Yet again -another- entry from my written journal.

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Yeah, I know, I kind fell apart on my updating duties. Last time I wrote, Sandi and I were in Delhi. We've been to a couple cities now, such as Agra, Jaipur, and Mumbai. Right now we're on a train headed for Goa. I've got alot of time so perhaps I'll go through my experiences in each of the cities. Lets start with Agra, home of the Taj. When Sandi and I arrived, we lucked out with our rickshaw driver. His name was V.K or something like that. He picked us up from the trainstation and charged an actual ok price to a ride to our hotel. Well, he didn't bring us to our hotel, he brought us to a hotel that he gets a commission from. The hotel he brought us to was called Hotel Kamal. Good price and an amazing view of the Taj Mahal from the rooftop restaurant. The room was... interesting. We had a couple hundred visiters. Three of which were lizards. Cute, very cute, but we didn't know if they were poisonous or not so we kept our distance. The rest of the visiters were little gnats. A lovely infestation in the bathroom. We kept the door closed. So Yeah, what did we do in Agra?... V.K gace us a tour later on in our arrival day. He brought us to Agra Fort where we stayed for a whole 15 minutes. We got swarmed by beggers and merchants. People insist that you buy something from them. Apparently 'no' is not a suitable answer. Even if you say no to someone they will continue to hassle you. It gets horribley troublesome and annoying. They keep at it even if you walk away. We then went to the 'baby Taj'. I'm sure you can figure out what it is by the name. After that, V.k brought us to a gentleman who conducts restoration work on the Taj Mahal. He showed us the method they use to do the gemstone inlay work. It was pretty cool. In the end he just wanted to sell us something, but that goes for about everyone here. We proceeded back to the hotel after that. We figured, 'Hey, we need food'. So we had a nice lunch/dinner while the Taj was in the background. We had butter chicken, oops, did I say chicken? I meant pigeon, yeah that's right, butter pigeon. (Really) It still makes me sick to think about it. Just for the record, it was terrible. Very chewy. That was about it for that day. The next day, we went and saw the beautiful Taj Mahal. Pictures do it no justice. It was huge and incredible. I didn't realize how much work was put into it. I know alot, but yeah, just incredible. Tons of pictures. That was about it for that day too. We've been going to sleep at wierd time, like 3pm. The next day was our departure day for Jaipur. We were to take the 7:25am train, but instead because of touts and scammers, we took the 8:30am -bus-. It wasn't a friendly bus ride. They reeeeeally didn't like us. We were made fun of the whole way accompanied by real bad glares. We had no water and no food. It was a very hot and very long busride. Well at the time 6 hours felt long. When we got to Jaipur I was in a terrible rush for water. It still took awhile to get the water once we got to Jaipur. Our rickshaw driver kept bringing us to hotels we didn't want to go to. You know, so he could make a commission. After awhile of sitting through his hotel suggestions we finally got to the hotel we wanted to goto. Jaipur Inn. We didn't get an actual room though. The guy at the counter must of thought we weren't big tippers, so he gave us the dorm room. A crappy room with hole in the walls and only two single beds. No Bathroom, chair, nothing. That was ok though. Jaipur Inn turned out to be a pretty sweet place. It would have been better if we had a real room though. We didn't get out much in Jaipur. We went to the trainstation to book our tickets to Goa, and while there, we met a WHITE MAN who wrote for the LA Times in the US. We got to talking about travelling and he has been to over 45 different countries. We were blown away, but when we told him India was our first, he was blown away. India, from what he says, is definately one of the harder countries to visit. he was impressed. We soon found out that he was staying at the Jaipur Inn as well. He shared a rickshaw back to the hotel. On the way, he told me that the owner of the hotel had rented him a car and that he was going out for the evening to Depok Chawni (or something like that). It's a mock Rajastani village with dancers and elephant rides (which we did) and an all you can eat rajastani buffet. It was so much fun. The food was excellent and Sandi got her first elephant ride. I'm sure it made her night/trip. It was a fun evening except Sandi's tummy wasn't too well, and I was coming down with Dengue Fever (terrible). The nexy day we check out and waited at the hotel until we had to catch the train. At this point my Dengue Fever was getting worse. I wasn't well. So we went and waited out in the hot sun for two hours (our train was late) and then we got on the scortching hot train for 18 hours. This was when my sickness was at its peak. Sooo hot, couldn't breath, it sucked. Well that was at the beginning of the train ride. I was advised to take the bunker bed above us and to goto sleep. After I protested for a bit, I did. The train ride went quickly. I awoke feeling alot better, but not completely. We had make it to Mumbai. Woo! Not the greatest city. We were only there for 2 hours though. We got off our 18 hour train ride, took a taxi across the city and waited for our 10 hour train ride to arrive. While at the station though, it blew ass. We were pestered and hassled, and hassled, and hassled by beggers. They are really cheesing me off now. I had a 2 year old (or however old she was) grabbing and hugging my leg for money. So annoying. Well only annoying because too many people do stuff like that, and if I gave money to one person, I'd have to give it to all of them. There was more to the trainstation than that, I'm just getting tired of writting. Eventually our train arrived and now here we are. On the train heading south to Goa. Hopefully we can finally relax for a bit and avoid touts, beggers, and other annoyances. well, that's it for now.
Cya next time!

(The real date right now is March 3rd, I just ran out of time on the internet so I'll update more later.)
p.s I'm currently in Goa. And it's awesome!

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