TravelStream™ news feed for member quirk on TravelPod's free travel blogs service http://www.travelpod.com/syndication/rss/quirk en-us Copyright ©2009 TravelPod.com Wed, 15 Oct 2008 11:21:50 -0400 http://www.travelpod.com http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/quirk/1/1224083160/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/quirk/1/1224083160/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/quirk/1/1224083160/tpod.html Wed, 15 Oct 2008 11:21:50 -0400 Made it to India!

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Raleigh, North Carolina, United States

Still can't get these damn photos to upload. I think my memory card is totally screwed and ALL my pics are stuck on my camera. This blows.
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Darjeeling, West Bengal, India

Hey everyone!

Been a while since I posted here. Last I wrote my Mom and I were in Siliguri. Well, we hired a jeep to take us on the 3 hour ride up to Darjeeling. Darjeeling is much nicer than the rest of India that I've seen (except maybe for Rishikesh). This is where the middle class people from Kolkata come for vacation. Very few beggars, much less trash lying around, it's not as loud either. Lots of Tibetans have moved here since 1959 when the Chinese invaded Tibet.

Been here since Saturday. Sunday morning I couldn't sleep so I went walking, saw the world's 3rd highest mountain at dawn which was quite a site. On Sunday went to the zoo which was remarkably nice. Saw some tigers, snow leopards, bears, monkeys, etc. On the walk back to the hotel it started pouring down and I caught a nasty fever. Laid in bed Monday, Tuesday, Wed. It's Thursday now and I had to force myself to get up. Feel out of it, was walking so slow a old guy using a cane passed me.

Tomorrow night we have a train back to Calcutta and will get there Saturday morning. Hopefully the heat of Kolkata will help me sweat out whatever bug I've got.
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Siliguri, West Bengal, India

Got out of Calcutta last night. I had booked a "Deluxe Tourist" bus for my Mom and I from Calcutta to Siliguri which is at the base of the Himalayas. From here we're trying to take the Toy Train up to Darjeeling, no luck. I was told that if I, being a tourist, go to the train station, I'd be able to get a ticket under the Tourist Quota. Well, that didn't happen. Just stood in line for over an hour to find out that I am #34 on the waitlist for the ticket in the lower class. Not good.............

I think it might just be easier and more costly to take a taxi tomorrow morning, it's quicker and will be more comfortable.


The bus ride last night was quite a ride. The bus was nice, but the roads definitely weren't. It was extremely bumpy the whole ride and the bus driver didn't go more than 30 seconds without honking his extremely loud horn. Ride was supposed to be 12 hours, turned out to be 14, I probably slept 2. Luckily though I am feeling better, not 100% but better.

Been here a month now and have been to the doctor 3 times. India is tough.
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Kolkata (Calcutta), India

Sick again now.

Taking a 12 hour bus ride to Siliguri tonight then taking the train to Darjeeling.
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Kolkata (Calcutta), West Bengal, India

Hello everyone, I have successfully made it to Kolkata (Calcutta).

The 32 hour train journey was quite long, but not as bad as a 10 hour bus ride in the Himalayas. I was in class 2AC which was the nicest class on this train. I had a upper berth which is kind of like being in solitary confinement! No windows from my area but it was really fun to go between the train cars while the train is moving and just watch what goes by outside.

Got to the train station and saw thousands of people going every which way. Pretty chaotic, but I was with a local (he was a journalist for Reuters) who I got a ride with in his cab. Got dropped off at Sudder St. (tourist area) and found a room for one night. My Mom arrives tonight so I just went now and checked into that hotel, The Lytton, which is very nice. It has A/C and a fridge! It's strange to walk out of a nice hotel and the first thing you see after leaving is some homeless dude just sleeping on the broken sidewalk in the middle of the day.

Kolkata has about 14 million people officially, but the whole metro area is roughly 20 million people. Let me tell you, there are people everywhere (but no cows). I went to the "New Market" area last night and saw crowds that went on and on and on down every street, completely nuts I tell you. Kolkata seems more developed than the other two big cities I've visited, Delhi and Amritsar. Although there is a herd of goats right now directly outside the door, Kolkata has more commercialized areas than I've seen thus far. I saw a KFC, a Ralph Lauren store, and a Reebok store.

Being in such a crowded area last night at New Maret, everybody was staring at me cause I'm about a foot taller than the 1.2 billion people in this country. Instead of saying "you're tall" or something like that everybody phrases it funny, saying things like, "your height is very good" or " you are very long". I wish I could've shrunk about 8 inches for this trip. I hit my head on something at least twice a day! If I'd known it was gonna be like this I would've brought my bicycle helmet with the nifty little mirror attached to the side.!

There are several beggars in the Sudder St area, they know this is where the foreigners come so this is where the $ is at. One of the scams the women use is to ask for milk for their baby. Some of the time the babies aren't even theirs, they actually rent them. There are also hand-pulled rickshaws here. I asked a local what he thought these guys make in a day, he said no more than 100 rupees, that's only $2.25 or thereabouts. Quite sad to see these emaciated men pulling people in a carriage down the road, lots of times they don't even have shoes. But even though it's sad these people have to live so poorly they're also quite annoying. Just to walk the 2 blocks to this internet cafe I had about 5 rickshaw pullers lined up asking me if I wanted a ride. You tell one "no" then the dude right behind him ask the same damn question, and then the next ask, then the next, then 3 cab drivers in a row ask "where you want to go".....they're very persistant to say the least.

Looks like my Mom and I will spend 3 days here in Calcutta then we have a Deluxe-Tourist bus up to Siliguri which is in the foothills of the Himalayas. From there we'll be taking the "Toy Train", a World Heritage Site, up to Darjeeling in the mountains. Not sure how long we'll be there or what exactly we're going to do after that. We might go down to the Sundarbans, south of Kolkata, these are the mangrove forests at the Bay of Bengal. A boat trip down through the swamp sounds fun. There are man-eating tigers there but the odds of seeing one are slim, and fortunately the odds of being eaten alive by one are even less.

One thing I really like about India is the food and being such a large mammal I can eat quite a lot. Often I go for the "thali". This is a meal they bring out on a metal tray kind of like the ones we had as kids in the school cafeteria. One portion of rice, one of dhal (lentils), another portion of vegetables of some sort, and then maybe something like yogurt, and you also get chapatis (thin unleavened bread). So what you do is scoop the food with your right hand and the chapati then you cram it all down your mouth. And if you want more food you can eat all you want, it's great! Eating with your right hand is actually pretty fun, but messy. All the restaurants have small sinks in the back where you go after eating to rinse your hand.

Another good thing here is all the fresh squeezed fruit juices. I just had 4 glasses of OJ that were made right in front of me for only 15 rupees a glass (35 cents). You can also get papaya and sugarcane juice just about on any street corner. There are fruit sellers with little carts lined up and down all the roads. Lots of apples, bananas, mangoes, papayas, and other fruits for sell for very good prices. At 2 rupees a banana it's easy to eat 5 or more bananas a day. I usually don't eat the apples because you can't eat the skin because it could've been rinsed in contaminated water.

Other good things are:

chai (tastes like hot chocolate w/a hint of spices)
samosas
pakora
aloo ghobi (potatoes and cauliflower in a curry sauce)
sweets (there are Sweet Shops everywhere that make and sell sweets, I don't really know what most of them are but they're good)
banana milkshakes
chocolate milkshakes

Before arriving in India I'd been vegan (no meat and no dairy) for several years, just eating vegetarian while I'm here in India. It would be nearly impossible to be vegan here because they put dairy in a lot of dishes. Plus I don't really have a moral dilemma with eating dairy products here, it's not like it is in the US where dairy cows live in "factory farms" and have their calves turned into veal, in India cows rule! There can be chaotic traffic like you can't believe and then there will just be a cow chilling in the middle of the road and everybody swerves around it! And having all the cows around is also the unofficial way that the trash is taken out. People throw their trash anywhere and then the cows eat what's edible.

Speaking of trash, Indians don't seem to understand the concept of "the trash can". Everybody, literally, just throws their trash anywhere they want. They don't even have trash cans on the train, in hotels, or along the streets. I asked one of the train workers what to do with my trash and he just grabs it and throws it off the train onto the tracks. In the mornings there are some people that go out with these tiny little brooms and sweep some of the trash off the streets, put in small piles, then set it on fire! In some places I've been there would be little fires every 50 yards or so.

Gotta run, time to go drink some sugarcane juice, be assaulted by beggars and rickshaw drivers, and try not to get hit by a crazy taxi driver!

namaste
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Rishikesh, Uttarakhand, India

Alright, I don't know what the deal is but everybody in India stares at my legs. Is it that they are so white they blind the locals, is it cause I'm practically the tallest person any of them have ever seen, or am I just that sexy?

I'm back here in Rishikesh at the base of the Himalayas. Was up in the mts. for about 10 days. Was nice and cool, saw some huge mts including Nanda Devi. Yet again, I can't post pictures because they have the USB ports disabled, bloody bastards.

Heading out this evening to Calcutta to meet my Mom on Monday evening. It's going to be a long train ride to Calcutta, 32 hours! But at least it is in the "upper class" portion of the train.

Craziest thing I've seen today: 6 people riding on 1 scooter!!!!!! (2 adults, 2 kids, and 2 babies) Indians take the idea of carpooling to a whole new level.

namaste ji
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Joshimath, Uttarakhand, India

....the bus is never full!!!!!!!!!

Looks like the last entry was done while I was still in Rishikesh, in the foothills of the Himalayas. Since then I've moved northeast into the mountains. Took a bus ride to Gaurikund where the road ends. It was a very small town that is just a series of alleys, no vehicles! It was nice not having to breathe in diesel or hear a thousand rickshaw drivers say, "where you want go sir?" Gaurikund is the starting point for the Hindu pilgrimage to the temple in the village of Kedarnath. It was a 14km hike each way on a stone path through forests initially then it opened up and some nice views were to be seen.

So instead of being asked over and over if I needed a rickshaw or taxi, the question when leaving town is "need horse sir?" There were thousands of mules, donkeys, and horses for hire for the trek to the temple. After about 7km I thought of renting a mule for the rest of the way but decided against it, 28km is a long way to walk I learned. Needless to say, the path was well fertilized, they didn't have donkey restrooms. Luckily I was wearing shoes unlike some of the sadhus (holy guys) who don't wear shoes.

I thought I was in decent shape, at least until I saw people being carried by other people up a freaking mountain! They would have four little Indian dudes with a type of chair with two cross beams that the carriers would put on their shoulders And to top it all off, they don't walk when they come down the mountain. They jog!!!! I have some pics that hopefully I can put up tomorrow, the internet here is through satellite and it's really cloudy, the guy here said I can try tomorrow it's supposed to be clear.

So after 1.5 days in Gaurikund and Kedarnath I took another bus to Rudraprayag which isn't too far from Gaurikund, 100km, but with the terrible "roads" it took a long time, 4 hours if I'm not mistaken. Stayed in Rudraprayag for an afternoon and evening, then this morning took a bus to Joshimath, where I currently am. Bus ride wasn't too far but it took about 7 hours.

Like I said earlier, the only rule on an Indian bus is that it is never full!!!!!!!! Every seat would be taken , the aisle would be jammed with people, and then we'd stop and somehow squeeze in another group of people. There were times when the bus was so full that there would literally be one guy with one foot on the bus, one arm holding on to a bar and the other arm wrapped around someone in the bus, it was complete mayhem.

The "roads" here in the mountains are so curvy and broken up that at times it's more like driving through a pile of boulders. Normally the road is about as wide as a one-way road in America. But every mile or so there would be a landslide that might have occurred a day ago or maybe 2 years ago, who knows? But when that was the case the driver would just squeeze the bus through with a few inches left to spare from a fall of a thousand feet or more, to top it off it was raining for nearly all three bus trips. What's hilarious is when the bus takes turns, they have to honk to let any oncoming traffic know that they're there. And when we'd meet another vehicle on a turn both drivers slam on the brakes and then one of the vehicles has to go in reverse until there is a spot to allow the other vehicle to pass. There was one landslide today that completely blocked the road, so we had to sit for about an hour till it was cleared up.

It's quite different here how they build roads. In the US we have all this fancy mechanical equipment, cones, warning signs, etc. Here in India there is none of that. There will literally be 100 people just beating rocks with old rusted hammers just trying to break the rocks into smaller pieces so that they can build retaining walls or fill in huge potholes. And there's no safety regulations, you'll come around a bend in the road and there will be a big rock that would break an axle, so the driver hits the breaks and steers around it, other times we'd come around a curve and there'd just be some dude walking with his 10 cows or mules right in the middle of the road!

Don't know my plans yet for the next few days. Will stay at least two nights here in Joshimath then might head back to Rishikesh. I want to do some day hiking here but it's a lot different than in the US. Here, you could walk for a day on a path but there are still people living and working along the trail. From what I know you have to walk a few days on an unmotorized trail till you get away from it all. And I don't really have the gear to go over night, I have a hammock but I think it gets too cold here at night for my tastes, and the thought of getting lost in the Himalayas doesn't sound too fun.

Thanks for reading!

namaste
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/quirk/1/1221407580/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/quirk/1/1221407580/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/quirk/1/1221407580/tpod.html Tue, 16 Sep 2008 04:24:20 -0400 Made it to India!

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Delhi, Amritsar, and Haridwar, India

Since I've had a difficult time finding a computer that isn't super slow I've had to wait till now to post some pics and vids, sorry for the delay! I have a lot more pictures but have had a difficult time trying to upload them, hopefuly in a few days I can put some up.

If you click on the first photo (the gecko), it will enlarge the pic then you can just click "next" to see the rest of the pics at that same size.
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Rishikesh, India

I've been in Rishikesh for 3 night now. I was going to head into the mts this morning but I didn't feel like waking up at 4:30AM, I'll wait till tomorrow morning. Rishikesh is better than the other cities I've seen thus far. The town is only about 200,000 and there are quite a few other travelers here. It's still dirty, loud, full of beggars- but on a lower level than the other cities I've been to.

To be honest, I'm not enjoying India. It's one thing to read about how dirty, loud, chaotic, etc it is; experiencing that all day everyday is another matter. Plus, I'm bored. I don't like to go shopping for souvenirs like jewelry, statues, rugs, etc. Temples don't do it for me either. I'm hoping to find a decent hotel tomorrow in the mountains that has some trails nearby.

Thanks for reading.

Gabe
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Rishikesh, Uttarakhand, India

Don't anyone worry, I wasn't in Delhi last night when the bombs went off.

Actually, I have a confession, I never went to India. I've been in Wisconsin living with a family of 13; we raise cows and make cheese.
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