Today, we took time off from our Arunachal Pradesh quest to visit a national park – and what a park. Kaziranga is perhaps not the best known park in the world, but for us it ranks among the top attractions in India – it even counts as one of the major highlights of this whole [...]
We both woke up at 3:30 AM and looked at the dawn-lit windows of our hotel room.
“Funny, it’s daybreak already”, said Jaime.
“Yeah, weird, it was light already at 2:30!”, I replied.
Next thing we knew, the alarm went off at 4:30. We looked out through the still dawn-lit windows. Our early sunrise was the front porch light.
Moving on . . .
Personal space means one thing to us and something all together different to Indians. When I board a bus at home (San Francisco), I hope that the empty seat next to me stays empty. It’s not because I’m antisocial (no, no – of course not). It’s because I like my space, especially on public transportation. I’m sure we all feel that way. Right?
Anyway, knowing this about me, you can imagine how much patience – how many happy places – I need to find to travel on buses in India. I’ll give you an example. Today we took a public bus from the Kaziranga National Park to Tezpur, a short two hour ride. All the normal seats were full when we boarded, so we sat in the front with the driver – and four other people.
Before you start feeling bad for us (it’s not time for that yet), let me explain the lay-out of the driver’s area. The cab is divided into three sitting areas, built to seat three people, maybe four if they’re tiny. The driver occupies one area. The second area is a bench that lines the passenger-side door. The third is a platform that fills the space between these two.
OK – still with me? Good. Now, we climbed into this space and shared the door-bench with a man who was so thin I was afraid he’d drift away. So, no problem fitting the three of us on the door. There was a man squeezed behind the driver and the middle section had just one man on it and. So we were good, right?
Right!
For five minutes. Then, just when I start thinking we’ll ride in comfort, the bus pulls over in the middle of nowhere to pick up another passenger. This is when our luck ran out. Into the drivers compartment rolled (how do I put this lightly?) a rotund man. The middle platform was now full of this man, some of which was drooping onto our knees.
Clearly he could feel us spearing his side – I checked and I could neither see my knee cap nor get a good estimate of how far it was into his side. Three inches is my best guess. Did this man adjust, wiggle or politely ask if we could move (though we quite literally could not)?
No. He actually leaned into us. Once to read the newspaper on the Thin Man’s lap and a second time to use our knees as some kind of messed up backrest.
How did the other man in the middle-bench react to such liberal use of personal space? Like a champ. He simply went from a sitting position to curling up into Martin’s lap to make a phone call. Never mind the invasion of my personal space. Life is good when your Scandinavian husband has an Indian man curled up in his lap.
***I have to apologize for the quality of the picture on this one. Its noteasy catching anything while drving in an Indian bus
“Stop talking poo-poo kah-kah from your mouth hole.”
-said after I said something totally brilliant (memory doesn’t serve what it was, but I’m sure it was brilliant)
We’ve been pretty lax about featuring Bacon on this blog lately, so it wasn’t much of a surprise to find our proud Swine at the keyboard today, chopping away at a post of his own.
He is a multi-talented pig, our pig.
If I were to be completely honest, I’d have to say that wearing anything other than a Muumuu is impractical. The Muumuu, or Muum as I like to call it, is the world’s greatest outfit.
You name me one other piece of clothing that you can wear while sleeping, running errands, cooking, throwing a dinner party (with the aid of a belt, of course) or lounging around a pool? I say nay! You cannot.
I have a fine collection of Muums at home (insert Martin’s embarrassment here). Five, if memory serves. With any luck today (mostly if Martin takes a nap this afternoon) it will be six. It seems that women in northern India share my love of the Muum – I’ve seen some fine specimens for sale in the markets here.
So, the top thing on today’s agenda is lulling Martin to sleep while I dream of billowy shapeless dresses in awful patterns.
Once upon a time I made a video reenactment of my experience in a Dharamsala yoga class. I put it on Youtube so I could share it on our blog. It’s since been watched over 150 times, with varying reactions. I will make no excuses for the video, but I will leave you with the words of three people that hated it so much, they just had to share:
“Yeah!..what a shame you find a 6000 year old science, that I have personally seen having amazing health benefits on children with autism, people re-generating their spines after serious accidents, asthmatics and degenerative diseases, is considered so hilarious. Maybe one day you’ll rediscover it and take this rather offensive clip off the web…..”
“Just because you preface by saying that this video is not meant to offend, does not mean that you don’t offend by your flippant attitude toward this very spiritual, sacred act. Fortunately, most practitioners of this ancient art who recognize what you are doing have better things to do on the planet, than to be offended by this.”
“Good for entertaining friends and family. And I don’t agree with the sanctimoniousness of the other comments. But sloppy observation leads to bad parody. It’s just not funny, sorry.”
What do you all think?
It looks like we are going to get our permit to Arunachal Pradesh after all! It’s been a process long in the making, to say the least. I am going to post a how-to here, for the benefit of other travelers hoping to do visit that far-flung corner of the planet.
First of all: if I knew what I know now, I’d try to get the permit arranged at the FRRO office in Kolkata. We did try Kolkata but thought it’d be faster to arrange it here in Guwahati, as the Holi festival was going to keep the branch shut down for a couple of days. Not so: Arunachal Pradesh permits are only available through an agency here – the Arunachal House refused us point blank.
So you need an agent. Our agent, who works part time at the Arunachal House office, visited us at our hotel at six o’clock in the evening. We had coffee in the restaurant, where we laid out our travel plans. He OK’d all our destinations, except for Changlang, made a few phone calls and that was it. The permit should be ours a few days later. Oh we had to pay a bit for it too… 8500 rupees/190 USD, to be specific. That is a heap more than the quote in Kolkata (30 USD), but it’s not like we can backtrack there and do it all over again.
The permit should arrive via email on Friday. We’re keeping every finger available crossed.
“Being married to you is not like an endless litany of sorrows.”
-said during a game we play in which we try to find the most non-committal way of saying that we love each other
Well folks, this traveling by the Seat of Our Pants has been great, but there comes a time when some planning needs to take place. We have some big flights in our future and needed to get them booked while we could still afford them.
So the credit card is rip-roaring hot from all the cyber-swipes, but we are now officially booked through the end of our trip. You can check out our itinerary here:
Germany
March 24 – 29, 2010
Sweden
Sangis: March 29 – April 29, 2010
Stockholm: April 29 – May 4, 2010
London
May 4 – May 10, 2010
Turkey
May 10 – June 2, 2010
New York, New York (for Jaime’s awesome sister’s graduation from Vet school)
June 3 – 14
Home? Where’s home again?
San Francisco: June 14, 2010 – ?
San Diego: ?
For the fans of our willy-nilly style of travel I should point out that we still plan on having no plan, if that makes any sense. We don’t know where we’re going tomorrow, for example. Or for the rest of our time for India for that matter. We have absolutely no idea what we’re going to do in Turkey, we just know we really wanted to go there. So SeatOfOurPants.com will still be doing what we do best – meandering – the only difference being that we have flight dates to stick to now.
To tell you the truth, it’s a pretty good feeling knowing exactly when we’ll arrive in the next five countries we’re visiting (Germany, Sweden, the UK, Turkey and the US) Up next, trying to figure out what we’re doing tomorrow.
BTW: the above picture was taken in our apartment in San Francisco. We were buying our first flight for this trip. Ah, memories.
Guwahati is the capital of Assam, and pretty much unavoidable if you wish to travel in India’s north east. It is a convenient hub with most of the mod cons (espresso, okay restaurants and travel agents). It also picks up a few points for its scenic location by the mighty Brahmaputra river. Other than that, there aren’t many more positives to list: it is a dusty, dirty and congested city.
Having said that, it is an interesting experience for another reason: you hardly see any other westerners here. Beside the stares (of which there are plenty), you can expect people to be interested in who you are and what you are doing here. Some will even go out of their way to be seen next to you – westerners are a novelty!
Still, after four days here it feels like it’s about time we move on. Now, if only that Arunachal permit would come through…
This actually qualifies as entertainment in Guwahati: bring your best friend, lock yourselves into a transparent bubble, zip it closed and commence splashing around on an artificial pool.
As the late Hunter S. Thompson used to say, “Buy the ticket, take the ride.”
“Alright, that’s it! From now on, I’ll be doing the thinking.”
-said after I lead us into a dead-end street in Bagan, Myanmar
When your backpack has space enough for exactly three outfits, you learn to mix and match with abandon. Martin’s pair of coral-colored pants (a laundry accident in KL months ago) and a blue striped shirt work perfectly together. Of course they work!
When you have only one black shirt, which everyone knows goes with everything, you wear it until you can hardly bear your own scent – then you launder. We began this trip with a bottle of detergent, thinking we would wash our own clothes. We’ve abandoned that idea all together at this point. Almost all the hotels/guesthouses/hostels offer laundry service.
Keep in mind, though, that laundry service means different things in different place. In Laos, for example, I turned in a big bag of smelly clothes to my guesthouse proprietor. I found her an hour later, on her knees, hand scrubbing my underwear. Harsher treatment is also sometimes used. In Ladakh we saw our laundry being stomped on in the local river.
We just had most of our clothes laundered by our hotel here in Guwahati, India. They were returned to us, clean, pressed and individually wrapped in paper. Are we feeling fancy? Heck yes we are. I just might wear my best outfit tonight – you know, the one I wasn’t wearing when I lost a little battle to a food bug.
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You know the term, “fly by the seat of your pants?” Well, that's been our philosophy for most of our adult lives – before and after meeting, falling in love and marrying. We're now taking that idea on a 14 month round-the-world trip. Follow us as we share the good, the bad and the downright nasty of life on the road.
