North India: More expensive than regular India

Hello everyone!

I'm sorry it's been so long since the last time I wrote... the last month of school was an absolutely INSANE month of school. I basically ended up condensing a whole semester's worth of work into one month. This would have been like the block plan had I only had one class, but instead, I had three to worry about. Ah, well, everything worked out pretty fantastically in the end, though not without stressing me out/absolutely exhausting me. But it's over now! My semester officially ended on December 1, and I've been traveling in North India for about a week now with my friends Ben and Nate.

We started out our journey in Rajesthan, India's famous desert state. That state is basically exactly the opposite of Kerala, where we were in the South. The temperatures are also approximately the opposite. Our train ride from Mumbai to Udaipur was completely frigid. And, because we are Americans in India, we assumed that everywhere in India is pretty much the same in terms of temperature except for the Himalayas in the Winter, so we didn't really both too much to prepare except to bring sweatshirts. The night was passed by me curled up inside my sweatshirt and underneath my towel. It didn't work. At about 4 AM, Ben and Nate both ended up huddling together with me on my bed for warmth while the smart Indians around us slept peacefully under their big blankets. This was not the only cold journey we've had: turns out, at night in December, north India is COLD. Oh, well. We're making it through!

Udaipur, despite the terrible trip up there, was an absolutely fantastic city. We all fell in love. My Rough Guides book calls it "the most romantic city in India," and I think that's probably true. The '82 James Bond--Octopussy--was filmed here, and they're completely obsessed with it. We hired a taxi driver named Mr. Singh to show us around for the day, and he actually drove Roger Moore in a rickshaw during filming once. The city is typically old-school India: the buildings are crammed together in a winding mess of alleyways that would take years to learn. Mr. Singh knew them all, of course, and found us a great hotel at pretty cheap. The buildings are mostly whitewashed and set near three beautiful lakes in a mountain valley. We spent the day with Mr. Singh seeing the sights and SHOPPING. I've never seen so much amazing shopping in a single day in India... but the wares and the shopkeepers were irresistible. We made friends with a few of the vendors near our hotel and made sure to go back to them before buying anything. Udaipur also inspired me for the next time I visit India: I'm bringing a fund specifically to get a coat tailored. Yeah, of all things, in Udaipur they have dozens of high-end tailors that make things like dresses and peacoats for about $100. Very, very cool.

The only thing that was disconcerting about Udaipur was how touristy it was; it was the first city on our tour and we saw soo many white people, it was a little unnerving. Since I've been living in a city where usually the only other white people I see are in my class, it's weird to be a part of the tourist track again. I feel somehow like "my" India has been invaded, though of course it's nothing like that. I can't even imagine what it's going to be like, being in the States again.

From Udaipur, we made our way to Pushkar--a city famous for a camel festival that happens every November and attracts more than 20,000 camels and people coming to trade wares. The city is tiny when it's not the festival, and it too was overrun with tourists. But we had a good time in Pushkar--we took a nice camel trek out into the desert for a few hours. Most of the more "intense" tourists take the time to go out to Jaisalmer, which is much closer to Pakistan, but we simply didn't have the time to do that. Instead we settled for the less authentic, cheaper version... but drank a beer and watched the sun set behind silhouettes of camels in the Rajesthani desert, nonetheless. It was a great moment. Pushkar also had a million things for sale, and my Indian compulsive shopping needed to be put on serious hold for the sake of my bank account. My backpack is now comfortably full of gorgeous wares from all over Rajesthan, though, and I'm happy with my purchases so far.

From Pushkar we took an overnight bus to Agra, home of the Taj Mahal. In short, the bus ride was awful and the Taj was just as wonderful as I always hoped it would be. Of course, we ended up in the only sleeper units on the bus that didn't have any sort of barrier between them and the rest of the bus (usually they have glass or a curtain or something) and, of course, the windows were broken and wouldn't close properly, so we all spent the entire night huddled up, sleeping on our backpacks and shivering. This also happened to be the bumpiest bus ride I've ever been on. I took two dramamine about an hour before getting on the bus and it made me woozy but kept away the nausea I usually suffer on bus rides like that. Naturally, I spent the whole night drugged but certainly not sleeping. Not the most comfortable of times, but I think I've mentioned that India is making me an incredibly tolerant person? This is one reason why. Somehow though, I don't think I would trade this experience--even all the really terrible moments like that bus ride. Because somehow, the next day, when we finally struggled out of bed after napping for an hour and eating breakfast.... the Taj was even more beautiful than I ever possibly could have guessed.

It is, without a doubt, the most stunning and most surreal place I've ever been. I can't think of much to say, other than that--but I can say that my ticket into the Taj, at 750 rupees, was one of the most expensive single purchases I've made while in India and it was so, so worth it. The whole thing was overrun by chattering Indian tourists and other travelers with huge cameras trying to catch the Taj's famous reflection in one of the pools. As per India, where nothing is working 100% of the time, they were cleaning one of the outer gates and several of the pools didn't even have water in them. But despite everything, this building that has been the object of awe of so many for so many centuries awed me just as much and left tears in my eyes. We hired another taxi in Agra, Vicky, and he took us all over Agra for only a few hundred rupees. We saw the outside of the Agra Fort, where Shah Jahan (designer of the Taj), was imprisoned by his zealot of a son after the completion of the Taj. From here you can also see a great view of the backside of the Taj from across the river. We couldn't muster up the energy to go see the Taj at dawn, though we did watch the sunset from a rooftop cafe nearby.

After a night in a somewhat shady hotel, we were off to Delhi, where I sit now. We left on a 6 am inter-city train, which is not a train typically taken by tourists--I'll tell you that, right now. We were crammed in and I was next to the window that, as you can probably guess, didn't close all the way. The train was quickly crowded and we tried to sleep on the way to Delhi but struggled a lot. Finally I gave in to not being able to sleep, and as the train eventually got noisy with morning commuters, I put my headphones in for a few minutes of zen. I watched as the train rolled past beautiful hills and valleys with farmland for huge stretches of time. The whole thing was shrouded in mist and fog, and as the sun came up it started to burn off slightly. Again, we were freezing the entire ride.

When I finally took my headphones out, I looked over and noticed that both Ben and Nate seemed really irritated. I quickly learned that a group of guys had been standing near them in the aisle of the train had spent the better part of an hour laughing very obviously at them. After four months of dealing with people staring at us... well, we're kind of over it. It's hard to remember that even though we're used to India, sometimes it's still not used to us. We got into Delhi, cranky and annoyed, at around 11 AM yesterday. All we wanted to do was find a hotel that was nice enough and close to the train station, preferably with a hot shower and a TV. We found one that was most of these qualities... we got the shaft on the hot water. We ended up spending a large part of our day yesterday complaining about Delhi (though of course it isn't Delhi that we were annoyed with) and daydreaming about being at home for Christmas, where at least where, when it is freezing, we have coats.

We saw some movie in English and in the last scene, they all made hamburgers on the grill in a park... and we snapped. I casually asked if Nate and Ben wanted to hit McDonalds, and about 20 minutes later we were lining up. Of course, they don't have cheeseburgers, but a nice dose of American trans fats via the mayo on my chicken sandwhich somehow made me feel better. I guess, in a sad way, it tasted like home. On a "Super-Size Me"-like high from our Mickey D's, we immediately fell in love with Delhi. What we loved about Delhi was the city's fashionable center, where we found tons of shops with cheap souvenirs from all over India and friendly Indian merchants who were more than used to the average English-speaking tourist. We've gotten in the habit, for some reason, of telling people we're from Wales, and most Indians don't know English accents well enough to place us based on our American "twang."

This morning, we watched more TV and, sadly, said goodbye to Ben. He's headed back to Mumbai as I type this, and then he's off home in two days! It's wild to see everyone leaving, and I'm already missing people from the program. It's wild how close we've all gotten and the sheer amount of time I've had with my fellow ACM-ers.

Now, it's just Nate and I on our own for a few days. The last week or so, we've been having a lot of difficulty deciding on where to go after Delhi. We're both ready to move on--big cities in India are overwhelming and we're both tired and ready to go home soon. We were originally planning on heading up to Himachal Pradesh to the North of Delhi, but based on weather forecasts and temperatures "down here," we've decided to stick to this area. Tomorrow we're headed East to a city of ruins called Orchha, followed by a Kama Sutra temple in a town called Kajuraho. On the 13th, we're meeting Allison and Garrett (who've been in Calcutta and Nepal) in Varanasi--India's most holy city and one of the world's oldest living cities. From there, Garrett's joining us and we're going to Kanha National Park, in hopes of spotting some tigers. After Kanha it's back to Pune on the 17th and then home on the 19th!

Look for another blog before I come home... I'll try to keep you all updated on my whereabouts!

Thanks again for reading all semester, this sure has been one crazy ride. 10 days to go!