Travel & Photography. I'm not sure what it is, I get on a bus, plane, train or in the passenger seat of a car and I'm out cold within minutes which sometimes works against my love for travel, is it really the journey and not the destination?
And here we are cruising in our own personal chartered boat (no squeezing in with the tourist riffraff) in the lake Pichola which has the Lake Palace hotel in it, or as it is more commonly known, Octopussy's palace.
Another crazy day in Udaipur. Did I mention that our tour guide was a priest of the temple of Vishnu in Udaipur so in one of the other temples, he gave Pris and me a blessing complete with the yellow dot on our sixth Chakra (also auspiciously known as the "middle of the forehead"). Then we visited his little shop of antiques, got a tour of his 300 year old house and he gifted me a turban which must be three football fields long, tried it on and after nearly strangling myself I must say I look pretty Bollywood in it.
I'm a little apprehensive about the rest of our trip now since Udaipur is such a great quaint place but there is more to be seen in this country and so tomorrow we are off to Jaipur.
Finally, figured out how to get online and here it is, our first update from India. I don't care what anyone says but I am fast falling in love with this place, and this only after spending one whole day in the country. It's so full of culture, history, spirituality that it's oozing out of my ears already. There is so much to take in and yet so much that is familiar.
Here are a few of the highlights - Pris had her a mega shopping day today, our first full day here, security is tight, they even check the engine compartment in cars at checkpoints, Pakistan and India are facing each other off at the border, our tour guide is also a part time priest in one of the temples and is converting us to Hinduism and the best surprise of all, other members of our tour cancelled so we got everything to ourselves. As I used to say in college . . . . "NIIIIIICCCEEEEE!"
Okay folks, as you can probably tell, Christmas time is not a good time to maintain a blog, especially if you come from the Philippines where Christmas carols can be heard in the malls starting September (and it just builds up from there). Couple that with a wedding that my wife had to kind of take care of (Case & Sam congrats) and our upcoming trip to India on the 26th and you can imagine the turmoil.
As usual I'll try and write while on the road in India, which should be more wired than my last trip across China. At the very least watch my progress on my twitter feed on the right side of my page.
Thought I'd also take time out to wish everyone a Merry Christmas as well as hope that everyone has a great new year despite everything that's happening in the world. If there is anything you should do running up to the New Year it should definitely be to put the following on your new year's resolution list - "Get out there!". I'd further like to add that you should make it some place you'd never thought of going before, the further, more remote, the more alien to your current residence, the better. Try Iran or Nepal, go to the cattle market in Kashgar or climb Mt. Kinabalu. Just get out there. Oh and change that item on your list to "Get out there in January".
We reached the fort in Jaiyuguan which is the western most part of the Great Wall. This is as wild west as it got in China and the western gate of the fort is the gateway to the beyond. Here travelers depart to go onto the Silk Road with Europe as their final destination. Here also is where people coming from the west let out a sigh of relief as they see the fort, having come across the Gobi, any sign of civilization is welcome.
On the more brutal side, the western gate was also used to eject unwanted people and degenerates from civilized China. Imagine getting chucked out with only a desert in front of you. I have to say, this part of the trip and the fort in general was the first time I felt I was on the silk road. Could have been the fort, could have been the surrounding desert or the camels beyond the west gate but here I felt "I'm on the silk road".
On one of our last train journeys in China we saw one of the best sunrises of our trips yet. The only problem, the train windows did not open up and they were quite dirty. Was able to squeeze this picture out though of my one of my travelmates taking a picture.
It gave us a real sense that we were heading West across China as the train was moving away from the sunrise.
You know how one thinks that if something goes wrong in certain places in the world your done for. I mean think of a precise tour operation spanning a month where everything if pre-booked and any kind of delay could mess up the whole schedule. Well China, one would think, is not a good place to have things go wrong but as the following shows, China works. Imagine the same thing happening to you in some other country.
Bad luck moment #1
I knew there was something wrong with our driver when he started keeling over the steering wheel, groaning and running red lights. We were on our way from Xining back to Lanzhou to catch our train to our next destination but from the looks of our driver we weren't going anywhere. Two red lights afterward he pulled over, much to the collective relief of everyone that was on our bus. He made a few calls on his cellphone and told Ming, our tour guide, that he was off to the hospital but that he had called in a substitute driver.
Only in China will you find someone to fill in on a Sunday at lunch time to fill in for you and sure enough, our replacement driver arrived within an hour. Disaster averted.
Bad Luck moment #2 We were well into our journey back to Lanzhou with our second driver at the helm, when all of a sudden a minor explosion hit the wheel well of the back wheel. Okay, explosion may be exaggerating but it was loud enough to make half the occupants of the mini bus get up off their seats. We had just had a blow out. We shuddered to a stop at the side of the highway, our driver getting off to assess the situation. Soon, he had was down to his undershirt hauling the spare wheel out and undoing the nuts one by one.
Bad Luck moment #3 At the last one nut I was just thinking "one more to go and we're home free" and that seemed to have jinxed it. He turned the tire wrench and the nut turned with it but before long it was clear something was wrong. He turned and turned and the dang thing wouldn't come off. It was a lose thread. Unphased, he bundled us all into the bus. He had had enough and we took off, limping out to a nearby exit into a small town. There we found a good old fashioned repair shop with the right tools - translated industrial strength pneumatic tools. It was amazing, this grease monkey took a pneumatic gun to the errand nut and it came off without a fight. Before we knew it, the gun bolted the spare wheel back on and without a thought the guy jumped underneath the mini bus and released the jack with the bus coming down on top of him . . almost.
Here's a quick video of the gun in action.
Good luck to the guy who needs to change the next flat.
Finished uploading my Xi'an Pictures on my company website - www.pathfinderphotography.com. Please visit, lots more pictures on it then my entry on Xi'an in this blog.
Okay, not travel related but slightly photography related. And the girls will get a kick out of this.
I just got in touch with my cousins in the US and it turns out that one of them has ventured in a very impressive and unique (at least when compared to the Philippine wedding scene) service. Go to www.simplycinematic.com. They not only do standard coverage but also provide High Definition coverage which of course is becoming the standard in video now. Watch their flash presentation, it's got some pretty stunning wedding photography in it and then head off to the theatre room where they have samples of their works, click on the couple that looks like they're standing on a lake. I didn't even bother with video coverage for my wedding back then because it was so . . . . normal and I figured if you watched once, you wouldn't watch it again until your 50th anniversary. With the coverage they provide now however it's really worth it.
So for all you guys wanting to get married or married again or those who just want to relive their wedding day provided everyone still fits into their wedding dresses, tuxes or barongs you might want to check them out.
I, like any self respecting male, hate shopping. I hate bargaining even more. I feel like everyone is out to get me. Unfortunately, bargaining is a big part of traveling, especially in China. China has its own rules when it comes to bargaining, the 50% off rule doesn't apply although vendors will be more than happy if that is all you ask for.
If something catches your eye and you ask how much it costs, counter immediately with a 80% discount to the sellers price. Harsh as it sounds, at most you'll get a disgusted look on the vendors face or, like the knife vendor in Kashgar, he'll put his hand on your forehead to see if you are suffering from high fever which is making you delusional. Most of the time though they won't blink an eye and counter with a lower offer and then you'll know your in the game. You'll get your item for less than 50%, I got a bag that started at 200 yuan for 30, but only after a lady before me did the haggling for the same type of bag.
Also, it turns out that my trying to pick out honest from dishonest vendors just by looking at them doesn't work. I once bought a cup off pomegranate juice and got charged 10 yuan for it. I paid thinking I got ripped off, the vendor was a shifty person with a pencil thin mustache but it turns out 10 yuan is the fair price for it - honest vendor. Then I dropped into a store of a homely looking muslim women who right off the bat gave me a fair price for some beads I was looking at 8 yuan, only for her to attempt to shortchange with a 1 yuan bill and another bill equivalent to their 10 cents. Only when I stood there looking at her as if to say "Really, you're going to shortchange me 90 cents. And we were off to such a good start", did she demurely take back her 10 cent note and give me the proper change - dishonest vendor. I must admit, it feels good when you feel like you got yourself a bargain.
While most of the western world goes of to overpriced gyms, that is if they're still going after blowing hard earned money on a years worth of hard earned money, most of China goes to the park.
Their only accessories, if any, are swords, staffs, fans or even paint brushes. Their only outfits are traditional Chinese dress and you only get to wear that if you are the one teaching or are pretty much a master at your craft. Most go in ordinary clothes, no specialized overpriced Nike shorts, yoga mats, neoprene covered weights, heart monitors, polarized sunglasses, etc.
Everyone is familiar with the Tai Chi scene in China but the park I went to in Xining also had a couple doing Chinese boxing (think Jet Li), a large group following a lady with a sword, another smaller group with another lady with a fan and my favorite, a philosophical group of older men with paint brushes writing Chinese characters on the pavement with water. That must be the ultimate in temporary art. Imagine making a breakthrough in your caligraphy, executing the most beautiful thing you've ever written, only to have it disappear after a while.
On the more amusing side I saw an old guy walking backwards throughout the park. I waved it off as a self-diagnosed way of low impact exercise "Gee, walking backward uses muscles I never use, it must be healthy". I thought he was a crackpot until I nearly bumped into a younger guy doing the same thing.
There's a common belief among anthropologists that you must immerse yourself in an unfamiliar world in order to truly understand your own. - Nanny Diaries
And here we are cruising in our own personal chartered boat (no squeezing in with the tourist riffraff) in the lake Pichola which has the Lake Palace hotel in it, or as it is more commonly known, Octopussy's palace.
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