Thailand, and a bit of colour

Suddenly our senses got another shock. This time, it was the sheer overwhelming colour of the place. A fair bit of it gold.

Perhaps we were feeling better, perhaps the rest and recuperation had done us good, or perhaps Thailand was just more colourful than China.

We went to see the world’s largest reclining Buddha. We’d already seen the largest sitting-on-the-top-of-a-hill Buddha in Hong Kong. In fairness this one was pretty big, lying indoors, and I managed to only get dark pictures of his toes…

Wherever we went there were colourful shrines, always decorated with flowers, incense and candles. Everyone had a shrine in the front of their house, and fed it daily. We saw dancers on the street and people generally wore bright clothes. There were bright window displays of colourful silks, opportunities to buy blingy jewellery and a huge number of offers to view very colourful activities involving ping-pong balls.

Our time in Thailand included the end of June, July, and a few days of August 1991 (when my sister, Cath, and her boyfriend made an appearance). During our Thai-time we visited Bangkok a number of times, trying to get to the bottom (no pun intended) of the recurrent illness that I was experiencing. We went to visit a doctor and his wife (probably to the dismay of the travel insurers) who completed a raft of tests, and gave me more meds to try, before going off on trips then returning for results.

Bangkok itself was a busy city – lots of people and horrific traffic congestion. We returned from one trip sitting on a bus for two hours just getting beyond the city limits. It would have been quicker to walk…

There were things going on everywhere though, and it was a pleasant place to explore. There were lots of monuments (different again to anywhere we’d been before) and they were colourful and opulent.

It was fairly easy to travel around and people were friendly – that was such a difference after being treated so suspiciously in China. Thailand had a reputation for having the smiliest people – and for the most part that was what we experienced. Sometimes you did get the impression that the ready smiles were partly fuelled by the lure of the tourist dollar (or Bhat).

It was good to explore some of the city waterways by boat, just to get away from the busy roads.

From Bangkok we travelled to some of the holiday islands. We had a week in Koh Samui, just reading, eating well (the abundance of fresh fruit and fresh bread) and enjoying the company of other travellers. It was pretty basic accommodation – we had a hut with a straw roof and were allocated a bucket of water each every day.  Whilst we were there I think we had thunderstorms every night. Lots of rain and a straw roof didn’t work too well together…we slept round the puddles. And caught up with any sleep we’d missed during our lazy sunny daytimes. It was a beautiful, quiet island with idyllic beaches until the weekend when the young professionals from Bangkok danced in the next bay until the early hours. We suffered greatly those nights when we had to walk on the moonlit beach and sit on the rocks watching the stars.

After this trip we tracked back to the doctor and I reported being so much better from his prescribed medications – wanting to give him some credit, even though this was a recurrent pattern. It was at this point that he said he needed to treat me properly as I had typhoid. Typhoid!! Like really!! And I’d had the travel jabs – was typhoid one of the ones that had really made me ill when I’d had it? We took his advice and paid him huge sums of cash for a nice cocktail of drugs to be taken for a month. Each day I needed to take 16 tablets of 3 different antibiotics. Oh fun!!

I had never been too bad at taking tablets, but some of these were monster-sized. I have fond memories (not) of the struggles that I had being unable to get them down me. Suffice to say that the only way to take my meds was to sit in a public place – I could not run round a restuarant chucking them back up.

Another trip out was to a town called Nakhon Ratchasima (now often known as Korat – can’t imagine why that is preferred). It was a very quiet little town, only accessible by rail or bus in those days,  where we had the hottest (spice) food we had ever experienced. This so soon after the doctor had suggested plain foods…

It was also a town favoured by some American Vets who’d been there since the Vietnam war, and we ate with them in the Veterans of Foreign Wars cafe on a number of occasions, and one night watched them as they downed numerous beers. They’d clearly been doing the same since they’d demobbed. Not a bad place to do it I imagine. We also were ‘adopted’ by a Thai English teacher, Mona Lisa (yes, really), who introduced us to her students and we had a really funny evening and traditional dinner with them. It was weird though because at the end of the evening they all left together and suddenly – apparently it wasn’t what we had said, rather the Thai equivalent of Coronation St was about to start!

Nakhon Ratchasima has a number of significant historical and religious sites around that you can explore, as well as silk-producing factory shops (more like factories than our understanding these days of factory shops).

 

Chiang Mai was another trip out of the big city. It’s a small (or it was then) city in the northern mountains of the country.  We hired a motorbike for some exploration of the nearby countryside. I am not a natural – and this photo is a real example of the camera lying.

We did make it up to a temple in the hills, after a minor argument with a ditch (I was not a great pillion passenger either as I tended to lean the wrong way…).

We also had a trip to a number of factory shops – but as ever we were never good shoppers – and preferred a day-trip to the zoo.

From Chiang Mai we flew on a tiny little plane to a hillside town called Mae Hong Son where we found a very rustic place to stay – all wood and palm leaves. It really was out in the middle of nowhere – and we could see the landing strip from our garden so Mark was happy going out each day to watch the landing and take off (of the one plane a day).

We trekked up to the top of a hill to see a temple – and the views of the green valleys.

We took a day trip to the Burmese border. There were a few of us in the back of an open jeep. That day it really, really rained, so not only did they need chains on the tyres to get a grip of the road surface we needed a makeshift roof (plastic sheet). This was at the height of my medication too – and it made me feel sick and burpy (not great for travel-sickness) – so I poked my head out in the rain anyway! As you can see I was not that impressed.

I remember on the way down the driver appeared to just get each tyre in a rut on the wet, muddy road and slide down…

At the border there was a small village, and we could see how people lived out there in the rural outposts. Not dissimilar to so many of the villages we had been to in Nepal.

Rain was a feature of that day and a few others in Thailand. Typical of those months there I assume. Back in Bangkok for a few days we found ourselves walking around the city centre during one of the most dramatic rainstorms I have ever witnessed. It was so sudden and so heavy that the road suddenly became a river and although we still had reasonably dry feet walking on the raised pavements we were joined by thousands of cockroaches and then rats out of the flooded drains… We moved pretty quickly back to our accommodation that day – didn’t want a scared, panicking rat assuming our legs were drainpipes or something.

I think you could do a day-trip to Kanchanaburi from Bangkok, but we spent a couple of days there. It was a sobering place where you could visit the allied war cemeteries, the great Bridge over the River Kwai and a museum detailing the building of the death railway. As in many other places the hostels and cafes showed the relevant movies into the evenings.

As an antidote to the sobering information around us we enjoyed some respite in the coffee shops and had ‘friends’ join us.

Thailand is well-known for its islands and beaches, so off we went to another holiday spot. This time to Krabi and a nearby beach called Phra Nang.

We had to get onto one of the long-tailed boats, and precariously off at the other end, carrying a huge backpack…I’m sure there was no awareness of health and safety back then. Phra Nang was a relatively busy (for travelling types) beachy-place – and again we found ourselves in a tiny thatched hut (cottage would have been too grand a term). Mark had his birthday whilst we were there…and this is our celebration cake! (I clearly hadn’t mastered the flash (or procuring birthday cakes) etc but it gives an idea of our accommodation).

We also went on boat trips to visit the famous islands and caves.

The area had particularly sprung to fame 15 years earlier with a James Bond boat chase. As well as the secluded islands and caves we visited this beach, where you could buy your James Bond tat and paraphernalia.

A treat was to stay overnight on a floating island. As soon as the boat trips finished the place was quiet, just a few tourists and the locals. It was a real community – a fishing (and tourist) village. The floorboards making up the streets didn’t always feel entirely secure, and some of the walkways needed you to jump between the boards.There was  no traffic though…and below you was just the briny.

We spent our last few Thai-days with my sister back in Bangkok – sorry Cath, I have no photos of that time…they do exist but must have been on Mark’s camera!! We  went on trips to places we’d already seen and explored places we hadn’t. I remember some fun times at the night markets with them haggling for t-shirts (which they got at great prices but gave us the next day as none of them fitted). We ate well with them and were reminded of the kind of opulent luxury that you could find in places when you weren’t travelling on £5 a day!!

 

 

We’ll work in Hong Kong

Imagine spending the best part of 4 months in a couple of the world’s poorest countries, then taking a flight and landing suddenly in one of the world’s richest. Culture shock!!

I think that’s probably how we felt after our flight to Hong Kong at the end of April 1991. From previous blogs you will have noticed that we had relaxed into ‘travelling’ gear, consisting of T shirts and flowery trousers. We arrived in Hong Kong where everyone seemed to wear suits and designer gear. Low level buildings had suddenly been replaced by vertiginous glassy high-tech sky-scrapers.

We met my brother Pete, who’d been working there for a while, in one of the huge (upmarket) sparkly hotels on the waterfront. He was wearing a suit too – was that just to show us up…?

He took us back to his place on an enviable commute on one of the regular ferries out to Discovery Bay, Lantau Island. It was a short, but very sweaty (suddenly so humid) walk up the hill to his shared apartment on the 10th floor. Lantau was in the early stages of building on any reasonably flat land and Discovery Bay appeared to be a recently-built community, with a small shopping area and leisure centre with buildings all around. Some were fairly low level and others were tower blocks. We spent some happy hours watching people from the balcony – it was the early days of karaoke and people in nearby flats were dressing up and singing in the privacy (or so they perhaps thought) of their own apartments.

Our plan was to stay a few days, find jobs and accommodation and earn a bit of cash to continue our travels.

We settled in for a few days on Pete’s couches, exploring a bit and updating our wardrobes and doing essentials like getting haircuts. We booked an appointment for a job interview with an English language school and looked at cheap accommodation. I think that shocked us as much as the sudden change in the culture around us, and the sobering thought that days spent in an English-speaking booth would only just cover the rent. Whilst we wandered this alien place we had a sudden idea: “Let’s go to China”.

So that is what we did…

We explored the idea of going up the Pearl river by boat to Canton/Guangzhou and a couple of days later we were settling into an overnight bunk in a weirdly open-plan boat with hundreds of bunks. Certainly ‘cattle class’.

We woke up the next morning in another alien place. We moved into a Youth Hostel and wandered about the city, fascinated by the huge groups of people in parks doing their Tai Chi.

Memorable moments included the city market where everything that you could possibly imagine was for sale, and plenty more, including snakes, frogs, hedgehogs and monkeys. There were flattened roasted pigs faces everywhere.

Mealtimes were fascinating. And challenging. Restaurants were generally huge, multi- storey buildings with huge tables and we were just allocated places on these tables, often to the bemusement (or amusement) of the locals. One had indoor waterfalls and streams that you could sit by. Ordering food was fun. We had a guide-book with some basic pictographs of foods. We tried that. Some limited success. Sometimes we wandered around pointing at other peoples’ food. That worked pretty well. Generally it was a lot of gesturing and pot-luck what you actually ate in the end. Good job we weren’t very fussy back then. We stayed in one hotel where a starter always arrived first – either small slippery mushrooms or peanuts – all to be managed with chopsticks – that always entertained us until the main course, and perhaps the waiting staff too.

Some days we became lazy and broke our rules about eating local and representative of where we were. The American Colonel appeared to have taken up many prime real-estate positions and was preparing his famous chicken (that appears in buckets) and we occasionally succumbed. These places were also popular with the locals judging by the queues.

People-watching was one of our favourite past-times (nothing new there). Again people were interested in us. It was so different from India and Nepal though. People wanted to chat, but didn’t feel safe talking to us. We often had the experience of someone sidling up to sit or stand near us, and then talking to us, without ever looking our way. Some told us they couldn’t be seen talking to foreigners, others told us that they secretly listened to World Services.

There were always people out and about at the tourist sites. The difference in China, that we noticed, was that everything was pristine. The monuments had all been restored to look brand-new, and the people were mostly out and about in their best clothes. We found this really amusing because at that time pop-socks were the obvious height of fashion along with frilly and lacy tiered dresses. We found ourselves highly entertained by the ‘fashion victims’ who were out and about enjoying the sights – and taking it in turns to be photographed by their friends (this was very much pre selfie-stick days). This amusement may well have been us feeling inadequate in our recently bought t-shirts and jeans (a change from our Indian traveller gear).

Everywhere was busy and we found refuge from the busy streets in quiet(er) parks where we enjoyed endless cups of tea. (OK, I know I don’t drink tea, but Indian chai and Chinese tea are different – and perhaps when travelling, I too, am different).

After a few days in Guangzhou wandering its parks, where strangely we met up with someone Mark used to work with, we headed off for another adventure. This one was an eye-opener from the moment we arrived at the train station. There were huge waiting rooms for each train. We waited in ours, listening to the canned music and chat that was a constant everywhere in China, until there was some announcement. At that point everyone (apart from us!) raced for the doors…we meekly followed once the doors opened…and the stampede continued down corridors and to the train. It was an incredible spectacle of seething humanity. I am amazed that people were’t killed in the crush. the funny part was that all seats and bunks were numbered anyway and those of us that were slow getting to the carriage and our bunks still got our places…

We had 2 nights on that train…I remember sleep being elusive due to the other 5 people in our bit of the carriage (triple bunks) and the ubiquitous canned music and what we imagined was regular propaganda updates over the speaker-system. I suspect our travelling moods were strained by being stir-crazy in that weird tin-can situation. Train food was served up in a very impressive restaurant car, comfortable and calm with waiters, tablecloths etc…and these irritating travellers wandering up and down the carriage pointing at other peoples’ food!

Beijing was our destination. We did get there eventually and settled into our usual occupation of exploring the streets (still shocked to remember that in one area where we strayed into the public toilets at the bottom of a tower block there was no running water and they were presumably the toilets for that block – just imagine that night-soil image) and the tourist sites. We watched the dressed-up locals out enjoying themselves and we were shocked more by just how sanitised everything was. Objets d’art in The Forbidden City were labelled as being thousands of years old, but were clearly either heavily restored or replicas.

The Forbidden City was huge, but also was a bit repetitive – lots of similar buildings with artefacts in each of the buildings. I may just be a bit of a heathen and lacking appreciation of culture! I think I was also annoyed by having to join in a tourist queue and pay significantly more than Chinese tourists.

Sitting in Tienanmen Square was way more interesting. It was 2 years, almost to the day in early May, since the Massacre. People slyly talked to us as we sat watching the world, and their kites, go by. Some talked about what had happened. Others were less forthcoming. We went to one of the hotels near the square (good places to get a drink and a cake!) and read some of the books available in English. Apparently a massacre did not occur. The students rioted due to American propaganda, and the army moved in to help them with food, tents etc, then helped them to leave. There were many attacks on the army by the students, and there were gory pictures of the injured and dying. One caption read ‘This soldier was carrying a machine gun but preferred to die himself at the hands of the protesters to using his weapon on innocent people’. Interestingly no protesters were killed but many soldiers were. The book was produced by the government. Very different stories from the ones we’d heard before.

We also went to the zoo whilst in Beijing to see the giant pandas. We were quite upset by the poor conditions that all the animals were kept in, and didn’t stay long. There were large areas of gardens for the people…

Whilst in China there was one thing that we had to see. The big wall. Being the cheapskates that we were (OK, still are) we went to the local bus station and booked a tour (not via one of the big westernised hotels…). So we found ourselves on a bus, obviously the only non-Chinese, and bemused by where we were at each stop… There were a few stops: the Ming Tombs; an underground palace; a strange underground chamber of horrors and waxworks and then the wall. Or not…Instead a weird folk museum of Mongolian History and Genghis Khan’s attempts to unify Mongolia. We began to wonder if we were on the wrong trip…

Then we got to a hugely crowded place, with so many tat-and-trinket souvenir shops. We knew we’d made it! Crowds walking and jostling on the wall up to a high point, then lots of posed photos, awarding of certificates and return journeys down. Except for the intrepid few…Walk on about 25 m from the top-spot and there was no-one else. We had a lovely walk along this amazing monument and had our bit of peace – and no certificates! A Chinese day out to remember.

Our last stop in China was Shanghai after another one of those interesting train journeys (though luckily not quite as long). They are not my most positive memories of travel! I do like to sleep beyond 5am and am not keen on having no choice but loud piped music! Shanghai was a busy city and accommodation was in huge dorm rooms. We met a girl who’d been travelling with a group of Chinese art students that she’d met on a train. Since arriving in Shanghai the teacher suddenly was no longer able to meet with her and she was worrying that he had disappeared as his students had complained that she had joined them.

Shanghai was a very beautiful city to wander along the river-front, The Bund. The buildings were elegant and the people were out in their Sunday best. I imagine this scene has changed massively since 1991.

We spent a lot of time just wandering and people watching, and also managed to find an office in one of the buildings for a shipping company who were sailing back to Hong Kong, and had room for up to 18 passengers (hardly a cruise!!).

Our last night in Shanghai was at a Chinese circus. It featured a lot of acrobats which were pretty good, although not quite as perfect as we’d hoped with a couple of injuries! I also wasn’t happy as there were elephant balancing acts, some monkeys riding bikes and the finale of a panda riding in a cart tossing a ball and supposedly blowing a trumpet. Bizarre. Bizarrely too the whole audience just got up and headed for the door as the whole troupe came back to bow.

The ‘cruise’ was a great way to travel back to Hong Kong, initially along a very polluted area where there was so much industry and smog on the river. Then out to sea.

We had our own port-hole, bunks and bathroom and spent the three day cruise reading, sleeping and chilling on the deck. One of the other passengers wanted to engage us all in deck games..but I drew the line at a bit of a swim in the tiny deck pool.

On this cruise I also discovered that eels for breakfast are not my favourite things. That morning was the last that I went for the Chinese breakfast and the other two I went with the toast and jam option.

We arrived back in Hong Kong in the midst of a wild electric storm. We had what looked like a laser and fireworks display from the boat. The following morning we were able to disembark and head back to Lantau.

Mark had a week or so back in the UK for his sister’s wedding so I stayed put. I have memories of making the most of the leisure club in Discovery Bay (with a borrowed entry pass…) and then meeting him on his return.

I went to the airport and watched the unbelievable landings of the jets. This was prior to the new airport being built on reclaimed land on Lantau. The old airport jutted out into the sea and the planes descended almost between tower blocks.

Our last few days on Hong Kong included walks around the green, hilly island of Lantau.

A new giant Buddha had recently been built and we went to see. It was a quiet and untouristed part of the island. Things are very different now as we discovered last year.  Worship of various kinds…

 

Then it was time to move on again. It’d been an interesting journey for our first foray into the far east, although it doesn’t strike me as my favourite part of the trip. Looking back I think we were shocked by the difference in wealth, after our time in India and Nepal.  China didn’t seem quite real to us either (perhaps partly as we only saw cities and the bits of cities we were allowed to see). Everything was pristine, artefacts had been fixed and there seemed to be a huge disparity between what we were told there and what we’d read before. People were friendly but were also very wary, and it was difficult to get a really good picture of what ‘normal’ life was like.

Perhaps we were a bit jaded from our earlier travels, exhausted by our trekking, and possibly a little lacklustre due to our underlying health condition (which we discovered later). It was probably perfect timing that we had had the opportunity to chill a bit in the comfort of Pete’s place before moving on. Thanks Pete!

 

 

 

 

 

 

Nepal’s all about the mountains?

India was all but done in early March 1991. But first we thought we’d do a little preparation for our trip into those famous Nepalese mountains.

From Darjeeling you can trek in what I guess are the foothills of the Himalayas and see the giant peaks in the distance. We opted for a three-day trek and after a short bus ride off we went. Looking at the options on the internet there are now roads and lots of organised tours… However back then, we followed the guidelines in one of our books and set off to walk. Our main aim was to trek to Sandakphu to stand on a ridge and watch the sunrise. It took two days walking upwards to get there, one of them walking through cloud. The accommodation along the way was basic and our torches and sleeping bags (with neck-cords tightly pulled for warmth) were used at last. We’d also invested in attractive yak-wool jumpers to stave off the extreme temperatures. Quite a fashion statement.

Our accommodation and the views from the ridge at 5am:

That certainly whetted our appetite for reaching Nepal-proper.

People living in the mountains had very basic living standards but were friendly and welcoming of all us foreigners. Our last night, after hours of unrelenting downhill, was spent at a very pleasant lodge – with many more creature comforts than most. When we arrived and kicked off our walking boots and settled in to our room, we had chocolate biscuits and tea delivered to our room followed later by a disgusting-looking jug each of fermenting grain of some sort. This place was run by an entrepreneur and there was no bill for the room or the continuous hospitality…”just pay what you think it’s worth…”.

There’s one thing I do remember vividly from the next morning . As a popular place, highly recommended in the guidebook, there were many people staying there and there just weren’t enough facilities…and those that there were had certainly been visited too many times during the night by people really not at their best. Suffice to say we had a walk out into the fields (looking for an appropriate bush or two) to meet our needs that day – and that was one time that confirmed for us that anywhere you are in India, even in remote mountain villages, it is very rare that you are never more than a couple of metres away from someone. Not great for those of us who enjoy our privacy at such moments!

Back in Darjeeling we set off on the long journey into Nepal. There were some shenanigans at the border. I have memories of arriving in a bus, transferring to a very crowded taxi (7 travellers and their packs in a standard-size car) for about a mile across the border, money changing and a hot meal in what seemed to be a no-man’s land between the two countries, before getting on the overnight bus… This was just a very basic service bus, with no acknowledgement of the fact it was going for hours. It did stop a few times overnight to pick up people and provisions. There were toilet stops (not for the fainthearted) and chai stops. I don’t think there was much sleeping done. This was the kind of bus with live animals (or, at least, chickens) in the luggage racks. The road was rough, more potholes than tarmac (and deep mud after a wild storm) and mad driving. These roads often have large life-saving slogans painted onto rocks that you pass.

My one abiding memory of the trip was stopping early in the morning to unload some of the provisions – they were piled up on the roof of the bus – why send a truck when a bus with roof-space  is going that way anyway? Wooden crates of tomatoes were passed down, but some were dropped – and we had tomatoes raining down the sides of the windows and splatting on the sides of the road. I wish we’d had a video of those moments – but it probably was funnier actually being there (and the colours, sounds etc were probably heightened by the lack of sleep).

Kathmandu was such a relief. We were amazed by just how much more westernised it was than anywhere we’d been in India. Everywhere we went there were little shops geared up for the traveller…and there were things to eat on the menus that looked very tempting for people who’d been eating curries for 3 meals a day for the last 3 months…whether we relaxed our guard, or whether we would have got it anyway, we will never know. But we were both ill. Mark a little bit, and me, seriously. I think I lost a week of my life with only vague recollections of Mark bringing in a doctor, taking medications that he brought, swapping beds as the mattress was soaked through with my feverish sweats and sitting on the toilet and throwing up at the same time…Oh joy. Too much information?

After a week I was able to make it to the International Travel Clinic where I was prescribed more drugs for ‘Traveller’s diarrhoea’. Whilst we were there waiting someone came out of one of the surgery rooms and announced to his partner, “I’ve got Typhoid”, and I said to Mark – I felt last week how he looks now. A couple of months later, after testing in Thailand, it was confirmed that indeed I had had Typhoid.

Anyway, once you feel a bit better you can carry on. We discussed going home, but figured we’d be just feeling weak there and might as well recuperate (and perhaps resume being careful of what we ate) in the exotic locations we found ourselves in…

Kathmandu is (or at least was prior to their devastating earthquake in 2015) a very ornate city with incredible buildings around every corner. We were bowled over. It was as surprising to us as India had been – and significantly different. It was also considerably more touristed too, with the world landing there on a regular basis for their pilgrimages into the mountains.

The temples were fascinating, and not only for us.  These were real working temples, not just for tourists, but for locals and some furry friends as well. I could spend hours watching the world go by and the antics of the creatures (locals, monkeys and tourists).

During our explorations we also discovered that Katmandu wasn’t quite the sanitised and westernised place that we initially had got the idea of… Just down by the river all of the town’s rubbish was thrown and it was a hive of activity for all sorts of creatures, including vultures and rats.

Perhaps we’d found this out just a little too late. It was galling because although we’d had a couple of incidents of sickness in India it was always short-lived and manageable…and perhaps we’d been lured into a false sense of familiarity and eaten a tomato or something that hadn’t been peeled or boiled. Hopefully you live and learn… (There might be a message in there for the weird days we’re living through now…complacency).

Whilst in the Kathmandu Valley we had a day trip out to a small town called Bhaktapur (which was also devastated in 2015) where the pace of life was different again. It was a small city that focussed on making clay pots. Everywhere we went there were craftsmen at work.

It was also built with bricks – and if you look closely behind where the potter is working you can see why such a place may have suffered extemely from the trembling earth.

The city square was ornate too, and had developed over time into a real haven for travellers, with coffee shops moving into the tall buildings giving perfect views of the city and mountains in the distance. It also gave great views of the children playing in the streets below. Yes, this was 1991 and not the Victorian ages. I wonder if they still play with hoops and sticks?

Again the kids were fascinating for us. I loved the fact that they didn’t bother with nappies for the little ones. They either didn’t wear any pants at all or had trousers with no gussets… specially designed open rear ends…to just squat and go. I don’t have a picture of that!

One last thing about Kathmandu…it was one of the few places we’d planned on visiting, so we had shared the main Post Office’s address with family and friends. Back in those days, prior to e-mail and instant messaging (and in a time and place where phone calls were difficult and relatively expensive from small telephone shops) the post was a major lifeline. And for us travellers arriving in a city with a Post Restante was a real treat. Any letters that had been sent for us were filed alphabetically in boxes in the Post Restante room and just waited to be picked up. Usually you showed your passport and were allowed to rifle through the boxes yourself. It was always good to get news from home, and we’d have time sitting outside, with all the other travellers, finding out what was happening in our other world.

Still no mountains?

Nepal is known for its mountains, but in the South of the country to the West of Kathmandu is a National Park known for its Bengal Tiger community. Who’d have guessed that we went to Nepal to go on safari…?

It was a fairly low-key experience. We stayed in a small village and could just go out for walks down the river and watch the lifestyle of people in a very rural community. And join in with playing with the kids and  that world-wide game of skimming stones.

We could also go out for a walk, with a guide, into the park to see the animals. We did just that, with a young guide, armed with a…stick. I loved it. It is such a priviledge and unbelievably uplifting to see animals in their own habitat.

The animals that we saw on this particular walk however, were, the endangered white rhino. I was in my element and see them we did. In retrospect it was probably quite a stupid thing to do – as it appears were many of our experiences during the year – but I was following the guide with Mark behind me and we were creeping through the grasslands and low bushes, happily taking pictures of the things he pointed out to us. He wasn’t ready however, to see a white rhino with its calf just in front of us in a clearing. I know it shocked him because he stopped abruptly, and so did the 2 of us close behind him, crashing into him, then as he disentangled himself from the two of us he scarpered quickly to a safe distance away. It may have looked like a comic-book scenario and it was probably at this point that he told us that white rhinos have quite poor eyesight and to protect themselves and their young they are quite likely to charge anything that moves… and they weigh 3 tons. Strangely enough I didn’t get a picture of that baby rhino and his mum.

We also had a day trip out in a jeep looking for the elusive tiger. We saw other animals but not the big cat. We also went to an elephant sanctuary. The elephants were working animals in the park. There have probably been many discussions about their treatment over the years, but what we saw at that time were animals that appeared to be carefully looked after that were part of everyday life. (They were very cute too).

There are some mountains in Nepal too…And we did go to them. And we did trek.

The trek into the mountains starts with a bus ride from Pokhara, which we reached by bus from Kathmandu. One of those two bus rides was one of the most scary experiences of my life. Nepali roads were bad, and driving was extremely bad, and the conditions were such that bits of road had washed away and basically I thought I was going to die.

However, I didn’t and we started the trek to Annapurna base camp. Every day was different. The track was clear (did we have maps? err, no) and I think we only made a mistake once, leading to a couple of hours serious up and down being repeated!).

The scenery was awe-inspiring. The walking was tough.

The first few days were through rice paddies, rhododendron forests (who knew that they were native to the mountains?) and bamboo. There were farms with animals and terraces and small villages with crops drying.

Along the way there were many river valleys that have had bridges built over them to reduce walking times – and ensure they are crossable year round. My family now laugh at me being pathetic and scared about crossing rope-bridges. My fears may have started on some of these long flimsy-seeming bridges crossing pretty wide river valleys. As we walked over one a herd of donkeys came trotting towards us. I didn’t think that I would survive Indiana Jones-style if this bridge was to snap under their weight!

Along the way there were lodges for trekkers. And there were many porters carrying heavy packs. They were often running along the trails, in bare feet and had baskets on their backs suspended on a strap around the front of their forehead. They carried travellers packs (one we saw was carrying probably 8 huge backpacks for an Israeli group that had upset their other porters), tents, food and provisions for the villages and lodges higher up the slopes. Understandably the cost of food and drink increased the higher you got.

One of the lodges, which was at a point where people continue on a circuit walk or commit to going onwards to the base camp, had many provisions for sale (chocolate mostly) and the choice of hot or cold showers. Showers were pretty rare in India or Nepal at that stage (we were usually allocated a bucket of water and had a scoop to douse ourselves with), but this was luxury. Well, luxury for some, as Mark didn’t read the sign on the cubicle door and was treated to an icy Himalayan shower! Funny afterwards of course, and funnier for the rest of us.

Soon after this stop we were beyond the snow line. There was one point I almost stopped and went back – there was a steep ravine to the side of the snowy footprints, but I persevered. And we made it beyond to the incredible views of the fishtail mountain, Machapuchare.

Our goal though was a ‘hotel’ at Machupuchare Base Camp, just a short distance from Annapurna Base Camp. We got there, and settled in for the night. It was so cold up there!! The lodge was a single storey group of rooms, with a central dining area. Under the huge table was a fire, and that’s where we spent the evening in the company of other hardy souls. Not sure any of the rest of them were as cold as me overnight though – I slept wearing a pair of trousers on my head…!

The next morning we climbed the final slope to the base Camp. We set off at about 5am because we had to get up and back down again before the snow stated to melt (or we’d disappear into the snow..). This was our destination:

Romantic eh?

My romantic now-husband obviously thought so (or was it altitude sickness – we were at 4200m) after our efforts and success in scaling the mountain. That is where he proposed to me and these are pictures of us (shortly after chocolate and a celebratory cup of hot lemon), before we made our way back down again. I’m still not sure that he mentioned marriage or that I said yes, but there we are!

That was Nepal!! Pretty memorable eh!?

 

 

 

India back then…

Here we are, 1991. India.

The intrepid young travellers (not too young!) arrived in Bombay (Mumbai), armed with a 2-month train travel pass.

Imagine our shock. We arrived, having never been to a developing country (Crete on a package tour was as exotic as we’d got) and having no real idea of what to do…We’d never been ‘travelling’.

We probably looked petrified…but two English girls took us under their wings (perhaps just wanting to split the taxi fare) and off we went. We’d already had a car crash, and some bribing of officials (“baksheesh, backsheesh”) before we left the airport. Just thinking about it I can feel the anxiety levels rising…

The 40 minute drive to the city centre was a baptism of fire for us amateurish travellers. That trip took us through miles of some of the poorest slums in India. We saw the sort of things that we’d only ever seen on TV and it was the start of our serious bout of culture shock. There were miles and miles of makeshift buildings, tarpaulins and pallets of wood, bits of corrugated iron and masses of people. The people were often just crouching down watching the world go by. Or they were walking carrying buckets of water from the standpipes, or washing under them, or washing clothes. Or crouching down in the gutters urinating. Some showed an interest in the traffic going by, tapping on car windows and begging, or just ignored it.

The girls had a place booked for the night. Not us! The intrepid ones… So we dived into a place near theirs, accepted a box-like room and just hid!! After a while we did venture out. The sights, smells and noise were overwhelming. And there were people everywhere.

The first night was another eye-opener. In the habit of getting up for a wee in the night I ventured out into the communal area outside the box-room…Scattered around were a number of couches and on each one there were people sleeping. Where had they all come from? More shockingly though, as I walked into the bathroom, a rat scampered up the wall and out of the window. That quickly cured that night-time habit!!

It didn’t take us long to get almost used to our new ‘normal’, with the biggest decisions in life being where to go, what to eat and when to sleep. India was fascinating. The things that were so shocking to our senses on those first few days are probably the things that we most remember now and quickly became our favourite parts of the experience. Those sights, smells and that noise.

Wherever we went there were people. And back then they were fascinated with us foreigners. It would be interesting to go back and see if the digital age and increase in tourism has dampened that interest. We were always surrounded by kids…interested in us and trying out their knowledge of current affairs (“Margaret Thatcher”, “Geoffrey Boycott”, “Liverpool, Manchester United”) – and generously and surreptitiously sharing their nits!

Usually I wouldn’t post photos of kids, but all of these will be in their 30s or 40s now. This one is the one I sometimes wonder about…begging around India Gate.

India was a great place to travel around. The trains were dusty and basic (despite being 1st Class), but our booked seats were always available. This was despite being booked in offices miles away and days before. But our names appeared on the sides of carriages, on paper that we’d seen written on in the booking office in triplicate! I wonder if computers have now replaced those huge dusty tomes – and will they be as efficient?

With our 60 day train pass we travelled a fair few miles (sometimes it would have been quicker by bus) and saw some incredible sights. Our route from Bombay to Calcutta and Darjeeling via a wiggly line demonstrates just how much, and how little, ground we covered.

India has some of the most majestic and ornate monuments and buildings that you can possibly imagine. As well as that most famous one, the railway stations and palaces were places to wander and explore, and be amazed by the opulence.

As well as the ornate buildings the carvings were extraordinary. They varied from figures and statues to caves, temples and whole compounds of religious offerings. We learned much about religion, and much about the pleasures of the flesh (as depicted in very graphic Karma Sutra carvings in a small town called Khajuraho).

We visited temples, ruins, zoos, museums, beaches, and we did very ordinary things like having a haircut, shopping in the market and just going for a walk. The ordinary became the extraordinary as with all things in India. Mostly it was beyond our expectations and imagination.

That simple ordinary haircut and shave was with a cut-throat razor – he was left with a moustache though for some bizarre reason…probably a symbol of manhood, although I think just sitting in that chair was manly enough facing that barber with a huge sharp knife…

Wherever we went people were interested in us. But we were also interested in them. Mostly people were friendly and welcoming. Some were very tactile (some a little too tactile – almost leading to an accidental death when pushed away at the top of an open staircase on the top of a ruin), and generous with helping us find our way (although we never did figure out that head wobble – yes, no or maybe..?).

One day we were taken out to see a hill tribe, the Todas, by taxi with another couple. Travelling was cheap enough for us to be able to afford a taxi and driver for the day. The Todas were said to have hardly ever seen Westerners before. It was quite an experience – and looking back we probably fell easily for that line. Looking at the photos and thinking back, for people who had never really seen Westerners before, they were clearly pretty good at posing for the camera!! It was like visiting a living museum though and I hope that they benefited from our visit (and probably many subsequent visits over the next days with the entrepreneurial taxi driver…).

Wherever we went we were impressed by the hard-working ways of the people we saw. There were few machines or high-tech equipment to make work easier. Much ‘woman’s work’ was manual labour.

People made do with what they had and kept working with things, mending and mending them. I wonder if it’s still the same…I imagine in some places it is, and in other places that technology and progress has changed the face of the country (for some).

Sometimes the cultural and religious differences were so extreme that it reawakened our culture-shock. One place that really was a challenge was Varanasi. This is the city with the huge river Ganges flowing through, where many pilgrims visit, and where it’s sacred to die.

Wandering the ghats or hiring a small boat on the river was a real eye-opener. The river was, to our eyes and noses, less than fragrant and fresh. The whole of the community could however be seen there: washing; doing the laundry; swimming; exercising the livestock; and burning the dead. Through the narrow streets there were often colourful funeral processions with the body being carried (at a run) on the mourners’ shoulders, down to the riverside where a ceremony took place. We were able to witness such a ceremony with a local explaining what was happening. Not for those with a weak Western constitution…

As well as the trains we also used other methods of transport, perhaps the most memorable being a river ‘cruise’ in the backwaters of Kerala in South India. We spent a day cruising, playing cards and watching the world go past, India style.

Another wild adventure for us was a day trip into the Rajasthan desert, by camel. We were staying in the most beautiful of Indian cities, Jaisalmer. The trip out there from Jodphur was the slowest train ride ever. It took a whole day to do the relatively short distance (less than 300km) through the desert, moving often at not much than walking pace and stopping often at places that didn’t look like stations, but where we were able to pick up snacks (like battered deep-fried chilli peppers – ouch!) and the ubiquitous chai (sweet milky tea poured from a great height).

Jaisalmer itself was like a place from an Arabian Nights fairy tale. It’s ornate buildings were all made from sandstone and the inner walled city had no roads, just narrow lanes and beautiful merchant’s houses, called haveli (yup, that’s me peeking out from the most ornate bedroom window ever).

Our day trip out into the desert by camel involved an 8 hour trek. Now, for those unaccustomed to riding camels, as we certainly were, 8 hours on a camel is pretty uncomfortable. As we chose to do a one-day trip we were also doing the same distance as many other people doing a leisurely 2-day trip, so to fit it in we had to spend some time on the camels at speed… So an uncomfortable camel experience became a very uncomfortable one! The day, starting very early, demonstrated a huge range in temperatures too. We set off in many clothes, and coats. By midday it was really hot. One of our camel-handlers liked Mark’s coat so much that once he’d taken it off he wore it for the rest of the day – becoming so comfortable in it that he also slept through much of the camel jogging…

The desert was stunning though.

There were signs of civilisation miles from anywhere, and so ornate.

Whilst we were travelling the (first) Gulf War was being fought. We had a few reminders about it in various places – few tourists in some places, comments about Saddam Hussein being a good man in other places and occasional glimpses of the news. The lack of communication and regular news updates was so different from today when we have updates whenever we want them. One memorable day however we heard the news that the war was over.

We were exploring the Jantar Mantar in Jaipur that day which is a selection of interesting ancient structures that allow you to observe astronomical positions with the naked eye. Not much use on a sunny day obviously…

The end of our India trip, involved yet another train. This one however went into the mountains north of Calcutta and to a hill-station (where the Brits used to go in the summer to avoid the dry and stifling heat of the cities) in the famous town of Darjeeling. The train climbed up through hills covered in (yes, you guessed it) tea plantations. The hills so green after the desert! Green dotted with the bright colours of saris of women picking those top tea leaves for your daily cuppa.

This train was different though – the Darjeeling Himalayan Railway which now has UNESCO heritage status – chugs 50 miles up into the mountains. Just getting up the hills was a challenge, and the engineers surpassed themselves back in the 1880s. The narrow-gauge railway circled round at times, zigzagging in places, using gravity and ingenuity to get up the next slope… It was fascinating… It didn’t look at all dangerous.

India had of course won us over. People had told us you love it or hate it and that to really get used to it you have to be there at least 6 weeks. We managed a few weeks longer, and there is no doubt that during out travels India posed us the most challenges, showed us the greatest differences from our ‘norms’ and introduced us to travelling big-time. We faced sickness, succumbed to scams and were overwhelmed by the sheer intensity of it all.

Maybe one day we’ll go back and see if things have changed at all…

Retirement and going back in time…

It’s a stage of life we almost all get to. We chose to do it pretty early. I’m talking retirement (although many people might be forced into it as self-isolation increases).

So what’s it like? Well, it is a big change!! When you have always worked all day, 5 days a week, plus driving an hour or so each day, there’s suddenly a lot of time to account for. So it’s the perfect opportunity to do all the things that you always wanted to do but didn’t have time for…

I’m not sure I ever thought about what I always wanted to do but didn’t…

However having moved house and explored the new area, and taken a trip or two…and having settled into a pleasant routine of leisure time and voluntary activities, there was always going to be that little list of things that needed to be done… on a rainy day last November I decided to attack the things that never made it out of the useful cupboard downstairs after moving. I inevitably sorted them into another useful cupboard, and as I did so discovered things that have been languishing untouched for many years. You’ll be relieved to hear I’m not going to share all of them, but one of the things I found was a large box of photos and negatives from the days when photography involved 35mm films, developing and printing. Back then some got religiously filed in albums, but most of them probably got stuffed in a box never to be looked at again.

At the top of this particular box was a stash of 33 sets of film negatives from a round-the-world trip in 1991. Exciting stuff eh? Add to this that when clearing out Mark’s parents’ house last year I also discovered a film scanner – one where you can feed the negatives into a little box and the photo appears magically on the computer screen. These things together added up to a perfect little activity to while away some rainy days…

So that is what I have done. Typically the simple act of feeding the negatives into a scanner took way longer than I could have possibly imagined. A few technical issues along the way meant that I ended up copying over some and needing to redo the lot! Then I discovered that the first half I’d scanned on a low resolution so I did them again too… After such a labour of love I decided I needed to do something with them…

And here it is. A (re)visit to that trip of many years ago. You may think that there is nothing more tedious than hearing about someone’s recent holiday and seeing all of the photos. Well maybe someone’s holiday from nearly 30 years ago is worse? At least as a blog you can choose whether to read or not. So this is the warning – the blogs to come are my memories of that trip. The pictures are my photographs. I may have edited some of them slightly – I obviously was unable to photograph a horizontal horizon even then! But the scenes are mostly just as we found them (although I suspect the colours have degraded over time in the aforementioned box).

We set off in early 1991 equipped with an SLR each. I knew nothing about how to use one as I’d always had a compact camera. I’d bought myself a Pentax P30 with two lenses – and Mark gave me some basic lessons on how to use it. We bought lots of film before we set off, and carried them. In those days unless you got them processed you had no idea of how successful your shots were – and as film canisters are easier to carry than prints we just carried them with us, and printed them 12 months later. Probably not the best way to learn to use your new kit!! Now though, having moved to a mirrorless digital camera where you can see exactly what you’re taking (and taking masses of pictures of the same thing), I really am amazed by how few pictures I took of places we went – and in reality how few were really rubbish. Looking at them you may disagree!

The trip took us 11+ months, and we headed through Asia and into Australia and New Zealand. We had never done any ‘travelling’ together before, just a couple of short holidays. We saved up for it over the preceding 12 months, spurred on by my lodger Briony (whose idea it was to do it in the first place – then she didn’t), by working, rarely going out and just treating ourselves to a shared bottle of wine on a Friday night. (Perhaps life hasn’t really changed that much – although the wine may have got a little stronger!)

We planned a rough outline for the trip – a few flights – bought a couple of Lonely Planet books, and chatted to my friend Julia who had just done a trip to India. We then visited a man in a tower block in Wembley who sold us our train pass for the first 2 months. We bought ourselves huge rucksacks, had a few travel jabs, and off we went.

Back in 1991, for those of us who remember that far back.., there were no mobile phones and no internet, so doing anything like this was based on what you read in a book or what others told you. We must have been mad! Or just young.