In an effort to boost donations for my charity fundraiser I did an interview with Las Vegas Weekly.  I thought I would share it here if anyone wants to check it out.  And please, if you are feeling philanthropic, consider making a small donation to my charity fundraiser (https://www.crowdrise.com/thescenicroutetospain).  Here is a link to the article:

Las Vegas Weekly Article: Wild Ride

Just completed some CRAZY adventures and will post about them soon.  Until then…

We climbed up and up…to 3,500 meters (11,500 feet)…Bala began to suffer, crawling up the hills…a mechanical issue we thought we had taken care of back in India was back.  The destination: Song Kul Lake.  4 days, hundreds of kilometers of muddy and icy dirt roads, 5 river crossings, a few dozen yurts, hundreds of sheep and horses, and almost NO PEOPLE!  there are only a dozen or so families of Kyrgyz nomads that inhabit the lake.  The day we left Song Kul we drove for 5 hours before we saw another car.

I didn’t have time to put together a full blog report yet on our time in Kyrgyzstan before we head off today to cross the Tajikistan border, but I thought I would share this little collections of video from our time around the Song Kul region.

PS: If you are in the charitable mood don’t forget my fundraiser…donate to causes like conservation, worldwide poverty, and cancer research and I will send you a postcard from somewhere along the way as a thank you…more details on how to donate by CLICKING HERE.  See you in Dushanbe.

This morning I woke up in Central Asia.  Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan to be exact.  Maybe right now you are saying to yourself “Bishkek?  Kyrgyzstan?  Where the hell is that?  Whats going on there?”  I promise I will answer some of those questions in my next post.  But for now maybe you would like to know what I’ve been up to the last 8 weeks:

We traveled 800 kilometers on train and 2000 kilometers (1,250 miles) on Bala through Northern India and Nepal.  Number of mechanics visited: six.  Here is our route:

I spent weeks living and breathing nothing but motorcycle motorcycle motorcycle while finishing up the engine rebuild on Bala in New Delhi

We did a swan dive into everything that makes India extravagantly mystic, surreal, overbearing, sacred, grimy, and unceasingly captivating in Varanasi, one of the oldest cities in the world.  It was one of my favorite places I visited in India.

On our train journey from Delhi to Gaya we lost Bala (she was supposed to be on our train).   For 24 scary hours we had no idea where she was.  After some funny interactions with the railway stationmaster we found her….800 kilometers away.

We took the wrong way from Varanasi across the Nepal border to Kathmandu. We spent three exhausting days sucking dust into our lungs and bumping along atrocious cratered dirt roads like these:

  

After months of eating dodgy food in India we decided to do poop tests at a local hospital to see what kind of little animals we were harboring in our stomachs.  One of us walked with a clean bill of health, the other with a virtual zoo of animals….numerous bacterias, giardia, AND amoebas.  Guess who…

Border crossing experience 1:  India to Nepal, Southern border.  A cacophony of chaos.  A blizzard of dust, rumbling trucks, horse-drawn carriages, and disorder.

Border crossing experience 2: Nepal to India, Western Border.  We had to wake up the sleeping Nepalese immigration officers.  There was not a single person, car, or motorcycle crossing the border.  A man literally had to come “unlock the gate to India” for us so we could pass through.

We witnessed true devotion to faith…hundreds of people bathing in and drinking the water of the sacred Ganges river… where the level of coliform (human and animal feces) is TWO THOUSAND EIGHT HUNDRED TIMES!!! the level which is considered safe by the World Health Organization.  Now that’s devotion.  Thankfully the newly elected prime minister of India is launching a major cleanup mission for the river.

We traveled to the future.  The day we arrived in Nepal was their New Year eve.  Goodbye 2014, hello 2071.   Despite being the year 2071, we found that Nepal still does not have stable electricity (The entire country, including the capital of Kathmandu only has power about 60% of the time.)

We crossed the Ganges 4 times on Bala in four different places, once we were rowed across on a boat.

We spent 8 days hiking up the Langtang Valley in the Himalayas near the border of Tibet.

In Kathmandu I applied for my third India visa in 8 months.

We passed through a very inconspicuous dusty city in Bihar, the poorest state in India, called Motihari.  We were shocked to discover that it is the birthplace of author George Orwell.

At the Iranian embassy in New Delhi we had a nice chat with Freddie Mercury’s cousin.

I climbed this 5,000 meter peak (16,400 feet):

I was alone on the summit, with a big blue sky close enough to touch and surrounded by icy peaks that rose even higher (The one right behind me is over 7,000 meters [23,000 feet].   This was the view from the top:

I made friends with Yaks.

And Elephants.

We watched a procession of men carry a body to the banks of the Ganges, place it on a pyre of wood and set it ablaze.  As the sun set into the river we watched the fire burn and the smoke rise for two and a half hours until all that was left was a small pile of hot coals.

The day that we drove into Kathmandu I was scandalized by how the women dressed.  I found adjectives like “Slutty, promiscuous, and scanty” popping into my head.  Until I realized that they were just dressed like any normal woman you would see on the street in America or Europe!  That’s what seven months in ultra-conservative India can do to you.

Memorable menu items from the last months:  Dhal bhat (Nepalese set meal of rice, veg, and a watery lentil broth), momos (Nepalese dumplings), lots of trailmix and porridge, tons of mangoes (just came into season), and the best samosas we ever tried (found at the tiniest little shack on the side of the road in Bihar)

We took a horrendous 10 hour bus ride packed like sardines into the bus with at least 15 additional people on top of the bus…on roads like these:

We ate dodgy fish at a restaurant on the shores of the lake in Pokhara and I suffered the consequences for days after.

We hiked to an ancient glacier high in the Himalayas.

In in a dusty town in Northern India called Bodhgaya, we mingled with Buddhists pilgrims, soaking in the nirvanic vibes that fall like leaves from the branches of the Bodhi tree where, 2500 years ago Buddha found enlightenment.

Three weeks and 1000 kilometers (625 miles) later in Nepal, we visited the site where Buddha was born.  It was enclosed in this not no nirvanic building:

 

We camped for a few days just outside of Bardia National Park.  We saw a couple rhinos and a tiger (I missed it, Magdalena caught a quick glimpse).  It was far away but close enough to be exciting just to know it was

near.   For all that we didn’t see of the tiger itself, we DID see some other gifts he left behind…some tracks and some hairball vomit

The day that we cruised back into Delhi, the World Health Organization released a list of the 20 most polluted cities in the world…guess what was number one.

 

We said goodbye to the team at garage team at Vintage Rides, who were instrumental in making this whole trip a reality.  Right down to the last minute.

Back in Delhi we spent a very hectic week and a half preparing for our final departure from India.  Mechanical work, organizing spare parts for the journey west, catching up with old friends, and getting Bala boxed up for the trip to Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan.

We said goodbye to India (with a tear in the eye) and boarded a plane to Kyrgyzstan.  It’ll be all overland from there.  14,000 kilometers (8700 miles) to go.  Bala is in good shape.  We are excited for new places, faces, and roads.  The journey west begins.

CLICK HERE for more pictures and stories

Thanks for reading.  Please consider donating some money to my fundraiser (I’ll even send you or someone you know a postcard from somewhere along the way!).  Click here for more info: http://www.crowdrise.com/thescenicroutetospain

 

 

I woke up this morning  in Delhi…again.  In the last week I have contacted 8 customs brokers in Kyrgystan, visited 4 foreign embassies in person and called several more, met with two shipping companies, completely disassembled Bala (rebuilding the entire engine), and visited more motorcycle parts stores than I can count…the Logistics & Planning Phase  of  THE PLAN  has kicked into high gear, a westward departure anxiously looms on the horizon.  But what have I been up to between Sri Lanka and New Delhi?

I acquired a passenger…and so “I” has become “we”.  One who has proven to be a true intrepid traveler, and who was ready to sign on for the big trip, Central Asia to Central Europe.  You have met her before… Magdalena

We traveled by moto from Madurai to Arambol almost 1,250 miles (2000k)  This was our route:

We visited 5 mechanics in two weeks time (luckily no major problems)

We drove through spice plantations that never seemed to end.  Beautiful mountain roads draped on each side by rows and rows of cardamom, black pepper, coffee, cinnamon and other fragrant plants and trees.

We passed through little towns and cities that never see westerners.  While suiting up to get back on Bala after stopping for a cup of chai and a samosa we would sometimes be surrounded by 30 pairs of curious eyes.

We visited 1000 year old Hindu temples with carved sexual scenes from the Kama Sutra and wondered how the Hindu culture today has come to be so conservative.

I loved the food up north, then discovered South India food and fell in love all over again.  Dosas, uttapam, parrota, coconut chutney, and “meals” served on banana leaves.

We bought fresh red snapper from a fish market in Goa and made Mexican style ceviche in the bathroom of our guesthouse.

In the state of Karnataka, West Coast of India, we spent several days in a hut with mud floors and no electricity on a beach that could only be reached by hiking through a jungle.

We spent more than a week driving through the Western Ghats, the second largest mountain range in India.  And we survived

We spent a few nights in a small mountain town where 4 miles (7k) away….just two weeks earlier, a man eating tiger that had killed 4 people was shot.

We visited the cashew capital of India, ate lots of cashews and bought some of the local liquor, made from…yep, cashew fruit.

We drank too much rum and suffered the next day.

We took a 41 hour train ride (With Bala as our baggage) from Goa to Delhi.

We visited a sacred temple of the Jain religion.  The Jains do believe in a strict code of not causing unnecessary harm to any animal.  They don’t use leather, are strict vegans, and they don’t even eat potatoes, carrots, or other roots because harvesting them it may harm insects that live in the earth.

We stumbled upon a cattle market in a small town where DEFINITELY no other westerns have stopped before.  We stole the spotlight from the cows for the 15 minutes or so that we walked around the market.   We got some strange looks from a lot of people, but also a few big smiles from guys like this

In Arambol, Goa we met a dear old friend of mine, Safira, who is a recurring character in my cast of travel partners (she was with me for two weeks in the days of Coco back in Brazil and I spent Halloween with her in Amsterdam couple years ago).

Sometimes in a single day we would pass through lush high mountain climate zones with COLD weather covered in greenery and tea plantations, then into dry and rocky mountains, then flat and hot acacia covered desert “à la” Africa, only to end up back in the mountains putting on our sweaters.

We celebrated Holi, the festival of colors.  Anyone who walks outside on that day will end up looking like they got pooped on by a rainbow.  We did.

We saw the second largest waterfall in India, Jog Falls, whose torrents, once attracting tens of thousands of visitors each year, have recently been stifled by the building of a big dam upriver L

We tried relentlessly to spot a GIANT flying squirrel (the image I had created in my mind of what this super-animal might look like was fantastical), native to the mountain area we were in, but we failed L

We did see crocodile though…big ones.

We walked 8 miles (15k) along some railroad tracks to reach some waterfall…to get back we took the advice of the station master in a tiny rural station and jumped onto a moving cargo train.  We ended up chatting with the brakeman at the rear of the train and then jumped off it when it reached the town where Bala was waiting for us.

We spent some days in Panjim the capital of Goa which, until just 60 years ago, was a Portuguese colony.  It was amazing how European it seemed in its architecture, food, and cultural differences.  We celebrated Carnival, drank beer in the streets, and ate beef in public.

What’s next?  Nepal for some weeks, a stopover in Varanasi, then return to Delhi where the journey West will begin.  Unfortunately we could not get access to Pakistan (in February a Spanish cyclist and his armed military escort of 12 people were ambushed by Taliban, 6 of his escort were killed…so the government clamped down on people crossing the country with private transport).  So unfortunately the only other way to do this (aside from paying $6000 in permits to go through Tibet) is to airfreight Bala to Kyrgyzstan and to begin from there.

PLEASE don’t forget about my fundraising mission.  If you like readings about this journey, and seeing the pictures, please consider donating to one of the charities I am supporting.  Here is a link to the fundraiser (Donate in a friend’s name and I’ll send them a postcard from some faraway place!) CLICK HERE TO LEARN MORE OR TO DONATE

To see many more photos and read some more commentary from the last 6 weeks CLICK HERE.

Greetings from Goa.  As I write this the sun is setting into the Arabian Sea just beyond a beautiful white sand beach.  Life is good.  A little vacation from the full-on adventures of life on the road.  (Just completed 1,500k (1000 miles) )  I will post stories and photos from those adventures soon.  But in the meantime I thought I would post some pictures from the time I spent while working in the Kathputli Slum in Delhi.

Many foreigners would come to visit the free schools and other projects that the NGO I worked for runs in the slums.  Local residents of the slums are not shy and would often ask to have their picture taken so they could see it on the digital viewfinder of the camera afterwards.  I thought that they might appreciate actually having a printed copy of the photos so after a couple people asked me to take their photos I later printed them out, found them in the slum days later, and delivered the pictures to them.  It wasn’t long before word got out and I became the unofficial family photographer of the slum.  I couldn’t walk through the slum without being swamped by people, young and old, who wanted their picture taken.  Within a few weeks I had printed and handed out nearly two hundred photos.

This is a collection of some of my favorites. (CLICK HERE TO BE BROUGHT TO THE SLIDESHOW)

The organization I worked for is called PETE (Providing Education to Everyone) India.  To learn more about them and how you can help with their projects you can visit their website http://www.peteindia.webs.com/ or email Shiva, the director at pete@socialworker.net