Moving on

Hello! Just a quick update – we’ve changed our flight plans slightly. The main reason is actually that we were stuck in Delhi for the remainder of our time in India as the trains north to Shimla were full. So, we move on from India to China – Hong Kong. Yay! We’ve enjoyed travelling in North India, but with the temperature here in Delhi hitting over 40 degrees each day now we think its time to move on to somewhere a little cooler…

We found India a weird place to visit. We’d highly recommend seeing Jaipur, Udaipur and Jaisalmer, but to be honest there’s not much to Agra excepting the Taj Mahal, or Jodhpur except the Fort. And Delhi is a bit smelly.

Some things we’ve found great…

1. Tandoors. Great kebabs – chicken, and paneer especially. And I love proper naan bread. I think tandoor food is definitely my favourite type of Indian cuisine. And it’s so much better out here than in the UK.

2. Colour. Everything is so colourful out here – particularly the women during festival times. And you can get lovely hangings and scarves and things (I hope our purchases survive the post back to the UK…)

3. Forts. Really big and impressive ones! We have nothing on this scale in the UK – our castles are really pathetic by comparison. The lived in one in Jaisalmer is vibrant, the huge one in Jodhpur impressive, Agra’s is more like a palace… Wonderful.

4. Palaces. They have some really silly, completely over the top palaces – sometimes in the forts, other times in the town, on mountains, lakes, wherever. It seems that each Emperor / King / Maharajah could not possibly be happy until he had built a bigger palace than his Dad / predecessor / whoever he conquered. And there seem to have been loads of Emperors, Kings and Maharajahs…

5. Mountains. Particularly around lakes. Udaipur does this particularly well.


And some scary things…

1. Facial hair. OK, I know this is a matter of personal taste, but the moustaches out here are impressive. Particularly the ones which get really long and bushy, so their owners twist the ends to make them stand up!

2. Big turbans. Really really big, colourful, and in lots of different styles of course depending on religion, region etc. The colourful thing isn’t always a good move however – particularly shades of pale pink…

3. Water. And food for that matter. It often tastes great (except when they try to westernise food), but you may regret it the next day! They have some serious bugs to challenge the GI tract around here. And on top of this, why is the Indian version of Fanta a particularly violent shade of radioactive orange?

4. Roads. Lane discipline? Nah, that’s for wooses! Plus it’s much more manly to drive the wrong way up roads, especially duel carriageways. Everyone wants to get you to give them huge sums of money for a 10 meter trip in their rickshaw / tuk-tuk / taxi / whatever Oh, and don’t forget the cows wandering down every street, or the carts drawn by ponys, cows, or camels!

5. TV and Film. And adverts. OK, now I know that we don’t understand Hindi, however, staying in a lot of hotels we’ve seen some TV over the last few weeks. And flicking between the few English language channels, we’ve seen a fair sample of Indian TV and films. You could say there are a few things we don’t get. For instance, in Indian soaps, why does every scene seem to be a hugely over melodramatic collage of the characters facial expressions, mixed in with a few epilepsy or nausea – inducing camera effects? I’ve never seen anything like it! And I’d also like to know why there seem to be so many men dressed in really bad jumpers with big patterns on them in films? Usually jumping around with paint-brushes or chairs or something to some song or other. Weird!

6. Sport. There is lots of sport coverage out here. Loads. But we could see interest in only one sport. Tell me, is cricket the only sport they play in India?

Anyway, here is a list of our new flight dates if you need them for any reason, or are tempted to come out here! Hope you are all having a good time at home.

26.4.08 : Delhi - Hong Kong

9.5.08 : Hong Kong - Tokyo

24.5.08 : Tokyo - Beijing

30.6.08 : Shanghai - Hong Kong

11.9.08 : Singapore - Perth

25.9.08 : Perth - Brisbane

31.10.08 : Sydney - Aukland

5.12.08 : Aukland - Tahiti

11.12.08 : Tahiti - Easter Island

20.12.08 : Easter Island - Santiago

12.2.09 : Lima - Mexico City

Scared

OK. Let me start this entry by saying I’m scared. The past few days have held a number of terrifying experiences for us. Well, one or two anyway.

Point One. Flying. Planes should be nice and big and have nice big jet engines. And there should be no such thing as turbulence. And there should definitely be no such thing as small propeller driven planes WITH turbulence. That is a very very bad idea. It feels like your itsy bitsy teeny weeny plane is falling from the sky after hitting a brick wall. Or is about to flip over sideways because of a random gust of air. Not nice.

Erm to explain, we flew in to Amritsar via Delhi from Udiapur in two very small aircraft. With propellers. A bit traumatic! Oh well, we got here I suppose. And actually the airline people (Jet Airways) were some of the best we’ve flown with – really helpful, nice and courteous.

Point Two. Indian food. I’m really really fed up of having stomach upsets. There is something seriously wrong with this country’s micro-organisms. Don’t ask me what, but they really don’t agree with me. Or Gary. Or anyone else from the west that we’ve spoken to for that matter. Saying that, the food can taste great. And I don’t think it’s the style of food, as very similar Indian food in the UK is fine. Also, we’ve never had any trouble with food in the Far East – China, Thailand, Japan, Cambodia, Vietnam… There is definitely something about India!

Also, although the food we’ve had here has usually tasted good (and occasionally brilliant), it can go very badly wrong. As far as I can see, there are four basic categories of food available in restaurants or cafes in India: Non-Indian food for Non-Indians, Indian food for Indians, Indian food for Non-Indians and Non-Indian food for Indians. The first three are usually delicious. The last is vile. And unfortunately not always easy to recognise when you walk into a restaurant or look at a menu. We’ve just had a very bad experience in a very popular restaurant – food which we thought would be Indian-style was horribly mutated by bad interpretations of western cuisine (basically putting large quantities of evil, thick, smelly, gelatinous sauces on everything and boiling all vegetables, rice, and anything else to oblivion). Yuk! Yet loads of locals seemed to love it…

Ah well, at least most of the time we have fun! But I must admit, I’m looking forward to having dim sum in two weeks time, and sushi a week after that! Anyway, hope you all are having a good time, and will post some pictures of colourful Amritsar at Vaisakhi soon.

A room with a view - and changes to plans

We arrived in Udaipur yesterday. After one of the most bumpy bus rides of my life (7 hours of winding over mountain roads)! And when we got here, the hotel’s pick-up service from the bus-stop was completely destroyed by the fact whoever was on duty at reception when we called spoke no English. So we then had to struggle 4km with our bags through town, harried by some particularly persistent rickshaw touts determined to rip us off!

But it was worth the trip. This place is truly beautiful. The town is on a lake surrounded by mountains, containing an island or two of palaces. The view from our room is breathtaking – see the photos. We’ll stay here for a few days and relax, do some work, and wander around the area before retuning to the hustle and bustle of Delhi.


On another note, we’ve decided not to go to Nepal – due to the present situation in Tibet riots have been sparked in Katmandu, complete with terrorist bombings. This is apparently typical during times of unrest in the area, although Nepal itself is normally safe to visit. Another time maybe. Instead we will go north of Delhi to Punjab and Himal Pradesh, and plan to see Shimla (a hill town) and Chandigar (the most modern city in India apparently). I’ll let you know how we get on!