Blogs from Uttar Pradesh, India, Asia - page 163

Hi All We took our tour bus to Agra and arrived in the early afternoon. We went on a short tour to the Agra fort which was awesome, absolutely beautiful. Better than the fort in Delhi, but I think thats cause we had more time to check it out. Then we went to the Baby Taj, which was Ok... Took some rickshaws across this very narrow bridge, there was push carts, livestock, cows, bikes, you name it, it was on this bridge, crazy. Around 3 we took the bus to the Taj Mahal. Ok at the fort, you could see the Taj in the distance.. one of the guys on our tour summed it up with a 'breathtaking' and he was right.. then we saw it up close. I can NOT descibe the The Taj Mahal ... read more

Hi All. First I want to say sorry for not keeping you all updated. The tour was crazy we were always busy, or seemed to be anyways. Now you are all going to be flooded with India blogs, again sorry about that. We took taxi's to the Nepali border, got bicycle rickshaws to take the luggage and we walked across the border into India. We must have walked 800 meters before we the customs "office" appeared. It was just 3 guys sitting at a table on the side of the road, crazy, we could have walked right by and no one would have stopped us. Getting out on the otherhand... Then we rented a jeep to take us all to Varanasi. The jeep ride was nuts, the driver had a tape of the soundtrack from a ... read more

India stands for 'I Never Do It Again' we were told. And for the first three hours in India that's what we felt also. After crossing the border we took a local bus to the city of Gorakhpur. We were packed in to a bus which was as full as it can be. For two hours we were standing and sitting with no space to move, side by side and people leaning on us. When we finally reached Gorakhpur we headed to the railway station and were determined to get tickets on the next train to Agra. For an hour and a half we ran from counter to another trying to figure out where to get the tickets to the class we wanted. From the fifth counter they were able to give us proper directions to ... read more

You think the only people who are people are the people who look and think like you, but if you walk the footsteps of a stranger you learn the things you never knew, you never knew… - Colors of the Wind from Pocahontas. For those of you who know me you know that I really don’t share my emotions at all. Maybe that’s why its so hard to write anything, because it was a very emotional trip….I don’t know how to describe everything that I saw, heard, did, and smelled in India, because it’s nothing like I’ve ever known before. I did a lot of traveling with early (4am) mornings, and late (11pm) nights. The 4 days that I spent up north felt like 2 weeks because we did so much, in such a short amount ... read more

Nepal's king declared a state of emergency and effectively shut down the independent press with blanket news bans, military patrols at media outlets, and threatened reprisals against journalists. King G imposed a six-month ban on what state radio described as critical reporting on government activities. Soldiers were posted at Nepal's major print and broadcast outlets, controlled television broadcasts, and vetted news articles, according to CPJ sources and international news reports. Internet and telephone communication, including domestic land lines and mobile phones, were cut off today in the initial days after the state of emergency was declared. Some local reporters anonymously smuggled information from the country through satellite communications. Editors at the major dailies Kathmandu Post and Kantipur were summoned by the principal press secretary of the king and w... read more