The so-called "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 and out with detailed carvings, reliefs and statues depicting gods, scenes of daily life of the period and erotic scenes so explicit they would make modern day pornographers blush. Well maybe not. Th [View Full Entry]

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We had heard varying reports about Rishikesh, a town of 80,000 on the Ganges. It is a holy city and is famous for ashrams, yoga schools and a visit by the Beatles in the 60’s. 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 wives/girlfriends. Later they grew disillusioned with the Maharishi due to his interest in acquiring fancy sports cars and wooing as many young ladies as possible. Gurus may have a sullied reputation [View Full Entry]

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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 it's important role in all activities, all the places we have been. sometimes it is black, occasionally we branch out to mint, ginger, lemon or cinnamon, however this [View Full Entry]

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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 mis-translations 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 imaginative, sometimes the meanings are totally obscured. [View Full Entry]

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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 menus can be 20 pages long, as they try to appeal to the palette of every visitor from italy to korea. some tourist places make decent kim chee, many do a vast array of isreali-tourist inspired dishes. pl [View Full Entry]

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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 the district commisioner's office to open. We needed to obtain inner line permits, which are required for foreigners to travel the Hindustan-Tibet highway, as it passes close to [View Full Entry]

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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 the 15 hours of travel between the two points, the only signs of human habitation are the occaisional makeshift hamlets serving food to travellers, shepherds camps, work [View Full Entry]

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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 - Dhangkar The 9am bus, which sometimes leaves by 10am dropped us at the start of a path to our first day's [View Full Entry]

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here [View Full Entry]

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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 unappealing place. There are many hindu temples to pay homage to, but a couple of lads from Bombay that we met told us that a lot of them are "fake". [View Full Entry]

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