The final days of my Monastic Loop 'trek' - really a five day hike-and-explore among the monasteries and villages in a region in western Sikkim. This is around Tashiding monastary. On the penultimate night at sunset I ended up together with two Austrian hikers up on the mountain above Tashiding's village, where there was another monastery whose name escapes me now, where we were told we would find a place to sleep. There was none. Luckily, after much knocking on doors and nonverbal communication, we convinced a nice family to let us stay in the rooms usually reserved for the monks. Beautiful fog covered scenery and colorful Buddhist religious artifacts dotting the hilltops - there ain't nothing better in life!
This might be my last post in this blog for a while, at least in the 'retroactive travel blog' category. Grad school work is gonna hit me soon! My China picasaweb page is fairly complete; India's isn't, but keep looking for more new photo uploads from India on my facebook page. Well, thanks for reading so far, let me know what you think!
Itamar
Wednesday, August 19, 2009
Friday, August 7, 2009
Facebook albums
Yeah... I don't seem to be working on this blog too much, right? Well, I did just upload too albums with some photos to facebook, with a few comments, so you can find them here and here.
I will try to put up a few more entries on this before I move to Berkeley. I guess I'll just have to start grad school with my travel photos incompletely posted in a variety of different online locations, and I'll just leave them in that big mess. I think that doesn't really count as 'quitting' though (right Pete?). Next time, I'll make sure I post photos and stories while I'm still abroad...!
I will try to put up a few more entries on this before I move to Berkeley. I guess I'll just have to start grad school with my travel photos incompletely posted in a variety of different online locations, and I'll just leave them in that big mess. I think that doesn't really count as 'quitting' though (right Pete?). Next time, I'll make sure I post photos and stories while I'm still abroad...!
Theyyam
In the villages around the medium sized town of Kannur in northern Kerala, during the winter months, villagers hold religious dance performances known as Theyyam or Theyyatam. In each village the ceremonies occur on different times, involve somewhat different gods and always a different local plotline. The dances usually start in the middle of the night, sometimes early morning, and go on for many hours, repeating over the course of several days. Most amazingly, these have not yet become a tourist attraction - only a few foreigners were with me at each performance, making up a small fraction of the crowd, which was mostly women and small children. The men are mostly somehow involved in the ceremonies; teenagers evidently universally think that their parents' traditions are too uncool to be worth attending.
I didn't have too much trouble taking apart my sleep schedule and seeing a few different performances: two in the day time (morning), and one starting from midnight through the morning. They were amazing. The nighttime theyyatam was especially mesmerizing, lit by the large bonfire and torches swung in beat to the drums... But of course the videos I took came out better in the day time. Here's a long sample one for your viewing pleasure. Turn the volume up and enjoy!
I didn't have too much trouble taking apart my sleep schedule and seeing a few different performances: two in the day time (morning), and one starting from midnight through the morning. They were amazing. The nighttime theyyatam was especially mesmerizing, lit by the large bonfire and torches swung in beat to the drums... But of course the videos I took came out better in the day time. Here's a long sample one for your viewing pleasure. Turn the volume up and enjoy!
Thursday, June 4, 2009
Photo Links
I put my photos up in multiple locations since I'm planning (hoping) to use all the storage space Google gives me. Here are the different locations where you can find my photos:
http://picasaweb.google.com/ikimchi/
http://picasaweb.google.com/itamar.china
http://picasaweb.google.com/itamar.india
Also, some amazing photos that Scot took during our January 08 D-Lab trip:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/scotfrank/sets/72157604462902284/
He's good with the camera...
http://picasaweb.google.com/ikimchi/
http://picasaweb.google.com/itamar.china
http://picasaweb.google.com/itamar.india
Also, some amazing photos that Scot took during our January 08 D-Lab trip:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/scotfrank/sets/72157604462902284/
He's good with the camera...
Dunhuang, Gansu, China
We're gonna be skipping around on the time axis with these blog entries, since I'm just posting photos as they catch my eye. This set is from around Dunhuang in Gansu province, China. We went here right after finishing our teaching stint in Xining, Qinghai, on the way to the great desert state of Xinjiang. Dunhuang is a famous tourist destination, but was also nice for our journey since it broke the 24 hour train ride from Lanzhou to Urumqi roughly in half.
(Lanzhou is the transport hub nearest to Xining, but is in the next province over, in Gansu; given that Xining is by FAR the largest city in Qinghai, that tells you what sort of wild animal Qinghai Province is. Lanzhou is also notable for at some point being the most polluted city in the world. I actually thought that the meat skewers sold in the Lanzhou market were the best outside of Xinjiang; I hope it wasn't pollution seasoning...)
This photo is of the entrance to the Mogao caves near Dunhuang. The caves have amazing artwork from lots of different periods, starting at 1500 years ago, by multiple Buddhist groups. The fancy entranceway is new and doesn't merit a photo except for the soldiers posing nearby. The soldiers might have been on their way to silencing protests (or general collective self-expression) in volatile Xinjiang province in prep for the Olympics; but at least here they got to have some fun!
Our other major activity in Dunhuang was an overnight camel ride to the desert. We went to the beginning of the dune area so that we would just barely not see the edge of the desert - so though it wasn't far, it felt remote.
Here's our convoy, Natalie in front, Tess following and Stephen's leg just barely visible.
This is a desert.
The wind was howling the whole night so we didn't sleep much in our flimsy tents in the desert. We spent half of the next day vegetating in a nice internet cafe in town. It's like I almost get over my nytimes addiction - and then it starts full force all over again...
Our train out of town was canceled, supposedly because of sandstorms but probably just because people didn't buy enough seats. But finally (I think the next day) we got out of town and made it to Urumqi. It might be politically within China, but it's still completely central Asia...
(Lanzhou is the transport hub nearest to Xining, but is in the next province over, in Gansu; given that Xining is by FAR the largest city in Qinghai, that tells you what sort of wild animal Qinghai Province is. Lanzhou is also notable for at some point being the most polluted city in the world. I actually thought that the meat skewers sold in the Lanzhou market were the best outside of Xinjiang; I hope it wasn't pollution seasoning...)
This photo is of the entrance to the Mogao caves near Dunhuang. The caves have amazing artwork from lots of different periods, starting at 1500 years ago, by multiple Buddhist groups. The fancy entranceway is new and doesn't merit a photo except for the soldiers posing nearby. The soldiers might have been on their way to silencing protests (or general collective self-expression) in volatile Xinjiang province in prep for the Olympics; but at least here they got to have some fun!
Our other major activity in Dunhuang was an overnight camel ride to the desert. We went to the beginning of the dune area so that we would just barely not see the edge of the desert - so though it wasn't far, it felt remote.
Here's our convoy, Natalie in front, Tess following and Stephen's leg just barely visible.
This is a desert.
The wind was howling the whole night so we didn't sleep much in our flimsy tents in the desert. We spent half of the next day vegetating in a nice internet cafe in town. It's like I almost get over my nytimes addiction - and then it starts full force all over again...
Our train out of town was canceled, supposedly because of sandstorms but probably just because people didn't buy enough seats. But finally (I think the next day) we got out of town and made it to Urumqi. It might be politically within China, but it's still completely central Asia...
China: around Guilin
I was looking at some of my photos from China and came across a few crazy ones from the very end of my trip (my final week before returning to Shanghai). By this stage Tess and Stephen were already out of the country, and I was traveling on my own, and with limited time to spare. The end is always the sweetest though!
Here are some photos from a touristy boat ride in Yangshuo, near Guilin in the south. I grew my beard out for most of my time in China - ain't nothing wrong with teaching physics or backpacking when you've got a bit of stubble - so by the end it was something to be proud of. A local college student decided I looked funny enough to be worth showing around for a few days - she's the one who took the photos. Hanging out with her definitely made sightseeing more fun.
In this one you can also see the pretty background:
After you quit crew, you've only got limited means for propelling boats across a lake:
Crazy landscapes...
Evidently the pretty tourist town wasn't quite fun enough - so this club came in:
After a few days in Yangshuo and a night in Guilin, I continued on to the Ping'an rice field terraces. I was planning to hike from the smaller village on the mountainside to the bigger one and thus make all the cool viewpoints in my short time there. I got lost quite often in the walk, was drenched by a few sudden rains, and finally arrived at a family run hostel somewhat after sundown - it was awesome.
The now-touristy buildings in the main village were quite pretty;
And the rice terraces delightfully dreamy.
Here are some photos from a touristy boat ride in Yangshuo, near Guilin in the south. I grew my beard out for most of my time in China - ain't nothing wrong with teaching physics or backpacking when you've got a bit of stubble - so by the end it was something to be proud of. A local college student decided I looked funny enough to be worth showing around for a few days - she's the one who took the photos. Hanging out with her definitely made sightseeing more fun.
In this one you can also see the pretty background:
After you quit crew, you've only got limited means for propelling boats across a lake:
Crazy landscapes...
Evidently the pretty tourist town wasn't quite fun enough - so this club came in:
After a few days in Yangshuo and a night in Guilin, I continued on to the Ping'an rice field terraces. I was planning to hike from the smaller village on the mountainside to the bigger one and thus make all the cool viewpoints in my short time there. I got lost quite often in the walk, was drenched by a few sudden rains, and finally arrived at a family run hostel somewhat after sundown - it was awesome.
The now-touristy buildings in the main village were quite pretty;
And the rice terraces delightfully dreamy.
Saturday, May 23, 2009
Sravanabelagola
For a couple of months on and off from October 2008, I was an intern at the Technologies for Emerging Markets group at Microsoft Research in Bangalore. I wanted to do something in development since going to western China with the 2008 D-Lab class, and 'ICT4D' ('information and communication technologies for development') seemed pretty cool.
Before I started my internship, I knew that interesting work and hanging out with cool people wouldn't suffice for my coming to work in India - I wanted to do some weekend travels around Bangalore. There were lots of cool interns in the office but we mostly hung out by drinking Kingfisher and watching Big Bang Theory. Nobody seemed to have the energy to get out of Bangalore for a weekend. So after a month and a half or so of trying to organize people together to go somewhere, I decided to just start my weekend travels alone. I did one trip to the Belur and Halebid temples, and then another trip to the same Karnataka region, going through mysore briefly on the way to the magnificient Jain holy town of Sravanabelagola.
It took me 15 times of rereading my little note saying 'sravanabelagola' whenever I wanted to get directions to the correct bus, till I finally memorized the name of the darned place and was able to roll it off my tongue smoothly. Now I can proudly say that my Sravanabelagola-saying skill is nothing to sneer at.
At Sravanabelagola, I woke up with the sun to walk barefoot up stone-hewn steps leading up to this naked meditating monolith:
I love Jainism!
View from the way up:
Ancient pillars at the top of the hill:
There was a marriage procession when I got down from the hill, probably for the same marriage at the pilgrims' halls which I later 'crashed' (with an impromptu invitation):
From earlier that weekend, here are some photos from Mysore. I was able to take this one at the bazaar as an action shot only because the pretty girl with whom I traveled that afternoon captured the shopkeepers' full attention.
I didn't even see any Hindu temples at Mysore - but the Mosque was pretty from the outside, and the cathedral contained Jesus (presumably after being taken down from the cross).
Before I started my internship, I knew that interesting work and hanging out with cool people wouldn't suffice for my coming to work in India - I wanted to do some weekend travels around Bangalore. There were lots of cool interns in the office but we mostly hung out by drinking Kingfisher and watching Big Bang Theory. Nobody seemed to have the energy to get out of Bangalore for a weekend. So after a month and a half or so of trying to organize people together to go somewhere, I decided to just start my weekend travels alone. I did one trip to the Belur and Halebid temples, and then another trip to the same Karnataka region, going through mysore briefly on the way to the magnificient Jain holy town of Sravanabelagola.
It took me 15 times of rereading my little note saying 'sravanabelagola' whenever I wanted to get directions to the correct bus, till I finally memorized the name of the darned place and was able to roll it off my tongue smoothly. Now I can proudly say that my Sravanabelagola-saying skill is nothing to sneer at.
At Sravanabelagola, I woke up with the sun to walk barefoot up stone-hewn steps leading up to this naked meditating monolith:
I love Jainism!
View from the way up:
Ancient pillars at the top of the hill:
There was a marriage procession when I got down from the hill, probably for the same marriage at the pilgrims' halls which I later 'crashed' (with an impromptu invitation):
From earlier that weekend, here are some photos from Mysore. I was able to take this one at the bazaar as an action shot only because the pretty girl with whom I traveled that afternoon captured the shopkeepers' full attention.
I didn't even see any Hindu temples at Mysore - but the Mosque was pretty from the outside, and the cathedral contained Jesus (presumably after being taken down from the cross).
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)