Blogs from Rajasthan, India, Asia - page 333

The second day of our tour we took a train to Ranthambore National Park. The park covers 1334 square kilometers and has about 35-40 tigers. Until 1970 when it became protected, the park was the hunting grounds for the maharajas (high kings). The ride from Delhi was 5 hours in an air-conditioned 2-tier (AC2) class train car. It was very comfortable with curtains and bedding for overnight trips. There were vendors selling Chai tea, water, pop, or snacks walking up and down the aisles. Each car had a couple toilets with one being ‘western style’ where you can sit down and the others being ‘Indian style’ squat toilets. The toilets all emptied into a pipe that curved a bit and put the waste directly on the train tracks! The toilets all had a large cup and ... read more

Hey all, as you can obviously see I'm still alive. Sorry it took so long for me to update this, and unfortunately this isn't really even going to be a real update. It's been tough for me to get to a computer with the internet and all, so that's why it's taken so long for me to update. Well, I do have a couple minutes, so I'll say a couple words. Well, how do I start this... Holy crap! This is a crazy place. Sandi and I (even though it's only been about a week now) have already had so many crazy adventures. We had a very sketchy first night in New Delhi. There are soooo many scam artists here. Of course we've been nailed a couple of times. But we're starting to know the ropes. ... read more

Despite only having about a week left in India I ended up spending 3 days here before I caught a train out of the place. I'd like to say that this was because I did something crazy and exciting that will enthrall others but I didn't really. Apart from another day exploring on a scooter and a couple of interesting walks around the place I did very little really. Just to set the scene, Udaipur is a picturesque place with an old palace (now a hotel) on a lake but apart from that there isn't much to it. Why then did I spend 3 days there? Alcohol, good company and bad reports about the places I was planning to go to. The first day I met a crazy mix of people from around the world of ... read more

Despite only having about a week left in India I ended up spending 3 days here before I caught a train out of the place. Just to set the scene, Udaipur is a picturesque city surrounded by lakes, one of which has an old palace (now a hotel) in the middle but apart from that there isn't much to it. Why then did I spend 3 days there? Alcohol, good company and bad reports about the places I was planning to go to. The highlight here for me was a day spent on scooters again. There were four of us that went on two bikes - Me and Becky (English), Michael (Austrian) and Kevin (Dutch). Michael and Kevin were both completely insane! They generally rode infront of us and we spent most of our time laughing ... read more

Off we set on our final adventure. A visit to a wildlife sanctuary and a famous waterfall. We drove for about 2 hours through the dustiest conditions we have come across. The dust is due to the fact that thousands of lorries (yes thousands) were carting Iron and Manganese ores from the open cast mines to the ports for export to China. We arrived very dirty and gasping for fresh air. We transferred to a landrover and entered the sanctuary and travelled about 12km over the bumpiest tracks I have ever seen and by the time we arrived at the waterfall we were shaken to pieces. Then followed a trek through the jungle, across dry river beds and streams . We passed a colony of monkeys which looked very fat and heathy and soon arrived at ... read more