Tag Archives: RTW travel

Photo Friday – Offerings in Bali

5 Oct

We were fortunate to be touring temples in Ubud, Bali during a holiday based around the full moon (though the celebration only happens either twice per year, or once every seven months…we keep getting conflicting information).  The temples were packed with locals, the women dressed in brightly colored silks while the men wore crisp white shirts and patterned sarongs.   We hung around on the sidelines and watched dozens of women parade by, carrying the offerings – gigantic platters of fruits, roasted duck, and sweets – on their heads.

Tags: , , , , , ,

It’s The Little Things – Essential Items for Long-Term Travel

2 Oct

Photo by Natmandu on Flickr

Earlier today, as we were trying to avoid walking through a thick stretch of tourist market in Ubud, Bali,  we were talking about how light we feel without the need to have all the ‘stuff’ that we regarded as essential for our daily lives when we were in NYC.  Our priorities have obviously shifted, and as such, our essential items have also shifted.

When we began to gather our gear for this trip we spent a lot of time thinking about what would suit our needs best.  Our packs can only hold so many things, so we wanted to make sure that we weren’t filling the space with frivolous items.  We searched other long-term travelers’ packing lists and made lists of our own.  We bought, and returned what seemed like a million different items of quick-dry clothing.  We were even running around on the last day before we left trying to gather those last minute items that we had forgotten about.

A few months ago we finished posting our own packing lists in the hopes that others might find them useful.  Today we’d like to narrow those items down into a list of little things that, as long-term travelers, we have found to be the most useful over the course of the last year.

Cheap flip-flops – This might seem obvious, but if you plan on staying in dorms these are essential for avoiding foot plague and other nastiness in the common showers.

Packing cubes – I never really understood these, but now that we pack up and move every few days I see that they are a huge lifesaver.  Nearly everything in our packs goes into a cube, and then the cubes go into our bags in a jigsaw-like manner to maximize space.  It makes it so that we can each get packed, empty to full, in just a few minutes.

Small combination lock– Again, this might seem obvious to some, but we’ve used our locks for everything from hostel lockers, to just locking our bags every day when we leave our rooms (we lock the laptops, etc inside them).  Sure, people could slice the bag open to get to our stuff, but it prevents opportunistic theft.  We also carry a little package of zip ties that we’ve used to secure smaller bags when we’ve had to leave items with a hostel (like when we go on multi-day treks).

Headphone splitter – Sometimes we want to just have a night in to be ‘normal’ and watch a movie.  These allow us to watch movies together on one laptop.

Quickdry towel – This is not my favorite item (it’s like drying yourself with a chamois), but has been one of the most useful.  We’ve stayed in many places, mostly in S. America, that didn’t provide towels, so these were essential.  In addition, when we hand-wash clothes we find that they dry more quickly when you wring them out in a towel, and these towels not only absorb tons of water, but they dry in only a few hours.

Smartphone – We brought Justin’s phone with us, even though we cancelled his plan (and it doesn’t use a SIM card so we can’t use it for calls), because we use it for an alarm clock, emergency wi-fi,  and GPS.  If we connect to wi-fi we can download maps of our destinations, which is incredibly helpful when you arrive in a new city and aren’t exactly sure where to go.  It was also essential in India where they don’t always announce train stops…without this we definitely would have missed some of our stops!

Multi plug thing – This is one of those plugs that allows you can charge 3-4 things at once.  With two laptops, two I-pods, two kindles and two cameras this allows us to make sure we’re always charged up and ready to go, even if we get a room with only one outlet.  It’s important to just get a two-pronged plug unless your voltage adapter allows for grounded plugs.  No need to go fancy with this, we picked ours up at a hardware store for less than a dollar.

Sleep sheet – We never would have expected it, but this has turned out to be one our most useful, non-clothing item on this trip.  They are made to be used when a place lacks sheets, has questionable cleanliness, or to put inside a rental sleeping bag.  We’ve used them for all these purposes, but also for loads more, including – warmth on long, cold, bus rides; as sarongs when we need to enter temples in Bali; as beach towels (they are huge, so your whole body fits on them!); and as a laundry bag.

As a counter to our favorite items, we figured we should include some of the crap we didn’t need after all:

Money belts – Justin doesn’t carry a wallet, so that solves his pick-pocket problem.  We do have an Eagle Creek money belt that we really like, and he used to wear it on the long bus rides in S. America, but honestly, we haven’t used it in at least 5 months.  We keep it around just in case. I had a more traditional money belt, and again, I used it once or twice on overnight bus rides, but other than that it just sat in my pack and wasted a little bit of space.  I got rid of this after 6 months.

Pacsafe – We got it ‘just in case’.  We NEVER used it.  We sent it home after 6 months..

Ethernet cord – In some places this might be a good idea, but we’ve found that most places have wi-fi, and if they don’t, they don’t often have wired internet either.  Not a huge waste of space, but totally unnecessary.

Tell us, what are your ‘must-have’ travel items?

Tags: , , , ,

Photo Friday – Prayer Wheels in Nepal

28 Sep

One of our favorite parts of hiking in Nepal was coming across one of the many prayer wheel walls.  Some were ornate and meticulously cared for, while others were made of old coffee cans with the prayers hand painted on them.  We always took care to walk down the correct side, and spin each wheel as we passed by.

Tags: , , , , , ,

Photo Friday – Angkor Wat, Cambodia

14 Sep

I first went to Angkor Wat in 2005, and while there were plenty of visitors, it was nothing like our experience there last week.  Tourism is booming in Cambodia and has definitely brought some changes.  One of them is the inability for people to go climbing about on the temples as they please.  In 2005 I snapped this shot of a monk climbing up the central tower in Angkor Wat.  There was almost nobody else around and he had stopped to catch his breath, or perhaps just to admire the view and I happened to look up and catch him gazing out at the front of the temple complex.  Today, you can’t just make your way up the crumbling stone steps, they have built wooden platform stairs on top of the originals, you have to wait in a long line to go up, and you are restricted to a brief 20 minute visit.  It was sort of a bummer to not be able to wander at our leisure, though the new rules do make it safer, and better for the preservation of the temples.

Tags: , , , , ,

Photo Friday – The Annapurna Circuit, Nepal

7 Sep

Hiking up to the Thorong-La Pass on the Annapurna Circuit in Nepal was one of the most difficult days of our 12 day trek.  We were both feeling a bit loopy from the altitude, and I had been battling a little headache since the night before, which was creating a bunch of stress about whether I was going to suffer the consequences of altitude sickness before I managed to make it to the top of the pass.  We were so immersed in our own thoughts that it took a while for us to notice that the thick fog that we’d been hiking through for the last hour was no longer surrounding us.  We turned around and realized that we’d broken through the clouds and could finally see some of the peaks behind us.  We had just a few minutes of this view before the clouds rose up and obscured the views again.  It was a good reminder to stop every once in a while and take a look at the majesty that surrounded us.

Tags: , , , , , ,

The Nepal Curveball

5 Sep

We went to Nepal to get away from the cities and the pollution and the general chaos of constant travel.  We knew that hiking the Annapurna Circuit would be both challenging and rewarding, and our entire trip to this lovely country revolved around the hike.  That is, until I got sick.

We had just finished our 150 kilometer trek and we were incredibly sore, but feeling really good about successfully carrying our own gear and still making it all the way through on our original schedule.  I went to bed that night dreaming of relaxing back in Kathmandu with a giant burger and a beer.

The next morning I woke up feeling, off. It was cloudy and we suspected our flight out of Jomsom would be cancelled, but we dragged ourselves out of bed at 6am and headed to the airport anyways.  By 8am it was crystal clear that not only was the flight not going to happen, but also that I was getting sick.  I spent the next 20 hours attempting to fight off a fever and shivering uncontrollably despite being buried in both of our sleeping bags AND two huge blankets.  I figured this was my body’s way of getting back at me for all the long and punishing days of hiking.

The next morning I still felt unwell, but our flight was set to go so I rallied myself and managed to survive both the flight as well as the very long and bumpy bus ride back to Kathmandu.  I figured once I had a good shower and some clean clothes I would be feeling much better.

I was wrong.

Justin kindly took a photo of me feeling quite ill. In retrospect, I don’t look nearly as bad as I felt at this point.

I woke up in the middle of the night, feverish again, and started to worry that something was really wrong.  By the next afternoon I still had the fever and it seemed to be getting worse.  We started to think I might have gotten malaria, despite taking anti-malarial meds all through India.  Justin called the US Embassy to get a recommendation for a doctor and we were directed to the CIWEC clinic, which caters mostly to foreigners and expats.

A few hours and many vials full of blood later I was informed that I would not be going back to the hotel that day.  The good news is that I didn’t have Malaria.  The not so good news is that they thought I had Typhoid Fever, though they sent out some blood cultures just to be sure.

Typhoid Fever is typically transmitted to travelers by an infected person who does not wash up properly after using the toilet, and then prepares food.   I had gotten the vaccine but the doctor said that while it’s ok to have, it’s really not much more protection than having an umbrella with a huge hole in it during a thunderstorm.

I was started on a series of both oral and IV antibiotics and told that the fever would likely not be getting any better until the infection was cleared.  They were right. I had a raging fever, reaching 102.5 – 103 degrees most days, for a total of 10 days.  The fever was accompanied by stomach pain, a complete inability to eat more than a few bites of toast at a time, and some of the worst headaches I’ve ever had.

During one of my better moments I manage to use the hospital’s wi-fi to break up the monotony of the day.

After a few days the blood tests came back, but they were all negative.  After that I had to give blood samples every few days so that they could test for other types of bacteria and viruses, and in the meantime they added two more antibiotics to the mix just to cover all the bacterial bases.

Finally, after what seemed like an eternity in the hospital, though it was really just about a week, the fever broke and stayed away for 24 hours.  Armed with baggies full of the rest of the antibiotics, I was released from the clinic, even though there was never a definitive diagnosis as to what I had.  The medical records I was given when we left the hospital state that it was a case of “possible Typhoid” since the blood tests apparently often come back negative when up to 50% of the time they should be positive.  It’s been 5 days, I’ve finished the antibiotics, and am finally feeling more like myself again.

After all our time preparing for the Annapurna trek, it’s frustrating that we didn’t have any time to revel in the accomplishment immediately after completing the journey.  The illness came on so fast, and so strong, that it seems like that’s the only thing that happened in Nepal.  We’ve finally managed to pull the hundreds of photos of the hike off our memory cards and now we need to sit down and make a point to go through them and focus on those 12 days of struggle and success so that the better memories can rise up to the surface and overtake the blur that the fever created.

In the meantime, we are hanging out in Thailand, re-acquainting ourselves with our old friend ‘beer’, and making plans to go visit my brother, who lives a life full of awesome on a little island in the Gulf of Thailand.

Tags: , , , ,

Photo Friday – The Taj Mahal, India

31 Aug

The Taj Mahal is one of the worlds most well-known pieces of architecture, and seeing it in person is just as impressive as you think it will be.  We certainly took our fair share of the standard straight-on photo from the beginning of the gardens, but we also liked the views you get as you peek out massive doorways of the mosques that sit on either side of the Taj Mahal.

Tags: , , , , , ,

Photo Friday – Taking Salt Flat Photos in Bolivia

24 Aug

We’ve seen a lot of optical illusion type photos taken in the Salt Flats of Uyuni that come out terribly fuzzy, so we thought we’d share with you how we got ours to be relatively clear.

In the photo above, Bryan looks like he is about to eat Kristin.  To get a shot like this Kristin had to be far enough away from Bryan to appear small enough to sit on the spoon.  You can eyeball this and have the person in the background move as necessary.  Whoever is taking the photo needs to be down on the ground, relative to whoever is in the foreground of the shot.  From here it’s just a matter of lining them up so that she appears to be all the way on the spoon instead of just above, or below it.  In some cases it’s easier for the photographer to move, in others you can adjust the subjects slightly.

The real trick, however, is getting all the subject to be in focus.  To accomplish this we used the manual settings on our cameras, though really you just need to be able to adjust the aperture.  We set the aperture to a high number (the higher the number, the smaller the opening that lets the light in) and then let the camera set the shutter speed.  In the first photo, we had the aperture at f29, with a 1/60 shutter speed.  We took 8 or 10 photos, adjusting the focus slightly in each one until we were happy.  Sometimes it works to focus somewhere in between the subjects, other times it works better to focus on either the front or the back subject.  At this point I can’t remember what worked best in each photo, but just take loads and you’ll be sure to get at least a few that turn out.

For some, like the jumping shots with the guidebook, the photographer has to get right down onto the ground in order for the effect to work correctly.

Again, the key for us seemed to be getting the aperture at a high setting, with a slower shutter speed.  For the jump shot we used f25 with a 1/80 shutter speed.

Good luck, and don’t forget to bring some props!

Tags: , , , ,

Road Trip – Bolivian Salt Flats

21 Aug

*If the weather held up, we should be done with our trek and chilling out in Jomsom.  We might even be on our way back to Kathmandu!*

The salt flats in Bolivia seem to go on forever!

For a country that is quite small in comparison to some of its neighbors, Bolivia has a lot to offer in terms of travel possibilities.  There are mountains, volcanoes, jungles, lakes and deserts, and it’s relatively easy to move from one place to another.  We were intrigued by the possibilities and one of the major ‘must see’ items on our list was the famous salt flat near Uyuni.  There are a myriad of ways to visit this area, but since we were making our way up from Argentina, we chose to do a 4 day jeep tour that began in Tupiza, and ended in Uyuni.

We’d already been travelling with our friends Kristin and Bryan from Happy To Be Homeless and were planning on meeting up with another friend, Eric from Ric and Roll, in Tupiza.  It’s easy enough to cruise into town, especially with a ready-made group of 4-5 people, and book a trip leaving within a day or two. We set out early in the morning, our packs strapped to the top of our Landcruiser, ready to see some of Bolivia’s highest lakes and desert formations.

Over the next few days we drove hundreds of kilometers on roads that often weren’t really roads at all, sometimes on ledges that were terrifying, or through dry riverbeds dotted with massive rocks. We spotted small villages, huge lakes, towering volcanoes and tons of flamingos.  That’s right, flamingos.  As it turns out, something about the altitude and composition of the mineral lakes (some of which are poisonous to humans) makes a perfect habitat for flamingos, of which there are thousands.  It was fascinating to see the bright bursts of pink these birds  provided in the otherwise stark landscapes.

One stop had us soaking in a hot spring, which was especially nice after being quite cold for most of the trip.

One of the most surprising sights was the huge amount of quinoa that dotted the landscape.  It’s a colorful crop and farming it is one of the major sources of income for locals in this area.The other common income source is raising llamas, which were also quite abundant.  Many of the animals have “pierced” ears, with different color poms that serve to identify them as they wander around the plains.

At our highest point, over 5,000 meters, there were amazing sulfurous hot mud pits that boiled and gurgled like a horrible stew.  It was both terribly smelly and oddly fascinating.

As we neared the end of the trip we wandered among huge rock formations that seemed to come out of nowhere.

When we finally arrived in Uyuni we took some time to visit the train cemetery before tucking in for the night since we had to wake up before dawn to make it to the salt flats before sunrise.  This was much more interesting than we anticipated, with all kinds of old trains abandoned and sunk into the ground.  Some clever folks even created playground equipment, including see-saws and a swing, from old train parts.

The salt flats were just as incredible as we had imagined, and we couldn’t have asked for a better sunrise.

After driving far out onto the flats to have space all to ourselves, we spent hours, literally, taking fun optical illusion photos with the expansive white background.

For more photos, check out the slideshow below.  Click to expand it to full-screen in flickr, or to see the individual photos.

Word On The Street

—————————————————————————–

There are loads of different ways to organize a trip to Southwest Bolivia and the salt flats.  It’s a huge tourist draw, so there are literally dozens of companies clamoring for your dollars, which is all the more reason to be really clear about what you expect from a trip.  You can do the four-day trip that we did from Tupiza, but you can also go from Uyuni and do it in the opposite direction.  We used La Torre Tours and were really happy with them.  Tupiza Tours is another company we looked at that gets good reviews from travelers.

With our group of 5 we paid about $150 per person for the whole trip, excluding the park entry fees and tips for the driver and cook.  Our driver was excellent, and though he spoke no English, he made a serious effort to communicate with basic Spanish and to speak slowly for us.  We were able to understand him most of the time and if you have a basic level of Spanish you should be fine.  If not, you can pay more for an English-speaking guide.  Our cook was very sweet, and the meals were basic, but plentiful.

If you arrive on your own, you can either meet up with other travelers and form a group, or shop around and get a space in a partially filled jeep.  Tours leaving from Tupiza usually have 4 people per jeep, while those leaving from Uyuni tend to cram 6 people in.

If you can’t, or aren’t interested in a 4-day tour, you can go for shorter routes from either Tupiza or Uyuni.  If you are really short on time, just head into Uyuni and sign up for a one day tour of the salt flats, it should be cheap, and totally worth it.

Tags: , , , , ,

Photo Friday – Dome of the Rock, Jerusalem

17 Aug

*Right now we should be getting ready to cross the Thorung La Pass on the Annapurna Circuit in Nepal.  Cross your fingers for us, this sucker is nearly 18,000 feet!*

The Dome of the Rock, in Jerusalem, is particularly gorgeous because of its vibrant tile-work in the midst of the white stone buildings that surround it.   We’re always blown away by the tile and mosaic work that is common in Islamic architecture, and this is one of the few buildings that is decorated on the outside just as intricately as most others are on the inside.

Tags: , , , , ,

← Older Entries
Newer Entries →