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Published: February 8th 2007
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Ghandi
Learning about what Ghandi has done for this country was interesting to say the least! Our goal in India, for this week is to get to Ajanta Caves from Udaipur. If you've read my last blog, I expressed frustration to the fact that every train
for weeks anywhere we want to go is 100% fully booked with no chance of getting on. Frusterated, we tried to change our flight to leave India early, but are finding it impossible to get ahold of Thai Airways in Mumbai, they seemd to change every phone number they have. **shrug**
About a week ago we were able to get an overpriced train ticket on the black market from Ahmedabad to Mumbai (Bombay). Luckily in Udaipur we found out we could change our tickets to go from Ahmedabad to Jalgaon. This was welcoming to us because this means we don't have to go to Mumbai twice. Are you still with me? I guess this blog won't be as exciting as others with amazing reviews of beautiful cities as they usually are.
We hopped on a comfortable 6 hour journey to Ahmedabad from Udaipur. The city itself is about as exciting as it sounds...... say it with me.......Ahmedabad. There's not much here. It's a small Indian city of about 5
Buddha
2000 year old carving million people. Slightly more people than Toronto, Canada. The traffic is pretty insane, and it's not the cleanest place in the world, actually you can say it's filthy. However, like other Indian cities is was friendly. Not too many tourists stop in Ahmedabad. There's not much to see. Although we did get to see Ghandi's Ashram that was mildly entertaining. The best news of all, in this city is we were able to change our flight! We are now leaving India to go to Burma, Malaysia, Thailand and Singapore on Feb 8th. I love India so much, so amazing here. The people are wonderful! But there's just nowhere else we can travel due to the fact that everything is booked solid. Being stuck in cities like Ahmedabad is no fun!
Ahmedabad is more like Pakistan, rather than India. A large percentage of the people here are muslim. They were really friendly and great to be around. It really kills the terrorist stereotype many westerners have about these people. The only problem is the staring. Everyone would STARE! It's because this place gets very little tourists so we really stand out! I guess we look really strange to them.
The lazy way
1000's of years ago they had a lot of large uneven stairs. If you're don't want to walk porters will always cary you up for a dollar or two! We spent 2 days here, before heading to Jalgaon the following morning. A 12 hour train ride. Jalgaon is the gateway to the Ajanta Caves, which I'll explain later. These were great.
We past the time on the train by teaching the Indian man in our train about Canadian life. He had all kinds of questions like "is our ocean sweet or salty? (In Hindu religeon they believe the sweetness of some water is from the Gods, when reality is pollution, quite sad actually) He wanted to know if Canada was vegatarian society or non veg. Love marriages or arranged marriages? It was quite interesting talking to him and answering questions in our weird ways. We soon had a small group of Indians listening to our stories. I explained how in India people on the streets people were so friendly and welcoming, and always wanted to have a conversation with you. In Canada the best you get is a quick hello. This surprised them. They were also surprised that we have washing and drying machines for clothes. "No buckets?" they'd ask and I'd laugh and say no we did that back in the 1950's haha
I showed him
Outside the caves
Sorry for the lack of pictures in this blog! The next one in Bombay I asure you wil be much more exciting! some videos on my camera from Thailand. He was shocked to see women and men dancing in the same place. And on the beach the people wear next to nothing! Wow! He was perfect to pass the grueling 12 hour train ride. But luckily it was on time, first time this has happened in India!
Jalgaon makes Ahmedabad seem exciting. With a popluation of 600 000 people the town has absolutly nothing. 1 hotel and 1 restaraunt that looked safe to sleep and eat in. By safe I mean cleanliness. The hotel was fine. The restaraunt had well dressed waiters and looked really fancy. After ordering our delicious food the cockroaches came out. We saw them all over the place but there is really nowhere else to eat so we continued eating. That is, until one was brave enough to crawl over our food. Then we just got up and left. We retreated to our hotel with 1 television channel and a bucket of hot water for bathing in. ugh.
The cool thing about here, actually I think it's more South India vs North India is there Sideways head wobble is different. It's the way Indians answer to
everything thing. It's a headwobble that isn't quite yes, and isn't quite no. It's really confusing and makes no sense. They also use it to say hello. Sometimes it means yes, sometimes it means no.
"Do you have a bathroom?" I'd ask (side ways head wobble). I get confused "yes or no?" (sideways head wobble) "oh ok, do you know where I can find one?" they point to the back of their restaraunt. I thought they said no but I guess it was yes! Just imagine how frusterating it is when you're trying to ask questions about what train or bus to get on! To make it even more confusing, the wobble is slightly different in different regions. haha It's amusing though, you gotta give them that!
We had a great sleep that night. That morning we ate at a dirty restaraut and headed for the Ajanta Caves. They are a series of 30 Buddhist Caves that date back over 2000 years. They're actually quite amazing. This is why we were in Jalgaon, it's about 1.5 hours from the caves. We spent about 4 or 5 hours here looking around at the ancient paintings and carvings. It's amazing because
unlike Angkor Wat in Cambodia, these were carved rather than built. Quite a feat for so long ago! A lot of the time we spent having pictures taken of us and signing autographs. We're really getting used to this now, although it's still kind of weird. I swear we're not famous!!
Getting back to Jalgaon we were excited to book our bus ticket to Mumbai. Mumbia is supposed to be the most happening place of India. The home of Bollywood movies and a whopping 18 million people! We soend 3 days there before flying back to Bangkok. of course nothing is easy in India so there were no day busses available. So we're going to have to spend 12 hours on a bumpy night bus with no sleep.
As I said countless times! I love and I'll miss India but I won't miss the travelling. It's long and very uncomfortable. I usually start my new blog with how I travelled to get there but I figure I'll add that part to this blog. I'm in Mumbai now, absolutley amazing city of 16.5 million people. To get here we took a bus overnight from Jalgaon for 12 hours. And
yup you guessed it, it was hell. I don't think the raod was paved most of the way, it was dark so I'm not to sure if it was construction or what. It was so bumpy and shaky that it was impossible to even think of sleeping. We could barely even keep a conversation. It was gross. Twice the bus hit a bump so big that the entire bus of people got thrown out of their seats. Jasmine's head even hit the ceiling! That really pissed off one Indian guy who screamed at the bus driver to wake up. Just another day of travelling in Incredible India!
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