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Published: February 2nd 2010
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Well I hope I don't lose this connection. They have power cuts. I thought it would be really easy to connect all over India. New Delhi was good but I am having a difficult time since then. Unfortunately, I can't seem to post photos. I managed to upload some photos to google: http://picasaweb.google.co.in/graphix2go.faith/India1#. We left New Delhi after two days there. I really didn't like it so much -- it may have been very nice but I couldn't tell, as I said, the whole city is in a building frenzy and a haze of dust covers all. So we took the train from Delhi to Jaipur. We were in 2nd class AC. We got dropped off at the back entrance to the train station and ended up walking what seemed like miles to get to our carriage -- the train itself, when we found it, seemed never to end and we just kept on walking and walking past all these carriages with people packed in like cattle and bars on the window. Micha started muttering something about being too old for this -- and I was thinking the same but I didn't say anything because I was the one that thought
it would be a good idea to take the train. Eventually found our carriage which wasn't at all bad and we had some interesting company on the way. On the way out of Delhi we passed endless slums with whole villages living in the middle of garbage dumps -- picking through the garbage seems to be the main occupation. A very small child of about 2 years old was perched on an enormous mound of garbage as we passed waving merrily at the train. Most of the journey after that consisted of idyllic green fields of mustard crop -- all green and yellow. The woman travelling with us was somebody high up in an international yoga organization that had been based in Russia for 20 years and comes back to India twice a year to visit her ashram there. She was travelling with a Russian follower -- who seemed to be some sort of servant. She was nice enough and we talked about the benefits of a vegetarian diet. She also said a few things that I found sort of offensive -- she said the slum dwellers that we had passed earlier were mostly people that had been given apartments
by the government and had sold them to pay for alcohol. ridiculous, I thought. I sometimes find that religious people can be rather insensitive to other people's suffering and lack compassion for "the other." Anyway, they brought us our chicken biryani with yoghurt and chilli -- all in separate little sealed containers -- very modern -- and 5 hours later we arrived in Jaipur.
I had booked 2 nights at a place on the internet. We got this really beautiful room -- you can see photos if you go to the google link above. I couldn't believe it -- it was amazing. The whole building was amazing -- corners with pots of lillies floating in water, bowls of rose petals, ornate doors, old photos of Jaipur in the days of the British Raj, Indian paintings and decoration on the walls -- very special. Our room had this big four poster bed with a sitting area, dressing room, bathroom and balcony. The ceiling was all glittery and the pictures and mirrors had little mirrors around them too -- all this lit up at night and was very romantic. The only thing was that it was pretty dark -- but as
we weren't in the room during the day, it didn't really matter. We went on tour of the city and saw so many palaces, castles and museums, that I have got them all sort of mixed up in my head. Maybe also because before we set out I drank some juice while we were waiting. I ordered two glasses -- one black carrot and one beets, lemons, coriander, chinese gooseberrys and other things. Micha wouldn't touch it so I ended up drinking the two glasses and after that felt very sick for the next 24 hours or so -- but I don't know if it was the juice, it might of been the two samosas for breakfast. I liked the Amber Fort overlooking Jaipur with its "great wall of India" (as the guide said many times) snaking around the mountains. It was all very impressive -- particularly the Maharaja's trousers -- he weighed 250 kgs, was 2.1 m, had 8 wives and no children. Anyway, really liked Jaipur and wanted to stay another day but we decided to continue and went to Pushkar by taxi -- where we have been for 3 days and now we are going to a
small town called Bundi tomorrow morning. Will write about Pushkar next time I blog.
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Nice !
the pictures at picasa are great