Indian food

Last month, when I was in Dharwad, Rajani's mother cooked a delicious dish for us. I enjoyed it so much that I asked for the recipe. Rajani sent it to me and I promised myself to try it before publishing it.

For half a kg of fish, you need:
- 1/2 a coconut (grated)
- 10 red chilies :)
- 1 onion (chopped)
- a piece of ginger an inch long (chopped)
- 1 small green chili (chopped)
- oil
- 1 tsp tamarind paste (squeeze a lemon if this is not available)

Saute onion, ginger and green chili in the oil till the onions are transparent. Blend together the coconut, red chilies and tamarind paste with some salt to a paste. Mix the paste with the sauteed onions, ginger and green chilly. Add some water (based on how thick you want the gravy to be) and bring to a boil. Add the fish and boil till the fish is cooked.

So, I tried this yesterday. Obviously I did not have all ingredients available so I had to adapt a little bit. I didn't have fresh coconut to grate but I used a can of coconut cream. I did not have the proper red and green chilies so I replaced the 1 Indian green chili (very strong) by 2 Israelis green chilies (it was too mild I think I needed more). For the red chilies I had some dry red chilies that are ok, and added a chunk of a red bell pepper and a bit of red chili powder. I did put the cream and the red stuff and a tea spoon of tamarind paste in the blender and got a nice orange cream (but I did put a little bit too much tamarind). I used a sea bream (dorade in french, ajaj in Arabic and denis in Hebrew) for fish as it is one of the best and cheapest ones available here. I used olive oil (I don't have any other oil anyway).

So in the end it looked very different because of the orange tint given by the bell pepper, was more sour and less hot than the original dish. I preferred the original version but I believe my version was more adapted to the western taste and still tasted really good (next time I'll put less tamarind and more chili though).

Oh and as I had too much coconut cream I did a "punch coco" with it and some rhum, vanilla, muscade, cinamon, and sugar.

Independance Day

So this was Independance day here. During this period many people put a smal Israeli flag on their car. I saw yesterday a car climbing the Carmel road with 2 Hezbollah flags. I was surprised by such Huzpah and was expecting something bad to happen when the car stopped at a red light in the middle of cars harboring an israeli flag. Well, nothing happened, people saw it and barely paid attention.
I wonder what would happen if someone was putting a Al Qaeda flag (does that exist) on his car near ground 0 in NY.

Last night Ravi and Omer joined me to watch the fireworks from my balcony, but we got so busy drinking, eating and playing sheshbesh that we missed it :).



Next day I had the traditional independance day Barbecue at Pierre's house where Cathy's razor blade slipped on my hair :).

Everest

This morning wake up at 6:45, we drive from the
monastery to the base camp and from there we hiked to
the 2nd camp 4 km away (and higher). The sunrise on
the Everest was absolutely stunning.



The sky was deep
blue, the air was freezing (as much as in the bedroom
without heater :) and the mountain gigantic, making us
forget how high we already are. The trip took us
a few hours and only 2 of us could actually go, the
other suffering from the lack of oxygen. I was pretty
happy to realize that I wasn't loosing my breath and
that I did acclimate rather quickly.




Makalu, Everest, Cho-Oyu and this time blue sky !

I wanted to stay there forever but the driver
reminded me that I had to be back to Lhasa in 2 days
so we drove back to Shigatze, not without piercing a
tire on the way. That's when I realized that the car
was not the driver's, without me he was unable to find
the tools to lift the car (with the fact that he
didn't really know the road, afterwise it looks a bit
scary:).

Going to Everest base camp

This morning we leave Shigatse for Everest base camp, but unfortunately the
Chinese need some additional paperwork to go there
because they don't hold a foreign passport (...).
After one hour of administrative offices bumping we
got all the paperwork done. I was actually impressed
it was much faster than in India and despite the need
of a middle-man it didn't seem to need any corruption
to get the thing done fast (I was really impressed by
the experience of seeing Rajani go through the process
of getting an international driving licence in India).


Morning view of Shigatse


Morning blue sky



The road starts to get narrower and narrower, and
loose more often its asphalt. We buy the permits to
enter the National park where Everest is, pass one
last police control and ... here start the gravel road.
It took us 3:30 to reach Everest Base Camp, going
through a pass over 5000m, a few isolated villages and
driving on a "tole ondulee" surface. I didn't think a
car can get any more shake, vibrated, and even broken
piece after piece that we got.


Cloudy, but that's it ! Three 8000+ peaks on sight.

However the last hours
the view was fantastic, we could see all the chain of
snowy spikes over 8000m from the Makalu to the Cho-Oyu
and with the Everest in the middle. The weather was
getting more and more covered (it is the same
everyday, the sky is pure in the morning and clouds
form from the sun on the snow, and all condensates and
disappears the next night) but we could still see very
far.
Once arrived we chatted with a few tourists from Hong Kong around a hot boiler. Most of the people
went to bed in their freezing room early, but I stayed
close to the heat until late and chatted with Natalia,
a Russian businesswoman traveling alone after a
business trip, on her quest to see the summit of the
world.

From Lake Namtso to Shigatse

This morning starts my trip around Tibet. I rented a 4x4 with 2 other Chinese for a 4 days trip.
This is going to be an interesting trip as the driver
doesn't speak a word of English and the 2 Chinese are a
deaf-mute couple that doesn't speak English either :).
We head first to Namtso Lake, a few hours later we
stop at a pass (at 5000m) with an impressive view.



Then we go down and follow up the river that flows in
Lhassa to Shigatse. Sometimes the riverbed is only a
few dozen of meters wide between rocky cliffs
sometimes it is a dozen of kilometers wide leaving us
under the impression of being on a plateau. All day
long great scenaries.


Houses near the river


Meeting tibetans along the road

We finish the day with the visit
of Shigatse monastery, and even after seeing the giant
gold statues and autels in Lhassa I got impressed by
the 21m high all-gold buddha statue they hold in a
chappel.


My travel-mates in front of Shigatse monastery

I had dinner with the couple and we went through 5 or
6 pages of paper doing little drawings to tell each
other's stories. I realized that it was actually
easier to communicate with them than most chinese as
they understood much better the meaning that could
hide behide a gesture or a small drawing (other
attempts to communicate with signs with chinese people
had been really inconclusive). I learnt a few obvious
sign language "words" and we are able to hold
conversations.

Visiting temples

Today was the monastery visit day, but not only. April
is supposed to be the driest month of the year in
Lhasa but it started to snow in the morning. So we
visited the Potala under the snow, then moved to the
Drepung Monastery where we met again the group of
French we met yesterday in the Jokhang. We finished
the day with the visit of a third monastery: The Sera.


The Potala palace after the snow


Drepung, back alley under the snow


Snowball battle at the Drepung


We ate at the restaurant situated inside Drepung, the dumplings were quite good but the kitchen was not for the faint of heart.


Sera monastery


Inside Sera

One thing strikes the visitor, these monasteries are
gigantic and did hold thousands of monks, but nowadays
they are almost empty (but not deserted). Drepung used
to have 10000 monks and now only has 700. It is
supposed to be related to the Chinese occupation as
since the Dalai Lama left no monks can be ordered.
The rich interiors of the chapels contrast with the
simplicity of the monks housing (and the extreme
poverty of the rest of the population). At the feet of
each statue lay a few bills result of a donation, and
as there are thousand of these statues, you are under
the impression that the chapels grounds are really
covered with donations.

Lhasa

Early morning flight to Lhasa, our "tour" organizers were perfect (you need an organized tour to get a permit to Tibet, however there are a lot of those fake organized tours where they just get you a ticket and the permit which let you enter Tibet without preparation), on time and we had no problems :). Once landed we took the bus to Lhasa (1 hour and a half away from the airport), got stopped on the way like all the traffic because of some official using the road at the same time, and admired the great scenery. It took us around 2 hours to acclimate to the 3800m altitude, 2 hours where we were slightly uncomfortable but fine, and now we just walk slowly to keep our breath.
Once in Lhasa we walked all around the city for 5 hours and visited the Jokhang temple (the holiest of Tibetan temples, in the heart of Lhasa). I start to really like Tibet.


The Jokhang


Inside the Jokhang


The view on the Potala Palace is fantastic.

I bought my return ticket :( and started to plan for a trip to the Everest base camp, it seems that I will team up with 2 young deaf-mute Chinese (that don't write English), I have the feeling that communication will be interesting :).

Panda !

We went early morning to visit the Giant Panda Breeding Research Center in Chengdu, and we enjoyed the sight of those lazy @#$es eating bamboo all day and their cuuuuuuuute babies playing around. Evgeni couldn't resist and payed what was needed to hold a baby in his arms (and get pictured doing it).



Let me badmouth pandas a bit. It has the stomach like other bears, made to digest meat. However it is lazy, really lazy, but very clever : meat runs bamboo doesn't let's eat bamboo. However because bamboo is not meat it only digests 3% of it. Solution ? Eat more bamboo, up to 15kg a day, and save energy as much as possible by having 12 hours a day of naps. So you would think that this explains why it is disappearing ? Nahhh, on the 1000 kinds of bamboo it accepts to eat 25. And as if being picky about food wasn't enough, it's picky about girls. Giant Pandas have really hard time finding the perfect partner. "Enough", I hear you say, well that's not all, baby pandas are born half developped (premature compared to most mammals), and that 200g thing is very fragile, so fragile that barely half survive even with an army of chinese doctor watching them. Finally mothers have pretty low maternal instinct and it usually takes them a few babies to figure what to do with it. So now you understand why it's disappearing (ok I agree that overpopulation in China is kinda helping as well). But it's so CUUUUUUUUUUTE !



We spent the rest of the day visiting the science and industry museum and the "computer street" (Akihabara or Mongallet in Chengdu).



I spent all the evening at the hostel drinking beer listening to an old french routard playing with a guitar and singing all the classic french songs (From Brel to Noir Desir with a lot of Renaud and Brassens). A young french couple joined us and we chatted all night :). It felt good.

Chengdu

The rain is definitively tracking us, Chengdu was gray and rainy when we arrived, however it didnt really last so we visited a Boudhist Zen temple and the center of the city. The city is ultra-modern, full of banks (more than in Beijing it seems) and most of the 2 wheelers have an electric engine which is scary for pedestrians because you don't hear them come as they are even more silent than a standard chinese bike. We also met that guy downtown:

Lijiang

After a lazy morning we took the noon bus to Lijiang. The road was really nice but unfortunately there was still a layer of clouds around 4000m hiding the snowy peaks supposed to surround us. The hostel we went to had a really nice view towards the old city of Lijiang. The old city is beautiful, however it is now entirely dedicated to tourism. The little streets are full of pricy restaurants and souvenirs shops.






Naxi girls

The evening got rainy, disrupting our plans to go hike in the tiger leaping gorge the next days, and finaly the cheap ticket prices for the next day and really expensive ones for the rest of the week helped us making our mind. So it's not that Lijiang wasn't nice, but we decided to move to Chengdu the next day.

Dali

We arrived early in the morning in Dali and took a cab
to the old town. Unfortunately the weather wasn't still
at its best and the suposedly stunning scenary was
remaining under cover.
We rented bikes and went around to watch the 3
pagodas, climb to a boudhist temple and go down near
the lake. The city is nearly at 2000m and the
surrounding mountains at 4000m. The sun showed himself
enough so we can enjoy a bit of the scenary and get
nicely sunburnt :).



We wandered all around the nice old city, took a lot
of pictures, had once again great food, and came back
to our hostel to prepare the next day trip to Lijiang.

On the way to Yunan

We had a last round of shopping :) in Yangshuo (baught
some warm cloth as it seems it'll be cold for all our
trip and some flash for the camera). We got a ride
back to Guilin airport where our plane to Kunming was
delayed (they were fixing one engine:).
We managed to get a bed in the night train to Dali and
killed time in a small restaurant not far from the
train station. It took us 45 min to order as noone
was speaking a single word of english but we ended up
with really good food.
The neighbourhood of the train station was like most
trainstation end up in most of the places... quite
unfriendly, Evgeni was almst running despite his 30kg
load to try to avoid kids and beggars.
In the train we chatted for a few hours with an old
painter from Beijing that was on a trip around the
country to find inspiration. He showed us the thousand
of pictures he took already of which some will become
very nice oil paintings.The man had been around the
world and was a very interresting character.

Yangshuo

We did a bike ride to the next town, then took a bamboo boat ride from a nearby village back. The scenary was fantastic and the ride nice but the weather was freezing cold (windy and 10 ish), we were almost happy to have to ride the bike again just to get warm. We got a bit scared the first time our boat went down one of these one meter wall (the bamboo raft was barely above water with the two of us two bikes and the girl steering it).








On the way back home we tasted a few fruits at the local market and went for some shopping before dinner. I couldn't resist and finally tryed dog meat (not much to be said about it though, not great not bad).
Tomorrow afternoon we're leaving for Kunming then Dali.

Arriving in Yangshuo

Long long day,we took the plane to Guilin from Beijing at 7:30 and arriving 2:30 before the flight wasn't really needed :) but we wanted to be on the safe side. Then a long car ride to Yangshou where we learn that the moonsoon started ... yesterday :(, the temperature dropped from 28 to 9... Well despite the gray and rainy weather I admit that the scenaries here are some of the most incredible I have ever been given to see. I'll flood you with pictures of limestone spikes covered by forest and just above peaceful rivers and ricefields.


I start to like it here :), unlike Madras on the beach where I attracted swarms of young boys that want to be on a picture with me, here it's swarm of young girls !!! We'll see if they send me the pictures :).


We met some Israelis downtown that recognized us as israelis (still have to figure it out how, guess is that our backpacks gave us) and invited us this evening for Pessah's Seder. We joined in and the dinner was quite enjoyable.

Forbidden City

Evgeni's birthday :) 26.
We went all around the forbidden city, Tienanmen square, we missed Mao's corpse as it's closed sundays though ;), then we visited the summer palace and finished by an evening at a chinese opera. Pretty busy day as you see, it's easier to describe how we were tired than how we were amazed by everything we saw. The chinese emperors definitely had taste (and not only for young girls).

The Forbidden city


Tienanmen under not that heavy surveillance :/.


The duck


The summer garden


The opera

One of the hard task of this trip is to dodge all the tourist traps that you attract like a magnet. From fake watches, to fake paintings, through scenic taxi rides and guides with an accent while speaking english that would make Jacques Delors cry.
We also had a birthday lunch at a fancy Pekin duck restaurant, yummee.