Saturday, June 2, 2007

The first week in India...

Hmm, this post will be a bit disorganized... I'm too hot to think properly about what I'm typing. I think it's been over +30 every day we've been out here! Insane!! Actually, when I flew into Delhi last week at 9pm, the sign beside the runway read +39!! gross!! Needless to say, the majority of what I've been doing is sweating hahaha.


After meeting Rach at the airport at 2am last Friday, we took an autorickshaw through the sketchiest area of Delhi, where we got a hotel for the night. We paid WAY more than we should have, but it was late, and the conversion math just wasn't working for us, so we shelled over 20$ for a good night's sleep. A few hours later, without that much needed sleep, we emerged from the hotel, to greet our first day in India. What a day that was... neither of us was prepared for the chaos, filth, and insanity that is Delhi. After about 5 minutes wandering around, we decided the best thing to do would be get out of that crap hole as fast as possible!! Unfortunately, foreigners can't buy tickets at the bus or train station (this is what we were told anyways- it may or may not be true), so we were led 20 minutes away to a "government" booking agency. After gettign mad at us for being skeptical about the whole sketchy procedure, they insisted there were no busses or trains out of Delhi of the next 5 days (which I find VERY hard to believe), so we ended up buying a plane ticket outta there to Srinagar, Kashmir.


We were both aware of the political unrest in Kashmir, but Rach's brother had been there a couple of weeks earlier, so we thought it would be ok. And it was!! It was gorgeous! WE stayed in a house boat for two nights, on a peaceful lake amidst the mountains. There were a lot of soldiers in the city, and the state, but they were all really friendly, and even posed for pictures with us!! That was great =) Although a little unnerving, seeing soldiers in little makeshift sandbag/barbed wire bunkers skattered along the road ways. Anyways, our experience there was great, but we moved on pretty quickly, since our travel time is pretty short.


From Kashmir, we headed to Dalhousie, Himachal Pradesh. Unfortunately, we had 20 hours of bus travel between the two cites. Our first day of travel ended in Jammu, which is honestly the most disgusting place either have us have ever seen. Stepping off the bus into mounds of garbage, the smell of urine in heat saturated the air, making for a pleasant welcoming. After 30 minutes of searching for a hotel, we finally found one. After checking out the tiny room, and paying, I headed into the bathroom, only to find we had a present left for us in the toilet- a floating turd!!! I was so disgusted, and immediately went downstairs to get a refund. Unfortunately there were no other hotels, so we had to sleep in the turd one, but we took off as fast as we could the next morning...

Dalhousie was great though. We spent the last few days there, doing some day hikes/walks around town, and sampling all the yummy Indian food.


Now we are in McLeod Ganj- the home of the Exiled Tibetan Government. We have yet to actually see the Dalai Lama's Palace yet (we were too excited about email, after no computers for the last week and a half) but I'm sure it will be great. There is a really large community of Tibetan refugees living here, but from what I've seen so far, it seems to be an enormous congregation of dredded hippies. We hadn't seen any other foreigners yet, but that's al there are here! Ther are also bakeries!! Woohoo!! I had carrot cake today- it's been so long since I had baking, so I was pretty pumped =)


Well, that's it for now!! I miss you all at home so much!! Take care, and keep me posted about all of your adventures!

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

heya kaleigh.. nice blog!! i liike the tiger story..