So, another day, another
newsletter. Not a lot of news at the moment, but thought I might as well keep
you informed of what's going on.
I got to India a couple of weeks
ago, the journey from Nepal to the border was pretty uneventful and the border
crossing took very little time. Then got a bus to Gorukhpur, the bus was mainly
filled with Tibetan refugees whom the Police and Customs enjoyed harassing and
demanding money from at the check points en route. When I got to Gorukhpur the
plan was to get straight to Delhi, where I would get some stuff sorted out
(details below). However, all the sleeper space was taken and even with the
offer of bribes there seemed no way to get to Delhi except general occupancy,
which is not pleasant, especially not for thirteen hours. So I booked a ticket
for the train the following day and stayed in Gorukhpur. It was rather nice
actually as I had a TV which had several English channels, which made a change,
so I watched various bits of crap on TV. When I got the train I was pleasantly
surprised how nice it was, after some of the stories I had heard about Indian
trains. The people I shared the carriage with were friendly enough, all in all
not a bad journey.
The first thing I set about doing in Delhi was try to arrange flight tickets.
The reason for this being that as many of you already know my parents have
decided we should have a family holiday, so we are all off to Miami over the
festive period and then my brothers and I will celebrate new years eve in Miami
(my parents are returning home on the 30th) before they go home. Then a couple
of days later David, a friend from home, is coming out for about a fortnight,
where we plan on doing all the cheesy things in Florida like Disney, Epcot, etc.
and with a bit of luck get to see a shuttle launch (as there is one scheduled
for 18th January). I will then be spending a little more time in North America,
possibly going up to Canada, before returning back to India. So arranging
flights was obviously important. This took more time than I would have hoped as
first I had to find a reasonable price, then get the tickets sorted. That bit
should have been pretty painless, but the woman who was sorting them out booked
the flights from and returning to Delhi, which would have been a real pain as I
will be in or around Bombay at the time I plan to go, about thirty hours by
train away. I did a little sight seeing in Delhi, however, my timing in India is
not good as the prices of most of the tourist sights have been adjusted by the
government to quite ridiculous levels. Even the mediocre sights cost ten US
dollars entry for foreigners, far too much. With a couple one could see them
well enough from the outside (and therefore free). Otherwise there wasn't much
going on in Delhi, but waiting. Eventually all was sorted, so I managed to leave
Delhi after nine not very exciting days.
I headed out to Amritsar, the
Sikh capital, to see the golden temple there. This is the centre of the Sikh
religious world and the temple is rather impressive, a huge complex, much of
which is marble and the centre piece being a small lake with the Golden Temple
in the middle. There not being much else in Amritsar I went from there to
Dharamsala, where I have been for the last few days and will be leaving this
evening. Dharamsala is home to the Tibetan Government in Exile and HH the Dalai
Lama. It is quite high up in the foothills of the Himalayas, so rather cold.
Essentially it is just a chilled place and as I have seen Tibet itself has
limited appeal aside from its relaxing air. Many folks come here from around the
world to learn about or practice Tibetan Buddhism, as it is rather fashionable
these days. It is rather odd to see these Westerners who dress as Tibetans
traditionally do and many joining the monastery/nunneries. The strangest thing
is that probably more Westerners are dressed in traditional Tibetan garb, than
Tibetans who wear western clothes.
Anyway hopefully off this evening, as previously mentioned. First I get the bus
to Delhi, which I plan on leaving immediately for Agra to see the Taj Mahal, a
rather expensive but necessary sight to see in India.
Hope you are all well. Keep in touch Raph
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So, I'm about to leave this country for a while so thought I should tell you all
what I've been up to in the past couple of weeks. Back in Delhi I managed to
meet up with Lisette and Oliver, who I first met six months ago in Esfahan, Iran
and travelled on and off with through Iran and Pakistan. It was nice to see them
again and we fell back in to the friendship and rhythm of travelling together as
though there had been no break. From Delhi we got a bus that evening to Pushkar,
home of the famous camel fair, which ended a few weeks ago, otherwise it is
unlikely we would have been able to get close to the place as millions of
buyers, sellers, tourists and media take over the area. When we got there it was
all rather mellow, it is a real backpacker place and not too bad, but rather too
touristy. We went on a day trip to Ajmer a larger town about half an hour away
where there are some interesting sights, including Arhai-Din-Ka Jhonpra mosque,
apparently one of the holiest sights in Islam and the tomb of a Sufi saint. From
there we went to the Nasiyan Jain temple which cost all of three rupees and a
guy who decided to show us round repeatedly told us that this was the greatest
sight in all of India and that after having paid nine hundred and sixty rupees
to see the Taj Mahal, we would feel that was entirely money wasted and that we
would be thinking this is the most incredible thing I've ever seen in my life.
He was wrong. It was nice though, it had models of all the major Jain sights and
temples in the world made of pure gold, there were diamonds and solid silver
baubles and other extravagances, it was impressive, but I still think the Taj
was more so. The last stop on our little tour was to be the Akhbar fort but it
was closed so we headed back to Pushkar followed and harassed constantly by a
fake Saddhu (holy man), he followed us on to the bus and just incessantly
demanded money and annoyed, to the point where an older Indian man gave him a
bollocking telling him that people like him gave tourists like us a bad
impression of India and Indians, when the fake Saddhu tried to make the point
that he was a holy man the Indian guy really opened up on him, probably as he
thought he was being sacrilegious or simply because he was a conman. It was nice
to see someone sticking up for us and shutting the idiot up, something one
rarely gets anywhere, especially in India.
From Pushkar we went on to
Jodhpur, also known as the Blue City as to try and control their termite
infestation the locals brew a copper sulphate solution that makes there
buildings go a light sky blue. It actually looks rather attractive from the
fort. The place we stayed was very nice, it was a home stay that had only opened
a month previously and Narendra the owner was incredibly enthusiastic (sometimes
overly so). The food that they made was excellent and the quantities more than
enough. When someone asked him what bahty were (as there were adverts around the
town for them) he told us his wife would make us some for lunch the following
day, which she did. This was despite the fact that she had never done so before
and had previously only watched her mother-in-law make them. After going to the
fort, the park, the clock-tower and just generally around town we decided to
move onto Jaisalmer.
Jaisalmer is a fort town (most
of the towns in Rajasthan have forts, this one though is largely inside the
fort) surrounded by desert. Our first evening there was also the anniversary of
my flight to Cape Town a year ago that started this trip, so we had some beers,
something I had previously never done with Lisette and Oliver as we had been in
Islamic countries. With our beers on the rooftop of the hotel, we watched a
lovely sunset across the desert and then were joined by someone who came to sing
some traditional songs that were not really our taste and I ended up in
hysterics as the guy tried to explain the meaning of the songs, which sounded
more like a cat being both strangled and castrated simultaneously. One of the
most popular things to do in Jaisalmer is a camel safari which we booked
ourselves on. So, we went off to meet our camels and drivers and climbed aboard.
Camels are not particularly comfortable animals to sit on for longer than a few
minutes. So, when we stopped to look around villages en route or to have lunch
it was very welcome. In the evening we had a camp fire and one of the camel
drivers, or villagers that turned up would sing a few songs. Otherwise the
nights were spent on the sand dunes, under the stars and an extremely bright
moon. They were also rather cold and I was rather pleased to have my sleeping
bag with me, the only problem with this being that as the dunes aren't
particularly flat and the sleeping bag has a water-resistant sheen to it, I
would invariably awake several feet lower down the dune than I had started with
the blankets I had used as a mattress out of reach above my head. On the first
night the camels came sniffing around at about two in the morning which woke me.
It is not a particularly pleasant thing to look into a camels face at the best
of times, let alone when one is woken by one of these big brutes. On the last
day we apparently had a lot of ground to make up, which meant trotting along on
our camels. By this point we had all just about got used to the walking pace and
the discomforts of that, trotting was an eye opener as to what muscles we could
feel pain in and at times felt more like an eye waterer. Unlike a horse, which
has a rhythm to it, so one can raise oneself on the stirrups to reduce the
discomfort camels are flopping backwards and forwards and side to side all at
the same time, so there seems no way to avoid the discomfort. When we stopped
for lunch that day we extremely pleased to be off the things and then we only
had a short walk in the afternoon to get to where we were to get our ride back
to town. The high point of the trip was when we stopped in a small village and
the kids were gathering for school. We took the opportunity to have a look at
some of their English books which included useful vocabulary such as:- traitor,
torture, pain, anguish, prison. Apparently useful words for a ten year old, in a
small Indian village, in the middle of the desert. When their teachers
eventually arrived the children all got into about eight different lines,
apparently by age. Then they all sang the national anthem and then some Hindu
song, despite the fact that most of them were Muslim. They then had an English
spelling test, which involved the child standing up and spelling the word the
teacher said. It appeared that all the lessons were done with all the years in
attendance, sat out on the sand. One thing we noticed before leaving was that
although there were young girls in the younger classes, there were no older
girls, probably married already. When we returned to Jaisalmer I had a
much-needed shower and we had a couple of nice cold beers. The following day we
got the bus back to Jodhpur where we stayed with Narendra again and booked a bus
to Udaipur for the following day.
In Udaipur went and saw the City palace and can see across to the Lake Palaces
(featured in James Bond - Octopussy). Inside the City palace there are a couple
of museums, one of which (the government museum) has a small collection of very
badly stuffed animals. These include a kangaroo, that appears to have been
stitched back together a few time already; a pair of Siamese calves joined at
the hips; but best / worst of all (depending on your sense of humour) was an
almost entirely decomposed Ostrich, whose beak was barely staying on and had
about three dishevelled feathers in total.
Whilst in Udaipur, we decided it was time we went to see Mohabbatein.
Mohabbatein is currently the biggest and best Bollywood film around. It stars
the two biggest stars of Bollywood: Amitabh Bachchan, the most famous actor on
the planet according to the BBC (Madame Tussauds has recently unveiled a waxwork
of him) as the one and a half billion people on the sub-continent all know who
he is; and Shah Rukh Khan, the second biggest star in Bollywood. It was good fun
to go and see and for a Bollywood film, rather good. There were only about five
song and dance routines, no real violence and it had a story. It was also fun to
watch the audience members shouting and whistling and generally getting rather
involved with the whole thing. The only downside was that it was rather long at
four hours.
We decided to go to Chittaugarh for a day trip. This being another town with a
fort, but also in possession of a couple of impressive old towers. We wandered
around looking at the old palaces and fort, as well as a couple of temples and
particularly the victory tower, an eight storey high tower to commemorate a
victory several hundred years ago. The whole place was rather nice as we were
the only whites around. There were none of the normal hassles of a tourist site.
Now, I'm back in Udaipur, said goodbye to Lisette and Oliver yesterday and am
flying off to the States from Bombay Tuesday Morning. So that should wrap most
of it up for now.
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I just realised that I did not mention in the newsletter that I went to the Taj
Mahal, I did and it was very impressive, as opposed to many sights that one sees
so often in the media, this one really lives up to and surpasses expectations.
Also went to a cultural show that was entertaining and interesting although
generally not for the right reasons, the singers were of varying quality and
some of the things they did during there performances begged the question, Why?
An example of this being the women who used themselves as human xylophones and
then decided to do the same thing with swords in their mouths and pots on their
head. Impressive for its stupidity.
Anyway, just thought I should
keep the record straight. In Bombay now, off to the airport for my flight
tomorrow.
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