American: “You know what, I didn’t vote for Obama. You know why? Because I’m from Chicago, see, and Obama didn’t change anything there. No, I didn’t vote for Obama, because I knew…” Etc. etc.

Diminutive British gap year student (also a new resident): “Huh. Oh. I see.”

American: “Where are you traveling to?”

Brit: “Well, I’m trying to catch the Trans-Siberian Express to China, then visit Peking—“

American: “The Trans-Siberian thing, huh? That’s great.” (Pause) (Grunt) “But you see, the Obama thing, I just knew…”

I picked a good day to depart. I’d rather sleep on a museum floor than listen to the retired, overweight know-it-all’s rants about his own intelligence, and smell his shampoo-and-fart essence, for one more day.

Later, on the plane, I would encounter the Pride of Germany, a group of wobble-bellied 30-something men who giggled like girls, smelled like beer, and made bird sounds in the security line.

More about the airport later. Back to the morning, when the hostel manager informed me that it was “very cold today.” Not something you want to hear from a Russian. I walked out to a bitter bluebird day with fantastic views of sunlit buildings and the expansive Neva River.

After a titillating photo circuit, I found myself waiting at a crosswalk for cars to pass. Here in the city, drivers often run red lights, drive on sidewalks, and ignore pedestrians. The police bribes for such violations are quite low (running a red only sets you back about $20). So a green crosswalk light means you still might get hit.

As I waited for the cars to pass, a babushka in a striped fur coat waddled up behind me and tapped my shoulder. She wanted me to cross the road. The crossing light was green, after all. A car was roaring our way, so I shook my head. She stepped into the road—right in front of the car. I made universal warning noises, hoping she wouldn’t continue into its path.

Instead, she stared down the driver, pointed at the green crosswalk indicator, and kept walking. I followed her. Amazing!

After that, I had a delicious meal of salmon blinys (crepes), apricot and cognac spiced tea, and a lovely salad made from shredded beets, smoked fish, egg, and shredded potato.

And before I could blink, it was airport time. The driver broke what would have been 10 US laws getting me there, but hereabouts, you can do what you want if you know the bribe system. Corruption is so systemized that the bribes have set amounts:

Speeding (20km over limit): $10 USD
Speeding (40 km over limit): $50
Running a red light: $20
Driving drunk: $5,000 bribe, or get your driver’s license suspended for two years.

If you have money, you can basically make your own rules.

It gets better. Within the police force, there is a secret police force whose job it is to jail corrupt cops. A police for the police, if you will. These secret policemen have to fulfill a quota—eg. they are required to throw one corrupt policeman in jail every year.

If you’re a regular cop, it costs $50-$100K to bribe your way out of being indicted by a secret policeman.

So the incentives continue to cycle. Cops have incentive to increase their bribes so they can potentially pay off the secret cops. People bribe the cops to avoid headache. “They need a reason to work,” the driver said.

When he saw me off, he proclaimed: “Don’t forget about Russia!”

I won’t.

People remains copyright of the author -andrea-, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

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I nearly did a faceplant today. Straight into a slushy cobblestone sidewalk. I threw out my hands just in time to save myself from actually eating slush. But it wasn't pretty.

All the people walking around me came to a dead stop until I stood back up. The second I was on my feet again, everyone picked up the pace as though nothing had happened. I wiped off my hands, astounded that nobody had offered me a hand, or the Russian version of "Are you OK?" To the ten people whose path I'd blocked, I was a brief obstacle, nothing more.

Either people fall here all the time, I'm used to people being really nice, or "Are you OK?" doesn't exist in Russian. I wish I could know for sure, but I don't speak the language, and here, that is a major barrier to knowing the culture.

I'd spent the day on a self-guided walking tour. The city is beautiful, it makes me think of Paris plopped atop Venetian canals. Colorful rows of Classical buildings flank the wide, frozen Neva river, with docked tourist boats and distant coal chimneys finishing the scene. Once in a while, you catch site of a golden cathedral dome or spire. Elegant trees add contrast to artful, snow-covered parks. The city is built on islands, so every once in a while, you cross an arching old bridge. The atmosphere is magical, romantic, and busy. This is definitely one of my new favorite cities.

Except for the slushy, puddly, icy sidewalks. How do Russian women walk them in narrow heels like it's nothing? They must have trained for years. I had at least two near-misses before the faceplant. Babushkas waddle them like ducks. I'm about ready for a sleigh.

Also before the faceplant, which is a climactic turning point in this tourist story, I visited the outrageous palace where Rasputin was killed, a delicate Russian Orthodox cathedral full of worshipping women, and the over-the-top Christ of the Savior Blood (I'm butchering the name, forgive me) cathedral. I took a good picture--you'll see it below--then faceplanted.

By the time I started walking again, I was tired, hungry, and humiliated.

I walked into the nearest cafe, a sushi restaurant. Fake sunflowers sprouted from the ceiling. Bird documentaries played on huge flatscreen TVs place around the restaurant. Five Russian men made sushi in front of a real-time airline arrivals/departures screen. Lounge music interspersed with soft rock played from ceiling speakers. The furniture was Japanese, but that was pretty much it.

So the place was weird. But it was busy--always a good sign. I ordered by pointing at pictures on the menu. I thought I was getting chicken and salmon kebabs, a Russian beer, and a sushi roll. I had to drink all the beer up when I saw that I had inadverdantly ordered beef tongue, liver, and pork kebabs.

I've never had tongue. The little tastebuds on the tongue pieces made me recoil. I kept thinking of French kissing a cow. I can see why people eat it--it's tender--but ick. The sushi, however, had amazing salmon and caviar. Best raw salmon I've ever eaten, hands down. It was buttery and melted on the tongue. The red caviar was also crispy and fresh. Delish!

A bitter wind started blowing on my way out of the restaurant, so I called it a day. The cold here is no worse than Colorado on a cold day--until the wind comes in. Its chill is dizzying, best avoided or vodka'd away.

After three days here in St. Petersburg, I'm entranced, but a little offput by how difficult it is to travel here when you don't know the language. It really helps to know people, or at least know how to talk to them. Otherwise things appear grim, hard to penetrate, distant. Might be me, might be the winter...but next time I visit Russia, it's going to be with an in-the-know friend.

Sushi Petersburg remains copyright of the author -andrea-, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

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I'm not very good at "doing" museums. I promised myself to do it right this time. I would focus on a few interesting exhibits, but the buildings were so cavernous that I almost immediately got lost. In four hours, I saw:

French art
German art
Flemish art
Modern art
Greek Antiquities
Egyptian Antiquities
Prehistoric Remains from the Caucases
Ancient Tibetan art
European Armor
Italian Art
Spanish Art

...should I go on? Suffice to say it was overload. What impressed me most--and what truly sets the museum apart--was that the rooms were that housed the art were also elegantly designed, historic, and beautiful. The Hermitage is titillating, if you dose it right.

Note on Babushkas
The museum also contained carefully placed babushkas in every single room. Are you familiar with the concept of the eastern European grannie? You know, the one in the round knit hat and long cloak, possibly with cane, notorious for spying and not taking shit from anybody?

The Russian babushka takes it to a new level. Here, they come ornamented with a porcupine-like fur hats, fashionable boots, and piercing hawks' eyes that give you the jitters. The expression is set permanently to Grim, and every movement is deliberate. I believe the Russians even have a word for the babushkas who work at supermarkets. It translates to Thunder Woman.

So, as I mentioned, every room in the Hermitage has a resident babushka. They're as good as they come in terms of stopping tourists from taking pictures where they shouldn't, eating and drinking in the wrong place, etc. I was reprimanded by babushkas in Russian at least four times, and I'm not sure why. The best part was seeing all their heads peak around the corners when they heard my footsteps. The worst part was that it's hard to enjoy anything when a granny's narrowed eyes are boring into your back.

I left today feeling gratified at seeing a couple really famous pieces by Matisse and Piccaso, and relieved to be out of there. The Hermitage requires at least two days of aesthetic sipping. I pounded it. Time to hibernate in my room and eat chocolate to recover.

See that figure wearing black? That's a babushka heading my way, to tell me that water is not allowed outside the cafe.

Hours at the Hermitage remains copyright of the author -andrea-, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

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Have you noticed that we renamed the blog “Wanderlust?” And replaced the “Asia” in the title with “Adventures Abroad?”

There’s a reason for that. We’re going travel through Egypt for three weeks starting in March, and we wanted the blog to reflect our continued exploration.

I’m traveling earlier than Seth this time. I’ll be blogging solo until the beginning of March. My trip takes me to Germany, Russia, Dubai/UAE before reuniting with my better half. Call it the Gazprom Oil Tycoon route. Or the Frigid/Boiling Express. Or the amorphous consequence of four random “that sounds cool”’s.

I started off visiting my Tante Erika and Onkel Juergen in Delmenhorst, Germany. There, I enhanced my waistline with delicious cheeses, wursts and cakes. They were wonderful hosts. I’ll show you some pictures below.

Today, I am in St. Petersburg, Russia. Just for the heck of it. Doesn’t everyone want to go to Russia in the middle of winter? Seriously, I do have a reason. I found a cheap flight there from Berlin. I’ve always wanted to go. Plus, Rasputin’s penis is preserved in a jar in a museum here. That, and the Hermitage, are pretty hard to top.

On Friday, I fly to Dubai, where I will meet my friend Lara and her friend Shanna. We’ll Dubai it up until Monday. They will leave then, but I’ll be there until February 28. I expect to either go visit Oman or sit by the pool and maybe do some indoor skiing.

Then, I meet Seth in Egypt. When the pictures get really pretty, you will know we’ve reunited.

Meanwhile, here are some mutant photos from Germany.

Note: Travellerspoint's photo layout capabilities are the online equivalent of giving a chimp a set of finger paints. I am destroying Seth's superhuman post structuring job from the Asia trip.

1. Old car with wooden-spoked wheel at Bremen car show
2. Porsche tractor (!)
3. Uncle Juergen next to a pretty car
4. Unmarried men in Bremen get to sweep the church steps when they turn 30--the shame!
5. Bremen old town
6. Bremen old town
7. Bremer Stadtmusikanten (the town musicians, an emblem of the city)
8. Medieval Catholic depiction of God himself
9. Cool Gothic art at the bottom of cathedral pillar
10. Art commissioned by local coffee tycoon
11. Old, narrow alley

Backtracking remains copyright of the author -andrea-, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

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Myth: I'd be able to get away with a really tight airport schedule (read: sleep in) because German trains are always on time.

Fact: German trains aren't always on time. Especially when you're in a hurry. My first train was 10 minutes late. The second, 25. The bus to the airport, which was supposed to come every 7 minutes, never arrived. By the time I hailed a cab, my flight had 40 minutes until departure. The airport, 20 minutes away by taxi from train station. Taxi delayed 10 minutes by old Berliner ladies hobbling across the street. Myself, sweating profusely.

But at the end, I had a winner: The airplane to St. Petersburg was delayed, too. That is the only reason I am sitting here, typing from an impossibly wobbly bunkbed, next to a Japanese roommate, tonight.

Myth: Airport security in the United States is the worst.

Fact: It was worse today in Berlin. First, the passport control guy informed me that I was in Germany illegally (my American passport doesn't have an entry stamp). He thought the French had failed to stamp it. I showed him my German passport and informed him that I had not been to France in four years.

Second, the metal control lady pretty much stroked my entire body, then unbuttoned the top button of my jeans. Then said "don't be embarassed."

Myth: As a woman, men judge you by your personality, looks, or figure.

Fact: In Russia, apparently, you may also be judged by your ability to free men of their money. A seatmate also happened to be going to Nevsky Prospect--St. Pete's main drag--so I offered to share the cab I'd called up. He agreed. In the end, he paid for the entire ride (39 euros). He is a sports journalist working on assignment here, so he can invoice the ride to his magazine.

After he got out, the driver turned to me and said, "You are good."
"Huh?" I was lost.
"You know, good." He giggled.
"Ungh?"
"You get him to pay!" More giggling.

To him, I'd proven my worth as a moneygrubber by meeting a guy on a plane, then getting him to pay for my ride. He'd already jacked up the cab fare by 4 euros to compensate for his waiting an extra 15 minutes. I, on the other hand, had achieved a true masterpiece.

I asked him later whether it was safe to go out at night alone.

"Oh yes, especially if you keep doing business the way you just did."

I think I'm staying in tonight.

Myth Busting remains copyright of the author -andrea-, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

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The End (25,490 miles later) remains copyright of the author -skh-, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

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I even tried my hand at medical tourism, visiting the gleaming, ultrasuave Bangkok Hospital to get a wart removed. This would cost a cool $200 in the States. Here, arguably under better conditions, it cost $50. They had an Arabic Hospital, a Japanese Hospital, an International Hospital, a Beauty Hospital (read: cheap facelifts), a Heart Recovery Hospital, and all kinds of other divisions. It’s a big industry, and thousands of people a year come for affordable, quality medical care.

The next time I catch something, I’m flying to Bangkok.

And then it was over. On May 19th, at 5 am, we found ourselves in the check-in line at Bangkok Airport. 27 hours later, at 9 pm on May 19th, we were standing around the baggage claim at DIA. Time to replace taxi bargaining with bids for assignments; $6 gourmet meals for bean soup and other recession-friendly meals.
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Two Nights in Bangkok remains copyright of the author -andrea-, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

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He didn’t get it. “You ruin my business for the night by not buying! This is very bad for me, you know?”
“I’m sorry, it was my mistake.”
“Buy the book! You say you want to buy the book, so buy it!”
“Please go away.”
“No.”

Thus ended my second serious argument with a 10-year-old street hawker in two days. The first one offered a contest of tic-tac-toe on a tiny piece of scrap paper. If I won, I got a free postcard. If I lost, I had to buy a postcard.

I lost. And he failed to mention that it wasn’t a single postcard at stake, but an entire $4 pack of them.

I refused the pack. He accused me of cheating him. I tried to push him away, all 90 pounds of him. He planted his feet and proclaimed “It’s my country!” His angry glares only stopped when a tuk-tuk (3-wheeled taxi) driver pulled him aside and said something to calm him down.

Four days later, a boy of similar age, built like a string bean, would try to push me in the bushes and molest me. He failed miserably, but it didn’t exactly sooth my nerves.

Hello, Cambodia.

Flat as a Texas highway, Siem Reap and Phnom Penh offer little in the way of natural scenery, but lots of heart. A bright red, gushing kind of heart. Between 1975-1979, the ultracommunist Khmer Rouge made the brilliant calculation that murdering huge numbers of bourgeoisie would be the fastest road to liberating peasants. So leader Pol Pot and his henchmen rounded up every intellectual, doctor, lawyer, writer, artist, and other “New Person” they could find, arrested them and sent them to work camps. They were worked to the point of exhaustion, then carted off to specially designed killing fields to be “liquidated.”

The Khmer Rouge killed more an estimated 1.7 people between 1975-79. That’s 1,550 people a day.

Cambodia was practically catapulted back into the Stone Age. Fortunately, neighboring Vietnam stopped the regime before it continued to cannibalize its own citizens. These days, all that’s left of the killing fields are several memorials and a haunting pagoda containing a 20-foot high tower of human skulls.

The genocide, new enough to be raw, old enough to be overgrown by crabgrass and banana trees, still lingers on the faces of the Cambodian, or Khmer, people. Many carry visible psychic scars in their expressions, a sad cast about the eyes despite their delightfully wicked humor and unquenchable optimism.

So you have this country full of vulnerable, sad, laughing, haunted, living, smiling people who openly carry their moods on their faces. Cambodia is so human, and that makes it endearing despite its many tragedies.

otos/126264/Angkor122.jpg thumb=http://www.travellerspoint.com/photos/126264/thumb_Angkor122.jpg]Then, there are the monuments. The most famous, Angkor Wat, looms majestically inside a 15-foot wide moat, its five crumbling towers marking the edges of the biggest religious building on the planet.

But the great monument’s physical beauty pales in comparison to the collection of temples around it. From the 267 meditating faces carved into the Bayon, the Angkor God-King’s temple, to Ta Prohm, a Tomb Raider-like ruin where massive tree roots hug piles of ancient stone, it is the surrounding temples that make the magic.

Little is known about the site, which houses more than twenty mysterious temples. The stunning bas-reliefs of elephants, devas, and, of course, peacefully meditating faces make the imagination run wild.

We spent around 5 days exploring the beauty, mystery, and tragedy that is Cambodia. It was a roller-coaster experience that intermittently stunned, awed, sickened, and soothed the senses. We also provided the fun-poking Khmers with a few good laughs along the way. I have no idea why—the only spoke Khmer—but come to think of it, two grimy backpackers with Buddha necklaces and fake designer sunglasses are pretty entertaining.

Even to our tired, worse-for-the-wear selves.

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The Khmer Enigma remains copyright of the author -andrea-, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

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Vietnam didn’t exactly embrace us from the getgo. We landed at the airport and found out the hard way that only one out of ten ATMs in this country actually give you money. The rest of the time, they come up with excuses ranging from ACCESS DENIED to SORRY, THIS MACHINE IS OUT OF CASH. None of the eight ATMs at Hanoi Airport worked, so we had to beg a tour salesperson to give us a cash advance.

Things improved after that.

After a decadent night in an air-conditioned real hotel (as opposed to guesthouse or lodge, the Southeast Asian pseudonym for “cheap”), we took a van to beautiful Halong Bay, a UNESCO World Heritage site containing nearly 2,000 limestone islets on 1,500 square kilometers. The bay is 500 million years old, and was used as an international trading port before someone figured out that its beauty might prove even more profitable.

These days, thousands of tourists in hotel boats modeled after Chinese junks cruise the main channels of the bay. The scenery is dramatic and surreal, like thousands of Thailand’s Ko Phi Phi islands thrown into the same emerald waters.

We spent two days on a faux Chinese junk with a white-coated waitstaff and carved wooden interiors designed to make you feel like an old-school Asian aristocrat. The scenery was enchanting, and our fellow tourists some of the most diverse and interesting people we’ve met on this trip: a French-American lesbian expat couple with two kids living in Singapore, two family doctors from Spain, a professionally trained Japanese singer, a Chilean couple, and a handful of others representing countries around the world.

When you’re floating on a big comfy tourist boat, you rarely get to penetrate the essence of a place. Instead, you breeze through several highlights, then spend the rest of your time focusing on self-indulgent pastimes such as drinking cold beer, eating fried food, and basking in the sun.

One of the highlights were fishing villages floating on bright blue bouys, a phenomenon typical of Vietnam. The people inside them make their living off the water. Instead of walking from place to place, they use wooden pedal-powered boats. The poverty was shocking—family homes were often tin shacks with laundry hanging on the family boats parked outside—but the unique lifestyle preserves a cultural heritage barely seen anymore in today’s rapidly developing world.

Another highlight was a cliffside cave deep enough to support a Broncos game. The stalactite-rich innards produced a scene akin to a sci-fi special, with heart-pounding bay views at the top.

We also enjoyed local seafood that was nothing short of glorious. The Vietnamese are known for flavoring their meats with herbs, resulting in unique and scrumptious cuisine that leaves you surprised—and craving more. Mango leaves and peppermint add culinary life to fresh prawns. Salads containing lotus seeds and green mango go well with fried fish caught just half an hour ago. Sea snails and boiled bananas in chicken stock comprise their hearty winter soup. Absolutely amazing. Exotic delicacies like swan and dog were also common, but we didn’t go there.

We spent two nights on the water, in an oiled mahogany boat cabin. The first day was excellent; the second, a welcome and relaxing addition. We headed back to crowded, high-energy Hanoi to spend the final day. There’s so much motorcycle traffic in the city that you basically have to walk into oncoming traffic to cross the street. The trick is to step slowly, so the mopeds have time to swerve around you. Running across the street is more likely to get you hit. And crosswalks…well, they might as be invisible. Hanoi needs signs saying “Cross At Your Own Risk.” Then, in small print, “People’s Government will not be held responsible for injuries caused by high-speed mopeds carrying three people and a dead pig on rear.”

It’s a busy, stuffy, nonstop, upwardly mobile city with a burgeoning middle class. Vietnam in general is on a strong economic upward swing. I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s as developed as, say, South Korea in the not-too-distant future. And the population has its eye on culling every resource their bountiful land has to offer. Environmental protection is not a priority. It’s a beautiful country, and probably one that must be visited sooner rather than later, before old-school fishing families go big industry, and verdant hills are flattened to support additional development.

After a whirlwind 5 days, we’re flying to beautiful, sweltering, and refreshingly laid-back Cambodia for some ancient temples and a hard lesson in one of history’s worst genocides…

Good Morning, Vietnam remains copyright of the author -andrea-, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

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Vang Vieng, Laos. Before the invasion, this small town nestled against the banks of the Nam Song River was a slow-paced fishing village populated by ethnic Loatians and tribal Hmong people. Soaring limestone karsts provided a stunning backdrop to the sunkissed rhythm of daily life. Women caught crabs with their bare hands on the riverbank, while men in pole-driven skiffs searched for bigger fish.

Then they came. At first they visited in a slow trickle, scouting the land for appropriate resources. When they discovered its bounty, they started coming in droves, changing the face of the town forever.

I should interject something here. Marijuana is a form of traditional medicine in Laos. As more and more tourists started visiting this beautiful, landlocked strip of Southeast Asia, the pot found its way into pizzas, where it gave birth to a traditional tourist delicacy known as the “happy pizza.” This snack evolved into a host of other laced delights with names reflective of the states they induced: the space shake, for example, might contain psycosilibin mushrooms along with the traditional weed. The Lonely Planet says to watch out for anything labeled “cosmic.”

So when you combine copious amounts of weed and Beer Lao with stunning scenery and a slow-moving river, you get creative. And when you get creative, you realize that inflating a tractor tube, bringing a few beers along, and floating down the river is not a bad way to spend a day.

Then the locals get creative and realize that tourists like booze, Bob Marley, and rope swings. So they line 90% of the river with bars, blown speakers blaring Bob, and rope swings. Thus, the formerly sleepy fishing village of Vang Vieng has become a party village.

In the midst of all this, there is, inexplicably, Friends. Ross, Courtney, Phoebe, Joey, Rachel, Chandler. Their sitcom lives play out 14 hours a day on Vang Vieng’s main drag, to an utterly stoned—and often passed out—audience. The idea is to get a happy shake and happy pizza and zone out. But only to Friends. The bars, which are identical in color, size, and TV screen placement, show nothing else.

It starts at around 9 am and lasts well into the night. It is also utterly creepy. You see one bar playing out the episode where Joey finds Rachel’s erotic book (Season 7, Episode #2), then you turn the corner and see the exact same thing. Same happy shakes, same mustard-yellow Beerlao tablecloths, same creepy studio laughter echoing down the main drag. Same erotic book. After passing the third or fourth such establishment, you have to pause and wonder whether you’ve walked into a space-time rift, where it is actually the same restaurant, time and again, containing the same people.

OK, so it’s not, especially if you’re sober—but you see my point. We spent a day in Vang Vieng tubing a river so slow that our tubes often stopped completely. The next day, we kayaked/songtheawed to Laos’ capital city of Vientiane. That river was much faster: They sent us down a Class III rapid, then had us jump off a 25-foot cliff, if we so desired.
That was scary. But I still don’t think it was quite as frightening as the Friends thing.

I'll Be There For You remains copyright of the author -andrea-, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

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Not so in Laos. Every Buddhist Lao male (read: most men in Laos) are expected to become novice monks between the time they graduate school (18-20 years old) and take on a career or marriage. For some, this means as little as a week in robes. Others spend up to two years in the order. As one novice, speaking from his own experience, put it,
“That’s a really long time.”

In fact, just outside of Luang Prabang, there’s a Vipassana center where monks learn to meditate. It’s not that they’ve been doing this all their lives. They learn from Square One and, after a ten-day intensive, might meditate for another few months, then leave the order.

In the meantime, hundreds of them populate the resplendent World Heritage Site that is Luang Prabang. Home to no less than 22 wats, or temples, the city is a visual paradise. French colonial architecture makes for chic hotels, cafes, and shops, while ancient Theravada Buddhist wats shine mysteriously through scented frangipani trees. Novices clad in sunset orange robes populate wats, streets, even cell phone stores.

We spent four days in Luang Prabang after a long commute from Thailand via something aptly dubbed the Slow Boat.
It’s a long, houseboat-style vessel packed to the gills with two-person school benches. Tourists cram on butt-numbing seats for two straight days, reading books, zoning out to scenery, or getting plowed on the half-liter bottles of Beerlao sold by ambitious village kids.

The benefit of the slow boat was that we got a scenic view of Laos, the most laid-back country in Southeast Asia, from the vantage point of the epic Mekong River. The river’s source is Tibet, but its bounty is here in Southeast Asia, where Thai, Lao, Vietnamese, Chinese, and Cambodian fisherman reap and export the river’s incredible bounty. It’s giant catfish season, so they cast bamboo nets all along the sides of the river. Meanwhile, naked little kids played in the water and fishermen waited out the heat of the day in makeshift shelters.

Luang Prabang was one of the most beautiful places we’ve seen, fully earning its status as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Land of Burnt Umber Robes and Golden Temples remains copyright of the author -andrea-, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

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The day was busy and hot, complete with Irish children exercising their natural gift of gab in the backseat of our van. The orchid farm, with its rare Phalaenopsis orchids, was beautiful. The trained elephants were astounding, and the elephant ride was bone-rattling. The bamboo raft was soothing. The hill tribe village was a human exhibit.
However, the oxcart ride—the most diminutive of the day’s tourist calisthenics—was epic.

It was supposed to be a slow-paced ride from one ox-cart station to another ox-cart station a quarter mile up the road. Each station consisted of a raised platform where roughly four ox-cart drivers languished in the shade. The idea was to get on one platform, then stop at the next to enjoy the view and take pictures. At that point, you get back into the cart and enjoy your liesurely ride back.

The tour guide touted it as a fun way to see the countryside. In our case, it was a textbook example of the hazards of mixing booze and livestock.

We’d just finished looking at paintings done by the elephants (one of which featured a pair of copulating pachyderms drawn in childlike scrawl) when our tour guide, a small, nervous man with a three-inch comb-over, summoned us to our ox cart. It was a wooden wagon with four steel-rimmed wheels, padded vinyl benches, and a blue sun umbrella protruding from the middle. Two humped oxen chewed cud up front.

After we crammed onto the benches, our driver, slight, beaming, homemade Thai tattoos scrawled on his forearms, leapt onto the platform behind the oxen. He bellowed “Oy!” and the oxen started clop-clopping down the driveway. It was uncomfortable at first. The oxcart didn’t come with shocks. We had to grab the umbrella pole with every rut. Someone said something about how the olden days must have sucked.

Once we hit the paved road, the oxen accelerated to a steady gallop. Our guide must have reckoned they’d go straight from there, because he placed his end of their rope on our cart and sat there yelling “Oy!” instead of driving them with the rope.

We swerved a couple times before bumping and crashing our way into the road’s shallow gutter. At one point, we came so close to a six-foot drop that the back wheel hovered off the ground. It was scary, but we figured that smooth wasn’t the oxen’s forte.

The first sign of trouble came when we caught up with the loud Irish family’s oxcart, formerly half a mile away. We promptly started tailgating it. After our guide emitted a particularly long and gutarral “Oyyyy!”, our oxen bolted onto a dirt road to the left, clamored up a short hill, then came to a dead stop.

No amount of Oy! from the guide could get them to start again. They had simply finished walking. One of them peed. Our guide took out his thin bamboo stick and start whipping one ox’s hindquarters, to no avail. He tried the other. Same result, without the urine.

Finally, after one particularly loud crack of the ox glutes, the beasts launched back onto the road. Our guide nearly fell from the impact. Summoning the dexterity and grace of a burning 1982 Winnebago, our oxen cantered their way up the correct hill, catching up with the Irish family once again. This time, they came so close that they started pushing on the cart ahead with their horns.

We were not only fast, but powerful. So powerful, in fact, that we passed the Irish people, then pulled over on the side of the road to take pictures. Our guide twirled off the oxcart, then borrowed my camera to take some souvenir shots. He took his time, laying down on his back for one shot, then climbing a ledge for another. His artistic license was in full force.

The Irish family passed us once again.

At this point, our driver decided he’d had enough. He put Jess and Jarrod behind the reigns, then started walking behind us. The oxen launched into another sprint. Our driver caught up with us just in time to leap back onto the cart.

We swerved and tumbled to the next ox-cart station, roughly 1/100 of a mile ahead. Jess and Jarrod climbed back into their seats. Our oxen embarked on their independent streak once again.

Our driver tried to grab their rope, but failed. As he once again attempted to get onto the platform, he lost his balance and fell. The oxcart kept rolling. It ran over his ankle with a solid metal thump, 300 pounds of steel-covered wood on one Thai ankle.

As a testament to the raw force of his inebriation, our driver simply got up and walked away.

A different driver took over after that. We discovered that a rhythmic butt-slapping and regular Oys! actually kept the oxen going in a slow, linear manner. For the first time, we saw the verdant rice paddies and sleepy palm-roofed huts around us. We noted that oxen don’t naturally seek out ruts or swerve dangerously close to precipices.
We dismounted at the ox-cart station in stitches. There’s nothing funnier than livestock and a drunk guy—at least to Denver folk like us.

We were also happy to be alive.

Oxen Gone Wild remains copyright of the author -andrea-, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

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Sign: “Sleep Under the Stars at Maya Bay!”
Brain: That’s the very same bay where the 2000 movie The Beach, starring Leonardo DiCaprio, was shot! It’s going to be a pristine, secluded expat paradise!
Sign: “Snorkel and Kayak at a National Park!”
Brain: Remembers reading in a tourist brochure that the reef around Maya Bay is a protected area promising reef sharks and ten different kinds of coral. Sends pleasure signals to rest of body.
Sign: “Catch Crab and Squid! Beach BBQ!”
Brain: Um…yum? Hello?
Sign: “Drink Bucket!”
Brain: Pictures ice-cold bottles of Singha sweating happily amidst crisp ice cubes. Sends thirsty signal to stomach while simultaneously alerting consumer reflexes to open wallet. Now.

We can’t resist. We sign up for the camping trip to Phi Phi Lay, plus an extra snorkeling boat ride before that.
Ko Phi Phi, which consists of two gorgeous tropical islands, is renowned as a secluded vacation spot. Finger-thin Phi Phi Don is packed with bungalows, bars, boat rentals, convenience stores, and Thai massage parlors. Most tourists are under the age of 25, tanned a color that defies their Caucasian ethnicity, and equipped with a ubiquitous can of Chang beer. P. P. Lay, on the other hand, is the remote island paradise the tourist sign was talking about.

A typical day on Ko Phi Phi Don involves gallons of cold beverages, minimal clothing, and proximity to a lukewarm water source in which to cool off. On the beach, life proceeds like an Animal Planet episode meets Girls Gone Wild. An awkward-looking American guy discovers a bare-breasted Swedish woman and flirts with her for hours in waist-deep water. An adolescent does a naked underwater handstand, waving his accouterments towards an unwilling audience.

Though the scene is riveting, we look forward to some nature time on P.P. Lay. We board our long tail boat from one of P.P. Don’s twin bays and roar off for our magical camping trip to Maya Bay, leaving the bikini enclave behind. The longtail boat, a thick-hulled motorized canoe named for the long, propellor-tipped tail that steers it around, rumbles into a deep blue Andaman Ocean, speckled with freshly painted yachts and bevies of other longtails.

Minutes later (the open ocean is a rarity in island-littered Krabi), Phi Phi Lay greets us in the form of a yawning limestone wall. At 5,000 feet in height, jumping off this cliff would be suicidal, though our guide Lay claims it’s common for people to launch themselves off with parachutes. The cliff is so sheer that even plants can’t grow in its crevasses.

The base of the island is a limestone overhang, making the landmass appear slightly narrower at the root. Above its water-darkened base, the limestone, much of it sheer, rises up to a jungle-tipped horizon. The occasional cave makes a jagged mouth in the gray rock faces. It’s Thai geography at its most dramatic.

After passing Viking Cave, a limestone cave where people collect swallows' nests to eat, we drop into the ocean near a place called Bamboo Island for a snorkel. Here, a dreamlike alien world of electric blue-throated coral, head-shaped brain coral, and giant clams greets us. In a reef crevasse, a steely gray moray eel, sleeps with its eyes open, looking wrinkled and forboding. We don’t realize it is a species known to chomp humans for getting too close. Another animal sticks its tiger-patterned legs out from the bottom of a coral tree. It has no discernable head. It could be an octopus, a plant, or a fish. Down in this acid-trip world, where plants and animals coalesce into a rich underwater garden, it may be all three.

After a spectacular snorkel, we arrive at Maya Bay, our home for the night. It’s pristine, but not untouched. Eight longtail boats bob in their moors, while their contents, a Venice Beach-sized gaggle of bikini life, trolls the bone-white sand.

Our poster had been lying through its little cardboard teeth. A more apt advertisement would have involved bucketfuls of Jim and Coke (as in, drink your Jim and Coke from this bucket), hanging out and having a beach party with 20 of your new best friends, and watching iridescent sea plankton spark on salty water at 2 am while collapsing into awe-struck giggles.

Sometime in the night, a small, chilly monsoon spills out of the sky. Most people crawl inside of their tents and pass out at that point. Our tent door is broken, so we spend the next hour manually holding it shut and sopping up the puddles forming on the ground. Luckily, the rain stops, and we manage to stay dry for the rest of the night.

The next morning, the scene conspicuously lacks kayaks and snorkels, but is heavy on hungover kids drinking Nescafe from plastic cups. Our guides tell us to hang out and wait for a couple hours. Then, we pile onto a boat, which deposits us unceremoniously at Phi Phi Don.

In sum, it was a Fourth of July college party on a most pristine setting. Not bad if you’re looking to vary your drinking environment. Also not reflective of the oh-so-perfect tourist poster.
Thaironic.

Leo's Sandy Footsteps remains copyright of the author -andrea-, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

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Well, it was a good run.
Four months in India was definitely an experience we won't soon forget.

Albeit, both of us were more than ready to be moving on.
India's intensity has a way of wearing a westerner thin. I know Thailand is only a few clicks closer to home, but it feels so much more hospitable and developed compared to India. Life is easier (and cleaner) and we're incredibly excited to be exploring some other parts of Asia...

Thai Ways remains copyright of the author -skh-, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

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A short man with well-muscled arms walks through piles of dirt and ash. The sun on his head is fierce. He pulls in hot, dry breaths through nostrils seared by years of working with fire.

He finds respite by ducking into an alleyway barely wide enough for a pregnant heifer. At the intersection of this alley and a worn stone walkway is the wood shop. The man stops in front of this ancient garage, a square-shaped hole where wood particles make stardust over piles of cords.

A shirtless shop assistant, his ribs begging for attention through thin skin, piles a six-piece cord on top of the man’s head. The logs are pale and nubby, not unlike the bones they will soon incinerate.

Below the shop, giant woodpiles as high as two men make a brown relief on ashen soil. Funeral workers, sweat dampening their checkered turbans, add and pull rhythmically from the pile. The wood clack-clacks like bones. Even the colors here, the India vermilions and canary golds, are muted by ash and dust.

This is Varanasi’s Manikarnika Burning Ghat, ancient, man-powered, and open 24 hours a day. Funeral workers chop wood and move bodies with unsmiling instinct, somber but uninvolved. They follow an age-old instruction manual as they complete the funeral ritual, dousing oiled, colorfully shrouded bodies in Ganga water, piling up logs just so, and burning the bodies from the middle outwards. When the body collapses in the middle, workers push the rest into the pyre with a pole.

We can smell the fires from our hotel room.

But Varanasi is not all death. On either side of the Burning Ghat, a long line of bathing ghats host a hive of activity.
Boys—young, fresh, full of mischief—swim out to our tourist boat. Fat men with furry backs and slick potbellies sidestroke like seals. Women take a holy plunge in delicate silk saris. Priests offer prayers, still as reeds on a mellow morning, eyes staring at the God inside. Freshly laundered saris in butterfly-wing colors make crisp squares on ancient steps.

Deeper inside the maze of the dark, ancient Old City, flocks of pilgrims make colorful rivers of alleyways. Red-faced monkeys scavenge from rooftops and panes. Bells and drums clamor for attention amidst throaty generators, monotone chanting, rumbling mopeds, and distressed cows.

Varanasi’s assault doesn’t end with sounds. Imagine endless dark alleyways smeared with cow dung, sandalwood burning in tiny shops, holy men squatting beneath moldy umbrellas. Clouds of flies, horned calluses on bare feet, heaps of marigolds, Kali’s skull-rimmed face, fires burning at intersections, hidden temples, clouds of bliss, endless chanting. Kids peering out of Alice-in-Wonderland doors and playing cricket in secret courtyards.

During the sweltering nights, men crowd the alleyways, high off bhang or booze or otherwise languishing in low lazy clusters. The temples stay lit, and aarti offerings surf the river’s current, beelining towards fulfillment.

We spent three days exploring this potent, paralyzing, mythical city. And it still, at times, feels like 567 B.C.
Next, we’re taking the train to Kolkata, from which we will fly to distant, exalted (and pressure-cooker hot) Thailand…

Burning Bones remains copyright of the author -andrea-, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

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He shakes his head. “No. They use chemicals, you know?” He screws up his face in disgust. “Ruins your clothes. Some of them don’t come out.”

“Oh,” we say, with big, naïve tourist eyes. I personally still want to be covered in Holi colors, fluorescent oranges, pine greens and 1980s shades of pink. I want to look like a psychedelic lizard, a subhuman species from the planet Magenta.

I don’t think Seth was as into looking like something out of a poorly-done Nickelodeon show.

Holi is an annual spring tradition in India and Nepal. Its name comes from the demoness Holika, who is ritually burned in bonfires the night before the holiday. According to the oft-creative Wikipedia, this "festival of colour is celebrated in all over the country with great festivity and joy. On this day, people...gather together in a common place where they play it with gay abandon." Which is to say, they gaily smear lead-based colored powders on one another's faces and clothes, making sure to douse tourists as much as possible. They also dance, squirt water on one another, and party for a good 20 hours before getting back to work.

It wasn’t bad. At first.

By the time we crossed the bridge, small brigades of Indian men had discovered us and done their best to douse us in powders and a mauve liquid that must have been made of lead-based spray paint. Hugging strangers is perfectly legitimate on Holi, so we both received heartfelt bear hugs after having our faces smeared with powder by wet hands. One old, fat man saw me and embraced me like I was his long-lost granddaughter. Several times. “Haaaappy Holi!” He kept exclaiming.

Soon, our look was complete. We were 100% Holi’d-out, parrots from an acid trip bearing human form, tourists-cum-canvases, the masterpieces of drunk Indian men and little kids with spray bottles. The mystery paint oozed up our noses and into our eyelids, causing a chemical stinging sensation. Concerned, we warded off revelers to wash off in the Ganga.

The powders came off easily. The Mauve Industrial Liquid did not, fading to the color of a Gorbachavian birthmark on our faces, necks and chests. A nice woman nearby passed us some black, foul-smelling soap. After we had both scrubbed it all over our faces, twice, someone informed us that it was laundry soap and would leave little cuts all over our skin.

Luckily, we came out of the experience relatively unscathed. Part of the left side of my hair is still pink. This is fine in India, where sheep, goats, and anything else unlucky enough to have white fur is also still looking pretty neon. I saw a man walk a pink dog down some steep stairs in Varanasi the other day. The same potent mauve liquid also clings to the fronts of rickshaws and third-class India Railways trains, baking to permanence in the driving sun.

Another year. Another Holi. And in 2 days, when we head to Bangkok, a few weeks of explaining that the pink hair isn’t a punk thing. It’s a Holi thing.

Holi *!$#! remains copyright of the author -andrea-, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

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The youngest of them, a tiny boy of seven, is standing at the front of the room, his nose almost touching the chalkboard. He keeps messing up his pronunciation, making the rest of the classroom giggle. The teacher gently corrects the boy when he fudges the words.

After a few tries, the boy gets it right. When he does, the other students chant after him. Their firm, clear chants have a military quality to them, as though they were ROTC recruits. The teacher smiles and nods in encouragement.

The headmaster, who’s been waiting in the wings, walks up to us and explains what the chant means. They yell again, in unison:

“Where there is war, we make peace. Where there is stealing, we make charity.”

Three miles through town is the Institute for the Research of Meditation and Understanding. In the adjacent Mindrolling Monastery, nuns and monks spend hours observing the contents of their minds, practicing peace until it becomes natural.

A 60-foot-tall golden Buddha looms benevolently nearby. Miles of prayer flags strung between trees make gentle shadows on carefully arranged gardens. The grounds, like the Buddhist mind, absorb movement and sound.

The schoolboys across town continue their chants. They are here every day from 3 to 9pm. Like their older brethren in the monastery, these young monks are learning peace through self-mastery. They are hand-plucked from Nepal, China, India. The school, a charity, sends officials to find the poorest boys in the poorest villages and sends them to this school to become monks. Their heads are shaved; their uniforms maroon robes.

And so they begin their lifelong study of peace.

For Tibetan Buddhists, peace and freedom are a practice. We in the West often think of peace as a utopic ideal. It’s a nervous, nail-biting affair with one eye cast towards the heavens and the other distracted by a Blackberry. We hope and pray for peace to come, yet we often do not practice it. We don’t see peace as something that can be trained or learned. We feel hopeful for a peaceful outcome, but powerless to affect it.

Tibetans, who have in recent years become all too intimate with torture, displacement, and other forms of violence, continue their compassion studies in large colonies in India. Many of these colonies house large orphanages where children learn to sustain the culture of a land they may never see again.

You may have read about Tibet in the news lately. A series of protests on March 10, the 49th anniversary of Tibetan Uprising Day, have led to a martial law situation in Tibet. The Dalai Lama has threatened to step down as political leader of the Tibetan government in exile. Tibet claims that 100 Tibetans, mostly monks, have been shot in China—the Chinese claim the number is more like 16. Arrests have also occurred in Olympia, Greece, Canada, and around the world as protestors vie for media attention in time for the Beijing Olympics.

It doesn’t stop there. Nepal is closing Mt. Everest in early May—peak climbing season—because it doesn’t want anyone waving the Tibetan flag next to the Olympic torch, which will be hoisted up during that time. The Chinese aren’t allowing tourists into Tibet. They’ve prohibited journalists from entering the capital and sealed off all channels of communication to the outside world, save for a few stealthy blog posts or YouTube videos.

And somewhere just outside the Kangra district of India, a group of 50 Tibetans are sitting in an Indian jail for walking across state lines against police orders. Their purpose was, and remains, to walk from Dharamsala to Tibet. They’re on hunger strike until their release, when they plan to walk again.

We spent a little over a week with the hunger strikers in McLeod Ganj, home of the Tibetan government in exile. Back then—so much has happened since on the Tibet issue that is seems like a year ago—they were training and preparing for their long march.

We talked to them, took pictures, figured out what they were all about. We talked to ex-political prisoners, monks who walked across the Himalayas to get to India, a 70-year-old man prepared to walk to Tibet to die in his homeland. We talked to organizers and supporters, holy women and famous activists.

To make sense of it all, we are making a book. Its working title is “Marching Home.”

We’ll include excerpts and pictures from the book in future blog posts. Hopefully, you, too, can get acquainted with the amazing, proud, and very human Tibetans whose faces and struggles have, suddenly, become very public.

On Tibet remains copyright of the author -andrea-, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

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We’re living in a treehouse. The Ganges (Ganga) roars hundreds of feet below, through a glacial cleavage in the low Himalayas. We’re close to its source here, so the river is chilly and clean, with big, frothy rapids. Wedding cake temples line the Ganga’s banks. Red-faced monkeys, the smaller, scrappier cousins to the regal gray langurs at Ranthambore, sprint across cables on the footbridges connecting either side of town.

Rishikesh is a spiritual enclave especially renowned among Westerners. The Beatles wrote much of the White Album while staying at Maharishi Mahesh Yogi’s ashram, located just down the street from us. Waifish yoga teachers and enlightened hippies stroll between innumerable temples, ashrams, yoga studios, and German bakeries. Rafts full of elated tourists tumble down rapids; renunciates in orange robes hike into the holy mountains to find God.

Rishikesh’s main perk is its pervasive sense of peace. Days waft by in fresh air and scented bliss. It’s what hip backpackers refer to as shanti (adj./noun, depending on context). As in, “it’s so shanti at this ashram,” or “that place just wasn’t shanti at all, you know?”

Hotel-wise, found the most shanti shanti in Rishikesh. Our room, which has pillars painted to resemble tree trunks, is located high up on an embankment aptly named the High Bank. We open our front door to a panoramic view of the Ganga’s snaking rapids every single day.

We’ve been here for three weeks, exploring states of increasingly deep relaxation fueled by periods of lounging on the river bank and multicourse breakfasts big enough sustain a Clydesdale. The process has proved that the Prozac people have it all backwards. All it takes to relieve tension is Nutella, brown rolls, a view, and a holy river with white sandy banks.

Once in a while, something surprising punctuates the serenity. Like the snake charmer who lives in the canyon next to our hotel. He showed up one day at the Swiss Cottage German Bakery, our favorite munching grounds, with two black cobras in a round box and a snake-charming flute with Deutsch Marks glued to the front.

The flute sounded like a Scottish bagpipe with a sinus infection. The snakes, upon hearing the flute, remained coiled. Bopal, the charmer, grabbed their heads to steer them out of the container. They reluctantly slithered towards the nearest source of darkness, often a woman’s purse or the space beneath her skirt, so that they could go back to sleep.

At this point, Bopal flicked the undersides of their heads to aggravate them into showing their hoods. They would show a little hood at first, splaying out just enough shape from the sides of their necks to make you suspect they might be real cobras. Bopal would continue to harry them until they jerked their necks back defensively, splayed out their patterned hoods in full glory, and looked for something to bite.

Thus, the snakes were charmed.

When asked whether the snakes were poisonous, Bopal said “No, no teeth.”
“Do you pull them out?”
“No.”
“So they have teeth.”
“Yes.”
“Do they bite?”
“No! No bite.”
“Do you take out the venom?”
“No venom! No teeth.”
“So you pulled out the teeth?”
“No!”
“So it has teeth?”
“Yes! No bite.”

The conversation went on like this for ten minutes. We brought in an interpreter and, another ten minutes later, had no further information, save for the fact that the snakes did not bite because they were under the influence of a special Shiva blessing. The snake peed on our neighbor’s purse after attempting to slither inside it, bringing us no closer to the truth.

The truth of Rishikesh itself, however, is clear. The Ganga’s whispers, 70-degree sunny days, and long hours reading on our balcony’s swinging chair spell out one thing: relaxation. Blissful, restful relaxation, the genuine kind that isn’t influenced by force or drugs. A rare jewel, indeed.

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Relaxikesh remains copyright of the author -andrea-, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

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One bag of chapati flour, a bottle of soy oil, and a bag of salt cost about $7—roughly what she might make in a week or two. She placed the flour on her head and led me out of town. We walked about a mile through exposed and trash-filled yellow dirt to an encampment strewn with blankets. A fence made of bamboo and twine encircled the place; beds were placed both out in the open and inside of leaf-covered huts. Women in brightly colored saris, with plastic bangle bracelets up to their elbows and multiple silver and beaded necklaces, squatted near a fire. It was a Rajasthani gypsy camp.

About seven women trickled in out of various corners of the camp when we arrived. Some, thankfully, spoke good English. They implored me to sit on a blanket and share a bidi, or small, leaf-wrapped cigarette with them. The bidi was potent little tobacco bomb that left a pleasant buzz inside of my skull.

The gypsies had come from Jaisalmar by mule. Pushkar, with its many tourists, presented good business opportunities, so they settled here. Someone gave them trouble about settling on the land at first, but leaves them alone now. They’re an extended family of married and unmarried women, widows, men, and bejeweled, dusty little kids.

When I asked one woman about her husband, she said he took the drink and left. Every morning, they walk one hour to get water and carry it back in clay pots on their heads. The rest of the day, they go do henna in the market, teach dance, and, as far as I could see, hang out, cook, smoke, and take care of the kids. The camp had a lull to it, especially around midday, and I could easily see myself becoming a squatting, gossiping chain smoker with the rest of them.
After the obligatory questions—how old you? You married? Kids? No kids? Oh…(face falls)—they told me about Puva, the old woman. She’d been widowed years ago and had no family. The big gypsy family allowed her to sleep by their fire, but could not share food with her, as they had to take care of themselves first. Her eyes were failing and her lungs were weak.

“She has two month, then she see no more,” Sanita, a girl roughly my age who spoke the best English, informed me.
“What then?” I asked.
“We give her a stick and tell her which way to walk to town.”

With failing eyesight and no family, Puva cannot make jewelry or do henna, two things that help gypsy women sustain themselves. Nor can she dance, she’s too old. When I asked how old she was, Sanita shook her head and said very, very old. About 40.

The women put mehndi, a marital wedding design, on my hands using henna squeezed from plastic bags. Before the henna was dry, they started dancing, a display complete with drums and a built-in audience. They did a traditional dance with flowing skirts and tricks like bending over backwards and putting a 100-rupee bill inside of her mouth. They continued to smoke like chimneys. I found yet another bindi between my lips as I took pictures. They then took me to their kitchen area, where I shared in throat-burning dahl and homemade chapati.

After buying some jewelry and giving them a kickback for the food and the show, one of them, Shanti, accompanied me back to the market. We sat in the middle of the dirt for a cigarette break halfway there. She informed me that my clothes were mediocre and I had to make myself beautiful. Next thing I knew, she’d stuck a bindi on my forehead and smeared dark lipstick on my lips with her pinky finger. She also gave me a ring to wear. Much better.

It was mid-afternoon when I finally got back to the hotel room, where the food service guy had locked Seth inside. He was a steaming heap of feverish blankets when I found him. He’s better today. Somehow, after smoking 4 bindis yesterday, I’m worse. After visiting an adorable hole-in-the-wall café this morning for breakfast, we’ve both collapsed into the dizzy, snot-ridden world of unending sinus colds.

The Gypsy Beggar's Surprise remains copyright of the author -andrea-, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

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There is one way to know that you’ve gotten Karni Mata’s highest blessings. Our camel guide Keysore has received them many times; so has Daisy, Camel Man Vijay Singh’s wife, at whose guesthouse we stayed. Karni Mata’s blessing, when it comes out, is easy to spot, because it’s the only white thing around, save for the occasional tourist. The rest of her 20,000 tribespeople—rats as well, but in the usual gray suit—scurry hungrily around her temple, piling themselves up to sleep, lapping up offerings of milk and egg yolks, and, if you’re lucky, crawling over your feet.

We visited the Karni Mata temple on the third day of our 4-day camel safari. It was just the two of us, three guides, three camels, and a camel cart piled up with supplies, food, and blankets. The tour so far had been a silent, plodding affair on bone-cracking saddles. A typical day went something like this: wake up under ten pounds of blankets. Freeze. Get served a breakfast of toast, scrambled eggs, tea and porridge. Mount camel, much to dismay of American backside, which is accustomed to office chairs. Pass through peaceful villages with handmade huts and cud-chewing livestock. Watch as children run behind camels screaming “Ta ta! Ta ta!” (Bye Bye!). Disappear into shallow dunefields and swaths of sand punctuated by thorny scrubs. Pass tender fields of peanuts, lentils, wheat, and mustard. Chill out on blanket as camel guides make rice and dahl for lunch. Repeat for dinner. Crawl into tent to avoid cold.

It was a pretty provincial affair, up until the rat temple. Dubbed the “Eighth Wonder of the World,” this large, ornate temple is a hub of blessings for believers. To them, the rats that scurry across the ground and pile up in corners aren’t rats at all, but kabas, Mataji’s reincarnated tribespeople. The kabas are purported to be clean, disease-free, and blessed. “They never leave the perimeters of the temple, nor do they reproduce,” says the website karnimata.com. People come to worship them and receive their goddess’s powerful blessings.

As someone new to this belief system, it’s harder to stomach. After about ten minutes amidst the kabas, you start to lift your feet an awful lot when you walk, thinking one’s on its way up your pants, or nervously batting your hands on your clothes to make sure they’re kaba-free.

The camel tour ended with a long, pelvis-rearranging trek back to a jeep, which in turn took us back to the guesthouse. Happy to be back indoors as this northern Indian cold snap continues. We’re heading to Ranthambore National Park next, continuing the animal theme, hoping to spot some wild tigers…

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Receiving the Rat's Blessings remains copyright of the author -andrea-, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

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Lacking the gentle, adorable quality of cows and the horse’s regal grace, the camel is the ultimate utilitarian beast. Its padded humps have comfortably held humans, sundries, building materials, and war provisions since man first figured out how to subdue it using ropes and sticks. In the great Thar desert, the dune-ridden, reddish-brown phenomenon that links Rajasthan with Pakistan, camels are still employed the same way they have been since the dawn of domestication. And we were lucky enough to take them for a ride.

After a Jeep ride into the Thar desert, a landmass with definitive Lawrence of Arabia mystique, we (Seth, myself, and fellow tourist Fernando) saddled up on a trio of ancient camel beasts to take a 3-hour tour of the Thar. Our guides, dressed in traditional desert tunics and turbans, added to the epic feel of the journey. Once astride the camels, we were a good ten feet off the ground. It was all desert beauty and cobra holes as we started meandering along a narrow path leading deeper into the desert.

Then Seth asked what the camels’ names were. I imagined something exotic, like Nagahindi or Desert Queen.

“Robert,” replied our five-foot-tall English-speaking guide, who would later start belting Hindu songs in a girlish voice and crank calling people on Fernando’s cell phone. Robert burped in confirmation. The other two were named Rocket and Number One. Rocket was a “very fast running camel,” while Number One seemed to have no particular claim to fame, besides being good for ladies.

Robert, Seth’s camel, was a neurotic lover of freedom who regularly trotted out of line and tried to take off on his own. His neurosis involved regurgitating his breakfast, chewing it, swallowing it, and regurgitating it again. He steadily munched on his snack of grass and bile throughout the trip, a rabid digestive foam percolating at his lips. Rocket defied his name by being unusually slow. Number One, the ladies’ man, did whatever he was told.

We strolled through rock-strewn scrubland onto sculpted sand dunes boasting delicate, wind-blown patterns. The sky turned to a deep periwinkle as the sun dropped low to the east, over Pakistan, located just a few miles away. We took rest stops to photograph the immaculate dunes and enjoy the sunset ambiance. Other tourist camel groups had already nestled into dune valleys to set up camp and watch the sunset. A Muslim-clad man with a bag of Kingfisher beers appeared from the east just as the sun was getting low, selling his chilly wares for us to toast the sunset with. A band of bored-looking gypsies sat down in front of us and did a music/dance routine. As soon as the sun had disappeared, leaving the sky a hazy purple, we mounted our steeds back to the jeep.

This was just a warm-up for the longer trip we plan on taking from the town of Bikaner, purported to have fewer tourists and dunes just as sweet as those surrounding Jaisalmer. We leave for Bikaner tomorrow at 6am, just in time to catch the tail end of the Bikaner camel festival and explore another fascinating, historic Rajasthan town. We will also meet the highly esteemed Camel Man, King of the Desert, for a multi-day desert ride.

Warming Up to Camels in Jaisalmer remains copyright of the author -andrea-, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

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People just don’t build fortresses like they used to. These days, our forts are digital, comprised of firewalls and DMZs, encryptions and layers of invisible security. Impressive, sure, but also invisible. Back in 1459, less than 40 years before Columbus misnavigated his way to the New World, an Indian king named Rao Jodha lay the groundwork for what would eventually become the imposing, red-stoned architectural marvel that defines the city of Jodhpur. He was the 15th king of Marwar, the mythical Land of Death, located in western Rajhastan. His empire lay nestled in a barren, dusty plain on the vital trade route between Delhi and Mujarat. It was a dry, fly-ridden town where merchants led camels through narrow alleyways, priests performed puja (blessings) nightly, and the scent of chanting and incense filled the air.

A fine kingdom, indeed, but terribly prone to attacks by the neighboring tribes at its old location. Jodha needed to protect his empire, so he turned his eyes to the heavens, where a 400-foot cliff loomed over the nascent town of Jodhpur. It was a logical place to build one of India’s most impenetrable and renowned fortresses. He rode up the hill with a few of his best men to lay out plans for the fort. An old scraggly hermit named Cheeria Nathji, the lord of the birds, was the only inhabitant there. When Jodha forced him off his roost, the hermit cursed the fortress with a chronic drought, a prophecy that remains true in Jodhpur to this day. Jodha tried to appease the hermit by building him a house and temple and, when that didn't work, burying a man alive in the fort's foundations.

Thus it was that the great fort of Mehrangarh was founded. Complete with elephant defense spikes, ornate cannons, a pleasure room, an armory, and quarters for queens, mothers, and concubines, Mehrangarh stands as one of India’s proudest and best-preserved fortresses. The cramped, endless city of Jodhpur murmurs below the fort’s towering hulk, a maze of blocky blue houses and flooding sewers that hasn’t changed much since Jodha’s time.

The fort saw his successors to the early 20th century, when it finally lost its primary purpose as a protective citadel. Men with bejeweled shields valiantly fought enemy troops by horse, foot, and elephant. The latter could fling man and horse casually aside with its powerful trunk, with which it also often wielded weapons. Society was equally dramatic: Queens flung themselves on funeral pyres, musicians and dancers kept the royals entertained in special pleasure rooms, and Jodhpur bustled with traveling merchants and spice traders.

We took an audio tour of Jodhpur’s imposing giant today, exploring the intricacies of the flashy and expansive Rathore empire. The kings seemed to be just as devoted to the glitzier elements of warfare as they were to their effectiveness as warriors. Portraits show them as bejeweled, glaring lords surrounded by rose-scented wives. Their swords had lion-headed hilts and blades cast with jasmine vines. Even the cannons were gilded. So much prettier than the spare northern European ruins I saw as a kid. I wonder what would happen if you put the Rathores head-to-head with, say, the Huns. One group would be perfumed, plaited, and shiny; the other coarse, smelly, and rough. It would be like a fistfight between Elton John and Jack Black. I mean, who would win? Impossible to tell, but highly entertaining in the process.

We finished off the day with dinner at the fort’s restaurant. Phenomenal view, but the overpriced food left much to be desired. Think lamb with shards of gristle, chewy chapati, and badly cooked rice. You know that when the rice is off, something’s wrong. Still, it was a nice, touristy day, and perfect introduction to the great forts of Rajasthan, Land of Kings.

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Jodhpur's Gnarliest Fort remains copyright of the author -andrea-, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

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If you’re traveling and get a head cold, you have two options: stay in bed, bored and sick, or tour around like it’s nothing and try to ignore the ever-growing wad of soppy Kleenex in your pants pocket. After three days of hanging out in bed and ordering room service, we felt decent—and brave—enough to start checking out the town in more detail. We rented a motorcycle—err, ok, it was a 30 CC moped with barely enough torque to beat a hungry goat in a dead heat. Correction: We asked for a motorcycle, but the one our hotel owners had was so fast, powerful, and immaculate that we decided it would be better to get something tame. Turns out this steed was just half a step above a bicycle.

So we took it off-roading. There was a rutted dirt road outside of town rumored to contain authentic Indian villages, with authentic-looking villagers, camels, and a smattering of mysterious Shiva temples. Village kids would stick out their hands to high-five us as we whizzed by at a high-pitched 9 miles per hour. Some of their little palms hurt pretty good. I’m sure they felt the same.

We explored a Shiva temple nestled inside of a rocky canyon about four miles into the dirt road. A narrow path led past small, boxy stucco buildings with a scummy set of pools running through the middle. Beautiful fig and bodhi trees grew artfully out of the mountain flank to one side; the inside of the temple, with its silent, dark shrine, contained a powerful, soothing sense of utter peace. Another India contrast: beautiful trees, peaceful temple, pond scum, trash. We passed a herd of billy goats on the way back, swerved around camels pulling loaded camel carts, their necklaces jingling in the sun. We also got stuck in the sand and had a near-miss with a tractor as a result. The moped, which had barely started as we headed out, died in town. The hotel people tried to charge Seth extra for a new spark plug. Sigh.

Another important Pushkar highlight involved flying kites off of Pushkar’s uneven rooftops. Flying kites is hard on every level: getting them up in the air, keeping them from nosediving into a tree, and reeling them back in one piece. Remember how the kids in Kite Runner would fly kites until it was too dark to see? Pushkar was like that, the sky flitting with geometric squares made of tissue paper, kids and adults alike delighting in their nightly ritual.

We also visited a lovely nonprofit called Fior de Loto. They run a school for girls, taking in poor girls from surrounding villages and giving them education, housing, and a chance at a good career. Finally, we discovered the perfect culinary complement to Pushkar’s peaceful and colorful valence. The Rainbow Café serves delectable recipes from around the world with a 360-degree rooftop view of Pushkar. He even serves eggs, which aren’t allowed in the rest of town for religious reasons. We spend many a satisfied hour cultivating our love handles at this sweet locale.

Tearing Up Pushkar's Rutted Roads remains copyright of the author -andrea-, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

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