McKenna's Map

  Notes from the journal: 6/8 Arrived in Ho Chi Minh in the middle of the night due to flight delay, walked 20 minutes in the HUMID night along a highway to our hostel and the very kind hosts and their kids checked us in at 2 am 6/9 Slept in as late as we could and then went to get beef soup for breakfast nearby Returned to hostel to pack up and Tyler found an available apartment for the complex we wanted to live at   Learned how to walk across busy streets and how the bus system works. Took a bus to Chinatown, which was pretty nonexistent? Took a bus to the Landmark 81 building and went up to the lounge on the 75th floor to order overpriced drinks and enjoy a beautiful panoramic view of the city. Sat for a couple hours and filled out our apartment application, which wasn’t super fun to do on our phones. We also felt hilariously underdressed, as we were in our grungiest backpacking clothes with our dirty packs in the very fancy building (whoops) Got food nearby and wandered ar...

  Notes from the journal: 6/21 • We immediately noticed the AQI as soon as we got off the train (wasn’t great for most of the time we were in India but was especially high in Delhi) so we put on masks and wore them for the rest of our stay • Took the very nice metro system in New Delhi from the train station to our hostel. The metro is very efficient, clean, and cheap, and we found it very unique/interesting that you have to go through a metal detector and baggage scan every time you get on • Took showers, did laundry, had a hard time sleeping due to people being loud and leaving the door open 6/22 • Wandered around trying to find a breakfast place that was closed so went to a South Indian place instead and had Uttapam and chai • Took the metro to Akshardham Temple, where a tuk tuk driver tried to scam us but luckily we were able to find the pedestrian entrance instead. The temple had very intense security measures but once we made it inside we really enjoyed walking around the tem...

  Notes from the journal: 6/17 Hiked to our accommodation in Shangarh, which was very pleasant until the last part where we were walking on a dusty road with lots of cars due to tourists visiting for the holiday weekend We really wished we had been able to stay at the Aastha Homestay for longer, but we had already paid for our accommodation in Shangarh Checked in at our hotel, used some very bad wifi to do some work/rebook a flight, did a ton of laundry Our room had a beautiful view of some very steep and green mountains, with some big snowcapped peaks in the distance We went downstairs to the cafe/restaurant and tried to order food but people to make the food could not be located and the guy who was going to try to make the food (that we were paying for) was reading instructions about how to turn on the stove and said he had no idea how to make the dishes we ordered so we cancelled our order We went back down later in the evening during dinner time when more staff were there and t...

  6/15 Found our pre-booked bus to Aut with little difficulty and departed on time. Went through flat desert for awhile before hitting the start of the Himalayas. It was really cool to watch the desert transition to the mountains throughout the day, but it quickly turned into a miserable, 12 hour travel day, as we got stuck in holiday weekend traffic going up the mountains. We both felt carsick and arrived in Aut about 2 hours late.   Luckily, a very nice man helped us catch the last bus of the day to Sainj, which went along a beautiful road with mountains and a river view. The bus was packed to the brim and since we were in an area that sees few western tourists, people were very curious. We got off at Ropa and the pre-arranged transportation up the mountain to our homestay was ready for us. We met Girdhari, one of the hosts at Aastha Homestay and walked to the beautiful village. I found this homestay when I was poking around on Google Maps in Great Himalayan National Park an...