We successfully completed the #1 India must-do, the Golden Triangle of Delhi-Agra-Jaipur and now we head into unknown and unplanned territory. We were reluctant to leave the beautiful sanctuary of our guesthouse but we’ve barely scratched the surface of India and we’re keen to experience more.
Everyone says we absolutely must travel India by train and I finally figured out the online booking system and got us comfy seats for the 6-1/2 hour journey to Udaipur.
The first couple of hours were in daylight so we got to see a little of the territory. We were given water and a newspaper before departing, and served food and beverages four times during the trip. Amtrak could learn a thing or two.
We arrived in Udaipur in the dark and after a lively negotiation with two rather enthusiastic tuktuk drivers we finally got onboard for a nailbiting careen through the narrow alleyways of Udaipur to our randomly chosen guest house deep in the labyrinth of the Old City. Someone should make a video game of driving a tuktuk through the crush of pedestrians, motorbikes, cows, and dogs all vying for the same 8-foot wide lanes, and yes, even late at night.
The following day we set out to explore our new neighborhood.
We can never pass up a music store and we got a bonus from the proprietor of this one, a discourse on the sitar and a brief demonstration. He claims the sitar is easier to play than the guitar because while the sitar has many more strings, you only play on one of them. The rest are drones. I didn’t know that.
Udaipur is the City of Lakes, and of course we love being near the water.
We happened upon a small museum in a restored palace. It was cool inside and a nice break from the scorching midday sun.
We found a tiny fruit stand serving beautiful smoothie bowls and established ourselves as regulars.
We’ve learned to take shelter in the worst heat of the afternoon. Then we take to the rooftop for sunset before re-emerging after dark for dinner. We seem to have settled in nicely.
From the Palace of Winds we strolled through a marketplace that featured mostly household equipment. I like this kind of market because it’s not for tourists, and you get a good sense of what families need in their daily life.
These huge pans (trays?) caught my attention and I asked what they were for.
“It’s to organize food for five or six hundred people,” the vendor told me.
“Five or six hundred people?” I gasped, “Does that happen often?”
“In India, yes.”
Jack wanted to shop for a new ship’s clock but I was on a mission. Ever since I read about Jantar Mantar, an 18th century astronomical observatory, it’s been marked as “want to go” on my Google map.
But despite it being right there on the map, finding the entrance required the usual twisty turny back alley traffic dodging, death defying crawl we’ve come to accept as shank’s mare in India.
Finally we arrived.
Jantar Mantar is a collection of huge masonry instruments to measure time, predict eclipses and track the position and movements of celestial bodies. The observatory is one of five built by Raja Jai Singh II and the largest. It was completed in 1734. The raja believed these large structures could produce more accurate readings than the small brass instruments commonly used in the period.
There are 19 instruments, each designed for a specific measurement.
One of my very favorite college courses was History of Cosmology, how we humans have tried to understand, describe, and predict the heavens above us. It’s interesting to see how our understanding of the universe evolves over time, and continues to change with new data. Jai Singh II was a student of the Ptolemaic model but noticed that observed positions of certain celestial objects didn’t match the predictions on the data tables in use at the time. The observatories he built were meant to create more accurate tables, using only the naked eye.
It takes some time and effort to examine each instrument and understand its design and purpose and the geometry involved. I could have spent days there. Not only is the science compelling, but the planes and curves of the structures themselves make for constantly changing patterns of light and shadow.
The Rasivalayas Yantra is a unique instrument comprising twelve structures corresponding to the constellations of the zodiac. Each is precisely oriented to indicate the moment a particular sign crosses the meridian. If ever I wished for a drone or a really long arm, it was at this place. You can find an overhead shot here.
Of course we had to find our signs.
The most prominent feature of Jantar Mantar is the enormous Vrihat Samrat Yantra, the world’s largest sundial, said to be accurate to two seconds. The gnomon is 27m tall and you can see the shadow move about 6cm a minute. It’s hard to stop watching.
By the clock on my phone it was dead on, at least to the minute.
On display inside a small building are an orrery and an early globe.
Like I said, I could have stayed for at least the rest of the day, examining each instrument in turn. But we had one more hill to climb.
Ok, it’s not a hill but a great big tower, the 43m Isarlat, built to commemorate the victory of Swai Ishwari Singh in the battle for succession in 1749.
Longtime readers know that for me very high places are to be avoided. But Jack likes company in his quest for the tippy top of wherever we are so here’s me playing along. Notice there are no steps, just a continuous undulating spiral ramp, ribbed for your pleasure.
The view from the top is admittedly wonderful, as long as you don’t look straight down, and my hands are sweating just typing this.
You can see the places we visited today, the Palace of Winds, back right, and the tall sundial gnomon of the observatory, center left.
These three fellows struck up a conversation and answered a lot of questions for us, which took my mind off how high up we were. By coincidence we ran into them again the next day at the Amber fort, which thrilled us all no end and led to another round of photos.
I could not for the life of me figure out how to book a train ticket online, and by the time I got it sorted it was too late for our intended departure. At the very last minute I booked a flight for not much more than the train and certainly faster. The short hops around India are served by Indigo Airline who operate smaller turboprop equipment. That means our baggage allowance is 15 kilos instead of the usual 20 or 25 kilos for most international flights. We only have one bag and over the last few months the weight has crept up to over 17 kg. For two people our combined limit is 30 kg but you know the airlines, each bag must be under the limit. And we only have one bag. Which weighs 17 kilos.
To solve this problem I moved some heavy items to our overflow carryon tote and we’ll check both bags. Neither of us wants to add to our carryon weight, and many airlines now limit carryon to 7 kg.
I made up an ID tag and secured it to the tote with Gorilla tape (new addition to my travel kit), moved the AirTag from the big duffle to the small and maybe easily lost tote, and hoped my weight estimates get us past the airline checkin scale.
Meanwhile, I felt a cold coming on. I ducked down the street to a small pharmacy and asked what he had for the sniffles. He produced two packets of pills that he recommended I take, one each morning and night.
“Will they work?” I asked, struggling to read the ingredients.
“Of course they’ll work!” he countered. “I’m a pharmacist!”
You can’t argue with that, and I generally trust that local medicine men know their local bugs. While I was there I restocked other bits of our first aid kit, replacing expired antibiotics and other just-in-case drugs we carry. He had everything I asked for and my total bill was about $12.
We took an Uber to the Agra airport. Or at least we thought we did. Our driver stopped well short of the destination indicated by Google maps, and right before a very tall, very closed gate.
“This is as far as I can drive you,” he said, and he indicated a bus across the road. He assured us it would deliver us to the terminal.
We decamped to the bus. There was another couple there. French. We waited.
It turns out the civil airport in Agra lies inside a military base. That explains the barbed wire, I thought. And all the men with guns. In fact, we’ve seen more guns in India than we have in years in SE Asia.
We sat on the bus for 45 minutes until a man from Indigo came to check our tickets and passports. Finally a driver hopped onboard and we drove the final ten minutes to the terminal. Because we were in a military base we couldn’t take photos, and the military did all the security screening. They zip-tied our bags closed, even the outside pockets. How am I going to get those things off, I wondered. The scissors are inside the bag.
Our duffle weighed just under 13 kilos so we passed with flying colors. I was so excited I didn’t even watch the scale for the tote. With boarding passes in hand we bought bad terminal food and sat down to wait.
The flight was delayed but otherwise uneventful and we arrived at our guesthouse in Jaipur early enough to enjoy the peaceful surroundings. It’s a stunning place, picked at random, and I’m glad I booked five nights. After the whirlwind of Delhi and Agra, we decided to take a personal day and just enjoy this lovely marble oasis. The Pink City can wait.
We wisely skipped breakfast before our Old Delhi food tour. This is a first for us. We don’t do tours in general but despite my love of markets and familiarity with lots of Indian food there are so many street foods that we haven’t tried, and having a guide to navigate us through the famously chaotic Chandni Chowk market seemed like a good idea.
While we waited for our guide we saw this man making samosas exactly as I’ve been making them for almost 40 years, and as Ericka and Drew make them now too. It’s nice to confirm that we’re doing it right.
We met our guide and our fellow tasters, an English couple and two women from Greece, and headed into the market.
We started with jalebi, a crispy sweet coated in a sugar-honey syrup. We all loved it.
Before going any further we made a stop at a Sikh temple. I remind you that houses of worship are not Jack’s favorite thing, mostly because he doesn’t like to take his shoes off. But he promised before we committed to the tour that he would participate in everything and here’s the proof that he did. We had to cover our heads like pirates and remove our shoes then walk down the street and through some areas that may not have been entirely sanitary. But Jack was game, and so were the rest of us.
This temple is a refuge for the poor and needy and volunteers prepare meals for 30-40,000 hungry people a day.
The people eat in shifts. They file in to this room to be served. When they finish the next group moves in. It’s very calm and organized.
After touring the kitchen and serving area we sat in the temple for a few minutes, then we were reunited with our shoes to continue the food tour.
The market area is nuts. This is one time I wished I had a GoPro and could shoot continuous video of wending our way through narrow alleys and dodging tuktuks and rickshaws across noisy streets. Still photos just can’t capture the madness. I loved it. I haven’t been this excited in a market since Palermo in the 80s.
I can’t even attempt to describe — or even name — all of the foods we ate, some familiar, others new to us. We knew to avoid that green stuff. It’s fire in the mouth.
Most of what we ate was street food but we did sit down twice. This was a paratha place, in business for over 150 years and six generations. There wasn’t a scrap left on anyone’s plate. Except the green stuff.
I must have 100 photos of various stalls and vendors. I always ask permission to photograph in markets and no one ever says no. (Well, except for a cranky German woman at the Turkish market in Berlin back in 2004 who yelled at me for taking a picture of her wares. They weren’t even that special.)
Deep in the narrow lanes of the market our group paused to enjoy another dish when seconds later we were almost run over by a fully loaded rickshaw trying to make the corner with a wheelbase not suitable for the width of the alley.
This is not a pedestrian only area. At any moment a vehicle of some sort will force everyone to the edge and squeeze past. It’s like the dimension-defying night bus in the Harry Potter books, ten pounds of pedestrian and vehicular traffic in a five pound alley. Somehow no one gets hurt, but it’s hard to believe it.
Full props to me for tasting everything (it was all vegetarian.) Jack passed on two, and this was one of them. It’s called pani puri and it’s a crispy little dough sphere filled with either a spicy or a sweet liquid mixture. You have to pop the whole thing in your mouth at once, and when you bite down it explodes in your mouth with intense flavor. I tried them both. The spicy wasn’t too hot for me, and the sweet one was delicious. It’s just a lot to have swirling around in your mouth at once. Most of our crew tried to bite into it daintily, which only resulted in squirts and dribbles on faces and clothing.
The constant din becomes a brown noise background and after a while I found my brain just tuned it out.
I think Jack’s favorite was a lemon soda in a unique reusable bottle. The seal is formed by a captive marble inside that’s sucked up to the top when the bottle is cleaned and refilled. You open it by pushing the marble down into the bottle, breaking the seal.
After more tasting we plunged into the spice market where so much spice was floating in the air that Jack and I donned our facemasks. The rest of our crew braved the thick atmosphere and sneezed and coughed their way around.
If I had a kitchen or space in my luggage I’d have filled up a tote with all the fresh spices, most grown all over India.
Our other favorite beverage was masala chai served in single-use clay cups.
Our final sitdown stop was a tandoor oven where we enjoyed fresh naan and masala paneer. Notice the sink nearby for handwashing before and after eating. There are sinks and other fresh water sources all over the market. When you eat with your hands you appreciate being able to clean up afterwards.
Jack’s last tasting was a sweet fluffy concoction whose name I forget. It’s a wonder I remembered as much as I did.
There was one last treat offered us, sweet paan, a betel leaf wrapped like a cigar around spices and who-knows-what else. Only three of us tried it. One of the Greek women spit it out immediately. The English woman gagged but managed to eat it. I ate the whole thing, and let me tell you, it was a Tim Burton movie of competing flavors and textures. The leaf itself was as tough as a garden hedge and after a journey from sweet to sour to flowery herbal I was left with a strong menthol aftertaste that for hours afterward burped back up again.
And then we were back where we started with full bellies, some new favorites and definitely a couple of never-agains. We will absolutely do more food tours in the future. It was the most fun we’ve had in one day in a long time.
We expected to do a food tour today but I waited too long to book it and we had to bump it back a day. That meant we did all the peaceful things we expected to do on our last day in Delhi, figuring we’d need a rest day. No matter. We’re nothing if not adaptable.
We began by moving guesthouses. We didn’t want to but our preferred choice wasn’t available for our whole stay in Delhi and we had to book a different one for our first two days. It turned out fine though. After we met and chatted with our first host he moved us from the inexpensive basement room we’d booked to his largest park-view room, just because he enjoyed talking to us. And let me just insert here that so far the Indian people we’ve met rival the Irish in the gift of gab.
Mid morning found us checking in to the next guesthouse with a host who’s famous for being a friend to the traveler. He gave us a nonstop high speed data dump of what’s in the neighborhood, how to get where we’re going, and he even rearranged the day we’d planned to make it easier to navigate on public transportation. Then he drove us to our first stop, indicating eateries and points of interest along the way. When we finally got out of the car we were exhausted with the effort of remembering it all.
We began at the Lotus Temple, one of only 13 Baháʼí Houses of Worship in the world. This one in New Delhi has won several architecture awards and it’s beautiful from every angle. I was surprised at how many people were there on a week day and I learned that on some days there can be 100,000 visitors.
Jack never likes taking his shoes off so I went into the temple alone, well, with a couple of hundred others.
We walked up the steps in single file then lined up in rows guided by volunteers. We were invited to enter and pray or meditate in whatever way we wished, and were only asked to keep a respectful silence. No photos were allowed inside.
The inside looks exactly as you would imagine from the outside. Once we entered we could sit wherever we wanted. Most people spread out in the huge space on wide comfortable benches arranged in an arc. It was a lovely experience and we could take as much time as we wished. No one ushered us out and people left whenever they wanted.
I rejoined Jack and we took the Metro to Khan Market, the fancy shopping district, then walked to Lodhi Garden, a large city park.
We strolled north to south through the garden and visited a few of the historical structures, including tombs and a mosque. It was a beautiful day and the architecture kept us circling and photographing for a long time.
We aren’t very good at knocking off top ten lists and with such a short time in Delhi we know we’re missing a lot of Must See attractions but we go where the mood takes us. After the park we skipped a nearby important tomb and walked instead to the Lodhi art district to admire some street art and pretty gardens.
We stopped for a very late lunch at a restaurant I’d marked on my Google map a long time ago. We sampled a couple of South Indian specialties (I forgot to take photos) and a cooling cucumber-lemon drink.
By that time we called it a day and Uber’d back to our guesthouse. New Delhi traffic is an experience in itself and every time we’re in a car or tuktuk we consider it a win when we get to our destination in one piece.
I don’t know why it was so hard for us to decide on India. I guess we were daunted. Through the years we’ve been traveling, and especially these last few years of land travel, we’ve been advised either “You must go!” or “Don’t even think about it!” We assumed it would be difficult on our own and we can neither afford, nor mostly tolerate, tours. In the end Youtube convinced us we could do it. Shoutout to all the YouTubers who share up to date real world experiences and offer a pretty good idea of what to expect.
From Kuala Lumpur every single affordable flight arrives late at night. We chose the least objectionable budget airline and arrived only slightly delayed to Delhi.
Our first task is always to get cash at an ATM and just like Indonesia, the maximum withdrawal is pitifully small for a country that mostly runs on cash.
Next up is SIM cards for the phones. We had one choice and I knew it wouldn’t be enough data for us but that’s all we could get at the airport. The process took forever, made even longer because Jack went outside to look for another vendor then wasn’t allowed to re-enter the terminal. He passed me his phone and passport under the watchful eye of the guard at the door, and the SIM vendor had to go outside to take Jack’s photo, a requirement to sign up for a phone card. The vendor was allowed back in. Jack wasn’t.
We took an Uber to our guesthouse, an impossible to find homestay down an alley parked so tight with cars that we inched along with millimeters to spare under a fine example of Asian wiring.
The next day we successfully navigated the excellent Metro system for a full day of sightseeing in New Delhi. Old Delhi will wait for another day— it’s a huge city and in a couple of days we’ll only get a taste.
It’s been difficult to decide on an itinerary for our month in India, and while we have a rough idea of the areas we want to visit for this initial trip, we haven’t booked more than the first few days of lodging or transportation. We know from experience that we may get suggestions from other travelers or guesthouse hosts and we like to be spontaneous. We’ll see how that works out.
We spend the majority of our time away from urban centers so city life is fun for us. We eat the foods we miss when we’re in more remote areas, we shop in huge international stores to replace or supplement our traveling gear and clothing, and we can take care of any medical needs. Penang is great for all of that, but the airport has no direct flights to the places on our list so it makes sense to spend a few days in Kuala Lumpur before moving on.
We returned to the hotel where we stayed before Sumatra. It’s clean and modern and with a pool at a very reasonable price, right in the middle of the shopping district. This time we had a peekaboo view of the Petronas towers. Well, one of them. If you look between the Park Royal and the black building you can see a sliver of one of the towers.
It took another day for us to finally make a decision on our next destination. It requires a visa, and nothing online assured us that we could make that happen within the week. Monday night found me laboring over the online evisa application which, for the first time ever, required information on our parents, and for the first time since French Polynesia, questions about our criminal history. (Spoiler alert: we have none.)
That done, we thought we should wait before booking a flight until our visa applications were approved. Meanwhile it was off to the nearby Pavilion mall. For the first time in our many trips here the main court was completely empty of decorations. A few days later they were all ready for Ramadan which begins the day we leave.
Of course we walked over to the Petronas Towers. We didn’t go to the top again (we did in 2018) and I’m kind of sorry we didn’t. We never know when we’ll be back in a favorite place again.
Jack of course had to admire the Formula 1 car in the lobby.
We always enjoy modern big city architecture.
Two days after submitting our visa applications we got our approvals. That put the gears in motion. We booked a flight and hotels for the first few nights. The rest we’ll do as we go along. I contacted a nearby clinic for vaccination requirements and we made two trips around the corner for shots because they can’t administer both on the same day. They also gave us recommendations on medications to take with us, so we stocked up at a nearby pharmacy.
The rest of our time we spent reorganizing our packing, watching YouTube videos for destination ideas and tips. And of course, eating.
And now it’s time to go. We’re excited, apprehensive, eager to throw ourselves into deep end of the pool and experience the rush of popping back up again.
Our 30-day Indonesian visa is about to expire and we have no further plans. If you’ve been following along for any length of time you know this is nothing new for the Escapees. We’re terrible at planning ahead.
We don’t want to return to our campervan in Northern Ireland until it warms up a bit, and the mechanic we’ve lined up can’t schedule us until the end of April so there’s no rush to be back.
The one thing we meant to do while in Asia is get our eyes examined and order new glasses. Also, I lost a filling while we were in Sumatra, so we need an optometrist and a dentist. We had a return flight to Kuala Lumpur but the longer I looked online for convenient eye and dental clinics in KL, the more I wished we were going to Penang instead. Penang is smaller, easier to navigate and because we’ve spent so much time there, familiar. Jack agreed so we decided to abandon our return flight to KL and fly instead to Penang.
We took the 8:30 ferry back to the mainland, then a shared taxi for our final trauma-inducing Sumatra road trip. Yes, I got queasy. I’m better now.
It took awhile, as Asian travel often does, but we got to Georgetown the next day and checked in to a familiar convenient hotel right in the middle of our favorite neighborhood. We got down to business immediately, eating at our favorite joints.
We’re spoiled for choice on optometrists and I eschewed the big eye clinics and Family Vision Centers and picked instead a one man shop nearby. Dr. Beh was UK trained, has a great personality, and gave us all the time we needed for full eye exams and refractions. We both ordered two new pairs of glasses, for reading and distance.
It’s funny how quickly we settle into life in Penang, wandering the alleyways looking for street art we haven’t seen before, shopping, eating bagels and pastries, but mostly avoiding thinking about what to do next.
Early one evening we heard drumming out in the street and raced downstairs to find a long parade celebrating the end of Chinese New Year. To be honest, I hadn’t realized it goes on until the next full moon. We were in Christian Northern Sumatra for the actual Lunar New Year and there was no celebration, so we were happy to be here in Chinatown for this exuberant parade.
As the sun set and the moon rose we retired to the rooftop bar to enjoy the rest of the parade and the fireworks afterwards.
The days went by and we still hadn’t decided where to go next. I got my tooth filled and we had a long anticipated meetup with Mark and Sarah of Field Trip, cruiser friends we met more than a decade ago when we first started sailing.
Jack and I finally exercised a little self discipline, put our heads together and whittled down the list of potential destinations. It’s clear that wherever we go, we first have to fly back to Kuala Lumpur.
We kicked the can down the road and booked the flight.
Once again we are happy to report we didn’t suffer longterm damage from the arduous volcano climb, and after a very rainy evening in Berastagi the next day dawned dry and sunny.
There’s not a whole lot more to do here but to walk up Gundaling Hill for the view of the two nearby volcanos.
The hill is steep but the road to the top slopes gently with long shallow switchbacks, so different from the brutal climb up Mount Sibayak. It was so gentle, in fact, that when we spotted a possible shortcut to the top we took it. I guess we’re getting impatient in our old age.
Near the top we found a good view of Mount Sinabung to the west, a 2475 meter volcano that last erupted in 2014. It’s still considered active and several alerts have been issued more recently. The villages surrounding the volcano have been abandoned. We are, I remind you, in the middle of the Ring of Fire.
To the north is Mount Sibayak, the one we climbed the day before, but we had difficulty finding an unobstructed view.
Jack found an abandoned cafe with a cantilevered patio marginally supported by a liberal use of very long bamboo poles. By leaning way out over the steep slope we could just about get a clear shot of the cleft in the volcano we’d climbed in the dark. My palms sweat even typing this. It’s a height thing.
The top of Gundaling hill is an odd place with three or four vignettes we presumed are for Instagramming your selfies, and dozens of small platforms of various individual designs.
I’m not really sure what it was all about and there were only a couple of other people around. We expected a cafe with a view or an ice cream vendor at the very least but there was none of that. After a few minutes we started back down again, this time taking the long switchback road all the way.
We left Berastagi with Uncle Mike, our driver for the volcano climb, his new car all cleaned up again. The private transport people try to make your drive into a “tour” but we were just interested in getting to our next destination as quickly as possible. The total journey takes most of a day anyway and we didn’t want to prolong it. We did stop for a quick photo op at Sipisopiso Waterfall, a 120-meter single drop and one of Indonesia’s tallest.
The 4-hour drive took us through the mountains, up and down again and again. My stomach flipflopped all day even though I’d taken a Dramamine before we left. I believe I suffered more motion sickness on Sumatra’s roads than I did on ocean passages on the boat.
Finally we got a glimpse of Lake Toba, the largest volcanic lake in the world and a welcome sight after a long and uncomfortable drive. The lake is 100 km long, 30 km wide and up to 500 m deep. We’re headed for Samosir Island, which means we’ll be on an island in a lake on an island, or what’s called a recursive island. It’s a thing and you can read more about that here.
It still took a long time to descend from the mountains that ring the lake to the shoreline and the ferry that will take us to the island. The lake is so big that the ferry ride is about 45 minutes to the town of Tuktuk, a tiny peninsula jutting into the lake from the very large Samosir Island.
We couldn’t book our preferred lodging for that night so we grabbed what we could, a rundown, slightly dirty place set back a bit from the lakeshore, but good enough for a long night’s sleep to recover from the journey.
We stayed in Bukit Lawang another couple of days to enjoy the comings and goings of travelers from all over the world who come to see the orangutans. Most of the younger ones go on two or three day treks; older folks opt for one day, as we did. Regardless of the time spent in the jungle, we felt a kinship with all the other travelers. Bukit Lawang is not easy to get to, and the jungle is hot and challenging. But we can now count ourselves among the intrepid few for whom the rewards are worth the effort.
I had the same feeling when we dropped anchor in Fatu Hiva in the Marquesas in 2015. There were 18 other boats in the bay when we arrived after weeks at sea and I knew that every one of them had also crossed the Pacific Ocean in their own boats.
The other reason to stay a little longer in the jungle was to assess the damage after what was, for us, a difficult physical effort. We were fine, we discovered. Not even a little sore. Just tired.
I planned another adventure that I assured Jack would be a walk in the park by comparison, at least judging by the reviews I read online. And so we were off to Berastagi, a small town even closer to the equator but much higher in elevation. We looked forward to cooler weather and a break in humidity.
We again booked a car and driver, and after schlepping the kilometer back to the road we embarked on our second bone-jarring, stomach-churning, nerve-jangling Sumatra road trip into the mountains.
We’re always sad to see the miles and miles of palm oil plantations. I know it’s a profitable cash crop for many tropical countries but it’s also the reason orangutans and other species are critically endangered. I don’t know how you reconcile poor countries’ need for development with the first world’s commitment to protecting wild places, especially when the parts of the planet we want to protect are often the places other people are dependent on for their livelihood. It’s a dilemma.
We arrived in Berastagi under threat of rain but we quickly learned that here in the mountains the clouds roll over the peaks and through the valley all day long. It might rain, it might not. Wait an hour and the clouds are gone.
We got settled in to our guesthouse and walked into town to reload our wallets at an ATM.
Berastagi is a town of about 50,000, with a majority Christian population because of the history of Dutch settlers.
I was keen to visit the famous fruit market and it did not disappoint.
This is snakefruit, a new one on us. I’m not a fan.
We were both starving for fruit. Unlike Thailand, Indonesian restaurant food doesn’t include much fruit and we bought mango, passionfruit, mangosteen and tamarillo. We had a nice chat with our chosen vendor who kept adding more fruit to our bag. She also slipped us a box cutter so we could slice the giant mango.
On our way back to our digs we were approached by a group of high school girls who asked if we had a few minutes to speak with them for a class assignment. They were adorable and very shy and they “interviewed” us to practice their English. We experienced this the last time we were in Indonesia, and it would happen again and again during the rest of our time in Sumatra.
We finally got a good look at our coming challenge. This is Mount Sibayak, a 2200 meter stratovolcano. We’ll be climbing to the top.
