Akshardham and Gandhi Smriti

Posted on April 11, 2017March 14, 2019 by Lark

Our second day of exploring Delhi was… interesting. We unintentionally visited all of, what I have deemed, the most baffling places in the city. Our first stop was Akshardham temple. Andrew and Rohan had never been before, so it was a strange, new experience for all of us. There’s no entry fee, but they make up for that in over-the-top security measures and the fact that you can’t take pictures. I’ve never been through security like this.

First, you go through a guardhouse where they looked through your bag. Next, you come to a building where you have to hand in certain items. This is where it started getting funny. I tried to just give them my whole little purse minus my wallet because you have to hand in your phone, so what else do I even have in there? They rejected my purse but then told me to remove “all electronics”. Uhh. Okay? So I gave them the little external battery pack I had too, and I had to give them the cord, as if I could do anything with that after giving up my phone and the battery pack. Then I had to give him my headphones, and finally he asked for my hand sanitizer. What the heck am I going to do with either of those? But whatever. At this point, my purse was practically empty anyway, so I’m not really sure why they wouldn’t just take it.

The first and only picture I took before my phone was locked up.

The next step was security. You always get split into men and women here, so I went in the women’s line and walked through a questionably functional metal detector, had everything taken out of my bag again (though apparently the granola bar I had was no problem), and got the world’s least thorough pat down which did, however, include the woman asking me if the bump she felt from my pants drawstring was a phone. Likely. And finally, we were in.

None of us had done any real research on the place, so we just assumed that it was some old temple. I quickly started questioning that once we got into the complex. Everything looked too sharp. The carvings were crisp and perfect, and it didn’t feel old. When we entered the actual temple (shoe-less, of course), there was lighting integrated into the shrines, and it didn’t look like it was added in after construction. Suspicious. Rohan went and asked an employee when it was built… 2005. Hahahahahaha I literally burst out laughing. Here we are, thinking it’s some sacred piece of history, and it’s barely more than 10 years old. We kept joking and laughing about it throughout the day. That also explained why everything looked so fresh. Some of the carving was done by machines (so it amazingly only took 5 years to complete!), though the detail work was done by hand, and there hasn’t been nearly enough time for it to start showing any wear and tear.

The building is beautiful, and I’m glad we went, but how funny is that? It’s supposed to celebrate and showcase India’s architectural history, so I guess I have to say, “good job,” to the designers. You fooled us!

Inside the temple, we also learned about Swaminarayan, an important figure in modern Hinduism. His followers believe that he was a physical manifestation of God. He did a lot of good things for women in India, including advocating for women’s education, discouraging the killing of female babies, and speaking against the ill-treatment of women. The temple is dedicated to him and contains an exhibit that includes impressions of his feet, and… wait for it… actual hair and nail clippings! Yeah, that’s too much for me I think. Can you imagine being such a big deal that someone would want your nail clippings?

There was also a lot of large artwork of Gandhi’s head. One of the other ones had little screens in his eyes. That was weird.

Okay wow I managed to say a lot more about the temple that I expected. The next stop after that was Gandhi Smriti, the place where Gandhi was assassinated. There is now a Gandhi museum on the site as well, and that’s near the top of the list of the weirdest museums I’ve ever been to. It has a “multimedia exhibit” with LOTS of multimedia elements and no explanations of anything. There’s nothing saying what anything is, how it works, or why it’s significant. There was a woman following us around and pointing us in the direction of the next room throughout our visit, so I guess she was our unofficial guide. The whole thing was just baffling. There was one room with all of these little wooden boxes on the walls, and one wall of boxes contained little screens that were playing footage from one of Gandhi’s marches. Why the boxes? I felt like I was in some weird alternate reality.

I have literally no idea what the purpose of this is. It’s like a kaleidoscope kind of… you look in one end, there’s a screen at the opposite end, and the space in between is filled with mirrors.

The multimedia exhibit was strange, but there was also a helpful and informative exhibit of dioramas that gave a good timeline of Gandhi’s life. Filled with new Gandhi knowledge, we walked around the gardens and saw the spot where he was shot during an evening prayer ceremony. It’s an eerie juxtaposition of a horrible history and a peaceful garden.

I’m standing on a bridge over dry land. Very functional, right? But this is a nice view of the garden.

Delhi Sightseeing

Posted on April 4, 2017March 14, 2019 by Lark

Here’s the location of Delhi, for reference.

We hit the ground running on my first day in Delhi. We have three sightseeing days scheduled before flying to my final destination, so I wanted to see as much as possible. I wasn’t worried about having any jetlag because I landed at night, and if there’s one thing I can always do to get onto the right time schedule, it’s sleep. I had no trouble going to bed after getting to our hotel, and when I woke up in the morning, I was ready to go.

My friends for the first few sightseeing days in Delhi are Andrew, the guy who helped to organize my trip here, and Rohan, a Delhi-ite who is a friend of a friend. Andrew had an ambitious list of places to visit on day one, and we managed to get through them all! I’m all about efficient sightseeing. I can’t even count the number of tuk-tuks we took (took… lol get it? I know, I’m too funny) today, but they made it possible for us to quickly zip around the city.

The first stop was India Gate, a war memorial triumphal arch. It’s located on the same stretch of road as the President’s house and other government buildings like Parliament and some department headquarters. Most of these buildings were designed by the same British architect, and the others were designed by one other British architect. It’s not hard to tell that they weren’t Indian designs. They look like someone picked them out of a catalog for British architecture and plopped them down in India instead of the UK.

This is as close as you can get to the President’s house without being special. Maybe you can make an appointment or something, but this was as close as we could get.

One of the buildings that houses some government departments

From there, we made our way to the Red Fort, the former home of many of the Mughal emperors. That’s who was in power before the European power struggle that resulted in the colonization of India by the British. The fort was built in 1639 by Emperor Shah Jahan, the same guy who was responsible for the Taj Mahal. The outer wall encloses over 250 acres with 1.5 miles of wall. That’s crazy. We didn’t go inside, but I think a lot of the interior was plundered and destroyed throughout history anyway.

A view from the steps of the Jama Masjid

A short walk from the Red Fort gets you to the Jama Masjid, one of the biggest mosques in India. If you’re Indian, you can get in for free. If you’re not, you have to pay the “tourist tax” (as in, EVERYTHING is more expensive here if you’re not Indian). You also have to take off your shoes to enter, and this is where I fell in love with barefoot culture. It feels so weird! Even when you “enter” you’re still outside, just in a courtyard. And you’re walking around barefoot. And so is everyone else. How weird, right? But here, it’s completely normal, and I intend to fully embrace it.

Anyway, this mosque was also built by Shah Jahan in the mid-1600s. Busy guy. The courtyard is huge, and they say that 25,000 people can pray in it at the same time. The architecture is absolutely beautiful. Shah Jahan was clearly not the kind of guy who was okay with second best.

At this point, it was about 1PM and things were starting to heat up. We decided to head to Connaught Place, a shopping area, to find some lunch and hide from the sun. I’ll give you one guess as to who built Connaught Place… most British name ever. We went to a place with Mughal cuisine for lunch, and apparently that means spicy. I mean, I expected it, but that doesn’t change the fact that I’m pathetic and can’t handle it. We got a bunch of things whose names mean nothing to me: mutton korma (lamb in some spicy sauce), chicken biryani (like fried rice but spicy), and khameeri naan (bread and my mouth’s lifesaver). I think my nose was running for all of lunch, and I ate like half the bread at the end trying to get the spicy taste out of my mouth. We got some kulfi (ice cream on a stick, but with indescribable taste and texture) to cool us down and also because who needs a reason for ice cream?

We only had a couple more stops to make after lunch. Number one was Humayun’s Tomb. This is another tourist taxed location… it’s something like 50 cents for an Indian to enter and 5 dollars for a foreigner. The complex has more than just Mughal Emperor Humayun’s tomb, though that building is definitely the highlight. There are some other monuments on the grounds, plus the 1547 tomb of Isa Khan, a noble who fought against the Mughals. Humayun’s tomb was built in 1572 by the Emperor’s wife, and now in addition to him, she and some other significant Mughals are buried there as well.

The tomb is spectacular. It came before the Taj Mahal, and it’s obvious that the Taj was built after looking at it. They have a lot of architectural similarities, though material-wise, they’re quite different. Humayun’s tomb is built from red sandstone. It’s undergone a lot of restoration work recently, so the building looks quite good actually. They also had an exhibit talking about the restoration work which was cool. I’m fascinated by that stuff. Fun fact – the finial on top is gilded in actual gold.

Okay, don’t worry, we’re almost finished. Now, the last stop of the day! We went to Lotus Temple, a Bahai temple. The Bahai faith is one that I had never heard of before, and honestly it seems more like a nice worldview rather than a religion. It started around 1844 and talks about the “oneness” of the human race, unity of people, condemnation of prejudice, gender equality, shrinking the wealth gap, the value of hard work, and the establishment of peace.

See that guy on top of the right petal? How would you like to be up there?

This definitely looks like a fake picture

All that aside, the building is awesome. It’s made to look like a lotus flower, and each “petal” is covered in marble. I have no idea how they built the thing, but it’s beautiful, and from the inside is just mind-blowing. Anyone can enter for free, but you have to take your shoes off, can’t talk, and can’t take pictures inside because it’s a place of worship. You can stay as long as you’d like and pray though, regardless of your religion. The whole concept is very interesting.

While I was sitting and attempting to pray, I’m pretty sure that I was falling asleep in my seat. The day took quite a toll on me, but I was happy that we had a chance to see so many things. We stopped and grabbed some dinner – spicy (of course) lamb shawarma – before heading back to the hotel and crashing.

Welcome to India!

Posted on April 4, 2017March 14, 2019 by Lark

*Between the chaos of travel and the ever-unreliable internet situation, I’ve fallen a bit behind on posts. I have most of them written, but I haven’t had the internet to support actually organizing the pictures and uploading them. I’m finally in a stable wifi environment, so I’ll be uploading the rest of the Peru ones and catching you up on my time in India so far over the next few days. I’ve back-dated the Peru posts and will date the India ones for around the days when I wrote them, so they’ll be in chronological order on my feed.*

Welcome to India!!! Whew! It’s been a whirlwind couple of weeks. When I first landed here, my brain was not ready to register being in a new country yet. I’m still getting used to remembering where I am. How weird is that? This is definitely not a problem I would have expected to ever have. Who the heck loses track of what country they’re in? How much do you have to travel for that to happen? Well, I guess that three countries in four days is my limit.

I landed in Delhi around 9PM last night and zombie-walked my way through immigration and customs. Thankfully it all went without a hitch because I don’t think I had the capacity to deal with any issues after 24ish hours of travelling. I connected no problem with my ride, and we headed off to the hotel to crash for the night before a big day of sightseeing today!

After a day of being here, here’s a list of my first impressions (these are all based on observations in Delhi, so things may very well be different in other parts of the country):

Traffic-related things:

Traffic view. This definitely isn’t the worst case but I was on a bridge, so I had to just take what I could get at the moment.

People are always talking about the traffic here and how crazy it is, so I was expecting something insane. Yes, it’s definitely hectic, but I’ve had experiences in Peru and China that are pretty darn close. There are some distinguishing factors here though.

Driving on the left – I think I knew this at some point, but I COMPELTELY forgot that they drive on the left here. When I got picked up from the airport, I had a momentary head spin when I got in the car and the driver was on the wrong side.
Honking horns – Everyone uses their horn as if everyone else in the world is blind, and the only way that they’ll know you’re coming is if you’re honking. You honk if you’re passing someone, if someone is crossing the street and you’re going to hit them, if someone even looks like they might be thinking about crossing the street, if an animal looks like it might be in your way, if you’re in completely stopped traffic and you need to make yourself feel better about not going anywhere, etc. You name an opportunity, and someone is probably honking.
Vehicle variety/quantity – The biggest thing that makes it more chaotic than other countries I’ve been to is that there are WAY more motorcycles and tuk-tuks (these are the same as motos in Peru – like a motorcycle rickshaw, or a motorcycle tricycle as I like to think of them) on the road. They weave in and out of the cars and drive kind of like nutcases. There are also bike rickshaws, normal bikes, other motorbike-related vehicles that I’ve never seen before, trucks, buses, and more. I’ve never seen such vehicle variety.
Not a great picture, but you can see a woman riding sidesaddle on the front motorcycle.
Motorcycle sidesaddle – This might be one of the most impressive things I’ve ever seen. Sometimes, women (especially when wearing a skirt) will ride on the back of motorcycles with both legs on one side, like riding a horse sidesaddle. To me, this is an incredible feat. How do they stay on? Is that not terrifying?
Crossing the street – This is most similar to my experiences in China. When you cross the street, you need to be aggressive, but not TOO aggressive. It’s like a dance where if you step wrong, instead of getting some stubbed toes, you get hit by a car (or tuk-tuk or motorcycle or who knows what else). Sounds fun, right? The best strategy is to hide behind someone else while you’re crossing so that if anything goes wrong, they get hit instead of you.

General Environment

Smog – This is another one that I knew about but forgot. If you haven’t been to a smoggy country before, just imagine that every day is a little foggy, but that fog is slowly killing you. The difference in your breathing and how the air feels between smoggy countries and ones with clean air are VERY easy to perceive. Thank goodness for emissions regulations in the US!
Trash – Like Ghana, there’s a lot of trash everywhere. If you think US cities are dirty, come here. It’s gross.
Water bottles – When you finish a water bottle, you’re supposed to crumple up the bottle before you throw it away (it even says so on the label). This is so that people can’t trash-pick the bottle, refill it with un-filtered water, “reseal” it, and sell it to an unsuspecting victim.
Water – Speaking of water, as a foreigner, you pretty much have to drink bottled water (unless you want to spend a lot of time and effort purifying the tap water). Besides possibly containing bacteria that can give you anything from cholera to typhoid, some of the water has heavy metals including arsenic. You know, arsenic… aka poison. Everyone, please take a moment to take a deep breath, drink some tap water, and appreciate your clean water and air. Don’t take these things for granted!
Dirt or tan lines? Hint: it’s dirt. All dirt.
Dirt – Do we have less dirt in the US than in other countries? I don’t know, but I never feel so grimy at home. Here, plus in Ghana and somewhat Peru, I constantly feel like I’m covered with a layer of grime. It’s like there’s dirt seeping out of my pores. It’s impossible to keep anything clean.

Random

Architecture – There is some REALLY cool stuff here. I’ll post more about what we saw today later, but just know that it’s pretty awesome. There are so many different styles happening here because of all of the different rulers and influences that have come in over India’s history, and it’s interesting to see them all interact. Tomb architecture is quickly becoming my favorite.
Barefoot culture – If you like going barefoot, this might be the place for you. We went into a couple temples today, and when you go inside, you have to take your shoes off. It feels very weird taking off your shoes and walking around in public but at the same time, very liberating. I <3 barefoot temples.

Okay, that’s all for now. So far, I’m enjoying being here. More details to come soon, I promise!

Off Again!

Posted on April 3, 2017March 14, 2019 by Lark

Where in the world is Lara now? Ha. Good question! These last few days have been crazy. One second I’m in Cusco, then I’m in Lima, then Miami, then Toronto, and now I’m somewhere over the north pole on my way to India. My brain hasn’t even had a chance to process the fact that I shouldn’t be speaking Spanish to people anymore.

In hindsight I’m pretty sure I’ve worn the same outfit on every plane ride so far. I promise that 1. These are all different pictures and 2. I do own and wear other clothes.

I knew that this was going to be a rough adjustment, but it’s different now that I’m living it. It’s going to be interesting to see how I adapt to a completely new culture this time. And what will it be like in June when I’m back in the States for a more significant amount of time? Well, I can’t worry about that now. For the moment, my concern needs to be getting myself to comprehend the fact that I’m going to be in INDIA.
I’m seriously so excited. My biggest concern is still the food, and the airplane food we’ve been eating hasn’t done anything to settle that concern. I’m not a spicy kind of person. I love bland. Give me a plain piece of white bread, and I’m set. Out of a million potato chip flavors, I would choose original. I am a fan of salad with no dressing. I think that’s going to be an issue here. Already on this plane ride, I’ve started developing a technique for eating without actually touching any of the food with my tongue. My taste buds cannot handle spicy, and if that meal was the airline’s version of a toned-down spicy level that should be acceptable to everyone on board, I’m toast. And not white bread toast. (Probably some sort of whole grain toast with seeds and other crunchy things in it.)

Anyway, there’s no turning back now. My head is still spinning from all of the things that were accomplished in the last two days. I landed Friday morning, my mom and I went shopping for some last-minute India supplies, I ate a couple of dinners with my sister and nieces, repacked my bag, and here I am! Be impressed because it really was an incredible feat.
Okay. It’s like 7 more hours until we land in Delhi. 7 hours to realize that I’m not in South America anymore. 7 hours to kill off 90% of my taste buds so that I can handle spicy food. India, here I come!

(Also, I’m going to retroactively post about my last days in Peru over the next couple days… so sorry for the post explosion. I had a very productive plane ride… But not now because it’s sleep time.)

Goodbye, Peru

Posted on April 1, 2017March 14, 2019 by Lark

My flight out of Cusco left at 7:30AM, so I dragged myself out of bed at 4:30 and was out by 5, just to be safe. I had hardcore travel anxiety about every single part of my journey. I worried that I wouldn’t be able to find a cab to the airport at that hour, then I worried that I would find a cab and get kidnapped or something. I worried that my flight out of Cusco would get cancelled and then I wouldn’t get to Lima in time for my flight to Miami and I would get stranded in Peru and miss my flight to India and everything would be ruined. Yes, I have a slight problem. Due to my worrying, I booked an early flight out of Cusco even though my flight to the States wasn’t scheduled to leave Lima until like 10:15PM. My first flight could have been delayed nearly 12 hours, and I still would have made it.

As you might expect, every part of my journey was totally fine. I walked out of my hostel, and there was a cab right there. I negotiated a good price to the airport, the driver didn’t kidnap me, and I got there with more than enough time to spare. Check in went fine, the flight was delayed by only like 20 minutes, and we got to Lima with no trouble. And then… I sat. And sat. And searched for strategic locations where I could sit without being in anyone’s way.

Thankfully, I had prepared some activities for myself (and by that I mean, I downloaded a bunch of books onto my Kindle and a bunch of Netflix shows onto my phone), and my hours of waiting at the airport flew by. I used up the rest of my Peruvian money on lunch and dinner and a chocolate muffin, and after a lot of seat-stalking, snagged a prime spot in one of the little airport cafes. Airports are like a second home to me now, which is good because I have plenty more airport camping out to do before the year is up.

Leaving Peru was strange. Unlike Ghana, I didn’t have the feeling of “I’m probably never coming back here.” That made the whole thing a lot easier. Also, I have barely any time to prepare for India which means less time to reflect and make myself sad. I have plenty of things to do to keep my mind busy before I go!

Anyway, it will be interesting to see what happens in the future. I’m all about South America now, so I’m sure I’ll at least be back in the neighborhood. I feel like I’m not completely finished with Peru though. At the very least, I have to go back to visit the Amazon!

Last Day in Cusco

Posted on March 30, 2017March 14, 2019 by Lark

Nice muggy picture of the plaza… the weather luckily got a bit nicer.

I didn’t have a very ambitious day planned for my final one in Cusco. Originally, I had been thinking that I would do a day trip to one of the towns close to Cusco like Tipon or Pisac, but considering how I felt when I finally rolled out of bed, I figured it would be a better idea to just take it easy. Pretty much my entire body was aching. Between the hiking and biking, every muscle in my legs, plus my shoulders and back from carrying a backpack, wanted to die. Trust me, it’s an accomplishment that I even managed to motivate myself to leave the hostel.

One of the churches in the plaza, Templo de la Compañía de Jesús. There are two (this one and the main cathedral) and then there are about 4 other churches within a 1 block distance

I decided to do the self-guided walking tour that I never got around to on day 1, and this time, I was sure to avoid every tour salesperson in the Plaza de Armas. I spent some time sitting on a bench in the plaza, then on the steps of the church, then on another bench. I know, really strenuous stuff. I just wanted to have some time to get to know the personality of the city. I spent all of my other days running all over, and I never had a chance to just sit and observe the people and understand what makes Cusco unique, besides all of the mountains and pretty buildings.

After sitting in the main plaza, I continued my stroll, browsed the public library (a popular tourist destination, I’m sure – not), sat in a few other, smaller plazas, watched tourists take pictures with alpacas and get harassed by people selling paintings and necklaces and whatever else, saw schoolkids getting into after-school mischief, visited the market, and tried to imagine myself as a Cusco-ian (or whatever the word would be).

My late afternoon was spent reading in a cozy little plaza by my hostel. I don’t know, I guess some people might think that I wasted my last day, but sometimes it’s fun to do normal things in a new place and pretend for a second that it’s your usual life. The city and I bonded.

Well, I didn’t spend the WHOLE day just wandering. I had a nighttime plan to go to the Cusco planetarium! I love stars, so this was something that I had been looking forward to. The Cusco twist is that besides talking about normal constellations, they also talk about the Inca constellations.

Another church, La Merced, just one block from the Plaza de Armas

Anddd another church, Iglesia de San Pedro

My reading spot… next to another church of course

The planetarium woman started out talking about rivers. Okay, not exactly the introduction I was expecting, but sure. She mentioned that Peru is the most ecologically diverse country in the world. I think I talked about this before, but Peru has 30 out of the 32 climates and something like 84 out of 114 microclimates in the world (don’t quote me because I couldn’t find support for that statistic, but that’s what she said). A number of them are quite fragile, so climate change is a very real issue for Peru as they’re already seeing big impacts on their wildlife. She said that many of the Andes mountains around the Sacred Valley used to be snowcapped about 15 years ago, and now barely any of them are. It was interesting to hear about things from her perspective, based on things she’s seen through her lifetime. Anyway, she tied all of this into how the rivers are the source of life. This is how the Incas saw them as well, so for them, the rivers were incredibly important. Ready for this segue from rivers to stars? The Milky Way was seen as the river of the sky. Aha.

We headed into the planetarium, and she showed us the night sky and some of the “modern day” northern constellations before switching to the southern hemisphere. That was cool because, as I realized, I know nothing about the southern sky, but of course there are just as many constellations as in the north.

Finally, we got to the Inca constellations. Some of them were constellations in the way we see them, by drawing lines between the stars. However, they also saw figures in the dark spots in the Milky Way. To them, the Milky Way was a river in the sky, and the creatures they saw inside were alive (because river = life). Here’s an image of the dark spot constellations:

She said that the most important one is the llama. The Incas believed that the llama came at night and drank from the rivers and streams on earth to keep them from overflowing. When it rains, it’s star llama pee. Who knows? Maybe she was just messing with us, but that’s what she said. I like it though, so I’m going to call it fact.

Moray and Maras Salt Mines

Posted on March 29, 2017July 23, 2020 by Lark

My train left Aguas Calientes the morning after Machu Picchu Day at 5:30AM. UGH for early morning wake ups. I forced myself to stay awake for the ride though because this time, I had a window seat! Easy to do when there are only about 10 people on the train. I tried to take some pictures of the ride, but between the glass in the way and the fact that I’d need an IMAX screen for you to really understand it, they’re not great.

I took better pictures on the train ride this time! Hooray for window seats! Of course, there’s still a window in the way, but this at least gives you a much better idea of what much of the train ride is like.

I decided to plan an adventure for the day, so I signed up for a mountain biking excursion that left from Ollantaytambo. It was just me and the guide, and I learned that mountain biking maybe isn’t my thing… No, that’s not true. I learned that I have plenty of room for improvement. I could totally do it. Anyway, I’m getting ahead of myself.

We drove from Ollantaytambo to Moray, another Incan ruin. This was one of the coolest ones though! First of all, it’s in great condition. Second of all, it’s super nerdy and shows how smart the Incas were. There are three different areas with circular, terraced depressions, and archaeologists think they were used to breed and genetically engineer their plants. Each different layer is at a different altitude and temperature, and this site allowed them to work with plants with varying environmental requirements all in one place. The deepest one has an almost 30-degree F difference between the top and the bottom terraces! They brought soil with the plants and had an irrigation system and a way to drain water out so that the depressions didn’t just turn into lakes.

The Incas managed to develop some amazingly strong plants. They needed to, if they wanted them to survive in places like Machu Picchu where the weather is constantly changing and the altitude is so high. It’s a shame that so much was lost when the Spanish conquered them. Most of the Incas were killed, either through war or through new diseases that the Spanish brought like smallpox and measles… I think I read somewhere that only 5% survived (though I potentially just made that up, so don’t quote me). That makes it much harder to pass on knowledge and scientific advances!

This is the biggest one (the one with the 30-degree temperature difference between bottom and top)

Check out the perfection of those curves. Amazing!

From there, we got onto our bikes and started making our way to the salt mines at Maras. It only took me about 2 seconds of biking uphill to realize that maybe I didn’t plan things so well. What idiot goes on a hike that’s ALL STAIRS and then goes biking the next day? This idiot. Those two things use a lot of the same muscles, and my quads were burning. Besides that, the air was still thinner than I’m used to. Between my burning leg muscles and struggling lungs, we made some slow progress. I just kept thinking how easy it would be to do the ride if we were at sea level, but instead, I looked like some biking amateur (how embarrassing).

I love these mountains!!! This whole long valley (stretching for more than 60 miles) is called the Sacred Valley and was an important area for the Incas.

At some point, I got a flat tire. I don’t know how long it took me to realize that I had a flat, but in hindsight, I think the answer to that is “too long”. We stopped, and the guide checked out the damage. If it was me, I would have just replaced the tube, but I don’t know if he didn’t have the right size replacement for my bike or what because he ended up patching it. I see patches as a temporary solution that doesn’t work very well. They especially don’t work well when your tube has more than a couple holes in it. Especially more than 5. Or 10. Or 15. I think there were something like 17 holes in my one tube, and even after all of those were patched, air was still leaking out… just slightly more slowly. I couldn’t even guess how long it took to apply all of those patches, but I have a sunburn on my shoulders to commemorate the eternity spent on that shadeless stretch of trail.

Pre-falls, moments post-tire patching. You know what? I think I need to blame both falls on my tire. Makes sense!

I’m going to blame my couple of spills on the tire, just because I can. Also because I’m not convinced that they aren’t at least part to blame. One thing I learned about myself on the ride is that I REALLY don’t like tight corner turns, especially when the trail is covered with rocks that can shift and slide. The first corner I got to that I felt like I wasn’t going to make, I brought my bike to a stop and tried to put my foot down… but the seat was high, and I was on a hill, so I ended up just falling over from a complete stop with my bike on top of me. It’s a good thing that I’m past the point of getting embarrassed by things like that. I wasn’t hurt at all, but I did need a little help to get the bike off of me.

Fall number two was slightly more dramatic. I was coming around another questionable corner. The terrifying thing about these corners is that if you don’t make the turn, you literally ride off a cliff. So you’re dead. So just know that I wasn’t being completely crazy. This time, I’m not completely sure what happened. I think that I got freaked out at the last second when I didn’t think I was going to make it, braked too hard, and got thrown. I was incredibly calm through the whole thing, though. I remember flying through the air thinking, “whoops… okay hopefully this impact doesn’t hurt too much”, hitting the ground thinking, “well nothing is broken, so now I just have to hope the rocks don’t tear me up too badly”, and laying there afterwards thinking, “hm that wasn’t nearly as bad as it could have been. I could use a hand though.” Sure enough, I was fine. I had a couple of scrapes and cuts that were bleeding way more than they needed to, but no question it ended as well as it could have (the fall, that is. The ride could have ended better, for example, with me NOT falling).

The salt mines are that light brown strip in the valley

Our second official stop (as in, not including the million flat tire stops and multiple Lara fall stops) was at the Maras salt mines. This is where most Peruvian salt is harvested. It’s been running since the time of the Incas, and the process they use currently is mostly unchanged from those days. Different families own the approximately 3,000 different pools, and they’re responsible for maintaining and harvesting the salt in their pools. Since this is the rainy season, there isn’t a lot of salt in production because the rain makes it harder to make quality, white salt.

I have no idea how the water flow works here, but it’s crazy awesome!

Luckily, there was still enough going on for me to see how it all works. There’s a spring that feeds a salty stream that runs to the area, and that stream is routed into all of these different pools. When a pool is filled, the flow of water is stopped, it evaporates, and the salt is scraped off the bottom of the pool. It’s given a rating of quality, the best stuff is exported, and the rest is sold in Peru.

You can see a little salt production happening, but they said that in the dry season, way more of the pools will be operating and will look white from the salt.

After the ride, I wanted nothing more than to get back to my hostel, take a shower, and lay in bed for a bit. The guide helped me clean my cuts, put me into a colectivo, and sent me back to Cusco, bruised and battered but feeling accomplished (mostly just for not dying). I think I’m going to take a short break from mountain biking experiences. Just for now.

Machu Picchu

Posted on March 28, 2017August 19, 2020 by Lark

When my Machu Picchu day finally came along, I had mixed feelings. On one hand, of course I was beyond excited to visit the place I had been looking forward to seeing ever since I decided to go to Peru. On the other hand, it’s nice to have really exciting things to look forward to, and sometimes the “looking forward” is almost better than the “actually doing”. That probably doesn’t make any sense… let me try again. When you finally go somewhere or do something that everyone has raved about, aren’t you ever nervous that the idea of it will be better than the actual thing? That it’s been talked up so much that the reality can’t possibly match your expectation? There was a part of me that feared that. Like maybe I’d find myself facing one of the wonders of the world and manage to not feel impressed.

When you walk in, this is the first view you get of the ruins!

Lucky for me, the experience of visiting Machu Picchu is partly indescribable. No matter how much people told me about it, they couldn’t convey the wonder I’d feel when seeing the huge expanse of beautiful ruins set against a backdrop that’s straight out of a fantasy. No matter what I write about it, I promise you that I can’t even begin to do it justice. Even without the air of mystery that surrounds the history of Machu Picchu, it’s baffling. When you add in the questions about how it was constructed, what everything was used for, and where everyone disappeared off to, it becomes even more marvelous. There’s nothing better than a good mystery!

View from the Inca Bridge hike. Still a little foggy (because I was there at 7AM), but still spectacular

This picture is confusing and kind of seems like it should be rotated… but this is right. I promise. The Inca Bridge is at the bottom of the light rocks on the left. See the gap in the rock path and the boards that are placed across it? The Incas could move the wood to block off this entrance into Machu Picchu if they ever needed to.

On my hike back to the main part of the ruins… I just couldn’t stop taking pictures!

Archeologists have concluded that the site was an estate for one of the Inca emperors, which means that it was basically a full city on top of the mountain. About 1000 people could live there, but they think that 5x that number was required to build it. Also, they’ve only recovered the skeletons of about a quarter of that. The stone is a type of granite that was taken straight from the site, and they don’t use any mortar to hold it all together.

Question #1: How was it constructed? The site is way bigger than I realized. I think that’s what everyone says after they go, and even though I’m telling you that right now, you’ll say the exact same thing if you go. There’s the main part of the town that you always see in pictures (which even that is bigger than you realize… all of those pictures are taken from quite far away), but then there are terraces EVERYWHERE that were used for growing crops. Carving out the terraces, cutting, moving, and putting together the millions of rocks, and building a town of that size must have taken an eternity. The methods they used for cutting rocks so precisely and moving the big ones around are still somewhat unknown. It would be an amazing feat even if it WASN’T on top of a mountain, but it is. Oh yeah, I didn’t mention that you have to take a half hour bus ride (or a 1-1/2 hour hike) up the mountain from the town. It is not located for ease of access.

There are also pathways that wind through the surrounding mountains. There’s no way the full extent of them is even known because at this point, the unexcavated ones are buried under almost 450 years of plant growth.

Let me just say that there’s a reason why one of the theories of its origin is aliens. It’s so fantastic that aliens start seeming like a realistic explanation.

Okay, this one was a mini-tripod/self-timer picture. There was no one around to take it, really! I’m standing in the quarry area.

Question #2: What was it used for? Archaeologists have general ideas about the site as a whole and the functions of some of the different buildings, but for the most part, it’s just speculation. If you hire a guide while you’re there, they’ll tell you all sorts of things about what this rock means and why that room has 5 windows and 4 niches, but the truth is that not much is known for sure. There are a lot of assumptions, but there are so many questions that it makes you wonder how much you can trust them.

I decided to skip the guide and take my sweet time wandering through the buildings, making up my own stories as I went. I did have a guidebook which was nice because it helped to draw my attention to some of the more interesting features, but I still got to move at my own pace and just soak in the wonder of it all.

Did I already take this picture? Yes? Ehh… I’ll take it again just in case.

Ruins and mountains, ruins and mountains

Question #3: Where did everyone go? When the Spanish invaded in the mid-1500s, they took out much of the Inca civilization. However, they never made it to Machu Picchu. Its existence wasn’t brought to the attention of the general public until 1911 (it was looted by a few German explorers, and some local farmers knew about it and were even farming on some of the terraces prior to that year). So what happened to all of the people? Did they all go to fight in other locations? Did they just die out eventually? Smallpox is one guess. Imagine for a second if whatever did happen hadn’t, and there were still people living there when it was stumbled upon. They certainly had the food resources and planting strategies that they needed to survive. How cool would that have been?

My thought about every picture: “this is kind of the same… but kind of different so yeah, I’ll post this one too.”

The more important buildings had more precise stonework, though none of the buildings used mortar so they were all pretty darn precise. These though… How on earth do you get such tight joints with such massive rock pieces?

Anyway, those are the three main mysteries that I allowed myself to mull over as I wandered around and tried to make sense of it all. I didn’t start out wandering the ruins though. First, I walked up a pile of stairs to look over the site and get that iconic Machu Picchu view. From there, since I was already halfway up, I did two of the hikes that are included in the entrance ticket, one to the Sun Gate, where the people who hike the Inca Trail enter the site and watch the sunrise, and the other to the Inca Bridge, a piece of wood terrifyingly placed across a big gap in the rock path that winds around the mountain. You can’t walk across it anymore because someone fell off and died, and after seeing it, that doesn’t surprise me one bit. More like why did they ever let anyone walk across?

The classic Machu Picchu picture. I actually asked someone to take this, rather than using my usual mini-tripod/self-timer technique.

A cool view of the terraces and the beginning of the hike to the Sun Gate

My big hike of the day was up Machu Picchu mountain. Nothing at Machu Picchu, including the place itself, is called by its Inca name. No one knows the Inca names. Machu Picchu is the Quechua name for the mountain next to the town, so when it was “discovered”, the explorer just called it by the same name. All of the buildings and such that are named were named by him. So like I was saying, everything is complete speculation. Anyway, I bought a separate ticket to hike Machu Picchu mountain, one of the two mountains next to the site. The other one, Huayna Picchu, is shorter, but the hike is more of an adventure with ladders and precarious ledges. I decided to skip the death-cheating hike and save it for if I ever go back with a hiking buddy.

The hike up Machu Picchu mountain is just hundreds and hundreds of stairs. And more stairs and more stairs and these stairs that are so steep you probably want to use your hands too. Every time you turn a corner, you’re faced with another dead-end wall of rocks. Oh wait. Those are stairs. About 20 minutes in, I found a friend! She and I bonded over our pain and the fact that we were moving at similar speeds. I was thankful to have someone to struggle through it with me. The only thing worse than a super intense hike with minimal oxygen is a super intense hike with minimal oxygen where you don’t have anyone to complain to. In hindsight, it was a definite mistake to do the Inca Bridge and especially the Sun Gate hikes before the mountain. I basically set myself up for failure because my legs were already tired when I started.

My hiking buddy speeding ahead on the Machu Picchu mountain hike

MORE STAIRS???!!?? Yes. The answer is always yes.

But I eventually made it! This is after about 45 minutes of relaxing at the top, which is the only reason why I’m smiling and not bright red.

Anyway, I’ll spare you the quad-killing, air-gasping details of the hike and just say that it was an hour and a half of me strongly considering turning around and being fairly certain that the mountain was never going to end. I got to the top just before the clouds blew in and completely obstructed the view of the ruins. Can you think of anything worse than finishing that horrible hike and then not even being about to appreciate the view? I had about 20 minutes before we were sitting in a cloud. That’s all I needed though. I found a nice wall to sit on, ate some pretzels, and soaked in the awesomeness.

Everyone gets booted off the mountaintop at noon, so I headed down through the clouds, a moment of rain, and back into the scorching heat. They say that you need to prepare for every type of weather when you go to Machu Picchu, and it’s true. I went in the morning wearing a sweatshirt and pants. I took my sweatshirt off early and changed into shorts on my hike to the Sun Gate. At the summit of Machu Picchu, it was freezing and drizzly, so I put my rain jacket on. Once I hiked down a little, it was hot again. Then, in the afternoon as I was wandering the ruins, I must have put on and taken off my rain jacket at least 5 times as it rained and stopped and rained and cleared up and rained again.

See that mountain enshrouded in clouds in the middle/right of the picture? It looks like the top is actually cut off in this picture too. Yeah, that’s the one I climbed

Me and my hiking friend with a very important rock that supposedly looks like some important animal but actually looks just like, well, a rock.

I think this is hilarious. There are a bunch of places where there’s some ginormous rock that I imagine the Incas looked at and said, “LOL I’m not tryna move that!” (loose translation) So instead, they just left them in place and built the walls around them. The way they fit everything together is amazing no matter how many times I think about it.

I spent the last couple hours of my visit exploring the ruins. I reencountered my hiking friend, and we had fun walking around and making things up about the different ruins and their uses. Sometimes it’s nice to have a friend! It was especially perfect because she and I were on the same page about taking our time and wanting to see everything. Sometimes things work out so much better than you could have imagined!

After finishing up at the site and heading back down the mountain to the town, we considered meeting up for dinner and ended up just showering and laying immobile on our beds at our respective hotels. I could have guessed that was what was going to happen.

Can you imagine having this view every day?

But seriously could it be any cooler? Sorry I can’t express myself any better but I’m sitting at my computer, days later, still geeking out over how amazing the whole thing is.

Ollantaytambo

Posted on March 28, 2017August 19, 2020 by Lark

After my day of visiting ruins, I decided to spend the next day… visiting ruins. I had a train to catch to the town at the base of the mountain where Machu Picchu is located (Aguas Calientes), but the train didn’t leave from Cusco. I had to find my way to Ollantaytambo, a town about two hours away, and get the train from there. At this point, I was a colectivo expert, so I wasn’t worried about it. I asked at the hostel where to find colectivos to Ollantaytambo, and off I went! If you even manage to get close, you’re golden. Once you find the right street, there are a bunch of people calling out to you, trying to get you to get in their van. You just pick one, confirm a million times that they’re going to the place you want, and then decide to trust them and get on.

I just thought this was funny… This person is unloading crates of eggs from this truck – and is standing on a layer of them! I never really think of eggs as something you can stand on.

The ride from Cusco to Ollantaytambo is beautiful but also somewhat vomit inducing if you have any issues with carsickness. The road winds up and down, back and forth through the mountains and valley, and view after view was like nothing I’d ever seen before. I was trying to play it cool so that I wouldn’t give myself away as a tourist, but on the inside, I wanted nothing more than to press my face up against the window, unblinking for the entire 2-hour ride so that I didn’t miss a second.

You can see Cusco to the southeast of Ollantaytambo and Machu Picchu to the northwest.

I got to Ollantaytambo about 2 hours before my train left, so I decided to check out the ruins in town. There are, of course, a million different ruins that you can visit in and around town, but I went to the biggest one that used to be an Inca fortress/temple. It’s one of the only sites where the Incas actually won a battle against the Spanish invaders.

My first thought when I got inside was, “UGH… stairs.” The whole thing is just terrace after terrace, leading up the mountain to where there used to be enclosed structures. The roofs were all thatch, so there’s obviously nothing remaining of those. They’ve been restored in some locations, but for the most part, you’re left to imagine the ruins in their former glory for yourself. There are also some giant stones (I read somewhere that they’re 50 tons, but I can’t vouch for the accuracy of that) that were used in the unfinished temple construction. They were brought over from a “nearby” (5km away…) quarry, and the trip to the site includes a river crossing. You can use your imagination to try to figure out how they managed to move them on dry ground, but to cross the river, the stones were brought to the edge and then the water was diverted around them! That’s crazy!

Those big rocks in the distance behind me are the (maybe?) 50-ton ones that had to get moved here somehow from the quarry.

It only took a couple ruin visits for me to realize that the Incas were masters of beautiful and hard-to-reach sites. This fortress is no exception. When I finally managed to wheeze my way up the stairs (remember that this is at high altitude! I’m not just completely pathetic), I was treated to an incredible view of the town, the valley, and the surrounding mountains. The best way to view the mountains is from another mountain!

I’m sure I’ve said this before, and I’m sure I’ll say it again… but I love the Inca stonework! I think it’s so pretty

I had plenty of time to check out the main part of the ruins, even with my “stop and take the same picture 100 times” breaks. I still wish I’d had longer though. From the fort, there’s a hike you can do to a temple nestled up higher in the mountain, and I’m sure that it would have been worth the extra climb (if you consider another pile of rocks, another view of the same mountains, and some solitude worth it… which I totally do). Plus, it would have been cool to have a time to see some of the other ruins around town.

This is the view at the beginning of the hike up to the temple that I didn’t have time to do. Looks like it would have been a pretty awesome view, huh?

Casual stroll along a path that wraps around the mountain

Here’s a building with a recreated roof, so keep this in mind when visualizing how the rest of the ruins must have looked

Oh well, I had a train to catch, and there was no way that I was going to miss it. There are a few different ways that you can get to Machu Picchu with the most common being either trekking (aka walking A LOT through the mountains) or taking the train. I think a trek would be awesome, but with my limited time in Cusco, I decided to spend it doing other things. Despite requiring far less effort, the train ride was still incredible. It was like something straight out of the movie “Avatar”. I’ve said that about other places in my life, but I’ve never meant it more than I do right now.

Let me try to set the scene. There are cloud-topped mountains towering over the train on either side, plus a river running beside the tracks (the water is very brown but no matter). Everywhere you look is green and full of life. You pass from the low highlands ecosystem at the beginning of the ride into the cloud forest ecosystem. I didn’t even know that was a thing, but can you think of a more mystical name than “cloud forest”? In reality, it was just as mystical as in theory. I’ve never been on a shorter 2-hour train ride. Seriously I could have stayed on that train for another 10 hours and been totally okay with it.

I want to know who you have to bribe to get assigned the front seats!

But alas, we arrived in Aguas Calientes, and I set off to find my hostel. It’s the off-season at Machu Picchu right now, so I lucked out and got my own room, complete with all-natural “raging water” white noise from the river outside. Perfect for getting lots of sleep!

[Check out my other post about Ollantaytambo HERE.]

The Travel World

Posted on March 28, 2017March 14, 2019 by Lark

After my mountain biking struggles, part of me just wanted to call it a night at about 6PM. The other part of me was saying, “Lara, you only have one more day here. Make the most of it!” My Machu Picchu hiking friend and I made plans to meet up for dinner, and afterwards, we were going to hang out with one of my friends from the tour I went on my first day and one of her other Machu Picchu hiking friends.

With this trip, I finally understand the whole solo travel thing. I kind of did it in London, but I was meeting up with old friends throughout my time there. In Cusco, I didn’t know anyone. I had no prior connections to work with. I was forced to choose between making new friends and just not talking to anyone for the entire week. Talking to strangers and making friends in those settings is hard for me, but I did it. And you know what? It wasn’t so bad. More than that, I met some really cool and fun people.

The travel world is weird. It’s filled with people from all different life situations and stages. First (in my non-exhaustive list), there are the families. In general, that travel world runs completely separately from the other traveler world. Families interact with other families, and that’s it. Next, there are the friend pairs and friend groups. Some of these are short-term travelers (aka normal work vacationers), some are doing longer trips during a school break, and a few rare long-term travel pairs. Usually though, the long-term travelers are going solo because chances are slim that two people have life breaks that coincide.

That brings us to the third group. The solo travelers. This group was a complete mystery to me before this year. I didn’t realize that some people do actually go on solo short-term vacations. Like they have a job, they take vacation, and they go somewhere by themselves. I think that’s incredibly brave. Also, how cool? You don’t have to put all of this pressure on finding someone to travel with. You find somewhere you want to visit, and you just go. Then, there are the solo long-termers. This group is the biggest mystery. Do they have jobs? How are they supporting all of this travel they’re doing? I can’t judge them though. Out of all the groups, I guess this is the one I most fit into. That’s something I NEVER would have predicted. I would never have pegged myself as a “solo travel kind of person”. Whatever that means.

Before, I didn’t understand how people did it, but after a night of hanging out with my travel friends, into and back out of my life in the blink of an eye, it makes sense. Solo traveling doesn’t mean you’re alone. It means that you’re given a unique opportunity to connect with other people from around the world. Now, I have friends in so many different countries!

You can learn a lot about yourself from people who are just passing through your life. Many of the people I’ve met are incredibly insightful. They’re only going to be around for a short time, so they’re more open and sometimes tell you things about yourself that you didn’t realize before. Some seem to know you better than the people who have been in your life for years.

That night, with three people who I had known for at most 3 days and at least 5 minutes, I had the feeling of hanging out with old friends. I know it doesn’t always happen that way, but the fact that it EVER does is incredible. We had three hours together, and then that was it. We’ll never all be together again. Likely, even just two of us will never be together again. But for those three hours, we connected. We laughed together, imparted wisdom, and when it was time to go, we said goodbye and good luck. There’s something beautiful about touching someone’s life for just a second and having that second be one that they remember and carry with them when they go back out into the world.