Vagabonding in Southeast Asia and elsewhere, without plan or destination.

The ancient kingdom of Sikkim is now part of India, but requires a special “Inner Line Permit” to enter. Sikkim is a large rectangle, neatly boxed in by West Bengal, Nepal, Tibet, and Bhutan. It’s up in the Himalayas and is essentially all mountains. The culture is entirely Tibetan, except less rustic than Tibet. People…

Back in the Himalayas, this time near Tibet! Darjeeling in West Bengal is another hill station, at 2100 meters, built on the side of a mountain. I can see the 8500m Kanchenjunga mountain from my hotel. The suites in the Dekeling Resort are incredibly comfortable, in 130-year old wooden buildings. During a heavy thunderstorm I…

Varanasi is the most holy Hindu city. It is here where Hindus bathe in the Ganges, and where bodies are cremated in open fires on the Burning Ghats, stairs that lead down into nthe river. Much of Varanasi’s waterfront is a series of ghats, often backed by palaces. Boats go out on the river with…

… Read the rest

Holi is the Hindu spring festival of colors and love. Years ago I have been in India during Holi so I knew what to expect and bought a big white shirt to wear that day. Everybody carries a small plastic bag with brightly colored powder, which they dab on other people’s for heads and cheeks…

…Kühe sind lila.… Read the rest

Here is how to make Indian Puri bread. First you need a restaurant with a kitchen. Form a small ball of dough with wheat, water, salt, and oil. Flatten it and throw it on the inside of your buried tandoor oven, where it will stick to the wall. Pull it out with a long poker…

My hotel in Khajuraho is so much more pleasant than the one in Gwalior! I have a door that leads into their beautiful garden. It’s also only a few minutes from the Western Temple Complex. Khajuraho has 22 temples, all a thousand years old and in almost mint condition. The ornamentation, the multiple bands of…

Between Gwalior and Khajuraho is a small rural village with a huge hulking Fort, at Datia. The entrance leads to a series of big dark caverns and wide stairways and arches, more felt than seen in the darkness. Two floors up it opens to a large square with connecting walkways, in various stages of charming…

The Sun State Hotel in Gwalior is the second-worst hotel in the world. Its business is tip extraction. First the guy who didn’t carry my bag for carrying my bag, then the guy who replaced the unused towel with another unused towel for replacing my towel just after getting to the room. The room has…

The big attraction of Gwalior is its big fort on top of the hill above the city. Once it was one of the most beautiful in Madhya Pradesh, with intricately carved sandstone walls, covered with mirrors and precious stones. The the Islamic Mughals came and took them all away. But some of the tiles survived,…

In Europe, the basic unit of traffic is the lane. Here it’s any space big enough to squeeze into, at any speed, without making the next vehicle brake too hard. It’s ok because people honk madly while they do this. It’s also ok to make a U-turn on a divided highway and going against traffic.…

Britain is an often cold and wet island somewhere out in the Atlantic Ocean, and that is how the British like it. So when they find themselves ruling a place like India, where temperatures can get close to 50 degrees C, they build hill stations up in the mountains. One of the largest ist Mussoorie,…

Once again I am in the Himalayas, my favorite mountain range. Not the high peaks, these are a long way to the east, but today’s trip took me to Chambra at 2000m. It’s a long narrow road along the edge of the mountains that consists only of curves. Chambra itself is a nice town, but…

Rishikesh is a town further up on the Ganges. The town has a split personality: the larger part is a fairly generic busy town full of markets and honking traffic, a narrow footbridge over the Ganges connects it to the smaller part built up a steep hill. The bridge is not too narrow for motorcycles…

Haridwar means Gate of the Gods. It’s a town on the Ganges, up the mountains where Ganges water is still clean, in eastern India. At the ghats – waterfront stairs – people go swimming in the holy Ganges because it’s a shortcut to Nirvana, i am told. The river is flowing so fast that people…

Downtown Kyoto isn’t very scenic, but the parks around it certainly are. The temples, being made of wood, have a habit of burning down and having to be rebuilt over the centuries, but the gardens around them are often much older. This includes the Arashiyama garden and the golden Kinkaku-ji temple and bamboo grove at…

More temples in Kyoto! Buildings are often simple wooden halls resting on large pillars, with elaborate roofs but very simple inside. Walls are white or rice paper, or occasionally painted with murals; there is very little furniture. Floors are covered with Tatami mats. Tatami mats are made from fine soft woven straw, and are so…

It’s a little over two hours by bullet train from Tokyo to Kyoto. Kyoto is not anywhere as busy and loud as Tokyo; the highrise downtown is fairly small and surrounded by more traditional small two- and three-story houses. People visit Kyoto because it was the imperial capital before Edo, now known as Tokyo, and…

Tokyo is an enormous city. Everything is bigger here, everything moves faster, and everything screams for your attention. Advertising covers entire buildings, especially in the electronics district of Akihabara shown below, and on the small clips on subway handles. Packaging is always as loud as possible; cookies, tiny bits of chocolates, and almonds are available…

This is what a proper four-course lunch looks like:… Read the rest

Some final photos from Ko Mook. Next stop Bangkok, via Krabi.… Read the rest

Another day on the islands. Relaxing! After the big tsunami in 2004 that washed away entire villages on the western coast of Thailand, they installed an earlty warning system, including signs on the islands that show which way to run when the tsunami approaches.… Read the rest

The beaches on Ko Mook aren’t quite as white as on the Parhentians, but the place is more authentic. Accommodations are more basic, and the locals live just around the corner in, for Thailand, very simple wooden houses. These people do not have much money. Otherwise it’s another tropical island paradise. They run long-tail boats…

Kota Bharu is very close to Thailand, there is a border checkpoint just west of it and the Thai city of Hat Yai is not far. Trouble is, using that checkpoint would take me through the southernmost three provinces of Thailand, where some crazies have decided that they’d like to re-establish some old Sultanate, and…

My last day on the Parhentian Islands, spent not doing very much at all, sampling the local cuisine, and trying to remember where I put the shoes that I am going to need off the island. Kota Bharu is an old Malay town on the northeastern tip of mainland Malaysia. It’s not a major tourist…

The Parhentian Islands are the sort of place where shoes are just a forgotten artifact left behind in a cupboard. It is just natural to step out of the door onto the beach barefoot. My hut is at one end of the long curved beach and the Quiver dive center is at the other, no…

It’s a long way by bus north along the coast, and I had to connect several times. All connections between different buses and the ferry worked like a Swiss clockwork, so I found myself looking at the lesser Parhentian Island from a speedboat in the late afternoon. The Quiver dive center is strategically located at…

… Read the rest

Time to say goodbye to Borneo. I had booked a flight to Kuala Lumpur on the Malaysian mainland the day before. Kuala Lumpur is Malaysia’s capital, and Kuala Lumpur airport is one of the main hubs is southeast Asia. Kuala Lumpur is polluted and Kuala Lumpur’s traffic is terrible. But I like Kuala Lumpur because…