Friday, March 30, 2007

Cha-Chiang Mai

With the Angkor temples firmly in our rear view mirror, we caught a flight back to Bangkok. Once there, we killed a few hours by leaving Kaberi’s recalcitrant Nikon camera in the capable hands of the Sukhothai’s concierge staff, dropping by unannounced at our not-entirely trustworthy tailor and stopping for a forgettable lunch at the campy Cabbages and Condoms restaurant (run by an organization whose ostensible mission is to make condoms as accessible to Thailand’s high-risk communities as cabbages). 

As evening approached, we made our way to the newly-reopened Don Muang Airport, now the home of domestic flights on a select number of Thai carriers, including ours. Upon arriving at Don Muang (this time, leaving ourselves more than enough time before departure), we discovered to our chagrin that the flight had been delayed indefinitely. As a result, we were left with at least four hours to take in our immediate surroundings. Compared to Bangkok’s shiny and modern Suvarnabhumi International Airport, Don Muang is meager and uninspiring. With old, musty carpets, dim lighting and cramped seating areas, it appears better suited to the role of bus station than major metropolitan airport. Vik thinks it should be renamed Don Johnson Airport. Don King, Don Knotts and Don Ho were some of his other unsolicited contributions. Time ground slowly to a halt, leaving us to stare at our watches fitfully. When the bright afternoon turned to dusk and then pitch-black nightfall, the airline finally boarded the plane. We touched down in Chiang Mai, Thailand’s second largest city with a population roughly one fortieth that of Bangkok’s, at 10:00 pm, about three and a half hours later than originally scheduled. 

Nearly five years had elapsed since our last trip to Chiang Mai, and we were quite struck by the changes to the city during that time. The Chiang Mai of 2002 appealed to us as a sleepy northern hamlet best known for peaceful trekking excursions and unintrusive handicrafts. The Chiang Mai of 2007 was almost a mini-Bangkok, with omnipresent noise and neon, myriad hotels and commercial developments, and formidable motorized and foot traffic. On our last visit, we had the made the unfortunate decision to stay at the local Westin. The inadequacy of our choice had been punctuated immediately upon arriving to a Thai lounge singer’s live rendition of Abba’s Dancing Queen in the hotel lobby. This time, with the benefit of advice from TripAdvisor and Kaberi’s handy LUXE guide, we settled on the sleek, mod D2 (think of a W with orange tones and more attentive service) located next door to Chiang Mai’s Night Market. 

Given our late arrival at the D2 (thankfully devoid of any late 1970’s covers), we made a quick dash to a food cart stationed across the street for a generous helping of hot, freshly-cooked-on-the-spot pad thai. For 25 baht, or approximately 75 cents, we feasted on the best pad thai we had ever tasted. In contrast to our earlier visit, the theme of this Chiang Mai trip centered around indulging our inner foodie. This was largely driven by circumstances – northern Thailand’s slash and burn agricultural practices had wrought havoc on the air as a thick haze of particulate matter lingered on Chiang Mai’s outskirts. Furthermore, the associated visibility constraints rendered treks and other outdoor excursions untenable. With that in mind, we slept in the next morning (Kaberi awoke at a gallingly-late 8:00 am) and got a late start to our day. 

Turning the corner from our hotel, we arrived at the Siam Celadon Tea House. Although Vik grumbled about the damage inflicted on his rapidly-fading Y chromosome, he quickly changed his tune once he tasted the lapis tea cakes, made with a divine combination of Indian spices, and crisp tea sandwiches. With his stubborn masculinity waning with every additional bite, Vik took an oath never to question his wife’s culinary judgment again. He then shamelessly lobbied for a return visit on the very next day. 

Given Chiang Mai’s well-deserved reputation as Thailand’s arts and crafts hub, we spent our time accordingly. We explored the artisan shops on Thapae Road one day and on Nimanhean Road the next. On both occasions, Kaberi browsed to her heart’s content while Vik occupied himself in efforts to find an open wifi connection nearby. Our culinary forays in town were varied and exhaustive. On our second evening, we returned to a traditional Thai restaurant on Charoenrajd Road that sadly failed to live up to our fond memories from a 2002 visit. The following day, we snacked through the day before partaking in refreshing lemongrass and ginger-infused drinks and a special Japanese tasting menu dinner at our hotel. On our last night, we splurged on a superb dim sum lunch at the over-the-top Mandarin Oriental hotel before concluding with an amazing northern Thai meal of khao soi at the swanky Chedi hotel’s restaurant. 

Our down time in Chiang Mai was used not only to eat, but also to plan the next legs of our journey in southeast Asia. Despite countless hours on the Internet, our efforts to secure an expedited Vietnam tourist visa on arrival were stymied by insufficient advance planning, intermittently-responsive Vietnamese online travel agencies and prohibitive itinerary costs. With a Vietnam visit proving not to be in the cards on this trip, we shifted our attention to revising our itinerary and locating reasonably-priced flights and accommodation. The net result of these machinations was to make Laos our next destination, followed by a week split between two of Thailand’s renowned beach destinations: Krabi and Ko Samui. Faced with this seemingly-surreal itinerary, we had to pause to take inventory of our strange, charmed position.




Sunday, March 25, 2007

The Keys To The Kingdom

Having completed two full days in Phnom Penh, we traveled to Cambodia’s northwestern city of Siem Reap, the gateway to the famed temples of the Angkor civilization. After an uneventful, 40-minute flight on a well-behaved turboprop, we touched down in sweltering heat and humidity amidst a potpourri of sage-green foliage and bright orange soil. The 10-minute ride to our hotel felt like an eternity, however, with our quite-literally-salivating-at-the-mouth cabbie ceaselessly hectoring us to put him on a $25 per day retainer. We arrived at our hotel breathless, having run through the front door to avail ourselves of a little peace and quiet.

As it turned out, the hotel was upscale, but not in keeping with our personal senses of style (the large saline pool had small waterfalls pouring out of the mouths of two gaping terra cotta lions). The Asian tour groups wandering around the lobby seemed not to mind the décor, nor the three prominently-displayed pictures of the Cambodian royal family, so our views appeared to be in the minority. After arriving at our poolview room (by now, the lions were very clearly taunting us), we took advantage of a much-needed hour of downtime in some good, old-fashioned air conditioning.

Refreshed, we made our way back to the lobby to locate the first U.S. friend to meet up with us during our around-the-world travels. It came as little surprise to either of us that our Boston pal Scott, a true gentleman epicurean, had crossed paths with us in Cambodia. Five years earlier, he had taken two red-eye flights from the West Coast to attend our wedding in Chicago. Granted, we had some compromising photos in our possession at the time, but we’re reasonably confident that Scott would have made an appearance, regardless.

This time around, we were meeting up with not only Scott, but also two of his college buddies: Adrian, who, in the small world department, just so happened to be a contemporary of Vik’s during their Booz Allen days, and Mike, a college professor currently braving a grueling sabbatical in dreary Bali. The five of us formed a motley crew: 4 men and 1 Kaberi.

After a satisfying traditional Khmer meal at a modest family-run restaurant in Siem Reap’s nearby Old Market (the total tab for the five of us, including appetizers, drinks and tip, came to a cool $25) and an ice cream pitstop on the walk home, we finalized the following day’s sightseeing plans. At 8:30 am sharp the next morning, we piled into a wonderfully-air-conditioned van along with our driver and guide and set off for the temples.

When we pulled onto the Angkor entrance 15 minutes later, we were shrouded on both sides by dense green underbrush. With our sense of anticipation mounting, we rounded a corner and saw the underbrush clear and an expansive moat unfurl before us. To our unaccustomed eyes, the moat appeared to be a uniformly-wide river. Within moments of our guide disabusing us of this notion, the undeniable gray form of Angkor Wat’s entrance gate came into view. Its five striking towers hovered tantalizingly in the background as we drove past.

Our first stop of the day was at Ta Phrom, an 800-year-old temple quite literally entwined with the nearby foliage. Built in the 12th century, Ta Phrom has had very little of the jungle cleared away from its footprint, and appears almost as unspoilt as it did to its French rediscoverers. The visual result is captivating with the temple’s sandstone exterior taking on a greenish tint through its lengthy exposure to Cambodian moss. We devoted two hours or so to exploring the site and marveled at the relentlessness of the nearby banyan trees whose roots had snaked around various crevices to make their way toward the temple’s foundation. In some cases, it wasn’t immediately obvious where the stone ended and the trees began.

Next on our agenda was Angkor Thom, an erstwhile city of temples surrounded on all four sides by walls, each with an entranceway running beneath a large stone face. We entered the complex from the east and began our explorations at the Terrace of the Elephants where three-headed stone elephants stood watch over the stairway. As our well-meaning guide tried to explain the method of historical construction, he displayed an unfortunate tendency to pronounce the word cement as semen. This idiosyncrasy cast the guide’s explanation in an unusual light, and gave all of us the occasion to consider the astonishing virility and endurance of Khmer laborers.

The piece de resistance of Angkor Thom was to be found at the center of the city in the form of the Bayon temple. Bayon is famed for its large stone faces, all boasting likenesses of the temple’s patron, King Jayavarman VII, carved onto its 54 towers. Despite its weathered look, Bayon was pronounced by Kaberi as her favorite. We carefully made our way through the temple in a clockwise route, relishing the refuge of shade offered by the small passageways and tower chambers. After an hour of exploring Bayon and admiring the detailed reliefs depicting everyday life on its inner and outer walls, we made our way back to the hotel for a 3-hour respite from the noontime sun.

Refreshed by a few hours lazing around the pool, we made our way back to the Angkor complex in the late afternoon. We took this opportunity to see the flagship Angkor Wat structure in the impending sunset. As we made our way across the causeway spanning the moat, and the structure neared, it was hard not to be awed by its stunning, symmetrical beauty. One inside, our guide gave us a passionate and exacting section-by-section explanation of Angkor Wat’s seemingly-endless, detailed sandstone bas reliefs (most of which remained in excellent condition and portrayed scenes from the Hindu epic, The Ramayana). Somewhere around the Sea of Churning Milk section, we roused ourselves from a collective self-induced stupor, to deliberately make our approach toward the inner sanctum of the temple.

Within minutes, we had reached the central chamber where a steep ascent to the second level awaited us. After a steep climb, we strolled around the antechamber for excellent western views (Angkor Wat is the only temple that faces west, suggesting its possible role as a mausoleum). We then made a slightly nerve-wracking descent down the steep exiting steps. At the bottom, Kaberi realized that her eyeglasses (removed in a brief picture-taking moment) had disappeared. After being inspired to make a second ascent to and descent from the upper level in a futile search for the glasses, we exited the grounds into a hazy, cloud-scattered sunset. Foremost in our minds was a faint hope that a needy, young, astigmatism-afflicted Cambodian would benefit from his or her newly-found, impish designer frames.

Our party ended the day with a well-earned, highbrow dinner at the restaurant of the posh Hotel de la Paix, a building which appeared to have been transported directly to Siem Reap by way of Soho. We feasted on another terrific meal, enjoying the cool background lounge music while basking in the glow of the day’s fulfilling activities. Mercifully, the topic of cement only came up a couple of times, saving our abs from yet another convulsing fit of laughter. As we prepared to settle our bill, the inimitably-generous Scott surprised the group by treating all of us. We didn't have the heart to tell him that we had long since sold the compromising photographs. Or that we still had Mr. Underhill's American Express card.

Our time in Siem Reap passed more quickly than we expected, and our final 24 hours in town were eventful. In the early afternoon, we toured Artisans d’Angkor, a Cambodian NGO that provides traditional Khmer craft apprenticeships to disabled youth. After a quick stop at the hotel to change our sweat-drenched clothes, we commandeered a tuk tuk and driver to take us to the Preah Khan temple ruins. Billed as a “battle” between wood and stone, Preah Khan managed to live up to the Lara Croft Tomb Raider-inspired images of Cambodia in Vik’s head, minus, of course, one form-fitted Angelina Jolie.

From Preah Khan, we visited the Sara Shraj bathing pool and then returned to Angkor Wat to observe a second sunset. The next morning, we roused ourselves at 5:00 am to join Mike in seeing Angkor Wat at sunrise. We enjoyed the majestic view of the structure’s silhouette against orange and then pink skies, and found that we were not alone in doing so. Our close proximity to hordes of tourists and mosquitoes, both of which proved stubbornly resistant to our fruitless attempts to swat them away, made us grateful for our earlier visits. By 7 am, the sun had almost fully risen, and it was time to bid Angkor farewell.

























Saturday, March 24, 2007

The Khmer Rouge's Shameful, Tragic Legacy

Before coming to Cambodia, we had both heard of the country’s killing fields. Nevertheless, neither of us even vaguely appreciated the complete extent of the suffering imposed on this friendly country’s people a mere 30 years ago – representing recent history that transpired during our own lifetimes. As a result, we were not prepared for the abounding evidence of brutality and inhumanity that we witnessed firsthand at Phnom Penh’s Toul Sleng Genocide Museum. The haunting, all-too-real visit deeply troubled us, caused us to bemoan the dark savagery of humankind and led us to draw parallels to the current state of affairs in Darfur and Iraq. We hope that the writing below does justice to what we saw.

Toul Sleng is located in southern Phnom Penh in a relatively-quiet residential neighborhood characterized by multi-unit dwellings and small shops. The building originated as a place of learning, serving as a high school until May 1976. That the structure would become Security Prison 21 (S21), a gruesome torture chamber in which mostly-adolescent soldiers brutalized the country’s intellectuals, holds a particularly cruel irony.

By way of background, Cambodia’s descent into the dark days of Khmer Rouge rule began in the early 1970’s. As North Vietnamese soldiers sought sanctuary across the border, U.S. and South Vietnamese forces followed in pursuit, and Cambodia became a flash point in the Vietnamese conflict. The escalating violence in combination with an ineffectual and undemocratic leadership fomented considerable leftist discontent. This backdrop laid the foundation for the rise of the madman Pol Pot and his communist Khmer Rouge party.

Pol Pot defied a Cambodian public hopeful for long-awaited peace and freedom by forcing the country’s entire urban populace to migrate to the countryside. His demented and revisionist agrarian ideology suspended basic freedoms throughout Cambodia (renamed Kampuchea), used force to restrict border access, and, worst of all, authorized the mass execution of intellectuals and their family members, Buddhist priests, those accused of petty crimes, foreigners, and anyone suspected of being disloyal to the state. In four years (1975-1979), half of Cambodia’s population (representing roughly three million lives) was butchered at the hands of the Khmer Rouge as the West stood idly by.

In Cambodian, the phrase Toul Sleng roughly translates into “poisonous hill,” which understates the facility’s horrific purpose. Civilian families, including children and newborns, were imprisoned here and systematically tortured until the arrival of Vietnamese liberation forces in 1979. At any given time, Toul Sleng held 1,200 to 1,500 prisoners with an average incarceration period of 2 to 4 months (some prominent political prisoners were jailed longer). Of Toul Sleng’s estimated 20,000 inmates, only 7 survived. The 14 corpses found in the individual cells by the Vietnamese are buried in the school’s playground.

As we approached the site, we took note of the ominous barbed wire atop the schoolyard’s perimeter walls. Once inside the grounds, a grim three-story block building stood before us, left in the same condition as it was found in 1979. The high school’s transformation was horrifying: ground floor classrooms subdivided into 15 square foot cells and interrogation rooms adorned with blood-spattered walls and blown-up pictures of disfigured prisoners. Middle floor rooms were designed to hold female prisoners in claustrophobic makeshift wooden cubicles. Undivided top floor rooms once housed rows of prisoners shackled together by their ankles.

The adjacent building housed an extensive and haunting exhibition of victims’ photos, as taken by their captors. The array of faces staring back at us in black and white poignantly personalized the depths of the tragedy that unfolded here. In one austere photo, a young girl of perhaps 9 or 10 manages a brave smile that immediately reduced us to tears. In another, the harrowed eyes of a desperately-thin man in his early 20’s reveal his sheer terror. Other photos appeared to reflect stoicism, disbelief or resignation.

In an adjoining room, we overheard a guide tell her tour group that she was one of Toul Sleng’s seven survivors. She had lost her parents in the prison and still bore shackle scars on her ankles. She had returned to Cambodia in the late 1990’s after more than 20 years abroad. She now gave tours at the scene of her life’s greatest sorrow in order to remind others of the heartbreaking events that took place here three decades ago.

Another photo exhibit depicted a chilling incident at the prison in two frames. In the first frame, we see a young woman from the front. She is seated holding a baby, but maintains her gaze forward at the camera. In the second frame, we see the side profile of the same woman, from the neck up, with a single tear running down her cheek. From this vantage point, we realize that the woman’s head has been secured in place to the wall, preventing her from looking down to see or tend to her crying baby. As the photograph was being taken, jailers silenced the baby by throwing it against the wall in plain view of its cruelly-immobilized mother.

By the time we had moved into the exhibition's final room -- past photos of slumped, lifeless bodies, photos of countless skulls uncovered from mass graves, cabinets of the Khmer Rouge’s preferred implements of torture and painted reenactments of scenes portraying prisoner mistreatment -- we were thoroughly shellshocked. Exhausted and emotionally-drained, we exited the grounds quietly. At that moment, we felt very small and insignificant. Once the facility faded from our sight, we felt a palpable sense of relief overcome us. We both knew that we still needed more time before we would be able to recount the experience in our own words.



Friday, March 23, 2007

Phnomenal

After a pleasant night out with Ann and Ben, we snagged a few, short hours of sleep before rising early the next morning for a 7 am flight to Phnom Penh, Cambodia’s capital and largest city. As it turned out, the morning became a bit of a debacle, and one that the lovely-and-rigorously-toilet-trained Kaberi found less than amusing. With Vik doing his best impersonation of Stan Slowsky (the unwitting terrapin pitchman for Comcast High-Speed Internet), we ended up leaving the hotel at 5:40 am.

Due to our cabbie’s rather unhurried driving on an empty tollway, it took us 30 minutes to arrive at Bangkok’s frenzied international airport. We devoted an additional 5 minutes to finding the appropriate nondescript Air Asia check-in counter. Another 10 minutes elapsed during a scintillating give-and-take with the check-in agent from which we learned that we would be allowed to check in a grand total of zero bags. It took 20 more minutes to clear Customs and another 10 minutes to walk to the low-cost airline terminal (which we suspect was located somewhere near the Cambodian border), bags in tow.

By now, we were within 5 minutes of our flight’s departure time, but not really any closer to boarding the actual aircraft. During the prerequisite X-ray screening, a Thai security officer took issue with the expensive Swiss Army knife safely ensconced in the recesses of our not-exactly-checked-in backpack. A frantic negotiation then ensued between us, the security officer and the Air Asia employee dispatched to the scene to scold us for holding up the flight. After finally reaching an amicable resolution – we would check in our bags planeside and the airline would vouch for the knife – we became the last two persons to board (by this point, Vik’s shirt had started to singe from the glare boring into him from behind). Adding further insult to injury, the actual flight ended up being a whopping 45 minutes long.

With our early morning arrival into Phnom Penh, we immediately made our way into the city center. Phnom Penh is constructed in low-rise fashion, sprouting from vivid orange flatlands, with broad promenades reflecting the influence of decades of French rule. The city was founded by a widow, Lady Penh, after she found that a trunk full of four bronze and one stone Buddhas had washed ashore from the adjacent Mekong River.

Despite considerable tangible evidence of Cambodia’s economic development (in the form of ubiquitous billboards hawking local and western brands), we perceived a decidedly-laid back feel to the environs, with only modest automobile traffic on dusty, but well-maintained roads. Phnom Penh is also easy to navigate as it is laid out in a grid with the mostly-numbered avenues and streets (some streets are named after foreign dignitaries like Nehru or Mao Tse Tung).

Our first stop was at our guesthouse, a stunning, French colonial affair, to drop off our luggage. Two white statue elephants stood guard over the imposing streetfacing exterior wall’s lone doorway. Once inside, we were transported into a lush oasis, where tropical foliage-shaded sunbeds encircled a serene, blue pool which, in turn, fronted a large, sunshine-yellow manor. After resting briefly at the poolside bar to take in the scene (French lounge music straight out of the Buddha Bar echoed around us as largely-European vacationers frolicked in or around the pool), we headed off to explore the city.

As we strolled around the neighborhood, we encountered no shortage of streetside cafes, restaurants and boutiques (much to Kaberi’s delight). In short order, we made our way into a charming café/patisserie catering to expats where we enjoyed our first fresh-baked sandwich in months. When it came time to pay the bill, we were surprised to find the tab quoted in U.S. currency. We soon learned that Cambodia is a dollar-denominated economy, with the country’s ATM’s dispensing greenbacks exclusively. Interestingly, Cambodians have adopted the use of American dollars in their transactions, but not cents (instead, Cambodians use riels with 4,000 riel roughly equaling a dollar).

As noon approached, Kaberi's plans to launch full bore into sightseeing were waylaid by Vik’s strong desire to seek both shade and shut-eye. The strategy ended up paying off in spades as most of the city’s cultural landmarks are mercifully closed from noon to 2 pm in deference to Cambodia’s unforgiving sun. The logic of Vik's course of action was further reinforced when we settled in under the lazy whirl of our room’s ceiling fan in the comfort of a billowing white canopy bed for a fifteen minute-going on-two hour catnap.

After reentering consciousness, we set off in the direction of Phnom Penh’s Royal Palace and Silver Pavilion complex. We opted to walk, rather than ride via tuk-tuk, the half-mile from our guesthouse and soon came to regret the decision. Slathered in SPF 60 in the 100-degree heat, we were caked in an unfortunate veneer of greasy sweat when we finally arrived at our destination. We did, however, manage to arrive just as the complex re-opened for the afternoon hours. To gain brief respite from the torrid sun, we largely admired the palace grounds from the shade.

At the Silver Pavilion we marveled at the extensive and weathered mural of the Ramayana, complete with Cambodian protagonists. We were also struck by the numerous depictions of a much-thinner Buddha than found elsewhere in Asia. Near the Pavilion stood the statue of King Norodom (originally a statue of a horse-mounted Napoleon with the head replaced), presented to the Cambodian monarch by the French in a rather conspicuous example of international regifting. Our sightseeing ended with a quick stroll through the salmon-colored National Museum, an impressive structure with four open-air galleries featuring many original statues from the Angkor temples and a central courtyard.

The next morning we awoke early to venture through the cramped food and clothing stalls of Phnom Penh’s Russian Market (once a reliable source for arms and ammunition). The market was an eclectic venue, with assorted vendors selling Louis Vuitton and Puma knock-offs next to others selling skinned chickens and other sundry aquatic and terrestrial life. Given Vik’s fragile emotional state as a recovering vegetarian, we opted to focus our time wandering the silk, silver and apparel sections. Our visit concluded with Kaberi spending $5 total on two light and airy wraparound pants to replace a pair of khakis thoroughly bleached by the Indian sun.

At the suggestion of Kaberi’s Carleton classmate, Becky, we stopped at Phnom Penh’s Friends Restaurant for lunch. Friends International is a Cambodian non-governmental organization (NGO) with an approach similar to that of one of Kaberi’s favorite Chicago grantees, The Inspiration Café. Friends provides a multitude of essential services for street children, including schooling, HIV/AIDS education and job training opportunities at the restaurant. After a very good tapas meal, where we sampled a number of traditional Cambodian dishes and interacted with friendly trainees, we walked away with a commemorative t-shirt along with plans to grab dinner at Friends’ up-scale sister restaurant, Romdeng, the following day.






Thursday, March 22, 2007

Living The Thai Life

An uneventful and surprisingly-quick, four-hour flight deposited us in the comfortable confines of Bangkok’s shiny new international airport. Our arrival in Bangkok marked our return to the site of our honeymoon four and and a half years earlier. The Bangkok we observed this go round struck us as much more modern and upscale than its predecessor, although that may have been dictated by the specific circumstances of our visit.

Vik’s Stanford friend Ben and his wife Ann had kindly arranged for us to crash at their spacious and impeccable flat on the grounds of the stunning Sukkothai Hotel in central Bangkok. In an especially-thoughtful gesture, Ben had even arranged for a uniformed hotel driver to greet us at the airport upon our 5:30 am arrival.

The highlight of our stay in Bangkok was, without a doubt, getting to spend an evening with the ultra-hip Ann and Ben, a smart and stylish couple whose tender interactions with one another made us remember the best aspects of the first year of marriage. We were also duly impressed by the specifics of Ben’s marriage proposal to Ann, which took place after a grueling, nonstop, 41-hour, 100-kilometer (60-mile) hike (this is in sharp contrast to Vik’s proposal to Kaberi, which took place after not quite 41 hours in a Washington D.C. hotel).

Ann and Ben also introduced us to a chic Bangkok that we would have never discovered on our own. First, we had dinner at Le Vendome, a trendy, new French restaurant in Bangkok’s Sukhumvit district. Afterward, we capped off the evening with dessert at Vertigo, an open-air, rooftop bar 57 stories high atop the Banyan Tree Hotel that affords patrons spectacular, unobstructed 360-degree views of Bangkok’s seemingly-endless night-time sprawl.

Having seen the historical highlights of Bangkok during our last trip here in 2002, we were able to enjoy the more cosmopolitan side of the city during this visit. On our first night in town, we shed our travel gear and dressed up for a fancy dinner at the Sukkothai’s renowned Thai restaurant, Celadon (where Kaberi finally was able to wear her perfect little black Theory dress bought specifically for the trip). On another night, we took an evening stroll around Bangkok's Night Market to browse the kiosks and practice our negotiating skills. The following day, Kaberi somehow managed to drag Vik along for a proper English afternoon tea at the Mandarin Oriental’s Authors Lounge. Vik grumbled a bit about losing his masculinity somewhere along the way, but was temporarily mollified by the finger sandwiches and scones with clotted cream.

Vik then secured “Husband of the Year” honors (as if he hadn’t sewn that up already) by patiently accompanying Kaberi to a number of boutiques on Sukhumvit Road. Her stops ranged from an upscale stationery store featuring unique hand-made notebooks to the city’s premiere silk boutique where she custom-ordered a handbag (in chocolate brown and champagne, a color combination resignedly selected by Vik). Even lunch at the stylish Kuppa (a Dean & Deluca meets Pottery Barn), turned out to be more of a ladies-who-lunch spot, judging by the nearly-uniform demographics at nearby tables.

As our time in Bangkok neared an end, we dabbled in some retail arbitrage by ordering custom-made suits and cashmere coats from a chatty Indian-Thai tailor calling himself Johnny. As if ordering heavy winter coats in 100-degree temperatures wasn’t ludicrous enough, Vik had us adopt a negotiating tactic of posing as Indian citizens visiting Bangkok on holiday. The last embarrassment left to endure was realizing at our second fitting that we had ordered identical blue shirts and matching black suits. When we return to the States, we're going to look like the Osmonds channelling Men In Black.


Tuesday, March 13, 2007

We Interrupt Your Regularly-Scheduled Programming

A message to all of our readers (all three of you, assuming an extremely generous counting of persons related to us). Sorry for the delay with the text (ahem, Vik).

After returning to Delhi from our Himalayan escapades, and imposing on the Mejos’ hospitality for a third time, we quite literally shifted into a lower gear. The long hours on dusty roads in Rajasthan and Uttaranchal caught up to Vik, resulting in a 24-hour head cold from which he recuperated horizontally (primarily in the throes of March Madness analysis). In between repeated forays for orange juice and facial tissue, Kaberi successfully procured lightweight clothing for the hot days ahead.

With some down time in Delhi, we finally managed to overcome some deep-seated procrastination by updating the blog with our complete India adventures. Please scroll back to Older Posts to read about the last month of our travels (beginning with the February 21st post, Not A Kerala In The World).

In order to maximize our endurance for another seven months of traveling, we decided to forego a trip to the northeastern Indian cities of Khajuraho (known for its shockily-erotic Hindu temples portraying the Kama Sutra) and Varanasi (one of India’s oldest – and dirtiest -- cities best known as a site for religious rituals on the banks of the Ganges). Instead, we rerouted ourselves to Hyderabad, the capital of India’s southeastern state of Andhra Pradesh and a burgeoning tech hub, to spend two days with Vik’s Ragunandan Uncle.

After our time in relatively-temperate Delhi, the unrelenting heat from an arid and sun-baked Hyderabad was somewhat shocking. As a result, we were only mildly surprised to discover that our collective energy level was significantly eclipsed by Vik’s 77-year-old uncle. In the midst of some modest sightseeing and nice dinners out, we managed to coax from Ragunandan Uncle some of his exploits as a 17-year-old Indian freedom fighter in 1947 Hyderabad, the most notable of which included an escape to Bangalore to avert an arrest ordered by Hyderabad’s then-Muslim leader, the Nizam.

After leaving Hyderabad glad to have spent some time with Ragunandan Uncle, we returned to Delhi to catch a flight to Bangkok to begin the Southeast Asia leg of our journeys.

Saturday, March 10, 2007

The Long Road Back

The front gate of the Binsar Sanctuary was a mere 7 kilometers (4 miles) from our hotel and marked the beginning of a treacherous, 13-kilometer (8-mile) dirt-and-gravel climb to an isolated lookout point. Near the top, our driver made a rash turn at a speed inappropriate for the underlying conditions, and we felt the entire undercarriage of the car scrape the assortment of rocks serving as a de facto road. Our vehicle sustained some damage, and immediately began to emit loud, unnatural sounds similar to the ones made by Vik most mornings while he brushes his teeth.

Temporarily putting the car out of our minds, we took a moment to appreciate the solitude of our surroundings. Sweeping views of the imposing landscape were framed by vividly-red, flowering rhododendron trees. We then hiked 2 kilometers to a panoramic lookout point and even mustered the courage to climb half-way up a narrow, rickety and rusty sentry tower. Briefly pausing to savor the view before climbing back down, we had another 2 kilometer walk back to the car and an unnerving descent ahead of us.

Three hours later (it would have been two if not for a missed turn by our well-meaning but thoroughly-lacking-in-common-sense driver) found us in the valley resort town of Kausani. After checking into a nearby hotel, we headed to Gandhi’s ashram to pay homage to the ascendant figure in all of Indian history. The ashram was simple, but inspirational, and we caught ourselves wondering what Gandhi would think of the present-day condition of his homeland (we suspected that disenchantment was the most likely response). Before leaving, Vik made a point of highlighting Gandhi’s painstaking financial record-keeping during his days in England, and Kaberi made a modest effort to feign interest.

As seemingly the only two tourists (peak season begins in the warmer months of April and May) in the entire town, we found the only open restaurant in town for an early dinner before heading back to the hotel. Back there, we lulled ourselves to sleep by watching the single worst example of American filmed entertainment ever produced (the absolutely execrable David Duchovny/Julianne Moore vehicle Evolution).

The next morning we awoke to watch the sun begin its steady, tireless ascent over the steep Himalayas. Amazingly, we were able to view it all from the comfort of our bed. Vik opened half of one eye to sleepily take in the splendor while Kaberi labored to capture it on film from the balcony. With clear skies, we were afforded an unobstructed view of the peaks. We watched with rapt attention for more than an hour as the range slowly went from muted shades of blue and grey to brilliant hues of orange and gold.

Knowing that we wanted to get back to Delhi by nightfall (our mounting concerns over the mechanical condition of our car heightening the sense of urgency), we hit the road at 7:30 am. Our driver began our long journey home with Vik keeping an eagle eye out to ensure that we didn’t take yet another wrong turn. While Vik worried about the potential risk to life and limb as the driver screeched down the steep, winding roads, Kaberi assumed the fetal position in the backseat in a valiant effort to keep the prior night’s dinner down. She took solace in knowing that if the car went over a cliff, at least she would be in Vik’s arms. Little did she know that Vik was thinking that, in such a scenario, he’d be focused on pummeling the driver on the way down.

Vik vigilantly kept watch through the windy roads and conked out in utter exhaustion once we hit straight roads in the plains. At this point, Kaberi’s sense of motion sickness subsided and she began to take an interest in the route. Minutes later, her heart nearly gave out when our driver seemingly ignored traffic conditions to play high-speed chicken with a six-wheeler bearing down on us. Even a tightening, vise-like grip on Vik’s arm failed to wake him.

Several hours had passed since we navigated safely through the treacherous highland route, and now we were ostensibly home free on mundane paved roads. Nevetheless, in a fantastic bit of irony, we ended up getting front-ended by a backtracking horse-driven cart while being blocked in by a colorful semi-truck overflowing with sugarcane. We were no worse for wear, although our car’s front left headlight didn’t fare as well. As the driver jumped out of his seat to assess the damage and yell at the horse-cart driver, Kaberi watched in profound disbelief as Vik blissfully slept through it all. We ended up arriving in Delhi at 6:30 pm, safe and sound, and fully prepared not to set foot in a car for as long as humanly possible.



Thursday, March 8, 2007

Stalking Divine Skyscrapers

After setting out on the road at 7:30 am, we headed southeast from Rishikesh to personally introduce ourselves to the Indian Himalayas. Our efforts were considerable as we made the excruciating, 10-hour journey in the Indian equivalent of a Honda Accord (a Tata Indigo hatchback).

Our route began by skirting the Himalayan foothills through the Rajaji National Park on the so-called National Highway 74 (in actuality, a dusty, congested two-lane road constipated by bullock carts, firewood-toting pedestrians and lackadaisical water buffalo). After what seemed like an eternity (but was actually the entire morning and part of the afternoon), we began to make our way east from the small town of Ramnagar, which sits just east of the Jim Corbett Wildlife Sanctuary. Within thirty minutes, we began our interminable climb to the heavens and terra firma became a distant memory.

As Kaberi slept on his shoulder, Vik grasped his seat with a vise-like grip in a futile attempt to ease his mounting apprehension. The 90-minute drive from Ramnagar to Nainital, the largest city in Uttaranchal’s Kumaon region, was fraught with hairpin curves curled on top of hairpin curves. Our driver coaxed a reluctant car up the accelerating inclines, marked by ever taller and taller pine trees. As we painstakingly tiptoed the pebble-strewn driving path bordered on one side by seemingly-bottomless dropoffs, the kilometer signs marking our progress crawled by. This drive made Maui’s Mt. Haleakala look like child’s play. The only saving grace of the stomach-churning journey (not stopping for lunch turned out to be a blessing in disguise) was the view of majestic brown peaks that stood at attention above us in the blue ether. They were to be a mere preview of the grandeur of the Himalayas.

After reaching Nainital, we barely had time to take inventory of the town’s attractive setting along a magnificent peanut-shaped lake (reminiscent of Lake Como) before bounding our way down into the valley leading to Almora. At the expense of our equilibria, our driver, now freed of gravity’s hindrance, invoked his Grand Prix aspirations and raced through the turns. Two hours and one more nerve-wracking climb later, we neared Almora.

By far, the best part of the journey was the approach into Almora. Working our way up to the town allowed us a new vantage point, and one that unsheathed the divine snowy peaks of the Inner Himalayas. Words do not do the view justice. Suffice it to say that the white mountaintops are so tall that they appear surreal, as if clouds have been pasted permanently above the horizon. It took us a few minutes to grasp the scale of these mountains – we were already more than a mile above sea level and the peaks still towered in the background.

In the next hour, we limped through Almora’s cramped cobblestone streets and stopped at a few hotels located along the town’s main thoroughfare. Unimpressed by the quality of the rooms we were shown, we decided to venture further up in altitude toward Binsar. After another 10 kilometers of inclines and sheer dropoffs, we found a jungle resort promoting mountainview rooms. As a reward for navigating a long, arduous dirt driveway, we were offered a smart, new cottage with spectacular vistas from its balcony. Vik put his negotiating cap on, and managed to get us a 35% discount (it was off-season after all) on the published rate. With our journey temporarily concluded after 12 hours in a car, we had finally earned some well-deserved R&R before exploring Binsar the next day.

Tuesday, March 6, 2007

While My Sitar Gently Weeps

After a brief, comfortable respite in Delhi with the Mejo’s, we prepared to catch a puddle-jumper flight to Pantnagar in southeastern Uttaranchal, which became the newest of India’s 29th states when it was carved out of neighboring Uttar Pradesh earlier in the millennium.

Uttaranchal is ensconced in India’s mountaineous northeast on the Nepal border, making it an excellent entry point for seeing the Himalayas. Our best-laid plans were quickly dismantled, however, when our inbound flight was cancelled due to inclement weather. After spending a day with Mejomama in his office, we hatched a new gambit: rent a car and driver in Delhi to take us on an ambitious sweep, starting in southwestern Uttaranchal where the Ganges rushes out of the Himalayan foothills to make its inexorable eastern march to the Bay of Bengal and ending in the elevated southeast where the stark, white peaks demand immediate reverence.

The extra day also afforded us the opportunity to grapple with India’s infamous bureaucracy. The ever-fairminded Indian Customs, Delhi Bureau had levied a $400 import duty on the repaired camera sent to Kaberi from her cousin Shanku in Chicago on the grounds that the camera would be resold in India. Incredibly, Indian Customs refused to review the original bill of sale or the shipping manifest documentation with which Kaberi had originally sent her camera home for repair. And FedEx, citing its policy of seeking to cause maximum end-customer exasperation whenever possible, paid the duty unilaterally, leaving us with the unenviable task of prying money from the cold, dead fingers of the Indian government.

We drafted an obsequious letter of appeal, but resigned ourselves to having paid a $400 tuition fee in the School of Hard Knocks. This left Kaberi to watch ruefully as all of the money originally saved on her camera purchase flew out the window in the direction of Indira Gandhi International Airport. The only saving grace was her having the Nikon back in advance of our visiting the Himalayas.

Upon venturing out the next morning, we advanced on our eventual destination of Rishikkesh at a snail’s pace. Traffic congestion and road conditions conspired against us, and it took nearly five hours to reach Haridwar (which literally means “The Gates of God”), still one hour south of Rishikesh. We stopped briefly to observe the holy Ganges River (the view was underwhelming) and take some completely-superfluous high-resolution pictures of the mediocre scenery. Upon reaching Rishikesh at 4:30 pm, we scoured the left and right banks of a city bisected by the Ganges for reasonable overnight accommodation. We settled on a clean, 600 rupee ($14) room in the heart of the Left Bank, near a variety of ashrams.

With sunset approaching, we dropped off our bags and walked toward the riverbed. As we had arrived in Rishikesh before the monsoons, the mighty Ganges was a bit enervated; the ratio of rocky sediment to flowing water strongly favored the former category. We had hoped to see a parade of floating candles on the river from sunset aartis, but only managed to spot an occasional stray diya. As daylight faded from view and the mosquito presence intensified, we retreated east away from the river. Our evening stroll took us into the heart of the Left Bank and a surprising buzz of activity.

Unbeknownst to us, we had arrived in Rishikesh in the midst of the International Yoga Festival. Unwittingly, we managed to happen upon a huge riverside congregation boasting hundreds of saffron-robed devotees. Sitting before them on a stage parallel to the river were several simultaneously-chanting-and-clapping, cross-legged dignitaries, presumably from the international yoga community. We only recognized the most central figure, a man by the name of Sri Ravi Ravi Shankar (not to be confused with the sitar-playing father of Norah Jones by the same name).

Sri Ravi Ravi is to transcendental Hinduism as the Reverend Jerry Falwell is to evangelical Christianity, and engenders a similarly-consuming effect on his multinational (and often Western) devotees. There was something charming about the scene, and the rhythmic chanting of hundreds of voices in unison was nicely atmospheric. It wasn’t until about 20 minutes later (when we heard a group of American and French disciples -- with dirty blonde dreadlocks and Birkenstocks -- loudly evaluating each other’s auras and dirty energies) that we were reminded of the innate charlatanry of the moment. Auras aside, this was nothing more than a business-minded cult of personality preying on the naïve sensibilities of a group of foreigners all too willing to exotify India.

Well, live and let live. At least we got a couple of decent George Harrison tunes out of it all.

Sunday, March 4, 2007

Royal Holi Crashers

It was only upon reaching Rajasthan that the full magnitude of Holi began to dawn on us. After returning to Jodhpur, our hotel manager told us that the renowned Mehrenger Fort was closed until 2:00 pm the next day in observation of Holi. He also strongly advised us to buy some cheap clothes to prepare for the festivities since the odds were high that we would be splashed by local color.

After finding a local department store, National Handloom Corporation, we were surprised by the ease of the buying experience. We simply uttered two words – Holi and cheap – and were immediately shown men’s and women’s white kurta-pyjamas that represented the de facto uniform for the event. For less than 200 rupees each ($4.50), we were both outfitted in style from head to toe. Vik splurged further by also picking up a pair of $0.95 rubber bath slippers.

That night, we headed to the Taj Tari Mahal hotel for a nice dinner out. While killing some time in the hotel lobby, the night manager (thinking that we were hotel guests) invited us to join the hotel’s Holi celebration the next day. We were pleased to learn there might be a way for us to participate in the fun in a relatively-safe and controlled manner (Kaberi’s Mejomaima had warned us that sometimes Indian men use Holi as an excuse to do a little groping, and Kaberi is very protective of Vik).

In the morning, cheerily decked out in our impeccable white Holi attire, we decided to visit the second and more majestic Taj property in Jodhpur, the Umaid Bhawan Palace. The colossal and opulent palace in the outskirts of the city took 16 years to construct and required the efforts of 3,000 laborers. Originally serving as the private residence of the Jodhpur royal family, it has been subsequently divided into thirds to accommodate a posh hotel and a museum in addition to the royal quarters.

Vik’s father had encouraged us to visit the Umaid Bhavan (primarily because it was here where Elizabeth Hurley was due to wed her semi-Indian fiancée, Arun “She Dropped Steve Nash For This Guy?” Nayar, in a few days). Before setting out, we had been forewarned that there was a steep cover charge just to enter the Palace (1,650 rupees per person, which translates into roughly $35 apiece), but hoped that our source was either misinformed or prone to exaggeration.

After being dropped off at the hotel in modest form (a particularly noisy auto rickshaw), we mentally prepared ourselves to be verbally accosted by the doorman. As it turned out, we serendipitously happened to be wearing the exact same costumes as those issued to all Umaid Bhavan hotel guests – pure white kurta-pyjamas. We capitalized on our luck by acting the part, and soon were welcomed to join the Umaid Bhavan’s Holi celebration, for free.

Not questioning our good fortune, we wandered across the grounds in the direction of the event preparation. Time seemed to slow to a crawl as we nervously waited for the commencement of the festivities. Not wanting to draw any undue attention to our questionable presence, we went to great lengths to keep to ourselves – including murmuring quietly whenever hotel employees wandered by and avoiding eye contact with the friendly, roving hotel general manager. In the next half-hour, we noticed that more and more hotel guests were arriving in the same, standard issue white outfits. Our cover seemed to be solid. Unfortunately, the start of the party was taking forever. We weren’t exactly sure what was holding things up.

Around noon, an unimposing gentleman who looked to be in his late 50’s walked in and was immediately greeted heartily by a number of the Indians present. For the first time, the large, neat bowls of colored powder on the lawn were handled. We watched with rapt attention as several men patted each other with the powders on the head, face and chest and then warmly exchanged hugs. The entire process proved very effective in smearing a healthy amount of color on once-pristine shirts. All of the participants looked like they were having much more fun than the docile hotel guests (who Kaberi cattily suggested were bystanders in Jodhpur’s version of Waiting For Godot). Impatience got the better of us, and we eagerly ambled over to the crowd in the hopes of being absorbed into the pageantry.

We literally marched right up to the alpha male of the activity, the unimposing gentleman mentioned previously, who greeted us in turn with a slight bow. He had been standing off to the side and his casual manner and informal friendliness helped alleviate our nervousness. We ended up talking with him for the next 10 minutes about the significance of Holi, after which he patted us with brilliant red powder and wished us a Happy Holi. We responded in kind, embracing him slightly and lacing his face and shoulders with colored powder (Kaberi using pink and Vik using orange). Before stepping away to mingle with other guests, the gentleman asked us our names, which we happily supplied him. Kaberi asked the same of him, and he paused ever so slightly before simply replying, “Mr. Singh.”

Following our cue, the rest of the hotel guests joined in on the fun. A couple of the older American men (in a blatant and transparent ploy to chat up Kaberi) told us that we were their inspiration for joining in. In no time flat, we ended up completely covered in powder, much of it originating from the hands of well-heeled hotel guests. Quickly, and as Mr. Singh had predicted, the party escalated from the harmless throwing of colored powder to forcible dunkings of captive partygoers in tubs of colored water. Careful to stay far away from the folks dripping wet with pools of pink, red and orange in their wake, we decided to avail ourselves of the complimentary chaat buffet and open bar.

While Kaberi went to the restroom, Vik unwisely attempted to secure a third free drink for himself. By the time Kaberi returned, she found her husband dripping from head to toe, flushed in a very bright shade of fuchsia. Vik had been accosted from behind by a pail-toting ruffian and had a gallon of liquid poured down his back. With a large pink stripe running from his neck to his ankles, he would spend the next two weeks looking like a radioactive skunk.

Later in the day, after a shower back at our hotel (from which Kaberi emerged impeccably-clean while Vik emerged with a backside pink enough to earn him comparisons to a red-butted baboon), we caught a rickshaw to the Mehrenger Fort. The Fort was impressive in itself, with vast latticework covering its standstone walls, but even more so in its scale and perch. Jodhpur is known as the “Blue City” and our vantage point high atop the Fort allowed us to appreciate the cluster of indigo-blue-washed houses in the town center. We also learned that the Fort was once in a state of considerable disrepair before being fully restored by Jodhpur’s current Oxford-educated Maharajah.

The Maharajah was one of India’s Midnight Children (born at the exact moment of India’s independence from Great Britain) and took office at the age of 4. Today, the Maharajah enjoys a reputation as a great patron of local architecture and arts. As we finished the tour and perused the gift shop, an overenthusiastic art student showed us a photo of the Maharajah at the dedication of the art school. Our jaws dropped. It was Mr. Singh -- actually Mr. Gaj Singh II – the man whose face we had smeared with colored powder earlier in the day. To our amazement and embarassment, we had inadvertently crashed the Jodhpur Maharajah’s private Holi celebration.






Saturday, March 3, 2007

A Better-In-Theory Desert Foray

After a quick 40-minute flight to Jodhpur, we found an auto rickshaw to take us to our hotel. To our incredible good fortune, we were escorted to our room at exactly the instant that the heavens opened to unleash a torrential downpour of Noah-esque proportions. At that moment, we both decided on the spot to make the five-hour car ride to Jaisalmer the very next morning.

The drive to Jaisalmer was relatively painless, and the skies began clearing as we moved out of Jodhpur’s vicinity. Our journey took us through terrain that morphed from something akin to the American southwest to a real-world version of the Lion King landscape, complete with scattered scrub brush and lonely acacia trees. It was easy to get lost in one’s thoughts staring out the window at the passing thatched-roof huts braving an unrelenting sun in the midst of a reddish-orange expanse.

Unlike other connecting thoroughfares in India, the Jodhpur-to-Jaisalmer road was in excellent condition. We learned from our driver that this was due to the road’s heavy use by the Indian army given the proximity to the Pakistani border. As if on cue, we soon were exposed to the Indian Army’s conspicuous presence. In the span of 10 minutes, no fewer than 20 flatbed trucks resolutely rolled by, each transporting hulking and recently-used armored tanks. We took it to be either a very good or a very bad sign that the military caravan was moving in exactly the opposite direction as us.

Jaisalmer welcomed us with an abundance of heat and dust, and we were only too grateful to indulge in a shower at our hotel before heading into the city. On the way, we stopped in at the nondescript offices of Adventure Travel, a tour operator recommended by our Rough Guide, to book a camel safari into the Thar Desert. Impatience or apathy got the best of us (being immersed in a room crammed with eager British tourists didn’t help much either), and we allowed our negotiating discipline to be subverted by an oily, glad-handing salesman. We were eventually charged what we later learned to be an exorbitant 2,100 rupees for a 21-hour overnight excursion. The unfortunate transaction behind us, we made our way toward the Jaisalmer Fort.

In contrast to other Rajasthani fort cities, Jaisalmer houses 2,000 people within the confines of its fort walls. Kaberi was initially enchanted by the continuity of life to the present day, but was soon underwhelmed by reality. Within the Fort, aggressive hawkers, single-minded cows and fly-ridden piles of filth (a combination of human trash and cow excrement) compete for scarce space on claustrophobia-inducing streets and alleyways. We both felt trapped inside a garish and charmless tourist trap. It was only when we ascended the recently-restored Maharaja’s Palace that the beauty of the city’s original handiwork (in the form of delicately-filigreed architecture) emerged. Heartened, we left the Fort to find some of the city’s original havelis, many of which struck us as even more beautiful in comparison to their counterparts in Jaipur.

The next day, after an unambitious morning, we commenced our journey into the Thar Desert with the ultimate goal of sleeping beneath the stars. We considered ourselves fortunate enough to be in a small group of five along with three friendly Austrians (apparently, India is not a popular vacation destination for Austrians, possibly because many Indian tourist tradespeople readily infer that Austrians are from Australia). After driving one hour from Jaisalmer in a jeep with limited shock absorption capabilities (an apropos precursor to the trip), we made an unfortunate stop in a local village.

Upon alighting from the jeep, we were immediately bombarded by no less than 50 primary school-aged children fervently demanding “ONE PEN, ONE PEN.” The experience saddened and disgusted us – instead of spending their days in school to learn skills to propel them to a better life, these children had been conditioned to beg from captive, camel safari tourists.

From the village, we drove directly to a camel embarkment point a few minutes away. Kaberi’s camel appeared to be the cutest of the bunch while Vik’s appeared to be the most ornery, leading Kaberi to suggest that each camel had been artfully matched to its rider. While romantic in theory, riding a camel into the desert is an extremely overrated experience. First off, the girth of a camel’s haunches wreaks havoc on the abductor muscles of those of us not primarily known for playing the ditzy blonde on Three’s Company. Secondly, male camels (it would be cruel to use female camels on safaris because they retain more water and therefore have more weight to bear) are easily-distracted (it was mating season after all). Thirdly, camels are like baseball players – they will not hesitate to scratch themselves at any opportune moment, often without sufficient prior warning. And finally, camels boast a frequency and intensity of flatulence that is incomparable. That ordinary, everyday hay could be transformed into something so fiendishly foul as that which emanates gaseously from a camel’s backside will be an unexpected takeaway for the two of us going forward. Suffice it to say that when sundown approached, we were all too happy to take leave of our camels in order to make camp in the dunes.

As our crew prepared a vegetarian meal, we walked around to take pictures of our surroundings as the sun’s arc faded into the horizon. We killed some time playing a few hands of two-person Texas Hold ‘Em and, much to Vik’s chagrin, Kaberi quickly managed to pad her shopping budget. Not bad for half an hour of poker. As dusk fell, we gathered around a small, hastily-prepared fire, and ate a simple dinner with our travel companions before turning in for the night.

As we settled into two of five neighboring bedrolls arranged on one of the dune’s downslopes, decked out head to toe in our North Face gear, we took inventory of the sky. To our surprise, the intensity of the moonlight (we had made our trek the day before a full moon) obscured our starry view. The moon actually lit up the night, so much so that we could easily scrutinize our surroundings. Vik likened it to the glare of high beams on an SUV. After some time, we managed to fall asleep, only to be awakened hours later by frigid gusts as the wind changed direction. In pitch darkness, the two of us huddled into Vik’s bedroll and flipped Kaberi’s on top of us in a futile attempt to preserve body heat. Sleeping outside in 40-degree temperatures was also proving to be massively overrated.

In the morning, we awoke to the impending sunrise. After an uninspiring breakfast, we looked at our waiting camels and wished for a Jeep to be magically conjured from the sands. Sighing deeply as we each jerkily threw one leg over our respective camels’ humps, we made our way back out of the desert. Our ride was mercifully short (it took very little time before the soreness of our thighs had registered), and we made it back to Jaisalmer proper by noon. With Jaisalmer being overrun by gangs of young boys threatening to spray tourists with colored water if they weren’t accorded 10 rupees each, we opted to head back to Jodphur as quickly as possible. On the two occasions that we were accosted by young blackmailers, Vik opted to dissuade them with ambiguous threats of physical violence rather than caving into their financial demands. Our departure from Jaisalmer couldn't come quickly enough.





Thursday, March 1, 2007