Safe and Sound in Calgary

We arrived home last night at 5:30pm safe and sound. I am currently chromatically messed up and jet lagged...hoping a good night's sleep tonight will return me to normal.
Below are a couple funny videos for your viewing pleasure. Enjoy!

Thanks for reading!!


Spooning on the plane

Crossing the street in Delhi

Interesting driving in Varanasi

We're Free!

We got into and out of Mumbai without incident. Well, unless you don't count the men pointing their machine guns at our heads while taking cover behind sand bag bunkers at every entrance to the airport or the fact that we practically had to have cavity searches at the security screening area...twice.....well, I exaggerate, but I did get some VERY thorough pat downs....(I wonder if my airport screener learned her skills at the same place my Varanasi masseuse did?) I'm sure getting a lot of girl on girl action this trip....and, yes, me and Sue re-enacted the 2 seat plane spooning technique that served us so well on the flight to India...with the help of an immovane and my sensory deprivation chamber(earplugs/sleep mask) we slept a good 6-7 hours. We are currently on hour 27 and killing an 8 hour layover at London Heathrow before a 9.5 hour flight to Calgary....so close I can taste it!
I will post a few short videos I took along the way in a day or two from home( spooning on the plane, crossing a 8 lane street in delhi(screaming included), crazy traffic ect.) for your amusement... so check back!

Operation: Escape from India!

Me and Sue at Cavalosem beach

Dona Sylvia Beach Resort

Jaisalmer couture...my finds from a little tailor shop in the fort.

Pool side!

Soaking up the rays!

We are officially enjoying our last full day in the resort! The weather has been beautiful and we have both been spending our time relaxing, reading, embracing the sunshine and eating fabulous food! Sorry, not much in the way of blogging this week...but unless you want to hear about what they served at the buffet or the current status on my sun tan... I've got nothing!

India has been an amazing adventure...full of fascinating places and overwhelming places! We have been enveloped into the crush of humanity in some of the most chaotic train stations which are beyond description. I have seen extreme poverty side by side with extreme wealth...such a larger gap with few in the middle. We watched open cremations by the Ganges river and dodged large group of chanting family members carting their deceased loved one over their heads through the streets of Varanasi. I watched the sun rise over the misty breathtaking Taj Mahal that seemed to float in the morning clouds and we nearly met our makers in more than one traffic mis-adventure! I was chased by a monkey, found a large lizard residing in my jacket, woke up to a mouse scampering past my head, fought off a hungry pack of crows trying to eat my lunch, was almost gored in in the stomach by a cow and watched a dog kill and eat a baby goat. I road a horse through the hills of Udaiper..complete with unintentional show jumping and ran on the back of a camel through the Thar desert at sunset! I even saw a wild Bengal tiger! I will never forget the smells...a combination of garbage, pollution, cow/human waste, incense and spicy curries wafting of the street vendors. My lungs have pretty much just taken up a 30 day smoking habit due to the thick pollution and am looking forward to ridding myself of my smokers cough. We took 6 planes and 7 trains and travelled 1000's of kilometers across the country. We met some fantastic people and had a great experience. And the icing on the cake: 30 days of delicious Indian food and neither of us got so much as an upset stomach!

Tomorrow we are flying into Mumbai... I know, crazy, but that's where the plane lives that will be flying us to London and then home! I 'll post an entry once I arrive in Calgary so anyone who is concerned will know we successfully escaped from India! A great country, an amazing unforgettable trip but....get me the hell out!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Plan B

So here's the plan.

We have cancelled out train tickets from Goa to Mumbai. We decided against showing up in a train station that was riddled with bullets and grenades 4 days earlier. Who knows if it will even be running with any normalicy.

We have cancelled our Colaba area hotel....who knows what the safety or situation will be in 3 days??? CNN says there are still gunmen on the loose so we decided not to show our white faces in downtown Mumbai.

We have decided to stay an extra night in our resort, thankfully they are not fully booked.

On Dec 2 we have booked a ticket from Goa to Mumbai with Kingfisher Airways arriving in Mumbai at 17:20pm...We will camp out in the airport for 8 hours until Dec 3 at 2:45am when our flight leaves for London. The airport is running more or less as per normal today, domestic flights at any rate, and in 4 days we hope everything else will be up and running too...primarily our british airways fight home. Cross your fingers.

A summary of the air travel hell we will encounter flying home:
Arrive in Goa airport 14:00 fly to Mumbai arrive 17:20
8 hour layover
9.25hour flight to London
8 hour layover
9 hour flight home.

TOTAL TIME FROM ARRIVING IN GOA AIRPORT UNTIL ARRIVING IN CALGARY AIRPORT : 50 HOURS
Ughhhhh....

We are really dissapointed that we won't be able to see Mumbai. What can you do though? At this point we just want to get out of here as safely as possible.

Until then: we keep an eye on the news, try to sun ourselves without thinking too much about the trip into Mumbai and enjoy the beautiful weather!

Goa

We are currently on the beautiful beaches of goa that stretch along the west coast of Southern India. It was a long 3 days in transit while we re-traced our steps across Rajasthan to get back to Delhi and fly in to Goa yesterday afternoon.
Our resort is beautiful....white sand beaches and great food so far!
The weather is hot and sunny and we are relaxing and resting after the chaos we have been completely immersed in for 3 weeks.
Our plans for the next 3 days don't extend beyond: suntanning, sleeping, eating, swimming, strolling along the beach, drinking cocktails...Repeat.

This morning I woke up at 8am and turned on the TV to CNN to see the news of the terrorist attacks that happened in Mumbai about 10 hours before. As of now the entire city of Mumbai is shut down. The train station that was bombed is the one we will be arriving in by night train on the morning of Dec 2nd and we fly out of the Mumbai airport about 20 hours later. Both the train system and the Mumbai airport are currently closed and for now so we will just have to keep an eye on things to see what will happen. We have 3 more days here in Goa. On the evening of Dec 1st we have tickets on the night train from Goa to Mumbai CST station. If things are either unsafe or not operational we will have to come up with a backup plan. Fortunately, Goa is a popular European resort destination so there will be flights from here to Eurpoe and the UK which hopefully we can get a ticket on and then make our way to London for our final fight home should we need to. Hopefully things will settle by then. I will keep you updated!

For now: Things here are business as usual and I am off to suntan and read by the pool :)

Jaisalmer Day 2

This afternoon at 2pm we ventured into the Thar desert for sightseeing and a camel trek to the sand dunes to watch the sunset.We stopped at some interesting monuments on the way to our camels...the first one was the Bado Bagh Cenotaphs at the Maharajah cemetery. These cenotaphs constructed by the various rulers. One cenotaph has been erected for each ruler...it is a sandstone carved structure on top of the tombstone. The oldest among them is the cenotaphs of Maharawal Jait Singh who reigned from 1470-1506. This tradition was discontinued when in 1947, one of the prince died of a mysterious disease. This was taken as a bad omen and thus this tradition came to it's end. We were nearly alone in this collection of over 40 sandstone structures, each elaborately domed cenotaph housing the tombstone of a King or Royal family member.



Look for the female figures to the right of the horse mounted king. The figures represent the number of wives he had.


We followed that up with a visit to a beautiful jain temple called Amarsagar. It is the oldest and the most beautiful temple dedicated to Lord Parshwanath. There is a small dome which is crowned by a water pot containing a lotus flower and its walls are intricately carved with animal and human figures.



Arar sagar temple. Women are forbidden to enter Hindu temples while having their period...notice the mis-spelled sign...a common and sometime amusing site in India!

We then drove out to the camel farm and took about an hour trek into the desert to some beautiful sand dunes. The camel boys jumped on the camel with us midway along and brought the camels to a run which was super fun and interestingly enough, unlike a horse, where trotting makes the ride bumpier on a camel as soon as they start to run the bumps disappear and it makes for a great easy ride!


Gorgeous sunset over the Thar desert.

Tomorrow we begin our journey back to Delhi for our flight to Goa where we planned a vacation from our vacation! We have the day to spend here in Jaisalmer then catch a 4pm train to Jodhpur. There we will stay the night and leave for the airport in the morning to fly back to Delhi. From Delhi we stay the night again and fly out the next day to Goa...where a beautiful resort and white sand beaches await us! Ahhhhh....

Jaisalmer- The golden city

The stunning view of the fort from our hotel roof top restaurant.

On top of the fort looking out onto the city.

Fort streets.

Inside the old palace.

Sunset view that greeted us on the walk back to the hotel.

Relaxing on the patio off of our room!

Jaisalmer lies in the middle of the Thar desert, at the most westerly edge of Rajasthan, less than 125 miles from the border with Pakistan. We actually flew into the air force military base instead of an actually airport and were met on the runway by a large group of men with guns who escorted us off the runway, waited with us for our luggage and then escorted us out of the base. Jaisalmer is Rajasthan’s oldest living fortified city and staying here is like taking a step back in time to the days of the Arabian Nights. The first thing you notice when you enter the city is the huge really impressive yellow fortress built across the top of the hill that is in the centre of Jaisalmer...it seems to rise out of the desert like a sand castle. It is called the golden city due to the yellow sandstone used to build the fort...amazingly enough, a quarter of the city’s population is still living in it! Some 2,000 people (and I'm guessing an equal number of cows) live within it's walls.... we have seen so may forts so far but all of them long since abandoned so it is cool to see how they once functioned and how people live in them. Inside the fort you'll find a bizarre labyrinth of streets, alleyways, courtyards, temples and palaces. It's not only the oldest fort in Rajasthan, dating from the 12th century, but it is the oldest inhabited citadel in the world. Unfortunately, it is now facing ruin. For the past 20 years, Jaisalmer's old buildings have been collapsing on an alarming scale, victim to the overuse by the people living and working in the fort as well as the tourist industry. The sheer volume of people living in the fort and particularly the hotels and guesthouses are putting too much pressure on the city's ancient drainage system and the increased water consumption has left the fort infrastructure in danger of collapse. Seventeen of the 99 bastions of the fort have already collapsed...the fort walls are subsiding and palaces and havelis have come tumbling down. The city is now one of the world's most endangered heritage sites.

For this ethical reason me and Sue chose to stay at a guesthouse outside of the fort as not to contribute to this problem... Our hotel has a wonderful roof top patio which gives us an amazing view of the fort(something you can't get while staying in the fort!) We arrived at 2pm after a quick flight from Jodhpur( so glad we weren't on that long train!) We walked into the fort and spent the afternoon exploring it's streets and alleyways. It is nice and quiet here and very laid back! We even found a cute little clothing shop and I found some surprisingly nice clothing all hand made by this man and his wife...some of the shirts you could slap a designer label on them and sell them for $150 in Calgary - but here $4! We just had dinner at the hotel at the rooftop restaurant and tomorrow plan on taking a an afternoon/evening desert safari to see the sites and watch the sun set behind the dunes!


Puppy trying to make friends with a disinterested cow.

Jodhpur- village treks and peeing for an audience.

This morning we signed up for a 5 hour trek through a bunch of rural small villages outside of Jodhpur. Our guide, Deepak, grew up in a small village and was really knowledgeable showing us around and he spoke great english so that was a plus! We visited 6 different homes throughout different villages to see how rural India lives. We went to the house of a potter who works with his sons to make water pots, a family cooperative that are weavers of rugs, a family farm (the ladies of the family dressed Sue up in the full dress and costume that the married women wear), a group of family's that live off the land and grow and farm just to survive, and a UNICEF funded lunch program/educational center for some of the poorest children.

Learning to weave!

2 weird experiences on this foray into India!

The first was as we were driving down a quiet rural highway and we see something colourful off in the distance...as we get closer we see a small child, maybe11-13 months old, sitting all alone smack in the middle of the road. We stop and I ask where his mother is and the guide looks around and guesses somewhere working in the fields...but seriously, I know children here are left to fend for themselves with more independence that North American children but really...who leaves a little baby, not even old enough to walk, in the middle of the road?? Totally ignoring the chance of being hit by a car there are wild dogs everywhere whom it would be helpless against. We leave the baby behind and drive up about a mile of 2 ahead to see a woman running down the road asking our driver if we had seen her baby. He reminded her of where she had left him and she ran on back down the road. How weird is that? Who loses a baby??!!!

The second strange experience was when I had to pee in front of an audience. A large curious audience! About 4.5 hours into our adventure the pot of chai tea I had for breakfast caught up with me and I had to go NOW! I asked the guide, when we stopped at the UNICEF house, where I could use a bathroom. He beckoned the lady who was running the program to show me so she, along with the entire school house of children..10+ kids following closely behind took me out back to a field behind the house and pointed to the ground... then they all proceeded to stand about 4 feet from me and watch intently and giggle while I peed. Very weird.

Sue getting dressed up and the little girls who made me take endless photos to they could see them on the digital camera!

Goat induced traffic jam.

Jodhpur : The Blue City

On the top of the fort...notice the great blue houses below.

Common site in India: Cow eating something that is neither food nor nourishing. Here a delicious plastic shopping bag.

How to jack a car in India.

Cool blue streets.

On the walk down from the fort...the old city peeks through.


View from the top!


Seriously...who shows up at the airport without confirming their departure time before hand??? Who does that?! As it turns out we are officially retarded. We booked our flight to Jodhpur two months ago and then just waltzed into the airport this morning without a care in the world and also without at any point checking or confirming the flight. How this escaped both of us is beyond explanation. Anyway, our 9:05am flight had been rescheduled to 11:40am weeks ago and we ended up waking up at 6:30am and sitting for 4 hours in the Udaipur airport completely unnecessarily with no one to blame but ourselves! Oh well, lesson learned. The flight itself took 35 minutes and was uneventful. On the bright side, we had a train booked for the 24th for a long 6am-1pm trip heading to Jaisalmer- which we were dreading... India trains, as we have learned, are always late! They always leave on time from the origin station but as the trip progresses they get later and later so if you are getting on later in the trip the more delayed it will be... a few days ago we realized that the train from Jodhpur to Jaisalmer starts in Delhi(a loooong way from Jodhpur) so in reality, by the time it gets to Jodhpur to pick us up the scheduled 6am with turn into 8,9 or 10am and who knows when it will arrive in Jaisalmer. So...anyway the plane we were on to Jodhpur was travelling onward to Jaisalmer after it dropped us off... to our surprise! When we booked the tickets a few months ago the Jaisalmer airport had been shut down for some time due to problems with it being too close to Pakistani air space due to the conflict there. Apparently it has been open for a month now and has a daily flight to Jaisalmer taking 50mins. We got on the computer immediately at the hotel in Jodhpur and booked 2 tickets to Jaisalmer for $100 each and cancelled our train from hell. Yeah!

We headed into town this afternoon to see the giant Jodhpur fort and the old blue city. Jodhpur is the second largest city in the state of Rajasthan, India. It is also known as the Gateway to Thar (due to its location on the edge of the Thar desert), Sun City (due to the many sunny days), or the blue city (due to the large number of blue houses). Founded in the mid-15th it is protected still by a high, fortified wall that stretches for more than 10kms – accessible by gates in eight different places. It was quite spectacular and in excellent condition...and had stunning views of the blue houses surrounding it below.

I also, on a whim, stopped to have my palm read. This really bizarre man, who would stop the reading occasionally to hork up a chunk of phloem and spit it in his garbage can,(super disgusting but made us laugh at it's grossness/inappropriateness) read my palm for several minutes sprouting out statements regarding my health, personality and disposition followed by a few predictions. Then at the end of the reading he says in this large run on sentence " you are very fertile.. you can have lots of kids even in your 40's and 50's if you want.. I read nothing else in your palm... I am done here. Goodbye" then he basically shut himself off, handed me receipt and ignored us as we walked away. It was strange experience! Also, he fortold that I will live into my 80's and have high blood pressure in my 40's and 50's as well as a list of other life details! I plan on getting a second reading, perhaps in Jaisalmer, to compare and contrast the two. Very amusing and highly entertaining for about $4 canadian!

We wondered around the old city for a bit until the chaos and livestock got the best of us as headed back to the hotel where I had a great buffet feast!

Shopping Chaos. India's answer to Safeway at 5:30pm

Tomorrow we have scheduled a 4 hour tour of the surrounding small villages starting at 8am and then we plan on spending a lazy afternoon here at the hotel reading in the courtyard and enjoying the beautiful weather and blue relatively smog-free skies of Jodhpur.

Udaipur Days 2 and 3

Me on Muval and Sue on Madame

We are having an awesome time in Udaipur! Yesterday we had a leisurely breakfast on the roof top patio of our hotel and then rented a paddle boat and made our way around the lake and got the close up views of it's palaces for 2 hours....followed by an even more leisurely lunch.

They have these fabulous couch/bed like window seats in all the restaurants that you can crawl up on and have "breakfast in bed" we stretched out on one with a superb view and had a relaxing feast.


Then we took a rickshaw to the bottom of a mountain that offers a great sunset view...you can climb up or take these sunshine village like gondolas up. We took a gondola up and the stairs down after enjoying the sun set over the lake in behind the mountains. Then we walked back to the hotel and had ice cream and marsala chai for dinner...no rules in India!


The views from sunset point

Today we went out to a ranch about 25 mins outside of Udaipur up the hills and went on a 2 hour horseback trail ride though the villages. It was really fun. Uta, our guide, who runs the ranch with her husband taught us how to trot and canter...which, while fun, was hard on my bottom! My horse, at the end, tried to overtake Sue's horse while we were cantering and ended up forced into a gully and when faced with a large cactus bush decided to do some show jumping and flew in the air full run causing me yet another startling wildlife encounter! I did survive and somehow didn't fall off and break something! Also traumatic: While we were on our trail ride the farm dog tagged along with us. We stopped at some point to point out a really cute baby goat on the side of the road...it was maybe one day old, black and fluffy with these big floppy ears.....we barely said "awwwww" when the farm dog attacked and killed it right before us and Uta couldn't get him off in time. Very sad. Poor little guy!

This afternoon we took an Indian cooking course! It was very fun and we learned how to make all sorts of the different Indian meals which we have been enjoying so far. I am especially excited about the Marsala chai I learned to make...after drinking a pot or 2 every day out here I may need to make some at home!!

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Tomorrow morning we leave our favourite little town and fly to Jodhpur at 9am.

Me and Sue on the roof top patio of our hotel

Udaipur : The Venice of India

The city of Udaipur is drastically different than any town we've seen in India. Here there are no loud congested headache inducing streets...instead they are replaced by narrow, hilly lanes weaving between old hotels, shops, and homes. Many of the streets were barely wide enough for a rickshaw which eliminates most of the crazy traffic, leaving them quiet and easy to explore. To top it off, looking like it is afloat in the middle of the lake, is the Lake Palace. Once a royal summer retreat, it is now the fanciest of luxury hotels and can only be visited if staying($1000/night or dining($75+ insanely expensive for India). It was one of the feature filming locations in James Bond movie Octopussy. A lot of the town's numerous rooftop restaurants try drawing in diners with nightly showings of the movie advertised on signs everywhere! The lake is man-made, built hundreds of years ago by Rajastani royalty to encircle their palaces built right in the middle of the lake...the lake had been empty for a few years not so long ago due to droughts in the area, which totally killed off the tourist business, but after a heavy rain in 2006 it is now full again!

We both fell in love with this city right away, it has a great vibe. Quiet, clean by India standards, and with fabulous shopping...in fact, the only good shopping so far! There are many art galleries and I found some great original prints that I bought to frame at home. We wondered the streets for hours without getting burned out(a miracle in this country) and it was really refreshing. We are staying in a great hotel right on the lake with stunning views of the palace. It has a rooftop restaurant where we ate dinner while watching the sunset behind the mountains. Totally magical! We are going to have a great sleep-in tomorrow after 2 early safari days and a night train last night we are in need of some rest! Tomorrow we are going to take a boat ride and travel up on of the surrounding mountains to watch the sunset in the evening. The next day we are signed up for a 4 hour Indian cooking class in the afternoon and are super excited.

Ranthambhore National Park

The Ranthambhore National Park is spread over 282 square kilometers and lies in the Sawai Madhopur district of eastern Rajasthan. It is right now the only forest reserve in Rajasthan state where tigers exist. During the 19th century the forests of Ranthambhore were the private hunting reserves of the Jaipur and Karauli royal family. In the early 20th century there was an estimated tiger population in India of 45 000, in the 1970's a tiger census revealed only 1827 tigers and recently the estimate is only 1411 adult tigers in existence in all of India. Due to the preservation laws over the last 3 decades Ranthambhore has became the best place in the world to see wild tigers. The tiger population has gradually recovered and in 2002 the Park counted nearly 35 tigers, a density of nearly 10 tigers per 100 square k.m. – which is one of the highest in the world. It is among the few places in the world where Bengal tigers can be observed at close quarters.


Ranthambhore national park is not just the home of the Tiger but also that of the leopard, striped hyena, sloth bear, jungle cat, wild boar, crocodile and over well over 300 species of birds over 35 species of reptiles and over 300 species of plants.
The preservation groups still fight illegal poaching of the tigers for their bones, skins, teeth, nails among other parts that are used in Chinese medicine. This contributes to at least one tiger death everyday in India.


Our Tent Hotel: The Ramthambhore Bagh

The Ranthambhore Tiger Reserve is the single largest expanse of forest left intact in India and the areas surrounding the Tiger reserve have been totally deforested and as a result, the Ranthambhore tiger reserve is now an ecological island surrounded by farmlands and overgrazed pastures.

We arrived in Sawai Madhopur Friday night after a shockingly uneventful and easy train experience. The Ranthambhore Bagh is the name of our hotel...well, not hotel so much as tents in the forest....These aren't your normal camping tents! They actually pour foundation and have electricity and plumbing and a tall fancy tent on top of all this! This, of course, seemed horribly romantic and cool looking at the pictures on the website (and even in person) until.....well, lets just say we were not alone in our tent- having later discovered several points of access and egress for crafty wildlife!!!
I was rudely woke at 615am yesterday to a scurrying sound and opened my eyes to see a rather robust rodent climb down the wall of the tent 1 foot from my head...I bolted upright and armed with my flashlight peered from a crack in the mosquito nest in search of the intruder...to no avail. When our alarm went off at 6:30am I greeted Sue with "good morning" followed closely by "I don't want to alarm you..." We never did see the mouse again but too extra precautions with our luggage!
Then last night, as I am laying out my clothes for the early safari, I picked up my jacket which was hanging on a hook and as I grab onto the hood to unzip it I feel something move under my hand followed closely by a long tail poking out....I throw the coat on my bed and scream hysterically while a large lizard sits poking out of the hood of my coat. Sue started screaming...stopped to photograph it, followed by more screaming. Just as we were arming ourselves and plotting the plan for lizard removal he scampered off the bed and up the wall to the ceiling where he kept a close eye on us all night...I was so freaked out I made sue empty my entire luggage and search for wild life...I also made her tuck the mosquito net in under the mattress on all 4 sides so I didn't wake up spooning with anything.

Not to be stingy with the wildlife encounter stories...I was also chased by a monkey. Note to self: do not eat an orange in front of a wild monkey while trying to take a photograph of it at close quarters. He was quite large and chased me for about 50 feet around the Ranthabhore fort screeching....I put the orange in my pocket and screamed like a school girl and he finally gave up. Talk about an adrenalin rush....I'm officially an idiot.



The Ranthambore Fort is located at the top of a rocky outcrop in the middle of the forest. The fort is huge and covers an area of approximately 7 kilometers in circumference. It is one of the oldest forts in the country and is said to have been built in 944 AD . Due to it's location and structure, it is considered to have been one of the most difficult forts to overthrow. It is said that more than ten thousand women committed mass suicide by burning themselves from the fort to escape being taken prisoner by Khilji and the barbaric invading armies. In 1528, the reign of the fort went into the hands of the Mughals and even the great emperor "Akbar" is said to have stayed at the fort between 1558 and 1559.








The first thing that hits you is the breathtaking view in every direction. The interiors of the fort are also stunning. The entire fort is dotted with beautiful temples and also a mosque. The most famous of these being the temple dedicated to Lord Ganesha. It is said that devotees actually send in letters to the God at this temple, which are brought up daily by the local postman.
We took a tour of the fort through the hotel and it was really amazing....except for the monkey infestation! We went from saying things like "Oh! look at the monkeys!" "Aren't they cute?!" "Look! This one's posing for my picture" to within an hour: "those bastards" "fucking monkeys!" "Watch out for the monkey!!!!!" We were travelling with a nice family from Delhi and their 8 year old daughter was pushed over by one of the monkeys and later their 15 year old son, who was carrying a necklace in his hand which they thought was food, was attacked by 3 of them and they were hanging from his hand until he opened it to show them it wasn't food!

We took 3 safaris into the forest to search for the elusive tiger! One in the morning and two in the afternoon. We were very lucky and saw a tiger on our first safari...it was pretty amazing! The guides find them by listening to the alarm calls of different animals and following tracks. We also saw: crocodiles, owls, wild peacocks, wild boars, spotted deer, antelope, and tons of different birds! The animals are quite used to the jeeps and you can get very close to them.

Where's Waldo? Can you spot the tiger?

It's been an awesome 2 days here in the park and we had an amazing experience! Tonight we have a final meal here. They have the most delicious Rajasthani food I've tasted so far on this trip! Later we take a night train at 1135pm to Udaipur.
No more tents, thank god!!!! If only I could say the same for monkeys....

Jaipur Day 2

At the Royal Palace

Jantar Mantar: the observatory

No it's not a skatepark! These are instruments to observe the position of the planets, sun and read horoscopes.

The streets of Jaipur

Hawa Mahal: Jaipur's landmark

In front of Hawa Mahal

Jaipur traffic from the back of our auto-rickshaw...camels welcome.

Me and Sue at Jantar Manter

The City Palace

Today we had a lazy morning and read by the pool until 1pm when we decided that we would at some point have to leave the oasis that is our hotel and enter India.

We took a taxi into the old walled pink city to see the sites. We went to the City Palace first then to Hawa Mahal (Jaiper's main landmark..a large pick honeycombed sandstone building that was built in the 1700's by the maharaja so the royal ladies could watch the goings on in the city below) and Jantar Manter, the observatory: a courtyard of what looks like bizarre sculptures but they are all instruments to calculated the position of the planets , the time of day and the movement of the horoscopes.

We wandered around a bit afterward appreciating the sheer volume of homeless livestock mulling around and found an auto-rickshaw to take us home...at one point we were sharing the road with cars, rickshaws, cows, goats, stray dogs, monkeys, motorcycles, bikes, horse and carts, a man riding horseback, a camel pulling a huge cart, and hundreds of pedestrians trying to cross through the mess...then on top of that imagine everyone who owned a horn honking it...constantly..... Chaos this country!

Tomorrow afternoon at 5:15pm we take a 2 hour train to the Ranthambhore National Park...well, actually to a city called Sawai Madhopur about 10km outside of the park where we will get picked up and taken to our tents inside the park! We are staying for 2 days in the park and taking 2 Safaris, one morning and one evening, in hopes of seeing wild Bengal tigers...this is the only park in Rajasthan which still has tigers and the best place to spot one: so finger's crossed! There may or may not be reliable Internet access so don't panic if we are not heard from for 3 days! I am off again to feast on delicious Indian food..I can smell my dinner from here! YUM!

Jaipur : The Pink City

We spent our last afternoon in Agra visiting Fatephur Sikri. It is a ghost town about an hour drive from the city.
Akbar, the most famous Mongol emperor, moved his capital here and it was inhabited for about 15 years before water shortages and Akbar's death caused everyone to abandon it...It is a beautiful fort enclosed city, compete with moat ,that is in amazing condition... considering it was left empty in the 1500's.

We had quite the adventure getting there and almost died in 2 head on bus crashes with in 10 minutes of each other. The first one was when our driver was driving in the wrong lane to avoid a cow on the road...just then a bus came around a blind corner causing both vehicles to swerve narrowly missing each other. The second was while on the highway(scarier....oh, did I mention there are no seat belts in the cars?) travelling highway speeds when I looked ahead and saw a huge bus driving towards us in our lane...and then it was like him and our taxi driver were playing a game of chicken seeing who would give first! Me and Sue were staring ahead with shock... eventually they both swerved at the last minute (the bus actually tipped up on 2 wheels it turned so hard) and we missed by a couple inches...it scared the crap out of us. It was close. The traffic here is frightening at best..no traffic laws, each man for himself : but it's generally at lower speeds in the city so accidents wouldn't be too bad but this one was freaky. We're gonna try to stay off the highway unless we're in the bigger vehicle!

Last night we took a train from Agra to Jaiper. It was a 4 hour train ride and also quite the adventure. Train stations in India defy description...I would take a photo but not only would it NOT capture the crushing chaos, I would get trampled or at least get my ass grabbed 10 times if I tried to pull off such a feat and distracted myself from a state of hypervigilence! The train stations are in completely run down buildings...filled beyond any safe capacity with people and livestock and ...name it! It's war in there...fighting for space, fighting to get through with your bags....it sucks the life out of you! Last night we showed up and NO WHERE did it say which of the tracks our train was on... we had no idea where to go and the train was going to leave in 20 minutes. The trains aren't labelled, the tracks aren't really labelled...it's a mess! So I camped out with our bags while Sue attempted to ask some one. There is a Ticket Enquiry room and a loud group of 20 Indian men crowding it out-shouting each other...no line up so much as a match of who can shout the loudest! Sue, thankfully very assertive, shouted her way to the front, slammed the ticket against the glass and demanded directions...only to be directed to another window...who after a similar shouting match directed her back to the first window. Frustrated she came back to find me and we got directions in the end from two of the security officers and a young boy who kindly helped us out. Then the train arrives and we have NO idea where our seats are...again, Sue finds the conductor and he gets someone to take us there...it is truly painful...and completely exhausted us. Thankfully the train was on time and we arrived in Jaiper at 11pm...our pre-arranged driver was there this time and took us to our oasis of a hotel, which we love!!!

Our Beautiful Jaiper hotel "Jas Vilas"

We are now in Jaiper! Jaipur is also known as the Pink City. Jaipur's pink color goes back to the early 1900's when Jaipur city was getting ready to welcome the Prince of Wales and needed a fresh coat of paint. But the contractor's inability to provide any other color except the pink saw Jaipur washed in pink. The city of has beautiful hilltop fortresses, magnificent royal palaces and historic pink-painted sandstone architecture.

Today we had a lazy day. We slept in, had a wonderful breakfast by the pool, spent a few hours this afternoon shopping followed by reading poolside! Tomorrow we are taking a half day sightseeing tour..we feel like being babysat for a bit! Tonight I eagerly await my Indian buffet dinner served by the pool in the courtyard : )

The Taj Mahal

Well, Agra is the land of the no-show. The taxi we arranged to show up at 1:30pm to take us to Fatepur Sikri yesterday didn't arrive (he must have received a better offer) and by the time we got another one it was too late in the afternoon to head an hour out of town so instead we went to see the Agra Fort, the Baby Taj, and then we had the driver take us to see the Taj Mahal on the other side of the river...these are good views of the sunset and it is free to view it there. We hired the driver, Satish, for 2 days...He also took us to the Taj Mahal this morning and will show up at 12noon(god willing) to drive us an hour out of town to fatphur Sikri this afternoon and to the train station tonight.

We were so exhausted last night we literally ordered banana splits for dinner and had them delivered to the room and ate them on the bed in our pajamas...I was asleep by 8pm! We woke up at 6am to go see the Taj Mahal this morning...it was as amazing and beautiful as you would expect! It was very foggy this morning and it seemed to float on a cloud...very ethereal and great to see but not so much for photography! The inlay work in the white marble is so intricate and hard to imagine how time consuming it would have been to construct.

Me and our Rickshaw driver "Baba" outside the Taj Mahal.

The Red Fort

The Taj Mahal seen through the arches of the gate.

At the Taj Mahal

At lunch! Me and a poppadam!

Me at the Baby Taj.

Me and Sue at the Red Fort.

Tonight at 18:20 our train leaves for Jaiper...this one is a 4 hour train so no night trains for a little while! Then we spend 3 days in Jaipur.

I am off now to shower India off of me(a fruitless activity!) and then we have to check out by 12pm!

Agra

This morning me and Sue arrived in Agra on the night train from Varanasi...the night train from hell!!!! I exaggerate but seriously: the train station double booked one of our beds with another tourist...luckily we got on the train first and were sitting in it( possession is truly 9/10ths of the law) but since they were short a seat he sat in the seat of this poor Indian man who, now having no seat, we invited to share our small 2 person bench seat! Well, at night you fold down the seats into beds and the Indian man went to his top bunk bed leaving me and Sue to close the curtain and officially assume the property! The couple left without a bed called the conductor who awarded it to us so they had to share a bed spoon-like( we had enough spooning on the plane) We felt bad but it's war on the Indian rails!!!! Then to top it off...the train was 3 hours late arriving in Agra and our driver arranged through the hotel wasn't there! So we got a cab and also arranged with him to drive us later to do all our sight seeing.
Today we are going an hour out of town to see Fatephr Sikri( an abandon ghost town) and then tonight before dinner we are going to a vantage point across the river to view the Taj Mahal at sunset and take photos!

Tomorrow we are waking up at dawn and going onto the grounds of the Taj to see it up close!

The Taj Mahal is one of the world's seven wonders and pretty much everyone has seen countless pictures of it but very few people know the love story behind this monument.

The Taj Mahal is a tomb, and a monument to love. It begins in 1612, when a Persian princess Arjumand Bano married Shah Jahan, the fifth (and most famous) mongal empiror. They fell in love at age 14 when they met randomly at a market. The next day the then Prince made an unusual and bold request to his father(in those days you did not marry for love alone): he had fallen in love at first sight and wanted to marry the princess. His father granted permission and for the entire period before their marriage they were not allowed to meet, a full five years of their engagement passed without ever once laying eyes on each other again.

Finally, on March 27, 1612, when all the calculations of the astrologers were in accord, the long anticipated wedding took place. He gave her the title Mumtaz Mahal (Jewel of the Palace). She was his favorite wife and he was so in love with Mumtaz that he showed little interest in exercising his polygamous rights with the two earlier wives, other than dutifully siring a child with each. She was charitable woman giving food to the peasants and silver to the beggars who called to her each morning outside the brick walls of the palace. She was compassionate and every day would draw up lists of helpless widows and orphans and making certain that the prince attended to their needs. And she was generous by supporting hundreds of poor families and arranging pensions for hundreds more. After giving birth to Shah Jahan's 14th child at age 39 she died in 1631. The emperor was heartbroken and, according to history, the entire court mourned her death for the next 2 years. During this period, there was no music, parties or celebrations of any kind in the entire kingdom. It is even said that, within a few months after the queen's death, the hair and beard of the king had turned white. And Shah Jahan was recklessly determined on building a monument in his wife's loving memory that the world had never seen. A group of the finest architects was assembled to devise a plan for erecting the tomb. A total of 20,000 labourers and a fleet of 1000 elephanst from across the country and the world were employed to work for 22 years continuously. The finest of marbles were procured and precious and semi precious stones were brought from far off places. The Taj Mahal was completed in 1643 and Shah Jahan’s beloved Mumtaz Mahal was finally laid to rest.

Sadly for the Shah, he didn’t get to enjoy the Taj for long. He was imprisoned by his own son who took over the throne in 1658. Either as cruel torture or as a gesture of compassion, he locked his father in a room of the Agra Fort that afforded the elder a clear but distant view of the Taj. When Shah Jahan died 8 years later, he was buried alongside his wife in the Taj Mahal, unaware that his final resting place would later become known as the most beautiful building the world has ever seen. Their real tombs are in a basement of the Taj Mahal.

I just went to second base with an indian woman

Me and Sue on the night train to Varanasi

As you were all tucked in your beds fast asleep I was having my breasts massaged by an Indian woman...yes, it was as weird as it sounds. They have a massage place in the basement of our hotel so me and Sue decided to get massages this afternoon...Sue went first and came back to declare it "interesting" and would provide no further description!

I got stripped naked, flared spread eagle on a wooden massage table, slathered in oil and massaged very thoroughly!! Had to leave the modesty at the door!

TOP: people bathing in the river, and waiting their turn.

BOTTOM: a stealth photo of the burning ghats...notice the piles of wood in the back and the smoke on the left is from 2 burning corpses.

This morning we woke up at 5:30 to take a boat ride up and down the Ganges river at dawn to witness the 1000's of People who everyday have a ritual bath in the water to wash away their sins. It was some tough haggling to get a good price! We met a couple from Ireland and 3 french girls and bargained en Mass to get a better rate...the one french girl was a fantastic haggler and got us all an hour for 500rupees ( about 2 dollars each) We watched thousands of people covering every square inch of the ghats and river in various stages of undress! Very interesting people watching!

Tonight at 18:30 we are off on a night train to Agra(home of the Taj Mahal) So we are very excited! We are going to order an early dinner from the hotel restaurant (which is very good and has not made us sick,so why deviate) and then the hotel has arranged a car to drive us to the train station.

I have been trying to post this blog all day! This is my third attempt...they have rotating, random power outages here all day and night due to the great demand on the electrical system and every time I was almost done I got thrown off of the computer with a blackout! So I guess third times a charm!

Off to Agra!!

Varanasi

Varanasi is one of India holiest cities, it is also one of the oldest living cities in the world. This is the most fascinating city I have ever been to...words can't do it justice. This place is an overload to the senses. Just walking down the maze like labyrinth of streets you are dodging stray cows, cow patties, goats, stray dogs, fighting monkeys, cricket balls from playing children, motorbikes, hundreds of people, and funeral processions! Everything is coming at you at once...you look down to avoid a goat and run head on into a cow or a motorcycle! We took a night train from Delhi and arrived at 8am...we somehow found our driver(miracle in the zoo that was the Varanasi train station!) and with the help of a few dozen men who pushed the car to get it started headed into the heart of town....complete with 100 meters of driving the wrong way down a road and honking the horn as cars, cows and motorbikes parted like the red seas! The city of Varanasi is to Hindus as Mecca is to Muslims or the Vatican is to Catholics: Once in every lifetime an observant Hindu hopes to make a pilgrimage to the holy city of Varanasi and many spend a lifetime planning and saving for the visit. Varanasi is a city where many people come to die. It is said to die here and have your body cremated and ashes spread into the Ganges river will liberate you from the endless cycle of birth-death and re-birth. More than 1,000,000 pilgrims visit the city each year. Some come to wash away sickness and sin in the sacred Ganges River...others bring their dead to be burned...still others come to live their last days here. There are hospices behind where they burn the bodies where people live while they wait to die...you only have 24 hours from death until you have to be burned. Me and Sue walked over to the burning ghats this morning...they cremate 2-300 bodies here every day, 24 hours a day right on the steps that lead into the river. The oldest son of the dead person is the one who lights the fire...before hand he has to have his head shaved, they rub he body with oils, wrap it in a shroud (colorful red for women white for men) and the family carries the body through the streets to the ghats(all of this in front of you and a crowd of family members)....The family men all chant a sing song prayer at the top of their lungs as they carry the body through the streets, you can hear them coming and have to stand out of the way fast as the whole group of mourners streams through the streets chanting and carrying the body of their loved one(family women not allowed as in the past they have been known to throw themselves onto the burning body of their loved ones). Once they get to the ghats they have to bath the body in the river which purifies it then the oldest son starts the fire and the body is placed on it covered by more wood(sandalwood and other fragrant wood used so you cannot smell burning flesh). After 3 hours when the body is completely burned the ashes are put in the river where people sift through the water/ashes looking for any jewelry from the corpse. We watched for about an hour and they had a constant stream of bodies coming in and going out with 8-10 cremations going on at any given time in various stages(Sorry photography NOT allowed)....Cows would come walking up mid cremation and start eating the clothing of the burning body. The Ganges river runs through Varanasi. Each ghat(a series of steps leading down into the river) has a different meaning and purpose, some are for bathing, some are for washing your laundry, some are for washing your buffalo's and a few are reserved for cremating the dearly departed. Some of the bodies of those that are already considered pure such as babies, pregnant women and holy men are laid to rest directly into the river with rocks to weigh them down....and also anyone killed by a snake bite is set adrift on banana trees in hope they will come back to life. Life on the banks of the Ganga begins before dawn when thousands of pilgrims - men, women and children - come down to the river to wait for the rising sun when immersion in the sacred river will cleanse them of their sufferings and wash their sins away. The most suitable time for this ritual is at the time of sunrise, at this time besides bathing devotees also offer prayers to the sun. People bath in the river all day though...you can watch them all up and down the river cleaning them self in pubic with no modesty! Saw a lot of naked indian men today!

Interesting fact about the Ganges river....the same river used by roughly 60000 people each day to bath and wash clothes...it is so heavily polluted that the water is septic(meaning no dissolved oxygen exists)। In tests it has 1.5 million fecal coliform bacteria per 100ml of water( to be safe for bathing this number should be less than 100). Tonight we are going down to the river at 18:30 to watch the evening ceremonies and tomorrow morning we are up at 5:30 to take a boat ride up and down the river at dawn to watch the peak of the action!

Delhi Day 2

Me and Sue were so exhausted last night after being awake for practically 2 days that we literally lost consciousness right after dinner and slept for 12 hours! I feel like I am

officially switched over to Delhi time( 12.5 hours ahead of Calgary time) now. We had the most fabulous home cooked Indian meal last night, I am falling in love with Indian food. Neither of us has been sick at all(knock on wood) so that is good news...but we haven't eaten anywhere but our hotel and brought a bunch of fruit/veggie/snacks from home that we mixing in with the local food supply as not to overwhelm our stomachs. I keep trying to upload a couple neat videos we shot yesterday but am having trouble with the computer here so will keep trying at further destinations! Tonight at 18:30 we have to catch a night train to Varanasi(13 hours) so decided to have a lazy day. We are getting kicked out of our room at noon so Sue is swimming laps in the pool before her shower as I write this and I am going to shower and get packed up soon. Later today we plan on walking to Lodi garden..it is walking distance from here and supposed to be large beautifully tended gardens within a bunch of ruins and crumbling tombs from the 15th century. Then we are going laze around here and read by the pool until 16:30 when we will take a cab to the train station and give us lots of time to figure it out and find out train!

PICTURES OF OUR HOTEL: LUTYEN BUNGALOWS

Delhi

We Made it! We survived the first 9 hour flight to London OK, had a quick 2 hour layover and then the fatigue hit us about an hour into our 2nd 9 hour flight to Delhi. We slept so poorly trying to sleep sitting up with no leg room on the fight to London that after much consideration/planning/laughing hysterically we somehow managed to spoon across the 2 seats all pretzel like and slept like babies...so we both actually felt pretty good today.

Our driver we arranged through our hotel met us at the Delhi airport(sight for sore eyes) and brought us to our wonderful oasis in the middle of New Delhi. The air here is smoggy..kinda thick, mildly humid and smells rather polluted(but not as bad as I was warned about). I have a mild smoker's cough after about 12 hours in it( Delhi air is supposed to be so polluted that breathing it in each day is the equivalent of smoking 20 cigarettes) The traffic isn't as bad as I was expecting...crazy for sure, but on a scale of 1 to Cairo it is only a 4...at least all the cars so far have had seat belts! The Hotel is beautiful...it is a small guesthouse run by a very nice and helpful lady named Shukla...we were greeted at 6am with a delicious breakfast and chai tea (Just what we needed) and we are eating dinner here tonight too.

We got into our room at 10am, showered and decided to hire a Private driver for the day (since it is only about $20) and we hit 5 tourist sites: The red fort, Himalaya's Tomb, The Gandhi memorial where he was shot, Quinta Minor, and a huge mosque. We went hard from 11am to 4:30pm! Lot's of cool stuff to see and do but after 5 hours we started to tire so just headed back to the hotel about an hour ago to await our 7pm dinner.

So far we are loving India...Delhi has been fun and noisy! It will be nice to hit some of the smaller towns and escape all the honking and smog though. Tomorrow we are going to do a bit of shopping in the morning followed by some R&R by the pool in the afternoon before we have to head off for the train station to take our night train to Varanasi.

I got some great video of our plane spooning and a terrifying attempt at crossing 8 lanes of traffic(complete with screaming) but the computer here can't seem to upload them so I will try again elsewhere.

Sorry to hear about your snow situation....the weather here today was 30C. Loving it!

India here we come!

We are off to India!!

I am heading to India tomorrow with my best friend Sue.

In the next 30 days we will visit 10 cities over 4 states.

We will travel 3497Km over 8 train trips and 2971Km over 3 flights.

I hope you enjoy reading my travel blog, I will be updating frequently and hopefully adding photos as I go. There is a link to Sue's blog on the right side of your screen. Feel free to leave comments or contact me through my email address!

India Itinerary

November 4 8:10pm Leave Calgary fly to London

November 5 12:15pm Arrive London, 15:20pm Fly to Delhi

November 6 4:55am Arrive Delhi

November 7 Delhi, Overnight train to Varanasi

November 8 Varanasi

November 9 Varanasi, Overnight train to Agra
November 10 Agra
November 11 Agra, Day trip to Fatehpur Sikri, Evening train to Jaipur

November 12 Jaipur
November 13 Jaipur
November 14 Jaipur, Evening train to Ranthambhore National Park

November 15 Ranthambhore National Park
November 16 Ranthambhore National Park, Overnight train to Udaipur
November 17 Udaipur

November 18 Udaipur
November 19 Udaipur
November 20 9:05am Leave Udaipur fly to Jodhpur, 9:55am Arrive Jodhpur

November 21 Jodhpur
November 22 Morning train to Jaisalmer
November 23 Jaisalmer

November 24 Jaisalmer, evening train to Jodphur
November 25 1:30pm Leave Jodhpur fly to Delhi, 3:00pm Arrive Delhi
November 26 12:45pm Leave Delhi fly to Goa, 3:15pm Arrive Goa
November 27 Goa
November 28 Goa
November 29 Goa
November 30 Goa

December 1 Goa, Overnight train to Mumbai

December 2 Mumbai

December 3 2:40am Leave Mumbai fly to London, 6:55am Arrive London,

2:55pm Leave London fly to Calgary, 5:20pm Arrive Calgary