Lake Waikermoana

Here is yet another blog about a hike a did in New Zealand. If you are sick of my hiking stories and beautiful pictures then please stop reading. However if you are not sick of hiking stories read on....

The Copeland Track and Hot Pools

On my way back to Queenstown after I finished the Heaphy and Abel Tasman I did a quick over night hike. It is 17.5 kilometers (10.8 miles) up The Welcome-Flat Hut along the Copeland Track which has natural hot pools right next to it. If you are never in New Zealand it is a MUST.

Swimming With Dolphins!!

From Queenstown I hitch hiked up Akaroa (because I left the car with my friend who I own it with so she could sell it) to see my friend Timmy that I did my yoga teacher training with.

The Heaphy and Abel Tasman Track

My time in New Zealand is winding down, finishing up, coming to a close... However you want to say it. And I've decided that I'd like to spend most of the rest of the time I have here hiking.

Liftie Life

 

After three months of working as a liftie, I am off to the next adventure. I'm officially unemployed and its feels goooood. The Remarkables closed on Sunday. It was a great day of skiing and partying.

TWO YEARS!

First off this is a hard blog to write... How do I condense everything that has happen and all the amazing people I have met and how I have grown and changed and everything that I have learned over the past two years into a readable blog post?! I am really not sure, so I am going to keep it short and sweet.

The Routeburn Track

Last weekend I hiked the Routeburn Track on a date. The Routeburn Track is one of the Great Walks in New Zealand. There are eight of them and the Kepler Track I did with my dad is one as well. The most popular is probably the Milford Track.

Milford Sound

The day after my dad, Donna, my uncle and I finished the Kepler Track we drove to Milford Sound. Before the hike we booked a cruise and kayaking. The drive from Te Anau to Milford is about two hours. It rained most of the drive and we could see snow on most of the high peaks. Since it was raining the waterfalls were really flowing which was amazing to see. The drive was really beautiful with all the waterfalls and snow capped peaks. 

The Train

After Arga and the Taj Mahal Carl and I took another bus (sigh) to Jaipur. When we got there we found a really nice hotel. It was tucked away from the craziness, with lots of trees and green grass. We had a beautiful marble balcony where we ate breakfast and dinner. Both Carl and I were pretty exhausted from the last two and a half months of hard travel so we only saw the observatory and the "tiger" fort instead of the three billion other old forts, castles and other buildings tourist are suppose to see in Jaipur. Jaipur is huge, we had no idea it was so big till we got a view of the city from the fort.

Looking over Jaipur

We didn't love Jaipur so we started to develop a plan to get out only after a day. We really wanted to take the train because we were sick of buses and everyone we talked to said train travel in India was something we had to do. I'll be honest, I was sort of afraid of why everyone was saying we HAD to do it but nonetheless I wanted the experience. Carl tried to book a train online for almost 5 hours, I am not kidding, 5 hours  (the guy has more patience than I will ever have). 

Here are the problems with an Indian website that millions of people use: It crashes all the time, it doesn't work at ALL between the hours of 8-12am, it will not take foreign credit cards and it says there are tickets available when actually there aren't. So only a couple minor problems...

Once Carl had given up trying to use the worst website ever we went to the train station to try and buy the tickets directly. The TWO men selling the tickets looked utterly confused and they told us there weren't any trains to Goa or Mumbai for at least three days. We couldn't figure out if there weren't actually tickets or the men just didn't understand how the computer system works. We returned home and  our researched reveiled that a bus or plane tickets likely wouldn't work so we were determined to take a train. After extensive research we figured out they release 10% of the tickets for every train the day before. It's called TakTal and you have to be at the train station exactly at 10am in order to try to get the tickets.

The next morning we woke up early and went to the train station. We filled out a form and checked if we did it right with the cashier. He told Carl it was unlikely we would get a ticket. Still we waited in line and old Indian men tried to push their way in front of us. Once we got to the front of the line the cashier actually started entering our passport information into the computer and actually got tickets to Mumbai for the next day! We were surprised but relieved we would be leaving Jaipur the next afternoon and taking our first train in India.

The trains in India are definitely worth taking. We got a bed and seat in the 2AC class. It was air conditioned and not crowded. Every 5 minutes someone would walk by selling chai, snacks or ice cream. We listened to music and watched the scenery go by in the afternoon.

At night we crawled up into our bed and let the train rock us to sleep.... Not really but it sounds way more romantic that way.

This is obvious but needs to be said: trains are so much nicer than buses, so much smoother, you can walk around, there is a bathroom, actually just a hole that empties to the tracks but its better than nothing. But seriously so much nicer. It cost about $45 for 17 hours.  

Sheets for the bed 

Nice bathroom

Getting ready for bed

Dinner time

The food was pretty delicous 

All the photos here are thanks to the wonderful and talented Carl. Thanks Carl :)

Keep in touch everyone. Miss you.

A day in India

Thank goodness we were on the orange bus for the ride some Armitsar to Chandigarh

Carl and I traveled from Amritsar (where the Golden Temple is) to Chandigarh by bus early in the morning. The ride was a peaceful four hours with scattered little towns and wide open rice fields. We arrived in Chandigarh at about 1 in the afternoon.

Adventures in Old Delhi!

Carl in front of the Red Fort

Yesterday Carl arrived all the way from America! He wanted to get a real taste of India and I was ready for an adventure after trying to read the Bhagavad Gita for a week. We headed out to old Delhi via the metro. We got lost twice in the a crazy small back allies of the bazars. As we walked deeper and farther into the markets, sunlight disappeared and pathways got longer and narrower. We started asking a lot of questions about what we were seeing around us. For example how does anyone make enough money to survive on; there seems to be way too many products and not enough people buying them. There was what felt like a square mile of tiny shops all right next to each other selling the exact same light bulbs...all the shops were the EXACT same! Also there seems to be a million rickshaws but no one is riding them! The drivers are all sitting on the side of the road. 

Carl and I decided that there are some things, probably most things, that we will never understand about India. Like why would a man on the side of the street ask me if I would like my ear cleaned whilst holding a q-tip? Seriously, why? Has anyone ever said yes to that man?!

Namaste!