22/07/2009 - assorted India macros.

22/07/2009 - assorted India macros.

22/07/2009 - assorted India macros.

22/07/2009 - assorted India macros.

22/07/2009 - assorted India macros.

22/07/2009 - assorted India macros.

22/07/2009 - assorted India macros.

22/07/2009 - assorted India macros.

22/07/2009 - assorted India macros.

22/07/2009 - assorted India macros.

20/07/2009 - India, touring Agra.

We explored some ruins in an area near the Taj Mahal that you're not really allowed in. I used a jedi mind trick to get us in.

20/07/2009 - India, touring Agra.

20/07/2009 - India, touring Agra.

Endlessly amazing buildings.

20/07/2009 - India, touring Agra.

Amazing buildings set against an endless sky.

20/07/2009 - India, touring Agra.

Details!

20/07/2009 - India, touring Agra.

This was not, alas, actually a bottomless pit.

20/07/2009 - India, touring Agra.

The lattices made for amazing lighting.

20/07/2009 - India, touring Agra.

The Red Fort. Did I mention we saw a week's worth of stuff in Agra, in a day?

18/07/2009 - India, days 2 & 3

Lucknow was a flashpoint in the 1857 Sepoy Rebellion. The old British residency still bears many of the scars.

18/07/2009 - India, days 2 & 3

And they're written in the most delightful Victorian English.

18/07/2009 - India, days 2 & 3

18/07/2009 - India, days 2 & 3

18/07/2009 - India, days 2 & 3

Home is where you hang your hat up, right?

18/07/2009 - India, days 2 & 3

Then we went to Agra, and I checked out the Taj Mahal.

18/07/2009 - India, days 2 & 3

It's pretty big, and gorgeous, and the gardens and buildings around it are similarly impressive.

18/07/2009 - India, days 2 & 3

Details from Agra.

18/07/2009 - India, days 2 & 3

Doorway in one of the old mosques beside Agra.

Varanasi, part 2

I walked along the Ganges from sunset until well after dark. There were a million fellows offering me boat rides, various Ghats (it means Palace, though I don't know if it's specifically for river-side palaces or generally used) along the way, and the occasional hotel or guesthouse on the Ganges' edge.

Then there was the ritual there.
The first was a night-time ceremony to the river. A man would stand with a container of burning incense, dancing and praying, ringing a bell with his other hand, while someone else drummed along. I saw this twice: the first time, it was one man doing the ritual, while a boy drummed; the second time, further along in my walk, there was a large apparatus, with 4 sets of pray-ers/drummers, all adults (and one, I think, female).

The second was the burning Ghats. It's traditional for Hindus to burn their dead, with a very special emphasis being put on being burned on the banks of the Ganges. People come from all over the world, in their old age, and stay in what are basically hospices next to the river. These temples/hospices care for the dying, and perform the rituals associated with the funeral. At the foot of these Ghats, between the walkway and the bank of the river, are pyres. This is one place where the caste system is very much alive and well, as Brahmin pyres are placed far higher than others, and the lowest caste's pyres are right on the water's edge. This might sound counterintuitive, as you'd think that if the river was the special part then the higher caste would want to be closer. My understanding is that the emphasis is on the spirit going upwards, so being higher up takes precedence.
The only people they don't burn are small children, lepers, and those afflicted with some other sorts of diseases. In the case of small children, and I think the others as well but I'm not sure, they tie the body to a heavy stone and sink them into the Ganges.

Which might be shocking, or even sound sick, to a Western audience, but having it explained while seeing the infrastructure and process of it all was
profound to say the least.
Though a completely different environment, it wasn't so different from hearing a priest explain the funerary customs in a church, for example.

I really can't describe the feeling of being there and seeing it all.
I can describe, if somewhat vaguely, the smell, but wish there was another word to use. It was distinctly barbecue-like, with a thicker layer to it.

I kept walking, through the night along the Ganges. Inconveniently enough, I was feeling quite famished at this point. There was a nice rooftop restaurant at one of the Ganges-edge hotels, where I got some great food.

My next day in Varanasi was short. The evening trains to Delhi were sold out, so I took a mid-day train that arrived the next morning, hopefully to catch my flight to Lucknow.

I got up very early in the morning, around 4:30am, and took a morning boat ride along the river. Lots of amazing scenes. Pretty sure the whole town came out to bathe.
Then I got some breakfast from a sweet, if very touristy, place. Inbetween the boat-ride and breakfast I wandered the streets for a while, encountering monkeys, cows (they wander everywhere here. Everywhere), lots of people off to work or school, and the general sprawl and dirt of the city.

Then it was off to the train station, to get my ticket.

Right before getting on the train, I got some lunch in the form of two samosas and a glass of chai from little booths across the street from the train station. Quite simply put, I don't know if I'll be able to approach contentment with any other 'chai' again. I'm looking at you, Starbucks.
{During my market-day in Jaipur, I got the ingredients to make proper chai. Much experimenting will commence when I return to the States}.
Bonus: the samosas didn't kill me. Delicious!

Then onto the train for Delhi. (where I miss my flight by 6 minutes)

Arrival to Delhi, and Varanasi, part 1

There's not a whole lot to say about Delhi. I never actually got to see the city, just went through the airport and train stations.

I regret that just a little bit, since I think it would have been an interesting contrast to all the other places and ancient sites my friend and I visited in India. Oh well, such is life with only a week in such a big country.

After landing in Delhi and clearing customs, I re-checked my baggage in the domestic terminal and waited to board the flight to Varanasi. Despite having a theoretical 4 hours before the flight, after customs and inter-terminal transport it was more like 2.

I got on the flight. Before takeoff, they distributed this tasty looking lemon drink, which I thought was quite nice.
It also had 'salt' listed as one of the ingredients. They didn't mean a little bit, either; it was by far the most bitter and foul drink I've ever had.
Adventure!

Varanasi was amazing. The luggage-conveyor at the airport was about 12 feet of conveyor belt, fed awkwardly from just outside the wall.
Then I got on a bus, for 100 rupees I didn't have (I'd left Dubai with 0 change, and hadn't seen an ATM yet; they stopped at the sketchiest ATM ever along the way)
and then was dropped off in the center of town.

Every autorickshaw driver ever accosted me, anon. Eventually finding one that would take a decent price to my guesthouse (not that he, or I, had any idea where it was), I departed from the overwhelming stench and crowd that was the center of Varanasi
to the overwhelming smell and slightly less crowd that was my guesthouse's area.

I'd picked this place because the reviews were good, and people had specifically said that the manager, Papu, was very helpful.
He really, really was, and the stay was great.
The room had a small balcony, an overhead fan, and its own bathroom/shower room, and a large if not particularly soft bed.

It was great. Papu warned me about leaving the balcony open if I left, because 'sometimes monkeys will try to get in.'

After settling in a bit, I got a hand-drawn map from the manager, and then walked towards the Ganges.

I've thought several times about writing an entire post about how I find smells one of the most interesting things about travel - partly because they're so unique to any one place, and partly because they're one of the few aspects of a place that you really, really can't record or transmit yet.

India, Varanasi in particular, was a wild bouquet of smells. Garbage, mud, water, food, spice, age, life, burning bodies and burning incense. I can't even begin to describe it.

Abu Dhabi and Al-Ain

There's not quite as much to say about these two stops than there is about Dubai, if for no other reason than that I spent far less time in either one.

Abu Dhabi is the capital city of the United Arab Emirates. It's thick with small shops, and full of cars and people, but there's very little there in the way of attraction. However, the government is centered there, so there are some pretty incredible buildings.

I don't think I've posted any yet, but I've got some photos of the absolutely massive, sprawling Presidential Palace compound. It's quite an amazing building.
Alas, I arrived to Abu Dhabi in the nighttime, after anything to do was closed. There was much driving around, and much trying to find a wifi connection to use for a bit.
I picked up a few books, a map of the UAE and one of Abu Dhabi, and eventually stopped at a rest-stop on the highway to sleep for the night.

I returned in the morning, took another loop around the Presidential Palace to get a look in the daytime, and then headed to Al-Ain.

Al-Ain was really interesting. The name means 'the eye' in Arabic (unless there's another meaning / voweling that I'm unaware of), and it certainly had some places that were eye-pleasing.

The drive from Abu Dhabi to Al-Ain was about as long as the drive from Dubai to Abu Dhabi: a bit over 130 km, or about 80 miles. The big difference was that while Dubai to Abu Dhabi is more or less along the coast, or at least beside coastal cities and towns, the drive to Al-Ain from Abu Dhabi is through thick, rolling desert.

It was easy to forget that you're in a desert area when in a big city like Abu Dhabi or Dubai. Al-Ain made it very clear just what the real environment was.

My first stop was a Palace Musem, after a bit of a drive around the town (some intentional, some because of being lost; street-signage in the Emirates was across the board pretty good, until you got close to whatever the sign was for. Then, signs tended to disappear entirely).

The Palace Museum was just that - the palace of some ancient king turned into a museum set out in a display of traditional Arab culture and palatial architecture.
Except that I'd arrived in the summer season, which is the off-season for the area (theme of the trip, that, so far). So the place was more or less deserted. I wandered about, poking my head into room after room. Most were sitting rooms, with some pictures and old Arab relics on the walls (swords, decorated old rifles, or garb), and large coffee or tea pots around a fire-box; I took a nap in one of these rooms, as it really was that deserted and sleeping in the car the night before hadn't been that restful.
Some other rooms had information about the history of the place or about the Emirates. One room had much of the entire Emirate Monarchs' family history in portraiture.

The next stop after the palace was an oasis just a bit down the road.

Now, take a moment to picture the archetypal desert oasis.

It was nothing like that. It was a long series of narrow dirt roads, with brick walls on either side and a thick canopy of palm trees. The walls had occasional openings to numbered lots in the oasis, which I believe are used for planting.
Occasionally, the walls and road was punctuated by a small mosque.
The entire complex was huge. I mean, I drove around in there for easily a half-hour, and there were still areas I didn't get to seeing. I passed about 3 mosques, one quite large, and eventually exited the oasis on the other side of town.

From there, I drove back to Dubai and arrived in the early evening.

Let the record show that Abu Dhabi is the most entertaining place-name to pronounce since Walla-Walla. The 'Dh' is pronounced like a thick 'Z.'

Dubai, part 2

- Indoor Skiing. I didn't try it, but took a few pictures. It's in the Mall of the Emirates. There's a giant ski-hill, a luge-thingy, and an area with snow-tubes that go around on a merri-go-round sort of thing. The hill has a full-run with chairlift, a midway-unload T-bar, and a friction-lift bunny-slope area.
It's seriously big.

- The Jebel Ali Shooting Club. It's part of the Jebel Ali resort complex, which is quite a bit further west than the main stretch of Dubai. They also have a large golf resort, and a karting track, in other compounds. I fired 25 rounds of 9mm, in a little Czech pistol (a CZ 75, I think).
They also had a 4x4 course around the perimeter (the range was indoors, so no safety conflict there), but it wasn't operating (maybe because it's the summer season? I don't know). This didn't stop me from romping a little bit in the Corolla....

All in all, Dubai was an incredible place to be. I could go on and on about the investment-centric nature of the city, the way that everything's a bit under-construction, and the utter extravagance of the spectacle that is Dubai.
I shan't, though. There's more to the Emirates than Dubai, so after another night there I went to explore some other places in the area.

Dubai, part 1

I'm taking a bit of a chill-day in Shanghai. Slept in, took a nice shower to start removing the India grime, and did all my laundry that needed doing.

Now I'm going to finally update some of this bloggery. It's crazy to think I haven't updated since writing about Cairo, despite that it's only been a couple weeks. I do apologize in advance that the next few entries will probably be long, rambling accounts of an entire week in a country.

Dubai was incredible.

I've described it to people as a 21st century city built on 14th century foundations, which has given up an oil-economy for the info-economy, all under the legal and political structures of a classic Arabian monarchy.

Some travel-tips, if you're ever there:

• 1: It's expensive. Accept this. Even the hostel was about $30 USD for a sub-par dorm room.
  
• 2: Other than the architecture, almost everything fun to do is in a mall. Accept this too, and don't think "Oh man, I spent the day in a mall!" when "the day" consisted of seeing a giant fountain-show set to Arab techno, a giant aquarium, and an ice-skating rink (yes, one mall actually has all of those.)
  
• 3: If you rent a car, don't speed, ever. Yes, people drive loony; it made me a little homesick for Boston and New York. BUT, most of the roads (and soon, all of them) have radar-emplacements that track speed. Ticketing is automatic, and pricey.
  Can you tell I got a speeding ticket?

Since it was going to be a pricey stop either way, and I was feeling pretty wiped from Cairo, I opted to bask in luxury for a couple of nights.
I spent them at the Jumeirah Beach Hotel. It's a 5-star beach resort, right next to the Burj Al-Arab.

By some strange twist of market-power, it's actually a LOT cheaper to book these hotels through an agent than to purchase directly from the hotel. This doesn't make a lot of sense to me, especially with hotels like this that are nigh-legendary.
Either way, I managed to get a $400+ room for around $250 a night, breakfast included. Life was pretty darn cushy.

It was a wonderful place to rest up, and a beautiful place to be. It was also a great reminder of the trip I'm not taking. There was anything a human being could need or want, all in the hotel.

Some highlights of resort life:

• I rented a Pico (a super-small sailboat) and cavorted about on the Arab Gulf for a bit.
• I took a dip in the sea, and then in the pool.
• Then I was That Guy and had a margarita at the pool-bar.
• I sat on the roof-lounge at midnight, looking out at the Dubai coast.
• I sat in the English Pub restaurant, sipping Pimm's and reading Toynbee.
• I lounged in a cotton robe, sipping coffee and looking out at the vista from 20 stories up.

It was a great two days, but I basically saw nothing outside the hotel. It could have easily filled the rest of my week had I wanted to see everything in the hotel.

Now, Dubai doesn't have a subway system. Rather, it doesn't have one yet. It's under construction, like much of Dubai, and will ostensibly open in September of this year.
It looks like it'll be a pretty incredible system, when finished.
Until then, however, options for getting around included taking the bus, taxis, or renting a car.
I chose the third option, and on the second day I got a cheap little Toyota for a very reasonable price, from a very tiny car-rental company.

It was a somewhat costly, but great decision.

Seeing Dubai by car meant being able to go from one part of the city to another with relative ease, and it enabled me to go explore Abu Dhabi and Al-Ain as well. More on that later.

Things I saw in Dubai, and where:
- The Ice-bar, Chillout. It's in the Times Square Mall. It's an eatery where the furniture and walls are primarily made of ice. Pretty incredible stuff, and one time I found myself wishing I'd been wearing long pants.

- The Dubai Fountan. It's in the Dubai Mall, which was a pretty amazing mall. There's also a giant indoor waterfall, an ice-skating rink, and an aquarium (with what's maybe the world's largest walk-through tank?). The Fountain, though, was amazing. I've got some video I'll post. Basically, it's a network of sprayers in a giant pool at the foot of the Burj Dubai, that has spray-shows to music every 15 minutes or so in the evening. This is also the mall where I found my obnoxious hat.

18/07/2009 India, day 2

Ganesha removed some obstacles to my leaving Varanasi.

18/07/2009 India, day 2

The view out the train window was striking.

18/07/2009 India, day 2

Toilets are of two kinds here. Western Style, like y'all are used to, and The Squatter.

18/07/2009 India, day 2

18/07/2009 India, day 2

18/07/2009 India, day 2

Lucknow has some amazing old buildings.

18/07/2009 India, day 2

18/07/2009 India, day 2

And this charming old fellow and his giant cannon, still keeping watch over a long-abandoned British residency.

18/07/2009 India, day 2

And this charming old fellow and his giant cannon, still keeping watch over a long-abandoned British residency.

14/07/2009 - India, day 2

Sunrise on the Ganges.

14/07/2009 - India, day 2

One of many beautiful Ghats on the riverside.

14/07/2009 - India, day 2

Sunrise on the Ganges

14/07/2009 - India, day 2

Everyone bathes!

14/07/2009 - India, day 2

Whirlpool from the water station. We got really close to it.

14/07/2009 - India, day 2

A freakin' monkey! The guest-house owner said I had to shut the balcony door when I wasn't in the room because "sometimes monkeys will try to get in."

14/07/2009 - India, day 2

I declare myself the most dapper Anglo in all the Hind. Obnoxious hat FTW.

14/07/2009 - India, day 2

Hey Ganesha. How you doin'?

12/07/2009 - India, day 1, and airports.

There little animatronic semitic fisherman were part of a contest display in the Bahrain duty-free.

12/07/2009 - India, day 1, and airports.

Not sure if it shows in this picture, but this guy was the spitting image of an Indian Bill Adama. He had the walk and everything.

12/07/2009 - India, day 1, and airports.

12/07/2009 - India, day 1, and airports.

The Ganges. I've no words.

12/07/2009 - India, day 1, and airports.

12/07/2009 - India, day 1, and airports.

12/07/2009 - India, day 1, and airports.

12/07/2009 - India, day 1, and airports.