Tag: india

Hello folks,

I know its been some time since i’ve posted any news, but its been kind of a problem finding internet access, and also, we havent been all so well lately, but we are getting a lot better now, joys of travelling :)

So last news said we were in Sauraha, seems like that was ages ago, had a nice time in the national park there, saw some crocos, rhinos, loads of nice colored birds, missed out on the tigers and bears though hehe, can’t have them all i guess. We also managed to spend a nice time for Stephs birthday there.

We then left for Kathmandu, and what should have been a 5 hours bus ride turned out to be at least 12 or 13 hours, gotta love check points, and miles of traffic jams in the mountains, but we managed it, waited, at least you can’t starve on the road, there is always people around selling food and drinks. We then spent 6 days in Kathmandu and its valley, especially the valley, visiting, lots of walking, lots of nice things to see, we spent that week with another 2 french guys who were starting their trip, and were going for a 20 days trekking the following week (can’t remember the names of the places we went now, but i’ll look them up at some point). So we spend a few days and evening the 5 of us, been nice to drink again :)

We were then thinking of going to Sri Lanka, but 2 things slowed us down, the first one was all the warnings we had been getting from friends and family about what had been going on the last few days over there, and the second was the price for the plane tickets, so we decided to simply go back down to Calcuta, and decide what we’ll do there. So we did, and after checking a few information sites and all we decided to go south, along the east coast of India, towards Chennai (Madras) and Pondicheri. However the train for Chennai is a 27 hour trip, so that was a BIG no-no in 1 go for us :) So we only took the train for 7 hours or so, down to Bubaneshwar (will have to check spelling). This is were i started to feel sick, so i didn’t see much of it, except for some caves with lots of monkeys hanging around, and the hotel room :)

I guess leaving Nepal and back to India was harder on the stomach that i thought (and it took me a few days to get over it, actually i’m just starting to feel better, a week later). So, we spent a couple days in that place then finally got on the tracks for a good 24 hours of train to Chennai. By that point none of us were feeling very good, so we didnt do much, and just basically hanged around, booked our plain tickets for Sri Lanka, and went off to Pondicheri by bus, and spent another 3 days or so there. There is definately good french cooking over there, but not that much else, temples and churches are … surprisingly colorful, beaches saddely poluted. But we ate good, and got our strength back now it seems as we just arrived back from Pondicheri earlier today.

So, tomorrow morning, gonna get up early, head to the airport, and fly to Colombo.

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I’m posting this from Calcutta (best computers and internet connection so far), where we arrived around midday today, after spending the last 15 or so hours in the train we took in Benares.

Benares is a big and fairly nice city, as long as you are near the Ganja, where there is no roads, only very small, narrow and quite dark streets, where you can find all sorts of small shops, silks of course, but music shops too, quite interesting to be walking down these streets and suddenly hear some sort of techno music in a distance, some drums and flutes in another direction, people shouting and trying to sell their goods, avoiding the bicycles, motorbikes and the holy cows in streets less than 2 meter wide !
Benares is also the city where all hindies want to die.
Thousands of people, bathing and praying in the Ganja river every day, as pure tourists we took a boat to see this ‘scenery’ and discovered thousands of people in that dark brown water before the sun raises. We could also see a fire on the side of the river, obviously someone passing to the other side …

Before Benares we spent a few days in Khajuraho, a not so famous city for some very famous Temples. Everyone has heard of the Kamasutra .. well this is the place it is from. We visited some very nice guardens in which we found a few (6 or so) temples,
some of which have some very nice *hint* sculptures on them, but all are very beautiful however. The city is quite calm, not as calm as Orchha though, but still quite pleasant compared to some other cities we have been through! We ‘lost’ a day here, as we didn’t book our train tickets fast enough, we didn’t realise that what was going to be tomorrow was sunday, and that we wouldn’t be able to book any tickets then, so we did spend a very calm day there.

Now a little information on the buses and trains, in land, there is no roads as we know them, but only paths, which makes short distances very painful in 50 year old mini buses, all wreckling, missing half the windows, you can feel every single stone on the road, and bang your head a few times as you jump off your (hard) benches. One would think trains would be better, well its just a totally different story, no board in stations telling you what platform your train is, very few announcements you can barely understand due to all the noise going around, overcrowded platforms, totally misorganized train stations, having the station manager at one end of platform 5 for some odd reason … so when you finally get into a train, you have to fight your way to your seats, hoping somone isn’t already sleeping in it, in which case you have to wake him up (sometime, you will find several people in your seat !) and try to make him understand he shouldn’t be here … having to be very careful where you walk, people sleeping absolutely everywhere, in the corridors, under the seats, in that small area that links 2 coaches !! in front of the toilets … everywhere …

that basically summarize the fun we have had with trains, and i am still omitting loads of details! the first time we were going to take a train, we took the train just before the one we should have, it was an 8 hour trip, we jumped down 4 hours later somewhere and managed to get onto the train we were suppose to take, hm fun fun … second try was a little more complicated, i asked some military in the station to find me the platform my train will be stopping, he went to find the board … platform 6 .. so off we go, a train is there already, not our train number .. we wait a few minutes, we were early after all, then i discover that our train had been announced on platform 8 but noone had changed the board … so yes you get it, we had missed our train this time ! off i go to find the tourist office, sends me to the controller room in the main station, yep confirmed, train is gone, he sends me to see the station master on platform 5 so i can get another train, he sends me to the other end of the same (thank god) platform to get an authorisation to get onto the next train, that should be coming in in 10 minutes … when we got on that train, it was already packed, so as we couldnt find the train controller, we decided to camp at 1 end of the coach and wait, after an hour, and after trying to explain the situation to a dozen hindies (all very nice, but not very understandeable unfortunately) we finally get our hands on the controller, and put down some extra cash to get in 1st class and finish the night, which we did! Trains are hell …

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Well thats it, we are on the road. After spending a few days in Delhi, we took the road to visit the country, as we slowly head towards Nepal.

Our first stop was in Agra, where you can find the famous Taj Mahal, absolutely beautiful ! all the white marble stones, the incrusted semi precious stones in the wall, and some really nice looking gardens. Hotel was quite nice and fairly peaceful. We managed to get a single room for the 4 of us. The hotel boss has a pretty good french, something quite rare over here.

We then went to Gwalior, very busy place, awful hotel, on the main road, noisy as hell, full of insects (all those crawling thingys), we had to split up in 2 rooms, but noone managed to get much sleep with all the noise in the streets all night long, and all that creeping going around us! However some very nice ruins of an old palace, with a great view of the area.

Next stop was in Orchha, we hadn’t planned to stop there in the first place, but travelling takes so much time, you just need to stop and rest a bit. We were all very surprised however, tiny placem probably just a couple hundred of people in the area. So peaceful, not a single noise, we all enjoyed the night we spent there. There is a huge temple there, we had a nice walk in there, had fun with the monkeys and the birds and huge wasps occupying the place. We saw an amazing sunset from the top of the palace ruins.

We left early in the morning for Khajuraho (Kama Sutra), but this is for next time …

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Well, here we are on the road. We finally managed leaving France an hour later than planned, but all went well.
Planes were full all the way, but we survived.
We met another french guy when arriving at the airport in Delhi so we have been 4 since. We found a nice hotel where we have a relatively nice room for the area.

We have been walking, or at least trying tom as the streets (if we can call them streets, rather some kind of old durty roads) in Old Delhi, probably the hardest thing to start with apparently, thousands of people hanging around, selling everything you could think of, including some nice piece of silks, and hundreds of reekshaw (spelling?) trying to take you everywhere you are trying to avoid. It can get pretty irritating in the end, as they spend all the time using their hooters to call you or tell you to move out of the way, so you keep looking around you, trying to avoid the crowd of people and ‘taxis’ that would probably run over you if you didn’t move out in time.
You can also see loads of cows just hanging around in the streets, quite interesting :)
We had a good walk however, and visited a nice sikh temple.

Today was a calm day, woke up quite late, done some little shopping, for clothes and stuff, and we have been talking about what we would like to go to next. We will be heading east a bit for a few days before going up towards Nepal.
We will be visiting the southern part of Dehli tomorrow, known as New Delhi, a bit more modern apparently.
It is really another world than the one we are used to, but its really full of nice perfumes and colors.
So we are going to be 4, for another week, then that french guy we’ve met will leave us and continue his trip his own way, as he is staying in India for only 2 months, and hadn’t planned on visiting Nepal or Srilanka.

It wasnt very easy to find a computer where i could plug in the cameras we have, so not sure how often i’ll be updating this, or maybe less photos, as the connection isn’t that fast either.

Well time to go get some food, take care folks :)

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