Where in the World update

Short post -- I'm just letting you know that I'm currently writing from Athens, Greece. Cool place, have been here the last 2 days, after spending a few days in Berlin -- part of the around the world voyage en route back to the United States of America. I'll be glad to get home but enjoying this last week as well...flight leaves for Portland on Monday morning March 26.

I'll post a farewell-to-India post in the near future, probably once I get home. Leaving was sad...I didn't think I'd get quite as sad as I was leaving work, I've met a lot of great people there, but at the very same time I'm REALLY excited to be coming back. I'm not sure what my international destination maximum time period might be, but I think 6 months might be close. I don't know. I do know that if I was staying longer, I would certainly have started travelling a little less. We have been on a whirlwind work and travel tour for the last 6 months, which while amazing, is also pretty exhausting. But what an opportunity!

More to come later. See you all back home soon!

India Travel Map - Final edition

Loyal Paneerbelly readers will be familiar with my Microsoft Paint India Travel Map, which I've updated a few times thoughout my stay here (version 1, version 2)...I went and did one final update the other day, reflecting our many adventures thoughout the 5 1/2 months spent over in this part of the world. Here it is:

Now if that isn't covering India -- I don't know what is!!! Whew! I've easily doubled my lifetime flight number in this short stint...so many places to see, so many things to do. :) It's been a great time, and if anybody needs to know the India airport security drill -- I'm happy to help. Don't forget to tag your carry-ons.

On India travel map version 3.0 I took the liberty of adding my incoming flight (from Singapore) and my outgoing flight (to Frankfurt) as those flights are what will be completing my around the world journey. Also since the last update are our trip with Joel, Dad and Selin to Delhi, Nepal (Kathmandu), and Kolkatta, a weekend trip to Bangalore, 2 trips to Vizag (plane there, overnight bus back), and a trip to Varanasi...I think it's safe to say I might just stay at home and avoid any airports for maybe a week or two once I get back to the states. We'll see though -- once the travel bug bites it might be tough to shake. Weekend trips to San Diego and Portland and other locales may become more of a normal occurence once back home. Although I will have to start paying rent again -- which will eat into my travel funds -- bummer. And are there any 500 rupee (~$11) hotels in San Diego? Judging on what $100 gets you in San Diego, I don't think I'd even want to find out. (side note: is there anywhere in the US with more expensive hotel rates than SD? Based on my limited experience, I'm inclined to say no. Pretty awesome place though.)

the air up there

As promised (and only one day late) ... Nepal pictures! (lots of them.) Enjoy.

the Kathmandu Valley, aerial shot upon arrival. Looks good here -- the dirt and congestion and traffic and smog don't start for about another mile or so :)

Boudhanath Stupa, in Kathmandu. One of the largest stupas (Buddhist religious monument) in the world.

One of the highlights was our Everest flight, Buddha Air. 1 hour tourist flight from Kathmandu -- flew us out past Everest and back. Small little plane, every seat has a window...and a view.

our Buddha Air pilot was enjoying it...

and so was I

Old statue in Bhaktapur, a historical little town we stopped at on our way to Nagarkot. Bhaktapur has found a nice little revenue stream, charging tourists $10 to enter the city gates...worth it

traditional temple courtyard guardian...

And Joel, always the good samaritan, getting in on the act

Selin, me, and our Newari friend

Bennett men at the end of the universe

Nepal sunset from the hills of Nagarkot

Bennett men again, taken from the viewpoint at our hotel in Nagarkot. (Yep I have a Canada hat on. Everybody likes Canadians.)

Dad's new Myspace pic

Pretty good place to have breakfast -- outside our hotel room at the aptly named Hotel View Point, Nagarkot

Room with a view

And one final memory. Remember how I said everybody got sick in KTM? Well...this glorious picture was taken by Dad, about 1 second before he threw up all over the Swayambunath Stupa. Oh boy, what a moment that was. What a moment indeed. :)

Nepal: easier to type than Kyrgyzstan

One of the highlights of our recent trip north was seeing the Himalayas, up close and personal. Amazing sight! Most everyone knows that Mt. Everest is located in the Himalayas -- and is the world's tallest peak -- but what not everyone knows (well, me) is that not only is Everest right there, but so are... the 13 other highest peaks in the world! In fact as I research this more, why stop at 14...the 109 highest mountains are all in the Himalayas!!! Whoa. It's not really fair. What about the USA and the Rocky Mountain high in Colorado? The Rocky Mountains don't even register on any highest mountain list -- the highest mountain in the Rockies is Mt Elbert at 4401 meters. Everest is 8850 meters. For you non math majors, that's more than twice as high! (FYI the highest mt in the continental US is Mt Whitney in CA, at 4418 meters. Mt Hood is the highest in Oregon, at 3,429 meters. The highest in the entire USA is Mt. Mckinley, in Alaska, at 6,194 meters. BUT -- if you really want to get technical, the highest mountain ISLAND is Muana Kea in Hawaii, which rises up 10,203 meters from the bottom of the ocean. It gets short changed because the common accepted mountain measuring practice is to measure mountains from sea level...not the sea floor. Still, worth a shout out for any islanders out there).

All numbers aside, it was certainly pretty cool to be right there in Nepal, within sight of Everest (and also the 3rd, 4th, 5th, and 6th highest mountains in the world, which are all in very close proximity to Everest...yes back to numbers, can't resist!). Kathmandu itself wasn't my favorite city in the world -- I could go on about how polluted, dirty, congested, and overall-not-that-enjoyable that the actual city itself was, but what an amazing place to be in. I don't think our health exactly aided in enjoying the city experience either -- all of us low elevation Bennetts got pretty painfully sick at one point or another during our time in Kathmandu. Silly us, we thought it would be a good idea to eat steak in Nepal...should probably have put down our forks when the waiter told us the steak actually came from Kolkatta, India...hardly the first choice of where you want your steak to be sent in from. But once we recovered (for the most part -- although my worst didn't hit me til getting back to India), and stepped a ways outside of the Kathmandu smog cloud, it was truly breathtaking. We stayed a night at a hotel in Nagarkot, a tiny little resort town about an hours drive away from Kathmandu, and atop a mountain ridge with clear views of the peaks beyond, and it was pretty amazing. Clear, crisp air, and whew it was COLD at night. COOOOOOOOOOOLD! Freezing cold. I could only imagine what it must be like in a tent somewhere on Everest -- hopefully those North Face knockoffs actually work as good as they look!

World's Highest Mountains. Right there by Nepal on the map, where the 1, 3, 4, 5, and 6 are is situated right by Kathmandu. And wow, there is Kyrgyzstan in the upper left! Now you know -- big mountains in Kyrgyzstan.

I'll post some of our actual pictures on here tomorrow -- for now, it's past bedtime!

Kyrgyzstan

A coworker just now emailed this out...if you have 10 minutes to kill, give this a shot:

http://andys.org.uk/countryquiz/

If you take the quiz, post your score in the comments section. No fibbing, and no cheating -- we're all friends here. To get the spirit started, me, with all my worldly ways, having just spent 6 months over on the other side of the earth, managed an all-too-impressive score of...120. (that is not a very good score. My coworker scored 63. Good for you David Wiesen, eat my shorts! Note: in this quiz, the lower your score, the better) (spelling skills are helpful. As is fast typing, dad, you might not do very well on this one. Click. Clack. Clack.) (in my defense I was not very scientific in my approach. And I had music playing in the background which greatly distracted me. And Selin was helping me for the last 2 minutes.)

Happy Holi!

H A P P Y H O L I !

Holi celebrations are kicking off around India this weekend...and people are pretty excited. Holi seems to be something folks here get pretty pumped up for -- there have already been five emails sent out to various email lists wishing folks 'Happy Holi!' and it's only 12:45 on Friday afternoon. Usually, those don't start until at the earliest 3. :) So, what is Holi you might ask? Well, I don't really know (I'll find out soon!) but I do know it is called the Festival of Color and that it is pretty much one big colorful party where everybody throws and paints everybody else a whole bunch of colors....if you want more, read about it on Wikipedia. I'll also post this summary of the legend behind Holi from this site here, which does as good a job of any of describing it:

"There are many legends given as the reason for celebrating ‘Holi’. There is one popular legend that is reputed to bring about the birth of ‘Holi’. It seems that long ago there was an evil king named King Hiranyakasipu. His son, prince Prahlad however was very holy and often prayed to God and this infuriated his father. One day, the wicked king ordered his sister, the demon Holika, to kill his son. The demon Holika, who was immune to fire, captured prince Prahlad and entered a fire furnace. She had done this to kill the prince, however it was her who was burnt to ashes. Prince Prahlad was safe and was not burnt at all. The legend goes that before the demon aunt died, she begged for prince Prahlad’s forgiveness and the prince forgave her and announced that her name would be remembered once a year. Thus the festival ‘Holi’ was created."

Anyway, I'm looking forward to it, and will be glad to be up here in North India for the celebration, as it is celebrated even more heartily in northern India than it is in the south (from what I read at least). We'll specifically be in Varanasi over the weekend -- which as an extremely holy city is especially a hotbed for Holi celebrating and festivities. Should be fun...and I'm going to have to make sure to try and pick up a spare t-shirt on my way out -- as I have a feeling that whatever clothing I wear on Sunday might not stay very clean!