Again, I am sorry that I haven't written for a long time. A lot to cover in this blog.
Nepal
Nepal was definitely better than expected. I was expecting the worst of Nepal and India when we were still in China. I was planning on spending maybe 2 weeks in Nepal just to climb a high mountain and maybe do some short treks then move on to India. How wrong was I to expect that there wasn't much to do in the little country of Nepal!
Oh, before I forgot, I can't believe that I bumped into someone I know from back home on the streets of Kathmandu whom I hadn't seen for 8 years! It just proves that you have to be on your best behaviour the whole time even if you are half way across the world from Australia! Big Brother is always watching!!!
I seriously thought that the Annapurna circuit was going to be a piece of cake before we started. I thought it was going to be a walk in the park for me since I went up the Everest Base Camp in Nepal at 5,200m. Maybe setting such a high goal of carrying our own packs with no guide was a little ambitious, but it was a damn good feeling finishing the trek knowing that we did it all by ourselves!
I remembered I was thinking day 5 of 18 that we were already struggling carrying our pack at around 2,200m let alone going over 5,416m with them! I seriously have no idea how we even made it in the end.
The scenery was picturesque along the way with many snow-capped mountains all easily over 6,000m in altitude and gorgeous waterfalls from melting snow. It is still so hard to believe that I was hiking in the Himalayas.
Because we didn't have a guide, we took some "short-cuts" at times. I think I nearly died at least 5 times along the way. On day 2, I was stuck in the middle of a cliff that was too steep to keep climbing up and too slippery to go down. I ended up sliding on my ass down the steep slope and ripped my new hiking pants! Later on the same day, we also followed some locals to go through this little dirt path next to the mountain cliff which required us to use all our hands, legs and our hiking stick to pull us up and down the path. We later found out that was an unfinished road and no one really used it......Thinking back, I felt like we were just 2 gigantic monkeys on that path.
I guess one of the most important factors that kept us going was all the good food that we were going to eat on the other side and in New York. We always always talked about the food when we were resting in our beds after a long day hike. Naomi was just like "I so want to have a massive massive burger when I go to New York and I am going to have tonnes of ice-cream and steak and I am going to make my own pizza". Just listening to it made me drool and feel even more hungry....
Just to clarify what Naomi said about me getting sick in Manang. A – I didn't just eat there because it was the cheapest restaurant in town. I saw some tourists eating there before I went inside. B – I saw the kitchen which looked quite clean.
But yes, I hated myself for getting sick so high up the mountain and only a mere 3 days before we needed to cross over the Thorong Pass.
I think Naomi also forgot to mention that I was carrying her 1L water bottle and some of her crap on my back on the day that we crossed over the pass. I am sure if I had less to carry, I wouldn't be as tired as I was going downhill as described in her blog.
I am not sure whether Naomi mentioned that I also almost died twice on the same day slipping and falling down the ice and almost twisted my ankle. It was such a scary experience falling down on those frozen paths down the side of the mountain. Especially after we heard so many horrible stories regarding people dying up there after they fall down!
I was glad that we finished the trek though. It just felt that as if I achieved something. Of course there was no medals, certificates, but just stacks of photos.
I don't think I am in any rush to do more long hikes. It was the most exhausting thing I did for a long long time.
India
Man, I had the worst cultural shock when I got to India. Maybe it was also a bit ambitious starting up north but we only had 2 weeks there.
It was great to see the vast difference in culture between Australia and India. Every day seeing something new was definitely an experience. The body burning along the Ganges River in Varanasi was just overwhelming. It also seemed that there were cows everywhere in northern India. On the streets, in the river, in restaurants. I have also never seen that much cow poo around. I don't even know whether the locals ever clean it up.
Poor Naomi was pretty much sick the whole time we were in India. Actually she was sick in our last week in Nepal as well. But in India, I think she was well only 4 days out of the whole 2 weeks. I managed to escape the problem until our very last night in India at the airport....
I also have never felt so harassed by beggars, touts and kids. It was just ridiculous that they think that if they say the same thing 200 times you will eventually say ok. When we were in Agra, I had these 2 kids asking me for pretty much everything ranging from shampoo, lollies, chocolate, pens, pencils and money. The worst thing is they repeated themselves for 20 minutes and wouldn't leave me alone.
I was just pissed off with India in the end when this kind of begging happened to us 4-5 times a day every day. It got even worse when some of the homeless beggars trying to grab you physically and started following you.
Besides all the negative things, there were some amazing sights in the cities we visited in northern India. The Taj Mahal was particularly amazing. It was just a very beautiful palace. It was also a pity that the Emperor spent all the money and money building it and ended up losing his throne shortly after the construction. We went in the late afternoon just in time for the stunning sunset.
There is so much history in India. Because of its location, northern India has an unique culture which blends traditional Indian, Afghan, Pakistani, Tibetan and Persia all into one. There were people from all backgrounds.
The only thing that all the locals loved talking to us about was cricket. One person even said to me that if cricket was a religion, Sachin Tendulkar would be God. Even the kids know all the Australian players. I was put to shame when I couldn't answer whether Michael Clarke's batting average was higher than Michael Hussey's! They had tremendous respect for Australian tourists because of our cricket team. Very bizarre. They still think that Australia is No 1 cricketing country because we won the last Cricket World Cup!
Ok ok, I have to be true to myself. I have no real desire to go back to India any time soon. It seriously requires a LOT of mental preparation to handle India. I thought I was ready after South East Asia and Nepal, but I was wrong....
We both were really glad that we were finally going to New York where everything is super-size!
New York, USA
Man, I had the worst plane experience ever from Delhi to New York. I started getting sick at the airport in Delhi before I even boarded the plane. I am not sure whether it was dinner or lunch that day, but whatever it was, my body didn't like it a little bit.
I could not eat, could not sleep, and was pretty much on the toilet run hourly on the plane. It was so embarrassing that the flight attendant told me that I had to get out of the toilet because the plane was landing.....
Nevertheless, we were both sooo thrilled that we finally got to NYC and spent Christmas and New Year's Eve there. We finally got to have some home comfort and put our backpack down for 2 weeks.
Our little apartment in Harlem was so cute. It had a nice soft bed, a working hot shower and a working toilet. I mean come on, after travelling through Tibet, Nepal and India, what more could we ask for??? The apartment felt like a paradise to us. India and Nepal were just like in another world from New York.
It was weird being in Harlem as it is now like a little quirky cultural hub with all the jazz and latin music playing. In fact, most residents speak Spanish there. I felt like I was in Latin America already.....
Unfortunately we pretty much spent the first 2 days indoor as we were so jet-lagged and sick. But don't worry, our appetite was back to full swing after that.
Besides accommodation, everything was so cheap and easy in New York. You can buy a nice huge steak from the super market for like US$2.50. We ate out a couple of times and had decent Chinese for 2 people for a huuuuuuuge price of US$13.50. As we got a unlimited 2 week subway ride, we pretty much were roaming up and down Manhattan and Brooklyn without catching a cab. I love the subway system there. Yes, it can be a little dirty at times, but I am sure you wouldn't be too flash looking either if you were over 100 years old!
The subway ran 24 hours and it was very fast. It was all nicely centrally heated inside.
We visited the famous Central Park, Staten Island, Brooklyn bridge, Rockefeller Centre, Times Square, the Broadway, St Paul's Chapel, the Trinity Church in Wall Street and a few museums. My gosh, you could spent just a whole month visiting all sorts of museums in New York. We only had time to visit the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the American Natural History Museum, Frizel Museum, and the Museum of Modern Art. I was so impressed especially with the Met. It was seriously the biggest and the best museum I have ever ever been to! I spent 2 afternoons there and still only managed to finish half the museum!
Everything in NYC was just like what I saw on TV or in the movies. The whole city was beautiful and everyone seemed really really nice. I never experienced any of that New York attitude I have been hearing about. Maybe it was the holiday season, but everyone was really happy and tried to make other people feel the spirit. We had people playing violin and singing inside the subway train who didn't even want any donations from other passengers. We saw people dancing in central station to entertain crowd. These dancers were so good that they moved better than anyone I have seen in the nightclubs in Australia. These people could actually dance!
It was snowing on our very first night there. We got out of the subway and walked towards our apartment and had snow on our face, our backpack and it was just so New York. We even made our first ever snow man the next day.
Yes, we had the best food over there in NYC. We had Chinese, Yum-Cha, Korean, Japanese, New York Pizza, Steak etc. And everything were in huge portions.
I went to see 2 Broadway shows – Memphis and some weird one that Naomi wanted to see. Memphis was amazing. It was by far the best performance I have ever seen. I can see why people from all over the world to come to NYC to see Broadway. It was just that professional. The theatre that Memphis played in had its first show in 1915. It had chandeliers hanging down from the ceiling and the walls were all beautifully decorated with antiques.
Central Park itself was stunning. We went there on Christmas day and it still had heaps of snow on the ground and on the trees. Unfortunately we didn't get to go on the ice-skating rings as it was quite expensive and fully crowded. I was frankly just enjoying being there.
New York was very beautiful by day, but it was just stunning by night. With all the shimmering lights on the high rises, the city truly earned its title – the City that Never Sleeps – in Frank Sinatra's song "New York, New York". Oh, we also walked around Little Italy and saw some of the restaurants that apparently Frank Sinatra used to eat in.
It was pretty much freezing the whole time we were there. I think the average temperature was like -2 when we were there. Luckily we had most of our gear from Nepal with us so we were fully wrapped up again :)
Naomi also spent around 4 full days going around to all the world famous shopping centres like Macys, Bloomingdale, Century 21, Saks and some very expensive department stores that I have never heard of. (She now told me it's called Bergdorf Goodman). I think she even said that she picked up best bargains of her life in some of these stores. I give you that, it was very very very cheap compare to Australia. (And Europe in that case as there were tonnes of European tourists there just to shop). I even picked up a Tommy Hilfiger leather jacket for less than half price.
We had a really nice Seafood and Sushi Buffet for New Years Eve. We then went to Times Square with like a million and half New Yorkers and tourists. We unfortunately didn't get to see the ball drop from where we were as we were too far from the drop site. It was also very cold and wet from snow and rain. But I was again just glad for being there and celebrating New Years Eve in New York.
It was sad leaving New York. I truly love the city. Hopefully one day I can work there! Hasta la Vista New York!
