Varanasi, India 2010

I can’t believe it’s only been two weeks. It feels like as if I have been here forever! I love India, I’m alive and everything is great. I have found a hotel in Pushkar where they actually have really good  wifi so I’m here right now and guess what.. you’ll get a proper update and some pictures today!

The streetfood in India is fantastic. It looks nasty when they cook it in things that don’t look anything close to clean, but considering the heat that it’s being prepared in, it’s safe.. and incredibly tasty. & CHEAP! We’re talking 10 rupees.. that’s about 13 eurocents, for a huge meal with rice,chickpeas, something really spicy and some bread.

My first trainride was a 13hour trip and I was enjoying to the fullest before I started feeling really bad not realising that I was actually sick. Luckily it didn’t break out before I had made my way to Varanasi..

Varanasi was wonderful. It is a place where death and spirituality is closer than I have ever experienced it, it is such a profound part of the daily life that you get used to it in a way that I never would have expected. After some days the frequent passing of processions with people carrying dead bodies weren’t anything sensational anymore.. it was just natural. I’m happy I stayed six days, even more considering the fact that I was half-dead during the first 24 hours. And wow, if that was all of Delhi-belly I would have to experience, I consider myself very lucky. Let’s hope that I’m immune now and that I don’t go there again!

In Varanasi I met a lot of wonderful people, a crazy and lovely Italian girl decided to join me on my 13h trainride to Agra to see the Taj Mahal. We were in Agra at 6 o’clock in the morning and spent the day with a motorickshaw man named Ameen who took us around the different sights in Agra for the cost of about 4€. The Taj was.. wow. Really.. no matter how many pictures I have seen of it, it was still breathtaking and a lot bigger than I had expected. At 18 I had my train to Jaipur and the mafia girl Sara took hers to Delhi.

I spent two days in Jaipur and I didn’t enjoy it that much.. first of all, my lens broke! My dear 18-200mm got stuck and now it’s just kind of like a fixed 24mm lens. I went to the Canon office and they said it would take a week because they would have to send it to New Delhi and bla bla bla. so I passed on that.. It’s really sad as the views here in Rajasthan are really wonderful and as photography is such an important part of my travelling, but on the other hand now I will have to learn how to manage and like my 50mm lens.. haha
Jaipur as a city was basically loud and crowded, it was more grey than pink and the hustle was just too much. As much as I love India, I also hate the fact that it turns me into a rude person. I have seriously never before been this rude to strangers in my entire life. India forces me to say things such as “I said NO!” or.. and this is so embarassing.. at some point I actually pretended that I am deaf. Seriously, I’m not the easily provoked one, but sometimes “hello ma’am, which country?” just gets too much when you know that they will follow you around trying to take you to their cousin’s/father’s/uncle’s overpriced shop the next 15 minutes if you answer or even smile. The nicest part of Jaipur was when me and a friend I had met on the train took a local bus to Amber and the fort there, it was beautiful and nice.. but no elephants as promised. And of course also the evening when we went to the cinema which was insane. Bollywood is so much fun! I have been to the movies twice now and the audience screams and shouts whenever there’s some bare skin or when some actor says something funny. They sing along with the songs and even if I don’t understand hindi.. it doesn’t matter, the stories are so cheesy that you literally get everything anyway. It’s great! haha

I left Jaipur and took a bus to Pushkar.. there are no tourists here! Like seriously, I am the only person staying in my hotel which is in a really nice location. I am paying 1,4€ per night for a beautiful big room with a really nice bathroom because the owners are so desperate for money that I basically could bargain my way to almost any deal.. Pushkar is lovely, it has a lake in the middle and people are friendly, calm and nice.. yesterday when going back to my hotel I found a children’s show being set up at the backyard. Me and two Irish girls I had met earlier in the evening joined and sat with all the kids that were going bananas over our cameras. Wonderfully random.

One photo! One chocolate! One rupee! One schoolpen! One photo! One photo!

I will stay here another day or two, then I want to head west to Jaisalmer. And you know that if you click on the pictures you can see them in higher resolution? And if you didn’t get enough, there’s some more pictures here. :)

Take care out there!