Sorry for the lack of updates, we just haven't had the time to get online since we're in India since we usually arrive in our hotel in a new city late every evening. Traveling here is not very relaxing, the trains are always hours late and crammed full of people and it's near impossible to get tickets. I don't like India, all the cities are the exact same smelly, dirty, polluted, overpopulated concrete hellholes and the people harass us all the time. But the trains are the worst. On the other hand we're seeing some great monuments so it's all worth it.
A summary of our adventures this week:
- Last Saturday we took a nightbus from Kathmandu to India. Since we took an unusual route to get to Bodghaya, we ended up in Bihar, the poorest and most criminal region in India. The border town Raxaul is the most miserable place I've ever been. Unfortunately, it was election day in Bihar and to prevent violence, all vehicles were banned while the army controlled the streets. So we were stuck there all day. We made up for that by taking another night bus out of there.
This day we were accompanied by a 16 year old Nepalese boy who had run away from home without any money or luggage because his parents were mad with him and wanted to go meet a famous Guru in the south of India. I helped him along to Raxaul so he could say he made it across the border, then spent the afternoon persuading him to go back, with success. A special adventure that.
- Monday we visited Bodghaya, the place where the Buddha was enlightened 2500 years ago and now the holiest city of Buddhism. Not much to see there.
- Tuesday we visited Varanasi, the holiest city of Hinduism. The most interesting thing there were the people bathing in the Ganghes. There was a big Hindu festival that day so we thought we were lucky, but except that there were a lot of lights and a lot of people nothing much seemed to happen on the festival. We were actually standing on the main square by the Ganghes between thousands of Indians during the time of the celebrations, and nothing happened, though people applauded periodically for no apparent reason. Very weird.
- Wednesday we visited Khajuraho, which has big 1000 year old temples covered in little statues, many of which are very sensual and some even pornographic. Beautiful monuments.
- Thursday we visited Orchha, a village on the site of an old capital where we could roam around the ruins of huge temples and palaces freely. That was great.
- Yesterday we visited Sanchhi, which has a Buddhist monument with nice statues 2000 years old.
- Today we visited Gwalior, which has the biggest fortress I've ever seen. There were other great things as well, like big rock carvings, and it was the highlight of the week so far.
- In between all this we've done lots and lots of traveling, mainly waiting for trains and sitting on trains.
- Tomorrow morning we're visiting the Taj Mahal!
Of course I have many great pictures of all these places, look forward to sorting them out and putting them online.
Not sure if I'll be updating again, in any case we're coming home in a week!
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