The Start of India

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Bonjour and welcome to the second instalment of my Asia travel blog...

We arrived in Delhi on the 25th of Feb after a pretty scenic flight from Kathmandu. Although a seasoned traveller of the subcontinent (I visited for a few weeks with Dad, Kylie and Andrew when I was 5 years old), this was to be nearly 3 weeks that I won't forget in a hurry.

Delhi is without a doubt the busiest, noisiest, dirtiest and most abrasive place I have ever been. Once the jewel in the crown of the opulent Mughal Empire, it's now almost impossible to picture the splendour and wealth that once existed here. We spent a couple of days looking around, visiting the Red Fort and the Jama Masjid before catching the train to Agra. This wasn't quite as straightforward as it sounds. After spending an hour and a half at the mayhem that is New Delhi Railway Station attempting to book a ticket, we gave up. 'Luckily', we managed to book a ticket through our hostel for the following morning. Rising at 7, we set off in a taxi to Nizamuddin Railway Station only to find that our train was departing in a month's time. Cheers. To put the icing on the cake a pigeon relieved itself on Kat's head as we stepped out of the station. Welcome to India.

There's no doubt that the Taj Mahal was worth all the trouble. The most beautiful building I have ever seen and so much bigger than you expect it to be. Amazing.

From Agra we caught the bus to Fatehpur Sikri, once the capital of India for fourteen years. There's an incredible mosque and fort there but the amount of hassle we got from 'tour guides', 'students' and 'ticket sellers' was just ridiculous (even by Indian standards) and did spoil the experience somewhat. I've discovered that speaking Welsh to people who are particularly persistent helps quite a lot...

Jaipur was the next stop (a 5 hour bus journey extended by a break down). Known as the Pink City, it has over 3 million inhabitants and is everything you expect a big Indian city to be - noisy, chaotic and unbelievably polluted. To be honest, the highlight here was the cable TV in the hostel - cricket on 24/7. Indians are genuinely obsessed with cricket and if you ask any Indian who their favourite player is, there is only one answer - Sachin.

The train journey to Jodhpur was not particularly straightforward (noticing a trend..?). This one was delayed by 5 hours so we spent a thrilling afternoon in a waiting room at Jaipur Railway Station. Jodhpur is far nicer than Jaipur and has an incredible fort (known as Mehrangarh) towering over the city. We spent a few days here looking around Mehrangarh, the Clock Tower bazaars and the winding back streets. I managed to find myself a fantastic waterproof, glow-in-the-dark watch and a silly hat to keep the sun off my head for a grand total of 1 pound and 40 pence. The watch is still working if you're wondering...

Sadly I was struck down by the inevitable travel sickness that comes with visiting India whilst in Jodhpur. The less said about that the better, but it did mean I missed the Hindu festival of Holi - where everybody throws colourful powder and water on each other and get very drunk. Pretty gutting.

The last stop on our whirlwind tour of Rajasthan was Jaisalmer (getting there involved an incredibly hot crowded 6 hour bus journey with no toilet or food stops. Painful.). It's almost impossible to visit Jaisalmer without going into the desert on a camel so, after barely having put our bags down, we'd booked an afternoon's excursion into the Great Thar Desert.

Setting off in our 'jeep' (actually something resembling a Vauxhall Corsa), we travelled about 40km before hopping on a camel and travelling a bit further through the desert until we found some sand dunes (a rarity in the Great Thar Desert). From here we watched the sunset, which was absolutely amazing. Incidentally, riding a camel is not so different from riding a horse, except you are a lot higher up and they have stupidly long necks.

Finally, we hopped on the 19 hour sleeper train back to Delhi (only three quarters of an hour late!). Sharing a bed with both my bags isn't the most comfortable but we have 3 more sleepers booked for South India so I better get used to it!

I don't think there's been an easy day in India yet. We've seen some incredible things and met some great people, but I never thought that just being in a place could be such a test of personality and patience. I find that I'm pretty much constantly see-sawing between loving and hating this country... Quite an experience. There's so much more I could have written but I think that's probably enough for now as I'm in a very sweaty internet cafe (in Bangalore). We head off to Hampi tonight before making our way down to the beaches of Kerala.

I hope all's well back home,

Lots of love,

Lewys

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