Hong Kong, Macau, and Guangzhou

After our flight landed in Hong Kong, Maren and I took a bus straight to the downtown neighborhood of Kowloon, which is on the mainland as opposed to Hong Kong Island just across the water.  My first impression of the city was that it is a cross between Singapore and Las Vegas.  It is modern and efficient, yet wild and fun.  There is a constant sensory overloading stream of advertising, ranging from flashing neon signs to screaming people.  There are people everywhere at all hours of the day, and they seemed mostly friendly.  We stayed in a gigantic old building called the ‘Chungking Mansion’ on the main road through Kowloon, right in the center of the action.  There are several so-called ‘mansions’ in the area, which are basically 20+ story run-down apartment-style buildings divided into several sections filled with businesses, cheap guest houses, tiny shops and restaurants.  We found a miniature room in a guesthouse on the 6^th floor with its own bathroom for a very cheap price.  There was hardly even room for us to lay our backpacks down, but we didn’t mind for the price and the location. 

We spent most of our first full day in Hong Kong searching for a guide book to China.  It was surprisingly difficult to find a used book store, and we didn’t want to pay for a brand new book.  We finally searched through all the guest houses in our mansion.  Several places had books they didn’t want to sell, but we finally found a hostel with the newest copy of the Lonely Planet book.  We asked the guy if he would sell it to us, and he just said, ‘You can have it.’  We sure felt lucky and saved a lot of money!  Later in the evening, Maren stayed in while I took a ferry across Victoria Harbor to Hong Kong Island.  The skyline at night is truly incredible.  There is also a nightly light show where most of the major buildings on the island turn on colorful, flashing lights.  Once on Hong Kong Island, I wandered around until I found the Mid-Level Escalators, the longest set of escalators in the world.  They are outdoors, and take you nearly halfway up the peak at the center of the island.  Along the way, I passed through a few different neighborhoods and tons of bars, restaurants, and shops.  By the time I arrived at the top, I was surrounded by luxury apartments and Western businessmen.  There is an amazing diversity of people in Hong Kong, particularly in terms of class, culture, and clothing.

Maren and I took the ten minute ferry to Hong Kong Island the following day.  We walked between the high rises and took the elevator up the Bank of China building to the observation deck.  After the views across the harbor and the city, we took the famous peak cable car up to the island’s high point.  I was surprised to discover that most of Hong Kong, including the peak, is covered in rainforest.  It is quite easy to escape the crowded city and find yourself alone on a trail in the forest.  From the top, we walked along a cool trail that wraps around the entire peak.  The sky was gray, but the weather hung on to give us great views across the sea to Hong Kong’s numerous tiny islands, many of them uninhabited. 

The rain arrived that evening, and we bought an umbrella for about 3 euros.  We walked to a nearby street night market, which wasn’t very crowded due to the weather.  We drank fruit shakes and perused the stalls filled with fake brand name stuff.  It was easy to find a bar later on showing the World Cup, but only the England game, not the U.S. match.  We watched the later German game in the middle of the night with a crowd of people while standing on a sidewalk outside a bar.

I was really looking forward to the food in Hong Kong, which was for the most part good and cheap.  We mainly ate at little hole in the wall restaurants with no tourists.  The food was not quite as diverse as I had expected though.  We only seemed to find meat choices to go along with noodles, rice, or soup.  They rarely added many vegetables, and we never found any vegetable dishes on the menu.  One highlight was some authentic dim sum, which we tried at a nice restaurant in Kowloon. 

We left Hong Kong by ferry in the morning, destination Macau.  Macau is a former Portuguese colony about an hour’s ferry ride away.  Like Hong Kong, the island has special economic status, which has helped turn it into a gambling mecca even larger than Vegas!  We didn’t want to spend too much time there, so we decided to make it a day trip.  We organized a bus ride for the evening and dropped off our packs.  We walked through the downtown area and checked out a couple of casinos, with the first being the Wynn.  I couldn’t believe how similar it is to the original Vegas version; in fact they are basically identical!  Several of the big Vegas hotels have built carbon copies of themselves in Macau in the last five years.  I attempted to try and play in the poker game going on at the Wynn, but the line for the low-limit games was way too long.  We also checked out one of the older ‘classic’ casinos.  It looked like it was designed in the 80s and the decorations were mostly cheesy and over-the-top. 

We next walked through the pedestrian only streets filled with cool Portuguese-architecture buildings in various bright colors.  We followed the road to the ruins of a very old Catholic church.  Only the front façade and the steps up to it remain, which is a bizarre sight.  Our last stop was the food and candy neighborhood, filled with shops and free samples.  We tried dried meats, egg custard tarts, and peanut brittle candy.  I had to fight the crowds of Chinese people to buy some candy, which seemed to be an incredibly popular souvenir.  We made it to our bus in the evening and took it to the border, where we thankfully didn’t have any problems with our Chinese visas. 

Our bus arrived in Guangzhou very late at night.  I am embarrassed to say I had never heard of this city before coming to China, despite its having over 10 million people and being the 3^rd largest city in the country!  But that is because I had only heard of it by its old Westernized name ‘Canton.’  Guangzhou is the capital of all things Cantonese, the most noticeable to us being the language and the food.  After hopping off the bus, we walked through the rainy night along the Pearl River.  After a few kilometers, we reached a tiny island where the river forks, and found our hostel.  In the morning, the weather was still dreary, but we grabbed our umbrella and hit the sights anyway.  After walking around our island and the river area, we found a metro stop and took the surprisingly modern and efficient metro north to one of the main train stations.  There, we bought tickets and dropped off our packs.  Our next stop was the Mausoleum of the Nanyue King.  This was the tomb of an important king in the Nanyue kingdom, over 2000 years old, yet it was discovered only in the 1980s by accident.  The museum and mausoleum were impressive; we saw the burial site along with tons of relics and artifacts found in the tomb.  The highlight was the actual burial ‘suit’ of the king, made of thousands of little jade pieces.

After the museum stop, we walked through the nearby neighborhood and found a local restaurant to eat at.  We found a place that had pictures of the dishes on the wall, because like many restaurants we found in China, there was neither an English menu nor English speaking people.  The meal turned out to be one of the best of our entire trip.  We got three huge plates of fresh vegetables cooked in different sauces and noodles.  It was delicious and enough food for the whole day, plus it all cost less than 3 euros.  We also found a bakery with strange looking sweets and got a few to try out later.  We then walked to a small lake set in a nice park.  The path around the lake felt like walking in the jungle.  There was a hotel that looks like a palace which was built basically on the lake itself.  The park was a nice and peaceful getaway from the frenetic industrial port city.  We had a nice leisurely walk around and then made our way back to the train station.  The stop in Guangzhou was quick because both of us wanted as much time as possible in China’s countryside and small villages.  Which is why we then took an overnight train west to Guilin, in one of the most beautiful areas of China.

There is one thing I forgot to mention in previous blogs.  While in Thailand I received news that my bank had put a hold on my debit card due to some unauthorized activity on my account (which I later found out came from Texas… bizarre).  Upon losing Maren’s wallet, neither of us had a working debit or credit card.  The rest of the trip was cash-only, which proved to be challenging at times.  It was nearly impossible to make any kind of reservation! 

Kuala Lumpur and Singapore

We arrived in KL in the very early morning and searched out a hostel in Chinatown, the backpacker heart of the city.  We got lost with a group of other backpackers from our bus and overshot Chinatown.  The others took a taxi back while Maren and I backtracked.  The place we found put us up for free in a dorm room to sleep for a few hours.  We caught up on our bus-induced sleep deprivation and moved into our room.  KL is an interesting and unique city, though not necessarily for a backpacker.  It is very modern and commercial, but there is not much more than a day or two worth of tourist sights.  In fact, the food is a bigger reason to visit the city than just about any other attraction.  We first visited the huge national mosque.  Malaysia is an Islamic country, though not in the Middle Eastern style.  Here, there seems to be much more tolerance and less fundamentalism.  The mosque even had English pamphlets with titles like ‘So do Muslims really have to pray 5 times a day?’ and ‘How to convert to Islam: It’s easier than applying for a visa!’  Maren did have to wear special clothing to enter the mosque.  But instead of just giving her a head covering, they gave her a head-to-toe purple cape.  She looked hilarious!

We next visited a gigantic park.  KL has lots of parks filled with rainforest to escape the surrounding urban metropolis.  This one had a nice lake with fountains and a deer park, both regular deer and mouse deer.  Our hostel hosted a free rooftop barbeque in the evening.  It was filled with delicious Malaysian food and we ate till we were completely full.  There was a huge variety of noodle and rice dishes along with barbequed meat.  We stayed on the roof with the other backpackers to watch the World Cup afterwards.  In the morning, we woke up early to get to the city’s famous twin towers with the connecting bridge/viewing platform.  We arrived fairly early, but not soon enough to book a trip up the towers.  They reached the maximum number of entries per day just as we arrived.  Instead, we walked through a cool park in the jungle right in the city center to another very tall building.  This was a communications tower with an observation deck much higher and with better views than the twin towers.   The walk through the jungle was fun as we saw and heard a troop of monkeys.  The views from the tower showed every side of KL.

We left KL in the afternoon by bus and arrived in Singapore later in the evening.  As soon as we reached Singapore, I could tell the city was far more modern and advanced than anywhere we had seen in SE Asia.  The border had a massive building with thousands of people shuffling through customs when we arrived.  We found the only cheap hostel in town later in the evening.  Prices in Singapore are nearly comparable to large cities in other first-world countries.  The city is clean and orderly as I had expected, but I never noticed any strict laws or ‘police state’ type rules that I had heard about.  The city is also covered in numerous rivers and canals.  The weather was warm and humid, but not as hot as Thailand.

We spent our first full day walking through the city.  We visited two temples, one Hindu and one Buddhist, both with phenomenal designs.  The Buddhist temple actually had an elevator which reached several floors, including a small museum and an outdoor rooftop garden.  We continued on to yet another well-decorated Buddhist temple before making our way toward the water.  We walked through the financial district where the ultra-modern skyscrapers made us forget we were even in SE Asia.  After a statue of a bizarre water-shooting beast, we circled back toward our hostel.  We stopped at a dessert restaurant, which are very popular in Singapore.  We tried a few strange desserts, including grass jelly and peanut paste.  Many of the popular desserts and drinks that seem like they should be sweet are in fact not sweet at all.  It is very strange that none of the different flavors are emphasized with any sugar.

We returned after our long day of walking back at the hostel, when I noticed something horrible.  Maren’s wallet, which I had been carrying with me in the bottom pocket of my cargo shorts, was missing!  The bottom of the pocket had a huge hole ripped across it which revealed what had happened.  My cheap shorts had failed in the worst possible way.  We spent the next two days in Singapore attempting to track down the missing wallet.  We retraced all of our steps for the entire walk we had gone on.  We talked to people working at every place we had stopped.  We filed a police report and followed up at two different police stations (on a side note, it was strangely difficult to find a police station).  The wallet had Maren’s debit and credit cards, which were the only sources we had been getting cash from.  It also had her ID, driver’s license, etc., but the most immediate concern for us was getting money for the rest of our trip.  

We both recognized the irony that I was able to get my lost camera back from the seemingly dishonest rickshaw drivers of Delhi yet couldn’t get a lost wallet back from the honest and law-abiding Singaporeans.  We were getting desperate, but fortunately Maren’s father (the ‘Packrat’ :) ) stepped in to the rescue.  He has a friend who lives in Singapore who we were able to contact.  We met up with him and received a supply of cash to last us the next few weeks through China.  Lucky!  Unfortunately we didn’t hear any positive information from the police by the time of our scheduled flight to Hong Kong.  We left Singapore very disappointed about the wallet, but we had money and passports, which is all we needed to continue on.  After a quick ride on the metro and a short flight across the water, we landed mid-morning in Hong Kong.

Koh Samui, Railay, and Phi Phi

The next ferry took us to Koh Samui, the most famous and (over)developed of the islands.  With good reason, however, the beaches are incredibly beautiful.  The sand is perfect and just stretches on and on.  We were lucky to find an amazing bungalow in a perfect location at the same cheap price we had been paying.  Our bungalow, on the gorgeous beach of Lamai, was a tiny but cute A-frame and was literally on the sand itself.  For the next two days, we never left the beach.  We swam and relaxed, drank fruit shakes and whole coconuts.  I went for a run on the beach in the morning, from one end of Lamai to the other.  In the afternoon, Maren and I both got Thai massages at a little hut next door to our bungalow.  200 baht (5 euros) for an hour long massage and well worth every cent!  A Thai massage is a unique experience that involves some stretching and sometimes painful pressure.  But overall it felt fantastic and relaxing.  In the evening, it started raining, the first we had seen in Thailand.  It rained very hard but didn’t last long as we watched the World Cup from a bar next to the beach.

Both Maren and I could have used a couple of more days on Koh Samui.  We were lucky to have found such a perfect place to stay and relax without huge crowds of people.  But it was time to move on to the other side of Thailand.  We took a ferry back to the mainland, and then a bus across the peninsula.  We ended up in Krabi, a port town that is the gateway to a few beach destinations along a peninsula.  We arrived fairly late in the evening, and decided to stay the night in Krabi before continuing.  We found a decent hostel and went to a night market next to the harbor for a late dinner.  We had the cheapest food and drinks of our whole Thailand experience.  Delicious fried noodles with fresh seafood and vegetables plus a beer for under a euro!

The following morning, we went down to the pier and negotiated with a boatman to take a longtail boat to Railay Beach, about an hour away.  Railay is famous worldwide for its rock climbing.  There are incredible limestone peaks and cliffs on both ends of two beaches running parallel to each other.  In the middle is jungle with paths running between the beaches.  The tide moved the waves in and out by nearly 500 meters!  We arrived at high tide, but in the morning people had to trek (or get a tractor ride) through muddy tide pools just to get to a boat to leave.  Again we found cheap and amazing accommodation: we stayed in a wooden bungalow that felt like a condo in a jungle setting right next to the beach.  We spent the first afternoon just exploring the area.  Railay is a very small place, and it only takes a few minutes to walk between the two beaches.  There was an amazing lightning storm late in the evening which we watched from the beach.  It was far away but lit up the clouds for hours.

I decided to go rock climbing the next day.  It wasn’t cheap, but I wanted to check out why Railay is so famous for climbing, and those rugged limestone cliffs looked pretty inviting.  Maren is not a big fan of heights, or at least of voluntarily climbing up cliffs.  She walked through the jungle to spend the day on Railay’s ‘third beach.’  I went with my Rasta-looking climbing instructor to a popular area of cliffs at the end of our beach.  There were about 8 other climbers around, with dozens of different routes up the wall.  I first went over the basics with my instructor as it had been nearly ten years since I last climbed.  In the following couple of hours, I did 5 different climbs.  The second and third were my favorites.  The second because it took me 25 meters high and had incredible views over the bay and the beaches.  The third because it was the most difficult and I barely managed to do it without falling.  By the 5^th climb, my forearms were completely useless; I could barely hold my own body weight with both hands!  I called it a day and met Maren over at the beach.  We walked through the water to a tiny island, then over some rocks to the secluded tip of the Railay peninsula.  There were bizarre and beautiful limestone cliffs and stalactites and caves all around. 

The final stop in Thailand was Koh Phi Phi (pronounced ‘pee-pee’).  From the beach at Railay, a longtail boat took us out into the bay, where we transferred to a ferry to Phi Phi.  It was raining during the trip, but our good luck with the weather continued.  We arrived at Phi Phi with blue skies.  The first view of the island is similar to the islands off the east coast.  But soon after walking through the town, we realized Phi Phi is quite different.  There is only one real town, though it is fairly big.  There is also not much need to explore the island as everything is close by, particularly the best beaches.  Phi Phi has a very interesting shape that, like the Railay peninsula, produces two beaches right next to each other facing opposite directions.  Unlike the rugged beauty of Railay, however, Phi Phi is just a pure picture postcard beauty.  The beaches are just flawless.  We heard from various people, including our guidebook, that Phi Phi is quite expensive, especially for accommodation.  Fortunately, this was not true at all.  We managed to find a nice secluded bungalow right in the center, just a one minute walk to the beach.  The price was becoming a broken record: 6 places in a row were each just 300 baht a night.

Our first mission on Phi Phi was to head straight to the beach.  It was crowded, much more so than any other place we had been in Thailand.  I felt as if we had suddenly left the low season and entered the high season.  It wasn’t any trouble finding a spot on the beach though.  After recovering from the sun-drenching, we walked up a path at the edge of town.  It took us up a hill to a couple of lookout points, the highest of which had a perfect view over the island.  Afterwards we went for a Thai massage right next to our bungalow.  In the evening, we found countless restaurants and bars, all seemingly packed.  Phi Phi seems to be a magnet for backpackers, many people seem to stay much longer than they had planned.  Some of them work at the bars, get free accommodation, and party every night.  We checked out the beach bar scene at night.  There were fire shows, dance parties, and buckets and buckets of booze.  Phi Phi is definitely a place to drink and party a few days of your life away.

We rented a kayak the following day to enjoy the perfect weather.  We left right from the main beach and paddled out of the bay and just around the corner.  We reached a beach called Monkey Beach, though we didn’t see any monkeys there.  The only people there were leaving just as we arrived, so we had a 100 meter long stretch of sand all to ourselves.  The beach had some of the most amazing sand I have ever seen, or should I say, felt.  It was wet and soft and we just sunk right into it.  After an hour of playing around in the water and sand on our own personal slice of paradise, we paddled back to the main beach.  In the evening, we finished off our Phi Phi experience with yet another Thai massage;)  We awoke in the morning to heavy rain, which was fine by us as it was to be a travel day.  I put on the poncho my mom had given me just in case (thanks mom!) and we made our way to the pier.

Maren and I decided to try and save some money and make our own way to Malaysia, instead of buying an expensive bus and boat combo ticket.  We first took a ferry back to Krabi, followed by a shared taxi to the bus station, and a cheap bus ride across the Thai peninsula to Hat Yai.  From there, we asked for any bus to Malaysia, but got rejected by everyone we asked.  There didn’t seem to be any ‘normal’ busses heading across the border, which seemed very strange.  We finally gave up and bought a ticket from a travel agent to take one of the tourist busses.  I still have no idea how the locals make the trip.  We still managed to get to Malaysia at way under budget compared to the expensive package price, but unfortunately it was getting late.  Our bus left in the evening, and we thought we would arrive in a town called Butterworth late at night.  Butterworth is where we had planned to get off to take a short ferry to Pulau Pinang.  Once on the bus, however, they told us we wouldn’t arrive until past 1 in the morning, when the ferry wasn’t running.  So we had to scrap our plans mid-bus ride and turned our trip into an overnighter all the way to Kuala Lumpur, the bus’ final destination.  Next up: KL and Singapore.

Bangkok and Island Paradise

Hi everyone, sorry for the lack of updates!  Maren and I have safely arrived in Seattle!  We spent the last 3 weeks in China, where Blogger (and Facebook) are banned.  So I was able to write my blog but unable to post it.  I will post blogs over the next week or two to update the last 6 weeks of travels.  And we are both working on sorting through many pictures which are going up on Picasa (http://picasaweb.google.com/SkiMania29) Let's start where I left off, in Thailand:

The first thing both Maren and I noticed upon arriving in Bangkok was that we were being completely ignored.  What a relief after India!  No one was staring at us, and only a handful of touts wasted their time bothering us.  There weren’t a large number of tourists in Bangkok due to the recent violence in the city.  We saw no sign of unrest during our stay, though I did make a conscious decision not to wear a red shirt.  After navigating the public transit, we made our way to the most popular backpacker area of the city along Koh San Road.  In the afternoon, we hopped on a tuk tuk, which is pretty similar to the autorickshaws of India, just a bit bigger and generally in much better condition.  Our tuk tuk driver drove us around to a couple of sights in the city, waiting for us at each one.  Normally we wouldn’t be interested in this type of ‘tour,’ but the price was too good to pass up.  The driver was offering some sort of ‘government special’ for tourists for one day.  The price was 10 baht (about 25 cents) for both of us, as many sights as we could see in a couple of hours.  The only catch was a required stop at ‘tourist information’ which was really a travel agent where the driver collected a commission.  We stayed for about 2 minutes.  We wandered through several temples and saw a giant golden Buddha statue.  We next visited a temple perched high on a hill with great views of the city.  Later on I tried my first authentic ‘phad thai’ (famous noodle dish) from a street vendor.  For 50 cents it was everything I had hoped for.  We finished off the evening with a couple of beers along Koh San Road.

The next day, we exchanged our Lonely Planet India book for Lonely Planet SE Asia.  We did some quick research and took a bus out to the train station where we made our travel plans for later.  We then took a walk through the city until we reached the main river which divides Bangkok in half.  It was fairly easy to hop onto a small passenger ferry at one of the many piers.  The views of the city along the river are unique.  We passed lots of small boats, temples, giant office towers, and old wooden homes hanging out on stilts over the water.  We stopped at Wat Arun, the Temple of Dawn on the opposite side of the river.  The architecture of the main temple, the design and shape, along with the four smaller pillars at each corner, make for an extremely impressive sight.  We walked around the temple and through the green surroundings.  Unfortunately we couldn’t go inside the temple; we hadn’t remembered reading that there was a dress code and they didn’t like our shorts nor our flip flops.  After taking a boat back across the river, we walked to Wat Pho, a massive temple complex.  It is filled with a number of small Buddhist temples, lots of Thai architecture, and the highlight: a giant golden statue of the reclining Buddha.  It is kind of funny to see a statue of a person lying down, but that is one of a few popular poses of Buddha (sitting cross legged is another common one).  The complex was also filled with tons of other statues and relics.  As we continued our walk back, we stopped in a market for some delicious and fresh Thai food.

In the evening, we got on a bus heading south.  We booked a bus-and-boat combo ticket and joined a gang of other backpackers all headed for the south of Thailand.  I am sure there is plenty to see in the rest of Thailand, but Maren and I wanted to spend as much time as possible on the beach ;)  Our bus left at a very inconvenient time, which meant we arrived in the port city of Chumphon in the north of the southern peninsula very late at night (more like early in the morning).  All of the backpackers had to attempt to sleep on the floor of a room by the pier.  We were woken up as it became light out and walked onto our ferry, arriving a couple of hours later at Koh Tao.  Off the east coast of Thailand there are three main islands.  Each has its own atmosphere and activities, so we decided to see all three, going from north to south, beginning with Koh Tao.  Koh Tao is by far the smallest and least touristy of the three islands.  It has become famous in the last ten years for diving, and that is certainly the thing to do.  Koh Tao is not known for having beautiful beaches, but we quickly learned a funny thing about Thailand: even a ‘bad’ beach can still be pretty damn good!  After one failed attempt at a guesthouse our guide book had recommended (out of our price range), we ending up staying at a quirky little guesthouse in a great location, just a one minute walk from a sandy beach.  The price for a double was 300 baht (about 7.5 euros) which, ironically, was the exact same price we ending up paying at every place we stayed at during our whole time in Thailand.  Koh Tao, like other islands in Thailand, is incredibly green and beautiful.  There are wooden bungalows, round rock formations, sandy beaches, palm trees, and tropical weather.  In a nutshell, it is paradise!

We spent our first day on Koh Tao doing practically nothing except the beach.  We walked the length of the sand near our guesthouse and across some rocks to the island’s main beach.  The rest of the evening was swimming, relaxing, drinking fresh fruit shakes, and eating yummy Thai food on the beach.  It was a great feeling to stay in one spot and relax for the whole day.  We rented a motorbike the following day to explore the island.  Though Koh Tao is quite small, it is rather hilly, so a bike is necessary to get to the center or to the smaller beaches.  This was my first time ever driving a motorcycle (or dirtbike, scooter, etc.) and it took a little while to get used to.  Once I did, Maren hopped on the back and away we went.  Some of the hills were quite steep, and the underpowered motorbike couldn’t handle both of us.  We slowed to a crawl while I revved the engine, then Maren had to hop off the back and walk just before the bike would have come to a complete stop.  We first went to a pretty beach on the south end of the island.  It was mostly empty except for a couple of guesthouses.  The wooden bungalows perched on rocky outcrops right on the water looked like a peaceful way to relax for a week or two.  There are only a handful of decent paved roads on Koh Tao, the rest are dirt and rock and some can be pretty bad.  On our way to one of the beaches on the far side of the island, we had our first (but only!) crash.  It wasn’t too bad considering we were only going about 3km/h up a steep, rocky hill.  The tire slid into a rut and I didn’t get my foot out in time before we basically just fell over sideways.  Unfortunately we landed on a rock which cut a pretty good gash in my left leg.  Maren also got an injury on her leg, though it was from the hot exhaust pipe of the bike searing her skin.  We dusted ourselves off and decided to forget that hill.  Later on, we made our way into the center of the island.  I was driving extremely carefully at this point, and when the road started to get bad, we parked the bike.  The walk through the jungle wasn’t too much further to reach one of the highest points on the island.  There were fantastic views of the hilly green landscape and the tiny villages along the beaches. 

We returned the motorbike the next morning before our planned snorkeling trip and were faced with an unwelcome surprise.  Neither Maren nor I had noticed any damage to the bike despite our fall.  It seemed so harmless we had hardly considered it.  But the bike shop noticed the side of the plastic piece where you rest your foot was a little bit scuffed.  I am certain they later just sanded it smooth in about 10 seconds, but they ended up charging us for a replacement piece.  It was an agonizing negotiation, especially considering the language barrier, but we finally paid them the incredibly overpriced ‘replacement fee’ of 1300 baht (a little over 30 euros).  It was frustrating because that amount of money goes a long way in Thailand when you are on our type of budget.  But there wasn’t a whole lot we could do except try to lower their fee, considering they held my passport as a deposit.  Luckily, our depression didn’t last long.  Our snorkeling trip was fantastic!  We got our gear sorted, and then went out on a boat with a small group to 5 different dive spots all around the island.  There was quite a bit to see, some interesting coral and types of fish I never knew existed.  At one dive, I swam through the largest school of fish I have ever seen.  There were thousands upon thousands of them, all moving in unison, dividing as I swam back and forth through them.  We ate lunch on the boat and later stopped at a private island.  We relaxed on the beach until we got too hot, then we swam through some coral known as the ‘Japanese Garden’ due to the bizarre white color and flower shape.  I would have liked to have gone scuba diving, but the prices on Koh Tao if you aren’t certified are pretty high.  Snorkeling got us much more to see and the full day trip was only 500 baht each (12 euros).

In the evening, we booked our ferry trip to the next island to the south, and did some shopping in town.  The shopping, food, and drinks are all very cheap on the islands, despite them being tourist hotspots.  We also continued to feed our new addiction to fruit shakes, which usually only cost between 50 cents and 1 euro and are unbelievably fresh and delicious!  In the morning, our ship set sail.  Less than two hours later, we arrived on the hippie, beach-party island of Koh Phangan.  The island is famous for its full-moon parties, though we didn’t plan our trip using a lunar calendar and therefore completely missed it.  We also somehow missed the black moon and half moon parties as well.  Because of that, we were on the island during the lowest of the low season, it was nearly deserted!  We decided to stay on the ‘full moon beach’ anyway to check it out.  The beach supposedly fills up with as many as 15,000 people during the full moon, but it was also cool to experience it the way we did.  Most of the people in the area either hadn’t planned around the moon, like us, or they were the permanent expat types.  It is easy to see why the island has become an enclave for hippies.  The beaches are beautiful, the villages aren’t overdeveloped, and the attitude everywhere is extremely relaxed.

We followed our first day of relaxing and swimming with exploring the island the following day.  We rented a motorbike and rode to the eastern side of the island towards a waterfall we had read about.  The area was thick jungle; we parked the bike and found the small river.  Then we started trekking upstream to find the famous waterfall that had been visited by Thai kings for centuries.  There was no obvious trail, so we hiked through the jungle and crisscrossed the river over rocks.  We passed several small waterfalls and even found a few inscriptions on rocks written by Thai kings, but the main waterfall we were looking for turned out to be little more than a trickle.  We drove our motorbike down to the end of the stream, where there was a nice secluded beach to rest on for the afternoon.  We drove back as it was getting dark, stopping for some petrol along the way to make sure we didn’t get stranded.  The Full Moon Beach was still pretty empty in the evening, but we drank beer on the beach anyways, and had a cocktail at the one beach bar with a small crowd.

We returned the motorbike in the morning before our ferry left, only to get completely scammed again by the bike shop.  I had driven very carefully, never crashed, and we were both certain we had not caused any damage whatsoever to the bike.  But the guy, who had seemed friendly the day before, now looked for any possible minor damage he could get us for.  He found a few nicks on the underside of the bike and demanded 3000 baht!  It was déjà vu, and we hardly argued with him for 5 minutes before agreeing that I would go to the police while Maren waited.  I came back an hour later with two sympathetic cops who believed my story.  Unfortunately, it was basically this guy’s word versus our word, and the cops insisted we pay something to resolve the situation.  After a very long debacle, we walked away with 1000 baht less in our pockets.  We agreed to never rent a motorbike ever again in our lives without taking pictures of the bike first.  Fortunately, there was another quick cure for the depression caused by overpaying for two motorbikes in a row: Koh Samui.

Agra, Varanasi, and Bodhgaya

­After taking a rickshaw from Agra’s train station to the main backpacker area of town around the Taj Mahal, we found a nice guesthouse to stay at.  It was in a quiet garden setting despite being right next to the most visited attraction in India.  Not long after we settled in, I looked for my camera and a horrible feeling set in.  I searched and searched, but I couldn’t find it anywhere.  I began to think it might have fallen out of the pocket of my Indian pants, which was starting to tear.  The only place I could imagine having lost it was in the rickshaw, which meant there was practically no chance of getting it back.  Maren and I both thought it would be nearly impossible to ever again find our rickshaw driver (there are an infinite number of them), and even if we did, the chance that he would have found my camera and would give it back to me was even less.  I was completely demoralized that the likelihood of ever seeing my camera again was pretty slim.  It was even more frustrating that we only had a narrow window of time to get to the Taj Mahal before it closed in the evening.  It was Thursday afternoon and the Taj is closed on Fridays, so we couldn’t wait for the next day.  Nevertheless, considering the value of the camera, I thought it would be worth trying to find the rickshaw driver and see if he had it.

We found another rickshaw to take us back to the train station to retrace our steps.  Once there, we went to the same place we had gotten our original rickshaw and were mobbed by drivers asking where we were going as usual.  We split up and tried to pick through all the faces, which wasn’t easy.  But after only 5 minutes or so I turned and saw our driver!  I wasn’t totally sure at first, but when he saw me, I noticed a flash of recognition.  I pulled him aside and he said ‘Iknow, I know.’  I was excited and frantic as I kept asking him if he had my camera, but the only words he would say were ‘I know, I know.’  Finally he walked me to his rickshaw and pulled out my camera!  I felt such a massive sense of relief I thought I might faint!  This tiny old Indian man had just saved this part of our Indian trip from being a total disaster.  He of course demanded a large sum of money for returning my camera.  I already had the camera in my hands, so I could have just said thanks and walked away.  I tried to negotiate a fair amount instead, but Maren finally convinced me to just be grateful and pay the amount he asked, which I did after he drove us back to the Taj Mahal.  Considering the guy could have just taken the camera for himself, I certainly was grateful, and paying him ten times the normal fare definitely made his day.

We walked up to the entrance of the Taj Mahal still with a sense of disbelief that we had gotten my camera back.  It was especially ironic that this had happened just before we went to see the most photographed sight in India.  There are three entrances to the Taj which all lead to a large and beautiful garden ringed by red sandstone walls.  As we walked through the gate of the fort-like building leading to the Taj, the giant white domes appeared before us.  The very first thing we noticed is how big the Taj Mahal is!  It is something I had never considered from seeing photographs.  The gardens and fountains between the main gate and the Taj are gorgeous and immaculate.  They are also in perfect symmetry, as is the Taj and all the other buildings in the complex.  The gardens and fountains make a perfect foreground for amazing pictures of the Taj.  There are several other impressive red sandstone buildings on either side of the gardens, including two large mosques on either side of the Taj itself. 

You have to take your shoes off to walk up the stairs to the Taj and the two mosques.  The temperature was still in the low to mid-40s this evening, which meant the stone tiles were very hot.  We had to practically run to the shade inside one of the mosques, and then had to tiptoe around the back of the Taj above the river in order to see it from all angles.  Finally we walked up the stairs to the giant white marble pedestal to the most beautiful building in the world.  The massive onion-shaped domes really tower over you.  When you get close enough, the craftwork and design of the marble itself is incredible.  Inside the Taj, the marble is just as beautiful and intricate.  There are only two tombs inside, one for the maharaja who built the Taj and the other for the wife he built it for.  We walked through the forested section of the gardens on our way out where there were hardly any other tourists.

As I mentioned, our guesthouse was situated right next to one of the entrances to the Taj.  This area of Agra was originally built to house the 20,000 workers the maharaja brought in to build the Taj.  Now it is filled with guesthouses, restaurants, and tourist shops.  Fortunately a few of the guesthouses have rooftop restaurants with nearly unobstructed views of the Taj Mahal.  We picked one for dinner and another one for breakfast the next morning.  That night, however, was the worst of all our nights in India.  As I wrote in my last blog, we were drinking tons of water all day long.  We usually bought two or three 1.5 liter bottles at a time.  When we went to sleep that night, we somehow miscalculated how much we had.  One thing I haven’t mentioned so far about India is the power outages.  Nearly every place we visited has regular power outages.  They usually affect different sections of the city at different times.  Sometimes they last a couple of seconds, other times twenty minutes, and occasionally even longer.  Despite the insane heat which was now pushing close to 50 degrees in the middle of the day, neither Maren nor I wanted to pay double the price for rooms with air conditioning.  Therefore we were relying on a single overhead fan.  The location of our room in this particular guesthouse in Agra made the room, despite the fan, hotter than any other place we had stayed.

 I woke up in the middle of this particular night to the sound of the fan clicking off, which had become familiar due to the power outages.  I discovered I was lying in a huge pool of my own sweat, with more sweat literally running down my skin all over my body.  Maren and I drank what was left of our water supply, then began to get very nervous.  I decided to go wake up the reception and buy some water, but the guy told me some nonsense about the water being in the restaurant and he didn’t have the key.  No shops were open at this time, so I returned to the room to suffer.  The next few hours were miserable.  The power did not come back on.  Neither of us could sleep.  We were both becoming very dehydrated very quickly.  Finally we went to our last resort: tap water.  We each drank just enough to make it through the night and hopefully not get sick.  We finally left the room at about 5:30 and miraculously found a shop that was just opening.  The bottles of water we each drank next were the most refreshing of our lives.  When the fan finally clicked on, my sheets were so soaked with sweat that the air from the fan completely chilled them and I actually became cold!

The next day in Agra we spent at the other impressive building in town: Agra Fort.  The walk there was mostly through a peaceful park.  It also passed a temple and some ghats on the riverbank.  We had read that one of them was a ‘burning ghat’ which means bodies are cremated on the steps next to the river.  We passed by some fires and then later a funeral procession passed us with men carrying a body over their heads on its way to be cremated.  This was an unfamiliar event and gave us both a strange feeling.  Before we went to the fort, we first bought our train tickets at the Agra Fort station for our overnight train that evening.  We were told that all the tickets, both AC and regular sleeper, were sold out, but that we should still pay for the AC sleeper to get on the waiting list.  We were numbers 9 and 10 on the waiting list, so there was a good chance we would get on if we showed up a couple of hours before the train left to check.

Though obviously overshadowed in fame by the nearby Taj Mahal, Agra Fort is a gigantic, impressive red sandstone fortress with beautiful gardens and a maze of white marble architecture, detailed stonework, staircases leading to nowhere, and windows facing the Taj Mahal.  The Taj is just a few kilometers away, and the view of it across the river is a cool perspective, though probably not for the maharaja who built it.  His son took over and imprisoned him in Agra Fort, where he had to stare at the Taj from afar for the last 8 years of his life.  There is an incredible amount to see at Agra Fort, and the architecture is phenomenal; it is a shame it is not in another city where it would be much more famous.  An interesting phenomenon happened as we walked through the fort.  Several of the Indian tourists asked if they could take a picture with either Maren or I.  One of them shoved this chubby baby right into Maren’s arms and started snapping photos.  The annoyed look on the kid’s face combined with the confused look on Maren’s face while she awkwardly held him was hilarious.  We started refusing people who asked after that because it seemed weird and no one would explain why they wanted a photo.  When a group of young guys asked for a photo with only me, and Maren not included, I definitely began to get a creepy feeling.  Later in the evening, we gathered our things and made our way to the train station.  We found out we were now numbers 3 and 4 on the waiting list, but there was not a lot of hope that that would improve.  Our best bet was to talk to the reservation guy once the train arrived. 

Our destination was Varanasi, to which there is only one train per day.  We were told that we could get a refund for our ticket and leave the next day, but I felt like that would be a waste of time as we had already seen the two highlights of Agra.  I decided I was not going to take ‘no’ for an answer.  We started talking to everybody we could, the inquiry booth, the reservation staff, even the station manager.  Unfortunately no one seemed to speak English quite well enough for them to help us.  One of them seemed to say that we were allowed to just go on the train and try to figure it out onboard.  When the train finally arrived we were running around in a panic.  We found the reservation guy who pretty much told us, ‘No seat for you.’  We ran around more talking to more people, the station manager in particular seemed very confused about what we should do.  Finally we found someone who said yes, we were allowed to go on the non-AC, sleeper class train and try to find a bed or wait for a bed to open up.  We went back to the reservation guy to ask him if that was OK, and now he just nodded his head to the side, which means ‘Sure.’  We climbed onto the train and prepared for what was to be our 2^nd most uncomfortable night in India.

Our overnight train left Agra just after 10 PM.  We spent the next 6+ hours on the dirty, metal floor of the sleeper class car next to the toilets.  There were lots of other people all around us doing exactly the same thing.  There were people constantly walking past and over us.  We found some newspaper to lie out and attempt to sleep on, but most of the trip we were sitting on our bags or trying to sleep while lying against them.  We also didn’t want to both sleep at the same time for fear of thieves.  The heat was stifling which meant we had plenty of sweat to go with the filth and grime we had acquired from the dirty train.  Our space was also tiny and horribly uncomfortable, and the smells from the squat toilets one meter away sure didn’t help.  We finally arrived at some station in the early hours of the morning where many people got off the train.  We managed to find two empty top bunks and fell asleep clutching our backpacks, dirty and exhausted.

Varanasi is located directly on the Ganges River and is one of the most holy sites for Hindu pilgrims.  The center of the old town is filled with narrow alleys and tiny shops and is closed to rickshaws.  We took a rickshaw as close as possible with a truly infuriating driver who repeatedly tried to take us to the wrong place, then stopped several kilometers short of where we told him we were going.  After that, we got quite lost in the alleyways looking for our guesthouse.  One of the problems is that there aren’t addresses in India.  I don’t mean they aren’t labeled, I mean they literally do not exist!  If the street has a name (which is only common for major roads), that is the address, but there aren’t numbers.  We asked some clueless people which direction the river was and got very conflicting directions.  We even said the name of the river to some people, pronouncing it the Hindu way, and got some blank stares.  I still have no idea why.  When we finally made it to our guesthouse, Maren and I both enjoyed long showers and a large breakfast.

The Ganges River in Varanasi is lined with dozens of ghats and is truly a sight to behold.  The ghats are the lifeblood of the city and there are people around them twenty four hours a day.  We walked to the river in the evening, and were surprised to see tons of people all moving in the same direction.  There was a Hindu ceremony taking place at the first ghat we got to, which we later found out happens every single night.  The steps were filled with crowds of people, and even the river was filled with boatfuls of onlookers as well.  Several guys wearing traditional Hindu outfits stood on pedestals on the ghat and performed rituals.  While music played, they made loud noises, waved sticks of incense, and lit some things on fire.  We walked around the ghats for awhile and found some other smaller, similar ceremonies happening nearby.  Because it was the hot season and the water level was at its lowest point, we could easily walk from ghat to ghat all along the river. 

We organized an early morning boat ride with our guesthouse, in time to see the sunrise.  In the morning, however, the guy didn’t show up at reception.  So we walked to the river, found a boatman, and settled on a price which was lower than what we had booked.  The sunrise turned out to be less than impressive as it was overcast, but the boat ride was phenomenal nonetheless.  Our boatman turned out to be a very good pick, because he spoke English quite well.  For an hour as he rowed he gave us commentary on each of the ghats we passed.  We learned about the history of some of the ghats and the buildings on the riverbank.  At the furthest point of the ride, we reached the main burning ghat in Varanasi.  Because the Ganges is the holiest river, Hindus often come here to die.  It is believed that dying in Varanasi can end the cycle of reincarnation.  Cremations happen at this ghat all day and all night long.  There is a very complex process of how people pay to be cremated here, because the wood used to burn the bodies is expensive for most Indians.  When we arrived we saw a few fires and bodies being prepared for cremation.  It is quite shocking to see this happening in the most public of surroundings.  The ashes, or sometimes even partly charred bodies, are dumped straight into the river.

There were tons of people swimming in the river as we passed by in the boat.  It was Sunday, which meant there was even more than usual.  I would have thought that a pilgrim bathing in a holy river would be a solemn and private affair, but that could not be further from the truth.  It appeared to be any other day at a beach: groups of boys laughing and splashing in the water, families, people swimming across the river, and guys waving at us.  It looked like fun, and Maren and I both would have liked to have a swim ourselves in the holy water.  The only catch is the one thing that cast a bit of a shadow over the whole Ganges experience:  the river is incredibly polluted.  Not by farming chemicals or some factory or even ordinary garbage, but by raw sewage.  There are over a hundred sewage pipes in Varanasi alone leading into the river.  We read that the contamination levels are thousands of times higher than what they should be for safe swimming.  The hundreds of not-always-completely-cremated bodies every day don’t help the situation either.  So we dipped our hands in the water during our boat ride, but a swim in the ‘holy’ water would have more likely resulted in an infectious disease than a purifying experience.  There are some recent efforts to clean up the river by establishing a real sewage system in the city, hopefully they work.

It is a bizarre sight to see cows living in the middle of a city, but they are everywhere in India.  Cows lying around, walking the streets, and in the case of Varanasi, even hanging out in the middle of the crowded train station!  We found out from an Indian guy we met later that no one actually owns them.  Cows are used on dairy farms, but once they get older they are just abandoned.  No one cares for most of them; they pretty much just eat garbage, create traffic jams, and are ignored.  The amount of garbage is another sight to get used to in India.  There doesn’t seem to be any public sanitation service, garbage cans are few and far between, and there are makeshift dumps on the side of the road, in rivers, or in random holes in the ground.  When you combine this with the lack of any sidewalks, it makes for very, very dirty feet!

The next stop on our way east was Bodhgaya, a famous Buddhist pilgrimage sight.  Bodhgaya is the site where Prince Siddhartha attained enlightenment while meditating underneath a Bodhi tree and became Buddha.  We took a train from Varanasi to Gaya, where we arrived late at night.  We found a place to crash before taking a rickshaw to the small town of Bodhgaya in the morning.  While on the rickshaw, we passed tiny villages of mud and straw huts, and people that appeared to be living an agricultural, subsistence lifestyle.  Bodhgaya is in the state of Bihar, which is one of the poorest in all of India.  When we arrived, we walked through the quiet town until we found our guesthouse.  It was located in a tiny little village on the edge of the city, complete with primitive houses, small farms, and half naked children running about.  It was quite a different experience from other guesthouses we had stayed in and it was intriguing to ‘live’ and experience this side of India.  We spent our first afternoon at the main Buddhist attraction, the spot of Buddha’s enlightenment.  The small complex is filled with plants and greenery and is a great spot to relax.  The main temple has stood in its location since nearly the time of the enlightenment itself.  The actual Bodhi tree surprisingly still exists there, well, kind of.  The current one grew from a branch taken from the original Bodhi tree which was taken to Sri Lanka.  The tree and a small monument where Siddhartha sat meditating are behind the temple.  There are tons of other Buddhist relics all around the area.

The town of Bodhgaya is filled with monasteries from every Buddhist country.  As this is one of the holiest places for Buddhist pilgrims to visit, many of the monasteries are quite impressive.  There is also a massive Buddha statue in town, which we visited the next day.  It was ordered by the Dalai Lama fairly recently and has a 30-some meter high sitting Buddha surrounded by his disciples.  Apparently the Buddha is hollow and filled with 20,000 miniature Buddhas, though I am not sure what the point of this was because there is no way to look inside.  We spent the rest of our time in Bodhgaya just relaxing and trying to stay out of the heat, which had climbed into the high 40s.  In the evening, we took a rickshaw back to Gaya, where we caught an overnight train to Kolkata (the new spelling of Calcutta).

Maren and I met a young Indian guy in Gaya on his way to Kolkata as well.  He spoke decent English and was pretty helpful answering our questions about the train trip and India in general.  In Kolkata the next morning, we arrived at a chaotic train station jam packed with people in the center of the city.  We had to fight our way through the crowds, and then took a taxi with our new friend just to get across the river to the nearest metro stop.  After getting directions, Maren and I headed to the north of Kolkata near the airport.  There was more chaos and an unbelievable number of people everywhere.  We somehow managed to get on a bus which dropped us off close to the airport.  We had incredible difficulty finding a cheap hotel next to the airport which Lonely Planet had recommended, and when we finally found it, it was full.  No problem though, the place next door had better prices anyway.  We had some grand plans to explore Kolkata on our final day in India, but the long train rides and one uneasy stomach finally caught up with us.  We walked through the markets and neighborhoods around our hotel, but that was the extent of our Kolkata experience.  The next morning, we woke up early and made it to the airport in time for our much-anticipated flight to Bangkok, Thailand!

Delhi and Rajasthan

People!  Dirty, filthy, grimy people, starving people, begging people, lying and cheating people, crippled people, urinating-and-defecating-in-public people, hassling and touting people, hopelessly impoverished people.  The first thing you notice in India is the hoards and hoards and hoards of people everywhere and they are, without exception, staring.  With so many millions in Delhi, a white person with a backpack stands out, so I suppose it is natural to stare.  Maren and I quickly felt as though we had taken a trip to the zoo, only we were the attraction to be viewed.  Fortunately we got somewhat used to this during our India travels, and we learned to just smile and ignore it.

Getting around in Delhi almost always involves an autorickshaw.  These are simply glorified tricycles with a roof and a lawnmower engine that tops out at about 50 km/h.  They tell tourists they can only take 2 people, but we saw some with as many as 7 or 8 Indians crammed in.  There are an unbelievable number of yellow and green autorickshaws all across Delhi (and most Indian cities).  They mass in certain areas, but it is always easy to find one.  Negotiating the price can actually be rather fun.  The oversupply of rickshaws means you can make them compete with each other to match the price you want.  The first price you are told for a destination is usually about 250% of what you should pay.  When going to a hotel or guesthouse, we never told them the name, even though they ask repeatedly.  If you tell them, they will try and con you into going to a ‘better’ place where they will get a fat commission.  I have never in my life felt as harassed as I did by the touts, guides, and rickshaw drivers of Delhi.  It is very difficult to ask for directions to anywhere, not because of the language barrier, but because everyone lies.  People everywhere try to direct you to the wrong place so they can earn a commission.  They claim you must make train reservations in a certain office, which of course is some travel agent jacking the price up.  The fact that we were travelling in India during the low season didn’t help.  May is the hottest month of the year in most of India, and the monsoon season doesn’t start until June.  Yet the number of touts is the same year round, so the fewer tourists get harassed even more.  It can be truly infuriating that people simply don’t take ‘no’ for an answer.  The only way to get rid of some touts is to be incredibly rude, but after a couple of days we didn’t feel bad at all about being rude.  Ignoring them doesn’t help much either.  They follow you everywhere asking ‘Where you go?’ and just don’t give up.

Maren and I decided to stay in a popular backpackers area of New Delhi on a street called the Main Bazaar.  The street is in an unbelievable state of disrepair, which I think is somewhat temporary.  I’m sure it always looks pretty rough, but it appeared as though they were currently attempting to widen the street; there was construction work happening on both sides of the road.  Bricks were falling from rooftops, we had to duck under cables and tiptoe around puddles of dirty water, all while trying to avoid honking motorbikes and rickshaws.

Our first task once we got settled in our place was to shop for some Indian outfits.  We both knew that we stood out way too much with Western clothing.  We easily found a shop and both picked out a pair of pants while Maren also got a shirt, the price was about 9 euros total.  Despite the temperature hovering in the mid-40s, not a single Indian person was wearing shorts and we wanted to attempt to fit in at least a little bit.  We both noticed that Maren got slightly fewer stares once she wore her new outfit.  Now only 90% of the people were gawking;)  Indian people feel absolutely no shame in staring at someone, which is baffling to me.  Everywhere we went we were stared at, and even when I ‘caught’ someone staring, they rarely looked away.  People would stare as they rode by on a bike and twist their head all the way around as they passed to keep staring.  There were even times cars or motorbikes stopped on the street so all the passengers could stare at us for about 5 seconds before they drove off.  That might explain some of the horrible traffic jams.  There were times people were staring for so long they seemed to be in a trance.  A few times I finally waved at them and said ‘Hello, can I help you?’ and that sometimes broke the trance.  People never attempted to be discrete when they were talking about us either.  There would be a group of guys or girls or a family all staring, then one of them would say something to the others, they would all talk more or laugh or whatever, then kept staring and kept talking about us, all while I am staring right back at them, just shaking my head.

Another interesting cultural difference we noticed is that Indian people do not understand the concept of ‘single-file line,’ or ‘wait your turn.’  And the Western notion of privacy does not seem to apply in public places.  Whether it was a line going into a tourist site or a line to buy a train ticket, many people were ruder than I could have possibly imagined.  Everyone crowds and pushes their way to the front.  When I got to the window they would crowd around to my left and right shoving their arms and ticket and money all in front of me.  I made some rude comments to people several times and I even forcibly pushed someone back in line a couple of times.  When I did, they said ‘OK,OK’ like they know what a line is, but just couldn’t help themselves.  I think the sheer number of people in India has created this aspect of their culture, because if you aren’t pushy and aggressive you will end up waiting forever!

After changing into our new outfits, we headed to Humayun’s Tomb, which is the most impressive sight in Delhi.  We took the Metro to get close enough to take a cheap rickshaw.  Delhi’s Metro feels like a different world, a little slice of London right in the middle of India.  It is modern, efficient, and (shockingly) clean.  The tomb is actually a very large complex of several tombs and various buildings of Mughal architecture.  This means primarily red sandstone along with some white marble.  These two materials were used by the Mughals and other groups all across central India.  The beautiful buildings and the spacious gardens were a welcome relief from the chaos of the city.  In the evening, we walked to Connaught Place, which is the heart of New Delhi.  We ate at a crowded self-service restaurant and got a variety of snacks.  We were hoping we could find some that weren’t that spicy, as Maren is not used to eating spicy food.  Unfortunately, nearly everything we ordered was very spicy, despite the staff insisting that it wasn’t.  We learned that night that when an Indian person tells you the food is not spicy, that does not give you even the slightest clue as to the actual spiciness of the food.  Another note about the food in India is that it is nearly always vegetarian, at least in the areas we travelled.  India has more vegetarians than the rest of the world combined, and with the Muslims not allowed to eat pork, and the Hindus not allowed to eat beef, all that is left is chicken, mutton, and fish which you can find primarily at tourist restaurants.  In certain religious cities, the entire city follows a strict vegetarian diet, and it is impossible to find either meat or eggs on any menu.

Our second day in Delhi, we applied for our Chinese visas.  This was an annoying and time consuming process.  We first went to the distant Chinese Embassy, which told us we had to go to the visa office somewhere entirely different.  Then we had to get more paperwork which we hadn’t brought with us.  In addition to copies of our flights in and out of China, we had to give them our complete trip itinerary including a place we would stay, and show them a copy of our flight from Kolkata to Bangkok, and explain how we would get to Singapore.  It was really a bunch of nonsense, but we finally got out of there as the office was closing and were told to come back in 4 business days.  We decided to use the time to explore Rajasthan, the state to the west of Delhi that is home to some of the most interesting areas of India and one of the most well travelled areas of the tourist trail.  We took an overnight train all the way to the south of Rajasthan to Udaipur, known as the most beautiful city in India.  The ride was 14 hours, but not terribly uncomfortable.  We rode in an air conditioned sleeper car that slept 6 people in kind of an open room.  We got sheets and pillows, but we brought our own food because we were uncertain about the onboard meal. 

Udaipur felt like a breath of fresh air compared to Delhi.  It is a small town (400,000 people feels like a small town in India!) with far fewer rickshaws, touts, and hassles.  The main draw of the town is the lake with two beautiful island palaces, which are now incredibly expensive resort hotels.  The more impressive one was featured in the James Bond movie ‘Octopussy’ which meant every backpacker oriented restaurant in town screened the movie every single night.  We stayed in an amazing guest house on the opposite side of the lake from the main town.  I think we got the most expensive room in the place, though it was (by our standards) still incredibly cheap.  It was a huge room on the top floor overlooking the lake, the palaces, and the main town.  We had to mostly imagine the beauty of the lake; as it was the end of the hot season, the water level was at its lowest point of the year.  This meant half the lake was completely dried up and had kids playing cricket and cows bathing in small muddy ponds. 

After getting settled, we walked into the main town to the city palace.  Neither of the two island palaces are open to non-guests, so the city palace is the main sight to see.  The huge complex is perched high on a hill and is filled with interesting Indian art and architecture.  We ate dinner at a restaurant overlooking a big and colorful Hindu temple in the center town, and decided to check it out afterwards.  We walked all the way up the steps and found a group of people all sitting on a carpet with some of them playing music.  We stood in the back at first, but after the second old man motioned for us to join, we decided to sit down.  We clapped along to the music for much longer than we had planned.  People left and other people joined, after kissing the Hindu statues in the front.  Some children spoke to us as well, with the very few English words they knew.  On our way out, we talked to a local guy about the temple and the traditions.  Maren and I both felt this was our first real contact with Indian people and culture, and it was quite a relief to find out not just that they didn’t want our money, but how welcoming and friendly they were.

The following day we walked through a tiny village to another nearby lake.  We had noticed on a map that this lake had an island park in the center, but were a bit confused that there were no bridges to get to it.  We understood as soon as we caught our first glimpse of the lake: it was nearly completely dried up as well.  We didn’t see any obvious path, so we just left the road and climbed down to the dry lake bed and walked across.  The lake bed felt like a desert wasteland with hot winds pummeling us and whipping up dust.  The park had a white wall around it and was filled with pink flowers and lots of greenery despite the dry weather and temperature in the low to mid 40s.  Later in the afternoon, we walked to a hotel in town with a pool.  For a very small fee, they let us use the pool and even provided towels.  This was the first time we had been swimming since the Dead Sea and was very refreshing in the Indian heat.  At this point, we began to realize just how much water we were drinking.  Bottled water was a constant source of concern during our trip in India.  It was easy to find and always fairly cheap, but we had to think about it every time we went walking somewhere, were about to get on a train, or even when we went to our room at night to sleep.  We were drinking up to 6 liters of water per day each! 

We ate dinner at a restaurant right on the lake and very close to the island palace.  The food in India was overall very tasty, and quite a bit different than Indian food I had tried at home.  Most of the dishes are vegetarian, though they make a lot of meat dishes as well for tourists.  The prices for meat dishes are usually about double that of a vegetarian dish!  I couldn’t believe how cheap the food was everywhere we went.  Even at a nice restaurant, we never spent more than 5 euros each for the whole meal, drinks and appetizer included.  At most places we ate at, the meal with a drink was between 1 and 2 euros each.  At the cheapest places, like the train station cafeteria, we were eating a full meal for not much more than 50 cents.  Eating the street food is even cheaper, though you have to be more careful.  Most of it was spicy Indian snacks made in a less-than-hygienic environment, so we didn’t eat it very often because we were worried about how our stomachs would react.  One of the times I did, I chose 4 different spiced vegetable filled pastry-like things, which was more than enough to completely fill me up.  The guy told me 10 rupees (about 20 cents) and I started to get 40 rupees out, thinking he meant 10 each.  Then he told me 10 rupees total and started laughing after seeing the shocked look on my face.

Our next Rajasthan destination was Pushkar, back in the direction of Delhi.  We woke up very, very early to try to catch the 7 o’clock train.  Despite everything we had seen in town and in our guide book telling us the train left at 7, we showed up at 6:30 and they told us we had just missed it. Fortunately for us, there was another train leaving a few hours later, so we didn’t panic.  I say fortunately, because for most of the other trains we took in India, if we missed them, we were stuck for 24 hours.  We had a very cool experience on the 6 hour train ride to Pushkar.  Not long after we left, a huge Indian family got on and sat next to us.  Next to us, around us, above us, there must have been 15 or 20 of them, and only 4 were adults!  There were about 6 girls in their teens and twenties that took an immediate liking to Maren.  They all had Henna tattoos on their hands, arms, and feet.  One of the girls asked Maren if she wanted one, and soon enough two girls were both working on her hands and arms while about 12 other kids watched and giggled.  They spent literally hours working and totally covered both sides of both hands and arms.  The designs were really amazing and were even more impressive considering they did them aboard a bumpy and shaky old train!  The Henna lasted the rest of our trip in India, though all of Maren’s sweating from the heat made them fade quicker than they otherwise would have;)

Pushkar was another great small town to relax in.  Unlike Udaipur, however, Pushkar is popular as a pilgrimage site.  Hindus come for the holy water of the main lake which the town is built around.  Apparently Brahma himself bathed in the water.  There is also a Brahman temple in town, one of the only ones in the world (every other Hindu temple is dedicated to one of the other gods).  One of the first things we noticed is there wasn’t a single rickshaw!  They aren’t allowed in town.  Also, because of the religious nature of the town, every restaurant is strictly vegetarian, which means not just meat is banned, but eggs and alcohol as well.

We began our full day in Pushkar by hiking a small mountain on the edge of town.  There was a temple on top which was closed, but the views over the town and the lake were worth the climb.  Afterwards, we began a slow walk around the entire lake, stopping along several ghats.  A ghat is a wide set of stairs leading down into the water.  Most are for bathers, but some have other purposes.  The lake was mostly dried up, but there were some pools of water that were filled with people.  We also went to the Brahman temple, which was the largest temple we had seen thus far and was filled with lots of cool sculptures, religious relics, and a troop of monkeys.  We were approached twice while walking around the lake by ‘priests.’  We talked to the first guy for a minute who took us to his private ‘temple,’ then realized his scam and gave him a tiny amount of money to leave us alone.  The second guy was more persistent in trying to get us to drop some ‘special flowers’ into the lake for good luck.  We had to be pretty rude to make him stop following us.  We found a beautiful, massive, brand new temple on the far side of the lake.  The view from outside was all we got, however, because the inside was still completely empty.

In the evening, after dinner and relaxing at what had become our favorite cheap rooftop restaurant, we got on a midnight train back to Delhi.  This short trip to Delhi was relatively painless.  We went straight to the Chinese embassy office, paid the incredibly exorbitant visa fee ($150 for Americans, $40 for everyone else!), got our passports back, and hopped on the next train leaving for Agra, home of the Taj Mahal.