Advertisement
Published: September 12th 2008
Delhi Main Bazaar
We stayed on the craziest 'road' in Delhi"Welcome to India!"
Everyone can stop worrying now we are still alive and made it to India, at one point it looked like Suze was gonna have to do the whole trip in just one pair of underwear but after a mix up at the airport all baggage was found and we were off into the scorching hot city of Delhi.
To say it was a culture shock is a bit of understatement but after getting up to speed we managed to see a lot of the sights in Old Delhi and a Gandhi museum and the like, Paul even managed a veggie Jalfrezi without barfing up in our manky hotel bathroom. Yummy.
The traffic is really horrendous in Delhi and we managed to pick the busiest location for our hotel for our two nights there Paul nearly walked into a cow's face as they freely roamed the packed bazaars leading out of the hotel area.
Floating corpses
Varanasi in contrast was quieter and more introspective, the hotel was amazing with a great view out of the town, and watching the sunrise over the River Ganges was a real highlight of the trip so far.
Delhi hotel room
"Delightful charm" It's the holiest city in India so we didn't get stared at as much as anywhere else and we managed to befriend a couple of local kids to show us around the sights including the infamous burning ghats where they openly cremate the dead and send them off down the river, which was disturbing but to see how everyone deals with death here was really interesting.
We managed to squeeze in a boat trip down the Ganges too which was fascinating to see everybody washing in the morning in possibly the dirtiest river in the World, we even managed to see a dead goat floating down the river which didn't help the breakfast go down any easier. Oh and Paul nearly got caught in a stampede near the burning ghat, now he constantly fears he's going to get rabies.
Agra and Jaipur
When your sleeper train gets cancelled in India it's a real pain, which we found out. Absolute nightmare situation but we managed to get on a similar train 2 hours later but kept getting moved around the coaches as it was fully booked, at one point it looked like we might have to sleep on
Jama Masjid
Pure guesswork at the spelling of that one the roof but luckily we ended up getting a bed for the night and groggily made it into Agra in the early hours.
We managed to bag a real gem of a guide though and for about a fiver managed to get taken around all the major sights for all of the really memorable day. Paul nearly cried at the Taj Mahal (Paul stood manly and heroicly as he viewed the Taj Mahal - edit) we took about 100 photos so look forward to that when we get back home. One thing that stood out was that it didn't look real, all of our photos look like us super-imposed on to a postcard.
Jaipur aka 'The Pink City' is a really beautiful place, yet again we had a really nice hotel and after the fiasco of the previous overnight train it was really nice to wake up to cheese on toast and kindergarten cop. We saw the Royal Palace and went on a good trek round the City then ate wood-fired pizza on a rooftop overlooking the city as the sunset. By the way it seems as India has adopted Italian food as its favourite dish so finding
Suze enjoying the mosque
The hottest day on Earth i swear a good Indian restaurant is ironically really hard. Suppose it doesnt do our stomachs any bother to have a pizza once in a while though.
Bollywood stars in the making
Well we would have been if we had another day in Mumbai, we got asked to be in a Bollywood commercial but unfortunately we couldnt squeeze it in, which is a shame because Suze had our sari's all prepared and everything. Mumbai definitely seems the most cosmopolitan of all the Indian cities, ie they have a lot of Thomas Cook and Adidas stores here (sorry Gaz the football shirts are still the same price, I think Suze is glad we dont have another Croatia situation on our hands).
Our hotel is barely an enclave in a big room, we don't even have a proper roof but luckily the earplugs and eyemask have kept us going so far. We've done a bit of shopping here and a lot of walking seeing the sights, and we're just preparing to leave for Goa which we have been excited about all trip.
We both hope everyone is OK, thanks to everybody for the messages we'll have plenty of time to
View from Mosque
Arty shot of some birds (ooo-err) with Old Delhi in the background taken from the 200m high minaret at the mosque email people and update the blog when we get to Beijing before our trips starts in about 5 or 6 days. PS how the hell did Rachel win Big Brother, we only found out the other day and I'm not gonna lie, Paul was sobbing quite a lot. (Standing looking heroic).
Love you and miss you all xx
Advertisement
Tot: 0.167s; Tpl: 0.015s; cc: 5; qc: 48; dbt: 0.0906s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.2mb
Mum Murray
non-member comment
BLOG UPDATE
BRILL BLOG UPDATE. FASCINATING, INTERESTING AND FUNNY. BOY WILL YOU HAVE SOME STOREIS TO TELL ON YOUR RETURN. CANT SEEM TO GET E-MAILS THROUGH TO YOU AT THE MINUTE SO THOUGHT I'D DROP A NOTE ON HERE INSTEAD. ALL WELL AT THIS END ALTHOUGH ROBSON IS WEARING A LAMPSHADE TO STOP HIM FROM LICKING THE ECZEMA ON HIS BACK PAW. HOPEFULLY THIS WILL ONLY BE FOR A FEW DAYS. WILL DROP ANOTHER NOTE SOON. LOVE AND MISS YOU TOO XX