We did a marathon drive from Kaikoura on the east coast of the South Island to Twizel (near Mt. Cook) on the west coast of the South Island. Driving is such a pleasure in New Zealand, though, that the drive went by very enjoyably. The pictures on the left are from Lake Tekapo near Twizel. Somebody told us that the glaciers in New Zealand have ground huge amounts of rock into fine dust. This dust then hovers near the bottom of the lakes and reflects the sunlight almost perfectly. As a result, the sky is almost perfectly reflected in the lake - hence the fantastic sky blue color of the lakes and also the almost perfect reflections of nearby mountains and clouds.
While we hadn't planned on staying in Twizel, we did end up doing so on the spur of the moment. We looked up the New Zealand B&B Guide (freely available in any tourist location) and found an awesome B&B on a farm. We had a view of Mt. Cook and a 2-minute drive to Twizel. Funnily enough, we found exactly the same model of rental car (Nissan hatchback) parked there - it seems as if 90% of the tourists in New Zealand rent exactly the same type of car.
The next morning, we took the 45-minute drive up to the Hermitage, near Mt. Cook (3755 meters). Mt Cook is a very technical climb but we took some satifaction in having climbed much higher to Mt. Kilimanjaro (6000 meters)! The Hermitage is a tourist destination in and of itself and is probably the most famous hotel in New Zealand. One can see Mt. Cook from here as well. Unfortunately, due to our budget and time constraints, we could not stay here! We followed several Japanese tourists up the Kea Point trail to the Hooker Valley glacier. As you can see from the photos above, the glacier itself has been retreating for a while and we could only the the moraines (in the black & white photo) left behind by the glacier and the glacier lake upon which several people were kayaking. The view of Mt Cook was fantastic - we could see the ice glistening on the top of the mountain. The right-most photo here shows the view from the Hermitage.
We left the ferry in Picton after a relaxing 3 hour journey from the North Island. Hopping in yet another rental car, we drove off to Marlborough country (no, not that one) which is one of the South Island´s top wine producing regions. We decided to concentrate our wine tasting to the wineries in Blenheim. In Wellington, I had found this great NZ food magazine called Cuisine which was chockfull of recipes, restaurant reviews, wine information and luckily- a great list of top wineries to visit region by region. From this list, I chose 4 wineries: Framingham,Huia, Mudhouse, and Cloudy Bay (this last one, because I have tried their wine in the US and wanted to check out the winery.)
First of all, we were expecting to deal with droves of people and tour buses, but it was very very quiet! In fact, at each of the wineries we went to, we were usually the only people, or at the most there were less than six people tasting wine. Further, all the tastings were free and there were no sales pressure. A good thing too, what with the limited space we have, it wouldn´t make sense to stuff anything in our backpack. Another (small) bummer is that some of the smaller wineries only export a few of their wines to the U.S. and the price per case comes to something like $300 US. Anyways, here are my thoughts about the wineries and wines. Not quite up to the level of Wine Spectator, I´m afraid!!
(Note: it would have been much easier to do this when I actually had the wine in hand!)
Framingham
2004 Sauvignon Blanc (SB)is the best known NZ wine so each winery usually had it as their best seller. Framingham´s 2004 SB is wonderful, very light with passion fruit and citrus-y notes. Seems like it would go well with Thai food.
2003 Pinot Noir: Somewhat spicy and rich tasting. Would be good to drink now, but the wine folks suggested cellaring it for up to 3 years.
Huia (named after a bird unique to NZ. Its tailfeathers were highly sought after by Maori and Europeans)
2004 Gewurztraminer: Peachy scent. Also a mix of spices- I came up with ginger for one of the spices (the wine folks said nutmeg is another). Also slight hints of pineapple!
2004 Huia Riesling: First thing I noticed was a sweet scent, almost like honeysuckle. Then a citrus-y, not too sweet taste on the palate. I would drink this by itself or with cheese
Mud House (our new favorite NZ winery)
2004 SB: Lime and grassy scents and flavor. I could drink this one quite happily by itself.
2003 Riesling. Definitely a winner. slightly sweet and mango and passionfruit scents. The wine folks suggested breaking out fruit or blue cheese (aka ´stinky cheese´ according to Dev) to nibble on.
Cloudy Bay
2004 SB: very different- tasted earthy, like tomatoes that have been grown in a garden, not the odorless ones at the grocery store.
A lot of the other wineries told us that although CB had had great wine in the past, it was slipping in quality and lot of the smaller wineries were catching up or exceeding them in quality.
After wine country, we drove to Kaikoura-well known for whale watching. The evening we arrived, we managed to get in a cliff walk. We had a gorgeous view of the water and saw many seals swimming about. The tide was out far enough that we felt sure that we wouldn´t get caught, so we lazily walked ovre the rocks then into meadow and scrub lands. At one point, we realized we were not alone.....we were walking on private sheep land!! ( we had to climb over several electrified fences- luckily no accidents!)
The whale watching trip the next morning was fantastic. Our guides set our expectations fairly low, saying that while we would definitely see whales, we might only see one or two. We actually came across 5!! The captain was in communication with other boats, and every time someone spotted a whale, he would call for everyone to sit down and gun the boat to where the whales were. These whales are huge! The ones we saw were about 20 meters long. Watching the whales dive was the best; before they dove down for the final time, they would spout and then hold their tails aloft out of the water, before finally going into the deep. I also got a chance to finally read Whale Rider, which I really enjoyed. The book actually has some more mystical elements to it that was not shown in the movie. I highly recommend it!
Oh, and these final pictures is of the sunset and the dessert I ordered at Finz (yes, i had to go partly cause of the name--you know.. Neil Finn...Finz..anyways!) - a seafood restaurant right on the beach that we ate at. They made me a wonderful vegetarian dish (even better than I have had at some fancy restaurants in SF) and topped it off with a wonderful chocolate mousse! Are you listening, restaurants in the US????
Our two week stay in New Zealand was shortened by a day due to the one-day delay in Bangkok. So we finally made it into Auckland after a lengthy 45-minute transit stop in Sydney (and a very aggressive customs inspection at New Zealand which focused on preventing any non-native insects, plants and animals from getting into New Zealand). In fact, we have even heard stories from other travelers that the NZ customs inspectors take out all walking boots from travelers' suitcases and wash them to get rid of any non-native life-forms - quite crazy! After taking the shuttle to the YHA in Auckland, we found out that our hostel reservations had been cancelled. Wonderful. Anyway, we managed to find another place quite easily.
The first day (which was also our last day in Auckland) we were there, we went down to Queen Street, the main street in Auckland, near the harbour. We met up with Roshanee in Three Kings! It was great to see her after such a long time - we had gotten to meet Jai in Delhi earlier in the month. Unfortunately, Zubin wasn't back from his vacation yet so we weren't able to meet him. Thanks to Jai and his travel company for helping us so much with our travel planning!
Along the way, we got ourselves a yet another SIM card for our mobile phone - we´ve found that getting local SIM cards ( most petrol stations, news-stands etc. sell these prepaid cards) has been quite a good way to keep in touch with people (or they can call us), not to mention making last minute changes to hostel/hotel/B&B reservations and also flights and trains. This saves us from hunting down payphones and juggling lots of change! We used SIM cards in India and New Zealand and will be using them from now on in the countries in which we spend more than 10 days. The New Zealand mobile phone company (Vodafone NZ) has a monopoly country-wide, so prices are quite high but the service is not bad - I could get access to my email through my mobile phone as well!
We then rented a car for our 2-week stay in New Zealand and motored on down to Rotorua, in the middle of the North Island. Driving through New Zealand is a pleasure - the roads are well-kept and pretty empty. Speed limits of 100kmph are seldom adhered to so inter-city travel can be quite fast! We passed several crystal-clear lakes, including Lake Rotorua which is amazing - looks bigger than Lake Tahoe in California and is much cleaner and warmer! Our impressions of New Zealand have been wonderful. So much beautiful open space - snow-capped mountains, crystal-clear lakes, well-maintained roads, clean cities and lots of adventure sports! The country has done a real good job of promoting itself as a focused tourist destination for adventure sports, outdoor adventures and nature.
Along the way to Rotorua, we saw a lot of terrain that seemed vaguely familiar - we were thinking that we must have seen this somewhere in Lord of the Rings (yes, we're both LOTR geeks), including Mount Doom etc.. Keep in mind that the actual movie was heavily computerized so the mountain has had computerized lava flows and a different sky put behind it.
In Rotorua, we again stayed at the YHA - the place was nice although the insect-life in New Zealand is quite focused on extracting human blood at all times of the day and night - tons of mosquitoes and moths everywhere, including the bathrooms, bedrooms and lounges! The area behind the YHA was a public park which consisted of mudpools and thermal pools and also had steam rising from it - quite different from most of the city parks I've seen anywhere else in the world! Rotorua (and the North Island in general) has a larger Maori population then the South Island. In addition, Rotorua is an area of great seismic activity with lots of geysers, sulphur pools, thermal pools etc.
We went to a Maori concert at the Mitai village that turned out to be quite nice - it started off with us being welcomed (their word for this is "Kia ora" which sounds quite similar to the Indian "Kia ho raha hai") and then being shown how the Maori use/used the hot earth (caused by the siesmic activity underground) to cook their food (they put the food in earthen pots, then bury them underground for about 3-4 hours). This was then followed by a ceremony which showed how different Maori tribes greeted each other and was then followed by various Maori dances (including the famous Haka dance). The Maori warriors were dressed in almost nothing (other than a loin-cloth and a lot of tattoos) while the women had animal-skin dresses which owl-tattoos on their chin. They stick out their tongues (saying "Hhhhhhaaaaaa") and bug out their eyes (presumably to frighten their opponents). We then went for a walk through the nearby forest and were shown glow-worms (which seem to come straight out of some science-fiction novel) and a Maori sacred spring which was crystal clear and had fish and eels moving around inside it. The sad part, though, is that the Maori had been pretty marginalized on the economic front and have crime/drugs/alcohol problems similar to many other economically-disadvantaged communities around the world.
Next morning, we went over to Wai-o-tapu which another thermal area near Rotorua. We saw a geyser which goes active at pricisely 10.15am each morning with a little prompting by the park ranger. Of course, a number of the tourists waited for the first spout to come out, took their photo and then left!
A long, 6-hour drive then got us to Wellington, the capital of New Zealand. We set up shop at another YHA and decided to chill for the evening, doing highly productive things like watching a movie (Alexander) and walking around the shopping areas. It was quite dull and rainy. Next morning, we went to the Te Papa museum which had a Maori marae (meeting hall/hut) and lots on the history of the Maori in New Zealand, including a retelling of how they came to New Zealand about 800 years ago (sailing on their canoes from Tahiti!) and their wars with the Europeans which resulted in the Waitungi treaty.
On the way from India to New Zealand, we transited through Bangkok for a day. Previously, we had cancelled a 10-day visit to Thailand in order to spend time on the southeastern coast of India volunteering for tsunami relief work. We had about 12 hours in Bangkok, so I got a visa on arrival and we took a taxi into the city to see my cousin Nidhi, her husband Dinkar and their son Bhaskar. It was great to see them! We had a very enjoyable lunch at a Thai restaurant nearby named Sukothai - the cold lychee juice was excellent and very appropriate for the hot temperature outside.
At about 2pm, we headed back to the airport and went to check-in for the flight to Auckland..... alas, we ran into a completely unanticipated roadblock there - apparently, our flight was transiting through Sydney for 45 minutes and, as an Indian citizen, I required a "transit visa" for the 45-minute stay in Sydney!... completely maddening... After all the trouble we've gone through to get visas (16 visas for me and 5 for Smruti, not counting the enormous sums of money that each visa has required), this one finally put a stop to our journey... Apparently, as of last year, the Australians have put in this rule for citizens of all countries that want to migrate in hordes to Australia (NOT!).
Anyway, so we unchecked ourselves from the flight, changed our flight to the next day's flight and went back to Bangkok. I downloaded the transit visa form, filled it out and waited.. Next morning, I took a motorbike-taxi to the Australian embassy. After crossing the moat (yes, the Australian embassy fortress has a moat to repel the numerous and highly regarded warrior knights of Thailand) and being relieved of my backpack, mobile phone and book, I crossed over into Australian sovereign territory. There, I waited for two hours, then filled out another additional form with details of my past 10 years of work experience plus all details about my education and family location/education. After that, I waited another two hours and then was granted a transit visa because, as the clerk there said, her supervisor had made an exception to the rule (I didn't bother to ask what rule... as I was too incensed to wait for the answer). This experience made me think that Australia feels in Asia as America does in the world.... AFRAID! Unfortunately, as long as people from poorer countries want to keep emigrating to these countries and there is the threat of terrorism, this won't change.
The good thing was that we got to spend more time with Nidhi didi and her family, including a visit to another great Italian restaurant called Govinda run by Hare Krishna devotees.. go figure.. anyway, it was very good food. Unfortunately, that evening, I lost two successive chess matches to 10-year old Bhaskar which has done wonders for my ego... I nominate Bhaskar for the next grandmaster of chess.
After coming back from Vedaranyam on the central coast of Tamil Nadu, we spent a couple of days in Chennai (aka Madras) before heading back to Delhi. It felt a bit strange, but we were so glad to be back in a large city after a week spent in a village! In fact, when our bus first rolled into Chennai, the first tall building seemed more like a space-ship to me than anything else! If this is my reaction after a week in a village, I can just imagine what the reaction of a villager would be when he saw a tall building for the first time in his life. The photo here shows a dog trying to survive the heat in Chennai - it was 30 degrees centigrade even in January.
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It happened to be Pongal during this weekend. Pongal (Lori or Makar Sankranti in the north) is a festival marking the beginning of the harvest season. One of the rituals surrounding Pongal is that women draw elaborate kolams or rangolis in front of their house to welcome the goddess of prosperity into their homes.
Nikil showed us around Chennai on the first day. Thanks to him for letting us crash at this place and also showing us around Chennai! We visited the Government museum which had a fantastic collection of Chola-era bronzes, in addition to stone statues. We also saw an exhibition on writing and inscriptions which displayed writings in Brahmi and Nagiri from over a thousand years ago and also showed the evolution of this writing in modern-day Tamil, Telugu and Hindi. Quite unexpectedly, the gallery of contemporary art also had a number of great paintings. There was also a museum of natural history which had several ancient skeletons and fossils - the museum itself seemed to be a fossil as well! There were huge crowds of people there as it was Pongal weekend.
We also visited various other touristy places, including Fort St. George (nothing much to see there), Marina beach (back to normal after the tsunami), the Parthasarathy Temple and the Sri Kapileshwarar temple. As it was Pongal time, the temple had various Pongal celebrations going on, including bedecked cows being paraded through it and people doing a circumnavigation of the temple, not by walking, but by continually prostrating themselves on the ground. The photos to the left are of the Parthasarathy temple in Chennai where we saw the mother of all chariots. Nonetheless, this is a small chariot compared to the chariot at the Jagannath temple in Puri (Orissa state) and the chariot carved out of stone at Ellora near Aurangabad (Maharashtra state). In addition to passing by the hallowed grounds of IIT Madras, we also saw churches everywhere - more than I've seen in any other part of India. We did not go down to Mahabalipuram (called Mamallapuram locally) as we did not have time - there was a Bharatnatyam festival going on there.
To pass the time, we also visited a few restaurants, including a Chettinad seafood restaurant, a Chinese restaurant on Mount Road (Spencer Plaza) and a couple of traditional south Indian restaurants. We also managed to see The Incredibles at Sathyam Cinema!
We were also introduced to another NGO that was helping out with the tsunami relief effort - Bhoomika Trust. Our friends Preeti, Faisal and Ava from AID India had all already left, so, we took an early morning flight back to Delhi and are now getting ready to move on to New Zealand!
While in Sikkim, we decided to cancel our trip to Thailand and spend some time down in Tamil Nadu to help out if possible. We did some Internet research and came up with the names of a few NGOs that were based in Chennai that were in need of volunteers. So we packed a bag, hopped on a plane and headed down to Chennai.
We showed up at AID India after having spoken to a volunteer coordinator on the phone. The office was a hive of activity, with computers and phones humming, piles of rice bags, buckets, clothing items and papers and tons of people all in the midst of various coordination activties.
We found out that a truck was leaving for Pondicherry later that afternoon and that we could catch a ride with it. We showed up at the godown (warehouse) a few hours later to help load up the truck. The room was filled with boxes and boxes of donated items: women's and men's clothes, food items, medicines, notebooks, pens, etc. When talking to some of the volunteers (one who turned out to be from San Jose), we found that while people had donated a lot of items, not all of them were needed, or even wanted. For example, we were desperately trying to find women's undergarments, but couldn't find any- but there were surpluses of salwar kameezes and saris and other items that might not be needed by the time it got down to villages in need (Note: we later read an article showing a villager that had been 'overwhelmed' in aid...she was surrounded by a big bag of rice, given a new stove (she already had one), and given clothes (which she did not want). It's quite illuminating to see what happens on the collection and receiving end of donations.)
We finally got all sorted out and got on the truck to Pondicherry, which was about a 4 hour ride. After a bumpy 5 hours, we reached Pondicherry and were told to go down to Nagiputtnam, a large town on the east coast. Quite frustrating to get bumped from town to town without any foreknowledge! Although we didn't see it from the bus, from talking to people, we heard stories of total devastation of villages, some which hadn't been reached by aid or government yet.
Because of the long distance and because it was now 2am in the morning, we stopped in Karaikal and somehow found a place to stay. The next day, we made it to Nagiputtam. There, we were again sent on to Vedaranyam with a doctor that had come down from Delhi. Vedaranyam was to be our staging area from which we would take a bus out to Pushpavanam, a coastal village about 45 minutes away that had a mix of fisherfolk, agricultural workers, and daily wage laborers.
We met up with about other volunteers that had come from all over: Mumbai, Delhi, England, and some local folks from Chennai and Verdanyam. This was critical, because none of us spoke Tamil!
We went to Pushpavanam with the intention of conducting a household survey that AID staffers had developed that would assess the long term needs of the villagers (that couse in grad school did come in useful) Of course, this being real-life and not a class, it was a little more difficult than we thought.
First of all, mostly everyone in the village had been affected in some way: loss of boats (some had lost fiberglass boats, engines and catamarans), loss of children or parents. It was the hardest to talk to this particular group of people. I often felt helpless: first the language barrier and then because I felt that if I were asking these questions then I was raising their expectations that this survey would be the direct link to getting compensation SOON. I had to remind myself that we were there to look at long-term needs and that many groups were trying to help. And, that results of this survey would make its way to those people in government that would figure out compensation. Many of the villagers invited us into their homes to show us how high on the outer walls the water had reached or inside the house where the mud and slime had come in. One woman showed us the empty almirah which had been filled with dozens and dozens of saris that her faily had been gathering for her upcoming wedding; all of of the saris were swept away by the wave. Still others were in states of shock. We sat down and talked with some of the women as to what they were experiencing, and some told us very candidly that they were still scared to go to sleep and they wondered what was going to happen to them. They had gotten back to work because they had to, but some noted that their husbands did nothing because they had no work, since their boats had been destroyed - each boat/engine/net combination costs about Rs. 1.5 lakh (Rs 150,000 or USD3500). Indeed, many of the men were gathered around in the village square watching all the activity.
The front row of huts and houses nearer the shore had been washed away, leaving tons of debris and mud. The beach area was full of mud, in addition to piles of dead fish, all smelling quite bad. The only things that seemed to have withstood the tsunami seems to have been the trees and the religious structures. In fact, we even heard a story on the TV that in Aceh (Indonesia), only the mosques remained standing... Perhaps some divine intervention?
Some of the guys in our group (Faisal!) talked with them and got them involved in a card game and even climbing trees. Soon, different men were hitching up their lungis and scrambling up the cocunut trees and gathering 5-6 and dropping it down for all of us to share. It might not have solved the long-term problems, but it brought a smile to some of these men's faces. In general, most people seemed happy that people had come to volunteer and thanked us for being there. On the other hand, there were some people who wanted us to give them money.
We also met other NGOs like ActionAid and Sneha that were working in the same village and learned what work they were doing. Every so often a government offical would rumble in in his pristine white lungi and car surrounded by bodyguards. They would all get out, take pictures, and zoom off again. Off course, none of them did any manual or counseling work! Our attempts at interaction with the governmental authorities (such as the local medical dispensary or the police) were only marginally successful - they gave us bits and pieces of information - we had to really be persistent about getting things like maps and other survey information. One rumor we heard was that they were focused on trying to prevent any news of the cholera outbreaks from spreading to the media as this would be an embarrasment to the local political authorities.
We also spent time playing and interacting with the kids, trying to build trust. With kids, even if there is a language barrier, this isn't so hard to do. Within two days, they were running after us, calling "Akka" (older sister) or "Anna" (older brother). They broke out into peals of laughter at our (ok, my) poor attempt at speaking Tamil. Many of them seemed physically and mentally ok, but I'm sure we weren't seeing the entire picture.
We spent a bunch of time in Vedaranyam town itself in the evenings. It is quite a bustling little town with lots of shops. We went to a bunch of dosa/idly restaurants and got used to the fantastic prices (Rs. 10 or USD 0.20) for a full meal served on a banana leaf! In fact, our mineral water cost more than that (Rs. 12) as did any ice-cream (Rs. 20 to Rs. 35).
As we left later in the week, we knew that some Tamil speakers were slated to come in and take over where we started with the survey. I really hope that the powers that be, including coordinating groups of NGOs and govrenemnt bodies really try their best to take all of the gathered informaiton and use it to issue death ceritifcates, give the villagers compensation for their boats, provide counseling and rehabilitation if needed. Quite understandably, the NGOs are quite disorganized in the wake of this tragedy... they're slowly getting their act together though.
I'll not easily forget this experience. It makes me thankful for what I do have.
Our shared taxi rides through the mountains of Sikkim turned out to be pretty hilarious events. Our co-passengers would always be laughing and joking, and also turned out to be pretty informative about Sikkim (other than when they were sleeping such as in this photo to the left). We had a Bhutia co-passenger along with a Tibetan co-passenger - both told us about how Sikkim became part of India - their story, though, does not match with what we've heard from others. I'll need to dig into this a little bit more.
We also had traffic safety signs, environmental conservation signs and army signs competing for attention along all the roads. As an exercise, we wrote down the signs we saw on the way from Gangtok to Changu, in the order we saw them. We learnt a little bit from these signs:
Bro is committed to you
Life is short, don't make it shorter
Blow horn
Gentlmen ply, they don't fly
If you're married, divorce speed
Good luck
Bro - Flag bearer of prosperity and civilisation
Caution - narrow road ahead - drive carefully
Thanks
Green Sikkim, Clean Sikkim
Do not destroy life of the flowers
Be late, don't be Mr. late
Bro men cut through the hills but join through the heart
Just wait
Faster will see disaster
Slide area - drive slow
Gati badana, jeevan ghatana (Increase spped, decrease life)
Rough area - drive carefully
A person without children would face an uncertain future, a country without trees would have a similar fate
Wild life need (sic) your care and concern
Horn bajao, sabko bachao (Blow your horn, save everyone)
Mushkil vakht, Gorkha sakht (In difficult times, the Gorkhas stand fast)
Bro is always in service to our nation - from Kanchenjunga to Kanyakumari we are one nation!
Drive with care, make accident area (sic)
Snow clad mountains, searing deserts, bro is seen everywhere
Niyantrit chaal, chaalak khushhaal (Controlled driving makes a happy driver)
Three enemies of road - liquor, speed and overload
You are at 12000 feet
Bro welcomes you to Tsomgo lake
Nature is the universal language
Bro - master of the mountains
No photography
We cannot command nature, except by obeying here (sic)
Always accept unexpected
The value of biodiversity is more than the sum of its parts
Skill x Will x Drill = Kill
First Black Cat Ghatak Camp welcomes you
First of all, what do you think Bro is? Is it Big Brother from George Orwell's novel '1984'? Or is it something else? Scroll below to find out
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Bro is the Border Roads Organization! It builds and maintains roads in Sikkim. Needless to say, we were quite bemused by these signs until we figured out who Bro was!
From the signs, we also gleaned that there must be a huge group of people in the traffic police organization who sit and churn out traffic safety phrases such as "Be late, don't be Mr. Late" everyday!
All the army signs also were interesting. The Brits sent a huge wave of Indian army battalions into World War II, especially in the Middle East and North Africa. This is why all these signs exist along the side of the road. Iraq. Palestine. etc. Given the sensitive nature of this region (border with China), there are several defense establishments in Sikkim.
The border with Tibet also was interesting. Apparently, tourists from both sides come there to shake hands with the army of the other side. Also, we're told, the Chinese armymen are much smaller than the Indian armymen - before you think that this is because of nutrition or something, think again. We are told that this is because the Chinese army is a conscript army and 16 year-olds are sent to this border, whereas the Indian army is a volunteer army and 25-30 years old man the border here.
From Darjeeling, we took a shared taxi ride (about 3 1/2 hours) to Gangtok in the state of Sikkim. Sikkim officially became part of India in 1975. A mountaneous state of about 5.5 million people, Sikkim borders Bhutan, Nepal and China. Click on the graphic to the left to see the location of the state. The state has a number of people of Tibetan, Nepalese and Bhutanese descent. India defended the borders of Sikkim against China in the war of 1962. Interestingly, there seems to be an intermixing of Bengali and Sikkimese people going on as the two states border each other in India. We had already obtained a permit for Smruti to travel to Sikkim (all non-Indian citizens needs permits for Sikkim).
Gangtok, the capital of Sikkim, is a couple of thousand feet lower in altitude than Darjeeling and so, thankfully, a bit warmer! The city is nestled on the side of a mountain (photo on the left) and so has many steep roads and staircases. We stayed in a hotel on MG Marg and could therefore go to the local restaurants and (importantly) Internet cafe pretty easily. The other photo shows a couple of Sikkimese kids playing near a monastery.
The Rumtek monastery, traditionally home of the Karmapa Lama, was a very nice place. We went into the prayer hall as well as walked around in the square. The wall outside has some nice paintings of the Buddhist boddhisattvas, including one called Smrtishri! There seemed to be a light atmosphere at this monastery, as opposed to the *heavy* atmosphere in Christian monasteries we've seen in Europe.
We also visited the Enchey monastery and a couple of gompas. The sight of Buddhist cemeteries was *interesting **with prayer flags fluttering all over the place.
There is a dispute going on right now about who the real Karmapa Lama is. The Karmapa Lama stands right next to the Dalai Lama in terms of importance in the Tibetan Buddhist world. One of the contendors for the Karmapa Lama is staying with the Dalai Lama in Dharamshala (in the state of Himachal Pradesh in northwest India) - he had been installed by the Chinese government as a puppet but escaped to India - for some reason, the Indian government is not letting the Karmapa reside in his traditional headquarters at the Rumtek monastery near Gangtok. You can find out more about this at karmapa.org and in this BBC article.
We visited the Namgyal Institue of Tibetology which has a great collection of Buddhist tankhas or painted tapestries showing the life of the Buddha. The paintings on the wall outside were quite nice as well as the structure on the pond with little gargoyles. The inside of the museum was nice also although it suffered from repeated black-outs and so we couldn't see much!
The next day, after having obtained all necessary permits from the Sikkim Tourism office, we took a shared taxi ride to Changu lake and Baba mandir. Changu lake itself was somewhat of a disappointment but we livened things up with a yak ride around the lake and a view of the Indo-Tibetan border and the Chinese occupation army in Tibet. The drive was nice with lots of snow, ice and frozen streams along the way. The fact that Smruti's woolen cap matched exactly with the yak's horncaps added to the fun! :-) Apparently, the yak also thought this was quite funny, as evidenced by its baleful pose in this photo. There's a lot more to see in North Sikkim but foreigners aren't allowed to go there!
While in Gangtok, we decided to ditch our plan to go to Camboda and Thailand because of the effects of the tsunami in Thailand. Instead, we decided to spend a week in south India (Tamil Nadu) volunteering for a non-profit (or NGO, as they are called in India) focusing on tsunami relief efforts. After much searching on the Net and contacting people, we whittled it down to AID India and decided to fly Air Deccan (very cheap!, like Southwest Airlines in the US) to Madras (Chennai) right after Sikkim. We will do that and then fly straight to New Zealand.
From Gangtok, we tooked a shared taxi ride down to Bagdogra. Unfortunately, the shared taxi dropped us off 13 kilometers away from the airport. Our only option seemed to be a cycle rickshaw (powered by a person) who estimated it would take us two and a half hours to drive the 13 kilometers. We quickly disembarked and caught a bus to the airport!
From Bombay, we transited through Delhi and then flew on to Calcutta. Our flight to Bagdogra was delayed, so we decided to take the opportunity to drive into Calcutta for a little bit. We managed to get a glimpse of the Hooghly bridge, the maidan and also walked around Victoria Memorial. We then dashed to Palace Court to meet Uncle Satyan and Aunty Anjali. It was great to see them again and also to have some delicious Christmas cake! Visiting Calcutta and Palace Court also brought back memories from previous visits to Calcutta to stay with my grandparents. The most recent visit had been a long time ago (15 years ago). After Palace Court, we made a mad dash back to the airport to catch the flight to Bagdogra. Bagdogra is an airforce base as well as a commercial airport.
From Bagdogra, we took a 3 1/2 hour taxi ride up to Darjeeling with our driver, Tendup. Darjeeling is at about 7,500 feet and is quite cold! The next morning, we woke up at 4am to drive up to Tiger Hill - the view from there was spectacular - the sunrise over the mountain range as well as the absolutely clear view of the whole range. Basically, one can see the highest mountains in the world from here, including Mt. Everest and Mt. Kanchenjunga. The Kanchenjunga range is about 60 kilometres away as the crow flies. Here're some of the photos taken from Tiger Hill. The highest peak in the middle is Mt. Kanchenjunga:
After this, we went to one of the parks, where there is a memorial to soldiers who have died defending the border with China. In the park nearby, Smruti tried on a local costume.
We visited the Himalayan Mountaineering Institute where most of the memorabilia from the first ascent of Mt. Everest (by Indian Tenzing Norgay and New Zealander Edmund Hillary) is on display. We also took a bit of time to see the moutain zoo, which turned out to be pretty interesting. We saw snow leopards, regular leopards, Siberian tigers, Tibetan wolves and various other animals as well! My first glimpse of a tiger on our round-the-world trip!
After spending the night at Shishir chacha's and Shoni chachi's apartment, we took the train from Mumbai to Goa on the 29th of December. There's a nice overnight train (Konkan Kanya Express) which takes about 12 hours and has sleeper carriages with beds, bedding etc. Our co-passengers were a Finnish family who had managed to get last-minute reservations on the train straight from Helsinki! They had been traveling on and off for the last 17 years - our trip pales in comparison to their travels! The views along the way were pretty nice once we got into Goan territory - mile upon mile of waterlogged green fields with palm trees on each side. Food was served in the train and, quite irritatingly, chai and coffee walas kept circulating up and down the train non-stop, speaking in voices that carried the length of the carriage. Thankfully, they stopped their antics early enough for us to get some sleep. Our train trundled into Madgaon station at Goa at 10am the next morning.
In addition to the past 30 years of hippy-inspired drug culture, Goa has quite a colorful history, having been part of various princely states until the 15th century and then being occupied by the Portugese for 450 years, much longer than the British in India! We visited Old Goa, about 10 kilometers from Panjim, the capital of Goa. Old Goa itself is said to have rivaled Lisbon in grandeur at one point in time. What's left of it now includes various Basilicas, Cathedrals and Churches. From the museum there, we learned that Vasco de Gama was governor of Goa for a year! He must have stopped here for a year before heading back to the motherland. The museum had portraits of all the Portugese governors from 1520 (approx.) onwards, all the way to 1975 when India took the place over. Here's a Christmas procession through the streets of Goa:
Getting to Old Goa from Baga beach in northern Goa was quite an experience. First, we negotiated the rental of a scooter from a random person standing on the roadside - the argument boiled down to renting for 5 hours versus being charged for a whole day. Then, I proceeded to try to learn h0w to drive a scooter after last having driven one 7 years ago. Thankfully, it was pretty straightforward and we drove off for our hour-long ride to Old Goa. Then, we had to negotiate traffic which was pretty heavy due to the holidays.
Anyway, we happened to be in Old Goa on the last day of the showing of the mummified body/relics of St. Xavier. St. Xavier, a Jesuit missionary, had been entrusted with spreading Catholicism throughout Asia, including India and China. The line to see the relics was very long but amazingly orderly. To keep us amused, er inspired, all along the line, there were small messages strung up saying things like:
He helps you walk by still waters- THAT'S SUPPORT!
He leads you through the desert - THAT'S GUIDANCE!
He provides you with fish and wine - THAT'S RESPONSIBILITY!
The photo above shows the mummified body of St. Xavier. It is about 4 1/2 feet tall and is very lifelike! Apparently, one devout Catholic bit off the toe in a religious frenzy a few years ago. And one of the arms has been sent to other parts of the world - it seemed to be back in place this time around though.
The party scene was happening, as usual, in Goa. Staying at Baga beach, next to Tito's, we were right at the center of the action. Unfortunately, that meant negotiating large crowds and traffic for everything and paying high prices for lodging. The clubs were super pricey - after going to one of them (Club Cabana, before Anjuna), we'd had enough! The neon-colored dancers, laser sky strobes and all-you-can-drink set-up was not impressive enough for us to keep coming back.
While in Goa, we went to a bunch of restaurants, most notably (for me) shacks on the beach serving prawn curry and rice. We also went to The Citrus which turned out to be a great Italian vegetarian restaurant. Fiesta turned out to have a fantastic atmosphere and setting - Smruti and I enjoyed watching the waiters fruitlessly light the candles every few minutes, only to have the candles blown out by the wind almost immediately.
We met up with a number of San Francisco friends and made some new friends - Paawan, Tushar, Armaity, Viraf, Jasjit, Preet and others! The whole world seems to converge on Goa at this time, making it a maddening yet fun place.
Of course, we spent the requisite several hours on the beach and in the water which was fantastic. Warm breeze and perfect water temperature- we only came out of the water to sprawl lazily under a beach umbrella! The only negative was the shacks sending their people to harass everybody into buying food/drinks from their shack.
To top it all off, New Year's Eve was great. We spent it on the beach, along with thousands of other people, lots of bonfires and lots of fireworks.
Now we're off, back to Bombay and then on to Sikkim!
We did a marathon drive from Kaikoura on the east coast of the South Island to Twizel (near Mt. Cook) on the west coast of the South Island. Driving is such a pleasure in New Zealand, though, that the drive went by very enjoyably. The pictures on the left are from Lake Tekapo near Twizel. Somebody told us that the glaciers in New Zealand have ground huge amounts of rock into fine dust. This dust then hovers near the bottom of the lakes and reflects the sunlight almost perfectly. As a result, the sky is almost perfectly reflected in the lake - hence the fantastic sky blue color of the lakes and also the almost perfect reflections of nearby mountains and clouds.
The next day, after having obtained all necessary permits from the Sikkim Tourism office, we took a shared taxi ride to Changu lake and Baba mandir. Changu lake itself was somewhat of a disappointment but we livened things up with a yak ride around the lake and a view of the Indo-Tibetan border and the Chinese occupation army in Tibet. The drive was nice with lots of snow, ice and frozen streams along the way. The fact that Smruti's woolen cap matched exactly with the yak's horncaps added to the fun! :-) Apparently, the yak also thought this was quite funny, as evidenced by its baleful pose in this photo. There's a lot more to see in North Sikkim but foreigners aren't allowed to go there! 
After spending the night at Shishir chacha's and Shoni chachi's apartment, we took the train from Mumbai to 
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