Oh and also St. Lucia.

So a few days back I posted an open letter to my fellow cyclists/adventurers. But that is not the only trip I am signed up to do.

A few days back, a couple of my friends suggested that the boys should have a boys trip out to a Caribbean island. The place in question... St. Lucia. (In case you didn't guess that you clever little golden marmoset)

At this point in time I have a sad admission to make. I am nearly 210 years old (give or take a couple of centruries) and I have never seen an ocean/sea/a large saline body of water in my life. Yes, I, @damookman the first, am an ocean virgin. Thusly it is up to the eastern Caribbean Sea and the Atlantic Ocean to take this precious gift away. Hmm, this metaphor seems to have gotten away from me.


Right, so I am heading to St. Lucia with a co-writer of this blog and a few of my close friends. A co-writer who, I must shame mention,  is yet to write even a single post. 


But this is not a normal boys trip. There are no strippers, there is no blow, and there is definitely no long walks on the beach followed by a glass of merlot by a campfire while the Atlantic ocean glistens under the moonligh... errr. 


Right, this is not a normal boys trip. You see, we are all cricket fans and being that St. Lucia is one of the places that the Twenty-20 world cup is being held, how could we not go? I am also going to use this opportunity to run on the beach to continue training for my upcoming duathlon, and to keep up with retirees clad in lycra who are going to make me climb up Mont Ventoux and then laugh at me for being slow.  


Well that's it for this post. More will come as things become more and more clear. 


@damookman

Elephants at Amer Fort.

Just a short post.




 Taken in Amer Fort, Rajasthan, India. (click on the picture to take you to my flickr page) 

One of the ways that you can actually get to Amer fort is on Elephant back. Here is the kicker though. They will take you up but they do not accept any fares to go down. 

An open letter to my fellow cyclists/adventurers

Good Morning/Afternoon/Evening all of you hyper-intelligent shades of blue,

Yesterday, I received a communique from a certain Sir MT. It turns out that his family, and his in-laws are going to the south of France. Mr. T  has graciously invited me and another crazy cyclist @bad_akuro to join him for about a week or so.


 Ah-ha! I hear your protestations and complaints already.  "But @damookman", you say shrilly in a distinct but husky tone, "Why do you want to go on his family vacation? Is he adopting you?"

Hah, you lovable dopes. NO, OF COURSE NOT. WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU TO ASK SUCH RIDICULOUS QUESTIONS ?!

*composes himself*

You see Big Lad MT, KT (his wife) and LM (his father in law, aka, the retiree who kicked our arses) are avid cyclists. And they plan on biking around the neighborhood. Of course, the neighborhood is the south of France, specifically the town of Orange, just a stone's throw away from Marseilles, close to being under the shadow of the legendary Mont Ventoux and maybe even spend a day or two in Barcelona which is 3 hours away. And as M "look at my shaven muscular legs" T put it.

Southern France has some great views through wine country so we could do la-la rides everyday and work in a few workout routes as well.  LM mentioned one nasty mountain route (he refered to it as iconic) that he and G? are planning to do.  I think it may be Montpellier.  Where we are LM says it's easy by car to get to a few good biking spots along the tour route.   Also we will be close to Avingnon (location of the "pont d'avingnon" a childrens song and key destination for AT) Marseille and a 3 hour drive from barcelona.  I think there will be a day trip of two to those locations.  KT has even suggested spending a night in Spain.

For those who do not know.
LM - Father in law, the retiree who kicked our arses fully clad in lycra at the beginning of last season.
G? - FIL's friend. Possibly also lycra clad. The ? is because he is mysterious.
AT - M "Productive Loins" T's daughter
Marseille - Type it into google, you lazy prat.


Ah yes, the cost. Here is the part I was scared of. It is not a trip to Wasaga beach or even to Goderich, ON. The flight is going to cost about 1000-1200 bucks. For staying there,  M "Sir Moneybags the Third" T, has suggested renting a house which would drop the cost to about 50 bucks a person per night. So if we stay for ten days that would mean $500. So just to get there and chill would cost us $1500 per person.


BUT. And pay attention here you spoiled yet lovely anacondas, for this is the important reason that I want to go to France.


I want to go to France. 


That being said, I am scared that at some point in time M "Dr. Livingstone, I presume" T will try to sell me to local caravans in exchange for trinkets. As he so nicely pointed out this time he will speak the local language. This worries me a bit because he did try to sell PD when we were in India, and it was only the fact that he could not speak the language that stopped him.


But it will be fun, we will have bikes, amazing scenery and French Women who will try to ply my affections with generous libations.

Yours in pain and hope,
@Damookman

Traffic is really physics

It has been a while, has it not, my frolicking mudskippers. Well fear not, this venerable charmer has not abandoned you. You can blame my infrequency on the recession and global weather changes. However, my musings will continue till the well starts to run dry and then I will run away to another location and carry on from there.

One of the constant factors in India that we always had to budget for was the traffic. Travelling is not straightforward there as heading from Yonge and Bloor to King and John (or Parliament Hill to Sussex drive if you are unfortunate lucky enough to live in Ottawa) might be.

Traffic in Delhi is not a stream but a raging torrent. In Jaipur, however, it was more akin to whitewater rapids… with sharks… with superlasers attached.. being ridden by bears… well you get the idea. Lanes are merely suggestions, and traffic lights are at best idealized concepts. Now granted that this might just be a small section of the city, but I sincerely doubt it.

Crossing the street is an exercise in physics. If car A approaches the intersection at 30 km/h and and is being driven by a man busy on his 22 cell phones, how many bodies does Car A need to dispatch before the sea of humanity forces it to stop before hitting you. The answer is dependent on how fast you can shove your friend.

The lesson that MT and I learned on our second day was to keep moving. As long as you can do that, the cars will adapt, but god forbid if you change your mind. That will lead to disaster. The other thingwe learned was the stick-your-hand-out-in-a- stop-please-gesture MANUeuvre(get it, huh? Huh? Huh?) . This complicated manoeuvre involves, and bear with me here, sticking your hand out in a stop-please gesture and walking. I am sorry if I got too technical there. There you go my lovely dumplings, armed with this knowledge you are now safe on the streets of Delhi. Assuming you know where the hell you are going because there are no street signs, and the streets have no names. Enjoy.

Boxing day and Airports

Since December 26, 2009, I have spent 23 hours flying, 12 hours waiting at the Delhi Airport, and 3 hours waiting at the Brussels airport. If I wasn’t the fearless, handsome and yet strangely in-touch-with-his-feelings type of blogger I would say I was tired.

I think I am ready to plan my next travel.

Stay tuned to the blog though. I still have several reflections to post from some days that I have missed. PS who is currently en-route to Goa is one of the guest columnists, and MT also wanted to pen his return from India.

Also, I want to thank you all. I know that there were several people in Ottawa who were following this blog, and I know that there were more than a faithful few in Toronto who were reading this. Trust me, just knowing that people were reading this made me keep wanting to write more.

I have the next two days off work. In those two days on I shall be editing a lot of video footage that I shot,  and posting the final copies of a lot of the pictures that I took. They shall all be peppered across social media for you to enjoy. Remember on twitter you can find me @damookman and on flickr you can find me at Aramil Liadon. I suppose I will paste on facebook as well, though it is well against my religion to do so.

Oh hey, I found an emporium. It was this way.

Merry Christmas from Udaipur

Udaipur, the city of lakes, the white city, the <insert superlative here> city. Let me start of by saying that Udaipur was by far my favourite tourist spot. I have seen tons of historical buildings. Taj was beautiful, and Humanyun’s tomb and Qutub Minar were awe-inspiring. Amer Fort in Jaipur was magnificent in it’s grandness, but no place oozed history and charm like Udaipur. The streets were narrow and not entirely unlike the cobbles in Belgium or in Flander’s Field.  Even the roadside buildings were old. Some probably older than Canada. I wish I had 1 more day there to explore it. I really do.

In the last episode we discovered that Christmas morning carolling in Udaipur train station, Rajasthan, India, was in fact rejuvenating. From the train station we got into cabs to head to the hotel well before sunrise. As soon as we had checked into our rooms this is the view that greeted us.  I will update these pictures once I get back to Toronto (hooray Photoshop) so you can get a better idea.

Christmas morning in Udaipur started off with PS and AS crying off touristing because of their respective sicknesses. However, AQ and NS were more than raring to go.
We started the day off by meeting our guide. Very nice fellow, who more than made up for my guide that we had in Agra back when PD and MT were around. This guy was full of pride for Udaipur. One of the first places were went to was the city palace. City Palace was amazing. A full fledged palace maintained privately, with the Royal family still living on a separate wing.  But enough about the beauty of the building. I am sure you can read up on it on Wiki.

Let me focus for a bit on the rulers. The Suryavanshi’s who ruled all of Udaipur (and still live there) were a tough breed of fighters. The downside of that it seems was that they spent a lot of time on women when not warring. And since wars are not an everyday event, they spent a lot of time doing nothing other than fornicating (according to the guide anyway). I left with a distinct impression that they built these beautiful forts just to bed as many women as possible. The dude had a “favourite wife”. How a favourite was chosen and how often one could be chosen was arbitrary. All we were told was that a king could have multiple wives and a couple of thousand concubines. This means that NK, our dashing yet slightly stressed out guide’s, ancestors were the original Hugh Hefners. I am not kidding. The kings built entire grottos just to chill with the ladies. Needless to say our female companions were less than thrilled with the kings of yore. I remain deeply sceptical on the sexual prowess presented here. I mean they used to hang up massive curtains to prevent others from looking in. What’s to stop him from playing Solitaire in there? I mean at the end of the day, he only has one thingy…. unless…. wait…what were we talking about here? Right, Udaipur.

The coolest thing on display by far was the miniature paintings. Not as cool as our tour guide made it seem, but they were cool regardless. The miniature is because of the level of detail not the size of the painting. The detail even in the beards was amazing. However, the guide’s constant, YOU WILL NEVAR SEE THIS ANYWHAAARRR attitude, finally got on AQ’s nerves and she pretty much told him about where all this kind of work can be seen. He was pretty unhappy at having his parade rained upon but did tone it down a bit.
The guide was a feisty one thought. He revealed to us that the palaces are the pride of Udaipur, and whenever, people do stupid things there, they all take personal responsibility. I saw him cuss out several people for many infractions, including two idiots who were getting a picture taken outside of the guard rails protecting a lookout point, overlooking a 60-70 ft. drop.

Touring was fun, but this was the last place that was on the itinerary for me. Christmas night was spent at a wonderful restaurant with my good friends. This restaurant overlooked Lake Pichola on whose banks City Palace and the Palace of Pleasure were resplendently lit, and whose reflections in the lake was too beautiful for words. It was the perfect end to my adventures.

Or so I thought.

I can almost taste it

Short post.

Current time, I am in Brussels airport. I am so close to home I can taste it. In fact I already did. I drank my first Starbucks coffee in 20 days.

I know it is not the best coffee in the world, but  it tasted great after having drank nothing but instant/airplane coffee for the better part of the month.

Now back to the program. Coming soon, the day in Udaipur, and why NK, our dashing yet slightly stressed out guide’s, ancestors were the original playas.