A flavour of the Orient
Rai & Stephie in Asia

Gladly leaving behind the semi naked sadhus and the glued to the terrace israeli and french pot smokers in Vashisht village close to Manali, we started the two day adventure that would take us 485km north to the town of Leh in Ladakh. The journey across the 2nd highest motorable pass in the world (5360m) is only possible during the summer and even in summer the road is frequently cut off by landslides and broken down lorries.

So off we went, rai , steph , a happy guitar and a very very brave and good driver with a very good jeep. The first challenge came shortly after departure as we climbed towards the Rohtang pass (3978m) which apparently means "piles of dead bodies"....the moonson rains had created an extremely muddy road. By 6am a huge traffic jam of lorries, jeeps and royal enfields was in full force. Just to complicate things a long convoy of kashmir army lorries were travelling in the opposite direction creating a very big mountain mess. Korean tourists wearing FLIP FLOPS were forced out of their cars to help push their car further up the hill. We took 5 funny hours to drive the 18km to the top of the pass...not bad considering our driver once took 3 days to do the same journey.

Leaving the nice mud behind we drove past some breathtaking scenery...beautiful mountain peaks, hanging glaciers, huge meandering rivers, narrow canyons. The camera was going off non-stop....it was really that good. To avoid altitude sickness we drank water bottle after water bottle ....we probably broke the world record for the number of pee stops in one single day...! After a fantastic night stop in a cute village (Jispa, 3300m) we drove on passing more impressive mountain peaks stripped of vegetation. Jeremy johnson, geologist extraordinaire would have given us a 1hr boring geology chat had he been with us! At the highest pass (5360 m) and with the head starting to feel heavy we made our way down towards Leh.

Apart from the scenery the Indian road signs kept us alert with laughter: 

Are you going to party, why drive so dirty?
Drinking whisky, after risky
Drive on horse power, not rum power
Peep, peep Don't sleep
Safety on road is "safeTEA" at home

Travelling is all about having brilliant ideas and instead of ending up in Leh we had a wise idea to cut the journey short by 20km and sleep in a stunning monastery (Tikse gompa). With our bloodshot eyes and feeling the altitude we chilled out on the roof terrace of the monastery. It was bliss...the perfect end to a fantastic journey.

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After a long overnight bus ride from Shimla (made longer by recovery trucks removing a lorry that had gone off the curvey road) followed by some hitch hicking we arrived at Naggar hill village (2000m)  located above the left bank of the Beas River in the Kullu Valley of Himachal Pradesh.

Hostels next to the castle in the centre of Naggar were offering typical inflated prices for very little...humid rooms with dirty bed sheets and no views...soooo with our backpacks and the healthy good looking guitar we went in search of something cheaper, more exciting and more memorable....and after a steep 30 minute climb we found the perfect place to stay : a cute guesthouse at the Krishna Temple overlooking the village. The family taking care of the temple gave us a delightful room which included two meals a day and hot water bucket shower...BRILLIANT. Even better was that our stay coincided with Krishnas (hindu god) birthday. So during the day and all night long worshippers from the surrounding villages descended on the temple and lucky for us we were invited too....the courtyard of the temple filled to maximum capacity with people singing, dancing, praying....a very moving and colourful experience !

Apart from enjoying the festivities we also had time to test our fitness with some short treks to more remote traditional villages among fields and fields of apple trees and wild and huge cannabis plants. Not being in any kind of rush we also went to check out some fantastic himalayan art work at the Nicholas Roerich Gallery. He was a russian artist who has a cult following in this part of the Himalayas and this might explain why you can order russian breakfasts (without the vodka) in practically all the hostels in Naggar !

Http://www.stephieandraigoasia.blogspot.com

After a quick pitstop in Kuala Lumpur to fix the lovely guitar and fix my long beard and share beers, cigars and good sushi with some old friends we headed all excited to Delhi for the next leg of the adventure: 3 to 4 months in the Himalayas (India, Bhutan, Nepal) as well as the delta of Bangladesh...

Delhi a city of 15 million or more people is actually a really fascinating place once you start discovering some of the nooks and crannies. Its brilliantly congested with rickshaws, street sellers, cows and confused backpackers. One of our main goals for the next 48 hrs was finding a train ticket towards the Himalayas. Standing between us and a train ticket were the famous TOUTS of New Delhi Railway station. We had been repeatedly warned of the problem by the guide books, mr julen ...The mission would be to find the Booking Office for Foreign Tourists apparently located on the 1st floor of the railway station....alll confident we arrived at the station and within a matter of minutes I got approached by a friendly looking official with a nice professional ID card who insisted that the office had closed down and we had to go to nearby Connaught Place. Despite Stephie repeatedly insisting on having a closer look at the station I got "swept away" by the official and before I knew I was on a rickshaw with a very disapproving Stephie next to me. And i felt like one big idiot when we arrived at our destination and realised we had been directed to a fake office. In fact there are more than 40 identical tourist information offices and only one is real hahaaaaaa. 30 minutes later looking red faced we were back at the station and sure enough Stephie found the booking office within seconds......Inside the queue looked like a big curly snake but at least we had sofas to sit on and the touts were gone gone gone....

With two trains tickets on the Shatabdi Express to Kalka for next day we headed to Old Delhi for some good fun exploring. The highlight was seeing the Jama Masjid mosque, the biggest one in India. The mosque was specially lit for Ramadan with families forming circles in the courtyard to have Iftaar at the end of the days fasting. Once the evening prayers were given the food stalls outside the mosque suddenly filled up with people...quite a claustrophic experience !

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Gili Meno is one of three islands located in NW Lombok and the perfect spot to chill out and take a break. But we were on a mission to find the best snorkelling spot of Indonesia ! No motorised vehicles on Meno just horses, cows, colourful boats, a few discrete beach bungalows, cute rickety family restaurants, hammocks and lots of white sand and coral.
The strong current around the island is perfect for those wanting to snorkel with minimal effort...lazy snorkellers....but if you blink and you miss the turtle then its too late....you have to be carlos menezes to be able to swim against the current.....luckily for us in the space of 60 minutes and with the sun setting we saw 10 cute turtles. The coral was pristine too and the visibility perfect. Next day we saw more and more turtles. The reef sharks never made an appearance but we were nonetheless very satisfied with our turtle find. To celebrate I ran around the island at sunrise (need to get fit for himalayas) and then after three blissful days it was time to leave Meno. We headed to Bali for one night with the tourists before leaving to Malaysia for some urgent laundry, a beard shave, guitar repair in preparation for our adventures in Ladakh, India.

From Timor we headed back to super mountainous Flores and completed the 700 km trans Flores road from east to west. There were more hairpin bends to look forward too. We counted only two sections of straight road and that lasted for no more than 10 minutes. To our surprise very little vomitting activity on the crowded buses. I guess the locals are used to left turn bend, up , right turn bend , down , left turn bend, down , up , right turn bend etcetcetc. 

Apart from bendy roads there are lots of empty white beaches, traditional villages among tropical jungle and your perfect cone shaped volcanoes in Flores. Also stunning rice paddies in the form of spider webs , black, green, brown caldera lakes (kelimutu volcano) and lots and lots of kids screaming hello mister!

Once on the west coast of Flores (Labuanbajo) we obviously said hello to the komodo dragons (giant lizards) which live on the nearby islands of Rinca and komodos...actually they seem to live quite close to the entrance of the park ...they appeared a little humanised...but apparently more than 2000 of them live hidden somewhere on these islands....makes overnight camping sound really appealing!

From Flores the plan was to head to Lombok for some trekking and snorkelling.....because of the dragons and the good diving in the area, Labuanbajo was more busy than we had hoped for. Backpackers had warned against the dull 24 hr ride across Sumbawa island which included two ferry crossings. Soooooo we ended up going on a two day organised boattrip. We hate anything organised but figured this was the best option for going from A to B.....it was not a boat full of oldies nor was it a party boat...but it was fun. Cheeky rai and steph found a perfect romantic spot on the front deck of the boat and with our thick sleeping bags we slept under the stars while the other tourists preferred to sleep in diesel stinking cabins and on the closed off lower decks....how effing boring...! On the way to Lombok we saw some wonderful tiny volcanic islands, tried our luck on some more snorkelling (still not superb) and cleaned ourselves in jungle waterfalls. Once in eastern Lombok (Labuhan lombok) the tourists were transferred by bus to beach resorts. We refused the bus transfer and checked into the one and only hostel in the harbour town for a nice bucket shower, a hot cup of tea and a good chat with the locals. The nearby mosque and the excited preacher kept us awake for a while longer....

Nemberala village on Rote island is well known among the surfing community for having the legendary T-land reef break....it makes the cabo ledo wave in Angola look like a wave for babies...
So we decided to check it out as i am officially ranked 6 among the angolan surfers and was confident i could ride the wave and jump to number 1 !  But it never quite happened that way....firstly you need to know how to duck dive the waves, secondly you need to avoid the aussies, third you need to apparently have a leach for big wave surfing and last but not least you need have balls and my balls weren't big enough ! And lets not forget i had no board and no sex wax.

Instead we got busy scootering, snorkelling, sunbathing, suntanning, sunsetting and drinking bintang in paradise....because it really really was paradise...stunning crystal blue lagoons, sand whiter than white and Mr Thomas who fed us three delicious meals a day . We even caught some baracuda...not one baracuda, not two, not three, not four but more than 200....maybe i should have become a fishermen...hahaaa

Rai, Steph and a sick guitar (one of the tuning pegs is worn out....will fix it in kuala lumpur ....)

Tourists are very thin on the ground in West Timor...we saw none outside kupang..... the bonus is that indonesians here are super friendly and they get very very very excited when they spot two strangers with backpacks and a guitar  ....very little bahasa indonesian language is spoken let alone english so we used our play acting skills, drawings etc to communicate. ...Selamat nok noka (good morning) is about all we can say in the local timor lingo..

Best way to travel around Timor is on these multi coloured, techno bass thumping minivans (known as bemos) and buses. Windscreens are covered with girly silhouettes  (some are quite explicit) as well as pictures of wayne rooney and matt dillon. Just to make it extra difficult for the driver to negotiate the hairpin bends they hang squeezy caterpillars, love hearts and other gadgets from the windscreen....

Timor is pretty moutainous and in some parts like around Fatumenasi it even reminded us of bonny Scotland (picture alpine landscape with pristine forests, streams, cold and misty and lots of cows... ) Families live, sleep and cook in lontar huts. ...it gets super smokey inside as we found out when we stayed  2 nights with a local family...great experience and they loved the little guitar !

Feeling a little bit like indiana jones and with some tricky scooter riding (even across some recent landslides) we visited more remote traditional villages like Temkessi, None and Boti...in the old days the warriors in some of these villages used to go on head hunting expeditions....glad we didn't get our heads chopped off when we visited !

Timor is crazy when it comes to non stop chewing of beetle nut. It makes your mouth go red, it rots your teeth and apparently it gives you a nice high...must try it before we leave...little kiddies, mum dad, granny grandad, aunt uncle, policeman, bus driver...they are all busy doing it...we have some fab photos of red lips black teeth and red lips with no teeth.....!...photos coming online soooooooon....promise!

From countryside timor we plan to cross to the nearby island of Rote and the famous surfing waves of Nemberala were we are bound to see a few aussie surfers (but not as many as in Bali !)

Rai, steph and the guitar

Getting to some indonesian islands was never going to be easy. Following our whale hunting experience in Lembata island the idea was to somehow cross the Sawu sea and explore West Timor. The wooden ferries were not travelling for the next week or so, the better Pelni boats were nowhere to be seen and the little cesna planes were long booked up. Going further east to the Alor islands for some cheeky snorkelling and then onto West Timor was not an option unless you fancied a very very very very long swim!

So we were forced to backtrack which we hate...but not for long...after a 4hr truck journey in the middle of the night and a 4 hr ferry ride back to the Eastern  port of Larantuka in Flores our luck changed and we are able to transfer onto a dodgy looking ferry for an 18 hr ride to Kupang the main city of West Timor. We were given two seats on the ferry and some floor space for sleeping. The cabin was nice and smokey despite it being oficially non smoking...indonesians love their clove cigarretes and they won't hesitate to light up on buses, taxis, ferries, toilets, shops, ....

Despite the boat rocking from side to side (the waves were big, very big) we managed to get some sleep and after nearly 30 hrs on the road we walked into a hotel in central Kupang smelling pretty bad and in need of a cold shower.