Traveling again: India and (hopefully) Pakistan

Well now that I’m traveling again I suppose it’s time to hit up the ole blog. The last couple of years have been pretty slow for any type of real active traveling, but I did enjoy my time in Nicaragua and Mexico during the pandemic times. And now it’s been a full 10 months of pretty heavy grinding at the poker tables with very few breaks, mostly in Texas and Florida, as the Chicago have been hit by some pretty severe dealer shortages. Although I can’t say I really enjoy traveling this much for poker though, I kind of like having a home base and some sort of stability when I’m ‘working’. Not being on the road ALL the time, it’s too much.

Fortunately the games I’ve played in have been pretty juicy, and it was a solid poker year. Unfortunately my expenses have been basically off the charts this year. Between travel costs, short term airbnbs/hotels being insane (FL, cough cough), eating out too much, paying for a broken collarbone and aftercare, dental work, and of course my good for nothing health insurance which doesn’t cover anything, my monthly expenditures have been stupidly high. Oh and now whatever I have in crypto is now in the tank, yay.

Anyway, it’s been a kinda frustrating year, so it’s very nice to be on the road again. I find the more time I spend outside the US the happier I am! So the plan is to be in the Himalayas for most of the two months I have to travel, in the Ladakh and Himachal Pradesh states of India and the mountain villages in Pakistan, north of Islamabad. After spending a lot of time at the beach in Florida, I felt like some cool fresh mountain air and snowcapped peaks were calling my name. Also there’s some interesting Tibetan culture, plenty of centuries old monasteries perched on the cliffs, and some great trekking opportunities. And I could certainly stand to lose a little weight. At high altitudes I’ll burn a lot of calories hiking and at the same time the altitude also seems to decrease my appetite quite a bit - the Himalayan Diet! Maybe throw in some diarrhea for even more effective weight loss, heh.

Logistically it makes the most sense to start from India, as their e-visa only lets you choose airports, while in Pakistan you can choose land crossings. It’s also worth noting that Pakistan has made their visa situation much easier in the last few years and the political situation is pretty stable right now, so I’m hoping it won’t be too difficult to get. For the India e-visa (for Americans) you can apply for a 5 year visa, which is really convenient, and they approved it, no problem! Also I found some $350 flights direct from Chicago to Delhi, which is a pretty damn good deal. I won’t be staying in Delhi very long though as they’re experiencing a heat wave where its 110+ degrees every day, yikes. And it’s a only a 1 hour 15 min flight up to Leh in the Ladakh province.

Update: I actually missed my flight to Delhi! I got to the airport 2 hours early, which is normally fine, but the line at the Air India check in counter was snaked way down the airport and almost everyone seemed like they had a cart fully loaded with jam-packed suitcases, and thus the check in process was moving along very slowly. I had apparently forgotten how much luggage Indians travel with! Also the check in closes a full hour before the flight, uh oh. So I finally get the counter with 5 minutes to spare, and I had my vaccination card ready, but I did not do my research properly and you have to upload that and your passport to the Indian government website. Shiiiit. It’s mandatory to fly. I still have time though!

My fingers were flying typing in all the blanks on the form on my phone, just mashing buttons at lightning speed, when eventually it gets to the photo upload part. They don’t take Jpegs, only PDF files, noooo. So I had to download an app to switch them to PDF and tried again, but it still doesn’t work, too large of files! AGHGH. At this point they’re closing up the counter and me and few others are still frantically trying to finish up on this stupid clunky gov’t website. Then the staff leaves the counter. And that’s it. Nothing you can do, nobody you can protest to or rebook a flight or anything. Air India doesn’t even have an office or ticket booth at O’hare. Nothing. I had to call my mom and to get picked up, and we went to the Air India office a few miles down the road. $300 cancellation fee + other fees basically meant I’d lose the value of the whole flight, but fortunately I could book the next day for the same price, so it could’ve been worse I suppose.

And now I’m in Delhi, the 14.5 hour flight really wasn’t that bad. Of course it’s hot as hell here and my guesthouse/hostel is oddly quiet, so not exactly ideal. But I’ll be off to Leh in two days! Although I’ll still have time to check out a few sites I haven’t been to yet, if I don’t fry to a crisp first.