Blogs from Rajasthan, India, Asia - page 339

Hello ! We are now back in Johdpur after visiting Jaisalmer and the desert on camel back! owever, I just saw a holy cow munching its way through a very large cardboard box, and it occured to me that I dont even think it is wierd anymore to see cows strolling through markets looking at the veg, laid down in the middle of roads having a sunbathe, and even walking upstairs to have a nose into the restaurants! (It's quite strange what people have as holy things - especially when they add so much aroma to the streets!) The fort in jaisalmer is full of shops and houses and restaurants giving it a wonderful old-world feel as you wander around the maze of streets trying to avoid cow pats and basking dogs. The atmosphere here is ... read more

For some reason it's been difficult to write about what I've done here and I still havn't come up with anything interesting so I'll let the photos give people a rough idea of what this place is like when I finally find a place where I can upload them. What do you get if you cross a sheep with a goat? I don't know but if someone didn't kill the bloody goat someone was going to find out! Kamakyha temple (which i went to today) is just outside the city and they keep a whole bunch of animals tied up together outside which they routinely sacrafice (apparently). I didn't see any sacrafices myself but I did see lot of people buying pigeons and taking them into the temple. I don't think they kill all the animals ... read more

Yesterday we arose at 5:30 (difficult for Jamie) and climbed into a "canter" (open-topped bus) for a morning trip to Ranthambore National Park, a 1300 km2 reserve about 300 km south of New Delhi. It's a dry area, mostly acacia thorn scrub, with larger trees in the riparian areas. It was good to have this tour, because it shows what much of India would look like if it didn't have 1 B people. In the morning it was cold, luckily the operators provided blankets. The hope of course was to see tigers; there are reputedly 35 to 40 tigers in the area (one per 3500 ha?), and most of the other passengers appeared to be fixated on that hope. We saw many peacock, or pea fowl, (this is their native habitat), chittal the spotted deer, (and ... read more

What a contrast, New Delhi with its clean wide tree lined avenues and pristine government buildings and Old Delhi, which being complimentary is a slum! where seemingly millions of people cling on to a pathetically poor existance living with their pigs and cattle in the most appalling open sewered streets. Cripples, beggars and women with countless children all begging for whatever they can get. I saw men and women openly urinating in the narrow open sewers which they call streets, and pigs and cattle feeding for what they can get from the mountains of uncollected rubbish and men walking round with rustly old rifles presumably for either crime or protection. Every type of shop and business seems to be present from barbers shops consisting of a chair and a mirror hung from a tree to butchers ... read more

It’s lovely being met at the airport. I am in India mainly for study, and the training centre has sent a driver to meet me at the airport. I’m taken straight to the centre where I pay them their fees. They also hand me some train tickets to Rajasthan. I have two weeks before I actually start studying and had asked them if they could book these for me. I dumped the things I’ll not need for the next 10 days and got a lift with the company driver to the Nizamuddin Railway Station. I was slightly alarmed when he didn’t know where it was, but with the aid of the rough city plan in my guidebook and asking everyone we saw, we managed to find the place in the end. I was also amazed when ... read more