Barny's World Dash

Now I've been back for a few days, and messed around on my computer between meeting up with lots of people, I've done a couple of slightly digitally enhanced but very cool pics....

(off to tenerife tomorrow)

So the blog hasnt been quite the same as the bestseller which took the extra 17 days, but ithe photos were better... and it was awesome, I am home now but am leaving to go to Tenerife to rejoin yacht blue sky on Thursday and sail to Antigua, due to the wonder of modern technology we can even blog from the middle of the atlantic via satellite internet, so there should be more updates tracking our progress for three or so weeks from ~25th November!


Nagarkot: the most awesome view I have ever seen, 180 degree of himalayas up to 250km away, sadly you just cant photo graph it... but this shows the sort of idea from the viewing platform at 0600 in the morning:

from the viewing platform, looking at the rising sun from above the clouds

England after 28,000 miles...

A few other facts we forgot due to the steak/ beer overload last night:

Minimum reading on Dan's Barometer: 520mb (ie there was 52% of the air from sea level at 5416m)

Total ATMs seen during trek: 1
Total working ATMs seen: 0

Total Oil Derivative powered 4 wheeled vehicles seen during trek: 3

(3 weeks of practicing my time lapse photography also produced this which is pretty cool: http://people.pwf.cam.ac.uk/dpe22/p1030440.mov )

... and you could feel the lack of air, because you considered a step a good one if you suceeded in putting the heel of one boot down infront of the toes of the other one!

here are some photos:

Pokhara bus stations at sunrise on the way to the trek start point:


We found the beach at 2500m


Looking back up at the south side of the pass, you can see some people descending from it two thirds of the way downthe near side left hill:



A Yak with a view...


Mount Dhaulghiri at sunset from Ghorepani (it is the 7th highest mountain in the world)




Machpuchere (the fish tail mountain) from Chomrong at sunset. This mountain is sacred, and may not be climbed.



and the team photo in front of Annapurna South (... and no Dan and I are standing on the same piece of ground as them...)

Namaste - "I salute the god in you".... or more conventionally 'hello'/'goodbye'

Days trekking: 19
Distance walked: 273km
Total gross ascent: 15500m
Highest point reached: Thorung La - 5416m
(Secondary maximum at Annapurna Base Camp: 4130m)
Coldest overnight temperature (INSIDE!): -1C
Greatest ascent in 24hrs: 2500m
Greatest descent in 24hrs: 1905m
Fewest number of hours walked in 24hrs: 2
Greatest Number of hours walked in one day: 8
Greatest horizontal distance covered in one day: 31km
Total number of fried mars/snickers consumed: 34
Number of items lost: 3 (one hat, one penknife, one propelling pencil)
Total Photos taken: c.600

Best Quote:
Himalya Rescue Association Doctor: "What are the main causes of dehydration when trekking?"
Member of Audience (gender need not be specified): "crying"


Size of steak required on return to Kathmandu to recover: 1.5kg

We are flying home on Thursday, arrving in UK on Friday, see you all soon.

Arthur & Dan

We have had an exciting day in Pokhara (by Blue Sky tours bus 6hours trip for 1.75 GBP, amusingly sharing the name of the Yacht Blue sky which I will be joining for the trans atlantic trip in a month!), at the advice of a very drunk Barny

Because we had decided to move on to Pokharra tomorrow, we had to see the whole of Kathmandu today... and it seemed to go pretty well!

Below Durbar square in Kathmandu where people were buying flowers for the fevstival, tomorrow is brothers and sisters day, when the sisters give their brothers purple flowers and annoint them with colourful powders, and in exchange the brothers give them new clothes...

We also saw a walking pet shop:
Then off to the main Hindu temple in Nepal (Pashupatinath) where people are cremated on the river banks and their ashes are brushed into the sacred Bagmati river (which is a tributatry to the sacred Ganges) nearby were several old peoples homes where people go if they think they might die, so that they will not bring bad luck to their families by dying at home but instead will go straight to heaven, or be reincarnated.

Then 2kn down the road is the Buddhist temple of Bodhnath which is the most sacred place for Tivetan Buddhists who feel that their lives are not complete, and that they may not go heaven unless they visit this place once in their lives (below)

There are a large number of Tibetans here, and many monks walk around the Stupa and spin the prayer wheels.




Off to Pokhara tomorrow, from which we shall hopefully see some big mountains!
Barny

We kicked off our time here in Kathmandu, not so much with breakfast at Tiffanys as Breakfast at Helena's which has the highest rooftop terrace in Kathmandu (our thanks to Amanda for recommendation) a full cooked brakfast with tea was provided for just 1GBP.

Then a bit of a walk through the chaotic streets here, to see people carving up hogs by the side of the road! It is afestival here today and tomorrow so evrything is especially manic! Below we ended up at the main roundabout in the centre of the city:



We will probably go to Pokhara tomorrow(on the bus for 6 horus), in the hope of saving the guide coming t Kathmandu and then going straight back... and then start our three week trek. Probably wont be many internet cafes in the high bits so silence for a week hopefully does not mean anything is wrong.

Barny

I have made it to the two thirds point of my trip from Kyoto to Kathmandu...

After some brief excitment this morning because the only Japanese Railway line that you cannot buy your ticket with a credit card is the line which goes to the airport :-S and I didnt have enough cash for the ticket... nor were there any ATMs open that took foreign cards at 7am I finally managed to find a taxi driver who took VISA cards and persuaded him (thorugh confused English) to bill my card the amount and give me some cash... probably against the VISA rules but it worked... phew.

Now I am in Bangkok (in it has to be said a very nice hotel, but youd hope so given that it cost twice what most places I've stayed in cost, and it's in a cheap country) but even here the staff enthusiastically made it clear that I might like to enjoy a 'Thai Massage' and which areas of my body I might like to be included in this.......

Anyway off to KTM tomorrow morning all being well (Thai airways, whio were very good to get here this morning. They seemed to expect to serve straight spirits at every drinks stop though, included a special offering of congac after dinner, but I suppose its cheap here!)

Barny

Arguably more of the same today, but still very nice, the Golden Pavillion (Kinkaji) below is covered in over 20kg of gold leaf!


Then to the Imperial Palace at Kyoto where the emperors used to live before they moved to Tokyo 150 years ago.

Tomorrow I go to Tokyo and then fly to Bangkok and then to Kathmandu in a journey spread over 3 days... and today the guide has emailed me to say he will be 3 days late to meet us... but we need not worry his brother will get us from the airport... now imagine that...

Much has happened since I last wrote anything...

I have now arrived in the hotel Roku Roku in Kyoto, in reality I have just finished my second day in Kyoto, but the first two nights were in the Youth Hostel, which was rubbish; it was a 6 person dorm with 5 people in it, it cost 19GBP per night, the bed was shorter than I am, and the Japanese people all wanted to get up at 0615 and go and have breakfast, since I didnt have any choice I got up then as well had breakfast, went back to sleep and then got woken up again at 0930 to be told that I was not allowed to be in the hostel between 0900 and 1530... which was pretty rubbish because I was really tired from having gone to the fish market (below)... as such I went in search of another place to stay... and found the hotel Roku Roku, which is slightly odd because check in is in a building 500m down the road from the hotel but such is life... after some discussion I have arranged an ensuite private room (in fact with two beds) and TV and air conditioning for....... 11.50 GBP per night and the hotel has been open for only one year so everything is almost brand new. The main reason for getting the room so cheap (it should be 40 GBP per night) is that the owner doesnt seem to have got the hang of marketing so it is almost impossible to find that this place exists and even if you do, to physically locate it is pretty hard so there are only a couple of other people here!

(above: my room)

Anyway, in my few days here I have been going to see some of the temples and shrines here, which are quite absolutly amazing... there are over 1000 in just this city, so I thought that most of them would be rubbish, but in fact all the ones I have even walked close to have been pretty amazing, and the less famous ones are really the best because they dont have bus loads of tourists rushing around them. So below are some of the photos of places I have been:
This is the longest wooden buildin in Japan, and contains 1001 statues of the Kannon (god(dess?) of mercy) that are each about 1.5m tall it is really awesome. Below.

Yesturday I went to several cool temples by following the Philosphers Walk, which was the daily route of Japans most influential philosopher whose name escapes me currently...

This is the Silver Pavillion at Sunset

Before that I was at the Temple of Nanzenji which has some famous raked gardens, you can just about see the swirls in the bottom of the photo below (while this sounds very boring it is layed out so well that you feel compelled to be relaxed (I can almost here people planning one at the boathouse ;-) ), and I sat here for almost 45 mins just looking at the gardens and the 4 or so trees planted in it):

... now for those of you who played the computer game Age of Empires (as I have done) may be thinking that these building look like somthing they have seen before! Kyoto is just a few miles from the ancient capital Nara which was the capital of the Yamato Empire (which is depicted in the game)

The other two visits of the day were Chio-In Temple where is was possible at no charge to enter the temple and sit while a buddhish ceremony was taking place and much chanting had hitting of bell/ cymball/ stones goes on, which was very cool.

The only remaining visit was to one of the most renoun temples (the effect of which was that I was not very positive because it was so overrun with tourists) but it did have a huge veranda which was supported on a forrest of columns almost 30m into the air. This is a photo of just one of the gateways going up to it:




My journet to Kyoto was a veritable demonstration of force by the Japanese public transport system, it kicked off with a trip to Tokyo central station on a normal train, the two adjacent platforms both advertised trains arriving for Tokyo at exactly the same time, on different line, ho ho I thought which one will arrive first... well both trains came to rest within 8 seconds of one another!!

Then I went to take the bullet train (Shinkansen) which takes just 2hr 20min to get from Tokyo to Kyoto (I dont know how far it is but the direct bus takes 8 hours) and it feels really smooth but when you look out the window you realise you are going damn fast. Anyway I was waiting on the platform for the train to arrive, and first a bloke in an offical uniform arrived with a flag to stand at the end of the platform, then an army of ladies dressed in bright pink and another army of men in luminous blue arrived on the platform how strange I thought they dont look like they are going to get the train, about 2 minutes later the train arrived everyone got off and within 5 minutes all the pink ladies had rushed onto the train turned around every seat on the train to face in the new direction of travel (ie the other way round) and hoovered the floor, while the blue men, had got all the rubbish of the train then the guard walked down the inside of the train and inspected it and then we were all allowed on! Below you can see the pink ladies waiting as the train flies into the station:

Before this trip I had got up at 0630 in order to get to the Tsukiji Fish market... this is the largest fish market in the world and happens 6 days per week at Tokyo dockside. Around 10million GBP of fish is sold there everyday!!


It is impossible to capture the sheer size of franticness of the whole operation in one (or even many photos) but I have tried with this one, it shows half of one of about 20 rows of traders and the tracks in between where people on small motorised cart rush up and down delivering fish to the thousands of vans parked in the car park outside (Japan alone accounts for 15% of the worlds fish catch) There are huge tuna and tiny tiny things all available here:




Below are a few photos of my walk around Tokyo:

(Rainbow Bridge at sunset below. Ginzo by night (its basically Oxford Street) above.


and finally I went to the museum of Emerging Science and Technology (since if youre going to go to one it might as well be here... and they had among other things, a working model of a magnetic levitation train (maglev) which went round a train track, and you could acctually see the empty space underneath it and push it sideways and it hovers straight back onto the track... very cool and finally but perhaps most impressively 100m pounds worth of Honda technology, in this little bloke the worlds most advanced humanoid robot infuriatingly I missed the demo of him walking around and up stairs and things by 10 minutes, but he was still standing in his case, and his neck muscles (as it were) were still enabled and when you stood near the glass he looked at you, and when you took a step sideways his head turned to watch just like a person.
I have one and a half days here, before heading to Kathmandu to meet Dan, tomrrow off to the Imperial Palace and the Golden Pavillion..

See you!
Barny

... in Beijing, as we all know, however there are a pretty serious number here as well, and you are allowed to ride them on the pavement which is good from a cyclist saftey point of view but not so much from a pedestrian point of view...

However it may be helped a bit because I have had a bit of a realisation; now it took 24 hours for me to notice, and I thought it was odd that people seemed to be trying to cycle into me whenever I walked down the right hand side of the pavement, but everyone drives on the left a behavior which I thought was reserved for Aussies, Kiwis and us but it seems not.

In fact far from the culture shock that everyone had warned me about Japan seems much more like the UK than America does after all:

-It is a smallish island
-The population density is really high
-Public transport exists and people use it
-People drive cars (not trucks or SUVs)
-As mentioned they drive on the left
-Long Distance trains are really expensive
-People from whom the current inhabitants descend have been living here for over a thousand years
-Various invasions and idea have come from and gone to the nearby continent
-It used to be ruled by shoguns and emperors and various king like people and now it is a demoracy
-The oldest building are religious are go back several hundred years unlike all the modern housing around them

They do have an interesting law here which is illustrated thus:

So then they have these bus shelter type things designated as smoking points which have loads of people gathered round smoking

Anyway I also went to the main temple in Tokyo at Asakusa (shown below) which was very crowded with tourists (I appreciate that it doesnt look that way in the photo but it was) hopefully Kyoto wont be this busy (hopes desperatly and probably in vain...

So there we go

Barny

Reading just before I went to sleep last night, that every month there are small earth tremours in Japan measuring 2 or 3 on the Richter scale, I wondered whether I would experience one... and then I woke up at 6:40am this morning (not bad considereing the time difference) and the ceiling was creaking a bit, and then the bed (well matress on the floor) shook for about a minute and my torch fell over... all very exciting!

I was amused by this; you will see below two maps of Japan, one my Dad gave me that he got when he was here some time ago and was printed (according to the back) in 1971 the other I was given yesturday at the tourist infomation desk at the airport...


Clearly styles last here ;-)

I crossed the International Date line a few hours ago and have moved from the far West to the Far East, I am now in the Land of the Rising Sun. I have negociated the transport system and arrived at my hotel in Tokyo without trouble, indeed I took an hour train journey for just 5 GBP and then a tube train for 75p, try doing that in England... so I'm not yet bowled over by the cost of the country. The cleanliness is however outstanding; this impression was certainly kickstarted by the most shiney urinals I have ever had the opportunity to use, at the airport. It continues even to this area of town which I think is far from the nicesest the city has to offer.

The cash machine was however a bit bizarre since the minimum dispence was Y10,000 (about 45 quid) and when selected provided be with a single note to this value, however the shop in the airport sold me a packet of biscuits for 50p and had no hesitation in changing the huge note.

My last few days in Hawaii were good. I went snorkelling again at Lahaina since it was so nice, and I met somebody equally nice who wanted to go... then I went surfing which was not so good since the waves were really big, so I went to a different beach where the rocks were not so friendly :-(

The last day I headed off to the airport (to go from Maui to Oahu) got there 2.5 hrs before take off and they moved me to a flight leaving just 40mins after I arrived... that's service! This is the beach next to the airport where I wasted some time before going to check in:

Then in the evening sat on Waikiki on the main island of Oahu as the sunset on my last day in the worlds most isolated archipelago and it turned out to be the most stunning of all! Shall also be going to the ancient city of Kyoto while I am here in Japan (later this week), but this evening shall mostly be trying to stay awake so that I sleep through the night.

Barny

There is still no wind here, and now I have a forecast that suggests that there will be no wind until Saturday by which time I will be in Tokyo... Doh! So I have been photographing more things that people have on their vans such as that above (Nei - cherished thing), life here is slow, I met somebody who is going to help somebody to finish some research on one of the other islands known as 'the big island' (for obvious reasons) because he 'has been in Hawaii too long' and has lost all sense of motivation to get it done as such the locals have stickers on their cars for the tourists:

"SLOW DOWN - this is not the mainland"

Also on the truck of the owner of the hostel it says 'FBI' that is:

and finally a quote from two Cisco Systems software engineers from Silicon Valley:

"The trouble is that you only have to pay a guy in india 25% of what you have to pay a guy in the US, and most of the guys you're paying in the US are indian anyway..."

So there we go, might not write much in the next few days, because I'm spending two of them travelling, and I will have one less day this week because I am crossing the international dateline on 'thursday' afternoon, so shall go from being 11hours behing the UK to about 9 hours in front therby losing all of thursday afternoon and friday morning.

Yesturday I went up to the top of Haleakala which is widely marketed here as the world largest dormant volcano, however we met some geologists while we were hiking, and they said that it is not really dormant since it has errupted in the last 1000 years, and if it were then it probably wouldnt be the biggest in the world... so some dubious marketing going on. Nonetheless it was pretty damn big, (10000ft) and a huge area at the top. As we walked accross the bottom it really is like being on the moon apparently so much so that NASA had people train there before they went for real!

Sorry for the poor standard of photos today, but it was really cloudy... and it was an excercise in snapping when the cloud cleared.

So since it is and there is still no wind, I have been doing some more surfing, the waves were bigger yesturday but since we had had the extra day of practice it was not a problem... I managed to stand up quite often and fall over much less so! When we finshed the sun was setting and all the locals had come to go surfing after work on a friday evening...
Sadly this means that if you get in their way they come and shout at you since it is their birth rite of having fun surfing... however it was at least made up for by this girl who came and made some suggestions to me about how to paddle faster (and therefore catch more waves) before carrying on to do somewhat better than the bloke who had got so stressed with me.

Surfing here is a bit like skiing in the Alps, you are doing your best, and then some 8 year old shoots past you with total ease...