Masa Mara Safari

Some people blog to be helpful to other travelers. They dutifully provide bus schedules, restaurant recommendations, referrals for guides and hotels for the rest of us. Alas, we have not been that kind of travel bloggers. We have been more concerned with trying to show the folks back home that we haven't gone soft in the head. But now, for the purposes of helping other travelers, I would like to share some of our experiences with the Masa Mara Safari in hopes that other travelers will could benefit from our experience.

We did a two night safari to the Masa Mara reserve in the middle of July. We went with Big Time Safari. And they were good. I'll tell you more about them, but first a few things to think about while planning your safari:


The Vehicle is probably fine.
Most Safari outfits use a pop-top matatu. It is a van with fewer, more comfortable seats and a roof that pops up to allow you to stand and look all around you while enjoying the shade and safety of the vehicle (think lions). For the purposes of a dry season (July) safari, this vehicle was fine. Maybe even ideal.

Number of Participants is important.
Ask how many people are going and how many they will take in a single vehicle. 2-4 would be ideal. Vans with more than 5 looked rather miserable. Not everyone fits in the pop top and the seating opportunities become more limited.

Quality of Co-Participants will impact your experience.
You will spend 3 days with these people. Make sure you do better than us in this department. We found ourselves confined with the most rude, vulgar and immature Spanish guys to ever grace this continent. I wish I could say it didn't affect our experience, but it did.

You will bother the animals.
About this we felt bad. And maybe you will too. Zebras sprinted from the road when we approached. Ostriches stopped their courtship dance when the van motored up to them. Even the sleeping lions woke up when we leered over them with many cameras. It didn't seem like a big deal until I understood just how many safari vehicles were in the park. Our car was one of 20 surrounding two leopards in a patch of bushes. The driving safari, in our experience, did disturb animals. This is something you should weigh out before you sign on.

Your Trip will be short, yet it will be long enough.
A "three day" safari really comes down to about 12 to 18 hours in the park. But consider that you will spend all your safari time driving around looking at animals. By the third morning, we had seen all we needed to see. In fact, a one day game drive would have sufficed. Keep in mind, that while you may spend 18 hours in the park, you will probably spend three full days in the car.

There are lots of safari companies.
We originally signed on to Safe Ride Safari. John picked us up in Narok at our hotel. When I asked how we would be returning to Nairobi (the other couple was continuing on) he asked if I had malaria and then told me not to worry about it and get back in the car. He was so rude, that within 10 minutes of being picked up, we agreed to take our backpacks out of the car and catch a bus back to Nairobi. We then realized that the guide/driver would greatly impact our experience. After that we insisted on talking to guides before signing on to a safari. All agencies were happy to call their drivers on their cell phones and let us talk to them. This gave us a gauge on niceness.

So in the end we visited Masa Mara with Big Time Safaris. George was our guide and driver. He was courteous and informative and gave the trip some good structure. He went out of his way to make sure we saw animals and got to observe different parts of the park. At times we were behind schedule which was a bit frustrating, but in the end it was fine. The camp was okay- a few more thoughtful details would have gone along way. The food was okay. We also spend sometime with another guide and driver named Abdi who would have been very good as well.

jl

Mark and Juliah

First Impressions of Nairobi

Arrived in Nairobi early-early on June 30th, landing around 1:20am and clearing customs by 2:30. Julie and I are scared: Nairobi is rumored to be the most dangerous city in Africa. We'd talked about crashing at the airport til dawn, but now we're dead on our feet and will pay almost anything for a clean bed. We don't have a hotel reservation or taxi waiting, but by the luggage carousel we force a conversation with Dirk, a German high school student doing volunteer work outside the capital, and he agrees to share his cab to his hotel, where we hope they have an extra room for us. We're somewhat amazed that this ride has worked out, without any prior planning, and is cheaper and less scary than arranging our own transportation at 3am. We knock on the glass door of the Embassy Hotel, and a fuzzy shape moves in the darkness: the manager, rising from his sleep on the couch. He turns on a light, unlocks the door for us. He's unfazed by our arrival, and hands us a registration form. We copy our passport numbers, dates of issue and expiry, visa numbers and port of arrival. A young prostitute in a banana and khaki-colored dress comes inside and interrupts to ask if there is a room available. Does it have a bathroom? Is there tissue inside? She hands the manager 2000 Kenyan shillings, about $25, and takes a room key. Her john is waiting outside, and comes in when she gives him the A-OK sign.

At 3am, inside the cab, the city is deserted and sort of menacing-looking to first time visitors, but by noon, when we've woken, we notice that the streets are clean, people are extraordinarily well-dressed, relaxed, and polite. The downtown district abounds with coffeeshops and Indian restaurants. There is construction happening behind our hotel, and the workers wear helmets and climb metal scaffolding. These are the things we're noticing after our 8 weeks in the Middle East.

I've got feeling of whiplash from flying from Egypt to Kenya. In Luxor, the temperature was 120 degrees Fahrenheit, forcing these skinflint travelers to splurge for rooms with A/C. In Nairobi, it's shot down to about 70, cool and overcast through most of the day. Security guards give you directions without expecting to be tipped. People ask you where you're from as a simple conversation starter, not as a means of suckering you into their shop--but we still have our guards up.

Mark and Juliah

Third Quarterly Report

To think that it's now month 9. The first part of our trip seems like a vacation we took years ago. People have started asking us which country we've enjoyed the most. I'm tired of the question already! My answer is that having the time to move slowly and really observe things has been my favorite part of this trip. I have most enjoyed the places I knew the least about. This quarter has been all about surprising places. From a rowdy Buddhist New Year's on the south coast of Sri Lanka to the syrupy sting of the Dead Sea in Jordan, our mantra quickly became "Who knew?" And when it comes to surprises, the Middle East has been very rewarding. Hospitable, safe and welcoming, there is much to see here in terms of people, history and natural beauty. What a shame we met so few Americans seeing it for themselves.

Countries covered this quarter: Sri Lanka, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Israel and Palestine, and Egypt
Days in the Middle East: 74 (April 16th- June 29th)
Miles traveled in the Middle East: 3,900 (Most of those logged on a train to southern Egypt)
Route: http://www.gmap-pedometer.com/?r=3851295
Cousins Visited in the Middle East: 4 (Thank you for offering up your cousins, Loussi and Maya).
Accommodations used to date: 109
Pictures taken by Juliah: 4,920 (Mark had shipped home a memory card and was unable to provide an accurate count)
Maximum number of falafel meals consumed consecutively: 4. Cheap, ever present and delicious, a large portion of our body mass is now made of falafel.
Next on the Agenda: East Africa

A Few Highlights from the Middle East:
Diving the Blue Hole in the Sinai Peninsula. We suited up in 5 millimeters wet suits, put on our tanks and started walking down the dirt road. We passed a cliff with at least 20 memorial markers for the divers who had died at this site. Summer, our dive master, made a point of humming a happy song as we continued our walk. Then we got into the water and began our 30 meters decent down a stone shaft. It felt like a free fall. I had to pace myself to make sure didn't fall on top of Mark who was right below me. The fall ended when we emerged through a tunnel in an immense reef wall. To our right, reef pulsating with crazy corals and little orange fish. To the left the deep blue Red Sea, mysterious and seemingly bottomless.

Getting pulled off a bus by Israeli Defense Forces headed back from the West Bank. Apparently foreign tourists were not permitted to pass through this security check point. We suspected that the Sargent on duty was just miffed that we had visited Palestine. With the Turkish flotilla incident just weeks behind us, perhaps the Israelis were feeling even more on edge than usual. The Israeli soldier barely looked up from his cell phone when we tried to protest this "new policy." So we were forced to walk along the highway in growing darkness until we found a cab to take us to a different security checkpoint that would let us back to Israel.

Touring the tunnels below the Islamic Temple of The Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem. Burrowing through the dark and muddy tunnels you eventually find the foundation and original door to the second temple, the most sacred site for Jews and an undeniably eerie place for the rest of us.

Climbing a hill in Amman to see the sunset. As we reach the top, two Palestinian women pull us into their home and demand we stay for coffee. We meet their children and heard all about how much they love American people. They hope we enjoy Jordan. We completely miss the sunset.

Petra at sunrise. I'm torn between the stately symmetry of the carved facades, statues and niches and the beauty of the stone itself. The cliff faces are marbled with white, red and orange hues that would make them stunning even had they not been carved by an artful ancient people. The stones reminds me of salmon and then I long to poach salmon and eat it with a nice salad. I found myself walking away from one building only to turn back for a second look.

Staying the night in a 10th century monastery tucked between rocky mountains above the desert in Syria. We ate homemade cheese with the monks and slept above the chapel which let the smell of frankincense wafted up from below.

Smoking shisha (tobacco water pipe) on the banks of the Euphrates river at sunset in eastern Syria. Eventually the guy at the next table started chatting with us, paid our bill and took us cruising around town as the desert air cooled and the locals finally emerged for the evening.

Sleeping on the roof in Damascus. It's cheaper to sleep on the roof rather than getting a room and besides they still give you breakfast. There are 25 cots set up on the roof, most just 6 inches from the next. Blankets quickly become a commodity between our 25 roof mates, most of us sleeping just inches from each other. The 4am morning call to prayer finds us wearing rain coats and wool hats and snuggling to keep warm.

Wading in the Mediterranean on the south coast of Lebanon and collecting a few choice pieces of sea glass for my desk at my next job. The southern coast of Lebanon has been inhabited for thousands of years. Its difficult to choose between the colorful bits that turn up among the pebbles in front of the light house turned hotel we have been sleeping in.


And How Would You Say Things Are Going?
It's amazing what seems normal after a while. After nine months on the road, I can't imagine doing anything else. It has been a very good use of a year. By moving slowly and not pushing ourselves to do the "must sees" we haven't burned out yet.Though, there are a few indicators that our stamina may be waning.

For one, everything we own is falling apart. My watch, which got a new band in Northern Thailand and a new battery in downtown Mumbai just got fixed for $1.25 on the streets of Nairobi. To my shock and dismay, the watch repair guy actually used his teeth.

What's next on the agenda?
Africa! East Africa. In 2006 Mark and I visited Ghana, Togo and Benin in West Africa. We looked forward to returning to Africa ever since.
The guide books that we bought in Cairo for Uganda, Tanzania and Kenya all have animals on the covers. Usually the cover of a guidebook excites me, but I couldn't be less excited about these book covers. Chimps? Elephants? really? What excites me instead about East Africa is meeting people, enjoying some lush beautiful country and seeing how people live. It will also be nice to eat with our hands, drink beer and have really good papaya again. But still, I will take 120 giraffe pictures when the opportunity arises.

When are you coming home?
This is a frequently asked question, to be sure. We will probably be home in later September or early October.

-jl

Mark and Juliah

Cairo

There's a good reason we haven't been posting as often over the last few weeks: our brains have been literally fried by the heat here. In southern Jordan and Egypt, you can feel cerebral matter melting out of your ears. Sorry to say, I haven't been keeping up with my journal. All my photos look bleached and whited out in the sunshine. Thinking back over these last months, I have moments of amnesia associated with blunt head trauma; it's just that hot here.

Last night I had a good conversation with a German student living in Cairo, and she helped me to put into context some of the feelings I'd been having about Egypt since arriving from Israel. The Holy Land itself was a difficult place, buzzing with tension, mistrust, religious zealotry, jittery and arrogant military, and occasional bigotry. It became a regular and uncomfortable routine to bump into a local who would tell you how much they despised Arabs, or would speak somewhat gleefully about how the Palestinian people could never come back to this land. One shopkeeper at a passport photo shop harangued us out the door, ranting about how my president ("Barack HUSSEIN!!!") was a Muslim, how all Muslims rejoiced in the September 11th attacks, and how by visiting Egypt and the Muslim world, we were supporting terrorists. Other times, we'd wind up in heated and circular arguments with other travelers about the legitimacy of the Israeli state, the rights of Palestinians, and the future of the region. Each day would shed light on an angle we hadn't considered before, but the picture as a whole emerged as one people scrambling to climb over the backs of another, while their neighbors did the same. Yeah, the sights were fascinating, but I couldn't wait to leave. The longer I spent here, the more I wanted to completely disassociate from it.

But Egypt wasn't much better. We crossed the border from Eilat to the Sinai, and in Dahab and Upper Egypt the temperature shot up to 50 Celsius, about 120 Fahrenheit. We were followed in this heat by hotel touts, restaurant touts, shopkeepers, greasy cops who'd corner you for baksheesh, and overtly sexual and harassing men in their 20's. Walking the streets, muscle-bound guys would zero in on my wife and sneer "Beauuuutiful. You're one lucky guy," in this breathy voice that made me want to punch the men give the whole city the finger. Last night, after giving us directions to an intersection, a man invited us to his perfume shop. He said he could sell us a fragrance that would make sex feel like an earthquake, that would make us feel something like we'd never felt before. People just do not say such things in the Middle East, but they seem to happen here.

I know I'm painting a broad and hyper-negative picture of Egypt, but this is how I'd been feeling after a week of travel here. We'd meet good people in Egypt, too, but it was impossible to let our guard down after dealing with the pestering and harassment. I wondered how they navigated this extraordinarily stressful society.

"People live such difficult lives here, that the immediate benefit takes priority," our friend told us. Financially, they were really struggling, and they did what they could to keep their heads above water without much consideration for strangers. That's why the touts would follow you for blocks or clutch your arm and guide you to a shop or restaurant. Among the people at the bottom, it means every transaction is followed by the question "Are you happy?" and the hope of charming a tourist into tipping 40 of 60 cents. Police pull you aside and give extensive directions around a neighborhood, then ask you for a dollar. It's hard-scrabble living and everything feels on edge.

But there's an allure to the challenges that come with living here; a little bit of language opens doors for you, and people who invest the time in living here have experiences they could have nowhere else. For some, the sheer weirdness keeps people going: our new friend Astrid told us how in a one week period, she had one cab driver fall asleep on her, another read a newspaper while driving in traffic, and a third propose marriage. And quietly hiding among the loudest and rudest of the crowd are the polite. It takes some work to find them, but they are here: practice a few sentences of Arabic with a shopkeeper, and you can be drawn into an excited, seven-hour conversation that only ends when you insist you have to go. Seeking out a small restaurant on our last night, we were invited to ditch our plans and have dinner with a local family. I think it's this allure that keeps drawing some people back here, like Astrid, who's now made her 5th extended trip in 18 months. And though the rest of the Arab world rags on Egypt as well, everyone is consumed by their music, art, and cinema--one of the world's largest entertainment industries outside of Hollywood and Mumbai.

No doubt, this is one of the world's more difficult places to travel. You can make a two week trip of it and see nothing but the ruins of a civilization that ended with the Roman Empire, but exploring the living culture takes more time and effort than we have at the moment.

--mark

Mark and Juliah

Welcome to the Middle East

Welcome. Welcome. Welcome.

The man in army fatigues had looked through every last page of my passport and examined each stamp in detail before adding a Lebanon stamp to my frayed passport. We had just arrived at the Beirut Airport from Sri Lanka. I was immediately struck by all the white people and how most of them seem to be smoking as they line up for Customs. The immigration official looked me in the eye, paused to hand me back my passport and said "Welcome to Lebanon" in such a thoughtful way it sent chills up my spine. Leaving immigration, I asked Mark if he too had received a meaningful Welcome to Lebanon and he said that he had.


Maya's cousin Omar met us in the airport and ushered into his car. He pointed out key buildings as we headed towards the hotel he had helped us to book. A long the way we stopped for an amazing schwarma sandwich that slit the throat of any ideas I had had about vegetarianism back in India.



"Are you afraid?" asked the hotel manager with a ghoulish smile as I handed him my passport when we arrived. Remember, I thought to myself, 'they can kill you but they can never take your soul.' It was a line I had heard on the TV show "Jailed Abroad", a show about foreigners who end up in captivity somewhere with dirty floors, hostile inmates and no flush toilets, usually for drug smuggling. This line came from an episode in which two journalist were captured by some terrorist group somewhere. One was an ex-marine who gave this shred of advice to the other journalist when it looked like they would both be killed. Whenever we have cable in a hotel room we try to watch the show. The show makes us feel pretty smug and superior-- we have dirty floors and no flush toilets because we are cheap.

"What should I be afraid of?" I asked the hotel manager, trying to sound very very casual.
"You have an American passport. I could sell this, you know."
"Then can I trade it for this free city map?" I took one of his city maps from the desk.
The hotel manager smiled and nodded and soon all three of us were sitting and drinking coffee until 11:30 pm. We spent the next afternoon smoking a nargila (water tobacco pipe) with him in a parking space ac cross from the hotel.


The kindness and hospitality we have encountered so far in Lebanon and Syria has been shocking.


"I think the rule in the Middle East is just to say yes" Mark said thoughtfully as we were strolling through Aleppo's old souk. Aleppo is Syria's second city and vies for the title of longest inhabited place on earth. The souk is a labyrinth of tunnels lined with neatly kept shops. While old and attractive, most of these shops are still geared to locals rather than tourists, which is make the whole thing feel even more authentic. Mark is talking about the frequent invitations we as foreigner receive here. A one minute conversation with a man in a small desert oasis town leads to an invitation to breakfast in his work place. Yes to a group of old men sitting by the side of the road in Lebanon yields us a ride back to our rental car after hours of hiking in the wrong direction. Yes to a man sitting at the next table in a cafe along the Euphrates finds us in the back of a luxury sedan with his brother. We cruised the riverside and tour town with music blaring before being thoughtfully deposited at our hotel.

Sometimes, hospitality isn't really a question at all. Palmyra is an ancient set of ruins of an oasis town in the middle of the desert. You can probably see to the Iraqi border from here although all there is to see beyond this town is a large expanse of desert. From the citadel we wandered down the hill of small rocks and dried grass to a small valley of roman tombs in the shape of three story towers. A man sitting with a group of people in the shade of a van yelled and beckoned us over. We were quickly ushered to sit down with them and drink some tea as they guessed at out nationality and introduced the family. Sometimes accepting hospitality here doesn't feel like a choice but these two tired travelers are happy to sit down and drink some tea.

Mark and Juliah

If You See Just One Movie This Year, Make It This Horrendous Piece of Bollywood Crap, "My Name is Khan"

Julie and I saw our first Bollywood flick 6 weeks ago, but are still fascinated by how this 3.5 hour behemoth was written, funded, produced, and screened.

Shah Rukh Khan stars as Rizwan Khan, a middle-class Indian Muslim with Asperger's Syndrome who moves in with his San Francisco-based brother after the death of his mother. He falls in love with a local hairdresser and they marry, but the terrorist attacks of September 11th inspire suspicion and hate crimes against his family. When his 14 year-old step son is murdered by a racist, after-school soccer team, Rizwan's wife has a breakdown and orders him to leave the house on a mission: Find the President of the United States and tell him: "My name is Khan, and I am not a terrorist!"

But Khan's efforts to reach the president run into trouble at a George W. Bush support rally in San Francisco, when security hear him yelling "Terrorist!" (as in, "I am not a terrorist!"). They arrest him and bring him to a Guantanamo-like facility, where he is tortured and interrogated. A federal judge releases him when it's discovered that rather than being a terrorist, Khan had actually reported the plot of a radical imam to the FBI.

Free from prison, Khan journeys to Georgia, where he saves the town of Willamina from a Hurricane Katrina-type storm, inspiring other American Muslims to assert their identities and perform acts of community service. Unfortunately, while reconciling with his wife while constructing a makeshift hospital, Khan is stabbed by the very imam he had reported to the FBI!

Meanwhile, Barack Obama is elected President on a pro-Georgia Reconstruction platform, and at his first speech as president-elect, invites Rizwan--just out of the hospital--to share the podium with him, and Khan finally has his chance to tell the American government: "My name is Khan, and I am not a terrorist."

You can watch the trailer here.

Mark and Juliah

2nd Quarterly Report: January 1-April 1st.

This honeymoon has its own anniversary. And now we are celebrating six months.

Countries Visited This Quarter: Cambodia, Thailand, Bhutan, India and Sri Lanka (we arrived in Sri Lanka March 25, so we won't mention it much in this report.)

Sunglasses Replaced (six month count):
Juliah:6
Mark:1

Hotels used this quarter: 29
Hotels used to date: 67

Longest Stay: Varanasi, India: nine days.

Highest fever recorded: 103 degrees. The honor goes to Mark. Nicely done, Mark.

Types of Animals Pet/Handled (to date): 14
(cow, dog, cat, rabbit, toad, fish, hawk, buffalo, pig, chicken, goat, elephant, pigeon, gecko)

Hours Spent on Trains in India: 102 ("Groooooaaaan" --Mark)

Miles Traveled in India: 3,160. (please note that total mileage was calculated "as the crow flies." actual mileage may be greater.)
see the google map for route details.


Favorite Sleep:
Juliah: Ganpati Guest House, Varanasi. We had a simple room on the top floor overlooking the Ganges. It was the best people watching on earth. At sunrise, boats of pilgrims took to the water. At night, crazy tourists swam. We spend a week on the top balcony, practicing Hindi with the hotel staff and eating pomegranates.

Mark: Gantey Palace Hotel, A former prime minister slept in our bed. Hotel staff provided hot water bottles under the sheets, and the room was enormous, if freezing. We had a killer view of the Paro Valley just outside our window.

Rudest Awakening:
Juliah: I had fallen asleep in a Jeep Taxi on the way down the mountains from Darjeeling. It was a share taxi, the kind that works like a public bus, picking up people along the road and cramming them in wherever they fit. I was wedged between two Indian men when I fell asleep. I woke up to something wet on my hand and realized that it was saliva. I had drooled all over myself and was ultimately woken up by my own spit. Of course, my fellow passengers were too polite to let on that they had noticed.

Mark: After a 9 hour overnight train to Kolkata, we were woken by the sound of yelling and clapping. In my groggy state, I thought it was a conductor coming through to kick us out. When I looked again, I saw it was a hijra, an Indian transvestite, also known as the "third gender." Hijras come through trains and harass male passengers for money. I later saw a man refuse to pay one, and she flirted with him, brushed his cheek, and tried to touch him while other passengers laughed and the man fumed.

Favorite Act of Kindness:
Juliah: Leaving the Capital of Bhutan for the Indian border, our bus made a routine lunch stop at a small restaurant on the side of the windy road. We marched in to the restaurant with the other passengers and found a seat next to the fire. The Bhutanese woman sitting across from us helped us order Tibetan dumplings (momos) and two cups of tea. When it came time to pay for our food, the woman told us that she had bought us lunch because otherwise they would have overcharged us. She refused to let us pay her back. When we reached the border town, her son climbed on top of the bus to retrieve our bags and the two of them took us to our hotel in a taxi to make sure we found our way. The taxi dropped us at a hotel and we waved good bye to the woman and her son as they crossed the border to the Indian side of town where they lived.

Mark: These are almost too numerous to count, but met some very kind Kashmiris in Varanasi who chatted with us for 10 minutes, gave us free breakfast from their food stand, refused our money, and insisted we come visit them in their home someday. People say many terrible things about India: that the country is filthy, the people are obsessed with money, that locals are rude; but the opposite is also often true. Everybody bathes, even if they do it in the streets from public pumps. For every 10 people who harangue you for baksheesh, one will buy you a meal, a train ticket, or a cup of chai. Leaving Chennai for the airport, we met a man headed for work who asked me in all seriousness, "What is your nice name, sir?"

Favorite Meal:
Juliah: On our first Saturday in Bhutan we climbed Tiger's nest. It was a a very steep climb in high altitude that lead to stunning mountain views laced with prayer flags and clean mountain streams. At the top is a cold little monastery build against the cliff. Most folks save it for their last day when they are good and used to Bhutan's altitude, but not us. We climbed Tiger's Nest on our second day in the mountains.
After the hike, we went to Yeshi's house for dinner. We sat next to the fire and ate all sorts of amazing Bhutanese food with the Dorji clan and their friends. It was so nice to be among friendly people and eating good food in a warm home after our harrowing hike.

Mark: Nothing beats Thai cooking, but India put up a fierce competition. We had some very fresh, 5-cent cauliflower samosa in Varanasi that were out of this world. I had them once and could never find them again. A hole-in-the-wall restaurant in Mysore served us a set menu on a banana leaf. The menu was different everyday, and as soon as you'd finish with one item, a man would come by and replenish your curry, dal, or vegetables from a bucket, as often as you'd like. You could stay for hours, and each meal was under a dollar.

Coldest Place:
Juliah: Bumthang, Bhutan in February. We put all our cloths on to have dinner next to the stove. After dinner we thought it would be nice to wander around town. After passing two store fronts, we decided instead to head back to the hotel where Mark and I feel asleep in one twin bed, huddled together for extra warmth.

Mark: Agreed. There were wide spaces between the wooden slats in the wall, and at night Juliah would say she could hear the glaciers moving outside. Under 4 layers of clothing and 5 blankets, I could still feel my extremities going numb.

Warmest Place:
Allepey, Kerala, India in mid-March. I started sweating around 9:30 am. I was standing in the shade next to a canal waiting for a ferry and I couldn't stop the sweat from dripping on to my book. When we reached the homestay, our hosts told us they only did tours at 7:30 am and 5:30pm as it was too hot for them to go out at any other time of day.

Favorite New Thing:
Juliah: Prayer wheels. There is nothing like turning prayer wheels as you walk clockwise around a 7th century Buddhist monastery as the sunrises over the snow dusted Himalayas. In Bhutan we went to Buddhist temple after Buddhist temple. While they were all very beautiful, with large gold buddhas, murals and offerings, temple fatigue quickly set in. Prayer wheels became a nice way to experience a religious site without glazing over.

Mark: Eating with your hands rocks! The trick is to make a little shovel with the fingers of your right hand and then spoon it into your face. It's a little messy but a lot of fun, and you'll notice that Indians wash their hands more often than any other people we've met.

Mark and Juliah