Shifi's Blog link

Hey there! Just a quick post to give anyone interested the link to my blog:

http://shifismusings.blogspot.com/

It will be a series of postings with musings about the world, and other reflections. A very different type of blog from this one.

Feel free to check it out!
Ashifa

Reality and its shortcomings (a.k.a. The End)

Well, so, I guess we're done.... As Ashifa said, it's kind of sad to stop blogging. She is even thinking about starting her own blog in the near future. We'll post a link here in a few weeks if she does. Otherwise... The End.

A few thoughts on our return to reality (or maybe where we were before was reality and we're in some other place now):

The first few days at home were a bit overwhelming as we adjusted from living out of a backpack for four months to managing a household again! Once I returned to the house, I remembered that we left parts of it in significant disarray upon both of our departures, in December and in March, and that it now needed to be arrayed again. That's what unplanned travel and procrastination will get you! So there was a lot of cleaning and organizing. And the realization that, despite thinking we're sort of minimalists, we really have a lot of stuff. No one really needs that much stuff.

No major culture shock, but a few things did cross my mind. My first day back in Toronto, seeing kids walking down the street with their carefully crafted images (clothes, hair, tattoos, tudes), adults walking down the street with their carefully crafted images (Lululemon, faux-hawks), Oprah and Dr. Phil and a thouand self-help/self-perfection books, hearing an interview on the radio with a woman who's written a book on what her job at Sea World training Shamu has taught her about people..... We in North America spend so much time and energy just thinking about how to be. I mean, there's a little bit of that everywhere, I guess. No, wait, I don't think that's true. I think we saw thousands of people on our trip who couldn't give a shit about optimizing their image and personality. Even in the Arctic, you had a little bit of image and attitude - the kids' little faux gang signs, and the sassy Canada Goose parka, and I'm sure there's a hierarchy of cool regarding different types of snowmobiles. But nothing like the effort those of us 'down south' spend on narcissistically thinking about ourselves.

Being back in our advanced civilization also means encountering irritable people, avoiding eye contact with anyone on the street, and never talking to the person standing an inch from you for half an hour on the bus. This is 180° from life in India and I'm pretty sure this is not what civilization is all about.

The other big downer has been work. I'd been trying to come back with a nice zen attitude - "eh, whatever... I am calm... I do not care about these gross inefficiencies... I do not care about mangled management.... I will simply do what I am asked.... Even when it is pointless.... I will be proactive and patient and.... " Hee hee - I am so naive! That lasted approximately one day. What I found was that, the inefficiencies have become grosser and the management more mangled.

After traveling in places that have far fewer or none of the advantages we in North America have - money, education, political stability - you realize how little we do with the much that we have. Despite all these North American advantages, daily at my job in this government (and it's only slightly worse than other places I've worked), I see so much opportunity, money, and resources wasted. Most of those advantages are negated by bad management, lack of political will, and fear. And in our society, it seems that the areas where we do manage to summon all our forces and our money, energy, and efficiency are for pointless things - The Bachelor, $80 yoga pants, deep-fried Twinkies, $10 million baseball players, Hummers, this year's fashion in lawn furniture.... And meanwhile, we haven't figured out how to make buses run on time, or how to quit getting high blood pressure, or that cars and leaf blowers do bad things to the air, or that our economy will tank if we're depending on Wal-mart to provide jobs when people are studying computers in places in India where people still crap in the street. I don't know.... maybe if we gave Laos or India all our 'advantages' and a couple hundred years to figure out what to do with them, they'd end up the same place we have.

[And, by the way, I am not being holier than thou. I read less-than-necessary books too, including some nearly as ridiculous as how Shamu can make me a better person. And despite Ashifa and I trying to be rationally eco-friendly (as opposed to trendily eco-friendly) the tons of greenhouse gases poured into the atmosphere by the planes we've flown on to learn all these lessons probably out-tons by far the amount created by all our car-driving readers in the last year.]

Anyway.... all is not doom and gloom in our world. It was an incredible trip and we are certainly better people for having made it. You can read all the books you want, but you can't really begin to understand other places and other people until you've expended the greenhouse gases to go there. The trip was humbling and frustrating, but also inspiring. No matter what the circumstances, or the 'disadvantages', people have, they find a way to live and thrive. I think that was my main lesson from the trip, and probably one a lot of us need to learn - there are lots of ways to organize life - in a village or a country or a culture or a political system. No one way is better than any other way - they're just different. People make things work their own way. We can learn something from others, but we'll all find a way.

I was just looking through the little notebook I had on the trip where I would sometimes jot 'blog notes' and it makes me remember all the amazing things we saw and learned. We've barely scratched the surface in this blog. We never talked about the smell of India (diesel fumes + coal fires + fresh cow poo + burning cow poo), or the greatest lesson of all - the co-existence of a billion Indians (or a thousand on the street in a single block sometimes) with general peace and lack of irritation and anger, the amazing contrasts between rich and poor in India, tactics for using a squat toilet, how unique our North American rigidity, rules, and liability-phobia are (even Italy was so much more laid-back), how nice it was to get back to a much less male-centered culture, my shocking statement "this gobi [cauliflower] is delicious", the surrealness of eating tandoori prawns and mutton in a pub while watching cricket and listening to an Indian rock band playing "Play That Funky Music, White Boy", that there was almost nowhere in India or Laos where people weren't helpful, listening to teenage Indian girls play Taboo in perfect English and understanding all the American cultural references, and things I saw from bus windows - men butchering a cow, a man and woman weaving on a giant loom, cows in a rice paddy, cows in a cemetery, a boy lassoing a cow, eight guys raising a telephone pole with a rope..... Incredible!

So, we're done. Thanks so much to all of our regular visitors and to those who occasionally popped in to read our long-winded spouting. We really enjoyed being able to share the trip with you. It was nice to know there were people back home following along. It was a great trip and I encourage everyone to try to exit your comfort zone at least once and travel somewhere very different than where you live. It's not as hard as you think. English is the unofficial language of world travel, so you're already good there. It's not really as scary as you think. I never felt scared for my safety once on the whole trip (well, except for the driving in India). Nothing bad will happen to you that couldn't happen to you at home or in Orlando (125 people die in North America every day in traffic accidents). If you are certain that something bad is going to happen to you, quit watching the news so much. Travel will teach you a lot about yourself and about other people. You may feel a little uncomfortable, but sometimes that's a good thing.

back in the world of spring!

So we've finally re-entered the "southern" world - which in this case refers to everything south of the Arctic Circle. While our icy sojourn in the far north was filled with adventure, new friends, and wonderful experiences, I must say that it is nice to be back where spring is blooming.

After 4 months of non-stop, 24/7 quality time together, Jen and I are now on opposite ends of the country for the next three days - it's been about 12 hours now, and I'm already going into withdrawal! We were joking that it would be our first time really being apart for more than a few hours at a time since November!

Jen and Binda have headed home to Toronto, and I am in Vancouver for a couple of days visiting my dear friend Fahreen, whom I haven't seen in almost a year! She has been working with an NGO in Afghanistan as a doctor for the past year, and is only home in Vancouver for 2 weeks before heading back there for another year! It has been SO wonderful to see her again and to reconnect.

There are a few things that feel unsettling about returning back. ..after spending the past several months in parts of the world (and more recently in parts of Canada) where commerce is based more on necessities and less on luxury items, the biggest shock I find when coming back into "western" civilization is the rampant materialism of it all. It all seems so unnecessary and wasteful! We went past MEC today (the Canadian version of REI), and it seemed paradoxical to see a giant store full of technical outdoor gear with high price-tags which are only for occassional recreational use. After coming from a place where people live half the year at minus 50, and where alot of people spend alot of that time out on the land hunting, ice-fishing, trapping, etc. with their livelihood dependent upon their ability to remain outdoors in that weather - and after seeing how they use local items to make their own parkas, their own boots, gloves, snowpants, etc. - it really did seem a bit funny to then see all this synthetic, prefab stuff filling up a store that is purely for recreation. Don't get me wrong...I love MEC as much as the next outdoorsy gal..it just is a bit odd settling back into the materialism of our world...and this just happened to be the example that illustrated it for me today.

Despite this however, I must say it feels quite nice to be back in a world where everything feels familiar. I've hung up my parka for now and kicked off the big Sorel boots in exchange for sneakers and a fleece. The flowers are in bloom and trees have leaf buds on them. Not a grain of snow to be seen. Went out for dinner tonite and could read every word on the all-English menu. And in a couple days I'll be snuggled up at home in my own bed with my puppy at my feet...life really doesn't get much better than this!

Scenes from around town

Here are some random pictures from around town. These unfortunately might be the last ones - our camera seems to be malfunctioning. And at a very inopportune time - there's a really cool cultural exchange going on this week - there are a bunch of native (not Inuit) people from the Northwest Territories here (some of whom got here by snowmobile - 600 km in four days). There's entertainment every night - dancing, traditional sports and games. Let's hope we can get our camera fixed. In the meantime....

The most common way to get around town in the winter is by far the snowmobile. All the other vehicles are trucks of one sort or another. I've only seen one car in town - an all-wheel-drive Subaru owned by one of the nurses. -30° doesn't really stop anyone from getting out. Some kids playing, probably around 9 pm:

Aside from a few dinners with the nurses, our social life here has revolved around a group of 8- to 14-year-olds who frequently come to visit. We had about 15 kids here the other day, making cookies. We probably aren't the most exciting hosts, but the kids seem to be fairly well entertained by Binda, the computer, a deck of cards, and Scrabble. But the favourite toy is the digital camera. Here's a shot someone took from our upstairs loft:
A tour of town....

The primary school is in the foreground, the high school is the one with the fish on it (I'm guessing that's an Arctic char, the local speciality), and the Northern store is in the distance on the left:
The Co-op is our other store: Notice all the buildings are built up off the ground, so they don't melt the permafrost and sink into it. Both stores have food and some clothes, hardware, snowmobile parts, toys, ice augers, etc.... Most services are found at one or the other - the post office, banking, tax services, mail order.

The recreation complex contains a hockey rink and curling sheet, and hosts a lot of other community events:The hockey rink. That's the Nunavut flag on the left:

The Pentecostal church, one of three churches in town:

Rabbit hides, maybe destined to become someone's mittens:

Overlooking the Coppermine River:

"New Town":

We saw three kids trying to catch ptarmigans. Apparently this is possible, but these kids didn't have any luck. Can you see the ptarmigans? Nice camouflauge, eh?

Three komatiks stacked up - komatiks are sleds pulled behind snowmobiles (and behind dogsleds in the past):

Muskox hide:

A nice walk around town Sunday:

Beached..... Binda leaves her mark.....

Absurd thoughts I have had recently

1. "Wow, it's warm today." - When it was up to -23° with no wind.

2. "I'm getting frostbite on my face, but sweat is rolling down my back." - Layering is not always easy.

3. "Dirt! Cool!" - Upon seeing a bit of a driveway scuffed up by a snowmobile. Everything else is solidly encased in ice or packed snow.

What is this Nunavut anyway? Why do green beans cost so much? And can you use the word 'ski-doo' in Scrabble?

Quick - what do you know about Nunavut? Yes, it probably went quickly, didn't it? I think most Americans and probably many Canadians don't know much. Before I moved to Canada, I knew that it was north, it was cold, and it was fairly recently separated off from the Northwest Territories (NWT). That's it. So, let me edify all of us.... Nunavut is one of three territories in Canada (the others are Yukon and NWT). All three are big and lightly populated and cold. They have some representation in Parliament, but not as much as a regular province. There are some other differences in governmental structure that I, as a pseudo-Canadian, cannot understand. Nunavut separated from NWT in 1993, as a way of achieving more autonomy and to recognize its higher concentration of Inuit residents (Nunavut is about 85% Inuit).

Nunavut is huge. It's the largest province or territory in Canada. It's about 2½ times bigger than Texas and is significantly larger than Alaska. In fact, it Nunavut were a country, it would be the 15th largest in the world, between Saudi Arabia and Mexico. It's so big, it spans the width of almost the entire continental US - the western border of Nunavut (not far from here) is on a longitude line that runs through the middle of California, and the eastern edge of the territory, Baffin Island (where the capital Iqaluit is), is at the same longitude as the eastern tip of Maine. The Nunavut government tried for awhile to put the entire territory on the same time zone, but the communities in the far east and the far west didn't care for it much. A few years ago when they tried to put everyone on Eastern time for the summer, Kugluktuk decided they'd had enough - they would permanently stay on Mountain time. The change to Eastern would have put them two hours ahead of Yellowknife and Edmonton, the two most important big cities here - and they're east of Kugluktuk.

In this huge space, there are all of 31,000 people. There are 26 small towns in the territory. Iqaluit is the largest at about 6,200 people; Kugluktuk is the 9th largest with 1,300 people. These large communities are a fairly recent development. The Inuit traditionally lived on the land and somewhat nomadically. The Canadian government encouraged them to concentrate into the communities, most of which are accessible by water, around the 1950s because it was easier to supply them with food, fuel, health care, education, etc. And I'm sure there are probably another reason or two. Kugluktuk started as a small trading village in the early 1900s. It was formerly known as Coppermine and took its Innuinuqtan name in 1996.

A lot of the residents here still hunt (caribou, muskox, seal, rabbits) and fish (arctic char is the big fish here), at least part-time. There's also an association that funds hunts to provide caribou and other traditional "country foods" for the elders and others who can't hunt. Right before we got here, there was a big muskox hunt and we've seen the produce of it sitting around town, waiting to be butchered (no hurry - outside is one big freezer here). Seal skin and caribou, wolf, muskox, and rabbit (arctic hare) hides and fur are still used to make coats, gloves, and boots. Today, I bought a pair of rabbit mittens [kind of unfortunate given the proximity to Easter, I guess :-) ]! Very warm. But I'll have to be watch Binda - she's been eyeing them all day!

A lot of people are involved in producing art and handicrafts. In addition to clothes, there are a lot of carvings made here, using local soapstone and dolomite. The carvings are really well done. We've bought a few (new visitors are hit up pretty quickly by local artists) - we're getting quite a bargain over what they'd go for in a boutique in Toronto, and it's nice to support local people. Ashifa says it seems to her that unemployment may not be quite as big a problem here as in other northern communities she's been in. There are numerous government jobs here, and a lot of people work at nearby mines, in particular a couple diamond mines. They work at the mines for two weeks and then are back here for two weeks.

It's 8:30 pm right now - the sun is down but it's still light out. In March. Yes, we are in the land of midnight sun, although we aren't going to get to see it. This year, from mid-May to mid-July, it's 24-hour sun, and from December 1 to Jan 10, it's 24-hour darkness. On January 11th, the sun will be up for about an hour around noon. I'm sure that'll be a party. So what this means is that things change very quickly the rest of the year. The day we got here two weeks ago, the sun went down at about 6:40. By the time we leave in a week and a half, sunset will be at 8:20. We are also in the land of the northern lights. We saw them the second night we were here - a really spectacular show of green flowing streaks all across the eastern half of the sky. It's the first time I've seen them. Unfortunately, we haven't seen them since. This is primarily due to the fact that we haven't been outside at night much, because it's, well, cold. We really need to get out and do some looking in these next two weeks.

One of the other facts of life here is that the cost of living is insanely high. There is no road access to Kugluktuk (or any of the communities in Nunavut for that matter). That means everything that is here that isn't natural had to be brought here by either plane or boat - everything from telephone poles to Kleenex. And boats don't arrive very often. The ice doesn't completely disappear from the gulf here until mid-July and starts reappearing in the fall (and the kids here swim in the gulf - I can only imagine...). So that means big things and non-perishable things arrive basically once a year. People who live here put in an order in the spring for everything they think they'll need for the next year - from trucks to new cabinets to jars of jelly. Then, barges arrive in August and September, carrying everything that's been ordered in containers. Your containers are delivered right to your house by forklift.

For the rest of the year everything coming in, including all perishable food, arrives by plane - at a very high price, of course. It costs about 30¢/lb to bring in something by barge; $5/lb by plane. Our plane from Yellowknife was divided in half - the back half of the fuselage had about ten rows of seats. The front half was divided off and was all cargo. Presumably that is where the $12 gallons of milk were. All of this means that prices for anything imported are incredibly high. Ashifa was prepared for this, since it's often the same situation in other northern communities. However, this place is more expensive than even she expected. I think the first time I went to the store, my jaw literally dropped. $11 for a medium-sized box of Raisin Bran, the aforementioned $12 for 4 L (gallon) of milk, $4.50 for a can of green beans, $20 for a 12-pack of Coke. And let's not even get into fruits and vegetables. Okay, let's get into it.... We haven't actually bought much fresh produce, but what we've observed - $7 for a small package of grapes, $5 for 3 little oranges, $13 for bag of potatoes that would have been $3 in Toronto.

Luckily, there are two stores here, both part of chains found throughout northern Canada - the Northern Store (whose history in the north goes all the way back to the 1700s, and was once a part of the Hudson's Bay Company) and the Co-Op, so we can comparison shop. Those prices above, by the way, would be at the cheaper store; Raisin Bran is $13 at the other store, Coke is $22. It seems that about half of the things are cheaper at one store, half at the other. Anticipating this, we had brought some food with us - specifically vegetables and tofu for Ashifa (no soy fake meat to be found here). We should have brought another suitcase! I guess we just have to factor the high prices in and consider ourselves lucky that we can afford to buy anything in the store. That's a luxury not everyone here has. We've decided we're going to just have to quit thinking about the prices and buy what we need to buy. Still, it's a pretty good diet tool for two frugal people. :) The doctor who was here before us left some food, which has been nice. We've gotten a lot of mileage out of a bag of instant mashed potatoes. And he also left a fish in the freezer! A whole fish, guts and all. Ashifa fileted it and we had some nice local fish one night (although I'm guessing not many locals serve it as a curry).

We're enjoying our four-day holiday weekend! We took a long walk/snowshoe yesterday along a cliff overlooking the Coppermine River. Today, we rented a snowmobile and took a couple rides with some of the nurses Ashifa works with. We rode along the river and the ocean. Beautiful! But very cold. Ashifa posed the question, "If it's -40° and you're driving at 30 km/hr, what is the wind chill?" The answer is "cold enough to make you hurt". We had a lot of fun, but it was hard to stay out too long.

On the Coppermine River:

On a smaller stream:

Fueling up the ski-doo (It's a Polaris, not a Ski-doo, but they're all 'ski-doos' here; in the summer they ride four-wheeler ATVs which, regardless of brand, are "Hondas".)This is the only gas pump in town. Gas was $1.28 a liter ($4.75 a gallon), which I believe is a bit higher than Toronto right now, unless things have gone crazy since we left. Which is possible.

Me driving the ski-doo. My normal gloves were seriously inadequate to prevent me from getting frostbite despite the heated handgrips! So I'm borrowing one of the nurse's wolf-fur mitts.

No more picture burnout - for me, at least

I've finally finished posting all the pictures from the trip. And I hope to never see them again. :) You, however, should go enjoy them.

• Italy and North India: www.flickr.com/photos/ediwa1
• South India, Singapore, Malaysia: www.flickr.com/photos/ediwa2
• Laos and Vietnam: www.flickr.com/photos/ediwa3

Why three flickr accounts, you might ask. Because I am a tightwad, I might answer. The pictures arranged themselves into three tidy packages of just under 200 pictures, which happens to be the limit for a free flickr account!

A dissertation on cold

You know it's cold when you start having serious discussions about what exactly 'absolute zero' means. For the record, we're not even close - it's -273°C. But we're getting there. This morning it's currently -58°C (-72°F) wind chill. This is by far our coldest day here. I can't really tell you what it feels like, because I've decided I won't be leaving the house until Binda is knocking down the door to go out to pee. Ashifa should be home for lunch soon. If she's still able to move after the five minute walk, I'll assume it's safe to go outside. Yesterday was one of our best days here. It was around -24°C (-11°F) and sunny with very little wind. Actually, it's almost always sunny here; right now -58° looks beautiful. I think it's a trick.

Yesterday, we took a nice walk and climbed a ridge on the west side of town where we could get a birds-eye view of the whole town and vicinity.
The hamlet of Kugluktuk:

Up the ridge: That's the Arctic Ocean beyond Ashifa: Binda goes exploring. Our little half-husky is loving the Arctic.

Normally, these extreme temperatures are fine for walking around, as long as you're dressed properly. Ashifa already had cold-weather gear from her previous trips to the Northwest Territories and northern Ontario. I had to do some shopping before we left. I had located my -100°F Sorel boots before we left for India. I didn't have time to look for a parka then, however. We were a little concerned about waiting until February to look for a serious winter coat in Toronto. We'd heard the selection was pretty minimal by then. We did some last-minute shopping and lucked into a great parka that was on sale.

I opted not to spend $600 on the ultimate "I have a lot of money and I don't like to be cold" statement, the Canada Goose parka. Canada Goose is the chic parka favored by real Arctic dwellers, and actors and film crews in Toronto. I found a North Face coat on sale for less than half that price.

I really don't like to be cold, so I was a little concerned that $300 difference was going to leave me sad and frostbitten. Not to worry. The first couple days, I was walking around comfortably and thought "maybe it's not really that cold". However, I realized how very effective my coat and boots are the first time I had to take off my gloves outside. The toasty jacket gives you a false sense of security. My hands started failing to move after about 20 seconds of fiddling with Binda's leash. Later, I tried to take some pictures and could barely take one - bare hand on metal camera - before I had to give up. Things like that remind you that hypothermia is serious business. So, I've learned to be very efficient at anything that involves skin exposure and otherwise keep well-bundled.

We both have good gloves, but unless it's really warm, we usually keep our fists balled up inside. My 5-minute walk home from the grocery store yesterday required at least three finger-warming stops because I had to have my fingers in normal glove position to carry the grocery bags. I've been hoping to buy some real Inuit sealskin mittens while I'm up here. I think I need to get on that.

Since you have to keep your face covered most of the time, glasses are pretty much useless when you're outside because they get fogged up. And since walking in snow with a five-pound parka and giant five-pound moon boots is always a workout, there's a lot of heavy breathing. So after any lengthy time out, we usually end up looking like this:

Ashifa said that in previous winter trips to the Arctic, she had her own way of telling the temperature by certain milestones - you know it's a certain temperature when your otherwise-soft parka starts to make crinkly noises, or the temperature at which your eyelashes freeze together when you blink. We've definitely reached both points here in Kugluktuk. When it's really cold, my parka feels like I'm wearing a sheet-metal skirt. And you learn to blink really fast.

You know how they say the Inuit (the ethnicity formerly known as Eskimo) have forty words for snow? The Weather Network is obviously trying to keep up. I usually check the weather online every morning to see what I'm up against. I've seen them describe the conditions on various days as "light snow grains", "frozen fog", and "ice crystals". Today, it's just "clear".

This was "frozen fog" day:
Did you know -40°C = -40°F? This trip has done a lot for my further education in the metric system.

Pics Are Up

One of my tasks for our time in Nunavut is to finish weeding through the 2,200 pictures we took on the trip and getting them online. I have it down to under 600 now. Just the essentials. :)

Here's the first batch, from Italy and North India: www.flickr.com/photos/ediwa1.

Feel free to leave comments - we'd love to hear from you. We should have the rest of the pics up within a week or so.

The Interlude

Greetings from Kugluktuk! We've made to the Great Really White Really Far North. We arrived two days ago safely and soundly, although not entirely warmly.

Our two-week "break" between Asia and the Arctic was packed full of visits with family and friends, interspersed with a few days here and there in our own home, trying to catch up on mail and other administrative things that had been largely neglected for three months. We spent several days in Markham with Ashifa's family, then headed south for a visit with my family in Ohio. It was so nice to be able to reconnect with everyone!

Visiting with my nieces, Beth and Maya:

Binda takes a snow bath, hiking with Missy in Akron:
We also managed to catch a little bit of the crazy winter Toronto has had. They've had tons (tonnes in Canadian?) of snow this winter and we thought we had missed it! But we got a nice fat snowstorm on our next-to-last day at home, so we got to enjoy it a bit (I think everyone else in Toronto is sick of it). Our neighbors Michelle and Rob have been wonderful helping us out with shoveling our sidewalk while we were gone, so were at least able to do that ourselves this time. And Binda loved playing in all the fluffy snow at the park. We also managed to fit in a couple of cross-country ski laps around Dovercourt Park ourselves.

Ashifa and our neighbour Boysie shoveling out the latest snow:
Thankfully, the snow let up just in time for us to take off for the north. Binda came along for this trip. She has flown before, when Ashifa first got her as a puppy. However, those were flights in little bush planes in northern Ontario and Binda got to sit on Ashifa's lap. This time, she was making three flights in the cargo hold in a kennel. She seemed to do very well (although she was really happy to get out of the kennel after each flight). I think it was probably much harder on Ashifa, the anxious dog-mom, than it was on Binda. Binda's a pretty adaptable pup - she's already a very good subway and streetcar rider. Now we can add airplane to the list. I have to say, though, nothing attracts attention like a dog walking through an airport.

In the airport shuttle in Edmonton:
We arrived in Kugluktuk on our little plane from Yellowknife to a sunny and pleasant day with a temperature of -29°C (that's -20°F, but at that point, does it really matter?). But, you know, it's a dry cold, so it wasn't so bad. :) Kugluktuk (formerly known as Coppermine) is a town of about 1,500. There are two stores, two schools, two churches, one health center, a few government offices, and a lot of snowmobiles. We have a very nice apartment that has, thankfully, very good heating.

Home sweet home - we're in the left side of the duplex:
Our neighbourhood. At the end of the street, the Coppermine Inn hotel is on the right and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP - sadly, Americans, no one calls them the Mounties anymore) office is on the left:
And a little bit beyond that, the Arctic Ocean.... Here's Binda running on the ocean:

From what I understand, this ocean is sometimes made of water.

I'd show you some more pictures, but this was about all I could squeeze out before my hands froze. We'll have to wait for a slightly warmer day for photography. I found that holding on to a metal object with bare hands at -42° windchill is not advisable.

One thing you won't be noticing in any of these pictures is trees! We left those behind several degrees of latitude ago.

As we took off on our last flight from Yellowknife to Kugluktuk, sitting there in a prop plane wearing our parkas, Ashifa remarked "We've had a surreal couple of months." Very true. From the Himalayas to the jungle to the Arctic. Right now, we're just happy to be able to unpack and relax in one place for more than a few days. We'll have lots more to say soon on Inuit culture, choosing a parka, and the price of green beans.

Next Stop - Ohio

So, we're home for a short break before we head to the Arctic on March 9. Although, in a way, our travel still continues. We're only going to be in our house for a couple of nights during the "break". We are still visiting exotic locales - suburban Toronto and Ohio! We spent a few days with Ashifa's family in Markham and today we're headed south of the border to the "old country" for a week's visit with my family (and belated Christmas). Then we're back in Toronto just long enough to pack our parkas before heading off to Kugluktuk, Nunavut! By request (or at least one person's request!), we'll be blogging through the month in Nunavut, so keep checking in.

We're also working on winnowing down the 2,200 pictures we took on the trip and I hope to post a big pile of them to the net in the next couple days, for those who are interested in seeing more.

Happy New Year in Vietnam

Hello from Toronto! As Jen mentioned, we safely made it home a couple days ago, and have been slowly reacquainting ourselves with our lives, our home, and our dog! So far it still feels a bit surreal, but it's definitely nice to be back home. As Jen put it this morning: "It's nice to have a house to clean". The things you never thought you'd miss, eh?

Anyways, just a final post on the last leg of our trip which was Vietnam...a country which many travellers we met elsewhere told us they disliked; a country which our travel books said was dirty, noisy, and full of people trying to scam you; a country we almost didn't go to because we (read: I) was so scared by everything we'd heard about it. Well, I'm happy to report that it did not live up to its bad reputation! On the contrary, it was one of the highlights of our trip!

We arrived in Hanoi on the eve of the lunar New Year (called Tet in Vietnamese). The mood was festive, the city was up in lights, and people were out to celebrate! In Hanoi we had the good fortune to be able to visit a Confuscious Temple on the day of Tet (new years day). This is a day when families dress in their best and go to temples to pray for good luck and fortune for the coming year. It is believed that the first day of the new year sets the tone for the rest of the year - so if on Tet you do good things and go to the temple and pray, etc. it certainly bodes well for you for the next 365 days!

Some pics of the festivities:

One offering seen at a temple. I think those are sweets in the boxes. Given, um... recent history.... obvious irony that US money represents prosperity.

People also have altars to their ancestors in their homes and shops. I walked around a bit on "Tet Eve" and, as it approached midnight, I saw a lot of people putting new things (offerings?) on the altars, making sure everything looked just right. Some were simple with just fruit, others were more elaborate - I saw candy, cookies, cheese, beer, whiskey, cigarettes, wrapped Tet gifts, and a whole cooked chicken on various altars.

The next day. The party's over....

Over the next few days as we explored Hanoi, we were surprised to find our preconceived stereotypes melting away - our experience was really nothing like what people had told us. We found people to be very friendly, and quite helpful. The streets were a bit dirty, but compared to India it was actually quite clean. And overall we felt quite safe and relatively comfortable throughout our stay in Vietnam.

Tet was a good time to be in Vietnam, as we got to experience some of this festive spirit, but it was also a bad time, because many things close for around 10 days following Tet. So, many trains weren't running, alot of museums were closed, and buses were fully booked b/c many Vietnamese families use this time to visit family or to take a family vacation to the beach or to the mountains.

We did however get to visit the Prison Museum in Hanoi, which was quite interesting. This is the prison where Vietnamese freedom-fighters were imprisoned by the French during the independence struggle. It was also the prison where many US pilots were held as POWs during the American/Vietnamese war (the sarcastically named "Hanoi Hilton"). And just like most governments, the Vietnamese government chose to magnify the injustices brought upon them by the French, and minimize the injustices they themselves brought upon the American POWs. I guess politics is politics, and propaganda is propaganda - the world over!

For example, there were lots of pictures of Vietnamese prisoners tortured by the French.....

... and lots of pictures of the American pilots making Christmas ornaments, playing basketball, and receiving high quality health care (that's John McCain on the left):

After Hanoi, we visited Halong Bay - a bay in northern Vietnam with rather unusual and unique rock formations jutting out of the water and into the sky. Many of these cliffs have caves - some quite extensive and spectacular. We took an overnight boat trip through the bay and did a bit of kayaking the following morning. Unfortunately the weather was fairly terrible - you may have heard of the crazy snow storms China was having around this time - and Halong Bay is very close to the Chinese border and so we got some chilly and rainy weather as a result of this weather system.

A huge cave we stopped at on the boat trip:

Given the cold weather, we decided to make a beeline for south Vietnam to the sandy shores of Nha Trang (pronounced Na Cha). It wasn't quite beach-going weather here either, but at least we didn't have to wear our coats! And we managed to get a few scuba-dives in, which was nice!

From here we went to Saigon (now officially known as Ho Chi Minh City post-reunification). Saigon is a name well-known to most North Americans, as it formed the headquarters for the US war. It is a very lively city, somewhat resembling Indian cities in the ways of the bustling informal economy, the number of street food vendors, the sounds and smells one encounters walking down the road, and the wide array of modes of transportation one sees on the roads.

I visited the Cu Chi tunnels on a daytrip from Saigon (Jenny didn't make it because her tummy was needing to stay close to a toilet that day! Thanks, sweetie.). During the French and US wars, the Viet Cong constructed a series of secret tunnels about 2 hours from Saigon in a place called Cu Chi. These tunnels were an incredible feat of engineering - they were three stories deep with parallel tunnel lines running at various depths. The total network spanned over 200 kms! The tunnels were so small that the Viet Cong soldiers needed to frog-walk through them - sometimes for 5 km at a time! They built various ventilation pipes out of bamboo to ventilate the deeper tunnels. And at various points there were underground bunkers - some used for living, some for military planning, and some even used as underground hospitals!

We got the chance to crawl through one of these tunnels to see what it felt like. These particular tunnels have been widened slightly to be able to fit the "western-sized bodies" of tourists , and yet it was so claustrophobic that i took the first exit available out (only 15 metres past the entrance)! A few others continued on for the full 120 metres, but came out looking quite harrowed and sweaty. I cannot imagine the will and conviction one must have to have for their political cause in order to live with those conditions for years on end, and to travel those tunnels carrying weaponry and other supplies on a daily basis! The human spirit is truly an incredible thing - and one realizes how much we are actually capable of if we were to just put our minds and convictions to it. It is just unfortunate that the sorts of things that historically have motivated humans find this sort of conviction have tended to be fueled by hatred, war, power, and greed.

A few more scenes from Vietnam.....

A woman selling food at the Tan An bus station:

A market in Saigon- friendly for pedestrians, and a drive-through for those on motorbikes!

In the category of other things you wouldn't see in North America... a stray kitten who visited me in a restaurant in Nha Trang. There were also a few cute puppies running around.

Almost everywhere we went on our trip - Italy, India, Laos, and Vietnam - was a motorbike culture. From Vespas to serious motorcycles, they were everywhere. But Vietnam wins for most motorbikes. Here we are in a taxi, caught in a rush hour motorbike scrum at a roundabout:

Ashifa made a comment in India: "India doesn't need HOV lanes. Every vehicle is a high occupancy vehicle." Same goes for most places we visited in Asia (Singapore and Kuala Lumpur, the most "modern" being the exceptions - full of cars). They also don't need SUVs; in the absence of Costco, a motorcycle can be your family vehicle! Ashifa's best sighting - dad, mom riding sidesaddle, and two kids - the youngest being breastfed by mom as they zoomed through the city. (My best sighting was a bike with a dead hog strapped to the back, feet up.)

And, if traffic is bad, you can always ride your motorbike on the sidewalk:

One of the nicer legacies of the French colonialists in both Laos and Vietnam is the baked goods! Indians do not really do baked goods, and when they do them they don't really do them well, so it was nice to find delicious baguettes, croissants, and cake in Southeast Asia.

And, finally from Vietnam, a toast to my dad (who had a small involuntary "vacation" in Vietnam about 40 years ago) - with the beer he remembers from his visit:

After a few days in Saigon, we made our slow wind back towards India with the intention of flying back to Toronto (via Milan) on our scheduled flight for Feb. 20th. As Jen has mentioned however, our airline (Alitalia) decided to change our flight schedule which meant we wouldn't make our connection from Milan to Toronto. MANY others were in the same boat as us no doubt, as the Delhi to Toronto (via Milan) route is a popular one, given it's the cheapest option out there. We tried to contact Alitalia to figure out what to do (we wrongly assumed they'd have a plan, since probably at least 100 others were in the same situation).

Unfortunately Alitalia went out of their way to make themselves as inaccessible as they possibly could. In the end, we had a list of about 6 different contact numbers for them - none of which actually put us touch with a real human who could help us. Each person basically told us to call another number - which usually ended up either being busy, or we ended up on hold for 20 minutes while we footed the long-distance bill. When we did get a hold of a person we got offered "solutions" such as: 1) the next possible flight we can get you on is March 3rd (2 weeks later!), 2) go to the airport in Delhi at 11pm and wait there at the office all night in hopes of getting on a different flight sometime the next day, or 3) we'll sort it out and call you right back..."i promise" (needless to say our phone never rang!).

Finally, being frustrated with the Delhi office, and being unable to easily reach the New York or Milan offices from India, we called my mom to enlist her help. Like most moms, my mom is generally very sweet, unless someone is messing with her daughter...then...watch out! Not surprisingly, she managed to sort it all out, and got us switched over to Air France and we ended up coming home on time, in a MUCH more comfortable fashion than Alitalia could ever have offered!

Our suggestion: DON'T FLY ALITALIA. We now understand why there is a website called http://www.alitaliasucks.com/ - if you ever feel compelled to take this airline because of their cheap fares, I would suggest that you check out this and other similar websites first!