Obsessions of Asia

We are woefully behind on posting since we came back to the United States. Despite having almost constant access to computers and the Internet, we have focused our time on seeing family and friends. Even for me, it is hard to say, "Mom, I know you haven't seen me for two years, but I just have to get those Obsessions posts done..."

So, without anymore excuses, here come Asia's obsessions:

India- Spitting. An easy one. The average Indian might spit 1200 times per day. And we aren't talking about small little bits of spittle. We're talking about pieces of lung the size of a fist. Sure, lots of Indians also have a paan habit (think chewing tobacco, but different ingredients that also happen to make one's spit Kool-Aid red), but even those that don't chew still spit. And before the spitting comes a noise that sounds like the regurgitation of a cow. Wait, most Indians don't eat cow, so a goat. Like hawking up a goat.

Sri Lanka- Water tanks. What is a water tank you ask? Well, I'm going to tell you even if you didn't ask. A water tank is a man made lake. Sri Lanka has a lot of areas that are at altitude and are very wet for part of the year, but very dry for the rest of the year. So, starting a thousand years ago or more, digging giant water pits became the prerequisite for growing any large city that wasn't on the sea. And they did it with gusto. Some of the cities have dozens of lakes that are far larger than many dammed lakes in the US, and they were all dug out by hand. Or maybe with hands and a rock and maybe a chisel, but you get the point. Good job, ancient Sri Lankans!

Malaysia- Tourism posters. If all the Asian countries were elementary school students, Malaysia would get the "Tries Hardest" certificate at the end of the year. Not only are tourism posters in nearly every window of Malaysia, they are in nearly every hotel and vaguely related travel business everywhere in Asia. They must have printed millions of them. And that makes it even sadder that more people don't visit Malaysia, which really is a spectacular country.

Singapore- Rules. Singapore has rules for everything. And fines for not following most of them. The list of fines in the subway cars was as long as my arm. (We especially appreciated that one of the highest fines was for bringing the smelly durian fruit on the train.) If you like to conform, consider moving to Singapore. If you have ever voted Libertarian or are a card carrying member of the Tea Party, consider vacationing somewhere other than Singapore.

Indonesia- Cats without tails. Didn't see that one coming, did you? We saw hundreds of cats in Indonesia and every one of them had some or all of its tail missing. We can only assume that people think they should not have tails and take it upon themselves to cut off the tails with whatever sharp instrument is laying around when they see a cat with tail intact. We thought that we might see this in other countries, but it was really just Indonesia.

Thailand- 7-Eleven. Think of all the 7-Elevens you have ever seen. Multiply that number by 100. That is how many 7-Elevens are on the average block in Thailand. It used to be a joke in New York that Starbucks would often have locations right across the street from one another. 7-Eleven in Thailand might regularly have three stores on a block. I don't understand how they stay in business, especially since they are more expensive than most Thai businesses, but they all seem the thrive. Since I love Slurpees, I thank the Thai people for making cheap Slurpees available everywhere.

Burma (Myanmar)- Gold leaf. I had never heard of someone's job being to hammer gold until it was gold leaf. In Burma, that ranks as one of the most popular jobs. Where does all that gold leaf go? Buddhists in Burma buy the gold leaf and then rub it onto the Buddha statues (or anything else that they believe should be gold) at the Buddhist temples. This keeps everything bright and shiny. Oh, I should point out that only men are allowed to do this. Women aren't allowed to touch the Buddha statues, but can buy some gold leaf and have a manly man rub it onto the Buddha.

Cambodia- Angkor Wat. It seems sort of lame to be obsessed with your biggest tourist attraction, but Cambodia unquestionably is. It adorns the flag, half the stores in the country are named for it, and it inspired enough awe that even Pol Pot didn't destroy it. And Pol Pot destroyed just about everything in Cambodia.

Vietnam- Motor scooters. The average person in Vietnam has 3.2 motor scooters. Approximately. Through a quantum trick, they ride all of them simultaneously. So, while Vietnam has only 80 million people, 250 million people ply the roads on motor scooters at any given time. And most of those 250 million are going down the road that you want to cross. The streets of the large cities look like a moped convention.

Laos- Fruit shakes. I try to find something deeper than a food for country obsessions, but fruit shakes made with fruit, condensed milk, sugar, and ice are what hold the country of Laos together and makes the whole country so friendly. That's pure speculation, but locals and tourists alike can be found drinking delicious and cheap shakes all over the country, and we were certainly fans. For those who are not feeling happy enough after a regular shake, many places seem to offer "happy" shakes, which come with whatever drugs they happen to have in stock (pot in most places).

China- Crotchless pants. No, China isn't turning into 1980s New York. Any child under the age of three in China wears pants with a giant slit down the crotch and no underwear underneath. This allows them to go to the bathroom anytime and anywhere they like. And I do mean anytime and anywhere. Let's say the kid is waiting in a busy ticket line inside the train station with the parent and needs to go to the bathroom--that's what those pants are for. Number one or number two? Doesn't matter. Does the parent clean it up? No. It stays there for others to step in. While China seems likely to take over the world one day, we hope they get rid of crotchless pants prior to that.

Mongolia- Chengis Khan. Yeah, I thought it was Genghis Khan, too, but not in Mongolia. This founder of the Mongol Empire is known for uniting the nomads of Mongolia, declaring war on anything that moved, killing about a bajillion people, and creating the beginning of the largest empire the world has ever known. That, of course, makes him the hero of Mongolia. Based on our experience, I don't see the second coming of the Mongol Empire anytime soon.

There you have it: the obsessions of Asia. Disagree with us? Too bad. Write your own blog. Or leave us nasty comments about how we disparaged your country. That's why our home address isn't on the blog. Well, that and we don't have a home yet...

From Rupees to Rupiah: Financing Asia

All through our travels, people told us how cheap Asia would be...and, looking forward to bringing down our average daily budget, we hoped that they were right. Luckily, they were!

Here are the numbers by country. In case you forgot how we do this, these numbers are for two people, including visa costs and all costs on the ground (and in the air if we took internal flights). Sometimes we also include the cost of a flight into the country if that was the only way to get there.

India: $53 per day. Visas cost $74 each at the embassy in Istanbul. India is one of the cheapest countries we've been to, so staying there for five weeks did wonders for our financial (if not gastrointestinal) health. Hotel rooms ranged from $10-$25 depending on level of comfort (except in Mumbai, where it's hard to find a double for less than $50); restaurant meals could usually be had for a buck or two, and street food for pennies; and train transport in sleeper class cost less than a hotel. Not getting ripped off on cabs and tourist excursions required some negotiating.

Sri Lanka: $80 per day (including flight from Chennai, India, which costs about $120 per ticket; $53 per day without flight). No visa fees. Sri Lanka's hotels and food were a little more expensive than India's, but it made up for it with what is possibly the world's cheapest public transport on a $-per-hour basis. If you plan to visit more than two historic sites in the "Cultural Triangle" area, getting a pass can save you $25 or more.

Malaysia: $47 per day. No visas. Some travelers complain about Malaysia being pricey, but as it turns out, the only traveler item that is really expensive in (Muslim-majority) Malaysia is beer! As long as you don't drink much, the country is terrific value, especially considering how developed it is. Air-con double rooms with shared (but very clean, hot-water) bathrooms cost $10-$15, and delicious, cheap street food abounds. Transport is a little pricier than some Asian countries, but you usually get comfortable, AC buses on smooth roads. We stuck to the peninsula this time and didn't do any fancy tourist excursions, but our memories of our previous trip to Borneo are that prices were very reasonable there, too.

Singapore: $111 per day. No visas. We only spent two days in Singapore, so this is kind of skewed, but it's certainly one of the most developed and expensive countries in Southeast Asia. Most of the cheaper hotels are in the red light district, where we found a decent private room for $35 a night. Public transport, museums, and restaurants are comparable to Western prices, but taxis (which are metered, hallelujah!) and street or food court foods are relatively cheap.

Indonesia: $102 per day. One-month visas on arrival at the airport cost $25 each. Indonesia was surprisingly expensive, though that's largely because we did a lot of pricey activities like SCUBA diving, chartering a boat to Krakatau volcano, and a few other organized tours. No-frills internal flights between the islands were a pretty good deal, usually less than $50 one-way and could be booked just a day or two before. Buses and trains on the ground varied a lot in price and quality. Hotel rooms for $10-$15 could be found, but were usually pretty disgusting; if we wanted cleanliness and AC, we usually had to pay at least $25. Cheap street food could be found in most places, though not so much in touristy Bali, where we usually had to shell out for real restaurants.

Thailand: $83 per day. No visa fees. Considering how many touristy activities we did in Thailand (diving, elephant training camp, etc.), this is a great average. Hotel and transport standards are pretty high, but competition for the tourist buck keeps prices low. Markets selling cheap local food are pretty easy to find, and even fancy restaurants are probably cheaper than the Thai restaurants you find at home. Just try not to get robbed, which could certainly send your costs soaring!

Myanmar: $77 per day. Visas cost $27 each in Bangkok. This average includes flights into and out of Yangon from Bangkok ($130 each roundtrip), which accounted for one-third of our expenditures there. Once you're on the ground, Myanmar (Burma) is super cheap in all categories, though its rough roads, ancient vehicles, and power cuts often made it feel more like traveling in sub-Saharan Africa than Southeast Asia.

Cambodia: $53 per day. Visas cost $20 each at the border. Cambodia is excellent value. $11 a night got us rooms with bathroom, AC, and sat TV in both Siem Riep and Phnom Penn, the two most touristed cities in the country. Markets and restaurants offer cheap food; bus transport and tourist site admissions are pretty reasonable. If we had stayed longer, or ventured out to less touristy places, it probably would have been even cheaper, but even so, Cambodia was one of the cheapest destinations on our trip.

Vietnam: $66 per day. Visas cost $45 each in Phnom Penn, Cambodia. Vietnam's one of those countries that feels more expensive than it is, probably because people are trying to rip you off almost continuously. But we did manage to stay in some pretty nice hotel rooms and eat decent food for not a lot of money. Trains cost more than buses but are much nicer (which isn't the same as saying that they're actually nice!), especially for overnight travel. Halong Bay overnight cruises can be an especially good deal for a decently swanky experience...provided your boat doesn't sink in the night, of course.

Laos: $57 per day. Visas cost $40 each at the border. Laos is pretty poor, so the roads and buses aren't always the nicest, but hotels were quite comfortable, food was inexpensive, activities like kayaking were very reasonable, and prices overall about as cheap as could be.

China: $92 per day. Visas cost $160 each in Vientiane, Laos--the most expensive of our entire trip. (They are about $100 less expensive for non-Americans, though.) Yunnan province, in southwestern China, was incredibly inexpensive; with $10 hotel rooms and cheap bus rides, it cost no more than Laos, where we had just come from. As we moved east and to the bigger cities, things got more expensive, though you could always find cheap and tasty food, even in Beijing. In general, China didn't feel overpriced considering the good quality of rooms, trains, and food that we got, and some tourist attractions, like the Forbidden City, were surprisingly reasonable.

Mongolia: $121 per day. No visas needed for Americans, though most nationalities need one. This number is high because we spent 6 of our 8 days in the country on a private jeep tour of the Gobi. If we'd managed to find a couple of other travelers to share the tour with, costs would have been halved. Otherwise, the country's pretty budget-friendly: In Ulaan Bataar, the capital, a hostel room with breakfast, Internet, and shared bath cost $15; there were expensive restaurants and cheap local-food canteens to choose from; and the 15-hour train from the China border cost around $9 for seats, or $25 for sleeper berths.

So, Asia had a few expensive countries, but was mostly pretty cheap for us. Hope that this post was slightly helpful to you if you're planning to backpack through Asia. If you have any questions, leave a comment and we'll do our best to get back to you!

What, No Grits? Southern Food in India

We've arrived at the final India post. Sadly for us, this is the last of the Indian food that we consumed. But, we had a great time eating our way through India. Tara managed to get a small stomach bug at the end of the trip, but we were otherwise illness-free after much carefree eating. Let's see the pictures.

Just before we left Mumbai, we started eating Southern Indian food. Mumbai is the cross-over town. In India, all restaurants say Northern Indian, Southern Indian, or Northern and Southern Indian food. You'd think the Indian part would be implied, but it isn't. Same about the geography: a place that just says restaurant in northern India should be Northern Indian food. But it doesn't work that way. It will always say "Northern Indian" on the sign. The best known Southern Indian food is the dosa, sort of like a giant pancake made of rice of chickpea flour, sometimes a bit sweet, and often stuffed with fillings. However, we made the mistake of ordering rava dosas, which are apparently just empty dosas with some dal on the side. Not terrible, but not at all satisfying.
So, outside on the street, we found this dessert. Sort of like an almond/fruit/sugar/crispy noodle concoction. Yes, it was weird, but good enough that we got a second serving. Right, it had been sitting in the sun all day and it was about 90 degrees out, but I didn't get sick, so we'll rule it out as what made Tara sick.

These are some curries. Don't know what kind, though the green one looks vegetarian. Very informative, right?

India also has cherimoyas, which are a very popular fruit in South America. However, they are called custard apples in India, so we didn't know what they were until we saw one. They are a bit like thick pudding surrounding little seeds. Much better than the outside looks (you don't eat the outside).

Nice restaurants in India almost always bring you a dish of hot water to wash your hands at the end of the meal, but it always has a lemon. It took three times before we were completely certain that the water wasn't meant for us to drink. The first time, we debated for a couple of minutes whether to wash with it or drink it.

While in Auragabad, we decided that it was not a great city, but then found a cheap milkshake place that Tara especially loved, so now she wants to go back. They are famous for their mango shakes, which were quite good. In India, a milkshake is a fruit juice mixed with milk (full fat, surely). You can then pay extra to have a scoop of ice cream added. You cannot find American-style shakes, but the Indian way is good, too.

A Southern Indian thali normally looks like the right. Lots of little dishes, but the key difference is that most thalis in southern India are all-you-can-eat. That's right: for as little as 75 cents, they will feed you as much as you want. We ate a lot. The left side is a masala dosa, which has a spicy potato filling, but we only got it because this was before we realized that most thalis are all-you-can-eat in the south.

For Christmas in Hyderabad, we went to one of the nicer places in town, and the place that is famous for biriyani. Biriyani has very long grains of rice that are cooked in oil before boiling. Apparently, it is a failure if the grains stick together. Ours did not. It was very good and had some crazy spices, but the best is the bread in the picture. Kashmiri fruit bread, which has dried fruits cooked into the bread and then fresh fruit on top. This was the second restaurant we had visited that stopped us from ordering as much bread as we wanted to because they didn't think we could eat it.

The other dish we got at the restaurant was a chicken saag, which is bits of chicken in a pureed spinach and spice mixture. It was amazing. One of the best dishes that we had in India. It is technically a northern Indian dish, but it was terrific. And Northern Indian food is better, anyways.

These are our anise seeds for dessert at that restaurant, but they are cleverly covered in a vanilla mint sugar, which makes them far superior to others in India. I ate about half this bowl, which probably appalled the waiter who is used to people taking a teaspoon full. He is lucky that I didn't empty the rest of them into my pocket.

While visiting a touristy town, we received tourist food. This porridge had some local coconut and cashew mixed in, though, which made it pretty good. Or maybe it was the sugar bowl of sugar that I added that made it so tasty.

The bike of a portable coconut vendor. Seems like he could have got some more on the back, though the number on the front are impressive.

Sugar cane juice is popular in India, and they are smart enough to put lime juice and ginger in it, which makes it far superior to plain cane juice. We thought this was a Tanzanian innovation when we were on Zanzibar, but it turns out that the Indians brought it to Zanzibar. Even so, we will refer to sugar cane juice with lime and ginger as "Zanzibar sugar juice" for the remainder of the life of this blog.

About three weeks into our India stay, we realized that we had never photographed tea (chai). Chai in India is just tea, with masala chai being the spiced tea that most Americans know as chai. More interesting is that tea in India always comes with milk rather than water. Since it is full fat milk, it makes the tea much better. It also makes it surprisingly expensive since milk is costly. Cheap for tourists, but I don't know how locals can afford a tea habit like so many of them have.

We found a breakfast buffet that we went to twice. Note the cornflakes on the right, which most excited Tara. The white thing on the plate is called an idly, which is a slightly fermented rice hunk popular in southern Indian breakfasts. The fried thing looks like a donut and is called a wade, but it is savory and gets dipped in sauce. The noodles are very good, but I don't know what they are called. Oh, and the drink is fresh grape juice, which is really popular in southern India, though we never saw grapes growing.

This was another iteration of dum aloo, I think, but this one had a whole, giant potato rather than pieces.

We got a dessert at our hotel that was all they had left. I don't remember the name of it, but it turned out to be delicious. A creamy, cardamom-laced, pudding-like substance.

Some places give you a banana leaf instead of a plate. We suggest trying it for your next dinner party. And most people eat with their hands, so you'll have no dishes afterward if you throw a Southern Indian banana leaf dinner party.

I bought these "peanut balls" mostly because they contain peanuts and jaggery, and I had never heard of jaggery. Jaggery, as I have learned from Wikipedia, is sort of like molasses, but without the terrible bitterness and it can also be made from date sugar. These things were so good that I bought more the next day. They look made in a factory, but since it is India, I'm certain that they were made in some old woman's shack.

Here are three types of barfi. Have we mentioned before that the most popular type of fresh sweet in India is called barfi? Not an appetizing name, but it is good stuff. One of these is covered in silver foil, which meant that our poop was a little more valuable for the days following our eating of these.

What is that, you ask? That's what we thought, so we bought one. It's called chikoo, and we had tried chikoo ice cream, so we wanted to try the actual fruit. Maybe a bit like a more fibrous fig, we can't claim that it was one of our favorite fruits, though it was fun to try.

Our first beef dish! In Kerala State, Hindus are rarer. That means people openly eat the sacred cow. Not many, though, so beef is really, really cheap. Almost free. Which is strange to us Americans, who are used to paying more for it. This picture is also improved by the radioactive potato dish on the right.

We went to what we thought was a nice restaurant for Tara to try some seafood. Tara liked this squid dish, but the Styrofoam dishes left something to be desired.

Fried banana! That's right, fried banana was back on our menu in Kerala. Not since Madagascar had we seen it. A bit more expensive and not quite as good, but still excellent. I continue to hope that America will have jumped on the fried banana train by the time we return.

Tara likes this shot of me relaxing on our houseboat drinking a coconut. I don't actually like coconut juice, but it was free, so I drank it.

This is a Kashmiri chicken dish, immediately recognizable as Kashmiri because of all the fruit on it. Not the best we have ever had, but fruit makes everything better.

On the houseboat in Kerala and at another restaurant, we got this mixture of cabbage, coconut, mustard seed, and who knows what else. It became one of Tara's favorite things. I let her have most of it while I ate the rest of her meal. A good trade for me.

In some Tibetan restaurants, we would see momos advertised. Turns out that momos are basically the same as dumplings. Maybe not a new food experience, but I'm never one to turn down a dumpling or ten.

Snack mixes are popular in India and many people mix their own from different bins of ingredients (or lazy people just buy pre-mixed ones). Here is the one we tried on the houseboat.

Tara informs me that this was an badam shake, which is almond with some other spices added.

These cookies were called masala and our train was boarding, so I quickly bought them. I was thinking masala tea, which has cinnamon and sugar and other nice things. Then I read the ingredients and discovered that the spices in this case are hot pepper and black pepper. As it turns out, sweet and pepper are actually good together in cookies. I ate them all for dinner.

And with a bit of sweet, a bit of spice, and a lot of hot, we conclude the foods of India. Feel free to invite us over if you decide to make anything from any of our Indian food posts!

Indian Summer: The Deep South

Technically, it was still winter as we traveled through southern India, but it sure felt like summer to us. Long gone were the nights of bundling up in a hat and a fleece on the train, and suddenly air-conditioned rooms started to cost twice as much as non-AC ones. But, there were sights to see, yoga classes to try, and lots of tasty new Indian dishes to eat, so we pressed on toward the southern tip of the subcontinent.

My(god, I'm)sore!
From Hampi, it just took a bus, a rickshaw, a train, and another bus to get to our next: Mysore! Our main reason for heading there was for me to take some ashtanga yoga classes, which had been recommended by my teacher from way back at the yoga retreat we visited in Mozambique...but he had also promised that we'd find great food there, and that Mysore was "the cleanest city in India." Luckily, it didn't disappoint.

OK, yoga first: I took evening classes for four days with Sheshadri and his son at the Patanjala Ashtanga Vinyasa Yoga Shala. The first class was really challenging, since I hadn't done any yoga in a while, and I was really nervous since it's mostly yoga teachers who come and study at this place (often for months at a time). Luckily, though, the evening class also had some nonpros, including our new friends Amanda and Rich, who have traveled all over the world by VW and bicycle and even published a book about it! (You can find their website and info about their book at VWvagabonds.com.)

I don't have any pictures from class, sadly, but if you want any more details, you're welcome to contact me. At 500 rupees per class (about $11 US--definitely foreigner pricing) it wasn't a cheap few days, but it was totally worth it. With each class, I found all the crazy new poses a little easier to accomplish, and by the last class, I'd even done my very first ever headstand (OK, a wall helped me out, but there was no one there holding my feet!). Sadly, Andy did not elect to take classes, but he was sweet enough to escort me to the studio every day (which was a little out of town center), pick me up after class, and even try a couple of the poses I tried to teach him (not the headstand).

Of course, as soon as I'd really started improving, it was time to move on. I'm trying to keep up a bit of a practice on my own, though...well, when I have lots of spare time and floor space, which is maybe once a week.

But there is more to Mysore than yoga! For instance, the maharaja's palace is the number one tourist attraction and is pretty impressive. Unfortunately, they won't let you take photos of the inside, which is incredibly lavish, but here's the outside. Definitely drop in if you're in town. (Foreigners pay about 10 times the local price, but that does include a good "free" audio tour.)The palace is guarded by some fierce-looking tiger statues...quite a bit fiercer than the napping actual tiger we saw in the north of India. Mysore also has a large and fairly impressive zoo, which we visited hoping to get a glimpse of animals we weren't going to have a chance to search for in the wild. The zoo is full of great warning signs like this one, which you don't need to be able to read the local language to understand...
Fun Indian animals at the zoo included gharials, rare croc-like reptiles with skinny jaws......and the sloth bear, which has sloth-like little claws! And is really cute. Apparently, there used to be a lot of trained sloth bears performing at roadsides, but the government has cracked down on that.
I'm not sure if this pink pelican is from India originally, but he was funky-looking.
The also funky-lookin' painted stork is definitely a subcontinental bird.
What else to do in Mysore? How about wander through the market? OK! Lots of flowers for sale. Many essential oils and perfumes are made in this part of India.
Incense is also made here, and this young man was nice enough to give us a demonstration, even though we swore up and down that we weren't planning to buy anything (and we didn't). We hadn't realized that incense sticks are produced by hand...but then again, I don't think either of us have ever burned a stick of incense in our lives, so forgive us for never having thought about it before.Another fun sight in the market was these little pyramids of colored powder, used to make the forehead dot known as the bindi. Many men, women, and children wear bindis in India, and apparently the colors you choose to wear can have different meanings!

Kerala: State of Sweat

After Mysore, we headed south and west toward the coastal state of Kerala. Kerala is lush and jungly and really, really humid. We were sweaty pretty much nonstop for five days.

Our first stop was the city of Kochi, which had a long history of trade with foreigners...and even used to have a Jewish quarter!Not too many Jews left, though.

Actually, Kerala has quite a lot of Christians, so we saw a lot of churches, as well as the slightly shocking presence of both pork and beef on many menus! (Since Muslims don't eat pork and Hindus don't eat beef, many restaurants elsewhere in the country just don't serve either.)

Kochi also has some huge fishing nets that were apparently introduced by Chinese traders many centuries ago. They take four adults to operate. Don't ask me how they operate, I don't really understand.

Many people who had traveled in Kerala told us that the highlight of their trip was an overnight houseboat ride through the "backwaters." The backwaters are a network of rivers, canals, and lakes that connect many small villages in the area. So, we hired us a one-bedroom houseboat, complete with captain and cook (but not Captain Cook) and took to the waters!

What does a Keralan houseboat look like, you ask? This:

Frontal shot. You can see that we had a little upper deck as well as the shadier lower one. Further back was our bedroom (complete with lights and fan) and bathroom (with working shower and toilet). It costs a little over $100 US to rent one of these for an overnight, including two delicious Keralan meals and a so-so breakfast. Much more luxurious (and expensive) boats with AC exist, but this one worked just fine for us.

What do you do on a houseboat? Not much. You read a little, you nap a little. Mostly, you sit back in your wicker deck chair and enjoy the lovely views.
You can also take pictures of your spouse against a background of blue sky and green rice paddy. You may also take pictures of your spouse at your final destination in Kerala, the beach town of Varkala.
That seems to be our only picture from Varkala, which was actually really touristy (many, many more foreigners than Indians) and had the most crowded beach we'd been to in a long time. It wasn't awful, but it was definitely the only place we visited in India that I felt could have been found anywhere in the world. Places like Agra and Udaipur and Hampi are touristy, too, but you never forget that you're in India when you're there.

Our final, 16-hour, train ride--and the only ride we took in India where I really wished we'd been able to get berths in an AC class (they were sold out)--brought us to Chennai, on the east coast of India in the state of Tamil Nandu. It's India's fourth-biggest city, and would be our last stop in India before flying to Sri Lanka.

I would have liked to explore a bit, but we didn't. After a whole month of perfectly good health in India, I had finally succumbed to some sort of stomach bug that took away my appetite and made me feel like crud. So we spent our only day in Chennai holed up in an AC hotel room, watching sat TV, waiting for my Cipro to start working. Luckily, it kicked in just in time for the huge breakfast buffet served in our hotel lobby the next morning (idli! sambar! cornflakes!), and I am all fixed now.

I took a surreptitious snap on the train to the airport of the women's-only section of the train. I've seen these elsewhere in India and in a few other countries, too (in Egypt the Cairo subway has a women's car, as does the Alexandria tram--which is funny because the tram is only two cars long). Basically, it's an area where women can be safe from groping hands and other such harassment--which is, sadly, tends to be quite necessary in some cities. Men of the world, I would really like to see such cars become obsolete in my lifetime, so let's up the respect a notch, OK?

And that's India! Overall, we had an excellent, and certainly an eye-opening, experience. In addition to all the sights and great food, we often enjoyed chatting with Indians (overnight trains are a great place to make new friends)--asking them our questions and hearing their questions for us about life in America and our impressions of their country. It's far from perfect: The smog, litter, traffic, and huge gap between rich and poor are impossible to ignore. But it's a fascinating mix of religions, languages, landscapes, and tastes. And it's huge, truly a continent in a country--we're already plotting all of the new places we'd like to visit on our next trip there.

See ya next time, India.