Liver river diver

We have arrived in Krabi and waiting to get on the boat to Ko Lanta. The bus ride last night was strange, we got on at 6:30 and they showed a preview of a movie then turned the TV off then the lights off at 7. We thought they were fixing something but the lights didn't come back on until 10 when we stopped to eat. It was a complimentary dinner which was rice in goopy water and some dishes to put in and eat with the rice. There were 4 Thais on the table and all of them barely touched the other stuff and just had their rice. We found this very peculiar because the rice dish didn't even have salt in it. The hole thing was pretty tasty but they wanted none of it. We also noticed that the people on our table left before anyone else, it was sort of a twilight zone affair. Thais also don't seem very big on finishing their food so we thought Walt ought to come here and give them a lesson, maybe he can even convince the King to sponser a nationwide campaign.
alp

coming from india, thailand seems a remarkably organized and prosperous country. its tourist base is greater than that of any other country i have visited, yet very few people speak english at all. alp and i utilized almost every mode of transport in bangkok, including canal boat taxis, tuk tuks (high-octane versions of the rickshaw), bus, skytrain, subway, and river boat. as admitted by miriam's former exchange student guest Goy (who we met our last night in bangkok and ate a special chinese dessert with), the main entertainment in the capitol is shopping. despite never going to Fashion Square Mall at home in charlottesville, alp and i went no less than three times to a seven floor megamall called MBK and watched movies, looked at cell phones, and desperately tried to join in the extravaganza. interestingly, most of the food we have eaten in thailand has been from street vendors, who are everwhere and each specialize in something. the main problem is we often just don't know what that something is (unless you point) because their signs are all in thai. nonetheless, our favourite place thus far was a fish/tom yum soup stall down the road from our guesthouse, which was open until the wee hours and allowed us to sip beer chang along with our fish niblets. and for your information, thais are the world masters of two domains: iced beverages (shakes, cold coffee, etc.) and takeaway food. it is perhaps funnest when these two talents are combined, like when one gets a mango smoothie in a plastic bag with a straw!
swimmingly yours~
ingie

One couple, couple of plans

So I will understand if some of you out there might stop reading our blog because we say we are going to do something and almost never do, but isn't it more exciting this way with all the twists and turns? We have been in Bangkok for a week now and have eaten many a different things, seen many a beautiful things and at the same time we have been doing rounds to the Indian Embassy for our employment visas. The first day we were told to bring back financial documents and when we did the main-dude told us to come back in four days as he had to do some research into what kind of visa he might be able to give us. Since we were not going to be paid and even though we had no financial trouble, he said it probably wasn't possible to give us an employment visa. So this morning when we went there he had done nothing in the last four days and did't even remember what he was supposed to do. Were we hurt? Not really, because when he hinted that we were probably not going to get an employment visa our little noodles again started to fantisize, so by the time he crushed our plans by saying he could if we wanted to send our documents to the ministry in delhi which would take 3 months or more we already had another fantasy ruling our lives.
The new plan is to extend our flight until May while we travel in South-east Asia, Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam you name it we will go! Afterwards returning to India with another 6 month visa and attending yoga school then for a few months. Then heading to China and taking the train through Mongolia to Moscow. From there heading to Turkey passing the Turkic republics. The last leg of the journey depends on me being able to lose a few kilos so I can dogde the military by being "unfit to surve". Either we do it or not it sounds cool right now. But I'am with the help of Yavuz trying to figure out if this is really possible. Other then that we will try to apply to paid military in every embassy on our way. I do not qualify but maybe we will find another incompetent that will not know.
Ecological disaster, political insurgance, bureaocratic incompetence we have seen it all and have not suffered anger nor dispear. We believe fate is showing us the way and we are easily being blown around by it. I should thank here our parents who support us and make us feel that there is comfort waiting for us back home. Yet for now we feel we can get a little more ruffed up!
alp!

ps thailand anyone? click the coorg title to link to the pictures.
ps2 for those of you who have juicy thoughts about travelling but think they will not afford it, our 5 months in India cost us $600 a month for two of us, but we did stay 2 months of that with friends and family.

Transnational Valentines Day

We are recovering from the most exciting Valentine's Day in the history of Alp and Ingrid's lives. A few days ago, Esin sent us off from Mysore and we sat on a train for 42 hours, hurtling towards New Delhi, with the final destination in mind being Kathmandu. However, ten minutes into our two day ride we found out that February 13th was the joyous 10th anniversary of the Maoist insurgency and they were most probably planning on celebrating the occasion with some old-fashioned civil war violence. We arrived in Delhi on a beautiful Sunday afternoon and enjoyed the perfect spring weather that the capitol enjoys for about three weeks a year while waiting for our Korean friends, the Shins, to come home. They are the most delightful hosts and we had a thoroughly tasty Korean meal at an excellent restaurant with them later in the evening. We also discovered that night that Kathmandu was under blockade and virtually no traffic was coming in from the south-east, precisely the direction we would be coming from if we took our final leg of the trip to the Nepali-Indian border in Gorakpur. The next morning we decided to scoot over to Mr. Gupta, my mother's travel agent who specializes in executing last-minute travel plans seemlessly and who also deserves to be called "Mr. Magic" for that reason. After one hour in his office, our breathless anticipation was rewarded with two (cheap!!) round-trip tickets to Bangkok Thailand that very night at 7pm!!! We squealed, we giggled, we were jealous of our own good luck! Following our fateful triumph, we made a trip to Khan Market, the expat shopping center in south delhi, and bought ourselves chocolate and cheese for Valentines, paneer tikka roomali rolls for our intestinal worms, and a Lonely Planet Thailand (though, believe us, we tried our best under the time constraints to NOT support that backpacker mafia publication company). After hastily packing and substantially lightening our packs (including tent, hiking boots, and mats our bags are 22lbs each), we made it to the airport and our flight on Myanmar Airlines went first to the sleepy airport of Yangon (formerly Rangoon), where we ate complimentary cake at a hotel and finally continued onto Bangkok, arriving here at 6am, both without any sleep and Ingrid with a headache. Blearily we made our way to a quiet residential area and a guesthouse, and slept for a few hours. We awoke and finally it sunk in~ we are in thailand, yaaaysss!
scoobydo!
ingrid

Coorg, Curd and Kurds

About two weeks ago we set out for the Coorg region on our Enfield and the Yezdi that Esin rented. In the first ten kilometers the Yezdi was stopping frequently and we called Hari and said we were bringing the bike back and as if the bike heard this and stopped to stop. So we turned around and headed again towards Coorg. After we passed the bamboo and teak forest area it started to get hilly and chilly. There was coffee and pepper everywhere and it smelled like honeysuckle on the road and roasted coffee in the towns.
Coorg is a small region with a distinctive language, culture and landscape. There is speculation that their ancestors were the troops of Alexander the Great. Also theories that they might be related to the Kurds in the middle east. I don't think there is a real anthropologic study about this. Well now that I have shown you that I read a few pages from a book while we were there what we were really busy doing was eating good home cooking and hiking around. The first place we stayed at was expensive by Indian standards but really beautiful. We stayed in our tent for the first time since there was only a single room available and we didn't want to open the mouth of the sack too much for a double as it was almost ten dollars. Upon coming to the conclusion that we had giardia we started on antibiotics, but it was really the best place to have it since we had fresh water and good food. After finishing the antibiotics we tried to replenish our bacterias by eating yogurt but they have this curd in Coorg that is really not very good which could be a clue to the fact that the Coorgians are Alexanders soldiers since everyone knows the Greeks can't do yogurt right. It was quite a scene at the estate where all the guests were served dinner and we ate and thrashed American and British politics and politicians. As the only American present for miles around, Ingrid endured the lambasting valiently (amidst blushes galore) and tried to be an example that all of Bush's country brethren are not as evil and culturally chauvanist as he. After a week at that place we followed the bumpy road to another estate close to a national park where we stayed a more humble accomodation for the same price and have home cooking consisting mostly of rice and potatoes for the same price. From there we ventured to a waterfall, of which there are many in Coorg. The first day we didn't realize was a Sunday so there were more Indians than water droplets, but then we went there again next day and even managed to bathe naked! And about the national park, we went but were not let in because we were on two wheelers and there was a chance that we would get trampled by wild elephants. We were up for the challenge but they weren't and we just didn't want to rent a jeep and pay money and see nothing that you can't see on the street already. So we didn't go in. On the way back the Yezdi ran out of gas. Here come closer, listen up, never never never run out of gas on a 30 year old bike!!
We are back in Mysore, right in time because our sandalwood soap was just finished. My elbow is a little screwy from the bumpy road but the bike is running great. Tomarrow we head for Nepal and Esin is taking the bike and heading for Kerala.
All the best to you out there and pray to Ganesh for luck and Laxmi for wealth and Shiva for ganja and Krishna for booty.
alp

I know what you all are thinking~ did Alp just say he and his lil lady were heading for NEPAL? but wasn't there just a total governmental overhaul there? didn't the king just dissolve the parliment and cut off international communication for a number of days? And i would say~ yes, indeed. We are going to Nepal. Probably. Our Indian tourist visas expire in one week and we have been mourning the fact that whenever we decide to go to another country, disaster befalls it. All our planning ahead is no match for killer tsunamis and Maoist rebels and insane kings. the final decision for today rests at our taking the train for two days up to New Delhi and leaving the option for other flights out of the country. Uzbekistan? Burma? Mongolia? Let's take an internet poll everybody! Where should Alp and Ingie go next? Or, more aptly, upon which poor country should God next strike down his wrath? Stay tuned for the next exciting episode!
love~
ingrida

ps~ click the title to look at our new lovely pictures~ we is three now! triple the beauty!

Horn OK Please

Esin has arrived, and the three of us have been hanging out in Mysore. Today we rented a 78 model Yezdi. It is a 250cc czechoslovakian bike that has a hard time starting but who can blame it? Nevertheless it looks very neat and we plan to explore the area with the Enfield and the Yezdi. Before we rented the Yezdi the three of us were riding on the Enfield which I must say was boosting my social status as a mustached man quite a bit. One younger policemen tried to stop us, well we were already stopped, but he said riding threesome was illegal and after telling him we have seen 4 or 5 people on bikes, he tried to write us a ticket but I figured we are on a bike and he is not going to run after us so zoomed out of there. Other then that not very exciting things been happening, thank god. There are new pictures of Goa and Gokarna and of Hampi which is worth looking at.
Love to all
alp

Sorry that we have been slacking in describing our recent journeys but riding from town to town can be tiring and we are mostly just happy enough with ourselves when we arrive in a place. But i will stop to tell you all that, after one more beach in Goa called Palolem (which has some of the most delicately beautiful shells in the world's oceans cast upon its shores), we travelled to the hippie-haven of gokarna, just south in karnataka. we slept on the floor in our shack there and enjoyed excellent food in our israeli-infested restaurant/lodge. following that we zoomed up to hampi, which had to be the most lovely place i feel i have seen in india yet. there are loads of ruins from the vijananagar empire and the most gorgeous boulders strewn about a large area of several square kilometers. hopefully we will have the chance to return in the future, so that alp may do some rock climbing and we can ride through the river there in a coracle. we love you all and hope the happiest things for you. thank you ladies for the compliments on the haircut... now esin and i match, which is perfect for the image of alp's harem.
ingi

Too much good

Picture yourself on a motorcycle passing though strawberry fields and over ochre mountains... and you would have been alp and I one week ago as we left pune with our horse packed and our newly decorated helmets on our heads. Once we got out of the urban areas, the road was perhaps the best kept in india (as good as that scene in dil chahta hai) and we sped 500 kilometers down to northern goa. We arrived in Arambol (what was a semi-sleepy town three years ago) and started to panick because we could not find anything but a single bed, thanks to the 300,000+ tourists that come to goa for new year's eve (including us). The next day however, we scored an idyllic beach shack on the northern end of the beach, complete with romantic/annoying mosquito netting and since then we have been drinking our goan beer or port or cashew fenny as more tourist roll in and ask for room, but we are full. Yes the port is very good and the fenny since drived from palm sap or cashew fruit does not threaten to blind or kill us. However we have only swam once in the last week which is a situation we want to fix. There were minor problems with the bike but because we couldn't ride it to go to the place to get the stuff things were long. It is really nice to have our own transportation and we are thinking of going down south still since Esin's coming is delayed ever further we dont expect to see her before we leave India. But she has travelled in Iran and now is below K2, so she is having a good time. We hope all of you are having or at least trying to have a good time. For us, all is too much good.
alping

ps there are new pictures in the pune album and a new album for goa, click the title a few posts back, and comment for krysts sake, we want to hear you

safe by the sound

The terrible tsunamis of Sunday have fortunately not effected our plans but certainly have made us upset. we are in northern goa, in a beach hut surrounded by palm trees, having perhaps too nice a time. Happy new year to you all~ we love you!

Quiet Moments are Life's Rewards

the title of this blog comes from a picture of a waterfall with these words emblazoned across the top that hangs on the wall of our hotel room in Mumbai. it is ironic of course because our room is separated only by a lattice window at the top from three other rooms, all of which were full of laughing, joking indian men last night. we fell asleep to their cackles and woke to their giggles. bombay is the most expensive place to stay in india, so we are paying dearly even for this sort of accommodation. nonetheless, alp and i are having a fun mini-break in the big city and have walked and found our way around like the hardened travellers we have become. there are beautiful and romantically crumbling british building left from the raj-era and it feels much more cosmopolitan here than other indian cities in the north, like new delhi. we have become intrigued by the parsi community in bombay and pune, as they are actually followers of the ancient element-revering zoroastrian faith and have placed fantastical symbols (like men with horse bodies and wings) about town. traditionally parsis leave their dead on the towers of silence to have their bodies picked apart by vultures and birds of prey. sadly, these places are kept off limits but i suppose that adds to their mysteriousness. we have heard the bad news about the tokyo rose closing and hope that final blow to the coolness of charlottesville will perhaps inspire some of all you to head over here. scoot~ ingrid

Yes we are in Mumbai right now, the only reason being the finding of a metal rigging to go on the back of a 1973 Enfield. We had a meeting on Wednesday in Pune with Bhargavi who is the head of Bapu Trust (click title), an organization helping women and the mentally ill. And the news is that we will stay in Pune for a year working part time with them. Our request was that we work part time so that we can write our book, and ofcourse we will not be getting paid. Finding a job is much easier when you dont want to get paid, because they cant say no. Well we observed that poor Bhargavi was traumatized by another german volunteer. apperantly she was more trouble then she was worth, asking by the hour what to do. We assured Bhargavi that we are pretty laid back and are happy not doing anything just as much as we enjoy doing things. At the same time we will attend the prestigious Iyengar Institute of Yoga four times a week. To the rock climbing enthusiasts out there let me tell you this, Pune is a heaven. There are beautiful cliffs and Iam sure many caves all over Maharastra. So we will be buying a bike tomarrow, and we had to come to Mumbai for the luggage rack because without it we cant take our stuff with us, but being a tourist implement it is especially hand made welded metal. Really grungy but it will do the trick. We are planning to head for Goa on Monday and spend the new year there. Hopefully on a more quiet beach and we will party with the crowd elsewhere. Then we are planning to head further south to Kerala, everyone beit Indian or foreigner seems to think highly of Kerala and we might spend more time there. All of this of course on our bike. We plan to go to Sri Lanka in February for a month where we will apply for the employment visa. So that is the outline of the plan. We feel that all of the things we wanted to do in India or in Asia came together in Pune and are very happy of the outcome of all our previous trials and failures. It is never a failure if it opens another door and who knows if you are heading to where you want to be by failing. Important thing is not to lose motivation. So high-ho to you all,
Alp!

Pheeling Phun in Pune

After a week in Pune, with and now without Manish, we have decided this would be a wonderful place to stay. Manish has gone off to Goa for a film festival and allowed us to further take over his hostel room. It is quiet and extremely peaceful on campus because the school is out of session but the guards are starting to become wary of us, traipsing in and out of the school with no chaperone. We spent four days intensely reading the Illustrated version of the Da Vinci Code out loud. Pune has many charms unique to itself. All of the apartment buildings have names scrawled on the sides and there are delightful old British-looking stone and wood buildings. We have found fresh figs, tasty papayas, and a beer store yards away from the entrance to the school. Walking around the Muslim section of town, we came to an old church-cum-chicken slaughterhouse where nearly one hundred hawks were gathered, swooping down and bombarding trash dumpsters filled with scraps, flinging dissattached chicken feet across the streets. Otherwise, Pune is extremely modern and progressive. Women abound (which is unusual for most Indian cities, where men certainly outnumber their counterparts) and ride around the town on zippy motorscooters, wearing mujahhadin-like headdresses to keep out some of the pollution. Pune also specializes in desserts and we have tasted wonderful creme caramel, chocolate mousse, and homemade ice cream (real reason y ingie wants to stay in Pune). There are several Iranian-style places around too and we have recently shared, over an apple-flavoured hookah, fantasies and thoughts on our upcoming, highly-anticipated novel. Most of the restaurants are outside, with patios, furthering the feeling like we are on perpetual vacation. When we realize some of our plans (i.e. motorcycle purchasing, etc), you all will be the first to know!
There is a new ablum of pictures on Pune, click the title!
I and A

Osho, for shau!

We are here in Pune. Four hours from Mumbai, it is a suprisingly pretty and hopping town. Well four hours on train, three on bus or six on a bus full of people and goods. Our bus yesterday filled the rack on top so mush with goods that on the slightest of incline we wee going 10km/h. Not to mention the Walt like scare I had about the brakes failing. But at the end we arrived then got hussled by rickshaws but at the end we met Manish. He is our friend who is attending FTII, Film and Television Institude of India, and is letting us stay in his hostel room. Very nice guy. He doesn't have it very bad either though since he is letting us stay in his room he gets to stay with his pretty girl friend. The school is out, everyone is in Goa for the International Film Festival so we have the campus almost to ourselves. These kids are funny, they live and breathe cinematography it seems like. We will certainly be smarter when we leave Pune, so watch out! There are lots of pretty banyan trees and I feel this is only the beginning. The south is going to be great and we will write about it. Gorusmek uzere,
Alp