Индияга Бардым (I went to India) part 3 Jaipur, Mumbai, and Kerala

Jaipur, Mumbai, and Kerala

We got to our train station in Agra and read that our train was slightly delayed.  Maybe it was an hour or two we forget.  We set up camp and began waiting… and waiting… and waiting.  In the end our train was almost 6 hours late.  We sat miserable in the train station cold, hungry and sick of hearing the food vendor next to us yelling for an hour for people to come eat.  It was one of the lows of the trip.  You can see our excitement in the photo. 

Train Station Misery

Our Train that was supposed to get to Jaipur around midnight got in around 7 am.  We made a plan to meet up around 9 after a short rest and try not to lose the whole day from our extended train station stay.  To no one’s surprise we didn’t get up till around noon.  When we all awoke, tired, sleep deprived, and somewhat sick of India we made our way off to the amber fort.  When we arrived we were blown away by the size of the fort and all of the surroundings.  The fort is situated in the hills around Jaipur and has an elaborate set of walls and smaller fortresses surrounding it.  We spend several hours wandering around the fort.  After the fort we spent sometime walking around the shopping district in the pink city being constantly harassed by shopkeepers who would give us a good price for “their friend”, when in reality they all had the same stuff as their neighbor and nobody gave a better price.  We had planned to do more in Jaipur, but because of our delayed arrival we only had one full day.  The next morning we headed to one of my favorite places of the trip.  The monkey temple. If it has another name I don’t know it.  We took our tuk tuk out to the temple, bought some peanuts and spent the next hour feeding monkeys.  Along the way we met this one hindu man who reminded me of a dread headed hippy you may find living on the beach.  He just smiled and was as happy as he could be.  After enjoying our morning of monkey business it was off to Mumbai, only a 24-hour train ride away.

Drake walking Stoically from the Amber Fort

Our Tour Guide at the Amber Fort

Monkey Fist Bump

Monkey with a Peanut

You do not want to mess with him!

Jaipur as seen from the Monkey Temple

We were terrified to get back on a train after our last experience but this one turned out to be much better.  Yes it was longer but fortunately Jaipur had some of the cheapest beverages we could find in India so we bought a bottle of two of cheap Indian whiskey to help us along.  The train was much more comfortable than expected, despite the screams of the train vendors every 5 minutes selling something.  The chai masala on the trains was amazing though and costs maybe 10 cents a cup.  Before boarding the train we stocked up on food from KFC.  It was an amazing choice.  Kyrgyzstan offers no international fast food chains and being Americans we took advantage of Dominos, McDonalds, Starbucks, Subway, and KFC during our 2 weeks in India.  This train also ended up being delayed by an hour or two because of a train fire that occurred on a different train.  We arrived to Mumbai and headed to our hotel.  We found a nice little place in the center of the touristy area so walking everywhere was easy.  Mumbai was a nice change.  It is a bit more built up, and offered more modern amenities.  If we were coming from America we wouldn’t have cared but we weren’t, we were coming from Kyrgyzstan.  We went to the beach, checked out the gate of India, and at one point even went to Starbucks.  Our first night there we also splurged and found a nice rooftop restaurant way out of our Peace Corps budget but scraped up the change to buy one overpriced drink as we watched the sun set over the ocean. It was a success.  We met back up with Kara’s friend and we all headed to Elephanta Island.  We relaxed on a 1-hour ferry ride out to the island.  The island contains a series of old Hindu temples built into caves on the Island.  The Island contains numerous large sculpted images of Shiva, a Hindu god, within the caves.  We also couldn’t resist stopping by the Taj hotel in Mumbai.  The hotel is gorgeous and there were no obvious traces from the horrendous terrorist attacks that took place there in 2008.  Mumbai was a very nice city and the only touristy city we visited that I’d have any interest in visiting again.  After Mumbai we said bye to Becca who left us to travel with an old friend from India for a few days. The rest of us headed to the train station for our 2^nd 24 hour plus train ride.  We were leaving from a train station about an hour outside of Mumbai to save on costs.  This train station was sketchy.  I studied abroad in Ethiopia, I live in Kyrgyzstan, it is hard for me to feel uncomfortable or out of place but this train station made me feel that way.  We received a lot of unwelcomed looks, people were sleeping on the ground all over the train station in the middle of the day, and there were cops roaming around with assault rifles.  It was odd.  We were even told we should leave the waiting area where we were because it wasn’t safe.  No incidents happened and we uneventfully got on our train headed south. 

Gate of India

Mumbai is Classy

Oh the Irony

Elephanta Caves

Not long after we got on the train I started feeling funny.  I was tired, sore, and just wanted to sleep.  This is what I did.  I passed out around 7 pm and slept through the night until a rumble in my stomach woke me up.  To put it as not graphic as possible I spent the next 48 hours having to use the bathroom on an hourly basis.  It was horrible.  I was heartbroken.  I was looking forward to this part more than any other for all of the fresh seafood I planned on eating.  I still had a decent amount but not nearly enough to make up for the food I have to eat in Kyrgyzstan.  On the bright side, it was hot, humid and reminded me of home.  We spent 2 full days at the beach getting pummeled by the waves and enjoyed the first bit of peace and quiet we’ve had since being in India.  The hostel Kara and I stayed at was modeled after a traditional Keralan house, the staff and food there was amazing.  I highly recommend it if you ever go to the area, heritage haven www.theheritagehaven.com.  My only complaint was it was during their local thanksgiving type celebration.  This meant fireworks and really loud music coming from the church a block or two away through out the night.  The other nights we stayed with the rest of the group a little farther from the beach.  On our third day we decided to take a backwater tour.  I was hoping to get to paddle ourselves around but instead we ended up sitting on a canoe while our guide did all the work.  It was a neat experience seeing how all of the people live along the canals washing their laundry, and making a living from the water.  We also got more delicious food on the tour served up on a banana leaf, and my body was back to normal so I ate a lot.  We spent our last day in Kochi the capital of Kerala taking care of last minute souvenir shopping.  Thanks to my awesome parents we even got a real hotel for the last night that had a pool, free room service, mocktails, and airport shuttle service.  It was a great way to end our trip and relax for the coming madness that was travelling back to Kyrgyzstan. 

Hanging out in the Ocean

Delicious food on a leaf

Taste like home

The Crew at the Beach

Crusin' the Backwaters

We woke up at 4 or 5 am to head to the airport.  We get there plenty early enough but because of the idiocracy of Indian airport security we just barely made it on our flight in time.  Our first hurdle was they do not let you in the airport without proof that you have a flight.  They do not even let you go to the ticket counter where you would check in for your flight, so if you didn’t print something before hand you are in a pickle.  The Indian airports also make you receive a tag for your carry on luggage showing that it has been scanned.  However they didn’t tell us this and they forgot to give us ours so we ended up scrambling around to find some or they would not let us on the plane with out carry ons.  You would think they would be competent enough to know that if you are on the other side of security your bag would have been checked and by finding a stupid tag that you could get on the other side of security is preventing nothing.  We took off from the south and headed to Delhi to catch our flight back to Kg.  We get there with maybe an hour or an hour and a half to spare.  We first had to travel a mere 3 to 4 km from the domestic terminal to the international terminal.  After haggling with the stupid taxi drivers and doing our best to not get ripped off by them for a super short drive and making sure we caught our flight on time, we got the international terminal.  We proceed to the airport entrance and they don’t let 5 of us in.  We don’t have proof of our flights…  Fortunately Kara was prepared and was the only person in our group to have one.  They allowed her in and she had to track down an airastana staff who then had to track down our flight list, bring the flight list to the security guard at the door, and he then had to find every one of our names and quadruple check our passports and the list before letting us through.  We make it through.  We are now down to about 30 minutes and are facing a long security line.  At this point there was nothing else we could do.  Our hope was they just wouldn’t leave without 6 people because we were going to be late.  Becca got questioned for having a 1 Liter bottle of juice in her carry on which didn’t help us move any faster.  Finally on the other side of security we here a lady asking if anyone is flying on our flight and we all yell, “we are” and begin our mad dash through the airport.  Our gate was literally the second furthest away from the security checkpoint. We ran for about 8 minutes until reaching our gate sweaty and out of breath.  We made it!!!  We sat down and the amazing flight attendants even brought us water after seeing our sweaty red faces.  Thinking we would for sure be the last ones on the flight, to our amazement we weren’t and we sat there for almost another 30 minutes waiting for other late people.  The last leg of the flight was uneventful until we were landing in a snowstorm.  We took off the morning from Southern India and 80 degree weather and landed in a mild snowstorm.  That’s Kyrgyzstan for you! 

We went out in style, Thanks mom and dad!

My big takeaways from the trip

-India is very very big, almost 3 days on trains and we barely saw anything

-You will get harassed in India

-Trains are great when they work properly and are the worst thing ever when they don’t

-Don’t go to big cities in India if you want to relax

-Fly Airastana if you are ever in central Asia

-Indian airports are the worst ever

-The Taj Mahal is overrated and the Monkey temple is underrated.

-You will get sick