Jaipur to Kochi

Feb 17

We are now in Kochi, Kerala. Last night when we checked into the hotel the thermostat on the A/C said that the temperature was 37 degrees in the room. It took all evening and most of the night for the room to get down to 21. Today with the A/C running all day the temperature is 26. It is really hot outside. I am loving the heat but Lindsay is not so much. I bought some drinks at a roadside stand that claimed to be a "cold bar". Really what this was is a stand with a tarp for shade where 4-5 guys can stand and drink coffee. An Indian Coffee Shop! I joined the 4 guys who were having coffee and had a Limca (like sprite only better). One of the guys started talking about me to the lady who works there. At once everyone started laughing and the lady (who spoke english well) said " don't worry about them", with a laugh as she circled her finger around her ear, as if they were loonie. So that's my first coffee shop experience in India. I think I am going back for coffee tomorrow morning! - Don

Feb 22

It has been quite a while since we wrote anything. One of the reasons, at least for the last couple of days, is that in the time that we spend in the hotel room resting we have been watching the olympics. Right now Don is recovering from our mens hockey loss to the US. The other reason is simply that we have been enjoying ourselves. Jaipur seems like ages ago. We stayed in a great hotel (with the first hot shower we've had in India) and ate superb food. We spent our day there wandering as usual, admiring the intricate facades of ancient buildings and even doing a bit of shopping. Within Jaipur is an old walled city that is buzzing with bazaar activity and littered with cows and goats and beautiful fruit and vegetable stalls. It was such a nice day out that I managed to get a sun burn. It might sound weird but until this we hadn't got so much as a tan. Right now Don and I are in Kochi on the coast of the province of Kerala. It's like we have gone to a different country. The first thing you notice is that it is about 15 degrees hotter here than in the north. The heat and humidity are so exhausting so we find that our days just can't be as long. Sometimes we end up taking a nap in the afternoon in our air conditioned room or like last night I sit down for a minute after supper and wake up in the morning. The people and culture here are also vastly different from the north. It is refreshing for people to be friendly and not trying to take advantage of us. We think there are a few possible reasons that people here are happier and not as desperate or needy. Kerala is apparently the first place where the people have freely elected a communist government almost continuously. We have heard people talking proudly about how castes are not allowed in Kerala. One guy jovially told us that there are no slum dogs or millionaires in Kerala. Although they are exaggerating we can tell from our past experiences that Kerala is doing something right. People here are more shy and modest but also eager. Kids especially want to say hi and be waved at, but people back off after encountering you: They don't pester you or follow you and they don't leer nearly as much. We've had so many positive experiences here. -Lindsay

Disclaimer!!!!

Feb 20
We have been told that our blog sounds really depressing... Sorry! We are having a great time I assure you all. When we are down we tend to write more and have more time to write... and when we are having a good time we don't feel like writing. So it only seems bad. Besides which we both agree that some of the more difficult experiences we've had have been worth it.
Lindsay

Delhi to Agra (Taj Mahal)

Feb 12th Continued.

On our many walks in Delhi we have seen very few garbage cans. People eat and drop the container where they are standing. There is urine and feces everywhere and the men of Delhi are not modest. They will whip it out anywhere. I have never been anywhere so dirty and loud and pungent. We got lost so much in Delhi. The city is a maze of streets and alleys that weren't on any of our maps. There are no street signs of any kind. All cars have at least a door ding even if they are brand new. Driving seems scary enough that the whole time we were in Delhi Don and I didn't take any taxis or rickshaws but that's also because they were always trying to scam us. - Lindsay

Feb 13

Agra is beautiful! The little I've seen anyways. I've spent most of my time here either sleeping or on the toilet. After some deliberation over whether or not we should try to figure out the insurance and go to the hospital we decided to walk across the s from our hotel and buy some over the counter antibiotics. Normally I'd feel very unsure about this but the lonely planet mentions a few that are used in the treatment of travelers diarrhea and the guy had all of them. We ate supper on the roof of our hotel and watched the sun set on the taj. It was beautiful and peaceful. There was chanting coming from mosques all around us and monkeys everywhere. Too bad the service here is abysmal. - Lindsay

I think I like Agra. Maybe it is just the rooftop restaurants with views of the taj. Maybe it is that there are less people, or just that the touts are less aggressive. We are staying in a noisy and active part of the city. In agra I have been able to meet all sorts of other tourists. We sat with two Japanese guys on the train, Noori and ___ can't remember. They also happened to be staying at our hotel. At lupper today I met a flower grower from Montreal. Also at lupper today I was feeling so good that i ordered a lassi. My first non-bottled drink other than coffee and tea. It was a great banana chocolate lassie. Now I just hope it doesn't make me sick again! - Don

Feb 14

Happy Valentines day to us!.. NOT. We haven't exactly had the best day. The peaceful feeling we had about India after seeing the Taj yesterday have subsided. And through all of the days trials we have managed to stay positive.. until now. We didn't get the wake-up call this morning that we asked for. Fortunately, being sick, I wasn't sleeping well enough to not wake up at five. I woke don and we hurriedly packed and managed to check out on schedule ( the hotel staff claimed to not have any change) . Outside the gate of our hotel we sadly saw that there was only one autorickshaw, as apposed to the usual 50 during the day. He promptly demanded 100 rupees for the 5 minute ride to the train station which was outrageous. Don got him down to 80 but on the ride we realized it would be nice to have some smaller (precious) rupee bills for getting food on the train etc. So we gave him 100 which was fine because he got us there fast and to be honest it's only 2.50 CND. At the train station we found out that our train was to be three and a half hours late. "So what" we thought... It is just a few hours... But those few hours turned into seven (one hour at a time). Still we had the ability to stay positive. We were bored and hungry but my dad had told us a few times that it is a 3rd world country; you can't expect anything to run smoothly or be on time. The frustration comes now after having to cram ourselves onto the overcrowded train only to find an entire family sitting in our seats. They finally moved but then we experienced the first truly rude (or possibly racist) behaviour from Indians. The remaining men wouldn't let us put our packs on "their bunks" even though they were sitting on "my bunk". I'm not really sure it was any of their bunks. They refused to produce tickets for the ticket men who seem to have no authority and there were more of them than there are seats. This train has far more people that it has seats. And now these men insist on staring incessantly at me. We are ready for the south!

Delhi

Some of our posts might not make so much sense because we have been writing in a journal and then copying parts of those journal entries onto the blog. Sorry if it overlaps or has sections missing.

Feb - 10

Today wasn't really the best but after 4 or 5 rolls of toilet paper (keeping in mind that Indian rolls are a gimmic) we don't feel like dying... so that is positive. Delhi is a bit of an assault on the brain. More honking than Mumbai, drugs, scams, pervs, accidents, and urine and garbage everywhere. The thing you notice first is the air quality. As we came in on the train it looked like we were entering an area just south of a forest fire. The weirdest thing is that your lungs seem to adapt to the smoke and dust. You also learn how to sleep through constant erratic noise and to be rude to touts which is probably only hard because we are Canadian. The day we arrived was a particular pain because with our packs it was really obvious that we were looking for somewhere to stay, not to mention that all the "reputable" hotels we tried seemed to be full. We even had a strange encounter with a friendly Australian guy who Don and I both think was acting as a tout. He took us to pretty abysmal accommodations down some shady alleyways which fortunately we didn't take. Once we got back on the main road it wasn't long before we found somewhere that would take us. Starving, Don and I killed a god part of our afternoon at our hotel's rooftop restaurant! We spent Tuesday doing a walking tour of "Old Delhi" seeing mosques and old forts but also seeing what could have once been a beautiful city, ravaged by population, pollution and poverty.

Feb 12

Boy oh boy am I sick! Last night I started shivering so violently it probably looked like I was having a seizure. I spent the whole night going to the bathroom and alternating between sweats and chills. I think Don and I might have liked Delhi better if we hadn't been so sick the whole time. It really gets you down! I felt so bad this morning that we considered not getting on our train and going to the hospital. We are on the train to Agra right now and the view is even more depressing. There are mountains of garbage, mostly plastic. It looks like wall-e's earth. Where the garbage is bad plants don't grow, grass doesn't grow. Cows try to graze between wrappers, dogs sleep on the mounds and children play in the filth.

Mumbai to Delhi

Feb- 7
We went to see a move in Bombay like Don had hoped and it was entertaining despite not speaking a word of Hindi. We sat in the balcony and watched the peculiar pre show advertisements. We were then asked to stand for the national anthem and the movie goers were not afraid to belt it out. The crowd in the theater brought a few things to our attention. Every Indian and their grandmother has a cell phone which is like us but what is unique is etiquette/rules around cell phones. In India there are none!. You can have the most annoying ring on as loud as it goes for 10 rings and then answer it in a movie... same in a restaurant.



Yesterday was pretty relaxed. we got up and started a bad McDonalds for breakfast habit. Joe and Vickey recommended it because Indians don't eat breakfast the way we do. Believe it or not the McMuffins are heavenly after the other breakfasts we have had. We went to the train stations tourist office and learned several lessons on booking trains. We took a rather long train ride to Delhi. Yesterday we also did piles of walking and called our parents. Today at the Bandra Terminus train station we experienced the most severe and persistant begging yet. They were kids and I thought it was going to be hard not to want to help them. But it was not. For one we were told that they had made the decision to beg over a free education with a free daily meal. And for another they were kind of jerks about it. Rather than choosing to look adorable, helpless and hungry, they approached you with food crumbs all over their mouths yelling and swatting at you, leaving with a glare. Other than that our train experience has been quite nice! It's a good way to see the country side and agriculture as well as the back side of some slums. And you can't go wrong with 24 hours worth of AC. The people we sat with were unbelieveably nice and fed us some of the homemade meal they had brought. It was amazing food and they even gave us desset. Once we told them that we're Canadian they were eager to tell us that they had been to Niagra falls. India changes a lot outside of the city. For one we meet nice people but also we saw a lot of hindu temples, a few mosques as well as grass huts and ornate homes with courtyards and common areas. -Lindsay

Feb - 9

Delhi is far more crowded than mumbai. The horns are no longer just used as mirrors and signals, they are now used as "get out of my way" and "move". I am getting tired of the hustle and bustle of the cities, feeling like everyone that talks to us is trying to scam us. I am looking forward to heading south where hopefully people will talk to us without a hidden agenda.-Don

Mumbai

Hey, Moms sorry it has been a while but yes we are still alive!!!.

Feb 3rd. Don and I are so glad to be finally on our last flight. Our flight to frankfurt was delayed an hour and as we were only scheduled for an hour wait in germany we were concerned that we would no make our connection. To our delight after a weird bus ride to the terminal and a mad sprint to our gate we got there before the line had all gone through. The plane we are on now is by far the biggest either of us has ever been on. There are two levels, and probably about twenty bathrooms. We are having trouble deciding whether to sleep but really there is no way to avoid the jet lag that is to come. The guy that is sitting with us on the plane is very friendly and eager to help. He chatted quite a bit with Don about good sites in India and told us that he was a shipman returning home to mumbai from spain after five months. - Lindsay

Feb 4th

So as it turns out I had never really experianced culture shock before. Today, likely because of sleep deprivation and the fact that we arrived in total darkness... I kind of freaked out... Don was fine though so it was easily overcome. The only problem with cuture shock is that it can be very hard to sleep... Which as it turns out is exactly what I need. When you arrive at night all you see is dirty walls, streets, and stray dogs, and boarded up shops with the occasional person sleeping in a lawnchair. It seemed quite desolate and alien. Now that I have slept, the sound of strange birds and incessant honking is far more exciting. Looking out the window of our hotel room, I can see all manner of traffic as well as some trees that appear to be growing through the building. -Lindsay

We don't know what to think! We are very jetlaged and to top it all off we both feel sick. (already!) I feel weak, dizzy and cranky. Which may be why neither of us have found much about mumbai that we like. People so far don't seem very friendly with the exception of the odd kid. And few seem to know much english. Today we took the adventurous cab ride from the airport to colaba (the region where you find piles of shops, the taj and the gateway to india). We walked there stopping at "mac donald" to eat (food didn't seem great but it is hard to tell when you are already sick) and then we promptly got lost. Mumbai has a very busy and repeating landscape with few street signs not to mention that the map we have is far from accurate. -Lindsay

Feb 5th

Today we found a new hotel (very budget) in a more interesting part of town. The first people we got a chance to interact with were tourists (our age) from the UK and Scotland. They were really nice and took us to a nice restaurant and really really lifted our spirits. Now is the first time we have felt good on the trip. We have decided that most of Lindsays ailments have been due to Malarone. Luckly they are supposed to be short lived. Today we are heading to the CST train station to try and get tickets to Dehli. -Don