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.
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| 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.
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| Drake walking Stoically from the Amber Fort |
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 2nd 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.
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| Gate of India |
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| Mumbai is Classy |
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| Oh the Irony |
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| 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.
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| Hanging out in the Ocean |
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| Delicious food on a leaf |
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| Taste like home |
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The Crew at the Beach
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| Crusin' the Backwaters |
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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!
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| 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
