After arriving in Aurangabad, we headed out first to visit the Ajanta caves.  Most of the sites we’d been visiting up to that point in India were old, but they weren’t really old.  The Ajanta caves, on the other hand, are really old.  The five cave temples and twenty-four cave monasteries at Ajanta were carved out of solid rock in the period from about 200 BC to 650 AD, and then they were abandoned, essentially forgotten, until their rediscovery in 1819 by a British tiger-hunting party.  Lucky for us, that means that considering their age, they’re pretty well-preserved.

Although the Ajanta caves are known for their Buddhist paintings and sculptures, I couldn’t get over how the caves themselves were carved out of solid rock.  They’re not small, and the thought of people working over 2,000 years ago to chisel away at the rock by hand to create monuments filled with artistic masterpieces kind of blew my mind.  Some of the paintings were also really fascinating, especially those in which you could see that Indian artists had mastered the technique of perspective over 1,000 years before European painters figured out how to do so.

We headed next to the Ellora caves, and where the Ajanta caves are known for their artistic detail and subtlety, the Ellora caves are known for their immense size.  Although the thirty-four Ellora cave temples and monasteries are considerably younger than the Ajanta caves, having been carved between 600-1000 AD, they were similarly carved out of solid rock.  The Ellora caves are also interesting because out of the thirty-four temples and monasteries there, twelve are Buddhist, seventeen are Hindu, and five are Jain—three different religions all represented harmoniously in one spot.  Since we had seen the Buddhist caves at Ajanta earlier that day, we used our limited time to visit a couple of the Jain and Hindu temples at Ellora.  The Jain temples were big, but the Hindu Kailash Temple was immense.  It covers a total area of almost 10,000 square feet, which makes it twice the size of the Parthenon and one and a half times as tall.  We read that it’s been estimated that about 200,000 tons of rock were carved out and removed to create that one temple.  How they managed to carve a temple that size out of solid rock without power tools is completely astounding to me.  It was all really interesting, and it gave us a little insight on what ancient India might have been like.

We always hear that the Taj Mahal is the world’s most famous memorial to love, so we were a little amused to learn that it was actually built to honor Shah Jahan’s third wife, who he married while he was still married to the first two.  We’d all romanticized the building a little more than that and had assumed he’d just been consumed by his love for his one wife, but we learned that it’s hard to know whether the building was truly built for love or to demonstrate the magnificence of Mughal architecture.  In any case, it was breathtaking–not just the perfect symmetry of it and the beauty of the marble that seems to change color as the sun comes up, but also the details that you don’t really see until you get right up close to the building–in particular the carved marble panels and the inlaid stones set in various patterns.

Our guide told us that we were lucky–that the day we visited was the clearest day he’d seen in about a month.  The pollution still seems to have softened the lines of the building, but he said we were getting the full experience, unlike other recent visitors.  The extreme pollution in Agra is really taking a toll on the building, though, causing acid rain that is eating away at the marble.  I took a picture of John when we stopped for a moment at the back of the building overlooking the Yamuna River.  You might think it looks foggy outside, but it wasn’t–it was just smoggy.

My absolute favorite moment of our visit to the Taj Mahal happened just before we were about to leave. To give some background, all over India people had been taking pictures of us.  Sometimes they would ask to pose with us (while we held their babies!), but more often than not we’d notice their smartphones slyly pointed at us as they passed by.  I was surprised that we were such a novelty there.  I guess I figured that as a former British colony, they’d be more used to seeing westerners.  After a while I felt like I was starting to get a taste for how celebrities must feel when targeted by paparazzi, and at my dad’s suggestion I decided to take pictures right back of the people taking pictures of us, which they seemed to get a huge kick out of, and it made it a lot more fun for me, too.  The boldest picture-takers would also engage us in conversation, which my dad loved.  I think he especially enjoyed having the opportunity to portray American tourists in a friendly light.  One day during our trip, at an old fort in Delhi, a group of high school students on a field trip with their teacher stopped my dad for pictures and an interview.  They asked him where he was from and if we had anything in our country like the fort we were visiting (answer: no, our country isn’t that old!).  I remember him talking about George Washington as the father of our country, somewhat like how they think of Gandhi.  I had fun snapping pictures of my dad being interviewed by the kids at the same time that they were taking pictures of him and the rest of us.

So back at the Taj Mahal, John and I had stopped to sit down where we could just soak in the view.  We noticed a couple of young Indian guys tentatively approaching, and they asked if they could each take a picture with John.  I hopped up and out of the way and one at a time each of them snuggled right up to John, practically sitting in his lap, to take pictures of the other.  It was hilarious.  Clearly our concepts of personal space and not being too intimate with strangers do not translate in India.  After they took their pictures I asked them both to pose with John.  I think they almost managed to kidnap him from me, but luckily I kept him in the end!

To begin our tour of India’s capital city, Shelley, Anne, John (the 1st) and I took a bicycle rickshaw ride through the streets of “Old Delhi,” an area within the city that was once the capital of the Mughal Dynasty, which existed prior to the British Raj.  This area of New Delhi remains a vibrant cultural center for the city and maintains a very dense population.

Touring Old Delhi is an experience not easily described in words.  I’ll let these pictures and videos speak for themselves.

Old Delhi Rickshaw

Old Delhi Rickshaw

Old Delhi Rickshaw

After our morning in Old Delhi, we visited the Mahatma Gandhi memorial.  The memorial consists of a large, black marble platform that marks the location of Mahatma Gandhi’s cremation.  While we were there, there was a continuous line of visitors waiting to look upon the memorial and we saw many school groups, like the one seen in this picture.  When entering the memorial, we all removed our shoes as a sign of respect.

Before travelling on to Agra, we visited Humayun’s Tomb, a site that gained UNESCO World Heritage Site status in 1993.  This tomb, commissioned in 1562 for Humayun, the second emperor of the Mughal Dynasty, is historically important because it is the first tomb of its kind on the Indian subcontinent.  Shah Jahan, Humayun’s descendant and fifth emperor of the Mughal Dynasty, would go on to build the Taj Mahal and many other grand buildings, each of which owe many aspects of their design to this very first Indian garden-tomb.

We spent five great days in Luang Prabang, Laos’s second city and definitely one of the most beautiful city stops on our trip.  The whole place has been designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site, so buildings both new and old are constructed in the traditional Lao wooden style, and it’s packed with striking, gilded Buddhist temples.

On our first three lazy days, we relaxed at Le Café Ban Wat Sene, where we drank coffee and ate delicious French food, thanks to the colonial legacy that was left behind.  We did get out on one of those days, though, for a really fun visit with the uncle of my good friend Alicyn from Austin. Last February, when I mentioned to Alicyn that John and I were planning to visit Laos, she responded, “My uncle lives there!”  I was surprised—in name and appearance, Alicyn is clearly of European descent, so I didn’t expect she’d have family living in Southeast Asia.  As it turns out, following his retirement, her Uncle Kenny headed to Luang Prabang to study Buddhism and ended up settling there for the last few years, where he now has a workshop in a large gallery space with a number of other artists.  At his workshop, Uncle Kenny spends his days creating and refurbishing spirit houses.  Laos is a predominantly Buddhist country, but from Uncle Kenny and others that we talked to, we learned that Buddhism there is not “pure,” in the sense that Laotians incorporate traditional animistic beliefs into their Buddhist practice.  One of these traditional beliefs involves spirit houses, which are little wooden dollhouse-like boxes.  The spirit houses provide a home for spirits that can create mischief if they’re not given a nice place to live.  Spirit houses are everywhere in Laos—on street corners and outside restaurants, hotels, and family homes—and the Laotians leave offerings inside of them—usually some sticky rice, incense, flowers, and fruit, and sometimes even cigarettes.  We met up with Uncle Kenny at a café along the Nam Khan—a river that feeds into the Mekong—for a leisurely breakfast followed by a visit to his workshop.  It was a beautiful twenty-minute tuk-tuk ride out to his gallery space, although sadly it was just in a regular tuk-tuk and not this great rainbow one that I saw—I especially love the driver on his pink cellphone.

Uncle Kenny showed us around the gallery and explained his work to us and afterwards chatted with us over coffee about U.S. politics and life in Laos.  It was a lovely morning!  John took a couple of pictures of me with Uncle Kenny, and I got a few of Uncle Kenny’s spirit houses and his workshop.

On our last two days in Luang Prabang, after we boarded the Mekong Sun (more on that to come in the next post), we visited several of the Buddhist temples that have made Luang Prabang so famous, including Wat Xieng Thong and Wat Wisunarat, plus the Royal Palace Museum and Mount Phousi for great views of the city.

We also drove out to the Kuangsi waterfall, where we had the chance to take a COLD swim in one of the waterfall’s pools.  After only half submerging myself in the freezing water, I watched while John climbed a tree to take a jump off a rope swing into the pool.  He emerged with a smile and goose bumps.

At dawn on our last morning, before the Mekong Sun began cruising upriver, we went to watch what Luang Prabang is most famous for—the daily religious ritual called Tak Bat.  Every day at sunrise, the hundreds of Buddhist monks that live in the city process down the main street with metal bowls to collect food offerings from Luang Prabang’s residents, who make merit by providing food for the monks.  It was really fascinating to watch, but trying to be respectful we hung back and just snapped a quick picture from a distance.

Last but not least, we visited Luang Prabang’s morning food market.  Just for my brother-in-law John B., who wondered if you can truly buy doughnuts everywhere in the world, we filmed this little video showing what the market has to offer.

Laos Morning Market

1 USD ~= 20,000 Vietnamese Dong

After our slowdown in Hoi An, we were a little taken aback when we arrived in Hanoi.  Hanoi was like the hustle and bustle of Ho Chi Minh City taken to the next level.  I would say turned up to 11, but Shelley and I have been to India since and know better.  More on that to come…

The most memorable thing about Hanoi for us, I think, was crossing the street.  Sounds crazy, but in a city of more than 6.5 million people and seemingly just as many motorbikes that never stop moving due to the lack of traffic signals, crossing streets can be daunting to say the least.  Our travels up to this point prepared us well for just diving into the traffic and miraculously emerging on the other side of the street unscathed.  Also, when we were in Ho Chi Minh City experiencing similar traffic and street crossings, we were helped by an elderly Vietnamese woman, who, with grandmotherly guidance, practically grabbed us by the hand and showed us the ropes.  She must have been in her 70s and was just super sweet, calming our obvious deer-in-the-headlights street corner paralysis.  Still, it felt like a little miracle each time we made it across.

It’s hard to describe in words, so I took a video of us crossing the street one night while we were in Hanoi.  This was fairly light traffic, since it was later at night, but it still gives you a good idea of the constant flow of traffic and what crossing the street is like.  You just have to charge into the street, walk confidently, don’t stop, and somehow you’ll make it across.

Be sure to look for the scooter that darts in front of us right before we get to the other side of the street–the one going the wrong way on a one way street!

hanoistreetcrossing

1 US dollar ~= 4000 Cambodian riel

From Kampot, John and I headed north to Siem Reap, which is the jumping off point for tours of Angkor, the ancient Khmer capital and the home of Angkor Wat.  We arrived in Siem Reap on a Friday evening and looked forward to a full day of touring temples on the next day.  My sister, Anne, would be arriving to meet us on Sunday, so we planned to spend Saturday visiting some of the lesser-known temples that are outside of the main Angkor tourist circuit.  We were especially excited to visit Bang Melea, a temple that was built far from the main Angkor temples but that’s believed to have been built in the 12th century by the same Khmer king that built Angkor Wat.  Unlike Angkor Wat and the other temples closer to Siem Reap, Bang Melea hasn’t been restored, so it’s a mass of rubble and crumbling, moss-covered stones.  We’d heard that it’s usually very quiet out there, with very few tourists, so John was looking forward to feeling a bit like Indiana Jones while exploring the remains of a lost civilization.  Unluckily for us, however, our visit to Siem Reap coincided with a major, weeklong, Chinese holiday, and Bang Melea—as we later learned—is a highlight for Chinese tourists.  After an initial few minutes of peace and quiet, we ended up sharing our exploration of Bang Melea with a teeming mass of hundreds of Chinese tourists.  Our guide was flabbergasted.  He said the most people he’d ever seen out there at one time was about twenty, and here we were surrounded by hundreds.  I had always thought that Americans were the loudest people in the world, but I think the Chinese may have proved that one wrong for me.  Our guide was nervous that the wooden walkways that cross over the crumbling stones of the temple would collapse under the weight of so many people, so we quickly passed through the walkways and made our way to the exit.  So much for our big archaeological adventure!  I guess it ended up being a cultural experience of another sort.  We did snap a few pictures of the temple while we had it to ourselves, along with a couple others that show the Chinese tourist crowds that arrived on multiple tour buses.

After Bang Melea we spent the rest of the day touring four other temples—Preah Ko (built in the 9th century), Bakong (also built in the 9th century), Bantey Srei (built in the 10th century), and Bantey Samre (built in the 12th century).  I think the highlights for us both were Bantey Srei, built with pink sandstone that was intricately carved, and Bantey Samre, which was one of the most intact temples that we visited, so you could really get a sense of its size and scale.

We rested the next day and looked forward to Anne’s evening arrival.  After a terrifying drive on a mini-bus from Phnom Penh, Anne arrived looking a little harried, so we headed out to relax over a nice dinner.  We had fun chatting about our various experiences in Cambodia so far and planned out a big day of sightseeing around Angkor for the following day, with our fingers crossed that the torrential downpour passing through, courtesy of Tropical Storm Gaemi, would have moved on by the morning.  Fortunately we woke up to find that it had.

We started the day off by passing through the ancient city walls that enclosed the royal Khmer city of Angkor Thom.  Stone carvings line the bridge that spans the moat around the city—with one side lined with gods and the other with demons.

Once inside the walls, we first visited Bayon, built in the 12th century and marked by giant smiling stone faces carved into its spires.

From there we passed quickly through Baphuon (built in the 11th century), the Terrace of the Leper King (built in the 12th century), and the Elephant Terrace and headed on to Preah Khan (also built in the 12th century), which was one of my favorites.  Most of the Angkor temples were Hindu, but Preah Khan was a Buddhist temple, with long, low-ceilinged hallways that approach the center from all four compass directions.  The ceiling gets lower and lower as you pass through so that you are forced to bow your head towards the Buddha (now missing) that was originally placed where the four hallways intersect.  Although partially rebuilt, the temple is also overgrown with huge trees, and it was quiet and serene, so we lingered for a little while.

After a break for lunch, we visited Pre Rup, a royal crematorium built in the 10th century.  We climbed to the top of its towers for some amazing views.  Cambodia has some of the most beautiful clouds I’ve ever seen, and our guide said that when he was a kid, he and his friends loved to look for animal shapes in the clouds.  Just like we used to do!

Then it was on to Ta Prohm, built in the 12th century and made famous more recently by Tomb Raider.  It’s a beautiful, crumbling structure in the jungle, and it’s gradually being retaken by nature.  It was easy to see why it would be an appealing movie location.

And then—finally!—we finished our grand tour with a visit to Angkor Wat, built in the 12th century and still the largest religious structure in the world.  The scale of the building is stunning, starting with its enormous moat that’s over a mile long on each side.  After crossing the bridge over the moat and then passing through the outer buildings, it was exciting to finally see Angkor Wat in person after seeing it in so many pictures.

Its five spires are currently being renovated, so unfortunately we couldn’t climb to the top, but we walked the vast hallways, and our guide explained the wall carvings lining them that re-tell the Hindu epics.

We stayed on in the courtyard of the inner temple for sunset and then wandered back outside just in time to catch a last picture of the five spires reflected in one of the temple’s ponds.

Singapore is the first country we’ve visited where the US dollar is worth less than the local currency, the Singapore dollar.

1 USD ~= 1.22 Singapore dollar

1 USD ~= 9000 Rupiah