Kolkata

01.10.2009

Kolkata was the first place we had visited when we arrived in India and we hated it. On returning back we thought that maybe we would not see it as bad, considering the fact that the first place one experiences in India is always the worst. It was not our case… we still hated it, and we remembered why!! It is too noisy, too dirty and too chaotic, and this is saying a lot considering we had been to many other places just as bad. It was a struggle getting a taxi.

First we got out of the train station, then a driver started bugging us to get the ride with him, then we went to the prepaid taxi stand where a long queue was waiting. Eventually we agreed with the driver to go with him, then he asked us to wait in order for him to go somewhere else, then we ended up getting out of the cab and going with another driver. The drive was noisy and polluted, given we could not avoid keeping our window panes down due to the heat. During the trip Janet had to keep looking at the luggage compartment as the rear did not close and her backpack was in a precarious position.

After nearly a two-hour drive we arrived at our hotel and decided to spend a considerable amount of money for an air-conditioned room as we were in need of a good night rest given the early start for our flight the following morning. We had something to eat, re-packed our bags to make sure we were not overweight, and had an early night sleep in preperation for the following day. The alarm clock rang at 03:45 and we were supposed to have a wake-up call at 04:00 from our hotel-reception, which call never happened, so thankfully we set up our own alarm!

We were driven by the hotel cab to the airport and waited until our gate opened. Given there was a delay in our flight we had to wait three hours until we boarded our plane. We had many luggage checks along the way. On the first one our check in luggage were screened and Yakof had to get out most of his staff, which he so carefully packed the day before, because they had seen an electric device inside the bag, which turned out to be his mobile’s charger!! Needless to say Yakof was quite pissed off with the police in charge especially when the latter told him that he should open the compartment where the device was, when his backpack was a typical drawstring one!!!

 After this commotion we checked in our luggage and went up to our gate where our hand luggage had to be scanned… but we were not let through as our hand luggage had to have a tag too!!! They need this in order to stamp it checked. Yakof had to go all the way back to get the tags, he was stopped because he could not go back to the check in stand, and had to wait while an airport officer gave him the tags. Our last check was just outside the aircraft itself, something we never came across before. Our exit from Kolkata was quite eventful. Once seated on the plane we relaxed and our minds drifted to the thought that soon enough we would be back in Thailand!

Varanasi

22.09.2009 to 29.09.2009

Varanasi was another place we had heard so much about. Many travelers love it and all agreed that if you don’t visit Varanasi it’s like you hadn’t been to India at all. Other people we met just hated the place, saying that it’s too noisy and dirty.

Our opinion : we loved Varanasi. It’s definitely true that it’s quite a noisy place but not any noisier than other cities we have been too. In fact, like anywhere else in India, you can choose to be in a quiet place even if it’s noisy, and this was our choice. Once out of the train station we went over to the pre-paid rickshaw stand and paid the fee for the driver to take us to Assi Ghat. We specified to him, more than once, that we wanted to go to Assi Ghat and then find a guesthouse ourselves. But, true their name he took us to a guesthouse of his own choice, one that obviously paid him commission. We had to fight with him to take us away from there and he kept insisting this was the place we wanted to go and that this was Assi Ghat. After much insistence he started driving again, before deciding to stop once more. This time he told us that he could not go through with his rickshaw as the road was not good. Obviously pissed off, we climbed out of the vehicle, telling him what a cheater he was! We tried asking our way around and everyone was kind enough to point us the way to Assi Ghat… which was on the total opposite side to where the driver took us. A guy we met on the street told us he could take us to the guesthouse we were looking for, he said we had no reason to worry as he was taking no commission, but if we did not like the place he would then take us to ‘his guesthouse’.

We followed the guy who, within ten minutes, through alleys full of cows and their shit, took us to the place we wanted to be, Sahi Riverview Guesthouse. We were relieved that this time we were not cheated. The guesthouse looked really nice but was above our budget given the rooms started off at Rs350. We had a lucky strike though as the receptionist offered us a small room without bathroom inside for Rs250…which was quite a bargain given that the toilet was just in front of our room and we had the key to it! We decided to stay. We had allowed eight days for Varanasi as Janet originally thought she would start learning an instrument here, but on second thoughts, she decided to wait for another time to do this.

The days in Varanasi were very hot… too hot to roam around the city, though we did go to some places. One day we went for a short walk to a couple of ghats and stopped looking at the preparation of a corpse for cremation in the small burning ghat. That same day we ended up in a beautiful shop, full of many souvenirs and clothing items. The highlight of this place was the locally handmade wooden merchandise which we fell in love it… we ended up spending over three hours in this shop, but bought a lot of stuff for our family and friends.

Two of our evenings were dedicated to visiting two of the most famous ghats in Varanasi, Daswadameth Ghat (more well-known as the main ghat) and Manikaran Ghat (more well-known as the Burning Ghat). In Daswadameth Ghat we saw the nightly ceremony called aarti. Basically six young men chant religious songs in front of an adorned diety and perform puja. Many people are present, both local and foreign, and the procession is quite a nice one, thought we preferred the one in Haridwar. Before the ceremony started many kids were roaming around trying to sell postcards, bindi (paint for the middle of the forehead) and the likes. They were really nice though, even if we did not buy from them they were all smiles. After some time we had to move away from the ceremony as we were being attaked by insects who had been attracted by light, under which we were sitting. Manikaran Ghat, the Burning Ghat, was a totally difference experience. We had to go through many alleys to reach it, until finally a well dressed man indicated the road to us and told us we could go in a particular building where we could view what was happening given only relatives of the persons being cremated could go close. The men escorting us inside made it a point to tell us he was a voluntary worker. So we watched what was going on with this man telling us many things on the background.

The sight was surreal. There were corpses lying on the floor, covered and adorned by golden colour cloth and other type of decorations. Other corpses were being burned and the smell in the air was similar to a barbeque… one of human flesh. In the water we could see some human bones of corpses which had already been cremated. We decided to leave after a few minutes, and the man who was ‘escorting’ us told us to leave a donation. When we did not agree, he said that we MUST give a donation… at this we walked down the stairs telling him that a donation is heartfelt not a must do. On our way out of the alleys we made way to two corpses being carried by chanting men. One was modestly wrapped up while the other was adorned in a regal way. Once out of the alley labyrinth we tried to find out a rickshaw but had to wait until a procession in the name of Shiva passed us by.

One day we also tried to visit the so-called monkey temple but we were not allowed inside as only Hindus could access… as if they knew what religion we practiced!! Oh well. The rest of the days were otherwise spent at our guesthouse, which had a very nice common area with fans, TV and a free internet which many times could not be used due to lack of electricity. Luckily enough our guesthouse had a generator which allowed fans to ran all day, otherwise the heat would have been a killer! During our stay in our guesthouse we met some nice people, mostly on their way out of Varanasi… an English couple, a Belgian one and a very nice woman from Melbourne, Australia, who was leaving the same days as us. Our last impression of Varanasi was a very good one. We were impressed by the police officers at the train station. They were very nice to us, offered us information, and even escorted us to our train. Whilst waiting for our train we met a girl and a guy who had just bought a train ticket from the train station and had no place to sit as a consequence. We offered them our upper bunk until we were tired enough to sleep. The train ride was quite fine and we arrived in Kolkata late on the next morning.

Agra

20.09.2009 to 21.09.2009

The only reason we wanted to visit Agra was for the world-famous, wonder of the world, Taj Mahal. Most of the travelers we met and who had been to both, told us that the Golden Temple was a nicer experience than the Taj Mahal. Another thing everyone told us was that Agra was a horrendous place and that we would hate it. While the first assertion is definitely true the second one we totally disagree upon. Maybe it’s the fact that Agra is usually one of the first places tourists visit in India so the impact is not good, or maybe because we have definitely been in much worse places, but we did not hate Agra, not at all. It was a first timer for us to book a place to stay, but we did so given all the bad things we heard about the Agra, so we wanted to make sure we had somewhere decent and quiet. This is why we booked Hotel Sheela, which is a lovely guesthouse, with a beautiful garden, nice rooms and very quiet surroundings. It was also very convenient as it is only a stone throw away from the Taj Mahal’s east gate.

We arrived in Agra late in the evening, after, what turned out to be, a thirteen hour train trip. It was the first time we travelled by day and next time round we will make sure to get loads of food with us as we were starving by the end of the trip, especially watching all the Indians next to us eating fresh vegetables, fruits and home cooked meals! Our eating experience on our first night in Agra was a disaster. The food was not good at all and we ended up in two places. We chose the first one as it has a very nice view of the Taj… we did not know as yet that the Taj was not lit at night so there was no view at all! Given the fact that the menu did not inspire us at all, we just took a couple of drinks and headed off to another restaurant, having high hopes that the food would turn out good… which hopes never materialized. After a far from satisfying culinary experience, we made our way back to our room, where we enjoyed a restful night. The next morning was obviously an early start given we had to see the sunrise at the Taj Mahal. But even if the sunrise would have been visible, which was not the case due to the weather, we would nonetheless have missed it due to the slow queue which was gathered in front of the ticket office. We eventually realized that the queue was slow as there were tour guides who were getting tickets for their tour, some of them made up of twenty people!! In fact once our turn came for the tickets we were able to jump the queue which was in front of the East Gate entry.

The first sight we got of the Taj Mahal was unsettling. This building is simply perfect… and from a distance it looked like a ghostly structure floating in the air… like a mirage. Given the early hour we were lucky enough to visit the Taj with relatively few tourists, compared to the later invasion of herds of tourists, mostly in a tour group. The reflection of the Taj in the water is beautiful… and the mausoleum, itself inside the structure, is beautiful as well. There are the reproduction tombs of Akbar and his beloved wife. The real tombs cannot be visited and are situated underground.

The history of the Taj is like a fairy tale. The great Mughal emperor, Shah Jahan, built this mausoleum in memory of his beloved wife, known as Mumtaz Mahal (Persian for “Elect of the Palace”). On her dead bed, after just given birth to his fourteenth son, Mumtaz Mahal asked Shah Jahan to build something which will remind everyone how big their love was until the end of times. And, true to his promise, Shah Jahan built the Taj Mahal. It took twenty years to finish the building, 20,000 workers and 10.000 elephants. The story along with the building, are wonderful.

The legend also says that after the construction had finished, one finger from every workers’ hand was cut off in order for them not to be able to reproduce the work done on the Taj. The same faith was reserved to the architects’ hand too, who, before the actual fact, is said to have gone quickly inside the Taj and changed something to the structure. This change leads the lower part of the Taj to flood during the rainy season. Till today no one was able to discover where the water comes in from. Although Agra offered other interesting sights, we decided that the Taj was the only one we would be visiting, also giving the fact that the Taj itself was really expensive to visit (Rs750 per person : 12 euros), especially considering that Indian nationals paid only Rs20 to get inside!!! After more than four hours hovering into its gardens, we left the Taj. By then our taste buds where in desperate need for some good food. We were rewarded by finding a great place to eat…Joney’s… a whole in the wall corner bar which made excellent food… their closed toasts were great. 

Once discovered we had our breakfast, lunches, dinners or whatever from this place. Here we also met a very cute dwarf-like man called Hanif. Hanif’s job is to sell essential perfumed oils… his shop is a small, metal case which he carried everywhere with him. The man was so nice, and his perfumes so good, that we ended up buying four of them! We spent our last day in Agra out and about, given our check out time was ten o’clock and our train to Varanasi was at eleven thirty at night.

So we went off to Fathepur Sikri. The old city itself is beautiful but the experience turned out not to be a very pleasant one given all the touts who did not leave us alone for one second. First some guides tried to make their way in. Then it was the young boys who said they only wanted to speak to us in order to practice their English as they were students. When we finally managed to leave behind a guy who had pestered us since our entry, we found another very nice guy inside the tomb who was telling us things about the place’s history. It turned out that this was their ‘manager’.

Trying to get rid of him, but not managing, we ended giving up to his request to see his ‘shop’, which was basically a small stall with marble miniatures of elephants and the like. When we eventually managed to convince them that we were not interested in purchasing any of their merchandise we were let free to roam around in peace. We walked as far away as possible to ensure that no one would follow us again and ended up next to the so-called Elephant tower. It is said that this tower was erected in the name of a warrior elephant. The surrounding fields were very peaceful, with only a couple of peasants and kids roaming around. After some time spent there we decided to head back to the bus station to catch our ride back to Agra.

Back in Agra we went straight to Joney’s place to have some quality food and walked back to our guesthouse to kill some time there. After a drink and some chit chatting we made our way to one of the marble shops we visited yesterday. Though many small shops promised quality products for a minimal prize we were totally unconvinced by their self-advertisements. We decided that if we were going to purchase something, we wanted to be at least sure it would be something of good quality. This would turn out be a very wise and lucky decision. After spending around an hour to find a good gift for our mothers, and having had a very nice conversation with the salesman, we decided to head off to the internet to call our parents. 

We spent around two hours at the internet café, by which time it was already nine thirty in the evening. At ten we were leaving for the train station and we had already made arrangements with an auto-rickshaw to take us to there. After having a last quick meal at Joney’s and on our way to the guesthouse to get our backpacks, Janet froze on the spot… her camera was not with her… and she knew exactly where she had left it… at the marble shop… three hours ago!!! With lost hopes we would make it to the train station for Varanasi that night we made our way quickly to the marble shop, with the knowledge that they had closed as soon as we had left the shop.

When we were approaching the shop we realized that there were still lights on so we broke out into a run… there was still someone inside!! The salesman was there, waiting for us, but was just about to lose hope and leave. He told us he had gone to our guesthouse to ask for us and left a message to call at the shop when we returned. He even went through the trouble of checking a couple of restaurants. Janet was so happy that she wanted to offer him a compensation for all his trouble, but he refused to accept, which shows more how genuine this man was. After this incident we went quickly for our bags, met the rickshaw driver and drove off to the train station.

The train ride towards Varanasi was far from being uneventful. For the first time since we had ridden a train in India we were confused by the numbering system of the seats. There were two sets of numbers and we could not make out which were the correct ones until some Indian passengers confirmed them for us. From them on the show started. First a passenger approached us claiming one of the seats was his…he had number seventy and we had numbers 64 and 65, but one of the ‘older’ numbers was 70. The same passenger who instructed us where the seats were told this man that his seat was another one not ours. After this another man just decided to climb on our upper seat to sleep. When we stopped him he, together with his friends started complaining and telling us that there were three seats not two. When we asked him to show us his ticket to check his seats no ticket was offered so we told him that if he had any problem he should go and fetch the conductor. Eventually we decided to go to sleep and Janet went on her upper bunk. 

An hour later a guy tapped loudly on her seat to move down and those seats where his and his wife’s. We started explaining that the numbering system had changed but he insisted. We insisted as well and he went to fetch the conductor. He returned saying no conductor was on the train at the moment. At this point some words where exchange between him and another man who was sitting, not yet asleep, on the seat adjacent to ours. When the conversation ended, the man sitting next to us moved to sleep in our bunk, on the one which was closed. When we complained, another man told us to let go and that we were not right in what we were saying. At that point we were totally confused and Janet, exasperated, told them that she only wanted to know the truth as there were too many people stating different versions.

The end of the story is that Janet moved in the middle seat, on top of Yakof, and the couple went on the seats adjacent to ours (which technically were not theirs according to what they claimed). When the conductor came, through half-opened eyes, Janet stitched together what was happening. The couple was right in saying the seats we were occupying were theirs, which meant that the seats we were in belonged to this couple and the first man who claimed his seat as number 70 and eventually went on another seat. What happened was the following.

Some of the passengers had no tickets so they occupied other persons’ seats (persons who had paid for the ticket). Two such seats were ours, but these were not only occupied by asleep men when we climbed the train, but their friends or whatever we can call them, confirmed to us for their sake, that our seats where the ones they pointed to us. Obviously they knew we would get hassled by the real owners of the seats and that we might end up without a seat ourselves given we were the only tourist in a cabin full of Indians. Janet saw the conductor ask for the ticket money both to the man occupying our real seat and to the one sleeping on top of her. She also noticed that the conductor was asking something else out of the men after giving them the ticket, which she realized was a bribe not to fine them. So the story was complete.

We were tricked from the beginning and this made our trip very uncomfortable. During the day the trip was much nicer as most of the passengers stopped in Lucknow and we had nearly all the cabin to ourselves until we reached Varanasi.

Back in Haridwar

19.09.2009

Again we were heading back to Haridwar… again just for one night until we caught our train to Agra. We woke up relatively early to leave from Rishikesh and found transport via a jeep until Swarg Ashram. The rest of the way had to be done on foot, which was not as bad as we thought. The bags were definitely heavy, but given our early start, the sun was not extremely hot. We found a vikram (a small vehicle resembling an auto-rickshaw, taking up to eight persons… in our case luckily it was just two on our side given our huge bags) and decided to take the trip all the way to Haridwar as it was not worth it to stop at the bus station and then catching a bus to Haridwar. Once in Haridwar we decided to look for a guesthouse which was close to the train station, which we definitely found, bang on in front of the train station. We spent the remainder of the day in our room, having an early sleep awaiting our ten hour trip to Agra.

Rishikesh

09.09.2009 to 18.09.2009

Rishikesh, the so called ‘Yoga Capital’. This was one of the destinations we were looking forward to, especially Janet to have some time to meditate, study and practice Reiki. The bus ride took us less than an hour. Once at the bus station we opted to catch a ride with an auto-rickshaw from there… a mistake we rarely do. We asked the driver to take us to Lhaksman Jhula which he agreed to for a good fee. It turned out that the place he stopped us was marked as the road leading to Lhaksman Jula… but about three to four kilometers away!! To add it all up we had to walk all this way with our heavy backpacks and under the blazing sun… nice! Once in Lhaksman Jhula we tried our luck with three guesthouses before ending up at the ashram.

We had a look at three rooms, and for the first time since we had been in India (apart from our anniversary in Darjeeling) we spent a lot of money in a room (a lot in our budget terms)… Rs400 (6 euros). We could not help it though… Janet just fell in love with the room… actually the room in itself was nothing in particular, we had rooms in better conditions for a lower price, but the view was capturing. It had a balcony which directly overlooked the Ganges, with a full sunset view. Yakof could do nothing but consent to her wishes. 

We spent eleven peaceful days in Rishikesh. Janet had time to read her Reiki books (most of which where new purchases from Rishikesh), practice hands on her Reiki and apply her Yogi diet. This was the ideal place to do all this… the place emanated spirituality from all pores. Here we must put a note though that our ashram was not true to its name. It was anything but holy… people smoked marijuana where it should be strictly prohibited and the manager was not a nice person at all. When he greeted us the first day he was all nice and smiling… hiding his true nature.

We discovered the real him when we decided to book the train ticket to Agra from the ashram. We had asked him for specific seats on the train, Yakof knew exactly which seats were situated where, and we always preferred the two in the corridor. When he came back with the reservations he gave us two seats which were totally the opposite of what we had asked for. When we asked whether we could change them he said it was not possible as the computer booking assigns seats automatically… which is true but you can give it your preferences and tell the system not to confirm the tickets if these preferences are not available. 

Whilst reading the details in the tickets Janet came across the possibility that the ticket can be cancelled. Once again she asked the manager whether this could be done. On his negative answer both of us made it a point that he contacts the agent who did the booking and cancel the reservation… giving back our money. This is what he did in the evening, failing to give us back the commission he charged on the ticket. Eventually he gave up and gave us a full refund. After this happening we decided to go down to the train station ourselves and book our ticket from there. In fact we ended up booking three trains : one from Haridwar to Agra; another one from Agra to Varanasi; and the last one from Varanasi to Kalkuta. In RIshikesh we found a great place to eat, Little Buddha.

This place is owned by a very friendly Nepali, with a beautiful white dog named Tommy, which we occasionally also saw in the Ganga, either bathing on a hot day or playing with a fellow dog… mostly female. We made this restaurant our habitual eating place… it had the best pizza we ever tasted in India (well this statement is not giving much credit considering the pizzas in India), so to rephrase it, it was one of the best pizzas we ever tasted since our travelling. But all the rest of the food was equally great. A couple of times we also visited Swarg Ashram. On one of these visits we visited the famous Beatles ashram. Nowadays the ashram is no longer in operation and is quite run down. It should not be open to public but with a small bribe one can manage to get in, like we did. We had to visit the place… all Beatles fan had to do it. The ashram, though in very bad conditions, still showed sign of its grandeur in its old days. Here the Beatles wrote some of their best songs. The place is huge and used to have different kinds of accommodation, ranging from rooms with balconies, without balconies and cone shaped huts. We could make out some other places like the kitchen, the yoga/meditation room, etc. The gardens are huge, swallowing most of the steps in the ashram as well as some of the rooms. During our walk we also encountered some very big species of spiders. 

During our stay we also gave a try to a yoga class, but was not really in the mood for that. Rishikesh is also a host for monkeys. We had two particular experiences with them. One was on our balcony. We saw these two big monkeys, male and female, on the balcony next to us. We decided to call them into our balcony by bribing them with some cookies. They immediately took the plunge. It was funny watching them taking the cookies from our hand and eating them. The female opened them, licked the insides first and than ate the rest of the cookie, similar to what we used to do when we were kids. There was no chance in touching them though, because as soon as you moved close to them they showed us their full set of sharp edged teeth.

Our second experience was next to the Beatles ashram. There was a whole big family of monkeys on a tree. The young ones cradling in their mothers’ arms… others were just playing with each other. After spending some twenty minutes looking at them, we realized that one of them was moving quickly on top of us and luckily realized on time what was happening… the monkey was peeing on us!!! The bastard!! He totally, metaphorically and literally, was talking the piss out of us… well technically on us!! We also accidentally ran into a friend of ours, Maltese, something quite rare for us when travelling given the small amount of Maltese who travel, especially around Asia. It was nice meeting him and we spend a lovely evening with him and his Italian girlfriend Daniela, which we also knew back in Malta.

The days here went by pretty quickly, considering that life was so slow. So one beautiful sunset after another, our last day arrived. This time our packing was quite heavy… we took out all of our things from our backpacks and tried to find a way how to pack our staff… mostly our twenty two books!! In fact most of our weight was books which we could not leave behind. Once fully packed we could not believed how heavy are bags were… the road with them will be quite hard!

Haridwar

08.09.2008

-->Haridwar was just a one-night stop over on our way to Rishikesh… we had to stop and rest a little bit after three sleepless nights… the last night in McLeod Ganj, the bed bugs night in Amritsar and the uncomfortable night on the train. We managed to find a decent room in the proximities of the bus station. We were glad to find a television in our room given we were planning to spend the rest of the day inside… or so we thought. After having a late lunch we decided to take a cycle rickshaw up to the famous ghat. The ride was just a 15-minutes one… the roads here where busy but not as noisy as in Amritsar. The sight of the ghat was a very interesting one.

The ghat itself is beautiful, much more than the famous ones in Varanasi. We had a look around and headed back to our guesthouse for a much longed for sleep. We slipped into the land of dreams for a couple of hours before waking up and heading once again towards the ghat to witness the aarti. The aarti is a Hindu ritual, in which light from wicks soaked in ghee (purified butter) or camphor is offered to one or more deities. Aarti also refers to the songs sung in praise of the deity, when offering of lamps is being offered. As soon as we arrived a government official asked us for a donation. We agreed to give a very small donation and he was quite angry at us stating that we should have given ten times as much… well so long for the name donation. Once next to the river we bought a leaf basket full of fresh petals and a candle. A local helped us in performing the puja (a Hindu prayer where you pray for all your loved ones), and as expected asked us for a donation at the end of his useful demonstration. From our end we politely refused. After the puja we were asked to sit down on the floor next to the river together with all the locals, waiting to see what was going to happen.

When the sun started setting, everyone lit their candles and performed their personal puja. A couple of men were lighting big fires and addressing the crowds. People where cheering and praying together… it was a wonderful scene to witness. Most impressing of all is that this ceremony is carried out every day!! After this touching experience, we ventured into a small alley lined with stands selling everything from prayer beads, to toys, to food. Janet ended up stopping at a sweet shop, taking an overdose of sweet samples. Back at our guesthouse we had a light dinner and a nice orange fruit shake to wrap it all up. We called it an early night to have an early and fresh start the next morning. Our next destination… Rishikesh.

Amritsar

Our wake up call to set off to Amristar was at 03:45 in the morning… definitely not something very humane but we had no other choice as the only bus to Amritsar was at 05:00 from Dharamsala. A taxi took us from our guesthouse to the bus station from where we departed towards Amritsar. The trip took around five hours with just a couple of stops; one for some food and the other to let the people down for crossing a bridge on foot (due to the fact that the bridge was not strong enough to suffer the load of both bus and passengers!). 

Once in Amritsar’s bus station we took a cycle rickshaw towards the temple and crossed the extremely busy and noisy centre. We were surprised by how hot this place was compared to cool McLeod Ganj It took us some time to get orientated but soon managed to arrive at the temples lodging quarters. The tourists’ quarters were full so we were given a standard room in the courtyard. The rate per night was only Rs50 (Euro 0.60) which is a bargain price considering that it was full of extras like a fan, wooden bed with no mattress and pillows, cigarette buts, fruit skin leftovers, homeless people living in front of our door and bed bugs!!
We headed immediately out to find somewhere to eat as we were famished. On the way out we got a glimpse of the Golden Temple and we already felt our heart missing a beat as we were really eager to visit it. 

After lunch we decided to book a shared taxi to watch the famous Indian-Pakistan border ceremony at Attari. Our taxi left at around 15:30 with a sky promising no good weather. We were sharing the taxi with five Punjabi lads, all in their early twenties. Yakof had a very nice chat with them as they wanted to practice their English. The sky’s promise was totally kept as on our way a storm started. We had never seen such a black sky and there was thunder roaring over the trees. The rain started immediately, hitting down very hard.

Our spirits fell a little bit as we thought we would be missing the ceremony as it could not possibly be held with such a terrible weather. Once in Attari we waited in the taxi for the rain to slow down, which it did for a couple of minutes, before starting hitting hard again. Once the gates opened everyone headed towards the ceremony stands, where miraculously the rain stopped and the sun came out! The ceremony itself was really fun, with soldiers dressed in full uniform, both Indian and Pakistani, festive music, people dancing, banners flying and marching going on.

Everything started with the rise of the Indian and Pakistani banners. Some women from the crowd where asked to hold the banner and walk with it towards the Pakistani gate. This was done two or three times. Then the music started, with women coming down from the audience dancing and men, from the other side, imitating some kind of break dancing. Once the music stopped it was time for the real show to get started. Trumpets made their call and several soldiers marched in unison towards the Pakistani gate. The same procession was taking place on the other side of the Pakistani gate. One by one the soldiers reached the gate, marching like toy puppets, ‘insulting’ in funny ways the soldiers at the other end of the gate. Eventually the gate dividing the borders opened and the soldiers could be seen acting as if they were quarrelling with each other and doing funny gestures. The ceremony ended at sunset, when both the Indian and Pakistani flags were lowered.

Once back at the temple we hurried to our rooms, took off our shoes and headed towards the temple. Any person visiting the temple has to remove their shoes and wash their feet in sign of respect. The beauty of the Golden Temple is not describable in words… it is of such amazing beauty and the atmosphere is so peaceful and unearthly… it was like, once we stepped out of the water where we washed our feet, we were transported to another dimension where everything is perfect and in harmony. The temples splendor was shining both in our eyes and in its waters. The devotees were praying and having a dip in the sacred waters surrounding the temple. We could not stop looking at the temple and enjoying the delicate voices of the singing priests.

We sat in front of the water, unable to find words to compensate for what we were witnessing. One thing was certain… this was the most magical place we have visited so far. Apart from its esthetical beauty it has more of an intrinsic beauty. The peace and faith which is felt inside is unique, nothing like we ever experienced in a church. Ten per cent of the Punjabi’s earning goes to the Golden Temple. With this money the temple can run a 24-hour kitchen which will feed anyone who needs to eat; host homeless people; charge no entrance fee to visit this magical place and be able to pay all the related costs, like electricity, water, candles, etc.

The Sikh religion is an inspiring one. They believe that all human beings are equal, that is why the temple is open for everyone, irrespective of casts or religions. The Sikh man have five predominant features : they let their hair and beard grow without cutting it; they have to own a comb to groom themselves and were a turban; they wear a steel bangle in sign of courage, they wear a small dagger in sign; they wear loose underwear in sign of simplicity. Eventually, once recovered from the spell (or so we thought), we made our way to see the inside of the temple. 

Whilst approaching it we could sense the peace and faith surrounding it. The first floor is where the chanting was coming from… it resembled more a small fairytale palace than a temple. There were priests singing and playing instruments and people walking around them as sign of devotion. The second floor hosted some sacred scriptures as well as a priest who was praying, while the third floor was the temple’s roof. After this mesmerizing experience we went to eat in the city centre and where glad to find a good pizza place, similar to Pizza Hut.

After dinner we made our way back to our room with full intention to get some sleep but that was wishful thinking! We were not alone on our wooden planks… we had company… bed bugs… different shapes, colours and sizes and above all… hungry!! Usually we never feel their bites when they do bite us, but this time it was different… we could really feel them, so we were closing our eyes, trying to sleep for fifteen minutes and killing the bugs for another fifteen. Finally we gave up and, at three o’clock in the morning; we made our way towards the temple.

The adoration and praying was still going on. We stayed there till around five o’clock in the morning and headed back to our room. We were so exhausted by then that we collapsed in a three-hour sleep. That sleep would turn out to be a king’s style banquet of the bed bugs on Yakof’s flesh.

Once awake we went to make train arrangements and were glad to find out that there was a train leaving for Haridwar at ten o’clock that night. That gave us more time to visit the temple again. Once the ticket was bought we went around for some shopping. Janet bought two pairs of typical Punjabi shoes and Yakof bought a very nice orange turban and was very happy wearing it. Back at the temple we visited its very interesting museum and had a final look at the temple itself in the morning light. Back in our room, we finished off our packing and killed the rest of our time by eating and sitting at an internet café. At around nine o’clock that evening we left for the train station, bidding farewell to this amazing place. Although in a train smelling more like a public toilet than anything else we managed to fell asleep due to our lack of it.

When we woke up we were just one hour away from Haridwar.

To see photos click on JOURNEY below :

Mc Leod Ganj

20.08.2008 to 05.09.2008

We set off from Manali at 7 oclock in the evening... the bus ride was quite uneventful and we arrived at our destination at 05:30 in the morning. We were both half asleep, Yakof still sick, and had no idea where to go given the early hour. We ended up following an indian guy who told us he had rooms for only Rs200. Usually we do not give in to these promises as most of the times they lead to rooms which are far from worth it, but we were too tired to do otherwise. It took us long to reach the guesthouse but the room was very good... nice size, bathroom inside and TV!!... and the bed was comfortable not the usual wooden beds we had to get used to here in India!!! We collapsed in bed and slept for a straight five hours before we woke up and decided to head to the centre for some food. Suddenly Janet realised that she had left her camera on the bus and it was panick... we made our way up the hill in no time, nearly fainting with the exersion!!! We asked the police, the travel agents, the people on the street until at last we found the bus and shot in it. We did not find the camera where we had left it and when we asked the conductors their first answer was negative. After mentioning the camera appeared from underneath a bench and was to us. One of the boys asked us for Rs100 in exchange for the camera... you can imagine Yakof's reaction to that! He grabbed the camera and stormed out.

We spent the first few days in Mc Leod Ganj resting, watching TV and eating good western food! We still needed to recover from all the travelling we had done... six days on the road in a span of 20 days was a bit too much. Eventually we decided to attend some courses. Janet finally did her Reiki, first and second degree, which she had been planning on doing since Nepal, and Yakof did a beginners Hindi course. Both of us enjoyed what we did thoroughly. Janet's teacher, Shivadas, has been practicing Reiki for a lot of years and started yoga from the age of four. Yakof's teacher, Sunil, was a yogi too, but thought Hindi as well. On one evening Shivadas invited us to join him for watching a movie. We ended up watching a short amateur film on Goa and one on Kailash mountain. We liked the one of Goa most.

Mc Leod Ganj is also referred to as "Little Tibet" because there is a high concnetration of Tibetan refugees living here. The most important Buddhist site in the town is Tsuglagkhang or Tsuglag Khang, the Dalai Lama's temple. It has three magnificent statues, of Shakyamuni, Avalokiteśvara, and a statue of Padmasambhava (Guru Rinpoche). That is the only sightseeing we did during our stay here.

We ended up staying sixteen days here as we really enjoyed everything about the place... our room, the food, the serenity and the people. The only thing which was too much, in our opinion, were the constant strikes and protests done by the tibetans... some of them did not serve any particular purpose.

Once we had both finished our respective course we decided to book an Indian cooking course at a restaurant call The Taste of India. Though we expected to do some practice during the class, which was not the case, we enjoyed these classes and learnt how to prepare quite a number of dishes. Our teacher, Nisha, is a really lovely lady.

On our last day we went for a short walk towards Bhagsu. Though the place is really nice and peacful we still preferred Mc Leod Ganj as it is more central. Our stay in Mc Leod Ganj came to an end. To be honest we were not very enthusiastic about getting on the road again but we had to make a move.

Our next destination... Amritsar.

Back to Manali

14.08.2008 to 18.08.2008

We had a 03:45 wake up call the day we left Leh, luckily the weather was fine. The four of us (the other two being, Mirko and Giulia) set off for a 15 minute walk to the bus stand. The bus trip was very different from the one we had towards Leh... in a negative way.

First of all the minivan was much more comfortable than the HPDTC bus. Though much smaller the seats were somehow more comfortable, and this taking into consideration that we had booked the best seats on the bus. Janet's seat, though push back, kept going up all the time. The time we spent on the road in total amounted to 25 hours, with a staggering 18 hour on the first day... this compared to the 15 hours we had done with the minivan. The amount of stops were excessive... every time someone wanted to pee all the people in the bus went down, and took photos, smoked cigarettes, etc etc. The worst part came in the evening. We arrived at the camp in Keylong at around 10 at night and went to choose a tent. The tents had three beds inside and they pretended us to share the tent with a stranger, which obviously we did not accept since we had specifically told them that we were expecting a 2 person tents before we booked the trip. The tent's linen was all damp as well... unlike the extreemly comfortable tents we had in Sarchu. Both dinner and breakfast were quite disgusting.

The next day the road was in a very bad condition and Yakof was sick with a temperature of a 101. Since we had left Manali there had been a lot

of rain, making the road's state, very poor. At a particular point the road could not be seen at all with the fog!! We also had to stop for around an hour waiting for workers to mend a bridge which had broken down... very nice... though we must say we were lucky as a friend of ours stopped for two hours waiting for a landslide to clear.

We finally arrived in Manali, exhausted, and headed to the same hotel we had slept before we left to Leh. Though we were not planning to spend much time in Manali we ended up spending four nights as both of us were down with the flu!! Janet was quite upset as she realised she had left her ipod in the tent at Keylong. When we tried calling them they said they did not find anything, but from the questions they asked us, we realised they were not necessarily saying the truth. The reason why she was upset most was that , in the i-pods' pouch she had a small elephant Yakof had bought to her, back in Cambodia. But well... We spent some time with Mirko and Giulia in Vashist before saying our goodbyes. We will miss these guys, and would have loved to spend more time with them.

When we were both recovered we headed towards our next destination... Mc Leod Ganj.

Ladakh

28.07.2008 to 13.08.2008

During our stay in Ladakh we visited Leh, Alchi, Thiksey, Shey and Spituk.

Ladakh means "land of high passes". It is a region in the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir, between the Kunlun mountain range in the north and the main Great Himalayas to the south, inhabited by people of Indo-Aryan and Tibetan descent. Ladakh is renowned for its remote mountain beauty and culture. It is sometimes called "Little Tibet" as it has been strongly influenced by Tibetan culture. In the past Ladakh gained importance from its strategic location at the crossroads of important trade routes, but since the Chinese authorities closed the borders with Tibet and Central Asia in the 1960s, international trade has dwindled except for tourism.

Leh

We found some difficulty in finding an accomodation when we arrived in Leh. Everywhere was either full, booked or not within our budget. At one point there was this monk who offered us a room for Rs300 and given we were in terrible need of a rest, we decided to stay in this guesthouse for the night. Immediately after we settled ourselves in the room we went to look for another accomodation. We found a room at Skyland Guesthouse for Rs200 and decided to move there the following day, especially because Janet fell in love with the hostess of the guesthouse.

Leh is the largest town in Ladakh and stands at an altitude of 3,500 metres. The religion is predominantly Buddhist. The place is beautiful and relatively quiet, though, one of the most touristic places we have been to in India so far. Most of the tourists here come for a short holiday and fly in from Europe, via Dehi. The main reason for their holiday would be trekking as the region is beautiful and offers various type of treks. All of this makes Leh quite an expensive place, compared to the rest of India. Western food, is found on every corner, and souvenir shops and the like, sell their stock at three times the price you would pay from other parts of India. Needless to say we did not purchase anything from here (apart from some nice wood sculptures, typical ladakhi... and cheap).

Leh is one of the places where we really felt at home. The credit has to be given to the owner of our guesthouse, Dol. She took care of us, gave us tea at any time of day for free, and even prepared us delicious ladakhi breakfast. She treated us like family. She was the one responsible for the guesthouse and her daughter Amo, helped her throughout the day. The girl was adorable... always with a beautiful smile on her face. She really worked hard throughout the day... washing dishes in the cold early mornings in order to be ready by the time she had to go to school. Dol also has two sons, a 12-year old and a 14-year old. She has lived in Leh all her life and we were the first Maltese citizens who stayed at her guesthouse (well this practically the case with the majority of the guesthouses we've been to).

In Leh we visited the famous Royal Palace. This was built by King Sengge Namgyal in the 17th century, but was later abandoned when Kashmiri forces besieged it in the mid-19th century. The climb to the palace is breathtaking... both with regards view as well as literally speaking... we were barely able to speak when we got at the top.

During our stay there we experienced two strikes, one due to the opening of the Olympics in China and the other due to elections which were going on in Jammu and Kashmir. In the latter all shops were closed, and had it not been for Dol, we would have "starved" that day. In the evening she made dinner for all the guesthouse which consisted of rice with daal and vegetable together with apple curd for dessert. Some of the best food we have eaten since we have been travelling!! We blessed the strike that day :)

On one of the day we were strolling in Changspa we met Stefan!!! As stated before... India can be so small. We joined him in the restaurant were he was having coffee with another friend of his... Wigi from Scotland. We spent a couple of hours with him and decided to meet in the evening for a drink in a local bar. While in Leh we spent quite some time with Stefan... going for nice walks and visiting Thiksey and Shey. We thoroughly enjoyed his company and hopefully we'll keep meeting him in our travels.

We also made friends with an Italian couple who were staying at our guesthouse... but this part you can read about further down...

Alchi

A few people had recommended us to visit this place so we decided to give it a go. We were at the bus stand two hours before the bus took off to find seats, and even so, the bus was nearly already full. What was most annoying was that there were a lot of places taken with boxes or bags on them. We decided to ignore them and set anyway. The road to Alchi took us four hours in total and we arrived there at eight o'clock in the evening, when it was already dark, We went straight to a guesthouse which was recommended to us by a Tibetan autorickshaw driver, Potala Guesthouse. At first they tried to charge us a staggering Rs800 for a room and we got that down to Rs250.

We spent three nights in Alchi... the guesthouse was quite nice and the village very quite. It is famous for one of the oldest monasteries in Ladakh, mainly known for its wall paintings of the 11th century. The monastery was built by the great translator "Lotsawa Rinchen Zangpo". The wall paintings in Alchi Monastery are some of the oldest surviving paintings in Ladkah and reflect artistic and spiritual details of both Buddhism and Hindu kings of that time in Kashmir.

On the other two days we went strolling around the village for short walks, in one of which we were nearly ran over by two donkeys who were chasing each other (most probably for mating). During this short stay we had to change room. On our second night, due to electricity failure, the guesthouse management switched on the generator. Which was positioned underneath our window, which happened to have a broken glass. We leave the rest to your imagination... the room became like a gas chamber. On the whole our stay was a very pleasant one, especially our return back to Leh, where we had a lucky strike and managed to find transport at nearly the same price as the bus fare, but being the only two passengers in a very comfortable four wheeler :)

Thiksey and Shey

As said before we went to visit Thiksey and Shey with Stefan on the day when there was a total strike in Leh. The day proved to be a very pleasant one. Our first stop was Thiksey Monastery.

Built some 600 years ago, Thiksey Monastery consists of 12 levels ascending a hillside, culminating in an incarnate lama’s private abode at the summit. The Gonpa contains 10 temples, below the monastery itself are chapels and houses of monks stretching down the hillside. There are about 100 monks of the yellow- hat sect of Buddhism. After entering the main courtyard to the immediate right and up several steps is a new temple containing a large Buddha statue. The H.H. Dalai Lama constructed this Buddha, 15 meters tall, in 1980 to commemorate a visit to Thiksey.The statue was made under the guidance, supervision and direction of Kushok Nawang Chamba Stanzin, the present head Lama of Thiksey monastery. The statue is the largest Buddha figure in Ladakh which took four years to construct and is made of clay and covered with gold paint. 

It houses the sacred Kangyur and Stangyur texts. The statue was made entirely by the local craftsmen and represents Maitreya (compassion in Sanskrit) - the Buddha of future. The prophecy made of the future Buddha is that the world will be undergoing such chaos that the future Buddha will teach compassion to the people. Located directly above this temple is a small narrow room used as schoolroom for the local boys. Here the Lamas instruct the children and some are later selected to become lamas. Traditionally, Ladakhi families donated one son to become lamas, although this practise is gradually disappearing. Returning to the main courtyard and going up the steep steps directly across from the new temple, on the far wall will be murals of two Tibetan calendars, with wheel of life. To the right of these murals is man prayer room, which contain racks of books along the left wall. Many of these books are handwritten or painted. Recent addition is done in block printing. In a small room behind the main prayers room is large image of Sakyamuni (the historical Buddha) flanked by two smaller Bodhisattava images. On the left is the eleven- headed Avalokitashwara, a form of the Buddha. On the rooftop is Lamokhang temple where only men may enter. 

Also on top is Thiksey library, containing numerous volumes, including Kangyur and Stangyur.

The site of the monastery from a distance has a particular charm to it... at first sight the building looks quite run down, when in fact it is very well kept.

Our second stop was Shey. Once again we had a walk uphill to arrive at the main attraction... the largest Golden Buddha statue in Ladakh. Shey Palace was not at all impressive, nothing compared to what we saw in Thiksey. Yakof and Stefan opted to climb all the way up to the ruins of the old palace... Janet decided to give it a miss... she had had enough steep climbs for the day. While waiting for them she enjoyed looking at the locals washing and polishing the gold and silver ornaments of the temple. Our new friends

We mentioned before that we made friends with an Italian couple. Their names are Mirko and Giulia. We started chatting initially about their lost luggage. They had flown in Delhi from Italy and had to catch a flight to Leh. In between connections they lost one of their luggages which contained all their trekking equipment!! That left them stuck in Leh, unable to plan anything, for four days. During the same time they were telling their story, their backpack was delivered at the guesthouse safe and sound. We had long chats with them... obviously in Italian... which, helped to brush up our Italian quite a bit. Unluckily, during the time we were in Ladakh, Kashmir was not very safe for tourists, so we opted, half-heartedly, to give it a miss. Upon Stefan's advice, Mirko and Giulia cancelled their flight and managed to get half of their money back. They decided to come down to Manali with us. In the end they opted to go to Amritsar to see the Golden Temple, via Mc Leod Ganj, before heading back to Italy. It is amazing how much we clicked with them and enjoyed our time together. We really hope that we will manage to meet in the future.

So this is the end of our Ladakhi adventure... setting off again for our two-day trip back to Manali...

Manali to Leh...the ultimate road trip

27.07.2008 to 28.07.2008

We decided to dedicate a whole chapter to this road trip, as it is one of the most amazing trips we have ever experienced.

Janet compared the Himalayas to a beautiful woman, wearing rich clothes and adorned with precious jewellery. When looking at her, she takes your breath away... never have we seen anything of such comparable beauty. Slowly and delicately, this lovely woman starts removing her jewellery and clothing, but, irrespective of what garment she is removing, her beauty remains untouched... until she is totally naked. Her beauty remains intact, glowing as ever. Both of her profiles are equally beautiful, perfect and unique. Nothing can spoil her perfection, her eternal beauty. This is the Himalayan range...

The mountains are of a mesmerising beauty. At the beginning of our trip their colour was mostly green. As we proceeded the colours started changing to various other shades, including softer greens, browns, beige, yellows... until they were actually bare at last. But even in their bareness they were breathtaking... the colours of the rocks changing continuously, with different reflections according to the time of day... browns, oranges, reds... we could not stop looking at their magnificence.

The first day we spent nine hours on the road. We had an hour delay in the morning as there was a german guy who did not want to move from our seat. He insisted to be refunded as he had booked a big bus not a small minivan. Eventually, his travel agent came to meet him, and they resolved the matter. The trip was not as bad as we thought it would be and the weather was very favourable, although we felt very lucky to have gone through the road with Ciri before as the weather in the Nathula Pass was much better then. We arrived at our camp in Sarchu by five o'clock in the afternoon.

Sarchu is at an altitude of around 4,000 m and is not inhabited apart from these tents set-ups. Here we found out that, as a couple, we had to pay Rs700 for a tent, dinner and breakfast when we had been told that tents prices start from Rs250 (per tent not per person)!!! Given we had no other choice we had to settle for this arrangement.

The meal was quite nice and, though it was extremely cold, we managed to spend a good night sleep. Janet woke up a couple of times breathless but that was it. The next morning we woke up for breakfast at around seven in the morning. The breakfast was good: chapati, omlette and tea. Immediately after breakfast we set off for the second part of our journey. The weather was good but the road was in a worse state than the first day. Luckily we had a very good driver. He had only two faults. Fault number 1 : he hated having cars in front of him... as soon as he saw one at a distance he would start hooting and pressing the gas to overtake. This fault led sometimes to fault number two : he hated conventional roads. Wherever he could he would take shortcuts, sometimes just making one crazy detour and scaring the shit out of us. Apart from that....he got us to Leh safe and sound on the second day at around 15:30.

Vashist

20.07.2008 to 26.07.2008

Our departure from Kasol was quite unprepared for. We had to leave on a particular day but the night before Yakof got sick, so we were going to postpone the departure. By midday of the following day Yakof was feeling better, so we opted to head to Vashist, as previously planned, to spend Ciri's last week there.

We took a bus and arrived in Manali six hours later. The public bus was not that bad, although we were pretty much squashed throughout the journey, given the amount of people in it.

Once in Manali we booked Ciri's ticket to Delhi ahead and found an auto-rickshaw to take us to the village of Vashist. The ride took us only ten minutes.

Vashist is famous for the sweeping valley views and sulphurous hot-water springs, it is an amorphous jumble of traditional timber houses and modern concrete cubes, divided by paved courtyards and narrow muddy lanes.

Accomodation was not easily found here. It took us four tries to finally find a suitable guesthouse... and we were lucky as he had the last two rooms left. The rooms were quite a bargain... less then Euro 2.50 a night with bathroom attached! Given the first day was quite exhausting due to the trip, we decided to have an early dinner and rest.

Our stay in Vashist was very 'shanti shanti'... peacful. We spent most of our time going for short walks, having long talks and eating. We went to see one of the waterfalls (calling it waterfall is quite presomptous, but well), we visited the hot baths and one of the temples and spend a day in Manali.

We went to see the Hadimba Temple. This temple is one of the most important in the region. This four story wooden temple is located in the middle of a forest called the Dhungiri Van Vihar. From the name of the forest parkland this temple derives its name. This temple was erected in 1553 and is dedicated to Goddess Hadimba. We also visited the Himachal Pradesch museum and Ghatoiktch Temple. The highlight came after though... we had lunch at Johnson's Cafe... and it was wonderful. We spent something like three to four hours there. First we had a platter of cheese. Janet was in tears eating brie!! Yakof had lamb and Janet had fish... sublime... at last someone who actually knew how to cook western food. This was a happy day!!!

Given Ciri's time was limited he wished to do some sightseeing, so we decided to go for a one day trip up to Nathula Pass. The two of us don't usually spend money to go sightseeing but it was a 'treat' from Ciri so we had no problem in going :)

Our departure time had to be at 08:00 in the morning, but, as custom in India, the driver arrived half an hour late and did not even know he had to take us sightseeing, until the guy who booked the tour for us briefed him. So we took off for a very bumpy jeep ride. Although we were very comfortable the road was quite terrifying... we eventually got up to an altitude of 3,500m. What was worrying us most was the fact that this was the same road we would have to travel on our way to Leh... and we could not picture a big bus driving through it. During our ascent we had to stop as there was a landslide. It took around thirty minutes to clear the road and it was incredible how the vehicles were passing, nearly touching each other. At one point, seeing a huge truck approaching on the other lane, the three of us decided it was wise to get out of the jeep... you know just in case there was a hit and run!!

We had around five stops in all during the day but the most impressive was the Nathula Pass in Rothang La. This place is amazing. A lot of people come here and hire a horse for the day to go through the whole pass. We walked just a short part of it... Janet was suffering a little bit from altitude sickness... loss of breath and dizziness. But we have to say it was worth the while to come all the way up as the views were breathtaking! We felt more relaxed on the way down given we knew what to expect out of the road now.

On Ciri's last day we went over to see Elana and Stefan and spent two to three hours at their hotel. They had bumped into each other in Vashist. India can be so small!!! We went down with Ciri to Manali, had lunch with him and went to say our goodbyes at the bus stand. We were very sorry he was leaving... two weeks with him went by so quickly... we will miss him but hopefully meet him in the near future.

So we were back to being just the two of us again....

On our last day, before heading towards Ladakh, we decided to go down to Manali to sleep the night and pick the minibus from there. We met Elana for lunch, once again at Johnson's cafe, as we could not resist the temptation of one last meal there. The place is relatively expensive in India but the food is well worth it. We sad our goodbyes to Elana and prepared for our two-day trip towards Ladakh.

Kasol and the Parvati Valley

15.07.2008 to 19.07.2008

Our trip to Bhuntar was long but comfortable... unluckily Janet was still suffering from stomach pains so the trip was not very pleasant for her.

We arrived in Bhuntar at around 09:00 and caught a local bus to Kasol. Kasol is full of two things... israeli people and charas. You can see ganga growing all over the Parvati Valley, like weed. It grows next to the guesthouses, next to the river, all around the police station !!!!

The first guesthouse we stopped in was suggested by our friend Ska. The owner is an Italian who's married to a local, and he was really welcoming. The rooms were incredibly cheap...Rs50 per night!! But even though the cost was cheap we decided to move as the guesthouse was noisy all day long and, given Janet was sick, she could not bear music full on all day long. Our second stay was gorgeous. We found a nice guesthouse next to the river, surrounded by a huge garden, and, to Yakof's delight, it also had a hot spring!

Out of the three of us, Ciri was the one who loved Kasol most, and we were glad to see him having a good time. Five days in Kasol went by pretty quickly. We did some shopping, ate mostly at the same restaurant, met with Carm who had been staying here for the past three months now, and went for some walks around the place.

Our next stop would be Vashist......

Delhi

08.07.2008 to 14.07.2008

We have not been updating our blog for quite a while now. We have seen many things and covered so many kilometres since then......

The train trip from Gorakphur to Delhi was quite smooth, ignoring the fact that the train had a 5-hour. We arrived at Old Delhi train station early afternoon and were welcomed by herds of people streaming from every existant pathway in the train station. Head straight, we headed towards the pre-paid auto-rickshaw stand and set off to Paharganj, the backpackers area in New Delhi.

Delhi is one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world. It's population is a stagerring seventeen million! So one can picture the feeling you get travelling with an auto rickshaw during peak traffic hours. Strangely enough we were glad of being back in this chaos... happy to be seeing again all the craziness and noise which only India seems to offer. Still we were dreading the fact that we had to spend a week in this city... but we had to, as we were waiting for Ciri, a friend of ours who was coming from Luxembourg to spend two weeks with us. Over and above that we decided to spend an additional day to meet up with Ska, another friend of ours, who would be stopping in Delhi on his way to Thailand.

So that was it... we spent a whole week in busy Delhi. The heat was unbearable, and our room did not cater for the heat-strucken poor individuals who needed air to breath... for Rs300 we managed to get a room with an attached bathroom which resembled a public toilet (obviously by Maltese standards not Indian... we are not that extreme)!! We baptised the room "Il-Latrina". Given Ciri was going to join us for the last two nights in Delhi we had already put our eyes on a particular room which could accomodate three. What was special about this room was that it had a huge cooler... similar to those used on film sets to reproduce wind... and we wanted that baby all for us....

Until Ciri's arrival we spent our time running some errands which had to be done. We mailed the stuff which we had so devotedly been carring, since Thamel in Nepal. This proved to be quite a tiresome task, as we had to do it twice, given that parcel rules changed, and now a maximum of 10kg per box can be sent to Malta. Given our box was a 16kgs one, it got sent back from the post office and we had to open up everything again to split up everything in two boxes... oh well... as long as they arrive.

We tried meeting the Maltese consulate as they had told us it was possible to extend our Indian visa from Delhi. After a long auto-rickshaw ride to the consulate they did not even let us in....so long for Maltese citizenship rights! At the end it was getting so complicated that we gave up and decided to fly to Thailand to renew our visas from there. Obviously this was no sacrifice to us as we adore Thailand. Another thing we sorted out was all our flights... we booked our flights to Thailand and back to India, those to Malta and those to Australia. This way we managed to get better deals as we booked them in such advance.

Delhi is quite a city of extremes. It is much nicer than Calcutta, as in the latter poverty is much more evident. In Delhi it is much easier to escape the chaos and the dirt.

When Ciri arrived we decided to spend a day sightseeing. We first went to Qutb Minar. Qutb Minar is the tallest brick minaret in the world, and an important example of Indo-Islamic Architecture. In fact it is listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The second place we visited was the famous Red Fort. The Red Fort showcases the very high level of art form and ornamental work. The art work in the Fort is a synthesis of Persian, European and Indian art which resulted in the development of unique Shahjahani style which is very rich in form, expression and colour. It is one of the important building complexes of India which encapsulates a long period of Indian history and its arts. Its significance has transcended time and space. It is relevant as a symbol of architectural brilliance and power.

Both places were incredibly beautiful and full of history, though quite expensive to visit at Rs250 per person.

On our last night in Delhi we had a problem with our room. At around five o'clock in the morning Yakof was woken up by Ciri (jumping on our bed) who informed us that it was raining in our room. At first he had thought that his clothes were dripping on him, given we had washed them and hung them over his bed. But eventually he realised that the ceiling was leaking. And so, more asleep than awake, at five o'clock in the morning, yakof informed the hotel manager and we had to change our room and get all our stuff downstairs. Luckily we managed to get a couple of hours more sleep before Ska came. The guys spent the last hours in Delhi together while Janet opted to stay in the room as she was suffering from what is often called, 'Delhi belly'... stomach upsets.

At around four o'clock in the afternoon we said our goodbyes to Ska and set off for our 15-hour journey to Manali... for the first time ever in a luxurious volvo bus, courtesy of our friend Ciri :)