Palma Vanooteghem
"I wanna hang a map of the world in my house. Then I'm gonna put pins into all the locations that I've traveled to. But first, I'm gonna have to travel to the top two corners of the map so it won't fall down". Ina y Manuel
"Quiero colgar un mapa del mundo en mi casa. Luego voy a poner tachuelas en todos los lugares a los que he ido. Pero primero, voy a tener que viajar a dos esquinas del mapa para que no se caiga".
Mitch Hedberg (1968 - 2005)
Travel Blog Posts
April 21st 2008
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 head into the water and suddenly I realize I could drink all this clean, safe water. However, I choose the wonderful beer Lenie (Ina's favorite sister), has waiting for me, then I dive into the ... read more
April 7th 2008
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 to put us in that terrible possibility of travelling during the monsoon, we took our last Indian train to get to Agra, three hours far from Delhi. Then, in Agra, I let Ina exercise her ... read more
April 3rd 2008
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 “bandth” or general strike, that included every means of transportation and made travel impossible. So, no complaints. Tansen is one of these corners of the world where you can still go back to medieval times. ... read more
March 23rd 2008
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 wake up at 4 in the morning to start the first hour of 10 long sitting meditation schedule. We lived in confinement and, more drastically, we were not to communicate with any of the participants, ... read more
February 19th 2008
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 immense pool that serves as an incredibly photogenic Golden Temple. A Taste of the Himalayas From the prosperous Punjabi plains we traveled 8 hours east, and everything changed. We are now at the base of ... read more
January 24th 2008
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 and guided by heaven-sent Joaquin, a Chilean who knows well the city and arranged us a good cheap hotel in the old bazaar area. Added to being submerged noisy Muslim markets and impressive mosques, Dehli ... read more
January 16th 2008
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 to access by bike. We could not stop watching how the sun - from sunrise to sunset - shed its lights on those majestic statues expressing such a serenity of buddhist meditation practices. I quickly ... read more
December 14th 2007
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 de turismo comunitario. Despues de hacer los contactos necesarios, comenzamos esta travesia de dos dias, guiados por un miembro de los Tai Lu llamado Singdi. La hicimos muy bien y llegamos a tiempo para pasar ... read more
November 29th 2007
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 bajamos con tremenda cerveza sabor a rosa. Memorable fue tambien el Viejo Camino a Burma, que nos reventamos en bicicleta (40 buenos kilometros). Las fotos cuentan la historia de una celebracion que por suerte encontramos. ... read more
November 22nd 2007
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 lugar de suenio a una hora de Yangshuo y nos quedamos una noche para disfrutar de un paisaje surreal. Estas montanias merecieron verse desde el nivel del rio y tambien desde el tope de la famosa Montania de la Luna. ... read more
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