South Trip, Holi and recent

Hello everyone,
Pictures are of tea gardens, Kathakali, Sunrise, temple man and me at Holi. Please check out facebook for more photos.
Sorry I haven’t posted in a while but I have been away and I don’t really have too much time at the moment. This blog will tell you about the South India trip I took at the end of February, what I have been up to recently and also the Indian festival of Holi.
First the South trip, as I said at the end of February I took a Rotary organized trip to South India. The trip was really incredible. With the trip to North India I had the opportunity to see the India we all see in magazines or on the TV but in contrast the south had superior natural beauty and the atmosphere was totally different. It was hard to believe this is all the same country. First we took a 27 hour train journey to Cochin and spent the night there. We did the sightseeing in Cochin and went to Munnar. Munnar is really an incredible place. It is a hill station but has the perfect altitude, rainfall and soil for growing tea so there are tea gardens everywhere. Some places there is tea for as far as you can see. The beauty of this hill station in incredible. We saw other things in the surrounding area like a couple dams with beautiful lakes (where we took a speedboat ride), a place where if you shouted you could hear an echo and also a tea factory/museum. This part of the trip was very tea oriented. The carrots at this place were amazing too. Most of the carrots in India are red in colour and the taste is different than Canada but the carrots here were almost exactly the same as good farmer’s market carrot. I never really knew what tea originally looks like till this trip. It is like leaves from a bush that are cut very finely then dried. There are also many other ways to get different styles or flavors of tea. In Munnar there was also a man who was selling ducks on the street. He had a huge pack of them and was taking them for a walk trying to sell them. It was a hilarious sight seeing all these ducks running around in a pack being scared by the duck keepers stick with a plastic bag attached to it to stay in the pack. The next stop was Thekkady. Here we saw a really cool dance/drama performance called Kathakali. It required the performers to put on like a pound of make up then a costume that probably weighs as much as a Great Dane. They then preformed the dance/drama to music. The performers were able to express themselves amazingly through different hand movements and facial expressions. Originally Kathakali was the way for people of a low caste to experience the Hindu epic stories because they were not allowed to read them. The next day we visited a spice garden. I never knew how all these spices were made and how complex the process is. The garden had pepper, rubber, cardamom, all spice, cloves and many more but I can’t remember them all. In the afternoon this day we went on a trek through a wildlife sanctuary and were able to see a bunch of wild elephants. There were two mother elephants with their babies so that was amazing to see. The next day we drove to Madurai. Madurai is a city famous for the enormous Meenakshi temple. I would say that is only reason we visited this place but unfortunately the temple was under renovation so it was about 5% as spectacular as it would have been if it wasn’t under renovation. I bought some postcards but that just made me angrier that I didn’t get to see the spectacle. There were some really weird vehicles that I will not even try to describe in this city, ok one I will try to describe. It was like a motorbike motor and two wheels under the motor then a couple long metal tubes stretching a couple meters back to a primitive wagon like structure upon which was a man who was ‘under control’ of the vehicle. Overall Madurai wasn’t too great though. Next stop was the southernmost point of India and the subcontinent, Kanyakumari. South of this place is Antarctica. This was one of my favorite stops on the tour. First we arrived and went to a fort and a deserted (but unfortunately rocky) beach then had time to look around and watch the amazing sunset. The sunsets and sunrises in this place were amazing, I don’t think I have ever got up to watch the sunrise two days in a row but I did here. Another cool thing about this place is that it is the meeting place of three major bodies of water, the Arabian Sea, the Indian Ocean and the Bay of Bengal. People say you can see the difference in colour of water as these 3 seas meet but I couldn’t see it. Maybe I need to find my specs or at least buy a new pair. Cool thing about India is the use of British terms; my favorite two are rubbish and specs. I prefer them to the Canadian garbage and glasses because the Canadian alternatives sound like a moan kind of but the Indian way sounds sophisticated and proper. Thought you might like to know. The next day we stayed in Kanyakumari but did the sightseeing of a couple small islands with statues and a really amazing temple. The temple was very old, most of the temple was about 1000-2000 years old but one rock with carvings was estimated to be 9,000 years old. There was also really amazing stutues of the gods, pillars in the temple which the main preist guy could play like drums as all the pillars had a different tone, a large magnificent tower and it is the only temple in India which has a female Ganesh( Ganesh is the elephant god and is normally male). Also the men had to go into the temple without a shirt and of course like all temples without shoes so that was cool; I like to use any excuse I can to take off my shirt in India. It is so hot and no doubt the Indian girls like it, so I enjoy making other people happy. The next day we drove to Allepy but stopped at such a great beach on the way there. The waves were pretty big and the sand was clean. Oh ya I forgot to mention in Madurai I bought 4 goldfish and kept them as pets for almost the entirety of the trip. They survived changing tanks on countless occasions and also they survived when the water bottle they were in tipped over spilling all contents on two separate occasions. Three of four of them even survived an overnight train journey. One night we put a fish in a girls glass at dinner time when she went to the buffet line and she didn’t notice until she was about to drink and someone told her not to. It was funny but not really for her. Ok back on topic we drove to Allepy and there we did a sunset cruise of the Kerala backwaters (a system of lagoons and lakes which lies parallel to the Arabian Sea). The cruise really showed the natural beauty of the area and the humble lifestyle the people who live around the area. Although the ride was amazing I made it more fun by climbing all over the boat, and swimming in the water. One thing I found weird about south India was the prevalence of the Communist Party. Although the party is not in power it has a lot of support in South and East India. Therefore there are many red flags with the hammer and sickle lining the roads, and billboards. So after the cruise we came back to the hotel. The next day we took an overnight train journey to Goa. Goa is really like a paradise, when you are sitting on the beach sipping a cold beverage you don’t feel like you are in India. We had almost 4 days in Goa, one for sightseeing (included church which holds St. Francis Xavier’s mortal remains, dolphins in the ocean, a couple viewpoints, and a temple) and the other 3 were just spending time on the beach, shopping, exploring or doing other activities. One day I went paragliding so that was fun but other than that we just spent a lot of time relaxing and swimming. Goa is full of foreigners (especially Russians and Israelis) so you have many people trying to sell you their services, or drugs. To sum up Goa was a great place to relax or party and we all had an amazing time there.
You can take this time to grab a glass of water or use the toilet; I know my blogs are too long.
We arrived in Mumbai at 5:30am on March 2nd and that day I started a one month Yoga teachers training course so that is basically all I’ve been up to these days. Basically I have been doing yoga based classes from 10am till 4pm every weekday. The classes are not what you might think just stretching 6 hours a day it is very different. The first class of the day is the exercises (or asanas), then comes theory. The theory session shows how yoga is a lifestyle rather than just a set of exercises, we talk about things such as the hierarchy of duties (first to yourself, then to your loved ones, then to your work, then to society), how you can attain happiness, how faith is a state of mind, the importance of positive thinking/techniques for such, acceptance, different attitudes we have, the importance of humility and much more. The topics are pretty deep for me but it is always rewarding when you find one sentence which makes perfect sense that you feel the need to share with people. We then have lunch at 12:30, the lunch is pretty brutal but in India I have acquired the ability to eat food regardless of taste you just don’t think and realize your body is still getting the nutrition it needs. Don’t get me wrong Indian food rocks my world but some of the stuff is not so great. After lunch we have relaxation which is a good session where you just (you guessed it) relax, observe your breathing or sounds around you as opposed to thinking. The goal of this session is to make your mind blank except for observing your breathing so when you can focus on one thing you allow your mind to relax. This relaxation is important because your mind gets such a work out everyday traveling to different parts of the world in the blink of an eye, you need to relax it. This relaxation can be more rewarding than even sleeping if you do it properly because when you are sleeping your mind may still be running amuck. Note I said if you do it properly, it is very difficult to not let your mind wander take my word for this. I find as soon as I can concentrate on my breathing my mind starts thinking about something I need to ask or do. After Relaxation we play a game which always has some message, like don’t get to attached, or the mind works better after it has relaxed. We also have started juggling as it uses more than one part of the brain and promotes concentration. Depending on the day of the week we then do methodology (how to teach), anatomy (body systems), or theory and lastly we always have more exercises. The exercises are difficult but I am becoming better, the thing is I can’t do some simple twisting exercise (because the flexibility in my back and hips is comparable to an Iron Festivus pole) but I can do some that require strength. In addition to this there are two Japanese girls, who I swear just came from being contortionists at the circus, who make me look like a noob. The class will end on the last day of March. On the weekend of the 27-29 March I will be going to famous caves in the interior of Maharashtra, called Ajanta and Ellora, with my host family so I am pretty excited for that. Also I have been doing tabla drum classes twice and my counselor lent me a tabla so I can practice at home now, I am better but still not very good. It is a little embarrassing when a 7 year old is far better than you at anything but there is definitely one of those guys in my tabla class. Whatevs I feel like I am learning relatively fast. Not a whole lot other news except I will be going on a Himalayan trek on April 24th for 10 days and I signed up for a crazy meditation course starting April 8th-19th during which you can not speak, read or have any sensory stimulation. You just meditate all day for ten full days, oh ya and you have to wake up at 4 am to meditate and your last meal of the day is at 5:30pm. I really want to do this as a challenge to myself and I am sure there are countless benefits.
Ok now for the answer to the question ‘How did this man become so red?’ the answer, HOLI. Holi is an Indian festival during which everyone regardless of caste, religion, job, or anything gets together to celebrate. The celebration traditionally had something to do with an Indian myth during which a demon was killed by a god because he abused the power given to him ‘and there was much rejoicing’ (Monty Python anyone). The story is part of Hindu mythology but the celebration is now enjoyed by all religions. The day after the full moon people play with colours to signify the rejoicing after the elimination of evil. On this day first I went to a beach where not many people were applying colours to each other then I went to the housing society of one Rotarian so that is where the real party was. They had all the free colours (which come in power form then you can mix them with water or simply throw or apply as power), a DJ, free food, many people (all of whom were rejoicing), and a rain dance. Rain dance means there was set up with 25 shower heads or so in an area about 5m by 5m and people were dancing and cleaning themselves. I wanted to keep the colours on me but realized in the afternoon that the colours are not coming out. That is one contributing factor to how this man became so red. After this party we went to another party at a different housing society, this place was bigger, the rain dance was better, the food was better and there were water balloons so where can you go wrong. The only problem was the colours at this place were the ones that really stuck, and one downer was I got colours in my mouth so they didn’t taste to peachy. I am surprised I didn’t get sick after playing with this material in the sun all day, but that is a good thing. After about 2 hours at this place me along with 8 other exchange students, whom I shared the amazing experience with, were pooped so we sat on the driveway wishing passersby a ‘Happy Holi’ and relaxing. How all the colours are applied are you put the mixture in your hands and apply it to the persons face or body whom you want to wish a happy holi, sometimes it gets out of control and there is a colours fight but it is all in good fun. The colours are also applied to hair so that pretty much destroys your hair, and the water from the rain dance spreads the colours all over your body hence the almost full red body. I have not attempted to wash my holi clothes; I will probably give them away. After exactly a week and many showers, my body is not yet colour free but it is almost colour free. My eyebrows, front of the hair, and nails (toe and finger) are still pink. If you are ever coming to India time your trip with at least one of the many amazing Indian festivals and be prepared to participate if you want to see the real cultural side of India. If you are in the Mumbai area give me a shout and maybe I can hook you up with someone to take you around to see the festival.
I think that is pretty much it. I have written too much but I had a lot to pass on. I hope you enjoyed the post despite my brain going a little haywire about 2/3 of the way through such. Have a great week! My next post will be in a couple weeks once I am done my yoga course. Have a good St. Patty’s day.

Preview

Hey everyone,

I am 2/3 done a blog post but I am going to Pune this weekend so I can't post it instead I give a preview. I am back from the South Trip. I had an amazing time. Recently I have been doing the yoga teachers training course so that is hard but fun. Nothing quite like 6 hours of yoga based classes a day. I have tabla drum classes twice a week. Just yesterday there was an insane festival called Holi. For information on this and to get the answer to the question 'how did this man become so red?' tune in for the next blog.
cheers,
-Allen

Recent

Pictures are of river rafting on the Ganges.
Hey everybody,
I am going on the South India trip today so I can't write. I just want you to know I am keeping busy. I have the tabla drum classes twice a week but I am still terrible, I think I was born without the ability to play music. I also have been doing more of the volunteer work with a NGO which helps educate slum dwelling kids, it is rewarding but sometimes it feels like a chore. The kids don't listen. On Wednesday this week the main teacher phoned me and said she was sick so I along with another volunteer had to take the class, it was frightening but went fairly well. Six hours of yoga a day in March then I want to do some meditation course in April/May, you should expect me to be floating when I get back.
I wish a Happy Valentines day to everyone.
I will be posting again in March!

North India 2 and recent times

Pictures are the Lotus temple in Delhi, Qutb Minar in Delhi, a couple Taj Mahal pictures and a photo at Fatepur Sikri. Check out my Facebook for more.
I left you a little more than half way through the North Trip and will continue with that along with describing what I did for New Years/ Christmas and what I am doing now.
So after Jaipur we went to Sawai Madhopur. That is a place between Jaipur and Agra and is supposed to be one of the few places where you can still see wild tigers. We went on a safari in the afternoon which continued till the early evening but didn’t see any tigers. We did see tiger footprints but we were joking around that they pay people to go out with a tiger footprint making stencil and place fake prints around. We did see lots of deer, monkeys, peacocks, wild boars and other birds. It was interesting how they tried to find the tiger, as they used the alarm calls of the other animals to try and find the tiger. Too bad it didn’t work. The next day we went for a drive to Agra and we stopped along the way at a place called Fatehpur Sikri which is an ancient abandoned city of a king which is carved entirely from red sandstone. It was interesting to see the history of this place but it was not amazing. The king embraced all religions so he had 3 wives, one Hindu, one Muslim and one Christian. Each of his wives had their own palace within the city. There was also a Mosque there and some thing where if you have a wish you tie a red ribbon to a holey holy wall and then your wish will come true. We left there and proceeded to our hotel in Agra. Our hotel had a revolving restaurant so that was cool, we ate there. The next day we did the sightseeing of Agra and drove to Delhi. For the sightseeing first we saw the Agra fort which was similar to what we saw the day before at Fatehpur Sikri but it had more marble with Marble inlay work. It was also a fort which belonged to that same king. One thing that I found interesting was that both the Agra Fort and the Red Fort in Delhi are both still used for military purposes. From the Agra Fort you could see the shadow of the Taj Mahal in the fog. On a clear day you can see the Taj Mahal well from the fort. The Taj Mahal was our next stop. I know what you are thinking, I am going to say something about being one of the wonders of the world, and you would be right. I don’t think I have seen something so wonderful and spectacular in my life. Nothing can prepare you for the sheer size and magnificence of the Taj Mahal. When you get your first glimpse of the Taj Mahal towering over the masses of people you still think that it is a photo. It still looks like a picture until you actually touch the cold clean marble. The Taj Mahal was built by Shah Jahan in memory of his favorite wife Mumtaz Mahal who died giving birth to their 14th child. The Taj Mahal took 20,000 workers 22 years to complete. The thing that amazed me about the Taj Mahal was how symmetrical it was. It looks the same no matter where you look at it from; it is exactly symmetrical from all sides. There is, however, only one garden which stretches from the front entry of the Taj Mahal which has a long narrow pool and many plants which have been maintained exquisitely. Another thing that amazed me about the Taj Mahal was the Marble inlay work. Semiprecious stones had been inlayed into much of the marble which the Taj Mahal is made from. The work that this requires is intense, you need to carve a hole in the marble the size of the semiprecious stone you are going to inlay then trim the stones minimally but precisely and then use special glue to inlay the stones. Amazingly this glue has held up for centuries without fail. There is so much more I could write about the Taj Mahal but I don’t want to bore you. After Agra our next stop was Delhi. New Delhi is the Capital of India and had good sights to see. New Delhi was very clean for a big city and the roads were big although there was still an excess of cars. Old Delhi is a different story I’ve heard it is dirtier and not as tourist friendly. The sights to see in Delhi included a cool temple (which was too modern for my liking), a big ancient tower which was erected by a sultanate who built the tower to honor a victory or himself or something I don’t remember. I know the tower was very nice and had carvings in the sandstone all the way up the 70m tower and some other interesting ruins in the surrounding area. The complex was also interesting in the way that it mingled Islamic and Hindu decorative styles. Also we saw the India gate, the Parliament buildings and an interesting temple for the Bhai religion, which I didn’t completely understand. The religion was like they didn’t The temple was the called lotus temple and looked a lot like the Sydney Opera House but more like a flower. In the evening we did some shopping and also saw a sound and lights show at the Red Fort which is in Old Delhi. The sound and lights show gave a history of the area, India in general and the fort. The fort was very similar to the Agra Fort and was built by the same guy who built the Taj Mahal, Shah Jahan. This guy truly shaped the Mughal empire in India. In the evening we did time pass together and went to bed. One of the most confusing things in India to me is time pass, people use this phrase very often and could mean anything. People text others stupid questions and wait for the answer as time pass, argue with others as time pass, look up useless stuff on the internet as time pass, think about stuff as time pass or just hang out together as time pass. Time pass could mean anything to pass the time but it is still confusing why the phrase time pass is used. Instead of trying to justify what you are doing you just deem it time pass as it has no other purpose other than to pass time. Ok that was my rant for the day, I feel better. Spending time with the exchange students is really great they are like the family we miss back home. The next morning we saw a Mahatma Gandhi memorial which has a fire that has been burning since his cremation, his last words, an important quotation and a bunch of trees that have been donated by various world dignitaries. We then drove to Haridwar which is a holy city, one of the seven holiest places to Hindus. It is the place where the Ganges descends to the plains and is holy because according to Hindu mythology, Haridwar is one among the four sites where drops of the elixir of immortality, Amrita, accidentally spilled over from the pitcher, in which it was being carried away by a celestial bird. We arrived after a 6 hour drive and did time pass around the hotel and had dinner. The next day was a better day though. We got up early in the morning and drove an hour and a half into the foothills of some mountains then went river rafting on the Ganges. It was incredible; we went through some pretty good rapids, went swimming at various points on the river and also jumped of a small cliff into the river. The water was pretty cold but I had definitely swum in colder water. We were allowed to swim down one set of rapids which was amazing and at one point we stopped on a small beach to play Frisbee with my Canada Frisbee. The whole experience was so awesome. In the evening when we got back we attended an aarthi of the river Ganges, it was like some prayers and rituals then people would set a candle afloat or bathe in the water. It was really interesting to see. I took some water from the Ganges and will bring it home to Canada. One funny thing was that when I was descending the steps to get the water from the Ganges I slipped and fell in the water. Luckily the steps continued into the water so I only got my right leg and upper body wet. It was pretty terrible but a cool story to tell back home. We went back to the hotel in the evening for a pretty bad dinner and hung out together. The next day we drove back to Delhi and took the train home. The trip was absolutely amazing, it allowed me to see the side of India you read about or see on TV as opposed to experiencing the big city life, which I also love. My next trip starts in 11 days and we are going to South India. I am sure it will also be incredible. So that is it for the North Trip but I could have written much more, now I will talk about New Year’s birthday and recent times.
Ok for New Year’s what happened was a bunch of us exchange students went to a BBQ and sleepover at one of the German girl’s houses. It is very rare to actually have a house in Mumbai but she is out in the Suburbs in a colony so she had one. We hooked up some sweet stereo, on the terrace and had a BBQ up there. That is where the party happened. I know you probably think India BBQ is terrible but the family was Parsee which is a religion and they are originally from Iran so we had beef. The beef was actually really bad because they steamed it before BBQing it but the thought of eating beef in India on New Year’s was priceless. Everyone pitched in and brought something for the party. I made pancakes in the morning which were actually pretty bad, except the syrup which is always good. For my birthday I rented a room in a sports club and it was all you could eat and all you could drink it was awesome. 23 people came and it was good times. In India for your birthday people feed you cake so lots of people fed me cake and it was all over my face after.
In the month of January I, along with the other exchange students, trained for dancing every day for 2 hours. We were training for a presentation we had to make at the Rotary District Conference. The dances we trained for were a folk dance/prayer from South India, a Bollywood remix and dancing to the national song (not the national anthem). The bad thing was I was fooling around and I seriously hurt my toe one day before the dance, I swear it was broken because it was not straight and I went into shock after it happened. In the evening I iced it and taped it up then the next day I taped it up more, sprayed some special athletic spray that numbs the area, and popped 3 advils then I was ready to go. The first dance was good; we spent a lot of time on it as it had very intricate hand movements and such. The Bollywood remix was a blending of 3 one minute clips from 3 different Bollywood movie songs, it was very upbeat and fast but was very fun to dance to. The next dance was to the national song and passed along a very important message of unifying India and putting an end to terror. In the dance there were 4 couples who preformed 4 different dances from different regions of India. I preformed a Bhangra dance which is from North India (Punjab) with a Brazilian girl, and then there were also dances from South India, East India and Western India. Each of the 4 couples dressed differently to match with their region. Overall the dancing went really well I feel and because of the importance of the message we passed along we got a standing ovation. I really want a copy of the video that was taken because I haven’t seen how we actually looked, you can’t tell from up on the stage.
I think that is pretty much it for now. I have started Indian drum classes and will be going on that South trip pretty soon. I can’t believe how fast time is moving. I will have been here 7 months on February 10th. I will be doing a yoga teachers course in the month of March and might post before the South trip but I doubt it.
Anyway take care and enjoy the increasingly “warm” weather wherever you are in the world.

Pictures

A blog will be coming in the next few days Indian time (so about a week) but here are some pictures to wet your appetite.
First is of a snake charmer in Jaipur, next is me with a nice water palace in the background, followed by a good assortment of (not so typical) street animals in Jaipur, next is the biggest sundial in the world in Jaipur it is accurate to within a few seconds, lastly is a palace in Jaipur.

North Trip Photos

Here are some more photos from the North Trip.
First is a typical street in Jaisalmer, next is shadows of the camels and the moon raising in the desert, followed by me jumping off one of the sand dunes, fourth is a cannon at the fort in Jodhpur (note blue city), and lastly is the blue city sprawling beneath the fort in Jodhpur.

North Trip

Pictures are of the Child Beer, an amazing ceiling design at the Jain temple, pillars at the Jain temple, one of a few lakes in Udaipur, and a temple in Udaipur.
Also check out my Facebook photos if you can there are a lot more. I will be adding more to the blog though.
I would like to say making a Facebook group to guilt me into writing my blog didn’t work but it did to a degree although I had already started writing a blog. Here it is anyway.
Ok so I haven’t written for a while but I have been busy. So this blog will tell about what I did before the North trip (briefly), and what the North trip was like (amazing).
Now I will zip through what I did a month prior to the North Trip. I was inaugurated as a guest member of the Rotaract club affiliated with my Rotary club, I went to a MS walk (which was only about 300m and then speeches) then I saw a circus. I have stopped yoga for the time being but I will start doing it in my house as I have learned a lot. On my way to yoga in November I had to walk by like 10 Garbage trucks every morning so that sucked. I saw another Hindi movie but still haven’t seen enough. Went to RYLA (Rotary Youth Leadership Awards), which was great. It was a full weekend of activities with groups, and they split up all the exchange students so we were forced to make friends with the Indian youth. My team was very friendly and allowed me to open up more than I would even in Canada. I did a dance on the stage with 2 others in front of like 250 ppl to a Hindi song and I also preformed a Hindi song it was insane. I would never do that stuff in Canada. The activities included teamwork and individual activities, such as valley crossing, a marble game, rappelling, flying fox, water games, yoga, maze games, feet tied together game, rope bridge, imaginary river, milk crates, rifle shooting, jumbering, speaking training, tennis ball, and listening. I never realized how hard listening is, most people don’t actually listen, especially me and the person conducting this session really proved that. I also have been volunteering a couple times a week at a NGO which uplifts slum children through education. Then there was the terrorist attacks mentioned in the last post. I also sent a package and some post card home.

Now the North Trip. First we took an overnight train journey to Udaipur which is in Rajasthan. Rajasthan is a state in the North West part of India. Udaipur was a very nice city it is called the lake city as there are a couple lakes within the city. Part of the James Bond film Octopussy was filmed at the lake palace in Udaipur which is a, you guessed it, palace on a lake. Throughout the trip we did mostly the touristy stuff so there were lots foreigners but you can’t call them noisy foreigners because everywhere here is so noisy that you can’t complain about the tourists. This being said there is a lack of tourism throughout India because of the terrorist attacks so the places we went were not too overwhelming. For the entire trip we took a small bus around, which looked like a van. We spent way too much time in the bus but as others said before I remember mostly the stuff I saw not the bus rides. So in Udaipur we saw a nice Hindu temple, the city palace (which still has a royal family living there), and a garden with over 700 fountains. The next day we drove to Jodhpur which is another city in Rajasthan. The thing that amazes me about India is how every city has so many people, you come to a city expecting a population of maybe 50,000 and it has 500,000 people. I went to a city in Maharashtra that I had never heard of and it had 2 million people. Just something that is a little different from Canada where such a city would be one of the biggest in the country. On the drive to Jodhpur we stopped for a couple hours in Ranakpur to see the most amazing temples around. The temples were Jain temples you may remember the Jain religion which I mentioned in a previous post. The Jain’s can’t kill anything you are normally not allowed to wear your leather belt into the temples but this one was a big tourist hot spot. No words (or even pictures for that matter) could ever do justice to how amazing the temple was. It had 1,444 marble pillars each of which were carved differently. The ceiling also had amazing designs which often used different layers for effect. There were too many amazing things about this temple to start naming a few but I will try. There was a huge basement where they would hide the gods during the Mogul attacks; there are two 108kg bells which were not ringing when we went but can be heard a very long distance away, the temple construction started in 1446 and took more than 50 years to complete, and the temple was nominated as one of the final 77 new wonders of the world. Every time I turned around I was amazed again. Although I could never describe how awesome the temple was I hope you get the idea. We drove to Jodhpur and stayed the night there. In the morning we visited the palace in Jodhpur which again still has the royal family living there but it has also been converted to a hotel. We visited the museum there which was interesting but also boring. It gave us an idea how the royal family actually lives from playing polo to sipping on French wine they have a pretty good life. After visiting the palace we drove to Jaisalmer. Jaisalmer is a really cool place it is right in the desert like 80 km from Pakistan and has some really cool sights, sounds and smells. The sights we saw include a water tank surrounded by important buildings and temples, the Golden Fort which is the only fort in India which still has village people living there, and the city sprawling at the base of the fort. Other notable sights that we saw which were funny were the couple shops that were advertizing ‘CHILD BEER’ not chilled beer, also some little girl who did an insane tightrope act, and all the camels which walked through the streets with ease. The sounds included people trying to get our attention so they could show us crap we don’t need, shrieks after jumping into the ice cold swimming pool at the hotel, and complaints after receiving the sub par meal at the hotel restaurant. Smells were mostly bad but not always from the seemingly endless supply of cow dung to the fresh aroma from the German bakery which we had lunch at. The afternoon we arrived in Jaisalmer we went for a swim and also visited a silversmith and saw how they make the jewelry. The day we visited the Golden fort and Jaisalmer city we also went for a one day camel safari which was incredible. So we left Jaisalmer in the afternoon and took the bus for an hour to the Thar desert in the far western part of India like 50km away from the Pakistan border. We were so close to Pakistan that every couple of hours you would hear and often see an Indian Air Force fighter jet patrolling the border. I think the Air Force patrol was more for show but the relations between India and Pakistan are not the best right now and it was really weird actually seeing the effects of that. So we took the bus to the desert and immediately went on a camel ride for about an hour we rode to some very nice sand dunes and stopped. During the halt we all played in the sand for an hour or more, it was so much fun. Jumping off and running down the sand dunes. We then watched the picture perfect sunset together and rode back. It was an amazing experience. When we got back to the camp we had a surprisingly good meal and watched a cultural dance/music program put on by 5 village people who lived a 5km walk away from the camp. In the evening there was also a campfire. The desert gets pretty cold at night actually and I had to put on my tuque. The next day we woke up early and I had a hot shower then watched the sunrise. The next day we drove much of the day but when we went back to Jodhpur and visited a pretty cool fort known as Menrangarh Fort. It had never been captured and was really interesting in general. Information was given on how the royal people spent time, to the design of the fortress, to the history behind it and finally to how prevalent opium was used with the royal family. Also from the fortress you could see one of the marvels of Indian architecture known as the Blue City where all the houses which were owned by Brahmans (which is a caste of Hindus) were painted blue on the walls which faced the fortress. Also, being modern times, many houses which weren’t owned by Brahmans were painted too so it gave a really amazing effect looking down on this blue city. In the evening we got time for shopping and came back to the hotel for dinner and sleeping. The food throughout the trip was very good generally as it was at hotels for breakfast and dinner. The next day we drove to Jaipur. Jaipur is the capital of Rajasthan and was a pretty cool city although it was pretty busy. Like many Indian cities there is a new city and an old city the old Jaipur is known as the pink city as most of the city, including the surrounding walls, are painted a pinkish orange colour. There are many theories for the pink colour some say it goes back to the architect of the city who was devoted to Lord Shiva (a Hindu god) whose favorite colour was the 'terra cotta' colour which is there at present, and another theory is that the city was painted to welcome the British king Edward VII as pink is the traditional colour of hospitality. Jaipur was the first city in India to enjoy rigorous town planning and it shows in the wide straight avenues that divide the city into nine sectors which reflect the nine divisions of the universe according to the Indian horoscope. We stayed two nights in Jaipur at a nice hotel. The first afternoon we arrived and then went to an ethnic theme park called ‘Chokhi Dhani’ for the evening festivities. There were lots of cool things there like what people normally associate with India if they don’t know how advanced the country actually is. For example there was an elephant ride, mendhi (the brown designs on girl’s hands and my bicep), magicians, traditional dance, a contortionist, and a head massage. The head massage was kinda painful, the elephant ride was ok but the guy hurt the elephant and the whole atmosphere was great. We also ate a traditional dinner there which many people didn’t like but I didn’t mind it. The next day we did the sightseeing of Jaipur. We first saw Amber fort which was interesting even after seeing so many forts. It had a few palaces in the fort one of which was covered in mirrors and coloured glass another of which was cooled by the presence of marble walls and channels which water flowed through. Royal people sure knew how to live and it is genius what the people could do so long ago with such little technology to make their lives more comfortable. Also in Jaipur we saw Jantar Mantar a medieval observatory, it was absolutely amazing how the solar and lunar measuring devices were and still are so accurate. One Sundial, which happens to be the largest in the world, was accurate to within 5 seconds. Your watch may be wrong but this sundial isn’t. There were also some other crazy other lunar measuring devices and some devices which apparently measure how hot the summer will be and when the monsoon will arrive. I didn’t understand most of what the guide explained but whatever it was very interesting. We chose not to go to the city palace as we had already been to a few palaces which were apparently very similar. This palace did have the two largest silver objects in the world though and we missed those but whatevs. The silver objects were massive urns (760lbs each) which held water from the Ganges so the king had a constant supply of Ganges water to drink. We went back to the hotel in the afternoon and had some time for shopping. I went with another German exchange student and some guy talked nonsense to us for at least ½ an hour and wasted a bunch of our time by taking us to his overpriced silver shop. It was a terrible time. We came back to the hotel by bicycle rickshaw for an amazing dinner and bed.
I have gone a long time on this post but still have more to cover so I will post this followed by pictures and in the next few days I will continue with the North Trip and beyond. I still have to describe the Taj Mahal, Delhi, and river rafting on the Ganges so stay tuned.
Also Mom, please don’t give me such big guilt trips about not posting so often I am having the time of my life.