Incredible India

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. 

India Gate

Lotus Temple

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.

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.. 

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!! 

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.

6am, watching the sunrise over Ganges

Taking a bath

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.. 

Tandoori chicken

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..

A small update

Being a student at BLCU and in Beijing is fantastic.

All the people you are meeting, the great food you eating ( or cook-me and Yilin are getting better and better in cooking!), enjoying the spare time you have with friends, doing homework in one of the many cafés on campus or in Wudaokou, shopping cheap and nice things, biking around (if you have a bike), walking through the many Hutongs, and so much more!

Right now the weather is lovely in Beijing, sunny and 15-20 degrees celcius. I love to ride around on my electric bike ( btw, I finally got new keys), feeling the wind blowing in my face, being faster than all the walking and bicycling people, not worrying about traffic lights or traffic rules..

But the good weather will not last for long, because the sandstorms are coming, along with its horror. Beijingers says that people can´t go out, or drive, because they can not see anything. In the recent years, it has become much better because of tree plantings, but still, the sand from the deserts in Inner Mongolia and Mongolia is still there and coming closer and closer to Beijing. And after the sandstorms, the heat and humidity will come and kill us all with overwhelming hot weather. So I´m enjoying the weather we have now to its fullest!

This semester has been good so far, and I have actually been studying and doing all my homework. I got new teachers and new classmates, and they are all really nice and fun. And I´m surprised that so many got Chinese girlfriends in my class! (3!) I was asking my Australian classmate the other day how he and his Chinese girlfriend met, and before he even got to answer, I jokingly said : in Sensation?  (a club in Wudaokou), and my other classmate was laughing so hard.. because it was true. Well, the best way to learn a language is in bed, as Ricardo´s father told him..

Speaking about love and Sensation, there are so many new couples on campus! And even my flatmates have some romances going on. It must be the feeling of spring coming :) I guess Sensation is a place for love seeking people to go to. I have a few friends who found their girlfriend/boyfriend there, and some are still together.. Looking at all the couples kissing and hugging around, I envy them a lot. Being apart from my boyfriend is hard, because we lived together and did everything together.  Luckily I´m going to INDIA(!!!!) tomorrow to visit him for two weeks!

I also welcomed two mini turtles and one beautiful rabbit into our family! 

Me and Yilin´s cooking skills are getting so good!! 

But even though our cooking rocks, burgers at Bluefrog at Mondays is a must.. :) 

Marte visiting me in Beijing! In two days we visited 6 different tourist attractions :o  

After Marte left, Runa came. She visited me for 10 days, so more time to check out Beijiing :)

I love seeing a blue sky. We live in the 7th floor of this building.

My two baby turtles. The darker one is the male, lighter one the female. 

My cute bunny. The race is called Belgian Mango Rabbit

And we call her Mango, because when we got her she was the size of a mango, and her nice color reminds us of a mango

The next day my good friend got the same rabbit, but a male, hoping to make some babies.. 

Now my bunny is so big!! No more the size of one mango, but two mangos! 

India, tomorrow <3

Bad Blogger

To be honest, I am not a good blogger at all. 

I blog very seldom, I don´t write good posts and it is probably very boring to read my blog. 

This is because I don´t know what to write about, and I don´t know how to make a blog interesting and fun, and to make readers longing for more posts. Another reason is that I don´t have time to spend everyday blogging, or trying to figure out what to blog about. What I would like to do is just to posts lot of pictures. Pictures tell more than a thousand word right? But that would be too boring for you guys. 

So from now on, I´m going to try to blog at least once per month, like a summary of what I have been doing after every month. And if something very interesting happens, maybe I will blog about that too.

:)

Home sweet home

Finally home from our trip! We had a great time, saw a lot of interesting things and just enjoyed it all. I missed Beijing though, and I`m glad we made it home :) 

We encountered a lot of problems with trains because of the Chinese New Year celebration. When we started on our travel, everyone was going back home, and when we wanted to get back to Beijing, the celebration was over so everyone was also on their way back to work. Almost in every city, we had problems with trains or buses. In Xian there were no train tickets back to Beijing so we had to fly. (We had to get home before the 9th). We flew to Tianjin, and wanted to take a bus or train to Beijing. However, there were no tickets left!! So we spent half the night waiting for the next train which had a few hard seats left. We finally arrived in Beijing 6am. 

My tip is to not to go travel in China during Chinese New Year. Everything is more expensive and you think its warmer in the south, but its not because the coldest days in a year is actually during new year! 

Also, almost every taxi driver wants double the price, e.g normal price is 7, but they want 20!

The good part is that there is almost no tourists wherever we go. Not as crowded as during summer, and that we like :)

Now I have been to 4 of the places I wanted to travel to, without counting the cities from Guangdong province. Altogether we visited 9 cities :)

(My post about where I wanted to travel: Travel in China)

Shanghai

88 floors down!

Meeting my friends in Shanghai :D 

Guangzhou, pearl river

Eating chicken feet in Shenzhen

and bird head..

Sunny and warm in Shenzhen!

Eating Japanese food

Shenzhen nightscene

We went to a bar on the 100th floor

Chillin in a bar on the 100th floor in Shenzhen

Spa/Karaoke/Restaurant

Chinese new year flower street market

Its only open once a year; a few days before the Chinese New Year

Turtles

Grandpa teaching Ricardo Chinese calligraphy :) 

Zhanjiang

Guilin

Li River

The picture of the 20 yuan bill is in Guilin! 

Yangshuo, west street

bamboo rafting

Beautiful Yangshuo

Feeding water buffalos

Reed Flute Cave in Guilin

We were in Guiyang for 7 hours, but sadly could not make it into the city. (Arrived 5am and had to take a flight 1 pm. We only wanted to sleep, so we "slept" in the airport for 5 hours ) 

Terracotta warriors in Xi an

Fantasy club

Street food in Xi an

The drum tower