How to make camping less complicated

^{Camping sunset views}

I’m sure there is LOADS of information on the internet about this. In fact, I’m not even going to check because it would make the past 30 minutes I’ve spent writing seem useless. I realize that sounds strange; I usually work backwards when I’m blogging and write the first paragraph last. So, let’s just roll with it! Besides, I think my advice is actually pretty good.

Our entire family loves camping and we camp quite a bit. Camping in Namibia is easier than camping was in Oman because there are far more campgrounds with varying levels of infrastructure. So unless you really try, chances are you are not wild camping if you go camping in Namibia. You will have, at the bare minimum, a drop toilet, a braai space and a garbage can. Or if you go fancy you’ll have electricity, hot and cold running water, a shaded area, table and sink, and full bathroom facilities.

Some people think that camping is hard or logistically complicated, but it’s not! Here are some of our family’s best tips to make camping less stressful and less of a production:

Have a checklist 
The key to a successful camping experience is to be prepared. Having a checklist is essential to being prepared.

Be organized
Camping is a lot easier when you know where things are. We have most of our camping gear divided into boxes 6 heavy-duty boxes that we just leave packed in between camping trips. Our boxes are pantry, gas fire cooking, braai, dishes, tent, cold weather gear, and miscellaneous. So when I’m setting up the tent, I grab our tent and the tent box, and that’s all I need to get the tent and mats ready to go (plus obviously our sleeping bags). We keep most of our camping gear in the garage, but we also have a shelf by the kitchen where we put the random bits of camping gear (laundered dish towels, clean camping dishes that we needed to rewash, flashlights, etc) that make their way upstairs. So when we’re getting ready to start going through our checklist, we just carry all those things downstairs and put them in the appropriate box. If you’re organized, it’ll make going through your checklist really easy!

^{Camping gear storage area in the garage}

Start prepping several days in advance 
The day before our most recent camping trip, we started going through our checklist. I opened the “dishes” box and everything was COVERED in mold. We had to wash absolutely everything in the box, and we discovered that a few things were ruined. Normally the “dishes” box is the best-prepared of all our boxes because we have absolutely no need for any of the things in it when we’re not camping, so we just keep it in the garage between trips and don’t even open it (obviously… or we might not have had the mold problem). Thank goodness we had time to wash, dry and repack everything. It’s also good to do some of your food prep in advance, if you have time. It’s not 100% necessary, but if you’re planning to make something that calls for diced chicken breast, it’s way easier to chop it up at home and then to just have a ziplock full of diced chicken ready when you need it. The one thing to consider is that some things, once you chop them up, should be refrigerated, like onions and potatoes. So you may need to take into account the amount of coldbox space that you have.

Only bring what you’ll need
If we don’t plan on making a stew, we leave the potjie pot at home. If it’s the middle of summer, we don’t bring our cold weather box (which contains blankets, hats, gloves, and scarves). If we’re not going to the beach, we don’t bring our beach tent. If we know there will be someplace to easily make a fire, we don’t bring our little grill. You know, common sense things.

_{^{The campsite at Farm Godeis has deep shelves that are perfect for storing our camping boxes. We were more organized that usual that weekend because we could so easily put everything away.}}

Be prepared for the weather
Check the forecast for wherever you’re camping. If it looks like it might be cold, bring the cold weather gear. If you’re camping along the coast of Namibia, make sure your tent is waterproof. We learned the hard way that our previous tent was, in fact, not waterproof when we were camping along the coast and Nate woke me up at 1:30 am because water was dripping onto his face from a leaky tent seam. The next day we jury-rigged a rain fly out of a random tarp to keep out the moisture. It worked. If you think it’ll be windy, bring extra tent stakes and guy lines.

^{Our camping boxes also help keep tent stakes in the ground in extremely windy conditions}

Have a good plan to keep food cold
In the US this isn’t really as much of an issue because you can find ice almost anywhere. In the rest of the world, this can be a real problem. In Oman we froze water bottles to keep our cooler cold for several days, and then as they defrosted we also had drinking water. In Namibia we’ve solved this quandary by installing a camping fridge in the back of our Hilux. Best decision ever.

^{Campsites with electrical outlets make life a lot easier!}

Know how to use your equipment
Maybe this means you put up your tent in the driveway before you first go camping with it. Trust me, it’s good to know how to assemble your tent before you try to do it in the sand and wind. Both Nate and I are able to easily assemble and use all of our camping gear, although he is better at chopping wood than I am.

You don’t need new or fancy things
If something works, and you are familiar with it, use it. We still use Nate’s dad’s 30-year old aluminum cooking gear. 

Don’t bank on getting the best sleep of your life
Sometimes I sleep well when we’re camping, sometimes I sleep like complete crap. Maybe it’s hotter than hell, or maybe you have noisy neighbors that play loud music until 3 am. Maybe it’s really cold out and you have to pee but you don’t want to get bundled up so you have to hold it all night. Maybe you’re learning the hard way that your camping mat is not as comfy as you’d hoped. The two most important things you can do to ensure comfort while sleeping in a tent are to have a good mat and to…

^{Hammocks are the perfect place to catch up on a bad night of sleep while camping}

Wear earplugs
Earplugs are a complete game-changer. I can’t count the number of sleepless nights I’ve had due to the wind. Also, in a tent, when someone gets up to go to the bathroom, there is a tremendous amount of noise. I only started wearing earplugs recently and I wish I’d started years ago. 

Don’t expect perfect
Things never work out 100% as planned. They just don’t; that’s life! Maybe you forgot the coffee, baboons raided your garbage and there’s trash everywhere, you ran out of aluminum foil, you forgot to pack underwear, or you broke a rotten egg into a bunch of good eggs. Roll with it and just make it work. It’ll be fine! This is why we pack one bottle of wine per person per night. I mean, if it’s really that terrible you can always just pack up and leave or go stay in a lodge/hotel. The whole idea is to have fun!

^{Not pictured: birds pooping all over the “kitchen,” a squirrel nearly chewing open the peanut butter jar, and strong winds that kept blowing the fire out}

Last, but not least, a few extra tips if you are camping with kids:

Make camping special
M knows he’s going to get to drink all the chocolate milk he wants when we go camping and that he’ll get to stay up later than normal. Plus, he’ll get to eat s’mores! These things usually don’t happen in our day-to-day life.

Bring reward toys
Maybe your kids will have a harder time than you’re expecting. Perhaps because they didn’t get enough sleep. In that case, we turn to bribery. No, really. Bring a new book or a new toy (but nothing small that can get easily buried or lost). This has worked wonders for us. 

Most kids naturally like camping
Keep this fact in mind and help nurture this. It’s an amazing adventure! Chances are you’re camping someplace vastly different from where you normally live, which brings a sense of wonder. Then, on top of that, they get to sleep in a tent! They get to explore, look for insects, climb rocks, roast marshmallows. They love that camping is messy and that’s okay. They love getting wrapped up in blankets when it’s cold, sitting around the campfire and listening to stories. We really enjoy camping with M, and he has so much fun.

^{Home, sweet home!}

I could go on. In fact, I know I’m excluding things from the list above, like making sure you have water, a way to charge your electronic devices, and a first aid kit. But you’ll find that advice anywhere. The tips I’ve listed are the ones that are perhaps unique to our experiences that I think are the most helpful. Happy camping!

Etosha trip reports and accommodation advice

^{Baby elephants at Rietfontein watering hole (October 2020)}

For us, the best thing about visiting Etosha is that each trip is different. It’s like one of those “Choose You Own Adventure” books playing out in real time. It’s fascinating, fun, and thrilling. But different climates and seasons result in different animal behaviors and can impact what you are able to see.

My last blog post was all about tips for making the most of your trip to Etosha. Trip reports and some advice on picking accommodation below!

When: Late December (summer)
Stayed: Gondwana Safari Lodge (because we didn’t know better)
Saw: Some lions snoozing under trees along the road driving to the main drag from Gemsbokvlakte, and lots of zebra/antelope. No elephant or rhino. Went on a Gondwana game drive and saw a lion with a zebra kill.
Over-all impressions: If you stay outside of the park, it’s harder to get in as the gates open (there is a line) and you have to be careful to ensure you leave before the gates close. There was a good amount of rain by this point so the watering holes were less populated. 

^{This dude had the meat sweats}

^{Hazy skies and grass during the rainy season}

When: Mid-July (winter)
Stayed: Okaukuejo
Saw:  At the Okaukuejo watering hole: lots of elephant, rhino, and lions nightly. Driving around: lots of fat and happy zebra/antelope and secretary birds, several hyena at dusk/dawn around Nebrowni, one elephant and two rhino. Monitor lizard on the Salvadora/Sueda loop.
Over-all impressions: After a solid rainy season ending in April/May, the grass is too tall to easily spot snoozing predators or anything else low-lying. Watering holes started to become populated around mid-day.

^{Plain zebra and tall grass in the afternoon sun}

^Springbok!

^{We saw so many secretary birds on this trip}

When: Mid-October (spring)
Stayed: Okaukuejo and Namutoni
Saw: Rhino, elephants, zebra, giraffe, bustards, and antelope galore. Lions in the morning near Nebrowni, a leopard resting in the cave at Ngobib. Spotted hyenas by Nebrowni, Klein Namutoni and Chudop. All the herbivores congregate at watering holes. Snakes and banded mongooses at Namutoni watering hole.
Over-all impressions: Best animal sightings yet. Literally hundreds of elephants at watering holes. Amazing sightings took almost zero effort on our part. Watering hole at Namutoni is nothing special.

^OMG

^{Watering hole buddies}

Animals galore: elephant, giraffe, zebra, and springbok

There is a glut of accommodation around Etosha, and it can be hard to decide where to stay. To make a choice, first you have to pick your #1 priority. The table below will help you to work through your options.

If your #1 goal is to…	…Then you should…	… Keeping in mind that…
Have a fancy, indulgent lodging experience	Stay outside the park	The NWR lodging in the park doesn’t suck. It’s just not fancy and the food isn’t amazing.
See Etosha on a shoe-string budget	Camp outside the park	Campsites outside the park are probably less expensive than those in the park.
See all the animals	Stay inside the park	Through NWR you can book night and early morning game drives, plus there’s the watering holes at night at the rest camps.
Have fancy lodging and still see all the animals including big cats (and you have an unlimited budget)	Stay at Onguma	We haven’t been there but it’s supposedly the best place to stay in/near Etosha.
Have a pleasant camping experience	Camp outside the park	Just about any campsite outside of the park gates will be a better experience than camping at the NWR facilities.
Save some money and still see animals	Camp inside the park	Camping inside the park can be crowded, noisy, and messy.
Go to Etosha during the high season at the last minute	Stay outside the park, or camp inside the park	Chances are NWR facilities will be fully booked unless you want to camp

From Windhoek, the closest gate is the Andersson Gate, which is about a 4-hour drive. Okaukuejo is the closest rest camp to Andersson, which is convenient since the watering hole is amazing and we can arrive on a Friday afternoon and still have time for a short game drive before the gates close. For these reasons Okaukuejo is also the busiest rest camp and is most likely to be fully booked. The vibe there is much more frenetic than at Namutoni, for instance.

We are heading back to Etosha again next month, and I’m already so excited! You never know what lies ahead, and that is the best part.

Tips for visiting Etosha National Park

Classic Etosha: springbok and zebra

First of all let me say that WordPress has been a huge pain in the butt lately and I have no idea if this post is going to publish the way I want it to. Text keeps disappearing, photos reorder themselves, and it’s general choas. I’ve spent 30 minutes trying to fix the photo captions and I’m giving up. Maybe they’re trying to get me to start paying to use their platform. HA.

Moving on.

One of our favorite things to do in Namibia is to go to Etosha National Park. We’ve been enough times now we basically know what we’re doing (Kind of? Maybe? We haven’t seen a cheetah yet so who knows.) There’s a massive amount of info on the internet about visiting Etosha, but I think I actually have some meaningful contributions to make!

I’m not going to tell you where to go to find the big cats or where the elephants like to hang out because frankly I have no clue. Each time we’ve gone they’ve all be somewhere different and Etosha is almost the size of New Hampshire so there is some wiggle room.

Spotted hyena in the morning

Here are our tips for making the most out of your trip to Etosha:

Get out the gate as soon as it opens. 
Yes, sometimes that’s quite early and yes sometimes it’s hard to get out of bed. But most of our favorite sightings have been early in the morning, and the light is great for photos. Similarly…

Black-backed jackal family near Okaukuejo

The Etosha morning commute

Exit the park right before the gates close. 
More great photography lighting and the animals are finally coming out of their shaded hidey holes. Pack a cooler with some beverages, find a watering hole, turn the car off, have a sundowner and just watch the animals emerge. 

Pack your meals to go.  
Or at least pack enough nourishing food to sustain you between meals if you get up early and plan on eating breakfast around 9 at your rest camp. On our most recent evening at Okaukuejo we made sandwiches for dinner while sitting alongside the Okaukuejo watering hole because we only had one night there and I’ll be damned if I’m going to miss an amazing sighting to go eat a mediocre expensive pork schnitzel at the restaurant. Some of our favorite meals-to-go: cold quiche, hard boiled eggs, hummus and pre-sliced veg, cold pizza, and of course sandwich fixings.

Bring lots of game drive snacks. 
I’m talking cookies, popcorn, gummy bears, chips, biltong, apples, granola bars, and more cookies. Everyone has their kryptonite snacks; bring those. Things that will make everyone forget their sore butts from enduring bumpy roads, keep whiny children and grownups from losing it, and generally make things more enjoyable. 

Bring a way to make coffee and large to-go mugs.
If you stay at an NWR facility there will be a water kettle; we bring ground coffee, a french press, and thermoses, and we are good to go.

Have everyone go to the bathroom whenever the opportunity presents itself. 
Toilets are few and far between. The LAST thing you want to hear when you’ve found the perfect watering hole, turned off the car, and cracked open a beverage is, “Mommy, Daddy, I REALLY have to poop.” Trust me.

Share information with other tourists whenever you can.  
If we hadn’t told a truck full of Namibians where we had our lion and rhino sightings, they never would have told us about their leopard sighting. And we never would have seen a leopard. Relatedly…

We never would have spotted this beauty without a tip-off and good binoculars

If you’re staying somewhere new and you don’t know where to go to find the big game, ask or look in the sightings book. 
If you can find a game driver they might help you, or maybe not, who knows, they can be proprietary about their info. Every NWR reception has a sightings book; take a look and go to those watering holes.

Buy a map (or several) before you start driving around the park. 
M gets one in the back seat, we have one in the front seat. They also function as an animal guide, which is helpful when you see things like the bird below, which is a puffed out male kori bustard.

Pay at once for as many consecutive days as you’ll be in the park.
You can pay for as many consecutive days as you want, and this will save you time each day. You don’t need to fill out the paperwork or go back in to pay, and sometimes the queues can be terrible.

Don’t get jealous when other people see things that you didn’t. 
There’s ALWAYS that guy that brags about how he saw a lion take down a zebra, but when you ask where exactly he saw this, he won’t/doesn’t want to give you a straight answer. It’s stupid. People are territorial about their sightings and it’s childish. But that’s life.

Lower your tire pressure, keep your vehicle in 4WD-high, and don’t drive too quickly.
The dirt roads in Etosha aren’t great, verging on really bad. We lower our tire pressure to 1.5 bar and take it slow and steady. After all how else will you see animals. The first time we went we saw a flipped over rented vehicle, probably some tourist who didn’t know how to properly drive on gravel roads. Don’t be that tourist.

Bring binoculars.
Good ones. This is not the time to figure out that your binoculars actually suck.

Take the advice on travel blogs with a grain of salt.
Most of them are written by tourists who went to Etosha for two days during the dry season, happened to get lucky with their sightings and now think they know everything. Have zero expectations: the only things you are truly guaranteed to see are zebra and springbok. Don’t waste your time researching where to find animals at Etosha on the internet because, speaking from experience, it never pans out. Instead look in the sightings book or ask.

Springbok for days

Whew. Well that’s more than I expected to write. In the next post I’ll cover our Etosha trip reports and go over some advice on how to pick where to stay!

This baby giraffe just couldn’t handle the morning traffic

Back to Swakopmund

Swakopmund sunset

One of our favorite places in Namibia is Swakopmund, an odd and eclectic town along the coast in the Erongo region. It has fantastic restaurants (the bar in Namibia is quite low), good shopping, and lots of things to do. It’s where most of Namibia goes to get away. It’s about 4 hours from Windhoek, depending on how many slow-moving semis you get stuck behind.

Initially, the epicenter of COVID-19 in Namibia was in Walvis Bay, the town next to Swakopmund. The entire Erongo region was put on lock-down on May 28, basically two weeks after the initial lock-down had been lifted (which had been put in place in the second half of March). Then the Erongo lockdown was lifted, but by then Windhoek was also in a lockdown. Then, on September 17, the State of Emergency expired, COVID-19 was magically gone from Namibia, and all lockdowns were over.

Many businesses in Erongo haven’t recovered from the COVID-19 lockdown, and I don’t know if they ever will

We went to Swakopmund as soon as we could. M got to go to the Snake Park and the aquarium, Nate went fishing, I went shopping, and we all chased guinea fowl, slept in, played on the beach and ate ourselves silly. It was delightful.

The Snake Park’s Very Dangerous Wall: black mambas, cape cobras and a puff adder

A Namaqua chameleon enjoying a worm snack

We went back to the best pizza restaurant in Namibia, Gabriele’s Pizza, and one of our favorite German restaurants, the Brauhaus. I was reminded why I don’t like eating oysters at The Tug: they don’t cut the muscle away from the shell. I once asked about this and was told “That’s why you have the little fork.” Um ok. Sadly the Jetty hasn’t reopened yet and hopefully it’s not gone for good.

Delicious pizza at Gabriele’s

The Jetty restaurant is, surprise surprise, at the end of the jetty

The Strand Hotel, which has the best views in town, was having a really great special so we stayed there. It’s hard to beat the convenience of having a restaurant with its own microbrewery and fantastic oysters downstairs. HOWEVER. Breakfast was an utter mess. No one was wearing a mask actually covering their nose and mouth, the tables were too close together, and the head chef was standing over the (uncovered) pancakes with no mask on, talking to everyone. We kept our masks on when we weren’t actively eating or drinking, and tried to eat foods that were covered, prepared fresh, or behind a plastic barrier. The first morning was terrible and the second morning we went down earlier when there were less people. Even then, we sat inthe most out-of-the-way table available, but when people came and sat next to us, we got up and left. Normally we would have sat outside but it was freezing cold and windy.

Lesson learned: next time don’t eat the free breakfast. 

Oysters at Brewer & Butcher

It’s nice to have the freedom to travel wherever we want around Namibia again. Tourism to more crowded places (which sounds like an oxymoron in Namibia) in the time of COVID-19 is tricky, but possible. You just have to make more calculated choices. Swakopmund: we’ll be back; the Strand: nope.

I love this little blue house so much

One of many buildings in Swakopmund with German-inspired architecture.

A weekend at Erindi

A huge elephant by the Camp Elephant watering hole

One of our best friends from Muscat came to visit us, and we decided to go check out Erindi Private Game Reserve. Just about everyone in Windhoek told us Erindi is absolutely amazing, and (spoiler alert) they were right!

There are two lodging options: Camp Elephant or Old Trader’s Lodge. At Camp Elephant, you can either tent camp or stay in a self-catering chalet. No matter which option you choose, I don’t think you can go wrong. The camping looks seriously nice: there are private flush toilets and showers, a refrigerator, hot water, grassy areas for your tent (grass!), picnic tables, and a kitchen sink. Coming from Oman where there was literally nothing if you didn’t bring it with you, the camping there is hardly even camping, other than the fact that you have to sleep in a tent.

Self-catering chalets

We booked the self-catering chalets since we weren’t sure if we’d have our camping gear or not. The chalets all border a watering hole and have two bedrooms, a bathroom, air conditioning, and a well-equipped kitchen with a microwave, toaster, and a two-burner stove. Then outside there’s a picnic table and two (two!) braai areas. It was awesome.

The front of the chalet, with a view of the watering hole and two braai spots

Watering hole and chalets at dusk

I can’t tell you much about Old Trader’s Lodge because Camp Elephant guests are “strictly forbidden from visiting Old Trader’s Lodge at all.” I’m guessing it’s fancy? I have no idea. I’m also curious about what must have happened to institute this ridiculous policy.

We visited Erindi on Thanksgiving weekend, so we decided to do a glamping Thanksgiving. We cooked all the food, except the turkey, on Wednesday and Thursday. We got the braai going as soon as we arrived, heated up everything else, and had a humongous feast. In hindsight, the fact that we thought we needed to bring additional food for Saturday night is laughable. We went home without having cooked some of the food we brought, and we never even had a chance to make s’mores. Oh well. Worse things have surely happened.

Thanksgiving desserts!

Sausages on the braai

On Saturday morning, E and I went on an early morning game drive while Nate stayed behind with M and slept in. The game drive was…. alright, I guess? It certainly wasn’t my favorite. There were a bunch of loud hungover people that arrived late, drank throughout the entire thing, wanted to wake up the lions, asked if you could hunt rhinoceros, watched youtube videos and video-chatted during the game drive, and asked the driver if he had more drinks. And the driver seemed hell-bent on driving through the tightest of spaces in an enormous safari vehicle. I sat in the middle to avoid getting swiped by thorny branches. He spent probably 10 minutes trying to drive over a tree. But we saw a male and female lion resting and then a cheetah family out on a hunt, so that was cool.

The next morning, Nate and E went on a game drive while I stayed behind with M. Their guide was awesome, super-knowledgeable about everything, and took them to see lots of lions (including cubs!). Plus there was the added bonus of no obnoxious passengers. So I guess the game drive tours at Erindi are a total and complete crapshoot.

Another option at Erindi is to do self-drive game drives. You have to stay on the road, so it’s unlikely that you’ll see any lions or large predators unless they literally cross the road right in front of you, but you’ll see lots of other neat stuff. We saw a lot of zebras, springbok, oryx, and giraffes. Plus some clusters of elephants and rhinos.

Since moving here I’ve discovered that I get carsick on the bumpy dirt roads (great timing, huh?) so Nate drove the first half and then I took over. I felt slightly better behind the wheel, but I need to buy some kind of medicine for next time.

The amount of wildlife visible from the chalets is awesome. Hippos and crocodiles live in the watering hole, and there’s no shortage of wildebeest, springbok, elephants and warthogs, plus a huge variety of birds. There are also scorpions and bat-sixed moths. A palm-sized scorpion wandered towards our picnic table while we were playing a board game outside after M went to bed. I shouted “Holy shit, a scorpion!!!” and I’ve never seen grown adults jump so quickly on top of a table.

Erindi makes for a nice weekend getaway, or a great first stop on a further-flung camping trip. There’s a surprisingly large well-stocked shop next to the reception with pretty much everything you could need if you forget something, including ice and firewood. That said, I started a list of things to make sure we bring next time: pool towels, tin foil, binoculars, extra dish towels, a silicon spatula, and a kitchen sponge.

Erindi, we’ll be back!

Update: We’ve since returned to Erindi and our second account was about the same. Guided game drives are a still complete crapshoot (even more so than last time) and the facilities are still amazing.

New trip-planning page is live!

Top left corner (clockwise): Wadi Shab, Daymaniyat Islands, Masirah Islands, Wahiba Sands

A quick administrative note: If you’re looking to plan a trip to Muscat, Oman check out the new “Things to do around Muscat” page! It’s in the tool bar at the top next to “Home” and “About.” I’m working on adding photos, but I don’t want to bog it down. Several of the items are linked to blog posts with more information.

There are several categories: forts/castles/other neat outdoors things, hiking, primarily indoor things (museums, the souk, etc), wadis, and beaches/watersports.

Please feel free to reach out if you have any questions!

Top left corner (clockwise): Jebel Al Akhdar, scuba diving at the Daymaniyat Islands, Sa’al Stairs, snorkeling at the Daymaniyats

Our trip to Rajasthan: Pushkar

The narrow, winding streets of Pushkar

Our primary reason for stopping in Pushkar was to break up the drive from Jaipur to Jodphur. Pushkar turned out to be a delightful, interesting, pedestrian-friendly town with lots of neat things to see and some great food. Definitely worth a quick stop!

Watching our lunch get made

Warily watching the world go by

We stayed at Inn Seventh Heaven, a quirky, fun haveli that M loved running around. There were cats to chase, elephant statues to investigate, stairs to climb, and swing benches all over the place, plus a water feature in the middle of the ground floor. Honestly, I think the most fun he had in Pushkar was probably exploring the hotel.

Looking up from the inner courtyard at the haveli….

…. And looking down into the same courtyard

Pushkar is a popular for pilgrimages because of its sacred Hindu lake and many ghats. A ghat is a set of stairs leading down to the water, and there are usually several ghats all for the same body of water. There are more than 50 ghats at the Pushkar Lake. One of the few temples to the Hindu creator-god Brahma is located in Pushkar, and this is also a popular draw.

A temple by a ghat

One thing to note about Pushkar is that because it is a devoutly religious town, almost all of the food there is vegetarian with no eggs. They still eat cheese and yogurt, and the main protein source is legumes. So be prepared for weak breakfasts if you like protein in the morning.

We were particularly glad to have a Pushkar city guide because he took us around the town in the evening. Experiencing the temples at prayer time was one of the more spiritual experiences I’ve had, and something we never would have done without our guide. We walked all the way around the lake and he got us into the Brahma temple 5 minutes before closing time (and showed us the best inexpensive place to store our shoes without having to worry about them getting stolen).

Pushkar lake, ghats and temples at sunset

We were pleasantly surprised by Pushkar, and unless you plan on doing some of desert adventuring based out of Pushkar, I think you probably only need to spend one night. After waking up early to wander around Pushkar Lake during sunrise, we ate breakfast (which left us all hungry an hour later), and we were on our way to Jodphur!

Our trip to Rajasthan: Jaipur

The Hawa Majal or “The Palace of Winds” is basically a facade; it is not a real building.

There’s so much on the internet about Jaipur already, I don’t have much to add.

My first-ever thali. Sadly nothing else on the trip was quite as good!

We stayed at the Pearl Palace Heritage Hotel (which is separate from the Pearl Palace Hotel) and it was wonderful. Our room was interesting and fun, and the breakfast area was super quirky. There is no restaurant on the premises, so they offer free tuktuks to their sister hotel, the Pearl Palace Hotel, which has a restaurant. The restaurant there is amazing: very good inexpensive food and excellent thalis.

We wanted to spend some time with elephants while we were in Jaipur. We found an elephant sanctuary called Elefantastic, and we had a really great experience. It was a bit canned and the guy seemed preoccupied with our potential TripAdvisor review (which I never gave), but we enjoyed ourselves and M loved it, so we were happy.

Our elephant for the day. The orange chalk line across her forehead kept the oil that was massaged into her scalp from running into her eyes.

We got to paint our elephant with natural mineral-based paints (where these colors exist in nature, I have no clue). It seemed gimmicky initially, but it was much more fun than I thought it’d be.

My handiwork

At the City Palace

We did all the normal stuff in Jaipur: the Hawa Mahal (much smaller than I thought it’d be), the Amber Fort (much larger than I thought it would be), the City Palace, etc.

Inside the Amber Fort

More of the Amber Fort. Picture don’t do it justice.

Between our city guide and driver, we were well taken-care-of, and the guide did a good job of being understanding of the limits of sight-seeing with a 3-year-old. Jaipur is worth the trip!

A Trip to Rajasthan: India for Beginners

Getting stared down in the Blue City: Jodphur

We are currently on home leave, and I thought now would be a good chance to finally blog about a trip we took last year in October to Rajasthan, India. I wasn’t planning to blog about it because what can I possibly say about India that hasn’t already been said somewhere on the internet. But, after some encouragement, I thought about it and I do have some helpful info and tips to pass along.

We’d been wanting to go to India ever since we were in Dhaka. We had good friends serving in Chennai, and we purchased tickets to visit them and got our visas, and then the terrorist attack happened. If we’d gone to Chennai we would have been “caught out,” which would have meant that M and me would not have been allowed back in Dhaka, and maybe they wouldn’t have let Nate back either. We decided we wanted to leave Dhaka on our own terms, and we knew there would eventually be an opportunity to go back to India.

Cows everywhere.

Ironically, the flight options from Oman to India are far better those from Bangladesh to India. When we lived there, you could only fly direct from Dhaka to Calcutta and New Deli. From Muscat there are flights to probably 15 different cities in India. And they’re super cheap! I was amazed by how easy it was to get there from Muscat.

We decided to go to Rajasthan because I always thought Jaipur looked like the most interesting part of the Golden Triangle (Dheli, Agra and Jaipur) and some friends said Udaipur was their favorite city in India. From there, we looked at a map, read the guidebook, and decided to also go to Jodhpur, with a one-night stop in Pushkar along the way to break up the drive.

A Jain temple between Jodphur and Udaipur, after which we got a flat tire.

This was our itinerary:

Day 1: Arrive in Jaipur
Day 2: Tour Jaipur
Day 3: Drive to Pushkar
Day 4: Drive to Jodphur
Day 5: Tour Jodhpur
Day 6: Drive to Udaipur
Day 7: Tour Udaipur
Day 8: Tour Udaipur
Day 9: Depart Udaipur

So, logistics. The first thing to know about traveling to India is that, if you’re an American, you need a visa. You can easily apply for it online and I used the app PassportBooth to take photos and edit them to the correct size, and then I just emailed them to myself. One thing to note is if you do the e-visa route, you’ll get only a double-entry three-month visa. I have no idea how to get the magical 10-year multiple-entry visa. Apparently you can’t get it even if you apply at an embassy.

We hired a car and driver for the duration of our trip through Tamarind Global. It was excellent. We had a large Toyota station-wagon that our driver kept clean and stocked with cold bottles of water. We also had a different tour guide in each city that we went to. This was the first time that Nate and I traveled with a tour guide and, I have to tell you, it was awesome. We learned and saw far more than we would have on our own, and I think people were less likely to pester us because we almost always had a tour guide with us when we were walking around town. The cost of the car, driver, and tour guides came out to around $80 a day, which was definitely worth it for us, especially with a toddler.

More of The Blue City. It was obviously a favorite of mine.

I found hotels using The Lonely Planet guidebook and online reviews. We stayed in havelis, also called heritage hotels, which are basically old houses that have been transformed into hotels. Each haveli is different, and we really enjoyed the experience.

I bought a lot of textiles. Did I get ripped off? Probably. Was it worth it? YES.

I will say this: when packing your bags, ensure you have a lot of space for souvenirs. In our case, this was textiles. We went a little overboard. Shirts, pillow covers, fabric (namely cotton, silk, silk brocade, and linen), pashmina blankets, table clothes, table runners, paper products, etc. There are so many interesting and pretty things to buy there. God help us if we ever get posted to India. I’m going to buy so much furniture and everything else.

Antiques (both fake and real) as far as the eye could see.

I’ll do a more detailed post about each of the cities that we went to, but I will say this about the trip over-all: it was awesome and went extremely well.

We were prepared for all sorts of misery. Food poisoning, pick-pockets, terrible traffic, getting ripped off, an overwhelming and constant barrage of stinky smells, air pollution, and so forth and so on. Basically every bad stereotype that you think of when you think of India. Other than a few days of bad air and maybe an hour of unpleasant traffic, our fears were completely unfounded. Well, maybe I did get ripped off on a few things, but I never paid more than I thought was reasonable.

First stop: Jaipur!

The waterfalls of Salalah

There’s more to Salalah than Wadi Darbat

Around Salalah, you’ll see many sights called “ain“/”ayn”-something, which means “spring” and sometimes “waterfall.” We decided to spend our time around Salalah checking out all as many of the natural water features as possible. I mean, if we made a return trip and it wasn’t during the khareef, they won’t be there anymore! As with Wadi Darbat, you should not go in the water at any of these sites due to the prevalence of schistosomiasis.

The beautiful water looks inviting and you want to jump in, but don’t do it!

After going to Wadi Darbat, our next stops were Ain Tabruk and Ain Athum. Ain Tabrukwas unimpressive, but Ain Athum was really something. It’s basically just a granite wall with water cascading down the sides in a waterfall curtain. M enjoyed throwing rocks into the stream and I could have spent hours there taking photos. There were plenty of snack vendors around, but no public toilets.

Nice, but not awesome, Ain Tabruk

Ain Athum

We also drove to Ain Humran, which was more of a stream than a waterfall. It was pretty none-the-less and if we hadn’t been so tired by then we probably would have explored it a little more. M clambered on the rocks and wanted to go swimming. We called it a day and went back to the pool for some swimming in not-parasite-infested waters.

Muddy, green mountain roads

The next day we went to Ain Khor. Around half a mile from the actual waterfall, the gravel road was flooded and we didn’t know if our car could make it. Turns out, it definitely could have, but we erred on the side of caution. The last half mile wasn’t a terrible walk, and it was nice to stretch our legs. Once you reach the waterfall, be sure to climb the rocks over on the right side to get some nice photos! This was another spot where M wanted to swim, but that was, once again, a no-go.

Ain Khor

If I’m being picky, like, very picky, I’d say the water at this waterfall wasn’t as pretty as the others. But it still made for a great day trip!

If you only have time for one, go to Ain Athum. You won’t be disappointed!