Great Wall

En route for the great wall ! We picked up the tour that looked like the least crowded one and we were right. We hiked for around 4 hours on the wall joining one touristic site to another. The weather was great, a bit cold and windy but very clear. It was beautifull, mostly empty outside of our group and a few Mongol girls that hiked all day with us to sell us postcards. We're dead tired, I am not accustomed anymore to hiking for kilometers on stairs in the wind.




We finished the day at the food market in Beijing. There you can find skewers of pretty much anything, raning from lamb to scorpions, including snakes, lizards, larvas, strawberries, etc... We stared at those stands in awe and were pretty much conservative (besides my snake skewer I admit).

Arrival in Beijing

Made it to Beijing, after a long line at the immigration I jumped in a cab and met Evgeni at the door of the hostel (quite lucky). I was surprised coming from India how ultra modern and western most of Beijing was looking. My cab driver had a small medallion hanging from his rear view mirror with Mao's face on it, and 20 cm away his steering wheel cover was full of dancing Mickeys. I wonder what the old Mao would think of this association.
Our hostel is situated at about 5 minutes walking from the forbidden city, in a quite old area, right by the 5 stars but at a chinese price. We're pretty happy about the choice (thanks Dana). As soon as I arrived we left for a short walk which ended up lasting close to 3 hours, as we were always spotting something that was driving us further away. We hiked all around the forbidden city and Tienanmen and ended up so late that the restaurant we wanted to have dinner at was closed.

We had dinner at a small wonton place, ordered for like 4 people and payed the price of a falafel, beer included. Evgeni is not yet very accustomed to the local food so ends up eating vegetarian. Good thing I am with him so I order plenty of stuff and he can try and stick with what he can eat :).

Leaving Bangalore

I have been self mailing blog entries every few days because blogger is blocked in China.

Flight decided to leave late from Bangalore, I caught my Beijing plane in Singapore by -15 min (yes it waited for me). I love Singapore Airline I have to admit: lots of leg room, very tweakable seats, and the cutest flight assistants ever in a gorgeous dress. Now I understand where the reputation of fligh assistants came from :).

Dharwad

I spent last weekend in and near Dharwad, Northern Karnataka, thanks to Rajani that took me to her hometown for the weekend. She definitely saved me from a boring weekend in Bangalore, instead this has been a weekend of discoveries. Among them many fruits (and other foods) discoveries. I had 3 premieres between chiku, djam (this was the fruit to guess), and acerola. Why speaking so much about food beside my big tendency to like everything associated to it, Rajani's mother tried to make me explode with lots of great discoveries (I am hoping to get the reciepes :).

We went around Dharwad, a quiet "little" city (little according to Rajani, 750000 population according wikipedia) and visited the very nice university. I was amazed by the way Indian administration "works" when Rajani went to get her international driving license (keywords here are middle-man and bakshish).

On sunday we went to a jungle resort on the way and not too far from Goa. We hiked in the middle of plantation and in the forest, swam in the river, napped in a hamac, went on a boat tour and spotted a few kingfisher flying around.


Just before leaving some official came in the resort with his personal escort and friends, and we piggybacked on their bamboo raft tour.


This weekend was not about visiting some known place of India but it was definitively the best weekend I ever had in India.

Another guess

Before I tell you stories about last weekend you'll have to guess what this is:
(and yes this is edible, remember who is posting).

Gone for a month

I am leaving for India for 2 weeks of work and then taking 2 weeks vacation in China. I'll try to post some news here.
/wave

Bonjour c'est pour un retrait !

Je suis tombe sur cet article sur Libe:

Un homme d'une soixantaine d'années qui fréquente son agence bancaire une à deux fois par jour depuis un an, ça met en confiance. Jusqu'au jour où il s'évapore avec 20 kilos de diamants d'une valeur estimée à environ 28 millions de dollars.

Chapeau ! Ca me rappelle des parties de jeux de roles tout ca :). Arsene Lupin est donc sextagenaire :).

Yehiam Fort and Zfad

This week I was still a bit jet-lagged so I ended up waking early and falling asleep early every day. This morning it didn't fail, I was up at 8... on a weekend day. So for once I had a whole weekend day in front of me I decided to go on a tour to Safed (Zfad). I looked up quickly where I could stop on my way and saw that in my previous trips I failed to visit Yehiam fort. The place was very nice as you can see on these pictures so no regrets.




In the end I arrived in Zfad, I guess a little too close to shabat as everything was mostly deserted. I was surprised by the amount of construction and roadwork going on and was wondering if it was resulting from last summer rocket fire (but I was expecting work to be done so I don't know). Anyway I wandered for some time in the quiet streets of the old city from an artist gallery to another.





Later on I stopped on my way back in En Kamounim to buy some cheese, I guess it's my french roots, I can't skip on good cheese. En Kamounim has a farm producing lots of goat and sheep cheese and has a restaurant where you can try all of their cheeses, it is located north west of the sea of Galil on the road to Karmiel.

Hot stuff

She told me hot stuff, I couldn't resist... and invited her home.

I messed up my blog's template

I tryed to fix it and couldn't get back the old template working, so I put this instead. And it's not that ugly !