BeauDuke
Beau Murphy Joined: June 2nd 2009
Logged in: December 26th 2011
Logged in: December 26th 2011
Travel Blog Posts
Varanasi
I left Delhi on about a twelve hour sleeper train. These can be a little maddening because they are dirty and hot, and the guys selling tea walk by and yell "Chai!" really loud every minute or so. On the whole they are pretty awesome though because you get to see a ton of countryside, and usually meet interesting people. My next stop was in a famous city called Varanasi, probably the dirtiest place of them all. Its an extremely cool looking city set on the Ganges. You wind through narrow brick alleyways until you find your way to the river, and from there you follow the smoke to the burning ghat. The burning ghat is a place of cremation, where corpses of hindus are brought in around the clock and set atop funeral pyres ... read more
The Floating Vegetable Market
Yesterday I finally cruised down from the Himilayas on an overnight bus from Manali, and now I am back where I started in the Pahar Ganj area of New Delhi. It is extremely hot and filthy. I think I stayed in one of the most rundown guesthouses in all of New Delhi last night. Very cheap. It was really more of a cell on the third floor of a dilapidated, empty building that reeked of burning garbage and was seemingly designed with the intention of inducing suicide. It had a solid fan though, and in Delhi a good fan is priceless! It feels like its been forever since I have been in the thick of polluted, overpopulated, congested India. Its good to be back! I just finished a couple of weeks in Kashmir and Himachal Pradesh, ... read more
Well, the date has finally been nailed down. On October 28, 2011 the world as we know it comes to an end. I guess I should not say 'finally', as the Mayan people calculated this date as 'the end' thousands of years ago. All this is according to a long haired, slightly bearded Slovenian guy staying at my friends guesthouse. Ulosh was a bit of an extreme hobbyist, and the other day he gave a casual two hour presentation on the 'potential end of the world topic' to me and a handful of other travelers, as he smoked hand-rolled cigarettes. A little out there, maybe, but nonetheless I found it pretty interesting. Dharamsala is actually pretty full of interesting people. Two weeks ago I came up here from Amritsar, only intending to spend a few days ... read more
--
So, I'm writing now from the city Amritsar in the Indian state of Punjab. This city is famous for housing The Golden Temple, a shrine of the Sikh religion made out of 750kg of pure gold, its a very beautiful building! Also, this place has a dormitory where they house and feed you for free, pretty sweet! The past week has been pretty cool, and very busy. Things seem to be about 50/50 between the hassles of riding on buses or trains, and then exploring the new destination. The hike I did in the valley of flowers was amazing, and to get there me and the Aussie who came with me had to take a twelve hour bus, hitchike 18km on a motorcycle, hike 13km into a village that can only be accessed by foot, and ... read more
New Delhi - Nighttime
Please imagine yourself waking up tomorrow in the international airport of New Delhi, India. If your anything like me your used to at least having the availability of such comforts as air conditioning, seatbelts, and being able to understand what the hell everybody around you is saying. Well, all of the sudden all that good stuff is gone. You are in a different world now. You really start to realize this a few minutes later as your cab driver casually speeds directly towards oncoming traffic and lays on the horn. This is it, you think. Your about to die already, trip is over. As you raise your hand over your eyes to block the sight of impending doom, the cab driver ducks into a gas station at the last moment, and you fake like you were ... read more
