We arrived in Jaipur at 4am from Agra by train, The hotel actually picked us up in their jeep, this was a massive relief as I thought we were going to have to wait until morning (later that morning) to check in and crash. We got our room straight away, dirty sheets (they had not had time to clean the room) but that is what sleeping bags are for, and happily went to sleep... to the loud knocking at 11am, I did not answer it but the hotel staff must have felt that we had had enough sleep after seven hours.
Still we got up (a little red eyed) and caught a cycle rickshaw into town (I am still not bored of them!! they are great), we could not see any pink yet but we were hopefully, as we passed the famous Indian cinema that looks like a big merengue inside, James in Varkala recommended it as a good experience (thanks James it was great, never seen a cinema like it). We booked some tickets for that night; buying cinema tickets has never been so complicated. One ticket booth is for the next film and the other booth (other side of the cinema) was for all future showing, easy when you know the score but a bit of a puzzle when you don't speak Hindi. I walked between each booth a few times before I could get our tickets!!
Hawa Mahal in Jaipur where the Maharajah's harem would watch the world from the safety of their latticed windows.
We walked a bit further east and finally saw a pink gateway, again not quite as I expected, still not managing to get my expectation level in line with Indian reality. The pink was a kind of dirty pinky and yellow, yellow as the pink plaster is coming off the wall. El thinks it is really more terracotta than pink anyway! We walked around for a bit and found one of the sights which is unique to Jaipur, the "Jantar Mantar" an observatory began by Jai Singh in 1728, which holds one of the largest sundials in the world, the thing is massive. The guide showed us a small model which measures 3 seconds increments and the large one that does 2 seconds increments, to do 1 seconds they would have to build a instrument twice as big as the large one!, unless you see the large one you can't understand how cool this thing would be if some one built it. The place was used, and still is used, by astronomers to work out people's horoscope. As the instruments are used as teaching tools they are built in two parts so that the students and teachers can get into these massive devices and read the information, so each increment is like a jigsaw, if you placed one on top of the other you would get a whole.
The guide asked Eleanor's and my star sign and when he heard El's he turned to me and said:
"this is trouble for you, yes!, she is very intelligent, yes I am right!, you not say no, yes"
I had to agree that yes she is very intelligent and yes I don't say no very often (apart when I am being strong and manly of course, or when I'm right (not often)), and yes you are quite right it was big trouble for me!!
I overheard another guide telling his group that the last time he got his horoscope was before his marriage. In India no one gets married unless the stars tells them that it's a good date, which gave me the idea that it would be fun to get El's and mine done before we leave, watch this space!
I took pity on the cycle rickshaw guy and showed him how to do it!, ended up with some other travelers doing the same, trying to race me... the fools!
I was very excited to be going to the TajMahal but it looked as though our karma was starting to run out as the "Express" train leaving from Varanasi was 4 hours late in leaving. It was quite cold on the station and just a bit boring, the only excitement was a wooden toy salesmen and Eleanor had to stop me from buying some of them.
The train being late was a problem as we had planned a day trip to Agra, in at 7am and out by 7pm. In the end we arrived at 2pm so we though that we would only be able to so the Taj and nothing else, Luckily our helicopter rickshaw driver was a whiz and told us "don't worry you have time this is my job madam", Eleanor replied: "That's fine but if we miss our train you are driving us to Jaipur".
Our first stop was the baby Taj. It was built before the Taj and was a really lovely place and building. Not what we expected at all and I suppose that is the beauty of travelling and seeing it for yourself. The precious stone was placed within the white marble and was absolutely flat. Eleanor made a comment that she thought her tiling the bathroom was hard enough!!.
The next stop was the foundations of the black Taj, that was never built. The black Taj was designed to be across the river from the white Taj and was the tomb for the husband and the white Taj for his wife. Lovely to see the Taj from a distance and from a place not many people see, the sunsets are supposed to be fantastic there but we did not have time.
On the way to the Taj we passed the Agra Fort a massive red-sandstone wall. Again we could not go in but we did see the outside of the wall where the husband was kept prisoner and had the view of the Taj across the bend in the river. This was the only part of the wall that we could see that had the top building made out of white marble.
The last stop was the TajMahal, it has been said all before but WOW, it really takes your breath away, as Indian Poet Rabibndranth Tagore said "a tear drop on the face of eternity".
You enter through a red sandstone gateway which gives you a a tiny view of the Taj and then you are out into the main area with all the famous shots of the trees and water leading up to the Taj. The most amazing things about the building and the baby Taj to a lesser extent is the symmetry of the place, every tree, pond and jewel design on the building is made to give you a sense of order, and this continues no mater which angle you viewed it.
The Taj was build by Emperor Shah Jahan in memorial to his second wife MumtazMahal, who died giving birth to his 14th child (not sure that this was Mumtaz's 14th, if so no wonder she died). Her death was said to turn the Emperor's hair grey overnight - now that's love for you. The work start on the Taj the year of her death and took 22 years and 20,000 workers to complete.
Of course the outgoing train was late by 4 hours so we had more than enough time to think about our visit to the Taj!! This left us getting into Jaipur at 3am in the morning, and was our first experience of basic sleeper class, we have really got used to first class as I found the carriage quite dirty!!
They say that Varanasi is the "true" India, and they are quite right. There is a little of India everywhere here, the Chai wallahs, Beggars, Holy men, Hawkers, Silk merchants, Temples, Random animals, (cows, bulls, goats, dogs, etc), but the one thing you do not see anywhere else is the cremations and the amount of cycle rickshaws. This gives the place a measure of charm that no other city has managed so far (apart from Madurai with the clown horns on the rickshaws). This has been one of the highlights of our trip so far, and I think that El will add a section to this blog as I am sure she will want to add her thoughts.
It was not as scary as everyone has warned us, even though we have made sure to be wrapped up in bed before it gets too late, and to be on high alert for any scams. Even so we were taken in last night as we searched for a bar that advertised live traditional music, a boy was handing out flyers and had the bar's name on it. "Cool," I thought (as the bar was hidden away in the labyrinth of the old city and would have been hard to find), "a guide for free." He took us to the bar up a lot of windy streets and there was live music for 1/2 hour while we had a beer and some byriani and I quite enjoyed it as a bit of light Friday entertainment. We left the bar and tried to find our own way back to the main road, as we walked about 5 minutes up the street we passed a bar with the same name... how strange. This is an old trick where a bar will rename itself to a name almost the same as a Lonely Planet recommended one, so we got duped but not in too bad a way :-).
The first day we took the hotel's advice and took a cycle rickshaw to the ghats as we were staying near the station in a lovely hotel (with hot water yeay!). The cycle rickshaws kicks ass. You are so high up that it gives you such a good view of the street life and plus it makes you feel like you have been transported to the "real" Asia of 50 years ago before cars and motorbikes started to pollute everywhere. I really loved it.
Getting to the main ghats was quite hectic with lots of people, so we headed south away from it all to get our bearings. We had no idea that the ghats would be so vast in distance and that the physical size of each ghat would be so high, some of them are a good 20 foot high with many steps going up and down to the water and the buildings are very high up. Later we learnt this is to escape the height of the water in monsoon season. In the 70s the river was so high that many buildings must have been destroyed, we could still see the tide line on one of the old buildings; it was damn high!
Not many of the buildings look that impressive (not many are over a hundred years old) but there are a few, still a bit run down but I mainly found them beautiful as they have trees and shrubs growing out of them, it makes them look more organic. There is one building down by the small burning ghat (I am coming to the burning) that looks like a classic Arabian palace that have these lovely trees growing out of it.
Anyway we headed down the ghats a bit and stopped to have a lassi in a roof top bar called the lotus lounge (sounds like a album). Lovely views and we could see the whole of the river. The Ganges at this time of year is relatively small and half of the river opposite the Ghats looks like a beach. The Indians take boat rides over to the other side and have a picnic and ride horses. The main impression you got from up there was the amount of kites that people fly here (not just kids), They are everywhere in the sky, on the ground, on the temples... everywhere. This sounds messy but all the kites even though they have the same simple square design are all different colours and makes the place a lot more colourful than it would otherwise be. I think this is one of the main reasons I like Varanasi... the kites!
So coming to the good bit... burning dead people. We came across a very small burning ghat (we had not seen the big one yet where they have 15 people burning at the same time 24 hours a day) with a viewing platform for the tourists. We stood there for ten minutes not really knowing what was going on, when a young guy came up and started to tell us the detail of the ceremony. No women are allowed on the front and this explained why there was only one or two people per body. Women are not allowed as they "wail" and this is supposed to be a happy event where the soul is cleaned. The son / brother / uncle of the deceased, pays 2500 rupees (£30) for the exact amount of wood needed to burn the body.
This is done off the river on big scales, the wood needed is not as much as you would think! They then have all hair on their head, face and underarm shaved, apart from a tuft at the back of the head. After that they take some fire on a stack of hay from a Shiva temple where the fire has not gone out for forty generations (think about that for a second, a fire without the help of another other fuel but wood, burning for that long, really amazing) down to the body that has been arranged by the "outcasts" on top of the wood and walks around the body clockwise five times before setting fire to the pyre. Well they are supposed to, but we saw some run around the body a few times and have to stop as the burning hay was licking their hands :-), they then light the hay underneath and stay with the body for the three hours or so it takes to burn down. Even in three hours the torso does not completely burn down so the last thing that the relatives must do is to throw the torso into the river "for the fishes".
The small ghats I felt was quite a peaceful place and not a bad way to leave the world, but the larger main burning ghats was like a factory, every 10 minutes a new body would come down and be dipped into the water and then burnt.
We saw these guys trying to sell a video of Varanasi, by showing the video on a tv... on a boat in the river!
Random Facts ------------ Showing in one of the cinemas in the holy city is "Mummy Returns 4" a American "B" movie spoof of the blockbuster hit The Mummy, I really want to go see this movie even if the audio will be in Hindu.
Burning dead people do not smell that bad, but the smell takes takes ages to come out of your clothes!
After a 3-hour bus trip, and a further 3-hour boat trip we arrived at the "luxury" tiger camp. We downgraded to a shared tent at the last minute and were pleasantly surprised to find our "tent" was actually bigger, cleaner and more comfortable than our hotel in Sudder Street, Kolkata. The first afternoon we visited a rather crap information centre with a bored looking crocodile and a few monkeys. Tired and with aching bellies we retreated to bed early to be ready for our 6am boat trip into the nature reserve to spot our first tiger.
The nature reserve is a really special place. We expected it to be jungle but it is mostly fairly flat mangrove swamps and scrubby areas. We saw a baby croc quite close up, lots of spotted deer (like bambi), wild boar, Kingfisher birds, monkeys (of course), and some other tourists but alas no tigers. Frankly we were getting around in a motor-driven boat with 16 tourists chatting and drinking chai, with the pilots on their mobile phones so no self-respecting tiger would be anywhere nearby, but it was exciting fantasising that we might see one.
Tiger tracks made early that morning - you could see fishermen's footprints under the tiger prints i.e. the fishermen were there earlier in the morning, hopefully they were not eaten!!
In the the evenings we sat around a camp fire before eating delicious food. The people we met were all lovely: Maninder, Samhita & Nick, Tom & Nick, Peter, and all the others made the trip a really good laugh.
On the second day we went for a walk around the local village and what promised to be a bit of a bore ended up being the most interesting part of the whole trip. We strolled around mud houses with lots of traditional living going on - fuel being made from cow shit, separating the wheat from the chaff, tending paddy fields. I walked around with Samhita who, speaking Bengali, gave me lots of insights as to what was happening and asking the locals questions for me (to which I am eternally grateful). It is because of her that one man humbly invited us into his home and showed us around his tiny mud courtyard complete with cooking holes and, of course, a satellite dish on the roof!!!
All in all the escape to the country provided a much-needed relief from city life and a wonderful insight into traditional life in India (plus there was absolutely NO RUBBISH ANYWHERE IN SIGHT!!!!).
We arrived remarkably refreshed after our epic train journey just in time to see the sun rise over Kolkata's smog. Everyone warned us how awful this city was but in all honesty we rather liked it. Unlike any other city we've visited so far, there is some really lovely Victorian architecture although much of it is falling down, decrepit and hidden under decades of filth. The traffic is really lethal here so you have to watch every step, but from the magnificent post office to the cricket maiden to the Victoria Memorial building, Kolkata is most enjoyable to wander around, although we drew the line at paying the extortionate fees to get into any of the sights!
The main tourist street, Sudder Street, is pretty dire actually and so many waiters and hoteliers are surly little bastards. We escaped the bustle though by going to see "DOA" at the local cinema (crappy fight film about girls in bikinis doing kungfu - excellent!) and planned our trip into the Sunderban Tiger Reserve.
We made the mistake of having our first cane sugar juice and subsequently suffered our first bout of "Delhi Belly" or, as we have coined, "Kolkata Belly"! We almost didn't make it to Sunderban as we were ill the night before we had to leave, but decided that as we'd paid we should make the most of it.
Well we survived and to tell the truth I really enjoyed it: I agree with all the people that say that train travel in India is the only way to do it. Forced to read, eat and have pleasant conversation with your fellow passengers... heaven.
We arrived at the station with 20 minutes or so to go, and the station was a mad house, post was going on the first few carriages, or bogeys as someone has since told me :-), then the waiting list sleeper class (cattle class) where they all line up in the hope of some room on the bogeys: there seemed like hundreds of them, and about half way down we entered the 3AC which means that in each section of the bogey has 3 beds on each side of the dividing wall. The middle bed is normally placed up against the wall until you want to sleep, so all three people sit on the bottom bed / seat until lights out. It was quite exiting as the train pulled out of the station in Chennai as we did not quite enjoy the city and were glad to be "bugging out". This was both our first long train journey, I was quite apprehensive before, while Eleanor was always looking forward to it, but as I sat there at the beginning I got a little strange feeling in my belly like you get as a kid waiting for a Xmas present, we were off into the unknown again...
We were very lucky on the journey as we were next to an extremely lovely Indian family on holiday from the US to visit relatives, and we had some lovely chats with them that ranged further than "you coming from?" and "What job you do?", which is all we have had for a few days. The husband asked if he could quote our blog in a magazine he produces, promoting Indian culture, which we of course we agreed to. So now folks we are truly international lol. They even gave us a stone carving of an elephant, which touched us deeply, so if you are reading this, thank you again :-)
The family got off in the afternoon the next day and we had some new guests just before 10pm, so we had lots of leg room and I enjoyed finishing off a fantasy book I was reading called Eragon. The next few people were not quite as friendly and almost went straight to sleep, but I did manage to have a quick conversation with a salesman from Titan (big watch-makers in India) who told me that he was about to do a Q3 meeting in Kolkata and that in order to project the sales targets, they have to look in the calendar for all the religious marriage days, as there are are only so many in a month, adding all these together gives them their target for the quarter as in India the average citizen can only afford a 1000 bucks watch for his wedding day... fantastic.
All in all I had a lovely time on the train, I am not sure if that had more to do with the fact that it allowed a small time away from the hectic life of true India or that I am bone idle and enjoy being forced to lie down and read for a day... mmm one to ponder on.
We arrived in Chennai on the 8th, and planned to use the time doing boring stuff like arranging visas for Thailand. We did not book anywhere in advance as we planned to arrived quite early in the morning, but some late night shopping the night before (we just couldn’t help ourselves) meant a trip to the post office in the morning. On the way we got some advice to get a rickshaw to the junction outside of town as more “express” buses stopped there instead of going into town, well there is a good reason that they are express; they don’t bloody stop for anyone, especially two westerners with massive backpacks! Eleanor started to get quite vocal with the bus conductors waving their hands at us in the universal sign of denial (flat hand waving side to side, not a birdy!) So after an hour wasted standing around in the midday sun off we trotted back into town to the bus station as we should have done in the first place.
As a friend just emailed to say, we tried to perfect the “Bus standing sleeping position” or in my case the “Trying not to fly out of the open door position” (great for the upper body strength) for the hour or so into Chennai. The bus station at Chennai is amazing; it looks more like an airport than a normal Indian bus station, absolutely massive.
Chennai is surprisingly clean for a city, which was a surprise as someone from work (William), said that it was disgustingly dirty, so we must be fully desensitized to India by now or Will needs to go to Mumbai to see dirty!!
We discovered that the worst thing about this city is the rickshaw drivers who charge an absolute fortune (well, a relative fortune) for even the shortest journeys, and also make you go to their shop “very cheap, very nice, madam, looking is for free, madam.” Unfortunately for us, getting our visas for Thailand involved a very long and tortuous rickshaw drive with a man who didn’t even know where Chennai was, and resulted in not getting our visas. To be fair the embassy people were very helpful, just not helpful in giving us the visas we wanted.
So to get over the disappointment we spent the rest of the day in therapy; yes, retail therapy! Shopping till we are dropping is a favourite pastime, and having 3 for 2 beers at the hotel certainly made us more optimistic about the next day. We visited another typesetters in the morning and did some sightseeing in the afternoon (plus the obligatory visit to the silk shops), although to be honest Chennai hasn’t really got any sights which is surprising as it is a huge place.
Still, distant climes beckon as we get on a 32-hour train to Kolkata tonight (ouch) and everyone here warns us that the north is dirty, unfriendly, thieving, cold, conservative and to be constantly on our guard, although as far as we can tell the northerners say the same about the south (except the cold) so we shall see.
We finally got off our arses after recovering from the New Years day hangover to go on a sightseeing tour around Pondi with the tourist centre. It was quite nice to be lazy and be carted around the town and told what to do, "Hello sirs, this is the Genesh temple and you have 20 minutes here, leave your shoes out side and there is no cameras allowed inside the temple". The highlight of the trip was the AuroVille city.
"Auroville wants to be a universal town where men and women of all countries are able to live in peace and progressive harmony above all creeds, all politics and all nationalities. The purpose of Auroville is to realise human unity."
To be honest all we saw was a 5 minute video and the outside of a giant golden golf ball. Inside the gold ball is a room that contains a white room with the world's (so they say) largest crystal, that has the sun beamed onto it by moving mirrors on the top of the building. Cool meditation chamber. The city is not owned by any country and on the opening day, a boy and girl from over 120 countries, came with soil from their countries to place in an urn at the centre of the city. I liked the idea that a city can exist in the world that is working towards a society that allows coexistence between all peoples of the world. Whether it is working in practice I don't know, but the Pondicherry folks are very proud of it and say that the Auroville people are doing a lot of good work in the local area. Someone told me that his father bought a piece of land there for the princely sum, of a thousand rupees, when it was being created, and this gives his descendants an automatic right to be Aurovillers... so far he has not taken them up on it, otherwise in order to live there you have to do a three - four year apprenticeship and then buy land in order to build your house... hardcore.
Yesterday we went to visit a company, Integra, that Eleanor has worked with in T&F. It was really nice to meet them, they were very friendly and gave us some advice on the north of India. It was great to have a look at the inside of a professional Indian company. They also took us to a lovely seafood restaurant called Rendezvous (thanks guys), which was a great way to say goodbye to Pondi... in style.
So we have given up our luxury hotel room in Pondicherry and took a bus two hours north up the coast to Mamallapuram, a travellers beach enclave similar to Varkala. We are booked into a hotel that screams traveller.. swinging chairs, waiters with Afros and the distinct smell of ganja hanging around, party...bonus.
We met a mad french lady, Anna, last night. She talked the hind leg off a donkey and three elephants that wandered by. We talked English, Indian and French politics of which I bullshitted my way through most of it and tried to sound like I know something :-).
Yes Andy G you have taught me well!
This place is well known for the local skills in carving and even last night looking at some of the figures they looked very impressive... I see a dent in the credit card coming. One of the guys said that they are doing four figures for the local temple and we could go there and have a look. He said that the figures were large bulls taking 6 people 6 months to do, so that might be cool.
Random fact from the paper... in one village in order to marry, you have to work for the father of the bride for a year, collecting firewood, farming, even begging. At the end of the year the father can decide if you have worked hard enough to win the bride otherwise you have to work for another year: some men have been working for twenty years, in all this time they are not allowed to see the bride to be... I hope that the bride was worth it!!!
Also a village in India is filled up entirely from one family and all the children are sired from one man. They say it is the largest family in the world and he has over 50 wives, the 60-year-old man only just took a 26-year-old wife this year: she said that the family was built on love... a lot of it by the sounds of it. The head stud said that he was prepared to go to America to increase his count of wives!! I broached the subject with Eleanor about starting our own cult, but she said that she was not good at sharing.
So we went to the swanky party. The evening started with a bang as we watched the public firework party just outside the hotel at 8pm. The buffet was fantastic with everything from Swissrosti and pasta, to paneer curry, thai noodles, mixed grill, tandoori chicken and wok-fried seafood. mmMMMMMmmmm. The puddings were also something else as they all came in tiny pots so you could have 5 puddings and then go back for more - we were in heaven!
The salsa dancing never happened, and the party games were non-existent. The "unlimited drinks" turned out to be unlimited beer and spirits but you had to buy the mixers at vastly inflated prices, but we didn't care: it was lovely to have a G&T after all this time (is it only 5 weeks?).
Finally we were allowed upstairs to gatecrash the party upstairs so got to do a bit of dancing and another great firework show right above our heads, above the fabulous palm tree lights.
All in all a really fun night. It was sad not to be with family and friends but we thought of you all. Our phone doesn't seem to work here so apologies for not sending or replying to texts if you've sent one.
Heading off to Chennai on 3rd January and by all accounts we should brace ourselves as we've been told by everyone that it is a mental place...hold onto your hat!
