Pieces of India...

Ok so I know I haven't blogged in months, but to be honest I just wansn't in the mood. We've also been travelling through northern India pretty fast, and going to some places where there was either no internet, or it was way too expensive for us paupers. The ironic thing is, we're now in Calcutta and leave for Bangkok tomorrow! Thailand here we come :)

So India. Well, it's crazy and colourful and annoying and beautiful and frustrating and fascinating. What can I say? We've been here over a month now and I'm quite ready to leave. Martin and I would love to come back one day to explore the south and other parts, but perhaps with a bit more money, right now I'm tired of slumbing it!

We (Martin, Chris, Emiko and I) started our journey off at the border with Nepal, Sunauli. From there we took a bus to Gorakhpur (the nearest town with a train station) and got a train ticket straight to Delhi. We were on a waiting list for sleeper class which is the lowest and cheapest form of sleeper that they do, just bare blue bunks with no blankets supplied. The (4 hours delayed) train journey was agony, it was so cold in the train that none of us could sleep, but that's all we wanted to do!!

We arrived in Delhi totally exhausted, but managed to find a decent hotel room that wasn't too expensive. We settled into the "Paharganj" area, known for its floods of tourists and seedy touts. At most, all we did was wander the streets, eat cheap Indian food (and no Delhi-belly for us horray!!) and enjoy the tv in the hotel room - our first time since we started travelling :)

Martin and I managed to do a little sightseeing in India's capital - we visited the Red Fort and the Jama Masjid (yes, all of 2 sights!!). I'm getting lazy with this blog so I'm going to steal info from wikipedia, sorry.

Good old Wiki has this to say about the Red Fort:
The Red Fort was the palace for Mughal Emperor Shah Jahan's new capital, Shahjahanabad, the seventh Muslim city in the Delhi site. He moved his capital from Agra in a move designed to bring prestige to his reign, and to provide ample opportunity to apply his ambitious building schemes and interests. The Red Fort stands at the eastern edge of Shahjahanabad, and gets its name from the massive wall of red sandstone that defines its four sides. The fort lies along the Yamuna River, which fed the moats that surround most of the wall. The wall at its north-eastern corner is adjacent to an older fort, the Salimgarh, a defense built by Islam Shah Sur in 1546.

Delhi's Red Fort


Beautiful corridors inside the Red Fort


Jama Masjid - the largest active mosque in India


After Delhi, Martin and I separated from Chris and Emiko (who planned on travelling different parts of India at different times to us) and took a trip up north to visit the beautiful hill station Kausani. This was to be where we would take our last glimpse of the Himalayas. Again, the trip was a bit of a nightmare... we had to take a train to Kathgodam, then a bus to Almora, then another bus to Kausani... all a bit stressful as we never knew if we were being charged the right amount or being charged "special tourist price". Frustrating.

Kausani was beautiful... we stayed a few days in a lovely little hotel room that looked onto the 300km-wide panoramic view of the mountains. It was stunning but freezing!! I caught a nasty cold, which seems to have stayed with me throughout India.



From Kausani we planned to head to Agra (so excited to see the Taj Mahal) but this again involved a crazy travel experience. After taking a jeep (hours in the car twisting and turning causing poor Martin to vomit!!) back down to Kathgodam, the train station town we had to wait for 6 hours to get a ticket for the train to Delhi. This proved impossible, even though we told the station master that we would pay anything (even first class) to get on that train, he wouldn't move. There were no tickets. We started to get desperate and at the last minute decided to take the unreserved seat carriage with the rest of the locals. Oh my... what a trip! I thought China was pretty bad but this had to top that!! There were so many people squashed into that carriage that I thought it would burst, people were sleeping in the luggage compartments, on the floor under the seats and there were even guys sitting on the top edge of the seats above our heads - yes, I had an ass pretty much on my head for the whole 10 hours!!!! LOVELY.

Needless to say, when we arrived in Delhi at 6am we were knackered! We went to eat some much needed breakfast and then made our way back to the train station to book a ticket to Agra. I must say that the foreign booking office in the New Delhi train station is a delight. It's quiet, nobody rushes you or even speaks to you. You can just sit there, plan your route and there are plenty of lovely men around to help you figure out which train you need. We decided then and there to book all our train tickets for the rest of our time in India... we didn't want to go through the hell of not being able to get a seat again!!

So from Delhi, we took the train to Agra for Christmas. A strange Christmas it was indeed. We spent Christmas day hand washing our clothes and phoning home. The real blow to the day only came that evening when Martin went to fetch our clothes from the line on the roof.... they were nowhere to be seen!!! Later he found them strewn about the roof in ruins!! The damn monkeys had decided to have a little Christmas fun. Grrrr... all the buttons had been ripped off, the clothes were filthy and there were teeth marks!! Merry Christmas Kate and Martin :)
After an all-too-spicy curry for dinner we set about re-washing our clothes and finding a place to hang them inside our hotel room.

On boxing day we were up at 6am and ready to be amazed. Taj Mahal here we come... and it's as beautiful as everyone says it is.



The story of the Taj Mahal is lovely too - the Mughal Emperor Shah Jahan commissioned its construction as a mausoleum for his favourite wife, who was known as Mumtaz. She died after giving birth to his 14th child (yikes!!), and he was distraught. The whole thing (which combines Persian and Islamic designs) was built between 1631 and 1654 by about 22,000 men! It's made from white marble, and inlayed with thousands of precious and semi-precious stones.

From Agra we took a train to Jhansi, then a bus to Khajuraho.



This small town became famous in the late 19th century when a British dude discovered amazing medieval Hindu temples hidden in the jungle. Now it's one of the most popular tourist destinations in northern India. The temples were built over a span of a hundred years, from 950 to 1050, and they are amazing. They mainly received fame due to the presence of hundreds of erotic sculptures built into their walls.

How do they do this???


The temples at Khajuraho are beautiful and we enjoyed seeing them, but I can't say much for the town. It survives purely on tourism and this has made everyone greedy. The restaurants are ridiculously expensive and you can't walk 2 minutes down the road without someone asking you if you want to buy their pashmina or silver or clothes or bla bla bla. Annoying.

After Khajuraho we were heading to Varanasi. We almost didn't make the train because we were on a bus leaving at 2pm but 11km down the road we stopped and didn't move again for another 2 hours!!! There'd been a murder in the town and so traffic was stopped while everyone tried to sort it out. We could see the body lying in the road (covered with a sheet) and there were hundreds of men sitting around blocking traffic. The bus was almost half full of foreigners - all of us booked on the same train that was scheduled to leave at 7:30pm!! And we had a 5 hour journey ahead of us. Eeeek. Luckily the driver was aware we all had to get on the train and made up the time by driving like a maniac!! We arrived in Satna at about 7:10pm and all piled into auto-rickshaws to make the 1km journey to the station. We made it!!

As this was supposed to be our last overnight journey on a train, Martin and I had splashed out and bought expensive 2AC tickets (which means we were in an airconditioned car, with blankets and everything - special). I was so excited to sleep, but in the middle of the night I was almost in tears. Something was wrong with my right ear... I hadn't felt earache like that since I was a little girl - it was agony!! I lay in my bed crying from the pain and unable to sleep. When we finally arrived in Varanasi at 7am I at least had Martin awake and able to look after me. We took a rickshaw to the first hotel in our guide book, not in the mood to search around. We found it, and stayed.



Varanasi, known as the "city of temples and learning", is considered the holiest city in India for Hindus. It is also believed to be one of the oldest continually inhabited cities in the world since time immemorial. According to legend, the city was founded by the Hindu deity Shiva and all Hindus are supposed to make a pilgrimage here at least once in their lifetime. The river Ganga (Ganges), which flows through the city is sacred and pilgrims bathe in it to rid themselves of sins.

Again, I'm too lazy but you can read Wiki:
According to Hindus the river Ganga (feminine) is sacred. It is worshipped by Hindus and personified as a goddess, who holds an important place in the Hindu religion. Hindu belief holds that bathing in the river on certain occasions causes the forgiveness of sins and helps attain salvation. Many people believe that this will come from bathing in Ganga at any time. People travel from distant places to immerse the ashes of their kin in the waters of the Ganga; this immersion also is believed to send the ashes to heaven. People carry sacred water from the Ganges that is sealed in copper pots after making the pilgrimage to Kashi. It is believed that drinking water from the Ganga with one's last breath will take the soul to heaven.

I liked Varanasi for its amazing cultural significance, but that was about it. It's dirty, overcrowded, smelly and crazy. You can barely walk anywhere without being pushed and shoved aside by a cow or a cyclist. The most interesting thing for us were the "ghats" or steps that run along the city and into the river Ganges. Here you can see everything - people bathing in the river, people washing their clothes in the river, people throwing litter into the river, people drinking the river water, people playing cricket by the river... you name it and it's happening here.

A man cleanses himself in the river


It's quite disgusting really... buffalo poo in the river, sewage waste runs into it, dead bodies are dipped (sometimes thrown) into it and people still wash their clothes and their bodies in it. Crazy but SO interesting for us.

One day we took a boat ride along the river with Emiko (yes, we met up again - we think they're following us ha ha ha) and stopped at what's known as the 'burning ghat'. This is where the main cremations are done.... and you can see watch it all happening!! We went up to a balcony of a building nearby and watched the whole ceremony... there must have been at least 15 bodies burning all the time we were there. The custom is that the bodies are first wrapped in lots of cloth and silk, then brought to the river. They are dipped into the river, then wait (sometimes for hours) before a pyre is built for them and they can be burnt. The robes are removed (they leave a thin white sheet on) and they are placed on the burning flames. Then they are left until they turn to ashes. The smell was so overwhelming and I had to leave after about 30 minutes - I was afraid I'd throw up!!



After 2 days of dust and dirt and sickly smells, Martin and I prepare to leave Varanasi. Our original plan was to visit Bodh Gaya (the place where Buddha attained enlightenment) but when we arrived at the train station and found our train was 8 hours delayed we made a new plan. Forget Bodh Gaya, we were going straight to Calcutta and then getting out of India!! I think by this time we'd just had enough. Almost 7 months of travelling and we were both getting tired. We just need a beach somewhere to catch a tan and relax!!

So direct to Calcutta it was, and after a bit of wheeling and dealing with the train ticket man, we managed it! It meant getting off the train at 4am and switching carriages onwards to Calcutta but that was fine with us.

We arrived at about 2pm, knackered and feeling sick again. My ear was still bad, I hadn't been able to hear out of it since Varanasi. Plus, I was feeling dizzy and dehydrated. Martin helped me get into a bus and across the famous Howrah Bridge to Calcutta side. When we got out of the bus I was so dizzy that I had to sit down for a while before I could walk with my backpack on to the cheap hotel area. But we made it!!! Martin looked around for a cheap deal, of which there were none!! But our hotel is nice enough and not totally out of our budget.

The first 5 days in Calcutta we spent in our hotel room, both of us suffering with vomit and diarrhea and me with stomach cramps. Eventually we made it to the hospital and the lovely doctor sorted us out with drugs. Horray!!

Once better, we ventured out to do a little sightseeing, taking in the Victoria Memorial - the last remnant of the British Raj (in power till 1911) here in India.



It's very beautiful - a mixture between the Taj Mahal and the Houses of Parliment!! The white marble they used to build it comes from the same mine in Rajasthan where they took marble for the Taj Mahal.

So now it's goodbye India for Martin and I!!! No more Indian "thali" (all inclusive meal).



Tomorrow it's Hello Thailand for us :)