Happy Birthday Mum

Some flowers for you. Courtesy of a garden in Srinagar, Kashmir.

Love always

One of the reasons I want to keep travelling.

New Zealand? That’s next to Sweden, right?

I’m a New Zealander and proud. However in my travels I’ve discovered that a lot of people have never heard of New Zealand and most Europeans think that a kiwi is just a type of fruit.

People have told me that New Zealand is next to Kenya, Sweden and Argentina. People have tried to tell me that New Zealand is in fact Papua New Guinea (right continent at least) and that all New Zealanders have black skin and live in grass huts (we don’t). I have been told I have fantastic English for someone who’s native tongue is French (it’s not, New Zealand has two official languages, English and Te Reo Maori. The large majority of the population speak English). I understand all this.  New Zealand is a small country of only 4.4 million, we are situated at the end of the world and live in relative isolation.  I’m not offended when people don’t know where New Zealand is (even American spell check doesn’t recognize New Zealand as a word) and I have no qualms about telling people about the land of the long white cloud.

Generally speaking New Zealands relative obscurity has never hindered my travel and using the NZ passport has made my life really simple.  That was until I decided to go to the Ukraine for a weekend. Legitimately entering the Ukraine was no easy task.  It all started at the Ukrainian Embassy in Warsaw, the smallest of my problems being that the women behind the desk was convinced that New Zealand was in fact a part of Australia. I could have suggested that Ukraine was in Russia but she didn’t look like she had a sense of humor. The people at the embassy were also utterly confused as to why I (an alleged New Zealander) would want to go to the Ukraine.

Four separate visits to the embassy later I arrived to pick up my passport on the day I was supposed to travel to Lviv. Despite applying for the visa with a New Zealand passport, providing a New Zealand drivers as identity proof, stating  on my visa application form my nationality as “New Zealander”, my place of birth as Blenheim, New Zealand and the place my passport was issued as Wellington, New Zealand when I received my passport back the Ukrainian Visa said this….

Nationality: AUS, Australian. FAIL. Don’t get me wrong I have no issue with Australia.  My mum’s Australian, I have Australian family and friends, I love the country and think that the animosity a lot of kiwis have for our neighbor is stupid BUT the simple fact is that I am NOT Australian and neither is my passport. It would be okay though? Right? Not many New Zealanders go to the Ukraine, maybe they don’t even have a “New Zealand” in their system and they just put AUS for official purposes to make the paper work easy.

Not so, when I went to hand over my passport at the border the official looked like I had just handed her a bomb. I could hear her thinking “what the hell is this”. Then my passport did something that it has never done before. It aroused suspicion.  Cue a long line of questioning that went something like this.

Is New Zealand part of Australia? – No we are an independent country

Are you sure? Yes, very sure.

Why does your visa say you nationality is Australia? I don’t know (ask the woman at your embassy)

Why does your passport have plastic in it? It’s an electronic chip all New Zealand passports have them, it holds all my data  supposedly making going through customs easy.

Why? To make going through customs easy…..

but why would they do that? To modernize the passport…..

Are you a diplomat, consular or businessman? No (do you think I would be going through customs like this if I was)

What is this? What does it say? – It says “New Zealand Passport”.  As we have two official languages, English and Te Reo,  our passport is in both languages.

Who is this man? Why is he in your passport? I don’t know who the man is.  He’s a John Doe. It is a sample photo of a New Zealand passport directing customs officials how to use the electronic chip.

Why did you sign by the man? Because that is where they ask you to sign on the passport.

Why are you coming to the Ukraine in winter? Because Lviv is supposed to be beautiful in the snow. Actually in New Zealand it is summer right now so technically I’m on summer holidays.  This response got some surprised looks.

It was at this point that I realized that they thought I had made up a country and my passport was fake. Not helped by the fact that my visa said I was Australian. The electronic chip was also causing a lot of concern.  Was I a spy? Was this chip actually a weapon of mass destruction? After some more questioning (you have been to India, why did you go to India?), some thorough scanning of my passport pages and a quick google search of NZ, I was reluctantly granted entry into the Ukraine.

Getting out of the Ukraine was almost as hard. It required another 4 officials to check my passport and  a round of questioning. It was worth it though.  As you can hopefully see from my pictures, Lviv was beautiful, the  Ukrainian culture was really interesting and I honestly want to go back and see more of the country. Also, there are now a few more people in the Ukraine who know that there is a country called New Zealand (and they have strange passports with electronic chips).

Lviv, Ukraine for a day

 

A tall man with a book, what more do you need?

 

 

Analogue Love!

My new Lomo camera with fish bowl lens. An impulse buy using money that would have been better spent on buying warm clothes, but look at her. The colour! At the moment I’ve got a black and white film in which hopefully will capture the winter mood of Warsaw which is quite bleak at the moment.

Fingers crossed for some interesting shots.

Maximum Capacity (and some Mehndi)

I’m back. Unsurprisingly I’ve been neglecting my cyber life, so five countries and over 6,000 photos later blogging has become unappealing.  However I will persist and hopefully in some time in 2015 I will have caught up to my current travels.

For those of you who are unaware I’m currently living in Warsaw, Poland.  I live with a fantastic Polish family, gorge on Polish fare and make vague attempts to learn the language.  Living the dream. Now if only it would snow.

BUT before Poland came India, Oman, Dubai and Lanzarote. This weekend I hope to add some photos from my brief foray into the Ukraine (visa pending).So I’m going back to finish my Indian adventure.  Once again the sheer volume of photos is overwhelming so I’ll throw some  photos out there and see how it goes. Starting with some of mehndi or as we refer to it in the west, henna.

Mehndi is temporary skin decoration (2-3 weeks depending on the quality and treatment of the henna). It’s a must for weddings and special occasions.  You can generally find Mehndi wallahs in the markets and on specific streets however most Indian women are capable of doing their own.  Our  designs are VERY simple! Typical mehndi is very intricate and can go all the way up the arm on both sides.  The downfall is that you have to wait at least an hour for it to dry thus losing the use of your arms. As they say , India is a lesson in patience!

.  

So it begins!

Life is never black and white

“A portrait is not made in the camera but on either side of it.”

Some photos of my boys

Photos by Me, Joana Nardo (love your work) and the boys of Surabi

Sri Lanka: part 2

We’re back for Sri Lanka part two.  What is Sri Lanka famous for? Tea of course, so naturally couldn’t visit and not see the tea plantations.  After Kandy our next stop was Hutton and Dalhousie. So we took the early morning bus into the mountains. The views were spectacular! Green, clean and beautiful (something I don’t see on a regular basis). It was also refreshingly cold. Not cold as in Dunedin cold more of about 20C cold AHHH When we arrived in Hutton we found a tuk tuk driver to take us to Dalhousie (about an hour away).

On the way Salim the tuk tuk drive let us drive. Maybe a new career option?

Loreta was a hit with the locals

The reason we traveled to Dalhousie was to scale Adams Peak.  Adams Peak is a mountain that has a giant footprint like mark at the summit. Christians believe it was the first mark on earth made by Adam as he was throw out of the garden of Eden. Buddhists believe that it is the footprint of Buddha and Hindus believe it is the mark of Shiva. So what ever religion you to relate to it’s an important place. Adams peak is a 7km ascent up a steep set of steps.  We originally planned to begin at 2am so we could see the sunrise but due to poor weather conditions we started in the afternoon. Of course after we had a quick tea stop.

Ready for action in ALL BLACK!

We also engaged the services of a local guide. Adam a stray dog followed as all the way up and back.  He was good company and the only tip he wanted was the left over tuna and a belly rub. Note how Loreta’s socks match her flag. Very patriotic.

A Buddhist temple on the way up.

On the way I also managed to pick up an unwanted hitch hiker. LEECH!!!

I was always told that you should not try to remove the leech because when they are full they will drop off. After letting it fed on me for a while I got fed up and Loreta kindly cut it off with her pocket knife (which she managed to get through customs). I have since found out that a single fed will satisfy a leech for up to 3 months. The wound also bleed profusely because leeches secrete an anticoagulant into the wound to facilitate blood flow. Very sneaky. I now have to nice puncture wounds a lasting memory of my time in Sri Lanka.

After some hard vertical climbing we made it to the top. The view was clearly AMAZING.

We were met at the top by a security guard who knew three words in English: “Hello”, “tea” and of course “tip”. It was freezing on the top and we were required to remove our shoes because it was a holy place. In order to avoid frost bite we didn’t stay at the summit very long.

 

Getting down was a lot quicker than getting up but my legs didn’t forgive me for a couple of days where I generally had to avoid stairs if possible.

Our last stop in Sri Lanka was Hikkaduwa a small beach town.  Here is where I had my next animal encounter.

ROSIE THE GIANT SEA TURTLE!!!!

Check her out. We both got to feed her some fresh sea weed in the morning.

We tried to get as much sun time in as possible unfortunately it is rainy season so our plans got thwarted.

Overall I really enjoyed Sri Lanka it was a refreshing escape from Chennai. The people are a lot more relaxed and friendly.  They still stared but it’s a different kind of stare to what I’m used to in India. It was less conservative, cleaner and a lot less visible poverty. Sri Lanka was still at times tiring to travel in because everywhere people are trying to rip you off and we had to bargain for everything. Prices would be doubled or even tripled because we were tourists. For example we went to buy a bottle of water from a store.  On the bottle it said 30Rs, when we asked the shopkeeper she first said it was 50Rs and then changed her mind and said it was 100Rs. When questioned on this dramatic price rise she said it was because the bottle had been kept in the fridge.   It sounds minor but when you are facing this all the time it begins to get frustrating however we had sufficient experience in India to know how to deal with it.

So two big thank yous. First to Loreta for traveling with me. We had a lot of laughs and interesting experiences and I was lucky to have such a chilled out travel buddy. A thank you Sri Lanka for the amazing time. I honestly didn’t want to go back to Chennai. 

Sri Lanka: escape from Chennai

Hello again it’s been a while. I think it is safe to conclude that I’m not good at the regular blogging thing. I’m not going to apologize though because it means that I’ve been out actually living in the real world, however I will strive to make more of an effort to keep in contact.

What has happen since we last talked? Quite a lot. I got fired from my first internship, lived in a peedam (like an ashram), taught nursery school,  climbed mountains, met some amazing people, undertook a second internship (which was successful), traveled around south India, got several bouts of food poisoning, chilled with some amazing wildlife and much more BUT the most exciting thing I have done recently is GOING TO SRI LANKA!

After 4.30am start and some minor trouble with security involving my Swiss army knife I made into Sri Lanka with Loreta my cool Lithuanian friend.  Our first stop was Negombo a touristy beach town just out of Colombo.

After checking in we went to explore the main attraction of the town, Negombo fish market.

There was an impressive range of sea food from squid to tuna. There was also an impressive smell and many satisfied cats lounging around (as Loreta pointed out the animals in Sri Lanka are not vegetarians.)

We decided to skip this attraction….

After the fish market the only thing left to do was go to the beach.

we even wore bikini’s (gasp) and nobody stared (much).

Day two: we drove to the Pinnawala Elephant Orphanage which is approximately 2 hours inland from Colombo. I was a bit too excited. Pinnawala is a government-run park that is home to a large herd of elephants.  Entry ticket allows you to watch the elephants have their daily bath in the river and then see them roam around in a field like area. I took about 300 pictures of elephants so here are just a few…

ELEPHANTS WOOHOO!

 

There were a number of keepers (with large pointed sticks) that herded the elephants. Sometimes I felt the elephants were a little exploited because the keepers would bring the elephants up close and then would encourage the foreign tourists to come up and touch them (which we did, I had to stroke an elephant). This inevitably ended in “tip madam, please madam,tips”.

For an extra fee (2.50 dollars) you could “feed the baby elephant milk”. Of course I brought the ticket as I had visions of myself sitting with the tiny babies BUT reality was sadly disappointing. It was not a baby elephant but an adolescent which was chained to the opposite side of the fence. I was allowed to touch the bottle while the keeper held it up for the elephant to drink. The whole feeding lasted about 3 seconds…FAIL.

I LOVE elephants so just in case you haven’t seen enough pictures of them here are some more….

Pinnawala is a must see for anyone travelling in Sri Lanka! We also got talked into going to a spice garden which is a place of Ayurveda or traditional herbal medicine. It was interesting learning about the plants and their uses we even managed to get a full body massage however nothing is ever truly free and it predictably ended in the hard sell where they tried to convince us to buy everything from weight loss pills to hair removal cream at “local prices not tourist prices madam.”

Day three: We spent exploring Colombo the capital. Many blogs, websites and even the locals we asked weren’t complimentary about Colombo. Clearly these people have never been to Chennai. By comparison Colombo was clean and fresh. The traffic was still insane but drivers didn’t feel the need to honk their horns every 2 seconds. There were rubbish bins, trees and parks and men were not peeing on every street corner. People (especially women) were wearing what they wanted i.e. short skirts (by short I mean knee-length) and there were plenty of couples showing public displays of affection like holding hands (oh god not holding hands) and some were even kissing.  Colombo was a relaxing city and at times I felt that like I could be back home.  There was also not the same level of poverty you can see in Chennai on a regular basis.  The only reminder that Sri Lanka is recovering from a 20 year civil war is the military presence with armed personnel stationed around the city.  I didn’t feel that they we obtrusive in fact every time we passed they would usually smile and wave.

We also managed to find a beautiful Buddhist temple that was sitting out on a lake. NICE.

The next day we braved the public transport and took the bus to Kandy.  Kandy is a city situated in the middle of the hill country about 4 hours inland of Colombo. We met a friendly tok tok driver Tara who gave us a quality tour of the city.  We visited another Spice garden, brought some tea and experimented with the tropical fruits at a roadside stall. We ate red bananas (not pictured)

There was also the favorite Sri Lankan fruit  Rambutan. You peel off the spiky exterior and inside is a soft, white, slightly gummy ball. I wasn’t a huge fan.

On a better note was the Mangosteen.  Inside the purple rind is a sweet and tangy seed. YUM

As Loreta and I were on a tight budget we decided it was better to spend money on sights rather than food. As a result we lived on tuna, crackers and chocolate milk. Good combination and ideal for weight loss.

Also in Kandy is the sacred temple of the tooth. This place supposedly holds the tooth of Buddha and is a major pilgrimage site. We didn’t visit because: you don’t actually get to see the tooth, we’ve both seen a lot of temples and entry was to expensive for what you got to see. Instead we went to the giant white Buddha overlooking Kandy and then went to see the Kandian dancers.

White Buddha.

The Kandian dancers were worth the money. The show lasted an hour and consisted of ten different dance performances including a peacock dance, a mask dance (still used as a psychiatric treatment, bet they don’t teach that in clinical) , a cobra dance and walking on hot coals.  The show was long enough to enjoy but short enough not to get boring.

We also managed to make a new friend at the guest house (with the help of Loreta’s tuna)

This post is already massive and I’m only half way through, so Sri Lanka will now be divided into 2 parts. Stay tuned for the tea plantations, turtles and leeches. xx

Mamallapuram

Temple, Check

Everyone needs to escape the city, especially Chennai.  So a couple of weeks ago we travelled to Mamallapuram for a weekend of sun, sea and archaeology. Mallalapuram or Mahabalapuram (called Mahabs by tourists) is a two hour bus ride from Chennai.  The bus ride costs 18Rs which is 50 cents NZ. Cheap definitely but public transport in India is an experience in itself (more on that later) what you don’t pay in money you pay in sweat, personal space and sometimes dignity.

We made it to Mahabs relatively unscathed and after some aimless wandering and coconut juice we made it to the beach.

Coconut juice please!

I had my first swim in the Indian ocean. BLISS! The beach is not really paradise; there are piles of rubbish in varying states of decomposition with varying smells associated.  Men also “subtly” roam the beach hoping to catch a glimpse of some exposed western flesh but it’s all worth it when you’re in the ocean

Mahabs is renowned for its fresh seafood, sadly we didn’t get to experience it, but we hear it’s good.  Emma and I had a serious case of food envy when we got dry fish that had clearly been suffocated in garlic and nothing else.

Garlic with a little fish

The most important decision of the day

Marsala Prawns, a better option

Fresh calamari with noodles (belonging to Ammie and Shu)

The second ancient capital of the Pallava Kings has a lot more to offer than sun and sea.  There are some ancient archaeological wonders that gave me an introductory taste of India’s rich history.

The Shore Temple

A World Heritage site, the shore temple is a beautiful temple sitting overlooking the sea.  It was built in the 7^th century and is a shrine to Shiva (the destroyer).  When I first saw the carving I was a little underwhelmed until I remembered how old it actually was, then you appreciate how well preserved it is. The temple is also positioned in a perfect place because it gets a delicious sea breeze that offers some relief from the heat.

Some photos in and around the shore temple featuring Ammie, Shu and Emma.

When we were roaming…

Lotus’s!

A lotus pond with a water guardian in the middle. It also doubles as a laundry

Holy COW!

Some of the locals..

Arjuna’s Penance- This is a beautiful relief carving etched into the cliff face.  It’s alive with Hindu mythology but very hard to take it in at one time.

Penance in Hinduism doesn’t mean suffering to erase your sins; in fact it’s the opposite it’s suffering to gain a wish from the gods. You can see Arjuna (skinny guy in the tree pose) performing self-mortification to gain Shiva’s (I think he is the regal looking guy with his palm extended and the trident like thing) most powerful weapon, the god slaying pasupata.

A herd of elephants marching under an army of angels

Nagas (snakes beings) that are descending in a crevice which water once flowed down. There is also the cobra which represents the holy mother.

I’m not sure if this is comic relief but it’s a cat performing penance to some appreciative mice.

While picking our way through the ruins we found a fortune teller.  It was impressive how my four years of scientific training in rational thought could be overcome by a physic parrot.

For 50Rs the small green parrot is released from his cage and he sorts through a pile of cards until he finds your fortune.  Every one of us got a “verrrry verrry goods fortunes missus”.

 

Negatives of Mahabs- I got absolutely molested by mosquitoes; my exotic blood really gets them going. My skin also reacts in an interesting way to the bites.  The bites form large red welts that get exponentially itchier as time goes on.  After a day the bites turn purple and it looks like I have a weird skin disease (because I’m not unattractive enough with my sweat drenched, pink skin).  I am not exaggerating when I say that my foot swell to twice its size The insane heat also means that sightseeing is difficult because there is only so much you can physically stand before you have to retreat to the beach.

Mahabs is a perfect escape from Chennai and a must see place if you are in Tamil Nadu.  So much happens in a week in India it is exciting but hard to keep pace with blogging wise.  Fortunately I got fired (over text) last Thursday so I have a bit of free time that I might use to get up to date.  Thanks to everyone for the lovely comments, as you can see I still haven’t mastered the photo/text positioning and my writing is leaving a lot to be desired but I’m getting better.  Once again leave me comments about anything you want to see (Ali, I’m working on an animals in India post).  Until next time. xx