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.

Cairo

Cairo is a massive, dirty, loud, crowded, chaotic city.  At first it is difficult to see how it could be the capital of the Arab world.  We only had two days to spend in the city before our flight, which is surely not enough time to fully appreciate the city, let alone Egypt.  The hostel we arrived at late at night was booked the following night, so we had to wake up in the morning, switch to a different hostel, and go back to sleep.  In the afternoon, we walked to the nearby Egyptian Museum, a must-see for anyone visiting Cairo.  We stayed until closing time, over four hours, yet I felt as though we had just scratched the surface.  The museum is set in a huge, beautiful complex, and it is filled with more Egyptian artifacts than one can possibly imagine.  There are literally hundreds of thousands of individual items on display: mummies, sarcophaguses, weapons, jewelry, statues, and everything else that has been plundered from the pyramids and tombs of Egypt.  At most of the pyramids themselves, there is very little to see inside!  The section dedicated to the relics of King Tut’s tomb was most impressive.  We skipped the Royal Mummy room as the fee to enter that room was more than double the fee to enter the museum and we already had plenty to see, including other mummies.

We walked a bit through downtown Cairo after the museum.  One of the first things we noticed is the complete lack of any Western-looking tourists.  Perhaps that was because the city is just so huge they tend to get lost in the crowds.  It also occurred to me that Cairo is the biggest city I have ever been to, 16 million people!  Crossing the street can be quite an adventure and takes some practice.  The drivers are horrible, there are rarely stoplights or crosswalks, and when there are they don’t mean much.  You basically have to just wait for the right time and move quickly.  It requires equal amounts of patience and bravery.  Often you get stuck in the middle of a 6-lane road for a few seconds, pray for your life to Allah or whoever, and then make a mad dash for the other side.  It helps to find a local person and follow their lead, using them as a human shield.  The smog and noise of the city are both intense.  Another thing we noticed is the high proportion of men to women walking the streets.  This is true during the daytime, but is most noticeable at night.  When we first walked to our hostel at 4 AM, there were still lots of people walking around and hanging out along the streets, but hardly a woman could be seen.  Poor, little Maren felt very out of place and uncomfortable with the unwanted attention.

For dinner, we went to a hugely popular Egyptian ‘fast-food’ style restaurant.  You first pay for what you want and get a ticket, then take it to the station that is making that type of food.  They had everything from grilled meat and fish to stuffed pitas, baked pastas, wrapped grape leaves, pizza, and crepes.  After trying to decipher the menu and getting help from a guy working there, we ordered several things to go and took them back to our place.  It was a huge meal and very delicious!

Despite a morning start out to the pyramids of Giza the following day, we didn’t arrive until after noon.  The public transportation from Cairo was quite inefficient, and an organized bus tour might have been a better option.  Giza is a suburb of Cairo, though nearly as chaotic, and it is disturbing to see the pyramids basically in the middle of a city.  We rode the bus with a friendly and chatty Egyptian man who was on his way home to Giza.  We transferred to a small mini-bus, in which the man paid for both of us saying he was ‘inviting.’  We got especially nervous when we flew past the pyramids and were dropped off down an alley.  The friendly man took us to a friendly camel-tour man who proposed a friendly 600 Egyptian Pound offer, which we obviously declined.  We quickly said goodbye to our ‘friend’ (who then asked for foreign money for ‘souvenirs’ for his children) and walked about 3 km back to the entrance to the pyramids. 

The inside of the pyramid complex was filled with tourists, camels, horses, and hustlers.  The Sphinx and the three huge pyramids themselves were impressive, of course, but the entire experience was clouded by the environment.  I don’t just mean the noise, pollution, commercialization, and annoying people constantly hounding us for a camel ride.  Watching the way the camels and horses were being treated by their ‘drivers’ (not to mention overweight tourists) was really depressing to see.  Little Egyptian kids were laughing and whipping the camels for no apparent reason.  The horses had to go up and down steep paved hills that had no traction so they kept slipping.  It’s not easy to walk on your own around the pyramids, despite them being very close to each other.  People were bothering us the whole time, telling us the other pyramid was closed or we could only go on a camel or some other conniving story to try to make us part with our money.  I think the only way to not get hounded is to go on a big tour bus.  The pyramids themselves are remarkably big and it is amazing to imagine them being built.  As we were leaving, however, I felt jaded by the whole spectacle and wish we had skipped Giza and gone to some other, more authentic pyramids.

As I mentioned before, neither Maren nor I felt we had a ‘complete’ Egyptian experience.  We both wished we had the 5 days we had originally planned instead of 2, but hopefully we will go back another time.  We ate a dinner of Egyptian pizza, pancakes, and fresh fruit, and then left for the airport first thing in the morning.  It was a mostly uneventful flight, and after a six hour stop in Bahrain, we landed in the morning in Delhi, India.  Our original flight was to Mumbai, but when we rebooked our flight from Cairo, we changed the destination to Delhi.  Our two weeks in India, from Delhi to Kolkata (where we arrived the morning I am writing this) coming up in the next couple of blogs!

By the way, Maren is now the editor-in chief of this blog, to make sure I don’t leave out any important details, and also to provide her commentary when appropriate;)

I am now finally posting this from beautiful Koh Tao, Thailand!  First trip pictures are up on Picasa.  Facebook will take a bit longer...