rantlust

Posted by renéejo on November 13th 2007 in Travel
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It’s not easy to write when you are going around the world (it’s taking more than 80 days). At the time I first announced my intentions to travel and keep the rantlust community updated on my adventures, I thought I’ll really stick to it. But there’s been too many ‘I’ll-blog-at-the-next-pit-stop’ promises to myself without much avail. Travelling is a draining activity especially if you are doing too much stuff. It’s been three months since I last wrote (about Tibet) and now Tibet is such a distant memory.

The Internet is everywhere I go and yet, I can’t bring myself to write. I am not even writing on my journal. And slowly over the months, I have attained this stage of travel nirvana where I don’t even see a lot of the touristy stuff. I just show up at places, meet some people (some fellow travelers, some locals) and just hang. Sip a coffee or chai here, sip a beer there, eat some noodle soup here, eat some Thai fish curry there. I sit and watch children play on the beach; young adults canoodle on park benches; Japanese tourists take pictures of me with whatever statue is behind me; get hit on by local men and touristy women. Life goes on. I occasionally pop into an Internet cafe to check on close friends and family and let them know I’m still in it. But even news has lost a lot of the meaning for me. I mean, what’s the point really? Unless you are on a world domination spree, why bother with what’s happening thousands of miles away? Give the conscience a break and be selfish… in your moment for a while. It feels good.

Random thoughts. Observing people and surroundings with nary a care in the world. Feeling good about humanity. Remembering how tough, interesting, life-changing and amazing the last few months of my life have been. Missing those close to me. Wishing I could get a hug.

I am now in a tiny cafe in Hobart, Tasmania. Beautiful weather. A few clouds in the sky, summer is approaching. I can see Sullivan’s Cove from where I sit. A beautiful woman with a Spanish accent sits by herself at a table nearby. Probably late 30s. She’s talking on a sleek looking phone (no, not the iPhone) to probably a jilted lover. She’s angry but the voice is soft but steady. On the only other table sits a young boy with headphones bigger than his head wrapped around. A girl sits opposite him bored and having a cake. He’s reading some thick tome. The waiter likes me. Keeps coming to my table to chit chat. I think I’ll indulge him. He’s cute. Pakistan and Darfur don’t interest me now. I am living in the here and now. And loving it.

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Posted by anupcs on September 05th 2007 in Geography, Travel, USA, World
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Recently, fellow blogger Suman asked me half jokingly if there are places in this world that I haven’t been to. Sure, I do love to travel and go to places (some of them damn near exotic) whenever the budget, boss and wife come into perfect alignment and more importantly post photographs and travelogues online. But even my travels have taken me to only a small fraction of this big world of ours. Quite a few of my close friends have been to far more places than I have. Something that can be visualized by the following maps. The first one details all the countries in the world I have been to and the second one displays all the states in the US that I have been to. You can generate your own such links here (world) and here (US).

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Posted by anupcs on August 31st 2007 in Art, Music, Photography, Travel
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Posted by anupcs on August 28th 2007 in Travel
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Some of you might know this already but for the rest of our readers who are planning a visit to the San Fracisco Bay Area or are living here and didn’t know about this,
be advised that the Bay Bridge will be closed from 8pm Friday, Aug 31 till 5am Tuesday, Sep 4 (the entire Labor day weekend). Try not to drive into the city on these days as traffic will most likely be hellish on the other routes into and out of the city. Use public transit (BART will be running overtime) instead or go elsewhere. The bridge is closed because they are doing some more retrofitting so that we don’t repeat the Loma Prieta mishap during the next big one.

I have to hand it to Caltrans for making every effort to publicise this; I saw signs announcing the closure up near the Oregon border where I was this past weekend.

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Posted by anupcs on August 23rd 2007 in History, Photography, Travel
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A couple of white wood-hole ladders outside a house in the Acoma Pueblo which is a 12th century “Sky City” built by Native Americans in New Mexico. There are still people living full time on the 367 ft sandstone mesa. I found this a mystical and spiritual place despite the clatter of hordes of fellow tourists.

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Posted by renéejo on August 21st 2007 in Engineering, Travel
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Tibet or Xizang as the Chinese call it, has been a dream destination for me and I finally made it out there a couple of weeks ago. And what a journey! I took the recently built Qinghai-Tibet train which is an engineering marvel as it goes through some spectacular scenery at very high altitudes. The journey on this train takes almost 48 hours from Beijing to Lhasa but is worth it just for the Golmud-Lhasa section. I booked a soft sleeper and the accommodations are quite luxurious. The train is pressurized to prevent altitude sickness. The Tanggula pass at 5072 metres through which the train passes makes this the highest rail track in the world. The dining car is decent and there is even a bar on the train. What’s amazing about this rail line is that a significant section of it is on permafrost.

I didn’t feel any effects of altitude during the train ride though I did often feel woozy once in Lhasa. This is a journey that every one who goes to China should take. You will not be disappointed.

Blogging is not easy from China as I found that from some Internet cafes I can’t even access rantlust. Weird. Now that I am finally out of China and am in Vietnam, I hope I’ll be able to blog more about my year off travelling the world.

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Posted by anupcs on August 15th 2007 in Europe, Travel
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The first time I went to London Heathrow was in 1994 and at that time, I thought that this was one of the world’s best airports (and it probably was). That was a transit trip and I had a four hour layover. There was enough to keep a novice traveler occupied for that duration and while I remember it as being definitely crowded, it wasn’t overwhelming. Subsequent trips in 2000 and 2003 were to the U.K. and I still found the airport good (but not great like Incheon or Changi). A few months ago, I had the misfortune of going through Heathrow again (transit) on a trip to Europe. I realized to my dismay that Europe’s busiest airport had descended into the dirty, chaotic mess that fits a developing or under developed nation rather than “Great” Britain.

The airport, which is now owned by a Spanish firm, handles close to 67 million passengers yearly even though it’s designed to handle only 45 million [source: The Economist]. The security lines snake for hundreds of yards and even if you have gone through excruciating security (”Spread ‘em Mr. Tafkap“) in other airports and you are just transiting, you still have to go through another humiliating check here. This means that any liquid you purchased in JFK (after clearing the security there) has to be thrown out before going through Heathrow security. People were clearly frustrated with this and I saw piles of discarded beverage containers next to the security line. The passengers were cursing in various exotic languages. The cost of buying anything after going through security is just preposterous here. A black coffee cost me around US $5 if I remember correctly. I didn’t even bother checking the prices on the Single Malts at the Whisky store. The toilets were crowded, stinky, and not well maintained (trails of toilet paper was all over the floor in the toilet close to the security check area).
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Posted by renéejo on July 26th 2007 in Travel
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As regular readers know, I am on the first leg of a year long odyssey away from the Netherlands, starting in China. After more than three weeks here, I am beginning to fall in love with this country…something that I didn’t expect when I landed with some trepidation in Beijing on a smoggy day in late June.

With absolutely no knowledge of the language and having never been in this part of the world before, I was a bit anxious when my taxi made its way through throngs of bicycles and smoke spewing automobiles into the heart of Beijing where I had booked two nights in a very touristy district targeting westerners named Sanlitun. I did this because I wanted to orient myself with the city before venturing into the unknown.

After a couple of days wandering around Tiananmen Square (yes, that square) and the Forbidden City (a truly magnificent architectural achievement), I checked out and moved into a less touristy part of town in the north and while it meant that I had to take public transport to get to the city centre, it was a big relief for a long time backpacker like me. I finally felt at ease.
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