Day 42 to 55: (Not) as calm as a hindu cow

Two weeks into our Indian experience and certain things have become our new normal. Vibrant activity, sharing roads with cars, rickshaws, tuk tuks, cows, goats, dogs, and the occasional pig, spatters of red betel juice on the ground from paan-chewers...and of course, people, people everywhere.

I expected India to be intense with the sheer number of people, the dirt, and the in-your-face poverty...as well as being a fascinating country with awesome spicy food. Overall we haven't found it as much of a culture shock as we expected. It is a buzzing place, which often appears chaotic to our western eyes. Almost everywhere we go people are curious about us as we are clearly foreigners, so we are becoming accustomed to not being able to blend into the background. Cities tend to have lots of rubbish about the place and pollution haze from the hordes of vehicles and it is hard and challenging to see lots of people begging and struggling to eke a living, when we comparatively have so much. I think I find street children the hardest to see, as they always run up to you and pull at your clothing. The best way to get through them is to completely ignore them, which feels heartless but is better than trying to shake them off like bugs.

Taking the metro on the weekend in Delhi was rather like joining a rugby scrum, particularly for men, as women have a dedicated carriage reserved for them which is much less crowded than the rest of the train. Train travel has been excellent in the upper class air conditioned (heated in winter) carriages and it was easy to sleep on the seats that converted to beds for overnight journeys, but the lower class carriages are not heated, and it did get very cold in the past few weeks. Winter fog made for some very long delays - the longest delay we encountered was when our afternoon train from Orchha to Agra was already 8 hours late before it got to us - so our tour group abandoned the train plan and took a 6 hour drive instead.

Exploring northern India has been a very interesting time and highlights for us include:

Treating our tastebuds

with delicious curries, breads, varieties of dhal, lassi and incredibly sweet sweets. We have been really enjoying hot samosas on train journeys and English tea has been replaced by cardamom-spiced masala chai.

Witnessing life and death rituals along the Ganges river

Floating along the Ganges was at times a sobering experience. The river was alive with the activity of boats, Hindus washing in the waters and the flames of funeral pyres where Hindus mourned and tourists clustered above to watch. It looked invasive, like spectating at a funeral. Our boat kept some distance from the burning ghats (banks) out of respect for the families. Although most dead bodies are cremated, certain exceptions (including pregnant women, lepers, those who die from snakebites and holy men) mean bodies are put directly into the Ganges without being burnt. We passed a shrouded body bobbing along, with head and shoulders above the water, which was a rather disturbing experience for us.

Peaceful Orchha and stunning Khajuraho temples

We enjoyed visiting the small town of Orchha, which had an impressive palace and many temples lining the river. An Indian cooking class was a great way to taste new dishes we can try to recreate when we return home. We also visited an awesome temple complex at Khajuraho - known as the kama sutra temple, the beautiful buildings are decorated with thousands of "instructive" figures.

A fog-shrouded Taj Mahal

We visited the city of Agra on one of the colder winter days and saw a mysterious looking Taj Mahal. Our other tour members were disappointed by the fog but we didn’t really mind, and as we were leaving the sun came out in time to light up the marble for a more contrasted view of the Taj.

Seeing Bollywood in action and on the big screen in Jaipur

The Amber Fort in Jaipur was a beautifully preserved palace complex where we enjoyed wandering and there happened to be a South Indian film being shot, so we joined the onlookers. Later that evening we saw the latest Bollywood film at the Raj Mandir Art Deco cinema – we expected to be a bit bored after an hour of watching the Hindi film without subtitles, but it was pretty easy to follow and we enjoyed the music, the dancing, and the cheesiness. Other highlights of Jaipur were a beautiful royal summer palace set in the middle of a lake and the Jantar Muntar observatory with astrological instruments built in stone, which are still accurate today despite being built over 300 years ago.

A serene lake city and a local festival

After our tour finished we headed south west from Delhi to the peaceful lake city of Udaipur. Islands in the midst of the lake have beautiful white palaces and the city is much cleaner than Delhi. An enterprising rickshaw driver took us from the train station to our hotel and offered to be our guide for the day, so we enjoyed being driven around viewpoints, gardens and spice markets. From Udaipur we took an aggresively driven bus to the city of Ahmedabad in the Gujarat region and arrived in time to enjoy seeing many children and families out celebrating the Makar Sankranti festival by flying kites. We also visited Gandhi's ashram and saw where he and his wife lived and from where they led their non-violence movement.

That wraps up our time in the north, we're now off to Bangalore to begin 2 weeks in south India.