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March 23, 2014

The Pink City

christinelouise Asia, NovaTOURient, Travel Talk 2014, Amber Fort, Asia, India, jaipur, monkey temple, Sightseeing, tiger fort, trains

This is a rather appropriate one, considering how pink my life is. I work and live in a pink palace and dye my hair pink every summer, so of course I had to visit The Pink City, Jaipur.

Now, our first time on an Indian train is quite an interesting one. I find the system super confusing, and the train is old without windows – it’s just carved out holes in the wall with bars on them. India doesn’t seem to have trash cans anywhere, so people just throw stuff out of the windows at any given time, creating big piles of garbage everywhere for the cows to munch on. The three sleeper beds per wall on the train are just seats during the day.

We get to sit with a nice Indian family, that is talking to us most of the time, and we share our snacks between each other. The beds are so narrow, that falling off is a serious concern for me, who of course gets to be on the very top one, being the shortest of us. Needless to say, it isn’t our best sleep, and we prefer our sleeperbusses.

At 5 in the morning, we find ourselves walking around Jaipur looking for our hostel, while a drunk beggar is following us. When we find Vinayak, we are shown to the Wi-Fi lounge to sleep for a few hours until our room is ready. The hostel is very nice. The owner knows the names of all his guests, and he always stops to talk with everyone he sees. We certainly feel welcome and comfortable here. He arranges for an autorickshaw driver to take us around town, and we split our sightseeing into two days. Our driver, Sardar, is amazing, and we highly recommend him to anyone who’s in Jaipur! If you want to get a hold of him, his number is ‪09928050788‬.

The first day, we each pay Sardar 250 rupees. He takes us to a tomb, through the bazars in the Pink City, and then to Amber Fort. That place is huuuge! We get lost a couple of times. We are also some of the most popular people at this major tourist attraction, as groups and groups and groups of Indians ask for pictures with us. One person will take the picture with someone’s phone or camera, and then they’ll switch photographer, until everyone has been behind the camera, and everyone has a picture on their phone.

Giving the locals a taste of their own medicine by also insisting on a 1000 pictures with them.

Rare sighting of a trashcan!

It’s a tiring experience walking around so much and taking it all in, but we continue to drive by Water Palace and look at it from afar for a few mintues. Not that impressed.

Then it’s off to the Monkey Temple, which is older than your mom, so like 500 years old. The walk up the hill is hard enough, but then we find out we still have to walk down the hill to get to the temple – all while being attacked by monkeys! One of the bigger ones by the entrance sees my bag of peanuts – something they insist you buy! – and tugs at my scarf to get to my shoulders and steal my peanuts. I am about to shit bricks. Luckily, one of the young guys hanging around, offering to escort people to the temple without having to worry about monkeys, comes to my rescue. Sara and I are wearing our Punjabi dresses, and they’re not very practical when running away from monkeys.

The next day starts at the Tiger Fort, which is located on top of the steepest hill I’ve ever peed on. Yes, after the most exhausting walk with lots of breaks, Sara and I have to pee really bad, and there are no toilets in sight. So we pee at the gate to the Tiger Fort. Sorry.

The Fort is simple and yellow, and not really worth the walk to me. It does give a nice view over Jaipur, but so does the Monkey Temple.

The view is pretty neat for a toilet, eh

Just look at that looong, curvy road we’re walking on! You can spot me and Sara being so far behind Bruno it’s not even funny.

This is disgusting and amazing. Of course, women are not allowed to use this, because vaginas are gross.

We’re soldiers

We then go to the Albert Hall museum, where we basically go in just to pee (again. I drink lots of water, you guys). Sara and I do have a quick look around and see some mummies and weapons, but it isn’t really something we’re that interested in, so we head out again to wait for Bruno.

Next stop is Hawa Mahal, but we only have 30 minutes to see it, because parking isn’t allowed. It’s stressing us out a bit, so we’re all in a pretty bad mood.

We stop by a 35 meter tower which is like Round Tower in Copenhagen, but steeper. Here, we once again get to check out the view. Finally, Sardar drops us off at a textile shop called Ethnic Textile. Here, they explain a bit about colorblocks and natural colours made from safran, chili, indigo and spinach. The guys at the shop are super nice, they teach us some Hindi phrases, serve us masala chai and show us a million different fabrics. We end up buying bedsheets, cushions, pashmina scarves and clothes. Oops.

Jaipur is pretty awesome, but not as pink as I thought. I’ll be back again someday, for sure!

March 20, 2014

The Golden City

christinelouise Asia, NovaTOURient, Travel Talk 2014, Asia, camel safari, India, jaisalmer, thar desert

I have to be honest with you: my butt is very sore today. I had the best ride of my life yesterday. More about that in a butt, err, bit.

Right now, I’m sitting with a cold beer in my hand in Jaisalmer, The Golden City. It is basically a big sandcastle, that I can admire from the rooftop of our hostel, Mystic Jaisalmer. The atmosphere here is amazing. Our first night, after exploring the fort, we sat down with the owner, the great “Mullah”, who offered free curries and masala chai, while we talked about travelling, amongst other things. It was the most amazing conversation I’ve ever had, and I was left feeling so inspired and so in love with life.

Well, let’s rewind a little bit. On the bus, we meet Michael from Germany and Hagar from Israel. Sara and I share a sleeper right across from Bruno, who has this weird tinfoil-looking blanket with him, and we are just laughing at him. At one point, while he is out of the bus, we grab his iPhone and take a collection of the ugliest self-portraits you can imagine.

Like this one. You’re welcome.

We get to our hostel and get a nice – shared – room. Bruno’s bed is basically the window pane with pillows, but he doesn’t mind. And we have a TV with Bollywood music videos playing all day long! This is pure luxury.

We decide to head out to see some sights and buy some clothes for a desert trip. On our way to the Fort, which is where the party’s at, we stumble upon a Bhang shop, and lots of places selling blankets like these:

I don’t usually have that kind of problem, but will definitely keep Jaisalmer in mind if it happens.

Bruno harrassing local women with his camera, as usual.

Once inside of the fort, we just walk around the narrow streets for ages, before visiting as many temples as we can before closing time, with an audio guide in hand.

Some ladies selling jewelry by the entrance of the fort. They wanted me to be in their pitcure.

I really like this picture. Also, I think that is probably the best looking man in all of India.

Cute kids in creepy masks following us around

Inside one of the temples

And here are some animal pictures, because Sara is obsessed:

Sara makes sure all the stray dogs in India stay hydrated.

Sleepy puppies!

The following day, the hostel has arranged a camel safari in the Thar desert for us and Hagar, Michael, Campbell and Paolo. We drive out with a funny local guy who’s dancing while driving to the deserted village of Rajasthan for a quick look. Also, from now on I am shamelessly using some of the pictures, the other guys took.

We then drive out to the desert, where we meet our “camels”, which are actually dromedaries, and our guides. We get on our camels – I’m really just going to continue calling them camels now – and as they stand up, we all freak out. It’s so scary. We start making our way across the desert, stumbling upon a gypsy village, and of course, lots of sand. The camels are quite painful to ride on. Mine is called Michael Jackson!

After a few hours, we stop at our camp, where the camel guys serve us fried pasta(!), which is definitely an interesting snack to go with our Kingfisher beer. We then go for a walk in the desert, see the sunset and roll around in the sand dunes, which is so much fun.

As dinnertime approaches, the camel guys have Sara and me sit by the fire and make chapati. We have them with curry-boiled vegetables and rice. So good!

Earlier on, we all decided to arrange our beds into a circle, so we could all talk before going to sleep. As we are lying in our beds under the stars, we see a shooting star. Then several more. The moon is rising behind the dunes, so Michael, Hagar, Bruno and I go to check it out, and we end being gone for hours, just taking pictures like these, while bugs are crawling on us, because we are standing so still for pictures.

In the very early morning, we are woken up by the sunrise. Everything’s just so bright out in the open. We decide to go to the sand dunes to check it out and it’s so beautiful.

We then have breakfast and get back on our camels. We head back to the hostel to have a shower and book our train to Jaipur (we were really supposed to go to Jodhpur), and now it’s time for the train (1st time woo!)

Thanks a lot, Mystic Jaisalmer!

March 18, 2014

Holi cow, what a party!

christinelouise Asia, NovaTOURient, Travel Talk 2014, holi, holi festival, holika dahan, local celebrations, udaipur

We didn’t know India could be this fun. It’s hard to put into words what celebrating Holi Festival is like, but I’ll give it a try.

We sort of came to Udaipur by accident. We wanted to book a bus ticket to Pushkar, but since they didn’t have any busses going, we chose The Venice of India instead.

We check into our hostel, which has what we call “The Porn Elevator” (which means it plays soft jazz music, and has the AC turned all the way up)

*soft jazz plays*

We then go out to get cheap clothes for Holi. I’m not about to ruin any of my outfits for this. In one of the stores, we meet Bruno from China, who is on the same mission. We all have the same list of items to get for tomorrow: flip flops, sunglasses, scarves to cover our heads, coloured powders, and coconut oil for skin and hair – especially a blonde like me needs it, if I don’t want rainbow hair. Now I kinda do.

We end up walking around the city together to buy all the items on our list, and while talking about our plans for this trip, we find out that we have similar plans from here. Perfect! We then go to several travel agents together, all with the same boring news: no busses going out on the 18th, which is the date we wanted to leave. Instead, we can either stay here for several days – or leave tomorrow, during Holi. We eventually decide that we will leave the next day. Stressful.

Because of that, our sightseeing time is limited. Boo (not really).
We get some street food at a small stall, and it’s actually pretty delicious, even though I have no idea what it is. Bruno then takes us to the temple on city square, where the priest is blessing a foreign couple, which involves getting painted on the forehead, hanging flowers around their necks and praying to a decorated sculpture of Ganesh.

At the temple, wearing the scarves we just bought

By the city square

We go went to the rooftop restaurant of our hostel to have dinner and a beer before heading back to the city square for a big celebration called Holika Dahan. It is basically a burning of Holika, the Devil, and there is music, dancing and firecrackers too.

In the middle of city square, right outside of the temple, there is a huge stage with lights and balloons. On stage, a lady boy in belly dancing clothes is dancing and dragging tourists on stage to join “her”, and right then it becomes my goal to get up there and dance. We make our way through the crowd, and “she” soon notices us. Next thing we know, we join her and several other tourists for a dance, that ends up lasting about 30 minutes, with a few breaks. The locals especially seem to enjoy Yo Yo Honey Singh – Sunny Sunny Yaariyan
At one point, Sara and I are alone with the lady boy and a traditional Indian dancer, just doing our best Bollywood-esque dance. I do not want to get down from there. We are dancing in front of an entire city and they are loving it just as much as we do!

The fire with the scene in the background

Creepy panorama from the stage

When we finally get down, we meet some nice young locals, around age 10-14, who fill us is on the tradition of lighting a big fire, and they are super interested in my camera. They ask Bruno to take some pictures of us with my camera, but they never change facial expression. They also give me a balloon. Such sweet boys. We then start dancing in the crowd in front of the stage, and a circle forms around us. It’s like an epic dance-off, except it’s just me and Sara dancing like lame-o’s. People are clapping and cheering on us, but then the guys in the crowd start pushing to get to us. Some of them even grope us a little bit, but luckily we have Bruno, the young boys and some nice locals to protect usby pushing the gropers away. Aw!

The big fire in the center is about to be lit, so everyone put fire crackers around it. The line of fire crackers circle around the fire, then down to a smaller side street. Someone at the end of the line lights up the fire crackers, and it causes a domino effect, so essentially, the fire crackers light the fire. People gather in a big circle around the fire, and we are as close to the fire as we possibly can be.

I stole these pictures from The Udaipur Times

I took this one myself, though

As the fire crackers go off, we pull back to avoid getting hit by them, and then shit hits the fan. Some local guys take this opportuinty to hold on to us so we can’t move, and then they start groping us aggressively. I am holding my camera, filming the fire, while kicking the people squeezing my breasts and buttocks and shoving hands down my pants, but there’s not much I can do – they’re too many. The little boys come to my rescue as the crowd approaches the fire to start the real party. After this, Sara and I feel terrible and fragile. The worries we’ve had have until now been for nothing, but tonight has really shown us that we have been right to be careful. At the same time it is also touching that other people aren’t just standing by and watching it happening, but actually trying to help you the best they can. We decide to go back to to the hostel, before people get even drunker and rowdier. Luckily, we have an amazing rooftop restaurant, from where we can see the city square, so Bruno comes with us for a few beers. That’s when we see the fireworks over City Palace, which has its own Holika Dahan celebration. It’s a beautiful full moon night.

Next day, we soak ourselves in 27 rupees worth of coconut oil (that’s a whole jar), put on our cheap clothes and go outside. We are supposed to meet Bruno outside our hostel, but he doesn’t show up, so we head to the square by ourselves, a bit scared.

My dusty tunic (it’s supposed to be white), the jar of oil, and the colours for the day

As we step out on the street, we are greeted by aggressive tourists with squirt guns, but as soon as we are in the square, locals approach us and gently touch our faces with the coloured powder, give us a hug and say “Happy Holi!” It is way more peaceful and beautiful than I had imagined. In a way, you feel so much love around you – everyone is the same colour, which is rainbow, and no one is a stranger. This sounds super lame, but it is way more than “just” throwing coloured powder on each other.

We hang out with a couple of tourists as we all throw and rub colours on people. It’s so much fun, but intense. Drums are playing, people are dancing, and police men are constantly watching us, spanking locals with a wooden stick if they get a bit inappropriate. I feel like that should make me feel safe, but instead I find it rather rude.

The aftermath. It took an hour to barely scrub ourselves clean. My hair will probably never be blonde again!

Still, the men (I have barely seen any local women) get intoxicated, and little kids are grabbing our powders out of our bags, so after an hour and a half, we go back to the hostel and take a shower. It’s a big splash of colour in the bathroom, and of course the owner had already predicted that, so he shows up at our door and starts cleaning the bathroom. And he just won’t leave our room once he’s done, so we force him out by going to the rooftop restaurant ourselves.

Bruno shows up 30 minutes later. He overslept this morning, which is why he was nowhere to be seen, but it’s pretty obvious that he’s had a great time. The receptionists and his friends join us, and of course we get painted again.

We have a few beers and try bhang, which is a paste made from marijuana, that is put into a sweet drink, like lassi or lemonade. The owner gets us some, but is still being creepy about it, and I suspect that he’s put way too much bhang in the drink, so I only have one sip. When everyone gets a bit drunk and creepy, we check out and head to the bus stop. On the way, we meet some people that recognize us from the night before when we were dancing on stage. We are officially celebrities.

So, that was our Holi experience. I would definitely do that again, because it is a beautiful and fun tradition. Now I’ve got to try and get the red out of my hair for the 30th time. I’m officially a strawberry blonde, ugh.

March 18, 2014

Busride from Hell

christinelouise Asia, NovaTOURient, Travel Talk 2014, Asia, bombay, India, mumbai, Night bus, scary stories

A 19-hour bus drive. That’s not too bad.

Or so we thought.
After sitting on the pavement of a hot, busy street for what seems like ages, our bus stops a few hundred metres away from us. As we are entering the bus, we are greeted by a handful of local guys right by the driver’s seat, loudly exclaiming “nice” as they stare us down. Creeped out, we go to the back of the bus to get to our top sleeper. As we climb the ladder, the guys go absolutely nuts. They are laughing, yelling and pointing, just because they got to see us bend over to get into our sleeper. Great. At this point, I am 90 % sure we are going to get either robbed or raped at night. I am extremely terrified, so we try to keep our spirits high by singing children’s songs about bad busdrivers.

But it gets worse.
The sleeper is disgusting. It’s old, worn down and downright dirty. It has to be the smallest, most expensive double sleeper we have ever been in, with no AC either.

But it gets worse.
The bus barely drives anywhere for the first five hours. It will drive for 10-20 minutes, then stop for an hour, then drive for another 10 minutes, only to stop for several hours again. Not having AC on the bus is acceptable when you’re actually driving, as the wind cools you down, but being parking for hours directly in the sun with no curtains to block the warm rays is awful. The mattress and blankets under us gets soaked with our sweat. We are getting increasingly annoyed. And the bus keeps stopping. We realise that it doubles as a delivery service, as we stop just to unload packages, and at one point, all the guys are outside, trying to lift motorbikes to the roof and then attach them. This gives the bus a slight tilt, which is just great when your driver is a maniac behind the wheel.

But it gets worse.
The road is so bumpy, and our bus is driving so fast, that our bodies actually elevate and we bump our heads into the ceiling, even though we are lying straight down. It’s like a long rollercoaster ride that you never asked for.

But it gets worse.
We get our only toiletbreak 9 hours into the ride, but we both have to pee long before that. I blame the bumpy road punching our bladders. Sara is so desperate, she takes out a plastic bag and asks me if it’s OK if she pees right in our sleeper, into the bag. Of course I say no, the girl has no aim and the road is bumpy, and I don’t want to spend 15 hours on a pissed-soaked mattress.

But it gets worse.
At one point, I pull aside the curtain that seperates our sleeper with the rest of the bus, and to our surprise, the bus is completely full. So full, that people are sitting on the floor of the bus. We are the only tourists on the bus, and as soon as I pull aside the curtain, people notice us and we are now the most interesting thing to look at on this bus. I close my eyes, enjoying the breeze coming from the window, drying my sweat-soaked clothes a bit. All of the sudden, Sara starts screaming, and I really think it’s because she has to wet herself, since we had had no toilet breaks. No. Big spider crawling right next to me. I freak out completely, find a reciept and try to squish the son of a bitch, but it slips away and crawls out of the sleeper. Except it didn’t really. So 5 minutes later it is back for more, and I brutally kill it in front of several locals just staring at the only blonde person on the bus, who is letting out a victorious laugh.

Our 19-hour bus ride turned into 22 hours, of course. We only had an apple and some crackers each all day, one pee break, and so many horny locals around us in this confined space. This was without a doubt a busride from Hell.

March 14, 2014

Bombaystic Mumbai

christinelouise Asia, NovaTOURient, Travel Talk 2014, Asia, bombay, India, mumbai

I wish I could tell you the story of how we went to Mumbai and saw everything there and took lots of pictures and were extras in a Bollywood movie and had the time of our lives. Sorry to disappoint.

On the bus, as we get off it to have our only toilet break that night, instead of available toilets, I am sent off to pee behind a bush. Not only is is pitch black outside, I am also very worried that the bus will leave without me, so I hurry up and relieve myself behind a friggin’ bush. As I walk back, a girl, Jill, jumps out and begs me to not let the bus leave without her, as she is running towards the bush now.

We arrive in Mumbai early in the morning, and Sara feels a bit sick and I want a shower more than I could want World Peace or a million dollars. We get into a cab, arranging to meet later at a café with Mike, Jill and a girl named Victoria. We take a long time agreeing on a price with our driver, and as we get in, another driver/businesspartner gets in with him. We start driving, and the deal we made with the driver is out of the window. When we come to a stop in traffic, we get out and start getting our luggage, until they both agree to lower the price a bit, but it is far from what we initially agreed on. They’re upset, we’re upset, and there’s just no winning this, but we’re sick and tired and dirty, so we stay in the cab. Turns out that not only is our hotel nearly impossible for taxi drivers to find (then again, they seem to know the city as well as we do), it is also very far away from the bus station. We drive through neighbourhoods consisting of old, worn-down buildings, “nicer” slums and a whole lot of pollution. At first I think it’s just a very foggy day, until someone tells me it is actually dirty air. How nice.

We are staying at Bentley Hotel Churchgate (on Marine Drive), and it is better than we could have ever expected. Our room is so big and clean, with a vanity, air-con, a couch and a safe box omigoshyouguys! The bathroom is out of this world, compared to what we’ve had to deal with lately, although showering is still just pouring a bucket of water over your head.

Shower time

We put on our Salwar Kameez’/Punjabi dresses that we bought in Delhi, and go to Leopold’s for lunch, with all the men outside yelling “Bollywood extras!?” It has been on my bucket list for ages, but with two days in Mumbai and Sara feeling sick, it seems that will have to wait until next time. Oh well. We break our vegetarian streak by eating a Caesar salad, and I actually feel bad about it. I was kind of proud of myself , since I am a huge fan of meat. After that, we walk around for like an hour trying to get a taxi that isn’t trying to scam us, and of course we almost rip each other’s heads off in the process.

We take a nap at the hotel, hoping that it will make Sara feel better, but it doesn’t. We have to meet up with our friends from the bus at 7 though, so we get out of bed and into a cab. Our driver is hilarious, saying he doesn’t want our money and proceeds to ask us if we “like Indian banana?” I am appalled, thinking he means he wants something other than money as payment for the ride, but then suddenly he gets out an actual banana and hands it to me, insisting I keep it. Needless to say, we payed him, ’cause that was just plain weird. At Leopold’s (again) we meet Mike, Victoria and Jill. A big meal, 6 huge Kingfisher’s and a banana covered in ketchup (that I actually eat on a dare) later, it’s almost 11 at night, which seems to be a dangerous time to be out as a white girl in India. We all say goodbye, I get Jill’s number in case she wants to hang out before her flight the following night, and we head home.

Next morning, Sara isn’t feeling any better, but we have a lot to do on our last whole day in Mumbai. After breakfast at the hotel (more masala chai, yum!), we take a long taxi ride to a much recommended, super hard to find travel agent. Holi Festival is coming up, and we have been thinking about celebrating it in Pushkar, as alcohol is not allowed there. Sara is concerned for our safety during such a big celebration. Well, no one seems to be able to get us to Pushkar in time, so instead we book a bus to Udaipur. We’re so spontaineous, ha ha.

We go see the Gateway of India, which is kinda underwhelming, but it gives us a reason to take a picture of me.

Close by there is an Indian Starbucks which means air-con! We head in and grab something to drink, share a cake, and Sara steals a roll of toilet paper in the bathroom. We are so cultural.

Next thing on our list of things to get done is to find a charger for the computer that we brought. After another drive with a confused man behind the wheel, we find a place where the nice people promise to order one and bring it to our hotel – and they even agree to take a look at my camera too, but can’t promise anything. Well, a few hours later, a guy brings us our stuff to the hotel and we are beyond excited… Until we realize a part of the charger/adaptor is missing! I call the company, but no one understands me, so the nice receptionist at our hotel talks to them for us, but it doesn’t help. Instead, he gives us directions to a department store that’s closing within an hour, where we can find plugs, so we run down to Asiatic and pick up a plug, along with some colours for Holi. Day saved!

We then watch the sunset from Chowpatty beach, which is right across the street from the hotel. It’s so beautiful, that everyone gathers at the beach to look at the drowning sun, even the crabs. Sara and I sit there for a long time, just watching the crabs have an epic duel.

We have a late dinner at Pizza by the Bay, where we also had lunch (we’re repeat offenders). The lunch was amazing and the dinner good, although I underestimated the amount of chilli flakes on my pasta, and I end up eating less than half of my portion. The waiters are all very nice, but I think they are a bit offended that I don’t finish. Still a bit hungry, but unable to finish my pasta, I order dessert, and so does Sara. Halfway through my cheesecake I am full. Once again, the waiters seem to think I hate the food, and it’s really awkward.

I’m a bit bummed we didn’t see more of Mumbai, but we definitely needed more time. Even though it is more populous than Delhi, it doesn’t seem nearly as crowded or aggressive, and therefore not as scary for a tourist. While a lot of what we’ve seen are poor neighbourhoods, the cleaner parts of Mumbai has some amazing architecture (Central train station, High Court and so on) that reminds me a bit of Europe. It seems very different from the flamboyant India, with the bright colours and details, we’ve seen so far. I thought wearing a Punjabi dress would make us blend in more with the locals, but not only do a lot of them wear more “western” styled clothing, it also gives us more attention than ever. Especially from men. I will definitely recommend any tourist doing it though, as people really seem to appreciate that you try to blend in, and I’ve gotten so many compliments on my dress!

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