Vancouver at last

Finally we're home. I've unpacked, and most of my things are put away for the next trip. :)

Here's a finished map that shows our crazy wanderings. The really long, straight lines are flights we took, the fat squiggly lines are trains, and the skinny lines are on cars, buses or motorcycle.

Dubai and Abu Dhabi

We arrived in Dubai in the afternoon after a 3 hour flight from Mumbai. As soon as we stepped out of the airport we were stricken with the realization that we had no idea what to do, or where to go. Our plan consisted of this:

• spend 5 hours in Dubai
• take bus to Abhu Dhabi
• visit Leah's friends Farhad and Leila
• stay overnight in Abhu Dhabi
• take bus back to Dubai
• catch flight to Mumbai

This is a solid plan. But there's no meat. What do we do in Dubai? What do we want to see? Neither of us had any idea what might be in the least interesting to see or do in Dubai, let alone how to get to those places. These thoughts run through our minds as we stand outside the airport, our sunburns fresh from Goa.

Thank goodness for tourist offices, and we managed to get into the markets where we explored the sprawling trading areas of Dubai where every store - no matter what else is advertised - sells watches. Men constantly approached us trying to get us to buy these watches, and I wondered more than once, who buys all those watches? There must be millions of watches on display at any given moment in Dubai, so somebody is buying them.

We met up with Leila on her way back to Abu Dhabi from Syria, and we met with Farhad when we arrived. They took us out for a huge feast, of which I don't think we ate even half of it. That night, they had arranged for us to stay with a friend of a friend who was renting a spare-room, we were so thankful to have a nice place to lay our heads that night after a very shaky sleep on the night-train the evening before.

Abu Dhabi

The next day Leila took us around town and showed us the Emirates Palace, a hotel of such opulence and beauty that we just walked around with our jaws open. We also visited a historical village, where artisans worked on glass blowing, sword making and a couple other things. That evening we hung out with Farhad and Leila, and then at around 2am we caught the bus to Dubai - so we could make our 8.30am flight home.

Kanniyakumari and Goa

We were going to take a bus from Kumily to Madurai, so we could catch a train down to Kanniyakumari, but as we waited for the bus we were approached by a taxi driver who was returning a car back to Madurai as some tourist had paid for the 4 hour trip. So we jumped at the chance to have a stop-free, private ride - it cost 100 rupees each instead of 40 but that's okay - 100 rupees is about $2.50. The ride was comfy, and when we got to Madurai, we found out that trains are not very frequent to Kanniyakumari so we decided to take a bus; we didn't realize this would be a 6 hour bus ride.

Butts-aching, we arrived in Kanniyakumari only to find that all the hotels listed in our out-of-date guidebook were full so the bus driver just dropped us off at a crappy hotel. We resolved to stay there and move in the morning to a better place.

Kanniyakumari

The next morning we did move, to the Lakshmi tourist hotel and we had a great room, with a view of the ocean and the monuments out on the water. We relaxed that day, lazily wandering around in the knowledge that we had another day in town to do the normal tourist stuff. Unfortunately when we booked our train to Kochi we found out we were wrong, and had mixed up our dates...instead of leaving in a day, we were leaving at 5am the next morning.

That meant we had to get as much into the evening as possible, so we rushed to get the train ticketing resolved, and then headed out to the sunset point to watch the sun go down. Sadly, it wasn't a great night for this and the sun gave a lackluster performance, but we had fun eating ice-cream and playing in the water.

The next day we caught that 5am train to Kochi, and from there flew to Goa. At the airport, we realized how big Goa is, and decided that it wouldn't be possible to visit Leah's friend Kimberley again - who had settled herself in Palolem - it being about 65km away. So we settled on Benaulim, a little town about 10km from Margao where we were to catch the night train to Mumbai the next evening.

We stayed at a little guest house called Caroline, and just walked around on the beach the next day. It was quite interesting to be in this place, a weird mix of western culture and indian culture. It is definitely India-lite - this would be a very easy place to visit, although I think tourists might find themselves wondering if there was more India somewhere else. The few street-touts that we encountered had fantastically inflated prices, which makes sense if most of the tourists have no idea what things really cost in India. We had lots of fun knocking vendors down to less than a tenth of the original price.

We grabbed the night train from Goa to Mumbai, and then got straight on the plane to Dubai.

Kumili and the Periyar Wildlife Sanctuary

So we left Kochi on February 7th, taking a train to Kottayam. The plan was to use Kottayam as a launching point to get to the Periyar Wildlife Sanctuary - and we were a little divided on how to go about that. I was hoping it would be possible to rent a motorcycle and drive out there, and Leah wanted to keep it simple. In the end, simplicity won out because it would have been terrifically difficult to ride a cycle out there.

The train to Kottayam went by easily enough and we checked into the Ambassador Hotel. It was insanely hot, and the room at the hotel acted as a pressure cooker. We ate at some arabian restaurant, and here we ate chicken - one of the few times we had meat out there.

The next morning, after handling some administrative bits about flights and train times, we caught the bus to Kumily and were guided to the Jungle View guest house. This was our first home-stay and it was probably one of the nicest places we stayed at in all of India, and definitely not the most expensive at 350 rupees a night. The owner, Ramachandra took us for a night walk around his compound and we sat in the dark for about 20 minutes waiting for animal life to come around. We saw a couple porcupines, but nothing spectacular; at least the night wasn't took cold.

Periyar Nature Walk

The next day, Abbas dropped off a motorcycle for us and we rode it into Periyar to go on the nature walk at 7am. Since Abbas was late dropping off the cycle, we almost didn't make it into a group but we managed to squeeze in at the last minute. The nature walk was really cool - it was 3 hours and because it was quite early in the morning the sun wasn't too hot. We saw two types of monkey, some wild boar, and wild elephants.

India Motorcycles: Cumbum, Tamil Nadu

After the nature walk, we took the motorcycle into the country. I didn't really know how much fuel we would need, so I put in 5L of gas and we roared off into the middle of nowhere. Our first plan was to go to the tea factory - and everyone seemed to have an opinion on how to get there so after a few missed turns we managed to find it. The tea factory was quiet due to a power outage, but the manager was very pleasant and he took us to each of the machines and explained how they worked. Or used hand signals and very simple english really, but we asked clever questions and basically figured it out.

We got some ice cream in town, and the owner of the shop gave us some advice for an alternative way back to Kumily - this time through Tamil Nadu, the neighboring province. This turned out to be a great ride from the highlands where we were, into a hot valley and back out into the mountains again.

Kerala Backwaters

Kerala Backwaters

We took the standard tour from the KTDC office - and headed out into the backwaters with 10 other tourists. We rode in a bus to a little stop where we got into two huge canoes - and sat on plastic deck chairs. Weird. Two men pushed the canoe through narrow waterways and we snapped pictures of whatever looked interesting.

Strangely, the backwaters are heavily populated which meant the canoe passed people doing laundry in the water, and even a man bathing. About 45 minutes into it we get out of the canoes and they walk us inland where a guy climbs a huge coconut tree and hauls down enough coconuts for all of us - then another man chops it open and we savour the sweet freakiness that is coconut juice. Lastly, they crack it open and we eat the coconut goodness inside.

After a bit more canoeing, we switch to a houseboat that cruises around the islands and we got a tour of an island calcium factory, and some info on common medicinal uses for local plants. It was terrifically boring, but they fed us some great Keralan food so we were happy. :)

Here is a map of India that I stole from a website to show you where we've been. I'll do this properly at some point with a map that has all the names of places we stopped at.

You can see the weird roundabout route we're taking - we started in Mumbai, went to Aurangabad first, then darted back to Mumbai so we could go to Jaipur. From there we went west to Pushkar, Jodhpur, and Jaisalmer, and then down to Udaipur. From there we went south to Ahmedabad, had that long flight to Bangalore, and then made our way through Mysore, the Nilgiri Blue Mountains (in blue) and then today in Kochi on the southern west coast.

Kochi at last!

At long last, after days and days of insane travelling that now seems so far away, we have made it to Kochi. We're staying at a place called Bijus in Ernakulam - a nice enough hotel close to the waterfront.

Altogether, in the last two days we have done this:

Jan 31: night train from Udaipur to Ahmedabad
Feb 1: flight from Ahmedabad to Bangalore
Feb 1: train from Bangalore to Mysore in the evening
Feb 3: bus from Mysore to Ooty
Feb 3: train from Ooty to Coimbatore
Feb 4: train from Coimbatore to Kochi

Writing it out, it doesn't seem like so much but we sure were beat until that sleepy night in Coimbatore. We had actually tried to change our train into a sleeper that night, but now I'm sure we're both very happy we got some sleep instead of the half-sleep we get on trains.

We walked around Kochi tonight and wandered into a little pavilion that was selling stuff at Indian prices. This was quite neat for us so we snapped up a few souveniers and then went for dinner and ice-cream. That's it for now, I'll flesh out these posts with pictures tomorrow.

pw

The Nilgiri Blue Mountain Railway

Nilgiri Blue Mountain Railway

We took a 5 hour bus ride through some crazy mountain jungle between Mysore and Udhagamandalam (Ooty), and then jumped on the Nilgiri Blue Mountain Railway which is such a famous rail-line that it has been declared a historic site by UNESCO. It is quite a neat contraption - the engines use a cog-driven system to climb and descent a ladder between the rails, up to gradients of 1 in 12.5. I'm not entirely sure what this should tell us, but I can tell you that the train was definitely on a serious angle going up and down those mountains.

Also, it is a steam engine because of the unique design. The end result of this is hot, humid steam air and the occaisional ember flying into the windows.

I have to say though, that being a tall man on this train was not easy, as the seats are clearly designed for children so I had to sit nearly across the bench seat, not leaving much room for Leah. I tried various positions but eventually I just gave up on comfort for four hours.

The views from the train were indeed tremendous, as the railway clambers through some very high mountain passes, and it goes through something like 16 tunnels which the local boys love screaming and chanting in as we pass through.

Bangalore and Mysore

After the cycle trip we took a night-train to Ahmedabad so we could catch a 2 hour flight to Bangalore, so we could take a 3 hour train to Mysore. It was a hellish journey, made so mostly because Leah's stomach chose the night-train as the right moment to start its inevitatable churning and gurgling.

Our first experience with the famed Delhi Belly, and it left Leah quite wobbly the rest of the day. The problem for me is twofold, first I'm trying to take care of a sick woman who would probably much rather lie in bed than take planes, trains and auto-rickshaws, but also that I forgot to eat all day because Leah wasn't chirping up that we should eat. Strange as it might seem, but I have grown into the habit of using her belly to tell us when to eat because mine is strangely mute here.

It isn't that I don't get hungry, when we eat I'm chowing down. But it just isn't the same as in Vancouver - it might just be the oddly planned days we're having. Anyway by the end of the night I had gone the whole day eating just one samosa, and when I realised this I tried to eat, but couldn't jam anything in.

Sleep restored us both to good spirits the next day, and we stormed Mysore in search of the internet, and sunglasses for Leah; who seems to lose them often. :) In the evening we met her brother's new fiance Katarina - she's lovely and we had coffee with her in the little Mysore suburb she lives in. Katarina is on some kind of a yoga training course, and there certainly seems to be quite a bit of that here!

Motorcycle Trip in India!

Wow it is like a dream come true - we rented a motorcycle and drove it into the country. It was a little 100cc bike, a TVS Star; just a tiny thing really but it could do 40kph comfortably.

So we started off from Udaipur and made our way north to Ranakpur, where we saw a massive Jain temple. It was a huge affair, and we rode the bike into a parking lot and changed into our flip-flops (us being experienced temple visitors we know that it is customary to remove footwear before entering). The main temple is made entirely of marble, is three stories high and has 1444 intricately, uniquely carved columns inside. Not just that, but the temple is open to the air on each level, and not just windows but huge swaths of open space - the great domes themselves create spaces that span all three floors. It is just tremendous.

We stayed at a place called the Roopam Hotel in Ranakpur. It was nice and cheap, and we were very pleased to have somewhere to put our heads that wasn't a tent.

The next morning we woke up and with our boiled eggs stowed safely away (for a later snack) we headed for Kumbhalghar. But wait a minute, I'm making all of this sound too easy. Motorcycling in India isn't actually hard, but there are some rules to pay attention to that aren't the same in the west.

1. most roads are one lane, with rocky/sandy/muddy shoulders
2. the biggest vehicle always has the right of way
3. big vehicles are usually nice and give motorcycles time to get out of the way (they don't like the smears on the windshield)
4. if you are overtaking a car, you honk
5. if you are overtaking a motorcycle, you honk
6. if you are overtaking a bicycle, you honk
7. if you are overtaking a pedestrian, you honk
8. if you are overtaking a cow, goat, sheep or dog, you honk and go slowly
9. if you are approaching a blind corner or hill, you honk
10. it is apparently okay to pass people on blind corners or hills, except when honking is heard from opposing traffic (see rule 4)
11. when an oncoming car flashes its lights, it means it is not stopping so get the hell out of the way
12. little kids will sometimes yell "namaste" (Hello/Goodbye) or "Tata" (Goodbye)
13. little kids will sometimes throw things at you

Navigation is a bit of a challenge, because 95% of all traffic signs are in Hindi, and I only know the characters for these letters: B, R, F. Thankfully we were going to "R"anakpur the first day, and then back to Udaipu"R" the second day. :) People are pretty helpful on the road, sometimes I would just slow down and shout "Udaipur?" and they would laugh and point where I was supposed to go.

So we were going to Kumbalgarh the next day. It was a fantastic ride, the bike performed well (at 40kph, sometimes 50 if we went downhill) and when we go to the fort our jaws just dropped. This was the biggest, hugest, most massive fort we have ever seen. The ramparts go on for 36km around the countryside, the wall itself was constructed around 1450. The palace that tops the mountain was built around 1850 and they call it the Cloud Palace, because during monsoons it sits in the clouds. Walking around we saw some tremendous views, and there was even a marching band...as always.

India Motorcycles: Ranakpur and Kumbalgarh

We were riding through the country, and we saw some beautiful countryside as this part of India gets some rain, as opposed to Jaisalmer that hasn't seen a drop of rain in 5 years. Something neat was water wheels, driven by some form of beast (cow, bull, buffalo) and a huge set of gears that pulls water out of a well and into a trough. On a related note (to the beasts) the country people have devised some use for cow dung as they collect it, pat it onto rocks for it to dry, and then pile it up into tall towers of these brown cakes. One day I will learn the true purpose, but I suspect it is for fuel.

Lastly, pretty much everyone out here waved at us, shouted at us, said "namaste/tata". A couple boys did some weird dancing as we rode by, one waggled his ass into the road, and not just a few kids (mostly girls) threw things at us. One old man threw both arms up into the air and waved them about in some kind of a dance, I guess he was happy to see us!

When we got back to Udaipur we wanted to drop off the bike, but there was some kind of huge parade and the entire center of town was blocked off with thousands and thousands of people. We nearly got trampled but a nice woman took pity on us poor confused tourists and held Leah against the wall while the throngs of people flowed past. What a weird night, I have no idea what the parade was for but they had these huge floats that were probably 40 feet high, it reminded Leah of the marshmallow man in Ghostbusters just trundling down the streets as the floats careened from one side to the other.

We're off to Bangalore tomorrow!

Udaipur - The White City

We had lots of fun here, first arriving at about 5am after a night-bus. We took a SLEEPER bus which I think would totally catch on in Canada, although here in India the roads are made up more of potholes than pavement so sleeping is somewhat of a misnomer. Our tour book said that this is called the white city because of the white-wash they use on the buildings, and you can definitely see that from the Monsoon Palace on the hill.

We've only been here for two days and already I feel like I live here. :) This is a fun little town and there is a RIVER of water, compared to the parched city of Jaisalmer that we just came from. Today we hired a rickshaw driver to take us around the tourist sites - you can see some of my pictures here:

Udaipur, India

So that's it for now, we're planning to rent a motorcycle tomorrow and drive into the country to see another fort, and maybe some more Jain temples. We have our train and plane tickets to get us to Bangalore on the 1st of February, and we can start the southern part of our Indian adventure.

I'll drop in again soon!

Jaisalmer; Gateway to the great Thar Desert

Yes we went on a camel safari and it was fantastic. :) Here are pictures:

Camel Safari

As a side note Jaisalmer puts itself forward as the Golden city, but this is neither here nor there because as far as I can tell that is just the colour of the soil-based plaster they use on the outside walls. Nonetheless, it does have a golden hue when seen at sunset from the aptly named Jaisalmer Fort.

We arrived at 5am from the night train (third class A/C sleeper car) and were snatched up by the offer of a cheap ride to a hotel at 5am when the air was veeerrry cold. We went right to sleep and woke up at around 11am to figure out what kind of a camel tour we would do. We interviewed a few post-tourists, and talked to three different outfits and eventually settled on the renowned Mr Desert.

All was settled, and we were at the Sahara Travels booth at 9am for our camel safari. First thing was a jeep ride into the desert, our driver's name was Leeloo and he immediately liked Leah, because apparently their names mean the same thing in Hindi - a gift! We popped into a Jain temple that had been reclaimed as Hindu, and then we were on a one hour ride into the real desert. We passed by a few very humble villages on the way.

The camels were not very comfortable at first, although by the second day I became quite accustomed to the extremely accentuated sway of their walk. My camel's name was Pallo, and Leah rode Johnny. We had two guides who rode the other camel. These guys did everything for us, they cooked lunch which was rice, some spicy goulash of some kind and fresh chapatis. We were totally stuffed because they wouldn't let us get away without eating pretty much everything they made, which was loads.

During the day we just sat on the camels taking in the visual expanse of desert, sometimes covered in hardy plants, and sometimes barren dunes. At night we slept in the dunes, on the sand. Unfortunately this kindof sucked because the sand was really hard and we were very uncomfortable. In hindsight, I would have asked for more blankets and just loaded them up on the ground before we crashed. Mr. Desert's mom sent a home-cooked Indian meal to us which was very filling although I don't have any idea what it was (except for two spicy eggplants)
because it was so dark.

The next day we packed up and headed back into civilization. In the morning they had the camels gallop, which was not comfortable at all but by the afternoon it was too hot for that so we just walked and I tried to regain what composure I had. After it was all said and done, Leeloo picked us up and drove us to Karnataka, an abandoned village, one of 84 that were completely abandoned all at the same time over 350 years ago.

Karnataka and the other 84 villages were populated entirely by the Brahmans, the holy caste of Indian society. The story goes that India's Prime Minister at the time was a very bad man, and he seized power from the local Maharajah by killing all of his key supporters. Once he had local power, he used it to extort beautiful women from the villages, and when he walked into Karnataka he saw the leader's beautiful daughter and decided he wanted to marry her. After his negotiations failed, the town met and decided that knowing his behavior and that he would take the daughter by force the entire town and all their friends in the other 84 villages left on the same day and moved out of Rajasthan entirely - never to return.

When we got back to Jaisalmer, we found a great little place called the Jeet Mahal hotel and it was the prettiest, most Indian hotel we have stayed at yet - and just Ru 300! This is middle of the road for us, I think we spent Ru 550 one night and as little as Ru 150 some nights.

Jaisalmer, India

The next morning our hotel manager convinced us to go to this local pavilion that had girls dancing in traditional outfits, and to our surprise they had a series of floats that went by, some of them celebrating Indian successes, some humorously showing the differences between our ways of life, and some pushing ideas like recycling and other social ideas. Quite a neat event - the pics are above!

Jodhpur: The Blue City

Hey everyone. I haven't had a chance to make any posts in a while because we've been really busy, with camels and all that. But to catch up, I think I'll go chronologically. This post is about Jodphur, which roughly translates to Jodah's City. It was founded ages ago, but really I'm not here to give a history lesson, I'm here to tell you what we did.

We stayed at a cool little place called the Krishna Pasham Haveli (or something like that, they just called it the KP Haveli). This was a totally remodeled Haveli (hindi for mansion house) and it was lovely inside, and since it was sitting just at the base of the fort we had a great view of the fort at night, and during the day. Right across from the KP Haveli was a little convenience store and the guys in there we really cool, they helped us figure out what to do and were generally the kind of people that make India great. :)

The first thing we did in Jodhpur, was get our bearings by walking around and shopping. Jodhpur is full of loads of cool little shops that have all kinds of useless Indian trinkets, which we have loaded up on. We've now sent three packages home to Leah's sister, who has no idea they're arriving and who will have to go pick them up from the post office. Just a few minutes from our haveli is the clock tower market, which is this insane madness of people, rickshaws motorcycles and people just laying their wares willy nilly all over the place.This is India. :)

There aren't really many restaurants in Jodhpur but we found a good (and cheap) one by recommendation at the Hotel Priya. Right across the street was a Softy and Softy ice cream shop that we went back to a couple times. The choco-dip was great!

Altogether I think people come to Jodhpur to see Merangarh Fort, a sprawling stone fort built on this huge rocky edifice in the middle of the desert. It is quite a site to see, so here you go:

Jodhpur and Merangarh Fort

The entire fort has been transformed into a museum, so we just followed the audio tour around. It was very good as far as audio tours go, and it was nice that there weren't people crowding around information placards trying to read about this stuff, we just listened as we walked.

You can see why they call this the blue city in some of the pictures, it is pretty cool to see so many houses painted the same way. Apparently they do this because blue helps cooling the walls, and it acts as an insect deterrent. I guess they would know!

We also walked around to the back of the fort, where there weren't any tourists. I guess there wasn't anything noteworthy on the audio tour, but I thought it was pretty cool walking around the parapets and seeing where the cannons were mounted.

We also tried to send a parcel from Jodhpur which was much more complicated than sending from Jaipur where it was so easy. Because of this, we hauled our package from Jodhpur to Jaisalmer, and then to Udaipur where we have just sent it off.

That's it!

pw

Pushkar, India

Pushkar is a holy village, surrounding a holy lake. This little town has sprung up into a very active tourist spot, it being so popular that the town officials have taken to examining passports to make sure people don't stay longer than three months.

Pushkar

It is hard to say why it has become so popular for long-time tourists, but its short term appeal is apparent in all the temples, probably over thirty of them that surround this holy lake. We saw it as the sun was setting and casting a reddish light over the lake temples.

That's the nice thing about Pushkar. The not so nice bit is that it is a little town over-run with long-term tourists. I hate to pinpoint a certain type of person, but it seems that there is some draw that brings the hippiest of folks here to stay. There are dredlocks at all angles, and everywhere there are tourists wearing baggy (undoubtedly very comfortable) clothes that only Indian priests wear.

The tourist attention means that the always attendant street vendors are not so hungry for our business, and this has two effects. First, they don't hassle us nearly as much. Second, they are very resistant to haggling - which is unfortunate because we're just coming into our own with this valuable skill.

The tourist attention has also created a weirder still side economy - that of the local religion. Men on the street approach us, and give us flowers which we are to throw in the lake. This wouldn't be so bad, but we have been warned that they will bully tourists into making 'huge' donations for the effort. Since we knew ahead of time, we avoided these people as much as possible, but one set of touts managed to slip these pretty little flowers into our hands. When it became clear that we weren't planning on dropping them in the lake they became angry and demanded the flowers back. We didn't intend any insult to the Hindu tradition, we just didn't want to participate like that - but these guys took it the wrong way and shouted at us as we walked away "why did you come to pushkar?!?"

Altogether the verdict is: full of tourists, expensive, and obnoxious religious touts. My vote is to stay away from Pushkar.

There is one caveat to this, and that is if you're interested in learning to become Indian. Everywhere there are places to learn to paint like the Indians, to dance like the Indians and even to absorb weird superstitious healing practices like the Indians. We saw spray paintings on the walls like "Aids is curable" through yogic medicines. If this is your bag, then Pushkar is where it's at!

Thoughts on standing in line in India

Standing in line is the bread and butter of the West. In the land where everyone is legally, if not socially equal we seem to feel that in almost every situation that standing in line is a pretty good way to fairly allocate whatever is given out.

India disagrees. India thinks that everyone pressing around whatever they're after is a good idea. India thinks that the noisiest, and pushiest person should get what they want - even if what they want is to get a good seat on the bus.

India favours the bold. India thinks that in traffic if you're in front of someone else you have the right of way - therefore everyone struggles to get in front. This applies both for pedestrians walking in traffic or for vehicles merging into traffic even if it's going much slower than everyone else. India thinks that if there is a narrow road it makes the most sense to just go into whatever bottleneck with little thought to how this bottleneck might best be sorted out.

India thinks that if you honk your horn you have the right of way. India thinks that bicycles don't need bells, the drivers of bicycles just need to make a weird "chht chht" sound that sounds more like a body being slowly dragged behind you than a bicycle that wants to get past.

My new Rolex in Jaipur, India

Jaipur is in the province of Rajasthan, and today is our second day here. We took a very uncomfortable overnight bus to Mumbai, and then flew here yesterday. When our flight finally got here after being delayed for 3 hours (it is a 1.5hour flight) we were exhausted and went straight to sleep.

Thankfully today was a day full of happy goodness. I'm not sure what that means, but I think it's because I'm comfortably stuffed from curry - we just ate dinner at a restaurant called Saffire and they fed us until we nearly popped. We're staying at this REALLY nice place called the Sunder Palace, it is a beautiful little hotel; the room is clean, the sheets are clean, no hint of stinkyness anywhere. Also the hotel staff is really nice and very helpful. Just my 2c.

We had this idea that we would buy stuff in Jaipur, and I think we succeeded in this. Walking towards the walled 'pink city' we had to jump around auto-rickshaws and bicycle rickshaws and cows. The city is actually pink, apparently from the terracotta plaster they use here. There is a huge gate-building but the gate is quite small for the amount of traffic that goes through, and Indian driving rules don't really handle congested spaces very well - so there was this huge traffic jam as all manner of vehicles are trying to get through the gate at the same time.

Once in the pink city we're assaulted with smells of food, exhaust, and occaisionally cow and gross stinky sewer smells. Visually the city is stunning, from the pink walls, to the white tower that soars above the markets, right down to the bright colours of all the stuff people are selling. They had huge HUGE bags of chilli peppers, and sacks full of what we guessed was probably spices of some kind, but it's all just ground down and they make little mountains of it. And the textile vendors have an astounding variety of colours and textures they're selling.

We got to see some of this up close, because we decided that we needed a few things to keep us warm. I got myself a wool blanket, and we got two wool shawls. One is more of a man-shawl but I haven't worn it in public yet - although lots of the local guys wear these things.
We bought a bunch of other crap, so far I've spent about $100 on myself.

That's it for now. I'd post pictures but I'm so stuffed I can barely move. Next time. I mean it.

pw

Good things and bad things

There are lots of great and wonderful things about India. And there are some things that suck. Here is a list:

Good things:

• cute kids that wave and say Hello
• cute kids that wave, say Hello and want a picture so they can see themselves on the LCD screen of your camera
• cute kids that wave, say Hello, want a picture with you and all their friends
• an old lady who wanted a picture with Leah, and then gave Leah a high-five!
• astonishing sculpted cave temples - carved out of the rock
• the food is amazing and cheap!
• friendly people that go out of their way to help us
• Shake the rickshaw driver who took us around the caves in Aurangabad and helped us negotiate prices from the roadside fruit vendors
• groups of girls are always friendly, smiley and they giggle when we wave and say "namaste"
• the fact that we are rockstars here, and everyone wants to talk to us (Hello where you from whats your name)

Bad things:

• cute kids that don't leave you alone, and chase you down the block (basically every group of boys)
  
• people with acute staring disease
• creepy men who sit a reasonable distance away and then stare unabashedly
• weird people who video tape us as we walk around
• weird people who ostensibly take pictures of their friends, when they're clearly framing the shot around us
• raw sewage
• sewer gas in the hotel
• touts that try to sell us garbage, and don't leave us alone when we don't want it
• rickshaw drivers that overcharge. every time.
• taxi drivers that overcharge. every time.
• people throw garbage everywhere
• men consider India a large-ish urinal and feel they can pee anywhere, at any time
• most toilets do not have toilet paper (of course) but they also don't have a little squirt gun, just a water bucket

India Trip

Hey everybody!

I am in Mumbai today - but first a quick background. I decided to go to India sometime in early January - and so Leah and I flew to Mumbai on Jan 10th. It has all been a bit rushed but that's the best way I think.

Mumbai, India

So we've been here for 5 days, we just arrived this morning on a night-bus. We wanted to take a sleeper train, but it was full, and then we wanted a sleeper bus, but it was full so we had to settle on a chair bus. Leah had a really hard time sleeping, but since Kimberly had prescribed us a sleeping pill I was able to get some rest. The roads were just terrible, with the bumping and the lurching and the braking and honking while we slept. Altogether it was "interesting and adventurous". I guess that's what we're here for! :)

Yesterday on the 16th we were in Aurangabad. This is medium sized city with a few good resturants. We discovered two that were outstanding - Smile at the Nirala Bazaar, and Prashant which is just down the road from the train station. We stayed at the Hotel Shree Maya, with Kimberly who had been there a couple days ahead so we could meet up. Kim was an immense help in getting us acclimatized to the nature of life and culture in India; she is also quite a hoot to have around so we were all laughing it up as we wandered around Aurangabad, and the caves.

Aurangabad, India

The 14th and 15th we went to see the main attraction of Aurangabad, the Ajanta and Ellora caves. These are monolithic temples carved right out of the mountain. It is absolutely tremendous to see these - some of these temples were carved from the early days of Hinduism, Buddhism and the Jains, anywhere from 300-1000AD. In Ajanta, some of the original paint remains and the skill of the artists far outweighs pre-renaissance paintings in Europe; these guys knew how to create perspective and the illusion on depth! In Ellora, many of the caves were carved by the Jains who were masters of fine detail in their art. It is hard to believe that all of those temples were carved directly from the mountain, no assembly required!

Ajanta Caves

Ellora Caves and Daulatabad Fort

We had a very uneventful night-train from Mumbai to Aurangabad in the first place - we took a second class A/C car and it was reasonably comfortable. Only a few bugs, and I wouldn't eat off the floor but altogether it was just fine. I have to say that the flights from Seattle to Mumbai left something to be desired, but we were stuck with them so we had to suck it up and be happy. :) I had a hard time sleeping, so I tried some Nytol (non-prescription sleeping pills) but they just made me tired and not sleepy - and on top of it they gave me restless-legs. Damn that sucked - no more Nytol for me.

Mumbai, India

Back at the beginning, Carl and Kristy gave us a ride from Vancouver to Seattle. Thanks! :)

pw

Edited Jan 21st to add links to the photo albums