Category: Uncategorized

CGOAB Link and map

Date: 2017-10-12/13 cycling days
Start: Chania
End: Athens
Distance (km): 32
Climbing (m): 350
Route description: back roads to the Chania port and back roads to Tsirikos Bikes
Road condition & traffic: on Crete, roads were fine, but traffic was moderate to heavy. In Athens, roads were sketchy, and morning rush hour traffic was very heavy, though some of the back roads we found were fairly quiet.
Weather: cool, mostly sunny
Notes:

“The map says there’s supposed to be a road here.” I think Steve is getting tired of me saying this, as our quiet rural street quickly deteriorates into a rough boulder-strewed walking trail for 200 meters.

Overall, OpenStreetMaps (and the corresponding OsmAnd app on my phone) have had excellent data about streets throughout Europe, but there are some random errors, such as this street segment that was marked as “paved” on the map but is nowhere near.

We had a whole day to kill in Chania; our hotel let us check out late around 2pm, so we took our time packing our bikes, did some shopping, and hopped between some cafes and restaurants, waiting for our 11:45pm overnight ferry to Athens.

I picked up a new athletic jersey for under 10€ that looks more like a normal shirt than my red cycling jersey but is made of wicking material to keep me dry and cool. This combined with some lightweight hiking shorts that we picked up in Istanbul, and we stand out a little less, though I think this will end up being futile in India, as we are going to stand out like sore thumbs regardless of what we do.

The ferry was delayed 3 hours, but we were allowed to board when the ship came in; we got on around 11pm. Every dark corner was strewn with sleeping bags and pads, so we were thankful that we had been able to get a private inside cabin. They even gave us a whole 4-bed bunk room to ourselves, even though we’d only reserved a 2-bed room.

Neither of us will ever get used to sleeping during travel, so we both slept fitfully and woke up feeling like we hadn’t slept at all. Still, the cold fresh air, hectic traffic, and 200 meter urban climb through busy Athens side streets kept us alert on the 20km ride from the port to Tsirikos Bikes.

The guys are the bike shop have been amazing. They respond to emails promptly, and they told us they’d be happy to service our bikes and would have bike boxes for us ready to go. We pulled all the bags off our bikes, and did a little shopping. We both added some padded underwear to our clothing, which now allows us to ride comfortably wearing normal street clothes.

It was weird to see the bikes with nothing on them, so naked! They hosed them down (they were filthy) and took them in the back, and we bid our farewells, carrying all of our assorted bags and bike gear in two huge heavy-duty plastic bags meant for holding wheelsets. It was strange (and nice) to check into a hotel and not have to explain or find a place for the bicycles.

One of the bolts on my handlebar bag is threatening to become stripped after being tightened and loosened many times, so I asked the guys at the bike shop if they might have a matching bolt. They sent us to a street in downtown Athens, right around here: https://goo.gl/maps/t2JmgxvqwQn They said there are shops that sell nothing but bolts!

The next day, we did a city tour and then went hunting for this bolt. Amazingly, even though the bolt is an odd shape with an odd head that has to fit into a recessed hole, I found a shop that had the exact one I needed! It’s just 2-3mm longer than what I have, but it’s correctly threaded and even has the same 3mm head.

I spent a frustrating 2-3 hours on the phone with DHL. My replacement Project Fi phone is stuck in customs in Athens, and there is all sorts of paperwork to fill out to authorize DHL to release it from customs for me (plus a hefty fee). The DHL rep insisted that she hadn’t received the form, even though it showed as sent in my email program. I sent it again 4 times, and still nothing. Finally, after I broke down emotionally a bit on the phone and found someone who spoke Greek to talk with her, the attachment magically appeared, and she said that it might be delivered before our flight to India, but she can’t guarantee it. I’m getting by just fine with a replacement phone and a local SIM card, but it would be much easier to have the Project Fi phone that “just works” in any country. So I really hope it arrives in time.

So the next few days we have lots of errands, including finding a replacement stabilizer post for me (that broke in Turkey), finding a disposable duffle bag to carry all our stuff onto the plane, getting some malaria medication, etc.

We are wrapping up our Crete mini-vacation, waiting for our ferry to Athens tonight, so I wanted to post a few photos from the past week.

The center of the island is full of olive fields and other farmland.

There are small lagoons scattered all along the coast, including this famous one at Agios Nikolaus.

Our amazing hotelier Niko in Tsoutsorous took very good care of us for two nights and told us about his fond memories of serving in the Navy in San Diego.

We spent some time at Ride Cycle Culture Cafe in Chania, a cool cycle shop/Cafe.

There are many small shrines like this scattered along the roads.

Minoan ruins against an incredible backdrop.

Dramatic cliffs popular for sunset photos and swimming.

Kitty cats everywhere.

Can we take them with us?

Our private beach view for dinner.

Cool doors in Rethymno.

Tourists flock to take sunset photos.

And here’s mine! LOL

Famous fountain in Rethymno.

We climbed a few switchbacks…

We’ve been leaving our mark in random places.

Here too…

Bike stomach!

We still have bike stomach, but actually now we are actually gaining some weight. Here’s why:

Loukomades, delicious fried dough balls drowned in honey.

“Cretan breakfast”. I can’t imagine any Cretans eat this on a regular basis, but it’s got a lot of local ingredients. The pork (apakia) with the eggs is really delicious, and the dakos (crusty break with tomatoes, olive oil, and feta) is tasty.

Tirokafteri, a spicy mix of feta and chilis. This is one of the better ones; often it has been made with too much mayonnaise.

Snails are popular here and very tasty.

Greek coffee made the traditional way in hot sand.

Raki is a liquor made from the remainder of the grapes after wine is made. Very similar to grappa in Italy but very many families distill their own, and there home made ones are the best.

CGOAB link and map

Date: 2017-10-09
Start: Rethymno
End: Chania
Distance (km): 68
Climbing (m): 600
Route description: mostly on A90 and E090 (except cut through Vamos), beach access roads when possible
Road condition & traffic: traffic on A90 was moderate to heavy. There was a shoulder most of the way, but it was often overgrown. Traffic was generally courteous though. Traffic on beach access roads and on the ride through Vamos was very light. Near Chania, traffic was very heavy.
Weather: sunny 21-28C, light tail wind
Stops: lunch at a beach restaurant in Kalyves, sightseeing in Chania old town
Accomodation: Hotel near Chania
Notes:
It’s hard to believe, but this was our last full-day ride in Europe!! We will have a little more riding to get back to the Chania ferry port and then to the bike shop in Athens, but otherwise, we have no other cycling planned. It’s 3 full rest days, followed by an overnight ferry to Athens, and then we drop off the bikes for servicing (mostly routine maintenance).

So our tour of Europe is over! I was thinking back to the many fond memories we’ve had from our first day riding out of Lisbon with a tailwind to our mountainous trek through Spain to weeks of coastal riding in France and Italy to amazing adventures in the Balkans and Turkey.

Yesterday, I spent a lot of time going over our India plan and filling in the details, figuring out specifically what things we will try to see and updating our route plan. Of course, this all could change, but I feel a lot better having a better idea of our ride than what we had before, which was basically, “yup, follow the coast from Mumbai to Kolkata”. Now we have some specific sights and activities we’d like to do along the way, and reading about them is making us excited and easing our anxiety about India.

I also spent a lot of time on the bike today thinking about destinations, just as I did on the first day of our European tour. I said then that we’d already reached our destination, being out there on the road. Every day we are where we want to be on our bicycles, and it’s not at all about what city we are planning to stop in that night or how much further we have to go. I’ll admit that sometimes that has been a difficult mental shift. It’s so easy to think in your head, “I’m riding to Zagreb today”. When I did that, I’d spend my time looking at my mileage and upcoming hills and how much time until we got there. But I began to stop myself when I was thinking that and instead say, “I’m exploring Croatia.” With just that simple mental shift, I suddenly ignored my bike computer (except for directions!), looked around more, rode more slowly, looked at passing landscapes and houses, took more photos, and said hello to more people we passed.

There are so many times in our lives where we focus some kind of destination, whether it be a job promotion, the end of the work day, saving enough money to buy a new car, getting off a plane after a flight. If you let these things consume you, then suddenly all time disappears and you lose what’s happening in the present. (Just ask Adam Sandler in the bad movie Click! LOL!)

It was a pleasant ride, nice and cool to begin, but not too cold. Stunning ocean and mountain views, and quaint little towns like Vamos. Chania was very busy by the port, and the downtown area was full of tourists and restaurant pushers and expensive hotels, so we headed west, where several beaches stretch out for miles and there are lots of options for hotels. Most hotels are giving off-season rates, so we got a great deal on a room with an ocean view and decent wifi, where I can relax and do some work, route planning, and maybe swim at the beach!

CGOAB link (with map)

Date: 2017-10-07
Start: Kalamaki
End: Rethymno
Distance (km): 73
Climbing (m): 1200
Road condition & traffic: very good, paved the whole way. shoulder in some spots but very small or none in others. light traffic for the most part, but got a little heavier towards Rethymno.
Weather: 22-34C, varied with elevation. mostly sunny, side/tail winds for the most part, not as strong as the past few days
Stops: cookies/water stop near turnoff to Agia Galini (gas station). lunch at To Sideradiko, excellent! details below
Accomodation: AirBNB in Rethymno Old Town using a coupon we’d been saving
Notes: After my last post, we went for pre-dinner drinks at a beach bar just steps from our hotel and watched the sunset while we played some backgammon. Met two women from Germany who had taken a spontaneous 10-day trip to Kalamaki and were on day 2, chatted with them for a bit.

We asked around about moussaka, and heard good things about the restaurant next to the beach bar, Aristidis Taverna, so we gave them a try, and it was indeed quite good.

Slept well despite a few mosquitoes (our room had a mosquito net, but we chose not to use it!). Had a yummy breakfast at the bakery next door and a Greek coffee back at the beach bar.

The sun was back out along with the heat, though as we climbed over the hills from south Crete to north Crete, it got a bit chilly in spots. The traffic was light and the scenery was beautiful, more barren than I expected in this area, but it was a difficult ride with all the climbing. Starting to regret being lazy in Greece the previous two weeks, as our legs have lost some fitness!

We came across a small taverna and decided to try it out. We were the only guests at 2pm for lunch, though soon after a French couple sat down next to us. When we arrived, the chef (owner?) Niko called for someone to help us, and a woman came out and said to come inside to see the dishes. Fresh on the stove, she showed us 6 different pots with different kinds of stewed meats and vegetables, plus several pans of baked items. We chose the chicken with egg noodles and pork with leeks, plus a piece of spinach pie.

A sign on the restaurant explained (in English, so I guess this is somewhat of a tourist place) that Niko cooks all the food fresh daily and much of it is from local farms. We were both very impressed by the meal; the spinach pie was the best we’ve had in Greece so far, by a mile. And the chicken and pork were excellent. They gave us raki after the meal, and I tried just a sip because we had another hill coming up, and it was also one of the best I’ve had in Greece.

The bill was a bit more than we expected, but I suppose that’s because the sign is in English. I wish that, like we did in Croatia and Turkey, we had learned how to find the truly local places. But in Greece we have been lazy, and Greek tourism makes it very easy to be lazy, so we have mostly been to the places that target tourists. Still, it was one of the best.

We continued on to Rethymno and really enjoyed the thrilling descent into the town. We passed a few other cyclists on the road today; one guy was coming up the hill on a racing bike faster than we were descending. It seems Crete has a few local cyclists.

After checking into our AirBNB, we explored the city. It’s more touristy than we expected, but nothing at all like Santorini, so we are enjoying it. We had a dinner of mezes at several different places and enjoyed walking around randomly after dark, stumbling on a basketball court with kids playing and riding bikes as well as an alley with art galleries and a photo exhibit.

We will take another rest day tomorrow, as we only have about 70km more to Chania, where our ferry leaves on Thursday. I expect we will spend the day exploring the town, and I may spend some time looking for work and/or brushing up on my skills.

Here is what I was thinking as I climbed the 400+ meters up a huge steep hill this morning, looking at the radio towers on the even-taller hills…

Picture this… Dystopian future, date: circa 4000 AD. Our modern democratic society of 2017 has collapsed and entered another dark ages, but it’s gradually recovering, and people are discovering our artifacts.

Exhibit at the top of a mountain: “Humans of the Ancient Democratic Civilization were very superstitious and religious. It was commonplace for a chosen few to climb to the highest peaks in their region to plant this odd-looking totem. It was expected that such a tribute to the heavens would grant their community supernatural abilities to commune with friends and relatives anywhere in the world instantly.”

Just how many historical artifacts have we misunderstood or lost the ability to understand today?

Or maybe I just drank too much raki last night.

CGOAB link

Date: 2017-10-06
Start: Tsoutsouros
End: Kalamaki
Distance (km): 71
Climbing (m): 900
Route description: country roads through the hills
Road condition & traffic: Road was in excellent condition, though no shoulders almost the whole way, but traffic was almost nonexistent, so it didn’t matter. One small section was dirt road through an olive farm, fairly hard packed dirt/gravel, just a little bumpy.
Weather: 23-32C, mixed sun, clouds, and some sprinkles
Stops: gas station near Sternes for refreshments and to put on rain gear, horrible taverna for lunch, should have known by the English signs and pictures
Accomodation: Hotel Kostas 30€
Notes: Except for the beach at the beginning and end of the ride, you could have thought you were riding through inland Greece or even Portugal on this ride, with the rolling hills, endless olive orchards, and small quaint rural villages.

On checkout, we thanked Niko (at San Gregorio Hotel) for his amazing hospitality and his wife’s excellent cooking, and took a photo with him. He really made us feel at home, and it was great to meet someone who used to live in San Diego half-way around the world. I enjoyed his home made raki the night before, so he gave me a bottle to carry with me!

The first climb was killer, up to 13% grades, sustained for 6km (average 8%!). One of the most difficult climbs since Albania. At the top I celebrated with a sip of raki (thanks Niko!).

The rest of the ride was really pleasant, rolling hills through olive orchards and small farming villages. We got a little wet, but just some sprinkles. The place we stopped for lunch was very poor quality food, and a little pricey, but there weren’t a lot of other options on the rural route we’d planned. But there were some adorable kittens that had to be less than a month old.

We made it to Kalamaki and asked about a room at Hotel Kostas. They said they had a double available, but they wanted us to put the bikes in a storage room. With our bikepacking bags, it takes a while to deal with the bags, so we asked nicely to bring them into the room, and she shrugged and said okay.

The weather’s not nice enough to go swimming, so we will go for a drink at a beach bar and do some computer work (I’m brushing up on the latest Google Firebase updates) and reading.

Steve is on the lookout for the best moussaka in town, will update on that later! The last one we had was in Chios and was amazing but too filling!

CGOAB link

Date: 2017-10-04
Start: Agios Nikolaus
End: Tsoutsouros
Distance (km): 92
Climbing (m): 1100
Route description: E090, then Epar.Od. Ierapetras-Pachias Ammou to Ierapetra, then coastal road to Tsoutsouros
Road condition & traffic: Overall traffic was very light, though heavy getting out of Agios Nikolaus. Almost no traffic along the south coastal road. Road was in great condition except for small sections of the south coastal road that was short stretches of gravel, rough concrete, or patched asphalt.
Weather: Sunny 21-31C, strong wind from the North
Stops: Ierapetra for lunch at a small place near the water for souvlaki pitas
Accomodation: San Georgio’s Hotel 25€
Notes: An incredible day of cycle touring, though the hills were a bit steeper than expected on the south coast (14-15% grades in places), and we had to walk some of them.

We found a cafe for a morning espresso and checked out. I asked the hotel manager about riding along the south coast, and he confirmed that there is a road following the coast all the way from Ierapetra to Tsoutsouros that we could use. I had originally thought we’d have to go inland from Myrtos and then come back out to the coast around Keratokampos. So I updated the route on my phone and GPS and found that it meant 200m less climbing, sweet!

We stopped in Ierapetra for lunch and asked a woman who was selling boat rides where to get the best souvlaki. She pointed to the place next to her and said it’s the best because the meat is fresh. So we gave it a try, avoiding the more touristy options overlooking the water. The souvlaki pita was good, and the tirokafteri was okay and for 11€ for two of us, quite a good price. Washed it down with a can of Alfa beer, and chatted with the woman a bit more. She’s from Romania and comes to Crete to work during season to sell boat tours of the nearby islands. She said it’s off-season now, so she mainly just gives advice to tourists walking around like us, and she has taught herself 5 or 6 languages! Indeed, we heard her speaking better French than me to a French couple walking by. This winter, she’s looking forward to reading more books in different languages to improve her skills. We told her about our trip, and she said “Bravo!” and said it was nice to see that we’d also given up the traditional life for one much more enjoyable on the road.

After lunch, we rode out of town, and I was surprised how industrialized the area was west of Ierapetra, with lots of businesses and greenhouses scattered along the landscape and lots of garbage along the road, which we haven’t seen anywhere else in the Greek islands. As we got further from the city, it became cleaner and less industrial, but the greenhouses continued all the way along the coast.

We passed a few small fishing villages and resort towns, some beaches with a handful of people, some deserted beaches, and a scattering of nudist beaches. Now this is the kind of quiet beach life we’ve been looking for! The road continued with some very steep 100m-200m climbs. With all the time off the bike, these took a lot out of us, and we started talking about maybe a rest day the next day if the Tsoutsouros lived up to our expectations.

When we’d asked a few locals about Tsoutsouros, the react varied from “meh” to an unconvincing, “yeah it’s nice”. It was described as a small fishing village with a decent beach, which sounded perfect to us, as it would be quiet.

When we arrived, it was exactly as we’d envisioned it, and since it was off-season, we had the pick of pretty much any hotel on the shoreline, many with ocean view rooms still available. We settled on San Gregorio’s and the owner of Taverna Anna next-door greeted us and called out the owner, Niko, of the hotel, who showed us a room with a partial sea view and agreed to let us put the bikes on our private balcony. And just 25€ per night, 10€ less than advertised online! Perfect! He offered us some appetizers and we had some beers overlooking the ocean, and he told us about his time in the navy stationed in our home town of San Diego in the 90s.

Later, he said he was making dinner for his family and that he would make it for us if we’d like, so we enjoyed a local meal of stuffed peppers, bitter greens, and tzatziki, along with some ouzo that I drank too much of! So with my hangover the next morning, we decided to stay an extra night and lounge by the beach!

I’m going to try to start doing a daily blog again as we begin to cycle in areas less commonly traveled by cycle tourists (e.g. India) in order to share our experiences with other cycle tourists and our friends/family back home. I will give this a try in Crete and see how it goes.

CGOAB link

Date: 2017-10-03
Start: Heraklion
End: Agios Nikolaus
Distance (km): 69
Climbing (m): 700
Route description: A90 / E090
Road condition & traffic: Car traffic near Heraklion was moderate. Pedestrian traffic was heavy along some parts of the north coast. Once we left the coast, the A90 had a nice shoulder, and the E090 was really pleasant low-traffic cycling through small towns. Roads were overall well paved with some small areas of potholes, patches, and heaves.
Weather: Very windy (mostly tail/side winds), mostly cloudy, 21C
Stops: breakfast in Heraklion at a nondescript waterfront touristy place for breakfast
Accomodation: Ikarus Hotel 29€
Notes: After nearly 2 weeks off the loaded bikes (we’ve been having a mini-vacation island-hopping in Greece), we finally began a 10-day tour of Crete. It felt great to be on the bikes again and also away from the over-touristy islands. We enjoyed Paros and Naxos, but Santorini and Mykonos we can only take in small doses. We found Heraklion to be a bit of a dull, gritty port city, and the north coast (east of Heraklion) to have many sections of super-touristy stretches by the beach, but we arrived at the lagoon in Agios Nikolaus, it instantly felt comfortable. Apparently it used to be a party town for the Brits, but it’s since become more sedate. We saw a cruise ship in port and heard a club playing music later that evening, but otherwise, it was pretty tame and quiet. We checked out a hotel with a straight-on ocean view first, but he quoted us 55€ despite it being listed for 30€ online, so I told him we’d rather go elsewhere. We ended up at Ikarus Hotel, where the kind front desk manager said the price online was right, 29€ for a double, and said it was no problem to bring the bikes up to the balcony in our room (just watch the walls!). The beach was just blocks from the hotel, not too busy this time of year, but we had a beer and relaxed before dinner. We thought about staying another night, but we were looking forward to riding more and getting even further away from tourists, so we left the next morning.

We’ve been island hopping through the Greek islands for the past two weeks, and our days have been defined by swimming, hiking, lounging, and eating. It’s a good life and a good place to unwind!

So far we’ve visited five islands, from the relatively obscure Chios (our gateway into Greece from Turkey) to the insanely popular Santorini and Mykonos, plus the moderately popular Naxos and Paros. Next up we will do a cycling tour of Crete followed by a week in Athens, where we will focus on bike maintenance and boxing, medical checkups and vaccines for India, and last minute preparations for the next leg of our trip. Oh and we’ll probably see the Parthenon and some other things too!

So here are some of the photos we’ve taken so far.

Chios

An intriguing blend of Turkish and Greek culture, you can order çay alongside moussaka in restaurants where everyone speaks Greek, Turkish, and English. The town center has a mosque mixed in with Greek Orthodox churches.

Ferries

It feels like we live on ferries lately. From Turkey to Chios, then Chios to Athens (overnight in a sleeper cabin), then an all-day layover, followed by Athens to Paros, where we finally rested for a few days.

Here we are as the sun was coming up, landing in Athens.

Damn Technology

My Nexus 5x smartphone spontaneously died while waiting for our ferry to Paros in Athens. It started to randomly lock up and restart. In its last dying breaths, I scrambled to upload all of my important info to the cloud, and literally 5 seconds after I completed the upload, it froze for the final time and never came on again. This is the same problem that Steve had with his phone, and when I called Google, they confirmed it is a known problem affecting many people, and they will replace it under warranty. We had two hours before our ferry, so I found the nearest cell phone shop to pick up a replacement to use in the mean time until I’m able to get the replacement sent to me somehow. The biggest downside to Google Project Fi is that the SIM cards only work with a few US-distributed Android phone models, so I have to get a replacement from the US.

Paros

We instantly fell in love with this island, with its small city center filled with white-washed houses and crooked streets, and lots of kitty cats. We began a routine of sitting by the beach doing absolutely nothing.

Kitty lounging

Sunset

Santorini

Santorini was astonishing, but we stayed too long, and it’s too touristy for us. This is a place where cities are literally built on bubbles. Granted, they are bubbles made of volcanic rock thousands of years old, but if you think about this island on that time scale, it is humbling and beautiful. I’ve heard it said that there are only a few places in the world where humankind has succeeded in improving on nature’s beauty, and I would have to say that Santorini is one of those places. Seeing the awe-inspiring volcanic caldera fringed with white-washed houses glimmering like icing in the sunset is simply mind-blowing.

A chilly sunset dinner

We hiked from Thira to Oia and just barely made it before hiking in the pitch dark.

We took a fun sailboat day trip, and here are some of the photos I took.

The switchbacks from the ferry terminal up towards Thira were not too steep but the traffic was horrible.

It’s always great to meet up with friends from back home!

When in Greece… Outdoor sunset movie theater!

Few clean cars on this dusty island

Ha!

Churches everywhere

Sunrise. I went back to sleep after snapping this photo.

From our hike

More churches

Our bikes  being lazy

Naxos

We took a fun around-the-island bike ride while here and enjoyed seeing the farmland and rural towns on the greenest Greek island.

Marble statue near Appolonas

Old and new technology

The terraced farmland and dozens of churches made for stunning contrast in the landscape

A very potent raki, similar to rakija from Croatia.

Terraced coastline

Lots of bees and honey

Church

Incredible sunsets from Naxos looking over Paros

More churches

Lunch on a beach that was almost deserted, being low season

Mykonos

The weather turned south when we arrived in Mykonos, and it is also a super touristy island, but we enjoyed our few days here.

Rented an ATV to explore the island

“Little Venice”

Windmills. The surf was so high, the waves were crashing over the wall on the edge of the town.

Blue and white everything

Cute bathroom gender sign

Tiny alley restaurant with incredible souvlaki

Food

You knew it was coming, so here is the food porn!

Greek salad, of course!

Many places had these meatballs with rice.

Gyros are our favorite quick meal.

Some kind of nouggat wafer they were selling on our ferry.

Souvlaki!

That’s all for now!

We’ve been totally lazy in Greece, and it’s been really nice, though we’ve gained a few pounds and need more physical activity. Our laziness is in part a reward for the challenges of the last few months and in part a way for us to plan what’s coming up. But it’s having an unexpected effect; we’re having second thoughts…

In less than three weeks, we’ll have our bicycles boxed up for our flight to India, Mumbai specifically. Yeah… Mumbai, formerly Bombay, the most populated Indian city, home to over 18 million people and one of the world’s largest slums. Poluted air so bad it’s blamed for the deaths of tens of thousands each year, over-population so bad that people get crushed to death when people move too fast in the metro, and traffic so bad you can be trapped for hours, and a city that is just barely recovering from a record monsoon season that killed thousands.

Yes, that city. Granted, it’s also home to Bollywood, arguably some of the best food in the world, a unique culture, friendly people, and has been named the number 1 city in the world.

But still, we are having second thoughts. Reading stories about streets and beaches litered with excrement, hotels filled with mosquitoes and only shared squat toilets, people catching amoebic dysentery, etc., we are understandably concerned about this choice of destination for our trip. But for every one of these stories, we read others of beautiful deserted beaches, stunning mountain scenery, relaxing backwater cruises, intriguing people, and food so good you will never be the same.

And that about defines India and the reason why we are going. It is an experience that will change us forever, and isn’t that the kind of thing we are looking for on this trip? The kind of thing we’ve already had, yes, but on another level in India.

I think Mark Twain said it best: “The land of dreams and romance, of fabulous wealth and fabulous poverty, of splendour and rags, of palaces and hovels, of famine and pestilence, of genii and giants and Aladdin lamps, of tigers and elephants, the cobra and the jungle, the country of hundred nations and a hundred tongues, of a thousand religions and two million gods, cradle of the human race, birthplace of human speech, mother of history, grandmother of legend, great-grandmother of traditions, whose yesterday’s bear date with the modering antiquities for the rest of nations-the one sole country under the sun that is endowed with an imperishable interest for alien prince and alien peasant, for lettered and ignorant, wise and fool, rich and poor, bond and free, the one land that all men desire to see, and having seen once, by even a glimpse, would not give that glimpse for the shows of all the rest of the world combined.”

So, how can we not go?? We have the opportunity, so we must.

Right?

No really, we need some validation to this decision… Right?

(PS: photos from Greece coming soon!)