My View of India and the Western World, after travelling to India

I have arrived back home in Germany.
Coming back to Germany is a strange feeling. It's like entering a completely different world. Like travelling to another Galaxy.
Physically i have returned home.
But i have to admit that my mind is still wandering through the streets of India.
If you are from Germany and have never been to a country like India you might not understand what i am trying to say. And also if you are from India and have never been to a western country like Germany you might not understand either.
 
I think that many people in Germany are not aware of what kind of privileged life they live. Well I don't know for sure. That's just what i assume, because i myself was not aware before, how different things are here from there.
It appears to me that many people here take many things for granted. Things which cannot be taken for granted in other places of the world. Things like, that here all men and women are equal. That everyone has access to free education. That everyone has the same opportunities, like studying at university. Life in Germany seems less of a competition as it seems in India. In India everything to me seemed like a fight: Starting with simple things, like people fighting to get into the Metro.
Can you imagine 10 Indian men trying to get through a door of 1.5 meter width at the same time? Only in order to get a good spot on the train? Well this image shows how probably things are in real life as well. Everything is a competition. Just like people have to fight for their spot on the Metro, it seems like people have to fight for their place in society. Yes in Germany it seems less like a fight. You know, when you get unemployed in Germany, you simply get money from the state. But  not in India. In India they have all these simple jobs which were unimaginable here at home. Like the "elevator button press job". Imagine going to a shopping mall and going on an elevator. And then there is this man and you tell him to which floor you want to go to, and then he pressed the button for you? Such jobs don't exist here. But they do exist in India. Because in India, if you want to live you have to work. Even if it's just a simple job like pressing the button in an elevator. That from the perspective of Germany.
On the other hand i assume that many people in India can not imagine how the world looks like beyond the borders of India. Many people probably have seen how things might be like on a Hollywood movie. But we all know, that the real life and a Hollywood movie have only few things in common. I assume that some people cannot imagine that there are places in the world were you simply can open your water tab and start drinking the fresh water, that comes out of it. (Assuming you do have a water tab). How it is to walk on a street, and to be the only person to walk on that street: No other people, no wild dogs, pigs, cows or any other wild animals.
How it is to walk on a street, which is not dusty at all, and where you can not find a single piece of trash. That if you walk through the streets, it never smells like "toilet", and that the air which you breath in, is rarely ever so polluted that it feels hard to breath. In some places of India, i saw people handwashing their clothes on the street. Here everyone has his own washing machine and dish-washing machine at home.

I guess i could continue listing up things which are different here from there, endlessly. But i guess i have a better idea. Maybe i should start writing a new blog about life in Germany. To show people from other places of the world how it's like here. I will think about it.

Alright i will close this post with a song, which i stumbled over in India. I kind of liked the melody. Because the beginning sounded very familiar, but then it changed to something completely different, with the strings instruments joining in etc.
Thanks to my friend Maitri for sending me that song =)

Hampi , Gokarna and Goa

Hampi - 12.09.2014

In the evening of the 11th of september i took a night bus from bangalore to Hampi. Bangalore, by the way i had reached 3 days before by airplane. Well Bangalore is relatively far in the south of india, so going there by bus would have just been a torture and it would have taken me ages.

Although i had a great time in Bangalore, spending some time with friends i assume if i wrote about it might bore you. So I'll skip that chapter.

So from Bangalore on the 12th of September i reached Hampi. Hampi is a lovely little village which is probably not bigger than 200 meters in diameter. The village is surrounded by hundreds of antique temples. 

So on my first day in Hampi i didn't do a lot because i was feeling a bit sick from some salad i had eaten the evening before. Small advice: Never order a salad in India! Even if you are in a better or more expensive restaurant. ( Except of course you were born in India ;)  then you might be fine). In the evening i went for some indian cooking class were we cooked some Indian meals, which was fun. The next day, i went on a guided tour until afternoon to explore the most important  temples around the village.  

Temples in Hampi

temples in Hampi

temples in Hampi

more temples in Hampi ;)

In the evening i went to some special location called "the sunset point" to watch the sunset :) . This point was at some temple on top of a hill. At this sunset point i met a guy from ireland and an indian girl, who had the same idea like me. So we watched the sunset together and later went to have dinner together.

me at the sunset point in hampi

watching the sunset at sunset point in Hampi

male cows fighting each other
with sunset in background

more sunset fights

nice colors of the sunset

nice colors AND reflections of the sunset

On my 3rd and last day in Hampi i met again with the Irish guy and the Indian girl to do something together. First we went for a walk along the river.

walk along the river in Hampi

Then we went for a short boat ride on the river.

some temple in hampi-
seen from the boat on the river

And then to see one of the main temples, which i had not yet seen.

Very impressive i found the ruins of the old "stores". As the guide had told me one day before: in the past india was a very rich country and in all these stores people were trading gold and diamonds. Many countries came to this kingdom to trade horses against gold. Obviously the king of this city needed lots of horses for the war.
Nevertheless i wonder were all that gold is gone...
It must have been taken by enemy invaders.

the old stores of the gold traders
 of the past kingdom

an antique swimming pool

gold trader stores

In the afternoon me and my 2 new fellow travellers went to a mountain to some temple which some of the locals called "monkey temple". From there we had an incredible view on all the surrounding landlandscapes
.

Landscape around Hampi
seen from monkey temple

monkey temple

me on the monkey temple mountain

Gokarna and Goa

For my last 2 weeks in India i decided to go to some more peaceful place at the sea. 

So the first place i went to is called Gokarna. Gokarna is not far south from the state Goa. It belongs to the same state like Bangalore, which is called Karnataka. In Gokarna i stayed in a hotel at some lonely beach. Lonely i mean in a sense that it was not as touristy and a bit offshore, because in order to get there you have to walk through some small jungle. The name of the beach was "Hudlebeach". This is a picture of the beach:

Hudle beach in Gokarna

From that beach with an about 20 minute walk you could trek to the "main beach" of Gokarna. There you find cheaper restaurants etc, and this is also were the buses depart to Goa.

walk to the main beach in Gokarna

the main beach in Gokarna

the main beach in Gokarna

Himachal 03.09. - 06.09.

In the evening of the 2nd of September me and my friend took a bus to a place called Manali, which is located in the state Himachal Pradesh of India. As you may conclude from the name of the state, most villages in this state are in the Himalaya mountains. So is also Manali, the village we went to.

We arrived in this village on the next day, so on Wednesday at around 12 o'clock noon. Not only this village but most of the places in Himachal are very peaceful. No annoying Riksha driver's begging you to take you to some destination, no street kids trying to sell you a box of crayons, no honking from the crowded traffic. And the air is so nice and clear. Not as dusty as in the streets of big cities in southern India.
Me and my friend stayed in a hotel in old Manali, where we had a very nice view on the valley of Manali. From this hotel you couldn't hear anything except the sound of the river which was running through that village. I must admit that the landscape in Manali reminded me a bit of my home, the black forrest, with all these pine trees.

river running through old Manali

On thursday , the 4th of September, me and my friend went on a one day trip to a lake which i think was in a height of about 4300 meters. The name of this lake is Chandrataal - the Lake of Moon. In order to get there we had to take a pass road called "Gramphu-Batal-Kaza Road" for several hours.

Sometimes on the way a herds of goats and sheep crossed our way. So we had to wait until all these animals had passed by, like in the picture down below. 

waiting for a herd of goats to pass by

Sometimes other animals like donkeys were blocking the road. So we had to honk a bit, until they made the street free. =) Actually i am not sure whether these were donkeys or ponys.

donkeys blocking our way to the lake

donkeys on the road in spiti valley

Some of these landscapes on the way to the lake looked really interesting, almost like from another planet.

About 1 or 2 hours away from the lake, we made a small stop for lunch in a small  hut. There we had some traditional mountain food. I don't understand why but in the mountains even the simplest things seem to taste delicious.

hut were we had lunch in spiti valley

The girl in the next picture is by the way my friend from Delhi, who came to travel to Himachal with me.

my friend having lunch

After lunch we continued our way to the lake, and went trough more moon-like landscaped areas.
(Well of course on the moon there are no rivers and clouds etc...).
The name of the valley we had to pass through was "Spiti Valley".

Finally after, i don't know, maybe 6 hours of driving along these pass roads , we finally reached the lake. Those flags which you can see at this lake are tibetan flags, which have usually prayers written on the flags.

tibetan flags at the lake of moon in Chandrataal

When we arrived at this lake, we had quite good weather, because the sun was shining a bit =) .
So we decided to go for a walk around the lake. I guess at some point we just stopped and enjoyed watching the beautiful landscape.

lake of moon , with mountains in the background

At some point it became really windy and cold around that lake, so i decided to wear that scarf around my head to keep myself warm. I had bought this scarf somewhere on the way to Chandrataal for about 300 rupis.

me at lake of the moon

me again

I must admit that until now , i guess this is one of the coolest trips i have done so far in India. :)
On our last day we went trekking to some waterfall from Manali. But of course the trip we had done the day before, was difficult to keep up with.
I guess this is sometimes a bit pitty. If you travel a lot and you have, lets say, seen the Grand Canyon, then sometimes a waterfall, which is actually quite pretty, might appear a bit boring, compared to the Canyon. I guess it's just important that after doing such trips, you have to keep appreciating the simple things in life, because they can also be beautiful. You just have to give them a chance.

Uttarakhand - 26.08.2014 - 30.08.2014

Rishikesh - 26.08 - 28.08.

In the morning of the 26th of August i arrived in the beautiful "village" called Rishikesh which is located in the state of Uttarakhand. Well, if you compare the population of  Rishikesh  to other cities in india i guess this is really a village. It's definitely not as crowded as other places in India.
Rishikesh is the place where the Ganges river leaves the Himalaya mountains before it flows into the northern parts of India. The origins of this river can be found if you go deeper into the mountains from here.
Rishikesh is also very famous because in 1968 the beatles visited this place to learn about indian culture.

the Ganges river flowing through the valley of Rishkesh

the Ganges river flowing through the valley of Rishkesh

So after my arrival in Rishikesh i first had to take a riksha to get to my hotel. Unfortunately my bus had dropped me a bit too far out of town, so it took me about 1 hour to get there. After checking in into my hotel, i went for a walk through the city. As you can see in the next picture they have several bridges which you can use to cross the river.

bridge in Rishikesh to cross the Ganges river

monkey sitting on the bridge, which crosses the Ganges

Of course like in most cities i have seen so far, there were many animals on the streets like wild cows, dogs, monkeys etc. Of course it is always recommended not to get too close to any of these animals. Who knows whether they might be infected with rabies or other diseases.

monkey sitting on a wall in Rishikesh

Well i guess almost for the whole day i was walking around just exploring the city. People had told me before that many people come to this city to learn something about yoga or meditation. So i was trying to find a yoga school, which someone had recommended to me. Unfortunately i couldn't manage to find that school. So at around the time when the sun set i decided to go back to my hotel.

sun set in Rishikesh

Well the whole city was spread with places where  you could take classes in yoga or meditation. So on the next day , the 27th i decided to go and take a yoga class for beginnres in the morning at a nice looking school which i had seen the day before. This was really fun. I had never tried anything like yoga before, but in my eyes this is just like doing some improved gymnastics, and it strongly reminded me of martial arts (which i used to practice when i was younger) just with the difference, that you don't fight anyone, but do excercices for the well-being and self control of your own body. It includes things like physical excercies, breathing excercices and also meditation. To do any of these excercices can be very relaxing. 

I also took a class in meditation in the evening of the very same day, because i have always wanted to know what this meditation is all about and how it works. And yeah, it was very nice. That teacher explained to us, that in the state of meditation you try to forget about everything around you and try to just focus on your self. While meditating there is no past and future. It's only you and the present. You try to focus that you are here right now in this moment. Maybe try to concentrate on your breath. For me it felt like I was leaving my body for a while and i was seeing myself from a completely different perspective. The teacher said that to very experienced people this state of meditation gives kind of god-like powers. So some people might stay in this state of meditation for like 2 weeks, not feeling any need of thirst or hunger. I really can't imagine how this is supposed to work. But it sounded interesting. And i must admit after i was finished with the meditation i felt like almost new born. I was kind of relaxed and felt like a bit more "alive". It's a nice thing  i guess to sometimes forget about the world around you and just concentrate on yourself. Because the world can be a bit stressful sometimes.

Well as i said  i had this yoga and meditation class in the morning and in the evening. Througout the day i went for a trip deeper into the mountains to see a nice waterfall.

  

waterfall in the mountains near Rishikesh

waterfall in the mountains near Rishikesh

As i followed the path near the waterfall up into the mountains , i ran into some indian people who insisted in taking a picture with me.

me and some indians at the waterfall

This lovely picture with the valley of the ganges i took from the mountain area near the waterfall. Usually at other times of the year in rishikesh they offer nice river rafting tours where you can go rafting on the Ganges trough the mountains, which must probably be super amazingly beautiful. Unfortunately when i was in Rishikesh the river had way too much water. So there were no rafting tours offered at this time.

Mussoorie - 28.08 - 30.08.

In the afternoon of the 28th of August i took a local bus to the hillstation called Mussoorie, which is also in the Himalaya mountains. Many indian tourists come to this place to enjoy the beautiful mountain scenery and also in order to get some cool air. Compared to other places of India the air in this mountain village feels like air conditioned and is really refreshing from the heat of India.

When i took that bus up to Mussoorie, the roads were curvy and that bus driver had a weird way of driving. He was always doing some kind of accelerating, "full breaking" and then sliding into the next curve. Felt a bit like a roller coaster. Good that i had not eaten too much before that bus ride.
On the bus i met a local indian who told me that he lives in Mussoorie. He spoke very good english.
I asked him how big Mussorie is and whether it would be hard to find a hotel there. Then he was joking and said: " If you get there you won't find a hotel - the hotels will find you ;) " .
And he was right. As soon as i arrived there were like hundreds of hotels. And some indian guys at the bus stop pressing me visiting cards from hotels into my hands.

mall road in Mussoorie

When i arrived it was a bit foggy but still the view from up there looked very nice.

view down the mountain from Mussoorie

Very close to the bus stop there was a viewing platform from which you could see all the area around the mountains and they also had a nice statue of Gandhi. I must say Gandhi looked very epic and mysterious with all that fog in the background.

Mussoorie as seen from the viewing platform

statue of Gandhi

After walking around the "mall road road", which is some kind of main road with many hotels , restaurants and shops, i decided to go to my hotel because it was already late evening at that time.

On the next day, the 29th of August. I first took a cable car to a higher peak of Mussoorie. The ride inclusive return ticket with that cable car was 75 ₹ i guess, which is around 1 euro.

Cable Car in Mussoorie

On top of that hill there was some kind of fun fair, with stuff like bow shooting, gun shooting etc. I tried some bow shooting, which was fun. I got 5 shots for 50 ₹ . Also there were some stalls which sold food and drinks.

Hill reached by Cable Car

Some friendly indian people took a picture of me from the top.

 

So after taking that cable car i wanted to go and see some more of the area around Mussoorie. I had read on tripadvisor about this place called "Kempty Falls". So first i asked some Cycle Riksha driver whether he could take me there. He stared at me as if i was insane. Well, reason is, because that waterfall was like 8 kms away. And it goes down hill a lot on the way to the waterfall. That means, of course, uphill a lot on the way back. So, too difficult to go there by bicycle. That's why i rented a taxi to get there. To get there was maybe half an hour. I can't remember so well.

Well, the driver dropped me close to the bottom part of this waterfall. So i walked down all the stairs to get to the bottom part, but it was not so nice there. I mean the waterfall itself was nice. But i didn't like what people had built around it. It was so touristy. With so many shops around that waterfall. And they had this kind of swimmingpool there with like hundreds of people taking a bath in the waterfall water. So didn't want to go in there.

Kempty Falls - Buttom part

Kempty Falls - "pool"

I stayed there for maybe 10 minutes and then decided to go further uphill into the mountains. Well this place i liked a lot more. There were no tourists at all, just me, nature and the waterfall. And no ugly shops trying to sell me stuff. Also the water looked a lot cleaner there. So i followed that trekking path up into the mountains, until it became kind of jungle like, and i decided to go back. All in all i think the Kempty falls are very nice. You should just avoid the bottom parts of it, and go further uphill into the mountains.

Upper parts of Kempty Falls

Upper parts of Kempty Falls

Upper parts of Kempty Falls

Dehradun - 30.08.

On the 30th of August i left Mussoorie and went for a short day trip to Dehradun. This is really a very big city and i only saw a small part of it by walking through the big shopping street. But that was enough for me that day, because it was quite hot outside. When i arrived at that street with all these shops, i was so shocked because some woman almost ran into me who had a face which looked kind of rotten, as if she had been infected with a disease like leprosy. I was so scared that i jumped to the side overrunning some passengers on the street.

Street in Dehradun

This is a picture taken from some fruit stall in that shopping street in Dehradun. But the guy in that stall doesn't look very happy about me taking that photo, as i saw later. He must have been like "Stupid tourists, taking photos of everthing they see. What's so exciting about some fruits?"

fruits shop in dehradun

They had some nice Mosque which was also close to that shopping street. Went there for some few minutes to take a look =) .

Mosque in Dehradun