Jalsaimer

jodpur

pushgar

Jaipur. the stomach cleanser.

We traveled on general tickets (meaning unreserved and super cheap) but got on Sleeper class (generall class was stuffed but sleeper seemed nice) thinking we could play the stupid tourist card "O, I didn't know you had to reserve a ticket to sit here.. SO sorry.." We ended up paying a "seating charge" (Bribe) of 15rps each, the price of a bottle of water.

At the train station we had arranged free pickup to a guesthouse making the process of finding the area with guesthouses easy. We was told there was a pool witch, Alon thought was perfect. There was a pool right, a very empty one. We ended up staying there anyway (after haggling for an hour) and spent the afternoon exploring the area. Alon wanted to find a rickshaw and rent it for the following day. he only had one condition... That he could drive it!

He found a a lot of rickshaws for rent that he couldn't drive and we didn't think it was possible. Soooo... a couple of minutes after Philip compensated my protective fire stick socs (15rps) he and alon previously covered in chit, we met Alibabba, The smooth talking, street smart, tourist hussteling Alibabba. Wow. The next morning we were promised a rickshaw that we could drive ourselves for the high price of 250 rps for the full day including gas... WOW

We also went for a 25rps thail (Indian meal that keeps getting refilled until you thing you stomach going to burst), an action pushed by revenge on cris for inviting uss to a ridicoulus expencive place (slightliy exagerating, in the sence that it's still cheaper than back home) when we were in agra. You can tell in his face he wasen't used to the dabas (small indian resturant, hole in the wall type), he did end up enjoying the meal and didn't get sic (I think).

Agra, the home of the Taj Mahal!!

Agra.... Wow.. This city make me feel so lost.. First of all: IT'S COLD!!

Stepping of the train was interesting. As all train stations there was a lot of hustlers at the Agra station, BUT.. Holy mother of cows, Agra must be in the top.. In the end we got a rickshaw to a hotel Stu and Pam (nice couple we met in varkala) had recommended us AND ended up staying at an other one called the India-inn with very nice personal (like many places here got), but with the doubtful intentions, I've started to sense way to much. As soon as it comes to money.. O boy...

We went to the back of the Taj Mahal, witch the bird way is 3 km from our hotel, in a rickshaw the roadway, witch is 24km through very thick traffic. This gave me time to take some photos and watch people though.

One rickshaw had what seemed to be two families covering four generations squeezed in to it. A boy washing dishes at the side of the road, half a meter away from the wheels of a buss. Angry men cursing each other when they cant get trough the impossibly narrow space in front of them.
Beggars pulling your clothes trying to get you to look at their newborn infant.

The back of Taj was nice but extremely crowded when I arrived there. I wanted to ask what was going on but didn't find anyone with good answer (I found a tremendous amount of people wanting to shake my hand and a couple of kids trying to pull my ring of while shaking it... Sigh)

Taking photos was harder than you would think... what would you do IF:
A crowd of 15 kids follows you around whereever you go.
They all want you to take a picture of them and then show them (the one in the center of the picture will scream and brag and wants you to show all his friends that he's in the middle)
They turn a deaf ear when you try to explain it would be nice to have some space and maybe take one picture that you were visible in too...

WELL.. I ended up:
Surrendering!!
Laughing!!
Taking a tremendous amount of pictures of street kids and showing them listening to their joy cries as they would recognice themselves on the screen of my camera..

The next morning we woke up WAY to early, Sometime before sunrise, to go to The Taj while it wasent overcrowded. It was hard but it worked out...

Our hotel is less than one kilometre from the entrance to The Taj jet it felt like we stayed in a crazy unplanned slum... We walked some narrow streets and then... A big entrance to the Taj Mahal area.

For 750 rps (you heard right, probably the single most expencive thing I've bought so far) we got not only entrance, we also got complimetrary whater and shoe covers... WOW.. Hrmm

But, yes, it is amazing, Big, and very muslim! NICE.. It's all made out of marble with diffrently carved stones forming patterns of flowers and arabic print. Once you see it up close it's MindBlowing (intonation on Blowing, it felt like a wind emptied my scull when I realized the amount of work pour souls had put in to this wonder), just take a closer look at the base of the Taj in the picture and you might se some people at the bottom...

I played around the Taj for a few hours feeling immensely touristy with my camera hanging around my necks. then it was time to maove on to something much more important than marble... BREAKFAST...


While eating our falsly advertised meal (though we would be paying the promised price, HA!) we met two very nice souls, Martha and Chris who's number we got, setting loose plans for dinner..

We had a very nice(..Not.. but kind of nice) tour with a bicycle rickshaw ("No sir, we Do not want to go with your rickshaw, not even for 10 rps" A small discussion with Philip, a shoulder shrug and then "OK sir, why not. We don't have anything better to do, show us around") that took us around to places they got commission at letting us look at random stores.. We unfortunately ended up buying a pashmina shale that later turned out to be made of viscose.. 400RPS.. Darn, damn, @#%$#......

The rickshaw drivers were nice and smiled a lot (No wonder, they probably made a fortune in commission on our fake shawls...) we took them for a chai (the rickshaw driver tried my beloved ray bans) before we got a Phone call from Alon telling us he was staring at our hotel. Wow, let the craziness begin.

We ended up having dinner with Marta and Cris (A super tourist expensive one where they added the tax as a plus on the menu instead of including it in the price. Alon got a scene going refusing to pay the tax we never got information about. The indians in the resturant looked SUPER UNCONFORTABLE and were quite relived when we left.


This kid was sooo happy that she got to play connect-4 with me (even tho I didn't let her win once).. She was working at this chitty rooftop resturant wich, like many other trown togeter rooftop resturants, had old plasic chairs, a table and a citchen built in a clauset with a gas stove and VERY dubious hygiene.

The next day we had bonded so much with the lovely Cris and Martha we decided to head to Jaipur together. So we all met up on the trainstation 630am. Four hours later the train's still late (First time). During this time Alon and Philip managed to get fesis on my fire staf kicking it over the track to eachother, finaly cracking it rendering it pretty useless for firespinning. O well.. They promised me compensation for the protective socs that got covered in chit and a new staff.. Right....

Indian crowds is very interesting as the seemingly appear out of nowere and in quit large numbers. This time we decided to have a connect-4 tournament at the train station, about 35 seconds in to the first game we had an exponetaly increasing number of people forming an audience staring at us while we played.. ONLY in India

Lots of love!!

The most amazing transport!!

We stormed the train to Agra and got to our seats kind of expecting to meet someone English speaking person to pass the time with... NOT.. Only Indians (some with better English, you understand some of it, who wanted to speak A LOT to you while you wanted to rest), some of which we had some good conversations with.

What do you do for two days on a train.

As always you watch the passing landscape trough the open door.

You walk down the different carriages to watch all different sorts of people. And the performers! Kids dressed up making back flips in the narrow space at the train, singing ladies with a very persistant way of singng making you wanna pay for her to go away. And of course the different salesmen shouting out what they're selling (Coffey, chai, paper (magazines), pani (water) and assorted sweets and food.

I played with my camera (lovely little thing) and read and ate.

I'm almost trough shantaram.. just got 200 pages left.

Food on a long journey like this is actually quite good. they come up to you and take your order a few hours ahead and then deliver your 30 rps meal to your berth. Nice!!

If you ever go second class sleeper in India, make sure you get upper berths. this way you can sleep whenever you want and not have people sitting at you when you wake up in the morning. We unfortunately had one upper and one lower and switched after half the way.

I also met an interesting sadhu (religious man who live only to achieve moksha, liberation) who blessed me and my wounds so they would heal faster..

I was quite happy when we stepped of the train station in Agra though. Two days is manageable but you start missing the mobility of not being stuck on a train gives.

In the end the entire journey ended up costing us around 650 rps per person (about 100 sek or 10 euros) with food included.. Amazing!!

So now I'm in Agra the city of one of the seven man made wonders of the world..

The good life in the south!!

I finished a little fast when I wrote about Kollam.. I would like to expand my comment about our Movie experience...

CINEMA!!
Imagine a giant space in 4 stages. you got a ridiculously big screen and a theater that could accommodate maybe 2-3000 people. We are sitting at one of the balconies waiting for the movie to start.. the giant fans turn on (we are after all in a tropical area = +30C) . The one in front of us starts quirking (loudly).. When the movie starts we cant hear the quirking anymore because the movie volume makes it impossible to hear much else than the movie, well we heard all of the Indian guys (probably a total of two females in the theater, Action after all??) whistling loudly shouting, witch is probably why they kept the volume so loud...
... We thought they whistled a lot when the movie started... NOT!!!
Only really oppressed guys (sexually oppressed) can scream so much when a girl enters the scene, and continue to do so the entire movie...

Only in India??

In India the guys hold hands, sitting in each others laps and being overall cuddly.. I guess it's a what happens when the only thing you know about physical contact involves men... If you kiss you marry, na???

This means that most westerners will think of Indian men (any age, married, unmarried (some married men have children and have not yet seen their wife naked, and Yes, I've had some interesting discussions about this) tall or short) as very immature.. 40 year old virgin 4 real.. just not as shy about it...

But I don't feel as bad for the men as I do for the women.. Who gives them hugs?? Marring immature virgins and .. Wow...


....hrmmm.... Side tracked again..

I was... in... Aaaa, Kollam leaving for Varkala..

So usual hustle, we woke up got breakfast 20rps of the street (parottas and curry)..
Caught the local buss.. (When you ask for directions or anything.. FOLLOW THE GOLDEN RULE: Ask three people, If you get different answers go with the most interesting)

An always interesting buss ride later (being the only goras (whitiies) on the buss having 20 pairs of eyes staring at you at all times) we got of at the closest bigger town and got on a 120 rps rickshaw down to the beach..

Hustled to get a room.. When hustling you are meant to ask around and try to get the price down but we were tired so we took the first offer, a 250 rps room a little bit off the main strip..

Varkala turned out to be really nice, although very touristy. The next day we hustled a better room located a little closer to the main strip behind the rock and roll cafe.
(It turned out to be two Italians, Aldo, with his friend, Bruno, who ran the place. They had bought it 3 month earlier and seemed to enjoy life by having nice company and letting friends stay for free and spent the nights chilling drinking beer)

The beach was nice. It's not like Palaloem or Gokarna where everything was located right at the beach. The coast here got high cliffs facing with the beach beneath. No cows and not to much hustlers down at the beach (the fruit lady was the worst, 70 rps for a pineapple!?). The best thing about this beach tho is the waves, A lot of body surfing!!!

In varkala we experienced the small world of traveling.
We met Shara from Gokarna, Kevin and Claire from Cochin, Viktor my friend from Sweden! and Serena from the boat to Kolam..

To sum it up we meet a lot of nice people.

Serena, Very nice English law graduate with a good attitude towards life (I'm sure a few years of law practice will wont affect you (really, I mean it))

Kevin and Claire were on a shorter vacation but they had it figured out, after all I met them in India. Kevin was amazingly good with pois.. (Have to say it again AMAZING.. Guess seven years of frequent practice will leave its marks)

Gabriell the arch angel from NZ was very nice to, I hope to see you again mate...

Viktor had advanzed in life and had figured out life is meant to be lived happily (made the deeper realization). He is now on his way improving quality of life!

We also met Stu and Pam from Dublin, Irland (is that how you spell it). Wonderful couple on an AMAZING journey. They also got it figured out! read their blog: travelblog.org/bloggers/stupam

From now on I'll try to base my blog photos and photo descriptions because I need some structure.

These nice cats were hanging under our table when we had breakfast the first morning in varkala before we hustled a new room.

The breakfast itself were quite nice if you like it Spicy, Very spicy.. Tomato fry with parottas for Phillip and a Special Dosa (Big fried pancake like thing with different sauses) for me.. 55rps, Nice...



The beach of the fire staff...
Wow I had some nice practice with my staff caching quite some attention (I admit liking attention).. The rock and roll restaurant convinced me to have a fire show in return for a few drinks. It was all very fun and all but then they asked me to walk out to the path in front of the restaurant. The path is about a meter and a half deep with about a meters margin to a stone face (15 meter drop)... Somehow I agreed to do this (the gave me the free drinks before we lit the staff) and It all went well until I had to catch the staff early after a trow tho a guy walked dangerously near. I ended up seizing it 10 cm from the flame and since my staff is home made it wasn't really made out of the ideal material (stainless steel) and gave me a third degree burn the since of a silver dollar between my thumb and my index finger.

Sitting at the funky art cafe with Viktor, Phillip, Serena, Claire and Kevin behind the camera (He will have a bunch of pictures on facebook when I'm done uploading everything in a month or five.




The gangsters of the Funky art cafe.. Super dancer guy on the right were the main attraction during the night showing of his dance moves (Wow, the Indian guys dancing that night did not have any inhibitions, arms were flying people were jumping. Of X I had to join).

Kingsley, (you guessed it) the guy in the middle, was quite the character. He was from Queens and spoke with a NY/Jamaica accent. He drove a nice 350cc Royal Enfield bullet (nice when everything else in this country got a smaller engine than 150cc) was quite the giggelo...

Next we are gonna go 46 hours on the train (second Sleeper class, the regular) from Varkala to Agra (Taj Mahal) in one go with the Varkala express.. Wish uss good luck...