11/10/06 I had never even heard of Jodphur until i saw it on an episode of "The Amazing Race." In the episode couples had to scurry around its streets, run up its hills, and end in the fort that looms powerfully over the city. One glimpse of that foreboding structure proudly rising from a jumble of blue buildings and i said to myself, "I wanna go there....." So here i am, almost 2 years later from the airing of that episode and i am happy to have followed through. Jodphur is awesome. It is an extraordinary explosion of sensory stimuli, mostly [View Full Entry]

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I have been to enough of them to know that i officially dislike indian train stations. The open sewer aspect of them combined with the onslaught of flies really just doesn't suit my fancy. Typically, due to this aversion, i try to spend as little time as possible there. Unfortunately, since i am an idiot, i booked us an unreliable train to Jodphur. So, we arrived at the train station at 11:30 am, with the idea we'd be in Jodphur by 6 or so. Our train however, did not arrive until 3:30pm, which didn't put us into Jodphur until about [View Full Entry]

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11/5/06 We were happy to leave Agra. Though the Taj was stunning, the town itself wasn't anything too special and we'd been spending quite a bit of money on touristy things. The train ride to Jaipur went smoothly. On the way we befriended a British guy. His name is Ben. He's just started his trip of three or so months. We talked about the usual things, the absurdity of our president, the absurdity of our government, and things of that nature. We shared some good laughs and before we knew it we had reached Jaipur. (thanks Ben, for helping the [View Full Entry]

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I'm on a roll with the whining type entries so i will continue in that manner. In Agra, Max and I were less than impressed with our room. It was on the top floor of the hotel. Though not much different from any of the other rooms we've occupied during our tenure here, there were small things that kept coming to our attention and provided some easy fuel for a nice healty bitch session for us both. Let's start with the bed. Though in my head i'd like to believe that sheets here get washed in between each use, the [View Full Entry]

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As is habitual of late, we rose before dawn today. We had hired the friendly driver who picked us up from the train station the night before to take us around Agra. Our first stop was a sunrise and FREE view of the Taj Mahal from the other side of the river. Obviously this is obligatory for me since getting a decent shot of Max and myself posed ever so lovingly in front of a monument to love, without the herds of tourists in flourescent colors splotching the background was impossible inside the complex. We spent about an hour there [View Full Entry]

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So being that it is high season for tourists, getting a train from Varanasi to Agra was a little bit harder than we expected. After much hassle, we realized that we would have to leave our sheltered world of air conditioned sleeper berths and brave the "real" indian rail system. i say "real" in parenthesis because we still got a sleeper berth, just the crappy one....and it still isn't as terrifying as normal seat classes. So anywho, not knowing exactly what to expect we boarded the train in varanasi around 10am, thinking that we'd be in Agra by 7pm. When we [View Full Entry]

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Max had said that he'd maybe contribute to this blog, but i'm filling in for now. One of the "must dos" while in Varanasi is to take an early morning boat ride along the ganges. We rose before dawn and hired a guy from our hotel to row us along the length of the ghats as dawn broke over the water. It was glorious. Before the sun was even up, the people had risen. There were candles being set adrift into the water, bells clanging loudly, prayers being muttered. It was still dark when we climbed aboard our boat, and the [View Full Entry]

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It feels good to be back on our feet again. After a few days of recovery time in Siliguri, we took a long overnight train ride to Patna, and from there hopped another train to Varanasi. The city has more than delivered. It is surreal. There is such an interesting array of people here....from hippie tourists to dread headed sadus that paint their entire bodies, to women clad in colorful saris that come to the river to bathe and pray and slap out their laundry. There are monkeys and cows and goats and dogs and people. It's kinda like a spiritual [View Full Entry]

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The last few days have been pure hell. Pure. Hell. I mentioned in the first email from darjeeling about how cold it is there. Even though technically it is not THAT cold, the fact that nowhere has any sort of heat to duck into makes it even more so. We checked out one hotel because they advertised wood burning stoves, but when we asked about them the manager shrugged and said, "we only use them when it's cold." I mentioned also in the last email that i had a temperature and some body aches, which i kept monitered. I noticed that [View Full Entry]

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It is not drizzling and as freezing today, so i find that i am in better spirits. Plus i didn't spend half of the night up with body aches and fever, also good. We drove into darjeeling via shared jeep. We somehow managed to get the front seat which was great for avoiding car nausea on the way up, but bad because i was in the middle and the driver kept nailing me in the thigh with the gear shift. The road up was steep and windy, but it was paved, which is quite a step up from tibet. All [View Full Entry]

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