We spend two days with the precious Razdan family, and get a good idea what kind of prices we should we paying for things, and what kind of service we should expect. Deepak takes us to a shopping mall where I search for a sleeping bag without a result, and we eat local sweets which are ridiculously sweet. We also visit a Sikh temple, where each and every visitor is served halva - again ridiculously sweet. Deepak suggests we should claim we have diabetes, and we d...

It's not a long way from Delhi to Jaipur, only 253 kilometers. But I didn't take the straightest route. Here's some turns I've taken.

I wake up in the noisy and ill-aired hotelroom to a ringing phone. Milla, a friend from Helsinki who is currently volunteering in Nepal, is also in town and we agree to meet. Before the appointment we move our things to a better-aired hostel, which we found the day before. The owner charges us one hundred extra because "we arrived so early in the morning". We, two novices, don't have the energy to make a hassle, and bitterly agree. The next hostel, Hote...

There's a word in Finnish called "väkisinmaata" ("lay someone by force"). That word would best describe what happened to me on our first day in Varanasi. As we arrive to Dasaswamedh Ghat, the main ghat, I'm offered a haircut, and I refuse. I refuse a shave as well, and the persistent guy reaches out his hand, as for to shake hands. I shake his hand, and he grabs my fingers with both hands and starts crunching them. "What's this?" I ...

As some of you already know, the beginning of my trip was not the easiest. Leaving the Delhi airport, I got the treatment some would call a classic. I shared a taxi towards town with a Danish girl, Marie, and we took a prepaid one as I had been adviced. The trouble started when I let go of the prepaid taxi reciept, less than a minute after recieving it. This guy comes to face us at the airport exit, asking "prepaid taxi?". I nod and hand the reciept to ...