Winds and Waves: South Africa

Cape Town from Table Mountain

Our South Africa trip started with a nine-hour long Emirates flight that took us from Dubai to Cape Town, not that I am complaining ( that flight was quite entertaining with their movies and games ). We landed in Cape Town, and the first thing that hit our eyes was Table Mountain, towering above the rest of the city, almost as though speaking to the winds and clouds in the sky. We drove to our hotel, which was a little off the rocky beach ( the beaches are certainly not very good, but then again there is lots of other fun stuff to do there ). Watching the birds eat strewn seaweeds of the small patches of sand, locked between a maze of boulders washed by angry blue waters, every morning was the most refreshing experience anyone can ever have. 

Cape Point

On our first day, we hit to road south, to the Cape of Good Hope and Cape Point. The former was a huge grassy beach-like swatch of land covered with seaweed upto the last inch. There is a signboard there informing tourists that that was the Cape of Good Hope, the rest is left to imagination; how did sailors disembark here, what did they feel; everything dreamt of like in a fairytale. Cape point, was a narrow, rocky mountain that rose like a cliff from the depths of the ocean. This south western tip of the country is closer to Antarctica than it it is to most other cities in the world. On our way back we also stopped at Boulder Beach, where we saw Jackass Penguins ( they are called thus because of the braying noises they make ). 

Jackass Penguins

The next day, we toured Cape Town, going up Table Mountain by cable car, visiting the waterfront/marina and spending the evening at the Stellenbosch botanical gardens. The top of the table mountain, was breathtaking, literally and figuratively. The air tends to get very rare on top, and you end up taking huge gasps of air every time you try to breathe in. 

Me on an ostrich

The next day, we began our road trip to a golf resort around a half day's drive away. We ended up taking one whole day to complete the journey thank to the many distractions on the way, like the ostrich farm, where we rode ostriches ( Oh an interesting to note; ostrich eggs are exceptionally sturdy, all of us took turns standing on one, and there was no effect on the eggs ). We also visited Cape Agulhas, the point where the Atlantic Ocean meets the Indian Ocean; it is a magical site for on one side you can see the calm waters of the Indian Ocean, and on the other side, the stormy waves of the Atlantic.

A vulture at sunset at the Kruger National Park

We spent the night at the resort, and flew to Johannesburg the next day. From there we drove to the Kruger National Park. We read the Park in the evening and took to the night safari that day; we ended up seeing some hippos and some hyenas, but none of the main attractions, much to our disappointment. We still had the the next day, and so we took the early morning safari the following day. We ended up seeing a rhino, a chase between Zebras and African wild dogs, an endangered species. We also managed to see some wildebeest. At the end of the day, we were all satisfied with the wildlife we had seen. 

Blyde River Canyon

On our way back to Johannesburg, we stopped at the Blyde River Canyon, the third largest river canyon system in the world. The red cliffs dotted by green shrubbery through which the blue river entwines, makes for an unforgettable sight. In Johannesburg, we visited Sun City, where we were actually taken into one of the gold mines that is not used presently. We also visited Soweto, the epicentre of the Anti-Apartheid Movement. We visited Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu's houses ( this is the closest distance between the residences of two Nobel Prize winners in the world ). 
We also visited Pretoria, to see the parliament. We then returned to India, carrying memories we would always cherish.

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My Tryst with the Tsunami: Andaman and Nicobar Islands

It was in December 2004 that we decided to go to Andaman and Nicobar Islands; my grandparents, my parents, my sister and I. We boarded a flight for Port Blair from Chennai, and the journey was actually longer than what it takes to reach from Bangalore to say Pakistan, or even Bangladesh.
The islands are very picturesque and totally worth visiting; especially for their magnificent corals. I swear, out of all the beaches and islands I have visited, no other place has better corals than the Andamans. The water is pure and pristine with its shades of blue, and as you dip your hand into it, a rainbow of colours hit your eyes through the snorkelling mask. You can find red, purple and even green corals; the experience was mind blowing and anyone who wants to see the ocean and it's corals left untouched by pollution and development, then Andaman and Nicobar Islands is the place to go.

Cellular Jail

A Lighthouse on one of the islands

We spent the first six days of our week long stay relaxing, snorkelling, and visiting the Cellular Jail. This jail was used by the Japanese during World War II to hold POWs, and later by the British to keep Indian freedom fighters. The jail proved very effective, for it was isolated from the subcontinent by the vast Bay of Bengal, which was not humanly possible to swim across; though it is said that a freedom fighter by the name of Veer Savarkar did actually swim to the mainland. 

View on a 20 rupee note

We also visited the place from which we could see the view that is printed on 20 rupee notes in India. Go ahead and compare the picture to a twenty-rupee note, and the similarities will be astounding.
We were scheduled to leave the islands on 27th December, and on the day before, we were supposed to go on a boating trip to a nearby island. 
It was the morning of 26 December, 2004....All of us ( except my sister ) woke up at around six in the morning so that we could be ready in time for the boating trip. We were out in the one of the gardens of the hotel, when we felt a tremor underneath, it lasted for almost half a minute and felt quite strong. We hurried back to our rooms, to check if there was any damage and to wake my sister up and keep her safe. My sister was all right, but the walls of the room had long and very noticeable cracks running from the ceiling to the floor.
My father suggested that we go and see the ocean because after an earthquake, the waves tend to rise a little and flood the shore, so my father, my grandmother and I went to check on the waves. We climbed up one of the viewing posts, and could see the waves rising and flooding the beaches, the sand on the beach had just disappeared. Nothing seemed very alarming as of now and we never suspected anything as massive as the tsunami. 
Our hotel was on top of a rocky hill, and over the next few hours as the rising waves ebbed and flooded the islands, water levels reached up to our knees, and that is when we realised that the waves had been quite large. 
My father immediately shot off two calls, one to his brother and another to his office, informing both that we were safe. The timing was almost perfect, because a few minutes after he had placed those calls, all the phone lines had been jammed or disrupted and there was no way to contact anyone else. 
After the waves had settled down to a level that was around my knees, we decided to venture out and see what had happened outside; dead fish lay strewn everywhere; on the beach, in the hotel grounds, on the roads; some motorbikes and cars floated around lifelessly in the water, as rescue workers tried to find any dead bodies or fishermen and motorists. 
We were supposed to fly out the next day, and ignorant of the situation at the airport, we decided to reach there as early as possible to get a grasp of the situation. We arrived at the airport around four or five hours before the flight was scheduled to depart. The airport was in utter chaos as the only runway was broken at one ended and was flooded. It took a few hours for water to recede after which only small planes could land and take-off as the usable portion of the runway was too small for a big plane. 
There was no place to sit or stand at the airport, and you inevitably ended up being hustled from one end to the other by the massive crowd. News crews were in full action and they even managed to interview my mother. In the meantime my father tried to contact the authorities to inquire as to when the next flight would leave, thankfully because of children and senior citizens, we were given tickets to one of the first flights out of the islands.
In the meantime, back in India, there were reports that no one was left alive in Andaman and Nicobar islands, and that all the planes were ferrying back dead bodies; this made all our friends and relatives really anxious and almost fearful of the fact that we were dead and being ferried back. 
Finally the plane took off from the islands, and we heaved a sigh of relief. At the airport back in Bangalore, a sea of people were present at the airport to check if their loved ones were alive, or dead; and if dead then to identify their bodies. It took a few days for everyone to settle down and be informed of our safe return. 
When we reached back and grabbed one of the papers, we realised what we had just been through. It was unbelievable how we came out of that tsunami alive and unharmed.

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Between Sex Shops and Lord Buddha: Thailand

If you ask anyone who has visited Thailand about their trip, the first thing that comes out of their mouths are the massive number of sex shops and nude beaches scattered around ( clearly I'm not an exception to this rule ). Walking down the market streets of the city, almost every second shop seems to have erotic posters and dangling sex toys, and funnily enough, in spite of their in your face shameless advertising, these shops are full of people, having more customers than most other shops on the streets.

Reclining Buddha

Emerald Buddha

But, Thailand is a lot more than just a tourist destination where one can realise his/her sexual fantasies. The country is a beautiful, almost heavenly connection, between nature and religion. The millions of Buddha statues, some scattered in the most remote parts of the country, always tend to be in harmony with their surroundings.
The two Buddhas that you just have to visit, are the Emerald Buddha and the Wat Po, which houses an enormous reclining Buddha. The Emerald Buddha though beautiful, is minuscule, and it took me ten minutes to actually realise what it was, and how it looked. The Golden Pagoda in the Emerald Buddha complex is quite breathtaking though.

Golden Pagoda

Ayutthaya

Ayutthaya

The city of Ayutthaya, the ancient capital of Thailand, is also worth visiting, with its palaces that have a mixed architecture, with local, Chinese and Indian influences. How many of you know about the famous bridge over river Kwai, which the Japanese had built using Allied POWs, with almost 80,00 to 100,000 dying in the construction; a movie was also made on it? Well, this bridge still exists, though traversing it is positively frightening!

Bridge Over River Kwai

On the way to the bridge, we stopped at a tiger farm, I keep forgetting it's name, but it's pretty well known. Though it gives you the exhilarating experience of petting a tiger, I really didn't like the place. The tigers were chained and treated like domestic animals. They had grown fat and ugly due to their domestic lifestyle, it just seemed altogether sad. Oh, but one of the rules of entering that place was that you could not wear anything red, orange or pink, and funnily enough my parents and my sister happened to be wearing something red that day, so we had to stop on the way and buy shirts for the three of them so that they could enter.
We also visited the island of Phuket, which is absolutely beautiful. The weather is extremely unpredictable; one second it's as sunny and hot as a desert, and the next moment it's raining cats and dogs. The circuses of Phuket are one of the last ones in the world where animals are still used to perform acts. Frankly though, in spite of the grandiose claims of these circuses, I found them very boring, and slept halfway through it.
The boating and snorkelling off the coast is mind-blowing and we also visited the shooting site for one of the Bond movies, again I forget the name. Forgive my bad memory, I took this trip quite a while back.

Phuket

In Bangkok, our hotel was pretty close to the main shopping area of the city, so every night after we were done sight-seeing, we would walk to the market street and do some shopping. The streets are very lively with noisy, yet happy, people walking up and down, buying goods, selling them, customers haggling over prices, and live food being fried and sold at ever corner. Oh and about the live food, it look disgusting before it is fried, and the smell of the stale oil used for frying is absolutely nauseating. I, who has never puked for anything in my life, actually puked twice into the drain on the side of the road at that smell. It is...unimaginably bad.
But, all in all, my trip to Thailand was pretty memorable for the right and wrong reasons I guess.

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The Sand Dunes of Time - Jordan

A hot blast of dry, inhospitable air hits you as you step off the pleasantly air conditioned plane. The first words that came to my mouth on seeing the dusky, little airport standing a few feet away from the aircraft were, 'Where have I come? This isn't even an airport...'. Only later would I realise how wrong I was. Our guide, who happened to be large when measured in any direction, knew EVERY SINGLE restaurant in Amman; their menu, the prices, the entertainment, the location; there was nothing related to food that the man did not know! By the end of trip we were so stuffed with Hummus, that gave you a kick every time you swallowed it, and Pita breads that melt like butter in your mouth, to the rustic flavours of home made Babaganoush and Labneh. Okay enough with mouth watering food, this is supposed to be a travel blog so I am going to continue with the trip.

Al-Khazneh

The best place to start would truly have to be my favourite wonder of the world, Petra!! Not to brag, but even after seeing the Great Pyramids and the Great Wall of China, nothing beats the Petra.

From the entrance you can see absolutely nothing and you wonder what is so great about this place, and after walking a kilometre on a dirt path stained with horse poop followed by three kilometres in a narrow rock-cut pathway, you really begin to feel bored and tired. But the very next moment, the small passageway opens into the treasury, better known as the Al-Khazneh.

Tombs that "float"

The pink treasury in the evening sun

Imagine one of the palaces in 1001 Arabian Nights, remove some Islamic features and then just stick it to the face of a rock, and you get the dramatic sight that leaves you breathless. Quick Fact: The Al-Khazneh changes colours throughout the day, a yellowish-orange during the day, and a bright pink in the evening ( those are the only two colours I got to see, though it changes colours a lot more times). We stopped for around half an hour just to like take in its beauty, but even that wasn't enough. No angle, and no type of light, could make a photograph of the Khazneh come alive. You have to see it to believe it.

Petra is an ancient city carved out from the large rocks, and as you spend the entire day there, you see tombs of great Nabataen kings and queens aloft sky-high rocks that gave it the illusion of floating on clouds. A monastery located around a 1000 steps above the rest of the city, which entails a lung-crushing climb, followed by a lung-crushing gasp on seeing the monastery, followed by more lung-crushing gasps as you take in the view all around. 

Wadi Rum

Our next stop was Wadi Rum, where a desert safari would show you around different mind-blowing desert landscapes. We even saw one of the sets where Lawrence of Arabia was shot! Jerash, north of Amman, is a purely Roman city ( yes, I know a rarity in the Islamic middle east). The amphitheatre, though in ruins is absolutely beautiful, and walking along the colonnaded walkway makes you feel like Caesar's heir.

The colonnaded walkway that feels kingly

Imagine a HOT day, like very hot with no wind or clouds, just a bright, blinding, white disc laughing at your misery. Well most of our trip was spent like that, though the day we went to the Dead Sea, really cooled everyone. You expect the waters of the Dead Sea to be different, like maybe black, or absolutely weird, but its just like any sea or lake in which you would swim. Entering the Sea for the first time can hurt a bit, as the water yanks you up into a lying position as you float around, and yes it feels very weird in the beginning. Like there is just something wrong, like this cannot be happening. For the first few minutes I kept trying to stand up right like I would do in a pool, but every time I made an effort to bring down my legs, the water would seem to resist with an even stronger force. Though the experience was amazing, the after-effects are something I will never forget. I happened to have really small, almost invisible scratches on my fingers from all the climbing and the travelling. While I was in the water, everything seemed normal, but as soon as I came out to dry myself and take a bath, my hand felt like it was on fire. The salt burned like the blazing sun, and my fingers were red with pain. 

Jesus' Baptism Site

My tryst with the Dead Sea

Lastly, we also visited some crusade castles and fortresses, very much abandoned and lifeless. We also visited the place where Jesus was baptised, and no offence to Christians or Jews, but the Jordan river in which he was baptised looked more like a stagnant drain.

If my trip to Jordan were to be described in a word, it would be....scintillating.

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