Day 41 - Monday, Nov. 25 - Off to Nepal

First sight of the Himalayas, the Roof of the World

Yet another day of airports!
       But it isn’t supposed to be.  The plane was to leave Delhi at 12:50 and arrive in Kathmandu at 2:35.  1 hour and 45 minutes.  That’s all.  Even leaving for the nearby airport at 10... completely fine.  That’s what was supposed to happen.

       Instead, what happens is that the flight leaves at 1:15, with no explanation given - although one passenger thought she heard “air quality” mentioned.  Maybe they were just inspecting the checked-in baggage for coconuts, something that for some unknown reason is forbidden in your bags.  Lord knows it wasn’t to check passengers, because that’s done at the doors into the airport; if you don’t have a ticket to somewhere, you don’t even get into the building past that point... something I’ve never seen anywhere else. 

Kathmandu Airport thinks of everything

       Whatever the reason, we arrive in Kathmandu a little past 3.  Still O.K.
       And then the lines started.
       The Nepali website said Americans could get a visa at the airport.  Like in Cambodia.  Fair enough.  I had even saved the $30 cash required.  But two or three planes have arrived at the same time.  The first line is to fill out the visa form.  Second line to pay for the visa.  Third line for immigration.  Fourth line for a second security check to get into baggage claim, a new one on me!  Total time:  two hours! 

Kantipur Temple House Hotel

       That means the ride into town is in rush hour.  Traffic with the same non-laws as in India, but honking is forbidden in Nepal, except in extreme cases.  The taxi van barely fits down the narrow lanes of the hotel’s neighborhood.  But we make it.

The hotel is a quiet bubble amid the clamor.  An eco-friendly place with solar power from panels on the roof, and no TV or A/C.  Which is fine.  It’s not hot and I don’t need to hear about the world’s miseries.

       I haven’t eaten in two days to let my Agra Belly calm itself, so I go down to the restaurant early and sit cross-legged at a low Japanese-style table to have some veggie dumplings, what Nepal calls momos.  Seems bland enough.  But after three of the ten served up, I’m full.  I reassure the worried waiter, who says there’ll be no charge.  And I head for bed.

Day 40 - Sunday, Nov. 24 - Agra to Delhi

I’m leaving the Radisson Citadel today.  That’s the name I’ve given it because it has closed gates at both entrance and exit.  And rightly so in my mind... or else I’m just a wimp.  I walked around Hanoi alone, and a bit in Siem Reap and Shanghai and Kyoto, but it just doesn’t seem like a good idea here... and nowhere attractive to go anyway in the immediate neighborhood.  So citadel is an appropriate name.

Agra traffic

Father & child at Taj Mahal

       My night was interspersed with trips to the bathroom.  Although I’ve eaten no stall food or drunk unbottled water - even brushing my teeth with bottled water - or had ice cubes in anything, I have a mild case of Delhi Belly.  Or Agra Belly.  Didn’t get Montezuma’s Revenge in Mexico, but this is serious stuff.  Luckily I came equipped with meds.  Maybe it’s just the spicy Indian food.  Or else someone in the kitchen isn’t washing their hands.  Or the tea at the carpet store was made with tap water and not boiled... at least not long enough.  I vote for that last explanation.
       At sun-up, still no Taj Mahal view.  As a matter of fact, it’s even murkier today.  The BBC World News was talking about that last night.  I hope Nepal tomorrow will be clear skies and breathable air.
       The hotel kindly lets me keep the room past check-out time, and I spend it mostly sleeping.  Then off by car to the train station and that’s an education!  Pure pandemonium.  No one is wearing a uniform to ask directions.  Doing my Blanche DuBois imitation from Streetcar Named Desire, I depend on the kindness of strangers... to find the right platform and to carry my now-heavy, gift-laden suitcase up a very tall flight of stairs.  One detail:  there is a cow on the platform.  Maybe he/she is also waiting for a train.

Agra station, with cow

Seen from the train

The train arrives, I show my ticket/reservation and board.  I’m seated next to a couple from Croatia.  We were all told that this is the “good train” but maybe a mistake has been made by the booking agent.  If this is the good train, what are the others like?
       At the station in Delhi, Gaurav from the hotel (remember him, my savior from the taxi-gang incident?) has arranged for someone to meet me at my coach.  And boy, I’m glad he did!  Because if I thought the Agra station was a zoo, the Delhi one is even more so, and many, many times larger.  The sheer number of people, some sleeping on the platform, including beggars with totally blackened feet, piles of goods that are somehow going to be put on-board some train... the platform is like the street but without cars.  Same pandemonium.  I follow the driver to his car and then, traffic being heavy, we take as long - 1½ hours - to travel from the train to the hotel as I spent on the train from Agra to Delhi.
       Worn out, it’s directly to bed.  Tomorrow is another day.  (Oops, that’s Scarlett O’Hara, not Blanche DuBois.)

Laundry drying by the Yamuna River in Agra

Day 39 - Saturday, Nov. 23 - Agra

After a good night’s sleep - still recovering from the Cambodia-Shanghai-India trip plus the ride down to Agra - I’m up at 6 a.m., ready for the Taj Mahal, even if I still can’t see it from the window, as advertised.

       My guide Mohinsha arrives soon after breakfast and we drive through not-yet-ridiculous traffic to the Taj Mahal’s East Gate.  Warned by a friend before I left for Asia that Indians dress with respect at this monument, I’ve donned my one skirt and brought my scarf for the mosque part.

It took 20,000 Persian workers 22 years (1631-1653) to build the Taj Mahal, designed by a Persian architect... all at a cost of the equivalent of $4 million.  Why Persians?  Because the Moghuls ruled India then and they were Persians.  

       Shah Jahan built it for his beloved second wife, Arjumand Banu, renamed Mumtaz Mahal.  Although he’d loved her since childhood, she was the daughter of a servant, and therefore not worthy in the eyes of Shah Jahan’s father.  So he had to marry a noble, but never had children with her.  When his father died, he married his always-love.  They had 14 children; only 6 of them survived.  

       And when she died, he had this monument built to her.  When the foundations were ready, he moved her tomb onto the site and the building was constructed over her.  The tomb you see is not hers, just a monument.  He planned to build a black marble replica on the opposite side of the Yamuna River for himself.  It would have cost three times more, so his son arrested him and emprisoned him - in majestic quarters - in Agra Fort, from where he could see his beloved’s mausoleum.  Eight years later, he died of natural causes and was buried next to her “tomb” in the Taj Mahal.

       So much for the history.  Now we visit; no photos allowed and no writing in the inner sanctum.  But I have images in my memory and they are amazing.

First around the courtyard, there are 210 “rooms” - niches - for visitors because there were no inns at that time.  Around the gates are verses from the Koran in black onyx from Belgium, which was very far away at that time; inside that are red flowers and green leaves of precious stones inset in the sandstone.  Mohinsha tells me they glow in the moonlight, a fact demonstrated by the gemsmith we visit later.  The red sandstone of the other buildings comes from here in the region, but white marble was conveyed, by elephant, from Rajastan almost 300 miles (400 km) away.  To one side of the Taj Mahal is the mosque (Persians were Muslims), and we go in - thus the shawl - so I can say a prayer for baby grandson Ibrahim, who died at premature birth.  On the opposite side of the Taj is the guesthouse, where I will obviously be staying on my next visit.

       The Taj itself is breath-taking.  Looking so white from afar, even in the haze, darker details become visible as we approach.  And the many panels inside, with no joints, are like lacework.  How many were ruined before one was completed?  What craftsmanship!

Mosque of Taj Mahal

The visit is over too soon and we head back through the gardens, along the reflecting pool.  Back to the hotel for lunch and a change to shorts, then Mohinsha is back and we’re off to Agra Fort.  The red sandstone walls look high and forbidding, running 2.5 km around (1½ mi).

Agra Fort

Walls of Agra Fort

This is more than just a fort.  Part is the residence of Shah Jahan’s two daughters, who were not allowed to marry, ever.  (You wonder how they felt about that.)  One part of each daughter’s palace is a white marble palanquin that looks like the one they would have been carried in on their wedding day, just in case they forgot they were doomed to be old maids.  I kind of felt like that’s adding insult to injury, but...

       Past the two daughters’ palace is the palace that served as a cell for Shah Jahan after his son arrested him.  Jailed in splendor, he spent his days looking out the lace-like white marble window at his beloved Mumtaz’s mausoleum in the semi-distance.

       We exit through the gardens, where chipmunks chase each other and a mama dog nurses her six pups.  We exit down the long ramp where troops could pour boiling oil down on any invaders, should they manage to cross the raised drawbridge.  This fort is far more than I’d expected.

Daughters' palace, in the shape of a bridal palanquin

Last on the list, the Khas Mahal, a park across the Yamuna River from the Taj, where you can walk to the bank and see the Taj Mahal reflected in its waters.  This is the spot where Shah Jahan was planning to build his own black marble mausoleum.  I think he’s better off closer to her.  (N.B.  Entrance price for Indians to this park:  25 rupees (35 cents).  Price for foreigners:  300 ($4).)

       On the return to the hotel, Mohinsha drags me to a rug merchant, the usual routine for guides in some places, but which I’ve been spared until now.  I don’t need a rug, even if they’re willing to send it to me.  (After all, I bought that silk comforter in Shanghai, which I’ll find on my doorstep a day after my return home.)  I do give in and buy a Black Star of India necklace, a gemstone black star diopside gemstone with needle-like inclusions that create a unique four-pointed cross star in the right light.

       Back at the hotel, I’m just in time for the end of lunch (3:00).  My “friend” waiter Ram, who served me Indian wine at lunch yesterday, jokingly chides me for not coming down to dinner last night; I tell him I doubt if I’ll be down tonight either.  He reappears with some lovely garlic naan again, like yesterday, the best I’ve ever tasted... all because he remembers I liked them.

       With a full stomach and a head full of the wonders I’ve seen, I retreat to my room, where I can just make out the silhouette of the Taj Mahal from my window.  Maybe tomorrow, before I head back to Delhi, it will be the view I was promised.

From across the Yamuna River, the site of Shah Jahan's never-built tomb

Day 38 - Friday, Nov. 22 - Delhi to Agra

On the sly, Lobby Manager Gaurav, my guardian angel from yesterday, has arranged a driver for me, and for half the price quoted by the hotel.  But shhhh, it’s a secret.  Agra, Gaurav’s hometown, is four hours away by road, about 250 km (155 miles).  We take off after breakfast, where I have a nice conversation with a business man from Colombia.
       During the 4+ hours it takes to reach Agra, my young driver receives numerous phone calls.  Between that and his English being very limited, I have ample time to look out the window.  Conclusion:  do not drive in India.  Driving on the left à la England is the least of your worries.  Cars, bikes, motorcycles, motorbikes and tuk-tuks pay no attention to the right-of-way, one-way streets, lanes or anything.  There are five lanes on a four-lane road, three lanes on a two-way.  Vehicles come at you from all sides.  The name on one big sign says it all:  Shiva (the Destroyer god)!  People have to change cars here, not because of engine wear, but because their horn wears out!  Another highway sign warns drivers:  “maintain your discipline”.... but to no avail.

       After an hour just getting around Delhi, we hit open patchy roads.  At one point I see a child in front of his driver dad on a motorcycle... on the highway at almost 100 km/hr (60 mph).  Not to mention saris billowing on other cycles.  One cyclist has no helmet because of his turban.  Buses stop at many exits, entrances and overpasses to let riders on or off.  We pass fields of some yellow crop, maybe colza/rapeseed.  From time to time there are groups of high, thin smokestacks; no idea what they’re for.  Sometimes a small temple in the middle of a field.  People living in tents under underpasses.  It’s a patchwork of life in India, and very different from life in the other countries I’ve visited.

       The haze makes it impossible to see far.  It’ll last until Agra.  (My guide says it’s been this way since Diwali (Oct. 27, a full month ago) and it’s the fault of the firecrackers, but my money’s on pollution and no wind.  Plus the burning of crop stubble after harvesting.)

The unfinished but occupied building across the way

And with Agra comes gridlock.  One instance of it caused by a man on a bike carrying long pipes blocking trucks as he cuts across traffic.  Bad Indian driving habits (see above) plus roadwork plus pedestrians and cows in the roads do not make for fluid traffic.  It’s like a video game.  Overwhelming.

       I have time to see the city, including people napping on walls by the river, before we finally reach the hotel around 3 o’clock, just before the buffet lunch closes.  I eat so much and am so tired that, after arranging for a guide for tomorrow, all I have the strength for is spending a while at my window watching life across the street... where, in spite of the specification “Taj Mahal view”, there is no Taj Mahal in view.  What is in view is cows grazing in the vacant lot between two unfinished buildings over open shops, a lady hanging wash out to dry on the roof of one of those unfinished buildings while her children play, a man dumping rubbish off a truck into that lot while, further in, workers dump construction trash off the roof of a building... all trumped by a tuk-tuk driver taking a dump in that same lot.  Pristine no-litter China this is definitely not.

       Night falls before six o’clock, local time.  I don’t last more than an hour.  Big day tomorrow.

The "Taj Mahal view" advertised

Day 37 - Thursday, Nov. 21 - In transit

Shanghai International Airport

An entire day getting from Point A (Siem Reap) to Point B (Delhi).
       Looking at a map, it would have been more logical - and much shorter - to go through, perhaps, Bangkok in Thailand.  Or even via Bangladesh.
       But no, I’m routed through Shanghai, waaaaay back 2700 km (1678 miles) to the northeast!  Then another 4250 km (2640 m) on to Delhi.  That’s almost 8000 km (5000 m) in all.  Whereas a direct flight would have been only 3240 km (2013 miles).  I hope I’m getting miles for this!



The death ride to the airport in the tuk-tuk on dark roads in Cambodian traffic was an experience; I think the driver had a hot date he didn’t want to miss.
       I leave behind Cambodia, which I thought had changed its name to Kampuchea, but I haven’t heard that word used at all.  (Turns out that name ended in 1989, and especially after the monarchy was restored in 1993.)  I leave without learning what the Cambodian currency is called because all prices in Siem Reap are quoted in U.S. dollars.  (It’s the riel - 4,065 to the dollar!)  I paid for a bottle of water at the airport with several big riel bills and got $1 back in change.  All the bills have the image of Norodom Sihanouk on them, at different ages.  His son is now king, but is unmarried and has no descendants.  I hope Cambodia isn’t headed for more trouble when he dies, but he’s just a figurehead and not the head of the government; the prime minister is.  The national economy is booming, having grown at an average 8% for the past twenty years.  Cambodia is a wonderful country, gentle in many ways, and ecologically conscious with trash bins at the airport sorted by cans, plastic, paper and “general”... although by the roadside there’s much refuse tossed and not picked up.


Two hours waiting at Siem Reap airport and a slightly early departure because all of the few passengers are there.  (That's never happened to me before, ever!)  I have a whole row to myself, as we all do, and catch about an hour of sleep.  It will prove a precious commodity.  Then ten hours - count ‘em: ten! - at Shanghai airport.  (Garry Collins, be sure to thank Delta for me for that!)  I have no Chinese currency and they won’t change my Cambodian money, although I have 31,500 riels in my wallet (under $8).  So after I finish off the last of my Snickers (thank you, Stanley), I’m tired, hungry and thirsty but nothing in the airport opens until 6 a.m.  Even then, I have no Chinese money.  Finally Starbucks saves me because they accept credit cards, so I get a tea, a chocolate croissant, a bottle of water and some cashews for later.  Just in case.

        Traveling makes for interesting exchanges.  I spend a lot of my waiting hours talking with a Filipino man who’s in transit from a wedding in Manila back to his home in Vancouver.  His is the flight before mine.  On my plane I’m seated next to a Sikh returning to India from his home in Los Angeles with his wife, father-in-law and ten-month-old daughter.  A vegetarian, he has great trouble getting truly vegetarian food from the China Eastern staff, generally very lackadaisical about their job description on this seven-hour flight.
       We take off at an elevation of 11 feet (Pudong Airport is built on tidal flats on the coast) and will have to climb high to fly over part of the Himalayas.  That’s only part of the change from the Far Eastern countries I’ve visited (Japan, China, Vietnam, Cambodia) to the Asian subcontinent (India and Nepal).  Another change is in time; as with Hiva Oa, Delhi is a half-hour off of the countries around it - a strange time zone.  When it’s 2:30 in Shanghai at take-off, it’s 12 noon in Delhi.

Then I have my first - and I hope my last - negative experience on this trip.  There is no sign with my name on it at the airport on arrival.  A man offers his services and I think he’s showing me to a shuttle bus.  But it’s a taxi he takes me to.  Then he jumps in the front.  Hmmm. Once underway, the driver says the short drive to my airport hotel will be... $60!  (Shades of the $15,000 in bogus charges from India on my credit card last May.)  We haggle.  I’m not at my best with only a half-hour nap in a chair at the Shanghai airport, and a transit of 21 hours total.  I just want a bed.  I get off with my life, my suitcase, and only a $30 fare, but the hotel staff is furious with them.  The lobby manager Gaurav becomes my guardian angel and I’m soon safe in bed instead of sold into slavery.

Day 36 - Wednesday, Nov 20 - Tonlé Sap and Raffles

My flight to Delhi via Shanghai (sigh!) is almost at midnight, so Bella has arranged for me to use a room at the hotel for the day, for free.  I signed up for a half-day tour of the floating village “then chill on the Queen Tara” on the Great Lake, or so they say.  (Where did they learn “chill”?)  For someone who has lived in the Great Lakes region of America, I’m curious about this.  As for “chilling” when it’s 30°C outside...
       Luckily, it’s a wee bit cooler today and not quite as humid.  My guide Va picks me up and we’re off with a charming couple from Wales and five Czechs.  Our destination is Tonlé Sap (“lake of freshwater”), the largest freshwater lake in Southeast Asia, fed by the Mekong River... and by rain.  (The lake doubles in size in the wet season.)  15,000 years ago, this lake was an ocean bay, totally flat.  Since then, the coast has receded, thanks to silt from the Mekong, whose headwaters are on the Tibetan Plateau.
       80,000 people live in four villages on and around Tonlé Sap, which is only about 10 miles (12 km) outside Siem Reap.  They have their own churches, police stations, schools and shops.  Villagers live 90% from fishing in the wet season and 10% from rice in the “dry” season, with three crops a year, each crop taking 2½ months, start to finish.  Some residents stay in place, in houses on stilts to accommodate a 23 foot (7 m) difference in annual water level.  Others live in floating homes that are towed from place to place by their boats, each boat with eyes painted on the bow to ward off evil spirits.

Lotus cutter

       There are plans to build three dams on the Mekong in Cambodia, for hydroelectric power, and others upstream, mostly along the Chinese section but also some in Laos.  The existing dams are already lowering the river’s level in the delta in Vietnam, with seawater infiltration killing the rice crops there.  Also silt is being trapped, making downriver land less fertile, as with the Nile, and some fish species are menaced, which is why locks are planned.  Va is worried “bad people” will go steal the fish from them.


The first two stops on our tour are to a lotus farm and to a workshop where the lotus is made into lots of products, including cutting the fiber from the stems and forming it into a long strands, like silk from the silkworms.  Tedious work.  One woman at a loom weaves the fiber into a linen-like fabric used to make suits and jackets.
      Then it’s onto our water tuk-tuk (with its noisy outboard) and off down the river past homes with no electricity; the rich have generators...  and TV antennas and wifi.  We stop by a crocodile farm where skins are sold for luxury shoes and such.  You can taste crocodile and snake jerky if you want, and I do.
       But just a taste; our lunch is farther along, on the Queen Tara anchored in the lake.  Simple fare - I have the sweet and sour chicken, my new Welsh friends choose the fried rice, and one of the Czechs the fish and chips (!).
       After lunch, we get back on our water tuk-tuk, accompanied by the bartender who we drop off on-shore.  Then off we head, by bus, on awful roads back to the hotel.  It’s been a pleasant half-day, and something very different from Angkor Wat, something I never would have seen otherwise.

First a shower (to wash off dirty lake water), then a short nap, I decide to treat myself.  I dress up - as much as that’s possible with my limited wardrobe - and tuk-tuk over to the Raffles Hotel for tea.  Raffles opened in 1932, in full Indochina splendor.  Photos scattered on the walls are of Jackie Kennedy, Charlie Chaplin (him again!) and Somerset Maugham, plus other celebrities who stayed here; I’m just an intruder.  Over tea and cakes, I ask the older woman in charge, “What happened to Raffles in the bad days?” (meaning Pol Pot’s reign), trying to be diplomatic.  She replies that it closed and Pol Pot’s men left it alone, except for ripping up the parquet floor, probably for firewood.  Her uncle, she says, fled to Thailand, as did my Cambodian friend in Paris, who fled as a child, all alone.
       After a delicious moment of luxury, I walk back to my hotel, to my borrowed room to repack.  Read a bit.  Have a Last Supper at the restaurant:  their lovely shrimp pad thai.  Then off to the airport, in the dark, by tuk-tuk.  And the long voyage begins:  Siem Reap to Shanghai to Delhi - what a detour!  22+ hours in all.
       I’m dreading it!

Raffles Hotel - Siem Reap

Day 35 - Tuesday, Nov. 19 - Siem Reap

A free day.  And I’ll be meeting up with a German woman I first met on Easter Island.  Karin visited me in Paris and in Ann Arbor and now, amazingly, she’s randomly in Siem Reap at the same time I am!  We spend a long time catching up, then head off on two errands in a tuk-tuk.  First to the “library” Channy told me about to find a small Cambodian flag for my prayer flag line; the one he bought was way too big, so I’ll give it to my Cambodian friend in Paris.  But I’m mystified why both Channy and Bella said the library would have them.  Turns out it’s a “librairie”, meaning "bookshop", a hold-over from French Indochina days.  Mystery solved.  On to the second errand:  an optician, who resets the lens in its wire frame from which it escaped... and he won’t accept any payment, no matter how much I insist.  Another example of Cambodian politeness.
       After a light lunch at the hotel, we set out to visit the Angkor National Museum kitty-corner from the hotel.  With a stop first at a shop to find Karin a cushion cover.  She finds one she likes but the price is too high and the shopkeeper won’t come down enough.  Karin is a good bargainer; I’m not.  (She writes me later, from back in Germany, that she returned to the shop, the owner brought the price down even more, and she bought more than one cushion cover.)

From the shop, we cross the street to the museum.  A beautiful, large building opened in late 2007, its treasures are admirably sequenced and lighted.  You start with a video presentation, then proceed to the Gallery of 1000 Buddhas.  As I tell Karin, I’m all Buddha-ed out, but the room is amazing, with the smaller statues all in golden niches, floor to ceiling, and the bigger pieces scattered throughout the room on pedestals.  One interests me in particular because this Buddha is lying on his stomach, face down.  Turns out he’s making a bridge so the other monks can cross the waters on his back.  The next three rooms concentrate on all things Khmer:  its civilization, its religion and beliefs, its kings listed on a great wall panel.  So much information, such lovely artifacts.
        Then it’s down to the ground level for the rest of the
collection, where emphasis is on the ruins she and I saw yesterday, separately, but who knows... maybe we were even there at the same time, given the number of visitors.  The first large room is for artifacts from Angkor Wat (called Heaven on Earth) and a video (to rest our legs).  Here in this museum is where some of the things taken from the ruins landed; many were spirited out of the country though by black market art thieves.  After this comes a room dedicated to Angkor Thom, the great capital with the churning of the ocean of milk legend spotlighted.  Two more rooms, one for stone stelae and one focusing on ancient costumes, with one row for women’s dress - from the apsara statues - and one row opposite for men’s - from statues of male gods.
       Somehow it’s 5 o’clock when we exit.  We spent three hours here and it didn’t seem like it.  All that for $12.  We bid each other a hug-ful good bye, wondering what continent we’ll see each other on the next time.
       After a short cool-down in the pool, I have some nem for dinner and fall asleep early.  But it’s a fitful night.  Tomorrow’s my flying nightmare.