Pakistan update

So... things have happened with the upcoming Pakistan trip. Or rather; the not-anymore-upcoming trip. Yup - it has been cancelled.

To be honest it wasn't much of a surprise, though. We were informed by the travel agency that they were waiting for the embassy in Islamabad and the Foreign Ministry to update the travel information for Pakistan and more specifically the area where we would be trekking. I am assuming that if the travel information isn't positive enough insurance companies won't insure the travel agency/tip. The travel agency had been promised updates were coming, but reaching the deadline the agency had at the end of November nothing had been done yet. We were informed in the beginning of December that they had pushed the deadline and expected to be able to commit to the trip between Christmas and New Year's eve.

And nothing was heard - until a few days ago when receiving the mail cancelling the trip. It wasn't much of a surprise due to not hearing anything way past the deadline so I had more or less settled on the fact that I wouldn't be going this year - though it wasn't fun having my suspicions confirmed anyway. But I was promised that as soon as they would be able to put up the trip again (next year or later) they would start off informing those who had signed up now. 

So now I have to start looking for new destinations. So much work!

Back to watching animals

In Denmark when quitting/being laid off from a job, depending on contract and agreement with the (former) employer, you are able to get some of your leftover vacation paid out into a vacation fund which you can get paid out when you are going on vacation (as you in your new job won't have saved up any vacation yet at that point you'll be able to fall back on the previous-job-money). 

Between Christmas and New Year's I was reminded that I have vacation money to spend - and the way the system works they need to be spent before the 1st of May. 

Oh, dear.

So obviously I need to go travelling. I mean - the vacation money shouldn't go to waste, right? Planning on going to two different cold areas later in the year I was thinking about something warm, and adding the fact that it has been a while I have been on a safari the decision was fairly easy in the end.

12th-13th of March

Flight from Copenhagen to Johannesburg. I am flying via Dubai and while the overall trip would have been shorter if I went over Europe I get to go in A380s. And because Emirates prioritize economy class from Copenhagen there are economy seats on the top floor of the plane. Guess who was willing to pay for a seat reservation on the top floor? And the flight was dirt cheap. Like... really cheap.

Meeting with the group the 13th in the evening and getting barbecue.

14th - 16th of March

Driving to and spending time in Kruger NP. I am looking forward to this - especially expecting to have a better driver/guide than back in 2013 which ended up being a bit of a disappointment. Finishing the tour in the park by driving to different park, Karongwe Private Game Reserve. 

17th - 18th of March

Spending time in Karongwe Private Game Reserve, hopefully spotting plenty of other and more animals. Ending with returning to Johannesburg.

19th - 20th of March

Flight back to Copenhagen, finishing hopefully a very successful safari. 

It'll be great getting back into the heat and dust of safari'ing. When going it'll be 2 years since my last safari so it's about time getting out there again.

Just another small stroll in the mountains

An update to this trip can be found here.

Some people reading my blog might have noticed that I enjoy going on treks. Those I have been doing have been quite popular which means that there are a lot of other people and therefore an established infrastructure with huts, tea houses and eateries. Despite being far away from everything you could always rely on being close to something established if you needed a break or shelter. Everest Base Camp is a good example of this.

Then there are treks that are not very occupied by tourists, far away from everything so you have to camp and be self sufficient with regards to food. I haven't really done some like that ignoring the acclimatization treks of some summits (e.g. Aconcagua and Elbrus) so it must be time to do something along those lines.

This trip will take me on a 3-week trek in the Karakorum mountains, culminating with reaching K2 base camp - depending on conditions, obviously. There are barely any tourists in the area so it's going to feel very away from everything, combining with only being able to camp and bringing our own food. We will of course have porters, otherwise I might have skipped this...

Oh, yeah. Combining this with the trip to Iran I might be able to give the border security in the US a small heart attack.

10th - 11th of July

Flying out of Copenhagen and going to Islamabad, having some time to see the city after arrival.

12th of July

Plane to Skardu at 2500m, where we will be staying at a simple hotel. If the weather is bad the trip is done by bus. Afternoon is spent on sightseeing.

13th - 17th of July

The start of the trek will be relatively gentle, while the distances are 12-20km per day the ups and downs during the days are not that bad, usually less than 500m either way. Nights will be spent at Korofon (3075m), Jhola (3150m) and Paiju (3420m) where we will have an acclimatization day.

18th - 22nd of July

We'll start off heading towards Horbose (3795m) followed by Urdukas (3900m) which will be reached after a relatively short day. Then we're heading to Goro (4295m) and Concordia (4500m) which will be the furthest camp. Here we'll have an extra day where there are several paths we can take, among others a trek to K2 base camp, but also reaching Broad Peak base camp or walk towards Gasherbrum I ("Hidden Peak") so you get to see that, too.

23rd - 28th of July

From Concordia we will be making our way back down towards Skardu passing by Shachspong (4100m) before reaching known places Horbose (3795m), Paiju (3420m), Jhola (3150m), Askole (3000m) and in the end Skardu where we will have the first night since being here last time in a hotel.

29th - 31st of July

Again; depending on weather we will either fly back to Islamabad or take a jeep via Chilas. Having returned to Islamabad we will take a flight home on the last day.

Very excited about this trip - there are some great views of mountains you won't see other places (or at least with great difficulty) and it's in an area I have never been before. And the lack of people that can be seen on other treks will just make it more special.

One would think I missed being in the cold

When returning home from Svalbard I agreed with myself that I wouldn't return; not because it hadn't been a great experience but due to it being fairly pricey.

Despite the trip to Svalbard was cheaper than going to Antarctica I decided to see the latter less than half a year later. And when returning home from Antarctica I agreed with myself that I wouldn't return; not because it hadn't been a great experience but due to it being fairly pricey.

Some time after coming back home from Antarctica someone from the trip created a group on Facebook to arrange a reunion in 2018 - and having said reunion on a trip to Svalbard. There were quite a few people backing up around this idea, and so was I, but I pointed out that as I had already been there, and recently, I wasn't totally convinced. 

Having an excuse to go travelling I looked at the options and said that if I was to return to Svalbard I'd take the long option where you'd also pass by Greenland and Iceland.

So....

Yeah.

1st of September

Arrival in Longyearbyen where I'll spend a night before leaving.

2nd -  6th of September

We'll board the ship in the afternoon and spend the first couple of days sailing around Svalbard before starting the crossing of the Greenland Sea heading west.

7th - 8th of September

Crossing through Northeast Greenland National Park towards Greenland. Not much land to be spotted so I'm crossing my fingers for whales, orcas and the like.

9th - 13th of September

Reaching the coast of East Greenland and the Northeast Greenland National Park we'll be getting a close up of the Eastern fjords. We'll be visiting the village Ittoqqortoormiit and a look into Scoresby Sund.

14th - 15th of September

Crossing the Denmark Strait to Reykjavik.

16th - ? September

I haven't bought my flight tickets yet so I haven't quite made a final discision on how to end the trip. I might just go home after leaving the ship but there's a chance that I might spend a couple of days in town before leaving.

This trip is with the same company I traveled with last time I was on Svalbard and to Antarctica so I am very much looking forward to it, especially because I know the conditions we will be staying in for the two weeks and the crew and staff are absolutely amazing and worthy of any praise they can get. Too bad it's 10 months until departure. I'll have to find something before that to distract me.

30th – Coming home and thoughts

Everything about coming home went according to plan. We left Singapore close to midnight and arrived in Copenhagen at 0600 the following morning. Granted – that wasn’t according to plan; we weren’t supposed to arrive until 0630 but I’ll let the pilot off on that one this one time. Arriving in Copenhagen I was reminded how early I arrived as I had to wait more than half an hour to get a train home, but finally, after a long sleep-less trip, I was home and got a needed nap. At that was it.

Big thanks to Get Out, A Cure for Wellness, The Lego Batman Movie (I’m ashamed I watched the Power Rangers movie, I am not ashamed I watched, and truly enjoyed, this (stop looking at me as if I’m a weirdo when I’m giggling, guy sitting next to me!)) and 5½ episodes of Scream Queens (yes, I’m still giggling, and no, I’m still not a weirdo – well, not that much, at least). Thank you for making a 12-hour flight feel not like a 12-hour flight, but like a 12-hour flight passing by quickly.

Well, as you are aware I normally don’t really do these city-trips but Singapore seemed interesting enough and the only thing I could realistically do on such short notice before staring my new job. I hadn’t done much planning on what to do before leaving – except of having a mind-list of what I wanted to eat. The former I think is pretty obvious from my day-to-day descriptions towards the end but having parks and whatnot around it’s still fairly easy finding a place away from the city noise and just going on walks. Also, as mentioned, had I been more interested in culture there were a few museums I could have gone to, making it easier to kill time.

Food, on the other hand, makes me feel that I should have spent more time there. If you enjoy Asian food but can’t make up your mind whether to go to Japan, China, Thailand, Korea or somewhere else on a food tour Singapore seems like a good middle ground. Here you have all the countries’ food and they seem local and genuine enough that you don’t feel bad about not being in the actual country when munching away. I never got around getting hotpot (roughly an Asian version of a fondue where you dip your food in chili-/chicken stock-/various-soups) but it’s a bit more of a time consuming and social meal so I decided to skip it. And only having to skip that during my 5 days I’m pretty satisfied. I was a bit disappointed with the sushi, though. No, correction; I’m disappointed with myself when I had sushi – it was delicious and I only ate until I was full, not until I was stuffed. I could have eaten so much more!

Singapore is a nice city. Nice if you like a modern western city with steel/glass high rises littering the center of the city – in that sense it seems very like New York. And it’s probably the cleanest city in Asia and among the cleanest I have ever been in. It helps that the punishments are so severe if you litter, it’s pretty amazing. But it also makes it feel a bit cold and less charming.

Compared to New York I went to last year Singapore does not feel as touristy so if you’re into that Singapore is recommended. But it also means it can get difficult to find activities directed towards tourists and therefore, for me, harder to justify going for longer periods of time. A 3-day layover I can justify, more than that you might start looking for things to do. But overall I enjoyed the trip; if you’re going somewhere in Asia or Australia and have a layover in Singapore I can recommend spending a day or two there for a short city visit.

Despite my reservations I had fun and have no regrets at all about this quite impulsive trip (well, apart from that Power Rangers movie). 

Full album can be found here.

29th – Last day

Today had no plans as I had pretty much seen and done everything I was interested in so the planning for the day was more along the lines of “what do I want to eat and how do I best spend the time in between the meals?”.

When waking up I heard the rain pounding on my window and as check-out wasn’t until 1200 I had no problems turning around and sleeping for another hour. I finally rolled out of bed, checked out at 1100 and headed towards Maxwell Hawker Center.

Hawker centers are basically a grouping of food stalls where you generally can get good food at a very reasonable price – they are also known as food centers. Maxwell is probably considered the most tourist friendly (without being touristy), and has a booth famous for its chicken rice called Tian Tian Hainanese Chicken Rice. And obviously, when arriving during the lunch rush, that was also where you could find the longest queue. They are efficient, thought, so it didn’t take long before I had my own portion. I had high expectations to it considering how much I had heard about it (mentioned by the Michelin Guide (Bib Gourmand) and praised by Anthony Bourdain) and had made it seem almost godlike, but I realized it was only very good. And let’s be honest; a dish being very good and it only costs S$5,00 and is filling is pretty damn impressive.

Maxwell Center, after the lunch rush.

To kill time I returned to Marina Bay Sands Hotel to get the daytime view from up high. The view wasn’t bad but the night-time views were far superior. It could also have something to do with the utterly dull weather today.

Gardens by the Bay.

Downtown.

The new theater Theatres on the Bay looking similar to durian fruits.

The new theater in the rear and in the bottom is the ArtScience museum shaped like a lotus flower.

I returned to Chinatown where I got a piece of durian sponge cake. It was quite good, especially considering all the stories you hear about the durian fruit. The taste was a bit different than expected which it likely got from the fruit and the sweetness seemed to be coming from added sugar. Overall it was a very pleasant experience and not nearly as bad as expected, though I could imagine that if you turned down the sweetness and up for the fruit’s taste in the cake my impression would have been very different.

From there I wandered for a few hours until I at around 1730 entered a restaurant to have my last dumplings and beef noodles. From there I went to a place that did desserts; I ordered a crushed ice with red beans. Apparently that was very literal – below the mountain of crushed ice and beans was more crushed ice. A bit disappointing to be honest.

Not having anything else to do I left for the airport and having already checked in everything was a breeze when arriving. I had 2-ish hours before boarding and I wanted something that could compensate for the dessert that let me down. I found a small Dunkin Donuts booth that sold massive donuts for a very friendly price which suddenly made the evening much, much sweeter. Success!

28th – Training the food

Went to bed quite late last night so I took it easy in the morning. I am slowly running out of things I want to do and see in Singapore. Had I been more culturally inclined I could have visited some of the museums but they don’t have my interest. I did consider the zoo and/or night safari though I do feel weird travelling somewhere and then spending time in a zoo. In this case though it would have been with the purpose of killing time, and also the zoo is considered among the 5/10 (depending on who/where you ask) best zoos in the world. But getting there would require half an hour by train and an hour by bus each way and I felt it was way too much effort.

Due to my soreleggedness I started easy today with visiting a toy museum; close to 50.000 items stuffed together in 6 small floors. It was mainly old stuff up to the ‘80s – and some of it was very rare – but quite interesting overall and a good few hours of entertainment. I continued to the almost-next door national library that had an exhibition on Malay manuscripts and books. A historical walk though how the writings developed and was influenced from outside cultures. The handiwork behind some of the publications was awe-inspiring, the historical walkthrough was less so (likely due to not being very culturally interested enough to enjoy something more adult than old toys….).

I was planning on having lunch by eating sushi but realized that nearby there was a Korean barbecue buffet. You paid a small price (lunch rebate!) and you had, for two hours, unlimited access to drinks (sodas, juices, tea, water), 7 different meats, sausages, squids, sides, salads and sauces. You grabbed what you wanted and returned to your table where you prepared it as you wanted on the small (electrical) grill embedded in the middle of the table. The meats were good and cut thin so the time needed to prepare the food was minimal. And in the end you had access to ice cream for dessert.

I continued and took the MRT to Labrador Natural Reserve which apparently had a lot of historical defences and whatnot spread out in the area. It turned out to be less of that and more of recreational stuff with picnic tables, grills and playgrounds spread out throughout the park. I got an ocean view with the harbour I walked by yesterday on my left, a long line of waiting cargo ships in the middle and another harbour to the right that dwarfed the left harbour. Apparently, this is all known under the common name Port of Singapore (not much imagination there) and in the global top-3 among largest ports.

Curving on two axis, one of the more peculiar-looking buildings.

I left and followed a boardwalk along the coast back towards Vivo City (the mall from where I took the monorail to Sentosa yesterday) and from there walked 20 minutes to get to Faber Point, 100m above, that according to rumours would give an alternative viewing angle of the city. It wasn’t incorrect, unfortunately most you could see was residential high-rises. I would have wanted to see more clearly downtown and the financial district, but it did give a good view of the residential areas that I otherwise wouldn't have seen.

Back down I returned to not-lunch’s sushi restaurant where I arrived around 1930-2000 and a short wait later I was seated despite them being busy. All tables are connected to one of the three small kitchens with a track, and all orders are entered on a tabled associated with the individual tables. A short moment after ordering your food arrives on a train, it stops at the table, beeps at you, you grab your food and press a button to return the train to the kitchen. Not sitting at the end of the line I occasionally saw the train whizz by with food. It was a delicious experience and an hour later I left and returned to the hotel and called it an early night at around 2130. No need to terrorize my legs any more than I have already done.

I’m checking out from the hotel tomorrow and already checked in last night to my flight home so leaving tomorrow night will be a breeze. As the departure is late I’ll be able to have both lunch and dinner in town. Planning the day’s activities on where I want to have my meals seems like the right way to plan.