Udaipur is only beautiful for some

Udaipur is a city in the Rajasthan state of India. If you’ve never heard of it before, don’t feel bad I hadn’t either. I’ll note only once that the US public school system makes no effort to educate its students on Indian geography or history. I came in completely ignorant and now know a tiny bit.

Udaipur was our first real stop here in India. Not knowing what to expect, we rolled into a very nice hotel right on one of the Udaipur lakes (there are three), but only on has a palace in the middle of it (ours). Dinner was buffet-style and had a surprising variety of food in addition to Indian foods (mac-n-cheese, Chinese noodles, etc.). There was at least one large tour group in the facility and it made dinner a bit less enjoyable as they all tend to graze at the same time and queue together for buffet foods.

Our guide took us on a tour of the City Palace which is an epic structure that has been incrementally built by the generations of Maharana over the last 400 years. The palace tour was interesting, but our guide just didn’t seem excited about it, so it lost its luster a bit. The one take away is that it is huge; covering about 1 kilometer in length alone. It the biggest palace of this type in all of Rajasthan.

After the palace we stopped by the Jagdish Temple for some photos (outside only). I got crapped on by a pigeon. I was lucky to have my hand up adjusting my ponytail and most when on my hand, but a I got a bit elsewhere. I hear it’s good luck in some culture, just not mine or the one here.

This evening we took a boat ride on the lake. While the scenery was quite beautiful, I noticed that very few boats were out on the water and asked our guide why there were more boats. It turns out that only hotels have rights to motor boats on the lake meaning that the most beautiful natural resource there (for recreational enjoyment) is off-limits to all the residents of the city. Despite it's history and it's beauty, this left me completely underwhelmed by Udaipur and with a rather sour taste in my mouth. It just didn’t seem like a happy city.

Tomorrow we head to Pushkar, I’m looking forward to be surrounded by people who really want to be where they are.

A Tale of Three South Africas

As we wrap up our stay here in South Africa, I find it hard to reason about the deep differences between our three distinct experiences here. We flew from Morocco to Cape Town the long way. Apparently, Morocco and South Africa don’t see eye-to-eye so there are no direct flights. When we planned our trip, we didn’t have a specific agenda picked out and I needed to pick airports, so I had us fly into JNB (Johannesburg). However, after some planning, we decided to start our South African adventure in Cape Town. Our actual flight path from RAK (Marrakech) to CPT (Cape Town) involved RAK to FRA to JNB to CPT. Needless to say that’s a long set of segments.

Additionally, our JNB-CPT segment was booked on a separate ticket, so managing our connection was no longer the responsibility of the airline. We planned a 4+ hour layover in JNB, just to make sure and figured we’d relax, stretch our legs and eat some good food. What did we end up doing? Filing lost baggage claim forms for Gianna’s pack. Not the best way to start our South African experience.

Cape Town

Once we landed in Cape Town and rented our car, we drove to our Airbnb house in Camps Bay and met our host Gert for a brief tour. The house was amazing, the view was amazing, we were amazed… and tired. We walked to dinner, ate some food, walked home and passed out. When we awoke the next morning, we hadn’t been dreaming - the place really was amazing. It was clean and large with four bedrooms and two baths, a balcony overlooking Camps Bay with beautiful views of the water, the Lion’s Head Mountain and Table Mountain.

At the end of day two, Lufthansa couriered Gianna’s bag to us which they had found in some undisclosed location. Travel crisis averted.

There are some things that made me quite uncomfortable with our Cape Town experience that became more concrete after our visit to Johannesburg. All of the places in Camps Bay (and the rest of Cape Town) have rather up-front and hostile private security systems: think razor wire or electrocution systems surrounding every personal residence. These things do not make me feel safer, they make me feel uneasy. Specifically, I didn’t feel that crime was a problem there and felt the deterrent unnecessary.

There was a lot of construction going on, but after Marrakech I was just like: “oh shit, this again.” All the labor and almost all the hospitality jobs were staffed by black South Africans, yet there were white South Africans living and working here as well. The part that felt uncomfortable was that everyone acted as if this was both normal and expected. Apartheid is over here, but the division in Cape Town seems embedded in a way that seems unlikely to be removed.

The food in Cape Town is the best food I’ve had on our trip so far; it’s a foodie paradise. So many different cuisines with top-notch execution. On top of that, the area is ridiculously inexpensive by U.S. standards. Our family of five went out to place after place and ended up with delicious culinary experiences between $40USD and $100USD. My favorite place was a little bistro called BAKED run by a few guys that came off as stoner surfers. They were wonderfully friendly, the food was complex, artistic and lovingly created. They also just opened a brewery called BAKED Brewery a week before our arrival and I got to have their first beer: BAKED Lager. I think I might go there almost every day if I were to live in Cape Town.

The construction there did develop into a more serious problem. On our way to dinner one night, I stumbled on a deconstructed sidewalk and stubbed my toes. Well, by stubbed I mean broke my second and third toes on my left foot and turned the end of one of them into raw hamburger. If my feet could talk, they would damn me in ways that no other on Earth would. Sadly, the buddy-taping strategy normally used for toe fractures does not work on my syndactyly-challenged feet. As I write this a week later, my toes still hurt all the time. I realize that construction is always ongoing in urban areas, but it still frustrates me deeply how other countries seem to take a horrible stance towards pedestrians and fail to setup temporary routes (tapes or coned) so that automobiles don’t hit them.

One day here we drove down to Boulders Beach to see the African Penguins. The girls loved it, so I’ll let them write about it. I just reinforced that penguins aren’t interesting to me. Another day we went to an outdoor supply shop to get permethrin to spray on some of our clothes for our upcoming safari.

Despite my limp, I enjoyed our stay in Cape Town because the relaxation factor in our house here was so high. We had almost no agenda here and executed it beautifully.

Peruse our photos at our Cape Town Gallery.

Safari at Kirkman’s Camp

We flew from Cape Town to a tiny airport (KMI) near Kruger National Park and a tour operator picked the five of us up and drove us two hours to Kirkman’s Camp. Kirkman’s Camp is a 300 hector game reserve abutting Kruger National Park such that the animals therein can freely migrate back and forth.

All the images you might have about safaris likely include dorky dressed Brits dining on fine food on white tablecloths in the middle of the bush with a lion nearby. Well, I’m here to tell you that is basically spot on. It’s ridiculous.

As we’re traveling light this year, I chose not to bring my big DSLR and lenses around. I regretted that decision partially and bought a DSLR in Konstanz. However, the idea of traveling with my 70-200 1:2.8L IS Canon lens makes me want to quit. Big and heavy. Here on safari, I would have given my left two toes for it (though I might have just wanted to get rid of my left two toes). What I didn’t realize is that the camp could coordinate the rental of whatever lens you wanted to be snagged by you at JNB on entry to the country and returned there as well. Had only I known! I would have gotten something up to 300mm and taken many more amazing shots. There were two saving graces. First, there are some nice parts about having the 5DSR though… at 50MP I could take full frame pictures and crop small bits of the picture to produce sufficiently detailed photos. Second, the big game was up close and personal. It was really shots of elephants and birds that would have been better with a more powerful lens.

One thing that absolutely amazed me is the animal behavior. Being in the bush on foot is quite dangerous. If you enter a large animal’s territory, it could quite quickly be the end of you. However, when you are in a safari vehicle (ours was an 11-seat, open-air Toyota Land Cruiser) most of the large game completely ignore your presence. Elephants and buffalo being notable exceptions; they can charge so you give them space.

We had giraffes about 8m away from our vehicle, a leopard 3m away and an adult male lion about 2m away. Being that close to a completely wild predator was surreal. And I’ll note that at that range, I didn’t need to get near 70mm on my 28-70mm lens. Lisa and I took more pictures in those two days than in the previous three weeks.

Stopping for cocktails to take in the sunset in the bush while looking at rhinos was surreal. Arriving at a spot overlooking the sand river to a white-tablecloth full English breakfast was surreal. Being served pork belly and leg of lamb cooked on the pit while listening to locals (the staff were locals) sing and dance was surreal. Watching giraffe kids frolic and play was surreal. Watching a white rhino altercation about 5m away from our vehicle was surreal (and very tense). The whole thing was surreal. I’m a bit sad that the rhino altercation happened after cocktails (which means after sunset) and the lighting was too dark to take good photos or video with my f/4.0. I got the giraffes on video though!

The last expedition ride we went looking for zebra (again) and failed. However, our ranger guide Rikus and his tracker Richard got a call about a male lion entering the reserve. They high-tailed it to the lion. Five of us in the back of a Land Cruiser going down 45-degree slopes, up 45-degree slopes, on slopes that had us yaw at almost 45-degrees. I got clipped in the ear by an acacia bush, spilling an awkward amount of blood from such a tiny nick. We reached the lion and tracked him for about 20 minutes until he left the other side of the reserve.

We got amazingly close. We had been told stories that this lion had recently attempted to take down a giraffe and got kicked with a hoof in the mouth. His incisor was dangling in a stomach-turning way. Since the injury, he and his brother had taken down (and eaten) a large buffalo, but alas the tooth would dangle by a thread. Rikus joked that he should tie some string around it while he was sleeping and pull it out with the expedition vehicle — if only for the stories.

Lisa and I stayed in one room and the girls stayed in a room next door. We were told that we shouldn’t come out of rooms for any reason at night without an escort as wild animals often walk through the camp. They had an elephant in camp the day before we arrived and several large buffalo sleeping near the main lodge the night before we left. The girls did great and so did Lisa and I. I will say that the 5am wake up was easier than I thought; passing out from a long day surely helped!

Peruse our photos at our Kirkman's Camp Gallery.

Johannesburg

Our stay in Kirkman’s Camp ended (I think far too early for all of us) with a two hour trip back to the airport where we flew to Johannesburg. Tori and Lisa, who are quite prone to motion sickness, managed the rowdy safari rides with no ill effects whatsoever. The same cannot be said for the fifty-minute plane ride from KMI to JNB; puke. We landed, this time with all our luggage and headed to our hotel in Sandton via the Gautrain and some foot trekking. Check-in was complicated due to some Booking.com snafu, but we landed in our two bedroom apartment by 4pm, ordered dinner, had a meltdown from the overly long day, and all passed out fairly early.

On the first day here, we walked up to Sandton City, which is an enormous shopping mall. We needed to get a few simple things. I ended up buying a tripod as I’ve been in so many evening situations wanting to take pictures that end up blurry because my hands aren’t steady enough. When we later go to New Zealand (and maybe some places in India) I want to take night-sky pictures as well. It weighs a ton, so what I didn’t want to do with a lens I am now doing with a tripod; color me idiotic.

We actually had no plans for Jo-burg, but had thought to visit the Apartheid Museum. We changed the plans a bit because that museum is a bit adult for the youngest of us (and maybe even the second youngest) and the Nelson Mandela exhibit is under construction and unavailable. Instead we went on the CitySightseeing bus for a two-hour tour of Johannesburg interrupted by a two-hour tour of Soweto; I rather enjoyed the whole thing. It was quite interesting and it gave me a better understanding of tensions in general here. Nelson Mandela and many others were truly great men who had the ability to lead in a way so few do. The tour helped crystallize what made me uncomfortable about Cape Town; here in Johannesburg - unlike in Cape Town - no one ignores the effects of apartheid: they are understood and remembered in everything, everywhere, always. The fact that the history here never dies and is not forgotten allows people to look forward in a way that we fail to do at home.

That evening we had a little rain spider in our bathroom. By “little” I mean the thing was the scariest looking spider I’ve ever seen in person. I fear more that will not hold true for the rest of the trip as we enter Southeast Asia: the land of giant spiders. This scared the bejeezus out of Zoe who discovered it in close quarters in the bathroom; elevated pulse, sweat and hyperventilated breathing put her clearly in shock. Not being educated well on the various spiders present in South Africa, I was not bold enough to take an in-focus picture of it. Even the maintenance guy who showed up said something resembling “oh Jesus” when he saw it… his departing remarks were, “I’m sorry, maybe you should shut your windows.” Turns out that type of spider is “harmless” to humans assuming that you don’t include “chance of heart attack” as a harm.

The rest of our time in Sandton was uneventful and used to catch up on schooling. Our time there would have been better had we found better food; when compared to Cape Town, the Johannesburg area is culinarily unimpressive. It was quite disappointing that the Internet there was so poor which put us much farther behind in uploading photos and blogging; double disappointing as we go to India next, where I expect connectivity to be far worse. I think we were all happy to leave Sandton for India. It was designed to be a respite before the great unknown of India, and it served its purpose.

The Ms of Morocco

Before I dive in, we took a ton of pictures and you can see them in our Morocco gallery on SmugMug.

Marrakech (part 1)

We almost missed our plane getting here b/c our flights had been updated and we didn’t catch the change. We happened to get to the airport three hours before our flight instead of two hours… which turned out to be 1 hour before our adjusted flight. That was stressful, but we made out plane and due to a stop-over in Agidir, we arrived only ten minutes before our originally planned arrival time. Someone was at the airport to pick us up and take us to the Andalous hotel. It was dusk, dry and dusty and warmish and it seemed like a desolate wasteland. The hotel lobby was nice, but the rooms were a bit dilapidated. Overall we were unimpressed, but keep reading to part two! Here we met Mustafa and he shared a quick week itinerary and a detailed “tomorrow” with us and left us to enjoy dinner and a good night sleep.

Dinner was classic Moroccan food: meat with some veggies and bread. Lisa and I ordered a half bottle of wine to take the edge of the day of travel. It wasn’t bad wine, but we had just been in France and Belgium, so we weren’t overly impressed. Realizing that Morocco, given it’s overwhelmingly Muslim population, doesn’t really have a fantastic alcohol scene decided that this would likely be the last wine we had until South Africa.

Mustafa

We took a guided tour of Morocco (granted a small part) that took us from Marrakech over the Altas mountains, to Ouarzazate, to Tinghir, to Todra Gorge, to Aït Ben Haddou and back to Marrakech. Mustafa was our guide along with our driver Akmed.

Mismanaged Expectations

We had been led to believe that this would be a group tour (in English) with about twenty total people. When we arrived, we learned that it was just the five of us. We had been looking forward to talking with other people from various places during our stay here. We were all disappointed and taken by surprise. Zoe was crushed; she’s been feeling particularly isolated from life back home and having some kids to talk to other than her sisters was the one thing she was most excited for. As things go wrong, people’s character tends to show. Zoe made me a very proud father. Clearly devastated and beginning to get sick with a cold, she handled the news better than most adults I know would have. I was so impressed.

Mountains and Movies

We woke up around 7:30am, had breakfast and left the hotel at 9am on our way to Ouarzazate. The Atlas mountains remind me of the foothills in Nepal quite a bit (at least what I remember of them). The high point of our trip was 2260 meters and the roads were decent, but likely to give heartburn to anyone scared of heights and close ledges. Lisa was certainly uncomfortable during portions of the trip. I was just glad that the road wasn’t completely crumbling away as I’ve seen elsewhere.

Ourrzazate is a thriving city of about 60k people and served as a salt producer on ancient trading routes. It is the home of Africa’s largest solar energy project that is due to supply over half of Morocco’s power needs by 2020. It was closed to the public, but we drove near by and had nice conversations about how great this project was. Ouarzazate is also the home of several move studios and boasts the filming location for parts of movies such as “The Jewel of the Nile,” “Kingdom of Heaven,” “Lawrence of Arabia,” “Khundun”, and “Game of Thrones.” We took a tour of the Atlas corporation’s grounds and saw a ton of set constructions. It was very cool. I think the girls will later watch some of these movies and be like: “WAIT! WHAT? I WAS THERE!”

A thunderstorm rolled through that evening which put a damper on any desires to use the pool at our hotel. Instead, we retired to our room. The beds smelled clean, but there were hairs and some bugs (not bed bugs and not lice). It was tough to sleep well there and tomorrow would be a long day.

Moonlight

On our way to the edge of the dunes, we stopped to get water and a turban for me. My first turban for 40DH. Mustafa tied it… 100% gangsta. We rolled up to the hotel that offer the camels and camping experience. Lisa took the lead camel, then Tori, Gianna, Zoe and then me followed by Mustafa and the pack camel. We packed light and the pack camel had almost nothing on it.

The trek through the dunes was a surreal experience as Abdul lead the camels for an hour to our encampment. I had tied the ladies scarves as I’d seen Mustafa tie mine. Winds rose and sand picked up. My turban setups for the ladies held at 50/50. Tori and Zoe’s unravelled as we rode, but Gianna and Lisa’s held fast. Even with sunglasses on and veils tight I managed to get sand in my right eye and struggled to see. I took some great pictures, but later learned I got a tiny scratch on the lens. After a lot of pictures and a lot of staring, I can’t detect the effects.

When we got to camp, the wind died down a bit and the girls grabbed the two available snowboards and climbed the dunes. The moon rose before the sun completely set. Absolutely surreal. My three daughters sandboarding on the dunes of the Sahara under a full moon. They convinced me to take a spin and all those years of skateboarding paid off well. A quick slice down the dune and I was done. We had dinner outside and just as it wrapped up, we noticed a lightning storm of the the Atlas mountains in the distance. The wind picked up, the lightning got closer. We moved quickly to our tent, which had a whole in the side, so we up and moved to the adjacent tent, which we soon learned had a hole in the roof. The staff started setting up a tent in a new section of camp that was still under construction. We waited in the tent as wind howled, the lightning flashed all around, and the tent shook hard. There was some mild looks of concern in the tent, but all in all the spirit was good. As I said then, “this is how we get good stories on this trip.”

We moved to the new tent as the storm was passing. It was solid, sound and well insulated with heavy fabrics. As the wind died down, we started a fire and Abdul and Mustafa played drums and sang and then got all of us to play drums and attempt to sing songs from home of which we know embarrassingly few.

Bed was find, but no one slept particularly well. Back up at 5:45am we were on the camels just after six and back to the hotel for breakfast at seven.

All in all, it was brief, but full of rich experience and all the material for wonderful memories.

Mobile Phones

So our T-mobile, unlimited roaming in 120 countries…. Morocco is not one of those 120. Oops. $2.99/minute calls, $0.50 SMS message, and $15/MB for data (plus tax, of course). International highway robbery. Morocco has some interesting hoops to jump through to get a local SIM card (you need to apply and provide your passport, but it is immediate). I’ll jump ahead a bit… I didn’t get a chance to get a SIM until day 4, but for 30DH ($3) I got one hour of local talk time and 1GB of data. Yes. 1GB for $3. Morocco’s data coverage is pretty crappy in the rural areas and in the mountains, but where it is, it is 4G and fast. Google Hangouts and Google Voice work exceptionally well and 1GB will get you about 10 hours of talk time on Google Voice. I was able to take a five hour board meeting on Thursday. One day this “roaming” crap will just disappear and we’ll only be able to buy world plans and call people and use the Internet without stupid imaginary billing fences… one day.

Mountains

We stopped at Todra Gorge (which is like the Grand Canyon of Morocco) as much as something epic and beautiful but only about 400 meters long could resemble the Grand Canyon. Dades Gorge was the following night on our way to Aït Ben Haddou. The hotels were nice, but the bedding was similarly “not so clean.” At some point during the night at Dades Gorge, I stopped caring about the sleeping accommodations so much and relaxed. I really didn’t think about where we were going next, or even where we would be tomorrow. My attitude changed to one of excitement and purpose to one of appreciation and enjoyment.

We bought two carpets and shipped them home. Lisa and I are both very excited to have physical things to help remember out trip when we return home.

Mud Architecture

We rolled into Aït Ben Haddou around 2pm and we left the hotel around 4:30 to walk into the old village. This was the most fantastic experience I had in Morocco. We got a private tour of an old Kasbah through its multiple stories and not-so-solid floors. Up a few hundred stone step paths we arrived at the top of the hill and the view was amazing. The new town on one side, the sun setting behind the mountain behind it and on the other side just rolling hills with Altas mountains in the distance.

We arrived minutes before sunset and witnessed the sun wink out over the mountains. I think they might be the first time the kids have seen a clear, unobscured sunset. It was beautiful. We got up to leave and turned around to be accosted with the amazing colors of purple, pink, orange, yellow and blue. The distant mountains took something that could not be captures in photos, only in paintings. I tried to capture some pictures and while I got the colors, my hands weren’t quite steady enough of the exposure bracketing I needed and they came out a bit ghosted. When I look at the pictures, I have the memories and I suppose that is actually what counts.

Marrakech (part 2)

The next day we headed back to Marrakech and the Andalous Hotel (the only hotel we will stay in more than one night). Checking in, the room was wonderful. Consider my perspective adjusted. We went to lunch and I sat by the pool for a few hours relaxing and reviewing work things. I’ll note that at lunch I had a delicious salad and girls had pasta, I think everyone was quite happy with the changeup from Moroccan food.

The next morning we went on a walking tour of Morocco with Mustafa, only a different Mustafa. I didn’t enjoy this experience as much, but the sights were interesting. We saw the big Mosque, the Palace of Bahia, the Medusa Ben Youssef, and walked through the markets. As we were walking, I passed a shop with old license places on the wall. One was from Maryland and quite old (I’m guessing from 1937 given its design). I stopped to take a picture and the shop keeper almost attacked me. He jammed his hand in front of my phone and yelled, “No, I want to sell.” This, ladies and gentleman, is called being a dipshit. So, instead of the free marketing he would have received given a picture on my blog telling you to buy awesome old license plates, I’ll tell you instead that you should search him out, waste his time negotiating and then not buying anything because he’s a dipshit. I got a fairly bad deal in the market on some clothes (I really don’t know what clothes should cost, so I didn’t know this until my wife told me afterwards). Lisa clearly should have done the negotiations. Anyway, Tori and Gianna absolutely love their new baggy pants and Zoe is thoroughly embarrassed by mine, and that is priceless.

I figure that I’ll end this with a list of likes and dislikes:

Likes

• the landscape is amazing
• tagine’s are some good food., we’ll have to get one when we return home.
• the old cities and mud construction are pleasing to look at
• the experience of going on a camel ride and sleeping in the Sahara
• the 4G mobile network here is superb and cheap, if you want to work remotely from Morocco, no problem
• everything is inexpensive

Dislikes

• it’s dry; really dry
• tourism is the second largest industry in Morocco, but service isn’t a strong skill
• the fact that everything everywhere seems perpetually under construction