India Leg 1. Varanasi - Rishikesh

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Hello all, we trust you had a very happy Christmas and New Year! We did miss everyone. Andrew is still in recovery after missing out on his "favourite meal of the whole year," his mum has promised to cook a Christmas dinner especially when we get back in September! Gifts from each other were a bit disappointing and very fleeting, on Christmas Eve we exchanged mini-toblerones then sat in our hotel and ate them in 2 seconds flat. After this we started to dream of cheese and biscuits, rose's chocolates, pigs in blankets and brussel sprouts (actually on second thoughts!) all of which seemed to be unavailable in Delhi. Don't feel too sorry for us though, as after all we are on a year-long holiday!

Anyway back to India, our first port of call was Varanasi where we arrived from the Nepali border roughly 4 weeks ago. The transition from the jeep to our guesthouse was surprisingly smooth given Varanasi's reputation for tourist pestering touts and rickshaw drivers. Our only encounter was with a funny little old man who had a very thick Indian accent and insisted on showing us the way to our guesthouse whilst telling us that even " though I am a poor man, I am not a cheater." When Kim showed concern as to where we were being led, he reassured us by saying "I am right, I am never wrong!" He was true to his word and we arrived safely at the hostel.

One of the first things that hits you when you arrive in Varanasi is the dirt, its probably the dirtiest place that we've ever been. The narrow alley ways are covered in cow s*it and rubbish, it takes a brave man/woman to put on sandals! Andrew did put them on and it didn't take him long to tread in a cow-pat! It was especially hard to avoid at night when the streets are poorly lit and its difficult to see where you're stepping. Quite often you'd be walking along and feel you're foot slip - you hope more for cow s*it than dog - and one night Kim got back to discover the familiar smell of the latter! Whilst on the theme of sewage, its clear that blokes can urinate (and in some cases no. 2's) wherever they want in this city (and many others), wherever there is a wall, there is a way!

Despite this, we soon discovered that Varanasi is a unique and amazing place full of spirituality, humour, colour, sights and smells. Its a holy hindu city which sits on the banks of the holy River Ganges. Locals and pilgrims alike come in there hundreds and thousands to bathe in the holy water. The bank is lined with steps known as ghats that people use to descend to the riverside. We spent our days walking up and down the ghats, here everyone goes about their daily lives in public, people use the river for washing, laundry and cremations. Judging by the amount of activity that goes on by the river you wouldn't think that the pollution levels make the water septic (a couple of people tried to tempt us in, but unsurprisingly we declined - Kim has enough trouble with the food as it is!). On the ghats there are numerous cricket matches taking place and seemingly endless hawkers trying to sell you everything from a head massage to a boat trip.

As we mentioned Varanasi is full of humour and this is where the touts come into their own. Its no exaggeration to say that you are pestered every minute, but the touts seem to enjoy a bit of banter with the tourists and if you go along with them it keeps you sane. We heard some real gems whilst walking on the ghats. We met a little boy called Bissi, who we took a real liking to, he tried desperately to sell us postcards, he failed, but undeterred he then tried to take us to his silk shop. In order to convince us, he told us that Goldie Hawn had once visited the shop and they had a photo of her on the wall, he said that we didn't have to buy anything we could just come and look at the photo! Needless to say we there like a shot! Not! We asked him which was his favourite Goldie Hawn film, his response was "Private Benjamin, a brilliant mix of comedy and romance (he was only about 10)!" Goldie Hawn was clearly quite a hit in Varanasi, as we were given the same line a couple of days later. Other belters we heard from touts (often youngsters) included "I'll cry if you don't buy these postcards" and "if you don't buy these postcards you'll break my heart!" One bloke even wanted money for doing an impression of Michael Jackson's dance routine in Thriller!

There had obviously been lots of British tourists in Varanasi, as whenever we told a local we were from England they would respond by saying Luvly Jubbly or Top Banana!

On a more morbid note, some touts seemed to be uncomfortably keen to show us the burning ghats - where public cremations take place - pointing out places where you could get a better view of the funeral pyres.

On the riverside it's not just the pilgrims, cricket matches and touts you have to dodge, the ghats (and streets) are alive with animals - cows, monkeys, goats and dogs. The monkeys were obviously a pest at our hostel, as the owner was taking shots at them with his air rifle. He did hit one, and the noise the monkey made told you it hurt, we didn't see him back again. Cows have the life of riley with a free "reign" over the place, unfortunately the same can't be said for dogs and puppies. Lots of the dogs we saw were in a terrible state - ridden by mange or maimed - very sad to see.

We loved Varanasi. Its difficult to describe the atmosphere on the ghats, you can just feel that it is a very special place. Sitting on the steps waiting for the nightly hindu ganga aarti ceremony to begin, listening to hindu music surrounded by sadhus and pilgrims was one of the highlights of the trip so far.

After 3 days in Varanasi, we took a 4am train to Lucknow, the state capital of Uttar Pradesh. On the way to our hotel we were accosted by some very aggressive beggars who were grabbing our arms and followed us for a considerable distance. When we arrived at what seemed the only hotel we could afford, the owner was as rude and as sexist as Jim Davidson and our room was a right dump. This was all a bit too much for Kim and she had her first travelling breakdown! It only took 3 days in India to get there! Luckily, she was quickly smiling again when we discovered a brand new shopping centre with a McDonald's!

Bad start aside, we really liked Lucknow and everybody we met was friendly and helpful, even though by the amount of staring we attracted you'd think Andrew was sporting a big buffon hair-do - oh hang on, he is! We saw some amazing muslim monuments constructed by the Nawabs and saw where many British residents were holed up in a siege during the 1857 Indian Uprising. We met a few friendly Indians in the park, who were kind enough to provide us with an indian packed lunch and Andrew was in his element talking cricket.

The majority of the next day was spent at Lucknow train station trying to buy an onward train ticket. This proved to be slightly more difficult than expected, as 4 kiosks and a few hours later all we ended up with was our names on the waiting list. The situation was made more frustrating by army officers and government officials who were constantly pushing in at the front of the queue. What we thought would be a simple task really tested our patience, however we have since discovered that you can buy train tickets over the internet which is a right result.

Fortunately we eventually we managed to secure a sleeper train ticket to Agra for the following evening. We stayed near the Taj Mahal, and it doesn't disappoint - its a truly beautiful and spectacular piece of construction. Whilst in Agra we visited the old bazaar, which was incredibly noisy and manic and Agra Fort which is another impressive historical building.

The touts of Agra have a bad reputation and our experiences proved this was justified. Tourists get plenty of hassle from some very persistent rickshaw drivers, guides and shopkeepers (although we loved one bloke who had the catchphrase "Small Shop, Small Price!"). The lengths that people went to, never ceased to amaze. For example, whilst at the Taj Mahal, a young lad asked to take a picture of us. We agreed, as during our trip lots of people have asked to take our photo because we're westerners. However this wasn't totally innocent, as that evening the same lad hunted us down, to try and sell us a print of the photo which he'd had developed!

The next stop was a trip to Mathura & Vrindavan, two holy cities, roughly an hour by bus from Agra. Mathura has ghats, but on a much smaller scale than Varanasi. Here, we had to be careful to avoid having our camera snatched by some cheeky monkeys. Vrindavan is famous for being the home of the Hare Krishna movement and we expected to see lots of people dancing through the streets with tambourines, like Boy George. Although there were lots of Hare Krishna's, there was no dancing (but lots of clapping), and we spent the day visiting the temples and mingling with pilgrims.

This was our last stop in Uttar Pradesh, and it highlighted the problems they have with power cuts in this state. In Mathura there was a power cut every couple of hours or so, which meant that a generator which sounded like a tractor coming through the bedroom window would kick in - not ideal at 3 in the morning! The constant black-outs must be unbelievably frustrating if you're trying to run a business or don't have a back-up generator.

This brings us up to December 23rd, when we arrived in Delhi. For a Christmas treat we had booked a luxury hotel for 3 nights, and Kim had a huge smile on her face at the thought of hot showers, carpeted floors, room service and tea & coffee making facilities!

Unfortunately the smile was quickly removed at the dishonesty we encountered as soon as we arrived at New Delhi station. In chronological order, it went something like this:

1. A taxi driver at the train station tried to overcharge us for a ride to our hotel by telling us it was 5km away. We already knew it was only 1km.
2. We eventually got a cycle-rickshaw, who instead of dropping us at the hotel, dropped us outside a travel agent (where he would get commission).
3. Cue the "travel agent" telling us we needed to ring the hotel to confirm the booking from his office, as you can't make reservations over the phone (where the scam goes that we would speak to one of his associates, rather than the hotel, who would say that our reservation was invalid and we would then be forced to check into one of their hotels!).
4. We decided to find the hotel ourself and asked various people for directions. None of whom would help us, and told us that the reservation we had made over the telephone was invalid and that we would need a voucher (another scam to get you to their hotel). We felt like saying would someone here just f*cking help us?!
5. We finally found our hotel, we were approaching the door and an auto-rickshaw driver asked us where we were going. He came with us to the door of our hotel where we took the lift up to reception. As we were checking in, the reception received a call from the security guard on the door saying we hadn't paid the auto-rickshaw driver for a non-existent journey from the train station. This was especially irritating as we were at a nice hotel and this made us look dishonest. Fortunately we managed to smooth it out with the hotel. I'm not sure if his motives were to earn a few easy rupees, or to jeopardise our booking so that he could take us to another hotel where he could earn a commission. We saw him the next day, and he had the cheek to try and shake our hand, the only thing I felt like doing was giving him a good slap, the cheating swine!

This probably sums up one of the problems we've experienced whilst travelling around India. So many people approach you with the sole aim of extracting your cash, and will tell you anything to achieve this, i.e. at a temple a guide will pretend to be a priest. It means that you've always got your guard-up, so even if you meet a genuine priest or someone who's trying to help you're always suspicious of their motives.

By the time we had arrived in our room (which was well worth the money) we were exhausted, good thing we had a complementary fruit basket and chocolate biscuits.

For the next 3 days we chilled out at our hotel, watched films and ordered room service. Christmas Day was fairly uneventful, just a trip to TGI Fridays for our dinner. We enjoyed a couple of beers, but unfortunately dinner consisted of horrible battered chicken, cheesy mash and deep-fried mushrooms and did not compare to Mum's best! There were lots of Delhiites walking round Connaught Place (which is where our hotel was located) as Christmas Day is a public holiday in India, and we saw a few Indians dressed up as Father Christmas. The masks they wore were a bit freaky though, and Santa looked like one of the orcs from Lord of the Rings, we saw quite a few children running away in tears!

On Boxing Day we left the utopia of our luxury hotel, and returned to real world, a backpacker enclave called Paharganj. The next couple of days were spent sightseeing. We had a look at the Red Fort in Old Delhi, an extremely noisy and congested part of the city. By comparison, New Delhi is an oasis of calm, with open space and tree-lined boulevards. We wondered down the ceremonial thoroughfare Rajpath which is punctuated by impressive buildings such as India Gate and the Presidents estate.

After the chaos of Delhi, we headed to Chandigarh which made a refreshing change. The city is a new town built in the late '50's/early '60's and on first impressions we thought we'd landed in Basildon. The town is mainly constructed from concrete with many of the buildings designed by the famous artist/architect Le Corbusier. It is very different from anywhere else we'd visited in India, as there is lots of greenery and wide-open spaces and this might explain why it has become one of the most prosperous cities in the country.

Here we ventured into our first Indian pub which was a seedy and male dominated basement, where the clientele seemed to enjoy getting stuck into bottles of vodka, rum and whisky, neat. The drinks menu stated that vomiting in the bar would cost the perpetrator 50 rupees which probably sums up the quality of the establishment.

For New Years Eve we decided to head to the hill station of Shimla. The town was used by the British as a summer capital to avoid the unbearable heat of Delhi. It was quite strange walking around, as the buildings reminded us of an English seaside town (although there is no sea). There is a beautiful church (called Christ Church) and lots of mock-tudor buildings, there was conspicuous wealth and none of the obvious poverty we'd seen in Delhi and the cities we'd visited in Uttar Pradesh. It made us almost forget that we were in India.

For New Year we stayed at a self-contained resort about 25km from Shimla. A little expensive for us, but they seemed to be the only rooms available in the whole town. The hotel had arranged a wild west themed evening, although the only link with the Wild West was the staff who were wearing cowboy hats, at one point the staff were introduced onto stage to perform a dance "all the way from Louisiana (correct me if I'm wrong but I'm pretty sure this isn't in the wild west!)" and walked out to "La Bamba" quickly followed by a bit of Shakira! This reminded Kim of the weekend she had at Butlins with Colleen and Claire. The rest of the evening was fairly surreal with hindi music, lots of Bollywood style dancing and a dwarf dressed in an over-sized cowboy hat who insisted on leading us to the dancefloor - he had a surprisingly strong grip for a small chap! There were 4 other westerners at the event and the MC made a call halfway through the evening to request all "foreigners" to the dancefloor. Kim and I were the only ones who got dragged up - where we proceeded to dance in front of 200 people! Sober! It was one of the most excruciating moments of our lives - we really wanted the ground to swallow us up (and we didn't even win a prize, for that or the newspaper folding in half dancing game - dont ask!!)! The Indian crowd didn' t know what to make of Andrew's one finger and thumbs up dancing!

From Shimla, we travelled to Haridwar, another holy city located on the Ganges. Like Varanasi, there were lots of pilgrims and locals washing on the ghats. The poverty here was the most shocking we had seen on our trip so far. There were lots of beggars with deformities, and many street children. Poverty in this country seems to be a fact of life, and is on a scale that you can't believe. It's brutal and upsetting, and forces you to put things into perspective.

We watched the Ganga Aarti ceremony on the River Ganges with hundreds of pilgrims. The atmosphere was amazing and at the end a little boy standing in the river threw holy water over the spectators. Quite a few young lads - who were as tough as old boots - were standing waist deep in the river trying to recover coins thrown in by the crowd.

At the moment we are in Rishikesh, known as the "yoga capital of the world." It is famous, as the town was visited by the Beatles in the late 1960's. Apparently they wrote most of the White Album whilst staying in an Ashram here. It is a really chilled out place making a nice change, we even did a 2 hour Yoga class. I quite enjoyed it but I have done Yoga quite a few times before whereas Andrew didn't have as much fun and found it very boring, in his words "I was counting the seconds, I couldn't wait for it to end, after the chanting, the first 10 minutes were like the warm-up for a game of footy, but without the good bit (i.e. the football)."

The last month has confirmed to us that India is indeed a crazy place. Even though this is a marathon entry, we can't sign off without mentioning a few other observations!

We will not forget the incredible noise in most cities, usually from the horns and engines of auto-rickshaws and buses. We'll be doing well if we leave the country with our hearing intact.

The food here is top notch, although surprisingly lacks the kick of some of the curries back home. Touchwood, we've had no serious stomach problems yet.

Fashion here seems to be stuck in the '70's, flares and tank tops are all the rage.

Hopefully this entry hasn't been too negative because we have seen some amazing things, and had lots of new and varied experiences. You've just got to take the rough with the smooth. We're looking forward to the next 6 weeks where we'll be visiting many more places such as Rajasthan, Mumbai, Goa and Kerala.

Anyway hope January isn't too harsh for you all and big congratulations to new parents, expecting parents and engagements! You have all been very busy since we left!

Lots of love
Andrew & Kim

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Photos

Varanasi
Shopkeepers taking their early morning wash

Varanasi
Looking at the riverbank from our boat

Varanasi
Children playing on the Ganges

Varanasi
Kim people watching

Varanasi
Sadhu (holy man) enjoying a cup of chai

Varanasi
Cricket match on the ghats

Varanasi
Little nippers

Varanasi
People washing their clothes

Varanasi
People by the Ganges

Varanasi
Laundry by the Ganges

Varanasi
Peanut seller on the Ghats

Varanasi
Cool kids from the '70's!

Varanasi
Men on the ghats

Varanasi
Seagulls on the riverbank

Lucknow
Little kid we met in the park

Lucknow
This lot provided us with a packed lunch

Lucknow
Dad, you would love the selection of Bombay mix!

Lucknow
Ladies at Bara Imambara

Lucknow
A man at the Bara Imambara

Lucknow
Busy market in Lucknow

Agra
Us at the Taj Mahal

Comments

[dee]

I'm so glad to hear you already know the newspaper folding in half dance because that's a new requirement at Sydney airport these days - so much easier if you don't have to learn it when you get here. I'll get to work now and book some yoga classes for Andrew in Sydney too. Lastly, is there something you've forgotten to mention in your mammoth blog entry or is the wedding ring a cunning way of fending off unwanted attention from the local hunks? Hope you enjoy the next 6 weeks - I'm just worried that our little apartment is going to be too clean and boring for you! We'll re-create the aussie xmas dinner for you when you get here if you like (involves lots of prawns, ham and barbequeued stuff). Lots of love Dee xx

[arun]

enjoyable write-up
hey, was just googling and came across your write-up, was an intersting read, of course because ur trip; am sure was intersting. most of the times i find people generally complaining about their experiece without understanding this country, am glad u had a good time and thanks for sharing the write-up cheers!