10 Jun 2013 |
Ban Chamni, Buriram district, Thailand
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After a few hours of shared jeep, 15hrs of train (general class, you don't have a seat, you just squeeze where you can), two days in Kolkata, and a few hours of plane, we finally end up in Thailand! Nothing to do in Bangkok, we go directly to my old friend Pierre who lives in the countryside in Isan, one of the poorest region of Thailand. He lives there with his wife Bam, they married last January, and her children Tai and Ellie. I was planning to stay only for a few days, but I end up staying for two weeks there, countless drinking and chilling, barbecues and other good food. Hard to leave! In the meantime Valerie decides she wants to go North while I prefer to continue South, so it's time for us to part.
25 May 2013 |
Rumtek, Sikkim, India
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We leave Gangtok walking, going to Rumtek 24km away. But after the 8km down, Valerie cannot walk anymore so we wait for the bus. Finally a guy called Renshen stops and offers to take us, and we end up staying in Martam, at the childrens hostel ran by his father for the night :)
Then we go to The Bamboo Retreat, which is a tourist resort in Rumtek where they want to introduce 'permaculture' in their garden and need a little help.
So after being students, we are now teachers and explain them some good ways of doing mulching and warm composting. Also there are lots of medicinal -or not- plants and vegetables in the garden, so we make an inventory of all these and label them properly.
It is quite strange for us to stay in that big hotel, for free, and to be treated like custormer, but it's also a good way to rest, out of big cities, and to be able to have walks in the hills and forests around, despite the bad weather and the leeches.
15 May 2013 |
Gangtok, Sikkim, India
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It's time for us to get to the higher Himalayas! So we set off to Sikkim. Sikkim is a small state of India, bordered by Nepal, Tibet and Bhutan. It is home of the mount Kangchenjunga, the third highest in the world culminating at 8585 meters high, and to countless wonderful landscapes and flowers.
But here start the difficulties. First you need a permit to get there, which is free and easy to get at the border, but then as soon as you want to go anywhere, you need another permit, that you can obtain anloy from travel agencies when you hire guides and vehicles (and you cannot be mixed with Indian tourists to lower any cost). No way to just walk freely in the moutains and enjoy the view. Also the raining season is one month early, which means it's raining everyday and foggy and cloudy all the time (despite that it's still hot).
So we first spend three days in the capital, Gangtok, wondering what to do next while enjoying that cute mountain town surrounded by temples, mountains and waterfalls.
12 May 2013 |
Darjeeling, West Bengal, India
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We finally decide to go to Darjeeling, the city. We take the famous Darjeeling Himalayan Railway which normally connects Siliguri to Darjeeling, but only the part from Kurseong is open due to some works on the ways. Darjeeling is also foggy and rainy, not much to do there, we stay only one night.
11 May 2013 |
Anand Gown, West Bengal, India
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After long hours in the hot train (I did some 65hrs of train in one week, too much!) and a few more in a shared jeep climbing the moutains, we finally meet Pratik at Kurseong who took us to his village: Anand Gown. Anand Gown means 'peace village' in Nepali, and that's what it is: it's a peaceful village in the middle of the tea plantations, there are eleven houses, from three families.
Everyone welcomes us, we spend a lot of time with Pratik and his sister Neha, but also with their uncle Sudeep and Pratik's good friend Arpan, but also lot of people from the village and villages around. We feel at home very quickly.
Our first day is very sunny but the other are foggy, cloudy and rainy, the raining season is coming. But it's good like that, we can finally enjoy some fresh air.
So we spend there a week, between walks in the hills and the forests, visit to the market, quality time with the people in the village, and occasionnal drinks with Sudeep-daju. Valerie learns how to knit, I learn some Nepali and how to read and write sanskrit. Life is good!
2 May 2013 |
Varanasi, Uttar Pradesh, India
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After three days in Khajuraho, we go to Varanasi. Varanasi is one of the most sacred city of India, a main place for bathing in the Ganga river and for dead people to be burnt before the ashes to be thrown in the river. It is common belief that being burnt there will make one go faster to the Nirvana.
It gives a very strange atmosphere to the city, one would cross dead corteges every now and then in the small streets of the old city, lots of differents gurus and other religious people around, and countless tourists who want to experience a bit of Hinduist spirituality.
All in all, mixed with a dying heat (like 45°C) and some sickness I had probably contracted from bad food in the train from Chennai, it doesn't make my stay very pleasant. I'm still lusting for cold and mountains, far away from the big crowd.
1 May 2013 |
Khajuraho, Madhya Pradesh, India
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The South of India being so hot and increasing, I want to go North, in the mountains. I join Valerie, she has been in India for some 3 months already, it's good to be with someone familiar even if I was liking traveling alone. We meet in Jhansi, the crossing of most Indian railways, and go to Khajuraho.
Khajuraho is famous for being home of a lot of temples, built around the 10th-11th centuries. It is a very touristic place, even if it's not the busy season (so hot!) there are still a lot of tourists around. So there we are visiting temples and places, I am not very used to it but I try hard :D
There we have contact with Sandeep, who make us stay at Buphenda and Pushpendra's family, they take good care as being good tourist guides, but that sometime cost us more money than we were willing to spend. So it is good to finally be in India, with Indian families, Auroville was a good transition from Europe but didn't have the same taste!
26 Apr 2013 |
Kottakarai, Tamil Nadu, India
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I finally end up at Sapney farm. Sapney farm is the home of a project -called heal the soil- which aims at developping organic home food growing in Indian villages. It is located in Kottakarai village, next to Auroville, but it is not part of the Auroville project. There I meet lot of people with different background and stories, I take part of the work, help in the village and learn a lot of different things. And also I can discover Auroville.
Auroville is some kind of an utopia. It aims at being a laboratory of the human development. It was created in 1968, at a place where it was only sand and dust and is now an area with plenty of experimental project, mainly around food growing and personal development. It works as an anarchist group of communities -usually called settlement- which try to cooperate together to grow in harmony.
It counts 2300 inhabitants (but aims at 50000), of which 40% are Indians, and French and Germans being a big part also; there are also between 1000 and 2000 volunteers helping at the various projects, and it employs around 5000 people from the villages around which are usually pay the minimum wage (a few dollars per day).
In the 10 days I spend there, it is hard to make an opinion for myself. Sometime it looks to me like a nice place to live, full of interesting people with lots of ideas. But some other times I feel like it is an european settlement which uses cheap India to have an easy life...
As Martin says, you have to live with your contradictions, it is hard for everything to be perfect and to follow all of your principles. So for sure I will go back there sometime, for a much longer time to try to have a much deeper understanding of that place and learn from the people there.
17 Apr 2013 |
Dubai, United Arab Emirates
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Monday morning, I wake up early morning in Yerevan. Call the Indian embassy at 9am. "We will have your visa tonight". After some negotiation, "come at 11.50". I arrive at the embassy top on time, meet the consul handing my passport freshly stamped to the secretary who gives it to me.
So now it's time, I hitchhike to Tbilissi in Georgia, it's only 280km away but it takes more than 6hrs driving, I manage to make it in 8hrs. Some time to have a some chacha with Mickael at the hostel I stayed last time before I go to the airport, Check-in at 4am, 3hrs of flight, I land in Dubai at 9am.
I didn't expect much of Dubai, but I was positively surprised walking in the city center which looked like a cosmopolitan jungle, a bit like New York City. But then outside are kilometers of skyscrapers, masterpiece of architectures in the middle of the desert, built by all those Indians, Pakistanis and others low-cost worker, and they probably will never be able to get in once...
After 10hrs under the strong Arabian sun, back to the airport, 3hrs again of Flight and I land in Chennai. It is 4am. I manage to find the local train to reach the city, have a tea (ahhhh, Indian tea, I had missed you so much!!!), and finally, not really knowing where to go, I jump in a bus going to Pondicherry...
15 Apr 2013 |
Աբովյան, Հայաստան
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From now, if I want to go anywhere farther East I will need visas. That is the part I really don't like. Papers. Documents. Plane tickets. Hotel reservations... I don't like that.
And there is not too many embassies in Tbilisi. Iran and India are in Yerevan. Pakistan is in Baku. But I would need a visa to go to Azerbaidjan...
"From the 10th January 2013 on EU Citizens DO NOT need a visa for Armenia anymore." Ok, Yerevan, here I come! I'll start with the Indian visa. Oh yes, Indian administration, one of the worst I have ever experienced, especially when I was there 6 years ago. So after three days at trying to negotiate not having to show all these documents, I give up and book a plane. Anyway, if I want to cross Pakistan it will be even harder to get a visa, and money-wise it would much more expensive to buy all Azerbaidjan, Iran and Pakistan visa, the latest I'm not even sure to get. So be it, plane then :(
So I spend two weeks in Armenia (Indian administration: they send my application to France...). The whole time I stay at Srbuhi's place in Abovian (a suburb of Yerevan), she's wonderful little girl full of energy and good vibes. The weather goes from too hot to stormy one day or the other, so I manage to go out of Yerevan only one day (the only contact I have who lives in the mountains is stuck in Yerevan the whole week...), but I discover amazing places and landscapes, and warm people, definitely worth exploring more some other time...
