http://www.travelblog.org/Bloggers/lynz/ Travel adventures in journals and photos from lynz en-us Thu, 07 Jan 2010 13:08:40 +0000 Thu, 07 Jan 2010 13:08:40 +0000 we decided yesterday to hire a driver to take us to Munnar which is a hill station in kerala. It's been raining a lot and i thought it would be nice to feel some mountain air.Feeling Blue As we climb slowly in elevation things become that unspeakable smear of green that i so love. It's the green that only comes from the steady lick of rain.....the green that has a million hues from pale cha http://www.travelblog.org/Asia/India/Kerala/Munnar/blog-197980.html On the road again......... It's nice to be out and travelling. Cochin is cool. It's a strange mix of portugese european and indian influence. It actually reminds me quite a bit of Hoi An in Vietnam in that it has the feeling of a town that was placed in a setting it shouldn't be in. We are still in India the people are dark skinned there is noise etc but it looks like we're walking in c http://www.travelblog.org/Asia/India/Kerala/Kochi-/blog-197977.html Our budget for guatemala is waning but i wanted to go ahead and write about the last few days before the details escape my mind.....although they're still so vividly with me now that it seems impossible that i could ever lose them. Since we're in Guatemala for such a short period of time we kinda did a touristy loop of highlights unfortunately missing atalan......though i saw postcards and t http://www.travelblog.org/Central-America-Caribbean/Guatemala/Flores-Tikal/blog-160415.html Flores nbspCentral America Caribbean raquonbspGuatemala raquonbspFlores Tikal By lynzMay 15th 2007lyndsey We happened to pass through Flores several times. From what i gathered it's mostly an island specifically geared towards tourism but we had fun there. There was a nice bar right on the water that we would frequent for sunsets and often we'd go for an evening dip in the lake. sort http://www.travelblog.org/Central-America-Caribbean/Guatemala/Flores-Tikal/blog-160412.html To maximize time we decided to suck it up and endure a 15 hour adventure that took us from Belize City across the border and then into Flores. At Flores we switched buses to an overnight bus that took us down to Guatamala city. I cant say that it was a restful night of sleep but we saved on accommodation for the night and got to where we needed to be. The rough plan is to get south and work o http://www.travelblog.org/Central-America-Caribbean/Guatemala/Antigua/blog-160401.html After a mere 24 hours we decided to call it quits on Belize. It was pretty and all but turns out not nearly as cheap as we were hoping. We took a water taxi to a small island called Caye Caulker which is supposedly the cheapest of all the islands surrounding belize but after being there for just a short while we realized it was quite out of our budget. We spent 50 US on dinner and i think the http://www.travelblog.org/Central-America-Caribbean/Belize/Belize-Barrier-Reef/Caye-Caulker/blog-160398.html ...california real cool to the homeless. In the city city of brentwood those who aren't south park watchers won't get the reference but that's cool. We've had a great couple of weeks exploring our own country for once. Took the long way to the ocean via southern oregon. Beautiful sweeping vistas and more trees than people. I liked it. Crescent City was a little lame but the redwoods there m http://www.travelblog.org/North-America/United-States/California/blog-160834.html So for the last 5 days or so we've been chillin' out not in a blue city but a golden one. Apart from that minor color difference from the surface the cities seem the same. Both are dominated by an impending fort both have similar cubical architecture and both have hotels with fun relaxed rooftops from which to take in the aforementioned sights. While i loved Jodphur for its color i like http://www.travelblog.org/Asia/India/Rajasthan/Jaisalmer/blog-104054.html This is written by Max Well after roughly a month of less than constant nagging Irsquom finally making a contribution to the blog. I held off for a long time and then decided I wanted the last wordhellipand I got it. How about that Wersquove got a matter of hours left on the subcontinent before our marathon length flight and I suppose nowrsquos as good a time as any to share my th http://www.travelblog.org/Asia/India/National-Capital-Territory/New-Delhi/blog-104885.html I'm sitting on the rooftop of the hotel on the eve of my last full night in India. The sun is gradually sinking behind the Delhi haze and the jumble of her buildings. Hawks and flocks of birds are circling alone and in groups creating a sort of pink concerto in the sky. The temperature in Delhi this time of year is cool......it feels like autumn. The wind still a tint warm from the sun is http://www.travelblog.org/Asia/India/National-Capital-Territory/New-Delhi/blog-104861.html 111006 I had never even heard of Jodphur until i saw it on an episode of The Amazing Race. In the episode couples had to scurry around its streets run up its hills and end in the fort that looms powerfully over the city. One glimpse of that foreboding structure proudly rising from a jumble of blue buildings and i said to myself I wanna go there..... So here i am almost 2 ye http://www.travelblog.org/Asia/India/Rajasthan/Jodhpur/blog-102037.html I have been to enough of them to know that i officially dislike indian train stations. The open sewer aspect of them combined with the onslaught of flies really just doesn't suit my fancy. Typically due to this aversion i try to spend as little time as possible there. Unfortunately since i am an idiot i booked us an unreliable train to Jodphur. So we arrived at the train station at 11 http://www.travelblog.org/Asia/India/Rajasthan/Jodhpur/blog-101521.html 11506 We were happy to leave Agra. Though the Taj was stunning the town itself wasn't anything too special and we'd been spending quite a bit of money on touristy things. The train ride to Jaipur went smoothly. On the way we befriended a British guy. His name is Ben. He's just started his trip of three or so months. We talked about the usual things the absurdity of our president http://www.travelblog.org/Asia/India/Rajasthan/Jaipur/blog-101061.html I'm on a roll with the whining type entries so i will continue in that manner. In Agra Max and I were less than impressed with our room. It was on the top floor of the hotel. Though not much different from any of the other rooms we've occupied during our tenure here there were small things that kept coming to our attention and provided some easy fuel for a nice healty bitch session for us b http://www.travelblog.org/Asia/India/Uttar-Pradesh/Agra/blog-100032.html As is habitual of late we rose before dawn today. We had hired the friendly driver who picked us up from the train station the night before to take us around Agra. Our first stop was a sunrise and FREE view of the Taj Mahal from the other side of the river. Obviously this is obligatory for me since getting a decent shot of Max and myself posed ever so lovingly in front of a monument to love http://www.travelblog.org/Asia/India/Uttar-Pradesh/Agra/blog-100046.html So being that it is high season for tourists getting a train from Varanasi to Agra was a little bit harder than we expected. After much hassle we realized that we would have to leave our sheltered world of air conditioned sleeper berths and brave the real indian rail system. i say real in parenthesis because we still got a sleeper berth just the crappy one....and it still isn't as terrify http://www.travelblog.org/Asia/India/Uttar-Pradesh/Agra/blog-100031.html Max had said that he'd maybe contribute to this blog but i'm filling in for now. One of the must dos while in Varanasi is to take an early morning boat ride along the ganges. We rose before dawn and hired a guy from our hotel to row us along the length of the ghats as dawn broke over the water. It was glorious. Before the sun was even up the people had risen. There were candles being set http://www.travelblog.org/Asia/India/Uttar-Pradesh/Varanasi/blog-99211.html It feels good to be back on our feet again. After a few days of recovery time in Siliguri we took a long overnight train ride to Patna and from there hopped another train to Varanasi. The city has more than delivered. It is surreal. There is such an interesting array of people here....from hippie tourists to dread headed sadus that paint their entire bodies to women clad in colorful saris http://www.travelblog.org/Asia/India/Uttar-Pradesh/Varanasi/blog-99203.html It is not drizzling and as freezing today so i find that i am in better spirits. Plus i didn't spend half of the night up with body aches and fever also good. We drove into darjeeling via shared jeep. We somehow managed to get the front seat which was great for avoiding car nausea on the way up but bad because i was in the middle and the driver kept nailing me in the thigh with the gear sh http://www.travelblog.org/Asia/India/West-Bengal/Darjeeling/blog-98784.html It is my last night in Calcutta. I'm pretty happy about that. I don't know if it's best to analyze my experience whilst still in the middle of it or wait until my senses have had a chance to decompress to give it a fair opinion. Whatever i have time to kill so i might as well ramble. To reuse one of my headlines i think Calcutta to me can be most accurately described as purgatory as d http://www.travelblog.org/Asia/India/West-Bengal/Kolkata/blog-98780.html