Going off the grid

Nov. 29, 2008

I am officially going off the grid for the next 16-20 days as I embark on a 150 kilometer trek of the Annapurna Circuit. The trek will take me through valleys and across plains and up over 5,000 meters to Thorung La, one of the highest altitude passes in the world.

The trek is not the wild adventure it once was. The trails are well-traversed and lined with dozens of small villages along the way. But still it is called one the best mountain walks in the world.

I am nervous but excited. It's a little late in the season to be undertaking the trek. Temperatures at the pass have been reportedly falling well below 0 degrees Fahrenheit in the past few days. But I'm feeling good and healthy, so off I go.

If you don't hear from me by Dec. 20, send in the search party.

Ahhhh... Pokhara

Nov. 29, 2008

This is how I spent my Thanksgiving afternoon.

Rejuvenation in the mountains

Nov. 29, 2008

I may have been a mountain goat in a prior life. For the second time on my trip, I have found peace and rejuvenation in a lakeside town at the foot of a major mountain range.

In Europe, my heart melted for Interlaken, Switzerland. In Asia, I have found Pokhara, Nepal.

Skirting Phewa Lake and within sight of the Dhaulagiri, Annapurna and Manaslu ranges, each with peaks over 8000 meters, Pokhara is actually the third largest city in the country. The city proper though is far from the lakeside along which a bustling tourist village has sprouted up. Thirty years ago my dad came to Pokhara when it was still a small village. He asked me if the old women still come up to tourists trying to sell magic mushroom omelets. Not anymore, Dad. Sorry.

Pokhara's lakeside district is lined with lots of good restaurants, Internet cafes and trekking gear shops. Everyone, rich tourist and poor Nepali alike, wears North Face gear. It's not the most authentic place in the world, but I admit it's nice to be back in a First World-feeling place after a few weeks in India where coming into intimate contact with extreme poverty is unavoidable.

Pokhara is actually a lot like Interlaken complete with its clear lake and paragliders in the sky. The town has even been called the Switzerland of Nepal. But in place of the apple orchards and crisp, cold air, there are rice fields and warm, hazy weather in the valley.

I've spent several days here doing some minor hikes and bicycling around town. One night I walked up to Sarangkot, a peak overlooking the valley, and then marched along the ridge to a small village called Kaskikot. There I was invited to spend the night with a Nepali family. Now this was an authentic experience.

Manbahadur, a man in his mid-thirties, offered me a room for the night in his family's house for 60 Nepali Rupees (less than $1). I had been heading toward a larger village where there was a guesthouse someone recommended to me, but this seemed like too good an experience to pass up.

Manny's elderly mother and sister kept busy around the fire in the middle of the floor of the house's kitchen/living room/dining room/bedroom. Manny's children
gathered around me asking all the questions they could think of in English. I sat with the family around the fire while the women squatted on their heels cooking up a meal of spicy chicken, curried vegetables, lentils and rice. I ate like the others with my hands, devouring the tasty food. Soon after the meal, I ended up going to bed in a room to myself adjacent to the main house. It was only about 8 p.m., but the electricity in the town was out and there isn't much you can do in the complete darkness in the hills of the Himalayas. I felt a little guilty about taking the room, knowing that on nights when they don't have guests, it probably is the bedroom for the old woman or the children.

I woke up before dawn and Manny's 17-year-old niece, and 10-year-old son climbed with me up to the peak over Kaskikot where there stands a modest Hindu temple. The children and I watched the sunrise over Pokhara from the temple for Kali.

When I left, I ended up giving Manny 400 rupees, more than I would've paid for a room in a guesthouse. The whole experience was well worth it.

Safe and sound in Nepal

Nov. 27, 2008

Just wanted to write a quick note to let people know I'm safe and sound in Nepal, far away from the terrorist bombings in Mumbai. I woke up this Thanksgiving morning to the shocking news and spent a totally surreal half hour in a Pokhara internet cafe listening online to New York City's WCBS 880 about the news of India.

My next stop in about a month's time is Bangkok where this is going on. In a few days I'm heading off on a three week trek into the Annapurna mountain range, far away from all that... so long as I don't run into any Maoist rebels on the trails.

What a crazy world.

Life and death in Varanasi

Nov. 23, 2008

The fire in the darkness reflected in the water of the Ganges was a magnet for my companion and me. Out walking along the ghats of Varanasi our first night in the city, my new Swedish/Porteguese friend Billie and I were drawn to the flames. They glowed orange in the faces of a crowd of somber men looking on from the steps along the riverside. Not wanting to intrude on whatever ritual was taking place, we girls climbed up into a cement enclave to look over the fire.

Then I saw it, a human foot crackling in the flames, the toes curling in the intense heat. I nearly fell to my knees at the sight.

The funeral pyres are part of the whole experience of Varanasi, also known as Benares, the holy city of India, the city of lights and the city of learning. One of the oldest continually inhabited places in the world, it has been regarded by Hindus, Buddhists and Jains as a place of great religious importance. One-time Redding, Conn. resident Mark Twain wrote "Benares is older than history, older than tradition, older even than legend, and looks twice as old as all of them put together."

Even without knowing of its historical significance, a walk on the ghats along the misty Ganges at night, listening to the chiming of bells and women singing in the temples, and watching the funeral pyres, one can't help but be moved by the place.

I met Billie on the train from Delhi to Varanasi earlier this week. We agreed to split a rickshaw and check out a guesthouse together near the Assi Ghat in the south part of town near the river. I quickly learned that my new friend has a fiery soul herself.

Billie, who has traveled to India three times before, received her name from a friend several years ago. In Hindi, Billie means cat, fitting because her birth name is Caterina or Katervina or something like that. She speaks in the deep way the Swedes have when they speak English. It is a quiet but powerful voice.

Before each meal, she lays her hands on either side of her plate, closes her eyes to bless her food with Reiki energy. She works now as a street performer doing fire dances with poi sticks and fans. She's hoping to get some gigs this winter in Goa.

Billie has intense brown eyes that are always wide open, sometimes chillingly so. They are the eyes of a newborn taking in everything for the first time. When she makes eye contact, it's hard to look away. A thought once flashed through my mind that if I broke our eye contact, Billie might whip a knife out of her sleeve and slash my throat.

Though she scares me a little, I like Billie. She's energetic and resourceful. She talked me into taking a Kathak dance class with her. Her hope was that the traditional dance would help influence her fire performances. I was just kind of curious and wanted to do something that might make me feel pretty.

The woman who taught us was beautiful and intense with dark circles under her dark eyes. Billie called them opium eyes. This young woman had such fluidity to her movements, like her fingers and arms and feet were made of melting wax.

For me though, instead of transforming into a beautiful flower, the experience left me feeling as stiff as oak. Kathak is a graceful dance. I'm not really a graceful person. (Sometimes, with a soccer ball, I feel beautiful, but otherwise I kind of just plod... but with exuberance!

That night, Billie and I took our walk along the ghats and saw the burning foot. A man attending the ghat took the opportunity to explain to us the significance of the ritual. People from all over India and beyond come to Varanasi to die. It is believed that those who die along the banks of the Ganges in this holy city achieve instant enlightenment. The burning of the bodies is a ritual of purification. Only men attend the burning because it is feared that women crying out in mourning would disturb the spirit on its way to enlightenment.

There are five types of people who do not require the ritual purification when they die, the man explained. These are the Sadus, or holy men of Varanasi, pregnant women, children under age eight, those with leprosy, those with small pox, and those who died by snake bite. All these people, he said, are already pure having suffered before death.

The snakebite one strikes me as quite interesting. The man explained that the cobra is one embodiment of Shiva, so the person is killed and blessed by god.

When they die, the bodies of these five types of people are taken out to the middle of the river, weighted with a stone and dropped into the murky, green depths.

Many who come to Varanasi find the place fascinating but filthy. Nothing is hidden in India, but especially in this city. Animals and people share every space, rubbing up against each other, pissing and defecating everywhere. Spirituality is an outward and passionate expression. Children run along the ghats offering visitors little palm leaf bowls filled with a few flower blossoms and a candle to light and set adrift in the river as prayers for the dead. Always, always there is the sound of bells clanging in the Hindu temples. People sell sweet, greasy pastries and spicy, greasy food on the streets. While walking the streets or taking a chai break in a little makeshift street cafe, sometimes one sees spontaneous parades of men carrying the body of dead man or woman down to the riverside.

It's all a big carnival in the city of light. Everything is a celebration of life and death. These two things are viewed simply as continuations of each other.

Hippies everywhere!!!

Nov. 21, 2008

Oh man. I need to get out of Varanasi. Hippies everywhere.

My friend from college pointed out that a comment I left for him on Facebook about buying a tam tam drum in Jaipur was a little more "out there" than normal. To quote him exactly, Mike Hand writes: "Holy f*&k-s$*t, girl.. Last I knew you, your hippie hatred knew no bounds. When did you go and become their queen?"

I've had four conversations about meditation today alone. I was prompted last night into giving my own interpretation of writing from the Tao Te Ching. I've been seriously considering enrolling in a ten day silent Vipassana meditation course in the foothills of the Himalayas. Yesterday, I bought a shirt made out of hemp for Chrissakes!

Where the hell did all this come from?

Finding my calm

Nov. 20, 2008

For those of you who've been following my travels here for the past several months, you may have noticed that since I arrived in India the pace for posting entries has slackened. This is due to several reasons. One problem has been finding reliable internet. In the neighborhood in Delhi where I stayed several days ago, internet cafes are abundant. This however hasn't been the case in many of the other places I've visited.

Even when I've come across a computer that has been updated beyond Windows 95, many of the towns I've been in have been plagued by power cuts. I'll be in the middle of writing an e-mail and then the whole city goes dark and I lose everything I've written. In Varanasi, where I write now, the entire city goes without power between 10 a.m. and 2 p.m. everyday. It's just a part of life here.

Those excuses aside, the major reason I haven't posted much is I find India a daunting subject to tackle. This place is tough to describe and impossible to sum up. I wrote earlier about how overwhelming Delhi was when I first arrived after the two month party that was Europe. But now after spending more than three weeks in this country, I've discovered a strange calm amidst all the chaos.

My friends at home can attest that I am not the most patient of beings. But here, on Indian time, where everything is rushed, yet takes forever, where docile cows lumber down streets as autorickshaws and motorcycles scream past, where women dressed in glittering bangles and flowing saris create a human rainbow as they walk along streets overflowing with refuse, where children bathe in busted pipelines in between the train tracks at the Old Delhi station, where young girls walk through the desert with a jug of water on their head and a bare-bottomed baby hanging on their hip, where beggers lacking limbs plead for rupees at every intersection, where a hundred brown faces and onyx eyes watch as a Western woman walks by, where the ceaseless honking of cars mixes with the chinga-chinga-chinga-chinga Indian pop music in the marketplaces, where the smells of spices, oils, animal feces and flowers fill the air, where every other Indian man wants to shake your hand and introduce you to their family, where people come to a sacred river in the midst of a holy city to die, I've discovered an internal calm.

I haven't been so hassled as I was when I first arrived. It could be that I've gotten a bit of tan from spending two weeks in the desert. It could be that I'm better at ignoring the calls from every other Indian man or street merchant and have taken on a bit of a thousand yard stare that keeps the hawkers at bay. I'm sure those things have something to do with it. But perhaps while taking this journey, I'm beginning to stumble upon my inner Om.

Bedbugs

Nov. 20, 2008

Look what the bedbugs in Varanasi did to my feet last night. Weird tanline too, eh?

Udaipur

Nov. 18, 2008

This was the number one thing to see listed in my Rough Guides book to India, the floating palace in Udaipur. Check.

Safari through the Thar Desert

Nov. 17, 2008

While in Jaisalmer, the boys and I decided to check off Lonely Planet's #3 "must-do" thing in India: "watching a bright moon out in the Thar Desert in Rajasthan during an overnight camel safari."

We booked the one night/two day tour through our hotel and took off in the jeep about 40 km outside the town to meet up with our guide, Tiger. The first thing he did when we met was tie bright orange turbans around each of our heads. The turbans served the functional purpose of keeping the sun directly off our heads and necks. They also were meant perhaps to authenticate the whole experience. I just think those bright orange scarves were mainly made to mark us as tourists, easily seen from miles away in the desert.

After getting turbanized, we mounted up. Jamie's camel was named Sonya. Ben rode Mr. Magoo. My camel was called Victoria. Vickie and I got along just fine.

Tiger, a Muslim from a small village 200 km north of Jaisalmer, explained to us that he had to leave his home and his wife and five children to search for work in the city after his home region experienced a massive drought. The Thar Desert hasn't seen rain in years and the drought has devastated the region's farming industry. The desert skyline is now lined with thousands of windmills the government built to pump water to all the small villages in the area. The water supplies them with enough for drinking and washing and to sustain some livestock, but not enough to continue farming. Instead, the villagers now make most of their money by cutting stones, Tiger said.

He took us to some of these villages where we were met by crowds of small children all a chatter, excited at the sight of a handful of goras (white people). As I pulled out my camera, dozens of hands grabbed at my arms as the children wanted to see the digital images I had just snapped of them.

During the hottest parts of the day, Tiger led us into the shade of a tree. He unsaddled the camels and let them loose to wander and graze. Then he made us lunch. Just watching him prepare the food and cook and clean the dishes and utensils using a splash of water and handfuls of sand made the safari worth the money.

He built up a small fire from tumbleweed kindling and boiled water and powdered milk together and dumped in almost a cup of sugar to make some super sweet chai.

"No sugar, no power. Full chai, full power. 24 hour," Tiger chanted. "Camel college, full knowledge."

Then he whipped up some spicy and delicious curries, some of the best tasting food I've had since I arrived in India. After lunch we all took a siesta in the shade.

It wasn't too long before the boys and I agreed that Tiger might have been out in the desert for too long. That evening as Tiger cooked, Jamie busted out his guitar and I took out my small drum from Jaipur and the three of us started singing Radiohead and Oasis songs. Tiger suddenly burst in banging on my drum and started screeching every English word he knew in rhyming couplets. Actually, Tiger only seemed to speak in rhymes. Beside the little history he gave us about his life and the drought, Tiger's English was limited to "camel college, full knowledge, full chai, no power, 24 hour." As we tried to sing through his screeching and banging, Tiger then launched into a crazed rendition of Aqua's Barbie Girl.

The boys and I looked at each other like who is this madman we're left with in the middle of the Indian desert. But thankfully he eventually wore himself out.

After dinner, the boys and I passed around a bottle of whiskey and then nestled under heavy blankets to fall asleep on the sand dunes underneath the bright, waxing moon.

Rough Guides #3 best thing do: Check.

Jaisalmer, the Golden City

Nov. 17, 2008

While in Pushkar, I met two funny Westerners, a smallish English bloke named Jamie, and a largish Canadian named Ben. I ended up joining them to travel to other parts of Rajasthan.

We headed first to Jaisalmer, the Golden City, located in the heart of the Thar Desert in the far west of the state near the border with Pakistan. The town stands on a ridge of yellowish sandstone, crowned by a fort, which contains the palace and several ornate Jain temples. The town is also known for its havelis, or private residences which follow the Islamic style of architecture and feature rooms of intricately carved stone.

The boys and I stayed together in one haveli within the fort. We split the cost of 90 rupees for the simple room. That's a total of about $2, or $0.65 each per night. The catch was, we agreed to book an overnight camel safari through the hotel. That's where many of these Jaisalmeri hotels make their money. Still it was well worth it for the experience. More on that in the next post.

Pushkar Camel Fair

Nov. 16, 2008

A major reason I decided to explore Rajasthan was that my visit to India happened to correspond with the timing of the Pushkar Camel Fair. Each year Pushkar, a holy town in the Hindu faith, hosts the world's largest camel fair featuring competitions such as the "matka phod", "moustache", and "bridal competition."

Thousands of people from all over India go to the banks of the Pushkar Lake where the fair takes place. Men buy and sell their livestock, which includes camels, cows, sheep and goats. The women go to the stalls, full of bracelets, clothes, textiles and fabrics. A camel race starts off the festival, with music, songs and exhibitions to follow.

The festival falls each year around Kartik Purnima, the night of the full moon, the day, according to legend, which the Hindu god Brahma sprung up the lake.

OK, so that was the Wikipedia explanation of the event. For me though, my experience of the fair was that I spent most of the time avoiding it as I fought off a brutal bout of food poisoning. Welcome to Asia.

The smell of cow and camel dung mixed with whatever spice it was that was in the food I spent a long night vomiting up, hung thick in the air around the town. I could only bear walking around the grounds under the desert sun for brief periods of time. But the short time I did spend there were well worth it if only for the photos I got. Check out those colors and those dancers and those beautiful, beastly animals.

Superstar

Nov. 14, 2008

This is constant in India. Now I know how Britney feels.

The Pink City

Nov. 14, 2008

After leaving Delhi, I headed west to the desert state of Rajasthan. My first stop was to Jaipur, the state capital also known as the Pink City. The city is a bustling place with a population of about 5 million. The whole city was painted pink in the mid-nineteenth century in honor of Prince Albert who came to visit.

Jaipur is known not only for it's color but also for the fact that it is one of the first cities to be laid out in an orderly grid, like Manhattan. But that's about the only orderly thing about the place.

Though not a massive as Delhi, Jaipur is similar in terms of its intensity of touts and hawkers. After a few days in the country though, I'd learned to better manage the onslaught of "Hellos" "What country?" "You want pashmina scarf?" Still, somehow I got talked into buying a block print blanket, a tunic shirt, and a drum. I don't even play drums. Why do I need one, exactly? I have no idea. The guy selling it made a really cool sound though, and once I showed interest he pretty much followed me through the streets banging out a rhythm to the pace of my steps. I just had to buy the damn thing.

It turned out to be kind of a fun purchase though. As I was walking back to my hotel, banging thoughtlessly on the thing, I passed a little boy amidst a throng of sari-wearing women. He had two little drums in his hands and was hitting them absentmindedly. When I saw him, I bent down and banged on my own drum eliciting laughter from all the women and the biggest, sweetest smile from this little boy who banged right back. That was pretty neat.

Those are the kind of moments that make this country beautiful.

A snapshot of India

Nov. 14, 2008

I've been in India for more than two weeks now which is unbelievable to me. Time has just flown by. I've seen so much in these past days, it's all been a big colorful blur.

Now that I've found internet that I think is reliable, I'm going to bombard you all with photos, many of which I think are some of the best I've taken on this trip. This country lends itself to the camera. Here is one I quite like of a woman selling floral wreaths as offerings to be laid under images of Hindu gods and goddesses. She's sitting along a main road under the new metro line near the Main Bazaar in the Paharganj district of New Delhi.

Many, many more photos to follow.

Indian lucky

Nov. 11, 2008

Learning the different customs of a new place by inadvertently trampling all over them can be awkward at best or be dangerous at worse. Sometimes though doing something taboo can be completely hilarious.

When I left Delhi to catch a train to the desert state of Rajasthan, I had to say good-bye to my new Kashmiri friend Rafiq. I threw my rucksack into the back of a waiting autorickshaw and turned to him to bid farewell. He put out his hand to shake mine, but instead I gave him a big hug and kiss on the cheek and then jumped into the waiting vehicle which sped off for the train station.

A few nights later while talking with a British lady I met in Jaipur, I learned that Indian men and women never show public displays of affection. They never hold hands, and they certainly never hug or kiss.

"It's like having sex," she said.

So now I'm probably being talked about back in Delhi like the whore of Babylon, and good ol' Rafiq is getting pats on the back for getting Indian lucky the other day with an American girl.

Dusty, smoggy, funny Delhi

Nov. 7, 2008

I have arrived in India and wow! This place is a slap in the face.

India peels your eyes, drums your ears, waters your mouth and tweaks your nose. It is stressful and dirty and too-close-for-comfort. But at the same time, this place is a good shock to the system, one that can save you from slipping into a cultural coma.

Arriving in Delhi on Oct. 30, panic set in as soon as I stepped off the plane. Everyone was supposed to queue up to get through customs, however Indians don't seem to believe in lines. They are much more comfortable in a close, pushy mass.

After getting through immigration and retrieving my checked bag, I stepped out of the airport into the hot, smoggy morning in India's capital city. I did what all the guidebooks say and sought out a pre-paid taxi that would take me to the hotel of my choice. My guaranteed taxi instead took me to a different hotel than where I wanted to go. When I complained to the driver, he turned off the engine and then pretended like the car wouldn't start again. Anxious and overtired and on the verge of tears, I climbed out of the cab and walked into a guest house called Hotel Blue.

As I signed the guest book where they overcharged me for a prison cell with no bathroom, I shot the cabbie a look of death. It wasn't just death, though. It was the look death might have after traveling for 24 straight hours and spending a six hour layover trying to sleep under some chairs in Dubai's airport. I saw fear in that cabbie's eyes when I looked at him looking back into my eyes. It gave me a bitter tinge of satisfaction.

The Hotel Blue is officially a flea-bag hotel. On the bed and walls were giant winged bugs flitting about. I was tired and freaked out and had no real idea where I was. For the first time on this trip I actually broke down and started crying. What the hell was I doing in this mad, mad country? How could I fend for myself against hawkers, scammers, cabbies, malaria, and massive fleas?

But exhaustion overtook me. I cursed the bugs and wrapped myself tightly in my sleep sheet and slept all through the day and the following night.

The next day, I promptly checked out of Hotel Hellhole and hoofed it across Connaught Place to a funky-sounding place referenced in my Rough Guide's book on Delhi called Ringo's Guesthouse. The book touted the cheap hotel as a famous meeting place for backpackers from all over the world. Great, I thought. Travel companions.

This is where I learned the importance of having an updated guidebook. The one I had dated back to 2002. A lot can happen in six or seven years. Ringo's is officially over. The place was dead. Regardless, the rooms are cheap, so I decided to stay.

That second day in town, I took my first autorickshaw ride to India Gate and visited the National Museum, a rundown showcase of mostly Hindu artwork in the middle of a rundown city. Later I wandered around Connaught Place, the supposedly ultra-modern, metropolitan district in town, which is really just a giant, trafficky round-about. All day I spent ignoring people left and right saying, "Hello, Where you from? What is your name? You want tour to Agra? You want rickshaw?"

As I headed back to the guesthouse that evening, I was within meters of the place when someone behind me said, "Hello beautiful. You want a tour?"

I couldn't help but laugh. I felt insane. Enough. Stop trying to sell things to me. But the person who spoke to me, a young Kashmiri man seemed kind and spoke decent English. I kind of wanted someone to talk to.

His name is Rafiq, which in Kashmiri means "a kind friend" and he turned out to be a good and helpful guide over the next few days in Delhi. Yes, I had to sit through a pitch from his brother to hire a private car to go to Agra, Jaipur and the Pushkar Camel Festival, a deal which I turned down. But over the next few days, Rafiq showed me around the neighborhood and took me to Paharganj, a vibrant marketplace and hippie alcove near the new train station. He also took me for a ride in Delhi's new metro system which turns out to be the cleanest thing in the whole city.

One day I stopped at an Internet cafe to look up information about trains and travel around India and to catch up on e-mails. In a flustered state, I left the cafe forgetting my iPod behind, still plugged in to the computer I was using. I didn't realize what I had done until late that evening. Kicking myself for such a stupid, stupid forgetful thing to do, I wrote the iPod off as lost.

The next day, Rafiq met me for breakfast and I told him about losing the iPod. He said we would go inquire at the cafe to see if it was there. When we got to the place, Rafiq said a few strong words in Hindi. The cafe clerk shot me a look like "Stupid white girl" and retrieved my iPod and headphones from a locked cabinet.

I couldn't believe it. Rafiq laughed and lightly slapped me on the head. Things seemed a lot sunnier in Delhi, in spite of all the smog.

Fly Emirates

Nov. 2, 2008

I received a big present the other day. Gulf Air overbooked my flight on Oct. 30 from Athens to Delhi so they asked me if I could be bumped to another airline and compensated with a free flight between Delhi and Kathmandu. Awesome! Who cares about a six hour layover in Dubai. Free flight to the Himalayas.

I was bumped from Gulf Air to fly Emirates Airlines to Delhi. Now I have never endorsed any product or company in the blog (or formally anywhere else for that matter, as far as I can remember), but I have to say Emirates is the best airline I've ever flown with. The flight attendants are super nice and smiley and wear funny hats with scarves (How Middle Eastern!), they serve food that is tasty, the captain is calm sounding and tells you about your flight, the seats are comfy, and you get your own T.V. with hundreds of movies and lots of different music to listen to.

It may just be that I've been on the road for two months and haven't been near a T.V. that spoke English in a while, but I was positively giddy to learn that I could turn to a channel that showed a live camera feed from under the wings of the plane, and then switch to another channel to watch Estelle and Kanye West's American Boy music video about fifty times in a row.

Oh, and they gave me free wine. And free snacks when I got to Dubai, which, by the way, has a really cool airport. My mom, who last year took a similar flight to India through Dubai, aptly likens the airport there to Mos Eisley Cantina, the bar in Star Wars. (I am not a nerd. I had to Wikipedia the name of that place.) The airport has rocket ships on the ceiling and palm trees along the people-movers and glittering lights everywhere. It's like a casino, mall, space station all rolled into one. I would've taken pictures of the place, but I didn't want to be mistaken for a terrorist.

I napped for several hours on the carpetted floor of the terminal under a line of chairs before boarding my second plane onward to Delhi. That flight was delightfully uneventful and I really have nothing more to say about that. I'm pretty sure I fell asleep humming pop songs.