10 Days in India

It's a bit belated, but we made it to India! Merry Christmas and happy holidays!

Describing ten days in a country like India is a tall order, and if I were to recount even half of what we've seen it would be far too exhausting to think about. So please know that it will be a struggle for our blog posts to do our travels justice.

We've been mainly in Delhi the past week, the capital of India and the queen of in-your-face. Shortly after Liz and I arrived, we were joined by the one and only Alynn Evans, my dear friend from Colorado. If two pale blond westerners didn't stand out, three definitely does the trick.

Our home base was Main Bazaar in the Paharganj neighborhood of Delhi, a small but lively area that attracts a backpacker crowd. Here we drank lassi and masala chai, honed our haggling skills, and celebrated Liz's birthday and Christmas Eve at Sam's Cafe, on the rooftop cafe a few stories above the honking and chaos of the bustling street below. Our days in Delhi reminded me of the human capacity to adapt. My first day, I was in a dreamlike state of shock, with my brain running to keep up with all of the new stimuli. Yet just last night, we were walking around Main Bazaar, waving to shop owners and telling people we would be returning in a few weeks. streets that were congested death traps of bikes, cars, and rickshaws at first are now a breeze to walk, the sketchy dirt alley where we first got dropped off is now the familiar place where I buy my water, toilet paper, Internet access, and cell phone service.

India is good at making sure you never get too comfortable, though. Various extremes of poverty appear throughout the city, making your heart sink at unexpected intervals during each day. Touts yell as you walk in any popular place, telling you that your destination is closed, or wrong. You learn to acquire a certain self-awareness in order to not get ripped off or misled in Delhi. And if you use Indian transportation, prepare yourself for lots of crowds, and lots of waiting...

We spent the better part of our Christmas Day on a train to Agra. Our original train was cancelled, and we were given tickets in the non-reserved section, where people and goods are stacked to the ceiling. A three hour journey turned into seven, alternating who got to sit on a lap, the seat, or a sack. Our train back the next day was delayed as well, and we arrived to Delhi at 4:30am, instead of the scheduled 10pm. The endurance required to sit through these train rides would have been exponentially increased were it not for so many kind souls that we've encountered here. Confused as they were as to why we and a Spanish couple were boarding the unreserved section of the train, some people helped us to squeeze in and stow our bags. And on our sleepless night back to Delhi, the memory of how hard we were laughing with our new Indian friend Gaurav trumps how cold it was next to the pane-less window. (Oh yeah, the Taj Mahal in Agra was beautiful too.)

The people are just one of the qualities that make India worth traveling so far. There's also the food, the hectic markets, the glittering saris, the roaming cows, and the awe-inspiring holy sites.

Besides the good and the bad, there's the awkward, which includes getting photos taken of us and being asked to be in photos of strangers. There's also learning to eat with one hand and squatting to go to the bathroom when necessary.

Okay gotta go, Liz is getting carsick on the journey to Kollam.
More to come!

The End of an Era

You know it's time to leave Europe when...

You've used up all of the travel days on your eurail pass.
You're sick of bread.
You've gained 10 pounds. Or at least feel like it.
You've finally figured out how to flush all the toilets.
You remember to weigh your own veggies at the grocery store.
Impressive gothic architecture bores you.
You've tried eating nutella with every other food ever.
You've mastered military time.
You know how to say "road" and "thank you" in a dozen languages.
You own at using a gas stove. And you can survive without a microwave.
You remember to use dd/mm format.
You've forgotten the taste of peanut butter. And good Chinese food...and a whole bunch of other items you've started a list of.

But mostly, it's time to leave Europe when you have plane tickets to India.

I still cannot believe the places I've found myself this semester: swinging over Berlin, wandering the streets of Venice, swimming in Icelandic thermal baths in the dead of night. It's difficult to wrap my head around this whole gap year experience even now. Liz and I were discussing this over a plate of ravioli the other night at dinner. "It's like...walking into a candy shop," she said. "And there's all these candies of every color all over the place. And you buy a few, and you leave the store with your little bag. You're happy about the candy you bought. But what you really wish you had was the excitement you felt when you walked into the store and saw it all right there in front of you."

It must be a necessary human flaw, this inability to capture a heap of experiences and emotions in one neat package at any given time. It would flood the senses, overload the brain, pull the heart in a million directions at once. As our three and a half month segment of travel comes to a close, I am endlessly grateful to face this threat of overwhelm. There are moments of clarity, when I look at my life on trains, with strangers, and in a backpack, and the overwhelm is nothing but sweet near-disbelief.

Liz and I leave for India tomorrow. We are ready to leave Europe, it has grown familiar and similar. (Though now that our last day here is coming to a close, we're getting rather nostalgic. Its like our own little finals period.) Still, we crave new and unknown. We are ready to be shocked with color and spice and chaos. What I really just want to say is ADSKLJDBAKEJBSKBFKJ OMG WE'RE GOING TO INDIA!!!

To wrap up some of our loose ends:
..Thank you to whoever has been reading our blog. We don't always know who you are but it means a lot to know that there are people interested in our journey.
..wifi in India is not going to be as ubiquitous or as reliable as it has been in Europe. We will continue to update, but it may not be as frequent or prompt.
..we have plane tickets home now! Yay!

Now that business and philosophizing is out of the way, please enjoy the following pictures of our last day in Europe. It was lovingly spent along the canals of Venice. What a magical city, with its ability to transport you to a different time period, and a maze of streets that confused even Liz.

Not All of Italy is Bad

Our next stop was Florence. We had a failed attempt at couch surfing in the beginning so our first night was spent in a hostel. I spent most of the night on the phone with my credit card company trying to activate a card so it was a frustrating but successful night, made better by the fact that we bought a whole Panetonne that I nommed on while I was on hold. Panetonne is a lovely European Christmas cake that comes in a trapezoidal box and is sold in every grocery store. It is packed with dry fruit but is not as dense as a fruit cake. As our time in Europe is coming to a close, we have been trying to sample all of the food that is "classic" European and this certainly counts as one of them.

Seeing the Cathadrale Santa Maria at night was probably my favorite thing we did in all of Florence. We turned the corner while looking for dinner one night and there it was. Quite honestly, it looks fake. It looks like it is a set for a play, a mere facade that will tumble with the slightest weight. I cannot even describe to you the surrealness of it because in pictures it looks real. In person however it is so impressive and decorated that your brain has no choice but to believe it is being tricked.

I said that the Cathadrale was my favorite thing but I might have to take that back. Why? Because I love food. We had in Florence my favorite meal on this trip so far. We went to Da Ganino, a place described on trip advisor as perfect for "a tired travelor who wants a great meal at a reasonable place to rest your head for the next day." And it was just that. It was dimly lit with a warm and cosy atmosphere and exactly what we needed. Their ravioli was indeed to die for, picture this: potato ravioli with pumpkin cream sauce in sage butter sprinkled with amaretto. And meatballs stewed in cinnamon and covered in homemade marinara sauce. That's right, be jealous. To top it off we finished with a heavenly cheesecake with fresh cut strawberries. Everything about the meal was perfect.

Florence as a whole however, was a fairly uneventful city for me. Sick to death of paying for famous sites, I opted out of seeing Michelangelo's David and going to the museum Uffizi. Instead I spent my time wandering the streets of Florence and frequenting various bookstores to read. Alexis assured me that David was an impressive site and I have no doubt that it was, but along our travels I've realized that in general I prefer wandering a city to paying to see sites that people tell me are famous and fabulous. Not to say I don't like museums, I like them too, but with only so much time in each city I prefer to see the streets. The streets are especially fabulous now because almost every window display is decorated for Christmas. We won't get much of a Christmas atmosphere in India so this is it for us.

I suppose not all of Florence was boring. An epic, wonderful, life altering event has happened! That's right folks! Put it in your calendars, tell it to your neighbors, we bought our flights home! We will be gracing the US with our presence on March 21st! In addition to that we purchased our flights to Nepal, Bangkok and Tokyo! It only took an hour on the phone in a cafe and a considerable sum of money but we did it. Now if we can just get through Europe...

Cheers,

Liz

When in Rome

When recovering from a nasty bout of sickness, one must take time to rest and recuperate in a quiet, clean space. In which case one should not go to Rome. Lesson #648292 learned the hard way.

We arrived to Termini station after another lengthy session of train travel, and walked to our hostel. We had heard horror stories of budget accommodations here with wires hanging out of the walls, and luckily ours wasn't quite so bad. However, Rome (and Italy in general) is not built for the backpacker crowd. On top of overpriced lodgings, the city tax kills the wallet, which, yes, if you must ask, is looking a little thin these days as the Europe portion of our trip quickly comes to a close.

Slowly but surely we made the rounds to Rome's must-sees: the Colosseum, the Pantheon, the Trevi Fountain, various piazzas, the Vatican, the Sistine chapel. There's also the more important list of must-eats: freshly filled cannolis at the Ciuri Ciuri sicilian bakery, pasta at the restaurants out in the suburbs, super thin pizza when we wanted to stay in for dinner, panettone in honor of the holidays. While all of the above were impressive and enjoyable in theory, a mood of mingled frustration, underwhelm, exhaustion, and stir-craziness predominated during my time in Rome, signaling that I am very ready to leave Europe.

Luckily, after leaving hostel #1, traversing the city from literally one end to the other, and having a failed meet up with a couchsurfing host, Liz and I sought refuge at Thousand Sunny hostel. A bit outside the city center, Thousand Sunny was a place to breathe at last, interact with the nice Italian owners who made us pasta, and drink wine with the two Canadian kids who were staying there as well.

I can't say Rome was my favorite place, but if I can't go back at least I went. $

Love,
Alexis

Vacation In Southern France

So you may have noticed that we haven't posted in a while. No, it's not because we were just having too much fun, no, it's not because we've had no Internet. We have been wretchedly sick.

******WARNING THIS POST IS GRAPHIC**********

There has been some debate on what made us sick. There was a stomach bug going around the tiny village we were staying in. Our bodies were exhausted from too much drinking and doing in Barcelona so our immune systems were low. And the ringer, we went to an all you can eat sushi place our last night in Barcelona where we consumed massive amounts of raw fish. Maybe it was one of these things, maybe it was a combination, we'll never know. The result? We were virtually incapacitated for 6 days.

Our first day there was fine. We stayed with Victoria, a native Scot, living in southern France. We were supposed to be doing a work exchange where we help weed, garden and do other household chores. We started by raking an enormous amount of leaves to the garden and laying them over everything for the winter. The day left us sore because our muscles have been severely underused on this trip, but it was fulfilling. For lunch I had the pleasure of having fresh eggs from the chicken coop scrambled with fresh herbs I had picked from the garden. We were expecting the rest of the week to go relatively the same way, but the next day things began to go downhill. It had gotten really rainy so for our second day, our task was to clean and paint Paloma's (Victoria's daughter) radiator. After a few hours we stopped for lunch. I was really light headed and not feeling great. Alexis was feeling achy and sick. I attributed this to the fact that we had been painting for a few hours with no windows open. We champed it out and finished the radiator but it was the last push and then we both had to go take a nap. Waking up from the nap was pretty horrible. I knew right away I had a fever. I was shivery and achy but sweating at the same time. Alexis was in a similar position. We ate some dinner but we were not doing well so we retired early.

Now, when most people get digestive sick, they skirt around the details preferring to say "oh yes I had stomach problems." No. Both of us were up all night having diarrhea. Between night sweats, bouts of being freezing and having horrible painful diarrhea I was up all night. Alexis wasn't having the same temperature issues but she was up more often than I was. For the next 6 days I saw more of their tiny little bathroom than anything else in the house. My fever days were really shitty (pardon the pun) because not only was I shitting 10 minutes after every meal but I was achy and fevery doing it. Thank god the fever went away after about 2.5 days. After the fever had passed I could sleep again. Although I say sleep lightly because I was still waking up every night to have diarrhea at least once. Eventually we halted our intake of food almost entirely. I don't know if you've ever had the "pleasure" of shitting out your food while you can still taste it in your mouth but it loses its novelty quite quickly. Soon rice and stewed apples were the only things going into our body. And still we weren't getting better. And it wasn't nice diarrhea that came out quickly and watery. It was painful and an effort every time. It got to the point where I would be in tears wishing aloud quietly that this would be the last time. That it would be over quickly. But someone wasn't listening because it never was. Six days! Six days, Alexis and I could not stop shitting. Finally Victoria remembered that you can drink clay and it will stop up your system entirely. Yes folks, we were desperate enough. We drank green clay and water. It was quite putrid and chalky but I was willing to try anything. At this point it was the 6th day and we were feeling much better (but still not holding down food.) We were supposed to be going to Rome the next day but we were still too weak (if you remember it's essentially been 5 days since we've eaten anything so we were extremely drained). So we ended up having to go to Toulouse instead for a night to finish recovering. The train to Rome from Toulouse (and St. Jean de Paracol respectively) is 15 hours which is exhausting to a healthy person and near impossible for a weak one. After a night in Toulouse we did manage to make it to Rome which is where we are now. We are not fully recovered by any means. Our stomachs are shriveled and sad and I am still having random bouts of diarrhea but it is not nearly as violent or often as it used to be so I'm confident that our road to recovery, while slow, is almost completed. It better be too because we leave for India in 10 days!

I hope this wasn't too graphic for you. But I'll have you know, however uncomfortable these intimate details make you, they are nothing compared to how horrible and wretched we were for those few days and I hope that none of you can ever truly understand what I'm talking about.

Cheers,
Liz

Barcelona+

Alright folks, here they are: some additional Barcelona photos so you can stop wondering what happened apart from Thanksgiving struggles in the grocery store. Sorry about the lack of commentary, we have been ill/busy these days. Besides, Barcelona has some secrets she will surely keep for herself. You can't blog it all.

To all you kids in school: Best of luck during these busy weeks before break! I can't say I miss finals period, but I do envy how close to being home you are. Hang in there.

Love,
Alexis



Day 1. All you can sushi round 1

Enthusiastic Reunion

Parc Ciutadella

Barcelona mistake 27362

 

Cathedral

 

Needless to say we lost the key that night.

...and found it in a shoe the next morning.

 

 

What about her? says the man taking the photo

One of Kurt's friend from home who is studying abroad in Barcelona took us
bar hopping on Wednesday. The night produced some delightful pictures
of Kurt that will prove useful if we ever need to blackmail him. This photo
is from Chupitos, a blacklit bar devoted to serving creative and often flaming
shots.



Find what is out of place in this picture.

Atop Sagrada Familia

Basilica of Sagrada Familia, designed by Gaudí

 

 

Nope.
We rented bikes one day.

Parc Güell, also by Gaudí

Kebabs on the beach

 

La Rambla on a slow night

Parc Güell

Finally.

Last night, cheers.