Last Days in India

I'm in Delhi now, getting ready to go to the airport soon - my trip is coming to a close.  Thank you for your interest and support!  I plan to continue my web presence here: scalingback.org - it'll be a site about various things but focusing on Bay Area locally produced food and solar energy.

I've spent the last week in Dharamsala, or actually a smaller town called Macleod Ganj just north of there.  There is a large Tibetan refugee community in the area, and the Dalai Lama calls Macleod Ganj home for parts of the year - it's the seat of the Tibetan government in exile.

Yes, this bull is in a graveyard, but he's not dead.

Cattle grazing at a dumpster.

Traveling in India

A couple more pictures from Varanasi:

My next destination was Delhi - the pictures below are from the Red Fort.

I had to escape the heat so I headed into the Himalayan foothills to a city called Shimla.

Bodhgaya and Varanasi, India

From Kolkata I traveled to a town called Bodhgaya.  I'm starting to understand what some guidebooks are referring to when they talk about the "crush of humanity" in India...

Bodhgaya is known as the place where prince Gautama Siddhartha achieved enlightenment and became Buddha while sitting under a pipal tree.  That was reportedly in 598 BC.  A descendent of the tree is shown below in front of a temple built to honor the occasion. 

Here is another view of the tree, known as the Bodhi tree.

In the temple complex around the Bodhi tree:

From Bodhgaya I traveled by train to a city called Varanasi.  Here's some video from my ride in a three-wheeled rickshaw from the train station into the town:



The streets are very narrow in Varanasi but that's understandable as this is one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world.  The settlement here dates back to 1200 BC.

Varanasi is located along the Ganges river - the stairways down to the river are called ghats.

Every evening there is a ceremony at this particular ghat:

Here is a short video clip of the crowd around the ceremony:

 

Back to BKK, on to India

One of the last places in Vietnam that I visited was Halong Bay:

Back in Bangkok, I applied for an Indian visa - after about a week I had my visa.

My flight brought me from Bangkok to Kolkata.  The monsoon season is about to start here, which means that it's very hot and humid...

I met an Argentinian named Nahuel (below on the right) - he was on the same flight as me to Kolkata.  We shared a cab into the city center and have teamed up a few times to do some exploring.  This morning Ronnie (shown below on the left) gave us a walking tour of the neighborhood.

Cambodia to Vietnam

From Cambodia I traveled to Saigon, Vietnam (now known as Ho Chi Minh City).

The War Remnants Museum was very moving...

I think I have to update my ideas about what communism is...

From Saigon I traveled north along the coast of the South China sea.

I arrived in Hanoi in northern Vietnam by train.  On the train I met three friendly locals - I don't remember their names in Vietnamese but the two women's names translate to "river" and "grass," they told me, and the man's name translates to "tailor."

Traveling in Cambodia

Here are a few more pictures from temples in the Angkor area:

The two pictures below show the causeway leading to Angkor Wat.  My pictures of Angkor Wat itself didn't turn out very well - you can see much better ones by doing a Google image search.

I traveled by boat to a town called Batambang, passing through many fishing villages.

Some fellow passengers:

Phnom Penh, the capitol of Cambodia:

Angkor, Cambodia

My first stop in Cambodia has been Siem Reap, the closest city to the temple complexes at Angkor.  I've spent one day exploring the area so far and I haven't seen the most famous temple (Angkor Wat) yet - the pictures below are from some of the neighboring temples.

One tourist group consisted of monks - they were way more photogenic than everyone else.

At the heart of one temple...

Many historical monuments were destroyed by the brutal Khmer Rouge that controlled Cambodia in the late seventies, but they spared the Angkor temples.  It has been heart-wrenching to see street vendors whose hands, according to signs on their carts, were cut off by the Khmer Rouge.