We are now in Udaipur (an impromptu post)

 

We are now in Udaipur, India.  This started as a Facebook post, but I guess it grew a bit.  So, I know this post is a bit out of order, and I won’t forget to go back and talk about Italy, Istanbul or Mumbai, but a somewhat significant change happened, so I wanted to write about it. 

We ended up, at the last minute, skipping our planned stop in Aurangabad to see the really awesome Ellora and Ajanta caves (which are really ancient churches carved into the stone). This was not entirely by choice.

We had actually already bought train tickets to Aurangabad. But when we looked into the options for getting from Aurangabad to Udaipur, our next planned stop, they were all TERRIBLE.  You see, apparently Aurangabad is on a bit of a side-track, and is virtually unconnected to the rest of the country.  When I originally planned this tip, we had another city in mind to follow that one, Jhansi, and there was no problem. But on further review and thoughts about what we wanted to see in this country, we skipped Jhansi, and added 3 new cities.  Unfortunately, the next new city in line, was not on the same side track. 

Pretty much ALL of the options for this segment involved going all the way back to Mumbai (a 7 hour trip, minimum), followed by a wicked layover, then a long, painful journey adding up eventually to about 26 hours worth of travel, with a big chunk of it in a crowded and cramped train, without A/C. Or, we could pay for plane tickets, at about $400, and only take 12 hours... including an unavoidable 10 hour layover in Mumbai. So, long story short, we agonized and spent all day trying to think of alternatives, but in the end, we decided that the caves had effectively become about a $500 side-trip. So, we skipped them.

That being said, at the last minute, there weren't even any trains available to Udaipur left, so we ended up booking a sleeper bus.  It cost $25 each, and took 16 hours, but at least it was air conditioned and had beds, and at least one power outlet to let us watch movies on the laptop... in the beginning.  That was the end of the nice part of the ride though.  The bad parts of the ride were that there was almost no head-room, unless we sat in very specific places, but then there was the bumping.  When I say bumping, I mean that, as our berths were in the back of the bus, we got the worst of EVERY LITTLE tiny bump in the road.   And when I say the worst, I mean that… well… picture the bus as a catapult, and us in the bucket.  Every time the front of the bus landed, we got tossed into the air like rag dolls.  I don’t want to exaggerate too much.  I mean, we weren’t hitting the ceiling or anything, but we were definitely bounced rudely, and frequently, up off our butts or backs, depending on how we were settled.  Aside from that, any time the bus turned, or accelerated or stopped quickly, we were tossed again.  And what’s more, Indian drivers LOVE their horns.  So all through the trip we were constantly annoyed by the screaming horn, which was customized to sound like some loud-singing slot machine in Las Vegas.

Long story short, this meant almost no sleeping for the whole 16 hour ride.  16… fucking… hours… of mostly-sleepless, nauseating, noisy, earth-quake-like torture.   Couple this with the fact that within a couple days of arriving in India, my stomach has NOT liked the food here (even though my mouth has liked several things), and I am not a happy camper.  At this point, even the smell of curry is making my stomach turn summersaults.   I will get past this, but right now, and for days, I’ve been feeling like ass.

As a city, Udaipur is gorgeous!  It’s got a small-town feel that is in sharp contrast with the insane,smelly chaos that was Mumbai.  There are beautiful palaces, small streets like in Europe, jasmine blooming fragrantly everywhere, and lots of birds singing.  Last night, at dinner, we even saw a flock of Indian Fruit Bats, which is a creature I find FASCINATING, and never expected to see in my life.  So… SCORE on the critter count (my version of a critter count is different than Pedro’s… mine are not on a plate).

As for our lodging here, we’re staying in a very cute little hotel here called the Hotel Kumbha Palace.  It’s small and simple, but clean, pretty, has a pretty garden in the courtyard, is cheap as hell (500 rupies per night = $9 = 4500 colones for the standard room), and even includes free wifi (which we were not expecting when we chose the place).  We had the option of an Air Conditioned room for 900 rupies, but it was out of the wifi range, and our standard room at least has a fan, and 3 windows, so it’s not too bad.  For us, WiFi wins out over A/C.  Now that we’re out of Mumbai, which is one of the most expensive cities in India, we don’t need to try so hard for couch surfing.  So, now we’re in the hotel stage.  Since it’s so pleasant at this hotel, and since we don’t have hosts to entertain (or be entertained by), and especially after that REALLY shitty trip to get here, we’ve been enjoying taking a lovely day off and just lounging around, doing absolutely nothing but relax and stay cool.

Hopefully, my belly will settle down soon and I can start to enjoy life again.  Jime is a trooper, and is almost untouched with her belly (or is at least handling it better), and she’s been super sweet taking care of me.  We haven’t seen much of this city yet, other than the lake and the palaces, so I will write more about this place later, when it comes up again in my regularly-scheduled blogging order.

For now though, I guess the moral of this story is, if you ever find yourself in India, Udaipur is a MUST-SEE city, but dear lord… do NOT get here by bus!  And if you DO have to get here by bus, for the love of all that is holy, ride in the front!

Cheers,

Alex

Hungary & Italy (1 of 2)–“Mostly Hungary”

 

So, after that incredibly long last post, I gave y’all a break to recover.  And yes, we’re going to pretend that I did that for YOUR benefit, and not because I just didn’t get around to writing again until now. The off-shoot of that, of course, is that now I have a lot more to cover in our trip so far.  So, maybe this won’t be quite the most insightful post I’ve ever written, but… but holy CRAP we’ve done a lot since then!

So, we spent a total of 11 days in Budapest and 12 in Italy.  Budapest was lovely.  We had a great time, and felt like the pace was pretty well perfect.  Italy though… honestly, I think we rushed it too much.  When I planned it originally, I thought hey… 12 days in one country, that’s about the same as the others.  But then I went ahead and sub-divided that down into 3 or 4 days in each of 3 main cities, with side trips built in from that.  What that turned into was *rush rush rush* to see everything.  That kinda sucked. 

Now we realize that for us, a different city might as well be a different country.  If we have to learn new maps and new transportation, it’s effectively a completely different place, and nevermind if it uses the same money and language.

That being said, the Italy part of the trip represented our first real intro into heavy train travel, and that was GREAT for me.  I love trains.   And Italy has some GREAT trains, including some high speed ones, which we got to ride for our inter-city transfers.  HOT!  Ask me again after India and China, but for now, I still really love trains.  My friend Jonathan Leiss will know more about where I’m coming from here, having lived on a train for a year.

Alright, let’s go ahead and wrap up Hungary, and then I’ll get to the rest of Italy.

So, in Budapest, we stayed with 4 different hosts over the course of our days.  Despite all that moving around, Hungary still felt relaxed and well-paced.  Our 3nd hosts, Janos and Rejka, we only had for a whole one night.  But we really enjoyed them!   They made us really delicious Hungarian pancakes.  Hungarian pancakes, for those who have never had them, are basically Crepes.  In fact, I can’t think of a single difference.  The texture, ingredients, preparation method and toppings are identical.  I think the only difference is that when you make Hungarian pancakes, you’re more likely, though not guaranteed, to be near the Danube.

Our final host was Vilma, who in addition to being an English teacher for a living, is apparently also a:  local radio talk show star, daughter of a former national Opera director, host for an annual teenage role playing  week based in the Lord of the Rings.  She also lived in the UK for a while, so her English accent is more British than Hungarian.  But in any case, we enjoyed her a lot!  She was incredibly generous… even to the point of having US stay in HER bed, while SHE surfed her own couch! Aside from that, she also took us to one of those Ruin Pubs I’d been hearing about before we got to town.  The one we went to, Szimpla Kert, was not only the first Ruin Pub, but was recently voted the #3 coolest bar in the world by Lonely Planet.  Alas, it was so dark when we went that none of my photos came out, so if you want to see pictures, you’ll have to use the interwebz (you can start by clicking the link above).

For reference on how cool Ruin Pubs are, the #1 best bar in the world is ALSO a Ruin Pub (a ship on the Danube called A38).  The best part about Szimpla Kert?  It just happens to be Vilma’s local pub, right around the corner from her flat.  I must say… this bar earned it’s reputation!  This was absolutely one of the coolest bars I’ve ever been to.  It’s several floors of eclectic, artistic decoration and old historic vibe, with a balance of light and dark, loud and quiet, open and intimate spaces.  Also, beer is cheap in Hungary, so that helped too.  To give it my best general description, I’d say it represents the “real” version of what places like The Kennedy School try to capture.  And that’s big talk for me.  The Kennedy School is one of my favorite places in the world (and I can say that now, having visited a bit more of it).

One other awesome thing we did in Budapest was visit one of the famous Turkish baths.  The one we went to was probably the most famous one, and it’s the one everybody told us we couldn’t miss.  That was the Szechenyi Baths (right next to the zoo with the Lemurs, as it happens).

Basically, these baths are a collection of large and small pools, some of which are heated by natural thermal waters from the ground below.  Some of which are cold.  Very… very cold.  But I’ll get to that in a minute.  The main pools at Szechenyi are two LAVISH, and gigantic outdoor swimming pools, surrounded by historic buildings and fancy statuary.  The outdoor pools are a little warm… about 36-38C, but the scenery is spectacular!  The buildings are gorgeous, the lighting at night is beautiful and there are fountains and statues all over the place.  Also, admission after 7pm is half price.  And half price is a bit like bacon… it makes everything better.

(I cannot explain why some of the elegant statues apparently encourage elegant animal sex, but my friend Scott in San Diego will appreciate this picture.  As far as we can tell, this appears to be a statue of a naked lady getting frisky with a goose.  She’s stroking the long, supple shaft of his goosey neck while the goose nuzzles her breast.  Somebody hired one kinky sculptor!)

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Inside one of the buildings they have some saunas and some smaller pools.  The insides, of course, are equally decorated, and equally beautiful and… historic… looking.  Some of the smaller pools have mineral waters (i.e. more sulphur and other stuff).  And some are hot and some are cold.  They all have a more intimate feel though, so we spent most of our evening in here. 

The hottest pool we could find was 40C.  You know what, compared to the 37C pool outside, which felt lukewarm (for ref: 37C = 98.6F) because it was exactly body temp, 40C doesn’t sound that hot.  What’s 2 degrees?  I’ll tell you what 2 degrees is… it’s the difference between warm and hot.  Jime pointed out that this was the only pool which was ABOVE your body temperature.  That’s the definition of hot, apparently.  But beyond that, it’s also the definition of “Aaaahhhhhh…. niiiiice.”

Next to that hot pool, as it happens, is a cold pool.  The cold pool is exactly half the temp of the hot pool.  So, 20C.  20C (68F) is a perfect air temperature.  In the water though… it’s ball-shrinking cold.  That’s about 2 degrees warmer than the North Sea (well, on a warm day)!  The trick here is to do a hot-cold cycle.   Cycling from hot to cold and back makes BOTH pools feel better.  It also improves your circulation and is VERY invigorating.  It’s also, of course, prone to making your partner believe you are an insane person.  But nevermind this.  I loved every minute of it!

To wrap up our Hungary visit, we took a couple little side trips.  For the first trip, we went to a little town about an hour away called “Szentendre”.   We went there because people told us that this was a pretty area with a lot of local craft stores that we might enjoy.  Also, near this town, was something they call an “Ethnographic Museum” called Skanzen.  Szentendre itself had some neat stuff in it, and it was indeed pretty.  But it also felt like it had been a bit overly touristified.  We went into a few shops and had a really interesting lunch, and finished out the day with a dirt cheap but delicious ice cream.  But overall, it wasn’t our favorite place. 

(One really cool thing they DID have though, was a touch and braille map for the visually impaired.  Sweet!  Of course, it was made from metal, so running your fingers on it on a hot day could be a bit unpleasant.  Still, very neat thought.)

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(Lunch was “Langos”, a sort of fried dough, either stuffed or covered with some sort of topping.  Jime got a sweet one, with Apricot jam.  I got a savory one stuffed with “sausage” (aka “hot dog”), and covered in sour cream and cheese.  The place we got these had a reputation as one of the best makers of Langos in the country.  We liked them.  :) )

Very close to this town, though, we had heard, was this Ethnographic Museum, Skanzen.  What is that?  Well, apparently they collected dozens of old historic houses from all over the country (which would otherwise perhaps have been destroyed or ignored to death), and from different times in their past, move them to this one area, restore them to like-new condition, fill them with historically-accurate home furnishings, and then whammo… a quasi-living museum!  They even made a few complete little towns!  

We were originally going to pop over here after seeing the main Szentendre town, but once we heard about the scale of the museum, we ended up coming back the next day and making a whole day out of it.   Some of the homes even had working samples of basic tools used, and some had videos of what happened either around that home, or in that exact home.  In fact, each home had a bit of history about what happened in that specific building.

So, we spent out last day in Hungary leisurely wandering through history, house-by-house.  It was really an incredible and unique experience.  What an amazing place!  My dad, who is a huge history buff, would LOOOVE this place!  I dare say, if he ever makes a trip across the pond, he should make Budapest a top priority, and make this side trip an absolute must-see. 

It was a fantastic end to our Budapest visit, and I think it will make a great end to this blog entry as well.

Cheers,

Alex & Jime