GriffJon's World Tour

Crested Butte, Colorado

While all the cool kids were offline at ASA this weekend, I was out seeing probably my oldest friend get hitched (we were first introduced at the tender youth age of 6 mos). He had a "destination" wedding in Crested Butte, Colorado (near Aspen) (both their families are from Texas, and they're now living in Alaska, so it seemed a fair location for all).

The wedding was great, and CB, despite it's one-trick pony of being a ski destination, was still a beautiful location.

Photos and HDRs after the jump

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An HDR of the vallery floor:

Camfields build Cairns

Just some mountain scenery

Mountains:

California Trip: Yosemite

So I spent last week in California with A, going to Yosemite, then up to Sonoma, then San Fran and back to LA. It was a long trip but very awesome. I got to catch up with my friend Mike, but sadly missed the other West Coasters. I also got to abuse my CHDK (Canon Hacker Developer Kit) scripts to take some HDR shots, which I'm still tweaking but seem good.

Yosemite was insanely crowded and also wet; which sucked. Fortunately once you get out from the vehicle-accessible spots, the crowds die down immediately, so it wasn't a disaster, and the weather improved a bit. Besides, the clouds make for dramatic HDRs:

(viewing those at full size is much more awesome)

The redwood grove was nice, but I remember Muir Woods as being more dramatic overall, but lacking redwood cameltoe and snowplants:

We hiked to the fissures near Glacier Point, and had to deal with lots of snow; for which I was not really well prepared for.

But the clouds did mask the really really really long way you fall if you misstep there. Which was nice. This was about as clear as it got:

(that's half dome in a cloud)

Sonoma was nice, but parallel to Yosemite you had to get out of the town, which was itself quite the tourist trap full of.. well, tourists. We drove up to the Russian Creek Valley and had a great time -- basically hitting the wineries I didn't make it to last time I went winetasting in Cali (on a bike)

San Fran was challenging because we really hadn't planned it and A was having a problem with her hip making it hard for her to walk a lot. We managed to walk most of the Embarcadero/Chinatown/Nob Hill area and used some MUNI bus/subway/things. We still managed to have some awesome food (tho my attempt at Mexican food was thwarted, we stumbled on to an amazing Italian Place, Caffe Delucchi) The Sushi place (Koo) was good, but not life-changing.

Travel

Not much travel of recent. I flew out to San Diego to present at the Youth Service Institute in late December, but barely saw anything outside the hotel. A and I did Texas for the winter holidays -- but West Texas just doesn't change much, which is both frustrating and relieving.

Coming up: A trip to LA to visit A in April, perhaps a longer trip in the summer to the West Coast to do San Fran, wine country, and so on.

We're planning some form of international jump in the late fall when she's back in DC again -- maybe a Europe trip, maybe Argentina.

Granada and Las Isletas

Granada's a beautiful, chill city that's being slowly re-invaded by Gringos buying it up. Huge numbers of expats walking the streets.

We got to see a funeral procession:

We climbed a belltower for a great view of the city:

At dusk, we took a boat around "Las Isletas" - a group of ~365 islands formed when Volcan Mombacho erupted a few hundred years back:

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Nica 2007: La Boda De Chana y Jorge (Managua)

I'm holding off on posting too much about the wedding to try and give Chanita some time to go through all the photos A and I gave her and post them herself. Until then, some photos from our first couple of days in Managua and Granada:

Managua:

Managua has some of the best street art / graffiti / murals

The Parque de la Paz was a huge bonfire of weapons used during the Sandinista revolution, burnt and concreted over:

It's a country in a big hurry to forget it's troubled past. This is the Somoza family grave. The Somozas rules Nicaragua for over 40 years, bleeding it dry (they had some great friends, too)

The shadow of Sandino on top of Tiscapa:

More India: Best photo from India

I so envy Audrey for being the one to capture this moment (by explicit and almost forced request of the village elder, in the glasses, mind you)

More India: Jain Temples in Jaisalmer's Fort

Another case of words detracting from the photos:

More India: Jaipur's Jantar Mantar (Observatory)

There's not much text I can throw in here to really explain or improve the photos, so here's an eruption of photos from an astronomical/logical site in Jaipur:

Each of these "small" tools was aligned for its specific zodiac, you can guess ours?

This is a REALLY LARGE SUNDIAL:

This was a fancy star chart/calendar:

And a planet chart:

This smaller sundial could get within 20 seconds accuracy, the large one had 2 second accuracy:

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More India: On Public Tranist

If you haven't seen Wes Anderson's latest; The Darjeeling Limited, I highly recommend it. Standard Anderson, people dealing with distant/absent parents and their own messed up lives, but filmed in India. Not really India-accurate, but hilarious nonetheless, and some awesome shots/scenery. If only the trains were actually remotely like that.

The main for of transit is autorickshaws, which I blogged about from India with my "three riddles" :

1) What's the only thing scarier than an autorickshaw ride during rush hour with a shaky transmission?

2) How many autorickshaws does to take to get you to where you want to go?

3) How many lanes does an Indian road have?
(answers at the bottom)

So, what IS an ARS anyhow? It's a three-wheeled gocart-type affair, with a pull-start motor and motorcycle-like handlebar controls. They're about 1/2 as wide as a normal car, and very dexterous moving through traffic. Here's some visual explanation:

not enough?? Fine. Here's a video of a normal, calm ride in a rickshaw. The (unusual) blasting bollywood tunes help you imagine you're a dashing hero out to save a modest female!

So while ARSs are the best in-town transit, it's the trains that get you between towns. Now, you have to fill out forms for everything at the train station; to get tickets, to request information about what ticket to get, to store your luggage... You even have to sign a log book if you wait in the waiting rooms for the reserved-class cars (the ones where you have a reserved seat, as opposed to the "hope you can squeeze on" style. Fully in line with the standards of bureacracy one comes to expect, we discovered where these forms go:
note that this was taken at a chest-high window into a room filled with piles of old forms. I'm sure there's a 27B/6 in there somewhere....

You spend lots of time waiting for trains. We had five train rides, 2 of which were 5+ hours late, 2 ~1 hr late, and one on time. You discover all sorts of things while waiting or riding, such as new flavors of chips (warning, may cause mischeviousness):

And you remember why you're paying exhorbitant amounts for a reserved seat:

Excuse me, conductor, this cow doesn't have a ticket:

Rickshaw Quiz Answers!

1) an autorickshaw ride during rush hour with a *good* transmission

2) One more.

3) One more. Tags: delhi indi

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More India: Hidden Delhi

A and I finally merged our massive photosets, took out exact duplicates, and did some work to pick the best couple of hundred photos, so if you ask us for an in-person slideshow, you know what you're getting yourself into. In the meantime, I've updated Flickr with the missing photos; Jama Masjid, a hugemongous mosque in Old Delhi, more Delhi shots, Jantar Mantar, a huge stone astro-nomical and -logical observatory, and some other random shots.

Jama Masjid

We went there because my finely-honed "late afternoon tropical thunderstorm" senses were tingling, and we figured we could find refuge. After wisely toting our shoes (you can't wear shoes in mosques), the sky broke open and deluged the less fortunate:

After the rainstorm we slipped and slided and clammered up a tall and steep minaret/tower to get a view of the city; it was... harrowing, unlit, narrow, and super crowded with 2-way traffic up a 1-way staircase. We survived, with some great shots.

Some pictures of India Gate, government buildings, and the presidential house:

A Hindu temple, and the Bahai temple:

There are three more choice photos from our morning at Humayun's Tomb that I must share. First:

There is one parrot, and five ninjas, in this photo.

Second, I come halfway across the world to find a country overrun by mesquite trees? Next time I'll save money and jetlag and go to west texas:

Third:

Important lesson for female travellers: don't get your picture taken with men outside of family groups. That shit-eating grin on the guy's face? Yeah, he's grabbing Audrey's ass. Not that I can blame him, really, but still.

Desert Safari

In the middle of our time in Jaisalmer, we went on a 2 day, 1 night camel safari. We never got that far away from civilization, but far enough to see some nice stars and feel far away.

The first day we got up early, jeeped out an hour, and met our safari. We went with a hippy from Germany. Three Indians were with us, Suban the guide, a camel driver, and "the boy" (who was a guide in training/internship). We each had our own camel, plus one camel which was in training (and not very happy about it)

Riding camels is smoother than horses (as long as they're not running!), it's a weird side-to-side, forward and back sway (camels move both feet on each side simultaneously). Getting up and down is a bit difficult, as they have a multi-step sitting process. As long as you're ready for it and holding on, it's no problem. Up on top, you realize that camels are TALL.

We cameled it from just past dawn until lunchtime, going through a few villages along the way. The desert was mostly scrublands, where some villagers were raising crops (mustard, millet, melon) and/or goats and sheep. They lived in thatch and adobe-style huts mostly, and many of them are Hindu refugees from Pakistan from the Partition.

From noon until almost 5 we just camped in the shade of a tree. We started with chaye and lunch, then chilled out for a while. A hunter came by and we made more chaye to share with him and the guides chatted with him for a while. Suban and Audrey played with their cell phones, though were still unable to download any free Indian ringtones to her phone :(. In a word, it was hot, with very little breeze. We drank lots of water and waited, then got back up and went another hour to camp.

Camp

We camped on a set of dunes, free of insect problems (except for lots of dung beetles) and grass burrs. After the sun set, it cooled down until it got a slight bit chilly late at night. I tried to take some star pictures, but my camera doesn't seem to allow for more than a 15 second shutter time.

We arrived just in time to catch sunset

We had dinner, and I played around with my new Indian jews harp, and taught "the boy" a bit of it, but Suban was more interested (and skilled at) playing midi tunes on his cell phone.

Day 2

Really, more of the same; walking around on camelback, exploring villages, waiting for the sun to cool, then at dusk we jeeped back into Jaisalmer and returned to our hotel for a much-needed shower.

All in all it was very pleasant. Sleeping under the stars (though, BFE Texas locales still win for stargazing) was nice, riding a camel was certainly an interesting experience, and our guides were great (And great cooks)

Camel Videos

The view of the scrub from the back of the camel - the bells are on goats, the grunting noises are from the camel driver, "Uh!" seems to be the way to say "Hey, pay attention, keep going". Other noises were a cicada-sounding chirp and a lop-lop-lop sound, which I think both were speed-up-a-bit sounds. There was a sound to tell the camel to get up/down (jhyu jhyu) and to drink (sounds like a camel/horse drinking sound, verbalized).

Also, here's a video of a camel walking. They're odd creatures. In heavy sand, their back feet step in the same place their front feet just left (they walk lopsided, both legs on one side moving in unison).

Camel noises while getting saddled:

Jaisalmer, the desert oasis

Our overnight train to Jaisalmer was on time (seriously!), and our hotel picked us up at 6:30 AM and even let us check into our room w/o additional charge. Jais would be our longest stop, with a 2 day, 1 night camel safari in the middle. It is dominated by a huge fort which is still occupied and has become very touristy in recent years. The Lonely Planet seems to have information that the increased strain caused by drainage from tourist hotels and restaurants in the fort is degrading the structure, and in the 2007 edition which came out while we were there, it had delisted every establishment, even shops, inside the fort -- which had the people in the fort pissed off, and the hotels and shops outside the fort very, very happy.

The politics of the Planet are very interesting, and you have to take even their comments with a grain of salt; did they talk to someone outside the fort who overplayed the degradation card to get better listings/recommendations for outside the fort? Or are the hoteliers and others inside the fort downplaying it?

Regardless, A and I had the best time wandering the fort in this city. Inside, the shopkeepers were so very friendly, giving reasonable first prices and happy to just chat. No pressures, not even the normal rounds of scams we were used to. It was a breath of fresh desert air and really was needed after so many hassles and scams in the other cities.

We spent a good chunk of one day with bookmakers who made a hardbacked folder to A's exacting specifications (she chose the exact piece of patchwork for the cover, dimensions, folder sizes, etc.), and I bought a nice leather (camel hide, cow hide wouldn't be proper) book that I've yet to decide what to do with.

Clothes shopping is similarly pleasant. You find a shirt that you like, and they tailor it (no additional charge) to your specifications. Don't like the length? pockets? too big? no problem! I picked up two indian-ish shirts for about $10USD

Jain Temples

A has most of the photos for the Jain Temples, but here's one from the outside

Jews harps!

Called a morchang in Rajasthan (other things in different parts of India), it's popular in folk music. I regret not buying a CD with a 'harp track on it.

Evening at the fort, and Jon discovers his time-lapse mode!

Jodhpur - The Blue City

Our train to Jodhpur left four hours late, so we got in at midnight instead of 8pm. Our hotel, even though we'd warned them and they'd said they'd pick us up, was a no show and didn't answer their phone. As it was 9km north of the city, we were in no mood to try and bargain a rickshaw driver to get us there at that time of night, so we began calling other options. As luck would have it, a non-commission-paying place less than a 2 minute walk from the rail station called Govind had an AC room available, and was clean, neat, spacious and imminently hospitable. The website gives this warning to travellers:

Note - Govind is the only Hotel not paying any commission to any autorickshaws or taxis (as mention in the latest lonelyplanet guide book), so when you touch Jodhpur you will hear many stories like Govind Hotel is a bad place or it is closed down. Please don't be carried away by such stories.If you want to come here tell the taxis driver that you want to go to the main GPO or the railway station.

It's sad how... scam-filled all of India is, such that it's so hard to just have an honest, friendly conversation with anyone, or even ask simple directions without getting directed/taken to a commission-paying shop or just misdirected. Govind was a haven from that, thankfully, and I had a wonderful chat with the owner, who like me is a coffee fanatic (a rare find in chaye-drinking India!) who has a good esperesso machine on his wifi-enaled rooftop restaurant/coffee bar. Yeah, you read that right.

Buying Spices

We set out the next morning to visit the clock tower and inadvertently ended up at MVSpices, a recommended place to buy spices. We bought, well, a LOT of indian spices and teas, which are shipping back to the US as I type (I hope?).

Mehrangarh Fort

The now-just-a-(very very rich)-citizen Raj of Jodhpur put a lot of effort into restoring the city's fort, Mehrangarh (garh means fort, btw). It's a bit of an ego-trip for him, and the (otherwise really good) audio guide makes sure you know he's behind it all. This was overall the most impressive fort of the trip, tho the Jaisalmer fort was interesting for different reasons.

The fort is huge, which I hope the photos do justice to. It took around 3 hours to wander through it, admittedly with some breaks and using the audio tour to slow us down as well. It offered stunning views on only of itself but also of the aptly-named Blue City below.

You can see why it was never successfully breached in the number of walls and gates and cannons/artillery of various vintages.

At one end of the fort there was a small Hindi shrine with a statue in the valley beside it. Tho you couldn't take photos inside the shrine, I used my fancy rotating camera screen to grab a shot from above the walled path to the shrine.

At another part of the fort, there seemed to be some people living there, where I took this photo of the door and some stacks of rocks, no doubt the free equivalent of blocks for the kids.

You can watch a video of me walking out the fort, accompanied by competing musicians:

Jaipur, the Pink City

We were mostly unimpressed by Jaipur; it had all the hassles of other cities, but the sights were, in a word, meh. We arrived more or less on time, and the hotel had sent a driver for us. A youth came up to us and asked if we were staying at Hotel Pearl Palace, which we were, and took us to his rickshaw and dropped us at the hotel, free of charge, with a card with his mobile on it if we wanted a city tour the next day. Turns out he wasn't the hotel's driver, who was still waiting for us at the station, but a rickshaw driver scouting for business. Jaipur's scam was the confidence-building to win greater and greater indebtedness, then, and we used this to our advantage.

The hotel, Pearl Palace, was wonderful. Cheap, but with luxury services and service, and a beautiful rooftop restaurant.

The next day we went to the train station to book our final ticket, and a rickshaw driver bugged us to let him take us there for free ("good luck"). We finally caved after a few blocks, and got to the station, bought our last ticket, and discussed (argued) the rest of the day with the driver. We (finally) convinced him of our plans with some of his input, and got on our way to the old city inside the walls, mostly painted pink. A was feeling a bit ill, so went back to the hotel and I wandered alone for a bit, and bought a shirt for the upcoming safari. I took a photo of walking around the back streets of the Pink City, which you can catch at YouTube:

The City Palace and Jantar Mantar

Re-connected with A, and we went off to the City Palace, which was quite a let down, but it did have a pair of Guiness-book winning largest silver urns.

After that, we walked over to Jantar Mantar, a huge stone astronomy/astrology calculator, which had a sundial of sorts that could be measured to 2 second accuracy, various instruments to find/predict stars and planets, calendars, and so forth. Again, A has the photos on her camera, so soon come. Wikipedia has a pretty uninteresting entry, but Flickr already has some good shots to satisfy your burning curiosity. No really, check it out, it's an amazing architectural place.

Commission Shop

Then as per an unspoken agreement with our driver, we made a stop at a commission shop in the Moghul quarter, one that specialized in fabrics/textiles. We bargained hard and got an almost reasonable price for a few pieces. We also visited their "factory" where we got the story that they employed people regardless of caste to work on fabrics (I'd be more impressed, except that this is a common story for all commission shops, and you learn to not believe it; I'm sure it's just a catch for unwary tourists, like, well, 90% of India.

The photo with all the spots is what happens if yhou take a flash photo in a closed, poorly ventilated room where they're heat-embossing fabric with gold and silver dust. My lungs are now plated with precious metals!!

We pushed hard next to make our driver take us to the fort for sunset, and eventually we prevailed, thouh we had to transfer to a "power" rickshaw with a stronger motor to take us up the hill.

Nahargarh

We succeeded at making it up to the fort and snagged our own private turret to watch the sunset, eat Cheese Pakora (fried Indian cheese in garbanzo flour) and drink a beer while enjoying the view of the city. A made a recording of the various Muslim evening prayer calls which rose from the city, very peaceful in a way.

Agra, the Taj Mahal, and a rant on transport

We arrived into Agra around midnight, due to our late-leaving train. We'd called the hotel from A's cell to warn them we'd be very late, and set out to find a rickshaw. We looked for the "prepaid" booth (the only way to get a good deal on a rickshaw), but it was already closed, so we walked out of the station to seek a better bargaining position. We had a rickshaw tout say "50 rupees (about 1.10), anywhere in Agra" and took him up on it. He got in the tiny front seat with the driver and we were off... to a different hotel. "Just along the way" (actually, many km out of the way). After many many arguments, where even my extensive attempts to maintain firm politeness were gone, and the yelling was starting, we finally got close to our actual hotel (30 minutes after we should have) (in a no-driving zone meant to curb the pollution coloring the Taj), and walked the rest of the way. The damned tout followed us to the gate of the hotel where he reappeared babbling about something. Thankfully, the hotel opened up and closed the gate behind us. This was our most obvious and worst experience with the commission system, where, if a driver brings you to a hotel or shop where you buy something, they get a piece of the profit, up to 50% -- which means you can't bargain as low as you would because the shopkeeper is giving half of what he's still making off you to the driver.

We had another rickshaw driver try that on us the next day and immediately got out, after which he repented and took us straight to our destination.

Transport Rant

We first went to the Agra train station to try and book our next ticket. After one and a half hours, we finally did that. The India railway system is this vast, bureaucratic mess, where to book a ticket you have to first stand in line at the Enquiries counter to find out what trains are leaving at what times, their numbers, class availability, and so on. Sure, there's a book, "Rails at a glance," which I tried to find a copy to buy to have as a prop to illustrate the worst practices in information design, evar. It's nothing but a series of tables deferring you to other tables, none of which ends up at an easy to read, this train stops at these stations at this time. Anyway. Even if you already knew your train info, you'd still have to get through the Enquiry desk to get the form you fill out to pass on to the clerk (who won't write on it at all, even to change a minor detail). These forms are guarded harshly behind the Enquiry desk glass, but occasionally someone will make a grab for the pile and distribute it to the people just needing the forms. It's an amusing cat-and-mouse game, in the same way that watching your laundry dry is amusing when you're in Peace Corps.

So we finally book our ticket and walk, dodging rickshaw touts, to the bus station to bus out to Fatepuhr Sikri, some ruins outside of town. The buses are all running late (it turns out that there's a big pile-up on the road), and as it's already 2 and the buses stop at 6, and it takes 1.5 hours to get there, my pessimistic optimism (hope for the best, plan as if you're mitigating the worst) opts us to ditch our plans. We're close to an alternate train station, so we head there to see if we can get ahead on the train ticket situation so we don't lose every morning to the same hassle. We're able to book two more tickets in 30 minutes there (less crowded, no one going on break). We need an ATM to book a third ticket, and go off on a wild goose chase into the Agra Fort market (We never made it to the Agra Fort, either; it looked from the outside just like the Lal Qila of Delhi).

To Market!

This market transformed us. After too many days in Delhi, the delayed train ride, the horrible rickshaw/commission scam when we were weary and ready for our hotel, the lost morning to the train station and afternoon at the bus station, all had us pretty India'd out. This market, though, was wonderful. No one bugging us, following us, tugging at us, begging from us, touting, leering... just a street market, bustling about its daily business in that uniquely, machine-like bazaar peacefulness. We blissfully wandered through the various districts of the market -- in these more organic city layouts catering to people with limited transit options, the economies of agglomeration are so visible -- here's the machine-working section, the sari section, the spices/nuts section....

We finally found the ATM and wandered back through, stopping to eat a small lunch at a street vendor's spot where lots of Indians were gathered. One of them translated a but for us and we got some yummy dish with a fried dough ball of probably garbanzo flour and spices in the middle, crushed, with dal and aloo on top, sprinkled with a spice mix and a sauce, served in a dried, pressed leaf bowl -- one of the best meals we had in India.

After the market, we hiked along a dilapidated nature walk trail that was being reconstructed. We talked to the contractor a bit and watched the sun set over the Taj Mahal view.

The Taj

After skirting around it in Agra for so long, we dedicated one entire day to the Taj Mahal, the most photographed building in the world. It's mightily impressive, though the very innermost chamber with the tomb itself is not all that impressive. In addition to the gleaming white marble Taj Mahal, there are also two symmetrical buildings, one an active mosque, the other used historically as apartments. It has beautiful gardens and multiple walls around it.

I figure you've all seen a few bazillion photos of the Taj Mahal itself, so I'm focusing mainly on the surroundings and the details in the flickr photo set.

After the Taj Mahal, we wandered around Taj Ganj, the market and residential neighborhood to the south. After we made it through the touristy parts of it, it was very nice and just wandering through a neighborhood. The kids were an endless stream of "Hallo!"s as we got lost and then wandered our way back out. We headed up to a rooftop restaurant for snacks, and discovered the secret of beer in restaurants -- it's never on the menu, as alcohol licenses are hard to get, but it's almost always available if you ask for it.