India was amazing.
The people, the food, the weather, the colors. What made it even greater is that my boyfriend lives there, knows the language and could show me around to all these beautiful places.
We visited three different cities; New Delhi, Agra (Taj Mahal) and Varanasi ( where my boyfriend lives).
In New Delhi, an honest tuck tuck driver took us all over the city, and showed us a nice place where we could have dinner. We paid 500 rupees for a whole day, including picking us up at the hotel which was next to the airport. Ricardo met him the day before I came, and this guy told Ricardo all about how tuck tuck drivers work here and how they rip off foreigners. They always work in teams, first you get on the tuck tuck and you say which hotel or restaurant you wanna go to. Then this other guy will come, and ask where you guys are going. After telling him, he will say oh that hotel is closed, or that one is so expensive. I will show you a better one and for a better price. So tourists will believe him, and follow him. But the thing that they don´t know, is that these tuck tuck drivers will get commissions from the hotel, restaurant, shop, tourists office etc.
They will always try to rip you off, even these so called "government tourist offices" will try to get the most money from you, and they will give money to the tuck tuck drivers who takes you to the tourist office. An example, a roundtrip to Agra (5 hours from Delhi), costs from 20000 to 30000 rupees (2400 to 3600 kuai) for tourists if you go to tourists offices. We paid 4500 rupees (550 kuai) for a private taxi driver.
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| India Gate |
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| Lotus Temple |
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| Lotus temple at sunset |
We spent one night in Agra. Everyone told us to go and see Taj Mahal during sunrise, and that Taj Mahal is beautiful and you will see all these different lights, so we had to be there from 05.30. Luckily we did not get there that early. We came there at 06.00 am, and thought we were late. Then we saw this huge line of foreigners wanting to get in, but the doors would not open before 06.15, so we knew we would miss the sunrise. However, we were still glad that we came there so early, because the weather was chilly and nice, not that many tourists and we could take some nice pictures :)
Taj Mahal was built by a Mughal emperor in memory of his wife, over 400 years ago. And it is as stunningly beautiful as everyone says it is. We spent over 3 hours there, walking around, taking pictures and just enjoying the moment.
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| Taj Mahal |
After visiting Taj Mal, we drove back to Delhi and took a train to Varanasi which took about 12 hours.
When you arrive in Varanasi train station, there are so many rickshaws and auto rickshaws waiting for you, but they will not give you a good price. We were living in "Chowk", and they wanted 150-200 rupees to take us to there ( takes about 15 minutes), but usually it is 80-90. So we walked away from the train station and found a driver who gave us a reasonable price.Varanasi is the worlds oldest and most religious city. It is very colorful and nice, but sometimes the people can be a real annoyance to you. Even though we were riding on a motorbike, they still stopped us and asked if we wanted a tuck tuck ride, and asked were we wanted to go. Or people trying to sell us things we did not want, get us in to restaurants we had no plans to eat in etc. If you are walking alone, some guys will always ask where are you going? I can show you where it is. I always says no thanks, and walk away. You never know if they are good guys or bad guys..
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| The main ghat |
The traffic in Varanasi is also very chaotic and has no system at all! I thought that the traffic in Beijing was bad, but at least there is a system here. In Varanasi, people were walking, bicycling, driving motorbikes, cars, rickshaws, and cows were walking on the same road! When we were driving our motorbike, we always had to stop for cows! It was crazy, and we almost crashed a couple of times. Indian guys drive so insanely fast and don´t care about traffic rules at all.
But I must say that if you can drive in India, you can drive in any parts of the world. And I think Ricardo is a really good driver and so brave for being able to drive in Varanasi!!
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| A dead person being carried to the burning ghat |
The Ganges river goes through Varanasi, so we woke up twice to see the sunrise over the river. It was beautiful. We went on a boat trip along the ghats, and it was a wonderful experience. You will see people taking a bath in the river, washing their clothes, swimming with cows, and also dead people getting burned in the burning ghat.. Everyday you will see dead people being covered with flowers and carried to the burning ghat. The people often comes from south, and get transported by train to Varanasi, where they will be cremated.
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| 6am, watching the sunrise over Ganges |
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| Taking a bath |
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| The burning ghat |
The food.. it´s just so delicious, with all these good spices and sauces, dipping roti or naan bread into it, eating fresh yoghurt everyday... yummy. The best part must be that you use your hand eating Indian food. Its just so much better than using fork and knife! And drinking real Chai tea everyday. So cheap and so good. And not to forget about the super awesome tandoori chicken! Just thinking of Chai and Indian food makes me so hungry..
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| Tandoori chicken |
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| Garlic naan |
One of the things that I liked the most about Varanasi, is that you can see monkeys everywhere!! I love monkeys, and whenever I see them I will become so happy and start smiling. They are jumping from rooftop to rooftop, on trees, and sometime they will come and try to steal fruits and other things from you. I got strictly information about not touching or hugging them, because they can be very aggressive and can attack you. In China you have these things in front of your window so no thieves can come through the window and enter into your house. In Varanasi they have some protective things on the windows against monkeys..
These 15 days went by so fast, and I had to get back to Beijing again. We took the train to New Delhi, met Ricardo´s parents(they were there for an exhibition) and ate in Kingdom of Dreams, and then I had to go to the airport, flying away from Delhi and Ricardo..
