bicrom abroad

context is a funny thing. growing up in the uk there is a certain banality about short hops to france or spain; it’s only when you witness the cohorts of wide-eyed antipodeans swarming out of earls court every weekend that you begin to suspect that paris or barcelona  might still retain an exotic charm that has been eroded for us brits by the mundanity of proximity. as a consequence, vicki and i are relatively poorly travelled in europe,  largely because of the failure of weekend breaks to capture the imagination.
shift some thousand miles  to the west however and context naturally metamorphosises into a subtly different thing. the bright lights of miami held a fascination for us that would amuse a native caymanian, used to having this contradiction of a city on their doorstep. similarly,  to minds still not quite fully adjusted to the locale which we now call home, a weekend in honduras seemed the height of outlandish glamour. we weren’t quite sure why cayman airways saw fit to have a direct flight to la ceiba, the third largest conurbation in honduras,  but this was not an opportunity we were going to pass up and thus we eagerly, if a little unpreparedly, wriggled into our seats on a grey friday morning. we didn’t know much about la ceiba beyond the fact that the town itself was a grimy urban fleapit of malaise and mild danger, redeemed by its position sandwiched between grey caribbean beaches and the green peaks of the pico bonito natural park. that thing context again; when you live in cayman grimy beaches do not mean what they once did, so it was an obvious decision for us to bundle into a rickety car which jolted us over unreformed dirt track to our new home deep in the rainforest, casa cangrejal.
the drive into the park gave us a good impression of  what to expect over the following days, the chugging rio cangrejal forcing its way through boulders and rapids below, banked on either side by sheer cliffs covered with verdant foliage. casa cangrejal itself is a happy little place, its turn off currently marked by a yellow church bus which veered off the road and into a ditch (a wise choice; ditch on one side, river on the other) and is now awaiting recovery, either until the holy collection plates aggregate to the price of a godly tow truck owner or the moment when the local residents chose to risk a few more years in purgatory and liberate the vehicle’s constituent parts from their grassy home with blow torches and surreptitious enthusiasm.
being deep in the jungle has the advantage of stunning views on either side, albeit tempered by the unavoidable air of pervading dampness punctuated by all manner of buzzing, crawling bugs. this being one a rainforest and two the beginning of the rainy season we knew what to expect and we weren’t to be disappointed. on our first day a short hike to a mirador rewarded me with a glimpse of an amazing view at the zenith of the trail before the heavens opened and shooed me, slipping and scurrying through the mulchy trail, back to the casa. after  an evening spent discovering that my secretive wife was surprisingly good at darts (more of which later) we woke up refreshed the following morning, peeked out to see a sliver of blue sky threatening the clouds and consequently decided to tackle the four hour walk to the el bejuco waterfall.
rainforest walks tend to blend into one. the trails are almost always narrow tracks, completely enclosed by greenery which our untrained eyes cannot differentiate, and it is only the occasional moments when you go past a viewpoint which allow you to locate yourself by reference to a river or mountain or other sight far below, making you realise that you are in honduras, and not sumatra or the amazon or elsewhere. given the relative functionality of these trails, coupled with the intense humidity and the lingering threat of rain, it is critical that the final destination be worthwhile. the water tumbling out of slits in the pico bonito rockface 80 feet above us may not give iguazu too many sleepless nights but as we gingerly edged our way over treacherous rocks, giving the impression of solidity until you stepped onto them and realised the deceitfulness of this claim, it certainly justified our hike, no matter how hot, sweaty and nibbled by red ants (good work sticky) we may have been. we rewarded ourselves after the hike with a restorative hammock snooze, before the heavens opened for the afternoon having at least had the decency to wait until we were safely under cover.
the following morning we headed over to sambo creek. some enterprising hondurans had set up a collection of twelve ziplines descending from high up in the jungle canopy which made for a fun, lightly adrenaline producing, way of spending a few hours. once you were confident your cojones were not about to be liberated from their rightful home it was an enjoyable hour or so spent zipping through the foliage, watching your head or legs didn’t crack into any tree trunks and trying to be the last of the late brakers en route to the platform.  top off with some scenic hot springs and light masajes, complete with a slathering in the local orange mud, and all in all an excellent way to spend a day.
and that, bar vicki hustling me at darts (double eighteen check-out at the second time of asking!) and an absurdly queue-filled and chaotic sojourn at the airport on the way back, was that: an excellent weekend break which remained undeniably exotic, despite the brevity of the flight from cayman. honduras may be the murder capital of the world but beyond the risks of being eaten alive by bugs or licked to death by over-zealous, massive, guesthouse dogs,  la ceiba proved a textbook place to kill a few days, and exactly the reason that we had decided to move to cayman.

this has been an odd long holiday, without the easy flow of our time in south america. this is largely because it was sandwiched between two non-travelling events, our wedding in cal and boropishi's kaj. we saw and did some amazing things but this was six weeks that lacked a common unifying thread. it was the holiday where my kindle came into its own: three jeeves and woosters, two amitav ghosh's, if on a winter's night a traveller and the richard hill autobiography was a edifying return (and vicki was not far behind with her oh so last century paperbacks). finally, this was the death of our backpacking dream; we're too old for it and besides, in the advent of the internet, it's simply not as good, or as cheap, as it was back in our day. the kids today just don't know how to do it right...

best natural sight: the himalaya bathed in the rising sun at sarangkot. nothing else could come close (although on any other trip radhanagar beach would be hard to beat).

best manmade sight: the taj mahal. again, hard to top. on retrospect we really did see some amazing things this holiday.

best experience: one of the joys of leaving penniless backpackerdom behind is being able to afford to do things. the best one on this trip was the ride in the two seater up to the annapurna. honourable mention to vicki's swim with rajan the elephant.

biggest disappointment: jaipur. dirty, unimpressive and a blot on the rajasthani landscape.

best journey: flying from pokhara to kathmandu, eyeball to eyeball with the himalaya. exhilarating. kathmandu to doha gets an honourable mention for serving up mountain views together with seatback entertainment on a spiffy new plane.

best hotel: the leela palace udaipur. this felt like a honeymoon. honourable mentions for the radisson in delhi for rescuing us after a day of travel gloom and the himalayan vista to which we woke up at trekker's inn in pokhara.

best food: the finger chips at barefoot and the tortilla chips and (especially) salsa at new orleans cafe in kathmandu. being vegetarian for a large chunk of this holiday did not help.

best drink: sweet lime soda at barefoot (all imitations thereafter increasingly disappointing). vicki was tucking into the hot lemon ginger and honey in kathmandu as well. finally, the entire bengal club wedding party chowed down more old monk and thums up then was strictly healthy, with clumpy getting a special mention for her gin and fanta combo.

touristiest ghetto: thamel. like a hundred khao san roads stuck together: nepal is more backpackery than anywhere i have ever visited.

most ridiculous public schoolesque nickname for city: katters for kathmandu.

best dog: assistant, apparently.

best wedding: our wedding!

flying into and out of kathmandu gives you a sense of the majesty of its setting as, on reaching any kind of altitude, you immediately begin to nervously flirt with the awesome himalaya (including, when flying back from cal, the clump of 8,000m plus monsters proudly standing guard around the highest mountain of them all). sadly, things are a little different down at ground level. kathmandu is a dirty, smog ridden city filled with freewheeling motorbikes punctuating cars belching smoke and carelessly pushing tired, wary pedestrians to the edges of the roads or, where available, viciously potholed pavements. it is also filled with tourists and backpackers, with thamel putting the khao san road to shame. this is a city (and in fact pokhara was the same) where travellers uncaringly live up to stereotypes, down to their individual uniforms: the streets are prety much a 50/50 split between the trekkers, bedecked in north face and mamut and making light work of the ragged footpaths in their hiking boots, and the finding themselves, faces proudly sporting uneven piercings and, of course, the obligatory dreadlocks and unwashed clothes. vicki and i were happy to be in neither camp (although if push came to shove were both wearing a bit of north face: and more pertinently had, like all reasonable people, found ourselves around the time of puberty).
because of my need to go back to cal for a few days we, and in particular vicki, ended up staying much longer here than initially anticipated. predictably given our track record on our travels we woke up on the first morning to be confronted with a bandh, with student unions forcing all cars to stay at home. as such our first foray into the city was along roads deserted by cars but fringed by crowds of bored looking youth perched on railings, chewing cigarettes and trying to look impressively rebellious. our mooch around the durbar square which is the heart of the city was enjoyable without being exceptional, with the concentrated mass of historical buildings starting to recede and fade into the squalid realities of the 21st century city, replete with thousands of pigeons and their poo.
so unimpressed was vicki by the sights that kathmandu had to offer that she eschewed the opportunity to see a few extra things whilst i was in cal, chosing instead to go and help out at KAT, a charity helping the stray dogs of the city: i was somewhat relieved that her pet puppy for the day assistant (a ridiculous name for a dog) only made it as far as our camera and not, as i had feared, back to our hotel room. we had an enjoyable day wandering around patan, an old city neighbouring (well now fully encroached by) kathmandu, with its own durbar square which was significantly more impressive than its counterpart in the main city and, pausing only to gasp up some steep steps to swayambunath, the temple and stupa infested by monkeys perched on a hill overlooking kathmandu, finished off our time in nepal with a slightly whimpering bang. well that and one final trek, abandoning our impotent taxi to scurry a couple of kilometres through protesting pre-pubescent students, too young to grow facial hair but old enough to bring the roads to a halt, to catch our flight home. just once it would be nice to go on holiday and not face some kind of civil unrest.
and that was that. nepal was in some ways an odd experience, perfect if you have 20 plus days to commit to a trek but hard to fill two weeks otherwise. being in the shadow of the greatest natural spectacle on the planet means that stunning views abound but beyond looking up and exclaiming with delighted surprise everytime a granite behemoth punctures the smog and cloud it is hard to get much more from the himalaya on a short timeframe (something more easily achieved if you are based at altitude somewhere like ladakh). the syncretisation of hindu and buddhist iconography, with hindu gods embedded into stupa walls and prayer flags fluttering at temples was interesting but this was very much quantity over quality. there is something satisfying about walking through a crumbling city where dilapidated squat buildings are interspersed with gaudy pagoda style temples, their own neglect kept at bay by the fresh daubs of vermillion on the walls and incense in the air, but there was no angkor wat or shwedagon paya here. it provided amazing photos, but like a girl who's listened to her mother nepal retained her most wondrous mysteries for those who are more willing to commit to her.

after two beautifully clear days in pokhara it was possibly inevitable but still disappointing to see, when pulling back the curtains on our third morning, that even the magnificence of the himalaya could be entirely subdued by apparently feeble cloud and wispy mist. our mood was particularly dark given that we were due to go up for a closer look at the mountains in microlights, and accordingly had once again pulled ourselves out of bed earlier than we might have liked.
pokhara airport was in a state of sleepy turmoil; the weather meant that all flights were grounded but, given that this appeared to be quite a standard state of affairs, noone beyond frustrated passengers seemed particularly concerned. we went over to the flying club shed and batted off the nepali air geishas tottering around on hooker heels offering bland reassurances to try and ascertain whether it would be possible to go up at all and if it would even be worth it; no point heading up to 8,000 feet on a hairdryer with wings just to yawn at some clouds.
finally, the decision was made to go up in the tiny toy plane; we were assured that the mountains were clearly visible once you broke through the clouds but were both cynical. as i, strapped in, camera impotently on my lap, watched the pilot steer us through minutes of sheer grey cloud my annoyance grew as it appeared that the entire experience would be one of wasting both time and money.
and then we broke through. the sun beat down through the plexiglass and we were eyeball to eyeball with the annapurna range. the views were out of this world, like nothing i have ever seen before and completely inaccessible without arial assistance. from the ground on pokhara, up the ridge at sarangkot, the fact that the himalaya were special had been constantly reinforced but staring slackjawed at them, so close you believed you could almost reach out and touch them, was the pinnacle of our himalayan experience. vicki went up next and came back suitable wowed, having also had a crack at steering the plane.
as such, it was a happy pair that boarded our flight to kathmandu the next morning. after the inevitable hour's delay our little twin prop got up in the air and we were treated to one final, ridiculous delight; looking out of our window as we flew for 25 minutes to kathmandu we were treated to the himalayan range, snowcapped, jaw dropping peak after peak. after the close up experience in the tiny plane this flight gave us an idea of the scale of the himalaya, a realisation that it was not just the individual mountains that were amazing, but also the range, the constant, unbroken line of picturebook peaks each as wonderful as the last that made the himalaya so special.
and so to kathmandu; we're not quite sure what we're going to do here and the weather is forecast to be cloudy but no matter; the last few days have given us ample opportunity to appreciate that the himalaya truly are the greatest natural wonder of them all.

though dwarfed by its gargantuan neighbours to the north and south, nepal provides a remorseless assault on the senses which confounds its relative size. our first glimpse on this came at kathmandu airport where we were mobbed by eager touts and taxi drivers displaying the kind of relentless, desperate hunger that seemed surprisingly absent in their indian brethren. having missed the last flight to pokhara we allowed ourselves to be taken in by a crooked grin offering safe passage across the plains and, keen to not waste a night in a city which provided a singularly grotty first impression, duly boarded a tired looking car which, fuelled by nasal nepali hits blaring from tinny speakers, delivered us to pokhara as the town tucked itself in for the night.
nepal may be a small country but the greatest mountain range of them all runs thickly through its veins. i still
remember the slightly unreal, humbling sensation when i first glimpsed the high himalaya in north india a few years ago. looking out of our bedroom window and then from the roof of our guesthouse at the monstrous, snow riven annapurna range which utterly dominates the pokhara landscape that same astounding rush coursed through me again. there is something almost spiritual about being in the presence of these starkly beautiful behemoths, an unescapable urge to look skywards and be repeatedly surprised by the presence of snow and rock where only sky should be.
pokhara is a brilliant base for long, ten day plus treks, but shorter two to three day hikes are much thinner on the ground; as such, we won't be getting near the snowline on this trip at least. it still offers however a number of easily accessible but spectacular viewpoints such as at the small hillside village of sarangkot, perched under a mountainous ridge which acts as a natural spectator gallery to a himalayan ampitheatre of unforgiving peaks. watching the rising sun slowly hustle the insistent mist away and illuminate the tops of the line of jagged annapurna mountains was duly spectacular, and (for once) vicki's incessant photo-taking felt justified.
we have a couple more days in pokhara which we will primarily use to potter around and generally enjoy being in the shadow of the mountains. vicki's skills on a motorbike have already allowed a speedy jaunt down to a tibetan settlement and wander through the fluttering prayer flags, around dusty lanes filled with wrinkled tibetan pensioners and a gompa populated by sleepy looking monks. tomorrow morning we, cloud permitting, will be getting more up close and personal with the mountains, going up in a couple of alarmingly flimsy looking microlights before, in all likelihood, taking the rest of the afternoon to drink soothing cups of tea in an attempt to dilute the adrenaline. we came to nepal to be blown away by the majesty of the himalaya and, so far, that is exactly what has happened.

after the disappointment of jaipur, udaipur restored our faith in the beauty of rajasthan. our stay was peppered with vistas of sundappled fairytale turrets dreamily reflected on the lazily shimmering lakes which are so central to the city. the famous lake palace itself, whilst retaining a novelty value, was outshone somewhat by the palaces on the shores, sheer walls and finely detailed ramparts perched perilously over the water. moreover, whilst the narrow lanes of the old city were suitably chaotic, with feet and elbows under constant threat from manic autowallahs and young lads teetering on scooters veering around the inevitable cows in the road, it did not feel anywhere near as busy or congested as jaipur, retaining instead a certain meandering charm.
we took the obligatory boatride at sunset and spent a few hours wandering around the maharana's palace, resplendent with fine detailing and lake views; beyond that however we entertained ourselves happily mooching around the alleys doing very little beyond giving shopkeepers undue hope and photographing cows.
we also spent a lot of time appreciating the delights of our hotel. expensive it may have been but from the postcard views from our balcony, to the sometimes frighteningly attentive service, to the bar which was brand new but filled with enough olde paraphernalia to give it a vintage comfort (as well as mixing up a passion fruit chilli cocktail so spicy it made even me gasp), the leela palace was absolutely perfect: making the step back down to normal hotels in the next few days is going to be depressing.
as such, it was a slightly gloomy couple who checked out, waved on by a mindboggling array of staff (i think we had a leaving committee of at least eight people). a short night in a grotty hotel in delhi before heading off to nepal tomorrow for hopefully some five star himalayan views.

air india had stolen the best part of a day from us and it was jaipur that had to pay the price; we arrived as the sun was setting knowing that we would be gone less than 24 hours later. as it was, the time we had there was more than sufficient.
i'd always thought that the so called pink city was the jewel in rajasthan's crown but it seems very much the ugly sister to jodhpur and, in particular, jaisalmer. modernity has made no concession to the historical aesthetic, and the grubby orange walls and buildings look helplessly and forlornly over broad roads, fully stocked with cars, autos and the rest of the daily detritus india has to offer. the hawa mahal, the city palace were all fairly average when held up against their rajasthani peers and whilst the jantar mantar was amazing we were unable (amazingly, in a city famed for its aggressive touting) to find a guide who might fully elaborate on the astronomical wonders on display. not even the insanely hyperactive dog bounding around the haveli in which we were staying could fully redeem the city.
as it was therefore, we were not particularly disappointed that our visit to jaipur had been a flying one and eagerly boarded our plane to udaipur that evening. we had not actually booked a place in udaipur, thinking that our three night stay would make us every eager hotelier's dream and that they would fall over themselves to offer us plush haveli suites at discounted rates. not quite; every place we tried in our range was booked out, with our three night requirement actually proving to be more of a hindrance than a boon. udaipur was the final straw, the point at which we realised that totally spontaneous travelling, of turning up in a city on a whim and winging it, is dead, strangled by the internet and online booking. from now on we will have to join the hordes who plan their holidays day by day, months in advance. a little depressing frankly, but perhaps i'm lucky to only have to make this concession so late on in my life.
as it was, it was pushing 9pm in udaipur and we were stuck between cheap little holes and sumptous, expensive luxury. after much pondering we opted for the latter and checked into the plush, but exorbitantly expensive, leela palace hotel. more than we can probably afford but for three nights of the most romantic part of our honeymoon it felt like the right decision. looking out over our balcony onto the lake with the famous lake palace floating in the foreground and the city palace behind the decision seems utterly justified; let's see how we feel when the final bill arrives!