The largest grooming project of my adult life

I grew my beard long for the Arab world.  The last time I shaved, St. Croix, feels more like a childhood sitcom than a real time and place.  My how the beard grew.  It could sand wood.  It could make polished brass appear antique.  It could make me appear like a disheveled Specter floating from one country to the next.  It was at its worst a costume and at its best a shining badge of my disinterest in the enterprise of grooming.

 

The Bugatti Veyron in Dubai - the world's most expensive car

Exchanging Nepal's world of rickshaws and oxcarts for Dubai's land of super-cars and 5 star hotels was a rush to the dome.  Upon arriving at our hotel, The Jumeriah Al Qasr Madinat, a string of flashy cars were parked out of front, including this blue Bugatti Veyron - a mid-engined demon with four turbos, ten radiators, and a top speed of over 250mph.  With a price tag of $1.9 million, the car is right at home in the excessive car culture of desert Dubai.  While I will do a proper story about it later, one interesting this about the car culture here involves the license plates.  Lower is better, 7's are important, repeating numbers are important, and 5 digit plates are for commoners and pleabs.  Here on this Bugatti is a 7700 plate number.  The 7's mean it is likely owned by someone in the Jumeriah group.  Frequently the plates are auctioned by current owners with "1" selling for over $14 million back in 2008.  Just driving around Dubai, we saw "3" and "5," both on blacked out Mercedes G-wagons.

The breakfast of champions

I do not know that butter will ever be enough again.  After many years on this planet, and still more as a semi-functioning adult, I have crossed over into the land of jams.

I may never again be the same. 

At they very minimum, I do not intend to look back on an existence free of preserves.  Whether they be black currant, strawberry, apricot, or orange honey blossom, my time in luxurious Dubai has been rife with jam eating, smelling, and smuggling.

I am kind of kidding.  Seriously though, our breakfasts have been epic and jam has figured prominently into the equation.  For the traveler, no time is better for carb loading than a breakfast buffet.  Above is a typical plate for me.  It is believed that if not for my intense workout regimen, I would weigh over 300 lbs from bread intake.

Self-realization in Dubai

In my wildest dreams, I never thought that it would play out this way.  On that first night when I set the proverbial pen to paper in Hong Kong, almost a full 3 years ago, I wanted a reason to justify traveling, a link to the world back home, and most of all, I wanted to write.  Some of my friends had done fantastic travel blogs: The Reiersons, Eric Rems, and Mark & Cathy Jackson. I wanted to follow in their footsteps.  Share my experience, allow you to travel with me.

Pokhara - escaping from it all, eating bad chicken, fighting the good fight on a glimmering commode

Pokhara is a small city about five hours west of Kathmandu - an adventurer's Shangri-la.  People come here to para-glide, start treks around the Annapurna range, hunt spiders, get food poisoning, climb mountains, go rowing in the lake, and other stuff. 

Kristin and I came here to see the sunrise over the Annapurna range of the Himalayas, among other things.  After a butt clenching 6 hour drive from Kathmandu on a two lane road filled with garishly adorned trucks and buses, we arrived in Pokhara, thankful for cheating death on the dangerous mountain bends.  The traffic went both ways, many a head-on collision was narrowly diverted, and at one point, we got stuck in a traffic jam behind a guy trying to shove a newly purchased coat rack into his small car.  It didn't work.  He drove off in what I imagine to be a fury of disappointment. We were also starving.

Durbar Square in Patan

We took a ride over to Patan with our homeboy Monaj. Since it was the birthday of Buddha, we witnessed some sort of processional.  Taking it in like great travelers, we watched and talked about Nepal.  It is such a beautiful place.  With the mountains looming and Everest champions coming back with tales of the most extreme place on the planet, it is easy to fall in love with the lore of the rooftop of our world.  The pace of life in Kathmandu is frantic, but just a few miles in any direction are small Tibetan villages, soaring peaks, and lush rolling hills.  It has been days since I have passed a solid stool, but Nepal makes this sort of sacrifice worth it.  At times I regretted it, at times my heart soared, but in the end, Nepal added up way past the sum of its parts.  For every poisonous chicken mushroom dish, a snow capped monster soars.  For every traffic jam that seems inescapable, a quaint mountain village filled with tea-houses begs to be explored.  Patan seems to be the place where this truth materialized for me.  That, for every malady or setback, Nepal would reward me with the epic grandeur of an old magical kingdom. 

Rhinos I have known and loved

In Chitwan, an area in southern Nepal, we went on safari on the back of a lumbering elephant and saw these solitary beasts lurking in ponds and green glades.  Rhinos.  One even charged at us as we approached on foot - not for the faint of heart.  Exhilarating though. Luckily, we outran the strange wrinkled goons.

Boo's corner - Kristin's blog

Irma Returns

Last year in Lao we stayed in the jungle and had an encounter with a huge spider that the hotel named Irma. We all noticed it after dinner hanging out above our door. Ryan and I packed up shop and were ready to get the hell outta there. Justin and Megan did not think it would be good to leave during the night in search for another hotel in the jungles of Lao. So we stayed. It was pretty much the worst night ever.

We spent the last 2 nights in the jungle of Nepal.It was pretty awesome. I got to bathe an elephant AND touch its nose ( I will post more pics later) it was seriously the best day of my life.

So yesterday when I heard the words "uh oh, Irma returns" from Boo, I freaked. I grabbed Tweet and jumped on the bed with my camera.  This is a pretty funny video of Justin trying to kick Irma #2 out of our room. He did not know I was filming.

I am actually kinda glad Irma returned. I pulled the "I did not picture us having to escort a huge spider out of our room during our honeymoon" act, and squeezed out a trip to the Maldives! We were suppose to spend 8 days in Sri Lanka, 4 days in the jungle and 4 days on the beach. Instead of us going to the jungle we are going to the Maldives. This was my dream honeymoon location but it was a bit pricey and not adventurous enough for Justin. But he agreed this was not the ideal honeymoon setting he had in mind and so we booked a last minute deal to Male, Maldives....

A ton of pictures of Kathmandu with little to no explanation

Okay, its time for me to open up the floodgates on my photos.  I have been pretty stingy with them, but no more, you have earned it fair reader, behold a flood of Kathmandu... 

The flaming ghats of Pashupatinath - where the dead turn to ash

In Kathmandu, in an area called Pashupatinath, the Nepalese cremate the dead on raised platforms along the Bagmati river.  Running down from the Himalayas, the Bagmati river meets up with the Ganges and flows down to the holy city of Varnassi. 

The air is thick with the smoke of the dead; mourners shuffle about in silence.  Monkeys pick through the offerings like oblivious goons. A ghost like presence haunts just above your shoulder at this Hindu burial site.  The bodies burn slowly and the ashes join the river. 

King Tibs the Bold - Furmonster royalty at Hotel Courtyard in Kathmandu

Upon our arrival at the Hotel Courtyard in Kathmandu, the hotel gates swung open and a dog with the bouncy gait of an Arabian horse came racing towards our car.  It was Tibby, ruler of the Hotel Courtyard kingdom.  Sometimes racist (it is said that Coca Cola was not delivered for a month because the Nepalese delivery man would not come near Tibby and thus the hotel), always sauntering about like royalty, Tibby is one of the finest furmonsters ever encountered by the goboogo staff.

Going medieval in Bhaktapur

 

Bhaktapur is a medieval town where little has changed in the last thousand years.  While the year in Nepal may be 2068, this hamlet of brick and chaos makes that collection of digits seem arbitrary at best.  The city's narrow lanes are flanked by leaning brick towers and the savageness of its back alleys is told in goat slaughter and starving dogs.  Truth be told, it is not a place for a first date.  You bring her here AFTER you marry her.