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Good morning reader,
Yesterday marked the halfway stage of my journey so i am now into the 2nd half of my trip and i hope it proves to be as good as the first half, although it has gone all too quick so far and i am sure time will only speed up on the home run.
Since my last blog i have seen some absolutely amazing sites, had some very long and ardeuos journeys and experienced some of the most different types of culture in my life.
I spent 3 days in Delhi, a city that other travellers told me was a place to get into and get out as soon as possible. However i was determined to make up my own mind on the city and it turned out to be a very nice and pretty place, you just had to dig a bit deeper to find it. After reading about Gandhi, i quite like the man so i went to his national museum to learn a bit more about him before going to the sites where he was shot dead and where he was cremated in Delhi. Later that day i visited what is supposedly delhis top site in the red fort which was very pretty but after all the forts i have been too it didn't really live up to some of the others. It was next to the largest mosque in India which was also a very impressive building.
There are 2 parts to Delhi, New Delhi and Old Delhi, and the next day was spent in New Delhi. This was truely a beautiful place. I went to see where the prime minister lives before walking along this incredible boulevard kinda like pall mall or the centre of Washington DC, to a place called India Gate which is basically an Arch de Triomphe n the centre of Delhi. I then walked around the district where all the important peopl;e live, all with there armed guards sitting on a perch at the gates watching and weighing you up as you go by. Delhi was also a place to stock up on Macdonalds and KFC whcih whilst i absolutely love Indian food was a nice change. I also got to see my first real close up snake charming in Delhi. I was walking along the road and some guy came up to me and i was expecting a sales pitch or something and he opening this basket and it was full of Cobras which he preceeded to play the flute to and they accordingly did the dance!!
After Delhi was Agra, and perhaps the most impressive buiilding in the world - The Taj Mahal. I met my friend Emma (who i spent 2 months with in Africa) and her friend Bethan,. It was nice to have some company for a couple of days and a great place to meet up, Emma was also ablt to take an incredible photo of me and the Taj, which in facebook which i am grateful for, hopefully the ones i took of her and Bethan are as good. I thought after all the hype the Taj gets i may have been a bit disappointed and i didn't see how it could be any better than some of the sites i had already seen but when i got there, it was a definite WOW moment with all the hairs on the back of me neck standing up and everything!! Agra also boasted agra fort and a few other monuments which were nice to visit. The Hotel also had a garden something no other hotel i have stayed in in India had, so i spent a bit of time relaxing and reading on the swinging bench, bliss.
After Agra, i decided to go to a place called Khajuraho which is in the middle of the jungle, where there are many Kamusuta temples, very erotic. The temples were reaqlly impressive, very explicite, like ancient porn!! I also got to bicycle around the countryside between the monuments which was a nice way to spend the afternoon in 40 degree heat like the last month in India!!
However, getting to and from Khajuraho was a bit of a nightmare. The journey there from hotel to hotel took 12 hours, involving a cycle rickshaw for half an hour, a 5 hour train ride and a 6 hour bus ride with ample waits in between and a few more rickshaw rides. From Khajuraho to my next stop Allahabad was even more tiresome!! I was told there was a bus at 6am which may or may not turn up you will find out in the morning. So i set the alarm for 5.15am, have a cold shower and walk 15 mins at dawn to the bus station only unsurprisingly to find the bus is not coming. The bus man calls his rickshaw friend and after a half hour wait i get the rickshaw 10km down the road to the main road. Another half hour wait and a crammed bus comes where i have to stand for the first hour until someone gets of. We then break down in a Tiger reserve (but i had read the previous day that all the tigers had left so i wasn't too worried altho there were a lot of Monkeys around!!) As is custom on Indian buses the bus starts moving when there are only aboput 4-5 people left to get on and you have to jump aboard, usually i am happily onboard by this time. However this time i was second last, so sprinting to keep up the bus i leep holding on as tight as possible to the rails and manage to get on without being sucked under the bus somehow!! I did meet a nice Indian on this bus tho, who altho we didn't speak much insisting on taking a rickshaw with me from the bus to train stations and wouldn't let me pay a penny even tho i tried, he made me put my wallet away, nice man. I then got on an Indian train and managed to secure half a bum cheek as a seat for myself, there must have been about a thousand people in my carriage, men, women and chioldren everywhere. I couldn't help smiling at this point as this was kinda the experience i came to India for, if every journey was like that i may look about 73 now, but as a one off this train ride was an incredible experience.
Allahabad is another holy place in the Hindu circuit (rather convienient for them that a religion predominently found in India and Nepal, that all the holy sites of the world are found in their countries!!). It is where the Ganges and Yamma river meet at a place called Sangum. There were hundreds of pilgrims there and it was definetely a sight to see. I predominently decided to go there as it was where Gandhis ashes were scattered and i thought it would complete the Gandhi circle for me. Every 12 years there is a thing called Kumbhl Mehl where many millions (last time 70 million people) all congregate for a religious festival making it the largest congregation of people on the planet, and for a relatively small place god knows where they all go!!
My last stop in India was perhaps the holiest place in the Hindu faith at Varanasi. The town itself wasn't all that but at the edge of town was the Ganges river with hundreds of Ghats(small steps leading down to the water where people swim, bath, wash clothes or just chill) which were amazing. I stayed in a hotel right on the river clearly the best hotel view i have ever had. I took a couple of boat rides one at sunset and one at sunrise with a real nice boatman. I also got to see the burning Ghats where people are cremated on the side of the river and then there ashes scattered. I went a few times out of curiosity and saw dead bodies being dipped in the river( to clense them) and then being laid out to dry before being burnt on the wood fire a process taking 2-3 hours. Hindus believe this may stop the cycle of rebirth or at least help them in the next life. Every Hindu is burnt here except Sadhus, children, pregnant women and those with Leoprosy who are just relesed into the water with a rock tied to them. The river itself was very polluted, sewers just run straight into the water and where as in the rest of India you get a whiff of Urine every 5-10 minutes, down by the river you got it every 1-2 minutes as everyone just urinates freely next to the river which runs staight into it, and yet people were swimming in it and people even drink the water, not because they have too but because they believe its holiness can cure disease and infection??!! There was also a nightly cricket tournament next to my hotel which was a quintessential Indian experience watching the national sport next to the river Ganges.
Then onto Nepal!! A 2 day trip. I booked a "luxury deluxe AC" bus from Varanasi to Kathmandu with a stop for the night at the border. Well when i turned up i was told there wasn't enough of us to run a bus so we were to get a jeep. 13 of us in total, 5 Koreans, 4 Japs, 1 Frog, a crout, me and the Indian driver. Well that was a cramped 12 hours let me tell you. We arrive at the bordert and stay the night in this dusty s***hole of a border town with only hotels, money changers and restaurants - nice i think not. I also had to share this tiny room with the German and the Frog.
It always amazes me how much things change when you cross a border tho, just a line drawn on a map not always that long ago. The people were much more Asian looking with slantier eyes, the men were big and butch and the women were very attractive compared to the average Indian women who for the most part are quite ugly with the exception of Bollywood actresses which are among the most beautiful people on the planet( but unfortunetly you don't see them on the street!!) You can kinda see why Great Britain conquered India but not Nepal, the police and army in India are usually middle aged men with tasches and a pot belly where'as in Nepal they are 6 feet tall men built like brickhouses. The countryside also immediately changed into lush green semi tropical terrain, the air was cooler and cricket was replace with football.
The journey from the border to Kathmandu was the longest of my trip so far leaving at 6.45am and arriving at my hotel in Kathmandu at 11.15pm, what a long day!! It was only 269 Km but it had rained the previous day so there had been landslides and the road was blocked in 2 places which meant a stop of 3 hours and a stop of 2 hours and in between a 100km traffic jam!! The views were amazing but arriving 7 hours behind schedule was a bit frustrating!!
Anyway i have been in Kathmandu 3 days now and it is a lovely city. It is set in a valley with mountains all around. I have climbed to a hill top temple and up a tower for incredible views across the city and genrally just walked around the place soaking up the atmosphere. I went to another burning Ghat yesterday where this time the Nepalese were a bit more open than the Indians and you could see the lifeless faces being placed onto fires and set alight, defienly something cultural to witness. I was also very lucky the other day, on my way to a place called Patan i thought i would walk past the national stadium seeing how i love stadiums. I noticed that it said AFC Presidents cup football on the 14th May (today!!) so i went in to check it out. I walked in about 20 minutes into the first game. I didn't know who was playing but i worked out it that they weren't from Nepal fairly quickly and the quality was quite high. There were also Fifa flags and officials everywhere. It turned out i had stumbled upon the Champions league of Asia for develping countries, so basically all Asian domestic champions minus the oil rich middle eastern teams as well as China, South Korea and Japan. I saw 2 games a high quality game between a Tajikstan team and a Pakistan team finishing 0-0 and a lower quality but better atmosphere game between a Nepelese team and a Taiwan team finshing 3-2 to the Taiwanese team. If i had Roy Keanes number i would be recommending the Tajik right winger, a skilful niftly little winger. I also saw something i haven't seen in the what must be 3 or 4 hundred games i have been to, a groups of Monks at the football!! It was nice to see some live football, being over 4 months since the last time.
I join my group for the trek to Everest base camp this afternoon, something i am really looking forward to, hopefully my fellow group members will be alrite, the last group turned out well so hopefully it will be a similar sucess.
I will write again when i have finished the trek. Oh and if you haven't noticed i put some Indian photos on facebook if you want to look
Tommy
Ps good luck in the moonwalk tonite Mum, Linda and Carole
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