Photo Hunt

I have finally gotten around to uploading a bunch of photos from my travels between Shanghai and Bangalore. Here are some highlights in random order.

Karoake in Shanghai

A taste of America in Hong Kong
Sign in Yunnan
Sign in Macau Lotus temple, Delhi

Me, sad Tibetan woman, Yak

Monastary, near Shangri-La

Ferryman's house, somewhere near Tiger Leaping Gorge

Yak tea with Tibetan monk, Shangri-La

Mountains near Shangri-La

Main Square, Shangri-La

New friends, Shangri-La

Random temple on bike trip, somewhere near Shangri-La

Field of flowers (poppies?), near Shangri-La

Much needed rest, near Shangri-La

Monastary view, near Shangri-La

Tiger Leaping Gorge

Tiger Leaping Gorge

Tiger Leaping Gorge

Tiger Leaping Gorge

Tiger Leaping Gorge

Tso Moriri, Ladakh

View from teahouse, Lijiang

Riverfront cafe, Lijiang

Main square, Macau

Winding mountain roads, Ladakh

Well-decorated truck ("Fruit King"), Ladakh

View from airplane, Leh

Tso Kar, Ladakh

Runaway camel, Rajasthan

Finding some shade, Taj Mahal

Ruins, Jaipur

Fort, overlooking Jaipur

Sunset with Tibetan prayer flags, Ladakh

end-of-day hiking adventure in Jaipur

Around 5:30 one afternoon in Jaipur, we tried to take a rickshaw up to Nagaranth fort, which overlooks the city and is supposedly good for sunsets. Instead of being taken all the way to the top though, we got taken to a path 2km below the fort on the hill and got asked to walk up the path or pay R500 extra. We chose to walk, but arranged for the rickshaw to come back and pick us up after sunset at the end of the path.

We started to walk up to the fort, and aside from the few beggars at the beginning and occasional massive reeking piles of trash, the walk up was a little sketchy but pretty nice.

Once we got up near the fort, there was only one group of guys who yelled some Hindi at us but seemed harmless. We eventually found the "entrance" by ducking through a hole in a door and found ourselves in a huge fort, almost all to ourselves. We walked for 10 minutes or so along the mountain ridge to what turned out to be a deserted spot looking over the city. It was really cool and turned out to sort of be a cafe, as a guy brought us a beer for 100 rupees. A few other people even showed up and were milling around watching the awesome sunset as well. I offered to take a picture for the group of Indian guys next to us, who then gave me a bag of super spicy potato chips. All was well.


The sunset was so cool in fact that we sort of lost track of time. And after the sun went down, it got very dark. When we realized how dark and late it had gotten, we hurriedly tried to find our way back to our path down the mountain. There were a few guys lurking around in the shadows, and just to be safe I moved some money and a credit card to a second pocket, just in case things took a bad turn.

When we got back to where we entered the fort, the door we had come through was closed up. We walked around a bit and found a different path that looked like it might go down to town, and followed it a bit. It was really dark though, and we couldn't tell where it was going. A little concerned as the night got darker and the fort felt more deserted, we decided to go back towards the "cafe" to see if we could find some people to walk down with.

We asked the first group we passed on the way if they knew how we could catch a taxi or rickshaw. They did not and said that nobody really drove up here. We thanked them and kept walking further.

Almost back to the cafe, a group of about 20 Indian men came walking towards us, singing and chatting loudly. In the middle of the group were the guys whose photo I took! We spotted them and I asked if they were walking down to the city. They said no but they could show us the way. Excited, we turned right around and joined the group.

We talked to some of the guys and it turned out they were in Jaipur on a management retreat for an Indian Conglomerate called ITC (incidentally we had a Stanford case on their agri-business, ITC e-Choupal, though these guys were from the technology business). They had a bus waiting for them outside the gate. Walking back with them, we picked up the guys we had passed before, who were also part of their group. Apparently it was just us and ITC at the fort.

When we got to the entrance where the bus was, they offered to drive us into town, and we gladly accepted. So there we were - on a bus with 25 men (no women) from all over India, totally crashing their corporate outing.

The guys were super nice, offered us water, more potato chips, and seats in the front of the bus, and we took off. In the bus, everyone kept singing. As best we could tell, people were taking turns singing songs from around the different parts of the country they were from, mixed in with some Indian pop songs. Everyone was laughing and having a great time. We felt slightly out of place.

We rode along for a good 30 minutes (the road down was much less direct than the path we walked up) and enjoyed the singing and generally laughed at the situation. Then, it became our turn to sing. Brittany and I are not the best singers in the world and the prospect of singing to a bus full of people was a bit intimidating. Despite out adamant protests, the crowd kept yelling at us and forcing us to sing something. Finally we managed to belt out two terrible versions of American Pie and California Girls but they seemed to make the crowd happy.

Earlier in the day, we had bought tickets for our first Bollywood movie at a huge movie theatre off the main street. The bus took us all the way into town and dropped us off right by the movie theatre. We thanked them and said goodbye. The whole bus waved to us as they drove off, and we waved back, then turned to head into the movies.

Rajasthan

We left Leh Tuesday morning and headed to Jaipur, a city of close to 3 million people in the state of Rajasthan. Lonely Planet describes Rajasthan as "a step back in time from Delhi". We were not certain how that was possible, and definitely were unsure of what to expect.

On the plane here, I read an article about Rajasthan. Near the end, it said that Rajasthanis regard moustaches as a sign of "manliness, virility, and macho power" and nearly every man has one. So of course I decided that I was trimming my emerging beard down to a moustache. And it's sweet.

In many ways, Jaipur is what I expected Delhi to be like. Its a pretty big city, and there is definitely poverty everywhere (beggars on every corner and people sleeping on every sidewalk), but there are also some nice areas as well. Traffic is still chaotic at times but some intersections have traffic lights and a semblance of order.

There are also a few interesting aspects of Jaipur worth noting here:

Jaipur's maharaja in the early 1800s was huge. Literally. He was 6ft 6in tall and weighed 560lbs. He also had 108 wives. This is where he lived. His pants were on display, but sadly photos were not allowed. The waist was over 4 feet.


Jaipur is known as the pink city. This is because, naturally, all the buildings in the old town are painted pink. This is not an ancient tradition however. In the 1800s the British King visited Jaipur. They painted the city pink for his visit, then decided to keep it.

As Rajasthan is largely desert, camels are big in Jaipur. So added to the traffic mix are urban camels pulling carts of vegetables and construction supplies or passengers. And in front of many buildings are hitching posts for tying horses (also used regularly) and camels. See if you can find a camel, horse, auto-rickshaw, bike-rickshaw, bicycle, scooter, pedestrian, and bus in the photo of the busy intersection with no traffic signals below.

The maharaja a few rulers previous to the fat man was a huge astronomer. He built 5 observatories around India, but the one in Jaipur is the biggest and best (#1 observatory). It also has the worlds biggest sundial (#1 sundial) in addition to numerous other astronomical and astrological instruments. Supposedly they all still work. It seemed like that was at least mostly true. We took a sweet guided tour. Also, a monkey ran around the observatory with us.

We went around to a few other forts and palaces which were fairly cool.

Below is me with the #1 largest silver object in the world, along with some guy who guards it.

Our last stop of the afternoon was for coffee. Jaipur's super trendy coffee shop is of course at a gas station. I sipped an iced mochachino as we listened to Ludicrus and US hip-hop music in comfy, modern, air-conditioned couches. Outside, 6 gas station attendants scurried around the 4 pumps serving rickshaw drivers a liter of gas at a time.

Finally, to reiterate, I have a moustache, and it's sweet.