Riding into the sunset.

Thank you for sharing our 'round the world adventure by visiting our blog.

If it's your first time here, take a look back through posts from January through April 2007 (click the links on the right). That's where the action is...or was. Our big trip is over, and while I've quit posting here, it's a good bet that I'm probably still sorting and weeding and retouching pictures.

From India to Innsbruck, from Cambodian river villages to the canals of Venice, Donna and I saw wonders we never imagined we'd see. We saw heartbursting beauty and heartbreaking poverty, often juxtaposed in close proximity. We dove into cultures and oceans headfirst and went without reservations, in every sense of the word. We're a little bit poorer and immeasurably richer for the experience.

Every day, as I reflect back on our trip, I relearn an important lesson it's easy to forget.

Adventure is good for the soul.

Paul

P.S. Oh, there's one more lesson I relearned every day of our trip. If you go adventuring, bring Donna. It'll be a lot more fun.

SHARK!!!

Okay, so it's only a black-tipped reef shark, but it is a live wild fast-moving shark, not the lazy lay-around bottom-feeding nurse shark type, and it is probably about 5 feet long. It was very cool to snorkel in Shark Bay on the Island of Koh Tao. While here in the U.S. one would assume that Shark Bay would be some sort of theme park or tourist attraction or zoo exhibit in a tank with souvenir tshirts and a stunning audiovisual display. In Thailand, on the other hand, Shark Bay is a bay...where there are lots of sharks.

Paul

Feeding the fish at Koh Tao, Thailand

While snorkeling on Koh Tao Island in Thailand, I took a small banana peel and shredded it into a bunch of thin appendages like a squid or swimming octopus. I would swim it through the water and it proved really effective in gathering curious fish. Of course, once they discovered that my octobananasquidopus was a big fraud, they would sometimes decide to nibble on the next closest living thing, like...me. We got a few fun photos from this supercheapo underwater one-time use camera. Again, it took a little photoshop wizardry to bump up the contrast.

Paul

Spring Fling and Pink Rajastani Holi Frivolity

Wow. You're still reading our blog! Thanks for checking in, and sorry it's been so long since we posted. I'm going to put up a few more photos then sign off.

It's been a whirlwind couple of weeks since we returned from our own version of "Around the World in Eighty Days." I've been sorting and playing with all our photos and putting together a slide show version of our adventure which I'll gleefully use to torture friends and relatives for many years to come.

It's spring, at least for a week, in Minnesota, and Donna and I are in the garden doing premature digging and bed-building. It's too early to do much gardening here on the Minnetundra, but both of us are experiencing a strange sort of seasonal confusion where we think Spring should be further along than it is, in spite of what the calendar and thermometer tell us. We visited so many really hot and sultry places, then went from Winter to Spring and back again over and over in Europe. As a result, our seasonal synapses aren't firing properly.

While sorting and tossing, a handful of pictures just seemed to be particularly evocative and to capture the feeling of a place or a people. This is one of them, and I'm putting it up today because it's got a Spring connection.

This photo was taken in the Pali District of Rajasthan in India, near the Jain Temple of Ranakpur. This Rajasthani shepherd man is wearing traditional turban and wrap pants. It's a style that's still very common in the villages and smaller towns but appears headed for obsolescence as virtually all the young people wear western-style clothing.

This fellow is also wearing some leftover color from Holi, the Hindu color festival and raucous celebration of Spring. It's quite literally a "spring fling." All over India, people throw off the gloom of Winter (or in Rajasthan's case the DRY of winter) by throwing colored powder or dyed water at each other. Poof. Yellow. Splat. Orange. Kerplunk. Blue. It's India's rowdiest day. While Holi had been about a week before we arrived, we saw many people -- and some camels, cows and elephants -- who still wore their bright spring Holi colors.

For blog devotees, you'll remember that Holi also played a role in our epic traffic jam.

Yes, you clever photo detectives. I DID do some Photoshop retouching and creative motion blurring on this shot. I even removed a bus and a hotel direction sign.

In spite of buses that get in the way of his sheep and the occasional tourist with camera (er, like me) there's much about this man's life that's the same as it would have been many hundreds of years ago. In the villages, ancient social norms and traditions endure, particularly for women. Marriages are inevitably arranged. "Love marriages" which run counter to the arrangements of the parents, or premarital pregnancy can still result in an unofficial and unprosecuted but very real death sentence. There's still a feeling of normalcy and even pride in some aspects of the caste system and one's place in it...at least according to the few people I spoke to about it. Within a caste, there can be many levels and one's position in a caste is important and sometimes a matter of great pride.

A few more photos to come.

Paul

Little Alps

On our way to and from Venice were the most sticky-up mountains of the Alps. Amazingly different than the Rockies, we could be comfy and warm within a short distance of 7,000 feets slopes. Near this tranquil lake we watched skiers slog up a closed skihill while a series of avalanches roared down nearby.

It's spring in Germany this week.... a regular daffodil festival in every yard and town round-about. Trees are budding and it's the season of stinky cow-poo being spread on fields, assuring the spring green grass will grow tall. Yards are being mown and the little gardens are being planted. Crazy and questionable customs are international as pastel colored plastic eggs are hung from trees all over Austria, Czech Republic, Germany and Italy.

Donna

Donna in San Marco Square - Venice

Venice is sinking and the sea is rising!

This main square in Venice floods almost 300 days a year on average. It's a big problem, as it's affecting the buildings and the underground structures. There are some days when the spot where Donna is standing is almost waist deep.

Paul

The biggest attractions in this square are the 10,000 pigeons so if the bird flu hits, Venice will be empty. I did not buy birdseed (corn) and sprinkle it on my navel or shoulder like everyone under the age of 19 did. Pigeons tickle their feeder and the kids giggle and freak out. They are cuter than the gondoliers who should enforce some upper age limit or body weight. Gondoliers often are pudgy and grumpy.... or singing out of tune! The tradition will die soon if this continues.

Donna

The missing Venice post

Well, we decided to make the best of the last few days of our adventure, so we zipped south through the alps into Italy and had a lovely day on the city of canals -- Venice.

You should be reading all about it. Unfortunately, Donna and I did about an hour of tag-team writing about our experiences there, and when we went to post it to the blog, it went up in a puff of cybersmoke, never to be seen or read again. Sometimes, I long for my old paper typewriter and bottle of Liquid Paper.

Suffice it to say that the long-gone post was far more interesting and well-thought-out than what follows.

Venice is like Italy: The Theme Park. After a day of walking and boating around, we finally realized what makes it so magical. There are NO cars. Not one. Everything comes into and out of this island city by boat and muscle. There are mailboats, garbageboats with long claw arms that reach out and snatch garbage cans, taxiboats, busboats, constructioncraneboats, piledrivingboats, deliveryboats and of course, the ubiquitous gondolas with their stripe-shirted gondoliers. For the prices the gondoliers charge -- about 80 Euros for an hour ride is their starting negotiating price (right now 1 Euro = $1.33) -- you should definitely get the wide-brimmed ribboned hat, the striped shirt, the short little matador jacket, the singing of O Solo Mio, the dancing and oar-hopping and every other cliche.

Sometimes, though, as soon as the gondolier got a group of riders on board, the traditional costume would be replaced by some mundane sweatshirt or windbreaker. We didn't gondola ride as it seemed a bit silly and embarassing, but we rode all up and down the Grand Canal on the vaporettos, or water buses. We even got an unexpected trip to the next island town over -- Murano -- when we hopped on the wrong water bus.

Because everything must come into the city by train/boat/back or truck/boat/back, prices in Venice are crazy high. Maybe that's why a gondola ride costs so much. For example, a 1.5 liter bottle of water ranged from 1 euro to 2.5 euros depending on whether you got it from a grocery or a tourist shop. That's a lot to drink water, but it costs just as much to get rid of it. A public restroom costs 1 Euro every time you visit. We stopped at a little outside cafe off the main tourist route. Donna had a tiny little dollhouse cup of espresso that was half full, and I had a teeny-weeny half full glass of the house wine. That was around $8 for about 6 ounces of fluid. The rest of the day we ate delicious bread and slices of pizza to save our pennies for the ridiculously expensive gas it took to get back to Germany.

So here we are back in Frankfurt, with one day left before we return to the U.S. We're eager to get home, but sad that this once-in-a-lifetime adventure is ending. We'll certainly continue to post here for a while, as we've got some great pictures to share (it's not always easy to transfer them from an internet cafe) and lots of processing of our experiences left to do.

Paul