sawat dee.

"Sawat Dee", or "Hello" in Thai. While Casey was off on his adventure in the mountains, I was attending a writing workshop for school in Thailand. I went a couple days early with another staff member so we were able to enjoy some of the sights and sounds of Bangkok, some very touristy such as the Original Floating Market.



At the Floating Market we went in a boat, hence the "floating" and could buy souveniers from vendors in other floating boats. Some of the vendors selling tactics included hooking us with a long cane and pulling us towards fruit, hats, statues of Buddha and much more.





One of the best things about Thailand was the fresh food. It was refreshing being able to eat food from any restaurant or street vendor without worrying about getting sick. But no, I didn't eat the chicken, or the dried seafood (below), but I did have my share of phad thai, papaya salad and other yummy Thai dishes.

The fresh fruit was amazing, this is a picture of a rambutan, something that I ate a lot of. In order to eat the soft sweet fruit inside you'd have to peel off the red-soft-spiky skin.

This is the main river that flows through Bangkok. It was so easy to travel around Bangkok with all of the metros, skytrains and river taxis... just a little different than Delhi.

This the Temple Wat Arun (Temple of Dawn) in Bangkok. The decoration on the outside of the Temple is all made of mosaics from recycled tiles, plates, cups and bowls. It was impressive up close and we were able to climb up the steep steps to get good views of the city.

The majority of my time was spent in Pattaya at the workshop. In the free evenings I was able to see the largest transvestite show in the area. Believe it or not the "women" below were once men.

We were able to take a day trip to an island where we swam and I forgot to put sunscreen on my legs, so they are still hurting a little, but it's a cheap souvenir.



It's good to be back at home in Mussoorie, school starts soon and I'm already thinking about our next vacation.

harkidun.

christina left for thailand just over two weeks ago, so after spending some time relaxing in our new house, watching seinfeld and getting our new garden going i decided to take the bike on a bit of an adventure to harkidun. the "valley of the gods" is a place where we tried to get to over the winter break when greg was out, but we were snowed out then so i thought it was a good time to try again... even though it is the monsoon, which means rain, leaches and landslides.... but one of the benefits would be there would be no tourists.




the trailhead is only around 140 kms from mussoorie, so back home that means less than an hour and a half... here that means around 7-8 hours on some amazing roads, some amazingly beautiful, some amazingly horrendous. there were a couple deep creek crossings, and one place near sankri (the trailhead) where the jeep had to stop on our last visit actually had a new bridge so i was able to cruise, or i should say bounce my way into town to the stares of the locals.

on my first day i hiked around 24 km to a village of gangar. it was a pretty long day, hard getting used to carrying a big pack after being spoiled with horses in ladakh. i was going to tent it this night but the granny saw me walk up and offered a spot on the floor with the family, so i was thankful for the dry night. this family had two small houses, there were the grandparents, mother and father plus 9 kids and then some grandkids and in-laws thrown in there too... they were all busy gathering the wheat at this time of year but they loved having their photos taken and then giggling away seeing themselves.

the weather was actually really great for most of the time, generally partly cloudy throughout the days, then clouding over and raining at night. but everything up there was so green and lush. there were lots of shepherds out grazing their herds in the high pastures who would come by for a chat and stare throughout the days. this picture below is looking back down the valley with only about 8 kms more to go.

the views from harkidun were great. green slopes all around, huge boulders and streams, and then when the clouds would clear off for a minute the snow peaks right above. the "chowkidar" or caretaker of the tourist house at harkidun wasn't there as tourists generally don't wander up at this time of year, but i found a nice cozy spot on a covered porch to crash and keep the rain off. i was thankful that the bears and snow leapards didn't come for a visit, i think the shepherds and their dogs scare most wildlife away...

this stuff grows all over the place up here, kind of like a weed i guess.

the trip back down was pretty interesting. there had been a lot of rain lower down at some areas and some big landslides... a few times where i had to wait for locals to see how they ventured across the slopes and then i would quickly follow. and remember the new bridge that i drove into town on in the beginning.... well it was long gone, and in it's place a 100 ft gorge with a sketchy unstable trail down sliding slopes and a narrow greasy log crossing over a torrent to the other side. the locals just accept this as part of everyday life and continued on carrying boxes of vegetables across for selling down in the plains, tires to be patched, the sick, supplies... everyone just continued on despite the huge change. for me the problem lay in that my motorcycle was on one side of this gorge, and my way home was across. so yes, we are now motorcycle-less, for awhile at least. the word is that it may take anywhere from 3 weeks to 3 months for a better temporary bridge to be built, but for now everything was really unstable and too risky... although the locals were trying to convince me that 5 porters could carry it across this maze of mayhem with "problem nahi hai". this picture is where the bridge used to be, if you squint you can see some men standing on the other side.