And we're done . . .

Sorry for any technical difficulties with this last blog entry (we preemptively uploaded a crappy quality video to YouTube and have rectified the situation) We look like much better photographers now!

Obviously we kind of sucked at blogging about Nepal. I had lots to say about the vast Milky Way galaxy of stars and the sweet echos of "nameste" on the trail but Mike was the one who just plain-old-refused to spend any of his time reunited with his computer, blogging. Instead, we (read:I) put together this video of photos to capture the three weeks of walking, which likely tells the story better than words. It IS 9 minutes long, not really long enough to warrant popcorn but maybe best not watched at work (there is music). Check it out here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sphg_ZNvxxs

We're on to the next adventure: the wild crazy ride to weddingville . . . will we blog about that too? Everybody has got wedding websites these days! MichaelandKristinforeva.com whoop! We'll never find the end of the Internet, never.

- S. Mangosteen

Annapurna

There she blows! That's where we'll be for the next 3 weeks. No updates, no Internet. Just momos (possibly the most perfect food), walking, prayer flags and mountains. Big mountains. 17,000 foot mountains. We'll miss you all, so much more than India *smile*.

- S. Mangosteen and Father Seahorse

Only in India . . .

Ya, I bet you can guess where this is going . . . but really most of these things you WOULD only see in India!

Where else would a monkey jump your sugar bowl while you are enjoying your 5 o’clock chai? That little prick ate our whole bowl of sugar and spent a great deal of his days terrorizing the ladies on our balcony. He's still cute though, isn't he?

Newfoundland dog shoved into a rickshaw?

And how many other places in the world would a trip to the “Ladies Salon” (often spelled saloon) would involve throwing two gals on the back of your moped and drive them across town to your living room cum ladies parlor? That floozy dress was a beauty day loaner by the way.

Only in India can you get chai delivered to your train bunk in a clay cup that you then smash on the train tracks upon draining. And where else do electrical employees boycott fixing a blown transformer until their co-workers hospital bills are paid? No electricity and no water, two days = "no problem".

India is queen of obscure holidays. At one point in Varanasi we realized that four separate holidays were occurring on the same day. One holiday was such that couples who were having conception problems visited the Water Temple, which was a set of stairs descending down to water, from which rose a 20 foot arch meant to represent the phallus. After dipping in the water the couple undresses, leaving their clothes at the temple. THEN, on the same day, all the couples who HAVE conceived since their last visit bring their new babies, shave their head, stuff the hair in chapatti (bread) and throw it in the Ganga (holy river). I can not make this stuff up!!!!

Bright and early (morning prayer) where you get the red tikka mark with rice pressed into your forehead?

Need I say more?

- S. Mangosteen

Who IS this girl?!

Wow, does that face say 'I’m done with India', or what? What IS that expression? I think it’s a culmination of these things:

- There are cockroaches in the kitchen drawers, ants marching across the tub and an infestation of fruit flies breeding on every fresh scrap in the house

- I got robbed on the metro in Delhi

- I have a cold that won’t quit and I just finally recovered from the most painful stomach ailment my gut has known

- It took me 2 ½ hours (actively interacting with 7 staff) to mail a package at the post office yesterday

Believe me, I could go on. Silence and competency are severely lacking from my daily routine. The thing is, India is a dirty loud place with too many people. Just let me pretend to hate it for one blog, ok? If the “Superbug” (antibiotic resistant bacteria) really manifests itself as an epidemic in India, we should be scared. Why? Let me show you the “the eye flu”:

That’s my recent travel buddy and friend from Seattle, Liza. She got “the eye flu” (let’s just call it Eflu) while volunteering with a mobile medical clinic in India – it’s pink eye on steroids. In Delhi alone, Eflu has increased 30 percent since last year. Around the country doctors are reporting 20-30 cases per day of Eflu. A highly contagious disease, the ailment is worsened by “overcrowded places, dirty surroundings and unhealthy living standards” . . . like say, India. And because it’s not obvious to the general public, India Today quoted an ophthalmologist as saying, “Looking into someones eyes can't spread the infection.” The combo of a population regularly taking antibiotics, lack of awareness about how disease spreads and the overcrowded, dirty bit are not favorable.

I believe I’ve mentioned the fact that most eating establishments, bathroom sinks (or even say my home kitchen sink) do not have a hot water tap. If I were mentally ill or wealthy I’d dedicate my life to the worldwide public service announcement: “Remember folks, soap don’t work without warm water”. And I’m not even a germ phobe!

Ok, to summarize . . . “Eye Flu” = yuck. “Superbug” = scary. Tomorrow I’ll be totally ready to show lovely pictures of the last few weeks.

- S. Mangosteen

Rishi-crush

Only one more week in India. We leave next Saturday for a month of backpacking in Nepal. Looking forward to being off the grid for a few weeks, though dreading the inbox on our return. India has been a bit much in the past week or so. It does that sometimes.

We did spend a few days in Rishikesh after our brief fancy pants life in Delhi. Rishikesh is an interesting place. Built up on two sides of the Ganges, in the foothills of the Himalaya, it has long been a base for trips to the holy sites deeper in the hills. Now it is a holy city in and of itself, swamped with both western and local seekers of various sorts.

The wedding cake on the left is a temple, which you walk up clockwise ringing bells at each pillar, and every room has a different idol(s). The view is from our hotel. The Ganges, the most sacred river in India.

Every pilgrim needs to bath/drink in the Ganges. We washed our feet. North India has been flooding pretty badly the past month or so, and the river was running dangerously high.

Rishikesh has been on the tourist circuit for awhile now, in no small part due to the Beatles. This is where they found their guru, Maharishi Mahesh (creator/marketer of transcendental meditation), and hung out at his ashram writing the White Album. Now, the ashram is in ruins. Unclear why exactly. We kept hearing about drug scandals, but nothing solid. Either way, the land is abandoned now and supposedly it can't be developed because no one knows who owns it. The jungle is happily reclaiming it. We walked out there and paid some guy $1 to ignore the "No Trespassing" sign and unlock the gate for us. There was an overgrown road leading into the jungle, and we had to fight our way through spider webs and foliage to get to the buildings. We climbed into a main building that was in shambles; broken glass, graffiti. It was huge. We passed room 468 at one point. Eventually we got to the roof, and found these.

On top of the dome was a hatch, and inside was a small meditation chamber tuned to resonate with the slightest sound. It was actually pretty intense. You could feel your skin vibrate when you made any noise. I can only imagine what it would have been like to hang out in there with 500+ people living and moving below you.

Kristin managed to get this great close-up of me just as I cracked my head open on the rusty ladder. Yay for tetanus shots lasting 10 years.

Lots of foreigners in Rishikesh, and lots of sadhus (holy men). Sometimes the two cultures meld, as was the case with this guy:

Not sure you can see these details in the photo, but he has a topknot of dread locks about 8 inches tall, and he's wearing a pair of Crocs. This is an apt metaphor to sum up Rishikesh. Even celebrities visit Rishikesh after filming "Titanic":

Whoops, wrong photo.

I can now say that I have slept in the same bed as Kate Winslet, and not be lying this time.

Considering this IS a food blog (that was the original idea, right?) we did find some delicacies. On our walk back from the Maharishi's ashram we stopped at this guys "shop". He is cooking us a papadam over an open fire. Papadam are thin pancakes, for lack of a better word, made of lentils and spices. They are made, then dried, then roasted. Always good, but really best when cooked over a wood fire.

A few minutes down the road we bought a pummelo, ancestor to the grapefruit.

I don't know how many of you have had the pleasure of eating a grapefruit section by section, turning each inside out. I grew up eating them this way, and pummelos are even more satisfying as they are larger and you can eat each drupelet (not technically correct, but close enough) individually. They taste like grapefruit crossed with a just slightly unripe blackberry.

The transition back from quiet and weird Rishikesh to .. Bangalore was a little hard. Though, I was happy to see that my friend dog-in-a-box had upgraded and seemed to have lived the hell out of his new home.

- F. Seahorse

Lady Dhamma

When I applied to do “service” at the 3-day Vipassana retreat last weekend I was under the mis-guided assumption that I would blissfully chop veggies between meditation sessions (such is the case in the US). But oh no, I was given this very special room:

Which means that instead of taking a vow of silence, I was the person that fielded the needs of participants (including one remarkably weepy pregnant woman) and got to woke up extra early (4am) to ring bells. But since I went there to remember the lessons of equanimity, I could hardly complain.

Then, as planned, I packed up my dhamma practice and moved it to the Le Meridien in New Delhi. Above all privileges experienced in this life, the one I cherish most is the ability to “pass” among an incredible range of communities. I’ve squatted on mud floor kitchens cooking chapatti over a wood burning stove with ladies in rural Kenya AND I have liberally indulged in the privileges of a guest at a 5 star hotel in Delhi. Let me be clear, I REALLY don’t fit-in either place but I “pass”. The irony of the fact that I was furiously brushing clinger ants off my backpack at the Bangalore airport and walked into the lobby of the Le Meridien with red monsoon mud creeping up the edges of my sandals, did NOT go unappreciated. That’s how I roll, I guess. Sometimes none of it seems real, like I’m only observing this round of life and other times I experience life so intensely my whole body buzzes.

So Lady Dhamma now spends her days laying in a soft white bed of fluff, watching DVD’s, ordering room service and lounging at the pool. Whatever, I’m allowed to take a short holiday from India! Check it out:

It is beyond swanky here. And let me tell you, there is an indescribable feeling looking down from the 16^th floor upon a city of 12 million people . . . from the john.

The whole center of this 20 story building is wide open, with a Charlie-and-the-Glass-Elevator styled machine that swooshes down a futuristic bee hive of rooms to the stylized mosaic floor of lobby. There are also glass walls of fresh lilies . . . and they play Tom and Jerry cartoons in all the elevator lobbies?!

And Mike, what about him? He’s doing this:

. . . attending a conference called Sigcomm. Thank you University of Washington for adding a little swank to our adventures in India. While serving ourselves to snacks at High Tea in the “Royal Club” Mike said to me (with the perfect pinch of sarcasm) “You know, sometimes I think we were meant to live like this”. Ah, how quickly one glares down that oh-so-slippery slope of believing one "deserves" all the amassed wealth. Thankfully India lies just at the edge of the lobby to keep the wide world in perspective.

Tomorrow we retreat to the spiritual mecca of India, Rishikesh. Ah, just saying that name makes my heart skip. Nothing but shanti, shanti on the banks of the great Mother Ganga (only the most holy river in India). Where whispers of past Sages are said to blow through the valley.

- S. Mangosteen

Loaded in Bangalore

Father Seahorse hates the term “Foodie” but really, is “gastronomist” or “food snob” any better? We is what we is, which is mildly obsessed with food! I discovered last week that Bangalore has it’s own Food Lovers magazine, whoot! This month was top 50 Foodie Picks and wouldn’t you know that F. Seahorse was devouring the magazine, talking ‘bout all the places we HAVE to eat and ‘shouldn’t we make a schedule?’ We thought we were really hot stuff when we could claim having already eaten at several of the top 50. It only makes sense to take advantage of the fact that we’re loaded when it comes to affording fine dining in Bangalore.

So this whole weekend was devoted to food. We cooked recipes from my new south Indian cookbooks (as fun as the Ladies Club was, all I really need is a good recipe and time to tinker in the kitchen). Coconut Fish Curry was an undocumented success and Egg Curry with Idly is featured below.

We also tried out some new restaurants around town and explored Russell Market, one of the oldest markets in Bangalore which has been described as “oozing old world charm”. It was oozing . . . mud between my toes. There was a pretty classic moment where I’m holding a soggy grocery list, barely beating off the torrential rains with a hot pink umbrella, listing out loud the items needed; “Cocum, fish, tomatoes . . .” and Mike says: “chicken feet?” Sure enough I look down and there’s a stray chicken foot lying in the muddy road. This was THAT kind of market!

Oh, and we made a stop at the “metal shop” to get an idly maker (for making those fermented, steamed rice flying saucers you see above)! Here is where I’ll admit that I’m a container nerd. Tiffin containers (those stackable metal lunch boxes) are irresistible as monkeys and mangosteens. Here’s a little Tiffin fantasy photo:

Random Tiffin Fact: 200,000 people daily in the city of Mumbai are delivered lunches in Tiffin carriers by the dabbawallahs of India!

. . . so ya, we got some metal containers for spice storage and fantasy picnics.

Taking advantage of being loaded, we used foodie weekend to score some fine silk Kashmir rugs! As you can see they are fine enough to rub your cheeks upon. There are some proverbial snakes in the grass when it comes to rug buying. But I think we can rest assured that our rugs are hand knotted with pure silk and will outlast us in years.

Yes, rugZZZ, I got suckered into the second one, it hypnotized me with it’s complexity. Can you imagine keeping the pattern for seven rugs in your head at once?!! That’s like knitting 7 different cable sweaters at the same time!

To counterbalance the weekend of lavishness I will spend next weekend doing dhamma service at the Vipassana center outside Bangalore. Then I will join Mike a 5 star hotel in Delhi. For real! Navigating the seas of international travel is complex! I will be without laptop for several weeks . . . experiencing more, talking less.

- S. Mangosteen