Thailand - Again!

How we wish we could have put this little cutie in our pocket! She cooked us some delicious dumplings out of her boat at the floating market in Bangkok.

Making friends with a 20 kg python at the floating market. Sorry Rebekah. I hope i didn't just induce early labour!

At the Tiger Temple outside of Bangkok. The tigers live with the monks and are used to people and human contact.

Just a big pussy cat!

This little guy was only 5 months old and was quite frisky and playful.

The little guy keeping cool!

I love this guys stripes!

At a wat (temple) in Chiang Mai in Northern Thailand.

Isn't she a cutie in her traditional dress?!

A good place to chill out when you're a hungry gecko!

Here we are back in Thailand for the third time on this trip alone! What can we say? We love this place! We spent the first two weeks shopping up a storm in Bangkok and have about 50 kgs of stuff stored there waiting to take home. I hope Malaysia airlines aren't too strict! After Bangkok we decided to come up to Chiang Mai in the North which is where we are now. The monsoon seems to be lingering on this year and it's been pretty wet but hopefully nature will cooperate and the skies will clear up by the time we head down South to the beaches. Well, we're off to go explore on our scooter. It's definitely not Enzo but it's still fun!

India - A Final Montage!

This monkey didn't like us much. After we took this photo and got a little closer he reared up and gave us both a bit of a fright!

Woman work hard in India. Not only is this woman carrying a super heavy load but she's crossing one of the scariest bridges we've ever encountered. It's full of loose boards, sections of missing railing, snapped cables and, to top it off, the Parvati river is absolutely raging below.

We ran into roads like this everywhere we went in the state of Himichal Pradesh. It's no wonder we couldn't make it up to Leh!

My view from Enzo. I miss you buddy.

An old man with his granddaughter pausing looking out over the valley.

I love this shot taken one day while we were out and about exploring.

This is the village of Manikaram in the Parvati Valley. It's a very holy place and lots of pilgrims make their way here to bathe in the hot spring seen below.

We spent 4 days in the picturesque village of Grahan. It's a 4 hour hike up from Kasol and we were lucky enough to time our visit with their annual festival. Culturally speaking this was an absolute highlight of our trip.

A field of marijuana right outside our room in Grahan. The best charras and hash in the world comes from this area.

The view from our room in the beautiful village of Bahu. It reminded me so much of BC.

Stopping to enjoy the view on our last day with Enzo. We rode for 12 hours this day, our longest day ever!

This is what we ran into a couple of hours down the road from where the last photo was taken. A flash flood caused a huge section of road to disappear, taking a bus tumbling down with it. Luckily we found a detour but you can see why we ended up riding for 12 hours this day!

A dog in Delhi. Just one more dog i wanted to bring home with me!

Delhi busy getting ready for the Commonwealth Games.

India gave us a great send off on our last night by celebrating the birth of Krishna, just one of the many Hindu gods. There was a huge procession with floats and marching bands all in full power Indian fashion! Do you think all those cables and wires are a disaster waiting to happen?!

Bye Bye Enzo!

It was with heavy hearts that Kim and I said goodbye to our beloved friend, trusted steed and traveling companion Enzo. But, as with all good things, they must come to an end sooner or later. For us it was just a lot sooner than we had originally expected.

As I wrote in the post below, Leh, which was to be our premiere destination for the trip was hit hard by rain earlier in the month. We were hoping beyond hope that the road would open again this year but it has become clear to us now that the damage is so significant and so devastating that the roads will not open again until next year. With that in mind Kim and I had resigned ourselves to riding around the Northern state of Himichal Pradesh (translated into the land of snow capped mountains) but even there we ran out of road to ride on due to floods and landslides. So, with our options being to stay and ride in a very limited part of the North or head South to the flatter, hotter, even wetter plains, we decided to sell Enzo early, leave India behind and head to Thailand for what will be our third time on this trip alone.

Enzo had been a better bike than either of us could have hoped for and because we bought a newer bike at a good price we had no problem selling him. We bought him for 70,000 rupees and sold him almost one year later for 60,000 rupees which means that it only cost us $250 (plus what we put into him for maintenance and repairs) to have our own wheels and all the freedom that comes with it. We reckon we could have sold him for even more if we’d taken our time and advertised to other travelers but we wanted a quick and easy sale so we sold him to a dealer/mechanic who will, undoubtedly, find a great home for him in no time. We had the adventure of a lifetime and you just can’t put a price tag on that.

We covered 8,660 kms on Enzo and loved every single minute. We rode through two countries and zig-zagged our through eight states. We rode in all kinds of weather, on all kinds of roads, through all kinds of landscapes. We went from the hot, palm tree lined, paved roads of the densely populated South, crossed into Nepal where we survived the crazy traffic of Kathmandu and crossed back into India to ride through the less populated, un-paved, pine tree lined roads of the North. We ran over one baby chicken, clipped the side of one car with our luggage rack, collided very slowly with another motorbike in extremely crowded and chaotic traffic, rode through angry mobs of Maoists wielding sticks in Nepal, lost control of Enzo while going up a super slippery steep slope and fell over nearly going off an embankment, dropped Enzo and slid across the pavement while trying to avoid a puppy (I can tell you these things now that we’re no longer riding him!), escaped from two men who were chasing us out of a restricted national park, got stuck and had to get help to get him out of a particularly muddy stretch of road, got lost and drove miles in the wrong direction and were run off the road repeatedly by cars and trucks that were bigger than us . On the flip side however, Enzo never left us stranded on the side of the road, he was always there in the morning right where we'd left him, his gas was never stolen, we never had a serious accident, never burnt ourselves on the exhaust, never ran out of gas and never lost the keys. All things considered, it was a very successful mission!

In our opinion traveling by motorbike is the best way to see this incredible country and we can't wait until the day we come back to complete our journey to the far North! Farewell Enzo. May you bring as much joy and adventure to your next owners as you did to us! In the words of Kip "Peace out man"!

Nature Can Be Cruel

Kim and i are sitting here in a place called Kasol located in the beautiful Parvati Valley. The pine forests are lush and green and the Parvati river is raging right outside our room. It's so full of water from the monsoon that we have to yell at each other when we're sitting outside. We'd planned on exploring this part of India but not until late September or early October. Plans change though and here we are in early August.

We'd hoped to be up in the Himalayan town of Leh in the Ladakh region by this time but that region has been hit hard by flooding and landslides in the past week, blocking roads and devastating entire communities. 165 people have died, over 400 are injured and 400 are missing. It's an extremely sad situation. This is a region that sees an average of 300 days of sunshine a year and only 90mm of rain per year. I think that close to 50mm of rain fell in one night alone so this tragedy isn't something that anyone could have predicted. Nature can be very cruel.

So far 81 foreigners have been rescued and Kim are i are glad that the number isn't 83 as it easily could have been had we decided to head up a few days earlier. Now that the weather has cleared somewhat the Indian army is working hard to restore essential services in the area and clear the landslides that have blocked the roads. We're still hoping to get up there but the reports we're hearing from people who were on their way up and had to turn around is that kilometer long sections of road have been destroyed and entire bridges have been washed away. So, it sounds as if the damage is significant enough that the road may not even open again until next year. If that's the case Kim and i will just have to come back one day to complete our journey and do the one ride we've been looking forward to since we bought Enzo way down south!

If we do end up getting to go, finger's crossed, we want to be prepared so we've been doing some research and came across this website. I've included some of what this guy has to say below so you can get a sense of what our ride will be like if and when we get to do it. If you're interested in reading more about the ride or checking out some of his photos the website is http://www.60kph.com/.

"Every year bikers from across the globe plan to ride on what is termed as one of the best routes to ride in the world, the 475 kms long Manali-Leh Highway. The road from Manali is open from the month of June to mid October. For almost half of its length, it is over 13,000 feet. The route passes through five high altitude passes. The terrain is so high and so barren as to have no settled habitation. Infrastructural support is at a bare minimum. No repair or service stations after Keylong, no petrol pumps either. But this scenario on the Manali-Leh Highway gives the excitement of planning, adventure and bliss while riding and lifetime memories after the ride.

The Manali-Leh highway is a roller-coaster ride of high-altitude passes, bad roads, landslides, glacial melts, broken bridges and what not. So don't mistake it for 475 kms on a normal highway and a single day's ride. Manali-Leh according to me should be done in three days if not more. Remember, one also has to deal with Acute Mountain Sickness (AMS)."

Sounds incredible doesn't it?!

What Did We Do In Kathmandu?

Shanti, Krishna, Bikram, Me, Sujita & Kim at their house on our last night in Kathmandu.

Kim & I both looking very focused in the factory!

Wedding rings we made for each other. The stones are aquamarine.

This is Kim's masterpiece. A belt buckle made out of $100 worth of silver, coconut for the tree, crushed malachite and turquoise for the leaves and various stones for the flowers. He worked on this for over 3 weeks and the end result is amazing. Krishna was a very proud teacher the day he finished this!

Another pretty incredible piece that Kim worked on for a while. This bracelet's made out of coconut with silver inlay and surrounds. Like the belt buckle, a lot of silver was used to make this and it has a lot of weight to it.

These are money clips that Kim made. The two on the end are coconut with silver inlay and the ones in the middle are tiger's eye and turquoise.

This is my design. I call it the tri-ring! The stones i used are amythyst, iolite and tourmaline.

These are coconut earrings with silver inlay. The coconut we used for our pieces came from India. In Gokarna, a small beach where we stayed for a while, we found tons of coconuts and decided that, at some point in time, we'd like to use them to make jewelry. We spent hours sitting there on our beach blanket sanding them down!

These are two pendants that i made. The turquoise came from Krishna's personal collection and i feel extremely lucky that he shared them with me.

We’re back in India now after a 4 month sojourn to Nepal, an incredible country that’s turned out to be a highlight of our trip so far! We were so busy our last two months in Kathmandu that it’s not until we’re back in Rishikesh – sitting on the same balcony that we sat on last year – that I find myself with the time to sit down and write.

In Kathmandu we spent our time at the factory with Krishna, our silversmith master and teacher extraordinaire, and his workers Binod and Shiva. Days would pass by so quickly, sitting at our desks on that street in Naya Bazaar, that we’d notice it getting dark outside and be like “it’s that time of day already”?! The days seriously passed us by as if in a vortex and the only break we’d take would be for lunch at Krishna’s house for dhal baht. The lunch time meal was prepared every day by Krishna’s wife Shanti who is arguably one of the best cooks in the world! Dahl baht is a meal eaten twice daily by all Nepali people and it consists of rice, dhal (lentil soup) and various vegetable dishes called takari. Dahl baht is eaten with your hand; the right one of course as the left is reserved for other business! It was our favorite meal of the day and we miss it!

Krishna and his family are, hands down, one of the nicest families we’ve ever met and they made our time in Kathmandu very special. They welcomed us into their home and treated us like family. They even threw a birthday party for me complete with cake and a cake fight! It was a really enjoyable evening and one that will stand out in my mind for many years to come.

During those two months spent at the factory we only took a couple of days off so we didn’t do a whole lot of sightseeing but we did get to know the neighborhood where Krishna lives and works quite well. Kim’s barber was just down the street where he’d go every second day for a shave that cost him less than 50 cents. We had three street dogs, Old Mate, Little Mate and Licks, that we bought a water bowl for and fed hard boiled eggs to in the mornings. We went to the same shop every evening for a beer and snacks and it was there that I learned my Nepali numbers! We bought mangos from the mango man every few days as he pushed his cart past the factory. But mostly we just sat at our desks thinking about designs and creating pieces like the ones you saw above. Our time in Kathmandu went by far too quickly and we're already planning when we'll go back. Krishna, Shanti, Bikram, Vicky, Sujita, Binod, Shiva, Old Mate, Little Mate and Licks, if any of you are reading this – we miss you!

When Friends Come To Visit!

A Maoist protest in Pokhara.

The four of us together again!

Krishna firing some silver. In the factory across the street kids from India ranging in age from 10 to 20 work making knock-off designer bags. Every day they would ask us for a little bit, gesturing with their friends. A little bit of what we wondered?? We soon discovered it was chocolate they were after!

The cycle rickshaw race! FYI - that's not rain you see. They're dust particles that the camera's picked up. Kathmandu's a pretty polluted place and a lot of people walk around with masks on.

I just want to start this post by saying thank you Dani, Tania and Krista. You guys managed to make Nepal an even more magical place for me and I didn’t think that was possible : - )

In case you haven’t already guessed, Kim and I were lucky enough to have three friends visit from home and the weeks spent with them in Pokhara and Kathmandu went by far too quickly for my liking. Can you guys come back please?!

Tania was the first to arrive and she did so in fine fashion, arriving during a bandh imposed by the Maoists. A bandh is a country wide strike where the roads are blocked and vehicles aren’t allowed to drive and all shops, schools and offices are closed as well. This particular bandh lasted for over one week and Tania was lucky enough to arrive smack dab in the middle of it, an interesting introduction to the country to say the least. She flew into Kathmandu at 10pm and I had been assured by her hotel that there would be a government bus with police escort there to greet her and other travelers to ensure they made it safely to their hotels and guesthouses. Kim and I were in Pokhara, a town 7 hours drive away or we would have been there to collect her ourselves. As it was I was only able to reach her briefly on her mobile while she was in the airport in Hong Kong to warn her about the situation otherwise she would have been none the wiser as no report of what was happening here in Nepal seemed to be making headlines elsewhere in the world.

In any case, the government bus wasn’t there to greet her as promised so she and another girl she met in the airport decided to take a chance and get a “taxi” to take them to Thamel where she had a room booked for the night. As she relayed to us later on the taxi driver drove with his headlights off through the winding streets and at one point saw a group of people up ahead and said something along the lines of “uh oh – this could be bad.” I’ve since been reading about bandhs in the Lonely Planet and this is what they have to say – “Don’t travel during bandhs or blockades and get very nervous if you notice that you are the only car on the streets of Kathmandu!” I’m pretty sure that they were the only car on the street at that time and I’m also pretty sure they were nervous as hell and rightfully so! What a crazy welcome to one of the most incredible countries in the world. Thankfully everything worked out and now Tania has a great story to tell. Thanks for letting me share it here!

Tania was supposed to travel the next day by bus to meet Kim and I in Pokhara but because the roads were blocked she took a flight instead which meant I got to see her even sooner which suited me fine! I should clarify here that the roads were closed, yes but that somehow didn’t apply to tourists travelling on Enzo the super Enfield. I think it would look bad if the Maoists attacked tourists (lucky for us) so tourists are given special leniency and because we have our own wheels we were still able to get around which was good because Kim and I were taking a 4 day whitewater kayaking course that started the same day the bandha was imposed and we were stuck half way between Kathmandu and Pokhara. We didn’t really want to have to drive the 5 hours back to Pokhara through mobs of angry Maoists wielding sticks but given that Tania was coming and there was no way to communicate with her from the river camp we decided to risk it and off we went armed with a sign written in Nepali that said – We are tourists and we need to make it to the Indian border as our visa is expiring so please let us through. As it turned out we didn’t have to use the sign but we did drive through two or three big groups who were happy enough to part and let us through once they saw our white faces.

Our time in Pokhara was spent mostly relaxing in our guesthouse garden drinking beers and catching up as the shops and restaurants were only open for two hours each evening between 6pm and 8pm. It was definitely a strange time to be in Nepal but we kept reminding ourselves how lucky we were that we didn’t live here and therefore had to deal with an unstable political situation time and time again. Nepal has a lot going for it; friendly people, massive mountains, beautiful rivers and ancient cities but the one thing that holds it back and causes unnecessary suffering to its people is the political instability. Their constitution was meant to be signed on May 28th of this year but with none of the parties able to reach an agreement they’ve deferred it for one more year. It’ll be interesting to see what happens and what this next year brings for the people of Nepal.

After spending almost a week chilling in Pokhara the bandha was lifted and we headed to Kathmandu to meet up with Dani and Krista who had been travelling in India. I met them at the airport because, after Tania’s crazy arrival, I thought it would be nice for them to see a friendly face waiting for them.

After catching up and a couple of nights of fun it was down to business, business being learning the tricks of the silversmith trade from Krishna at Golden Hands Designs. Tania and Dani own a jewelry business in Vancouver called byDania and they’d come to Nepal to hone their skills and make connections with people in the business overseas. Kim and I tagged along and the four of us spent almost two weeks together working every day at the factory designing and making pieces under the expert instruction of Krishna and his workers. I think I can speak for everyone when I say we had a lot of fun at the factory.

The factory is small, just big enough to accommodate Krishna, his two workers and the four of us. It’s located in an area not far from where we stay in Thamel and every day we’d walk and/or ride Enzo down, spend the day working, usually from 10am – 7, 8 or even 9pm and then we’d come back, meet up with Krista, have a drink in the garden and head out somewhere for dinner. This was always a bit of an effort as everything in Nepal shuts down early and by 10pm your options for eating are extremely limited. But, we never went hungry and we ended up having a few nice meals out, one that ended in a random encounter with Russians resulting in drinking cheap bottles of vodka until the wee hours. It should be noted that the wee hours here in Nepal means 1am!!

We did have one day off from the factory and we used that time to soak up the sights of Kathmandu. Our day started off with the scariest ever cab ride. Seriously, I feared for my life! This guy was a maniac and the fact that we were all nervously laughing our heads off only made him drive faster. We survived though and spent a few hours at Swayambhunath or the Monkey Temple which is a beautiful Buddhist stupa located on a hill overlooking the Kathmandu Valley. After that we went to Durbar Square which is in the centre of Kathmandu and is over 200 years old. It’s an incredible place with a very medieval feel to it. Then, to top it off, we took a cycle rickshaw ride back to our guesthouse. Dani and Tania paid their guy extra to get there the fastest so they won. Sneaky buggers!

There are so many memories that Kim and I will take with us from Nepal but our time spent with the girls tops the charts. Thanks ladies!

The Annapurna Circuit - 25 Days Trekking In The Mountains Of Nepal!

All along the trail it was not uncommon to see porters such as this man carrying heavy loads of 50 kgs or more. And, as if that's not incredible enough, they're usually wearing flip-flops or tennis shoes!

These are Tibetan prayer wheels. They were placed at the beginning and end of most of the villages we walked through. Prayer wheels are used by Tibetans and Buddhists alike to send out blessings and positive thoughts so every time we would enter or leave a village we would walk with the wheels to our right and spin them as we went by in order to ensure a safe journey.

Along with the prayer wheels there would sometimes be rows of stones such as these engraved with Buddhist mantras.

A glacier at 5,400 metres.

Looking down the valley towards Manang.

This is a picture of Ganggapurna Peak taken from Gunsang which was one of our favorite places on the trek. How could it not be with views like this?!

This picture gives you an idea of the kind of mega terrain we walked through. As a Geologist Kim was in constant awe as he'd never before been anywhere like this.

This is high camp where we spent the night before crossing the pass. It was a cold sleep up there at 4,925 metres!

This picture was taken from the ridge above high camp. It was super windy up there. I was scared i was going to be blown off!

After an early start and a climb of 500 metres we reached Thorong-La Pass wich is said to be one of the highest mountain passes in the world at 5,416 metres. The air up there is definitely a lot thinner and each step must be taken slowly or you find yourself out of breathe and gasping for air. This day was a long one because after reaching the pass we had to descend 1,600 metres to the nearest village with accomodation.

A wooly mountain yak!

A mountain woman spinning yarn from yak.

The cutest little girl ever!