Around the world with National Geographic

 The forecast for the day in Agra was sunny and pleasant. It turned out to be foggy all day. (There were comments that some thought it was smog, not fog.)  The result was a different view of the Taj. But if you were close enough you could see things fine.  And the fog kept the number of people at the site down. We were given little blue hospital booties to wear over our shoes when we went in the mausoleum itself. In the afternoon, I went to see Fort Agra.  Although it is called a “fort” it was really the palace compound of buildings.  There were public spaces, working spaces, and the residence of the emperors.  It reminded me of the Alhambra in Spain.  There was a large part of the residence space set aside for the harem. And not too far from there was the apartment where the builder of the Taj, Shah Jahan, was imprisoned by his son who seized power from him.  There is a picture of him staring out his window at the Taj, but today it looked like Th...

 One of our shortest flights, I mean Bhutan is right next to India.  But we left our jet in Kathmandu, so first we had to fly out of Bhutan and back to Kathmandu. We got out by 8 AM That’s only slightly over an hour flight, but we did just fly into the country from Bhutan, so we go thru customs and immigration and security again in Nepal.  Then it is back in the air for another short hour flight to India.  But our destination is Agra, India, and that apparently does not have an international airport we can fly into, so we have to stop at Lucknow, India for immigration, customs and security.   Immigration control took 2 solid hours.  It appeared that they are trying out a new process that involves getting finger prints from everyone that enters, but their equipment had difficulty reading the finger prints, so people had to have their finger prints scanned multiple times.  By the time they got to Linda and I (we were towards the end of the line for our g...

Today was to be a hike up to Tiger’s Nest.  But instead I spent it in our hotel room. In the middle of the night, I started feeling nauseas.  By morning I had throw up twice, and had an approximation of diarrhea, and was freezing.  I tend to get cold whenever I get sick. So I spent the day in the hotel room, trying to sleep.  The working diagnosis is altitude sickness perhaps with a touch of travelers diarrhea. Linda went ahead on the hike, but apparently only got part way up the mountain and also threw up, so they sent her back. I took a hot bath to warm up.  At least this room has a bath.  Several of the places only had showers.  The bath is very elegant.  The drain plug is a spring loaded pop-up. And by positioning it in the middle, there is a nice hint of symmetry. But from a practical point of view, if I am trying to soak my upper torso, the plug is right where my butt goes, and since it is pop-up, every time I shift, it pops up and starts to...

We started the morning in Kathmandu.  After breakfast we went to a stupa. This was the biggest stupa at least in Nepal.  A stupa is a solid object, like a building, but with no inside.  It is build around, or to contain, Buddhist relics.  For example, after the Buddha died, he was cremated and his ashes divided into many parts and sent to Buddhist temples.  So this stupa might have been built around some ashes of the Buddha. There were a lot of people, walking around the stupa in a clockwise direction, burning incense, feeding the pigeons, and turning prayer wheels.  All things that are meant to improve your karma, so that you will be reincarnated as a better person. At the top of the stupa was a square with the eyes of the Buddha watching you from all sides. And around the stupa was a set of shops where you could buy particularly religious items, like prayer wheels and prayer flags and incense and so on.  Plus just stuff — like hats and gloves and tee...

 We awoke this morning in Cambodia, went to the airport and flew to Nepal.  It was a 4 hour flight.  Mostly there was cloud cover, but as we approached Nepal, the clouds broke and you could see some of the Himalayas in the distance. Once in Nepal, we first went to visit some Hindu shrines.  These are scattered in the city center, and it was obvious that some buildings were heavily damaged by the recent earthquakes. Kathmandu is a bustling city with lots of people (over a million), but the city itself seems unable to support them.  For example, there are “telephone” poles and wires all over the city that look like this, or worse. Apparently there are plans to replace all these with underground fiber optic lines, but that will be a massive undertaking. The streets are narrow and winding, but they swarm with traffic.  Not just “traffic” but almost all kinds of traffic — bike, motor scooter, motor bikes, cars, trucks, busses — with little apparent regard to the...

 Linda signed us up for a sunrise photo trip to Angkor Wat, so we were up at 4AM, and on a bus to be there before sunrise at 6 AM.  But it was a cloudy morning, and if the sun came up (pretty sure it did), I couldn’t even tell which direction it was coming from. But there were a lot of people there.  It’s clear that this is a popular thing to do. We went back to the hotel and had breakfast, and then tried it again.  In full light, even on a cloudy day, you can see a lot more.  And there is a lot to see.  Angkor Wat is large. The grounds are surrounded by a rectangular moat.  There are a series of walls and courtyards, with the main towers in the middle. The walls in the galleries are covered in carvings like this one showing Vishnu using a snake to churn an ocean of milk. A lot of the temple site is undergoing restoration. When you work your way into the center of the complex, to the main central tower, you can climb the 30 steps to the second level, a...

 The hotels, so far, have been okay, but nothing that special. But the hotel in Cambodia is a different story.  It has the air of old Colonial times.  It’s only 3 stories, but an imposing 3 stories It has halls that go on forever. And to get from one to another floor, you can either walk the stairs, or use the elevator We have been using the stairs.  Thankfully we are only on the 3rd floor.