Tibetan food

Hello. I was going to write loads about Mccleod Ganj but I've ended up reading about Buddhism for nearly an hour. So I'll just write a little about the Tibetan food that you can get here.

The most popular dish is momos, which are like Chinese dumplings. They are usually steamed, sometimes fried, and can be found with both veg and non-veg fillings. The veg is usually potato, tofu, mushroom or cheese. I had a soup before which was ok, but I think they are best eaten fresh. Many Tibetan ladies sell them one the street here, four for 10 rupees with a little chilli sauce on the side (71 rupees = 1 pound).

The other dishes are largely noodle soups or stir-fried noodles (chow mein). There's chitse (flat noodles), gyathuk (the usual thin noodles), and thenthuk (my favourite, fat square noodles). The broth is usually very tasty, with some veg like spinach and carrot and some times with optional egg or tofu. Its great being able to try all this food, as its predominantly vegetarian, unlike in Vietnam and other Asian countries where I usually spent hours walking around trying to find somewhere that did veggie stuff other than fried rice.

One thing I haven't had yet is tsampa, which I thought was a very popular Tibetan food (roasted barley used to make porridge or eaten in various other ways), maybe they don't think the Westerners would like it!

Rob

Vipassana

Today I'm in McCleod Ganj, in the north of India. I've just finished a rather intense meditation course, 10 days of no talking, no eye contact and 10 hours of meditation and instruction in the Vipassana style. It has had a very strong effect on me and now I'm back in the "real" world I'm trying to keep up the daily meditations and general attitude of being aware and equanimous.

I've been here nearly a month and I still don't want to go, definitely the best place I've visited so far in India.

Any other pertinent information? I haven't drank alcohol now for over a month which is the longest period of abstentation since I finished uni (ten years ago now). I haven't missed it at all, India is a great place to be teetotal (well, apart from Goa). I also quit the smokes when I arrived in this town, again, I haven't missed them, in fact its great to be without that constant feeling of self-disgust. I've been travelling now for nearly a year but it seems like just in the last few weeks I'm being transformed, hopefully into a better person.

Don't worry though, I'm not going to come back wearing all-white robes and calling myself the Enlightened One.

Remember, there is no spoon.

Iddly, dosa and black sludge

Stilll in Madras. Its very hot today. I tried to walk to the museum but gave up. I think crossing over the incredibly stinky river finished me off. So, what do people eat for breakfast here? There seems to be two favourites. One is the dosa, basically a big pancake, folded over with something spicy inside, served with a small bowl of curry sauce and one of curd. Usually I've got a masala dosa which has spicy mashed potato inside. The other main one is the iddly, which is basically a big soft savoury cake thing served in a curry sauce. Sometimes they throw in a donut shaped piece of bread too. Sometimes there is a rice and curry combo available. Lunchtime is the main eating time, a lot of cafes (and most seem to be just vegetarian, every eating establishment is proclaimed as being veg or non-veg) serve "meal" between about 11am and 2pm, which involves a banana leaf, a big pile of rice, some types of curry and a samba (sauce) poured on to the rice. It is eaten by mixing with the fingers and then shoved into the gob. I've not found any eating place that could be called relaxing, most a big utilitarian cafe type scenarios where the service is fast, the bill comes before you've finished eating and you're out the door before you know it. This is all in the south of India, I'll soon be finding out what the north is like as I'm heading up to Delhi tonight. Anyhow, I can sort of see now why Goa is so appealing, as things definitely were a lot more relaxed there.

Black stream of sludge which passes for a river in Chennai

Fruit juice and chipmunks

Just had an amazing lassi, there are loads of fruit juice cafes here. In Madras(Chennai) at the moment. Its dirty, busy, it stinks and there's people all over the place, sleeping on the street, washing their kids in the gutter and so on. For some reason I kind of like it though, its the most full-on Indian place I've been to yet. Only yesterday I met a man who was walking a chipmunk on a string leash. Street scene in Chennai: Honk honk!

Tomorrow I'm going up to Delhi (3hr flight - trains are booked up solid for the next month), then taking a train up to Pathankot to get to Dharamsala, the new home of the exiled Tibetan people. I wouldn't have minded the 40-hour train journey, but it seems I was highly naive in my "lets wing it and just rock up to the station to buy tickets on the day". I should have learned my lesson from China. The other travellers I've met here seem to be following quite a highly planned itinery, booking all their train tickets and accomodation several weeks in advance. What a bore to do all that though, you might as well be in work.

From the beach to some big red rocks

Namaste. Just a mini blog as the internet is unpredictable here (powercuts and the like). I arrived in Goa airport last wednesday about 5am, and took a taxi to Benaulim, which seemed like a quiet, reltaively undeveloped place from my guidebook and not too far from the airport. It was ok for a few days, but I'm not much of a beach person at the best of times, and there was not much to do apart from wander down the beach, back up again and then sit in the few bars that were open at night time. Hardly any tourists there, so most of the town was looking pretty bored. I have this impression that Goa is just a big beach resort. Nice and relaxed but thats about it. Had curries and Chinese food mostly, cheap (about 80-100 rupees for a curry and rice and a nan, so about 2 pounds). Anyway, I was half deciding whether to just go back home, but I thought I might as well travel around India a bit.

Fishing boat, Benaulim beach, Goa

So today I'm in Hampi, which was an 8 hour train ride from Goa's Margao station. From the train I could see forests, open grassland, a few small settlements, and miles and miles of agricultural areas (paddy fields, bananas, coconuts). Not a very heavily populated part of the country. Hampi is a very small town, basically catering for tourists who come to see the ruins of what used to be a great Hindu city here. There's some nice little walks up on top of hills with various ruins scattered around and lots of monkeys. Not done much today, I walked along the river here watching the Hindu people bathing in the water and carrying out various religious ceremonies. Been chatting to a Kiwi bloke most of the day, we're going to meet up later and find the one bar in this town that supposedly serves alcohol...

Cows mooching by temple ruins, Hampi

Next place I'm going is Mysore, further down south. It is of interest to me as the main ashtanga yoga training centre is there; Unfortunately I don't have a reservation (you need to book a month in advance and it was way out of my budget), so I'm just going to do the usual thing of wandering around aimlessly taking random photos.

Inventory for India

This might be a bit boring, or interesting, who knows. I'm getting pre-flight jitters and it helps me to type stuff.

On my first outing I took a 50L Quechua rucksack, which was packed with mostly outdoors stuff for New Zealand:
2 shirts (including one quick-drying one)
1 pair quick drying walking trousers
1 pair running shorts (mainly for doing yoga)
1 sunhat
2 pairs of pants
3 pairs socks, including 2 thick walking socks
1 pair North Face sandals
1 mountain hardware jacket
1 Peter Storm rain coat
1 Quechua lightweight sleeping bag
1 silk sleeping sack
1 micro fibre fleece
1 large micro fibre towel and one small one (I cut the large one in half, I lost the small one)
camera, mp3 player, phone, and the various leads and adaptors to plug them into computers and wall sockets
A four-section toiletries bag (one of the ones that can be hung one the wall) with shower gel, razors, malaria tablets, water purifying solutions, plasters, toothpaste, travel toothbrush, mosquito repellant (50% DEET), sunblock
sketchbook, notepad, pens, pencils
New Zealand and South East Asia guidebooks
1 canvas shoulder bag to use as a day bag
Plastic cup and camping cutlery set
Wind-up torch and head lamp
Spare glasses (never used) and a shitload of contact lenses (hardly used them, ended up throwing most of them away)
Compass (it now does not point north but south - not much use, although it came in handy several times for orientation)

It all came to about 20kg

And I was wearing a shirt, underwear, socks, quick drying walking trousers and some Merrel hiking shoes

Well eventually I abandoned all the shirts in favour of t-shirts which I picked up along the way. I just couldn't be arsed trying to look smart. T-shirts just feel a lot more comfortable against the skinI find in hot weather than shirts. Also one of the trousers went in favour of shorts, all the thick socks went, I went through several hats, swapped the guidebooks for novels, never used the purification tablets, the sandals broke so I got some flip flops and wore them most of the time, the other shoes really hurt my feet after a while and I went through three pairs of other shoes. I also bought a small backpack for going on day hikes, as the canvas bag didn't last five minutes, although I used my main bag for big walks in New Zealand. The silk sleeping sack was supposed to protect me from bed bugs but I hardly used it, it wasn't that comfy to sleep in and got ripped easily, it was most useful as a sleeping bag liner when staying in huts in NZ as my main sleeping bag was woefully under powered. I ahd to buy some other stuff for hiking in NZ as well, such as a warm hat, gloves, camping stove attachment and a set of pots. I hardly used the fleece outside of NZ, except on buses/trains/planes with crazy AC on, and in the north of Thailand. The travel toothbrush went mouldy so I bought a new one in a 7-eleven in Saigon. The head lamp got broken in my bag, however the wind-up torch I used a few times. I also came back with a yoga mat which I bought in Indonesiam, and an umbrella which I picked up in Japan.

The most important thing for clothes is to wear stuff which is comfortable and which dries quickly, it really sucked in Japan having wet clothes from the rain and not being able to dry stuff due to the humidity.

As I'm just going to Asia this time I'm taking a lot less, got it all in a 28L Tofana bag.
2 t-shirts, both quite thin so they'll dry quickly
1 slightly smarter polo-type t-shirt for hanging around in bars
1 shirt, a very thin O'Neill one
the same yoga shorts and fleece as before
2 pairs shorts
2 pairs pants
2 pairs thin socks
1 pair flip flops
1 pair North Face trekking shoes (in case I go up to the Himalayas - anything else I need I'll have to buy/rent up there)
yoga mat
camera, alarm clock
note book, pens, Goa guidebook (probably the first thing to get chucked), copy of Midnights Children by Salman Rushdie
umbrella, emergency poncho, torch
travel toothpaste, toothbrush (a normal one!), mossie repellant, sunblock, water purification tablets

The main things which have gone are the jackets and the sleeping bag. I'm quite happy that I've got enough stuff to wear and survive (not that I need a yoga mat to survive... well it helps my mental survival) and yet can carry my bag for long distances if needs be.

I'll probably think of something else to write in a minute...

Back in the UK (for a bit)

Its been a while... I suppose I should start from where I left off. Linda and me travelled from Hong Kong to Beijing, where we did a dodgy tour to the great wall which included a diversion to a Chinese medical centre, had a walk around the back lakes, Forbidden palace and had hot pot (huo guo) by one of the hutongs (old-style streets). It was hot, humid, and very busy. Chinese people don't like to queue, the worst thing was taking the subway when everyone would try to get onto the train at once without letting anyone get off. I dreaded it. Still, the subway, food, drink and cigs were all very cheap so we were trying not to complain too much.

On our first day, we braved Beijing train station to get train tickets for Xi'an. The tickets are sold in a huge hall with lots of ticket booths, all of which had long lines (okay, so they queue up sometimes). We found the only "tourist" window (i.e. which had someone who could speak English) and managed to get some hard-seat tickets for the 12 hour trip (no sleeper berths available). When the time came to get the train, we showed up at the station 2 hours early. Passengers have to wait in this large hall for the gates to the platform to open, and the waiting room for our platform was already chocka with people, sitting, standing, sleeping on the floor like in an airport. When the gates were about to open, there was a huge rush of people trying to get through, it was absolutely crazy, and we couldn't understand why all these people, most of whom had reserved seats on the train, where fighting each other to get in. Turned out that a lot of people only had standing tickets, so we had a less than pleasant journey on a very packed train. I had an aisle seat and at one point I had one man sleeping on my shoulder and another with his head on my knee.

After that we just took buses which were fine, and a lot easier to get tickets for. Xi'an was a lot quieter than Beijing, although not especially pleasant or interesting to wander around. We visited the immortal sages temple and nearby market, which was cool, and rode a tandem around the city walls, which was probably the nicest thing we did in China. Rather than take a tour to the Terracotta warriors we found out where to get the public bus, which leaves outside the front of the train station. We got to the museum site pretty early and it was great having the place virtually to ourselves, the warriors were amazing, the scale of the place has to be seen to be believed. Its also amazing that the main pit has only been half excavated to date and they still don't know all of what's down there. We took a sleeper bus from Xi'an to Shanghai, which looked like the ones I'd used in Vietnam with the three rows of bunks.

Rather than stay in Shanghai we took a train to Suzhou, which is famous in China for its system of old canals. Its a very picturesque place to wander around, although actually quite dull. The most interesting thing I did there was to get up at 6am and go to the nearby park, where, as I hoped, there was lots of elderly Chinese people doing Tai Chi (er, I didn't hope they were elderly but you know what I mean). I had a go myself, but as I haven't had many lessons I felt a bit silly doing it in front of Chinese people who had probably been doing it their whole lives. Its quite a special thing to watch to old ladies shadow boxing under a tree.

We got a bit annoyed with the hostel we stayed at in Suzhou (Ming Han Tan), the only Chinese food on the menu was fried rice, which I usually love but this had half a litre of oil floating on the plate. Meanwhile the staff where on the next table having a huge Chinese banquet. Not that I was expecting that, its just a bit frustrating when they can obviously cook all this nice food for themselves but give the guests such shite. A similar thing happened in the next place we stayed, in Hangzhou (Tour An hostel). The problem with both places is that there was not much in the way of places to eat nearby and we were hungry when we showed up. Breakfast was out of the question too, I think we had a pot noodle for breakfast nearly everyday. Actually I started to grow to like that. The range of pot noodles you can get in the Far East is pretty impressive. I had fun trying to translate the Chinese characters on the top - soon I could tell what "flavour" I was letting myself in for - Beef, shrimp, chicken etc.

The best place we stayed was the 7 Sages hostel in Xi'an, the staff were great (staff in the other hostels were not interested in helping at all), the food was good too (breakfast and dinner), they had a guitar (sweet) and the place is set in a very cool looking old Chinese army barracks with the typical round entrances to get in to different courtyards. The only weird thing was the room - the shower and toilet were separated from the rest of the room only by glass, so it was a bit voyeuristic when one of us was on the loo.

Hangzhou was a bit boring, there is a nice big lake but unfortunately it was perpetually swamped with yellow baseball cap wearing Chinese tourists. We weren't too sad to leave, and it was actually really nice when we got back to Hong Kong. Just the general mannerisms of people and the way they behave to each other, like letting people get off the subway trains first and so on. We celebrated by getting hammered.

My original plan for China was to travel to Guillin and Yangshuo, across to Yunnan province then up to Chengdu and maybe into Tibet. There were some major difficulties with that, not only the weather (the worst floods China has had for years) but also getting into Tibet sounded like an expensive nightmare. In the end I decided to go to the airport with Linda (she had a flight booked, I did not) and try to get on her plane. It turned out that there was still some seats left so I thought, why not, and next thing I'm back in London.

So I've been bumming around Manchester for the past few weeks, helping a friend move house, trying to sell stuff online, and catching up with people. One of our friends has had a baby, another one has managed to get her ex-partner out of her house and is much happier. Linda and me went camping in Malham, Yorkshire, which has some amazing scenery but was very cold and wet. We also had a day out to Southport, which has the biggest beach I've ever seen - big as in you can't see the sea its that far away.

I think I was just tired of the travelling but I'm getting itchy again now, the options are either get a job or go off travelling again. I think I'll regret it if I don't go to India, as I don't know what my situation with regards to holidays will be like in the future, and its definitely a place I'll want to spend some time in. Considering I'm a vegetarian and a yoga nut, it seems crazy that I didn't just go there first (but then I had no idea about Asia or most other countries then). I lodged my application for an Indian visa yesterday, I think after I go there I'll be ready to stop moving for a while and get my head down.

Alright, next time I'll put some more pictures up for people who aren't on facebook!

Rob