Angkor Wat Part I

We made it through the Thailand-Cambodia border crossing yesterday and arrived in Siem Reap (the town outside of Angkor Wat).  We had a bit of culture shock walking around the town because it felt like Rosarito Beach in Mexico (think lots of cheap beer and restaurants that all look the same and are charging exorbitant prices for Western food).  We definitely do not love the town, although it is easy to navigate. We also found out that Cambodia is one of the most expensive countries in this area because they use the US dollar.

Enough of the negative.  This morning we headed to the Temples of Angkor in a tuk tuk and bought a 3 day pass for $40 each.  We toured half of the area in about 5 hours.  Angkor was a former religious city of the Khmer from about the 12th century.  The most iconic structure is Angkor Wat, which is the largest religious structure in the world.  We will see Angkor Wat tomorrow.

Today we saw many other temples in the area with beautiful stone work and impressive structures.  Many of the walls and ceilings are collapsing with some restoration work being done. It was super hot today (about 95 degrees) and we were thankful to have a tuk tuk driving us from temple to temple. 

Some of the statues lining a bridge

Entrance to Preah Khan

Some of the carvings into the walls.

Jeff at Preah Khan

One tuk tuk driver had a hammock in his cab

A temple in a pool surrounded by four smaller pools (that were empty)

The wood is holding up the wall

This reminded me of Olmec from "Legends of the Hidden Temple" (Nickelodeon show from the mid-1990s). I know Ashley will get the connection!

Jeff descending some very steep steps

We finished the trip with a nice cold Angkor beer at our hostel

Tomorrow we will get up early to catch the sunrise over Angkor Wat.  Consider today a teaser for the big reveal tomorrow! That's how we see it!

Bangkok

We made it to Bangkok early Wednesday morning.  Our guide book said that March and April are the hottest months in Thailand, but we got lucky and it has been cloudy and cool the three days here.  Our first day we rested and enjoyed our great hostel.  The second day we wandered through Chinatown, and today we visited the Royal Palace and the Temple of the Emerald Buddha. One difference we felt walking around is the number of tourists here compared with any Indian city we visited.  We saw more foreigners walking around Chinatown than we saw in any city we visited in India (including Agra).

In all, we have really enjoyed Bangkok. We didn't see that much of the city though; we do wish we were spending more time in Thailand and will add it to our long list of places to visit in the future.

Reclining Buddha

I'm enjoying some pad thai on the street

Part of the Royal Palace

The Emerald Buddha is atop the gold tower behind the people.  It was about 3 feet tall.

Lots of gold used at the palace

Farewell India

It is hard to sum up what 11 weeks in India has meant to us. It has been a difficult, and often emotionally trying experience, that may take months or years to digest. What we have seen, felt, smelled, tasted, and experienced here is unlike anything we will ever do again. Some things we loved, many things we hated. We met one traveler who said the only way to get through India and enjoy your time here is to let go and see the world as Indians do. It is wise advice that we were never fully able to do. We may see a rickshaw driver as trying to rip us off, but the driver only sees it as negotiating. There is a different flow to life here, colorful, chaotic, and uniquely Indian.

So instead of boring you with some half-baked insights into our time here, we came up with a short list of things we liked and things we didn't like about this overwhelming country.

Things we liked:

1. Cows hanging around and hearing them moo from our hotel room
2. The Golden Temple in Amritsar
3. The food (for the most part)
4. Watching monkeys swing across rooftops
5. Being up close and personal with historic sites
6. Masala dosa (look it up if you have to. Awesome.)
7. Watching chaiwalas (tea servers)
8. Riding in rickshaws
9. Colorful bazaars
10. Watching mini communities form on train rides with people sharing food, space, and stories

Things we did not like:

1. Overnight buses
2. Anise flavored food or sweets
3. Paan spit everywhere, including inside national monuments (paan is like chewing tobacco, but the spit is bright red and stains everything) and the general number of people spitting
4. Paying 25 times as much as Indians for a ticket to a tourist sight (10 rupees for Indians, 250 rupees for foreigners)
5. Crossing busy streets with no regard to pedestrians
6. Getting stared at on buses, in the streets, at monuments
7. Seeing child labor
8. Burning trash and mounds of trash everywhere (plastics included)
9. Hearing the excuse, “Its India” (said with a big grin) for anything and everything that might be slightly off, for example a bus arriving two and a half hours late.
10. Feeling sick sometimes (and not knowing why)
    
    

    

    
    

    This photo is of Gandhi's last footsteps (in concrete) before he was assassinated in 1948. The memorial in Delhi was very moving and beautiful.

By the Numbers

For those of you that may be interested in the numbers side of our trip I've written this post at the conclusion of our stay in India. Jeff and I have been keeping a spreadsheet of all our expenditures (give or take a couple rupees). Before we left, I outlined a rough travel budget with a per day expenditure amount, which I came up with after looking through our travel guide and talking with people that had visited India. I projected a $40/day budget, and after 69 days in India, we have averaged $35.11/day.

Average: $35.11

Lowest: $19.11 (In Hampi – we were both sick and didn't leave the room)

Highest: $81.67 (Included a first class train ticket to Amritsar)

Mode: $29/day (per rounded $)

Most expensive city on average: Agra (Taj Mahal is very expensive to visit)

We also kept our spreadsheet based on how much we spent on certain items. I created the following pie chart* to illustrate our expenditures:

*We are using Open Office, not Microsoft Excel, so I do not have access to super fancy charts!

And by percentages:

Room: 40%

Bus/Train: 15%

Food: 32%

Sight-seeing: 7%

Internet: 1%

Rickshaw/Taxi: 2%

Misc.: 3%

We did not include some items into our daily budget such as souvenirs and big expenditures like our flight to Bangkok, but we have included those in our overall total. In total, we have spent about $2800 (this includes expected expenditures through the last few days in India).

We could have spent less money, maybe $30/day if we had reduced our room standards. A cheap hotel in India goes for about 300-400 rupees, ($6-$9), but those usually mean a squat toilet or a shared toilet, and a mat atop wood planks for the bed (very hard). We stayed in a couple of these types of rooms, but we were miserable. So we averaged 720 rupees/night ($16). This typically includes a private toilet, a soft mattress, and a TV. (BTW, the movies on TV here are way better than at home.) Prices definitely range across the country and given how many tourists visit a city, so some cities everyone pays a premium, like in Bombay. We wouldn't change our room allocation – we found that with how overwhelming the streets of India can be, we needed somewhere comfortable to be to escape at times.

In all, I am pleased with where we are budget-wise; although I may have under budgeted the upcoming countries. It will also be good to have the money saved here for the end of our trip – the Trans-Mongolian Railway and Russia will be expensive.

McLeod Gang (Dharamsala)

After the overwhelming streets of Amritsar and a long day of bus travel, Jeff and I made it to the hill station known as McLeod Gang. An aptly named area for it feels like we are up in the clouds. Dharamsala is known internationally because this is where the Dalai Lama lives in exile from Tibet, as well as thousands of Tibetans, and a place for Tibetan refugees. Our hotel room has a view over the valley as well as a view of the Dalai Lama's residency, called the Tsuglagkhang Complex.

The view from our room

Tsuglagkhang Complex

We wandered around the Tsuglagkhang Complex yesterday and visited the temple there. The Dalai Lama is in his residency now and will be giving a public talk on Thursday. We will try to go, but we aren't sure if we need tickets or if we can just show up. We also happened to be in Dharmsala for Tibetan New Year, which has been fun. Little kids have been setting off fireworks and the Tibetan businesses have been closed for a long weekend. For the Tibetans it is now year 2138.

Offerings to Buddha

It is so beautiful and peaceful up here. It is quite cold at night (low 30s) and in the high 50s during the day. This is a big backpacker destination, so there are plenty of tasty restaurants and more importantly, Tibetan women selling momos on the streets (a momo is a Tibetan dumpling, stuffed with potato, vegetables, sometimes meat).

We may have another McLeod Gang post coming up, once we see a bit more of the area. One more week in India!

The Golden Temple

On March 3 we arrived in Amritsar for a two night stay. Claire and I had been looking forward to this location from the beginning of our trip because it is the location of the Golden Temple, the holiest shrine of Sikhism.

We headed into the temple with throngs of other people, Hindu and Sikh

The Golden Temple.  The top round part represents an inverted lotus flower.

We decided to visit the temple around noon on the next day. Our hotel was only a few blocks from the temple, so we were able to walk. One of the requirements for visiting most temples in India is that you have to remove your shoes and socks. This is something we were accustomed to from having visited so many Hindu temples before. In addition to this though, Sikhs require that your head must be covered before you enter. Claire was able to wrap her pashmina scarf over her head. There are many different scarf vendors selling saffron colored handkerchiefs, so I happily bought one for ten rupees gaining both a head covering for the temple, and a unique little souvenir.

Upon entering the temple, there is a little stream of heated running water that all visitors must wash their feet in. After washing, we descended some marble steps into a huge central plaza. The entire plaza was paved in beautiful white marble. In the center was the beautiful temple itself, seeming to float out on the water. The number of pilgrims and visitors inside the temple grounds was phenomenal. Easily approaching our emotionally charged experience of seeing the Taj Mahal for the first time, the Golden Temple is simply breathtaking in its beauty.

Sikhs pride themselves in the democratic nature of their religion. The temple was 100% free for Claire and I and anybody else who wants to come. We were able to check our shoes without paying even a single rupee. Perhaps the most impressive part of the temple was that anyone who visits can eat a full lunch if they want to. The kitchen is run entirely by volunteers, and feeds anywhere from 40,000 to 100,000 people per day. Not only this, but the kitchen has been operating continuously, twenty four hours per day for 450 years! I wasn't sure what to expect, but we got a decent and tasty Indian meal for no charge. We did make a small donation to the temple to cover the cost of our meal and visit, but it is still just incredible that any Sikh or non-Sikh who visits the temple is treated equally.

Waiting for our meal

Our free meal (and Claire's pant leg)

Volunteers shucking garlic for the meals

Our afternoon experience was so amazing that Claire and I really wanted to see the temple at a different time of day as our guidebook suggests. We decided to return around 9:00pm, knowing that the ceremony for returning the holy book to its nighttime resting place happens at 9:30 pm. We were pleased that the line across the bridge to enter the Golden Temple itself was much smaller than it was in the afternoon. We waited about ten minutes, and were able to actually go inside and see the Sikh holy book being read from. We were standing no more than 15 feet from the man reading it, and there were absolutely no security checkpoints for entry. Pretty incredible.

After seeing the book, we sat by the side of the lake and witnessed the procession of Sikhs carry the book out of the temple, along the bridge, and place it to rest for the night in a building just across the water. We left then, knowing the book would be returned to the temple at 5:00am the next morning.

Nighttime before the book was moved to it's "bedroom"

The book is carried in this to where it spends the night

Jodhpur

Our last stop in Rajasthan further cements that this is one of the most beautiful states in India. Jodhpur, like Jaisalmer, is known for its magnificent fort. But, Jeff and I chose to be bums here and we didn't visit one tourist sight, so I can't bore you today with the history of some structure.

Clock tower and main market

The fort view from our hotel rooftop

Before arriving here we had heard about the fabled “Omelet Guy.” He has been making omelets in Jodhpur since the 1970s, and has become somewhat of a legend, supplying omelets for both tourists and locals alike (omelets are not part of the Indian diet, especially because eggs are considered meat here). We found him our first day and returned every day after that.  Each time we ordered the Masala Cheese Omelet, which is served on mini pieces of bread for 30 rupees each (about 0.66 cents). Our third morning here we had a bad surprise finding the Omelet Guy had gone to a wedding. So we ate at one of the imposter omelet shops in the area.  It was just not as good as the real one. Seeing Jeff's face when he first took a bite of the real masala cheese omelet will forever stick in my head as one of his happiest Indian moments.

Jeff enjoying his Masala Cheese Omelet with the Omelet Guy serving up some more

We also found a place known for its lassis made with saffron. They were delicious.

Today we head to Amritsar to visit the Golden Temple on our last overnight train journey.  We decided to go big and reserved tickets in the 2 AC class (only 4 beds per berth instead of 6). It'll be a 16 hours train ride. Let's hope for a nice trip!