"Until the floods come...



...and this is a lake."

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

National Museum, Jantar Mantar, Connaught Place

Image
Last day in Delhi. Last day in India! Today I took an Uber to a place I’d meant to visit last time, but which was closed: the National Museum!  The first impression isn’t great, because it occupies a rather old and ugly building -uglier still inside, white walls with green white tiles that scream “government building where you need to take a number and wait for an hour to do paperwork”. Plus, like all stations and airports and the metro and most museums, they have this stupid security system where they make you put your bag in an X-ray scanner, then go through a metal detector, and regardless of whether the metal detector beeps or not, the security guard does a patdown of every single person. It’s so inefficient!! But: the collection is absolutely worth the visit. I spent nearly two hours inside, and several galleries were closed for renovations (including, alas, the Jewelry vault -longtime readers know I like exhibits of shiny things!). The greatest asset...
Keep reading

Landing in Istanbul

Image
I'm in Istanbul! One year after my Japanese oddysey I'm once again out and about, so I'm coming back to the blog to make sure you don't miss a thing! The flight from Orly to Ataturk airport, which takes three hours, went without a hitch. Things got interesting once in Turkey. When I landed I was directed to a little visa shop, where you literally just fork over 15€ to get a visa, and then I made it to Passport Control... where I found a massive queue between my passport and the border guards charged with letting me into the country. Hundreds of people, Disneyland style. As soon as I took my position the cultural differences became apparent, as queuing seemed to be largely optional -groups of ladies in their hijabs and niqabs would just merrily elbow their way straight ahead, regardless of how many people they had to trample to get to the front of the queue. It was like one of those awful nature documentaries, where these ladies were the lions and the French tourists fro...
Keep reading

Shibuya, Harajuku, Omotesando

Image
After a relatively sedate first day in Tokyo, I thought the best next step was to jump straight into the madness that is Shibuya and Harajuku. The Shibuya crossing is the first movie-checkpoint of this trip, as it featured in one of the posters for Lost in Translation . Every time the lights turn green a flood of people cross in all directions at the same time. On a Sunday morning, the atmosphere was less busy and hurried, but even in this low season the entire neighbourhood was packed. Strolling along the Shibuya area is like entering into every exaggerated Japanese metropolis scene you've ever seen in the movie. Many stores even have J-pop or commercial jingles playing *on the outside*, so you have your own soundtrack while you walk around. It's all an explosion of colour, sound and consumerism. It's an ideal place to get lost, which I did, repeatedly. Even with a map in my hand and having already established a route, orientation grows difficult if only one in eve...
Keep reading