Tasmania???

Day 28: A day of travel

This morning we woke up early (6am) again to catch our last sunrise over Uluru. Rachna’s knee is not better, so no hiking today! The sunrise was beautiful, lighting up the rock from the darkness, and we were happy to have gotten up to see it.

We went back to the hotel to sleep a bit more, and then packed away our stuff for our next destination: Hobart, Tasmania. After lunch, we dropped the car off at the airport only to find out that there was a complete communications outage in the town, and nothing was functioning (no phones, no computers, nothing). So we were essentially thrown back into the “stone ages”, haha, and were manually checked in for our flight – hoping it would actually take off today. At check-in, we found out that the Hobart airport was closed down due to the volcanic ash from Chile (still a big problem here), and that we would not likely be making it out there today. Attempt number two to get to Tasmania seemed to be a failure!

We charted out our various options in case we wouldn’t make it out to Tasmania, but thankfully, when the communications came back up, we were told we would be flown through our two connecting flights to arrive in Launceston (another town in Tasmania), and then bussed to Hobart upon arrival. Talk about determination – after losing millions of dollars and disrupting thousands of passengers, our airline was going to get us to our destination, no matter what (nice job, Virgin Airlines)! So we flew from Ayer’s Rock to Sydney to Canberra to Launceston, only to land and find out that our baggage was lost! What an adventure! We still took the bus to Hobart, and hoped our luggage would meet us there tomorrow.

After arriving at Hobart airport, we hopped on our final transport – a shuttle bus – to our hotel (Bed & Breakfast), where we arrived at 1:30am! We checked in to our very nice room, called home to let them know we were safe, turned on our warm electric blankets, and passed out!

Sunrise over Uluru

Kata Tjuta in the distance

Goodbye, Uluru!

A 20+km day

Day 27: Uluru and Kata Tjuta

Today, we got up at the ungodly hour of 5am, packed into the car with our groceries, and made our way through the darkness to the gates of the national park. We waited for it to open so we could buy our parks pass and head out to Kata Tjuta to catch the sunrise. The mountain range was beautiful, but the cloudy morning prevented us from seeing the sun rising over it.

The Kata Tjuta range is considered even more sacred than Uluru, and as such, the stories associated with it are not divulged to anyone but a choice few Anangu people. Obviously, we were extremely intrigued, but with no hope of finding out the traditional stories, we chalked it up to one of the great mysteries of the world! People are not allowed to walk on the majority of the mountain range, but the permitted hikes have trails to follow.

So we made our way out to the mountains to do our two first hikes. The first walk, the Walpa Gorge Walk, took us through the middle of the mountains to a gorge, where we sat and appreciated the utter peace and silence. The mountains looked like they were a collection of billions of rocks clumped together with clay (or some equivalent substance) and were just beautiful. On the way back, we left our mark and made a little rock stack on one of the boulders there!

After our first walk, we went over to another area of the mountain range to do our second hike, the Valley of the Winds Walk. This one was particularly challenging, as we walked on a track made up of a lot of loose stones and rocks, up and down through the mountains. Unfortunately, Rachna pulled a muscle behind her right knee during the walk, but she tried to walk it off and hope for the best. The views were spectacular and at some points, we really felt like we had the entire mountain range to ourselves. The enormity of the mountains, the complete and utter silence, and the challenging walk were all the ingredients to a unique experience we will not soon forget.

After our three hours of hiking, on our drive back towards Uluru, we saw two wild camels walking by! It was so cool – they were just trotting along in the Outback! We prepared and ate some sandwiches for lunch, and then went to the Cultural Centre to read a bit about the stories associated with Uluru before setting off on our next walk – the Uluru Base Walk.

Uluru is also a very sacred site to the Anangu people, but not as sacred as Kata Tjuta, so they are willing to share the creation or “Dreamtime” stories about it with people. Because it is still a sacred site, so they request that people not climb the rock. Most visitors still do the extremely treacherous climb, despite that this is against the wishes of the traditional owners of the land. We opted to do the more respectful base walk instead, which is a 10.6km walk around the base of the monolith.

The walk itself is not difficult because the land is completely flat, and the weather was decent (not too hot and not too cold), though in the summer, the temperature can hit over 36 degrees Celsius! A quarter of the way through the walk, though, my (Rachna’s) knee decided it had had enough and I could barely walk anymore. I seriously considered calling for help and forfeiting the walk, but after much coaxing, I convinced my knee to continue and limped the next ¾ of the walk around the base. I don’t actually know how I made it, but thankfully, I did. We considered it a sort of pilgrimage in a way, and stopping halfway just didn’t feel right. We are both glad we made it! Once we completed the circumference, we drove out to a sunset point and watched the sun set over Uluru, a beautiful full-circle end to our day.

After going back to the hotel, resting for a bit, and having dinner, we took a little snooze before meeting up with Mireille (the reception girl) and her husband Amit for drinks. We were exhausted after having walked over 20km today, but it was really nice to hang out with new friends! We went to one bar and then to a private bar for the resort’s residents, before having to call it a night (at 1am) out of sheer exhaustion!

The sweetest smelling flower we have ever smelled

Walpa Gorge Walk

Valley of the Winds Walk (can you see the "many heads" of the mountain?)

Wild camel!

Cave Paintings

Uluru in the day

Uluru at sunset

The Rock

Day 26: Ayer’s Rock

We headed to the airport this morning for our flight to Ayer’s Rock, which is in the middle of the country, in what is known as the Australian Outback. Basically, the middle of nowhere. We are here to visit Uluru, a huge monolith that juts out of the earth in the middle of vast flatlands as far as the eye can see. There are other such mountains in the area, including Kata Tjuta, but they are very few and far between, and we can understand why the Anangu (pronounced Ananu) people of the region consider the monolith, Uluru, and the nearby Kata Tjuta (meaning “many heads”) range to be very sacred and of considerable spiritual significance. They really do come out of nowhere and are truly impressive!

The flight was smooth, and as we approached the airport from above, we saw the massive monolith standing in the middle of nothing. It was awe-inspiring. We landed, grabbed the shuttle to the resort complex (where all of the hotels are owned by the same company – talk about a monopoly!), and checked in to our room. At the reception desk, we met a sweet Dutch girl who caught us off-guard because she was wearing a mangal sutra (traditional necklace won by married women in India). We asked her about it and she told us she was married to an Indian guy (go figure, there are Indians everywhere – even in the middle of nowhere!)

So we got to our room and there was a nice bottle of champagne waiting for us (because it’s our honeymoon)! We then started looking at all the things we wanted to do during our visit here, and realized we would definitely need to rent a car. So we rushed to the visitor’s centre and literally got the last car available in town, as people lined up behind us! Yay for good karma! It was expensive but much less so than taking the various tours, so we were happy! After that, we got some groceries for our long day tomorrow, and got ready for our dinner plans – aptly named the “Sounds of Silence”.

The bus picked us up for dinner and took us out to a little setup in the middle of the flatlands, where the sands were a deep burnt orange, the sweet scent of desert flowers took over our senses, and there was nothing but flat land for miles. We watched the sun set over Uluru and Kata Tjuta, with champagne, beer, and various hors d’oeuvres of kangaroo, crocodile, and smoked salmon! Rachna cannot believe she tried it all! We were then seated at our table with two other honeymooning couples from Italy. A musician played the didgeridoo, a very interesting looking and sounding aboriginal instrument. Then, we were served appetizers and wine, as we mingled before dinner. As darkness settled over us, we could see nothing except the vast and mesmerizing night sky full of more stars than either of us could imagine ever seeing. Then, they extinguished all the lights around us and we spent a few moments surrounded by darkness and utter silence – hence our dinner was called the Sounds of Silence.

Before dessert, a star expert came out and spoke about the various stars, constellations, and galaxies out there. He pointed out the Milky Way, which we could see so clearly here, and other constellations like the Southern Cross (none of the constellations that we could see in the northern hemisphere, though!). We learned that there are more visible galaxies than there are grains of sand on earth – how mind-boggling! Another cool thing we learned is that the indigenous people define their constellations, not by “connecting the dots” like us, but by looking at the dark spots in between the stars! So we saw the “emu constellation” in the darkness between the stars. It’s just amazing how different perspectives can see the world in such different ways. But we have to say that probably by far the most amazing thing was looking through the telescope and seeing Saturn, with all its rings!!! It looked like a little black and white drawing, but it was such a spectacular sight to actually see a planet!

After dessert and digestifs, we bid farewell to the stars, climbed onto the bus, and made our way back to the hotel for a nice night’s sleep. Tomorrow is a packed day so we will definitely need our rest tonight!

p.s. Halfway through the night, around 2am, Gaurav heard some tin foil moving in the room. We turned the lights on to find a chocolate egg on the floor with half the tin foil wrapper missing. Needless to say, we were a bit freaked out. We stayed quiet for a bit and then Rachna saw the mouse sneak out from behind the fridge. We quickly called down to reception, who told us that when it gets cold, the mice want to come in! So he switched our room and told us to put a towel in front of our door because since these are desert mice, they are a protected species and cannot be harmed! The bigger mystery here is that the chocolate egg had been in Rachna’s purse… so how did the mouse get it? Perhaps we’ll never know. Perhaps we’ll pretend we don’t know.

The sunset in the Outback

Sounds of Silence dinner