Varanasi

High density living

Varanasi is a super-holy city in the North of India. Varanasi is like a teeming, concentrated, museum version of India; it’s less diluted by the human need for personal space and etiquette, which is pretty thinly spread in India to begin with. Everything is more intense. The streets are narrower, the rickshaw drivers are more conniving, the swarming touts are more aggressive, the smell of sun-baked cow dung and open-air urinal runoff is more potent. The sun pounds heat down into the tarp-covered alleys, creating a slowbake oven full of sweating shopkeepers, who are usually comatose on their cushioned shopfloors by lunchtime. Bikes and scooters careen through the narrow passages, and huge bulls lazing on in shady spots block off thoroughfares, forcing pedestrians to find an alternate path through the concrete maze. People carry offerings of flowers, curd, food, water and line up to be let into the high-security, Hindu-only confines of the Golden Temple. Dead bodies are carried through the streets down the Ganges, where they are cremated or just tossed in whole, while people bathe, wash clothes and drink the water just metres away.

In Varanasi, the most remarkable thing to see is just the way people relentlessly get along with their lives amidst all the noise, heat, hassle, death and concrete. It’s plain to see that there’s too many people there, too much stuff going on, but it all works somehow, and makes Varanasi one of the most invigorating, spirited cities I’ve ever been to.

Kite fliers

Happy bull

According to a magazine I was reading, 40% of Indians suffer from hypertension. It's roundabouts like these that cause it.

Leaning Shiva temple in the swolen Ganges

Kite flying is a popular afternoon pastime in Varanasi. Every day near sunset, the sky would fill with hundreds of small, paper kites.

A storm front rumbles in, dropping the temperature an arctic to the mid-thirties.

Sauraha

After a while travelling through places like Nepal and India, you get used to all the animals on the road. Horses and bullocks are always pulling things around, while cows, pigs, goats and chickens look on from the road’s edge. And of course, there’s always skinny dogs everywhere, exploring plastic bags and food scraps.

But as we walked down the main street of Sauraha, we added a new animal to the list of domesticated road users. Huge elephants plod up and down the streets of the small town, with their trainers perched on their shoulders. They really are enormous, much bigger than I would have imagined, and with their makeup on are impressive beasts indeed. The local horses, who even though they have very nice haircuts and pull around colourful buggies that are the main mode of public transport, look very insignificant next to the pachyderm hulks that cruise nonchalantly around the streets.

In Sauraha, they use the elephants mainly for tourist purposes, running groups into the nearby national park to look for one-horned rhinos. Traditionally, the elephants have for other, more practical functions, such as hauling building materials, chasing wild elephants out of villages and playing elephant polo (unfortunately, we were in town outside of polo season.)

Pokhara

Island temple

Somwhere in those clouds is a magnificent mountain range, but the clouds never moved and we never saw the hills

Philly Loves Rocky

Skip forward to the 1.50 mark to see the important bit

Apparently the Rocky character is based on someone real, and the Rocky tributes refer to both versions

Everyone in Philadelphia loves Rocky. The museum steps that Rocky runs up are probably the most important tourist attraction in the whole city, and this is the city where they signed the Declaration of Independence. At any one time, there is always at least one person skipping up the steps and jumping around at the top.

This is Angie and Stephie doing the famous run, but you'll notice that in the original, Rocky didn't run up the steps holding his best friend's hand.

Philly Phoods

A Phake Philly Cheesteak (suitable for vegetarians, this is made with soy chicken and the closest I got to the real thing)

Philadelphians are intensely proud of their native foods, and there are two snacks in particular that are their absolute pride and joy. The first is the Philly Cheesesteak, which is a portion of a shredded up cow grilled and dumped on a bun along with some onions and a good dollop of Cheez Whiz. It’s the kind of thing best enjoyed at around 2:30 in the morning after all the bars in Pennsylvania close (for some strange reason, all the bars in Pennsylvania close at 2).

The second thing they love in Philadelphia is the bizarrely named ‘Water Ice’ Water ice is not really water; it’s not quite ice. It’s something in-between (but it’s not gelato or sorbet or a slurpee). Whatever it is, it’s loaded up with noxious levels of colours and flavours and served with a spoon and is fantastic in the sun.

A face-sized breakfast burrito for brunch at Sabrina's (a favourite of Philadelphia). It came with a side of half a dozen chopped and fried potatoes.

Angie destroys a Phillies hotdog

Philllies ice-cream, which is cream and chocolate suspended in a bath of cool sugar.

A Baseball Game

We went to see the Philadelphia Phillies play the Los Angeles Angels

When someone scores a home run, this bell lights up and starts swinging. It stayed motionless while we were there.

The bell, the lights and the city

This is something called 'rally caps'. If your team is losing, you put your hat on upside down, spurring them onto wonderful victory. The Phillies lost 6 - 1.

An Afternoon with the Acapulco Cliff Divers

Oaxaca (wah-hah-kah)

So far, Mexico is great. Traveling is easy, people are nice and there's lots of good coffee about, served in minimalist cafes like this one.

Three Clowns. Wrestling is popular entertainment, and the marketing is pretty nifty

We had to get the last of our Hepatitis A/B shots while in Oaxaca. The price was well over $100 per jab. When the doctor told us this, my face resembled the mask of this penguin suit.