Darjeeling

You can see mountains from Darjeeling too. But the agent that made my arrangements for me has put me in Kuersong, halfway back down to Siliguri! I express my displeasure and he agrees to move me to Darjeeling the next day. The place I’m staying in Kuersong was once the British Viceroy’s summer home during the colonial times. It’s perched on a ridge (see a trend here?) high above some of the Tea Estates. Did I mention that I’ve drank more Tea in the last 4 days than in the previous 4 years (except for ice tea, that doesn’t count).

The next morning, my guide and driver pick my up and we drive back uphill another hour to Darjeeling. The first stop is Tiger Hill to look at the mountains. Nope, still cloudy and no mountains to be seen. No Tigers either. I will concede that it was a hill.

Then we stopped at Batasia Loop to watch the Darjeeling Toy Train pass by. The Toy train is a tiny narrow gauge train actually runs all the way down to Siliguri. What is a 2.5 to 3 hour drive by road, the train can do in just 6 hours. The long run is done with a tiny diesel engine, but local “tourist” runs are done with little Steam Engines. They still have 3 operational. The train is really cool, but when it passed by they had the engine hooked up backwards pulling the cars from it’s nose so it didn’t photograph well. What do you expect, it’s India? Did you really think they’d hook the engine up the right way?

My guide dropped me off at my new hotel, which is….

wait for it….

perched on the top of a ridge.

My room has a view of the mountains. At least it would have a view if it weren’t for the clouds. This is 5 days of clouds now, and it’s the “best time of the year”.

Darjeeling is a little like a combination of Shimla and Manali on the western side of the Indian Himalayas. It’s very steep like Shimla, but a bit grungy like Manali. However, it’s much bigger than both of those combined. Since this is some of the world’s most famous Tea Country, there are Tea sellers everywhere. I decided it might be nice to buy some Darjeeling Tea to take home as gifts so I went into one of the bigger shops to check it out. I explained to the clerk that I was an American and hence I knew less than nothing about tea and wanted to take some back as gifts for friends and family who knew even less than I do (I’ve at least seen Tea plantations on two continents). He proceeded to get two packets of tea out, opened one and had me sniff it. To be honest, it smelled like lawn clippings from the top of a compost pile. Then he opened a packet of “the good stuff” and gave me a whiff. It smelled like lawn clippings from the bottom of a compost pile. I said “uhh, thanks, I’ll think about it” and walked out. Later I tried another Tea seller and gave him the same intro to my Tea IQ. He picked up a package and said “Here, this is want you want. Anything better would just be a waste of your money”. I said gimme four of those puppies.

On my last morning, I woke up at 0630, looked out my window and OMG, There are Mountains! So I scurried up to a pedestrian walkway that has scenic lookouts and had about an hour and a half before the clouds finally reclaimed the view.

Darjeeling Toy Train Steam Engine:


Uhh, guys, you have the engine hooked up backwards:


Darjeeling is much cleaner than other parts of India (I think Lebong is where they smoke Leweed)


I’ve been jealous of my son ever since he got his Space Gray AppleWatch. Well I’ll show him! I found one of the rare Gold Editions and it was far cheaper than they are in the US. That Jony Ive is a design genius:


Yes! After 5 days I have finally confirmed that there are actually Himalaya Mountains. It is not a myth. The tallest one in the middle is Kangchenjunga, the third highest mountain in the world.

Into The Clouds

After a 19 hour trip from Varanasi to New Jalpaiguri, I spent a night in Siliguri waiting for my guide to pick me up for the next leg of the trip. It involved a 3+ hour drive to Chitray in the foothills of the Himalayas which is the furthest that a regular vehicle can drive, and then a switchover to a Colonial era Land Rover jeep for another hour to Tumling. We spent the night at Tumling in a small guest house. Tumling sits on the crest of a ridge and is actually located in Nepal. You can look one direction at India and the other direction at Nepal. This area wasn’t damaged by the massive earthquake the occurred three days earlier, but they did experience strong tremors. We should have been able to see mountains from here, but alas, we had heavy clouds moving through the valleys and over the ridges.

The next morning, it was still cloudy as we boarded another jeep for the final climb up to Sandhakphu which is at an elevation of about 12,000 ft. After three hours of steep switchbacks and multiple crossings back and forth between India and Nepal we arrived at Sandhakphu in the middle of the clouds. By this time they were rain clouds and you couldn’t see more than a few meters. Sandhakphu is also situated on a ridge that is the border between India and Nepal. On one side of the road are tiny guest houses in Nepal and on the other side of the road there are Indian guesthouses. I stayed on the Nepal side again. Better facilities and I like Nepalese food more than Indian:<) That night the rain cloud we were in turned into a snow cloud so everything, sky and land, was white in the morning. But the Safron Fried Rice was yummy, the best thing I’ve had since Dubai.

The next day, there was a brief time that I could see all the way to the next ridge about 500 meters away. Still no mountains. For the lack of anything at all to do, I filmed some time lapse scenes of clouds flowing up the valleys and over the ridges.

Next morning, up at 0500 to see if it cleared. Nope, still a white-out, so back to bed under thick quilts. Did I mention there is no heat up here? At 0900, still in a white-out, we started the long journey back down to Darjeeling without the slightest glimpse of any mountains.

This large concrete pillar is the border between India and Nepal. At the moment I was standing in India, looking at the guest house that I was staying at in Nepal. Most of the time I was in the clouds and you couldn’t see this far:

Varanasi

Varanasi is one of the holiest cities in India. Long rows of stone steps, known as Ghats, line the banks of the Ganga River (Ganges) from the upper banks to the water’s edge. Indian pilgrims come to bathe in the Ganga, and also come to die, be cremated and have their ashes spread on the waters of the Ganga.

Varanasi is also one of the filthiest cities in India, and that is saying something. If you can do an early morning stroll along the Ghats without gagging, you have a truly strong stomach. You really need to watch where you walk because there’s excrement (and worse) everywhere. Personally, if I bathed in the river at sunrise like the thousands of pilgrims, I’d spend the rest of the day taking hot showers with plenty of anti-microbial soap.

Sunrise over the Ganga:


The Ghats at sunrise with early bathers


More Bathers in the Ganga. This spot is downstream from the crematoriums and a large percentage of the toilets in this region of India


Washing clothes. I’m sort of glad that I’m not in Varanasi long enough to be tempted to have my laundry done.
This place is downstream from the bathers, the crematoriums and a large percentage of the toilets in this region of India.


Laundry is dried by carefully arranging it over piles of dirt and rocks. One of the sheets is laying on a cowpie, but to be fair, it’s a fairly dry one:


Butt heads:


This is Lord Shiva’s cow:


Only in India could they invent such a novel way of peeing on your own feet in public:


Morning shave:


This is one of the cows that defacate outside my hotel. But cows are sacred here, so what can you say but “holy shit”!


The view from my hotel window. It could be worse, at least I don’t have to look at Varanasi.


One of my truly favorite things in India are the signs. I wonder if the patrons of this shop ever say “does this make my butt look big?”


Next time I feel like having a Mountain Dew, I’ll know to look for a Delicious Purity Station:


OK, I can’t even begin to come up with a smart assed remark about this one.

The Road to Varanasi

It’s not easy getting from Ranthambhore to Varnasi, my next stop. It’s a 19 hour train ride if all goes well, but this is India, and all never goes even remotely well.

It was, of course, a classical Indian Cluster F#©k. I scoped out the platform signs and found the place my carriage would stop so all I had to do was get on and sit down.  The train was 45 minutes late (of course).  When it stopped, it was instantly obvious that they had put up all the signs backwards so my carriage was all the way at the other end of the platform.  I hot footed it down that way (literally hot footed because it was 108 F) but since the train was late, they only stopped for 2 minutes instead of the 10 they were supposed to so I wound up having to hop on the moving train with my stuff into a 3rd class “cattle car” and stand in the doorway for 45 minutes until we got to the next station where I could hop out and get on down to my 1st class carriage.  The next station didn’t have a platform long enough for the whole train so I had to shuffle down the rail bed to find my car. When I finally got to where I was supposed to be (in blessed AC), there was an Indian family of 4 in my berth!  They very graciously “allowed" me to sit with them until the conductor finally shooed them off an hour later.  By the end of the journey, we were over 3 hours late getting into Varanasi. I wish I could say tht this was my worst train experience in India, but no…. not even close.

Ranthambhore Fort

This morning, after my last safari drive (yes, saw another Tiger), I did an excursion to Ranthambhore Fort which is located on a high plateau in the National Park and surrounded by steep cliffs. It was very interesting and scenic. Lots of Monkeys everywhere and interesting vistas from the top. The fort was built in 944 AD on the location of a site started as early as the 5th century. It’s not occupied anymore because the plumbing is not up to code. Wait, this is India, that couldn’t be the problem. At any rate, it has a sacred Ganesha temple and gets tens of thousands of pilgrims during the holy festivals. The pilgrims all have to walk in, several miles, through the Tiger Reserve.

The old fort sits on the edge of steep cliffs overlooking a manmade lake:


Most of the ruins at the fort are at least 1000 years old


Old quarries on the top of the plateau are now small lakes:


The only inhabitants of the Fort are numerous Langur Monkeys and the occasional Leopard:


The Monkeys feast on the offerings left by pilgrims at the shrines:


Troops of dominant Monkeys take over the best spots:

Ranthambhore National Park

I’m about halfway through my visit at Ranthambhore National Park in Rajasthan India. I scheduled 8 safari drives in the Park to increase my chance of seeing a Tiger. Sightings are not guaranteed since the park is very large and only 20% is accessible. There are 58 Tigers in the reserve, but only about 20 in areas that you can get to. Even then, they are solitary and like to hide out of view. I didn’t see any on my first two drives, but I saw one yesterday afternoon and a mother with two nearly full grown cubs this morning. The one yesterday was pretty far away, about 70 meters, just barely in 500mm range. Today, they were closer, resting about 30 meters away, then VERY close as they came to get a drink at a stream a few feet from the truck. It was actually freaking our guide out a bit because I was sitting sideways with my feet over the side on a running board for stability. As they approach, you can hear the guide on the video saying urgently “feet in the vehicle Mr. Steven, quickly, feet in the vehicle”. As I look at the video now, it does seem like a very large out of focus tiger definitely is eying my Nikes:<) The cubs are about 95% the size of their mother, but still inexperienced in hunting for themselves. But soon, they will be off on their own.

The park has lots o other interesting wildlife too. The only trouble is getting the guides to stop for it. They seem to be on a Tiger mission all the time, which is a shame. There are two species of Deer, two species of Antelope, Langur Monkeys, Mongoose, Wild Boar, lots of Peacocks and other birds.

A Banyan tree at one of the park gates:


Lots of Banyans in the Park:


Flame of the forest trees and a small herd of Sambar Deer:


A young Sambar Deer Buck:


A Spotted Deer Buck:


A Peacock in a tree:


A Langur Monkey and its baby:


A stalking Tiger sees something interesting:


It’s a pair of Sambar Deer, but the Tiger decides they are too far away and not worth the effort:


Resting tiger cubs:






Momma Tiger and one of her cubs:


Momma Tiger and cubs get a drink:


Momma Tiger (really close now):

Jaipur

I’m back in India now and joyfully rediscovering all the things that made me swear that I’d never make this mistake again. I hadn’t even left Dubai when I had my first taste of Indian Bureaucratic efficiency (sarcasm). The security at Dubai Airport is manned by Indian TSA equivalents. They seemed to think that there was something in by bag that was curious so they ran it through the X-Ray 3 times before giving up and passing it on. Apparently, nobody thought about actually looking in the bag, not that there was anything unusual in it in the first place.

Then there was my Indian airline check in experience. I had checked in online, so theoretically, the only thing I had to do was to stop at the web check in baggage drop counter. But the computer was down at that counter, so I went through the normal line. After 20 minutes, I worked myself to the front of the line, then some Indian guy with a big family and a dozen bags tried to use the web checkin line and when he found out it was out of service, he just moved laterally in front of me. If you have never been to India, you probably don’t know that they are the most rude people in the world when it comes to queuing up. If they feel entitled (most of them), they will just shamelessly walk past everyone to the front of the line since they are obviously more important that anyone else. This ain’t my first Rodeo, so I now how to handle situations like that. I told the guy not to even THINK about cutting in front of me. He said “but I have checked in on the web already”. I said “so have I, get to the back of the line like everyone else”.

Then there was the gate. My boarding pass said Gate 18. I went there and there was a sign saying it had been changed to Gate 20. So I went to Gate 20 and there was a sign saying that it had been change to Gate 21. So I went to Gate 21, and the person there said, “Oh, you’re flight is at Gate 18” (because that is what it said on the boarding pass). After some discussion about infinite loops (or how to keep an Indian busy), it was decided that Gate 20 was going to be the place.

Then there was the Plane. When I got to my assigned row, I saw the tray table down. On close inspection, I saw that it had no latch at all. I pointed it out to the flight attendant and he said to just sit there and they would fix it. I thought “Right”! In a few minutes a guy from the flight deck came out (all this while the aisled are packed with people trying to figure out which seats they were supposed to be in (buses don’t have seat numbers, Indians think a plane is just a flying bus. They call them Airbus don’t they?) The guy from the flight crew must have been the flight engineer, he had two gold bars on his shoulder boards. He looked over the missing latch, disappeared for a few minutes and came back with a roll of masking tape. Well I thought to myself “self, that ain’t gonna work” because one of the important qualities of masking tape is that it DOESN’T STICK VERY WELL TO ANYTHING. So I said to the guy, that isn’t going to stick, you should be using something like duct tape. He says “Duct tape”? And I said, “yeah, you now, the stuff you use to hold the engines on the wings”. I don’t think he understood because they allowed me to stay on the plane. In the US, a sky marshal would have asked me to leave the aircraft at that point. Well, surprise, surprise, the tray table fell down before the flight engineer even made it back to the cockpit. I just held it up with my knee during takeoff and affected a more permanent fix inflight myself (see photos below).

My arrival in India went smoother than I anticipated. I had arranged for the newly instituted Visa On Arrival by filling out a 50 page online questionnaire to insure that my father wasn’t Pakistani, my mother wasn’t Pakistani, my paternal grandparents weren’t Pakistani, my maternal grandparents weren’t Pakistani, That I didn’t own any goats of Pakistani origin, etc.. It turns out that I was the only one at the Visa On Arrival window. A lonely Immigration officer really perked up when I arrived. I think I was the only one he had seen all day. Either nobody else could prove their Pakistani free lineage, or they simply just gave up on the web form. Later when I had to show my passport again at customs, the officer said “Oooo, you have a Visa On Arrival”! I don’t think they have seen too many of them yet. Even the guy at my hotel in Jaipur said “Oooo, you have a Visa On Arrival”! And they said it with the awe of something like “Oooo, you have the new AppleWatch”!

It was freakishly hot in Jaipur today (106). Also a Sunday so virtually everything was closed. I did manage to get a SIM card for my iPhone which is no easy task in India. You have to provide a copy of your passport’s picture page, a copy of the passport visa page ( “Oooo, you have a Visa On Arrival”!), A copy of something that proves your home address (used my driver’s license), A copy of something that proves where you are staying in India (I used a business card from the hotel) and 2, yes that’s right, 2 color passport size photos. Then, after all this stuff, it takes 24 hours to get the SIM activated. I remembered that there plenty of hoops from my last Indian adventure, so I checked online to see if everything was the same and had all of my ducks in a row when I finally found a phone shop that was open. I told the guy I needed a SIM and he started to tell me everything I was going to need, probably figuring that he was going to get rid of me pretty quick. I started slapping all the stuff out on the counter, he looked at it and just gave a shrug and got a SIM out for me. It turns out that he had some SIMs that were pre-activated, so I had it working in much less time than I thought. At least something went well.

Tomorrow morning, I take a train to Sawai Madhopur and should be out hunting Tigers to film by afternoon.

The “flight engineer’s solution to a missing tray table lock:


I sacrificed one of the airline’s headphones for a better fix:


I mentioned that it was HOT in Jaipur today. Here is a solution that one of the street dogs came up with:


No kidding. He was just casually standing there enjoying the relief.

Dubai

I had lunch today at the Mall of the Emirates. As Malls go, it's fairly large. Not quite as ginormous as the Dubai Mall, but still bigger than what you would consider a huge Mall by American standards. One thing that the Malls in Dubai all have is every type of food outlet you can imagine ranging from typical fast food all the way up to fine dining. Probably at least 50 choices in Mall of the Emirates, maybe 200 in the Dubai Mall. The Dubai Mall actually has two food courts and they are so far apart that you can eat at one and by the time you walk to the other, you're hungry again.

I decided on the Cheesecake Factory for my lunch. It was by far the biggest Cheesecake Factory I have ever been in. All done in Marble and gold. It's so big that there is perspective in it. The people at the other end look small (you can get this effect in Asia in a much smaller restaurant). Now outside the mall, it is blistering hot because this is the edge of t he Arabian desert after all. Inside though is comfortably air conditioned. But there are windows in the Cheesecake Factory that look inward on another part of the Mall that is way beyond air conditioned, it is frigid. That is because you are looking into "Ski Dubai", the worlds largest indoor snow skiing slope. It also has sledding and toboggan runs and other frozen delights. But what I find the weirdest thing is that nobody seems the think this is weird at all.

Ski Dubai, complete with chairlift, toboggan run and other snowy activities:

Masai Mara Video

Masai Mara was very productive for us. We had more predators (and scavengers) feeding than any single place I've been. The weather was also interesting with alternating sunshine and torrential thunderstorms. You could almost see the Mara greening up as the first rains arrived. We also had larger herds of Zebra and Wildebeest than you would normally expect at this time of year due to the lack of rain the the Serengeti causing half of the migration to turn around and stay in the Mara this year.

You can view this video here on this website in the "Wildlife" tab, or directly on my Vimeo channel at www.vimeo.com/fishtales/masaimara

Amboseli Video

Here are a few scenes from Amboseli National Park in southern Kenya. We were fortunate to get one really good morning with excellent views of Mount Kilimanjaro complete with a fresh coating of snow on the summit. Even though the park was very dry, and the rains are just about to begin in earnest, there is still lots of wildlife near the areas with permanent water. Loads of Elephants, one of the largest populations in Kenya.

You can view the video in the "Wildlife" tab of this website or directly on my Vimeo channel at: www.vimeo.com/fishtales/amboseli

Samburu National Park

From Ol Pejeta we traveled further north to Samburu National park. Samburu is in a fairly arid region. You are as likely to see a herd of Camels as a herd of Cows (though I’m not sure what they do with the Camels). Samburu is home to a number of species that are either rare or nonexistent in parks to the south. You can find Reticulated Giraffe here in good numbers. These Giraffe have a particularly handsome pattern. They look like what you think a Giraffe should look like. Also present are Grevy’s Zebra, an endangered species. They have finer stripes, are larger, have bigger ears and are adapted to arid regions. I think they are much more attractive than the Common Zebra that you see everywhere else. Also present in the part are Gerenuk. They are a species of Antelope that look like a cross between an Impala and a Giraffe. They have extremely long necks for grazing higher up in the foliage than other species can. Samburu has plenty of Oryx, something you generally only see in dry regions like Etosha in Namibia. The Ostriches in Samburu are Somali Ostrich. They have light blue legs and necks instead of the pink of Ostriches in the south. We arrived a couple days after a torrential rainstorm that caused much flash flooding in the area. Everything had dried out sufficiently to get around without problems and lots of fresh green grass shoots were sprouting everywhere. My first day had interesting scenic clouds, and my second day had the bluest sky of my whole trip. So the first day was good for scenics and the second day was better for animals.

First morning sunrise from my camp. Looks like the start of a good day:


Good clouds for scenics:


Lots of branching palms. Some of them look like Candelabras:


More nice clouds:


Somali Ostrich have pale blue legs and necks:


The Vulture Guinea Fowl looks like someone attached a vulture’s head onto a Guinea Fowl body:


The Elephants in the park have a very reddish coloration:


Mom and baby. This is a wide angle shot, they were VERY close to the 4x4:


Grevy’s Zebra and its baby:


Lots of Dik Dik in the park:


Gerenuk look like they are part Impala and part Giraffe:


A pair of young Oryx in a mock battle for mating supremacy. A couple older males look on to see what talent is coming up:


A Reticulated Giraffe in the shade of an Acacia:


A hunting Cheetah:


A Leopard with it’s kill in a tree:


The trouble with getting a drink at the river is that you get your paws muddy:


Yawn, must be time for a cat nap:


I saw more camels on the way out of Samburu than Cows: