I’m in Goa right now and it’s just too hot to blog.
So have fun in the cold folks, I go to the beach now.
Dam di dam di dam. 😉
As my time in India is running out, I just took a small 2-day detour east before heading south. I visited the Ajanta and Ellora caves. I love caves so it was pretty cool for me, other people might find it boring. The only other thing worth mentioning was an Bulgarian guy I ran into. He was on a 3-year trip around the world, already in his 2nd year. At the beginning he was cool but then I got pretty annoyed of him and was lucky when I got rid of him before I went to Ellora. Some travelers are freaky. 😉
I took a shot-cut flight from Diu to Bombay (now named Mumbai but I just don’t care neither do the Indians). This is some kind of town. Delhi or Calcutta were nice but Bombay kicks ass. It’s modern, sophisticated and clean. Like an Indian Shanghai. The architecture is British Victorian with some Indian influences and looks totally unique. I’m not just talking about the sights like the Prince of Wales Museum, the Victoria Train Station or the Gateway to India. The whole town has these nice old restored buildings and looks totally British.
And it’s the first town were a decent Cappuccino is served in almost all places and you can get real Italian food. Just totally cosmopolitan. I can easily say that if I would have the opportunity to work in Bombay for 6 months or a year I would probably do it. Just the heat would kill me. 😉
I love this place. Really. Diu is so cool. It’s a totally unknown small (12kmx3km) island the Portugese ruled until 1961. Diu town is an Portugese looking totally laid-back small house gathering. The food is fantastic – Portugese style fish and stuff. Almost no tourists. Empty beaches. Cheap booze. All the Westerners gather every other day around the church barbecue. I don’t know how to describe it but it’s fantastic.
Ana even convinced me to go on a bike tour around the island (to the people that don’t know: I hate bikes and other things with two wheels). Unfortunately we went through a small Indian village passing a school and about 200 kids where running behind us screaming for a ball-pen. I tell you, that was scarry! 😉
Apart from that, the perfect place to be in India so far.
I run into Ana yesterday during dinner. She is a travel agent for Slovenian tourists in between two tours and had to escape Rajasthan, too. 😉
We decided to climb up the Ginar mountain together. It’s 8000 steps to the top! I had a hard time going up (haven’t eaten anything for 3 days), Ana had reals problems getting down (ex-ballet knees). But it was definitly worth it. The view was cool. And if Hinduism is the right religion I earned my place in heaven now (that’s why all the Hindus climb this mountain).
As Ana and myself are getting along pretty well we decided to travel together to Diu.
I arrived yesterday at 5am in Junagadh after no sleep and a lot of pain in my belly. Again. The third time now that this country is trying to kill me. 😉
In the morning the hotel owner dragged me to a hospital and I got a shitload of anitbiotics and pain medicine. I’m fine now. Cost (including doctor): 5 Euro. The doctor was making jokes about the expensive German health system all the time during examination. 😉
I had to get out of Rajasthan and the tourist triangle around Delhi asap. Way to many people trying to rip you off and just no peace at all. So I skipped the rest and went to the state of Gujarat.I’m in Ahmedabad now, the capital. It’s like a completely different world here. No tourists, no rip-offs. The rickshaw drivers use there meter and don’t overcharge you. The buildings are new and well-maintained. The streets are clean. The shops sell real stuff and not just kitsch.
The Ashram of Gandhi had no admission fee and nobody tried to tour me, nobody even talked to me. Like heaven. 😉
Unfortunatly the cheap food in Jaipur gave me stomache pain again, so I’m not really fit for running around. 🙁
I arrived on Saturday in Jaipur running into Jazzadeiro and his new (at least to me) girlfriend. The city itself is called the pink city, because all of the buildings in the old town are supposed to be painted in pink – to me it look more like a reddish orange. Highlights were the Yantra Mandir (astronomic observatory) and the fort stair climb.
And it was just cool to hang out with Jazzadeiro again, have a smoke and so on. I also had a lot of fun complaining about the money saving attitude of the both. 😉
Yesterday we were lucky, because Talvin Singh was in town and we could go to his concert. Very cool.
At the ticket office a couple of Indian women got into a discussion with the ticket seller, because they were told it was free and now they have to pay. He told them it has changed last minute. They weren’t happy about it. Jazzadeiro let a “that’s typical India” slip out which tipped one of the women over the edge, screaming at him that he should stop this kind of stereotyping. Jazadeiro tried to defend himself one the lines of free expression (of course not working).
I told him afterwards that he insulted that women but he said it’s his opinion. It’s ok to have an opinion but you don’t tell this to an Indian in the same way as you don’t tell your host family that their furniture looks like kitsch and that their kids are dumb like shit – politeness of the guest.
Plus as a traveller you don’t know nothing about a country – you have to live there, have a flat, a job and all this other shit which travellers never experience.
I took a bus to Fatehpur Sikri today and will stay here for a night. It’s a very nice city somebody build who knew a lot about architecture but nothing about life. For example, when you build a city in the desert, check for water first. The whole city was used for just 14 years then abandoned. So it’s in pretty good shape. But dusty. Ok, it?s the desert. 😉
The annoyance level here is at the highest. Everybody tries to be my tour guide. Not by asking. They just start the tour. You have to tell them firmly you don’t want them. If you just walk away they follow you. After 6th guy I gave up. The last want toured me a bit around then tried to sell handmade family souvenirs (made in China). I gave him a bit of money. He wanted Euro coins. I said no. Then he wanted a pen. I said no. Five meters away I had a new tour guide. Luckily I was finished sightseeing.
At night I went to the only place in the town having Internet (a hotel). The owner told me 3 hours waiting time. So I had dinner at his restaurant. That actually made him happy and he offered me some whiskey (do I ever have to buy it myself? 😉 ). After one glass he was already drunk and started complaining about the Lonely Planet: that every backpackers goes to the other hotel (the one I’m staying – close to the bus station) and almost nobody to his place, because it got better ratings (despite having crappy food and run down rooms – which is true actually). Anyway it was tremendously funny and the waiting time for the Internet got down to half an hour drinking.
I’m sitting at his private PC right now. 😉
I had a pretty good discussion (and a bottle of wiskey) about Indian culture with an artist named Ram Baboo (living in Agra). He seems to be pretty famous as he has students all over the world including Germany therefore he has been in Europe almost 20 times.
He was complaining about the difficulties in communication in Europe. That nobody talks openly. That people sit together waiting for the bus or so and don’t talk. That it is complicated to find friends. He hopes this will change soon as both cultures become more alike.
I told him I bloody hell hope that this is not changing. What does “friend” mean in India? Almost nothing. When you talk to somebody for 15min in the train and you exchange addresses, he will say that we are friends. People show you address books to prove they have friends abroad. It means nothing. Family is everything here friendships are just random encounters.
And after some time in India you will really appreciate sitting at a bus stop and don’t have to answer question about marriage and salary. You learn to miss being alone here.
