Homeward Bound

Post by Josh

Today we fly back to the US, ending near six months of global wandering and a grand experiment in weird and wild foods. I am sad to be ending this, but there are a few things that I am looking forward to back home:

• Hot showers
• Campfires
• Consistent access to Peanut Butter
• Having a rational amount of facial hair
• Family and friends
• Cooking for ourselves instead of constantly going out to restaurants
• Having a schedule again
• Being charged the same amount as "locals" for things
• Having more than one change of clothing
• Having a real computer
• Creeks, rivers, and forests that we can explore without guides or armed escorts
• Bicycling

Looking forward to seeing all of you soon - we will be back in your airspace in 24 hours.

Markets and Festivals of Perú

We crossed over the Andes last night and are in Puerto Maldonado, a river port city in a corner of the Amazon rainforest.  For the next four days, we will be without internet, heading into a jungle lodge for some wildlife viewing, kayaking and ziplining, and a brief interaction with an Ese'eja family.

For now, some pictures from the cities in Peru where we have enjoyed the life in the streets, markets, and public squares.  This has been some of the best street food and free music from our entire trip!

1.  "Diablito" dancing as part of an unidentified street festival in Arequipa on May 31.  Several paces behind were rows of women in skirts and men playing drum and panpipes with Robin-hood type hats.

2.  Ceviche!  For only 8 soles (about three dollars) at the San Camilio market in Arequipa, we scored a lunch of Perú's national dish, raw fish cured in lime and chile, with all the fixings.

3.  Thousands of children performed Quechua dances at the Fiesta Del Cusco, celebrating the anniversary of the city's founding.  The very next day, adults performed similar, more complicated dances, very evocative of birds in flights and flowers swaying in the breeze.

4.  Guinea pig, roasted and served with rice and potatoes for 13 soles at a Sunday street stall in Cusco during the big fiesta.  They call this bad boy "Cuy al Horno."

5.  Aguajina is the drink made from the aguaje fruit, an Amazonian specialty which is dazzling in its color and texture.  Real yummy too!  For only one sol at the central market in Puerto Maldonado.  Google reveals it is part of a health trend under the name of Buriti.

Cairo Spring Break

We were slightly sad about missing Easter in Rome, what with the huge audience and blessings and fanfare.  But as soon as we landed in Egypt, we learned that Easter is a huge national holiday here, too,  It's called Sham el Nessim, and though it is not about Jesus' ressurection, it does herald spring, involve mackerel, and give people time off work.

Our host family in Cairo was using this time off to head to the beach on the North Coast of Egypt, and they invited us along.  We were initially reluctant, since it did not fit our idea of an Egypt trip, and we had not seen the museum or pyramids.  Plus, this is what Lonely Planet said about the North Coast:

"This is where well-to-do Cairenes and the top brass of Egypt’s military establishment now come to escape the oppressive city heat of the summer. It’s so busy here that when driving past, the only glimpses you’re likely to get of the ocean are through the skeletal structures of unfinished holiday villages."

Unless you come in April.

We stayed two days on the beach in El-Hamam city, about 50 km west of Alexandria.  There are no fake pyramid decorations or hieroglyphics or King Tut masks anywhere.  Just families and friend groups hanging out near the water.  For us, it was a great opportunity to relax in a gorgeous scenery while seeing how Egyptians take their holiday.

They ate breakfast at noon, lunch at six pm, and dinner at midnight.  We had Bedouin food with lots of tahini and tomato and fenugreek and eggplant.  There was fish and baklava and fûl and olives and cheese and lots of warm, hearty flatbread.  They slept in close quarters and stayed up laughing and joking around.  Josh taught them the card game Egyptian Rat.  They tried to teach is a game they called Estimation, but it was really hard and then we realized it was Bridge.  We all ran into the cold water together during a day with an extreme riptide and felt so alive, pushing against the current and the temperature and running back to our towels with brain freezes at the end.  I tried asking the men patrolling the beach with uniforms and guns to take a picture with me, but they must have been confused why an "Arab" was asking for this.  The sand was not tiny square grains like the beaches I am used to. It was white and fine and each grain was spherical, making it really pleasant to grasp and knead.  And of course, it was awesome to see old women wearing flow robes and head scarves sitting on beach chairs while their sons brought buckets of ocean water for them to put their feet in.

The whole time in Turkey and Italy, we had not visited any of the Mediterranean beaches for which they were famous.  I think that Egypt's beaches may be even better.  The only hard part is driving there, across the desert road (speed bumps sneak up on you!) and checkpoints without falling asleep at the wheel.  (Kudos to Josh for driving all the way back to Cairo and not losing his mind with all the aggressive drivers and pedestrians swirling about.)  We still have not done the pyramids yet, but I doubt they will be this idyllic.

Dance, it's Spring!

In Budapest, Erszébet square, March 28:

Now that is what I call folk dance.  I knew before coming here a thing or two about Hungarian folk dance.  The Smithsonian folklore festival in Washington DC last summer featured Hungary, and Josh and I went out to the dance barn there and learned our "ta, ta, ti ti ta."  Those rhythms are now back on display, during the Budapest Tavaszi (Spring) Festivál.  This has made it real easy for us to get down contry style.  The roots revival of folk dance is still going strong since  1970, apparently.  Later the night of this video, I ventured out to a place called Fonó, where average joes were doing this boot-slapping dance.  And I joined a large circle dance which felt like a sped up version of the hora.  

At the other end of the spectrum, weird modern dance is really easy to find now as well.  The night before, we watched an abstract dance video of a woman breaking out of a coccoon, followed by a dance group that looked like pleather astronauts who have just discovered a freaky laser beam synthesizer.  Thank goodness it was free.  We witnessed circus dancing last night, we'll be seeing a multimedia fashion show tonight, and on Tuesday, we'll attend the world premiere of "Mata Hari" the musical.

Also during this spring festival is a chess tournament.  This one is for Daanish.

Aside from the festival, we have been enjoying the heartiness of Magyar food and the well-preserved neo-Gothic buildings, like the fisherman's bastion.  Not to mention the excellent public transportation and the nice apartment we found through Airbnb.  We are definitely enjoying the relaxed pace of our time here.

A mountain Too sacred

In the city of Osh, in the country of Kyrgyzstan, on the night of March 8, in an otherwise nondescript cafe, dance music poured out of the front door.  It drew me in, weary as I was of eating in quiet and lonely teahouses.  That is how we ended up stomping to a Kyrgyz remix of Gangnam Style, with hooting teenagers forming a circle around us.  The occasion?  A national holiday celebrated throughout Central Asia, coinciding with International Women's Day.  We had been seeing cheesy TV commercials leading up to this holiday, but did not expect that people would celebrate it so heartily!

But Kyrgyzstan is full of surprises.  Crossing the border by land from Uzbekistan, the first things we noticed were 1) dogs, 2) mountains, 3) people who look a fair bit more east Asian than their Uzbek neighbors.  Tables have soy sauce, all signs are in Cyrillic, and the air is colder.  In fact, the morning after the dancing, we awoke to a snow-covered valley.  The local hill was cloaked in white clouds and it felt like we were thousands of feet higher than we actually were. 

This hill is awesome by the way, and totally worth a visit.  Called "Suleiman Too," it is the "best preserved example of a sacred mountain in Central Asia" according to UNESCO.  I think this lady concurs.

She is sliding down the rock, we're told by a local, because it has healing powers.  The really plump people were especially fantastic to watch, because they slid so smoothly.  Elsewhere on the mountain, people were sticking their arms into holes in the rock, squatting and praying in tiny caves, and exercising.  At the peak, there is a little building with a dome.  Inside the building this dude can tell you all about how the prophet Soloman prayed on this very spot (and as evidence, there are well worn, knee-sized depressions in the stone floor), and how later Babar Shah of Moghul fame built a dome on top of it.  The dude cannot tell you this in English, but his gestures work excellently.  Plus he has a great Kyrgyz hat.

This hat, called an Ak Kalpak, is not a gimmick like some other "traditional costumes" you might see on sale in tourist areas.  People actually wear it.  We saw men and boys were wearing it all over town.  It is probably their version of what a cowboy hat is in America; folksy, stylish, and masculine. 

Our stay with Central Asia's Turkic people winding down, we are excited to hit up their relatives in the Mediterranean. See you in Turkey!

Grabbed

Here is a non-comprehensive list of instances we have been grabbed in Uzbekistan:

1.  Grabbed by a businessman and his girlfriend at 3 am as they were passing by us on the street in Tashkent, and invited to an improbable breakfast of shashlyk and lagman as we waited for our train.  Here, by the way, were our cabin mates on the train:

2.  Grabbed by a drunk fellow named Zakero and pulled into an Uzbek wedding in Samarkand where Josh danced with two babushkas.

3.  Grabbed by a crowd of competing dudes as soon as we got off the share taxi in Bukhara, who gave us no choice but to take their bus back to Tashkent, even though it was not parked at the station and was full of sacks of textiles.

Just a tiny sampling of life in Uzbekistan so far.  More to come soon.

Procession

One of the coolest things we did in Myanmar happened on the last night we were there.  While heading down to Chinatown for the night market, we heard music coming from a nearby alley.  We looked down the length of it and saw a stage set up at the far end.  Thinking it may be a concert, we walked in for a closer look.  A short way in, we reached a point past which people were taking off their shoes.  Sacred event space?  Intriguing.  That day was a national holiday, Union Day, so it was probably a public event with Buddhist backing, or vice versa. 

We took off our shoes and walked further in.  The street was covered in woven sitting mats with a central red aisle for walking.  On both sides of the aisle, people were seated in clusters and holding pages covered in Burmese script.  We walked and walked past about four sets of mini screens and loudspeakers, and maybe two hundred sitting folks, until we got close enough to the stage to see what it was.  A big golden throne, in front of a splendid backdrop depicting what seemed like paradise to me.  The throne was empty though. 

We sat down on the mats and took our places among the people.  Soon, a man came over and handed us each a plastic bag with a bottle of water, a juice bottle, and a baked item.  It felt like kindergarten snack time.  People around us were looking at us and smiling.  Some dude walking around with a big looking camera even got us to pause for a photo, maybe for a newspaper.  Then, the music changed.  It went from being instrumental and recorded, to being a live, single voice chanting.  The chant was slow, sounded nasally and female, and was in Pali I think.  People shifted their posture so they were now sitting facing the aisle rather than the stage.  Some had their hands in their laps, looking down, and some were looking up with their hands pressed together at their chest.  We turned to face the aisle as well. 

A bell started ringing, about one chime every ten seconds.  Then we saw from the same direction we had come, a procession.  In front were two men carrying a bell shaped gong between them.  In the back was a man holding a golden parasol.  And in the center of the procession, under the parasol, an old monk.  As the monk walked past, people on both sides of the aisle bent and touched their foreheads to the ground over and over.  When he came by us, it was very difficult not to bow.  The monk finally reached the stage and sat down in the golden throne.  The chanting continued.  It was beautiful and well orchestrated and felt like just the right amount of ceremony to end our visit to the most overtly Buddhist country of all that we had visited. 

We decided to leave before the monk started talking, because that seemed like the least disrespectful course of action.  Picking up our shoes, we took the sidewalk all the way back out of the alley, put our goodie bags on the table at the entrance, and felt grateful for the chance to witness Union Day, Buddhist style.

The Wheel

Whew!  We made it to Myanmar.  We made it on by bus and by foot, across a border that literally just opened to foreigners five months ago.  We are in a little town called Myawaddy.  When we arrived at the border, we were escorted to a "foreigners lounge" and the agent told us the news.  The buses only run onward every other day, and we got in too late that day.  So we would have to wait two days to get a bus out of town.  Luckily, Myawaddy is the most interesting middle of nowhere that we have ever been stuck in.  For example, this:

Almost no one speaks English, and there are no maps, but it feels very welcoming.  Almost everyone had yellow face paint on their cheeks when we arrived, and we assume it was because of Chinese New Year.  Hungry, we walked through an outdoor market until we found the only thing that looked like a restaurant: a table and chairs and pots and some women sewing.  One of them bade us sit.  She poured a dark vegetable broth and rice noodles into bowls for us, slid tamarind and chili our way and cut fish and tomatoes into the bowls with scissors.  She told us the Myanmar words for everything, and kept refilling the noodles and broth.  The food was less tangy than Thai food and had more hints of lentil and  black pepper.  Perhaps because we were hungry, it tasted amazing.  And it was all 1000 kyat.  One dollar.

After dinner, we followed the lights and sounds of music until we entered a place where people were taking off their shoes.  We were at a Buddhist temple, except this night it was also a carnival.  Picture it: golden statues and bouncy castles, ancient bells and wood carvings and a ferris wheel.  Ferris wheel?!  They were looking for people to get on, so of course we did.  I got nervous when four young men in flip flops climbed onto the outside of the ferris wheel and found positions in the framework near the top.  What is going to happen to them when this thing starts, I wondered.  Then I realized they were the reason it was going to start.  There was no motor.  They all shifted their weight at once and the wheel started turning.  Fast.  I held on for dear life as the little Burmese kids across from us giggled.  The young men pounced off the spinning wheel right in the nick of time.  I thought their job was done, but no.  They stood right under the wheel, bent backwards like they were doing the limbo.  And flicking their bodies at each car to keep the momentum going.  The human powered ferris wheel, in a Buddhist temple, on Chinese New Year, in a Myanmar border town.  Absolutely worth it.

That was lucky

Ancient road number 2: the Nakasendo Highway.  Like the Tokaido Highway from our last post, this was an important road linking Tokyo and Kyoto back in the days when Tokyo was called Edo.  Unlike the Tokaido Highway, the Nakasendo Highway is a fair bit north in the area known as the Japan Alps.  Thus snowy.   The trail was treacherously icy at points.  One clever old man on the trail had wrapped twine around his shoes to increase traction.  We just repeatedly wiped out for 8 kilometers.  But it felt awesome to consider that we were walking the path that feudal Japanese lords would follow to visit the capital from the provinces.

The story of our getting here is yet another testament to how gracious Japanese people can be.  We arrived in the sleepy mountain outpost of Tsumago by bus at 6pm without a place to stay.  The sun had set and no signs were in English.  It was freezing, and there would be no more buses until the next morning.  From the narrow street, every house, restaurant, and potential hotel had the same dormant exterior.  We briefly considered sleeping under an awning somewhere.  Fortunately fate led us past a man walking his shiba inu at night and smelling vaguely of sake.  It took a while with our limited knowledge of each other's languages, but he made some phone calls for us and found a lady willing to lodge us at her Ryokan (old style inn).  Her cedar-wood onsen (hot tub) was incredibly relaxing and her breakfast was delightful: salmon, egg, miso-rice wraps, pickles and sweet beans and, most bizarrely "sticky potatoes."  Imagine raw potato hash embedded in a spittle-like foam.  If you ever come to Tsumago, look her up:  it is called the Daikichi Inn.

Tsumago is about halfway between Nagoya and Matsumoto, the latter being an awesome place to find yourself randomly on the second Sunday in January.  We had no idea when we arrived that it would be the weekend of the Candy Festival.  But the candy was nowhere near as impressive as the teams of people carrying shrines on their shoulders and bouncing around the town.  There was squid on a stick and Taiko drumming and then it all culminated in an epic tug of war contest to commemorate an ancient feud between two local warlords.  It was pretty sweet.  (har har)