Life can be so easy in this part of the world. It took us only minutes after our arrival to Belgium to become aware of it. Even when we had to go from the 100° of a still pleasant early spring in New Dehli to the late spring 40° in Brussels. Even when our luggage ended somewhere between London and Brussels (ja, we were unable to break our bad luck streak in European airports). It all comes down to a hot tub waiting for you (bubbles included). This immaculate bathtub at my inlaws' house looks almost unreal . I dip my [View Full Entry]

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Being this our final pit stop in Asia, we thought there was no way we could find a better closure than crashing the Taj Mahal at sunrise. This also gave us the perfect excuse to escape from a very genuine recreation of a war zone, which is New Delhi after the first spring storms. We had to accept it, after almost half a year of travelling through pretty ugly areas we are still not immune to this unimaginable mix of rain with diesel, garbage, and, more than anything, animal and human excretions. So, as we thanked all the Hindu gods not [View Full Entry]

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For the last time, we crossed borders between countries, at least the last time we do it by land. This time we used a mix of terrestrial transportation, ending with the most expensive 10 minutes journey on the roof of a Nepali bus (they charged us 100 times more than locals). Our first stop in Nepal was a small mountain village in the Terai region. While sitting in this crowded bus, saving every curve 50 meters above an almost dried Himalayan river we had to think of the fact that, just a few days ago, the whole area was under a [View Full Entry]

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Sleeping in a moving train is not yet an easy matter for us, not when you have a high fever. Here the merit goes to Ina, who got this Indian cold virus that knocked her out for a few days while in Haridwar and we had no choice but to travel with her suffering this. After 24 long hours we arrived to Bodhgaya with the idea of participating in a highly recommended meditation training and, of course, visiting an important pilgrimage site where the Buddha attained enlightment. The meditation training happened to be a serious and challenging experience. We were to [View Full Entry]

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Our second month in India came with very different religious experiences. We started in Amritsar, the capital city of the northern province of Punjab, where we mixed up with a river of pilgrims visiting the Golden Temple, the equivalent of the Mecca for the Sikh people. We stayed at the dormitories offered for pilgrims and joined the more than 40, 000 humans eating in massive dining halls everyday, maybe 500 at the same time. Hospitality is a feature of all Sikh temples, as a mark of unity among people of all religions. Most of the time, we just wandered around this [View Full Entry]

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The Bird Flu and the Planes. Knowing that your flight is cancelled at the very moment you are in the airport can be a crude start of a new country's experience. Maybe it was the terrible idea of being stocked in Bangkok that gave us the courage to think of changing our travel plans. Instead of going to Kolkatta in the west, we could get off in New Dehli and move north from here. So, we gave up the second flight and, in a matter of hours, we were surfing this chaos called New Dehli, driven by a suicidal taxi cab [View Full Entry]

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Sorry taking so long to come with this entry. This time we had time only to do it in English. Hope Our passports start to look very colorful. Our lives as millionaires in Laos came to an end when we crossed our fourth border to get into Thailand. Hitting Thai roads put us right away in context. The narrow gravel mountain roads of Laos became 2 or 4 paved and well kept roads, all of them lined with "seven elevens" and car dealers. Sukothai was our first stop on our way north. Ancestral vestiges of Buddhist civilization, all of them easy [View Full Entry]

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Solo necesitas cruzar la frontera con Laos para hacerte millionario (y es que por 10 pesos te dan 10 mil kips). Asi, cargaditos de billetes, nos tomo un minuto para familiarizarnos con los "sawngthaew", una rara mezcla de camion y combi, para transportarnos a Mouang Sing, antigua base de uno de estos legendarios mercados de opio del famoso Triangulo de Oro entre China, Burma y Tailandia. Hoy dia, no hay mas opio que el que te ofrecen senioras en las calles polvorientas. Nuestra meta aqui es ser parte de una expedicion a las tribus del area, operadas por un innovativo proyecto [View Full Entry]

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Despues de una noche de competencia con un senior en el tren nocturno, llegamos a la ultima de las grandes ciudades en el sur: Kunming. Aqui nos quedamos solo lo que lleva curarse del mareo y reservar boletos para Dali. La maniana siguiente ya ibamos rumbo a las montanias del suroeste de China, donde el color de las minorias, su comida, ha sido una experiencia memorable. Hablando de comida, creo que nunca hemos tenido tanta hambre para disfrutar de nuestra primera sopa de vibora y una sopa que lucia tremendos gusanos que no creo que hayan sido de maguey, que nos [View Full Entry]

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Perdidos en Shanghai... y es que por terrible confusion nuestra estuvimos esperando el tren en la estacion de trenes equivocada. Pero con suficiente tiempo y la experiencia de usar el metro (en hora pico), cruzamos la ciudad para llegar a tiempo. Asi, agarramos el tren nocturno rumbo sur, a Guilin. Los horas pasaron rapido. Veiamos ya los cambios del paisaje, del Shanghai industrial a campos de arroz y montanias. Elegimos como base Yangshuo, un pequenio pueblo, en donde rentamos bicis y nos dedicamos a explorar los pueblitos y las hermosas montanias alrededor de Guilin. Descubrimos un lu [View Full Entry]

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