Trip costs, and thoughts

Jodhpur

Annapurna Circuit Trek

In total, we spent exactly seven months (to the day) in India and Nepal. Not too bad for a honeymoon, we like to brag to each other. We’ve since met a few recently married people who spoke loftily about having taken two weeks for their honeymoon, “because the typical one week just wouldn’t do, ya’know?” We know. So how did it feel to be living out of a carry-on size backpack for such a large amount of time? Absolutely wonderful. We loved the total freedom and independence of going anywhere we wanted, whenever we wanted, with no set itinerary other than a general desire to see certain places when they had decent weather.

Bakhtapur

South Asia really is a perfect backpacker-style travel destination, and not just because of the minimal costs. We saw such a variety of scenery and cultures that looking back it’s hard to believe we only visited two countries. From the Buddhist monasteries and high alpine scenery of Ladakh, to the Himalayas of Nepal, to deserts of Rajastan, and the tropical beaches of Goa and palm-lined waterways of Kerala, and so much in between, this part of the world has so much to offer. Wonderful ancient history and art are spread throughout the subcontinent, the culture is fascinating, and you really have to work to be bored in most places. Of course not everyone would enjoy the subcontinent; you have to be able to look beyond the dirt and frequent stench, the poverty, crowds, the hassles, and you’d better have a sense of patience and humor. But if you’re able to embrace the lifestyle here and not get hung up on the more difficult aspects, you’ll find a place that is absolutely exploding in color, music, tastes, and a wonderful enthusiasm for life. We miss it.

Varanasi

We know many of you are curious about how a young couple, without the types of careers (and salaries!) that would preclude dropping off the US map for seven months, could afford such a trip. Well, it’s quite simple: India and Nepal are cheap. Very cheap. We found that we could enjoy ourselves just fine on an average of about $30 USD a day (as a couple, so $15/day per person). Honestly that was without really worrying about the budget that much, at least by our dirtbag standards. That’s not to say India can’t be expensive; there are plenty of luxurious options for dining and hotels where the sky is the limit for costs, and trains that cost more than flying. We just happen to be happy eating in local style restaurants and sleeping in, uh, “atmospheric” hotels. Take the dirt cheap and not too bad sleeper class trains to get around, learn not to get ripped off too egregiously by the rickshaw drivers, and you’re set. There were plenty of days when we spent less than $10, and we probably could have averaged that if we’d really scrimped, plenty of people do. I just don’t think it would be very fun. We spent about $3400 on airfare, consisting of two sets of one-way tickets purchased through Kayak.com. Visas ended up costing about $400 ($100 per person for one year in India, and $100 p/p factoring in extensions for 90 total days in Nepal), and we spent about $600 for (unused, but you really need to have it) medical and evacuation insurance from Worldnomads.com. Immunizations were a few hundred bucks, but most last a long time and we wanted them for future trips also; I’m still factoring them into the total trip cost, which is: about $11,000. We made it a priority to save travel funds and lived very frugally (we were lucky in that we had parents who let us crash with them for that time rent free) for about five months while working a couple jobs each. We were able to save enough for the trip and some money to come home to without much difficulty, and we consider travel a better investment than a new car or plusher lifestyle.

Elephant top Safari in Chitwan, Nepal

Last time at Alta

I have certainly wondered many times if we’re being irresponsible by not starting our “real life.” This year will mark yet another that I’ll be putting off going to graduate school, and a great many people would snort upon reading my previous sentence equating “travel” with “investment.” But it’s hard to put a price tag on freedom and personal growth, and the opportunity to travel and see so much while spending so much time with someone you love. We’re really not interested in home ownership at this time; a mortgage sounds like a huge and unwelcome anchor, the investment value is uncertain, and the taxes and insurance alone would pay for a decent apartment in many parts of the world that we’d like to live in. We’re not interested in most material goods, so that leaves saving for retirement, but the financial events of the last year have convinced me that security in this age is an illusion, and there really is no “safe route.” Had we invested our money in the stock market we could easily have lost half of it, and not experienced a trip of a lifetime. There is no telling what the future will hold, so we’re planning for it as best we can while living life as fully as we can at the same time. We’ve spent the last five months saving up a nice sum of money working as servers out here in New York, and we’re spending this winter living in Alta, Utah, where we’ll ski everyday in some of the best snow in the world. After that, who knows, we’ve got some extended sea kayak journeys in mind, and South America is sounding pretty good.

Hyde Park

The fun thing about living in the Hudson Valley is that there is some sort of historic site or little piece of history in nearly every town. One of these places that’s worth a visit is Hyde Park where both the Vanderbilt Mansion National Historic Site and Franklin Roosevelt’s Presidential Library and home are.

The grounds of the mansion are now a park that is open free to the public, and anyone who has an Annual National Parks pass can use it for tours at both places.

Vanderbilt Mansion

The Hudson River

We’ve spent a couple of nice afternoons in Hyde Park and I would recommend both sites for anyone who’s passing through.

Boston and the Cape

The U.S.S. Constitution

Andy and I absolutely loved Boston. What a fun city. We spent the two days we were there walking the Freedom Trail, which I’m sure just about every first time Boston tourist does, and had a great time looking at the old buildings and graveyards. We saw the church where the lanterns were hung to signal Paul Revere, we saw a meeting house of our forefathers, and we saw the Bunker Hill monument. Everyone knows by now that we are huge nerds so it should come to no surprise that Andy and I really enjoyed the free tour of the U.S.S Constitution; “Hizzah! Her sides are made of iron!”

The best part of the trail were all the bars along the way. We drank hard cider and Sam Adams at the oldest tavern in the States and on the way back we drank at another tavern on the opposite side of the cobblestone street. We also walked around the Beacon Hill neighborhood wishing that we were were blue bloods who could afford one of those amazing apartments. The area that was probably the most fun was the North End where we ate cannolis, espresso, and pizza slices at little Italian hole in the wall restaurants.

The old meeting house.

Boston is known as a great walking city, and for good reason. It felt like a small city, and in reality it kind of is, it’s only a little larger than Portland, Oregon. The best part of Boston was the combination of really old and brand new. We would walk by and old church or cemetery tucked away in between skyscrapers and down cobblestone sidewalks that were uneven from huge tree roots pushing upwards. We left Boston in the afternoon on our second day to find our way westward to Cape Cod and the yurt we had waiting for us in Nickerson State Park.

This was the first time that we really got up close and personal with the Eastern U.S. Coastline, if you exclude Coney

Highland Lighthouse

Island, and we loved it. The ocean is always beautiful and Cape Cod was no exception. It felt wild and unpopulated, which had to do with us visiting at the end of September when it’s a little colder and the kids back in school. We’ve heard that in the summer time the amount of people on the Cape is crazy and it is impossible and very expensive to find a place to stay overnight. The state park we stayed at is pretty centrally located and for thirty dollars a night we got a yurt with a double bed, bunk beds, a table, chairs and electricity. We thought it was a great deal.

We went to the very tip of the Cape to Provincetown where the Pilgrims first landed and lived for five weeks before the lack of freshwater forced them onward to Plymouth. There is even a huge, slightly out of place monument celebrating the pilgrims. The natural light was amazing out there, even when the clouds rolled through. The blues were bluer and the greens were greener. Everything we saw was like we were looking through a polarized lens.

The Province Lands

We explored the area and saw a few quaint lighthouses and some really large expensive looking houses (that probably used to be bed and breakfasts) and we also saw many examples of the typical Cape Cod home which consists of a rectangle base with a triangle roof with shutter accents. We ate chowder and Andy feasted on fried clams and oysters. I even got to drag Andy to a few thrift stores. It was definitely brisk outside in the evenings, but missing the crazy crowds was worth going on the cusp of the tourist season. We enjoyed two fully relaxed days and had to set off the next morning to drive the five hours home to work the Mohonk dinner shift.

Country Livin’

It’s hard to believe that where we are living is only two hours from the largest city in the States; it feels so rural. Andy and I enjoy spending time taking drives through the countryside surrounding the Mountain House. We drive along winding roads past red barns, fields of corn and baled hay, stone silos, orchards, vineyards, and rolling hills covered in hardwood trees. In the evening we have to drive extra slow to avoid hitting all the suicidal deer.

Stoneridge Library

Often times we brave the traffic jams in New Paltz to see movies at the theater or to eat ethnic food. Sometimes we stop in Rosendale or High Falls to walk around the quaint local shops, but our favorite thing to do on a lazy afternoon is to go into the Stoneridge Library. The huge stone building is the perfect place to read magazines and check out books for later. They even have a rack of two dollar books for sale. Whenever we’re feeling a little more cosmopolitan we head into Poughkeepsie to the Galleria for a little shopping, movie watching, and Taco Bell.

Philadelphia and NYC

With our next two days off we decided to head south to Philadelphia and see a little piece of American history.  We started out by driving down a very pretty scenic route along the Delaware River and through the Delaware Water Gap recreation area. We passed through many quaint little towns that had stone built houses and were surrounded by thick forests of hardwoods.

The Liberty Bell

The scenery changed drastically when we got to the outskirts of Philadelphia where we started driving through some really depressed looking areas with streets lined by decaying buildings. Interspersed through out these sketchy neighborhoods were really old historic buildings and when we finally made it to the town center the City Hall building loomed impressively over head. After finding parking for the car at the Independence Mall we headed straight into the building that houses the Liberty Bell. In person the Bell lived up to Andy and my expectations, it is fairly large and weighs one ton. What was more impressive to us than the actual size was imagining a time when a large bell was so important to a town, without one there was no way to signal to the townsfolk when something important was happening. Up close one can see the hammer marks made by the craftsmen, and the large wooden yoke the bell is attached to is also amazing to look at. By now all this history has worked us up an appetite and the only thing we could think about was Philly cheese steaks so we bee-lined it to the nearest street cart.

Independence Hall

We spent the afternoon enjoying the beautiful sunny weather walking around very old buildings like the first and second banks of the United States among others. Our favorite restored building was the City Tavern not for the architecture like you might think, but for the amazing beer we had there where our forefathers used to eat and drink while having political discussions with one another. We tried a porter that was made following a recipe that was found in the rare manuscripts section of the New York City Library and one of the most amazing beers I’ve ever had; a strong honey wheat beer made following a recipe that Thomas Jefferson used to brew his own with. Definitely a highlight! Eventually we made our way to Independence Hall where both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution were written. Both rooms inside the building were preserved they way they had been over two hundred years ago and it was easy to imagine the events that had taken place there.

That evening we left Philadelphia and made our way back to the Delaware River to Washington’s Crossing Park where we cooked a nice meal on our camp stove and watched the sunset and the lightning bugs light up.

The next morning we made a spur of the moment decision to head into New York City so we drove into Staten Island and were insanely lucky enough to find four dollar parking for the day (plus the eight dollar bridge toll) and got on the soonest ferry to Manhattan. Our first stop, of course, was street food where we got falafels and then a quick stop to the nearest Borders to glance at a NYC guide book. We walked from Battery Park to Chinatown, SoHo, Tribeca, and the Villages. My favorite part of the day was walking around the East Village and eating Pinkberry while people watching, we also enjoyed the street performances in Washington Square Park and looking at the different styles throughout the neighborhoods. After a full day of walking we rode the Staten Island Ferry back to the car as the sun set and made our way home.

View from Battery Park

New York City

Lower Manhattan

Andy and I waited to get a few paychecks and watch our bank account recover a little before heading into New York City for the first time. We woke up early in the morning and drove into Poughkeepsie where we got onto a Metro-North train headed for the City. Two hours later we were disembarking from our train in Grand Central Terminal and taking our first steps into a city that we’d both heard so much about and have always wanted to see.

After admiring the Grand Central building inside and out we

Avenue of the Americas

walked over to the Empire State building and waited in line for tickets to the 86^th floor Observatory. Luckily for us this was the fifth of July and due to the small number of tourists in town we were able to make our way through the three separate lines fairly quickly. The whole experience was pretty cheesy until we finally got to the top and could look out across all the other skyscrapers. The view was amazing and we soon got really excited to start walking and exploring.

We walked by Rockefeller Center, Saint Patrick’s Cathedral, Radio City Music Hall, and then down the Avenue of the Americas which was closed off to traffic for the

Times Square

holiday weekend and filled with pedestrians and food and clothing vendors. As we looked around us we kept on thinking that the City was so clean, and not polluted at all. Some of our co-workers had warned us that it was a dirty and busy place, but compared to the cities in India we felt completely comfortable walking around and not at all overwhelmed. I mean, NYC has sidewalks where you can walk without being worried about being hit my speeding motorcycles. We ate some great pad thai and chicken satays then headed over to the Museum of Modern Art. After spending a few hours wandering the museum and seeing Van Gogh’s famous Starry Night we refueled with coffee in the MOMA cafe and got onto the subway to the southern tip of Manhattan.

The subway station we got off at was right next to the Staten Island Ferry and we hurried into the terminal to catch the next ferry. The ride is free and the concessions stand sells beer so we had it made on the twenty minute ride to Staten Island where we disembarked and got onto another ferry back to Manhattan. It was fun to see a close up view of the Statue of Liberty and the skyscrapers off in the distance.

Grand Central and the Chrysler Building

Next we walked up through the financial area by Wall Street, the Stock Exchange, and the Twin Tower memorial. We walked over the Brooklyn Bridge and back, past City Hall, and up through Chinatown where we stopped at a really neat park which is where the old Five Points neighborhood used to be in the early 1800s. Eventually we made our way back up to Times Square where the lights were so bright it was almost like the sun was still in the sky. We drank a few beers at an Irish pub while we rested our feet and finally walked back to Grand Central and took the train home exhausted

Sunnyside and Union Church

Washington Irving's Sunnyside

On one of our first days off Andy and I decided to drive down the Hudson Valley and explore our new temporary home state. Our destination was Washinton Irving’s Sunnyside, the house of the American author Washington Irving who wrote The Legend of Sleepy Hollow and Rip Van Winkle. We had a guide dressed in period costume show us through the house which Irving had designed himself to include the best elements of architecture that he had observed throughout Europe during his time as an ambassador for the U.S. He had copper pipes and a water heating system installed, which was very advanced for his time, and a shack out back with a deep well-like hole in it to store ice during the summer. The porch was also really nice with a beautiful view over the widest part of the Hudson River.

Our next stop was the Union Church of Pocantico Hills to see a

Sleepy Hollow

stained glass window by Henri Matisse and nine windows by Marc Chagall. The windows were commissioned by the Rockefellers who used to attend services here and it is still a working church today. The intricacy of the Chagall windows are amazing and the artwork glowed with the natural light coming in from outside.

On the way home we stopped in the town of Sleepy Hollow to see the graveyard that that inspired Washington Irving to write The Legend of Sleepy Hollow. Although we didn’t see the headless horseman we did see some very old grave sites and the final resting place of Irving himself.

Inside Sunnyside

Mohonk Mountain House

Here’s some pictures of where we are living for the summer. Andy and I are both working as servers in the dining room at Mohonk Mountain House near the town of New Paltz, New York. Some money gets deducted from our weekly paychecks to pay for our nice size two bedroom dorm room and three meals a day and we get full use of the hiking trails as well as the lake to swim in. So far we’ve been enjoying our time on the east coast and have been trying to take advantage of any opportunities that we have to explore the area.

This is a view from the lake of the Mountain House. This is where the guests stay, the dorm Andy and I live in is on the other side of this building.

Behind Andy's head you can see Sky Top Tower up on the ridge, it used to be used as a fire tower and you can see some nice views from up there.

These little huts are everywhere lining the trails so that people who come from the city and are afraid of the outdoors can still feel like they're in civilization. They are also fun to relax in.

Mohonk has a lot of gardens and this is the victorian maze made out of arborvitae.

Oregon to New York

DAY 1

It actually all fit!

Every time Andy and I leave for a trip we procrastinate packing until the last possible minute and, in keeping with tradition, we were finally able to start driving at eight thirty at night. Andy drove for about five hours dodging deer until we decided to pull over near Burns and sleep in the car.

DAY 2

Nature's Cooler

Our second day was pretty uneventful, driving across Idaho where we hit higher speed limits and drank extreme amounts of diet Pepsi until we reached the Teton Scenic Byway near the border of Wyoming. We pulled into a deserted campground called Pine Creek, found a little patch of snow to cool our beers and we set up camp.

DAY 3

We woke up early, broke camp, turned the radio to The Range where they play ‘just plain good western music’, and started working our way up over Teton Pass to Jackson Hole, WY. We went out for a great breakfast in Jackson and started driving north by the Teton Range towards Yellowstone Park where there were literally tumble weeds blowing by the side of the road.

The Teton Range

Andy had never been to Yellowstone before and this was different experience for me as well. I had been to the park before in the summer time but now in third week of May there was still snow on the ground and some of the roads were

Riverside Geyser

closed, not to mention that there weren’t too many people in the park which was a plus for Andy and I. We started off by going to Old Faithful and walking around the many other geysers and pools along the surrounding trails. We were lucky enough to be passing by Riverside Geyser when it erupted and it was amazing to see the huge bison just minding its own business eating grass nearby. Another spot that we enjoyed was called Artist’s Paint Pots where the different pools were different colors and one was so thick it looked like bubbling plaster. We saw so many bison throughout the park and there were a lot of little baby bison with their lighter color fur. We also saw elk but sadly no bears or moose. It was too early in the season for any but one of the campgrounds to be open and it was full, so we drove out of the north entrance into Montana and slept in the car after cooking dinner in a picnic area.

DAY 4

We drove back into Yellowstone through the north entrance and spent the

Trees in the calcite pool

morning around Mammoth looking at some really neat trees in the middle of a calcite pool and the Petrified Tree. In the early afternoon we exited the park through the northeast entrance, after getting through a bison traffic jam, where we drove along the Chief Joseph Scenic Highway over Dead Indian Pass into Cody, WY. Once in Cody we passed by Buffalo Bill’s daughter

Bison traffic jam

Irma’s Hotel where Calamity Jane, Annie Oakley, and Ulysses S. Grant all stayed back in the days of the Wild West. More exciting to Andy and I was the Sierra Trading Post that was having a huge sale! I left with a Gore-Tex Pac Lite rain jacket for only a hundred dollars and Andy scored a Windstopper jacket to replace the one that was stolen with our car a while back. We slowly made our way closer to the border, trying to coax our sweet turquoise Escort wagon over the Bighorn Mountains without overheating. When we got to the top of the pass we were able to look down upon rolling hills and the far off horizon line. We drove into the night and ended up sleeping outside the Blackhills National Forest.

DAY 5

We crossed the border into South Dakota making a quick stop in Sturgis for coffee. It was funny to drive through Sturgis and see bars called ‘Sidehack Saloon’, and the ‘Knuckle Saloon’. The ‘Ye Olde Worlde Bookery and Café’ seemed a little out of place. Sadly we saw no bikers (the closest we got was a lady on a scooter) so we drove on to Deadwood. It’s a cute tourist trap with streets lined by Old West style buildings and casinos with signs marking where Wild Bill Hicock was shot and killed and where his assassin was captured.

Crazy Horse Memorial

We drove onward to the Crazy Horse Memorial. When the sculpture is finally finished it will be the largest in the world, but right now the only fully completed part is his face; the rest of the years of work seem to have been dedicated to blocking out the general shape from the mountain side. The most amazing thing about the Crazy Horse Memorial is that it will be a complete 360-degree sculpture; you will be able to look at one side of Crazy Horse’s face on one side of the mountain and the other side of his face on the other side of the mountain. After enjoying a buffalo burger and free coffee we traveled the short distance to the Mount Rushmore Memorial.

Mount Rushmore made a more striking first impression on Andy

Mount Rushmore Memorial

and I than Crazy Horse did because you can really get up close to the faces. We also liked how the faces blended into the mountainside more. I’ve seen photos of Mount Rushmore before but never realized until I saw it in person that it is an unfinished work. When WWII broke out the funds for Rushmore dried up and it was just left as is. That’s also one of the main reasons why Korczak, the sculptor of Crazy Horse, decided to fund his project solely on donations, a tradition which his family carries on to this day. When it started to sprinkle on us we decided to head to the car and start driving across South Dakota.

Badlands

We took a slight detour off the freeway to drive through Badlands National Park. It is so beautiful that we were sad to not have more time and really hope to make it back again some day. We saw a lot of prairie dogs and a lot of signs telling us to avoid the prairie dogs because of the plaque they carry. We pulled over at a picnic area in the park and made some chicken and rice on our camp stove to carry out to a bench at an amazing viewpoint. We sat there and watched the red stripes hills change color with the sunset to a plain whitish gray color that matched the sky perfectly with the clouds rolling in. After the sunset we started driving again and tried unsuccessfully twice to find a spot to sleep. Finally we pulled over at the first rest stop in Minnesota and slept in the car.

Badlands

DAY 6

We woke up to find out that the rest area we slept in was a very nice one with an informational center and friendly staff. There were even fresh lilacs in the women’s bathroom! Five days without a shower was started to get to me and I decided that I needed to wash my hair in the sink. The need for clean hair outweighed what the mid-western road trippers might think of me and I left the ladies room a new woman.

Andy loves Legos!

We drove north to Minneapolis to the Mall of America, the largest mall in the United States. This place is so big that it has an indoor amusement park! Andy’s not much of a mall person but when we went by the Lego Store and he saw the life size sculptures made out of Legos of huge dinosaurs, space shuttles, an earth complete with accurate continents, and a moon complete with accurate craters he started acting like an excited ten year old. After Andy finally got his fill of building things at the Lego Store we stopped in a tropical themed restaurant and got a few beers before walking around getting lost among the stores for a while. Next we drove through farmland until we reached the Mississippi River, stopping only to eat some deep fried cheese curds and admire the many lilacs along the way. We slept along the Apple Blossom Scenic Drive just this side of Wisconsin.

DAY 7

We entered Wisconsin through the town of La Crosse where a large statue of Native Americans playing lacrosse greeted

Frank Lloyd Wright's convention center

us. We stopped only long enough to see the ‘world’s largest six pack’ (which is actually six of the City Brewery’s water towers painted to look like beer cans) and to drink coffee at a park overlooking the Mississippi. We continued on to Madison, the state’s capitol, where we walked around a convention center designed by Frank Lloyd Wright and saw the state’s capitol building which was designed to be similar to the capitol building in Washington D.C.

We spent the night an hour outside of Chicago in a town called Rockford in Andy’s grandparent’s luxurious fifth wheel. Andy had called Bill and Sallie the day before to check in and surprisingly they were staying close to where we were going. We knew they were somewhere in between South Carolina and Oregon, but to be so close to where we were was an amazing coincidence. They treated us to a comfortable pull out sofa bed, taco salad, and warm brownies, those two sure know how to travel in style!

DAY 8

You can see Andy and I in the very middle, we are the distant looking couple.

We woke up, said goodbye to Bill and Sallie and drove on the toll way straight into Chicago where we made a quick stop at Wrigley Field to score tickets for later that night. Our hotel was nice enough to give us an early check in, so after unloading our car full of stuff we spent the entire day walking around town. We walked the ‘Magnificent Mile’ full of retail stores, saw the old fire tower that survived the great Chicago fire, ate hotdogs covered in chilies, mustard, dill pickle, and bright neon green sweet relish, and explored Millennium Park with its awesome sculptures until it started to rain so hard we were forced to duck into a Caribou Coffee shop.

When the rain let up we got on the red line El train to Wrigley

Wrigley field

field where we were happy to find that our obstructed view seats weren’t even really obstructed at all. In honor of Memorial Day, while the last few bars of the national anthem were being sung a trained bald eagle soared in from the outfield, circled the field a few times and landed on his trainer’s arm. After the eagle was walked off the field Mr. T entered in all his American flag parachute panted glory to throw the first pitch. As if that wasn’t enough during the seventh inning stretch he lead the crowd in singing ‘take me out to the ball game’. We had a great time at the ball game eating deep-dish pizza, hot dogs, and beer and watching the Cubs fans throwing back onto the field any ball caught from the opposing team’s home runs. The stadium had a nice small feel to it and the surrounding buildings had put bleachers onto their roofs to accommodate more seating, which they sold tickets to through various websites.

After the game we packed into the El train and worked our way back to our hotel near Grant Park.

DAY 9

The Chicago River

Each day in Chicago a different museum has a free day and since Tuesday is the day for free admission to the Museum of Contemporary Art we went straight there after our morning cup of coffee. The main exhibit was about Buckminster Fuller and the various architectural and engineering feats he accomplished throughout his lifetime. It was interesting and Andy especially enjoyed it. I really enjoyed the smaller exhibit by Olafur Eliasson called ‘Take Your Time’. In one piece we walked into a room filled with yellow light and after a few moments we realized that everything that we saw was in black and yellow. The monochromatic bulbs he used have such a narrow frequency that they affect how a person sees color. Another piece that was incredible was one where a spotlight shone through a fine mist and wherever we stood we could see different colors in the mist.

We worked up quite an appetite walking around the museum and the only

View from Lake Michigan

thing we could think about was going to Frontera Grill. Back at home one of our favorite cooking shows to watch is hosted by Rick Bayless on PBS and so many times after we’d drooled over the delicious Mexican food he’d cooked or after he’d taught us how tequila was made Andy and I would look at each other and talk about how cool it would be to go to his restaurant and eat his food. I never thought that we’d actually go to Chicago and eat at his restaurant, but it did not disappoint. He has two locations next to each other and we decided to go to the less formal one called Frontera Grill. Andy and I each ordered margaritas, mine with tamarind in it. Andy also ordered the tacos al carbon, which came with two different salsa while I got the chicken enchilada special smothered in a perfectly balanced tangy sauce and topped with a jicama cucumber salad. To try and work off our Mexican lunch we walked along the Chicago River to Lake Michigan until the rain started up again and we were forced to pack up the car and leave Chicago.

We drove straight through Indiana and into Ohio where we saw some intense lightning storms on either side of the turnpike and slept in the car at a rest area.

DAY 10

Rock and Roll Hall of Fame

We drove into Cleveland where we spent five hours in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame looking at Madonna’s bustier, John Lennon’s Sgt. Pepper suit, Michael Jackson’s glove, and other famous memorabilia. Then we drove across Pennsylvania and entered New York on a small highway passing through quaint towns and by little vineyards and wineries until we reached northeastern New York. We cooked dinner at a picnic area next to the Niagara River and slept in a casino parking lot.

DAY 11

As soon as we woke up we drove straight to Niagara Falls. All three falls were

Niagara Falls

incredible and the sheer volume of moving water was quite a sight to see. We had always heard that the view is best from the Canadian side so we left the car in the state park parking lot and walked through the turnstiles into Canada. We stayed only long enough to take in the view and decided to head back to the States since neither of us had our passports with us. When we came back through U.S. customs the border patrol lady rolled her eyes at us and told us that we non-compliant without a passport or birth certificate. Thankfully the following Monday was when the newer stricter border rules were going into effect and we were let back into the States after a short grilling about our lives to make sure that we weren’t attempting to become illegal aliens. We spent a few hours gazing at the falls and decided it was time to move closer to our new home.

Niagara Falls

We drove through rolling hills of hard woods on our way east and stopped in Elmira to see Mark Twains grave. Eventually we made it into New Paltz where we ate a Chinese food dinner and slept on the side of a deserted highway.

DAY 12

We woke up, got coffee, and drove to our new home- a dorm room at Mohonk Mountain House.

3865 miles driven

102 gallons of gas used

$250 spent on gas

38 miles per gallon in our 1994 Ford Escort Wagon

Mumbai

Victoria Terminus

We entered Mumbai early in the morning through the Gothic architectural masterpiece that is the busiest train station in India, the Victoria Terminus. To understand the sheer size of the building try to imagine two million commuters filtering through each day. That’s half of the population of Oregon. Even though we were a little tired from the train ride we were exhilarated to finally be in Mumbai. It was a city that both of us had been excited to see since the beginning of our journey and we eventually found our way outside where we celebrated with a quick cup of chai.

We hailed a cab to the Colaba area of town and wandered

The Taj Hotel

around for quite a while searching for a budget hotel; a difficult task in one of India’s most expensive cities. Finally we stumbled upon a nondescript and somewhat strange but reasonably priced hotel called the Al-Hijaz. We would have been happy with any moderately clean room as long as we had a working ceiling fan- it was pretty hot. After a quick rest and a shower we walked through the throngs of people packed into the sidewalks of the Colaba Causeway. Every step we took there were new sights to see. Tourists and locals slowly weaving past one another in between store fronts and booths filled with wares from all over India. Not to mention the touts constantly offering us paid extra roles in Bollywood movies.

Gateway of India

We spent time at the Gateway of India, which in true Indian fashion was partially covered with scaffolding, and tried to avoid having our photo taken by people who would later try and sell us the photos. We could see huge ships off in the distance and the sea breeze was a nice respite from the heat and humidity. Even with the breeze we soon found ourselves ducking into Leopold’s Cafe for a couple of iced coffees. Sitting at the tables we were able to look around and see multiple bullet holes in the walls from the terrorist attacks that had happened five months previously on November 26^th, 2008. At least 173 people were killed when organized gunmen started shooting at people in southern Mumbai and setting off timed bombs then taking hostages in the prestigious Taj Hotel. It was especially strange for us to visit the Taj Hotel. Months ago we had watched news broadcasts showing the hotel on fire while people were held hostage inside for four days after a long closure the hotel was open when we were there and there was no sign of what had happened except for a nicely done memorial dedicated to all those who passed away on November 26^th.

We walked up past Oval Maidan, the University of Mumbai, into the Modern Art Museum, and past a lot of old British buildings. The streets in this part of town were different from those we had seen everywhere else in India, they were wide with large sidewalks under tall leafy trees. It was possible to actually walk down the sidewalks without being bumped or surrounded by people. Despite the grandeur of the buildings and the obvious wealth that flows through Mumbai there were still signs of the poverty that exists in India on every street corner. Mumbai is a city where the world’s fifth richest man Mukesh Ambani is building the world’s most expensive home; a twenty-seven story skyscraper complete with three heli-pads, a “cool room” with man made snow, 168 parking spaces, and will employ 600 servants when finished. Mumbai is also a city where the workers who are building Ambani’s skyscraper most likely live in one of the slums, where seven million other Mumabi residents live, and the average income is about $2 US per person.

Washing ghat

We got a chance to see behind the glitz of Mumabi when we went to the Dhobi ghat where most of the linens for Mumbai’s hotels are washed and beaten by hand, starched, and hung up to air dry before being delivered clean back to the hotel. It’s an impressively large operation and incredibly hard work for the wage these laundry men make.

One of the more amazing experiences we had while in

Haji Ali walkway

Mumbai was when we stopped by the Haji Ali mosque. The mosque was built in 1431 on an island and is reached by a five hundred yard walkway which gets covered up by the high tide and becomes walkable in the low tide. We went at low tide and it was fun to walk on the damp concrete past vendors with hundreds of Islamic worshipers. We weaved past people who were crippled and calling out prayers while worshipers gave them coins and made our way to the actual mosque. We were happily greeted and after watching people chanting and drumming for a while we made our way back to the mainland.

Chowpatty Beach

One evening we took a taxi to Chowpatty Beach which is far too polluted to swim at but has a really fun carnival atmosphere at night. One entrepreneur had a pink “power wheels” type vehicle that no longer worked but he had put a small boom box in the back and pushed around children for a few rupees. Every now and then he would turn off the radio and take a cigarette break. We sat in the sand and attracted a very large crowd of interested male youth who had a bunch of questions for us. After we started feeling a little claustrophobic we wandered over to the food vendors and I had my last- and possibly best- pista kulfi ( a delicious pistachio gelato-like thing). There were small Ferris wheels which are spun by having two or three carnival workers climb to the top one at a time and, holding onto the bars, used their body weight and gravity to keep the wheel spinning. We watched the sunset and headed back to Colaba.

The hustle and bustle of the Crawford Market was fun. There were stacks of all kinds of fruits and meat

Crawford Market

butchering areas, and Andy and I stocked up on spices and metal ware to take with us back to the States. Our time in India was coming to a close and we spent every spare moment walking up and down random streets and filling up on thalis, fresh ginger sodas, and delicious chicken tikka rolls.

Delicious chicken tikka rolls

There was a heavy Muslim presence in Mumbai which resulted in many wonderful meat dishes to sample- some of the best street food we had anywhere in India. Every morning when we’d stumble out of our hotel we’d grab a couple of juices from the stand on the street, and contemplate the fact that we were about to leave the country. The heat, the constant crowds and sensory overload, the colors, the food… all the things that had come to define India for us, that we’d grown accustomed to and fond of, all soon to be over with. Of course we weren’t going to miss everything; the hassles of India are plentiful, and we were definitely looking forward to returning to a place where we could blend into a crowd and not be constantly stared at and approached. All our time in Mumbai was filtered through this kind of bittersweet lens; swinging us from feelings of sadness to excitement depending on whether we were having a good or bad time at the moment, and taking the good with the bad is probably the single most definitive aspect of a trip to India.

Mumbai is one of the world’s largest cities with a population of around 19 million people in its metro area, so

Thalis and fresh ginger sodas

driving from Colaba in the south to the airport in the north of the city took a few hours. Our driver tried to overcharge us when we parted ways; a fitting farewell to India that made us smile. A fairly easy fifteen hour flight then took us to Newark, NJ, where our connecting flight was delayed several hours, causing us to miss our next connection in Atlanta. Eventually we landed in Portland, a tiring 48 hours after we’d stepped into the cab in Mumbai. We’d crossed more time zones than we were capable of remembering, so Andy purposefully kept his watch on Mumbai time so we’d know what time our bodies thought it was. Somewhere over Texas a seatmate had asked him what time it was; I watched him look at his watch, pause and consider some math and an explanation, and then just shook his head and say he didn’t know.

Goodbye India