tshat

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I’ve always thought about myself as a city person. In countryside I feel a bit out of place and have no idea what to do apart from, well, observing the countryside and being a little scared. In a city I function, cities for me mean people and the best things the people managed to produce: beautiful buildings, nice parks, theatres, museums, palaces, universities, quirky things of different kinds, bookshops, restaurants, etc, etc. I am not scared of crowds and can easily get lost in one, being amongst hundreds of people and spend the whole day without saying a word to anyone and feeling alone. People who don’t like cities often argue that it’s not nice to start your day from struggling to get on a bus or tube, that there is no fresh air and that ... read more

url=https://plus.google.com/photos/115609549730102758242/albums/5737114052412719777?authkey=CLvzyofZuu_mowEhttps://plus.google.com/photos/115609549730102758242/albums/5737114052412719777?authkey=CLvzyofZuu_mowE... read more

The only A/C carriage on the night train from Agra to Khajuraho has 8 foreigners out of maybe 80-something people in the carriage – an unreasonable high proportion, if you think about it. We arrive at 7am, fight our way through rikshas, find the guy sent by our hotel to pick us up, and are driven into the nicest hotel we’ve seen inIndia. For a country with 1 billion people, 19k population of Khajuraho is tiny, the village literally consists of less than 10 roads and still is one of the main tourist attractions of the country because of its Hindu “Kamasutra” and Jain temples. The village feels very calm and quiet after Delhi and Agra, with easy to handle traffic and not-so-insistent vendors. - Look at my souvenir shop sir! - No! - ... read more

url=https://plus.google.com/photos/115609549730102758242/albums/5736926578853559121?authkey=CPD3hNz35qiyTQhttps://plus.google.com/photos/115609549730102758242/albums/5736926578853559121?authkey=CPD3hNz35qiyTQ... read more

Agra has two main attractions – the Taj Mahal and the Agra fort. The first is more famous, most probably due to being clean and more westernised than any other place of interest, much more advertised literally everywhere, and charging you much more too. This is not to say the Taj is not nice – it is, but not so special after all, and there is not so much to see to be honest. Agra fort is a remote copy of the Lal Quila inDelhi, or rather the other way round, is a large complex of buildings and a home to monkeys and green parrots. Not as white as Taj, but who cares? Monkeys and parrots are better! The idea to book a hotel in Agra was a good one, for we had a place to ... read more

url=https://plus.google.com/photos/115609549730102758242/albums/5736694495209872193?authkey=CIO5z7bT2vShnQEhttps://plus.google.com/photos/115609549730102758242/albums/5736694495209872193?authkey=CIO5z7bT2vShnQE... read more

I am sitting in a train to Agra, chai vendor has already walked by three times, people are eating a late breakfast and the train is heading towards the South. So Delhi is done for us, at least for this time. Delhi started for Vanya about 7 hours earlier compared to myself, when I still was in a hotel in Bangkok and he was already in Delhi airport. So he is now an expert in all colours and shades of the Indian military and security forces, where to buy food at the airport and where to take a nap. Driving from the airport to the hotel in an overpaid but still cheap taxi was fun, surely noone sticks to the lanes on the road and cars go in 7 rows instead of 5, honking whenever they ... read more

Our last day in Phuket we spent like real Russian tourists – we bought an organised day tour, you know, this sort of thing that grannies do on holidays. We were driven in a mini bus to Phang nga bay north-east of Phuket, and then entertained there in a variety of ways: we saw some bridge which is famous because people jump off it to commit suicide; we saw amazing monkeys who live by a cave with a Buddha statue inside – of course we got so caught up feeding monkeys that we skipped this Buddha too; we sailed in a long boat through a zillion of tiny green islands to a muslim village in the middle of nowhere, and then we were taken sea kayaking in a mangrove forest (which I didn’t take pics of ... read more

url=https://plus.google.com/photos/115609549730102758242/albums/5735453445261000209?authkey=CLuL0ra0haaZYwhttps://plus.google.com/photos/115609549730102758242/albums/5735453445261000209?authkey=CLuL0ra0haaZYw Christian's pictures: url=https://plus.google.com/photos/106801262501615157089/albums/5736188227890822865?authkey=CPrptfmf49jTxgEhttps://plus.google.com/photos/106801262501615157089/albums/5736188227890822865?authkey=CPrptfmf49jTxgE... read more