Rishikesh (days 4 & 5)

On Thursday, we flew from Jaipur to Delhi, Delhi to Deradun, and then took a harrowing hour taxi ride to Rishikesh in a Ambassador car, which is a car designed back in the 50's but still manufactured today...and in case you are wondering, no, it does not have seat belts. The city of Rishikesh is about a 5 hour drive north of Delhi in the foothills of the Himalayas and bills itself as the birthplace of yoga. Back in the 60's, the Beatles spent a few months here studying under the Maharashi and writing songs that would eventually make it onto the White Album. The mix of yoga culture, Beatles-history, and backpacking launch site make for lots of young college-aged yoga girls, burley/stoked adventure-seeking guys, and TONS of dirty dread-locked hippies from America and Europe

Fortunately, we are not staying in the city proper, but are about 10 km out of town at Rishikesh Valley, a tiny retreat on a tributary of the Ganges that is composed of about 8 huts made out of bamboo. Each hut has a bed, tiny table, bathroom (sink and toilet), and electricity. There are no showers, a few spiders, and lots of monkeys in the trees above. That said, the couple who own and run Rishikesh Valley (Anand and Subudhi) are the calmest, loveliest people who might have the coolest job ever. A few tidbits so far: all of the huts have to be rebuilt each year after monsoon season when they head 70km north to the forests to harvest bamboo and bamboo grass; the owners & 2 others cook ridiculously good all-veg meals for residents each mealtime (including calmer meals of rice and bean curd for Ian who is dealing with a touch of Delhi belly); there's yoga every morning (of course) that comes with an anatomy lesson of what each pose does/helps with; almost all of the plants around the grounds are herbs or have medicinal qualities and Anand gave us a tour of the sprawling garden as we drank chai masalas when we arrived.

We took a trip into town today to explore Rishikesh, buy bug spray (doh!), and hop online. We're planning to go white water rafting tomorrow on the Ganges, and then relax on Sunday. On Monday we head back to Delhi to hang w Kate & Aaron and brave the markets, food stalls, and chaos of the city. I already wish we could stay here longer but I think Ian and I are a bit too fidgety to chill out enough to sit still for more than one day...and I think we will be in desperate need of a shower and laundry.

Jaipur (days 2 and 3)

Yesterday, Meg and I traveled from Delhi down to the city of Jaipur which was a 4 1/2 hour train ride southwest of Delhi. We took a taxi from our Delhi hotel to the train station and got our first good glimpse at driving in India. Once again, I was amazed at the utter chaos of the situation and even more amazed that this society functions given this level of chaos. All of Indian drivers subscribe to two simple rules: 1) you must have your hand on the horn the entire time you are moving and 2) there are no other rules. It pretty much is a free-for-all between the thousands of cars, motorcycles, scooters, mopeds, auto-rickshaws, bicycle rickshaws, bicycles, tractors, pedestrians, dogs, and cows who all use the streets to get from point A to point B. In our 40 minute drive to the train station we drove on fast moving highways, pedestrian crammed street roads, animal filled alley ways, and pothole filled dirt access roads. It is also worth noting that we often found ourselves driving agaist the flow of traffic, which surprisingly received less honking than when we drove with traffic.

The train station was not nearly as crazy as I had anticipated as it was on the outskirts of Dehli and used mostly by the locals. My dad had given me the sage advice to hire a porter at the train station to ensure that you get to the right train. But there were no porters to be found because, apparently, foreigners don't depart from this particular train station. Fortunately there were only two platforms and we found our way in board ok.

We spent the next 4 hours relaxing on the train while the Indian countryside, which consisted of acres of wheat fields, small squarish farm houses, and countless piles of burning trash, passed by outside our window.

Our time in Jaipur was spent visiting various very interesting historical buildings (Amber Fort, City Palace, Albert Hall, Hama Mahal) and negotiating with auto-rickshaw drivers (aka tuk tuk drivers). Negotiating with these guys can be boiled down into the following 11 steps. Step 1 occurs before any words are even spoken; when the driver easily identifies us as "white people". Step 2: we ask "keetna?", which means how much? Step 3: we get our inflated white people price of 250 Rs ($5). Step 4: we divide quote by 10. Step 5: the driver explains to us that the 5 blocks we want to go is actually 20 km. Step 6: we see his untruth and raise him a boldface lie by saying we traveled this same route yesterday for 50 Rs. Step 7: he counters with 150 Rs. Step 8: we perform the "walk away". Step 9: he calls after us that he will take us for 80 ($1.60). Step 10: we counter with 70 ($1.40). Step 11: he accepts, but only because it is slow today. While this negotiation is going on, a swarm of tuk tuk drivers will have assembled around us. This can work either for us or against us in the negotiating process. Sometimes the tuk tuk drivers start negotiating against each other and the price gets driven down to the 70 Rs. quickly. Other times, they collude to keep the price high, which forces us to walk 5 extra steps during the "walk away". After all of this, there is usually one more long and painful Step 12. Step 12 occurs when you realize the driver actually doesn't know where you want to go so he just takes you to the textile shop where he earns 40% commission. All this is very draining, but part of the whole Indian experience.

Tomorrow we are heading to Rishikesh, which is supposedly a more relaxing part of India...but with everything being relative, it probably means something equivalent to getting stuck in a room with flickering fluorescent lights and a smoke alarm with a low battery warning going off intermittently.

Traveling (and blogging) again

In January of this year, Meg and I decided to travel to India to visit with our friends, Aaron and Kate Katzman. So we booked our tickets, not really knowing what we were getting ourselves into. Now that we are here, I realize that it was a very good thing that we didn't over research our trip prior to buying our tickets because we probably wouldn't have come.

We are traveling here for two weeks and plan on exploring Delhi, Jaipur, Rishikesh, and Varanasi while gorging ourselves on amazing food. This latter bit, is what I'm most excited about.

As i am writing, we have just finished our first day in India. We traveled into Old Delhi to the chandni chowk market, which our friend Aaron says is about as crazy as India gets. It lived up to this description and then some. After many years of hearing dad talk about the chaos of India, I was not surprised by anything, and yet, i was still overwhelmed by the full effect of India (throngs of people, constant car/scooter/rickshaw honking, garbage everywhere, bad smells of mysterious origin, dogs sleeping in gutters, and the occasional cow). It is the most insanely chaotic place imaginable.

To get to the market, we took the metro, which is an elevated train - and a very nice one even by US standards. But in Indian fashion, it was still a crazy experience because we were absolutely packed into the cars like sardines. It was really an uncomfortable and overwhelming experience. Fortunately, I was at least a foot taller than everyone so I could see and breathe freely over the mass of hot sweaty Indian men. (Meg was lucky enough to avoid this and ride in comfort in the women's only car. I could see her in the next car up, riding in comfort, free to move around.) While boarding the train on the way back from the market, I got shoved into the metro car by a huge surge of people trying to all board at once. I reached up with both hands to the handrail in the middle to avoid losing my balance and getting trampled. By the time I got my balance, removed one of my hands from the bar and shoved it back down through the mass of bodies to my pant pocket I found that my wallet had been pinched. Luckily, I didn't have anything in there except about $40 in rupees. All my valuables we either in the safe in the hotel or in my money belt. Good thing leather wallets are pretty cheap here.

We spent the evening going to dinner at a southern indian restaurant with our hosts and their house guests. The food was so delicious. As I am learning, northern Indian food is what we typically can find in America. But south Indian food is harder to find and features many different kinds of flat pancakey types of food, such as Dosa's, that get dipped into various types of dipping sauces. I am sure that I will be craving non-Indian food by the end of the trip, but for now, I'm in heaven. (and no, I did not eat any mangos)

Tomorrow we are taking a train down to Jaipur. Hopefully tomorrow is a little less eventful.

our little helper

Ian and I worked on the pergola floor this weekend.
Rufus helped, too.


He double checked that the line was straight.



He made sure that the ground was level.



And he ensured that our support beams were sturdy.



Good work this weekend, Rufus.

Rufus Update 2

As you can imagine, Rufus has grown a lot over the last 6 months. Here are some highlights of him...

We also got a cat named Borris for Rufus to play with. The cat apparently didn't sign up for this.

6 months later...

So posting to the blog has never been my specialty, but this latest hiatus is ridiculous.  Sorry to all my readers (mom and dad) for keeping you hanging.  However, given the fact that i talk to you guys every week, you should be well aware of what is going on in my life.  

Today, i thought i would give you an update on all our yardwork.  Exciting huh?  Although i could show the progress on the upstairs, after 7 months it looks much the same as it did the last time i posted.  Makes me wonder where all the money we have spent has gone.

The first picture is what our yard looked like a few years before we bought our house (Funny story on how i got the picture...i downloaded this picture from a "for sale" listing of our house in April.  Apparently a previous realtor had re-listed the house for sale mistakenly for a few days.  No one asked to buy it in that short period of time.)  

As you will notice, Meg and I have done quite a bit of damage.   We first removed all the concrete that covered about 60% of the yard.  We had a bit of help on this part of the backyard landscaping.  When we did our 2009 scavenger hunt we listed "remove concrete slab in our backyard" as one of our clues and put a ridiculous amount of points next to it.  One team actually removed a section of it for us!  (they only got partial points because they only removed a part of the slab.)  Then in early winter we started our campaign of deforestation...starting with the little charlie brown pine tree that soon became our xmas tree.

Once the first tree fell, the flood gates opened and we moved/cut down all the trees in the backyard in preparation for our garden boxes.  

The gardens are mostly planted...now all we need is some grass.  We are also working on a pergola in the back corner.  We hope to make some good progress on that this weekend. 

   

Rufus Update

Our darling little puppy is all growns up.  Over the past 4 weeks, Rufus has lost all his baby teeth, grown a few inches and put on about 15 pounds.  He has also managed to get pink eye and a persistent bout of the runs.  Here are some random pics from the last couple of weeks.

About to be flattened by his play friend.

Playing in the snow today with our neighbors dog.  Rufus owns him!

He is not growling or smiling.  He is sleeping.  We pushed back his lips and dried off his teeth so his gums wouldn't slide back.

The very last bathroom post.

You will be thankful to hear that this is the last bathroom post. After 11 months, ladies and gentlemen, the downstairs bathroom is done. It was actually done right before Thanksgiving along with our guest room. It is amazing what a solid deadline can do for getting stuff done. Here are the pictures.

Before...

and after...

Demolition Men! (and women!)

Having just finished the bathroom (no joke) we began our next project...the master bedroom suite. If there was any doubt that our house has decreased in value over the past year, today erased all doubts. We went from a 3 bedrooms down to 2 bedrooms.

With the help of our good friends from Seattle we gutted the upstairs and hauled off over 2000 lbs of crap out of our house.

(well be posting final bathroom and new Rufus pics soon)

and the winner is...

Rufus!

We spent the last couple day's debating what we should name our dog and decided that he was indeed a Rufus.  Not only does it fit his personality perfectly, but it also rhymes with doofus. And he is one big doofus.


He has been a pretty good dog over the past week. He is well on the way to being house trained. When in his normal confines (i.e. the kitchen area), he lets us know when he has to go out. However, when roaming the rest of the house he always seems to pee on my clothes. (I think he has an oedipal complex.) 

We've now stepped up his doggy socialization. He is getting pretty socialized with people (because everyone wants to pet him). Other dogs different story. He flips between "Hey, I really want to play with this other dog" and "Holy Sh!t get me out of here." We went to a dog park last night and he spent the whole time between my legs or trying to get me to pick him up. Now if only we could find some kids to throw in the mix.

Snips and snails and puppy dog tails.

We got ourselves a dog! Fresh off a successful summer of keeping all (er...most) of our tomato and basil plants alive, we figured we were ready to take it to the next level. We've been cruising the dog equivalent to match.com (Petfinder.com) for about a month now and finally found one that caught our eye. It was a Staffordshire Terrier named Dash. Meg is a sucker for any and all puppies, and I am a sucker for cute things with big googly eyes (like Meg). So we arranged to meet Dash on Saturday. However, the rescue person did a total bait and switch on us. When we arrived, she didn't have Dash, but instead had a pen full of five other puppies. Four of them were 8-week old pitbull-hound puppies who chewed the living crap out of our hands during the brief attempts to handle them. The other one was 12-week lab/pitbull mix named Boomer. We instantly fell in love with this dog. He was so gentle and so cuddly...we just couldn't resist.

Turns out this dog is the perfect dog. No accidents so far, he hasn't barked or whined much, and he just wants to be near us (as opposed to sneaking away to poop in our shoes). Furthermore, I farted and the little guy was right there for me to blame it on. I should have gotten a dog a long time ago.

Although his previous name was Boomer, Meg and I are going to rename him. We've got a couple of ideas for names, but need some help from you all (yes - all three of you). Here are our top names...

Mac
Quinn
Archie
Rufus

Filbert

Daniel Shore

Jersey (Shore)

Please leave a comment on your favorite or suggest another one!

Now at the risk of becoming those weird dog people who post incessantly about their dogs...here are a few pictures...isn't he so cute??!

Look at the little guy!

Wide awake and curious...

Getting a bit tuckered out...

Totally pooped.