The second half of our Journey in India

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Hello everyone,

So here is how it is, we are sitting in Mumbai’s International Airport Terminal waiting for our 2.45am flight to London. There is the usual overhead speaker calls, expensive prices but we are both a little upset that there not any free Wi-Fi. Not to worry, it gives me time to update the blog, and finish our update on our journey in India.

So how are we feeling. A little sad, that our travelling is over and we are settling down, but also a little relieved. We have had a tremendous 12 days seeing lots of Indian culture. We have tried many types of new food, been in lots of different taxis, seen lots of sites and been in four different trains each time being on a different class. India is a land of extremes. As lonely planet says, “India just grabs you by the head”. It really does. The people are mostly really friendly and very keen to find out our story. The food is amazing at times. On the other hand there is a real lack of development in most areas as well as numerous slums, beggars and wild animals - notably cows and dogs, but sometimes cats and birds and in one case heaps of rats.

We were very fortunate to come to India when a major festival was on - Holi. This is the celebration of the end of the winter and involves everyone from society being painted with colour - by the throwing of coloured dust or liquid paint balloons - whether they like it or not. We were very fortunate and tried to stay a distance from people who looked suspect. We also declined a few invitations from people to throw stuff at stuff (it was great they asked). There was also one time when we were sitting in the gutter, when tow little kids probably around 5 came up to us smiling. I was quick to catch on and started saying no no no no...and we got up and left very fast (they were yielding a tube and a ballon full of bright fluro red paint.

The best part of Holi was that everyone was happy as. There were smiles alround. Plus seeing people that had been smashed and those cloured hands all round was just plain funny. It also added to our Mumbai experience cause during the day of Holi - the 1st of March - it was very quiet in town - with people celebrating in the parks (mainly playing cricket - India is Cricket Crazy) and at the beach. This made it good to both observe plus made it easy to get around as the streets weren’t congested. Come the 2nd though and the streets again became like any Indian city - crowded and loud. Though we both enjoyed Mumbai more than any other city in India. It seemed less in your face and everything seemed to run a lot more smoothly (if that can be said for any India city). Mumbai also gave us the opportunity to shop. And shop we did! We bought lots of clothes, I bought a pair of shoes, Amy bought a bag and handbag and a few other things. The great thing was there was lots of choice and that it was all rather cheap. The problem was that Indian fashion Is very different from western tastes in many ways so you have to go to many shops to find what you want.

Agra

On the way to Mumbai, from Varanasi we visited Agra and Jaipur. Agra was great! We arrived early in the morning and decided on picking an auto rickshaw driver to drive us around between sites for the day. This was both a good and bad idea. It was great cause we got to cover lots of sites in the one day, but bad cause he tried to con us and put us in a pretty precarious situation. It was going great, cause we had seen the almighty Taj Mahal, which I will talk about in a sec, before he decided to take us to a place showing how the pieces of stone as carved to make the fancy ornamentation used in the Taj (we should have seen it coming). This was all ok till we were told to go had a look in his shop (just browse no buying). Then the blinds and door was closed and he decided to show us the marble under different lights. Then he wanted us to go into his back room - which was dark and out the back of the building. We could only have imagined what would have happened if we went along with his plan - probably would have been told to hand over all our possessions - money and passports. We worked it out though and had to push pass a second guy in the shop blocking the front door. The seller then chassed us out the rickshaw with evil eyes. We were pretty filthy with our rickshaw driver for setting us up so we didn’t talk to him much after that. He then tried to take us to more shops which we politely declined. The rest of the day went pretty smothely and we were able to see all the sites we wanted - the baby taj (more intricate and detailed but lacked the overall greatness of the Taj), a famous poets mausoleneums and a park across the river from the Taj which we spent a few hours relaxing in (it was great to unwind in the shade).

The Taj

The Taj Mahal - WOW! Spectacular! Its simplicity and symmetry makes it so fantastic. Its white marble radiates with the sun. But it is the overall effect of the Taj itself as well as the two identical red buildings (one is a mosque) on both sides and the garden in front of it that make it so great. The Taj itself has beautiful Arabic writings and precious stone motives. It also has parts which ‘jut in’ which make it look fantastic (and can’t be seen in two dimensional photos which you see in books). But still it is the simplicity that makes it so great. It is massive but also simple. It is not overdone - everything is in proportion. We also thoroughly just enjoyed sitting in the park just looking at it, thats how nice it is. You can look at for hours and still want to look at it!

Train to Jaipur

The train ride to Jaipur was an experience. We were in cattle class - so there were heaps of people. People were sitting in our seats when we got there. Later we worked out there were people sitting in all the reserved seats and then when the actual person with the reservation (more expensive ticket) got on the train then the people would resort to standing or sitting on the floor. We were lucky though cause we saw a couple of other trains where there were so many people in a carriage that it would have been impossible to move. The seats in this class were also very narrow so 3 people sitting on one bench was a bit of a squeeze - sitting on top of each other in the heat was not overly fun. But we got there - albeit late by two hours.

Jaipur

We got to Jaipur and found it difficult to get a taxi without being ripped off. No one would use the metre and even though we knew it was only a short distance we had to walk in circles to find someone who would take us for a good price. This ended up being a taxi, who we thought was good, but ended up driving around in circle (even after I told him to take us straight there). After he drove past the same building twice we told him (more screamed at him) to pull over and we got out (we didn’t give him anything -he didn’t ask - he knew he had done wrong). We ended up getting a Rickshaw to our hotel. Our hotel was an old colonial building. It was very posh and great place to stay. The restaurant was also good. While in Jaipur we went to the old city and just walked around and took in the old pink (very faded in most parts) buildings. We walked through the city palace which was very nice. We also thoroughly enjoyed going to a temple where Holi celebrations were in fully swing. People were dancing and singing and many Indians had crowded around to watch.

Future

So know we look forward to Germany. We don’t really know what to expect but we are sure it will be different from Australia, Thailand, China and India. We cant wait to get there.

Love Amy and Andrew

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