Just a few notes about my flight experience:
JFK Airport: While sitting in the lounge and waiting on my flight to leave @ 22:30 PM, I called some friends from the airport. Wonder what the weather is like in Delhi. I still cannot fully comprehend the full scale of the adventure I’m setting out to.
Heathrow: So far the experience of with the BA has been more than outstanding and I have to say that they have an excellent bike-on-board policy. No extra charges, no hassle, really worth it. I reserve my final review upon receipt of my bike in New Delhi. But I’m tired, tired, tired (Chris Rock words;) and waiting for my connecting flight to New Delhi in London. The time shifts are messing up my sleeping patterns, and the airport food is not to brag about either. Oh BTW, Heathrow airport is ‘bloody’ expensive, even by airport’s standards of overcharging…
Three more hours of this and hopefully I’ll be airborne by then. The JFK Heathrow BA flight went remarkably well. Got some sleep, food was OK and partly watched the Pink Panther movie with Steve Martin. Loved the emergency seat so I could spread out my legs;)
Can’t wait for India. Will most likely stay in Paharganj, Hotel Downtown, or Vivek. I will have a whole day to get some decent food down, buy train tickets, put my bike together, get some extra sleep and head out in the early next morning to Shimla by train.
Indira Gandhi International: Arrived in Delhi early morning, after waiting for more than an hour I have finally cleared the Immigration and Customs. I paid for a taxi and headed straight to Paharganj.
My first impressions of India:
Driving through Delhi in a cab with fully open windows feeling hot and humid early morning wind in my face quickly reminded me of what India is like: streets full of people, noise of traffic, tea stalls on side of roads, busses full of passengers, heavy smell of car fumes… Despite traveling to India before, it simply overpowers all my senses, again. But in all that chaos I sense energy and vitality that so much characterizes the modern India of today…
June 30th, 2006
Posted by
Rich |
India |
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I wrote this message a few days ago to appear on June 28th (@11:00pm) but Blogger doesn’t allow for post-dated entries to show up properly as I have just realized minutes ago after testing it. And I’m shutting down my desktop tonight, so no posting tomorrow. Oh well, read it with that in mind. Thanks;)
Finally!!! By the time this entry will appear here, I’ll be waiting to take off from the JFK airport. Or, maybe already sitting in a plane on my way to Delhi via London enjoying on-board entertainment, or trying to get some sleep. My next posting will be from India;)
No more preparations, no more worries, if I have everything I will need during the next six months. Now, I have to get by with what I have. On a trip of this scope, things will go wrong here and there. I just will have to deal with it when that happens. But with positive attitude, and a bit of luck, it will always get sorted out. Most importanly, as they say before movies I need to “sit back, relax and enjoy the show”. OK, “enjoy the ride” sounds more appropriate;))) Basically, take a day at a time and have fun… It might take a few days, or a week at most, to get my mind accept new daily realities of ‘just’ riding a bike every day;) Eventually, it will. It has no other choice. But I know that once I start pedalling among the mountains of the Himalayas, I will enjoy every single day of it, rain or shine…
Just one more thing to add and remind myself (and others): Flexibility in planning is everything!!! Have a ‘rough’ trip plan but don’t over-plan. Leave some room for the unexpected, even embrace it. Many times the true ‘travel’ experiences, the ones we’ll remember forever, happen when we just relax a bit from our over-organized schedules and preparations and let circumstances and chance guide our progress. Enough of my rumblings already;)
Cheers & tailwinds to all of you travelers and cyclists out there. I’ll see you in India;)))
June 28th, 2006
Posted by
Rich |
India |
one comment
Never got a chance to review a copy of the Adventure Cycling Handbook by Stephen Lord. I really wanted to see it before I leave, I guess not. It was supposed to be out in January ‘06, then it has been postponed to mid-April and finally to June. Seems like it is out in the UK but not in the US. At least, it’s nowhere to be found in NYC bookstores. Not even Amazon.com has it in stock (LINK)!!!
If you ever have a chance to watch Michael Wood’s BBC documentary In Search of Myths and Heroes, go for it!!! It is great series. In the second part, Shangri-La, Michael Wood takes on a journey to India and through the Himalayas to discover the mythical place of Shambala, the paradise deep inside the Tibet, which inspired the 1933 novel by James Hilton: Lost Horizon (and the 1937 movie with the same title by Frank Capra). He eventually reaches ruins of the Guge Kingdom and Mount Kailash grounds, both places I like to see on my journey… I love Wood’s enthusiam and fascination.
Lastly, I bought a great paperback to read while in the air or waiting around airport lounges: The Places in Between written by Rory Stewart, a walking journey through Afghanistan during the winter of 2002. (And they say the age of discovery and exploration is dead. Don’t believe it. It’s just different!!) Saw it mentioned first at World Hum and reviewed by Tom Bissell in The NY Times (free registration required, or use Bugmenot.com 
Just from scanning the cover and first few pages, it looks like great read. Let you know later, don’t really want to start it now. I’m afraid I’ll finish it before I get to the airport;)
June 27th, 2006
Posted by
Rich |
Blogging, Preparation |
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These are just a few maintenance tips before going off-line;)
I changed my Countdown Clock to how many days left ’til the end of my trip. Hope it’s not too premature;)))
When searching the blog, I’m using Google Blog Search BETA. It works beautifully, but… I have realized that when I change title of my post after it has been posted for the first time, it will be listed among search results but when I try to follow the link, I get “404 - Page not found”. The only way to get around it, it to go back to Google Blog Search results, find the date of the entry and navigate through the blog’s archived pages to the month of the actual entry. Sorry about it;((( I promise never again to rename blog titles!!!
June 27th, 2006
Posted by
Rich |
Blogging |
no comments
I have no idea if the title of the post is grammatically correct as I don’t speak French;) That’s my adventure ‘tour’ as opposed to the Tour de France race, the greatest cycling event in the world. The annual three-week stage race starts on July 1st, about the same time as my cyclo-touring trip, and I will miss watching and following it. Hopefully, I’ll catch results enroute online;) My prediction: Alejandro Valverde will win the yellow jersey and will ‘ascend to the throne’ left vacant after the retirement of Lance Armstrong!!! I know many cycling aficionados will says that’s a long shot and they favor the more usual suspects of Basso and Ullrich but I’m sticking to my choice;) It’s time for younger riders to claim their place in history. Damiano Cunego showed that by winning another famous three-week stage race in 2004: Giro d’Italia. And Tom Boonen did the same among sprinters by winning many races over the past two years, among them the World Championship in 2005 and some of the ‘Classics’ (world-renowned one-day races): Paris-Roubaix ‘05, Tour of Flanders ‘05 & ‘06. I bet he’ll win the green jersey of the TdF race this year (best sprinter)… In the mean time, I’ll be having some fun (and little of suffering too) on my Tour d’Himalaya;)
For those interested, you can follow the TdF here:
and countless more sport news websites;)
June 27th, 2006
Posted by
Rich |
Cycling, Preparation |
no comments
Just came upon the article in WIRED (July 2006, Issue 14.07) about new high-tech trains connecting Golmud with Lhasa. Great pictures too… It’s not online yet. Give it a few days;) I will be in Tibet but, most likely, I won’t be visiting Lhasa and see it for myself…
Anyone interested in China affairs knows already that Chinese are extremely proud to have accomplish this feat. It was one of the Mao’s big dreams to have it built during his lifetime. Official opening ceremonies are slated for July 1st and I’m sure the government’s propaganda machine will make sure the whole world knows about it. The train link has been hailed as an engineering marvel, even the 8th Wonder of the World. And rightly so. Tracks are passing through elevations between 13,000 and 16,600ft requiring oxygen supplies for passengers, and crossing wide areas of permafrost and otherwise unstable ground, necessitating novel building techniques to prevent rails from sinking and cracking. Builders even came up with ‘cooled nitrogen’ pipes spiked into ground to keep it from overheating and melting permafrost… Amazing!!! But it’ll be interesting to see how the project will hold up over the next few years of use and how expensive upkeep costs will be. There are plenty of misgivers proclaiming that within 5-10 years this rail connection will become un-rideable.
Even though it might prove political & economic success, the future social & cultural consequences of the train link are open to wide discussion, even outright criticism. On side side is the official story of ‘faster’ Tibet development and tighter connection to the ‘Motherland’, on the other the increased influx of Han Chinese into Tibet further marginalizing native Tibetans…
In the mean time, here are some links about the project (take your pick):
And Ed Genochio, a cycling overlander on his way from China back to the UK, passed by the train viaduct too (last picture).
I wonder if Paul Theroux who wrote the great travel classic of the 1980s Riding the Iron Rooster: By Train through China will visit again to get a ride???
June 21st, 2006
Posted by
Rich |
China, Tibet |
3 comments
I’m sure everyone who travels a lot has some technology-related tips how to keep blogging on the road. Obviously, if you decide to bring your own laptop, it all becomes lot simpler. I came up with a nice and simple solution. At least, I think so;) Given my mode of travel and places to be visited, it satisfies my needs to be as light and as electricity independent as possible. All I need is to have access to an Internet cafe/bar with a WinXP machine from time to time…
In terms of posting pictures, I can connect my PSD (photo storage device) through a USB connection, browse it like an external HDD and get pictures I need. I will save my pics in JPEG+RAW formats. A basic JPEG, i.e. 1024×768, will be uploaded to my Flickr account and linked to my blog. The best of the rest will be processed after the trip from RAW files. For basic photos adjustments of the JPEGs, i.e. resizing & cropping, or color adjustments, I can use Portable GIMP (see below) which I have installed on my USB stick.
To scribble my writeups, I will use a PocketPC iPAQ (with ThinkOutside portable keyboard) and save my entries on a SD card as text files. Pretty much every blogging software out there allows you to date-stamp entries, so they can be easily pre-dated and shown in proper order on the blog…
The ‘most important’ parts of my setup are the little pieces that interconnect my iPAQ, digital camera and PSD with host computers: a USB memory stick (USB2.0, SD card compatible) and SD flash memory cards which can be inserted into the USB stick and serve as its memory. I need to transfer my files between iPAQ and Interent Cafes’ computers, therefore I have separate stick and memory, rather than the more popular ‘key-chain’ USB sticks with memory already built-in. Besides, I had too many flash cards and they needed to be put to use;) It is also small enough not to raise too much suspicion from owners of the Internet places (Hey, you never know;).
The SD flash card is stuffed with useful selection of ‘portable’ open-source software applications (PortableApps.com): Firefox, ClamWin AV (Anti-virus) & GIMP (Photo editing). The software will run exclusively from the USB memory and doesn’t need to be installed on a host machine. So, there is no danger of leaving passwords and other sensitive info behind. Moreover, as an Internet junkie, I’m quite dependent on my ‘customized’ Firefox. I’m glad to report that it is extremely easy to transfer user settings (bookmarks) and some of my extensions (Sage RSS reader, Greasemonkey scripts) to the portable installation!!!
In addition, I added an almost 90Mbs large;) folder to the SD card with detailed satellite and road maps of remote parts of Western Tibet. The maps can be printed whenever needed rather then carried with me all the time. Plus, it certainly is faster than downloading them later from my Gmail, which already has plenty of emailed info there;)
June 19th, 2006
Posted by
Rich |
Blogging, Equipment, Preparation |
2 comments
