Camel Safari

Camels are huge. I mean really really huge. Mine was called Raja and was the biggest there. The safari started by going through town so I had to duck the telephone and power lines and one point I think we gave a monkey a shock as he jumped over me only missing by ½ a meter, but Raja was very calm about everything. Then we headed out into the ever more arid desert. The slow rhythm of a camel walk is really quite relaxing. Tho we trotted a ran for a little bit. My guide (Gesook) races camels at the annual camel festival here and has been quite successful on his brothers racing camel. (Images of a camel with racing stripes in my head)

We stopped for chai at a place where about 8 women were picking roses, while another looked after all the kids, all under 5, brewed the chai. The rear wheel had come off there toy bicycle so I had a go at fixing it for them. As soon as they twigged what I was doing the ran of and came back with a spanner for me J

We arrived at some huts about 30 mins before sunset, where there were a couple of American camel riders I’d briefly met earlier. We watched the sunset over the scrub and desert as our guides cooked dinner. The making of chapatti balls by burying them in the ashes of a fire was a really cool traditional skill to see.

The Americans were staying the night in the dessert but I’d gone for the cheaper trip as I needed to be off in the morning. So Raja, Gesook and I set off across the dark dessert in the rough direction of pushka. Gesook assured me camels can see very well in the dark, but it was really dark as the moon hadn’t risen. Anyway two slightly chilly hours later and we trotted back into town.

Right now I’m on the road to Ranthambore National park, where I am hoping to find Big Cats and Wifi I will let you know how it goes (or not if I can’t find the wifi)

-Dan

Me on Raja, I might trade in the focus:

 

Pushkar

Hi Y’all

I am sat sipping chai in a cafe at the top of Jaipur Ghat by pushka lake. For those of you that ain’t been to india ghat means steps down to water. Scale is not implied so the term is sometimes used for hills and mountains (eg the Weston Ghats Mountains) but usually what is meant is the classic Indian steps by a river used for washing and bathing ect. Pushka lake is completely surrounded by 52 separate ghats and over 500 adjoining temples all tucked away in every space as the lake is really not that big. It’s hard to believe it was ever a natural lake at all. The town almost feels like a caricature of itself with all the Brahmin Priests trying to get you to put flowers in the lake, traditional buskers and colorful statues of deities under each tree or in any available alcove.

Alcohol is illegal here. Strangely this means its 100rs cheaper than the other places I’ve been and comes wrapped in tin foil, a stealth technique I was previously unaware of. (bring on the tin foil ninjas)

Met a tour bus load of people last night and played some chess over dinner with there driver who was from south America. Sounds like a cool job, just driving a Merc Truck from place to place on a 11 week circuit for a few months then when the season changes switch to a different continent and repeat. Tiring tho as you only spend 1 or 2 nights in most places.

I have a camel ride and desert this afternoon with diner out there after sunset. I didn’t do a camel ride when I was in morocco as all the animals seemed so badly treated, but here they seem well looked after. There is a wild cow, Near the hotel, that’s ill so people are running out with food and things for it.

Off to Ranthambore national park tomorrow. Hoping to shoot some tigers (with a phone camera).


Pushkar lake:

Jodpur

Got here yesterday evening. Rana had already booked me a room and highly recommended this place (Durag Villas). It’s pretty awesome, In a quiet area just outside the city center My room is huge with aircon, and opulent features such as stained glass, quite nice paintings (prints) an intricately calved table ect. The bath room alone is bigger than my room in briz, and is covered in white marble (we drove passed loads of marble quarrying on the way here.) I’m sat on the roof top terrace typing this now J oh and the best thing… it £10 per night J

Last night I played Raju at chess, he’s not too bad. Rana says he’s a pretty strong ludo player (!?) but not chess.

As the evening went on oth travelers joined us on the roof and played Tigers and Goats against a Nepalese guy, who was shocked to lose to a westoner as both (hehe)

Today I’m feeling almost 100% again which is so good. We Visited the Meherangarh Fort which would be amazing anywhere but overlooking the blue city made it really magical. Raju came in to as he’d never seem the fort and its really cheap for Indians to get in. He dosen’t speak any English but we can communicate ok with points and nods etc. Then I popped into a marble temple that was glowing on the inside as the sun hit the other side of the marble.

After that I had lunch in beautiful courtyard garden restaurant with lots of trees. Then went to the Palace a bit of which is open to the public. It is one of the largest in the world, took 15 years to build and was only finished in 1947. It seems the Maharaja at the time did many good things for the people here but one of his proudest achievements was taking his polo team to England and beating all comers.

Tommoro, off to pushkar

Laters, Dan

The Blue City:

Journey too Jodpur

Feeling much better today and have managed to eat a few things. And that’s given me more energy to communicate so am feeling less lonely too. Tho I’m still ushered off to the posh bit of places on my own to eat.

It’s a long 7 hour drive from Jaipur to Jhodpur and Rana nephew Raju, drove for a bit. Then I had a go J 80Kph is all you can get out of a 13hp (apparently, tho it must be more) Tata but that makes you one of the quickest things on the Indian motorway. The really scary thing is the brakes or almost complete lack of them. Engine braking is almost as effective. And I’m guessing this car is less than 3 years old.

Rana’s newphew was playing some Hindi tunes on the stereo so after I put some Nintin Sawhey, Badmash & Shree and a few other random anglo-indian (ish) tunes I have. They seemed to like it and Rana was singing along.

Will blog again about Jodpur laters.

-Dan

Rajistan tour, Jaipur

Well I got picked up yesterday morning and to my surprise the minibus was a small car and I was the only tour member. Oddness. The guide (Rana) said he was bringing his nephew (Raju) along to help out and to teach him too drive out of Delhi.

What I did find weird is when we stopped for lunch I was ushered into a restaurant and they went to a drivers lounge. So I was all on my own.

The first place we visited was the amber fort which is probably the most amazing thing I’ve seen for some time (google it). Again it was a there’s the entrance off you go thing, so not much guiding.  

We stopped at a few other places but by 5 I was feeling really ill so we went to our guest house, which was full. Eventually we got to an expensive dump that had room for us. Just after I had a second viewing of the small amount of lunch I’d managed. Diner was arranged in the guest house then after a long wait canceled for reasons I have yet to understand so I managed to get some nibbles as I couldn’t face the outside world.

After a sleepless sickly night with dogs fighting in the tire yard outside my window. I managed to sleep in the morning and in the afternoon I visited the maharaja’s palace and the observatory which has all manner of crazy structures to measure astronomical things like a 50 meter sundial that is accurate to 2 seconds. Then we moved to a better guest house (but its still a bit of a dump) and finally I looked around a museum called the Albert hall.

This evening Rana knew of this restaurant that had traditional music and dance, I was a little concerned as I’m still off my food but it seemed like they were both looking forward to it so I went along. It was really nice music and dancing on the roof of a tower block but, as is par for the course now, they buggered off and left me on a table on my own not able to eat more than 5 mouthfuls of Sag Paneer. Quite an embarrassing situation but it would have been lovely in different circumstances. But i’m now beginning to feel a bit lonely tbh. I’ve not spoken to another traveler for day’s now so I’m going a bit crazy. And my guides don’t seem interested in anything much other than dropping me off places

Tommorow we’re off to Jodphur and I think I’m going to insist on staying in a guest house that’s in the lonely planet and has a restaurant so I won’t be the only non Indian and can get food no hassle when I feel I can manage it.

Will let you know what happens.

-Dan

View from the Amber Fort

Red & White Carrots:

Delhi

Went around loads of the sights of Delhi today. I think my favorite was Humayun’s tomb, a site with loads of ancient mogul tombs including the precursor to the taj mahal (only in red stone and white marble), unfortunately the red fort was closed due to the presidents upcoming visit.

In the eve I went out for some food with some other travelers then Raman, who is from delhi and used to work with me at BT in Brizzle, met up with us after he finished work at 11pm. Twas nice :-)

But this City is too hectic, so i'm looking forward to getting on the road tomorrow.

Cows in Delhi:

Flights, Getting here and First day

Hi all

I landed in Delhi an hour early (3am), and managed to get some rupees and a pre paid taxi from the police run office, I was then ushered past all the new taxis in to an ancient Hindu ambassador (or Morris Oxford) that had been converted to run on gas, although it sounded like it was running on rubble. I told him where I wanted to stay, he told me I should stay somewhere else (usual commission scam), but I insisted. As drove away from the airport it seemed to get more rural and no other cabs on the road, just Lorries. I started to worry as I couldn’t find any of the sign posted places on the map. Eventually we hit civilization again and I was told we were near where I wanted to go at a better hotel. Again I insisted but he gave lots of excuses and eventually said he didn’t know where mine was, sigh, I showed him on the map (again) and as we got here he tried to charge me again!!! I’d already paid twice the guide price at the police booking office. Now usually I tip cabbies but this guy’s tried to rip me off twice so he didn’t get a thing.

I woke up about 11, and met an American girl over breakfast who recommended a tour of dehli from a travel shop I have booked for tomorrow. He also quoted for a tour of Rajasthan In a minibus. Just the short walk there (2mins) was a shock with the chaos that is india. From there I wandered into Connaught place, the hub of New Delhi, constantly hassled by people. Eventually I started to chatting to these two young Indians who worked in IT, who were full of good advice and after a coffee helped me get a sim card (email me if you want my Indian number) and sort out the best options for a tour of Rajasthan before they went off to the cinema.

When I got back to the hotel I had a bit of a shock when I discovered the plaster ceiling from the of my bathroom was all over the bathroom floor. Oh well, the staff here cleaned it up quickly enough.

Going off to meet some other travelers in a bar now so catch you all soon

PS its really cold here at night this time of year, I must get a coat.

Visa & Flight Pt 1

So here I am, 1 hour, 2 beers and a curry into my flight to India. Just past Berlin if you’re interested. Not convinced by air India yet, the food was pretty good but the fact the zoomed in map of the channel had famous ship wrecks marked was a bit disconcerting. Even more worrying was the white smoke out of the jet engine when they started it. Although this just reminded me of tony’s van ;-). And like the van it seems fine now it’s going. The only thing to of crashed so far is entertainment system. Some linux problem. Do you think I could fit Iain in hand luggage next time I fly?

I’m a bit surprised to be here tbh, as I went to get my Visa on Thursday to discover that you can no longer get same day visas. Doh. The soonest my visa could possibly be ready would be Monday afternoon, and I need to check in on Tuesday morning. They make no guarantee about when it’ll be ready. So I just had to turn up on the Monday on the off chance. I’d pretty much given up as they turned the 3 people before me away as there visas were not ready. But mine was ready waiting for me. Phew.

A last minute flurry of emails to try and book a room has failed so I intend to get a cab to one a hotel that looks good (£7.14 per night air con’d with en suite) and hope for the best.

Anyways I will let you all know how it goes in my next entry.

-Dan

Blog’s, I hear you can get them on the interwebs now.

So I’ve finally decided to take half a step into this century of user generated content with my own blog.

I guess usually I keep my web presence quiet as I don’t have much interesting to say (at least until the third pint anyway). But lots of people have asked me to keep ‘em on a mailing list about what I’m up to during my travels and this felt like a better way than bombarding people with emails they may or may not want.

For those of you that don’t know I’m heading off to India and Nepal for a few months, flying out next tue (18/01/2011)

The rough plan so far is to fly to New Delhi, then Jodhpur, Agra, Varanasi, Kathmandu, Darjeeling and maybe Kolkata (Calcutta). Although I’m keeping my options open and may head in any random direction on a whim, to any number of other places I can’t spell.

So I’ll try to keep this blog updated periodically so anyone that’s interested can see what I’m up to.

Right now I’m in a small village called London, in the east of England, where I’m heading to the Indian embassy tomorrow to get my visa.

Then I have loads of other preparation stuff to do before I leave that I won’t bore you with.

So finally a question for you all. What should I add to my itinerary? Where’s not to be missed?

Let me know

-Dan