muddy road as there was no way she could get through. I have to say I am just thrilled that wasn't me, and not only because I'd have felt guilty about the chicken.
Cambodia is also a bit slim in the forest and wildlife department... if it walks, jumps, crawls, swims or slithers, its eaten. I'm not blaming the Cambodians here, when I was a child they were starving to death in their millions. However it does impact on wildlife, time and again we would pass stalls with live minah birds strung up by the legs for sale whilst there were none in the sky...really, how much eating can there be on a minah bird? For those who don't know the average minah bird is about the size of a starling, i.e. not very big at all. And the Cambodians have plastic sheet and strip light contraptions for catching all manner of minibeasts for frying in chilli sauce (though I've know idea how they catch the spiders, James reckons they're being bred for the pot...yum yum).
I learned a lot about the Khmer Rouge whilst I was there (considerable cause of my heavy heart) and it was disturbing to know that many of the people regularly smiling and waving at us from the side of the road had lived through the horrific hunger, torture and genocide (or were perpetrators of that genocide). If you ever want a snapshot of what life was like under the Khmer Rouge read "Stay Alive, My Son" by Pin Yathay, tis not a cheery tale but you'll get the picture. The current government is still one of the most corrupt in the world. The very wealthy few pay the powers that be to ensure they have a monopoly on goods and services (food imports, roads, national treasures etc) meaning they can fix really high prices on everything, however the average Cambodian earns such a tiny amount of money that they can never afford to buy anything, and the tourists don't hang around too long as it relatively expensive considering the relative abundance of its neighbours.
On the upside though the people of Cambodia have come through all this with their beautiful smiles always at the ready, possibly the smiliest people we've encountered to date, and the children, awwwwwww man, they were really cute, really, cutest children in the world, even in a bad mood you couldn't help but smile at them and their giggly cries of 'ello, 'ello, 'ellooooooo!!! At times we couldn't even see them as they'd be hidden in trees or bathing in ponds but we could hear them giggling and calling and so found ourselves just waving in the general direction of the cry and hoping we were seen. Aside from the heartwarmingly welcoming people of Cambodia, who treated us to smiles and waves all along the road the road itself was frequently fringed with beautifully abundant Lotus flowers which never fail to make me smile.
But on to the journey...we cycled from the border via Sisophon (little to comment on there) to Battambang which was a surprisingly lovely town where time was spent eating nice food, feeling sorry for the fish, frogs and other miscellaneous live 'foods' in the market and learning the finer points of Cambodian cookery, watch out for my veggie amok and spicy salad coming to a dinner party near you.
Whilst in Battambang we also hired some motorbikes (including drivers but sadly no helmets) to take us out along the dirt tracks to the killing caves and temples nearby. This is not something I would normally choose to do and for good reason, its a dark place which left me sad, empty and at a loss for words.
From Battambang we took a boat to Siem Reap, home of Angkor Wat. The boat trip itself, although conducted by a teenager with steering issues, gave us a good peak into the lives of people on the river and their floating homes, schools and shops. People punted from home to home selling fruit and veg, whilst others dressed in their finery were steered to wedding parties. They even had a floating water hyacinth craft centre, water hyacinths introduced to the area are blocking up the waterways at a worrying pace, as they do, so people using them to make stuff is just grand as far as I'm concerned.
Angkor Wat is THE attraction in Cambodia, infact I think many tourists only go to Angkor Wat, staying in five star resorts and so must come away with a really warped idea of what Cambodia is like. Anyway Angkor Wat is the centre piece of a huge complex of temples and palaces at the heart of the Khmer Empire of old. Angkor Wat itself I wasn't blown away by but this could have been to do with the renovation work and scaffolding which seems to dog most attractions I turn up to (I'm all for preservation and renovation though it does marr the view sometimes. I also went right at the end of the day so my brain was probably totally fried in the heat).
However Ta Phrom I just loved, the place has been swallowed by (and reclaimed from) the jungle, huge tree roots hug the ancient masonry, I just love it, the way nature just consumes humanities greatest with such elegance and disregard, blows me away it does, Ta Phrom is so atmospheric and beautiful, you can even escape the other tourists for a few moments by ducking through old passageways in which its easy to become disorientated but hey ho, I spend half my life disorientated, its not that great for navigating round cities but otherwise its a state I'm happy with.
After a bout of illness in Siem Reap we hoofed our way to the capital Phnom Penh stopping only to check out the spider snack capital en route but J bottled it and couldn't eat one (that time). Personally I love being veggie...'Nope, I can't eat that, I'm a vegetarian'. Brilliant excuse! Anyway it was an odd entry to a capital city, the closer we got the worse the road condition became, unusual as in most countries roads around capitals are pretty smart even if the rest of a country is falling to pieces but not Phnom Penh, and as you ride through the dust, grit and pollution the road is lined with brothels...there's nothing like a good first impression. Anyway Phnom Pehn is a weird one, it has prettiness and granduer in parts, you can promenade down the river and watch people doing some kind of dancercise which is clearly all the rage.Its main attraction though is the Silver Pagoda, temple of the Royal Palaces and the palaces themselves which were indeed very, very lovely. The other main place to visit (I'm not sure I'd call it an attraction) was the S21 prison camp, where Cambodians were detained and tortured. Alongside the killing caves we visited near Battambang this is the darkest place I have ever been. This will suck the light out of your soul. Prior to the Khmer Rouge's take over of Phnom Pehn this was a school but is now a museum to the horror that was their 3 years in power and the victims of the prison itself. The classrooms were converted to cells which have been retained as a have the torture devices the Khmer Rouge used and photos of the victims. All of these are disturbing but particularly so were the images of the many small children there, all scared, all killed yet meticulously documented. It was harrowing there's not much else to be said about it really, its crushing to realise how brutal the average human can be.
But despite its darkside, I'm glad I went to Cambodia, there is beauty and culture if you look for it, the people are just lovely (if partial to the odd grasshopper) and I learned a lot. It has a long way to go, and sorting out the corruption everywhere would be a good start (I saw a land mine charity building with hugely ornate electric lamps lining a road to an ostentatious building acting as its offices in the middle of NOWHERE, really if i was donating to that charity I'd be well pissed off, would they not have been better spending that money actually ridding the country of the land mines which injure and kill approx 30 people per month?!
tx
Thursday, 14 May 2009
Thailand Thailand lovely lovely Tahiland!
Ahhhhhh, Thailand, tis a blessed relief to not be in India anymore. When I was in India I just thought it was great (except when I thought it wasn't) but having left it and being in a state of some shock for a few days (maybe even weeks) I realised just how stressful it was to be so constantly and at times fiercely the centre of attention, I mean I upstaged a small girl who was tightrope walking on an old bicycle rim, 6ft off the ground, with 3 pots balanced on her head...really, that's how interesting I was.
Anyway, Thailand is a delight, the roads are smoooooooooth with a really wide hard shoulder for pootling along in. Rarely does anyone pip their horn at you and when they do its almost apologetic. People stare at us, oh yes, but when they do it's accompanied by a huge smile and a wave (which I always return, global ambassador for cyclists that I am). People have geared bikes so we can buy spare parts. I can cycle with my legs and arms uncovered without feeling like a woman of loose morals (I quite like having a veneer of respectability). All is good and lovely. The only downsides being a) the mosquitoes b) the blistering heat and c) the 'bonus' meat which the Thais keep treating me to in my rice and noodles. Honestly I thought it was going to be tofu heaven what with all those Buddhists, I have been very much mistaken. The Thais, Buddhist or not eat meat, fish, tentacles in fact anything with everything, they do have tofu sometimes, its only that they love to serve it with a good sprinkling of tentacle, dried shrimp and pork. I can spend ages at the counter, pointing to all the things I'd like with a happy face, even pointing out the things I don't like with an 'oh my god please do NOT put this in' face and accompanying actions, and do you know what they do, they make what I asked for and then find some crazy piece of meat that wasn't even on display, maybe from the back of their own personal fridges or under the murky depths of their stall and put that in instead. They just can't bring themselves to feed me such poor food. This sees James eating many extra portions and/or me picking out lumps of animal and dumping it in James's bowl when no-one's looking.
As for Thailand itself (as apposed to my daily food crisis) its been a pleasure. We landed in Phuket which admittedly was package holiday hell, unimproved by us taking the scenic coastal tour around which involved hills so unbelievably steep I was pulling wheelies up them but once we'd escaped things improved dramatically. First we headed to Phang Nga which was just the most photogenic place in the world, we spent our time on a long tailed boat, zipping around through mangrove and visiting Dr. No's secret island, spending the night at a floating village and the highlight, viewing an island that "bears a remarkable resemblance to a poodle dog" according to the publicity boards.
We visited Khao Sok Nature reserve which was just amazing. On a jungle walk we spotted a beautiful snake which I paused to take a picture of only realising later when we looked it up in a field guide that it was to be treated with 'extreme caution' (but it was soooo pretty). As we sweated our way through the jungle I became obsessed with photographing fungi and plants, we also paused to watch a troop of dusky langurs making their way up the river (though we thought they were gibbons at the time). All this and the most beautiful bungalow on stilts in the jungle by the river with outdoor bathroom (in a glamorous way). From there we sweated our way along steaming roads, camping in a steaming tent, through at times amazing rainforest (and at others huge deforestation for the sake of palm oil and rubber plantations), past Burma and on to the west coast.
From Chumpon we caught a boat to one of the highlights of my trip to the island of Koh Tao so that I could do a PADI open water diving course. I have been so excited by this I just want to become a better diver, do more courses so i can go deeper, dive in the dark and the like and then go on diving holidays, excellent stuff! Koh Tao itself is obviously full of westerners learning to dive so not quite the island retreat you might necessarily track down but I loved it anyway. James wasn't up for it as he didn't want to spend his time watching video's and bobbing around in a pool when he could be snorkeling and seeing stuff but it was one of the things i wanted to do before i left,
so off I went, bobbed around, met some lovely people, had a laugh, learned to dive and fell over drunk at the end of course celebration (surprise, surprise) causing my legs to come up in hideous pus riddled scabs which are only now healing but it seemed worth it at the time and was a price I was happy to pay. We went snorkeling with the lovely people from the course the next day for fun and had a great time, even saw small reef sharks in REALLY shallow water... so on this wave of euphoria I am contemplating doing my advanced diving course in Vietnam...
Sad as I was to leave Koh Tao our time was running short so we bombed our way north to Bangkok, pausing only to freeze our brains with slush puppy style slurpees (my latest addiction) and shovel down rice n veg (and J ate the odd bit of tentacle). We did take a detour to another national park which had amazing karst limestone formations but I was totally depressed by the endless shrimp farms and the sight of coconut picking macaques chained to the back of pick up trucks. As we made our way up the coast we called in at a few resorts which the Thais favour and the lonely planet is pretty favourable about them too but couldn't see the appeal, they were either hellishly overdeveloped to the point where you couldn't see the sea or had a bit of a neglected blackpool feel about them. Anyway we sizzled into Bangkok, the heat is overwhelmingly, well, hot on the skin actually. We have spent our time wandering round wats, admiring enormous reclining (and non reclining) Golden Buddha's, buying amulets for protection from who knows what, having a beer or too and steering clear of the sex industry, I've also bought a few nice new stickers for my bike.
So tomorrow we're off, heading to Cambodia and into the monsoon proper, I've got a new (plastic but 100% recyclable) basket for my bicycle (the last one rusted to oblivion), my crocs are at the ready, I've a supply of plastic bags (to keep my feet dryish) and a smile... bring on the rains.
x
Anyway, Thailand is a delight, the roads are smoooooooooth with a really wide hard shoulder for pootling along in. Rarely does anyone pip their horn at you and when they do its almost apologetic. People stare at us, oh yes, but when they do it's accompanied by a huge smile and a wave (which I always return, global ambassador for cyclists that I am). People have geared bikes so we can buy spare parts. I can cycle with my legs and arms uncovered without feeling like a woman of loose morals (I quite like having a veneer of respectability). All is good and lovely. The only downsides being a) the mosquitoes b) the blistering heat and c) the 'bonus' meat which the Thais keep treating me to in my rice and noodles. Honestly I thought it was going to be tofu heaven what with all those Buddhists, I have been very much mistaken. The Thais, Buddhist or not eat meat, fish, tentacles in fact anything with everything, they do have tofu sometimes, its only that they love to serve it with a good sprinkling of tentacle, dried shrimp and pork. I can spend ages at the counter, pointing to all the things I'd like with a happy face, even pointing out the things I don't like with an 'oh my god please do NOT put this in' face and accompanying actions, and do you know what they do, they make what I asked for and then find some crazy piece of meat that wasn't even on display, maybe from the back of their own personal fridges or under the murky depths of their stall and put that in instead. They just can't bring themselves to feed me such poor food. This sees James eating many extra portions and/or me picking out lumps of animal and dumping it in James's bowl when no-one's looking.
As for Thailand itself (as apposed to my daily food crisis) its been a pleasure. We landed in Phuket which admittedly was package holiday hell, unimproved by us taking the scenic coastal tour around which involved hills so unbelievably steep I was pulling wheelies up them but once we'd escaped things improved dramatically. First we headed to Phang Nga which was just the most photogenic place in the world, we spent our time on a long tailed boat, zipping around through mangrove and visiting Dr. No's secret island, spending the night at a floating village and the highlight, viewing an island that "bears a remarkable resemblance to a poodle dog" according to the publicity boards.
We visited Khao Sok Nature reserve which was just amazing. On a jungle walk we spotted a beautiful snake which I paused to take a picture of only realising later when we looked it up in a field guide that it was to be treated with 'extreme caution' (but it was soooo pretty). As we sweated our way through the jungle I became obsessed with photographing fungi and plants, we also paused to watch a troop of dusky langurs making their way up the river (though we thought they were gibbons at the time). All this and the most beautiful bungalow on stilts in the jungle by the river with outdoor bathroom (in a glamorous way). From there we sweated our way along steaming roads, camping in a steaming tent, through at times amazing rainforest (and at others huge deforestation for the sake of palm oil and rubber plantations), past Burma and on to the west coast.
From Chumpon we caught a boat to one of the highlights of my trip to the island of Koh Tao so that I could do a PADI open water diving course. I have been so excited by this I just want to become a better diver, do more courses so i can go deeper, dive in the dark and the like and then go on diving holidays, excellent stuff! Koh Tao itself is obviously full of westerners learning to dive so not quite the island retreat you might necessarily track down but I loved it anyway. James wasn't up for it as he didn't want to spend his time watching video's and bobbing around in a pool when he could be snorkeling and seeing stuff but it was one of the things i wanted to do before i left,
so off I went, bobbed around, met some lovely people, had a laugh, learned to dive and fell over drunk at the end of course celebration (surprise, surprise) causing my legs to come up in hideous pus riddled scabs which are only now healing but it seemed worth it at the time and was a price I was happy to pay. We went snorkeling with the lovely people from the course the next day for fun and had a great time, even saw small reef sharks in REALLY shallow water... so on this wave of euphoria I am contemplating doing my advanced diving course in Vietnam...Sad as I was to leave Koh Tao our time was running short so we bombed our way north to Bangkok, pausing only to freeze our brains with slush puppy style slurpees (my latest addiction) and shovel down rice n veg (and J ate the odd bit of tentacle). We did take a detour to another national park which had amazing karst limestone formations but I was totally depressed by the endless shrimp farms and the sight of coconut picking macaques chained to the back of pick up trucks. As we made our way up the coast we called in at a few resorts which the Thais favour and the lonely planet is pretty favourable about them too but couldn't see the appeal, they were either hellishly overdeveloped to the point where you couldn't see the sea or had a bit of a neglected blackpool feel about them. Anyway we sizzled into Bangkok, the heat is overwhelmingly, well, hot on the skin actually. We have spent our time wandering round wats, admiring enormous reclining (and non reclining) Golden Buddha's, buying amulets for protection from who knows what, having a beer or too and steering clear of the sex industry, I've also bought a few nice new stickers for my bike.
So tomorrow we're off, heading to Cambodia and into the monsoon proper, I've got a new (plastic but 100% recyclable) basket for my bicycle (the last one rusted to oblivion), my crocs are at the ready, I've a supply of plastic bags (to keep my feet dryish) and a smile... bring on the rains.
x
Saturday, 2 May 2009
Out of India! and the lovely Andaman blog
We managed to get a boat out of india HOORAAHH! This is, strictly speaking, impossible but we managed to get a dive and sail company at the end of their dive season to take us from the Andaman Islands to Thailand, this was a lot more difficult and long winded to sort out than you would think but I will spare you the details, just know that this is not allowed, you can not leave India by boat, none of the ports are designated as exit points, owing to current neighbouring border situations you've got to fly... however we did leave, on a luxury yacht no less, if you're going to do it might as well do it in style.
Part of me wants to say the Andaman Islands were rubbish...no one should go there, nothing to see, the boat crossing was hell (this bit is true, crammed in bunk class with cockroaches running over you all night and hundreds of Indians wretching up phlegm into the bin by your head, awww man, and I will NEVER recover from discovering a great big poo in the shower cubicle, I am damaged). However after the hell that was the (3 DAY) boat journey (did I mention there were little cockroaches running along the dinner table too?!) we spent an amazing week snorkelling in the Andaman Islands which I genuinely believe is THE most beautiful place on the planet. I will exempt the captial Port Blair from this which looks like every other town in India which is none too pretty a sight (man, I don't know how they do it!) but this is a tiny fragment in an otherwise paradise of islands. Seriously, I was nearly crying when I had to leave to catch the boat at the thought that I was leaving my pinnacle of beauty, once in a lifetime never to be repeated experience, pristine coral, crystal clear water, white sand, huge colourful fish everywhere, hut at the beach which cost us about 3 quid a day between the two of us. Pretty undeveloped though its starting hence why I am tempted to say the Andaman Islands is pants...don't go.
Amazing though just amazing, I am tempted to learn how to sail just so I can get back there. We could easily have spent a couple of months just exploring the islands, snorkelling, bimbling around in the leech free forests and generally not doing much else. There is nothing else to do, no nightlife, no nothing just up and to bed with the sun but really what more do you need in paradise?
The highlight was snorkelling off south button island which is a tiny little island (more of a boulder with a few trees on top) in the middle of nowhere (took us 1.5 hours on a boat to get there) and its edges just drop straight down to the sea floor which is about 20-25m down. All the way round the undersea wall of the island/boulder is just basically a wall of coral...like HUGE fan corals teeming with amazing, beautiful and fairly sizeable fish, so colourful, just calmly swimming around not caring about you at all, and the clarity of the water was something else, visibility from top to bottom and right out. At one point I even had a little yellow and black fish slipstreaming me for protection or fun, and though he was mostly just swimming under my chin, now and again he would be right in front of my mask, cool as but somewhat obscuring my vision and making me laugh which doesn't help keep the sea out of your snorkel. Between that, the crunching of parrot fish and shoals of giant travelli (which in shallower water would have scared the pants off me) it was something else, really. Fortunatley it was a luxury yacht that took us away so the pain of leaving was compensated for slightly.
I hope to return one day, mainly to snorkel and walk in the forest though perhaps to dive and see if I can hang out where the big stuff lives...but for the minute I shall content myself with knowing that we made it, out of India, via the Andaman and onwards to Asia with the no flying rule in tact. The bikes were a bit rusty from all that time at sea but with a bit of tlc they're still going strong and we're in Thailand. I'm feeling pretty darned pleased about that.
txx
Part of me wants to say the Andaman Islands were rubbish...no one should go there, nothing to see, the boat crossing was hell (this bit is true, crammed in bunk class with cockroaches running over you all night and hundreds of Indians wretching up phlegm into the bin by your head, awww man, and I will NEVER recover from discovering a great big poo in the shower cubicle, I am damaged). However after the hell that was the (3 DAY) boat journey (did I mention there were little cockroaches running along the dinner table too?!) we spent an amazing week snorkelling in the Andaman Islands which I genuinely believe is THE most beautiful place on the planet. I will exempt the captial Port Blair from this which looks like every other town in India which is none too pretty a sight (man, I don't know how they do it!) but this is a tiny fragment in an otherwise paradise of islands. Seriously, I was nearly crying when I had to leave to catch the boat at the thought that I was leaving my pinnacle of beauty, once in a lifetime never to be repeated experience, pristine coral, crystal clear water, white sand, huge colourful fish everywhere, hut at the beach which cost us about 3 quid a day between the two of us. Pretty undeveloped though its starting hence why I am tempted to say the Andaman Islands is pants...don't go.
Amazing though just amazing, I am tempted to learn how to sail just so I can get back there. We could easily have spent a couple of months just exploring the islands, snorkelling, bimbling around in the leech free forests and generally not doing much else. There is nothing else to do, no nightlife, no nothing just up and to bed with the sun but really what more do you need in paradise?
The highlight was snorkelling off south button island which is a tiny little island (more of a boulder with a few trees on top) in the middle of nowhere (took us 1.5 hours on a boat to get there) and its edges just drop straight down to the sea floor which is about 20-25m down. All the way round the undersea wall of the island/boulder is just basically a wall of coral...like HUGE fan corals teeming with amazing, beautiful and fairly sizeable fish, so colourful, just calmly swimming around not caring about you at all, and the clarity of the water was something else, visibility from top to bottom and right out. At one point I even had a little yellow and black fish slipstreaming me for protection or fun, and though he was mostly just swimming under my chin, now and again he would be right in front of my mask, cool as but somewhat obscuring my vision and making me laugh which doesn't help keep the sea out of your snorkel. Between that, the crunching of parrot fish and shoals of giant travelli (which in shallower water would have scared the pants off me) it was something else, really. Fortunatley it was a luxury yacht that took us away so the pain of leaving was compensated for slightly.
I hope to return one day, mainly to snorkel and walk in the forest though perhaps to dive and see if I can hang out where the big stuff lives...but for the minute I shall content myself with knowing that we made it, out of India, via the Andaman and onwards to Asia with the no flying rule in tact. The bikes were a bit rusty from all that time at sea but with a bit of tlc they're still going strong and we're in Thailand. I'm feeling pretty darned pleased about that.txx
Sunday, 29 March 2009
India in Images
India, how I have loved it and contrary to popular opinion, which included "oh my god, please, please, don't cycle in India", it has been great for cycling... if you stick to the minor roads not on our consistantly erronous map that is.
Don't get me wrong there are times when you could have spotted me evil eyed, marching down the road, or speeding off on my bike muttering under my breath oh so quietly... 'man, i hate india'... because the things that can make it so exhilirating can also really p*ss me off. But overall, I love it.
And the reasons I have loved it:
Stunning landscapes, temples and temple life, crazy, crazy colourful people in colourful villages with colourful livestock, consistantly doing nuts stuff like squeezing a family of 5 onto a 'hero' honda motorbike (please do not try this at home, tis very dangerous indeed) or hanging seemingly impossible wide loads onto bicycles...anything from chickens on the handlebars to coconuts just everywhere, which makes us look like super light packers. I have loved the tuk tuks, food (I am leaving my body to medical science as I am quite frankly super human as I have manged to spend 4 months cycling in India eating at trucker's dhabas which resembled pet shops due to the variety of animal life to be found on the table, under the table, in the kitchen eating out of the cooking pots and picking hairs out of my food daily and didn't drop 2 dress sizes... super human). I have also been much pleased by the wildlife to be seen outside of dhaba's, stopping for pop in rural roadside shacks, cows, camels, elephants, the countryside, the coast, the hills (though only first thing in the morning and late in the evening), dosa's, dosa's, dosa's...
but overall its just pure entertainment to be here.
And those things I will be glad to leave behind, though I'm pretty sure some of this will follow us for some time yet:
Scary bus drivers, 'horn please!' the ONLY sign ALL drivers obey without fail, 'which country madam?', spitting (like they're going to hough up a lung), crowds squeezing round us, staring all the time, drains, picking my way through crap, broken glass, smashed concrete, dead rats, people's laundry etc to walk down the street, being hassled in tourist spots, falling off my bike when i come back to it cos all the gears have been messed with, dodging cow poo - not always successfully, rubbish (read: plastic - the scourge of India) everywhere. And last, but by no means least, I shall be thrilled to leave behind my curry pit.
The pictures are roughly in order from where we entered, Amritsar, to now. We are heading to the Andaman Islands by ferry tomorrow (takes 3 days) to do a spot of snorkelling and work out a route out of this place. Anyway enjoy the pictures, it'll save you going through my flickr site and is nearly like you were there...
The Golden Temple, most holy site of the Sikhs, was just so beautiful, especially when lit up at night. So enchanted by the place we went back every day we were in Amritsar. Music and chanting rings out continuously, though I wasn't to sure about drinking from the holy lake as people were washing in it on the other side.
We traded in our bikes to ride camels across the desert for Christmas. Shown here is The Lip, you'd understand if you saw it, below the lovely Binky (Tchen) who was delightfully well mannered, possessed fluffy ears and a tendency to drag me through thorny bushes ripping my only pair of trousers, they were backed up by Sniff (aka Tony!) who had the ability to smell female camels from miles off and would spit his palate out in a crazed camel mating call. 7 days we travelled across the Great Thar Desert (it would have taken us 2 by bike if we'd gone on the road) but it was amazing to see desert life where the only traffic was other camels.
Ho ho how much did I love this... Karni Mata, favoured Goddess of Deshnok, reincarnated all the bards as rats to deprive death of human souls, so they're all here, the rat bards, being fed milk and eating grains and generally crapping everywhere and running over your feet which is meant to be auspicious and occasionally licking toes which is a little bit of an uncomfortable feeling actually. James felt physically sick afterwards, many of the rats also looked a bit poorly too.
The Great Thar Desert, where the deer and the antelope play (cos no one eats them), goats nibble what scrub there is (as people need to eat something and hey how else do we keep the desert deserty?), families can reach up to about 15 children per couple (who else will tend the goats), women collect water from wells in the brightest colours imaginable (in defiance of the muted desert hues), and the only noise to disrupt the peace is the sound of camels farting (which they do a lot).
Langurs abound in the trees, in the cities, in the roads with babies clinging on underneath. They are such gentle creatures, they never once bothered us but just looked on in interest, unlike the Macaques which will ferociously stalk and mug you for your water bottle.
India has been a breathtakingly beautiful country to cycle through with landscapes ranging from desert to forest and lots in between. Sadly it has a serious smog problem in cities combined with particles being blown up from the dusty plains, but hell, its still stunning. Mostly due to the Hindu religion's respect for most living creatures, as some deity somewhere loves them, there is plenty of wildlife still abounding making it a dream country for people like us...and James has been ticking off new bird spots almost daily.
Thali, tis like an all you can eat buffet (generally termed simply 'meals' the further south you go). Perfect for hungry cyclists though regular consumption has left me with an unquenchable chutney and papad addiction. YUM! Note the heavy coat wearing, this was taken in Mount Abu in January where it was absolutely freezing, not improved by me choosing a room with a tin roof (I am now let off from room selection duties), though as soon as we descended the weather turned blisteringly hot and has remained so ever since.
Jodhpur (home of the baggy/tight riding trousers) has been my favourite Indian city, Jaipur (the pink city ) was just too pushy for me (and i got groped there so wasn't loving that) but Jodhpur just charmed the pants off me with its narrow winding lanes and amazing fort. We also spent a splendid new years eve here with the German motorcycle road trippers we met in Cappadocia, so that made it extra lovely, especially when I got to wear a sari for the occasion instead of my knackered old t-shirt!
Temples have obviously been a huge feature on our trip, they range from simple roadside piles of bricks to exquisitely carved Hoysala creations or mountain top sites of pilgrimage, not sure about my karma but we've trekked a fair way to get there so I must have earned a few points.
Possibly the most beautiful well in the world. These wells are enormous and carved with virtually every Hindu deity, understandable in a country where water is so precious.
If you go to Gujurat go here, Desert Coursers in Zainabad, money raised from staying at the eco resort also helps pay for a school and orphanage and you get to see wild ass, nilgais, and sit on chairs made of cow poo! Happy days.
Gecko's have had the power to make me scream when running at close quarters in the dark (yes, I am suitably embarrassed by that), but they are the coolest mosquito munchers and may be my favourite common wildlife here except when they become surprisingly vocal in the night.
Temple building, regardless of how exquisite the current temple is, is always ongoing in India, the tapping of stone masons is a regular sound (though concrete is a common replacement).
The Jain's have a policy of non violence, kill nothing or else you will have to come back and live its life... James has a lot of futures as a cockroach, I'll be a fair few mosquitoes and ants... they keep eating me and my biscuits respectively.
Skinny dogs and tuk tuks reign all over india, the tuk tuks have been amazing at times, seriously, they know how to pimp their rides. The dogs however have rarely been amazing, puppies I have renamed stains as huge numbers end up as exactly that on the roads, if they make it through they end up as skinny rake type creatures, often with serious mange issues...I'm not sure what's worse.
Laundry is pounded to clean it whether in the laundry ghats or in the street. I have stuck to scrubbing... at this stage of the trip I don't think my gear could take it.
I reckon this is where most of the laundry in Mumbai comes to, to be beaten into submission, a huge slum has grown up around it simply because its there, but at least the occupants have some form of work. I'm not saying its great, India has a l-o-n-g way to go.
Cricket in India... beautiful, though it was hazardous to watch as some of the informal teams were playing with real cricket balls and there were hundreds of people playing, running through each others games with the odd (foolish in my opinion) football game starting up in the middle.
The Moz...it hath taken its toll throughout the trip, if I was to pack again I'd pack a net.
The most splendid beast in India.
Riding down the Konkan coast was a huge highlight, virtually deserted (and sometimes non existant) roads, stunning paradise coastlines, beautiful villages. Very few people come here and it was a delight to ride, every night camping on the beach and buying freshly caught fish to cook on the sand, as well as dolphin spotting.
Fishing although a way of life here is still pretty low tech. However loads of the catch ends up being sundried over huge areas of fields for fertiliser which can lead to an overwhelming fishy odour. Birds and rather surprisingly cows gorge themselves on the tiny drying bodies (gag)
Goa, it was nice to take a break from India, swim in the sea in a sensible swimming outfit, laze around, eat tofu in black bean sauce, drink beer and sleep. I didn't enjoy the bit where I was violently ill for 4 days to the point where I thought I had Dengue fever but at least I was in a good spot for lying around.
Sometimes the road has been tough.
This was actually the state highway, a rubble track with about a 15 degree incline, it got worse, we turned back... there was 20km of it still to go through tiger country, I think it was the right decision.
and sometimes its not so tough...
Overtaking cow carts in the ghats
The bridge isn't quite finished yet!!
Dugout canoe across river on Konkan Coast
Originally uploaded by james_littlewood...and sometimes its not there at all!
We crossed so many rivers on the Konkan coast, on everything from big ferries to dug out canoes and small private boats, the dug out canoe though was possibly the most 'how the hell do we get on that?!' moment.
Eating on the road is always entertaining once you get used to the health and hygiene of it. This particular breakfast joint had newspapers pasted onto the ceiling and old recycled bits of furniture, it really did look like the wombles hang out, loved it, breakfast was nice too.
Pooja (prayer/offerings to the Gods) being performed at the feet of Lord Bahubali (Jain Temple), the largest monolithic statue in the world apparently, and possibly the most serene place in the world (except when the drummers got going). Sadly I never found out why the men were carrying coconuts around on their heads.
India is indeed crazy and colourful. And I have no idea why the goat was pink, there was a little group of them in a herd...?
These are Karnataka specials, beautifully done.
Not all of the Ghats were this lush but we took a detour past these amazing fields to a wildlife reserve (as I was broken quite frankly) and had a couple of days of looking for tigers (without success), spotting sambar deer (magnificent) and generally just enjoying the beauty and peaceful surroundings, except when there was a scorpion in the sink.
Ooooo if I had a pound for every time we were pursued by boys (young and old) on squeaky bicycles... These bikes were rather shiny and new though, a bit like their owners.
Tikka powder vendors were doing a roaring trade right before holi, a hindu festival in celebration of spring where people run around chucking coloured powder over each other and the menfolk get a bit pissed. Fortunately for me the locals were a lot more restrained than I was led to believe so I didn't get blathered in powder, which was a bit of a relief as i've only got 2 t-shirts.
We were lucky enough to see Theyyam happening at a temple not far from Kannur. A Theyyam is a performance depicting stories from the Hindu texts which are performed as an offering to the Gods. The performers prepare by doing hours of meditation and wearing HUGE elaborate costumes and make up, the idea is that whilst they are acting out the theyyam they take on the spirit of the deity they represent. People then approach them to ask for advice human to deity, no whispering into the ether here. This was one of the most otherworldy things I have ever seen. Wild dancing, drumming, processions and fireworks and a random snake appearing in the middle of it all freaking everyone right out til the head temple honcho blessed it and it disappeared into the wall under our feet. We watched the whole thing unfold from sunset to midday the next day, being summonned and blessed in the night by actually quite scary deities! Blew my mind it did.
Says it all really.
much love
tx
Don't get me wrong there are times when you could have spotted me evil eyed, marching down the road, or speeding off on my bike muttering under my breath oh so quietly... 'man, i hate india'... because the things that can make it so exhilirating can also really p*ss me off. But overall, I love it.
And the reasons I have loved it:
Stunning landscapes, temples and temple life, crazy, crazy colourful people in colourful villages with colourful livestock, consistantly doing nuts stuff like squeezing a family of 5 onto a 'hero' honda motorbike (please do not try this at home, tis very dangerous indeed) or hanging seemingly impossible wide loads onto bicycles...anything from chickens on the handlebars to coconuts just everywhere, which makes us look like super light packers. I have loved the tuk tuks, food (I am leaving my body to medical science as I am quite frankly super human as I have manged to spend 4 months cycling in India eating at trucker's dhabas which resembled pet shops due to the variety of animal life to be found on the table, under the table, in the kitchen eating out of the cooking pots and picking hairs out of my food daily and didn't drop 2 dress sizes... super human). I have also been much pleased by the wildlife to be seen outside of dhaba's, stopping for pop in rural roadside shacks, cows, camels, elephants, the countryside, the coast, the hills (though only first thing in the morning and late in the evening), dosa's, dosa's, dosa's...
but overall its just pure entertainment to be here.
And those things I will be glad to leave behind, though I'm pretty sure some of this will follow us for some time yet:
Scary bus drivers, 'horn please!' the ONLY sign ALL drivers obey without fail, 'which country madam?', spitting (like they're going to hough up a lung), crowds squeezing round us, staring all the time, drains, picking my way through crap, broken glass, smashed concrete, dead rats, people's laundry etc to walk down the street, being hassled in tourist spots, falling off my bike when i come back to it cos all the gears have been messed with, dodging cow poo - not always successfully, rubbish (read: plastic - the scourge of India) everywhere. And last, but by no means least, I shall be thrilled to leave behind my curry pit.
The pictures are roughly in order from where we entered, Amritsar, to now. We are heading to the Andaman Islands by ferry tomorrow (takes 3 days) to do a spot of snorkelling and work out a route out of this place. Anyway enjoy the pictures, it'll save you going through my flickr site and is nearly like you were there...
The Golden Temple, most holy site of the Sikhs, was just so beautiful, especially when lit up at night. So enchanted by the place we went back every day we were in Amritsar. Music and chanting rings out continuously, though I wasn't to sure about drinking from the holy lake as people were washing in it on the other side.
We traded in our bikes to ride camels across the desert for Christmas. Shown here is The Lip, you'd understand if you saw it, below the lovely Binky (Tchen) who was delightfully well mannered, possessed fluffy ears and a tendency to drag me through thorny bushes ripping my only pair of trousers, they were backed up by Sniff (aka Tony!) who had the ability to smell female camels from miles off and would spit his palate out in a crazed camel mating call. 7 days we travelled across the Great Thar Desert (it would have taken us 2 by bike if we'd gone on the road) but it was amazing to see desert life where the only traffic was other camels.
Ho ho how much did I love this... Karni Mata, favoured Goddess of Deshnok, reincarnated all the bards as rats to deprive death of human souls, so they're all here, the rat bards, being fed milk and eating grains and generally crapping everywhere and running over your feet which is meant to be auspicious and occasionally licking toes which is a little bit of an uncomfortable feeling actually. James felt physically sick afterwards, many of the rats also looked a bit poorly too.
The Great Thar Desert, where the deer and the antelope play (cos no one eats them), goats nibble what scrub there is (as people need to eat something and hey how else do we keep the desert deserty?), families can reach up to about 15 children per couple (who else will tend the goats), women collect water from wells in the brightest colours imaginable (in defiance of the muted desert hues), and the only noise to disrupt the peace is the sound of camels farting (which they do a lot).
Langurs abound in the trees, in the cities, in the roads with babies clinging on underneath. They are such gentle creatures, they never once bothered us but just looked on in interest, unlike the Macaques which will ferociously stalk and mug you for your water bottle.
India has been a breathtakingly beautiful country to cycle through with landscapes ranging from desert to forest and lots in between. Sadly it has a serious smog problem in cities combined with particles being blown up from the dusty plains, but hell, its still stunning. Mostly due to the Hindu religion's respect for most living creatures, as some deity somewhere loves them, there is plenty of wildlife still abounding making it a dream country for people like us...and James has been ticking off new bird spots almost daily.
Thali, tis like an all you can eat buffet (generally termed simply 'meals' the further south you go). Perfect for hungry cyclists though regular consumption has left me with an unquenchable chutney and papad addiction. YUM! Note the heavy coat wearing, this was taken in Mount Abu in January where it was absolutely freezing, not improved by me choosing a room with a tin roof (I am now let off from room selection duties), though as soon as we descended the weather turned blisteringly hot and has remained so ever since.
Jodhpur (home of the baggy/tight riding trousers) has been my favourite Indian city, Jaipur (the pink city ) was just too pushy for me (and i got groped there so wasn't loving that) but Jodhpur just charmed the pants off me with its narrow winding lanes and amazing fort. We also spent a splendid new years eve here with the German motorcycle road trippers we met in Cappadocia, so that made it extra lovely, especially when I got to wear a sari for the occasion instead of my knackered old t-shirt!
Temples have obviously been a huge feature on our trip, they range from simple roadside piles of bricks to exquisitely carved Hoysala creations or mountain top sites of pilgrimage, not sure about my karma but we've trekked a fair way to get there so I must have earned a few points.
Possibly the most beautiful well in the world. These wells are enormous and carved with virtually every Hindu deity, understandable in a country where water is so precious.
If you go to Gujurat go here, Desert Coursers in Zainabad, money raised from staying at the eco resort also helps pay for a school and orphanage and you get to see wild ass, nilgais, and sit on chairs made of cow poo! Happy days.
Gecko's have had the power to make me scream when running at close quarters in the dark (yes, I am suitably embarrassed by that), but they are the coolest mosquito munchers and may be my favourite common wildlife here except when they become surprisingly vocal in the night.
Temple building, regardless of how exquisite the current temple is, is always ongoing in India, the tapping of stone masons is a regular sound (though concrete is a common replacement).
The Jain's have a policy of non violence, kill nothing or else you will have to come back and live its life... James has a lot of futures as a cockroach, I'll be a fair few mosquitoes and ants... they keep eating me and my biscuits respectively.
Skinny dogs and tuk tuks reign all over india, the tuk tuks have been amazing at times, seriously, they know how to pimp their rides. The dogs however have rarely been amazing, puppies I have renamed stains as huge numbers end up as exactly that on the roads, if they make it through they end up as skinny rake type creatures, often with serious mange issues...I'm not sure what's worse.
Laundry is pounded to clean it whether in the laundry ghats or in the street. I have stuck to scrubbing... at this stage of the trip I don't think my gear could take it.
I reckon this is where most of the laundry in Mumbai comes to, to be beaten into submission, a huge slum has grown up around it simply because its there, but at least the occupants have some form of work. I'm not saying its great, India has a l-o-n-g way to go.
Cricket in India... beautiful, though it was hazardous to watch as some of the informal teams were playing with real cricket balls and there were hundreds of people playing, running through each others games with the odd (foolish in my opinion) football game starting up in the middle.
The Moz...it hath taken its toll throughout the trip, if I was to pack again I'd pack a net.
The most splendid beast in India.
Riding down the Konkan coast was a huge highlight, virtually deserted (and sometimes non existant) roads, stunning paradise coastlines, beautiful villages. Very few people come here and it was a delight to ride, every night camping on the beach and buying freshly caught fish to cook on the sand, as well as dolphin spotting.
Fishing although a way of life here is still pretty low tech. However loads of the catch ends up being sundried over huge areas of fields for fertiliser which can lead to an overwhelming fishy odour. Birds and rather surprisingly cows gorge themselves on the tiny drying bodies (gag)
Goa, it was nice to take a break from India, swim in the sea in a sensible swimming outfit, laze around, eat tofu in black bean sauce, drink beer and sleep. I didn't enjoy the bit where I was violently ill for 4 days to the point where I thought I had Dengue fever but at least I was in a good spot for lying around.
Sometimes the road has been tough.
This was actually the state highway, a rubble track with about a 15 degree incline, it got worse, we turned back... there was 20km of it still to go through tiger country, I think it was the right decision.
and sometimes its not so tough...
Overtaking cow carts in the ghats
The bridge isn't quite finished yet!!
Dugout canoe across river on Konkan Coast
Originally uploaded by james_littlewood
We crossed so many rivers on the Konkan coast, on everything from big ferries to dug out canoes and small private boats, the dug out canoe though was possibly the most 'how the hell do we get on that?!' moment.
Eating on the road is always entertaining once you get used to the health and hygiene of it. This particular breakfast joint had newspapers pasted onto the ceiling and old recycled bits of furniture, it really did look like the wombles hang out, loved it, breakfast was nice too.
Pooja (prayer/offerings to the Gods) being performed at the feet of Lord Bahubali (Jain Temple), the largest monolithic statue in the world apparently, and possibly the most serene place in the world (except when the drummers got going). Sadly I never found out why the men were carrying coconuts around on their heads.
India is indeed crazy and colourful. And I have no idea why the goat was pink, there was a little group of them in a herd...?
These are Karnataka specials, beautifully done.
Not all of the Ghats were this lush but we took a detour past these amazing fields to a wildlife reserve (as I was broken quite frankly) and had a couple of days of looking for tigers (without success), spotting sambar deer (magnificent) and generally just enjoying the beauty and peaceful surroundings, except when there was a scorpion in the sink.
Ooooo if I had a pound for every time we were pursued by boys (young and old) on squeaky bicycles... These bikes were rather shiny and new though, a bit like their owners.
Nandi is the vehicle of Shiva (the destroyer) and is to be found just about everywhere, usually slathered in ghee (refined butter) which can make them look and smell a little bit sweaty. These are the reason for cows being sacred, though still well used to pull carts, produce milk, roam the streets eating newspapers, election posters and plastic bags and if they are little and male to be turfed out alone when very little indeed (though in kindlier spots they can often be found being fed chapati). I took to feeding them our veg peelings. I'll miss the cows.
Tikka powder vendors were doing a roaring trade right before holi, a hindu festival in celebration of spring where people run around chucking coloured powder over each other and the menfolk get a bit pissed. Fortunately for me the locals were a lot more restrained than I was led to believe so I didn't get blathered in powder, which was a bit of a relief as i've only got 2 t-shirts.
We were lucky enough to see Theyyam happening at a temple not far from Kannur. A Theyyam is a performance depicting stories from the Hindu texts which are performed as an offering to the Gods. The performers prepare by doing hours of meditation and wearing HUGE elaborate costumes and make up, the idea is that whilst they are acting out the theyyam they take on the spirit of the deity they represent. People then approach them to ask for advice human to deity, no whispering into the ether here. This was one of the most otherworldy things I have ever seen. Wild dancing, drumming, processions and fireworks and a random snake appearing in the middle of it all freaking everyone right out til the head temple honcho blessed it and it disappeared into the wall under our feet. We watched the whole thing unfold from sunset to midday the next day, being summonned and blessed in the night by actually quite scary deities! Blew my mind it did.
Says it all really.
much love
tx
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