Mumbai

The south of India is different than the north. Perhaps, it's richer. I don't know. Compared to Delhi, Mumbai is almost civilised. There are the usual scam-artists and touts and all that but there is a lack of wildlife in the streets. I didn't see any cows, pigs or goats anywhere. Mumbai or Bombay (as most people still seem to call it) is a beautiful city. Though my knowledge of British history really isn't that strong, my guess is Bombay was perhaps one of the most important cities in the British colonies. They seemed to have sunk a tremendous amount of money into it. You can still see the British influence. Big stone buildings with elaborate designs are everywhere in the old part of town. Even the train stations are beautiful. We spent a few days here before heading even further south.

This is a clock tower at the University of Mumbai.
The High Court.
An interesting name for a park and traffic circle.
On the left is the Taj Mahal Palace and Tower. It's a fancy five star hotel. We went in one night for a couple of drinks in their lounge bar. Very nice.

On the right, in front of the tower, is the Gateway to India - one of Mumbai's most famous landmarks.
Believe it or not, this is a train station (Victoria Terminus). Like I say, the buildings in the city are unbelievable.
Check this crazy room out. Purple and green trim for a paint job. Padding at the head of the bed and all down the left side of it. What you can't see to the right is a full wall mirror. We felt like we were on the set of some 70s porno shoot or something.

India Interlude

Before we get to the next instalment of our trip to India, let me introduce little Schiehallion (pronounced Shehallian) Moore. Shea for short. She arrived on Feb. 21, 2007. She's a ray of sunshine in our Taiwanese lives, and we all love her very much!!

Varanasi to Mumbai

You are basically doing our same journey through India from your armchair. The next thing you do is fly from Varanasi to Mumbai via Delhi.

This is the airport in Varanasi.

You are on Indian Airlines flight 805. And yes, even domestic flights in India are better than Air Canada. You get free hot meals, drinks and you don't have to pay for or rent (or whatever they make you do) any blankets or pillows. All this is supplied for free with a smile.

This is your girlfriend getting on the plane.
This is a sign for the Ladies Frisking Booth that you are awfully curious about.

Varanasi - Part 3 (Life)

One of the most ironic things about traveling is the fact that it is actually quite difficult to meet and hang out with the people of the country you are in. You meet cab drivers and merchants and touts and hotel workers. And of course you meet and get to talk to some random people on trains and buses. But it's difficult to actually immerse yourself into their culture and see how they live. We were lucky in Varanasi. Our friends Jess and Dan, from Taichung, opened up a school for under-priveledged children in Varanasi. By under-priviledged, I mean street kids with no families or no homes. They have a school there as well as a hostel where over twenty of the kids also live. Jess and Dan are good people. Better people than I could ever hope to be. They live like locals. They don't really make money. They are there to help children. Lice and ringworm are part of their everyday lives.

So in Varanasi we visited them and, of course, went to the school and saw the children. The part of town where they live and where the school is, is a completely different place. The locals don't even look twice at you or come up to you and try to sell you stuff, scam you, take advantage of you. Once you leave the ghats, it's like you are a local almost. Great feeling to be able to just walk down the road and not be bothered by throngs of people (believe me, India is bad for this. There is always someone hounding you, begging, scamming, selling, etc. I think I already mentioned this in probably every one of my posts.)

Here's a picture of the hostel that Jess and Dan run.

This is Jess and some kids. The blue tractor trailer is part of a puja that we participated in that same night.

I know, I know. What the hell is a puja, you are thinking. Basically, a puja (I'm probably spelling it wrong) is kind of like a parade. People get tractors and trailers and decorate them with lights and sound systems and then go to their destination-a temple. They leave from their homes all over the city all with the same destination. So when you start out, it is only your tractor. The closer you get, the more tractors and people you meet up with. From what I can guess from the experience, the objective is to make as much noise as possible.

So how did we get involved? Of course, the whole city doesn't participate. I think it's special people or something. Jess and Dan's landlord of the hostel is a minor celebrity in Varanasi (at least I think he is). He got some tractors for it and wanted some white foreigners making a lot of noise to attract attention. Our float was comprised of four tractors/trailers. Here we are during the puja in our trailer jamming. They are acoustic guitars but they are plugged into this massive amplifier. It was pretty cool.

I forget what the green marks are for. Good luck, I'm assuming.

Like I say, the closer you get to the destination, the busier it gets. There were parties in the streets. Every trailer was blasting music/noise of some sort. It was so loud.

That dude in the red hat is Jess and Dan's landlord. He was in this fancy trailer in the back. Jess and Dan, as mentioned before, are very good people. This is their adopted son that used to live in terrible poverty. It's against the law to sell alcohol within one kilometre of the Ganges. But they still do. They're hard to find but there are "liquor stores" around. And they are always ridiculously busy. Line-ups of men all day and night.

Varanasi - Part 2 (The City)

Some more shots of Varanasi...

Here's a shot of a local Varanasi woman.
Here's a shot of a local Varanasi man.
Like I mentioned in the previous post, the locals do their laundry in the Ganges.
Big laundry day.
This woman is making cow patties. They use cow shit as kindling for their fires. It must stink.
This is a temple at the University of Varanasi. Like Fredericton, Varanasi is a university town with a nice river running through it. But it is the exact opposite of Fredericton in every possible way.
A cute little puppy.
Here are some of those guys I was talking about last post. Who knows that could be the guy who does the penis and sword trick.There are guys like this everywhere in Varanasi. I guess they are some kind of holy men.
Some fruit.
It was so much fun just walking along the ghats everyday.

Varanasi - Part 1 (The Ganges)

Our next stop was Varanasi - an overnight train ride away. The train itself was fine but I am the worst packer in the world. Two years ago, I remember unpacking my bag in boiling hot weather in Thailand only to discover that I forgot to pack shorts. This time I wasn't prepared for the cold. This part of India (Delhi to Varanasi) in January/February is hot in the day time but it cools down at night. We had a sleeper in the train but with all the windows open I nearly froze to death. Like I say I simply wasn't prepared. Lindsay was all cozy with her blow up pillow, scarf, and blanket (courtesy of Thai Airways). I had a ball cap for a pillow and air as a blanket. It wasn't the best journey. But it was all worth it...

From my recent and probably future posts, you will get the impression that I have a love/hate relationship with India. I do. The good stuff in India only comes after a day or two of hellish travel. You have a horrible day, then you have five great ones. Many of the places we visited were nice and fun and beautiful but I can't picture myself going back to a lot of them. Varanasi, however, is an exception. I already want to go back. It is the coolest, strangest place on earth. It's this holy city built along the Ganges River. Very holy and religious. Every kind of person is there from all over the world - it's a destination for many hippies and spiritual types (if you are basically a cynical nihilist like myself, you can often feel out of place). Sometimes it feels like you're in the parking lot of a Grateful Dead show. Sometimes it feels like you are on Mars. It's a crazy place. There are cows, goats and pigs everywhere. They burn bodies by the river in full view passer-byers (is that a word?). Many of the men don't even wear clothes. A traveler I met from Duncan, B.C. told me a story. He went into one of the many tents (perhaps where some of the people live) by the river and there was this guy (holy man?) naked, painted in white. He took out this sword and wrapped his penis around it a bunch of times, then kind of stepped over it and sat down on it for a while (yes, it is hard to picture but I saw the photograph). Anyway, I think you get the jist of it. Varanasi is like no place you ever imagined. It is sensory overload. Here's a picture of one of the many ghats. Basically a ghat is just an entrance to a river. Probably five miles of the river bank in Varanasi looks like this. There are steps all the way down to the Ganges. I assume it's built like this because of flooding during monsoon season. Whatever the reason, it's really cool.
Here's a very crowded boat.
Here's a shot of the Ganges. It's quite a big river. Not much of a current at all and it is, unfortunately, very polluted. According to the Lonely Planet, there is 1.5 million faecal coliform bacteria per 100ml of water taken from the Ganges. In water that is safe for swimming this figure should be less than 500. It's disgusting but the locals swim, bathe, and do their laundry in it. Problem is they also dump everything in it. Apparently, it's better than it was but baby fetuses and cow carcasses have been seen floating in it in the past. And since it is so holy, the ashes of all the dead go into the river and sometimes the bodies (if it's a baby, pregnant woman, leper, death due to snake bite, etc.) This is all stuff we heard, so I'm not sure if it's 100% accurate. But it's probably pretty close.

The Ganges at dusk.
Our boat guide and some ghats.
Some boaters.
Here's a shot of the burning ghat where they burn the dead bodies. Now, you are not supposed to take pictures of it but I think I'm far enough away here that it shouldn't matter. I certainly don't want to be culturally insensitive. This is one of the main ghats.

Agra - Part 2 (The City)

Before getting there, I assumed that Agra (the home of the Taj Mahal) would be one giant tourist trap. It seems that all the cool stuff in the world is slowly getting less cool. There's a Kentucky Fried Chicken and a Pizza Hut at the front entrance of the Pyramids in Cairo; there's a Starbucks in front of Chairman Mao's portrait at the Forbidden City in Beijing (this is new since I was there - I actually just read about this today in the China Post); and most of the landmarks in Europe are packed with line-ups of tourists. It takes away from the experience and spoils the beauty of these wonders of the world.

So Agra, was a nice surprise. The Taj Mahal was off in a little neighbourhood with small streets and no big chain stores (there's really not much of this in India anyway). And though the city is over a million in population (every small Indian town you've never heard of is a million people), the town seemed smaller. Of course, there were the usual scam-artists, touts, and beggars but we found Agra much friendlier than Delhi and Jaipur. We only spent a couple of days but it was great stop full of interesting things to see.

Here's a picture of an autorickshaw. These are everywhere in India and a good way to get around. Check out the fancy seats in this one.
I like this picture. You see monkeys a lot and they can be a real pain in the ass but they are fun to watch. At the restaurant at the hotel, we saw one monkey sneak onto a table and steal the sugar bowl. The waiter chased him with a stick, something he said he has to do all the time.
On a street outside one of the gates of the Taj Mahal.
Camels walking through the streets of Agra.
Here's a cool dude. We had to wait for our rickshaw driver forever outside of Agra Fort and this kid and his mother befriended us. The sunglasses are Lindsay's. He kept wanting me to take his picture with them on.
Some locals walking to the other side of the river. Not much rainfall here either, by the looks of it.
These are some guards that watch over the Taj Mahal. You see big guns everywhere in India but it still hard to get used to.Unlike New York, London, Milan and Tokyo, India isn't necessarily on the cutting edge of fashion. Though the women dress quite nice (saris and stuff), the men don't seem to be as fashion-conscious. You see lots of acid wash and orange. I had to laugh when I saw this jean jacket. I can't even guess what "Le Gay Dil" is supposed to mean.
Party Smart hangover cure. I had to buy this when I saw it in the pharmacy. Maybe you can buy it everywhere but it's the first time I had ever seen it. Believe it or not, I haven't even tried it yet.

Agra - Part 1 (The Sites)

We were told by everyone that India was difficult to travel in but we (or at least I) didn't really believe them. We were planning on leaving Jaipur the same day we arrived on an overnight train to Agra. It would have got us there in the morning and saved time - perfect! Of course, after about a half an hour of finding the ticket booth at the train station and an hour of waiting in line (crowded with people cutting in line, a very common thing to do in India), we found out the train was full and spent the night in Jaipur. We booked into a hotel, ate dinner and drank a bit of rum with a couple of Canadians (believe or not, the only Canadian travelers we ran into all trip). The next day we got the train and were in Agra by mid-afternoon.

This is the rooftop of our hotel. The first day we just chilled out. Look at that view! How many times have you seen this shot? Finally seeing it in person is really something. We went to the Taj Mahal early in the morning. As you can see, there were some people there but it wasn't really too crowded.
I must have taken about seventy shot of the Taj Mahal. It is truly one of the most beautiful buildings in the world. I knew beforehand that it was a mausoleum built by some emperor for his wife that had died. Lovely story. What I didn't know, is that the guy had three wives in total. There were two other little mausoleums on the grounds in memorial of them. To some people, this fact might make the love story of the Taj Mahal kind of bogus, but to me, I think it makes it a little better. If you are an emperor, you might as well enjoy yourself.This is called the Itimad-Ud-Daulah, nicknamed the Baby Taj. It's certainly nice but after the real Taj, it's just another building.

This is Agra Fort. I think it was many things in the past (including a military fort) but apparently it was a jail too and the emperor who built the Taj Mahal ended up there (his son threw him in there when he seized power from him).

Inside Agra Fort.

Here's the Taj Mahal at night. We walked down to the river to check out the backside of it. As you can see there are spotlights and fences all around it. What you can't see are four soldiers with machine guns on guard (actually you will see them...next post).