Delhi, the 3rd group, and Shimla

We took an overnight train back to Delhi from Ajmer, which is about an hour's drive from Pushkar. I think I've spent too much time on Indian trains already...this experience wasn't anything more exciting. I did keep a few people up with my snoring (I caught a cold and was all stuffed up)...that made me chuckle in the morning.

I hung about Delhi for a day and just rested for most of the day. My roommate Andy and I tried to make up for our beer deprivation in Pushkar so we had a couple. At dinner, the group parted and said gave farewells. I made some good friend in those 2 weeks...I hope to keep in touch with them down the road. David and Karie convinced me to alter my travel plans so that I'd stay in Hong Kong for a few days around Chinese new year. I'll do that on my way back to Canada.

The next day, I met up with Lara, an aussie whom I met on the first tour. We had lunch, then and a nice chat. Then we parted ways and I went back and met up with the third group for dinner.

Yesterday morning...back on the train ! This time a full day's journey north to Shimla in the mountains.

Pravin on the toy train:



Shimla during the day:



Shimla during the night:



I like Shimla a lot. It's really mountainous, but quiet and cool. A big change from the desert of Rajasthan and the noise and hustle of Delhi. The place is very scenic...very nice. Wish I could stay longer, but we're due to depart tomorrow morning.

Beware of the monkeys though...the Rhesus Macaques here are very agressive. They will jump on you and steal your glasses because they know that they'll get food in return for them. If you are walking along eating something, they will try to steal it from you and scare you into throwing your food away and running. You can rent a monkey stick for rupees to hit on the ground and threaten them to turn away. Oh...they also don't like having their pictures taken.

Why I didn't like Pushkar...

There's really not much to do around there except sit around at cafes or shop. There also seems to be some organized crime at work there, because it seems like there are a lot of drugs going around the place. There's also a big tourist rip-off scheme at work there...it's pretty elaborate. Here's how it works:

The bait:
Some guy comes up to you and tells you he's a brahmin (hindu priest)...he's dressed pretty normally, but shows you a string from under his shirt that's supposed to be proof that he's a priest. He asks you to drop the water in the lake because it's a holy place. You take the flower and head down to the lake via one of the 52 ghats (or series of steps) and starts the supposed blessing ritual.

The hook:
He then has this kit of flower petals, rice grains, and red paint. He begins a mantra or chant that you're supposed to repeat. The ritual involves a lot of repitition, water, throwing the petals in the water, etc. At this point, he pretty much has you and now he asks you to pledge a donation. Whatever amount you say, he will tell you to give much more...in US dollars or euros. If you resist, he will say something about it being bad karma. When you agree...he then goes into another repitition and water and blessing ritual. Then he will double the amount you had said previously, because the intial donation was for a charity, and now the second one is for him because he's a priest and has no work and this is how he supports his family. You will probably agree at this point even if you don't like it.
Then he says thank you...another blessing ritual. Then he places the red hindu welcome mark on your forehead and ties a string around your wrist to show that you have already been blessed.

The Sinker:
He now asks you to had over the money you pledged. Half of it then goes to the supposed charity guy and he keeps the rest. Then they send you on your way and thanking you. You walk around pushkar and all of a sudden every street vendor, beggar, and store keeper are asking you to come in and buy something. The mark on your forehead is apparently a big sucker sign.

I thought that I was pretty street smart at this point, but I fell for this scheme and ended up giving $10 canadian. Others I know got taken for $25 US. I'm pretty sure that there's an organized crime element in the area that's behind all the drugs and these schemes. Once you accept that initial offering of the flower, you submit your will to theirs and your done. They're really good at what they do and the whole setup is slick and elaborate.

It's a shame that it happens in such a holy place. You can go to the Brahma temple, drop a flower in the lake, and get similar sort of blessing with no pressure for a donation. The only money you hand over is what you are willing to donate and you put that yourself into a donation box. I was already turned off by the whole place so I never went to the temple, but I've been told that that's the proper way that things should be done.

_________________________

There's also a large Israeli presence in Pushkar. The story goes that a lot Israeli soldiers that finish their tour of duty leave Israel and go to Pushkar to find a spiritual experience. I also saw some rabbis there who apparently go there to try and bring those soldiers back into the fold of Judaism.

There are a lot of other people trying to find God or themselves in Pushkar...it seemed like a hippie commune at times. All in all, I just had a bad vibe about the place. If anyone plans to go to Pushkar, go for the camel fair or go just for a day...not more.

Pushkar

Pushkar is a holy city of about 7000 people with a small lake. The story goes that Lord Brahma was flying by on a lotus flower and one of the petals fell to the ground and formed the lake. Pushkar also has the only temple dedicated to Brahma in the world and it is also a destination for hindu pilgrims.

Because it's such a holy place, there's no eggs, fish, meat, or beer. We spend 3 days and 2 nights there...too much time in my opinion.

We did go on a camel ride...I was excited to go on it, but rather sore by then end of it. Here are some nice pics from the ride:





Pushkar is also known for the camel fair that runs around the end of October and the beginning of November. Apparently we were a few days early...too bad, I would have liked to see it in action. Apparently the base model camels go for 10,000 rupees (@38 rupees per canadian dollar...that's around $260 !). The top model camels run for about 40,000 rupees or $1,050. The best buy, I'm told, is the mid-range camel for about 25,000 rupees. What's the difference between a top range camel and the base model camel ? Well...the top range camel is healthy, intelligent, and fully trained to obey voice commands. The base model camel is old, weak, and pretty dumb.
The mid-range camel is somewhere in between...

Bijaipur

There's another really nice hotel in Bijaipur that used to be a maharajah palace and now converted into a classy hotel. If this sounds similar to some previous posts that's because we were touring the Indian state of Rajasthan...literally meaning the land of kings, or Raj's.

The hotel was really nice with a nice swimming pool and a ping pong table, but there's not much around the place other than some very rural villages. We ran into a few water buffalo:



And watched the sunset by a nearby water reservoir.



We got up early the next day and headed to Pushkar by car.

Snow in Fort Erie...

I heard a really big snowstorm hit Fort Erie. Hope everyone survived ok.
Anyone get any pictures ? Can you send some ?

Hard to believe...a little early in the year for snow.

Bundi

From Jaipur we went to the Ranthambhore National Tiger Part reserve. We were in a loud diesel powered bus and there were about 5 other similar buses on the same route. Needless to say...no tigers. So there's no real story about Ranthambhore.

Bundi, on the other hand, was a really nice place. There's an old palace there that's abandoned and in disrepair. It's cool to see nature slowly take over...bats have found a home in there and some of the structures were starting to decay. It had some really neat painting in there...really fine delicate art. It used to be a maharajah residence but now it's an attraction. It was really nice because we were pretty much the only people there and no hawkers/vendors.

We also saw the summer residence:



...and a lot of monkeys:

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Apart from that, Bundi is a nice little town. The houses were mostly painted this nice baby blue colour aparently because it's one of the cheapest paints around. Makes for some nice photos...like this goat:

Jaipur

I heard Jaipur was a really cool place, but I didn't really get that. It had some neat places...the city palace and the wind palace. The coolest by far was the Jantar Mantar observatory. Big massive sundials ! I was amazed at how they could carve such straight lines in marble...you'd have to see it to really get it, but I thought it was incredible. The bazaar was interesting too...bought some basic items like toothpaste and underwear (very important...should have packed more to start with). Overall though, I thought it was very similar to other Indian cities.

I did decide to get a haircut though...was starting to look a little shaggy. I asked the barber if he had clippers and he said "yes ! Yes ! Sit down."
I said: "how much ?"
He said: "30 rupees"
I said: "ok" and sat down.
He toweled my head off because I was pretty sweaty, wrapped an apron around me, reached into a box and pulled out the hand shear clippers. I looked at them and said to myself:" this is probably a bad idea, but what the hell, I'll give it a shot".
It was a bad idea...he started getting hand cramps and my head looked pretty patchy. I told him it looked like crap and that I heard that Jaipur barbers were really good, but this was not. He shook his head and said that his arm hurt. I said: "Crap...shave it then." So I left Jaipur as a poor imitation of Ghandi and with a funny story to tell.

Lots to update...

I left my log book back at the hotel and all the days have blurred into each other, so this will be a quick summary of each place since the last update...

Fathepur Sikri:
Nice little town. We toured the Mahrajah palace there. It was pretty elaborate ! The government has taken over it and is updating the place and cleaning it up. Here's a picture of the place:



Afterwards we went to the mosque next door. I didn't enjoy it that much. It had some really neat architectural features, but the hawkers in the place really drive you crazy. We had lunch in the town afterwards and hopped back on a bus to Bharatpur.

Bharatpur:
A lot of the national parks around India are former hunting grounds for the maharajas back in the day. The bird sanctuary at Bharatpur was one of these places. The place was really dry due to insufficient rains this season. They were pumping water from underground wells to create some ponds to attract birds, but they were just starting that when we were there so we didn't see much. It was still nice to go out in nature away from the noise and business of the urban areas. We hired some bicycle rickshaws...Chelsea and I ended up with a tiny 4ft-nothing 50 year-old guy. I felt really guilty having this tiny man cart my ass around. He made a good wage off of it though and we gave him a good tip.

Madhogarh:
Nice area. We stayed at a fort that used to be a residence of the local landlord when India still had a fuedal system. The system no longer exists so the family was renovating the place into a hotel. The idea was nice, but I had the worst night of sleep there and the food wasn't that great. The setting was excellent though...will be really great in a few years. We met 3 americans there...Paul, Katelin, and Jordan (I hope the spelling's right ?). Interesting people...nice to talk to.

The Taj Mahal.

Here it is in all it's glory:



Yeah...it was busy with lots of tourists. I managed to get a good one here:



Overall, the Taj Mahal is impressive, but I wasn't all that excited about it. I thought it was rather plain when I finally saw it. I think the white marble makes it seem fancier for some reason. There are nicer places, in my opinion. The blue mosque in Turkey for example. The Red Fort we saw earlier in the day is the palace of the maharaja that built the Taj. That was a really fancy place ! Really big !

Belated Happy Thanksgiving...

With all the travelling, I forgot all about thanksgiving. Hope everyone had an excellent weekend with family and friends...

Hinduism as I understand it...

I have a clearer picture on Hinduism. It's interesting to note that there is a trinity at work in Hinduism in a similar fashion to Christianity.

The trinity consits of Brahma the Creator, Vishnu the Preserver, and Shiva the Destroyer. Each has the wife/conosort. Brahma has Saraswati, the goddess of learning. Vishnu has Lakshmi, goddess of wealth. Shiva has Parvati, goddess of love.

Ganesh is the son of Shiva and Parvati. The story goes that Shiva was away for a while doing something. While he was gone, Parvati gave birth to Ganesh. When Shiva returned, Ganesh was guarding the entrance. Neither knew each other and they clashed...Shiva being the destroyer and a much stronger being, cut off Ganesh's head. Parvati came upon the scene and was distraught...so Shiva promised to revive Ganesh with the head of the next animal that came by. It happened to be an elephant...hence Ganesh with the elephant head.

Ganesh seems to be the most popular figure, since he's the god that is capable of accomplishing the almost impossible. People pray to him for things that they want in life. The method of prayer is peculiar to outsiders. Once you're at the the shrine, you put your feet together, cross your arms over your chest, and grab your earlobes. i.e. you grab your left earlobe with your right hand and the right earlobe with your right hand. Then you pray to Ganesh for what you want. When your done, you sort of bounce three times by bending your knees...and then you let go of your earlobes and tap your temples three times with your knuckles. It looks a little strange when you see it, but I suppose every religion looks strange to an outsider.

There are other god figures in Hinduism, but every one also has several incarnations. The Buddha, for example is the 9th incarnation of Vishnu (people may disagree on the exact count...). All the incarnations of the different gods add up to about 3 million....each with their own specific story and situation that depicts certain abilities/accomplishments.

The gods can have up to 36 arms...even numbers only...they work in pairs. The idea is that the more arms a god has the more he/she is capable of doing. i.e. more powerful, etc.

Obviously, this was a simple summary of the religion, but it's a bit of an insight.

More on photos...

Unfortunately, connection speed aren't fast enough here where I am...it's a tiny kiosk...I'm surprised it's even here. I've some really nice pics from Mysore and Ooty that I really want to share with everybody. It'll have to wait though...I'll try to find some time in Jaipur a few days from now. It's more of a tourist destination and their bound to have some high speed connections there...

Agra

This morning we boarded a train (yes...I've already had my fill of the trains !) early and after about 3.5 hrs we arrived in Agra. We saw the Red Fort this morning...an impressive structure built during the reign of the Moghul Empire.

We're going to see the Taj Mahal this afternoon. I'm pretty excited to see it up close and personal. We can see it in the distance from the roof top of our hotel.

So far the new group (12 people) has been getting along great. It's a litte different dynamic than the group of six that I was part of before...more canadians this time around. Should be fun.

Delhi

Delhi's interesting place...a mix of modern and archaic. We walked through old Delhi and the spice market there. Really small crowded streets that people still manage to drive scooters and bicycles through.

The train system is really modern though...better than Toronto's TTC if you can believe it. You go to a ticket booth and pay for your destination...the longer you go, the more you pay. They then give you a token to enter the system...it has a chip in it that opens the gates for you. You hang on to the token until you exit the system by dropping it in a slot at the exit gates. The trains run on time (pretty much) and are really clean.

We didn't stick around the city for too long. I don't mind...I'll have my fill of the place by the end of my tour of India.

48 hours on a train from Kochi to Delhi

3 words...don't do it.

I'm a little upset at GAP Adventures for not giving me enough information about this. I was under the impression that the south and north tour was one continuous tour and not two separate ones. It turns out that it's 2 separate 2 week tours on one single booking. They also referred to the train ride as a "high speed" train...there are no high speed trains in India and if they told me that it would take 48 hours I probably would have booked a flight instead and paid the extra money.

But such is life...you live and learn. It turned out that Neil had to make the same journey as well...and even though we booked the train tickets separately we ended up sitting next to each other. Apart from one jerk who came in on the second night, it was pretty uneventful. Just felt like sitting in a moving air-conditioned cell for 2 days.

In any case, I'm in Delhi now and met the second group last night. There are 12 of us this time with Padam Singh as our leader. Seems like a nice bunch...5 canadians this time including me. Should be good.

I'm told that there won't be many chances to do some emailing so the updates may be infrequent. I'll probably try to find a kiosk tonight and put up some pictures.

Masinagudi and Ooty

It's been a whirlwind few days and this is my first real chance to sit down and update the blog. Not much time though, so the pictures will have to wait.

From Mysore (btw...it's pronounced My-soor) we got into a car and went back into the mountains into Masinagudi and the Nigril (sp ?) national park. We stayed at a the Jungle Retreat...a nice little secluded place with an outdoor pool with some spectacular views. The Lonely Planet book for India lists it. Pretty rustic place but very cool. We went on a bit of a safari to try to seem some wildlife, but all we really saw were some spotted deer.

Driving around though, we some some wild elephants. A mother with a calf and another female. We were pretty close to the second one and it didn't seem to like it much so it started to charge the jeep to scare us off. It worked ! Don't wear bright clothes in the sunlight when dealing with an elephant.

The next day we hiked up a mountain for 4 hours. At the top was a rural village planting tea and other crops. Really nice scenery...rolling hilltops with fog streaming over the tops of the mountains. You'd think you were somewhere in Europe rather than India.

From there we went into Ooty to stay at the Ratan Tata Army Officers Holiday House...I think that's how it went. I was a little too tired to take pictures of the place and take a few notes, but it was a really classy place...kind of a throwback to the British colonial days.

We got up early the next day and pretty much rode a bus all day back to Kochi (Cochin) and back into the heat and humidity. We had our last dinner as a group and thanked Peter for leading us on a great 2 weeks.

You're thore !

For those in the know...I finally told that silly joke to the group. Not sure how well it went over, but I got it out of my system...

New photo album

Check out some new pics here. There's also a link in the side bar...

Mysore

We hopped into a car to go from Mamallapurum to Chennai (or Madras) to catch an overnight train to Mysore. Peter said that there wasn't much to see in Chennai, and based on the traffic that we saw, I doubt I would have liked it much anyways. The traffic made rush hour in Toronto seem like a fun thing to do. I was bored so I pulled my camera out and got some great abstract shots...I'll post them on my next internet stop (maybe).

It turns out that we arrived in Mysore in the middle of the Dasora festival...an annual thing for the city, something on the order of a christmas like celebrations. People dress up their cars and autorickshaws and the city is done up. It also means that a lot of people came into the city for the occasion and it's really busy !

The main attraction here is the Maharaja Palace. It's really fancy and the decorations are impressive. The maharaja is only a figurehead now and the palace is a museum/tourist attraction. We had to fight through some crowds to get in and a guide showed us around and explained some of the features, but it was really too busy to appreciate fully.

Along with the festival is a parade that goes through...sort of like a santa clause parade. A few floats go by and an army band, some elephants, and the like. There is also a show at the local arena...sort of a make shift structure that holds a log of people. We went there to see the rehearsal for the show...the highlight is a motorcycle stunt show put on by the police motorcycle unit. The people here get a kick out of it, but we've been exposed to motorcross and the like so I didn't find it all that exciting.

Today we sat by the road and watched the parade go by. I found it really entertaining...there were some very comical scenes. I'll upload the pictures next time I sit down to publish...

Missing photos

I was browsing through my previous album and notice that I missed posting a few pictures...mainly these ones from the Kathakali that turned out great.