"Even the nice hotels in India are a little ghetto."

Catching up on some pictures from Varanasi first, post follows.These are the musicians from the classical music performance on New Year's Eve.

Beautiful silk being sewn at the silk factory.

The stupa near the place where Buddha gave his first sermon in Sarnath.

The Bodhi Tree (or an offspring thereof) -- the tree under which Buddha sat and meditated.

Boat on the Ganga with very colorful clothes drying. People do their washing in the Ganga, which seems unwise. However, I love all the colors!

We have decided on partial list of what makes a hotel in India nice, since today, we're staying (for half the day and no night, weirdly) in the nicest one we've been in so far. So, a nice hotel has: a space heater, hot water that does not run out mid-shower, towels, soap, toilet paper, a curtain to separate the shower from the toilet, and a shower set up in such a way that the entire bathroom floor does not end up wet (only half of it does), and meat that appears to be safe to eat. Most of these, I'm noticing, revolve around bathrooms. :) However, since this is India, even a nice hotel has to have a weird touch, evidenced by the photo below -- that's a tub under the AC unit coming out of our room. Silliness.Anyways, yesterday (while we were still in Agra, in a less nice hotel than today -- no hot water), Mu felt better and we were able to go see the Taj Mahal! It's really as amazing as everyone says, and we took loads of photos (only a few of which I'm including here -- you all know what the Taj Mahal looks like, I assume, and there are better photographers than us). It's really much cooler in person than in pictures, though -- so grand and majestic from a distance, and amazingly detailed work up close. The mausoleum, which is considered sacred and thus photos are not allowed, has very delicate-looking marble carvings, which is hard to imagine were done without computer aid. The inlay work is also quite impressive, with flowers and different geometric shapes and things, all identical and perfectly symmetrical. It's really a work of art, plus an amazing display of arrogance on the part of Shah Jahan, the Mughal emperor who thought up the whole thing. I mean, how, in the 1600s, does one envision that such a thing is possible, and then find people to carry it out? Anyways, we were impressed.Some of the amazing detail work

The rest of the day was spent lazing about, as Mu was still recovering. I had an interesting conversation with the owner (?) of the internet cafe, which ranged in topics from what is meant by "karma" (it means "action" and there are 3 categories -- from intelligence, passion, or ignorance) to his travels (in the 70s, he spent 6 months driving from India to Germany with a random woman from Tucson who he met while she was traveling in India herself) to the tiger sponsored by Bill Clinton at the park we went to today (after sending it money for years, Clinton asked for a photo. At this point, the park officials realized they couldn't find the tiger, or 22 others, who had apparently been poached.). I also ate more yummy food at the hotel restaurant (I did not eat anywhere else in Agra, weirdly enough -- everything was either too far for me to want to go alone, or there were aggressive shop owners outside and I didn't want to encourage them), played video games, and was otherwise lazy. It was nice, for the most part.

This morning, we cancelled our train and hired a car to take us to Ranthanbore Park, where we would go on a safari. Because this is the foggy season, trains have been super late. This mostly doesn't matter for us, but today, we didn't have that much leeway between the train's arrival and the safari's beginning. The car trip was...long and suboptimal, over super bumpy roads through the fog, but at least we got there, safe and on time. Due to scheduling issues, we're only here this evening, which is almost sad, since the hotel we're at is super nice compared to everywhere else!

The safari itself was both nice and disappointing at the same time. We saw lots of wildlife -- deer, monkeys, peacocks, different birds -- and the weather was quite pleasant. However, we didn't see any tigers! Not an opportune time, I guess. Still, a little sad. We also saw lots of goofy camels along the road. They're actually used for transport here, genuinely, but they're such bizarre animals!
Now, we're relaxing for another hour or so, and then we're off to the train station and Amritsar, where one of Mu's coworkers will meet us and show us around for the next few days! I'm so glad Mu is feeling better!

Hungry hungry tigers?

I've had a minor obsession with tigers since I was a kid, which I think is relatively common. They're such gorgeous animals and have that great combination of seeming wildly exotic and dangerous while often acting like an overgrown house cat. So, when Mu and I were browsing the web a few months ago, looking for a day trip out of Bangkok, I got really excited about a tour of the Tiger Temple, a place where monks and volunteers take care of tigers, and where the public can visit and interact with the animals.

We made the unfortunate decision to book a tour there, which was the one downer in an otherwise awesome day. The reason we did this is that when one searches for "tiger temple thailand," the first result on google is actually the tour company, with the implication that one can't really get there on one's own. In retrospect, we could've jut hired a car and driver for less, but there we are.

We started the day in a huge, ugly (but admittedly comfortable) van and headed first for the floating market, about an hour outside Bangkok. It's a rather touristy, but still fun market where you get on a boat and a guy takes you around all these canals, with vendors set up on barges on either side. Some sections were super crowded, leading to essentially bumper boats. There were lots of souvenirs, clothes, random art, spices...pretty much anything you'd expect in a market, but on water. There were also food vendors, floating around in boats of their own. We hadn't done any souvenir shopping up to this point, so we got a few things, ate some sticky rice with mango, and headed back to our driver.

We then had a two hour drive to pick up our guide before going to the Tiger Temple (the guide was on the way, it was just far from Bangkok), and that was when things got annoying for a bit. The guide called us (through our driver) to ask if we wanted to feed tiger cubs. Well, of course we did, I told him...that's what the tour description promised. He then told us it would be 1500 Baht each (about $50), on top of what we already paid. No, I told him, the website said it was included. He hemmed and hawed, called a manager, called us back to say the manager said no, called another manager at my insistence, and that manager called back to talk to me. And oh, my. I don't think I've had a worse customer service experience before. He was rude and pushy, accused me of being "malicious" and "American" (I almost said, "well, I can tell you're European, your customer service is crap" but refrained), kept yelling at me, and was just horrible. I just kept telling him to stop raising his voice and let me talk, and finally, after a long while of this, he agreed to give us a "discount" of 500 Baht each. We agreed, because we really did want to feed the cubs. Later, when we got to the temple, we found out that that's actually the price, and he was just gonna pocket that extra 500 Baht each for doing exactly nothing, since the guide and driver costs were included in the original price. Ugh. Conclusion: if you're in Thailand, never ever go with these guys. "Thailand Tours Center" or "Tiger Temple Thailand" (Tourism Authority of Thailand license number 13/01632) is horrible, and we plan to report them to the TAT.

But anyways, on to the good stuff. We picked up our guide (who, frankly, was useless. Friendly, but useless), stopped at the War Cemetery for POWs of the Allied Countries (which was pretty and depressing and not really that exciting), had lunch, and then got to the best part, the tigers! The temple is huge and has other animals on the grounds (deer, hogs, other random things), but of course, they were less exciting that the giant cats. We had some time to go 'till our cub feeding, so we hung out and even got to walk one of the big tigers! We also petted a 5-month old cub (that was one of the photos in the last post) and then finally got to go to the very little 4-week old tiger kittens!

Our group was led inside by a volunteer (the temple is staffed by them along with the monks, they come from all over the world or month-long periods to work with the tigers) and we were allowed to walk around the enclosure and pet, hold, and play with the cubs for a while before feeding them. The cubs were cutest things ever! They're brothers and don't yet have names (the volunteer said the names were already selected, but it wasn't yet decided which tiger would get which name), so they were referred to as "blue," "green," or "red," by the collar of their collars. They were tiny and awkward, with paws too big for their bodies, so they were fairly unsteady on their feet. They mostly wobbled around or crawled, or plopped in corner, kitten-like, or rolled around on the ground. We all spent a lot of time ooh-ing and aww-ing at them, as you might imagine. So adorable! Eventually, it was time for the actual feeding, so Mu and I got a bottle of milk and a cub to feed. The cub we got had been really sleepy right before, but he woke right up when there was milk! He was kind of ridiculous, and in his excitement to eat, ended up not actually ingesting a lot of the milk but spilling it all over the place. How like a baby! We both ended up covered with drops of milk, but that's ok, we're doing laundry today.

Of course, after eating, the baby pretty much conked out and we were able to get a few more really cute pictures with him before moving on. All this makes me remember how much I wanted a pet tiger. :)

After the babies, the adults were somehow less exciting, but still pretty cool. We walked to the tiger canyon, where there were about 10 big tigers hanging out. There were lots of guides and they walked you around and took pictures of you with various tigers. For some reason, you had to pay if you wanted a group photo, but individual ones were free, so that's what we did.

As we started heading back to the van, I told Mu that feeding tigers beat out feeding hippos. He asked if it beat them out per Baht spent, so of course, we had to calculate this. It cost 10 Baht for hippos and 1000 Baht for tigers, and tigers are not really two orders of magnitude better. BUT, we spent 3 minutes with hippos and 30 minutes with tigers, so that's a whole order of magnitude right there. Are tigers 10 times better than hippos? I think it's pretty close. So, we decided that, on a per-Baht level, they were about even. Yes, we are dorks. :)

We drove on to our next animal adventure, an elephant ride. I wasn't sure how exciting it would be, since I've been on an elephant at an amusement park, but it turned out to be great! It was a fairly long ride, and I got to ride on the elephant's head for part of it! That was a little scary and wobbly, but so much fun! Our elephant was named Kelta.

After the ride, we went to visit the bridge on the River Kwai, which wasn't that exciting, and then had a 3 hour drive back to Bangkok. Ooof. We did find a very tasty veggie place right near our guest house, though! Today, we meander about Bangkok some more, and tomorrow, we fly to Kolkatta!

Also, because I've been forgetting to say so, happy holidays!

Tiger teaser

It's been a rather long day, and I'm too tired to blog now, but here's a preview of what the post will be about. Hint: baby tigers! Eeeeeee! Excuse me. :) I hope these photos are as happy-making for everyone else as they are for me!

Ziplining in the jungle

Yesterday, one of the things I'd really been looking forward to about this trip finally happened: we did the Flight of the Gibbon, a zipline adventure in the jungle. I'd seen this on the Amazing Race (yes, yes, I watch reality TV sometimes) a few years ago and have wanted to do it ever since, so when we decided to go to Thailand, I of course convinced Mu that this would be a cool thing to do. He agreed, we booked, and finally, we went!

After picking up everyone, our van drove for about an hour on an increasingly windy and narrow road into the jungle. There were small villages along the way, but mostly, it was just forest, with a surprisingly well-paved road running through the middle. Upon our arrival, we were helped into safety harnesses and helmets by our very enthusiastic guide, Bert (and our less enthusiastic guide, Tom), driven a few minutes to the start of the route, and then there were the ziplines!

The process was pretty straight forward. At every station, one guide would go ahead to the next one to catch us, and one would stay with us to send us off. As we stood, we were always clipped in to a safety line attached to a tree, and the line only got unclipped by the guide in order to attach us to the zipline itself. Once he was satisfied, off you would go, flying to the next one! They were quite concerned that you not unclip yourself, as you can see from the warning on the right.

The first few ziplines were pretty short, and I was starting to get a little anxious that the whole thing would be less exciting than I had imagined, but then (after a hike that was all uphill for 10 minutes, and decidedly not "gentle" as described on the website), we got to the longest zipline, so long that we couldn't see the end of it, and the guides couldn't yell across anymore, using walkie talkies instead! We think it must've been about a kilometer long. Flying on it, surrounded by greenery, with a canyon and creek below, was exhilarating! After that, our whole group was pretty fired up.

There were two more rather long ziplines, though shorter than that first amazing one, and also two ziplines side by side for couples, and also one where you hung from your back and could fly, superman-style, into a net. We got a bunch of photos and a few videos. The ones I've posted here are from the same zipline ride -- one that I took of Mu coming in (sorry that it's sideways!), and one that Mu took as he was flying down!




At the end of it all, we got lowered by ropes to the ground, and you could choose to go "normally" (attached at the front), "superman-style" (attached at the back), or "upside down" (attached at the front, but lying on your back with your feet up, so you could see above and not below). I chose the latter, of course, while Mu decided to go right side up, leading to a funny picture of us. And then we were done. There was a delicious dinner with traditional musical accompaniment, and then we returned to Chiang Mai, exhausted and pleased.

Today, we have the morning in Chiang Mai to meander one last time, and then we get on an overnight train to Bangkok!