Perhaps a Week Too Long in India

Amritsar the closest major city to the Pakistan border was our first stop after the chilly heights of McLeod Ganj. We took a taxi to the Wagha border closing ceremony where every night India and Pakistan close their borders in grand style as each side tries to outdo each other in terms of outlandish showmanship. Before the main event the Indian crowd were encouraged to dance to blaring Hindi music in front of the border and members of the audience run with giant Indian flags. The Indian guards wear brilliantly pluming red hats, a military brown uniform, white socks and shiny black boots (they also have AK47’s) and march with such force and vehemence towards the border gate stopping just before it to kick a leg so high in the air towards Pakistan that it nearly touches their heads making them look like they’re doing vertical splits. This goes on for a while as each of the guards have a go and Pakistan do a very similar thing on their side both getting loud cheers from the crowd. The gates are slammed shut and then re-opened again to lower the flags, a very quick handshake, blink and you’d miss it, between Indian and Pakistan then the gates are slammed shut again then everyone heads home. A ridiculous spectacle but extremely entertaining!

The next day was a Sikh festival celebrating a former Sikh guru’s birthday so there were lots of processions in the street, with music, sword fighting and fire breathing going on. Everywhere in India a festival always seems to creep up without us knowing about it! Before our night train we went to one of the most sacred Sikh sites called the Golden Temple which floats upon a holy lake. It was a marvel to see and the atmosphere was relaxed with lots of space to enjoy slowly walking around the lake taking in the temple and the individuals and families praying.

The night train to Varanasi would be our longest train and for more reasons than one, at 22 hours it was never going to be fun but unfortunately Kat was sick all throughout the night. We arrived to find out it was the Hindu festival Deepavali meaning busy traffic jams but lots of fireworks lit up the skies that evening.

Varanasi is all about the Ghats. The city itself is busy but the Ghats (steps that lead down to the river Ganges) has little pockets of peace as you walk along them. We also did a sunrise boat trip, enjoying being nosey from a distance. Each Ghat has a different use such as the most famous being the burning Ghats where families cremate their dead; our favourites were the washing Ghats where Indian’s beat their colourful clothes clean in the water and then hang them out to dry. Kids are flying kites, holy men are blessing people, cows are being bathed, Indian’s are having a holy dip or a full wash in the Ganges – the best thing about Varanasi Ghats is that it’s just everyday life for these people and it’s fascinating.

To break up the journey back to Delhi we stopped at Bandhavgarh National Park. In the guide books it’s mentioned as an almost guaranteed tiger sighting destination, we saw no tigers after two 4 hour safaris, it was expensive and the National Park didn’t have that much other wildlife in it. To make matters worse we very nearly missed our last train of the trip as a three hour bus journey turned out to take six hours! Luckily we got to talking to some really nice Indians who helped us out and let us join them as they got off the bus early and shared an auto-rickshaw (11 of us piled in, plus the driver!) to make it to the train station in time.

We’re now back in Delhi, Kat’s still not feeling well but we’re both excited to catch our flight home tomorrow.

See you all soon!

Love Chris & Kat xxxxx

Bollywood, Festivals & His Holiness



 After some relaxation, lots of eating and resting we headed out to explore Jaisalmer fort.   From the outside it looks like a giant sandcastle; inside it is a maze of alleyways and streets, people still living inside the houses within the fort walls.  Imagine our surprise whilst exploring when we came across the filming of a Bollywood movie called Freedom.  We were hidden in one of the shops as they didn’t want us white folk in the shot, but we watched the short chase / stunt sequence being filmed.  Not sure how they get anything done as nothing is sealed off, lines of tourists waltz through the set unaware of what they’re interrupting, locals ignore the goings on, insisting on parking their scooters where they always go (even if this messes up the shot) cows wander through regularly – its just chaotic!  No smoke machines, just men with hot coals that run around the set to create the smog!  We saw the stars of the movie too, wearing questionable jumpers and leather jackets!  Where else, other than India could you stumble into a film set?!

Floating Flower Boats

After this memorable last day in Rajasthan we took a train back to Delhi, for a brief overnight stop before heading north to Haridwar, one of India’s holiest cities.  Haridwar is what we imagined India to be; set on the Ganges, a busy town, lots of begging, lots of asking for donations, lots of fake Holy Men to avoid...but scams aside, the river location makes for interesting viewing.  The main attraction of Haridwar is the evening ceremony.  Hindus come to the river to light a flower boat which they cast off down the river; offerings to the goddess Ganga.  It is lovely to see the tea lights floating along and on the river banks priests perform elaborate fire ceremonies.

Our next stop was a short journey north to Rishikesh.  This odd river town was made famous when the Beatles stayed at an Ashram here in the 60s; Ringo stating it was “just like Butlins”.  Now a mecca of yoga, ashrams and hippies, I would personally think it too busy to find your inner-peace!  Oddly, although set on the banks of the River Ganges it was surprisingly difficult to find a room with a view – we did find one, but at a price – it was opposite a temple which did a ridiculous bell and drum ceremony at 5am each day!  Our view came in handy though as we just happen to be here for Dewali (Like Hindu Christmas, a festival of lights) so that meant we could admire all the fairy lights and fireworks over the river, it smelt just like bonfire night and looked like Christmas with all the fairy lights!  The firecrackers (just bangs no light) went on till 2am which was less enjoyable!  We had a great day white water rafting in the clean holy waters north of Rishikesh.  We had a cold Holy dip in one of the small rapids and Chris entered the waters another 2 times, not quite on purpose!  I was tucked further back on the raft so avoided falling in, although it was touch and go as our raft almost flipped on one of the Grade 3+ rapids!  It was a great trip and lovely to see India’s natural beauty away from the busy cities.

Chris Trapped by a Cow in our Guesthouse
- Rishikesh

We have been in McLeod Ganj for almost a week now.  Up here amongst the mountains we don’t feel like we’re in India at all.  Here is home to the Dalai Lama, most of the population is Tibetan therefore food, handicrafts and culture is mostly Tibetan.  We have a stunning view from our balcony of the Dhauladhar Range, the beginning of the Himalayas.  It is peaceful and relaxed and we’ve enjoyed the change of pace; we’ve even been to the cinema to watch Skyfall – well, not quite a cinema, a basement with office chairs lined up and a big overhead projector!   

Whilst we’ve been here the Dalai Lama just happened to be doing a public teaching at the temple opposite his residence here, we got our passes, bought an FM radio for the translation of his teachings, took a cushion to sit on and joined the masses (his website estimates 4,000 people were there) waiting for His Holiness to arrive.  We are able to watch him walk up to the temple from his home, there is something very charismatic about the Dalai Lama, he is instantly loveable as he smiles and offers a cheeky wave to his adoring crowd.  The initial part of his teaching spoke of the importance of love for each other then he went into the understanding of actions, consequence and karma, the latter segment was discussing a sacred parchment, sadly this bit was a little lost on us!  It was a great experience though, interesting to watch the rest of his audience, lovely to see him give the teaching and to watch the monks organising the blessed tea, Tibetan bread, rice & curry for everyone attending the teaching.

 

Yesterday we decided to hike up to Triund for a closer look at the Dhauladhar Mountains.  This was a harder walk than we expected – an 18km round trip, with the trip up being continually uphill to reach an elevation of 2875ms (1100ms higher than we started!) it was hard!  But we are sure it was worth it!  The view was beautiful and the Chai at the top helped replenish our energy.  Being here has reminded us so much of Nepal, prayer flags in the trees, donkeys trekking down the paths, tea shops nestled in the hill side – it feels like our trip has done a full circle!

Only 2 weeks to go until home!

Lots of love & be seeing you soon,

Kat & Chris xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Triund View

3 Smelly Camels, 2 ‘Blue Cities’ and 1 Roger Moore

In Bundi (an excellent recommendation from Greg & Jade!) we stayed in the royal Palace’s former Elephant Stables. It was a quiet and tranquil setting right next to the palace walls, with squirrels and monkeys, naughty dogs that would sneak in and eat the families Hindu offerings, chapatti chasing cows (because you can’t use a stick on a cow to scare it away, that’s not very Hindu!) and bats flying out of the palace walls at dusk providing plenty of entertainment. We also had the best Thali of all of India so far, with unlimited refills.

Bundi is a small town in comparison to the other cities we’ve visited in India, meaning traffic’s not as bad and there’s an easy going feel to the place as well as a pretty blue hue to a lot of the buildings to appreciate. Perched up on a hill behind the town is the palace with some fantastic architecture and colourful murals. Even higher up is the impressive fort overgrown with jungle vegetation adding further to its charm. We rambled through the fort, all the while making sure we didn’t get too close to the monkeys that call it home and enjoyed some breathtaking views of ‘blue’ Bundi.

Moving on from Bundi with a ridiculous 2am train to Udaipur we arrived to one of India’s most romantic cities because of its lakeside setting and floating palace. Unfortunately the smog never really lifted whilst we were there so the views around the lake were never stunning, but if you squinted that helped! Udaipur has a busy tourist strip near the palace where the streets are clogged with wonderfully colourful Indian tat; and cows, 4x4’s and rickshaws try there damndest on the narrow roads to try and get you knocked into the stream of waste that runs parallel to them.

We took a relaxed approach to Udaipur and had a really good time there. On the first night we enjoyed watching the terribly hammy James Bond movie Octopussy which was famously shot in Udaipur over a pot of tea filled with beer – a delightful way for the restaurant to get around not having an alcohol license! The best bits were the rickshaw chases and any of the sections where you could look from the rooftop cafe and spot where it was filmed. The second night we took in an Indian dance and culture show which was fantastic, the highlight being a traditional Jaisalmer desert dance where a lady balances 10 pots on her head and dances! The third night we did a cooking school with Shashi, a lovely Indian woman who had a fantastic story of overcoming all odds to start her cooking school, making chapatti’s was my highlight (although both Kat and I kept getting told off for not rolling them correctly!). On our fourth and final full day we rode Indian Marwari horses (who have wonderfully distinctive bendy ears) through the countryside a few kilometres outside of busy Udaipur.

A long bumpy bus ride the next day took us to Jodhpur renowned for its amazing hilltop Meherangarh Fort and being called the blue city as most of the buildings are painted blue, originally denoting a higher caste (class) of people and also supposed to keep insects away. The Meherangarh Fort looked suitably imposing from the outside but inside it was fantastic as well as it had been decorated for Naomi Campbell’s boyfriend’s birthday party in colourful traditional Rajasthani lamps and sashes. We thought it was originally going to be for Dewali (the Hindu festival of light) happening in a week but were told it would never look that nice if it were left up to the Indians.

Jodhpur is also one of the four locations in India to feature the ‘Flying Fox’ a combination of zip lines that in Jodhpur’s case criss-cross the Fort’s walls. We did a sunset trip and the views were amazing of the ‘blue city’ and the Fort as we hurtled past. Also interesting to note is that the Wes Anderson movie The Darjeeling Limited was mostly shot in and around the blue buildings of Jodhpur, Bruce Wayne emerged from the well prison in The Dark Night Rises to a backdrop of the Fort and Keira Knightly made a movie called The Fall there (it was a commercial flop).



We’re now in Jaisalmer and have just returned from a gruelling 7 hours total camel ride. It sounds romantic riding a camel through the desert but in reality the camels fart a lot, instantly dispelling that notion! Also we’re now suffering very sore thigh muscles and I have a very badly chaffed ass! The camels are all real characters though. The best bit, and the romantic notions are still very much in place for this, was watching the sunset over the sand dunes and sleeping under the stars with just a duvet and pillow. The stars were amazing, only free camping in the middle of nowhere in Australia has come close. We saw well over 15 shooting stars, and the moon when it did come out was so, so bright! Sunrise was equally lovely as we were the only people around to enjoy it. All in all a good experience, if painful (we did have to come back half a day early we were so sore!).

We’ve now got two more days in Jaisalmer then we’ll be saying goodbye to Rajasthan and heading up north to Rishikesh for a change of scenery and pace.

Love Chris & Kat xxx

A Week In India!

Us at India Gate

India was the one I’ve been worried about, the volume of people, the scams, the begging, the constant hawking, the possibility of getting sick, or always being sick whilst here...expect the worst and you’ll be pleasantly surprised; India has been lovely so far.

We expected that Delhi was going to be a challenge, but for us the culture shock wasn’t too bad, if anything it felt quite tame in comparison to when we landed in Nepal all those months ago.  The backpacker area felt like Thamel, strings of alley ways full of cheap accommodation, beeping horns of bikes and tuk tuks and lots of hippy clothing shops.  The nice thing for us was that you can get the Metro around to see the sights, so no bargaining with tuk tuk drivers just d.i.y transport!  So we headed off to see India Gate.  It was a surprisingly very green area of Delhi, with park surrounding each side of the Rajpath leading up to the India Gate.  There were over 50 Birds of Prey gliding around in this area, sometimes landing in puddles for a bath – it made it very beautiful and not what I was expecting from Delhi. 

Kat on the Train

We had booked our first train for that afternoon so we didn’t have time for further sight-seeing this time, we’ll be back to Delhi again though.  The train was brilliant, we’d already booked online so had our tickets already (definitely would recommend this, it feels so hassle free!).  The train arrived on time and had a passenger list stuck to the outside of the carriages so you could check you were in the correct place.  We had seat numbers and no extra passengers cramming in as we had paid a little more for AC3 class.  There was room for our bags to be stored away and it was an easy couple of hours to Agra.

We found a great room in Agra with a view of the Taj Mahal from our balcony.  The next morning we got up for sunrise to watch the city smog gradually lift and reveal the Taj’s beauty from the guesthouse’s rooftop restaurant.  Full of breakfast, we walked to the Taj Mahal; after a frantic entry of being scanned, padded down and Chris being sent out as camera tripods are banned(!) we finally made it in and it was all worth it.  Still fairly hazy the Taj looked like a painting when we entered the grounds.  There is something quite mystical about it, it’s perfect symmetry, it’s white marble against the river back drop.  There were a lot of tourists there, but the gardens are big enough that you can find moments of solitude where you feel like you are the only ones there.  We sat admiring it at various angles for over 3 hours before retiring back to our room to admire it there from afar! 

Taj View From Our Balcony

Agra has quite a bad reputation for touts and hassle, but we actually quite enjoyed it there.  It is a dusty, fairly noisy city, but the popular rooftop cafes mean that you can escape the crowds and look on from your vantage point whilst eating curry or drinking a pot of tea.  The array of transport and animals never fails to amaze us here, cows blocking the road, everyone has a goat or two which they seem to move about on leads (our hotel has 3 goats) and camels pull carts about. 

Durga Puja Festival

On our second day we got the bus out of Agra to Fatehpur Sikri, a city/Palace built in the 1500s that was mysteriously abandoned by the Mughal people, perhaps due to poor water supply.  The Mosque was most impressive with huge entrance gates and turrets lining the perimeter walls.  We spent most the morning wandering around, admiring the architecture and enjoying seeing something so different in comparison to the South East Asia part of the trip.  On our bus journey back we got held up in traffic as a float of loud blarring Indian music, lots of people, dancing, drums, bright paint and water being thrown in the air – it looked like Holi Festival, but we worked out later it was another Hindu Celebration, Durga Puja.  When we got back to our accommodation area there was a constant stream of floats and people passing by, we watched for most of the afternoon and evening from the restaurants.  The restaurants were Muslim run and it was funny to hear their take on this “Hindi thing” they told us, sounding rather exasperated, “a couple of years ago, maybe one float or two, but now, it goes on all day, so many floats...” they also amused us by how fascinated they were with the “funny Hindi dancing” to the point where they would be doubled over laughing at some of the men shaking and gyrating about!

Our next train hop was to Ranthambore National Park.  We had booked our safari online (which was lucky as it had sold out that day) but we did have to pick up our tickets at 5am!  We were in an odd vehicle which they called a Canter, best described as a high clearance, convertible mini bus!  We were on a quest to see a wild tiger, but sadly for us it wasn’t meant to be.  The National Park however, was beautiful with a fort in the middle, lakes, forested areas and hill plains.  We saw the usual birdlife, wild boars, deer and monkeys.  Later that day we went back to the park and climbed up to the old fort.  It was a surprisingly large complex and with the backdrop of the National Park it was very photogenic.

Kat at Ranthambore NP Fort

 Next stop was the Pink City, Jaipur.  Busier than we experienced in Delhi and we got the hard sell from a rickshaw driver about doing a tour with him...but as ever, we prefer to get ourselves around.  So on our first day we got dropped into the centre and admired the colonial Albert Hall Building and then walked into the Pink City, more of a terracotta I think.  The buildings are filled with busy shops, selling pretty much anything, jewellery, paintings, carpets, clothing, books...etc.  We headed to Iswari Minar, a tower you could climb to get a view of the city. From this vantage point we decided that one of the forts didn’t look too far away so we’d walk to it!  It wasn’t too far, but there were many more back alleys than our map would have us believe!  So we got a little lost looking for the path up and ended up with a string of irritating children shouting hello and demanding 5 rupees (apparently school doesn’t teach them the meaning of no) but when we’d shook off the hangers on and found the correct route, the city view was excellent from the fort. 

View of Jaipur

India is a man’s world.  I presume they hide the ladies at home as you rarely see them out and about (apart from the higher classes of Inidan tourists which often are a full family on holiday).  But the guesthouses are always run by men, food is served and cooked by men, drivers are always men, shop keepers are men, guides are always men...day to day the women just aren’t there.  Groups are always the same sex, you would never see a group of friends girls/boys just hanging out; generally it is just gaggles of men holding hands and behaving like little boys.  The staring hasn’t been awful, but the boy groups can easily make me feel uncomfortable.

Yesterday we went to Hawa Mahal, a beautiful pink building which the rich ladies used to live in.  There are small windows everywhere, these were there for the ladies to peep out of to see what was going on in the Bazaars below.  We then got the bus to Amber for our 3^rd fort in 3 days!  Amber is in a valley with rocky hills surrounding it, the fort walls line the hills and reminded us of the Great Wall of China.  We explored the Palace, hiked up to the fort and saw a huge cannon reported to need 1kg of gunpowder to make it fire!  Today we have a travel day, we are waiting for a train to take us to our next city, Bundi.

So far so good...Lots of love,

Kat & Chris

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