Jaisalmer - 19.08.2014 - 21.08.2014

In the morning of the 19th of August at around 5 am i went to the central bus statoin in Jodhpur to catch a bus to the city which is called "Jaisalmer". Well i was shocked when i arrived at this bus station, because usually early in the morning places are not as crowded in india. But at this bus station there were so many people. So i got in line for that ticket window. After waiting for like 1 hour i finally reached the window, and the guy in side that window told me that this was the wrong ticket window and i would have to go to another window.

That was kind of anoying because i had only 10 minutes left at this time until the bus would depart.

So i ran around trying to find the right ticket window. Unfortunately there was also a long queue infront of that window. I was so afraid that i might miss the bus, that i didn't get in line but just went straight onto  the bus. My plan was to stitch the bus driver to just let me drive without a ticket. I was like "if i pay him enough he will just let me on that bus without a ticket, i mean seriously, who needs a ticket? This is india. In india everything is possible, that's what people always keep telling me". It actually worked for me. So inside the bus the bus driver after we had started asked me for my ticket. I told him i would pay him cash instead of the ticket. So i payed him around 200 Rupi, which is maybe 3 euros, and he gave me some kind of bill for it.

At around 11 am the same day i arrived finally in the city Jaisalmer. From there i got a free pick up from my hotel. I was staying in a very nice hotel called "Renuka". This hotel is located outside the fortress. And if you go to it's rooftop restaurant from the top you can see the whole fortress, which is pretty cool. The staff of this hotel was very friendly and welcoming, and the food in the restaurant was also very good.

In this city it's possible to stay in hotels either inside the fortress or outside the fortress. Well i prefered staying outside, because i thought it might be a bit cheaper, and you know, when you are inside the fortress, you can not actually see the fortress.

Fortress of Jaisalmer seen from my rooftop

From all the cities that i have seen so far in india, i really like Jaisalmer the most. The streets were not as dirty as in other cities, and i liked the colors of the building which were all made of yellow sandstone.

street in Jaisalmer

another street in Jaisalmer

One of the main attractions in Jaisalmer, and i guess one of the main reasons, why so many people come to this place, are the desert & camel safaris. I did such a trip from the 20th to the 21st of August. Basically they were driving us into that desert with a car. They showed us some small villages on the country side. Then we went camel riding for about 2 hours to some sand dune. 

On that sand dune we stayed over night and slept under the stars.

This was incredible. I have always dreamed of watching the stars at night from a desert. I think i have never seen the stars like that before.

Well the tour afterall was fun, but not quite what the had told us. Because this desert wasn't really a desert. It was more of a savanna, because there were many trees and bushes growing in the sand. And the camels were not actually camels but dromedaries. But all in all it was a nice experience

our dromedaries sitting in the sand dune

me standing in the sand dune

shadow of me riding the dromedary

Jodhpur - 18.08.2014

For my trip to Jodhpur this time i had tried to order a nice airconditioned bus. In this country the best busses usually are "Volvo-Buses". They look compared to other busses relatively modern and the great advantage was, this buses seem to be resilient enough, so you don't feel every single pothole on the road.


But now lets get to this city.
From all the cities , which i have seen so far in India i think i like this one the least.
Why?
Well, quite easy to explain:
Because it is dirty, it stinks everywhere, and there are flies all around. And then there is this thing which i don't like about india in general:
People just throw all their trash on the street. People have this very weird attitude, that they don't care about where all the trash is going and whether things might be recycled. They just throw it wherever they want. So what you see on the next picture, is not typical for Jodhpur, it is typical for any city in india.
Well i don't like this attitude. My friends say: Well there are so many millions of people who struggle with the simplest things in life, like having access to a normal toilet, that these things don't really matter to them.
Fine, maybe - but i think the way people treat their environment , is also how environment will return things to them. Like the fact that you cannot drink tabwater anywhere in this country, because it is all completely polluted.
I remember being on this volvo bus, and i see this empty water bottle rolling to the front of the bus. I picked it up, and didn't know where to put it. While trying a place where to put it during the busride, the busdriver offered me, just to give it to him. So i gave him my bottle. And what is he doing? He opens the window and throws it out of the window.
Anyways, if you don't want 95% of your roads to look like this - don't throw your trash on the streets.

another garbage dump in the middle of the street

I guess i got a bit off topic. So i didn't like this city, because it smelled bad and there were flies everywhere, probably because of all the trash on the street.
It is said that all the buildings in this city were painted in blue color, because the blue color is meant to keep insects away from this city.
Obviously this did work quite as well as trying to keep away moths away in the darkness, by keeping the lights on. So not at all...

Anyways here some fotos from this city. If you walk through the city, it doesn't appear all in blue. Not all the buildings are colored in blue. Only some of them. So Only if you see the city from the top of the castle, which i went to that day, you can see that it is actually blue.

clocktower of Jodhpur

street in Jodhpur

Autorikshas in Jodhpur

On the way to the castle

The Blue city seen from the castle

The blue city, seen from the castle

Jaipur - 15.08.2014 - 17.08.2014

Busride to Jaipur - 14.08.-15.08

On the 15th of August at around 5 am i finally arrived in my hostel in the city of Jaipur which is the capital of the Indian state Rajastan.

This was a hell of a busride. He he.

Well it was not as terrible as you may think. It's just that this bus was what could be called a "lower class" bus. 

And i was not really aware of it. Because the difference in the price was maybe 100 rupi. Which back home wouldn't make much of a difference because it equals about 1.5$ . But in this country for some people is a lot of money.

So in the moment i entered this bus i was a bit surprised, because on the floor a whole bunch of poor looking people where sitting. Some mother's where sitting there with their children and some children lying on the floor sleeping. While trying to get to my cabin ( this was a sleeper bus) i had to be careful not to step on one of these children on the floor. So after finally reaching my cabin, the super shaky bus ride started. This bus was shaking so hard that it was not even possible to read something or for example type a number on my phone. 

Well it was maybe not the most comfortable bus ride ever, but very interesting to see how people with less money in this country travel.

Arriving in jaipur my bus simply dropped me in the middle of nowhere somewhere in the middle of this city at about 4 am. So from there i had to take an autoriksha. My hostel was a bit hidden, so for like 1 hour me and that riksha driver were driving around in circles in this area around the hostel, trying to find it. After searching for ages i decided to ask for the way in one of these bigger and more expensive hotels. Luckily the man at the reception was very friendly and offered to explain the way to my driver in Hindi. This helped a lot and , oh yeah, finally we found my hostel.

Jaipur exploring the city - 15.08.2014

 So in the morning of the 15th, after i had slept few hours, i decided to join some germans and one guy from the states to explore the city together. That was a real advantage because it divided the costs for the rikshas of each by 3, as a riksha in Jaipur can usually carry up to 3 people. The american guy told me that he was going to do a bigger site seeing trip the next day through the city. I liked his idea and told him i would join him, which i actually did after all.

So this day we were walking through the city mainly. 

street in Jaipur (all the streets look like this)

As you can see in the photo above, all the houses in this city are  in red color, probably because they were made out of sand stone. On the side of the street there were endless amounts of shops which ironically were all selling the same kind of stuff. Which is why i ask my self how these people can still make money.

men making straw baskets on the street

shops in jaipur

a market street in jaipur

 A man on the street tried to show us a small Hindu temple where are all the local people go to. He said that mainly the people who live in this street are usually coming here to pray.

small hindu temple in the middle of the city

After that we went to see an antique astronomous observatory called "Jantar Mantar". One of the old Kings of this City had let this built. When you enter the Jantar Mantar there are many of these constructs as shown in the next picture.

giant sun dial, in the Jantar Mantar observatory

 The one shown on my picture above was a very large sun dial built to show the time. Similar looking smaller constructs served as a compass or way to track star constellations. ( how these work was not so clear because the signs didn't explain much except the name of the constellation like e.g. cancer). 

After visiting the observatory we went to a restaurant to get lunch, and were hanging out there for about 3 hours. After that around 6 pm we went to a bollywood movie, which was super fun to watch. Every time something exciting was happening, the whole cinema was cheering like a football stadium. Like every time the good guy was kicking some bad guy's ass, for example, people were cheering for him.

The movie had a duration of about 3 hours, so between 9-10 pm tired we returned back to our hostel.

At the cinema i took a shot of the poster of that movie in order to remember the name of that movie. So the name of the movie was "Singham Returns".

bollywood movie i saw that day

16.08.2014 - round trip around jaipur

On the 16th of August me and the american guy went on a one day trip to see the most  important sites around the city. For that we rented us a riksha driver for a whole day. The most important sites included:

• The city palace
• The Wind palace
• The Amer fortress
• The Water palace
• The monkey temple

The price for the risksha for a whole day was around 800 rupis which is about 10 euros. So it was around 5 euros each.Which is not much compared to home. Imagine working at home for a whole day and to only making 10 euros/day. But for people here this is a lot of money.

So first of all we went to the city palace. Well, there isn't much to see from outside. So i didn't took a photo from outside. Most buildings in this city from outside look exactly the same, even the palace. You only see the difference when you actually go inside. So the following picture was taken from inside the palace.

city palace from inside

There was also a museum inside the palace. But i found that rather boring because they were only showing some old dresses.

After visiting the city palace we went on to see the so called wind palace of jaipur. Well this building you may recognize as a non regular building from outside while walking down the streets.

wind palace from outside

wind palace from inside

After visiting the wind palace i was waiting outside sitting on a bench under a tree, while the american mate tried to find our riksha driver. Well i was waiting on that bench because i didn't feel so well that morning. While waiting i saw that very cute squirrel kind of animal eating a nut. You see these animals running around here in the cities a lot.

squirrel eating a nut

After seeing the windpalce we went to a place called "the amer fortress". From all the sites we had seen that day i liked this on the most. I guess this is also the reason why from this place i took most of the photos that day. So there is this fortress , which is ontop of the mountain. And around this fortress there is a great wall protecting the fort from possible invaders. It was possible to walk up the stairs to this wall, which is on top of the mountain. We met some funny guy who i think was from russia. He counted the steps the way up, and it was 377 steps to the top. So when i reached the wall, i was so impressed, because it looked a bit like the great wall of china. Just of course not as big as the chinese wall, but still quite impressive. Because from the top you get too see all the land around.

the amer fort as seen from the wall

me inside the amer fortress

the stairs going up the wall

me sitting on the stairs to the wall

the wall on the mountain top

me sitting on top of the wall's watch tower

After our visit to the amer fort, we made a quick stop to see the water palace which was in the middle of a lake. It's was not possible to go there inside, just to see it from outside. Some people told me that in the past they tried to make a very expensive hotel inside the palace. But it smelled like pee all the time, so people didn't want to pay for their rooms and they had to shut down the hotel.

the water palace

Our last stop that day was the monkey temple. I assume it is called monkey temple because on the way up to the temple you can see loads of monkeys.  The temple was on top of a mountain. From this temple we could see the whole city of Jaipur and watch the sun set. I guess this was a good and peaceful  end for this very long day.

monkey temple

Akshardham temple & journey to Rajasthan - 14.08.2014

This evening i will take a bus to the indian state called "Rajasthan". So for that reason i decided not to do too much today and just plan my trip a bit more. But because i think it is a waste of time to plan 24 hours, i decided to go and see a temple in Delhi which is called "Akshardham" temple.
Compared to other sites i have visited until now in Delhi, this temple is relativaly new. It was opened in 2005 and is known to be the largest Hindu temple in the world.
To get there is very easy, you just have to take the metro to the station called Akshardham, and from there it's only a 5 minute walk to get to the temple.
Unfortunately it's not allowed to take any cameras inside, but the nice thing is that you get in there for free. So the only way to get a picture of this temple, is from the metro station. So the following foto which i took from the metro station.

In my opinion this temple is definitely worth to be seen, because it tells a lot about the hinduism religion which i didn't know before. As my friends told me some days ago, hindusim is less of a religion but more a way of life. I could see this when i was walking around the temple.
Around the temple there are many sculptures of elephants. As i could read from the inscriptions the elephants play a very important role in hindusim, because they are an ideal example of how humans should be and behave. In hinduism, the elephant is a creature which shows the beauty of gods creation. Elephants are strong, peaceful, and they wouldn't harm other creatures, because elephants are vegetarian.
I wish i could have taken a photo of some of the sculptures. But as it is not allowed i will just describe one of them in words as an example.
So one sculpture was showing two elephants with two human riders fighting against each other. The meaning behind it is that elephants are very peaceful animals and would never fight each other, but humans do. So this sculpture basically symbolized that humans should not use violence against each other, but live together in peace. So there were many sculptures like these surrounding the temple,  giving examples of how humans should behave.
If you sum up the main ideas of all these symbolic images, you realize that these religions from their idea are not so different from the religions which we have back home.

Inside the temple paintings can be seen of people who we in the western world would call prophets, because they brought their positive philosophies to the people. So i guess this is also very similar to for example the christian religion where people pray to jesus, and try to follow his philosophies.

Well i have not studied the hindu religion, so if what i say is wrong, you may correct me. This is just what i have concluded from what i have seen so far.

Delhi & Agra - 9.08-13.08.

Agra - 11.08.2014

On the 11th of August i made a one day  bus trip from Delhi to Agra. The trip was quite exhausting because it took us about 4 hours to get there.

Arriving in Agra, we i first went to see the very beautiful Taj Mahal.

There are 3 entrance gates as far as i remember to get into the Taj Mahal area.

I entered trough the west gate. Between the west gate and the actual gate ware you pay your admission,

it"s about a 1 km walk, so there are many rikhas and wagons with camels like seen in the picture down below, which could potentially take you there if you don"t want to walk.

Anyways, so i decided to walk. 

wagon with camel to bring you to Taj Mahal

Infront of the entrance gate and also inside there were so many indian people lining up.

But luckily i didn"t have to wait at all in order to get in , because as a foreigner (so non indian) you have to pay a higher admission fee, which gives you the advantage that you don"t have to wait.

after entry gate where you pay admission

 So after entering the Taj Mahal "terrain" i had to walk around 200 meters, and then finally,
through this door i could see the beautiful Taj Mahal.

Taj Mahal seen from through the Gate

 As you can see on the photos many many indian tourists come to visit this place. On this day i only saw maybe 5 european tourists, the rests was just hundreds of indian people, but of course this was very exciting.

Taj Mahal seen from inside

First i wanted to get just a picture of myself and the Taj Mahal, but then indian people constantly came over to me and ask me to take a picture with me, probably because they rarely ever meet any foreigners like me.

After like the 6th or 7th foto, i decided to take advantage from it and just give them my camera, so i would also get a group picture like the one below :)

me, random indian people and the Taj Mahal

 After visiting the chamber with the grave inside i came to the backside of Taj Mahal, which looks like this.
Behind the Taj Mahal there is this beautiful river. Wonderful scenery!

behind the Taj Mahal

river behind the Taj Mahal

After visiting the taj Mahal , i first had lunch, and then went over to the "Fortress of Agra".
I first didn"t really know what to expect from it , but after entering the fortress i was really surprised.

the Fortress of Agra

I was surprised because i didn"t expect to get this wonderful view on the Taj Mahal from the top of the Fortress.

Taj Mahal as seen from the fortress of Agra

This is really a huge fortress and definitely worth to be seen. It looked very nice inside too.
Maybe i will upload some more pictures from the inside view later.
I really had to laugh when i saw that they have a "This is is Sparta!" whole in this fortress! Hahaha :D
(Actually i'm not sure what the meaning of this hole is... i'll have to research it.)

this is sparta! :)

inside of the fortress (only small part of it)

Delhi 9.08.-13.08 & my perception of india until now

I have saved this chapter for a while because i was not sure in first place what exactly to write.
I have been in India now for almost a week, but it took me a while to understand this world which seems so different from mine. Also, until now i have only seen this city. So this city certainly is not representive for the whole country. This country is so huge, and my friend who i am staying with currently, told me that there are so many different cultures and habits all over the country, that everytime you come to a new place you will be really surprised.
So this is now my try to shortly describe how i perceive india.

When you walk through the streets, or drive through the streets it happens a lot that you see wild animals on the road. Sometimes you see wild cows or pigs walking around. At almost every cross road you can see wild dogs who are sleeping on the middle of the street. If you"re lucky you can sometimes see some monkeys like in the picture down below. Reason for that is that people simply accept those animals, and don't just hunt them down, like they would probably do it at home. Animals are treated very nice here in india, and if you would hit one of them with your car accidently some  people might get really mad with you. Especially if you hit a cow. As you have heard cows are holy animals here, so be careful when driving your car.

wild cows standing between houses, in the middle of the city

monkeys on the road in new delhi

The next thing which i quickly noticed, as soon as i arrived:
Oh my god, there are so many people!! Everything here just seems very crowded. Like lets say you come to the metro station, like i did yesterday evening, i had to line up in this queue which you see in the photo below. Because everything is so crowded it can happen that you have to wait at some places for a very long time.
Also there are security people at every corner of the street. That queue i had to wait at, actually was a security check, where they scan all your luggage, like you would usually have them at airports.

waiting for security check in the metro

If you drive on the road people drive very chaotic. It seems like there aren't any traffic rules. Everyone just drives around as they like. On the road you see thousands of these yello/green auto rikshas, like in the next picture. There are also of course these cycle riksha's which are a bit cheaper, but also slowlier. Maybe i'll upload a picture of that if i can get a nice shot.

auto rikshas on the road

At places like the metro station you sometimes have these parking areas where hundreds of riksha drivers are waiting to pick possible passengers up from the station and bring them to a certain destination.

auto rikshas in the lower half of the photo, and riksha parking area in the background

As my friend says : in this country for money you get people to do almost everything. Just because there are so many people and obviously there aren't enough jobs for everyone. Also a huge problem i guess, is that many people don't have free access to education, like people get it at home. Some people i suppose are very smart and have great potential, but because they grow up in a poor family, they might end up as a riksha driver, and then have to try to make the best out of it. There are people in this country who are incredibly poor, but also people who are very well educated and have a lot of money. Because everything is so cheap, this makes "rich" people dramatically rich compared to people with less money. For example some people who have a bit more money can afford the luxury to live with their own servants, who cook and clean for them etc. But i guess in some way this okay, because at least by that, people with less education have a job, and a way to make money.

I guess in general it just took me a while to get used to how people lived here. So the last days i simply tried to explore the city a bit, and "get used to" india, and of course did some site seeing. In the evening i sometimes went out with my friend. Like two days ago we had dinner in some nice pub. There we ordered this lovely looking food which is (from top of image to buttom image) : brocolli, tofu, ? and spinach. 

Yesterday i went to do some site seeing in the city. First i went to some place called "humayun's tomb". When i got to the entrance door, it was what people nowadays would call "cuteness overload" ,
because there was some school class with many little indian kids making a trip to see this world heritage site.

indian school class waiting infront of humayun's tomb entrance door

As i entered this site, to the right there was first some other mausuleum with a bunch of dead guys burried inside.

If you don't turn right, but just walk straight trough the main door, from far away you can see the actual humayun's tomb from far away. Some guide told me and i could also read this on the signs and in my lonely planet, that the Taj Mahal's architectual design, which i showed before was orignally inspired by this tomb.

After walking around exploring the tomb, i asked a girl from france to take a photo of me. This was quite funny, because while she took the photo i put my water bottle somewhere on a wall. And when i returned 2 minutes later the water bottle was gone. I assumed someone had taken it. So i asked some security officer, asuming he might have removed it, because he thought it was trash. But then he led me to some indian guy who was holding my water bottle. It was completely empty. Can you belive this? Within 3 mintues someone had taken my (at this time almost completely filled) water bottle and completely emptied it. Some people here are obviously so poor that they cannot even afford buying a bottle of drinking water. The indian guy apologized and i was not mad with him, because the water had been a bit warm anyways. So i simply bought a new cooled bottle for some cents.

me with humayun's tomb in the background

After visiting humayun's tomb i went to some other world heritage site called Qutub Minar. On the bus i met a friendly girl from Canada, who told me that she had been traveling in india for 6 weeks now. We explored this ancient place together and as you see in the second picture from here got some picture taken together. Some areas where so huge, that it was impossible to get everything on a regular photo, so i took this panorama shot:

me and the canadian girl

Tower on the left, Mosque on the right