I’m on vacation. I know that sounds weird coming from someone who’s been traveling almost continuously since 2011. But travel is hard work, whether it’s a road trip by car or campervan, cruising on a sailboat, or land travel via planes, trains and buses. Where are we going? How do we get there? Where should we stay? Do we need a visa? How do we get around? How much will it cost? Where can we eat? Every day there’s research, decisions, reservations. It can be exhausting.
This six month journey is a new kind of travel for us, essentially low-budget backpacking but with rolling luggage. The first month and a half getting Jack’s knee replaced was largely proscribed. We knew where we needed to go and for how long. Since then we’ve been making it up as we go along, discovering places on our own and getting tips and advice from fellow travelers. We’ve learned a lot about what we really need with us, what kind of places we like to stay in, how to balance “touring” with “living.”
Looking back at our six months in the campervan, that was often exhausting, too. Every day meant decisions on where to go, where to park overnight, where to swap our propane tank, which supermarket car park is campervan friendly, where to dump our black and gray waste and fill up with fresh water. That was also a learning experience, and once again we were helped by fellow vanlifers.
Right now, after months of continuous travel, and with a few weeks to go before we return to our campervan and hit the road again, I need a break. I told Jack I want to stay in one place for a few weeks, do nothing but catch up on reading and writing, maybe do some family history research, my favorite pursuit but which takes a backseat if I don’t have a solid block of time to focus.
Antalya is my vacation time. I envisioned a comfortable hotel room (check) with a good breakfast buffet (check) near cafés and restaurants (check) where I can do yoga with a long-distance sea view (check). It has fit the bill perfectly. We haven’t done much but explore the Old City and make daily forays looking for cheap local food.
As always, we gravitate toward the waterfront.
Now after a few weeks we’re ready to venture beyond our immediate surroundings. We consulted a Ten Things to Do In Antalya list and hiked a few miles along the coast to the Antalya Museum of Archaeology. It’s a beautiful walk.
We get the impression that most of Türkiye is an archaeological site, and we recognize many of the location names from Bible stories and other tales of classical history, plus various antiquities we’ve seen in museums in America, England and Germany. In fact, we were amused to see these plaques on a few displays here in Antalya. There were more pieces reclaimed from Germany.
The museum is an eye-popping collection of classical sculpture. The audio tour is a mixed bag, good in identifying the pieces and the period they were created in, but not much on how and when they were found. The works are well presented with no attempt to fill in where pieces are missing. I prefer that to reconstructions.
One room houses floor mosaics, another shows various means of burial, particularly elaborate sarcophagi, most of which had been broken into and robbed in the second or third centuries.
One of our favorite galleries displays statuary and friezes rescued from the Roman Theatre in the ancient city of Perge, ten miles east of Antalya. We mentally put a visit to Perge on our must do list if we can figure out how to get there.
We warmed ourselves in the sunshine at the museum café before walking back to Antalya.
After seeing the treasures in the museum we became more mindful of the antiquities on display all over the Antalya. The entire Old City is an open air museum. With a never ending gift shop. And cats.
As Escapee layovers go, our Istanbul — or is it Constantinople — layover was a short one. Not short enough to cause panic but we were still able to buy new sims, pick up some pocket lira and kick back for a few minutes. After our business class windfall we weren’t looking forward to back-of-the bus seating to Antalya even though the flight is only an hour duration.
Feet on the ground, bags by our side in Antalya, Türkiye (same fine country, creative new spelling) we began to fully appreciate how utterly profound the difference is between Turkish and English. We haven’t a clue. Not one word is recognizable.
Showing true Escapee chutzpah we left the terminal dragging our two wheelie duffels into the usual taxis driver scrum knowing that the favorite Turkish taxi trick is to settle on a fare only to raise the price on arrival. Our guy gave it go. We weren’t having it.
Apparently our hotel has a part time doorman who held the door while I wrestled the bags into the lobby. Let that sink in a minute, Escapees. We are staying in a hotel with a doorman. During the day Yusuf cleans rooms, but the elevator is very real and whisked us up to our 5th floor room with a gorgeous sunny Mediterranean view.
There must be some kind of screwup. I mean, have I died and gone to heaven? Marce has pulled off another miracle on such a miserly budget.
Turns out that Antalya Harbor is a block away and about 200 feet down at the bottom of a cliff. A glass elevator is gratefully provided to whisk the savvy thrill seeker up or down to the harbor esplanade where vendors of all stripes can be found hawking their wares.
Tour boats with bizarre cartoon like, large plastic “Pirates of the Caribbean” themed sculptures stuck on the stern, were arrayed around the harbor in a huge horseshoe shape.
But the truly amazing thing is the massive defensive walls, some built by the Romans. With Marce fighting the traveler’s lurgy I decided to reconnoiter Old Town.
This town is really cat crazy and everyone puts out water and cat food. It’s actually hard to get a photograph without a cat in it.
Five roads crossing blended perfectly.
Any yachtsman worth his grog knows who Sir Francis Beaufort is but few know that in addition to creating the Beaufort windscale, he explored and charted southern Anatolia, locating many classical ruins including the ancient Hadrian’s Gate which apparently was encased within the heavy walls of the city.
This ancient gate with its deep worn chariot tracks has perked our curiosity especially with the ancient city of Perge ten miles away. A rare Escapee museum visit sounds like a plan.
Our one-month Nepal visa is about to expire and we don’t know where to go next. The big picture is that we’re returning to our campervan, currently in storage near Glasgow, Scotland, sometime in April with the hope that by the time we get there the UK will have warmed up considerably. That means we have a month yet to go somewhere interesting but not too cold and not too expensive to fly into and out of. Looking at a map, Türkiye fits the bill. We chose Antalya because it will be a little warmer than Istanbul, and maybe a little cheaper.
I spent days looking for a reasonable airfare from Kathmandu to Antalya, and especially one with a short layover in whichever Gulf State capital we fly through. Nothing obvious presented itself and I was resigned to a long and expensive travel day when Peter came up with a brilliant plan. Kuwait Airways has a six-hour direct flight to Kuwait City. Instead of an airport layover, he suggested we stay two nights in Kuwait and book our onward journeys on a separate ticket. This never occurred to me before because I always assume a stopover will be more expensive. As it turned out, separate flights to Kuwait then to Istanbul was hundreds of dollars cheaper than the continuous journey. The difference allowed us two nights in a hotel in Kuwait, plus a little touring. Great idea!
None of us was looking forward to the long flight to Kuwait and as we sat in the waiting area at Kathmandu airport we could see that the flight was fully booked. When boarding was announced we shuffled along in the queue to the gate, girding ourselves for the coming ordeal. Jack was the first of us to reach the gate agent. Instead of scanning his boarding pass, she took it and set it aside, then handed him a new one. She did the same for me, and again for Peter. We had no idea what was going on until Peter whispered to me, “We’ve been upgraded.”
We joined the scrum on the tarmac and speculated the reason for the upgrade. Peter thought maybe the flight was overbooked but not business class, so they needed to move some people forward to make room for the locals returning to work in Kuwait. But why us? We’re old? European? Tall? We’ll never know, but wow, was this an unexpected bonus that could spoil us for life!
After a mighty fine breakfast — chosen from a menu, la-di-da — Jack watched two movies, while I took advantage of the lie-flat bed and had a comfy nap. What a great way to travel.
Kuwait was unexpectedly cold and rainy. We thought we were going to spend two days in the hot desert sun but no, it was bundle up time, not great for a quickie tourist visit.
Nevertheless we were game to make the best of it. After checking into our hotel and taking a quick rest we went out to reconnoiter and discovered that Kuwait City is not a place you can explore by foot. For one thing, it’s a huge sprawling city and the points of interest aren’t anywhere near each other, or for that matter, anywhere near our hotel. The city is criss-crossed by multi-lane highways with no accommodation made for pedestrians so navigating back and forth is life-threatening.
We taxied to the iconic symbol of the country, the Kuwait Towers, but with the sky socked in it didn’t make much sense to go up and not be able to enjoy the view. We moved that to tomorrow’s schedule, hoping for clearer weather.
We walked along the shoreline of the Persian Gulf, aware that we’re less than 40 miles from Iraq and 50 miles from Iran. This area of the world has been the focus of geopolitics for decades and standing here reminds me how easy it is to think your own world is the center of the universe, and how hard it is to maintain a global perspective.
None of us had been on the ground in any of the Gulf States before, although we’ve connected through Doha, Abu Dhabi and Dubai when flying to and from Asia. We vowed to schedule stopovers like this when we head east again.
In a perfect example of worlds colliding, there’s a huge MacDonald’s right on the waterfront. It was cold and windy and we sought shelter inside and ended up eating an early dinner. All three of us are still fighting lingering colds so we packed it in for the day promising a better day of tourism tomorrow.
The next day dawned partly sunny, if not much warmer. I was tasked as the tour guide and planned a perfect day, first taking a recommended tour of the beautiful Grand Mosque, then walking to the historic Al Mubarakiya souk; lunch at a recommended falafel joint; then a stroll through Al Shaheed Park to visit the memorial to the martyrs of the Iraqi invasion of 1991 and a coffee break at a modern Starbucks in the park; finally ending at the Kuwait Towers for sunset before dinner.
It did not go as planned.
The mosque was closed for renovations, and no amount of pleading with the guard for just a peek inside could convince him to let us through the gate. I don’t think Jack and Peter were disappointed but I was. Mosques are very different from churches, synagogues and temples and I always visit the ones I can, even if, as a woman, I can’t set foot in the main part.
We forged ahead to our second destination, the Al Mubarakiya Souk. There’s been a market here for hundreds of years but the buildings are more recent so it doesn’t have the ancient warren-like atmosphere that I think my companions were hoping for. Longtime readers know that markets are my happy place and I could have wandered the aisles for hours looking at the produce, spices, teas, clothing and housewares, chatting with the vendors.
I dragged the men around until they rebelled and demanded a bit of a sit down and food. The falafel place I was hoping for didn’t present itself, so lunch was unremarkable.
No matter. Onward we plodded. I set Google maps to navigate us to the Martyrs Memorial in the Al Shaheed Park. Walking isn’t easy in Kuwait, and we were the only people we saw on foot.
We arrived at the park near the memorial only to find that the park is surrounded by a high fence and we couldn’t see a gate. We chose a direction — Google maps was no help, only indicating we should walk directly to the memorial; apparently Google doesn’t know about the fence — and walked. And walked. And walked. The park is huge, and we walked several miles, nearly 3/4 of the way around the park before we found a gate, the gate. What kind of public city park has only one entrance? And why isn’t it marked on the map?
By this time everyone was pretty much done with the park, since we’d walked the entire length of it already and the memorial was at the far end. Even the scheduled Starbucks break was eliminated from the itinerary since it was halfway through the park and a visit would log another couple of miles on our already aching feet.
I spent an inordinate amount of time apologizing for the botched day until I was told to can it and we decided that since we were all feeling a bit under the weather anyway, we’ll retire to the hotel to rest up for later.
A nap did the trick and we arrived back at the Kuwait towers about an hour before sunset.
The towers were completed in 1979 and have become the symbol of modern Kuwait. Two of the three spheres hold water, and one holds a restaurant, a cafe, the observation deck and a meeting hall. The third tower has no spheres but houses electrical and lighting equipment. It costs about $10 to enter. The observation deck makes a full rotation every 30 minutes.
As soon as we stepped off the elevator on the observation deck we knew the whole day was salvaged. Even without perfectly clear weather it was wonderful to see the view of the city, the waterfront and the Persian Gulf from this vantage point.
We spent an hour up there, two complete rotations, until the sun set. It was worth the whole visit to Kuwait just to experience this.
When we left the towers we asked a taxi driver to take us to cheap local food and by happy coincidence he dropped us at the very falafel place I’d planned for lunch. It lived up to the reviews and we ate a pile of falafel and a bucket of hummus before returning to the hotel.
Peter was scheduled to fly to Cairo the next day, while Jack and I had a middle-of-the-night flight to Istanbul. So after spending nearly a month together in Nepal and Kuwait, we said goodbye to a wonderful travel companion and new friend. We hope to visit him in the Netherlands when we get to Europe.
And it’s back to economy class for us, and on to Türkiye.
Bhaktapur is apparently parade central, especially now during what seems to be wedding season. Almost every day various processions promenade past our hotel and down nearly every street of the city. Sometimes I text our friend Peter, who’s staying in a hotel on the other side of town, to alert him to a coming brass band, and sometimes he lets me know they’ve just passed his place and are on the way toward us. It can be any time of the day or night.
Early morning some days we see a cortège of young monks carrying silver bowls to receive alms of food or supplies. We never caught them in time to record the eerie recorded chanting that accompanies them. They walk a different street every day so we only saw them twice during our stay.
Every morning there’s a procession carrying offerings to a nearby temple. These parades always liven up our breakfast on the rooftop.
During the Spring color festival there was dancing in the streets, which we largely avoided to prevent being doused with too much dye powder. People are so happy here and, just like in Puerto Rico, can’t stop themselves from moving to the rhythms of the drums.
Most fun for us are the wedding processions complete with full brass band. Sometimes there are two or three a day. We have quite a few video clips but I’m working on an iPad, not the best device for video editing. Still, enjoy the joy!
Sometimes, it seems like I’m the last to know. I found myself humping away at a morning forced march through the old cultural city of Bhaktapur.
It was a vain attempt to keep up with Marce who has an insanely swift walking pace.
I was under the impression that we’d walk until a decent deal on a tour up to Changu Narayan presented itself to us. I really need to read the fine print more carefully. Apparently it’s the temple of peace and love featuring a decent view of the Himalayas on a clear day, which we have not got.
You can imagine my disappointment when Marce turned away from the charming old town and headed down a steep grade In Kathmandu-like conditions. It didn’t take long for us to be in flatlands in the middle of nowhere.
Every time a truck approached we lunged off the road raising a cloud of dust in the path alongside.
Just before my total breakdown the land began to rise. It kicked up quickly into a remarkably vertical road with switchbacks. These are legendary tough folks. Occasionally we had to ask a local which road to take and they would look at us and point straight up. Halfway up we ran into a wedding party. It’s hard to believe that ordinary life events could possibly take place on a gradient like this but there it is.
For entertainment we tried to imagine what the occasional old broken down signs of abandoned defunct businesses actually were. Sometimes we slowly plodded through tiny villages. Far ahead we could see mountains and we knew that the temple of peace and love might be on top of one of those. What I want to know is, what happened to my tour?
Breaks for a breather came more and more often. Just when the question of who will take the blame for this fiasco were all I could think about, a parking lot came into view. We collapsed into a vendor’s chair and gasped for drinks.
It turns out we’re not there yet. There’s a path up to the temple, but first you need to buy a ticket and walk up through the gauntlet of souvenir and trinket hawkers. It’s the “enter via the gift shop” paradigm.
With quivering thighs we climbed the final stairs to peace and love.
The earthquake did major damage to the temple up here.
While trying to get some feeling back into our old legs a young Italian couple who are staying at our hotel came bounding into the square through the backdoor archway.
I’m no expert but Changu Narayan is purported to have the highest density of erotic art in Nepal. I guess that’s the love part. Still looking for the peace bit.
We decided to go back to Bhaktapur on the same southern trail that the Italians walked to get here. Instead of wandering around the mountain it just drops straight down towards the valley.
We could actually see the Italians far ahead of us but soon the trail began to roller coaster up and down in an exhausting pattern. We spent a few miles plodding through dusty and desolate stacks of drying brick.
Just when we were sure the trail was heading down to a flat valley road I could see the Italians, by this point far ahead, reach a fork in the road and turn up another long steep hill. I found this particularly soul-crushing.
After the hill we dropped down into another valley that had a few obviously empty, isolated, strangely suburban-looking houses right before the path kicked up again. The significance here is that one house was surround by a small wall. I sat down. I was spent.
I looked at Marce and said, half joking, “I wonder what the chances are of finding a taxi out here in the middle of nowhere?” She laughed but found just enough cell signal to pop up the local ride-hailing app, and in true Marce fashion, found a driver on the map, also out in the middle of nowhere but very close to our middle of nowhere. What are the odds? Minutes later it was bizarre to watch a little yellow four door speck find us on this lonely stretch of road in the middle of nowhere. We crawled in.
Before long we were dropped off at the city gates, flashed our passes and shuffled off in the general direction of our Rupakot Hotel and Rooftop Restaurant.
As my grandfather used to say, “There and back in the same day!” Then he’d look at you as if to say, ”Isn’t that amazing?”
Bhaktapur is full of squares, each one with a distinctive temple or two or three, and each with its own character. Dattatraya Square is home to the oldest temple in Bhaktapur and is sometimes called the woodcarvers square. All of Bhaktapur has beautiful woodcarvings but this square is especially fine in quality and detail.
We chose another rooftop restaurant for lunch. These places are always up three, four, or five flights of stairs, each flight with different or uneven stair geometry, but oh, the view is always worth the climb! And on this day so was the food, a very typical Nepalese lunch, fresh, spicy and made to order.
On our way back through town we ventured down a narrow alleyway and found this nearly hidden music shop. We never pass up a guitar store, and this one also featured some native instruments we weren’t familiar with and which the proprietor was happy to demonstrate. We’ve sworn off buying more instruments because we have no place to put them, but we sure were tempted by the telescoping horn he’s holding.
Pottery Square is close to our neighborhood and we visit often. It doesn’t get the tourist crowds that the big draw, Durbar Square, does, but it’s a genuine workplace where hundreds of identical pots are thrown, air dried, and fired in traditional kilns every day.
We love watching the potters work but judging from the pots lined up to dry there doesn’t seem to be much room for individual creativity.
Also in Pottery Square is one of the many Thanka Painting schools around Bhaktapur. This is a traditional Tibetan Buddhist style of painting on silk or cotton, usually of deities or mandalas. Mastering the technique requires six years of apprenticeship. We were told this group is in their second year.
It’s painstaking work requiring keen eyesight and a steady hand, often using a brush with a single bristle. Some of the more extraordinary works have 24k gold in the paint.
https://www.handmadeexpo.com/
Most tourists visit Bhaktapur on a day trip from Kathmandu. We’re staying for two weeks, allowing us to look beyond the touts and souvenir shops to appreciate real life happening all around.
In Nepal one breakfasts up on the roof. It makes sense to get above the dust and dirt. Om and the boys at Rupakot Hotel and Rooftop Restaurant do a great job and the view is without equal. I suspect that given a modest amount of time most of Bhaktapur will walk, chant, dance, or parade past our front door. Back to breakfast, which is up one more flight of stairs from our room. From here we have a 360 degree view of this magical ancient city but those shy Himalayan mountains just north of us are still AWOL.
Across the street we can see down into what must have been a temple but due to the earthquake has slumped down into a pile of rubble.
Still, every day we see two people separating roofing tile from bricks, stacking tens of thousands of those clay colored bricks against what was once their back wall while avoiding the angled wooden props stabilizing the next door wall.
A few steps from us a small group of workers are reconstructing another ancient temple lost to the earthquake. The bricks from the original structure were saved and neatly stacked. Bearers load them into a basket they carry via a strap across the forehead leaving their hands free to climb ladders up to the second story where they throw the bricks one by one up to the third story. We watch their progress every day.
A few steps from this rebuild site is a beautiful conical temple that has been completely restored.
By this point you would have been encouraged to add to your baggage allowance with a brass singing bowl, carved wooden masks, pottery, spices, tea, jewelry, t-shirts, curved daggers, all at a special price just for you because you’re the first customer this morning.
Moving farther into Taumadhi square is a beautiful four-story cafe that we frequent.
The square is dominated by the tallest temple in Bhaktapur with a long climb up steep uneven stairs past restored lions, elephants, and fantastical creatures.
An early morning climb shows a rare quiet moment at the square.
Height-adverse Marce can be seen parked next to the potted plants.
This temple seems to gather a lot of attention.
Almost everyone stops to light something, bow in Namaste, or breathe in incense, and most nights feature a couple of hypnotic tunes and chanting by the band.
Streets head off in every direction promising weeks of adventurous discovery. We’re up to the challenge.
We’ve been kicking around the idea of traveling to Bhaktapur for a few days. We’re trying to avoid the expense of another flight. There are no trains. The bus to Kathmandu is posted as a ten-hour trip, but has been known to take hours longer and has rattled and even unhinged seasoned travelers that we know. The mostly unpaved H04 road is legendary in Nepal. Legendary snarled traffic. Legendary potholes. Legendary mud.
Our friend Peter came up with a compromise solution which is his special skill: hire a driver with a newish 4-wheel drive high-clearance vehicle who promises to stop for food and photos and we split the cost. Done and dusted. The only fly in the soup is that our innkeeper at the Orchid Hotel warned that early in the morning we’ll run into the tourist buses, but how bad could that be?
The problem with the road to Bhaktapur is it appears they are trying to pave the unpaved bits and maybe widen it too, all while you and everyone else are trying to drive on it. Some Nepalese smiled and proudly told us, “Come back in two years and you will be amazed.” After a couple of hours on the road we all agreed twenty years might even be optimistic.
Things went smoothly in the morning, but no final appearance of Fishtail and our Himalayan friends. Immediately, while passing the airport, we ran into school buses that were not fond of pulling off the road to swallow the kiddies. The buses behind would try to leapfrog the one stopped to pickup a new load of kids. It was a mess but our driver remained stoic and calm.
Out of town things began to deteriorate. Between tourist buses, construction vehicles, mud, and far too many cars, things were slowing down quite a bit. And getting bumpy.
After sitting still in a line of vehicles for a long while, without a word our driver turned the truck off and went back to watching a Bollywood drama on his phone.
Eventually we started to move again, surmising that some construction issues were afoot.
This was the pattern of our day, except for the occasional snack and comfort stop.
At Anbu Khaireni we stopped for a few photos
We still had to work our way through the mountains, then around the constantly constipated traffic of Kathmandu.
This is Nepal. There are no ring roads, and Bhaktapur lies about an hour or so beyond Kathmandu.
We could feel things constrict as we approached the Old Town of Bhaktapur. It had taken us just over eight hours.
Bhaktapur is a restricted UNESCO site and requires a pass, 1800 rupees whether you stay for a day or a month. We got a long term pass which required some lengthy paperwork.
Our hotel is right in the heart of the old town on Taumadhi Square. While we passengers were now legal to pass through the gate, sadly our driver had to turn back. It was schlepping time and we unloaded the roller duffles and started to hunt down the Rupakot Hotel and Rooftop Restaurant.
The walkways are carefully paved with cobblestones and bricks but they’re incredibly old and with all the earthquakes some shifting may have occurred. The rolling duffels did their usual flop over trick on the uneven streets which made dodging the thousands of maniacs intent on skewering us with their speeding scooters quite scary. Funny that the authorities are so careful to regulate visitors but apparently any idiot can speed through this amazing UNESCO site on a motorbike at breakneck speed, scattering people out of their way.
With Marce navigating we found our wonderful old hotel and our room on the fifth floor. It was a long but interesting day of travel and we now have an amazing ancient city to explore.
