Where have you been???

Ok, I was gone for ten days and each day contained more adventures than I usually have in a whole year. This is a bit of a predicament in terms of blog-composition. I think it's time to break out the bullet points.

DELHI or I have a feeling we're not in Kansas Andhra anymore.

-Arrived to Delhi late Thursday evening. As we flew in over the city I looked out the window and realized two things. 1) This city is HUGE 2) This is SO different from Hyderabad.

-Having not traveled much out of the south, landing in Delhi was like landing on another planet. A beautiful, highly developed and comparatively efficient planet that has sidewalks and traffic lights and buildings higher than 3 stories and toilet paper in the public restrooms! A few of us drew comparisons to Paris because New Delhi is really gorgeous with wide avenues and lots of big parks. The "India Gate" seems to be channeling Parisian architecture as well.

-Old Delhi, on the other hand, bears a little more resemblance to the rest of India that we've seen with some busy street markets and lots of cows everywhere.

-The four girls on the adventure got to stay in the home Bharat and Shriya, the friendly son and daughter-in-law of Julia and Maya's host parents. The two boys on our trip were banished to a hotel in a cool part of the city known as Paharganj where an interesting chain of events led the hotel managers to believe that the four of us girls were prostitutes. That was a fun misunderstanding to clear up.

-The first day we visited the National Museum which had a great collection and a great gift shop, then we visted the Craft Museum which had a great great great collection and a great great great gift shop.

-The second day we ate a really enormous lunch where Jamie broke into a serious sweat, not because it was hot or because the food was spicy, but simply because he was putting so much effort into food consumption...then we went to the Red Fort which you see on the left. Here, Julia was crapped upon by a pigeon.

-A word of advice: If ever you find yourself in Delhi in a place called Urban Pind and a "Masala Martini" is offered to you, order as many as you can handle because it is the single greatest taste you will ever have in your mouth.

JODHPUR or I'm Blue.

-We had never planned on visiting Jodhpur, but somehow we ended up there.

-Jodhpur is known as the blue city...for obvious reasons (all of the buildings are blue). It is in the middle of the desert in the Indian state of Rajasthan which has a flavor distinctly more middle-earstern-y than anywhere else in India. It is a medieval fortress city which means windy, narrow streets and beautiful (blue) architecture. The best analogy anyone could come up with was EXTREME Venice with no canals.

-The highlight of Jodhpur was the Fort there which provided beautiful views of the city. Best fort in India by far.

-Day 2 in Jodhpur we decided to take a "Tribal village tour" of the desert. This involved the six of us piling into a jeep and being speedily driven around the desert where friendly desert-dwellers allowed us into their homes to watch them weave carpets, craft clay pots, and drink tea made from opium.

-Day 2 was also Shiva's (Hindu deity, "The Destroyer") birthday which meant a lot of festivities in the city when we arrived back from desert-jeeping. The whole city of Jodhpur seemed very eager to help us participate in said festivities. At one point we wandered into a Shiva temple and before we knew it we were standing bare-foot in six inches of sacred water in the basement of the temple pouring cups of water over the sacred lingam (phallus) in a ceremonial act while crowds of Indians gathered to watch and a photographer snapped away for the Rajasthani Times. Typical day in India.

JAIPUR or "No, I don't need a rickshaw."

-The city of Jaipur is also in Rajasthan. It is where we initially meant to go when we inadvertently ended up in Jodhpur. It looks like something from Star Wars. It has a lot of markets. It is crawling with tourists.

-The most entertaining part of Jaipur was the fact that six of us shared one giant bed in one small hotel room. I think this was the moment when we officially became the cutest group of travelers ever. Or maybe it was when we read each other bedtime stories or maybe when we played summer camp style bonding games...it's hard to decide.

AGRA or omg is that the taj?-I fully expected Agra to be filthy, crawling with tourists, cheesy, and populated only by Westerners. It had some of these things to a degree, but overall, I thought it was actually a very quaint place. There were not nearly the number of tourists that I thought there would be and most of the tourists were Indians. There were, of course lots of souvenier shops with aggressive salesmen, but I've really perfected the art of ignoring the shouts of "Hello! Madam! Good price! Look in my shop!"

-Brenda's guidebook says: "The Taj Mahal. The world's greatest building." I guess that's that.

-We had just been discussing what it must like to be a townie in Agra dealing with tourists all the time, when stumbled upon a night-market/carnival at the edge of town. We wandered in and soon realized we had found all of the locals, we were certainly the only Westerners around. My five thrill-seeking travel companions who all have death wishes peer-pressured me into riding a ferris wheel constructed from scrap metal and rubber bands which whipped us around in seats with no safety bars at 100 mph. I'm glad to be alive.

-We couldn't get a train ticket out of Agra when we wanted one so we ended up there for a whole extra day. We solved this issue by going to Keoladeo National Park, a fabulous bird sanctuary about an hour outside the city. In keeping with the theme of being the most adorable travel group ever, we hired a guide and horse-drawn carriage to take us around the park all day.

-Our guide had a keen set of eyes and a heavy accent, which made the day very enjoyable as he stopped to show us the park's great varieties of "antelopps," "painted-astorks," and even an elusive "pie-ton snake."

-Our hotel in Agra was the setting for many a horror film and contained more varieties of bugs than guests. The sickening color of the chipping chartreuse walls was perfectly accentuated by the flickering, seizure inducing, neon light. The bathroom doors didn't close and my favorite feature was the shower, which didn't work, but when you turned the knob the sink turned on across the room. We each paid the equivalent of $1.75 USD to stay there...so the next night in Varanasi we sprang for the $8 hotel.

-The train to Varanasi from Agra has not arrived on time in nine years.

VARANASI or THE END

-Varanasi is one of India's oldest and most sacred cities due to it's strategic location on the Ganges River. It is still a very important pilgrimage site for Hindus, especially after the death of a loved one.

-Because of the amount of funeral pyres, bathers, and other rituals that take place in the Ganges, the river is extremely polluted. It was described to me as "not water," "sludge," and "smells really bad." I didn't want to rain on anyone's parade, but I was silently wondering why on earth we would want to go to Varanasi, which to me, sounded like the morbid, crowded, waste-land of the North.

-When we arrived we had to wander a confusing labrynth of narrow streets before we found our hotel, but then all of the sudden we emerged and saw the river. I gained a sudden understanding of what makes Varanasi special.

-Varanasi surprised me for being actually quite clean, hauntingly spiritual, and truly beautiful, but I was even more surprised by how tourist-ridden it was. Dare I say Varanasi may have had more tourists than Agra?

-That evening we gathered among the pilgrims and the neo-hippy tourists for some Shiva-worship on the river. The ceremony was very mesmerizing and actually had a few striking parallels to a Catholic Mass. As I was walking away afterwards I lost my friends in the crowd for a moment and suddenly found myself face to face with a Hindu priest who grabbed my head and drew a huge, red bindi on my forehead with a powdered finger and the words "good luck, good karma, god bless you."

-We rose early the next day for a sunrise boat-ride along the Ganges, and thus ended our epic adventure.