India Part I: You say Mogul, I say Mughal

And so it was that, with bellies full of delicious noodles and ferns, with heads full of nervous anticipation, we boarded our flight to Delhi. Malaysia had been very good to us; was India the beginning of the real "adventure"?

After disembarking the plane, one of the first things we noticed was that all of the immigration officials who were supposed to let us into the country were chatting with each other. Eventually enough of us gathered that they surmised it was time to get to work and they slowly made their way back to their desks to let us through. We hopped in our cab and got our first glimpse of Delhi.

On our first cab ride, many thoughts passed through our minds: "dusty," "lots of people," "is that a cow in the road?" "boy am I glad I'm not driving," and so forth. Kristen made the observation that to travel in India it helps to have a healthy sense of humor. Over the next few days we got to know the city of Delhi a bit better. And it turns out that it's a wonderful place. We visited during the Commonwealth Games, sort of like the Olympics for the British Commonwealth. So things were busy. But then, it's safe to say that things are always busy in Delhi. In fact, our first visit to a museum was a literally unforgettable experience.

We visited the Indira Ghandi Museum, at the home of the former prime minister who was tragically assassinated by dissidents. We have no guess of how many people were visiting the museum with us, but let's just say if we told you, you probably wouldn't believe us. The crowd was organized as basically a solid line/mass of people that constantly moved through each room of the museum. We were given the privilege of being allowed to read the descriptions, but the rest of the people were ordered to keep moving and if we wanted to move along we'd have to push our way into the river of people and just keep going until we wanted to get off again. But, after that experience, things were much less crowded and it would be interesting to go back to Delhi in a few months and see if things are different. We suspect the city had been 'cleaned up' for the benefit of the games.

With all the news about outsourcing jobs to India, it's easy to think that a lot of Indians speak English fluently, but we had a few instances in Delhi when the good old language barrier popped up again. When we were first talking to our driver who took us sightseeing for a day, Kristen asked him if he could point out one of the new Tata cars if we passed one (the Nano). He replied by saying, "No, you are in New Delhi". We were so glad he cleared that up, because we had been thinking we were in New Tata. We also had lunch for a total of US $1.50 at a paratha stand in Old Delhi where it was clear that no one spoke English. We communicated by pointing and saying what few words we knew (fortunately most of them involve food). And we were treated with one of our favorite meals in Delhi.

Delhi also has some really nice restaurants. We decided to splurge and go to "the best Indian restaurant in the world" according to the iPod of a very amusing pair of British couples sitting next to us. Bill and Chelsea Clinton ate there and everything. The food was 40 times what we paid for that lunch in Old Delhi and we didn't like it as much, though it was still good. Their big thing is kebabs. We realized our big thing is parathas (a stuffed wheat tortilla) and it became our go to food when we were in a place where we wanted to eat and no one spoke English or if we were in a rush.

We spent our time in Delhi wandering around a lot of Mogul ruins, mosques and forts. They were so beautiful! We had both heard about these Mogul peopile but have to confess we didn't know much of anything. We learned just a bit more- they were a Muslim empire that came down from Afghanistan and ruled northern India. And they have beautiful architecture. They are the people that brought us the Taj Mahal (more on that later).







These Mogul sites also provided us with a respite from the hectic and dusty city streets. They were very tranquil sites with lots of green around them. And lots of Indian tourists enjoying their own patrimony- it was great to see people enjoying their own cultural heritage. In fact, there were so many Indian tourists, that it seemed like there were hardly any Westerners. We were such a novelty that people kept asking to have their picture taken with us. Why, we don't really understand. We can only imagine what people say about their photos when they get home to show people...

After a few days, we took a train to Jaipur, which we will feature in our next post...

Selamat Tinggal Malaysia: So long, and thanks for all the orangutangs

It's official. We *heart* Borneo. Kuching was our home base for the last week and it's a great city (even though it has a sprawl problem) built along the Sarawak River. It also has excellent dining. We think that each meal we ate was better than the last. Kristen's sister Megan has a 'fear no food' policy and we have become practicioners and have yet to be disappointed. Mike's favorites include Tom Yum soup and whole fish in a black pepper sauce. Kristen's favorites include battered prawns and jungle ferns. We would do something touristy during the day and then walk on the river and eat good food at night. Not a bad life!

During the day we tried our best to learn about the people and wildlife in the Sarawak state of Malaysian Borneo. Our first day we took a tour of the city and visited the ethnographic museum to learn about the different indigenous tribes. In the afternoon we went to an orangutan rehabilitation center. It was pouring down rain when we first got there, so we weren't sure what we'd see, but we got quite the show. There was a momma and her little baby and another one building a nest in the rain. Then when the rain stopped we checked out the other feeding site and saw the big guy himself- Ritchie, the dominant male. He was without question the dominant one. He was probably twice the size of the next biggest we saw and he really enjoyed eating bananas. Apparently he's got the strength of ten men so it probably takes a lot of bananas to fill him up. Across the way there were two teenage boy orangutangs hanging out and showing us just how easy it is to open up a coconut.


I love it when you call me big poppa, while also feeding me bananas


Our next adventure was to visit an Iban longhouse community. The Iban people are the people formerly known as headhunters who have transitioned into more peaceful ways of living. They are gracious enough to open up their traditional longhouses for home stays for tourists so people like us can learn more about them. Truth in advertising: a longhouse is in fact a long house- it's like a single story apartment buiding on stilts where all of the apartments are in a single row. There are connections between each of the "apartments" because most of the people who live in the longhouse are related.

Our trip to visit them involved a 4.5 hour car ride, a beautiful boat ride across a lake, and a walk from the dock to the longhouse itself. One thing we noticed at first was that most people didn't speak English. But, we were able to get by with hand gestures and translation from our guide. They served us tea and we said hi to the different people who were at the longhouse. Our guide told us that 100 people officially live there, but there were only about 20 people there when we were there- the rest were working in the cities. They were very friendly and welcoming. We checked out their farmland until it started to rain on us and then got a cooking lesson on how to prepare jungle ferns and other tasty things. We endeared ourselves to the community by helping to bring out the food to eat and clear the dishes after dinner. With that, we were declared 'mana' or good people. We really didn't help out all that much seeing as we don't know how to cook jungle ferns or speak the language to understand what's going on, but were glad they appreciated the little we did. And boy were we appreciative of them- they were great to us. Dinner was followed by drinking of rice wine whiskey. Even Kristen had a shot, but since one made her turn red and lightheaded, she stopped there. Mike, however, was more adventurous and had a few more shots with the guide who was more than happy to sling 'em back. We slept in the chief's quarters on a foam mattress under a mosquito net. We woke up very early to the sounds of the roosters and then had a tasty breakfast. And then it was already time to say good-bye.

Our final stop in Borneo was Bako National Park, which is the home of beaches, mangroves and proboscis monkeys. We saw each of these things and they were very lovely.


Oh Leonard, I love the way you pick nits from my back... I could sit here all day

However, the part of Bako that brought us the most amusement was the naughty macaque monkeys that liked to hang out around the open air canteen were we'd take our meals. They would wait until the right moment, bound into the space and then steal the food out of someone's plate.




naughty monkey...


There was a young fellow who had a sling shot who had the job of trying to dissuade the monkeys from coming onto the porch. However, these monkeys are very fast and very naughty. Inevitably, a monkey would make it on the porch and make off with someone's food. They also had the nerve to sit in a tree in view of the canteen and eat whatever they stole. Mike took on the role of monkey tamer and would pick up an empty chair whenever they came close to shoo them off. Kristen just ate quickly. Fortunately, neither of us lost any of our food to the monkeys. The park is building a new canteen that's and safe from the invaders, but smokers will still have to eat outside. It may be an effective way to convince people to stop smoking so they can avoid having half their food stolen by voracious monkeys.


"Naughty monkeys around, watch out"

The monkeys also liked to hang out at the beach at dusk.


Next stop, New Delhi!