Hotel Abhinandan Mathura

... my home for now. Tomorrow on our way to Jaipur, to visit the Old Red City and meet again many touts…Shiva please give us enough energy to deal with them ;-)))

India: The land of colors, red chewing tobacco, rickshaw drivers, commission based tour guides, many gods, temples and shrines, smiling people, great food, hectic traffic roads, holy cows, Hindu language, handsome guys, the standard 3 questions and the need to haggle over everything. The country I am falling in love with…

... no doubt to a place where he would get a commission but we declined. Back at our hotel after we did not tip the brother we felt we had had a very full day of history of the mughal ruler Akbar and gained quite an appreciation for the immense wealth and power held back then in India. After a rest we headed out for dinner to a local restaurant which catered to tourists but we were not that impressed with the food or the higher prices, we definitely prefer to eat where the locals do.

... good gear has been pillaged over the past two years and all we have left is an exotic mish mash of medicines and first-aidy thingybobs that have words written in strange languages on them. You can usually find what you need though if you rummage, we've collected a good range in there having been through quite a few medical situations. I inspected the wound and found it to be a deep cut on the funny bone with lots of bruising and a scrape up the forearm. The cut is in a smiley face ...

... squeezed mango juice which was the niceset drink I had ever had and refreshed my throat which felt drier than the Yamuna river. I went on to drink a further 2 litres of water about 10 minutes later at lunch which was my usual!

I was then hassled to take a ride with a rickshaw driver, Salim, who was only going to charge me 20 rupees (30p) to take me to the Taj Mahal. Of course along the way he took me to various clothes shops and even ...

... travel. Skip it if you don't like.)
After I came back to Japan, one of my coworkers underestimated a guided tour. In my opinion, the guided tours have advantages and disadvantages, but she couldn't understand. Japanese tourists, especially middle-aged and old Japanese tourists, tend to take a guided tour when they travel abroad, because they don't speak English, but they do have money. They just travel from one tourist sight ...

... I would have expected. Kids screaming, running around, guides screaming to the top of their lungs to be heard over the other guides. It really was a disappointment for me. The maintenance and upkeep of this marvel of architecture left much to be desired. So I did not spend too much time inside and exited to enjoy the outside of the building and the gardens surrounding it. We returned to the hotel for breakfast and a "rest" - another total waste of time. We were ...

... that Wildlife S.O.S. does is not just to find and remove the bears from these terrible situations or protect their habitats, but how they also inform, teach, and help the Kalandars learn about why this practice is so bad and also provide them with alternative livelihood options through a community rehabilitation program. Realizing that the dancing bear practice is the main form of livelihood for the Kalandar's ...

... shoes to protect the flooring. The outside of the Taj is covered in beautiful details...inlaid marble, frescoes, sculptures, precious stones. On a platform it offers views back towards the entrance gate, and towards the river. There was a great breeze in the morning also, that seemed to wash away any ill feelings. It was quite amazing to finally see the Taj Mahal. Hear the story, feel the love is must have had for his wife who gave him ...

... mi uz rysuje. Shrnul bych to do rozhovoru s peti chlapiky co sem mel na namesti u Amer Ford v Jaipuru. Sedili na hradbe pred vchodem a pili milktea a kourili. To je jejich hlavni zamestnani. Prisla rec na rodinu....kolik mas deti??....hlavni otazka. Kdyz sem nesmele vykotkal a skoro zalhal ze jedno...zacli se hlasite smat. To ja jich mam sedum..hrde voznamil ten co se ptal... ja devet prihlasil se dalsi....ja sest.......vodesel sem se stazenym........ a premejslel kam ten svet asi speje....

Our 8 hour drive to Delhi turned into 10 thanks to the heavy fog (smog), so we missed our connecting train. However we caught the next and made it to Mathura with enough time to while away a few hours in the scrum for tickets for our onward journies. (Once you've made it to the front of one "queue", no mean feat, you are passed from window to window in an Orwellian nightmare of petty bureaucracy, by a series of spectacularly unhelpful ...