Around and Around.

In Sum: The World Is A Great A Place. There are zillions of amazing and surprising and beautiful things. Really more than we can even imagine, and so our feeling is–better keep working hard at enjoying them, five at a time.

We get used to hearing about the problems, but there is so much zipping along in happy, creative (sometimes gorgeously strange) ways every day.

Almost all people were very kind to us everywhere we went. Global taxi drivers score a B-.

We have some pretty cool animals on this little planet. Have you thought much about the yak? How about the warthog?

While wandering around Beijing trying to burn calories in order to make room for another meal ASAP, we’ve been talking about whether we feel sad or happy to be headed home. The answer is:

A. This trip was so big that it’s not going to leave us, so we don’t exactly feel like we’re leaving it. We love that we actually did it, and then how unbelievably fun it was. We love how connected to all these funny corners fo the world we feel. This is a feeling we plan to hang onto, hopefully for the rest of our lives.

B. We miss our people, and we’re really going to be happy to see you all.

C. We’re not exactly settling right down, so the traveling continues, which is nice. We’ll be in Berkeley, LA, back in Berkeley, on a roadtrip to New Mexico, and in Chicago and New York all before the year is out. The US is part of the world, and we’re traveling in it, so we’re still traveling around the world. Take that.

D. And, you never know – we could be updating this blog and making more podcasts the second we land. See above.

Thank you for reading, listening and looking at our photos. Having such friendly stow-aways made this trip extra super double maximum great. We’ve met and made friends with really wonderful people around the world, some of whom may find that little card in their wallet with this address on it. Thanks for being so great to us while we were there and we’ll return the favor. Come on out.

See you soon!

And here are some photos from our last week in China:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/teogr/sets/72157622356093444/show/

more about “Made it all the way!“, posted with vodpod

Introducing: Far, Far Away

Check out the last episode of Introducing Everything we’ll produce from a hotel room on the other side of the world (for now). We try to figure out exactly how we got so far, far away, and what it’s been like to be here. Then we head off to Nomad School in Mongolia to get some lessons from the pros about being permanently on the move.

Find it at introducingeverything.libsyn.com or by clicking the link at the top right of this page.  It has also been listed on iTunes, finally, so you can easily subscribe – just search for “Introducing Everything” in the iTunes store.

Six Things, Mongolia

1. We love the Ger. It’s warm and round and you can tuck your toothbrush into the lattice frame. There’s room for all your homemade yogurt and, if you’re not careful, your yaks. Everyone is welcome – and everyone sleeps right there, on the floor. Living in Mongolia seems like a big slumber party – there’s more of course, but it’s probably why everyone is so completely friendly.

2. Ulaanbataar is something like a cross between Albuquerque and Anchorage. Can one find a great fresh salad in Ulaanbataar? Yes, one can. Can one purchase a gigantic Russian fur hat? Of course. Can one also grab a beer and sit outside eating bratwurst and chips? How about Uzbek horsemeat sausage?  Or perhaps watch the latest Mongolian hip-hop music videos on a flat screen TV in a Japanese restaurant? Yes, yes, yes. Are the coal powerplants located within the city limits? Yep. Does the whole thing seem a little bit made up, like something out of a frontier version of Sim-City? Something like that.

3. Two humped camels provide a naturally warm saddle on a cold day. We named our camels Mandelbaum and Bruiser (Mona’s was a little on a crazy side, giving her a pretty substantial headbutt when she tried to hug its hump). When Mandelbaum and Bruiser open their lounge act in Macau it will be called “Between the Humps.”

4. It’s illegal to blowtorch a marmot, not because it’s a weird thing to do but because they carry bubonic plague. Still, this is a favorite dish and we saw a man hunched over a ballooned out critter (they’re stuffed with hot rocks first) illicitly blowtorching his morning marmot in the corner of a children’s playground. At a checkpoint an hour outside Ulaanbatar we encountered two policemen, the only one’s we saw in the whole country. They were on marmot duty.

5. Yak butter is absurdly creamy and good. Fresh goat’s butter is also very good, and the milk from cashmere goats (as if they needed to produce anything else amazing) is delicate and lovely. Fermented mare’s milk tastes a lot like wine, which is not what it looks like it would taste like.

6. Galloping—galloping! Across the huge open steppe on our trusty horses. We were going at full speed, way ahead of our guide all afternoon. Across streams, over hillsides, past lots of yaks (Teo’s horse kept wanting to herd the yaks while Mona was a little scared of them). It was kind of the best thing in the whole world. Mongols – to your horses!

Photos from Mongolia

We’re in Qingdao, China right now after our trip to Mongolia. Among many other random sites, the Chinese Government, for some bizarre reason, does not allow access to Picasa which we have been using to post our photos. We’ve posted themon Flickr, which is apparently A-OK here (not really clear on the whole thing) and the link is below.

Monogolia is an astonishing country. It’s wide open with one of the lowest population density ratings on the planet. Except, in Mongolia’s case, the density rating isn’t an average – the entire country is inhabited, just incredibly spread out. If you’re ever lost, there’s sure to be a ger around the next bend or eight. Amazing yak butter, lamb dumplings, camels, cold weather and cashmere goats. More later, enjoy the photos.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/teogr/sets/72157622180683461/show/

more about “Mongolia“, posted with vodpod

Five Things, Beijing

1.Roast duck, and even more specifically, roast duck skin. Good lord.
The Forbidden City looks especially good with a belly full of duck
fat.

 2.Oh, Chairman Mao in your hulking “Maosoleum” preserved and displayed
for all the world (or all the world willing to wait in that
unbelievable line) to see. What would you think of thousands of
Chinese people viewing your ghostily lit body draped in a red flag,
and then to be let out in a Mao themed mall? I had to buy a
heart-shaped necklace with that jowly profile, and Teo got a smart
looking tie clip. The New China.

 3.People are very cheerful and helpful to us everywhere. Walking down
the subway stairs I felt someone grab my skirt and turned around to
find that a young woman was holding it so it didn’t drag on the
ground. She disappeared into the crowd when we reached the bottom.

 4.In the China Daily, the English Language newspaper there’s a feature
called Better English that gives one supposedly useful phrase each
day. On August 19th, the entry was Dissolvable Bikini. “The
dissolvable bikini looks like a real bikini but disappears after just
a few second in water.” Ah, yes, a key English phrase.

 5.In other glorious language, on a single menu we found the following
three items: Irritable Duck Intestines, Explodes the Close as Flesh
and Blood, and The Spareribs Cowpea Sticks the Volume.

Five Things, Kuala Lumpur

1. Oops, we came to Malaysia.
2. Oops, Malaysia is full of Europeans on holiday and there appear to
be no rooms or plane/train tickets available for those of us who shot
from the hip and ended up here.
3. Kuala Lumpur is almost exactly like San Diego. Who knew.
4. We get a “cute fish” pedicure which means we put our feet in a big
fish tank and get nibbled at for ten minutes. This tickles a lot, and
we like it.
5. Giant, beautiful Rambutans on every street corner. This keeps me
busy for our whole day until we continue on to China.

Beijing! (and Kuala Lumpur…)

Photos from Beijing as well as a couple from Kuala Lumpur, where we accidentally spent a couple of days on the way. It’s a long story. On the plus side, we did have hundreds of small fish clean our feet while we were there.

Beijing is a mighty large city – China does “scale” very well. It all looks so easy to get around on the map and then it turns out that each city block is easily a mile or so. And when you add in the lovely air… The Hot Pot is really wonderful, just a terrific culinary invention. I’ll admit that it wore me out, as evidenced in these photos, but I made it through and we went back for more. And more and more – it’s a great place to eat, among many other things.

Check it out below (click the link in the bottom left corner to view them in Picasa with captions and the rest):

India Photos (Finally!)

We took all these great photos in India and then were so busy we never had time to put them up.  And then we were in China which is doing a really remarkable job at making the internet relatively useless.  Many things are off limits, including our blog site.  We’re officially dangerous in China.  Anyway.  Here are some of our favorite photos from India (and we’ll put up the China ones as well!).  There are a lot of photos but then there is an awful lot of India, so we think it’s understandable.

The Taj and more

Alleppy all the way to Varanasi

Introducing: Roar, Hiss, Snort

Knock, knock.  Who’s there?  It’s the Animals.  Put on your jungle hats, it’s Introducing: Roar, Hiss, Snort.  We’ve pressed a new podcast which is now up.  Find it on the right-hand corner of this page or at http://introducingeverything.libsyn.com/

Recipe for Blowtorched Marmot or ‘boodog’ (courtesy of our guidebook):

Pull the innards out of the neck of the marmot.
Then stuff the carcass full of scalding rocks, then cinch the neck up with wire.
Burn the fur off with a blowtorch, while the meat cooks from the inside.
The finished product vaguely resembles a balloon with paws.

It’s worth noting that bubonic plague can be passed from handling marmot skins.

India By The Numbers

Weeks in India: 6
Number of Bollywood Films Seen: 2 (Love Aaj Kal & Kambakht Ishq)
Number of Elephants Showered and Scrubbed (by hand): 2
Number of Elephants who returned the favor (by trunk): 1
Number of available train tickets in all of India:  0, by our count
Number of trains taken: 5
Population of India:  A billion or so
Population of Indian Tigers:  1400ish.
Pounds of Samosas consumed:  Hard to say — A lot.
Above consumed while on trains:  The majority.
Modes of transportation utilized:  Car, Bicycle, Train, Plane, Foot, Ferry, Houseboat, Canoe, Bus, Ganges Rowboat, Horse, Elephant, Ambassador (it’s way more than just a car), Rickshaw
Number of times Teo was attacked by a cow:  1
Number of cows that walked peacefully past:  at least 500
Size of the lump on his thigh:  Grapefruit-plus
Number of known moose-sized spiders lurking in our hotel rooms: 1
Number of unknown lurking moose-sized (or better) spiders:  Too terrifying to even consider
What we did about it:  Nothing.  Short of a wrestling match, we had no other option.
Occasions on which we had to sprint away from wild elephants in the forest:  1
Position in group of our armed guide as we were running away:  Way Out Front
Percentage of tip withheld as a result:  100%
Number of super-sexy knee high leech prevention socks utilized:  4
Number of leeches: Again, we choose not to consider
Size of leech found attached to Mona’s calf:  Quarter
Weeks it has continued to itch: 3
Level of Teo’s bravery in removing it, on a scale of 1(low)-10(high):  2
Number of gods worshipped in India:  3 million-plus, by some counts.
Number of times Teo was almost ‘offered’ to the god Kali over a fiery furnace:  1
Extracted cost for the opportunity:  100 rupees
Price of 1 kilo mangoes:  30-50 rupees
Weight, in kilos, of mangoes we consumed: 30, at least
Price of 100 grams of the best Darjeeling Tea in India: 400 rupees
Price of 1 brand new HM Ambassador car:  $10,000 USD
Reason we don’t own one right now, even though we need a car:  Only available with right-hand drive.
Average length of inseam in “Ali-Baba Pants”, the latest backpacker craze: 30 inches, but this number goes up the farther north one travels.
Teo’s level of angst provoked by above pants:  Substantial
Number of Turbans purchased: 2
Cost to have turbans prepared for shipping in a handsewn muslin parcel, sealed with red sealing wax: 75 rupees
Level of enjoyment Mona recieved from this package:  At least equal to the turbans inside
Number of rowers on a Nehru Trophy competitive Snake Boat:  100
Percentage with a Mustache, Tank Top and Ankle Length Skirt (lungi):  100%
Rank of India among the world’s MPNs (Mustache Producing Nations):  1