Intense India

India is a place that can be described by many conflicting words – beautiful, majestic, colorful, delicious, dirty, polluted, relaxed, noisy, overcrowded, etc. India has a rich culture, is full of incredible architecture, and is home to some of the best tasting food I have ever had. Out of everywhere Lindsey and I have been, India wins for being the most different from what we are used to.

I believe that most who have been there would agree that India is definitely not a place to go for beginner travelers, especially if you travel on your own, but if you are willing to face the intensity of India for the joy of seeing what it has to offer, it is well worth it.

Jaipur – The Pink City

Out first stop in India was Jaipur, which is the most densely populated city and the capital of the state of Rajasthan. It is known as The Pink City because most of the brick in the old section of the city was painted a soft pink color when European royalty came to visit about 150 years ago. It is a busy and beautiful city.

On our first taxi ride in Jaipur, which was also our first day in India, we noticed quite a few things that seemed to be common everywhere we went - Indians drive like complete psychos and love to honk their horns and somehow never get in wrecks, cows and poop and trash are everywhere, beautiful ancient forts and palaces seem to be around every corner, women wear the most colorful clothing ever, and there are lots of food stands making Chai Tea, which we learned is a delicious backbone of Indian refreshments. It was hectic and chaotic, but somehow we loved it and found it all fascinating. There is no place like it on earth, and in a world of modernization were everything is becoming more Western, it was refreshing to see a huge country that is still deeply rooted in it’s culture and traditions.

 

The Monkey Temple in Jaipur. The water is considered holy so they are bathing in it.

Amber Fort - it was the first fort we saw and absolutely huge.

We spent a few days exploring the old forts, walking around the streets surrounded by pink buildings, somehow avoided being hit by cars, and drinking Chai. I seriously love that stuff.

The Hawa Mahal, or The Palace Of Winds. It is the traditional pink color.

The Jal Mahal - the floating palace of Jaipur.

A common scene - cows, donkeys, poop, and trash.

We decided it would be the fastest and cheapest to take a train to the next stop, but when we arrived at the Jaipur train station, my goodness…… we were in for a surprise. I thought Africa had toughened me up for unsanitary conditions, but I had never seen anything like this before. The tracks at the station were covered in piles of human feces and puddles of urine that reeked to high heaven. Dogs ran about looking for scraps and flies buzzed around all of the venders’ food looking for a place to land. The first train we saw was so packed full of people that half of them were literally hanging out the doors, trying to push their way on. Even when the train started to roll forward, hoards of men were running next to the doors still trying to push their way on. Lindsey and I looked at each other, laughed, and found our way through the craziness of the train station while occasionally holding our breathes because of the smell. It was an intense experience.

The Pushkar Camel Fair

This fair is held yearly and boasts of being the biggest camel fair in the world and is held in the smallish town of Pushkar. Around 40,000 camels and 200,000 people show up for a week of camel festivities and a week of religious ceremonies. Funny story – I actually revolved all of the planning for our entire trip around being at this camel fair. When would we ever get to see a sea of camels if we missed it? Exactly. Well, it did not disappoint and we had a great time. Our good friend Adam, who was a Peace Corps Volunteer with us in Namibia and now works in Delhi, even came to meet us for some camel craziness.

Lindsey and I on our first day at the fair. Many more camels would come over the next few days. 

Now that is a lot of camels.

 The fair is about more than just buying and selling camels. There were carnival rides, religious ceremonies, horse racing and camel dancing competitions, food stands, and even a few snake charmers. People continued to flow in all week and the city streets continued to fill up with people, cows, and camels. The morning that we left, the streets were so packed full of people that it was a standstill – no one was moving anywhere because there was no free space left to move. I was happy that didn’t happen until our last day.

The Pushkar Holy Lake. We were not allowed to wear our shoes on the steps.

Some of the snake charmers. Do you see the cobra with its hood flared?  

The ferris wheels in the background were the fastest ones I have ever ridden. I'm sure they are super safe - right?

Jodhpur – The Blue City

Jodhpur has the biggest and most impressive fort I have ever seen – Mehrangarh Fort. This thing literally looks like a mountain and was never once captured in the 500 years it was occupied. A scene from The Dark Knight Rises was even shot outside of the fort.

Do you see Lindsey with her arms up? That is where Bruce Wayne climbs out of the prison in The Dark Knight Rises.

I'm telling you, the fort was absolutely huge. 

The old part of the city is painted blue and we had some incredible views overlooking it from the top of the fort. Most of the streets are no more that 5 feet wide (just in the old part of the city), so there was only foot traffic and the occasional moped since the streets were too narrow for cars. Lindsey and I spent a lot of time exploring that area since it was the one peaceful part of the city where car horns could not reach us.

The Blue City. 

One of the times we were exploring.

The owner of the hotel we stayed at booked our train for us (the hotel owners usually take care of the bookings for their guests) at 5 AM for the day we wanted to leave. So we showed up at the station still half asleep, got on the train, but found our seats were occupied by sleeping Indians. I woke them up to tell them they were in our seats and they promptly waved their hands at me and closed their eyes again, essentially ignoring me. Annoyed, I shook them harder to really wake them up and got forceful in telling them to get up out of our seats. Everyone else in that area of the train began to wake up and joined me in yelling at the guys to get out of our seats (there were no empty seats so we couldn’t just sit down somewhere else). The guys were claiming the seats where theirs, so we both took out our tickets to see who was in the wrong spot. Both sets of tickets were for the exact same seats on the same train. Were the seats double booked? Nope. We quickly discovered that our tickets were for the next day. Oops. The hotel owner booked the ticket for the wrong day and Lindsey and I got on without checking to make sure the date was correct. I felt dumb for making a giant scene and getting angry over our own mistake, but we luckily met some other travelers on the same train that let us squeeze in with them.

Lindsey and I watching the sunset from our hotel roof.

Jaisalmer – The Yellow City

Jaisalmer is a dusty city in the middle of the Thar Desert where the buildings are primarily made out of yellow sandstone, so it truly is The Yellow City. The fort in the center of the town is the oldest working fort in the world, meaning that people still live and work inside the fort and have been for the last 900 years. That alone is pretty impressive if you ask me. All around the city, much of the sandstone is very intricately carved and many of the men in the city make a living as expert stone carvers. If you could jump into the set of an animated Disney movie, visiting Jaisalmer is like jumping into the set of Aladdin. It was much smaller and quieter than all of the other cities we went to in India, and we loved exploring the city and the old fort in relative peace.

The one pond in Jaisalmer. The fort is in the background.

The entrance to Jaisalmer Fort. 

A group of us watching the sunset. From far away, the fort looks like a giant sand castle.

Lindsey trying to talk with a few happy kids. 

Some of the stonework inside the fort. Most of the sandstone is carved very similar to this.

A cow road block.

Some shifty looking men drinking their morning Chai.  

A gypsy woman trying to sell some crafts at the fort entrance.

A holy man on the street asking for money.

One of the more adventurous things to do in Jaisalmer is to take a camel safari out into the mystical Thar Desert. Lindsey and I originally planned on doing a 5 day, 4 night safari, (you can do treks of up to 20 days if you so desire) but every single tourist we talked to said that a 2 day, 1 night trek was “more than enough”, so we took their advice and changed our plans.

 

A village that we passed on our camel trek. It was not so different from a Namibian village.

So, a group of five of us hopped on some camels and our guides led us out into the sand dunes for a night under the stars. Our guides cooked delicious food, we jammed on the bottom of water jugs like drums around a camp fire, and we slept in the sand under some really thick blankets as the stars shined brightly overhead. It was great. We actually had so much fun that we heavily regretted not doing the 5 day trek. I’m still bitter about it.

I was trying to urge my camel to go faster via my shadow.

Lindsey with her camel, right before sunset. 

It was relatively hard to walk after a few hours of riding.

The next morning when the riding began again.

I asked the camel to smile but that was all he could manage.

Delhi

Our next stop was Delhi, where we were stayed with another Peace Corps volunteer, Mayank (pronounced like “My Uncle without the le” as he would say) who was originally born in India and still has family living there. But before we got there, we had a 20 hour train ride on the “party train”.  It wasn’t really a party train of course, but it sure felt like one. The guys sitting next to us busted out their instruments (I suppose they played for money on the streets) and started playing and singing their hearts out. Soon, our entire section of the train was up and dancing around in the aisles and once people realized there were two white people in their mist, oh boy….. everyone wanted to take pictures with us. We were back to being celebrities. Normally we would say no, but since we literally had nothing else to do, we went along with it and took several hundred pictures with Indians as they danced around us. It sure made the 20 hour ride seem much shorter and is actually one of our favorite memories from the trip.

Jama Masjid - the biggest mosque in India. Lindsey had to fully cover herself to see it.

The outside wall of the Red Fort in Delhi. It was a rather large wall.

Anyway, we arrived in Delhi and stayed with Mayank and his mom and ate what seemed like an unlimited amount of amazing, home cooked Indian food. His mom seriously never stopped cooking. I had no Indian friends growing up and was not very familiar with Indian culture before this trip, but I seriously cannot say enough about their genuine hospitality. Indians are incredibly friendly. Not only did we encounter it while staying with Mayank, but throughout our entire trip the Indians were very welcoming and sincere about everything (unless you are dealing with a shop vendor and that is an entirely different story). 

Qutab Minar - at 238 feet tall, it is the second most visited place in India behind the Taj Mahal.

We toured around Dehli with Mayank, sampled the endless varieties of street food, and watched the orange sun set behind a hazy cloud of pollution every night. Interesting fact - Dehli has the most polluted air of any city in the world and has a visibility of maybe half a mile. The air quality is really, really bad. Regardless of the air, we had a great time in Delhi and even managed to make a day trip out to the Taj Mahal.

Taj Mahal

What trip to India is complete without seeing the Taj Mahal? Adam, the same guy that joined us in Pushkar, also came along for this part of the trip. The Taj Mahal is in the city of Agra, and as you can imagine it is the most touristy part of the entire country. Not just foreign tourists, but Indian tourists as well. We ended up going on a Sunday (it was the only day Adam could join us since he works), so it was probably twice as crowed as a usual day. The Taj Mahal is simply amazing. We have all seen countless pictures of it, but seeing it up close and walking around it is a totally different experience.

The amazing Taj Mahal. You can see people on the first level of the base to get a sense of scale. 

Adam, Mayank, and the two of us. 

The day we left India, Lindsey and I were very anxious. Our hearts were pounding and palms sweating, almost like we were having miniature panic attacks. I guess it didn’t help that we had several strong cups of coffee and deep-fried sandwiches for breakfast, courtesy of Mayank’s mom.  We were nervous about the next part of our adventure – The trek to Everest Base Camp in the Himalayas.