Eight Months Later

It's been a long eight months since Ric and I crashed a scooter and mangled his leg up in India, but I'm pleased to announce that after two operations on two different continents, three months of bed rest and five months of physiotherapy Ric Stopher is officially mended!

We tested his newly repaired tendons out last week with a 12 mile hike in the lake district in torrential rain and Ric proved that his fitness levels are far superior to mine even after his injury by dragging me up and down various hills for almost six hours!

We're incredibly lucky to be able to finish off our trip more or less where we left off and are looking forward to flying out to Thailand in just under two weeks. I've been planning our return trip to Thailand since we went there two Christmases ago as I absolutely loved it. Inspired by our trip to the lakes, we've bought a tent to take with us in the hope of doing some camping on a remote Thai island.

In the meantime I'm enjoying the British summer in Huddersfield and spending time with my lovely little nephew.

Lake Windermere

Camping at Low Wray campsite, Ambleside

View over Windermere from our rainy hike.

Nice spot for a picnic in the sun, Marsden, Huddersfield

"Hello I'm Jake and I love mud!"

India Vs. England: The Cost of Living

Sitting at Ric's house, unemployed in England, trying to entertain ourselves with card games and endless TV series, it occurred to me how much it would cost us to live as we did in India, in England.

An Average Day India (for 2 people): 
- Breakfast would be something cheap, like fruit, bread or some mystery snack from a street vendor = >£1
- We'd hop in a rickshaw across town to a palace or temple we wanted to visit = >£1
- Entrance to tourist attraction/temple/palace = £4
- For lunch we'd share a meal and have a drink each = £3
- Afternoon activity could be walking around a park, playing scrabble by a river or sitting in Cafe Coffee Day drinking ice lattes = free or >£2
- Evening meal we might splash out on something nice = £6
- Hotels averaged £3 - £6 per night
- Extra spends for drinks/snacks etc = £3
Daily cost for two people = £26

Indian Thali, enough for two people and cost less than £1

Now imagine that in England (for two people):
- A cheap breakfast (fruit or bread) = £2
- A taxi to somewhere within 3 miles = £3
- Entrance to a tourist attraction = £10+
- Cost of one dish in a standard restaurant plus two drinks = £10
- Two iced lattes in a cafe = £4
- Nice evening meal in a restaurant = £25
- Hotels start at about £40
- Extra spends for drinks/snacks = £5
Daily cost for two people = £100

So for the cost of one day in England, we could have four in India!

Happy 2014 everybody!

Disaster Strikes

I'm not sure we could have had much worse luck than we've had in India. Conned, scammed, poisoned and robbed, with broken laptops, mouldy clothes and an insurance policy that won't pay out. 

Here's the story of how we came to be home in England, with Ric in a wheelchair, when we should be sunning ourselves on a beach in Kerala.

The 2,256km journey from Rishikesh to Cochin took 25 and a half hours, two flights, three rickshaws, three buses, one ferry, three subways and one train. One of our bags was stolen on the train, leaving us minus one ipod and costing us three hours sat in the damp office of the Old Delhi railway police. 

Despite the horrendous journey, we arrived in Fort Cochin in high spirits; this was India's second chance to impress us. First time round we'd encountered some problems; mainly being scammed into a car tour costing us £450 that we didn't want to spend. We hoped the south would be different; more relaxed and more diverse, and upon arrival we were excited to begin the second part of our Indian tour.

Faulty Towers

However...India had other plans. On our second day in Cochin we decided to hire bicycles and do some exploring, but the bike hire shop had no bicycles left, only scooters and motorbikes. Given that neither of us knows how to ride a scooter or a motorbike, we walked away, but half way down the street, something made us change our minds, turn around and hire a scooter. 

Biggest mistake of our lives! 

Before we'd even driven out of the petrol station, Ric lost control and crashed into a wall, trapping his leg between the bike and the wall and taking out a huge chunk of leg in the process.

I won't share the photos of the injury, it's too gory for this blog, but the would went down to the bone, denting the bone, and cutting in half the tendon that allows the foot to move up and down.

We then spent the next six days in Sangeeth Nursing Home, the Faulty Towers of hospitals. 

Where Ric had to hop up two flights of stairs to his own operating theatre, where he was kept for six days on a maternity ward, where only three people in entire hospital spoke English, prescriptions were written on scraps of paper, syringe vials were kept in recycled plastic bottles, where rats and cockroaches ran free, where tyres fell off a wheelchair with Ric in it, where I slept on a metal table, the room was cleaned with a besom, and dusty ceiling fans spun dirt around the room all day, where the windows had bars but no glass, the nurses washed their hands with a rusty water valve and a bar of soap, where plastic gloves were kept in metal jars and reused... the horror stories are endless.

Hand wash?

Well done for recycling!

Hospital corridors; apparently they're building a lift!

The nurses came twice a day to give Ric his IV antibiotics, other than that he received no care from them whatsoever; I had to go out and buy food for him, help him wash and use the bathroom, give him his tablets, get his medicine from the pharmacy. After the second night there, I checked out of our guest house and moved into the hospital to look after Ric.

Being a white man on a ward of pregnant Indian ladies, Ric attracted his fair share of attention. Every visitor to the ward popped their head to oggle Ric in his bed. Every person I encountered - rickshaw drivers, guest house owners, transvestite waiters - wanted to visit Ric, and bring along their friends and family too!

For me it was extremely frustrating, it was near impossible to communicate with anybody and only one lady there was remotely interested in helping me. After two nights in hospital Ric wanted to speak to his parents; even though there was a cordless phone in the hospital, and all of the staff had mobile phones, not one person would give me a phone to take an incoming call from England. In the end Ric had to hop into the nurses station to take a call, to which the staff accused me of making him walk, claiming that I had a phone of my own and wouldn't let him use it. It was horrible.

After six days we were allowed to leave, but because Ric's a big lad, they wouldn't get him a stretcher, he had to hop down the stairs, despite the doctor ordering him complete bed rest.

Ric's prison cell for a week!

Ric spent the following week in bed, unable to move out of the hotel room apart from to return to hospital to have his dressings changed. I spent my time running around trying to arrange flights (with Ric travelling as a medical passenger), ordering us take out food from local restaurants, and generally trying to keep Ric entertained. 

Qatar airways were fantastic at getting Ric home comfortably; he had a wheelchair for every step of the journey, and was given four seats to stretch out on. The great service stopped at Manchester though, where I was left carrying three heavy bags and pushing a wheelchair through customs unaided!

More great news came from the insurance company, who won't pay out a penny for Ric's medical treatment or the flight home. It seems the UK law regarding motorbikes changed this year, meaning we aren't covered. 

Now we're back in Huddersfield, to the safe cleanliness of the NHS. According to the doctors here, Ric's foot was set in the wrong position by the Indian doctors, so his tendon hasn't healed and he still can't move his foot. His wound is infected, surprise surprise, so they can't do anything for the tendon until it's completely healed. 

It feels like it's been a while since we had some good news or some good fortune. We're hoping Ric will be on his feet by Christmas, but until the infected wound clears up we can't know anything for sure. In the meantime, at least we have bacon and good old British weather to keep our spirits up!

Tales of Rishikesh

We spent 10 days in Rishikesh, longer than we've spent anywhere else on this trip so far. It's a beautiful, inexpensive place and we were privy to great company, namely Anna, who we'd already met up with in Varanasi and Lucknow, and her motley crew of pensioners, playboy holy men and yoga snobs. 

Laxman Jhulla, Rishikesh, at the start of the foothills of the Himalayas.

The Silent Playboy Baba Goes Rafting
Through Anna, we were privileged to meet Moni Baba. Baba is the name for the numerous "holy men" dotted around India, who've dedicated their lives to some religious quest. This Baba had taken a vow of silence, earning him the name Silent Bob(a). Unlike the majority of Babas, who have no possessions and live a life akin to a beggar, Silent Boba lives the high life, hanging out in cool bars with foreign tourists and texting on his two mobile phones. 

Mad man in a loin cloth

One day, at the beginning of our time in Rishikesh, along with an Irish girl and an Israeli man, Ric and I decided to take Silent Boba on a rafting trip down the Ganga. Wearing only a red loin cloth and a black cloth skirt rolled up far too high, Baba joined us on the raft and provided most of our entertainment for the day. After trapping Ric's finger in one of the raft's ropes, Silent Boba proceeded to enthusiastically suck the injured finger for far longer than necessary. Unable to verbally apologise, Baba fussed over Ric for the remainder of the trip, and at one point pulled Ric out of the river, face first onto the red loin cloth, leaving Ric's swim shorts in the river, and providing the rest of us with an awkward yet hilarious sight. 

Ric jumping into the river off a rock.

The rapids were far from exhilarating, it was more of a leisurely boat ride than white water rafting, but it was really enjoyable, with great company, beautiful scenery and my long avoided first dip into the holy river of waste! 

Brijing the Gap
Another one of Anna's friends we were introduced to was a 78 year old man named Brij. Having traveled around the world and earned a fine living working for Air India, Brij is now retired and dedicates his time to helping others in his community. He's got kids off the streets and into schools, he's helped finance business ventures for his friends and neighbours, he welcomes tourists into his house as if they were old friends and he is constantly looking for the next project where he can spread his kindness and help others.

Over dinner we heard how he and Anna had organised a hike up a mountain to a nearby village that few tourists have ever visited. A few days later, Ric, myself, and Connie, a Canadian friend we first met in Nepal and bumped into again in Rishikesh, made the same journey up the mountain and I committed myself to helping Brij set up a website promoting tourism in the mountain villages surrounding Rishikesh. The website will be called "Brijing the Gap".

Sweaty and disgusting after our hike up to the village.

Another facade to Brij's benevolence was helping out a local family that live in the neighbouring ashram. The parents and their three children live in this tiny room which doubles as the mother's studio where she makes clothes. Anna, Connie and I all had kameez made, an Indian dress that's seen as a modern alternative to the saree. And it's beautiful! 

Dress maker Kamni and my new kameez.

Brij was somewhat of an inspiration and it was wonderful meeting him.

Yoga
Rishikesh is pretty much the Mecca of yoga. The Beetles were there in the 60's studying transcendental meditation and today it attracts tourists from all over the world in search of yoga teaching certifications, enlightenment and bendy limbs. 

Some of these yoga pilgrims were really sound, lovely people. Others were total snobs that laughed in our faces when we told them we were doing beginners yoga. There was also a lot of talk about chakras, spirituality and other worldly stuff that went rather over our heads, but each to their own, eh?

For years I've been trying to get Ric to do a yoga class with me, and finally, in Rishikesh, he agreed! I think Ric liked yoga, although I couldn't look at him during the class because his silly faces had me in stitches. 

We tired 'laughter yoga' which was like being insane for an hour - roaring like a lion, laughing constantly for no reason, jumping and shouting "ha ha ha", all the while surrounded by 20 others doing the same thing... it was all a bit bizarre, but really fun! It was also a good work out for the abs.

105 years old!!

One yoga class was taught by a 105 year old man. He was like a living corpse; skeletally thin (yet freakishly strong), long white beard, slow zombie-like movements. Ric was mortified that this relic of a man could do more knee crunches than him! According to this ancient guru, yoga, meditation and breathing exercises are the key to a long healthy life. Apparently he gets up at 2am every day and does 5 hours of yoga to start the day!



Chilling
We otherwise spent a lot of time relaxing in Rishikesh. Sitting in cafes drinking lemon and mint slushies, getting massages, reading, writing and sketching. Ric went off to break into the ashram where the Beetles studied; it's now abandoned and overgrown with jungle. 

Rishiskesh was really a nice place to spend a while, and I could have stayed there longer.

This cow, with its dyed orange fringe, was always found standing on a bench!

Back to India and Heading North

We flew from Kathmandu back to Delhi, and had nine hours to kill before our 10pm north-bound train. We'd planned to visit the Red Fort, as it was closed the entire month of August and was the only Delhi landmark we hadn't been able to visit. After maneuvering our way through the streets of Old Delhi, we arrived at the fort's gate. "Closed Mondays" typical Steph and Ric luck. Quickly, we established a plan B; go and hang out in the gardens at Connaught Place. A nippy rickshaw ride later we arrived at the gardens. "Closed Mondays". Giving up, we spent the remainder of the day sipping iced tea in Costa Coffee.

The next morning we arrived in Haridwar, 350km north of Delhi. The city is a place of holy pilgrimage for Indians and once every 12 years the Kumbh Mela festival is held there, attracting in excess of 40 million pilgrims! 

Haridwar is located on the River Ganges, where the flat plains meet the foothills of the Himalayas. Interestingly, the rivers has been dammed off to create a man-made canal that can be kept at a certain level, saving the city from the flooding that occurs every year in monsoon season. Along a wide, paved river-front path are bathing ghats where pilgrims take their holy dip in the Mother Ganga. It occurred to me that elsewhere in the world, the path would be lined with expensive restaurants and high-end cafes. In Haridwar, however, it is home to hundreds of homeless people who live tents, bath in the Ganga and generally try to survive. I thought it nice that the people living at the bottom of India's vast shit heap could have such a pleasant space to live, although I would have liked a coffee in a nice cafe at the time!

We where walking around Haridwar with no idea about what sights were there for us to see, when we spotted a cablecar, and decided to go for a ride. At the ticket office there were numerous different tickets with different names and different prices and Ric, impulsively, bought the most expensive one, much to my dismay. I later regretted my criticism as the ticket we'd bought included two round trip cablecar rides, a return bus trip, and entrance to two temples, making it £5 well spent. 

Me at the top of cablecar one, post blessing.

The temples we visited were not very attractive, but the views over Haridwar were nice and I was fascinated by the Indians there making "offerings" to the Gods. Money, flowers and food are offered at every shrine, statue, picture and holy man in sight. The first holy man I came across blessed me, marking my forehead with the iconic red ash, and then refused to release my shoulder from his grip until I coughed up some money! After that I hurried through the temple telling everyone I was "just here for the view". This wasn't a tourist scam though, the Indian people there were throwing around notes like there was no tomorrow, and it occurred to me that for all it's thousands of Gods, Hinduism is no different from Christianity or any other religion on this Earth; it's all about money.

View looking back at Haridwar from the second temple. 

In the evening we attended the pooja (prayer) ceremony on the banks of the holy river. There were hundreds, if not thousands, of people there; sitting on the steps, singing, splashing out on more offerings. We'd also seen a pooja in Varanasi, but due to major flooding it had been a cramped, mini-pooja, Haridwar on the other hand, was the real deal. Suckers we are, we let a priest carry out a prayer ceremony for us, during which we offered flowers and candles to the river while the man in a white dress mumbled quickly in Hindi. Of course, once he was done he asked us for a donation to the Mother Ganga, only 500 rupees he said (£5!). I gave him 50 rupees, which he pocketed grumpily. 

People gather ready for pooja, which starts at sunset.

Pooja in full swing, orange man (center) is a holy priest fellow.

After just one night in Haridwar we caught the local bus 25km up the road to Rishikesh, land of yoga snobs, silent Babas and Anna Skinner!

The Lonely Planetarians and The Model of Lucknow

Trains in India are as crazy and complicated as the rest of the country. They are immensely long (20 carriages plus), and have five or more different classes. In brief, there’s AC1, AC2 and AC3 (air conditioned, 1 being the nicest and 3 being the not so nicest), then there’s sleeper class (no AC, even less niceness), and unreserved seating (mayhem). The reason I mention the trains is that from Varanasi to Lucknow we travelled in sleeper class, and it was quite an ordeal.

Sleeper class is how your average Indian person travels, with the AC carriages being more for the middle and upper classes. From Agra to Varanasi we travelled in AC3 and it was fine, if not a little cramped, so going straight into sleeper class was quite a shock to the system!

Our beds were right next to the toilet, so it stank of urine and there were puddles of dirty, pissy water under the beds. We saw rats running around the floor, and it was very noisy, with one considerate passenger playing the same song on his phone over and over again. The biggest problem though was the overcrowding, as sleeper class is sold out twice over, in order to accommodate the tremendous Indian population. This meant that whilst we were stretched out in our berths trying to get some sleep, random men with no reserved seat would come and sit at the end of the bed, very unnerving!! This was mostly a problem for Ric who was unlucky enough to get a bottom berth and had to spend the entire seven hours on the train fighting off strangers trying to share his bed, and also keeping the guys from getting into bed with me and Anna – what a hero! Eventually, Ric lost his seat completely when he went to the toilet and came back to find one fat Indian man sitting on top of all his things, unwilling to move. Needless to say it wasn’t the most enjoyable train ride for any of us, and if we do brave sleeper class again we’ll be getting top level bunks, and some pepper spray!!

Lucknow isn’t on most backpacker’s agenda and it was a refreshing change to feel like we were the only tourists in town. For some reason though we did find Lucknow to be more expensive than other places we’ve been.

Lucknow is famous for its rich food and tasty meat dishes, so a large part of our fours days there revolved around eating. We took some recommendations from a guy we met eating Chinese food at a road side café, and also followed most of the recommendations in Anna’s Lonely Planet. Usually none of us are the kind to walk around, nose in a guide book, following every step down to the letter, but… partly by coincidence and partly for the fun of it, we decided to go to all of the places recommended by the guide: We became… The Lonely Planetarians! Being the Lonely Planetarians led to us eat some great food, in some fine establishments, which were all conveniently located in Hazarat Ganj, the posh part of town where the buildings have a very European feel. Among the culinary highlights were: the best chicken massala I've ever tried, melt in the mouth kebabs, basket chat (a potato basket filled with all sorts of sweet and savoury delights), and bright red tandori chicken fresh from the oven.

Basket Chat: potatoes, pakoras, crisps, pomergranite, yoghurt and all manner of unidentifiable eatables.

When we weren’t eating we did manage to visit some sights: Bara Imambara and Chota Imambara (big tomb and little tomb), which were palatial buildings surrounded by gardens and mosques. In Bara Imambara we were able to climb into the labyrinth of passage ways in the ceiling and climb up onto the roof to get a decent view of Lucknow.

In the labrinth at Bara Imambara

We weaved our way through the streets of Chowk where ladies’ chickan suits are made. Everybody kept telling us about chickan, not to be confused with chicken; it basically refers to custom-made, hand-embroided clothes. First you chose your material and have it tailored to fit you perfectly, next you chose your pattern and a man prints it in ink onto the material. Then you take the printed material to another shop where it is embroided, then another shop where the collar and cuffs are decorated with the hem of your choice. The whole process costs less than £10. The outfits were lovely and I was tempted to buy one, but in the end I stuck to the tastier type of chicken!

Chota Imambara

On our final day in Lucknow we spent part of the day with a girl who introduced herself as ‘The Model of Lucknow’. Her actually name was Apurva and she volunteered herself to show us around the Residency. The Residency was built by the extravagant Nawab settlers and later inhabited by the British. During the First War of Independence the Residency was held under siege for several weeks and is now left as ruins, with cannon ball holes visible in many of the remaining walls. Apurva gave us a “tour” with some questionable facts and then led us to see the river. I’m pretty sure a large portion of what she told us that morning was fictional, however she was certainly an interesting character and it was very kind of her to offer to show us around her city.

Mosque among the ruins at Residency, Lucknow.

The three of us with the Model of Lucknow.

After many, many iced coffees and lavish meals in Lucknow we said farewell to Anna and left for New Delhi in time for our flight to Nepal. Getting off the train at New Delhi station felt oddly like coming home and it was uplifting to be somewhere familiar (we even stayed in the same hotel).

We spent a day and a half in Delhi, chilling out and doing some light sight seeing. I indulged Ric and joined him at the National Railway Museum, acting as his photographer for the day whilst he climbed and posed on various decrepit engines. (He had certainly earned it after sitting around in various shops while me and Anna tried on sarees!) We also went to Qutub Minar, a 238ft minaret and ancient mosque built by the Mughal emperors.

Choo Choo!

Qutub Minar

Everyday in Indian dozens of Indians what to take photos of us. Those who ask politely usually succeed in getting a photo, but those who try to candidly take our picture, or worse, those who shove a camera in our faces and click away without shame nor grace, are often privy to my wrath. This was the case at Qutub Minar, where a group of men relentlessly tried to take our photo, without success, and then finally came over and asked us to pose. Now if you’re wondering why it makes me so angry when people try to photograph us then allow me to explain: firstly it’s a violation of our privacy and it’s extremely annoying when we’re trying to enjoy some beautiful tourist attraction that we’ve paid to see; secondly I don’t want every Tom, Dick and Harry with a photo on his phone showing all his mates the photo of the white girl he saw and telling them all manner of lies about what type of encounter we had, indeed we have met Indian men who have showed us photos of European girls claiming that they’re their girlfriends. Unlikely! So at Qutub Minar I got a little bit angry at the paparazzi and ended up insisting they pay us money to take our photo, and they did! I’m now planning to finance the rest of our trip on the profits made from posing for Indian people’s photos.

Wonder of the World, Floods, and a Familiar Face

The North facade from across the river.

The Taj Mahal was great. I had low expectations (overrated, looks better in the pictures, just another building…) so I was delighted to find myself impressed. We got up at 5am to get there as soon as it opened at 6 and it was well worth it; less crowded, cooler weather, rising sun, and we even got a few photos without any people in. It’s a majestic building and the large gardens and waterways around it are peaceful, despite the crowds of tourists doing the “pinching the top of the Taj” pose (which Ric insisted we do even though I said it was tacky).

Woop look at me, I'm at the Taj Mahal!

To be honest we spent a lot of time in Agra just sitting under trees or in our room under the fan (air-con not in the budget). It was so, so hot, we could barely walk anywhere without collapsing. Right across from our hotel was the ‘Taj Nature Walk’, a kind of park/nature reserve with views of the Taj Mahal. We sat there for a long time under a pagoda, chatting to any other sweaty tourists that came by. Agra is a really green city, a nice change from the polluted madness elsewhere. Another really nice place we sat for an afternoon was directly across the river from the Taj Mahal, known as ‘Sunset Point’. It’s a park that you’re supposed to pay to go into to get the perfect view of the north facing side of the Taj, but seemingly most tourists just walk down to side of the park to get to the river for free. We left before sunset, as it got busy and we were facing north, not west, (not sure why it’s called Sunset Point really).

From Agra we took a night train to Varanasi. Finally a train! It was nice to get into “proper” travelling at last, after our extravagant start to the trip with the chauffeured car and the crazy driver. I was pretty taken aback by the train, it was crowded with people, with extremely narrow walkways, and bodies sleeping at eye level. Even though it was as I’d expected, the sheer number of people boarding at Agra station was mayhem. Eventually we settled in our berths and were rocked to and fro for a mere 16 hours before arriving in Varanasi.

The River Ganges, over twice its normal width, taken from a park near Shivala ghat, where Ric played cricket in the rain with some local kids. 

Varanasi is India’s holiest city, a place of pilgrimage for millions, and the place to come and get cleansed in the holy River Ganges, or Ganga. I have two things to say about the Ganga: firstly, it’s probably the most infectious, dirty, unhygienic body of water on Earth. It is a sewer, a bathing area and a crematorium. Indians come to Varanasi to die so that they can be cremated at the edge of the river, so for starters there are human remains and ashes in there. What disturbs me more is that certain people are not allowed to be cremated, including people with leprosy and small pox, instead they are tied to rocks and dropped in… and people bathe in this water!! The second thing is that there is a whole lot of water right now due to the monsoon, in fact the river has burst its banks and risen over 30m, flooding homes, temples and farmland.

Life in Varanasi revolves around the ghats, the steps that lead down to the Ganga. The ghats are usually alive with people washing, fishing, worshipping, and generally hanging out, but given the current flooding there are no more ghats. A lot of tourists we’ve met have been seriously disappointed about the flood, one girl even booked a flight out of Varanasi the day after she arrived! Ric and I have had a great time though, not least of all because we met up with our friend Anna, the only person who knew both of us before we knew each other!

Flooded ghats: the yellowy-green bush is in fact a fully grown tree, and the reddish pointed roof to the right is a temple!

 Me and Ric met in Peru, volunteering in Arequipa and living in the same house, and Anna was the volunteer coordinator who basically coordinated us both being there at the same time, thanks Anna! With a lot of luck and a little bit of organisation the three of us were reunited in Varanasi and it’s been awesome.

Happy to be reunited with Anna. The girl on the left was selling prayer candles, she was one tough business woman.

We took a tuc-tuc tour of the temples here, which was not in the least bit impressive but we did enjoy it. In the monkey temple Ric pointed out to us the cute baby monkey that had grabbed onto his toe, only for its mother to come over bearing her teeth, snarling, and give Ric a curt slap around the back of the legs. In the evenings pooja (prayer) is performed all along the ghats. We watched a pooja on a flooded ghat, I’m told it was a lot less elaborate than usual because of the restricted space but it was still rather fascinating. To the constant ringing of a bell the Brahmin (Hindu holy man) waved a number of things around in a circle (burning silver snake heads, peacock feathers, smoking coals, etc.) People chanted, sang and threw flowers into the river as an offering to the mother Ganga. It was quite a spectacle to watch, although the bell drove me pretty crazy, pretty quickly. The typical thing to do in Varanasi is to take a sun rise boat ride along the river as the ghats come to life, unfortunately we didn’t get a sunrise thanks to the monsoon, and we didn’t get much of a boat ride due to the dangerously strong currents. Also: we visited the place where Buddha gave his first sermon, we saw Thai-style, Chinese-style, Sri Lanka-style and Japanese-style Buddhist temples, we met plenty of Israelis, tried on sarees (not Ric), got hassled by hundreds of Indians, waded through the old town, got turned away from a temple for being white, did some light shopping and ran up an impressive food bill in the guest house restaurant.

The Brahmin at pooja.

Ric getting seriously hassled by some ladies at the Buddha place.

 Now our awesome threesome are headed to Lucknow!

Favourite people of Varanasi:

The man who bitch-slapped a cow and Lala the fantastic guest house manager who did everything for us, including trying to marry off Anna into an arranged marriage.

Least Favourite People of Varanasi:

The woman with the cute baby who convinced me to buy her baby milk and then went on to show me the entire shopping list she expected me to shell out for, and the cow that kissed me.

Monkeys, Cows and All Their Excrement!

From the jungle village of Ranakapur we drove three hours further south to Udaipur, the Lake City. Udaipur is built around a number of lakes, with palaces towering up on the banks and a five star hotel plonked in the middle. For the first time since arriving in India I’d say the weather was pleasant; sunny but not too hot, no monsoon rains and a nice breeze. We visited the city palace, took a lovely boat ride around the lake and took a cable car up a mountain (unfortunately we were a bit late and it was dark by the time we reached the top!) I also decided to get henna painted on my feet in Udaipur; I’d seen a hand painted sign pointing towards a little blue house down a back alley saying “HEENA MAKE HERE”. I thought it would be nice to get it done in someone’s home rather than in a shop and boy did I get my money’s worth! Inside the little blue house lived a family of four; the father was a local artist and the daughter who painted my feet was studying to be a teacher. I spent a whole afternoon in their living room, chatting in broken English about their lives and mine, the mother made us chai (Indian tea) and gave us home cooked food (chapattis with some strange vegetable I’ve never seen before). It was a great experience meeting a local family; hearing how the father has to mass produce intricate paintings that he passes on to a shop owner only to earn £3 per day; how the house and the two along side it were built by the man’s father and are now inhabited by the three brothers; how the kids are both studying to get good jobs; and I learned a lot about their traditions and the Hindu faith too. I love the henna, it’s so detailed and beautiful and the girl who painted it was so sweet; when I told her it was my first time getting henna she insisted on painting my hand too, as a present.

Cows enjoying the view over Pichola Lake, Udaipur

A long, tedious drive north from Udaipur landed us in Pushkar, a city where once a year, millions of people attend a camel trade fair, but the rest of the year it remains a small, dirty, little town full of people trying to sell to you or scam you. We took a look at the holy lake where pilgrims go to bathe in the holy water. We managed a paddle but it was pretty grim. We also went to a temple dedicated to Brahma, the Hindu God who created the world, but it was full of wasps so we didn’t stick around there too long either. I wasn’t at all keen on Pushkar as a city but it did have a fantastic vegetarian kebab shop where we got naan rolls stuffed with falafel, hummus, salad and chips, a welcome change from curry!

My gnarly feet looking a little more glam than usual.

After one night in Pushkar (and more kebabs for breakfast!) we drove to “the Pink City”, Jaipur; the capital of Rajasthan. The road was mostly motorway, boring in most countries but not in India. Imagine a motorway in any ‘civilised’ country: six lanes divided by a central reservation, hard shoulder, traffic, etc. Now add cows, people, camels, herds of goats being shepherded from one place to the next, trucks parked in the left hand lane, cars going the wrong way and coming for you head on… and you’ve got Indian motorways!

The rain caught up with us in Jaipur and we spent our first afternoon there wandering around the pot holed, muddy streets. We went to Hawa Mahal, the Wind Palace, which looks more impressive in photos than it does in real life, and we walked right across town the Albert Hall, built by the former Prince of Wales, who was named Albert. The next day was clear and sunny and we visited the Amber fort in Amer, a mountain town just outside of Jaipur. Outside the fort we met a snake charmer who convinced us to pose for a photo with him. Seeing Ric’s face turn white with fear when the snake was placed around his neck was well worth the pound it cost us for the privilege of taking the photo! We took an elephant ride to the top of the fort, which was expensive fun, with half a dozen touts snapping our photo to sell to us at the top. The fort was a bit of a maze, lots of narrow corridors and staircases leading no where useful, and for once I regretted not hiring one of the local guides to show us around. After the fort we went back down to the pink city to wander the busy streets and check out Jantar Mantar, an ancient observatory made up of huge, peculiar instruments used to track the sun’s movement. Outside the observatory one of the touts from the fort spotted us and once again tried to sell us the photos he’d taken of us on the elephant. As it was the end of the day we managed to haggle the price down from £2 per photo, to 5p per photo, and bought all four of them, bargain! In the evening we went back to Jantar Mantar for the sound and light show. To our surprise we were the only visitors at the show and we had the place to ourselves, sitting in the darkened observatory away from the horns and the fumes outside the walls was peaceful in itself, and the show didn’t disappoint. We heard the story of how the Pink City was built (it was the first planned city in India, which explains why the streets are in square blocks, instead of the tangled webs seen everywhere else), and heard how the observatory was made and how each instrument works. The most interesting part for me was hearing how one huge staircase that looks merely superficial, is in fact perfectly parallel with the Earth’s axis, pointing directly at the North Star.

Pure fear on Ric's face outside Amber Fort, Amer

On our way out of Jaipur we stopped off at Galta, a temple complex not far outside the city. The complex is also known as the monkey palace because of the 20,000 monkeys that live there. The complex is made up of several old decaying temples built at the bottom of a valley. At the first temple we met one of the local holy men who briefly explained the history of the temple and then showed us though narrow corridors and staircases to a shire to the Monkey God (whose Hindi name I cannot remember). At the shine we were unexpectedly thrown into some kind of ceremony where the holy man chanted at us, marked our foreheads with orange paint, wiped flower essence on our hands, tied bracelets around our wrists and wished us long happy lives. The ritual lost some of its meaning for me when half way through another holy man walked between us and retrieved his mobile phone from behind the deity! Pleasantly, our chanting man didn’t ask us for any money, only a donation to the temple, which we were happy to make. Further up the valley there were people bathing in holy water alongside cows an monkeys and all of their excrement. We followed the valley up to the top of the ridge where we had a wonderful view of Jaipur to the west, and the mountains to the east, well worth the arduous walk in the early morning heat. After our walk we stopped at the bottom of the hill and had some hot chilli pakoras for breakfast.

Holy water at the monkey temple, Galta, Jaipur.

Four hours later, travelling east towards Agra, we arrived at Fatehpur Sikri, a palace that was abandoned shortly after its construction and has been left untouched for hundreds of years. Our guide book described it as a ghost town, giving me the impression of an eerie, tranquil place, but it was far from it. There were literally tens of thousands of Indians there (dur, it is India). Half were tourists who kept trying to take our photo, stare at us, shout all sorts of random crap at us, and generally make me feel uncomfortable (leery Indian men). The other half were touts that just wouldn’t leave us alone, pestering us to buy things, see their shops, take their tour… it’s like that everywhere in India but in the midday heat in such a constricted space it was really quite stressful and I wasn’t able to enjoy the surroundings as much as I would have liked.

View from Galta, Jaipur.

Monkeys!!!!

All was forgiven though when we arrived in Agra and found out that our hotel has the best view of the Taj Mahal ever, and costs less than £2 each per night! In Agra we finally ditched Manoj, our mental driver, and now we can get on with our travels with one less Indian shouting at us in Hindi.

Stuck in a Car in India!

Delhi - Mandawa - Bikáner - Jaisalmer - Jodhpur - Ranakapur

It’s just over one week into our trip around India and we’ve been sick, we’ve been scammed, and we’ve broken and repaired our computer, we’ve met some lovely people, some crazy people, we’ve seen a lot of cows, we’ve sweated, burned and we’ve been soaked by monsoon rains.

As I write I’m sitting on a hotel veranda in the middle of the jungle town of Ranakapur. The trees around us are full of monkeys and just across the road is a lake where we saw crocodiles earlier this afternoon.

We had planned to get here by train but an unfortunate chain of events lead us to be stuck in a chauffeured tourist car with a slightly unhinged driver named Manoj. We were at the train station ready to board our train at 5.30am when an apparent station employee approached us and told us the train was cancelled. Before we knew it we’d been passed between numerous “officials” and we were handing over far too much money to set off on a chauffeured road trip. Only after we’d set off did everything fall into place and we realised we’d been had.

The most annoying thing is knowing that we let ourselves be conned, especially as we’ve both travelled all over before so we should know better. But we’re making the most of it and trying not to worry about money that’s already been spent, and it’s certainly been interesting. We’ve seen plenty of things from the car that we’d never have experienced from the inside of a train: buffalo bathing on flooded plains, women carrying huge pots of water for miles on their heads, holy men on a pilgrimage, insane wildlife, tractors carrying bales of hay treble the width of the vehicle... and it’s only day six!

First of all though we spent three nights in Delhi, staying in the main bazaar. We met up with Ripul, a friend we met in Korea and he took us on an eating tour of Old Delhi. Whilst we were there we visited the Lotus Temple, a temple for all religions; Jama Masjid, the main mosque; the Golden Temple, which is a Sikh temple; and Akshardam, a beautiful Hindu temple, so it was a nice introduction to the multi-ethnic land of India.

Although it took me a while to get used to the smells, the noise, the filth and the craziness, I ended up enjoying Delhi; it’s a fun place, even if there was a smelly public urinal at the end of our street. We’ll be going back there again soon.

With Ripul (right) and an Ozzy girl outside the Sikh temple

The day we set off on our impromptu road trip was an emotional one. Tears were shed upon realising what we’d got ourselves into, although they came in handy when negotiating room rates as I was sobbing so much the poor guy at reception gave us a room at half the original rate! (Might have to try that trick again!) The first day involved an arduous 13 hour drive along unpaved roads, and due to our recent failure (being super scammed) we were extremely foul tempered passengers and I don’t think we got off to the best start with Manoj, our driver. Manoj looks like a serial killer most of the time, apart from when he laughs; unfortunately he only laughs when he’s shouting/singing at us in Hindi and watching our perplexed expressions in his rear view mirror. I managed to offend him straight from the start by trying to kill a fly that had found its way into the car. Manoj reminded me that Hindus don’t harm any living thing and that I should politely ask the fly to leave the car. The fly ignored my gentle pleads but flew out of the window immediately when asked to go away in Hindi!

Riding in a car all day along questionable roads through the India wildness is certainly interesting:

First of all it’s monsoon season and a lot of the roads are flooded. That’s no problem for the mysterious Manoj though, he ploughs through enormous puddles, swearing in numerous languages and filling the foot wells of the car with water with water. It’s only a small Toyota hatch-back, I’m amazed it’s survived this far!

Along the way we saw some wild deer, which Ric tells me are called nil gai (blue cow). The deer are a problem in India because they eat the crops in the countryside, and because they’re named after the holy cow, farmers aren’t allowed to harm them (shoot them).

We saw a couple of dozen men dressed in orange robes walking along the road side. They were carrying holy water from the Ganges River for the festival of Saava. People from all over the country walk for as long as a month to collect the water and take it to their villages in holy pots as an offering to God.

After far too long weaving around trucks, cows, rickshaws, people and pot holes we arrived at a town called Mandawa. As the rain poured down on us we climbed around a castle and looked at the painted Havelis in the town. Havelis are ornate houses that were previously owned by the rich merchants who traded silk and silver across Asia, Rajasthan is full of them.

So thrilled to be in Mandawa, overlooking the city from the fort/palace

We stayed two nights in Bikaner, where we visited the old fort in the scorching heat, and then watched a beasty storm roll in from the comfort of the hotel’s roof top restaurant. From Bikaner it was a wet 6 hour drive to Jaisalmer, the “Golden City”, where we visited another (better) fort. The locals told us it hadn’t rained in over a year but while we were there it poured it down constantly, flooding the streets with dirty water, cow poo and litter. We celebrated Ric’s 27^th birthday in Jaisalmer with a bhang lassi, a local herbal drink said to heighten your “spiritual” connection to the Gods! Totally legal and government registered. We also visited a lake made by a maharaja. As you can imagine, a lake in the desert is not ideal and in spite of the torrent of rain we’d seen, the poor fish were still flopping around on the surface barely covered with water.

Train dodging in Bikaner

Ric enjoying the rain on his birthday, Jaisalmer

From Jaisalmer to Jodhpur, the “Blue City”, and yet another fort, where a middle aged man pinched Ric’s bum and called him beautiful – twice! After visiting the fort we ditched the car and the driver and took to the streets on our own, ankle deep in dirty rain water yet again. In search of higher ground we ended up walking through the streets under the fort where all the houses are painted blue in honour of the God Krishna (hence, the Blue City). The people living there all wanted their photo taken. I was quite hesitant at first as I thought they might pester us for money once we’d taken the photo, but as it turns out they were just excited to see themselves on the camera screen, so we got loads of lovely photos of the local people and children, which usually I wouldn’t have dared to take.

Jodhpur fort

Nice ladies who wanted their photo taken in Jodhpur

Today we arrived in Ranakapur, at the foot of the Aravalli hills. It’s amazing how different the climate is here, it’s a few degrees cooler than anywhere else we’ve been and it’s SO tropical! We visited a Jain temple complex and had lunch in a canteen that’s supposed to be for pilgrims. Lunch was amazing, for 40p each (less than a dollar) we had unlimited food: three types of curry, two types of bread, rice, chutney and water, by far our best value for money meal so far. After visiting the temple we took a short walk to a lake, where a baby crocodile crossed our path (and almost gave me a heart attack!)

Jain temple, Ranakapur

Monkeys everywhere!

From here the plan is Udaipur, Pushkar, Jaipur, then Agra, where we can end this tour and get on with some independent travelling!

Namaste!