The Taj Mahal for me turned out to be one of those iconic attractions that more than exceeded expectations. What I had never fully appreciated through pictures or reading about the Taj is the incredible workmanship involved in the inlaid marble work that is everywhere throughout the mausoleum. It is a pity therefore that for such a global icon the organization of the huge amount of tourist traffic is as hilariously chaotic as the rest of the country. When we turned up early in the morning shortly after opening time there was a 100m long queue for the women to get in while the men sailed straight trough. This was due to separate security lines of which there were two for the men and only one for the women. For all the crowds and chaos though it was well and truly worth the effort to visit.
After the Taj visit we headed off on the five our drive to Jaipur. I know I am getting a bit repetitive talking about the traffic however the amazing sites on Indian roads alone I have discovered are enough of a reason to visit this country. Once we got out of the city the unbelievable road behavior was replaced by unbelievable forms of transport. Camel cart, donkey cart, horse cart, and every conceivable form of motorized transport both mass manufactured and home made share the freeway. The numbers of people jammed into busses, trucks and carts make the cartoon clown cars look like they aren’t trying.
Arriving at Jaipur at about 5pm we ran headlong into the peak of a major Muslim holy day. It becomes obvious very quickly in India that anything that happens, happens on the roads. Normal traffic movement if there is such a thing was replaced by bands, parades, hordes of drum wielding kids and a general cacophony of sound and movement. Every road that the driver turned turn to try to get to the hotel was either officially or unofficially blocked so we spent about an hour going in gradually decreasing circles until finally reaching the hotel.
Today we have spent a long day sightseeing and shopping in Jaipur. The Amber fort has been a highlight of the trip so far although we keep saying that about each monument that we visit. A sprawling complex fully enclosed by imposing walls circling the edges of a ridge overlooking Jaipur. The fort and all of Jaipur really is a lot better organized for tourist traffic and we actually saw the first example of organized rubbish collection.
Jaipur is renowned for handicrafts, jewellery and textiles and the place is full of markets, bazarrs and emporiums offering amazing stuff and ridiculously cheap prices. We were not immune to the goods on offer like most of the tourists here and the credit card got a good work out.
Tomorrow we are off to a fort/hotel that is slightly off the regular tourist trail to spend a couple of days in a more rural setting.
I have also posted some more photos on Picasaweb. You can follow the same link as below.
Tuesday, December 29, 2009
Sunday, December 27, 2009
Photos
I have uploaded a heap of photos to http://picasaweb.google.com.au/richtam2/India?authkey=Gv1sRgCOKH-omT9ZTnfg#
Hello Everyone
Sorry for the huge long blog post below. I expected to have internet access a bit more aften than we have. We are now in Agra and I expect that the hotels we are in for the next little while will all be a bit more internet friendly so whould have a few more shorter posts. Hope you all had a great Christmas and are getting plenty of rain wherever you are.
First 10 days.
We arrived safely into Delhi airport about 5:30pm and spent about half an hour taxiing to a back paddock of the airport amongst the freight planes and other assorted airport refuse. Due to our prime seats back in 125Z we were about the last off the plane (down the steps onto the tarmac) at which point we milled around the base of the plane for 20 minutes while we waited for a bus to turn up to take us to the terminal. All the reading about India had warned us about going with the flow in terms of transport and general organization so I guess we were getting an immediate crash course.
The representative from India Unbound was there to meet us once we got out of the airport so things started to look up. Driving in to the hotel (about 40min) was where the India that I had been expecting hit me in the face like a brick. The whole way in was like driving past a big stadium after the end of a football game. Torrents of people seemed to just flow from every direction on foot, by bicycle, by motorbike, tuk tuk, bicycle rickshaw, car, truck and bus. Boundaries between pedestrian and road activity were blurred to say the least and once you were on the road it was organized chaos like I have never seen. Imagine lane markers painted on the bottom of a white water rafting course and then expecting a cork floating down the course to stick to the lanes. At one point I counted three painted lanes on the road with around five and a half actual lanes of traffic navigating them. This was not including the motorbikes which weaved around, though and at some points it seemed like over whatever was in their path.
Friday saw a full day sightseeing in Delhi with our guide Raj and driver Mr Vijay. Once again the roads of Delhi were like nothing else. I asked Raj at one point whether westerners ever attempted to drive in Delhi. This question produced much hilarity amongst Raj and Mr Vijay who asked me if I’d like to have a go. I declined immediately.
First up was Lakshmi Naryan Temple and a long and detailed explanation of Hinduism. Raj, a devout Hindu agreed that it is not an easy religion to get to the bottom of considering that there are around 33 million gods to contend with. One thing about Hinduism however that makes visiting Holy sites so enjoyable is the profusion of colour, sound and smell used in the way they worship and construct their idols. Garlands of flowers and incense were everywhere. Bells were ringing and chants being made all of which gave a more festive feeling than a somber religious experience.
From the Lakshmi Naryan Temple we moved on to the Qutub Minar, an amazing Muslim tower built to celebrate the Muslim victory over Hinduism in the 11th century. The tower was in a compound of beautiful formal gardens and also contained the remnants of a mosque that had been built out of stone from the temples of the Hindus that had been vanquished.
Next stop was the presidential palace and other government buildings all of which were built in imposing British colonial style. One strange Indian eccentricity is that the official government car (and there are thousands of them around Delhi) is the Ambassador built by Hindustan motors. The design of this car has basically not changed since it was first built many decades ago. For a country that is at the forefront of IT and many other new technologies it seems strange that when you visit the seat of government you can’t escape the feeling that you have been transported back to the 1960’s judging by the age of the cars.
Next on the agenda was Humayun’s Tomb, otherwise known as the mini Taj Mahal. It is a beautiful building once again set in expansive formal gardens that successfully removes it from the craziness of Delhi.
From Humayan’s Tomb we moved on to Old Delhi which is truly insane.
Within Old Delhi is the Jama Masjid ,the biggest mosque in India. We visited in between Friday prayer sessions so the mosque was busy with families coming and going from their worship. Two little Muslim boys took a liking to Rhiannon following her around making kissing noises. The mosque fits 25000 people for prayers and so was an imposing space to say the least.
After the Mosque and definitely the highlight of the trip so far for me was a bicycle rickshaw ride through Old Delhi. A Rickshaw ride through Old Delhi is an assault on the senses on so many levels. At one point during the ride I asked Rhiannon what she was thinking about and she replied that she was trying to work out how she was going to describe what she was seeing to Ellen and Maja when she gets home. Beautiful women in dazzling sari’s and kaleidoscopes of colour in the flower stalls stood side by side with filth that is barley describable and a palpable poverty.
Narrow streets and laneways crowded with even tinier shops selling everything from amazing jewelry to car parts to cows heads. The navigation of these lanes without collision would stump even the most sophisticated software I am sure yet the rickshaws and motorbikes seemed somehow to move confidently within millimeters of each other without incident. The short stretch of busier wider road that we went on was fairly hair raising as trucks and busses roared up behind us, horns blaring then darted around the side within a few inches of the rickshaw wheels while all the time dodging bullock carts, tuk tuks and pedestrians.
Saturday was mostly a travelling day with a 5 hour train ride from Delhi to Ramnagan. Before we went to the train we had a quick visit to the Gandhi Museum and Gandhi Memorial both of which were quite and tranquil places away from the craziness. The train station was in Old Delhi and took the experience of the previous day to new heights. A big, big station for people and freight servicing a city of 18 million with seemingly no organized access or parking is just plain bizarre. Transport of every kind imaginable, human, animal and machine, jostled for position to pickup open air piles of freight ranging from bales of cotton to vegetables to soldering irons to televisions and computers. Seeing brand new HP laptops being tied 20 high to the back of a cycle rickshaw with a flimsy piece of string in the context of Delhi seemed completely normal. Through all of this freight chaos the passengers were somehow expected to make their way to the trains. Without our helper from India Unbound I can guarantee that we would have had no hope of navigating our way onto the train.
The train trip was uneventful although the ground alongside the railway seemed to be a preferred place to set up some truly horrible slums which were confronting sites on the way out of Delhi.
We are now at a beautiful resort on the outskirts of Corbett National Park. We got here about 10pm last night and then left at 6am this morning for a safari into the park. While slightly cold the animal viewing was awesome with heaps of different kind of dear and monkeys and beautiful scenery. The big attraction of Corbett is the number of Tigers and while we did not see any actual tigers we did see plenty of evidence in the form of footprints. Judging by the size of the footprints I’m not too sure I wanted to get too close to a tiger in any case.
The resort itself is stunning. It is perched on the bank of a reasonable size river with crystal clear waters and hundreds of huge fish. It has large decks on the river side where we spent the middle of the day catching some sun and watching the monkeys come down t the river to drink. After lunch it was time for one of Rhiannons all time highlights. A two hour elephant back ride back into the forest. Once again no actual Tigers were sighted but footprints, deer carcasses and the warning calls of barking deer were a reminder that we were truly in tiger country. The forest was absolutely beautiful, full of teak and sal trees and a carpet of lantana from which deer constantly moved in and out of.
Monday morning we took one more Safari into the park and I’m afraid once again the closest we came to a tiger was a short moment of excitement over some rustling in the undergrowth that turned out to be a deer. It did however beat my sighting of a very tiger like pile of leaves. So although no tigers were spotted the park itself was stunning and well worth the trip.
After the Safari we headed off on a five and a half hour car trip to the Kalmatia Sanghum resort near Almora in the foot hills of the Indian Himalayas. Five and a half hours of single lane, mountainous, steep, windy and unbelievably scenic roads. The car horn was heavily employed around virtually every blind turn (and there were thousands of them) to make sure we did not lose a battle with a truck or bus coming the other way. On a few occasions there was a reasonable amount of backing involved before a wide enough place was found for the two vehicles to pass without one toppling over the side of the cliff. As the scenery got hillier and seemingly more remote I kept expecting to see less people but around every turn there would be another little village teeming with people perched to the side of the hill. Terraces cut into the hills were growing crops of wheat and grazing animals.
Towards the end of the trip we rounded another corner to suddenly be confronted by a clear and sparking view of the Himalayan range. A whole series of snow capped jagged mountains all just short of 8000m. When we finally got to the hotel our room had a balcony looking straight towards the range and as the sun set the snow on the mountains lit up a beautiful orange and pink. And then it got very cold. Two German families are also staying in the resort with children Ally and Rhiannons age so it will be nice on Christmas day when we are back there for a roast Turkey lunch.
Tuesday we started our three and a half day walk through the hills and villages. Somehow when we were booking this thing the word hills must have registered in our minds but I guess not quite been associated with Himalayan hills. The tracks are good and well used by the villagers but our legs are now lumps of concrete. I am writing this after the second day so we are over half way and apparently have the steepest sections behind us. For all the reminders of how unfit we are it is still the most spectacular and surprising walk I have ever been on and well worth the effort. We are also constantly reminded to suck it up and take the pain when we run into tiny women carrying huge logs or stones or piles of fire wood up and down the tracks on their heads. What are we complaining about with only a little back pack to carry?
First of all the landscape is amazing. Steep hills one after another are either covered in pine or terraced to grow grass or crops. The grass from the monsoon has been cut and tied in big stacks in the trees to dry. In the valley bottoms small flat areas either side of streams are irrigated so a patchwork of wheat, mustard and fallow (soon to be potatoes) carpets the valley floor. Dotted amongst all of this are the villages with houses made of stone and slate and painted white and bright colours around doors and window sills.
While there are roads nearby, the villages and trails we are taking are not connected by road however there is electricity at every house. It all seems incredibly remote and quiet. Yet when you stop and listen the quietness is simply the lack of mechanical noise and in fact the hum of human activity (voices carry a long way in the thin mountain air) is constant. At one point we came upon a secondary school that serviced a number of the surrounding villages and it had 3000 students! Most of them were walking anything up to 10-15 km each day to get there though.
We are staying in houses that the resort has bought in each village that have basically been maintained as they were but given a coat of paint some reasonable beds and a toilet. Locals cook for us each night (they are completely self sufficient) and it is surprising us just how much Ally and Rhiannon are coping with the 100% curry diet.
The third day of the walk was the longest and all of it up hill however the track was smoother (not vertical like the previous day) and so overall not too bad. By the end of the day we had reached 2200m and our house which was perched spectacularly on the top of a ridge with magnificent views to either side. As we have discovered any flat space more than 10m by 5m is enough to play cricket on as far as the Indians are concerned so a small flat area out the front of the house was enough for a vigorous game of Christmas eve cricket with many a long climb down the hill to retrieve balls that had been hit a little too hard. I am afraid to say that the variable bounce on the Indian wicket was far too unkind to the visitors and the Australians did not acquit themselves very well.
The last day of the walk was a descent through a cedar forest alongside a beautiful stream. Easily the most beautiful natural scenery we had been through and right up there with some of the most beautiful natural scenery I have been in anywhere in the world.
Back at the resort we all enjoyed some hot showers followed by roast turkey for a little Christmas spirit. Just to add to the slightly off key Christmas for us lunch was accompanied by Christmas carols sung in German! (The resort is owned by a German man).
Saturday morning we did one final short walk from the resort up to a temple perched on the end of a ridge overlooking Almora to the South and north towards the Himalayas. While there we had a very interesting conversion with a Hindu Swarmi who was everything you could possibly stereotype into a Swarmi. Softly spoken, very polite, long hair and beard, flowing robes and looking and speaking like he was about to drift off into a deep meditative trance at any second.
Late afternoon brought an end to our time in the mountains and we departed via a trip to a womens collective who run a weaving and knitting workshop employing 300 women from local villages. They produce absolutely stunning material but after a tour through the factory I couldn’t help thinking that it looked like a bit of a sweat shop. I suppose everything is relative though and the conditions are probably a lot better than back in their villages. One thing though that we are still coming to terms with about India is that these beautiful women were producing stunningly beautiful things but were surrounded by filth and this seems to be the norm. Indians love beautiful things and their houses and possessions are always immaculate but step outside the house and it is grot piled on filth mixed with squalor.
After the weaving factory we had a three hour drive down the hill to Kathgodam where we caught an overnight train back to Delhi. Snatches of sleep were a bonus amongst an orchestral snoring performance from every other person on the train who by the volume of their snoring seemed to have no problem sleeping at all. We arrived at Old Delhi at 4:30 in the morning at which point 99% of the passengers got off. We were a little alarmed that there seemed to only be us and a couple of others left on the train but we had been told to definitely get off at the next station. After half an hour or so sitting on the platform a boy came around collecting all the sheets and I showed him my ticket to make sure that the train was going to go on to another stop. After a lot of head shaking and clucking I managed to hear the word cancelled in amongst the Hindi. Anyway after only deciding at the last minute to bring a mobile phone with us it has certainly come in useful on a couple of occasions such as that as I was able to redirect the driver who was picking us up to another station.
From the train station in Delhi we drove straight to Agra and continued my absolute fascination with the mayhem that is driving on Indian roads. At the train station when we left there was a big sign saying “Zero tolerance for breaking traffic laws”. If there is any law applying to traffic in India I am yet to work it out. I had thought that the crazy road behavior could not have got any worse than Delhi but as we got further and further away it just seemed to get more bizarre. There is nothing like scooting along at about 60km/hr (very fast by Indian standards) and suddenly coming face to face with a bullock cart comically overloaded straining straight towards you on the wrong side of the road and not being able to move to either side because you have a rickshaw on one side and a pre war truck on the other.
We arrived at Agra at lunch time and spent the afternoon touring the Red Fort. A truly awe inspiring complex that well and truly exceeded expectations. I’ll let the photo’s do the talking.
Tomorrow morning we tour the Taj Mahal at dawn. The crowds should be down a little at this time although I don’t know how much of a view we will have because the early morning smog here is terrible.
The representative from India Unbound was there to meet us once we got out of the airport so things started to look up. Driving in to the hotel (about 40min) was where the India that I had been expecting hit me in the face like a brick. The whole way in was like driving past a big stadium after the end of a football game. Torrents of people seemed to just flow from every direction on foot, by bicycle, by motorbike, tuk tuk, bicycle rickshaw, car, truck and bus. Boundaries between pedestrian and road activity were blurred to say the least and once you were on the road it was organized chaos like I have never seen. Imagine lane markers painted on the bottom of a white water rafting course and then expecting a cork floating down the course to stick to the lanes. At one point I counted three painted lanes on the road with around five and a half actual lanes of traffic navigating them. This was not including the motorbikes which weaved around, though and at some points it seemed like over whatever was in their path.
Friday saw a full day sightseeing in Delhi with our guide Raj and driver Mr Vijay. Once again the roads of Delhi were like nothing else. I asked Raj at one point whether westerners ever attempted to drive in Delhi. This question produced much hilarity amongst Raj and Mr Vijay who asked me if I’d like to have a go. I declined immediately.
First up was Lakshmi Naryan Temple and a long and detailed explanation of Hinduism. Raj, a devout Hindu agreed that it is not an easy religion to get to the bottom of considering that there are around 33 million gods to contend with. One thing about Hinduism however that makes visiting Holy sites so enjoyable is the profusion of colour, sound and smell used in the way they worship and construct their idols. Garlands of flowers and incense were everywhere. Bells were ringing and chants being made all of which gave a more festive feeling than a somber religious experience.
From the Lakshmi Naryan Temple we moved on to the Qutub Minar, an amazing Muslim tower built to celebrate the Muslim victory over Hinduism in the 11th century. The tower was in a compound of beautiful formal gardens and also contained the remnants of a mosque that had been built out of stone from the temples of the Hindus that had been vanquished.
Next stop was the presidential palace and other government buildings all of which were built in imposing British colonial style. One strange Indian eccentricity is that the official government car (and there are thousands of them around Delhi) is the Ambassador built by Hindustan motors. The design of this car has basically not changed since it was first built many decades ago. For a country that is at the forefront of IT and many other new technologies it seems strange that when you visit the seat of government you can’t escape the feeling that you have been transported back to the 1960’s judging by the age of the cars.
Next on the agenda was Humayun’s Tomb, otherwise known as the mini Taj Mahal. It is a beautiful building once again set in expansive formal gardens that successfully removes it from the craziness of Delhi.
From Humayan’s Tomb we moved on to Old Delhi which is truly insane.
Within Old Delhi is the Jama Masjid ,the biggest mosque in India. We visited in between Friday prayer sessions so the mosque was busy with families coming and going from their worship. Two little Muslim boys took a liking to Rhiannon following her around making kissing noises. The mosque fits 25000 people for prayers and so was an imposing space to say the least.
After the Mosque and definitely the highlight of the trip so far for me was a bicycle rickshaw ride through Old Delhi. A Rickshaw ride through Old Delhi is an assault on the senses on so many levels. At one point during the ride I asked Rhiannon what she was thinking about and she replied that she was trying to work out how she was going to describe what she was seeing to Ellen and Maja when she gets home. Beautiful women in dazzling sari’s and kaleidoscopes of colour in the flower stalls stood side by side with filth that is barley describable and a palpable poverty.
Narrow streets and laneways crowded with even tinier shops selling everything from amazing jewelry to car parts to cows heads. The navigation of these lanes without collision would stump even the most sophisticated software I am sure yet the rickshaws and motorbikes seemed somehow to move confidently within millimeters of each other without incident. The short stretch of busier wider road that we went on was fairly hair raising as trucks and busses roared up behind us, horns blaring then darted around the side within a few inches of the rickshaw wheels while all the time dodging bullock carts, tuk tuks and pedestrians.
Saturday was mostly a travelling day with a 5 hour train ride from Delhi to Ramnagan. Before we went to the train we had a quick visit to the Gandhi Museum and Gandhi Memorial both of which were quite and tranquil places away from the craziness. The train station was in Old Delhi and took the experience of the previous day to new heights. A big, big station for people and freight servicing a city of 18 million with seemingly no organized access or parking is just plain bizarre. Transport of every kind imaginable, human, animal and machine, jostled for position to pickup open air piles of freight ranging from bales of cotton to vegetables to soldering irons to televisions and computers. Seeing brand new HP laptops being tied 20 high to the back of a cycle rickshaw with a flimsy piece of string in the context of Delhi seemed completely normal. Through all of this freight chaos the passengers were somehow expected to make their way to the trains. Without our helper from India Unbound I can guarantee that we would have had no hope of navigating our way onto the train.
The train trip was uneventful although the ground alongside the railway seemed to be a preferred place to set up some truly horrible slums which were confronting sites on the way out of Delhi.
We are now at a beautiful resort on the outskirts of Corbett National Park. We got here about 10pm last night and then left at 6am this morning for a safari into the park. While slightly cold the animal viewing was awesome with heaps of different kind of dear and monkeys and beautiful scenery. The big attraction of Corbett is the number of Tigers and while we did not see any actual tigers we did see plenty of evidence in the form of footprints. Judging by the size of the footprints I’m not too sure I wanted to get too close to a tiger in any case.
The resort itself is stunning. It is perched on the bank of a reasonable size river with crystal clear waters and hundreds of huge fish. It has large decks on the river side where we spent the middle of the day catching some sun and watching the monkeys come down t the river to drink. After lunch it was time for one of Rhiannons all time highlights. A two hour elephant back ride back into the forest. Once again no actual Tigers were sighted but footprints, deer carcasses and the warning calls of barking deer were a reminder that we were truly in tiger country. The forest was absolutely beautiful, full of teak and sal trees and a carpet of lantana from which deer constantly moved in and out of.
Monday morning we took one more Safari into the park and I’m afraid once again the closest we came to a tiger was a short moment of excitement over some rustling in the undergrowth that turned out to be a deer. It did however beat my sighting of a very tiger like pile of leaves. So although no tigers were spotted the park itself was stunning and well worth the trip.
After the Safari we headed off on a five and a half hour car trip to the Kalmatia Sanghum resort near Almora in the foot hills of the Indian Himalayas. Five and a half hours of single lane, mountainous, steep, windy and unbelievably scenic roads. The car horn was heavily employed around virtually every blind turn (and there were thousands of them) to make sure we did not lose a battle with a truck or bus coming the other way. On a few occasions there was a reasonable amount of backing involved before a wide enough place was found for the two vehicles to pass without one toppling over the side of the cliff. As the scenery got hillier and seemingly more remote I kept expecting to see less people but around every turn there would be another little village teeming with people perched to the side of the hill. Terraces cut into the hills were growing crops of wheat and grazing animals.
Towards the end of the trip we rounded another corner to suddenly be confronted by a clear and sparking view of the Himalayan range. A whole series of snow capped jagged mountains all just short of 8000m. When we finally got to the hotel our room had a balcony looking straight towards the range and as the sun set the snow on the mountains lit up a beautiful orange and pink. And then it got very cold. Two German families are also staying in the resort with children Ally and Rhiannons age so it will be nice on Christmas day when we are back there for a roast Turkey lunch.
Tuesday we started our three and a half day walk through the hills and villages. Somehow when we were booking this thing the word hills must have registered in our minds but I guess not quite been associated with Himalayan hills. The tracks are good and well used by the villagers but our legs are now lumps of concrete. I am writing this after the second day so we are over half way and apparently have the steepest sections behind us. For all the reminders of how unfit we are it is still the most spectacular and surprising walk I have ever been on and well worth the effort. We are also constantly reminded to suck it up and take the pain when we run into tiny women carrying huge logs or stones or piles of fire wood up and down the tracks on their heads. What are we complaining about with only a little back pack to carry?
First of all the landscape is amazing. Steep hills one after another are either covered in pine or terraced to grow grass or crops. The grass from the monsoon has been cut and tied in big stacks in the trees to dry. In the valley bottoms small flat areas either side of streams are irrigated so a patchwork of wheat, mustard and fallow (soon to be potatoes) carpets the valley floor. Dotted amongst all of this are the villages with houses made of stone and slate and painted white and bright colours around doors and window sills.
While there are roads nearby, the villages and trails we are taking are not connected by road however there is electricity at every house. It all seems incredibly remote and quiet. Yet when you stop and listen the quietness is simply the lack of mechanical noise and in fact the hum of human activity (voices carry a long way in the thin mountain air) is constant. At one point we came upon a secondary school that serviced a number of the surrounding villages and it had 3000 students! Most of them were walking anything up to 10-15 km each day to get there though.
We are staying in houses that the resort has bought in each village that have basically been maintained as they were but given a coat of paint some reasonable beds and a toilet. Locals cook for us each night (they are completely self sufficient) and it is surprising us just how much Ally and Rhiannon are coping with the 100% curry diet.
The third day of the walk was the longest and all of it up hill however the track was smoother (not vertical like the previous day) and so overall not too bad. By the end of the day we had reached 2200m and our house which was perched spectacularly on the top of a ridge with magnificent views to either side. As we have discovered any flat space more than 10m by 5m is enough to play cricket on as far as the Indians are concerned so a small flat area out the front of the house was enough for a vigorous game of Christmas eve cricket with many a long climb down the hill to retrieve balls that had been hit a little too hard. I am afraid to say that the variable bounce on the Indian wicket was far too unkind to the visitors and the Australians did not acquit themselves very well.
The last day of the walk was a descent through a cedar forest alongside a beautiful stream. Easily the most beautiful natural scenery we had been through and right up there with some of the most beautiful natural scenery I have been in anywhere in the world.
Back at the resort we all enjoyed some hot showers followed by roast turkey for a little Christmas spirit. Just to add to the slightly off key Christmas for us lunch was accompanied by Christmas carols sung in German! (The resort is owned by a German man).
Saturday morning we did one final short walk from the resort up to a temple perched on the end of a ridge overlooking Almora to the South and north towards the Himalayas. While there we had a very interesting conversion with a Hindu Swarmi who was everything you could possibly stereotype into a Swarmi. Softly spoken, very polite, long hair and beard, flowing robes and looking and speaking like he was about to drift off into a deep meditative trance at any second.
Late afternoon brought an end to our time in the mountains and we departed via a trip to a womens collective who run a weaving and knitting workshop employing 300 women from local villages. They produce absolutely stunning material but after a tour through the factory I couldn’t help thinking that it looked like a bit of a sweat shop. I suppose everything is relative though and the conditions are probably a lot better than back in their villages. One thing though that we are still coming to terms with about India is that these beautiful women were producing stunningly beautiful things but were surrounded by filth and this seems to be the norm. Indians love beautiful things and their houses and possessions are always immaculate but step outside the house and it is grot piled on filth mixed with squalor.
After the weaving factory we had a three hour drive down the hill to Kathgodam where we caught an overnight train back to Delhi. Snatches of sleep were a bonus amongst an orchestral snoring performance from every other person on the train who by the volume of their snoring seemed to have no problem sleeping at all. We arrived at Old Delhi at 4:30 in the morning at which point 99% of the passengers got off. We were a little alarmed that there seemed to only be us and a couple of others left on the train but we had been told to definitely get off at the next station. After half an hour or so sitting on the platform a boy came around collecting all the sheets and I showed him my ticket to make sure that the train was going to go on to another stop. After a lot of head shaking and clucking I managed to hear the word cancelled in amongst the Hindi. Anyway after only deciding at the last minute to bring a mobile phone with us it has certainly come in useful on a couple of occasions such as that as I was able to redirect the driver who was picking us up to another station.
From the train station in Delhi we drove straight to Agra and continued my absolute fascination with the mayhem that is driving on Indian roads. At the train station when we left there was a big sign saying “Zero tolerance for breaking traffic laws”. If there is any law applying to traffic in India I am yet to work it out. I had thought that the crazy road behavior could not have got any worse than Delhi but as we got further and further away it just seemed to get more bizarre. There is nothing like scooting along at about 60km/hr (very fast by Indian standards) and suddenly coming face to face with a bullock cart comically overloaded straining straight towards you on the wrong side of the road and not being able to move to either side because you have a rickshaw on one side and a pre war truck on the other.
We arrived at Agra at lunch time and spent the afternoon touring the Red Fort. A truly awe inspiring complex that well and truly exceeded expectations. I’ll let the photo’s do the talking.
Tomorrow morning we tour the Taj Mahal at dawn. The crowds should be down a little at this time although I don’t know how much of a view we will have because the early morning smog here is terrible.
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