Samir's article. The gas in your lungs, the droppings on your shoes. That's the Himalayas for ya. Just yesterday we finished a 5 day trek in the Himalayas (the pain!) so you can probably guess there's a lot to tell. Day 1: We drove up a mountain, through some creeks and streams (thank god for land rovers) to get to a place for equipment and such. Then we set off with a parade of ponies and an army of guides. That day we just went around the mountain to have lunch, then came back to stay for the night. Alia [View Full Entry]

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Hi, it's Beth, which you can probably tell from the title since I am the one who recently turned a year older. Could have titled it "We're not as young as we think we are or would like to be..." Really just trying to convey how stiff and sore I am since returning from trekking just yesterday. Both Azim and I were feeling our age and a little nostalgic for those days 20 years ago when we could trek through the Himalayas in Nepal for three weeks with large packs on our backs. Not so anymore...Now we trek with a [View Full Entry]

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Hi everyone. It's me Alia. We're now in India's Kashmir, the far north, near the famous Himalayas. Surprisingly, it's freeeeeeezing here, unlike the rest of India! But let me start from way back when, on our last day in Indonesia. Somehow (it had something to do with visa extentions) we ended up in Malaysia instead of being in Indonesia for two more weeks. First we took a cockroach- infested piece of junk with a motor, to Georgetown, a city on an island called Penang. We stayed for a few days doing basically nothing but errands, eating and sleeping, our break [View Full Entry]

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Samir's article. On our last day on Langkawi, we went on a cable car up a mountain that had a suspension bridge. The view was great, but you should have seen Dad shake! The next day we went back to Georgetown and rented a car. We went to a steep mountain car, and a butterfly farm. The day after we flew to Kuala Lumpur, the main city of Malaysia. We basically ate, slept, and shopped there. (When don't we?) Now we're in India (again) and a day back we were in Delhi. We found a guy there who insisted we [View Full Entry]

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Hi, it's Beth. I have to say Happy Birthday to my Dad and sisters Suse and Chris and of course Raju Singh! We are celebrating my birthday on a beautiful houseboat in Kashmir and I couldn't have asked for a nicer setting. But first we better say a few words about Malaysia because I'm not sure anybody besides Samir is taking that country on. We are all so taken with Kashmir, it's hard to look back and write about the past. But I think Samir did mention a $180 mistake that he would leave to me to own up to. [View Full Entry]

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Hi, it's Jamil. Well we're back in India but it is not so bad because I think it is the houseboat ( it is one day old) we are in. We were not so sure at first because of Allepy and the houseboat we rented there. But this one does not move and we can still smell the cedar they used to build the boat. They even have chandeliers for lights! It has a living room, a diningroom, 5 bedrooms but we rented only 2. The first day there we did a lake tour. First they took us to a [View Full Entry]

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Samir's article. Don't get me started with all that legal visa stuff, but let's just say we somehow wound up in Malaysia. We first took a roach-infested ferry to an island called Penang, and watched Spider-man 3 on the boat ride (what do you mean it just came out in theaters!?) We stayed at a hotel near Chinatown, so if you walked past shops you could see roasted ducks with their heads still on. After spending 3 or 4 days eating and sleeping, we finally decided not to treat Malaysia like a pit stop before India (which we will also [View Full Entry]

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Hi, it's Beth. I can't tell you how much we like all the comments everybody sends. It keeps us all interested in keeping this blog going. To start with, I better answer a few questions...No, we don't encourage Samir to write more often than Alia or Jamil, but he is always begging to get on the blog whereas the other two realize how much they like writing on the blog once we have "convinced" them to get on here! We are spending our last night in Indonesia doing this because we realize that once we leave a place, it's hard [View Full Entry]

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Samir's article. About half a week ago, we left Toba and drove up to a city called Berastagi that sits at the foot of an active volcano. As soon as we arrived, we instantly began hotel-hunting (as always), but soon realised that it would be awhile before we found a decent resting place. We'd just turned down another hotel when our driver pulled into what he guessed was a hotel. Dad got out to talk to the "manager", and then came back to tell us that our supposed hotel was really a church! The man Dad was talking to before [View Full Entry]

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Hi everyone! Well, as you can see, we've had no time in the last month (was it that long??) to write anything on the blog, and we have gone through every place in Indonisia that we were planning to. Sadly, today is our last day in the country and even I'm overwhelmed by how time flies! So we are now in Sumatra, an island that is described by tourists as the "adventure island". Before Sumatra though, and right after Ubud we were in Lombok (another island) in the small ghost town like city, Senggigi. Since it was Jamil's birthday (and [View Full Entry]

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