http://www.travelblog.org/Bloggers/Scott-and-Emily/ Travel adventures in journals and photos from Scott and Emily en-us Fri, 25 Dec 2009 15:14:55 +0000 Fri, 25 Dec 2009 15:14:55 +0000 We've been in a bit of a slump lately. Our last month in India was a drag. We became thoroughly disgruntled with the country its ways and its people. Our arrival in Singapore perked us up some. We felt the thrill of being in a new and unfamiliar place a different culture and landscape. The cleanliness and orderliness of the place was shocking but relieving. Everything sparkled and shone http://www.travelblog.org/Asia/Malaysia/Penang/George-Town/blog-382120.html Only a few hours after our arrival in Goa it became clear that I was going to have to modify my boorish behaviour. Travel in India toughens you up and after several months of it the words please and thank you had disappeared from my vocabulary almost entirely and I thought nothing of shoving old ladies to the ground in order to secure a bus seat. But in Goa things are different. People que http://www.travelblog.org/Asia/India/Tamil-Nadu/Kanyakumari/blog-374202.html From Udaipur we had a long journey ahead of us to get to south India the first leg being the 6am bus to Indore. Travelling through Madhya Pradesh we couldn't help noticing a pattern in all the towns we passed through they were all crapholes. Indore looked no different only bigger as we rolled in at about 6pm. We had four hours to kill before the night bus to Aurangabad. We bought our tick http://www.travelblog.org/Asia/India/Maharashtra/Aurangabad/blog-368590.html One of the first things that grabs your attention upon your arrival in Rajasthan is how vivid and varied the colours are. The landscape is largely desert or semidesert with flowering shrubs and trees punctuating the red and yellow background. The state is famous for its striking uniformly coloured cities. There is Jaipur the pink city Jodhpur the blue city and Jaisalmer the golden city. http://www.travelblog.org/Asia/India/Rajasthan/blog-365666.html The driver started doing that trick again revving the engine honking the horn and inching forward. But by now we knew it didn't amount to anything and after a minute or two of this he got bored and went back to snoozing behind the wheel the engine ticking over. I sighed with self reproach as I watched yet another nearempty government bus roll by. I passed the time by observing the subtletie http://www.travelblog.org/Asia/India/Uttar-Pradesh/Agra/blog-359636.html There's only so much you can write about trekking before you start to sound like an anorak and only so much you can read about it before it becomes tedious. Having already written three fairly detailed trekking accounts I don't particularly feel like writing too much about how beautiful the Himalayas are. So here are some of the choice photos from our two week trek in Langtang National Park y http://www.travelblog.org/Asia/Nepal/Himalayas/blog-352657.html trekking in annapurna region the circuit and then sanctuary was great but the food wasn't overall. mainly due to obscenely inflated prices coupled with miserly portions. same with the langtang experience. however here are some food related trekking photos the lodge dining rooms were often cosy and fun and the fresh apples around kagbeni the best i have tasted. http://www.travelblog.org/Asia/Nepal/Annapurna/blog-348663.html it may have been inferred that indian food surpasses nepali in a general sense from our previous writings and observations. however there is a lot of indian food in nepal of course and kathmandu is one of our favorite places to eat in the world. in fact after finishing our langtang trek we have spent the last week pretty much only eating in our favorite joints around our hotel in freak street. http://www.travelblog.org/Asia/Nepal/Kathmandu/blog-348672.html After spending some time in Nepal the first thing you begin to miss about India is the food. After the initial optimism and enthusiasm you foster for Nepal's culinary individuality sooner or later you are forced to admit that it just doesn't compare with its southern neighbour. The national dish is called dal bhat dallentils bhatrice. At its worst it consists of a plate of white rice with http://www.travelblog.org/Asia/Nepal/Kathmandu/blog-347661.html in india all foods are fancy foods. some look better than they taste more often it is the other way around. one thing is sure it will be hard to leave these wonderful foods behind the fun of street snacks the ritual of the thali. not to mention the addiction to the spicey and sweet chai. perhaps we will extend our trip just another month or two... http://www.travelblog.org/Asia/India/blog-347668.html The socalled blogging seems to have fallen by the wayside recently so this entry is intended as an update on our movements and activities over the past two months. From Varanasi we headed west into Madhya Pradesh to visit the temples and palaces of Khajuraho and Orchha. The temple complex at Khajuraho dates back over a thousand years. They are very grand and are intricately covered inside a http://www.travelblog.org/Asia/Nepal/Kathmandu/blog-342199.html We had heard varying reports about Rishikesh a town of 80000 on the Ganges. It is a holy city and is famous for ashrams yoga schools and a visit by the Beatles in the 60rsquos. They stayed at an ashram for a spell learning the ways of the yogis from the Maharishi Mahesh. Ringo got bored quickly and left by the others stayed on for a few months with their wivesgirlfriends. Later they gre http://www.travelblog.org/Asia/India/Uttar-Pradesh/blog-318556.html i like to enjoy the often funny strange and nonsensical signs around india. the english here is generally pretty good but there are luckily enough little mistakes or mistranslations to make for some light humor on a day of hard travel or intense heat. these are some signs i liked. i am not making fun of the mistakes i consider them to be works of genius the phrases created are often very ima http://www.travelblog.org/Asia/India/blog-318548.html chai is an all day necessity in india. it is too delicious to deny. served all over in tiny cups for several rupess one can drink one after the other for long periods of time. sometimes it is spiced with cardamom cinnamon cloves or sometimes just milk and tea. it is normally extremely sweet. it is always beside us we feel naked angry without it. these photos reflect the presence of chai and http://www.travelblog.org/Asia/India/blog-318553.html Coming down from the highest mountains in the world is an occupation that takes some time. Buses often can't travel more than 100km in a day and even catching the bus can be a challenge the schedule being very flexible or maybe just some kind of joke. Upon leaving Ladakh we passed through the Spiti and Kinnaur valleys on our way to Shimla. We got marooned in Kaza for three days waiting for t http://www.travelblog.org/Asia/India/Himachal-Pradesh/blog-315901.html the variety and genius of indian foods is unrivalled. i love the many complicated medleys of spices employed vastly different from region to region although the main types can be eaten in any main town as there will be both north and south indian restaurants as well as vendors specializing in local snacks sometimes reflecting their personal flair. tourist restaurants serve everything and menu http://www.travelblog.org/Asia/India/blog-318212.html The airport in Leh makes Ladakh an easily accessible place. But the only way to get a sense of how isolated and remote this region is is to travel there overland. It is less than 500km from Manali but the bus journey takes 2 days stopping overnight in Keylong presumably because it is unsafe to travel the winding mountain road in the dark. Keylong is the last town before you reach Leh and in http://www.travelblog.org/Asia/India/Jammu-and-Kashmir/Leh/blog-314970.html We arrived in the Spiti Valley area in the hopes of doing some trekking. On the bus on the way here we were lucky to meet Ralf an amiable and eccentric German trekking guide who spends 6 months of the year in the Himalayas. He told us every detail we needed to do a five day trek from Dhangkar to Kaza which required no guide or tent as we would walk to a different village each day.Day1 Kaza http://www.travelblog.org/Asia/India/Himachal-Pradesh/Spiti-Valley/blog-300053.html here http://www.travelblog.org/Asia/India/blog-299958.html Manali lies at the head of the Kullu Valley and is considered the gateway to the high mountains. Many trekkers pass through here on their way to Ladakh and it also serves as a hill station for the throngs of Indian tourists from Punjab Gujarat and Delhi who come in the summer to escape the unbearable heat on the plains. The town is essentially built on tourism making it a somewhat unappealin http://www.travelblog.org/Asia/blog-299884.html