Tenerife in May

After a high altitude winter straight down to sea level in Tenerife! Although I ventured up to 2300 m again on the volcano Teide - did not make the top of 3700 m, a bit too lazy for walking, but we explored a great part of the island by car. And spent a day in neighbouring La Gomera. And still found time for 3 surf sessions at Playa de Socorro! All in all - seen loads, done loads, ate loads!

Teneriffa - Spanien

Honduras - Guatemala - Mexico - NY

I did a long leg from Granada (south of Nicaragua) to Tehucigalpa (the unpronounceable capital of Honduras), the bus arrived late and a preoccupied fellow passenger did not want me to go around town at nighttime, so she invited me to stay in her house with her family. What a nice welcome to a new country!

The next day I went up to La Ceiba at the Carribean coast of Honduras. I spent the night as the only guest at the spectacularly situated Jungle River Lodge and also was the only participant in the canopying tour. Definitely low-season, but very relaxing after all the surfing action in Nicaragua.

Next I crossed over to Utila, the smallest island of the three Bay Islands and allegedly the cheapest place in the world for diving certifications. Stepping off the boat you get thronged by dive school representatives offering their deals, it is hard to find accommodation as a non-diver - the island seems to be owned by diving schools. Utila itself does not have any beaches worth mentioning but I was lucky to find a dive school (Captain Morgan's) who had a little hotel on one of the small islands off Utila's shore and actually let me stay there even though I was not taking part in a course.



This place was like paradise - it was the only tourist accommodation on this tiny fishing island (2 islands in fact, connected by a bridge: Jewel and Pigeon Cay), great snorkelling right off the hotel pier, private rooms with seaview. The island's population is only 500 people and you can walk across the whole place in 10 mins, it looks and feels like a toy town.

Residents on all the Bay islands are a weird mix of indigenous people, British settlers, and Afro-Caribs imported after some slave riots way back, so you meet people of all colours and looks (and for the first time you won't get recognized as a tourist straight away). Moreover, they speak a nearly unintelligible version of Jamaican English and/or Spanish - this was certainly one of the strangest places I've been to on my whole trip, I loved it!

I stayed on the Cays for a few days, going out with the diving boat every day to snorkel at different reefs around the islands (being too lazy to do a refresher of my diving cert). Snorkelling alone was amazing enough, the reef around the islands is the second biggest in the world and there was tons of stuff to see.

Then I had to say good-bye to the sea (it's always so sad, I think I should live by the sea, I never get fed up with it) and move on north. I crossed the border to Guatemala to visit Livingston, a Garifuna town (meaning inhabited by Black Caribes) that can only be reached by boat.



The further north I traveled the better the food became - finally! Garifuna food is especially delicious, and Tortillas arrived on the menu as a variation to rice-beans-chicken dishes (therefore more food pics in this album - for Annette, who requested a food documentary :).

From Livingston I took a boat through the Rio Dulce Canyon up and continued by bus to Flores, the jumping-off point for visits to the Tikal ruins. Tikal is the main attraction of Guatemala, it's one the largest Mayan sites and is situated right in the middle of the jungle. It's so huge, it would take weeks to see it all. Besides, many of the temples have not yet been excavated (and probably never will be). It was impressive but also very touristy and expensive, but still worth visiting.



After Tikal I had only a few days left to make it to Mexico City. I did a stopover in Palenque (Chiapas) and spent a beautiful day at Agua Azul (a river with almost artificially blue water because of its high lime content) and the Misol-Ha waterfall. In Mexico City I visited friends, went shopping and stayed indoors as much as possible because it was very cold. Same goes for New York - lunches in Chinatown and at the Google office and I spent the remains of my budget in the Burton store, so now I am fully equipped for the winter season to come!

Honduras - Guatemala - Mexico - NY

Panama - Costa Rica - Nicaragua

I finally seem to have escaped the rainy season, apparently the weather just had to get really bad before the sun returned for good. So Panama City was still quite rainy but I managed to see a few rays of sun at my visit of the Panama Canal and of the Casco Viejo - the old part of town which consists of (what a surprise) colonial buildings. The Casco Viejo is being renovated, so some houses are really nice while others are still in a process of total decay, a very strange contrast but certainly appealing.

I did not spend too much time in the city, because I could not wait to hit the beaches of Costa Rica. First I went to a really remote place on the pensinula of Nicoya, the Playa Pelada near Nosara, where friends of a friend of mine from Berlin run the hostel "Almost Paradise". The place has a great location and is really peaceful. It was so quiet that even the main surf beach was almost empty most of the time, plus it rained heavily during the few days I was there. I decided I needed more surfing company and headed to the most touristy place I could find nearby - Tamarindo, a few hours north.

Tamarindo, also called "Tamagringo", has certainly been sold out to the Americans. High-ride condos around the beaches, astronomic real estate prices and all the facilities you want. It is full of foreigners but there are not too many backpackers around (I had my dorm room to myself for 5 days). It's seems to be a favorite retirement place for aged surfers, which made the line-up quite an interesting place. But the main attraction that kept me there for longer than I had stayed anywhere else on my trip were the waves! They were so much fun, gentle and the perfect size for me, I could not get enough of them. Also I found some local friends to party with, and there were plenty of parties, great fun (apart from being too hungover to surf in the mornings...).

My next destination was the exact opposite: Isla de Ometepe in the lake Nicaragua. I arrived with some Argentinian girls and their friend from Belgium in the village of Merida and since we were almost the only guests there we went on our excursions together. There was the idea of climbing one of the volcanoes but after an extremely exhausting hike to the waterfall of San Ramon, not even half-way up the mountain, we decided to skip that - it would have been pure torture, the heat was just insupportable. On my second day I visited the Ojo de Agua, a natural pool with supposedly healing water from the volcano. It was such a chilled-out place and I finally managed to do all the reading to plan the rest of my trip.

The 2 days of pure nature and dirt roads were enough, I needed to get back to the beaches and traveled over to San Juan del Sur. It has the reputation of being the Tamarindo on the Nicaraguan side but it is much less developed and therefore also much more authentic. Anyway, it is THE place where all surfers meet, and of course a great party place. There are several beaches nearby, but unlike Tamarindo San Juan does not have its own surf beach, the village beach is rather ugly. So every morning all the surfers piled onto a truck that took us to the surf beaches. It felt quite like a school trip, great fun! The hostal, Casa de Oro, was the center of activities and would be recommendable except for a very ugly trait: bed-bugs. I was nearly eaten alive at my first night there and had to wash and desinfect all my belongings. Not fun at all, and I was not the only one.

Apart from surfing I went on a really memorable excursion: the arrival of the turtles at the nature reserve La Flor. Only every few months there is a big arrival at night for a week or two and we were lucky to have one happening just at full moon. It was a such a sight: thousands of turtles on the beach and coming out of the water. According to the guards around 16.000 turtles arrive every night to lay their eggs. They were huge, longer than 1 m, and so many of them, you had to be careful not to step on them (luckily they moved extremely slowly). Visitors cannot use white lights, because it would stress out the turtles, and we were given weak red lamps whose light cannot be seen by the turtles, so the pictures did not turn out great. But it was definitely a sight I will never forget!

Today I arrived in Granada, a nice enough colonial town, unfortunately the weather was not that nice. Tomorrow I'll head on to Honduras to spend a few last days at the sea, at the Bay Islands. No more surfing though, but I had an epic last day in San Juan, first catching the biggest and then the longest wave I´ve ever had in my very last session!

Panama - Costa Rica - Nicaragua

Colombia marinera

Yes, finally I've arrived in the hot climate zones! I just forgot to take into account that it is the rainy season as well. Full of enthusiasm and ignoring the rain showers I headed from Santa Marta into Parque Tayrona, a nature reserve at the Colombian Caribbean sea. Since there are no roads to the beaches and the walkways consisted mainly of knee-deep mud, I decided to take a horse. After 1 1/2 hrs ride I looked just as if I had bathed in mud (my horse certainly had), but at least I had arrived at the famous beach Cabo San Juan de la Guia, where you can sleep in hammocks overlooking the sea on the top of a little island.

It would have been very nice except for all the garbage that was swept on the beaches after the rain and the thunderstorms at night, which kept me freezing in my luxurious hammock (after all, this hammock on top of the island was more expensive than any hotel room I had before on this trip), so after only 2 days I fled the site and took the fast boat to Taganga, a supposedly picturesque fishing village near Santa Marta. Only this time it looked as if it had been hit by a reverse Tsunami - the streets and the beach had been literally washed away by the heavy rains and all that was left was rubble and garbage.

Not impressed I moved on the Cartagena - first I was told that the road was closed because of floods and there was no way to get there, but then after changing buses in Shakira's home town (very ugly Barranquilla) I miraculously arrived in Cartagena.

The historic center is what Cartagena is all about and it is pretty wherever you turn. I also started looking for a boat to cross over to Panama and found a captain from Barcelona whose boat was up next for departure. Since the sea was very rough after the thunderstorms we had to wait for a few days so I killed time by visiting the nearby volcano El Totumo, whose main attraction is not its height (which is only 29 m above sea level) but the fact that you can throw yourself into the (supposedly healthy) mud it still spits out and experience zero gravity. Great fun!

Spending the weekend in town called for party and I found an able guide in Angelo, who brought me to an Austrian-owned bar (highly recommendable: Harry's Tropical Cafe in Getsemani) and to other hotspots of Cartagena nightlife. With a slight hangover I boarded the boat Lyka the next day and we waved good-bye to Colombia. Thanks to anti-seasickness pills I had a rather relaxed night (as opposed to other passengers including our cook, whose been on boats for 10 years!)

After 2 days of a bumpy ride we arrived at the Archipelago of San Blas - what a magnificent reward, the most beautiful, picture-postcard like islands I've ever seen! We stayed around for 3 days, counting starfish, buying lobsters and crabs from the local Kuna people for almost nothing and roasting them on the BBQ, getting coconuts from palm-trees, snorkelling around corals and a sunken boat and rowing our little dinghy to the tiny paradisiacal islands.

I don't think I will see anything alike again on this trip. Now I am in Panama City not sure how to divide the rest of my time, I think next I will hit some decent surf beaches in Costa Rica and Nicaragua and finally get to practice!

Colombia - Panama

Colombia terrestre

It´s only 10 days since I arrived in Colombia and it seems ages ago - loads of interesting places in such a short time! So before I head off to remote Carribean beaches and islands in Tayrona (and will certainly be offline!) here´s all about my visit to mainland Colombia.

I arrived in the city of Cali after a very long trip from Baños, Ecuador, and was welcomed by my friend Isa's parents, who invited me to stay in their amazing home. I also got to spend a day with Isa's lovely friends Cata, Paulo and Gabi at a very rustic finca in the mountains.

After a few days I continued to Salento in the coffee region where I got the real stuff from Don Elias at his coffee plantation (coffee in Ecuador usually had a suspicious taste of washing-up water). The main activity in Saltento, however, is a hike up the beautiful, though somewhat misty, Valle de Cocora, where wax palm trees with a height of up to 70 m grow on surreal green hills.

At my 1-day stop in Bogotá I was hosted by Ana, Isa's sister (since she had promised me I would be passed around her whole family in Colombia :) She took me to the amazing event steak-house Andrés Carne de Res, the best food I've had so far on this trip!

People in Colombia are exceptionally nice, they sincerely try to help if you are lost or have any questions, I have hardly noticed any of the usual tourist rip-offs, kids don't beg (yet) even in the most touristy places, and you can walk around without being hassled (what a relief after my last trip to India!)

So the next stop was Villa de Leyva, a picture-book colonial town, great to visit for a day, then San Gil, the outdoor adventure sports capital of Colombia. My programm on the first day was kind of conservative though - a trip to the 180 m high waterfall Juan Curi and an afternoon in Barichara, a colonial town so perfectly preserved it has become a popular film set for Columbian telenovelas.

My second day in San Gil was more exciting - I signed up for a paragliding tandem-flight! San Gil and its surroundings are a paragliding mekka, it's possible to fly on almost all days of the year. Just on the day I went it looked as if we would not have enough wind - our only pilot accidentally crashed way down the mountain with the third person he carried, and it looked as if there would be no more flying for the rest of us. But then 3 more pilots arrived, the wind picked up and all of us went home with big grins on our faces!

Colombia

(I wanted to add a picture of my flight yesterday but just found that a vicious virus has attacked my camera card, will add it later once I restored the data - thanks, Macondo Hostel computer!)

Up and down Ecuador

It was cold. And cloudy. But beautiful! Still, I can't wait to reach the sun, the beach, the heat, so my trip through Ecuador was short and sweet.
Started out with a couple of days in Quito - the second highest capital in the world (2850 m) and apparently the most dangerous of all cities I am visiting on this trip (with the exception of Mexico City, maybe).

I survived without damage (except for a cold) and went on a 3-day-tour to the volcanoes of the Central Highlands - not before visiting the touristic equator of Ecuador.

First challenge was to climb up to the glacier of the Cotopaxi, Ecuador's second highest peak, in a hail storm. The glacier lies at 5100 m, so one could say, I climbed the Kilimanjaro (hehe).
A day of horse-riding and a visit to the stunning volcano crater lake Quilotoa completed the tour.

I thought I might improve my poor surfing skills in the surfer´s mekka Montañita, but somehow I hardly saw the daylight (and this was not only due to constant dark clouds).

To cure my resaca I went to the spa town of Baños, where I first cycled along the route of the waterfalls and afterwards fried my sore muscles in boiling hot thermal pools.

From now on my direction will be exclusively North - Columbia it is for the next few weeks!

Ecuador

New York in 4 days

It´s been 11 years since I´ve lived in NY and have never been back since, wow! It was great to revisit places, eat loads of pizza slices and the occasional fish gut (accidentally ordered at a posh japanese sake restaurant), and of course to meet old friends again - especially my roommate who I had completely lost touch with, I literally ran into him on the street in front of our old apartment, what a surprise!

Apart from that my old friend Micky happened to be in town, who I have not seen in years, and I went to see their show on Monday night - they were amazing as always (now I can´t get the Molotov songs out of my head!), and on Tuesday night I met Fitz, who I have not seen in ages either (apart from about 30 seconds at the Berlin festival 2 weeks ago), and he invited me to the completely sold out Tune Yards show!

In the short phases when I wasn´t recovering from jetlag/lack of sleep/hangovers I went into a shopping craze and am now equipped with a great new Canon camera and high-quality outdoor gear for my trip to South America (putting it all to the test tomorrow, when ascending up to 5000 m on the Cotopaxi volcano).

All in all, a very diverse week, ending with a night at the Nordic cine festival in Mexico city (my only night there, since I was only in transit to Ecuador), where I even got to meet the embassador!

New York

Roma - Napoli - Pompei

A last glimpse of summer... loads of monuments, ruins, museums, pizza - all very big and impressive! And a lovely time with Mara, Francesco & Ilaria - cari saluti da Berlino!

Rom, Napoli, Pompei

Egypt Warm-Up

All-inclusive holiday with the parents, I don't complain!
Hurghada, a thoroughly artificial resort on the Red Sea, locals speak better German than English, the average tourist is around 65 (or alternatively an unadventurous young couple or a family with very small kids), exotic factor equals zero.

So I ventured out to see some of the real Egypt (with an organised tour group and German speaking guide of course :) and went up to Cairo to see the famous pyramids (and yes, the ones in Mexico are more spectacular).

Luxor has quite a variety of sights to offer (17% of the world's monuments are based there according to our guide). We had 1 day to see the highlights, which was quite sufficient - looking at monuments in the desert at 42°C was almost too much even for me (and apparently it was one of the cooler days...).

Apart from that I discovered windsurfing (we had wind speeds of over 40 km/h, great fun and so easy to learn compared to surfing!) And the obligatory snorkel trip - rather healthy reef, loads of fish, amazing visibility, what more to say...

Here's some of the pics:

Ägypten Mai

Mumbai, Indian authorities & Ayurveda

I arrived in Mumbai early in the morning with only the day to spend before I took the night train for Nadiad to the Ayurveda clinic.

I was supposed to register my arrival back in India at the Indian Foreigner Registration Office, so this was the first thing I went to do. I had believed that the re-entry visa nightmare would be over on entering Indian soil - far from that. For ridiculous reasons (I needed a hotel receipt as proof of a local address, which I did not have since I was in transit, the address of the Ayurveda clinic was no good since it was in another state, etc.) they refused to confirm my re-entry.

So I spent half the day of my 1-day-visit in Mumbai with inefficient, frustrating bureaucracy. The other half of the day I rushed through the city to see some of the sights, and I have to say I quite liked the place. There is nice architecture, you can actually walk around without being hassled too much, and there are street signs indicating where you are. Colaba would be the part of town where I could imagine spending some days and Chowpatty beach promenade seems to be a real nice place to hang out - anyhow, its rather romantic :)



I would have liked to have gotten to know Mumbai better but due to the time I'd lost with this unfortunate visa business, I needed to move on. And as I said, the nightmare continued. I had a rather unwelcoming arrival at the Ayurveda clinic - the head of the clinic blamed me for not having my visa in order before my admission to the clinic (as if I had not tried) and threatened to send me away.

In the end I had to visit the local police station for 4 times (the officials there clearly had no clue, their ridiculous inefficiency in handling the simple procedure would make for another blog post of its own - but I do not want to go into this anymore, same as the choleric fits I had to endure from the clinic head every time I needed to go to the police station, since patients were not supposed to leave the clinic).

I ended up receiving 2 pieces of paper (I was made to sign that if I stayed longer than March 31 I would face 5 years of prison and a fine - pretty harsh given that my initial tourist visa ran until June...). And the very end of the story is that none of the immigration officers looked at any of these papers when I left the country.

My personal conclusion: I have no immediate desire to visit this country again, there are plenty of other places where foreigners can feel more welcome and face far less hassle.

Anyhow, the Ayurvedic treatment was the main incentive for this trip. Right now I cannot really assess its effects in the long run but it was certainly the most thorough health treatment I ever had and I learned a lot. Anyone who is interested in more information, please contact me directly!

Here you can also find a good overview (in German) of what to expect of a Panchakarma treatment with Dr. Gupta in the J.S. Ayurveda College, Nadiad.

Photo album:

India Mumbai - Ayurveda

Good-bye Sri Lanka

Sri Lanka has given me a good break from India, lovely beaches, nice surf and sooo quiet. I spent 2 days in Hikkaduwa, which is the more developed surf beach on the west of the island. Waiters even spoke German and there were plenty of retired people around, so after exploring some of the surroundings I moved to less developed Weligama, which was recommended to me by other surfers.

It was very nice. The guest house was right at the beach in front of the surf spot. Apart from the other 5 guesthouses and the surfers in them there is no tourism, it's a real fishing village. Apart from surfing, sleeping, eating and - well, one night of arrack drinking (which I sincerely regretted the next morning) - there was nothing much to do.

Nonetheless, there was no lack of excitement. I had some interesting experiences with the animal world of Sri Lanka. A massive beetle, around 5 cm long, with hooks on its legs and making the sound of a helicopter refused to leave my bedroom one night - it was 3 a.m. when I finally got it out. The similarly sized cockroaches living in the cracks of the bathroom floor were the real owners of the hut. A python and other types of snakes were put around my neck and an octopus came round during my snorkeling trip (only to end up as dinner of some locals).



Everything would have been so nice if this short excursion to Sri Lanka had not ended with quite a nightmare. Some weeks ago India had introduced a new law that does not allow re-entry into the country within 2 months (based on an incident involving terrorists last year who left and entered the country around 200 times without anyone noticing).

So now, anyone who leaves the country and tries to re-enter it in within 2 months is considered a potential terrorist and has to undergo a series of time-consuming, chaotic procedures that were mainly devised to make money (of course, you have to pay for the privilege to re-enter on a perfectly valid tourist visa) and give people as hard a time as possible.

This, of course, I not did not know and I had not been informed about on leaving the country. I only found out by another German surfer, who had spent 1 day in the Indian High Commission without receiving his re-entry permission and then had given up and changed his travel plans.

After I had heard about this on Saturday I made my way to the Indian High Commission in the capital, Colombo, on Monday early morning since my flight was due on Tuesday 4 pm. It turned out that spending the entire day of Monday and most of Tuesday at High Commission was not enough to get my re-entry stamp into the passport in time. Not to mention that I had only 8 days to visit Sri Lanka, 2 of which I now spent in the most unwelcoming place on the island, the Indian High Commission.

At the end I got my stamp 3 hours too late to catch my plane. The officers had known about my flight (from the moment of my arrival at the High Commission I had told them over and over again that I needed my passport back by Tuesday 12 noon to make it to the airport; in addition they also let down a group 12 elderly Americans who were on the same flight with me, we had begged, pleaded and fought together - in vain). The officers deliberately delayed (!) handing out our passports so we would all miss our plane. It was so obvious and there was nothing we could do.

I cannot describe the scenes that were taking place in that office. People who knew nothing about that law arrived straight from the airport because they had not been permitted to get on their flights, others had important business or family emergencies and were stuck because these officers were too lazy (or too mean) to speed up the process of placing a simple stamp their passports, others only flew to India to catch a connecting flight, which they were in danger of missing.

People were shouting, crying, begging, pleading. It felt like a refugee camp, only that the refugees were tourists on legitimate multiple-entry visas (that was the real joke about it!)

I had to spend a considerable amount of money changing my flights and buying new tickets, plus additional hotel nights etc. Apparently there are complaints about this crazy situation from international embassies, but who knows when this law will be changed... it's India after all.

I just advise everybody who goes to India:
do not leave the country planning to re-enter (at least not within 2 months), do not book any connecting flights over India, you might not be able to re-enter on the way back and miss all your connections, do not try to renew an expired visa (unless you are in your home country - after waiting for 2-3 weeks you will simply be rejected, I have seen this happen to various people during the 2 days I spent in the High Commission)!

So, I am off to the airport now - finally.

Sri Lanka pics:

Sri Lanka

How to be Indian...

Certain characteristics of Indians never cease to be the talk of travelers - they bring backpackers of all nationalities (except Indians, of course) closer together, you may talk shop with Koreans or Brazilians alike on the wondrous world of Indian behavior. So if you want to become Indian you might consider adopting the following behaviors...

- clear your throat prolonged and as noisily as possible of mucus and spit the collected matter in front of other people's feet
- burp often and loudly
- wear mustache (male & female alike)
- avoid politeness (exception: salespeople, train your "Hello Madam, look here Sir"), phrases like "sit here" or whistling will do the job
- cultivate lying and cheating
- never carry change (money), or at least always pretend not to
- pretend to be dumb if you don't want to deliver a service (equally: only understand English if you may gain a benefit from it)
- always answer "Yes" regardless of the question asked, support your answer by shaking your head
- consistently get directions and durations wrong (intentionally or unintentionally), if you don't have a clue about the directions you are asked make them up
- when you see a foreigner do not hesitate to force inquiries on them like, "Your name!" or "Which job?" without prior introduction.
(One anecdote on this habit: I was walking by the riverside in Hampi, which is also used by Indians for their morning toilet (i.e. shit), when suddenly a voice came out of a bush "Your country!". It seems to be a reflex in Indians that cannot be suppressed even in their most private moment of taking a dump...)

I, on the other hand, do try to adapt in some ways, if only to be able to advance in my travels and save time. My English dangerously deteriorated and I articulate myself in sentences like: "When bus coming?" or "Me already have dinner", and avoiding yes/no questions at all times.

I also had to reinvent my CV:
Now I am German (Austria is invariably mistaken for Australia and it requires a lengthy geographic explanation to illustrate the difference), I am married (being older than, let's say 18, and not being married is as incomprehensible to them as having no religion), so my husband is at home working, I am traveling with a friend (who accidentally is not with me right now), I am a journalist for a travel magazine, or in tougher situations: I work for the police/military, I have no money.

And now finally, my last photo album on India (including Hampi, Gokarna, backwaters):

India South

Writing this I am already in Sri Lanka - back to civilization, people speak English and sometimes apparently also the truth :)

I will check into the Ayurveda clinic on Feb. 18th, so maybe I can upload some stuff on Sri Lanka beforehand, but maybe I will be too busy surfing the waves...!

The backwaters of Kerala

I considered myself lucky again - my train arrived on time in Alleppey, and I had met a couple on the train, Angela from Melbourne and Manel from Barcelona, who also wanted to go on one of the famous houseboat trips in the backwaters. In the guesthouse we picked up Jess from England, and the next day the four of us set out on this incredibly relaxing trip.

The backwaters are basically water streets, people live in small houses lined up by the waterside and grow rice on a lower level behind the rivers. The houseboats seem to be used for tourism only but they are very pretty and it is tempting to stay on them for much longer than the usual overnight trip, which unfortunately lasts only half a day and a night as in the morning the boats rush back to prepare for the next customers.



After that I went up to Kochi, a nice enough town (especially the part called Fort Cochin, even though there is no fort to be seen), and surprisingly clean by Indian standards. The guesthouses call themselves 'homestay' but usually they are just the same as anywhere else.

I found a nice woman to take a cooking lesson from, so now I know how to make chapati and some other South Indian dishes - the big advantage of this lesson was that I got to chose the amount of chili to put into the dish. So finally I was able to discern what the dishes actually taste like!

On Gokarna beaches & Indian Men

I got myself a cute beach hut made from palm leaves and with a 'natural' sand floor for less than 3 EUR on Om Beach near Gokarna. The beach is quite nicely shaped like an Om-sign and not as overcrowded as the nearby Kutley beach (which is quite nice nevertheless, especially if you want to show off your Yoga or drumming skills or other weird forms of meditation at sunset on the beach).



What was rather disturbing on Om beach were the hordes of Indian men who came to stare at female tourists in bikinis and shamelessly took photos - they were hard to ignore.

I will never understand the double standard in this country - on the one hand people feel offended if you show your bare shoulders or knees (it is considered a sign of disrespect), on the other hand Indian men seem to barely be able to restrain themselves from tearing the clothes off female tourists.

The story goes that Western women uniformly have the morals of porn actresses, this knowledge is apparently taken from Western blue movies which are highly popular among Indian men. It happened to me more than once that a seemingly good-mannered, cultured Indian guy wanted to turn the conversation into dirty sex talk, and more than once I had to fight off stray hands from strangers and shout at them. It seems that the more restricted the society is, the more perverse its men are.



Anyhow, the next day Clip and Mellie from Berlin arrived and we hiked over to the quieter & more beautiful Paradise beach and spend a nice, relaxing day.

On the way back we even saw dolphins! That evening Susi and Jason also arrived and our group was complete for a few hours until I took off with the night train to Kerala.

The long road to Hampi...

It started out harmlessly - I got a ticket from Goa to Hampi on the overnight bus without any trouble, the bus was more than on time, that is, it left 20 min earlier than scheduled (this must have happened the first time in the history of Indian public transport).

At 2 a.m. I got rudely woken up by Indian screaming "bus change!!". OK, whatever. The 'new' bus went off, soon started making roaring sounds and stopped shortly after. I woke up at 8 a.m. realizing that we were still at the same spot, in the middle of nowhere. Scenario: 2 broken down PAULO buses by the side of the road, some very confused tourists, and one tiny food/drinks stall making the business of a lifetime:



Apparently a mechanic was on the way, expected to arrive within 2 - 3 hrs. Since Hampi was "just" 250 km away some of us figured it might be wiser to call a taxi. Miraculously (that is after promising a fee of 5000 RS) a taxi appeared and 7 of us happily piled in, almost sitting on top of each other. That was at around 10 a.m. At 12 a.m., a number of errants and two fillings of propane gas bottles later (I didn't know that cars can run on this...) we finally hit the road.

The driver had promised to arrive around 2.30 p.m. The hours passed. The driver seemed to be lost in small village roads (although he would never admit to it), his average speed was 45 km/h. Food was nowhere to be found and we were all starving. We finally arrived at 10 p.m. - 12 hrs after he had picked us up, and 24 hrs after starting a supposedly 10 hrs long trip!

In Hampi all guesthouses were full due to a festival going on that was attended by 4 Million (!) Indians. Luckily we all managed to find some place or the other to crash. The next day we heard that our bus had arrived 1 hr after us but dropping the remaining passengers in a different town 14 km away!

After all this transport hassle I decided to be my own driver for a change and rented a little girlie-motorbike. I thoroughly enjoyed cruising through the impressive boulder landscape and along the rice fields of Hampi, jumping from rocks and visiting innumerable temples.

My favorite vehicle so far on this trip:



For the way back I steadfastly refused to take a PAULO bus again and luckily found a ticket for ISLAND bus, whose driver raced like a madman over the bumpiest of all roads dropping us in Gokarna at 5 a.m., I could not believe that I
a) was still alive (well, at least until the cows started attacking...)
b) had really arrived after traveling only for 1 night.

In heaven - and its called Goa...

It is warm, it is chilled, it is soooo nice.
I expected something like Thailand since Goa is such a household name and I also went to the 'most developed' beach, Palolem.

Well, Palolem itself is not my favorite beach around here, although it has nice shops and shop-owners who actually let you look around in their shops peacefully without hassling you with their selection of goods (which is usually of a taste you would not even give your grandmother as a gift) - I spend my days in Patnem beach only 10 mins walk away.

People seem to be fine, you have your usual share of pink English but they are surprisingly quiet, there are hippies, young hip families and single moms, and also retired people and/or retired hippies.

There are just little beach huts and beach restaurants, not one hotel building in sight (actually, every off-season most of the huts have to be taken down and can only be set up again in the next season, where the owners need to negotiate their spots anew).

In the evening they have little tables and cushion chairs on the beach, they light a few candles, sometimes they provide a Shisha, nice chilly music in the background and this is it. Sooo romantic, sooo relaxed. No 'Goa parties' (these times are long gone, and the police is omnipresent controlling on the one hand the 10 pm curfew for music and on the other the Indian lechers who like to stare at foreign women in bikinis).

I met up with Susi, a friend who I have not seen in ages and we have a very nice time here. Speaking of - its time to hit the beach!

Good-bye north India (forever)

Finally, I am in a 'real holiday', all that happened up to now I would rather call 'survival training'. People in the North of India are doing their best to scare even the most adventurous and good-natured tourists away and make them never want to come back again.

I kept on wondering how the compulsory lying and cheating agreed with their believe of karma. Possibly the northern people don't care if they get reborn as cockroaches in their next lives.

Some 'golden rules' to observe when you are traveling the North:

1. Argue about EVERYTHING you pay money for (attn.: they will even cheat you even on the price of a bottle of water).

2. Do NOT believe anything anybody tells you until you see it with your own eyes (train is not going, hotel is closed, tourist attraction being very far away so you need a rickshaw...)

3. Do NOT TRUST anyone, especially if they seem nice and (almost) normal - these are the most dangerous ones; speaking of which: never trust travel agents, especially not in Delhi!
I got nicely scammed for a rather sizeable sum of money by a Dehli travel agent - supposedly from a 'government-approved agency', don't know where they bought that title from...
Take special care with Kashmiri travel agents, they are the most skilled and have no shame to bill you 3 times the price of what their services are worth (apparently Karma does not apply to Kashmiri folks since they are Muslim).

4. Bring a winter jacket if you are going this time of the year.

5. If something seems expensive, it is. If it seems alright, you're still paying double of what it's worth.

6. EVERYBODY is getting commission, get rid of any Indian company if you need to buy something or you will always lose money.

7. Keep answering 'Yes' to whatever anyone is telling you and never stop walking - it will save you a lot of time, believe me.

8. Alternatively, pretend to be deaf.

9. Go South.

But I do not mean to say that everything was bad, we saw some very nice places including the Taj Mahal, Ranthambore National park (the promised tigers didn't care to show up, however), and mystic Varanasi.

I then went down South and spent a few days in Aurangabad seeing these amazing temples that were carved into stone with hammer and chisel over 6 generations during the 5th - 10th century (they are a World Heritage Site and truly impressive, read more )
Apparently, when the workers got bored they started carving pornographic scenes to amuse themselves - see pics.

Here a selection of pictures of the past 3 weeks (click to see album):

India North

Namaste - my first week in India!

As many say: it's impossible to describe this country, you have to see it. And smell it. And - especially - taste it!

Everything Indian-experienced friends predicted or warned me of happened of course: arrival in Delhi at 5 a.m. and the hotel taxi nowhere to be seen, found a taxi into town with apparently vision-impaired driver who hit the rail on the side of the highway and continued driving as if nothing had happened, he had no clue where the hotel was, after driving around for a while he dropped me in the darkest quarter of Delhi so I had to find it myself, the street full of garbage, beggars, stray dogs , all very scary - but I found the hotel, which did not have my reservation (even though I got an email confirmation), and so they put me in their most expensive room, which was a total dump etc. etc. But I was still happy I had arrived in one piece.

The next day I set foot out on the street and after 5 mins I thought my head would explode. My hotel was in the middle of a busy bazaar, people approaching me from all shops I walked past, "come here, look here, Madam", kids following me, clinging to me begging, Rikscha drivers stopping offering their services, the air dark with exhaust fumes and smoke from little fires that the beggars burn on the sidewalk to warm themselves (it was actually quite chilly), this all happening simultaneously while I try to find my way.

Crossing my first street was a big achievement. Approximately 5 lanes of traffic, donkey-carts, mopeds, rikschas and people all going into different directions, blowing their horns like mad, no sign of a traffic light or even a pedestrian crossing - the best method is to stand behind a local and when he starts, close your eyes and run as well.

I got through the chaos, and moreover was really lucky to meet the right people. At the end of the day I was all set with a new family accommodation, a 20-day-travel plan with all reservations and bookings made (which apparently is difficult to manage yourself because it is high season).

So now I am on a tour of Rajasthan, sharing hotel rooms, a car and our very nice chauffeur Sureis with Ilaria, an adventurous girl from Italy. It is an intense time filled with impressions and information, every second day we arrive in a new place - but it is the best way to see some really impressive parts of India in not too much time and without too much hassle.

We started with Pushkar, a beautiful pilgrim town, where we successfully completed all the typical tourist activities in a day: meeting some Sadhus (holy men), but also plenty of locals, who showed us the tents in the desert where they live; I took some more or less successful (but fun) music lessons of sitar and flute, then saw the sunset on a camel and got my hands painted with henna, drank countless Chais, went shopping... At the end of the day I even met a Brazilian tourist guide who is studying music in Varanasi, so I got my second Sitar lesson already arranged plus a local tour guide for the city :)

The next stop was Jodphur, also very beautiful with the massive Maharaja Fort, then Udaipur with the magic palace on the lake, which was not quite so magic because there is hardly any water in the lake at this time of the year - it was the palace surrounded by mud, and today we arrived in Jaipur, especially famous for the Hawa Mahal (palace of the winds) and its excellent shopping (the latter will take more of our time tomorrow than the sightseeing I reckon :)

To see a small selection of my pictures, click on the album below:

India 2010

Berlin Festival 2009

Another one gone by: I may proudly claim to have attended every Berlin Festival there ever was and all 3 locations. Favorite: Postbahnhof, 2007. Unfortunately the area was closed for events. Tempelhof is not too bad if one likes concrete and historic sites. Anyhow, it was great fun - the highlight apart from Deichkind, our 3-D-glasses mission and Lebkuchenschnaps was being taken up to the roof of the airport at 6 a.m.!

Austrian Treasures

Our little Erasmus trip lead us to Linz, where we enjoyed the perfect Schweinsbraten with Knödel created by Gatsch and then ventured up to the roofs for some Höhenrausch challenges. To recover from that we went to the beautiful Wolfgangsee in Salzkammergut, where we basically had more Knödel, Kasnockn and Bauernjausn. Apart from eating we also visited Salzburg for a day. Then there was more eating in the house of Petra's parents, where her father had a Barbecue ready for us.

On my way back to Berlin I stopped over for a night in Angela's (La Alemana) house, where we had a lovely Barbecue. She now has a little daughter, Theresa, who is 5 months old. David is already 3 years old.

Arriving in Berlin after a 10 hours (!) trip from Munich (it normally takes 5 hours, but I got stuck in 4 major traffic jams) I went to the office opening party of my translation agency, and we had - guess what, a really tasty Barbecue.
So, now you know what we do here all summer ;)

Click on the album below to see more pictures of our culinary trip:

Austrian Erasmus Reunion 2009