Day Five Alaska - Seward and Hope

 Wednesday Day Five in Alaska -Seward and back to Hope

We woke up when KC arrived at 8:15 telling us he wanted to take us out to breakfast.  OK! Don't need to tell me twice! I was up and ready and in the car waiting before Jams or Jamie were out of bed!  Take me to food!

We had breakfast at place in town called The Goldrush.  Pretty delicious and as they gave me an extra stash of hollandaise I was pretty pumped for my eggs benny.  Jamie had biscuits and gravy (spectacular), KC had corned beef and eggs (great!) and Jams had eggs benny with tomato and bacon (can't go wrong there).  Most importantly, the coffee was strong. We took a leisurely breakfast and then went down to the Sealife Center to meet the fiancé of an old college acquaintance who got us tickets.  (Matt Murphy was my acquaintance, for those of you from UMASS. Murph from Earthfoods)

The Sealife center was GREAT!  Started with some small exhibits of Alaska and commercial fishing, moving into some tanks with local fish and then it opens up to a great touch tank area.  Aside from poking the anemones, I love watching barnacles fan out and try to catch nutrients in the water. That's a gorgeous thing to see if you want to check it out.    By the touch tank, you can look out and see the animals that are being rehabilitated.  Two otters, a baby seal, a bigger seal and LOTS of birds. The woman who got us tickets told us they just got a 3 day old baby otter and a bearded seal!  (don't tell anyone, there hasn't been an official press release yet!) We didn't see either of those things but I enjoyed knowing they were there.

We wandered out into the aviary where there were puffins, cormorants, gulls, and eiders all just flying around.  Some of the gulls literally flew within striking distance of our heads. They look just like your everyday bird but Jamie says he overhead the guy talking about how they are a very rare species that only nests in three places in the world.  They looked like any run of the mill sea gull).

We wandered through the Salmon exhibit (mandatory in Alaska).  There's lots of types of Salmon here. Once the season starts (with King salmon), you can pretty much be fishing some sort of Salmon all the way through September.  The salmon life cycle, as you might know, is interesting. They are born, go out to sea (where we know very little about what they do) and then when they are about 5 years old, they come home to spawn. After which, they promptly die.   When they come back to spawn is when people are doing all the salmon fishing here. On their way home, they go through a crazy physical transformation. One of them develops a gonzo type nose. I'm not kidding - I think it's the sockeye.  Anyway, as they come back to spawn, they stop eating, they lose all the fat stores in their bodies and their meat kinda turns to mush. You can really only eat them as they begin their adventure. This surprised me because as they swim upstream they get redder and redder but, while salmon meat is red/pink you don’t want the salmon you catch to be that color.

After Salmon, we went downstairs to see the big tanks and watch the sealions, diving birds and seals from underwater. Dang-sealions are big! They are more closely related to bears than to dogs. They have ears, really long whiskers and are massive.   The male Stellar Sea lion (the ones up here) can get up to 2,200 pounds. THAT'S MASSIVE. It was captivating to watch them circle around. (also a little sad).

At that point we were just about at the end of the center and so after scoping out the smack of jellyfish (yes, a group of jellyfish is called a "smack") we wandered out.  At this point, we heard a story about a baby walrus that was brought to the Sea Life center and it was so young and sick and alone that they had to organize 24 hour cuddle sessions for it. For weeks!   How adorable! (and also sad).  

After our sealife center adventure we wandered around Seward a bit more. We stopped into the Seward hotel and met Robby, the manager.   There were lots of stuffed bears and Alaska things. The original was built in 1905, survived the earthquake and the fire. The new side was built in the 80s and they’re open all winter.  Mostly, it seems, because they house a lot of the railroad personnel. And they have little trinkets that tie them to the railroad too. The bell on the desk came from the railroad depot and the big bell on the floor was from the rail station and it used to ring when a train came into the station.   

Next, we went into a random gift shop that was Russia Themed but had lots of Alaska stuff.  Russian stuff makes sense as Russia was the first nation to claim Alaska but the small Peruvian dolls and Scandinavian keychains and Atlanta Georgia Jewelry - I had a harder time making the connection. Anyway, there were great carved stone figurines, lots of Russian dolls and various other trinkets. Smelled a bit like patchouli but looked like a swanky gift shop so that was another hilarious incongruity.  

Next, we crossed the street to the original Bank Building -Brown and Hastings. Those two came up for the gold rush and became good friends and opened some banks. They decided they needed a move and so went up to Turnagain arm and Knik arm areas and anchored themselves in the mudflats and opened a store/bank.  They called it "the Anchorage" or rather, people referencing where they were going called it the Anchorage and as they were the only thing around, it started to reference the whole area and the name for Anchorage was born. The bank then became the Bank of Alaska.

We had Gelato at the Sweet Darlings Candy Shop - Whiskey Cream, Brownie and Peanut Butter (KC had added in Vanilla).

I chatted with Cliff in the attached gift shop where he tried to pitch the "Men of Seward" calendar and then we went to Ray's Reusables and chatted with Ray.  He's trying to make a go of a reused retail store in Seward. His old shop burnt down 5 years ago and he didn't want to end on that note so he started anew! I hope he can make it work but unless he figures out how to sell things on the internet, he's not gonna get very far.

Continuing on our full adventure of Seward, we went down to the pier to see if Kenai Fjords National Park Visitor Center was open (it wasn't) so went to Kenai Fjords Tour Company.  It's owned by the same company that KC works for (Pursuit) and we took some time looking at all their wares and trinkets which included some crazy whale, walrus penis, walrus tusk and mammoth bone carvings.  

Afterward,  we stopped at the Visitors center where I got an absurd number of pamphlets about the Kenai peninsula. (I’m sure they’ll all just sit in a pile until I throw them out).   We finished up our shopping, dropped KC off at his work/house and then went back up the Kenai to spend the night in that little cabin in Hope.

Day Four Alaska! Hope - Seward

 Tuesday Day Four in Alaska  Hope to Seward 

We woke up this morning to finish our ride down to Seward. 

We didn't stop too much on the way down. We got out at the top of the Turnigan Arm Pass but mostly we just cruised on down to Seward. We started by picking up an old Ice friend at his work, the Roadhouse.  He's the executive chef there and is setting things up for the coming summer.   No employees (and certainly no guests) other than the managers and caretakers so he was free to come and hang out with us!  We cruised the mile downtown to look at Resurrection Bay where we promptly saw some otters and then was told by the guy with Binoculars that we JUST missed the sea lion.  We saw the memorial for the Railroad as Seward is the end of the line and there was a fun memorial for a man I'd not yet heard of in my Alaska Research.  Jujiro Wada, a Japanese American expert musher who was hired to improve the mail trail up to Nome, proving that Seward was a viable option for commerce.   His work and improvement on the trail helped to concertize Seward as the gateway for trade and transportation.  See how helpful monuments are?! 

After walking along the waterfront for a bit we went over to a little Greek restaurant for lunch.  Jamie got the equivalent of a Fisherman's Basket but here, they called it a Gold Mine. It was mostly the same. No clams but yes on shrimp and scallops and the white fish was halibut. Pretty good!    I like to check out libraries in new towns so we walked over to the library and lo and behold! It was rainbow tiled!  The tiles were all blue and purple and green and shimmery! Kinda like a mermaid. It was spectacular! I got a lot of free magazines there (some new yorkers-score!).   

After all our wandering around we were finally ready to head over to Millers Landing where we were going to be staying in a dry cabin.  When we arrived, there were 17 bald eagles sitting on the shore eating a HUGE fish they caught.  And that wasn't a typo.  Seventeen bald eagles. It was SO INCREDIBLE!  (they're like pigeons here) Our cabin was called (still is, infact) the "rocket ship cabin" because it has a cute little belfry on top.  It had two old train cars near by that we went to scope out and then, as we were right by the shore, we walked down to look at the water where we watched a seal play along the shoreline.  After a bit, we got organized to go have dinner (pizza) and then head up to visit some friends of Jams who built their cute little house and are living off the grid. Check out their blog if you are interested and you should be interested because their blog title is pretty adorable. They are really rustic.  5 gallon recyclable toilet, heating water on the woodstove and using a water pump for the shower which is really just one of those big plastic bins that they stand in.  They are pretty spectacularly committed.   https://alaskabode.wordpress.com/

After our visit we went back to our little cabin, KC took the truck and went to sleep in his heated and cozy bed and we settled in for a night listening to the rain and the crackle of our wood stove.  

View from our little cabin -you can see the train cars too! 

Our Little Rocketship Cabin at Millers Corner. 

Millers Landing

Bald Eagles - as common as pigeons

Me, Jams, Jamie and KC!

Jujiro Wada

End of the Railroad!

Resurrection Bay where we saw otters and just missed the sea lion. 

Day Three - Alaska. Anchorage to Hope

Pulled out the Milepost and we started driving!  Took awhile to get to that point though. 

Let me backtrack to Jamie and the Auction.   Antarctica (yes, i've just jumped to the other side of the globe) has a bi-yearly auction of things that are still serviceable but not really useful anymore in Antarctica.  This years lot included a skid-loader, a few snow mobiles, brand-new in-package kitchen knives, kitchen shelving, Big Red Canada Goose Jackets, bunny boots, and what Jamie was looking at- inverters, radio stuff and scientific equipment.    And he won it on auction!  That part, while nerve-wracking as it was an auction, was easy.  The next part - getting it - was less so.  Once won it meant there's 8 pallets of things that he's got to ship back to the east coast and house somewhere.  Figuring out large scale shipping for the first time was a little nerve racking. Ultimately he went with UPS but some of the vagaries included a $6,000 price jump from the online quote, unbelievably rude and unhelpful people on the UPS service line (multiple), finding a place to leave the items for an extended period of time and generally, worrying that all the "i's" had been dotted and "t's" crossed and that you had made the best choice at the least cost.   

So, while I had indeed pulled out the Milepost, the reality is that I spent about 3 hours looking at it before we started driving.  

While waiting, Jeremy and I took a fun trip to get coffee!  Kaladi Brothers is a local coffee roasting company and as Jams had worked on the North Slope he gets a 50% discount. Thank God as 4 pounds cost 35 dollars (with the discount).   When we were there they were getting ready to send out the first shipment of coffee to the Red Dog Mine, the largest Zinc mine in the world.  14,000 lbs as the initial batch.  They provide coffee to the North Slope employees (oil) and have little coffee shops all over Anchorage.  The woman, Margaret, that we visited yesterday made us Kaladi Bros Coffee and then told us that this company was one of the factors in their decision to move to Anchorage. 

As we were finishing up that chore Jamie messaged to say he was finished, had done a headspace meditation to mentally step away from  the stress and was ready for road-tripping! 

Jams and I returned home, we loaded up the car and were on our way! 

Our first stop was 10 miles away but still inside the city limits of Anchorage (bigger then Rhode island, remember?). We stopped at Potter Marsh Boardwalk.  An accidentally manmade marsh that is now home to all sorts of nesting and migratory birds. We assume. It is, admittedly, a little early in the season.  We saw some mallards, a tern and a little bird that Jamie was trying to talk to but he must have offended it because it flew right off.   Most exciting thing at the marsh was a big dead animal that I'm looking forward to watching disintegrate as the season progresses.  

How was it manmade you ask?  In 1917  an embankment was built for the railroad along the edge of the Turnigan arm. There were, however, streams that emptied into the arm and with the embankment,  No where to go and Viola! Marsh!  

Our next stop was a Beluga point and, while beautiful, there were no Beluga's to be seen. A bit early. They come in chasing the salmon and it's not quite the right season for that.  We also bust with the Dall Sheep which we had been promised were always at Mile marker 106.6.  But, no.   

We continued on our merry way surrounded by steep snow covered mountains and following the water. It was spectacular.  

We are currently in Hope, AK.  About 1.5 hours from Anchorage in a swanky cabin being built by friends of Jams in the first Gold Rush Town in AK.   The people that live here (totaling 125ish) still live in the old goldrushers log cabins built at the turn of the century (one before last) and this place truly looks like a scene from "Paint your Wagon" (without the selling off of women and whore houses, of course).  As it's a bit outside the tourist season, nothing is open but I'm excited to see the contrast in the coming months. 

I'll tell you about the cabin we're staying in tomorrow.  Hope all is well with everyone. 

Potters March Boardwalk

Beluga Point

Hope, AK

Begich Visitors Center (and their temporary iceberg)

Anchorage! Day two in Alaska!

Yesterday was another fun day although not a very touristy one.  We started slowly with studying and snacking and connecting with people online.  Always a fun time. One of the people I was trying to connect with, Margaret, lives here with her family.  Two kids, a dog and a husband. I met her back in 2002 when I was driving cross country and we road tripped together for about three days.  Since then, we haven't been in touch but my good friend Meg has stayed in contact with both of us and when she found out we were going to be in the same town she connected us again!  Jamie, Jeremy and I went over there for a reunion cup of coffee and met the family. What a delight to catch up and hear where people have been in their lives.

After visiting Margaret we meandered over to the Salvation Army (we love a good thrift store) where Jams bought some board games and I got a few white button down shirt (per my dress code).  The salvation army here was a lack luster. Lots of bizarre 80s exercise equipment and and pitiful looking furniture. It felt pretty run down and wasn't cheap enough to reflect that. The cashier checks EVERY BILL you handed her.   Every bill. Even $1 bills got held up to the light. Perhaps an indicator for the clientele that frequent that store? Or her idea of the clientele.

Anyway, after Salvy's we tried to visit some friends but they had already gone adventuring for the day so we set off to Kincaid City Park.  Which, is huge. We walked past the sand dunes for the Motorcross track and up and onto the bluffs. It was another spectacular day. Again we could see the Turnigan Arm and Fire Island but we were right up on the coast this time.  We strolled for a bit past very healthy people out with their dogs. Lots of runners and walkers and LOTS of dogs. I feel like every group out there had a dog. The tree cover was all pretty low and stunted and, right now, still brown.  In fact in corners of the park that managed to stay hidden from the sun, they still had snow.

Out in the parks, the people walking around are exactly what you would see in any park where people are out exercising. Mostly white, relatively fit people wearing appropriate clothing (gear, puffy jackets, Solomon trailrunners) and they all seem to be  dog owners.

In town, however, Anchorage is a pretty diverse area.  It has one of the most diverse neighborhoods in the US and has the top 19 most diverse schools - diverse includes white people in this instance.

That’s pretty impressive and it surprised me. That being said, while racially and ethnically it’s pretty mixed, it seems like it’s economically pretty divided.  I’ll do a bit more research on that. Anchorage is huge, by the way. Bigger than Rhode Island. 1900 square miles. Rhode Island is only 1200. Population wise, though...not so much the same.  RI has about a million people and while Anchorage only clocks in at about 270,000.

I digress.  After our hike, we decided that a brewery adventure was in order.  We started at King Street brewery with a flight of 7 beers so we could get a full sampling. I liked them all, generally. Their IPA were a little to bitter and their New England IPA had too little flavor but they really nailed it with their Pilsner, Blonde, Hefe, and Stout.  All Delicious. They don't serve burgers there but they do have a “Grizzly Dogs” hot dog stand out front and we had a reindeer dog to tide us over until dinner. Pretty delicious.

Next we walked about 30 seconds over to Anchorage Brewing Company which had lovely atmosphere, fire pits, allowed dogs and had great art but I was not overly impressed with their beers. They all tasted a bit sour (and to the chagrine of the bartender - I tried 7), they were all super high in alcohol content and compared to King Street, expensive.  Our ice friend Dugan and our new friend Joe came to meet us there and after a beer we left to go back to King Street.

Joe’s partner Doug met us there to say hello and give us all the deets about the Cabin that he’s going to let us stay in tonight and after another round of beers we went to the an adorable little 50s style diner called City Diner.  

By this point in the day it was 8:30 and while the sun was still streaming bright and it felt like 5pm we retired to the apartment so Jams could get some school work done and Jamie could scheme on his shipment of electronics from California. (more on that later).

Tomorrow we are off down the Kenai peninsula!

Other random things:

• Sunrise today was at 6:36 and sunset is 9:22.  They gain about 6 minutes of sun a day.

• Secretary of State William Seward bought Alaska from Russia for only .02 an acre totaling about 7 million in 1867.  (109 million today). At that time, Alaska was being used for the fur trade and as that trade was losing profit, the were ready to give up Alaska.

Jams, Jamie and I out hiking in Kincaid Park!

Sanddunes at Kincaid Park

Margaret and I!

Kincaid Park

Beers at King Street!

Kincaid Park - you can see the track on the left of the shot

Anchorage Alaska - Day one!

ALASKA!  

Here we are.  I've gotten a job with Premier Alaska Tours for the summer and I'll be doing coach tours (off the cruise ships) from Seward up to Fairbanks.   Jamie is here during his April vacation and we'll have a week hanging out with our friend Jams until he leaves. 

I'm trying to review each day and write it down. I'm hoping it will help me solidify information for my tours as well as help me get a running list of "things here that I have done" to talk to my tour guests.

This isn't really edited as I need to move on to memorizing things about the various cities but this is what happened yesterday if you want a snippet! I'll be *fingers crossed* doing this every day for a bit to help me focus my studying. We'll see how it all works out!

This morning we went to Glen Alps Overlook in the Chugach State Park.  After checking out the parking via a webcam (not kidding), we headed out. We drove past the hilltop ski public area to get here.   We started with a trip to the bathroom (thank god) and then walked out to the overlook were we got a spectacular across the Cook Inlet. We could see both the Turnigan arm and the Knit Arm from there.  We could look across the bay 110 miles and see MT Redoubt 10,197  (Iliama 10,000ft and Spur are the two other volcanoes we could see).  All three of those are at Lake Clare national park. 

After admiring the view, we went to hike the Powerline Trail. Literally a powerline walkway. While out there we saw tons of people walking their dogs, a cross country skiier, two fat tire bikers, and also some hikers who had surprisingly hiked UP the mountain to then ski down it. 

Afterward we cruised to downtown Anchorage to go and visit the Holy Family Church. The co cathedral of Anchorage (with the Our lady of Guadeloupe) but we couldn’t get in.  The outside was  a bit lackluster. I was hoping for a big old exciting church but it was simple construction.  Built in the 1940s in the Art Deco style this became the seat of the archdiocese in 1966 and was upgraded to Cathedral.   As we were unable to get in, I can’t tell you anything about the inside and as I’m disinterested in going to Mass today...it’ll probably be awhile. We killed some time by going over to the Cook Hotel. There were SO MANY eateries in the Cook Hotel but before that we stopped into the little gift shop inside and talked to Barbara. She’s moving to Reno for her retirement as her husband has died but she’s worried about finances.  She decided that she would have to pay a lot of money to fix up an old place so she might as well but a new place and get everything she wants. She also told us that Anchorage is expecting an influx of 15,000 Chinese tourists this year AND that they are getting more cruise ships than this year than years past. The shop was adorable.  Lots of lovely little trinkets including Mammoth ivory, soapstone carvings and miniature totems.   It was a delight.   Aside from this store there was a great photo gallery, a chocolate shop, a figurine/sculpture shop, another trinket shop and, like I said, SO MANY EATERIES.   At least 4 on the bottom floor and there’s another on the 20th. 

After we left the Cook Hotel we stopped at Fred Myers (other grocery stores? - Carrs, Walmart, Costco, Three Bears) for shrimp, Romaine lettuce, and beer (in the same building but another store).    We were looking for Singha beer as we were going to a Thai dinner for the Thai New Year but they didn’t have it. When I asked the guy he said that he didn’t think there was anywhere in Anchorage that had it.  Lots of local craft brews though.   We bought a local beer that had been named after some friends of Jeremy’s and then went off to our dinner with a few ice friends.  

Kristin and John hosted dinner (Antarctica peeps) made lap moo, pad thai, tom yum soup, egg rolls, mango sticky rice, coconut custard and had lots of beer. It was all together too much food.  We met two other ice people that we hadn’t know,  and then another one that we had worked with, Dugan, arrived and we had a nice little reunion!   Dugan is here working as a surveyor.   He told me lots of fun little things about his hometown, Homer AK.  

For example: 

Jewel comes from there and her family stars in a reality TV show called : Alaska, The Last Frontier (but she’s not in it). 

The Time Bandits, a boat from the deadliest catch is from Homer AK. 

Homer boasts that it’s “at the end of the world” because it’s at the end of the highway that leads out to the over the Kenai Penninsula. 

 

It’s also the “Halibut capital of the world”. 

Thus ends Day One In Alaksa.

View from our friend Jeremy's porch:

View from the porch again:

Our friend Jeremy!

View of Anchorage from Glen Alps

Pano from the same area:

Powerline Trail (note the powerlines)

Jodhpur and Jaisalmer

Jodhpur and Jaisalmer 

Out and about on our own in India.   How very different from the quiet catered experience we had been having up till now. Also,  Gujarat, while it has some tourists, didn’t have many westerners and didn’t cater to that group quite the same way and for that reason was a lot more laid-back for us. 

Jodhpur and Jaisalmer are tourist destinations and as such you get a lot of people selling you things, talking to you, and following you on the streets.   After awhile, you get used to just walking by people and ignoring them completely. This is the best way to handle the situation.  Unless you actually want to talk to someone,  do not turn your head to engage them.  If you do, you are inviting a discourse of whatever it is they have to sell you.  I got a bit better at this practice than Jamie did so I found it a bit easier to walk around. 

Regardless of these issues, both cities were really great fun.  Jodhpur had an amazing fort with an excellent audio tour.  We spent 4 hours there just wandering around looking at things.   The next day we went over to the Jaswat Thada, A memorial one of the kings built for his wife. It was a very beautiful and peaceful marble structure, and we found that it and the grounds were wonderfully maintained. There we met two Australians and we all took the auto ride over to the one World Heritage site in the city, the Umaid Bhawan Palace.  It was built over a period of 14 years in an effort to provide work to people during a famine (oh capitalism).   Unfortunately you can’t go into it unless you pay 3000 rupees (around 45 dollars) or make a reservation at the bar which will cost at least 1000 rupees (15 dollars) and then you can’t see anything else.  Staying there can cost 2000 USD!   So we trekked up there,  looked at the antique car museum, gazed at the outside of the building and wandered back.  As we only had two days in Jodhpur we got back in time to grab some dinner and head to the train to take us to Jaisalmer. 

At the train station we met a charming Spanish couple (Alesh and Lisa) that ended up sitting with us and then staying at our hotel in Jaisalmer, the Tokyo Palace.  We spent the time traveling around with them and one of the adventures we partook was to go on a Camel Safari together (the word safari is used very loosely).  

Jaisalmer is in one of the driest areas of Rajasthan, and popping right out of the middle of the desert is an almost magical golden sandstone fort.  Built up over the last 500 years or so this walled domain is still inhabited by 3000 people or so and filled with shops, restaurants, and guesthouses.  The sellers hawking stuff was a little less than Jodhpur (probably because their are less people in the city) but still enough to encourage a brisk pace up the ancient stone ramp into the small city.  Once inside we found two attractions, a self guided audio tour of the palace (nice but didn’t hold a candle to the tour of the Jodhpur fort/palace), and a collection of Jain temples.  The Jain temples were absolutely stunning.  It was one of those places that just desensitizes you to the level of complexity that went into its construction.  The entire thing was covered in ornately covered stone, I think the only smooth surfaces were the floors that we walked on.

As mentioned before, we also did a desert tour by camel with our new friends from Spain.  This apparently is the thing to do in Jaisalmer, and it seems every hotel is offering some variation of this.  We thought why not and we booked through our hotel.  We all jumped into a car and drove off out of the city for a half hour or so before we stopped off at a local musician village - another one of Jaisalmer’s claims to fame is music.  We said hello to the villagers and then quickly made our destination, a small gathering of camels by the side of the road.  We each were paired with a camel - getting on a camel is pretty easy, as they start of kneeling on the ground.  Getting up for the first time is a bit of a surprise as they do so in two stages - first their back legs and then their front.  And camels are tall!  It was a smoother ride than we expected and our saddles worked out fine for the four of us.  We rode for perhaps an hour until we arrived at a small camp in the sand dunes.  We hung out for a bit while our guide put together a fire and made us some dinner.  It was quite nice and peaceful, and we enjoyed seeing the stars with very little light pollution for the first time in a while - the only draw back was that another camel tour had included with it music and dancing and it clearly had some amplification equipment as we could hear it the whole time.  We were not perturbed, we still had a wonderful dinner in the desert starlight. At some point, Shannon started asking if camels run and our guide said, yes, indeed they do. So he took her out for a wild, dark mildly terrifying run on a camel.  After all that excitement,  We made our way back in the dark (camels have great night vision apparently!) and drove back the hotel for around 10pm. 

Next stop: Delhi.  We are currently (hopefully) nearing the end of an epic train journey from Jaisalmer to Delhi, one that was supposed to leave at 12:45 in the morning and arrive at 10:00PM, but left at 2:30 in the morning and we are afraid to even guess when we will arrive.  Adventure!  Luckily we are in an “AC2” Sleeper, which is pretty spacious and comfortable enough.  More to come.

This is the view from our hotel of the fort in Johdpur.

This is looking down at Jodhpur from the fort.  The blue houses are everywhere.  I've heard a few things on this point.  One was that the Brahmans painted their houses blue. Another was that anyone would paint their house (or door) blue for luck and to ward off bad spirits. Whatever it was and for whatever reason it is now-I like it. 

While I was listening closely to the audiofile, I can't quite remember what this room in the fort was used for. Entertaining of some sort I'm sure. Don't you just love it? I really enjoy the stained glass windows. 

Jamie. Just relaxing after all that learning.

This is that palace, Umiad Bhawan, that I mentioned above. Built to feed people during a famine.  Viewed from the fort. 

This is kind of an hilarious story.   We accidentally locked our key in our room. The hotel doesn't have extras, nor does it have a master key.  When we told the front desk their faces dropped.  Then they asked if we had an open window, to which Jamie replies that we do, but that no one could fit through the bathroom window.   Oh how wrong we were.  

To get into our bathroom window, the guy had to climb out of this room which was, thankfully empty.  Notice the tiny tiny ledge he shimmied across.   Unbelievable. 

Desert Watermelons! 

These are our camels. I'm riding ATM and Jamie is on Hot Shot.  

Our camels stopped to eat what our guide described as "camel chocolate". 

I really like these shadow shots. 

Alesh, Lisa, Jamie and Myself at dinner. 

These figures were on every wall in many of the rooms of the Jain Temples.  I really liked the sign.  

These two men are cleaning the temple from top to bottom.  He's holding, essentially, a flat head screw driver and chiseling off the dirt on the walls. You can see the difference from above and below his tool. 

The picture, above, is of the far right hand corner. You can see him reaching into that corner now. They started at the top and still have another 6 feet below them. 

This is the view of the Jaisalmer fort from our hotel. This fort, unlike others I have visited, is still inhabited and still intact.   You walk through the gates of the fort and BAM, it's liek a mini city.  It's pretty incredible.  There's temples, cafes, restaurants. It is chock-a-block full of people and things. 

Interestingly, when I say it is still intact, that's a questionable statement as there are some serious issues of disrepair, mainly from water seepage.   Everything in the fort is now modernized, including water pipes-something that didn't exist when the fort was build in the middle of  desert back in 1156.  The water seepage has created some serious issues with the footholds of the fort and consequently there has been some collapse.   This, of course, is exacerbated by the thousands of people like me who come to visit the fort yearly.