Random Thoughts and Pictures.

A sick crocodile, they were sure what was wrong but they had some "animal people" checking into it it's not uncommon for them to get sick.




Yamaha

The bus I took from Chitwan to Pokhara, we stopped for lunch. I had a snickers bar because I can only eat so much rice.





A few random thoughts since I haven't done very much in the last couple days.

1) An elephant is much hairier then I thought. The hair is very hard too, like a hard bristle brush.

2) From my experience all the locals answer there phone with "Hello" but then continue in their native language.

3) Finding a garage can in India and Nepal is pretty hard. In Thamel they don't exist but in Pokhara there are some around.

4) Chitwan Tiger Camp has the best finger chips I've ever had.

5) Finger chips are french fries.

6) The humidity here is unreal, specifically in the Chitwan area, it felt like 90 percent.

7) Sleeping with a mosquito net on is a bit restricting and isn't that fun, although malaria isn't either so I'll take the uncomfortable nights sleep.


Motorcycles over here pretty sweet, they look just like street bikes here but they aren't nearly as powerful. All of the bikes are between 100cc and 200cc, if you have a 200cc your doing pretty good over here. The picture of the Yellow Bike is a Yamaha, not sure what model but you can't get it in North America. Another very popular bike is the Hero Honda.

One thing I haven't mention is the amount the power isn't on here, I'm used to it now because it's been like this since Delhi. The reason is because it's the dry season which means the water levels are low for their hydro dams. So the power outage shifts from city to city. Sometimes we go 8 hours without hydro, some places have generators but not many because they are expensive. It's just the way life is over here, they learn do deal with it, although they don't rely on electricity in the same way we do. Maybe next time the power goes out at home and I complain I'll stop myself because most of the time the people here don't know when the power will come back on.

Pokhara

Well I'm in Pokhara after a fairly uneventful bus ride, except for the massive hail storm that we drove into. I'm staying in Butterfly Lodge right now in a dorm for like 165 rupees a night. The hail were as big as golf balls at some point, and the streets were flooding pretty fast. The rain was the first I've seen since I started traveling. So I haven't seen much of the town yet because of the bad weather but I'm excited that I'll be able to see some mountains that aren't covered in haze. Well that's all I got for now because I haven't done much since the last blog, I should have more tomorrow night.

Andrew

Chitwan National Park

There is a blog under this one that was written before it but not posted until now.
Another interesting bus ride

Saturday, March 276:20am. Wake up
7am. Check out of hotel and hurry to bus station because the bus is suppose to leave at 7:15

7:15: step out of taxi and right away there’s someone asking me where I’m going, I say Chitwan National Park. I don’t think he understands so I say it again.

Now he takes me to the bus ticket window and says something to the man behind the steel bars and then he brings me too the bus that hopefully will go by Chitwan. So with no ticket I get on the bus (they will collect money later) so I made the bus, except it sits in the parking lot trying to get onto the highway for 30 minutes or so. By 8:30 we’ve maybe gone 10km, now I’m thinking-this is going be a really long bus ride and I should have ate breakfast although not many places are open very early. By about 11am I’m starting to think I’m going the right way because I’m seeing signs that I should be(according to lonely planet) Then it’s 11:30 and I think this bus isn’t going the right way because there’s a sign for Pokhara and that’s west of Kathmandu( I should be going south)
I ask some kid on the bus and he thinks I’m going to wrong way because this bus is going to Sunauli which is on the border of India and Nepal. Now I’m thinking “okay well I guess I’m going to Sunauli, oh well. However the bus stops so people can go to the bathroom and I ask someone else and he says my stop is the next one. Well that’s good, so in about 10 minutes they drop me off on the side of the road and point to another bus and tell me to get on that one. I do that and it’s just a local bus and I’m the only white person, also the only person over 5’9. The people are very nice and even move out of the way so I can have a seat(the bus was packed) I take this bus for about 15 minutes and then they drop me off and point to a horse rickshaw. I guess I have to take that now, they tell me I’m suppose to take a horse rickshaw 7km south to get to the park, this was pretty fun and after about 30 minutes I was at the lodge, I was staying Chitwan Tiger Camp. Apparently there’s a tourist bus to Chitwan and a local bus, I took the local bus which isn’t as direct but it’s cheaper. Anyway I made it too the park after 7 hours of traveling.





I went to the elephant breeding center shortly after I got to the lodge; it was not the best way to see elephants but still it fun to see them. It was feeding time when I was there and they really like their grass balls, they have something inside the ball that makes it like candy for the elephant.

On Sunday morning I took a canoe ride down the river and then a jungle walk, a jungle walk is exactly what it sounds like. There’s 2 guides with bamboo sticks incase the animals charge the tourists. They aren’t allowed to carry guns. We saw a rhino sitting down in the bush so that made the walk worth it; we also saw some monkeys playing in the trees. After the jungle walk I took a shower with the elephants in the water, it was the best thing I’ve done on the trip so far. I climbed on the back to the elephant and then the instructor guy got the elephant to spray me with water from his trunk. After this he got the elephant to sit down in the water with me on him and then stand back up. Then the elephant started to shake like crazy, trying to get me off his back (instructed to due so) well that worked because I fell off his back. It was so fun. I don’t have any pictures of me on him because I didn’t trust anyway with my camera.

The next day I went on a jeep safari for about 4 hours and fairly deep into the park, I was hoping to see a tiger but there aren’t many around anymore. 2 reasons for that: Poaching and a big monsoon season in 2003. Because of the poaching there is the Nepal army in the park with machine guns at different checkpoints. The park itself is about 932 square km and is controlled by the Nepalese government. In 2003 during the monsoon season the water was very high in the park, higher then normal. This caused a mud slide and killed quite a few of the animals either by drowning them or them being stuck in the mud. So there aren’t many tigers or wild elephants in the park. It seems like there are quite a few rhinos though and they are really cool. I have pictures of them but I’ll put them up later since this internet got slow.

Well that’s all I got about Chitwan Nation Park. Tomorrow I’m headed to Pokhara and will stayed there for a while because I’m going to do the best thing ever: Parahawking
It’s like paragliding except they have trained to hawks to land on your arm while you glide around the mountains; I’m doing this on Friday.

Durbar Square

This was written Friday night and not posted until now due to internet.

First Off: I just went to Roadhouse Cafe for supper and had a very good Chicken Wrap, after that I walked to internet place that is about 100m down the road. I got asked if I wanted to do drugs 6 times.

So day 3 of the bike trip was very tiring. I'd hadn't done 3 days of physical work in a while, snowmobiling doesn't really count. All the time when we passed a village with children they would always ask for money or my bike.

Child: Hello
Me: Hello
Child: You give my bicycle?
Me: No, I need it.
Child: You give me rupees?
Me: No rupees.
Child: Five rupees?
Me: No rupees(as I bike away)
They are all harmless but it gets annoying have to say the same thing 20 times a day.

The last stop on our bike tour was a town called Bhaktapur, there is 65,000 people living there. When your biking it's all farm land and then all of sudden the town jumps out of nowhere. There isn't much to do there except go to Bhaktapur Square, which is a complex of temples and shrines(buddist and hindu) Bhaktapur literally means "City of Devotees" most of the building date back to the 17th and 18th century. This makes for some very interesting architecture. A few pictures from the Square:




So Durbar Square is in South Thamel. The buildings here were built around the same time and this is where the Kings of Nepal are crowned. Some of the temples have been changed since they were built because in 1934 there was a large earthquake that destroyed some of them.

Chyasin Dega-built in 1649 by Pratap Malla in memory of his 2 dead queens. It's a octagonal building-very cool in person.

Forget the name of this one



One annoyance with going to these touristy sites is that I'm constantly being bothered but people wanting to give me a tour of the temples. These people aren't legit guides just people wanting to make some money from the white folk. Another annoyance is the children that beg for money. I had 2 boys following me for a bit asking for money, I kept telling them no and eventually a guard came over and grab the boys by the shirt and gave them a lecture-it was in Nepali so I couldn't understand it. After this I went back to the hotel and sat down because it was like 35 degrees outside.

Andrew

Back from the Mountains!

Pictures from around Kathmandu and the bike trip. If you click on them they should get bigger(that's what she said)















Well I'm back from the very long mountain bike trip that was 3 days and 150km of riding over very hard terrain. It's relieving to know that I don't have to bike again tomorrow because I don't think I would make it. I went on the trip with Hari-the guide from the company I booked with Himalayan Mountain Bikes and with David. A guy from NY who was already going on the trip, I joined the group.

Day 1: Started biking at 9:30am, we left Thamel and headed west for the town of Nargakot which is 30km east of Kathmandu. Once you get out of the city the scenery is very nice and there isn't garbage everywhere. The trail is mostly a dirt road with lots of rocks that are in no way fun. The whole trip was in the Kathmandu Valley, biking is the best way to explore the valley and possibly the easiest. Even 25 minutes of the city it's a completely different lifestyle, all farming. These people grow potatoes, wheat, corn. Right now everything is planted for potatoes. This is where all their food comes from, what they don't eat they will sell for whatever then can at the local market and then stocked up on things like salt, sugar, soap, smokes. These Nepali people sure like to smoke, you can actually by individual cigarettes from the stores. What's very interesting is the altitude at which you can grow certain food. Rice is grown up to 2000m above sea level, corn and wheat up to 2800m and buckwheat and potatoes at 4000m which is astonishing considering them lack of oxygen in the air. Even at 2100m I can notice the difference, it makes everything harder, especially biking up the mountain. We got to the hotel around 3pm and just chilled out until supper. Nargakot is almost the same elevation as Darjeeling.

At supper the first night I had an experience with Dhaal Bhat, hopefully it was my last one as well but I doubt it. Dhaal Bhat is the main meal over here, it's rice, lentils and curried vegetables and they keep serving as long as your eating it. I tried curried vegetables for the first time and they weren't as bad as I thought they'd be. I still won't eat them again, once was enough.

Day 2: Breakfast was hard boiled eggs, which was a great surprise because you never know what it could be. We started climbing for 6km to a look out tower, it wasn't a gradual climb either, it was like straight up. At the top I'd like to say the views of the mountains were awesome-it's suppose to be one of the best places to view the Himalayan Range. Except the mountains were covered in fog, which is very common for this time of year. I use the term fog loosely because it's part that and pollution. There is very little wind around these parts of Nepal, which is a little odd. After the climb we went down the mountain, probably for about 15 km, there was several switch backs so you couldn't go that fast but it was still a good time. It was fairly scary because there are no guard rails( do you think there would be) and sometimes you are right on the edge of the cliff and there's like 2000 feet of open air 1 foot beside you. Day 2 was fun, although we did climb about 10 km straight at one point-this is after the tower climb and about 40km of riding.

Day 3. Back to Thamel, the home stretch. We rode about 35 kms today and I'm completely exhausted. More detail will be added tomorrow about this. I need to get some correct names of places to write it properly. I didn't proof read this so hopefully it's not too bad.

Well that's all I got for now because I'm very tired. Thanks for reading and feel free to comment or ask questions. Tomorrow I'm just going to take it easy, good thing I have like 5 weeks of vacation to recover from the bike ride. Thanks Dalton.

Andrew Rowaan

Kathmandu by Bike.

Hank-yes there are internet cafes everywhere. most charge about 30rupees per hour.
K2-Northern Pakistan

Today walking around I saw the following things on t-shirts worn by Nepalis
the music group "slipnot" "nirvana" "the beatles" "Korn"(it even had the backwards R, all the cool kids will know what I mean) and the best was Avril Lavigne-she seems to be everywhere.

Well I just spent my first full day in Kathmandu, I'm staying in the area known as Thamel. It's the most popular spot in Kathmandu. In all the shops on the street you can find anything you want. NBA clothing, new dvds, knives, toilet paper. The North Face-very popular trekking equipment, every other store sells them here. The name refers to a the north face of a mountain.

So the pollution here is just terrible. Kathmandu is in a valley and because of this the air just hangs around here doesn't move all that much. They don't really have an industry here, they don't make steel or anything like that. Most of the pollution is from vehicle. There are so many of them on the street, there aren't emission standards in Nepal so all the vehicle run like crap. Black smoke is always coming out of the tailpipes of buses and cars. Especially big trucks of which there is no shortage. There are good pictures to be taken of the city with the mountain in the background but the haze obstructs the view of them.

Money: a canadian dollar is about 76 nepali rupees
Time Change: Nepal is 15 minutes ahead of India-this is too show they are a different country.


Nepal: By the Numbers
30 million people
62: average life expectancy(pollution and not the best health care)
48 percent: Literacy Rate.
142 out of 177 on the UN Human Development index( Canada is 4th)
information about the index if any is interested. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UN_Human_Development_Index

One of the most shocking yet almost not when you bike around the city is that 82% of Nepalis live on less then 2 dollars a day.

So today I woke up and had bacon and eggs for breakfast, it was great. Then I rented a bike to explore the city. I did that for about 6 hours, I didn't really go anywhere in particular I just wanted to explore. The areas of the city are very different from each other. There is an old section and newer section. The new section has malls and high rises and the old section is completely filthy(pictures later) and most people grow all there own food. Nepalis living mostly off the land, corn and potatoes are very common.

My next 3 days are going to be awesome, I'm doing a mountain bike trip that will total 130km. Let the adventure begin, the descent are going to be amazing and very dangerous.

The weather here is alright, probably around 30 degrees today. No wind though so it feels hotter.

Well once again, thanks for reading.


Andrew

Picture Time

Random pictures from the last week or so.

Arrived in Nepal.

Hello from Nepal. Before I get into talking about the trip to Nepal I had a couple more things to say about India.

Darjeeling was the nicest city, there wasn't garbage everywhere and the air was cleaner.
Most of the panhandlers are children, which is sad because they all look like they need food. However you aren't suppose to give them any money because some parents will send there kids to beg at the train station(where the tourists are) because there families need money and the kids can do this instead of going to school. In Darjeeling it was nice to see children wearing school uniforms and not begging for money. You can also see the missionary presence in Darjeeling because it's the first place I noticed any Christian items and churches.

Into to Nepal.

It took a long time to get here but it was worth it. So this is what my saturday consisted of. So I was awake at 8am and trying to think about what I should do for the day. I was anxious to get to nepal and out of India so that's what I did. I jumped in a share jeep for 90rs and headed to Siliguri which is down the mountain and it took about 3 hours. So by 2pm I was in Siliguri and looked for a share jeep to get to the border of Nepal and India. I found one rather fast, the border town is called Kakarvitta. I just basically walked across the border and started to get the paper work for my Nepal visa. This was less of a hassle then crossing the border between Canada and the USA sometimes. The visa was 40 dollars american for 30 days, I can get an extension if I want to stay longer. The difference in tempature was vast compared to in Darjeeling. It seemed like 40 degrees in Kakarvitta and it's a dry heat. Everywhere is super dusty right now because it's before the monsoon season, they have seasons just like we do except when it's not the monsoon season it doesn't rain at all. This makes everything super dusty and after a short car ride you can feel it on your skin. I was sitting at the border deciding if I should stay the night so I could shower or just go to a different town. Except in the eastern part of Nepal there isn't much to do or see so I asked about bus to Kathmandu.

Me: Bus to Kathmandu?
Bus Clerk: Yes, okay seat 12 window, 465 rupees.
Me: okay(thinking to myself, I guess I'm going to Kathmandu now)
-that may not seem like a big deal but being as dirty and smelly as I was it was a big deal. See, in India when you book a train it's a whole process on the computer and you spend like 10 minutes doing paper work, the bus took abou 2 minutes to set up.

It's like a 17 hour bus ride and this was about 5:30 at night and I was completely covered in sweat and dust. I felt disgusting but i didn't want to hang out this border town any longer. So the bus left by 6pm and I was on my way to Kathmandu, now to some people reading this a night bus might not sound so bad because you can sleep. However you can't because it's like driving down Burlington Street in Hamilton X5 with a vechile that doesn't have any suspensions. During the bus trip I think I heard every Indian pop song ever written, all of them being awesome, I'd say take the best ABBA song and multiply it by 5 and that's how good they are.

Honestly though it was probably the worst bus ride ever, if I was going back that way I'd consider flying just to avoid the annoyance of it all. The bus stopped often enough so everyone could go to the bathroom which is a relief. So finally at 11 am today we pulled in the Kathmandu, Nepal. First impression: wow there's a ton of pollution here. Travel books recommend wearing a face mask because it's so bad, it also makes for a crappy time trying to take pictures of the mountains surrounding the city. So I found Hotel Moonlight and I'm going to stay here for a couple of days while I plan what I want to do. Taking a shower today never felt so good, even without soap I could see the water coming off was brown/black. It looked like I'd been sleeping in sand for a day.

Heading to Nepal

First off, Hello to everyone reading this at Jackson Square, how's the mall doing? Chances are the security guards are reading this instead of doing their posts which is fine with me.

Last night was annoying, with all the dogs on the street it's hard to sleep because they bark at each other for a long periods of time. It sorta feels like winter hours in Ontario here because the sun in down by 6:30 which makes for short days. Most places here closed by 9pm, including restaurants. They don't use daylight savings time in India, neither in Nepal.

Yesterday I went to Padmaja Naidu Himalayan Zoological Park, it's probably the highest elevation zoo. It was okay. They had some red pandas and a couple leopards, the animals look fairly healthy but not the greatest. There was some interesting birds there with some super bright colours(no pictures today because the internet isn't so great) After the zoo I went to the Himalayan Mountaineering Institute which as an Everest museum. In 1953 Tenzing Norgay and Edmund Hillary were the first 2 people to summit Everest. Norgay was from Darjeeling and that's why there's a museum here. It was pretty cool to see some of the equipment used to climb back in day, items that were twice as heavy as they are now.

I also saw the 3rd highest mountain peak in the world. Kangchenjunga is 8586 metres above see level and the first ascent was in 1955. The name means "the five treasures of snow" because it contains 5 peaks and 4 of them are over 8400 metres high. This was probably the best part about Darjeeling because I'm very interested in mountain climbing(reading the stories anyway) There are 14 8,000m peaks in the world, all of them are located in Asia. Right now I'm reading about climbing K2 which is the second highest and one of the hardest. Anybody care to guess where K2 is?( don't google it though)

Darjeeling has been a very nice break from the typical business of other Indian cities. It's possible to walk down the street and not get hassled constantly, there's also no cows on the road here and everybody is very friendly. The dogs actually look like dogs here,in Varanasi and Agra they are all very skinny and not actual pets. In Darjeeling people seem to take care of them, they still sleep in middle of the road but I'm used to that by now. The drivers are still nuts but you get used to it. Another great part of Darjeeling is eating at the bakeries, the food is fresh and always good.

Well I think I'll head to Nepal,not sure when the next update will be. Thanks for reading, hopefully you are enjoying it.

Andrew

Still in Darjeeling

Well I'm still here in Darjeeling and I'll probably stay until Sunday. I've been fighting a cold the last 3 days so that has sucked. I think I picked it up in Varansi, getting some meds for it was interesting. On the streets here they have all the shops selling clothes and shoes and meds. I went to Popular Pharmacy mainly because of the name. I just pointed to my head and said that it hurts and that my nose wouldn't stop runnning. So he handed me some pills. They were sealed still so that was a relief. So I got 8 pills for RS30 which is like 80 cents, I took them and then went to bed. They seemed to work and I didn't die or starting having a huge drug trip so I'll consider that a success.

Money: One Canadian dollar is about 45 Rupees(RS). A bottle of water is anywhere from 15rs to 25rs depending on where you are. A bottle of pop is about the same price, every place has pop(coke, mountain dew, sprite) A main dish in a restrauant is about 100RS to 150RS but the depends on where you are. I've ate a lot of chicken and rice in the last couple days, the rice is about 20RS per plate. So a whole meal can cost about 4 or 5 dollars Canadian.

Apparently I had the best cup of tea in the world yesterday. At least that's what I was told by the lady at the Happy Valley Tea Estate. This is the finest tea in Darjeeling and it was 50rs to try one cup. Which is a lot when I got a whole pot of "normal tee" for 40rs. The tea didn't live up to the hype and just tasted like normal tee that you would drink at home. It was a big let down.

That's all for now because the interet cafe is closing for the night. It's about 9pm here and that is when most places shut down. So I'll write more tomorrow morning.

Andrew

7,000 Feet

So after a crazy long train ride and then a jeep ride I'm in Darjeeling. Darjeeling is on the east side of Nepal and is 7000 feet or 2134 metres above sea level. You should google it get an idea of where I am exaclty compared to 2 days ago. The train from Varansi was long, first it was 2.5 hours late. So it left at 2pm and not 11:30, I was at the train station for 9:30 and just waited around there with the smell of death. Varansi was okay but I'm glad to gone from there. The orginal plan was to go to Kolkata but I heard from a couple different people that's it's just another big city and is dirtier then Delhi. Which is not something I need to experience. So I just skipped it and headed north. The train ride was 21 hours long, it felt like more actually, I thought my dad and mom snored alot(i can hear them all through the house) but these Indian guys on the train are almost louder then the train. So finally today I arrived in New Jalpaiguri and took a share jeep north to Darjeeling. Which is 88km from there and it's all up hill. A share jeep is exaclty what it sounds like, 5-6 people pay the driver to take them somewhere. Alot of people make their living doing this because a lot of tourist come to Darjeeling. So the journey took about 4 hours and it was pretty nuts, if you've watched the tour de france-up those roads in the Alps. It's the same kind of road to Darjeeling.

This whole city is built on a mountain, it has about 100,000 people and it's world reknown for their Tea. More on that later. So that's just a quick update, I don't have too much to say because I did just spend the last 2 days travelling. Darjeeling is much cleaner then anywhere else I've been and the people here look more Asian then they do Indian.

A man said to me on the train "if you can travel in India, you can make it anywhere."

Thanks for reading and praying for me. I can feel your prayers because I've had a relatively easy time traveling in India and there's no way I could do it without God.

Andrew

The Ganges

The biggest river in India is the Ganges River. It starts in Northern India and travels south then east, eventually into the Bay of Bengal (in Bangladesh) The river is 2510km long and is considered very holy. Situated on the banks of the Ganges is the city of Varanasi, which is where I am right now. For the citizens of Varanasi their lives need to be linked with the river. People that practice Hindu believe they can not live without the River, because Ganga is Mother and she delivers happiness to our world and salvation when we leave it. Because of these beliefs many things that we Canadians consider personal take place in public. Along the river there are Ghats. Ghats are just a series of steps leading down to the river. There are about 80 Ghats here and some are burning Ghats. Assi Ghat and Dasaswamedh Ghat are two popular ones. The latter got its name when Brahma(not sure who that is) sacrificed 10 horses there. Manikarnika is the main burning Ghat, and a favorable place for a Hindu to be cremated. Before a body is cremated it is wrapped in cloth and dunked in the river, outcasts handle the dead body. After this the body is placed on a large fire to be cremated, this is a common occurrence and watch by a lot of people. I'm assuming because to be cremated here is a very holy practice. The wood used is carefully weighed before it is placed on the fire so they can calculate the cost of the cremation. This event takes place at night, I didn't see of these because I was sick the first night and the second night it didn't seem like they were doing any.

The Ganges River is the most polluted river in the world. There are several raw sewage pipes from the city that flow directly into the river. Everyone does their laundry in the river as well as washing their clothes, sometimes right next to cows taking a bath. You couldn't pay me any amount of money to go into that river. An example of how dirty the river is: water that is safe for bathing should have less then 500 faecal coliform bacteria in every litre of water. This part of the Ganges has 1.5 million. The river is actually septic, no dissolved oxygen exits. Everyone from little children to elderly males bathe in this water. Quite frankly I don't know how many people are still alive after swimming in this water. The northern part of the river isn't dirty and you can swim in it, the water is actually blue and not dirt brown. It's interesting because the Yamuna River in Agra looks much dirtier then the Ganges.

I will spend 3 nights in Varansi. Tonight is the last one and I have a train booked for tomorrow morning at 11:40 to take me close to Darjeeling which is not far from the border of Nepal. Hopefully I will stay in Darjeeling for a while. The views of the Himalayan Mountains are the reason most people including myself are going there. I'm very excited for this part of my trip, first though I have to get through an 18 or 19 hour train ride. I'm doing very well and have met a lot of nice people on this trip, including 2 guys from BC who I will probably go rafting with Darjeeling.

Thank for you reading.

Andrew

Some Pictures

Tombs.




Green Parrot.




From the top of the New Delhi train station.

Cows, Monkeys and a 14 hour train ride.

Friday March 12th. 5:30am. Wake up call from my hotel, it was acutally a knock on the door. 6:00am. Met my driver Aslam in front of the hotel and he took me around the town of Agra. 6:30am. Sunrise by the Taj Mahal. It's actually closed on Friday so I saw it from the back and across the river, still a good view. I knew it was closed but I wanted to leave Delhi and then I didn't want to stay in Agra for another day, oh well. 7:00am. Met 2 hot american girls while taking pictures of the Taj. Good Times. 8-11am. Explored the farming side of Agra. The Yamuna River runs through the Town. This river is very dirty, the water looks like tar but isn't as thick. Everyone in town comes here to do laundry and wash their black buffalo and throw garbage out. The river divides the city and farming area. The farming area was very interesting.

They grow watermelons and carrots and a few other items I can't remember right now. 12pm. Agra Fort. Very Interesting and massive. It was built primarily as a military strcture, construction start in 1565. The distance around the outside walls is 2.5km. 2:30pm. Went to Hotel Amar to go swimming and kill some time before my night train to Varansi. Very nice pool. I met 2 ladies from Vancouver who work in the film industry there. 7pm. Went to Pizza Hut. Yes that's right, the most American thing I could think of. It was really good, I had a Chicken n Spicy Pizza. I think this is also where I started to get sick. So I'm sick now, not too bad though. I started taking my pills for travellers diarehre right away. After Pizza Hut I went to the train station, it was about 8pm and my train didn't leave until 11:30 but I had nothing to do and the train station is pretty safe as long as you don't fall asleep waiting for the train. I met 2 people from Quebec which was good. It was nice to have someone to chat with. On the train I had a sleeper bunk with AC so that was good because it was a 14 hour train ride. Dogs: they are in the street everywhere. although they aren't like dogs back home. Here they are all wild and not friendly at all, which is good because most of them probably have diseases. The dogs attack each other frequently and just roam the streets all day. Cows: King of the Road. The cows in the street are cows that used to be milk cows but when they stop producing milk they just push them into the street because they can't kill them because they are scared. Monekys: Lots of Monkeys in Varansi. This morning while getting ready in my hotel I heard a couple monkeys fighting. So right now I am very close to the Ganges River in Varansi. I'll probably stay here for 2 days before moving again. I have to decided where to go though. Orginally I planned to travel east to Kolkata but I was talking to a man from Bombay and he was pretty adament about not going to Kolkata because there's nothing to do and it's really hot. I may just go to Darjeeling right away. It's nice not having to have plans and I can just to what I want. Even though it has been less then one week that's I've been gone it strangely feels longer. The Ganges River is one of the holiest places in India. More on that later after I explore the town some more. Well thanks for reading and feel free to comment at the bottom of the blog, you don't need to sign in. If you have any questions about India just let me know through there or on facebook. Go Habs Go.

Namaste

Hi Everyone. Thanks for reading, hopefully your enjoying them. Well I'm in Agra right now. Last night I took the train from Delhi to Agra which suppose to be about 3 hours although it ended up being almost 5. It wasn't too bad, air conditioned car and a sleeper bunk. I talked to a man from Bombay for a while. Turns out he used to live in Canada and the US. He seemed pretty legit about his stories and he knew where the Guvernmnt was in Toronto and he was talking about how much he liked it. He told me I should have went to the Philippines because of the good price of women. It was a good conversation.

Even though Agra isn't that far from Delhi the life style here is very different. It's a bit slower pace and it's actually a lot warmer. Probably over 35 in the sun. So after the train ride last night I hired a ricksaw driver from the station and he took me to Hotel Sheela. The driver is Aslam and is very good. He's my tour guide for the day and knows the area very well and speaks good english. I had probably the best chicken ever last night: tandoori chicken. So good. today for breakfast I had eggs and some toast with mango jam and a masala omlette. All good. So the plan for the rest of the day is too visit Agra Fort and then find something to kill time before my train ride tonight. It's suppose to be a 13 hour train ride starting at 11:30, I'll figure on it being closer to 16 hours.

Well back to the heat.

Andrew

Getting better at this whole travel thing.

So it's Thursday morning here and I just bought a fake watch for 4 dollars. I realized I should get one since I'm going to be actually travelling now that I've had enough of Delhi. I'm still there now but I'm leaving this afternoon to go to the Taj Mahal in Agra. The train should take about 3 hours but I'll figure on 5 because not much is on time here. I haven't gotten sick yet but I also haven't ate much either, I just haven't had the appetite. Yesterday I travelled Delhi and went to the important sites. Red Fort, Humanyun's Tomb and a couple others. Getting to the places was fun, I took an autorickshaw the whole day, same driver. He stayed with me from about 9:30 until 5:30 when I decided I should go rest. He waited for me at the different sites and told me where to go. At the entrance to the Red Fort he made sure to tell me not to talk to anyone, just keep walking. This is because it's all scams and everybody's selling something. It can get really frustrating but it's part of the culture. The Red Fort is exactly what it sounds like, it's massive. The walls stretch for 2km and are as high as 33 metres. While I was at Humanyun's tomb I met Seth who lives in Delhi for work but is actually from Pittsburgh. We hung out for a bit and ended up going to a restaurant together. It was nice having someone to chat with.

My sleep schedule has been really bad, I only sleep about 4 or 5 hours at a time which is not great but I haven't been too tired except for yesterday after being in the sun for 7 hours. The weather has been great here, around 30 degrees but it's actually not that humid.

Another annoyance is all the scams here. Pretty much everything is a scam, people will just come up to you on the street and start asking everything about you. They want you to come to their tourism office so they can make money, like a commission. This happens quite a bit but I haven't followed those people. On street they really presure you but if you explain you don't want anything to do them they usually leave you alone right away. They are very polite when you tell them your not interested.

So I've acutally spent enough time in Delhi, for me anyway. It's very fast paced and there isn't that much to see. There are some malls and market I could go to but I'll probably to that when come back.

Well I've got a couple more hours to kill before my train leaves so I'm going to go to Lahore gate and then get some pizza. Side note: while talking to Seth he mentioned that KFC is a huge thing over here and the Mcdonalds is almost out of buisness.

Arrived in India. Finally

Hey Everyone. So I'm sitting in a internet lounge close to the hotel, it's 9:15am. Everythings fine. The flight was very long and not that much fun. Toronto to Brussels was okay it was Brussels to Delhi that was hard. I fell asleep for what I thought was 6 or 7 hours but it only turned out to be like 2. that flight was 7.5 hours and I got into Delhi at 11:30pm. My airport pick up was waiting for me so that was awesome and my bag arrived with me so that was good. The drive to the hotel was about 20 minutes and it was really fast and fun. Pretty scary but I expected the drive to be like that. After the drive I slept for about 6 hours in the room and then ventured out onto the street. Although it was only 6am so nothing was open. There were still alot of people around but they were just there hasseling the white folk. I walked to the Train station just to check it out, the walk was about 10 minutes and I got stopped by like 10 people offering me rides and ticket and such. As long as you keep saying no they leave you alone, but after you get rid of one there's another right around the corner. So the plan for today is get some food and visit Red Fort and a couple of burial sites. There is no shortage of cows and dogs over here. Both of which just walked around the street. It's probably like 20 degrees here right now, getting hotter as a type this. Well that's about all I got for now, I need to go find some food. One word to sum up Delhi: INTENSE

Andrew

India Here I Come!

Ganges River:

Well it’s almost here. I can’t believe how fast the time has gone by, this time tomorrow I’ll be waiting in Toronto airport for my flight to depart. It doesn’t seem like it was that long ago that I asked my boss for 2 months off when it was actually August. It’ll probably be hard to sleep tonight since I’ll be too excited and nervous. My mom is actually more nervous then I am and tomorrow at the airport she will probably be nervous for the both of us.

So my plans for my time aren’t really concrete but I have a good idea of the places I want to visit. Starting in New Delhi, India I’ll spend a couple days there just checking out the city and different temples in the area. From there I’ll make my way south to Agra which is the home of the Taj Mahal. I’ll probably spend a day or two there depending how much I like the city. From there I’ll travel to Varanasi which is east of Agra and the home of the much talked about Ganges River. The river is 2510 km and flows from Northern India and eventually into Bangladesh. After Varanasi I’ll make my way to the second biggest city in India: Kolkata. The population is around 14.7 million and the main language is Bengali. From there I’ll travel north to Darjeeling which is very close to the border of Nepal. Darjeeling has a population of 109,000 and the elevation is 2134metres. By comparison the elevation in Banff is 1483metres. Darjeeling is famous for 2 things: Tea plantations and the views of the Himalayan Mountains. I’m very excited to visit Darjeeling and will spend lots of time just taking pictures. After Darjeeling I will cross the border into Nepal and will spend a whole month travelling the country. The places I’m going in Nepal are still undecided but I’ll have time to plan that while I’m in India. So that’s the plan for my first 3 weeks in India, I’m sure it will be challenging and at certain times down right annoying and frustrating but I’ll just have to roll with it and do the best I can.

My next update will probably be from New Delhi. Boo Ya!