Author Archives: Marce

We get this a lot. We got it when we lived on a boat, too. I guess people think if you travel full time or long term, whether by boat, campervan, or with suitcases or backpack, you’re on perpetual vacation, busy touring every day. We’re not, and I think most of our traveler friends would agree. Even though we’re often on the move, we’re living life just like anyone else. We’re just living it in different places.

All the things you do to keep your household running we do too. We shop for groceries and household needs, we plan and cook meals, we maintain our home/boat/vehicle, we do our banking and other administrative chores, and so on.

Take laundry, for example. On the boat we had a washing machine — bliss! — but since our boat systems depended on solar charging, we planned laundry day based on the weather. On a sunny day I ran the watermaker to top up the tank. On the next sunny day I ran the washer, maybe two loads, and hung it to dry in the cockpit. On the third day I ran the watermaker to replace the water the washer used. And of course, wind and solar dried the clothes.

The campervan has no washer. Sometimes we find a reasonably priced drop-off service, and other times we use a self-service laundromat. Here in southern Scotland there are outdoor machines, usually located behind a filling station, where for a fair price we can do our laundry while we’re parked right alongside. The machines work great, laundry soap is included and they accept ApplePay.

When we traveled through Asia this year we paid someone to do our laundry. Most of the guesthouses we stayed in offer laundry service, which we prefer because there’s less chance of some article going missing.

All of this is to say that unlike going on vacation, where you do your laundry when you get home and unpack, we do laundry when it needs to be done, wherever we are and however we can.

Mail and online ordering are a challenge. I mentioned a few posts ago that we’re waiting for the arrival of my replacement credit card mailed from the States. At the same time we ordered a new thermostat for our refrigerator. These two deliveries would have been easier on the boat because we could use a marina address to receive mail or packages. Marinas are used to it. In the campervan, at least here in the UK, nobody seems to get that we don’t have a permanent address within a few hours drive, and even the post office has refused to accept an Amazon delivery. This kind of thing is a time-sucker and we’re always happy to stay in one place and get our ducks in a row for a couple of days.

We both have our own interests in addition to travel. I like to spend time researching family history, either online or at a library, archive or historical society. Jack keeps up with Formula 1 news and other interests. We both read. Every day, rain or shine, we get out and about to explore our temporary neighborhood and chat with anyone we happen upon, maybe visit a café.

The other day this gentleman arrived near our parkup with a basket of homing pidgeons. I was in the middle of cooking but I switched off the hob and jumped outside to have a chat.

In a thick accent I struggled to understand, he told me how long he’d been doing this, how old the birds are, how the club he belongs to is losing members, how far away he lives and how long it’ll take the birds to get home.

He checked his watch periodically, and at a predetermined time he opened the basket and the birds flew out.

We watched them circle a few times before heading off toward home. Then my new friend said goodbye, picked up the basket he told me had belonged to his father, and drove off. I love these encounters.

A few minutes later it started to rain and the schoolchildren that were down on the riverbank gathering specimens were herded out of the muck by their teachers and marched back toward town, undaunted by the downpour.

Almost every parkup brings surprises. A great bakery. Or a beach. Or a good sunset. We just take whatever every day brings and live our lives around it.

That’s what we do all day.

Both my parents were great readers and history buffs. My dad read any period of history, while my mom held a particular interest in the history of Britain. I wouldn’t be surprised if she could have recited the names of the kings and queens of England in order along with the dates of their rule. I say this because she could recite all the American presidents in order, the 50 state capitols alphabetically either by state or by capitol, and, in a dazzling triumph, all the names in our family (at the time numbering over 100) alphabetically either by first name or last name, or by birth date. I know. Incredible.

I didn’t inherit that talent but my sister did. But back to British history; it’s daunting. There’s just so damn much of it. When we first got to Scotland we bought a big fat book of Scottish History but except for making good use of the index to answer specific questions, neither of us has managed to wade through something both my parents would have gobbled up.

By now you’re familiar with our mode of travel: go somewhere, look around, figure out what you’re looking at. In this case we found ourselves near something on the map called the Antonine Wall. We know about Hadrian’s Wall of course, and Jack has that on his Must See List. But the Antonine Wall? Never heard of it.

While Jack took a personal day, I strode through the woods along John Muir Way toward something called Rough Castle Fort along the Antonine Wall. It had rained the night before and the trail was soft in parts.

After about a mile and a half I emerged from the forest to what looked like a big lumpy field. This, a placard informed me, was the fort and the wall.

Most of the ancient sites we’ve visited have been excavated and either preserved as is or reconstructed to varying degrees. This one, with no visible evidence of excavation, is a mystery. There are placards with artists’ renderings of the buildings but looking around you really need to use your imagination.

Unlike Hadrian’s Wall, constructed of stone, Antonine Wall, begun 20 years later, was earthworks on a stone foundation. Nearly 2000 years of natural forces have understandably had an effect. It’s difficult to capture what the eye can see while walking through the space. The photo below is about as good as I could get to show the remains of the wall.

The wall ran 39 miles, from the Firth of Clyde to the Firth of Forth and marked the northern frontier of the Roman Empire. It was 3 meters high and 5 meters wide at the base with a deep ditch on the north side. The ditch is how you can tell where the wall was.

An early 1900s excavation uncovered lines of defensive pits which would have had sharpened sticks at the bottom.

There were originally 19 forts along the Antonine Wall with smaller fortlets inbetween. Nevertheless, the Romans abandoned the wall only eight years after completion and retreated back to Hadrian’s Wall. It seems they couldn’t subdue the Caledonians.

Wikipedia tells me Rough Castle is the best preserved of the forts along the northern Roman frontier. Earlier excavations were covered up again and more recent research depends more on technology like LIDAR. Today it’s just a pretty place with a brief but significant history.

From the fort I followed the Union Canal, part of the Scottish canal system. The swans on this day were undisturbed by narrowboat traffic.

Until the 1930s the Union Canal was connected to the Forth and Clyde Canal by a system of 11 locks, dropping boats 115 feet and completing a continuous waterway from Glasgow to Edinburgh. It took almost a day to pass through the flight of locks. By the ‘30s the route fell into disuse, the locks were dismantled, and in the 1960s the Forth and Clyde Canal was closed.

Around the bend, the Union Canal goes through the Rough Castle Tunnel, illuminated for some reason with constantly changing colored lights.

On the other side of the tunnel the canal appears to end in mid-air, but this is where the story gets good.

In the 1990s the British Waterways Board and the Millenium Commission, along with other entities, sought a way to reestablish the link between the Union Canal and the Forth and Clyde Canal. The result is the Falkirk Wheel, a rotating boat lift that replaces 9 of the original 11 locks, raising boats 79 feet and making a continuous sea-to-sea passage along the two canals possible again.

The wheel not only benefits the narrowboaters navigating the Scottish canals, but also draws tourists from all over to see this one-of-a-kind feat of 21st century engineering and design. I recommend reading the whole story here. It’s fascinating. Tourists can ride on modified narrowboats, lifted from the Forth and Clyde Canal to the Union Canal, then along the canal to the first lock and back to the Wheel for the lift back down. Even on a chilly weekday when we were there it was busy.

Without a drone or a helicopter it’s difficult to photograph the entire structure, so I recommend googling for some better overall photos and videos. We enjoyed sitting in the café on a drizzly day watching the mechanism and the delighted visitors boarding the boats for the slow-motion watery elevator.

The best part for us is that for a small fee we could spend the night and enjoy the services from the marina. Once the tours were over for the day, we had the place to ourselves.

While I was out taking pictures a huge flock of geese flew by, loudly announcing their passage. I watched until they disappeared, then went inside our cozy home for dinner.

It’s been two weeks since we arrived in Scotland and moved back into the campervan. In some ways we slid right back into it; in others we’ve had some adjustments to make.

From the storage place we drove directly to a caravan supply store and swapped out our empty propane bottle for a full one. Propane fuels our heat and hot water, the refrigerator, and the stove. Next we stopped at a grocery store for a few essentials for dinner and breakfast before checking into a small campground where we could fill the water tank and plug into shore power to get the fridge down to temp before we do a full food shop. After not driving anything at all for six months Jack had no problem negotiating the ubiquitous clockwise roundabouts or squeezing the van into the narrow spaces of shopping centers.

It was damp and rainy and we were the only ones at the campsite but it served our purpose as we unpacked and made a first pass at organizing. It will end up being many passes as we remember what needs to be at hand and what can be stashed away.

After a more substantial grocery run the next day we felt confident we could go offgrid and drove to a beautiful parkup at Louden Hill near something called the “Spirit of Scotland” monument. We had no idea what that is and couldn’t see anything from the van.

Early the next morning an unexpected blue sky lured me outside to follow the trail toward Loudoun Hill, a volcanic plug that dominates the landscape. This place, we learned, is the site of two key battles in the wars of Independence, led by William Wallace in 1297, and Robert the Bruce in 1307.

The Spirit of Scotland is a modern (2004) monument to these battles. The outline of William Wallace frames the hill, with the inscription “Thou saw’st the strong arm of a Wallace raised to stem the tide of alien tyranny.” It’s a dramatic addition to a dramatic landscape.

I gave up on the idea of climbing the hill because of strong wind and hurried back to the warmth and shelter of the van. I was glad I went early because it was Easter and for the rest of the day the car park and trail were crowded, despite deteriorating blustery weather with spitting rain that would have kept a normal person home by the fire with a good book. The Scots, we’re reminded, are not normal.

Our original plan was to head straight for Ireland but we’d had an unexpected spanner thrown in the works. Before we left Turkey the bank canceled my credit card without warning “on suspicion of fraud.” My card is always in my possession, I’d had no fraudulent charges, and the bank couldn’t say what convinced them the card was compromised. Despite my desperate pleas, they shut down the card and sent a replacement. To New Jersey. I was in Turkey about to travel to Scotland, with no working credit card. That’s not entirely true. I do have a backup from a less desirable bank (points and rewards-wise) and Jack has his own account, but still.

My sister, who receives our mail, promised to forward the new card to the storage address in Scotland as soon as it arrives in New Jersey, and all we have to do is hope it gets here before too long. That puts Ireland on hold while we hang around the general area until the mail arrives. We need to come up with a plan.

I chose a quiet parkup where we could stay undisturbed for a few days and we found ourselves adjacent to a UNESCO World Heritage site.

This is the village of New Lanark, founded in 1785 and built around cotton mills operated by water power from the only waterfalls on the River Clyde. The village is an important example of urban planning in the early Industrial Revolution, and includes housing for workers, schools, shops and a church. The experiment was successful, combining profitability with better living and working conditions at a time when most factory workers endured a grim existence.

It’s still too cold in Scotland for us, so after a quick turn around the village to admire the water sluices and surviving waterwheel we took refuge in the warm café on site.

The village was built long before the advent of modern vehicles and the car park is a steep uphill slog from the river. Of course I had to detour to visit the graveyard.

By the time we got home we decided to head east to Edinburgh. And we’re hoping for warmer weather.

After nearly three weeks in our fantastic, affordable sea-view hotel room, the management informed us that as of April 1 the rate goes up almost 50%, putting it right out of our budget. I found us a cute little boutique pension for a reasonable price right smack in the middle of Kaleici Old Town. The hosts are very nice, the place is spotless, and breakfast is good but the room is so tiny that I barely have room for my yoga mat, and we not only don’t have a sea view, we barely have any daylight at all from our tiny little window. No matter, we have work to do.

My days are filled with planning our journey back to Scotland and sorting the logistics of picking up our campervan, stored in a rural area south of Glasgow with no direct path to get there via public transportation. When we left last fall we paid the storage boss a pretty penny to drive us to Edinburgh airport and we don’t want to incur that expense going back.

We work in the mornings, writing and planning, and the afternoons are spend exploring more of the labyrinthine streets of Old Town and eating our fill of local foods. Jack eats döner kebab nearly every day, and we found a popular little café that serves the best baba ghanouj I’ve ever had, even better than my own which, if I do say so myself, is better than most.

The shopkeepers in our new neighborhood see us so often they even stopped launching into their spiel when they see us coming because they know by now we’re not going to buy anything.

Every day we pass a shop with a pile of large gourds outside. Inside a craftsman is drilling holes in elaborate patterns to make beautiful lamps.

We love these lamps, and if we hadn’t dragged a vacuum cleaner through five countries we might have room for one. I tried making one years ago with a Dremel and a calabash gourd from Grenada but mine was definitely not as beautiful as these.

About that vacuum cleaner. You may remember that in Penang we stayed in an Airbnb that had a terrific stick/hand vacuum that we fell in love with, both because it was effective and because it charged via USB-C. We thought this is perfect for us because our campervan doesn’t have an inverter and USB charging we can do offgrid. We bought one. That meant we also had to buy another rolling duffle to carry it. In retrospect we should have bought a smaller rolling duffle, because with all this extra room we acquired more stuff than we usually do when traveling. We’re not really souvenir people but we do sometimes buy textiles or decorative items, or useful things like a water bottle or can opener or, say, a vacuum cleaner. There’s also Jack’s growing t-shirt collection.

In olden days Jack chose one t-shirt from each country we visited. Lately, though, his allotment has increased to three, sometimes more. I don’t know the final count of acquisitions on this trip but it’s a lot, maybe a dozen. Frankly, I don’t really want to know.

I’m not entirely without guilt. I bought pajamas and a bag for my yoga mat from a women’s collective in Kathmandu, and a distinctive blue batik tablecloth and matching napkins made by the Hmong in Northern Thailand. We both picked up various non-souvenir clothing items here and there by necessity, either because of unexpected cold weather, or because something just wore out. Travel is hard on clothing.

The new “Brown Rolling Duffle,” as it’s identified on its AirTag, was cheap and not very well made but all it has to do is survive until we get back to the camper. From the beginning we had our doubts. Back in Penang we had our beloved 30-year-old tech backpack expertly repaired and reinforced, so when one of the handles pulled out of the new duffle as we got off the train in Bangkok, we assumed a repair would be easy. In the end it was easy — one of the housekeepers at our hotel took it to a shoemaker and had it restitched for next to nothing. But looking at how little reinforcement the handles have we worried it would happen again. And it did.

By the time Mr. Brown Rolling Duffle rolled onto the baggage carousel in Antalya he was missing one handle completely, and the other one dangled uselessly, barely attached. The one remaining handle on the short end has started to split the seam. We’re going to have to figure this out. We have one more flight and possibly two trains to go before we can retire Mr. BRD.

A few days before departure we left the tourist area of Antalya to find a hardware store where we bought five meters of thin rope for the duffle. We did a final load of laundry, topped up our transit card, packed up the last six months as efficiently as possible and tweaked the plan for getting back to the van.

Departure day was cold, windy and wet, and we said goodbye to our pension at 6 AM and dragged our baggage up the steep cobbled lanes of Old Town and through the deserted streets of Antalya to the tram station in a freezing drizzle.

Mr. BRD is hogtied and I’m confident we won’t lose our belongings to rough handling by the airline. I’m just hoping UK Customs doesn’t want to search us.

Our crowded flight was uncomfortable but uneventful and we were welcomed to Scotland with unexpected sunshine.

We stayed one night in an airport hotel, then took a taxi to the train station, a train to the town closest to the storage place where we were collected by the boss man and returned to Escape Velocity. She started right up.

Our six month Asian odyssey has ended with another successful knee replacement for Jack and a big bucketful of great memories. Now a new adventure in the campervan begins.

The brown rolling duffle did his job but with missing handles, open seams, and zippers missing teeth, he’s headed for the skip.

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.

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!

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.

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.

We spent nearly two weeks in Pokhara. It’s the second largest city in Nepal, and yet it has the feel of a small town. Because we were under the weather most of the time we were there, or maybe because we just weren’t motivated after nearly five months of continuous travel, we didn’t take a boat ride on the lake, or book a hot air balloon, or explore the nearby caves, or hike up the hill to the Peace Pagoda, or do any trekking. No, we did none of that. We wandered the streets of the town, some days toward the tourist area packed with shops supplying trekking gear and camping supplies; other days in the opposite direction where the locals who aren’t involved in the tourist industry go about their daily business. We like this mode of travel, where we just settle into a place and become part of the community if only for a short time.

On sunny days this man carves slate plaques. Most of his wares were too large for us so we asked if he could make a van-sized one. He happily obliged and we now have a colorful representation of the Sanskrit mantra “Om mani padmi hum,” an untranslatable phrase that’s said to embody the sum of Buddhist teachings. I think affixing it to the entrance of our camper will have the same effect as a mezuzah, a reminder of our home as sacred space, and to do good works as we go out in the world.

We would like to have seen how they managed to carve a golf course out of this terrain but we never got there.

One day we came upon a sculpture park. There were no signs, so we don’t know who the artist or artists were and no amount of Googling answered our questions, not unusual for Nepal.

This end of town is quiet and domestic, a nice break from the hundreds of tourist shops toward the center.

Our daily routine of predawn mountain watch paid off a few more times culminating in this breathtaking view of the Annapurnas from our hotel room. Any view of the Top of the World is a gift.

After our thrilling first look at the Annapurna range we’re determined to maximize the sightings, even though we’re here in exactly the wrong season for clear mountain views. We go about our daily business, exploring the streets and pathways of Pokhara but with a keen eye to the sky and the weather.

One afternoon we had a pretty good rain shower and that prompted us to plan a dawn trek to the Annapurna Cable Car, which takes you up the nearby mountain for a better view of the Himalayas. I asked the hotel to order a predawn taxi for the 20-minute ride to the cable car.

When the alarm went off the next morning I looked out the window to assess the conditions. It didn’t look good. But maybe it’ll clear up? At the cable car station we were the only passengers. Another bad sign.

The ride up was mostly in the dark, and from the top station there was quite a steep and rocky walk to the Sarangkot View Tower.

As we feared, there were no mountains visible through the dense smoky haze. We were disappointed but there’s still much to enjoy being up there. We parked ourselves at a cafe, had some coffee, watched the activity around us. More and more people arrived, and none of them seemed too disappointed either.

Jack, always wanting to get to the top of anything, climbed a narrow spiral staircase to the upper deck of the cafe while I stayed on the main deck enjoying what view there was. I was staring out toward the mountains lost in thought when I became aware of a person standing quite close to me. Then I noticed someone taking a photo of — me? I turned my head and standing right beside me was a very happy Indian woman leaning toward me. I was an inadvertent subject of a selfie! I laughed and smiled at my co-star, then all of her companions wanted to take turns having their picture taken with me. I happily obliged for at least 8 or 10 people, and some of the ladies even hugged me for the photo. After all the women took turns, the men started in too, and at this point Jack, on the upper deck, noticed what was going on.

Finally I had the presence of mind to turn my camera back on some of them. I haven’t been the object of such attention since our sail through Indonesia, where selfies were just part of our everyday travels, although it’s happened to a lesser extent everywhere we’ve been. I never know whether it’s the white hair, or my foreign looks or something else that makes people want to include me in their vacation memories. It happens to Jack, too.

Eventually we started back down toward the cable car and detoured to the other lookout point. Jack, as always, took the high route, showing off his bionic knees.

It’s so frustrating that the sky can be clear blue directly above but around the horizon it’s opaque haze. No matter, we parked ourselves at another cafe and had a plate of mo:mos, just enjoying being up in the hills.

We took the cable car back down, and in the daylight we could appreciate the beautiful terraced hillside. We’ll keep looking for the Himalayas but what’s nearby is nice too.