Perusing: Lima and Nazca

While my recent accelerated updates have been a long overdue effort to get ready for my year-long absence from the U.S., I'm also quite excited about updating MD&R regarding my recent trip to Peru.

So, let me start with Lima. I had such a fabulous time in Lima. Staying with Meg's lovely family was great, and even though my (lack of) Spanish limited communication, we still managed to have a wonderful time, make friends, and have several lively conversations about vegetarianism.

Meg, Lauren, Mallory, Cici, Tessy, and myself bebopped around the city a lot. We actually went to Lima twice, both coming and going.

We toured a monastery, complete with catacombs; visited a fountain park with what boasted the world's tallest fountain; followed Violetta to the oldest bar in Lima for pisco; and generally just enjoyed everyone's company. It was nice to see Lauren and Meg after so long. It was also really nice to meet up with Meg's family and friends (who I adore). Here are some pictures from Lima:

The Pacific Ocean

A Franciscan Monastery

In front of the Peruvian flag, flying in the capital

BUT. Moving on. You're probably much more interested in Nazca and the famous Nazca lines. The Nazca people were an advanced civilization that lived in pre-Incan Peru. They were all wiped out presumably by some horrible weather that killed them because of an ecosystem imbalance caused by cutting down too many trees. Huh. Sounds familiar. But the Nazca people left behind these great mysterious lines in the desert. The lines have several figures drawn in them and can be seen from airplanes. No one is really sure what purpose these giant desert pictures serve, but theories abound ranging from astrology to olympic-style competitions to calendars.

Regardless, people flock from all over to look at these amazing feats of human construction, precision, and art to fly in tiny airplanes that seat six people, including two pilots. Here are some pictures from Nazca:

The humming bird. You can see it in the top part of the photo.

The astronaut. He's waving to you.

The man who watches you take off. He's in charge of the fire extinguisher. I guess there's a reason for that.

This is everyone from our plane in front of our plane. They had to weigh us beforehand and distribute the weight. Lovely.

And so...

Today's Meal: Pisco with Violetta, Tessy, and Sandra. Birthday cake with Cici. Explaining vegetarianism.

Today's Deal: Flying in the smallest airplane in the world. Learning that Meg's mother is nicknamed Michelle because she gets her hair done like Michelle Obama. (awesome)

Today's Reel: Everyone from Floyds Knobs inside a fountain tunnel in Lima

Destination: Horror. The art of low planning, low budget travel.

Why must I begin every post with apologies for tardiness? Sorry for the belated post.

Every so often, I try to get away from monotonous living and do something unexpected. My good friend Sarah feels the same. A couple years ago, we went on Operation Bear Shank (we like to give our trips nice titles), which was a camping trip through the Colorado Rockies and part of Utah. This year, we sat down one evening, pulled out a U.S. map and circled three places, promising ourselves we would drive to one of them the following morning.

Key West won; can you ever imagine why. While we did many wonderful things-- befriending ghost hunters, hustling smelly t-shirts, touring Hemingway's house, snorkleboozing, bullriding, carnival hopping, and eating the closest to Cuba Cuban food we've ever had--what I'd really like to talk about is living and traveling on an unemployed or student budget.

We gave ourselves a three hundred dollar cap for week. It sounded fair. The budget was for each of us, so really we had 600 dollars to spend on gas, food, and entertainment. It was a realistic goal, and we made it work.

Here are the things we did that made budget travel a success:

*Never paid for camping/hotels. If you camp at free locations with free parking, then you never pay expensive hotel bills.

*Asked questions. Just by asking questions, often you can find deals on tourist attractions, free swimming pools, or inexpensive or free meals. We also found the only free parking lot in Key West this way.

*Grocery shopped. A jar of peanut butter and a loaf of bread is less expensive than a single restaurant meal.

*Came prepared. We knew where we were headed, so we brought swim suits. We knew we'd be eating, so we brought a cooler with veggies and utensils. We knew we'd be sleeping, so we brought bedding.

Anyway.

Today's Meal: Delicious Cuban food. And lots of peanutbutter and hummus.

Today's Deal: Budget travel can include snorkel cruises and touring Hemingway's house when you cut out expensive hotels and meals.

Today's Reel: Hemingway's House

Agra's Breakfast Surprise

So, it's been awhile since I cared to update. I've very sorry to my limited, but dedicated, readers. If you wanted to hear about Nepal and northern India, I suppose now is the time.

Let me start. Northern India is beautiful. Nepal is beautiful. The Himalayas made me think I'd stepped into a dreamworld. From Darjeeling through Nepal, the Himalayas made up much of the background. They were incredible to see. We went to Calcutta's flower market, the Durga Temple, Mother Theresa's mission, tea farms, on a Nepali safari, canoed with at least 16 crocodiles, saw a mother/baby rhino pair, rode elephants, visited Buddhist monasteries, flew right past Mt Everest, climbed a mountain, went Himalayan paragliding, rowed down the Ganges, visited the Taj Mahal, toured the pink buildings in Jaipur, and finally looked at modern Indian master's paintings in Dehli. But you don't want to hear about all that.

What you probably wanted to hear about is how we mistakingly dropped $80 USD a piece on a meal one day. Scratch that, 80 on drinks. Drinks at breakfast. Impossible? I'd think so too. We were in Agra. 'We' consists of myself and the twins, Amelia and Bianca. For an early Christmas gift, their mother paid for them to stay at a very nice hotel. How nice? It's turned-down-sheets-shower-and-jacuzzi-everyroomhasabalconyviewoftheTajMahal nice. Naturally, they sneaked me in too, and we decided to celebrate our good fortune (after 18 plus hours on a bus and a long train ride) with mimosas for breakfast. Two a piece, in fact.

After a bit, the chef comes out. Was everything to our liking? Did we have any comments? Were we enjoying our complementary dosa?

Do they do this for every table? This place was really nice, so perhaps. But then, after our delicious meal, we looked at the bill. 12000Rs. That was the drink bill, food was separate. But surely they meant 12 hundred? No, 12 thousand. We called our waiter. Why were six drinks the equivalent of 240 USD?

Here was his answer: Last month, a french rockstar had been staying in the hotel. He only drank Dom Perignon, so now that was the only type of champagne they served. We were mortified. I'd never imagined I would get to even taste Dom Perignon in my lifetime, and here I was mixing it with orange juice for breakfast. (In my defense, they were delicious mimosas).

What choice did we have? We paid the bill, and ended the most expensive breakfast on the least expensive vacation I've ever been on.

Anyway.

Today's Meal: See above

Today's Deal: Being frugal throughout the trip pays off. Be ready for surprises.

Today's Reel: It had to happen.

Rabies, maybes, and monkey babies. Or everything rhymes in India.

We all know there are lots of animals on my campus, but lately they've gotten way more intense. I've nearly run into five different species of animals on my cycle within the last 24 hours.

These are close encounters with death, friends.

Or one of them was. Imagine a hoard of monkeys filling the entire road. When I began trying to stop and dodge the monkeys, I was upon them, swaggering my way through the crowd. Then, one monkey with a bright red butt and thirsty eyes barred its fangs and jumped straight at me.

Luckily, my earlier experience with dog attacks on cycles taught me a thing or two. So I screamed and zoomed away. Seriously, that's what you're supposed to do.

That was the most exciting one, although I did swerve through a herd of cows; good thing they move slowly. Other bicycle sightings include a sidewinder, birds, and cats. I haven't even seen cats on campus, but sure enough I swerved one with my cycle.

So, don't trust the monkeys.

Today's Meal: Riiiiiice.

Today's Deal: Getting to yoga is more and more dangerous.

Today's Reel: They'll getcha.

Some Remover of Obstacles

Recently India has become more intense in every way. Yoga has us attempting headstands; weekend trips are a given; some of my professors actually expect real school work; festivals take up every conceivable moment; and unfortunately large parts of Andhra Pradesh (and Karnataka) have flooded.

So, I've been some places. I've been to Warangal, Hampi, Ajinta, Ellora, and Arangabad.

Warangal is neat for a small town. It has a temple called the 1000 pillar temple which was carved from a single rock. The architecture is beautiful and the people there (who all thought we were Italian) blessed us for the Ganesha pooja. We also saw a fort a ways away which had an underground tunnel leading to the temple. Here's a picture of the 1000 pillar temple:


Hampi was abnormally beautiful. It seemed like everything there was carved from giant rock boulders that expanded across the entire landscape. We crossed the river by boat and spent time across from Hampi, bouldering mainly. It seems the rule of southern India is that the higher you climb a mountain, the more priests living in caves. Just an observation. One priest invited us in and explained our chakras in Hindi. Here he is:

Also, Hampi is very beautiful, like the people in this photo:

At night we were put up in some resort with a fake Rajistani village. This means four things: thali, fire dancing, mehindi, and camel rides. This also means that we had crazy-had-to-be-Japanese-because-they're-so-complex showers. It's rare to say I've been sprayed from six places at once.

Finally, Ajinta, Ellora, and Arangabad proved to be some of the most impressive, oldest places I've been. They're old caves which were hollowed out and used by Buddhists, Jains, and Hindus. Some of the caves were as old as 200 BC. They were forgotten until a British man stumbled upon them one day. Now they're part of the world heritage project. Here is a picture of my favorite:


Anyway...

Today's Meal: Thali. Lots of Thali.

Today's Deal: I have fabulous travel companions.

Today's Reel: Buffalo in front of Hampi's most famous temple.

Auroville Belongs to Nobody in Particular

For those of you who love communes, I went to Auroville last week. It's an intentional community with a huge gold plated room for a crystal in the center. The buildings are then laid out to imitate the layout of the universe. It was run by this lady called "The Mother." I now have two bumper-stickers of her eyes on my sitar case. They follow you.

Here is a picture of their center:


The community was interesting. I liked that it was a universal community whose land was cultivated from a dry desert into a kind of tropical forest. They had a nice organic store there, and the architecture differed greatly from the surrounding palm leaf houses.

They'll even let you stay, if you have 10,000 Euro in your bank account.

I would just live around outside it, I think. Auroville is right outside of Pondicherry, the french quarter of India. People there only speak French and Tamil. My English and limited Hindi were borderline useless.

But, we had a great time at the beach and shopping and eating at bakeries and french restaurants. These guys think we're crazy for burying people in sand:


Other fun in Pondicherry includes general vacation fun. Also an elephant blessed me outside a temple. This entailed me putting a rupee in the elephant's trunk and the elephant bopping me on the head with its trunk. Blessed. Bam.

To illustrate:


In short:

Today's Meal: French/Italian/Indian cuisine with some port for dessert

Today's Deal: Who knew they speak so much French in India?

Today's Reel: Lucia enjoying elephants at the temple

Beauty Dies Where Litter Lies

August 15th is India's Independence Day. Things were really fun here. Apparently, most Indians celebrate by eating lots of food with their friends and family (pretty much July 4 sans fireworks). However, I got to enjoy some celebrations on campus, thanks to Khaiser, my peer tutor.

The vice chancellor of the university took Independence Day as an opportunity to give a political speech inspiring action and political knowledge. It was really interesting to hear the future-oriented tactics he used. In the U.S. it seems small scale Independence Day speeches focus on the history of the day and perhaps tie in a future-focused comment.


But, after the speech there were dances. There were dances by the children from the University School; there were dances from the kids from the university's slum. Actually, I took this as an occasion to be surprised once more at the readiness with which people use the term slum. Just an observation.

The dances and songs were followed by a performance by the environmental activist group. They were trying to get people to stop littering. (Nearly everyone in India litters. On more than one occasion, when I've asked for a bin, I've been instructed to toss it out the window.) So naturally, we donned picket signs and marched to shop com (the affectionate slang for shopping complex) and began to pick up trash.

At this point I was thinking that the students in Hyderabad really knew how to utilize national holidays to get things done. But where was the party?

The party, it turns out, was by a fire, on a giant boulder, past a winding path in the jungle, outside of peacock lake. Let's just say that English students are lots of fun in every culture, and that I can't hang out with Indian students without hearing some "my heart will go on", "summer of '69", and this time "twinkle twinkle little star." And, if ever there was a time to hear overly zealous interpretations of Monty Python skits, Independence Day would be the time.

Today's Meal: Fusion 9 pasta with intense chocolate birthday cake

Today's Deal: Boulder parties and peacock night hikes

Today's Reel: Khaiser, Kate, Cecilia, Sarah, and myself respectively with our signs and brooms