Scrub a dub dub.......

Greetings from Istanbul!!!

Katy and I landed in Turkey after a quick layover in Ethiopia and a looooong layover in Cairo. You would think after 24+ hours of traveling to only go about 3000 miles, we would be quite crabby upon landing in Istanbul. Incorrect.

After clearing customs, we were able to use Istanbul's very clean, very efficient public transit to get us to Sultanahmet, the prominent neighborhood for tourists.  We stepped off the light rail and were greeted by literally breathtaking views of Aya Sofya on our left and the Blue Mosque on our right, with Sultanahmet Park resting in between them. Our hostel was about a five minute walk from the light rail stop and we loved it from the moment we stepped into it.  Good thing we have a loose schedule for Turkey....our original plan was to only stay here for two nights but we quickly changed it to four.

There is an insane amount of history and culture in this town that I am going to blog about when I have some stellar internet and little bit more time....and I can't wait to share that all with you.

However, I wanted to quickly share with you our experience this morning just because it was so hilarious and it won't take long.

Many people had told us that we had to try a Turkish bath while we were here, and Lonely Planet and our hostel recommended it as well.  So this morning we set off for what I pictured to be something similar to a massage.  What followed was a smidge of an awkward surprise.  We found a hamam (bathhouse), headed in, and bought the standard package.  We were led to a changing room an a Turkish lady instructed us to essentially "drop em" and throw on the towel.  2 minutes later, clothes off, towel on, check.  It was funny to us that in a city where about half of the women have to cover all but their face, and probably 5% of women wear a full burka (covering everything but their eyes), that we were led out of the changing room, through the bathhouse, past numerous men and women to the women's bath.  But I'm not a modest person, so no big deal, right?

Next we were led into a room with some facuets and an area to sit against the wall. Upon entering, the female worker attempted to take my towel completely off of me....to which I nervously laughed and gripped it around myself, saying "No thank you."  She shrugged, sat us down, and started dumping bowls of hot water on us. She told us "20 minutes," and walked out.  This room was similar to a sauna, and I think you are supposed to sit there and continue to dump water on yourself for the following 20 minutes. I think this would have been a funny place for a hidden camera, as Katy and I sat there like idiots staring at each other, trying to figure out what was going to happen next, and throwing some water on ourselves about every 30 seconds in case she walked back in.

After our 20 minutes were up, the woman (aka bath giver) came back into the room (and can I please create a proper mental picture: she had changed out of her clothes and into a very small bikini.....) instructed me to follow her and Katy to stay.  We went around the corner into a room with a slab of granite in the middle of the room and a bucket of water nearby. She motioned for me to take off my towel and lay down.  At this point I figured there was no escaping the nakedness of this experience, so I conjured up my strongest "When in Rome" attitude, dropped the towel, and embarked on my very first Turkish bath.

The bath had a few parts:

To begin, more buckets of water are thrown on you. Next up: the exfoliation. A coarse hand mitten is used to scrub you from head to toe. Albeit a somewhat violent experience, everyone appreciates (and usually needs) a really good exfoliation, so I was alright with that. After that? Soap massage. This part was actually really interesting...and if I didn't feel so awkward I probably would have taken more time to observe how these bubbles were being formed because one minute I was laying there and the next moment I felt like someone was rubbing clouds all over my back. Post-massage....more buckets of water thrown on you.  And then? The shampoo.  The awkwardness continues as I now am sitting up, naked, with a Turkish, bikini-clad woman washing my hair and even going so far as to clean my ears for me. After that? You guessed it. More buckets of water, 180 degree turn, more water, and finito. You are then led over to a hot slab to lay, relax, and think about just how awkward you feel. Haha.  No, no- it was a nice experience, I guess...and now I will be able to say I have had a Turkish bath.  However, I don't think it is something I will be repeating in the near future.

So that is how I spent my morning....essentially paying 60 Lira for someone else to bathe me :)

So Long Tanzania

As much as I am sure everyone wants to hear about our safari (and Zanzibar)......I am very inclined to talk about Mt. Kilimanjaro one last time after our flight out of Tanzania (just yesterday afternoon, we are currently laid over in Cairo).

Katy and I knew there was a possibility of seeing Kili from the plane. We had missed it on our original flight into Africa, briefly saw a peak of it on our way to Zanzibar, and missed it on our flight back from Zanzibar.  However, yesterday had been fairly clear up until that point, so we requested window seats on the left side of the plane (this was the view we heard was best) and in an hour or so were settled into the plane and awaiting takeoff.  We figured it would just be the icing on the metaphorical cake that was our visit to Tanzania.

As we took off out of JRO, I was pressed against my window, eagerly anticipating a potential view of Kili from above.  Just off the runway, a tiny part of Kibo was visible, although it was difficult to distinguish it from the clouds. I was hopeful. As we rose higher and higher, the clouds parted (or maybe we just moved.....for the purposes of this symbolic moment of my life, I will forever say the clouds parted).

Kibo was clearly visible.

Seeing it majestically poking through and above the clouds took my breath away as I was reminded that I had been ON TOP of that mountain a mere 16 days ago.  I know climbing Kili is  an awesome accomplishment for many, but for me (and I think Katy, too)  it was something more than that.  For me, at this point in my life, that mountain was almost a symbol of freedom for me.  Freedom to do, think, and feel what I choose, to explore the world, to make my own decisions....something that I think most of us (myself included) take for granted.  The irony of the situation is that Uhuru (as in Uhuru Peak, our final summit point) means freedom in Swahili. (And I swear, as these thoughts were looping through my head, that didn't even occur to me until after I had realized what summiting that mountain meant to me). 

I think that my trip up that mountain can best be described via my favorite phrase that I have learned along the road: "Sab kuch Milaga."
History?  I was in Varanasi, India with Katy (duh) and our new friend, Vinay (you may remember him from a previous blog post!).  Katy and I were debating how to get to our next destination, fretting about train tickets, etc etc.  I was frantically asking Vinay what he thought about trains to Agra (among other things) and after telling me to relax and reassuring me that we would figure something out, he turned to me and said "Sab kuch Milaga."  I quizzically looked at him and aksed what it meant.  He answered, "Anything is possible," and then turned back to what he had been doing. 

I think this moment, along with reaching Uhuru Peak, were two of the turning points of this trip for me. I don't know what it was about that phrase, but I fell in love with it, asked him how to spell it in English, had him write the Hindi translation down as well, and I must have muttered it to myself 20 times over the next two days making sure it was implanted in my brain forever.  I looked it up shortly after I heard it to see what the actual translation was, and I guess it is a rather common phrase among the backpacker community in India, and it actually means "You will have everything," as in: anything is within your reach.  However, I will forever think of that phrase as exactly as Vinay translated it to me that day in Varanasi.

I digress........

After viewing Kibo from the left side of the plane, the captain came on overhead and said that it would also soon be visible from the right side. Whaaaattt? This is too good to be true. However, I was on the left side and we were still ascending, leaving me restrained to my seat with the seatbelt sign brightly illuminated above me. Butttt....it really was my lucky day.  Just as the mountain was about to come into view, the seatbelt sign dinged off and I jolted from my seat (over a rather large man on my right side) and took the empty window seat one aisle back.   The wing of the plane was blocking Kili at the time, so I sat, eagerly anticipating my final view.  The Mawenzi peak came out from behind the wing first, shortly followed by Kibo....and this was a view of Kibo I had never seen before. I could see exactly where I had trudged across the top of the mountain to reach Uhuru, and it practically brought tears to my eyes.  I stayed in that seat as long as the mountain was visible, craning my neck over my right shoulder until it disappeared behind the plane.  My time in Tanzania really was complete with a final reminder of my summit as the cherry on top.

I settled back into my seat to spend an emotional two hours contemplatng my time in Tanzania (and writing this blog post :)............and so we continued on towards Istanbul via Ethiopia and Egypt, literally leaving Kili (and Tanzania) behind us.