One last adventure before going home!
Trip Start
Jul 27, 2010
1
21
Trip End
Dec 18, 2010
Rajasthan, India
Saturday, December 18, 2010
Leaving our relaxing week in Delhi we rented a car and driver for a two week tour of Rajasthan where we stayed in some really interesting "heritage" hotels – old palaces and havelis redesigned to accommodate tourists. By having a private tour guide we were able to customize our itinerary and visit some remote destinations that trains do not reach. From Delhi we drove to Mandawa, Bikaner, Jaisalmer, Jodhpur, Udaipur, Pushkar, Jaipur, Agra, Varanasi, and then back to Delhi. We saw some very impressive forts, remarkable temples, and ate copious amounts of scrumptious local food. Unfortunately, our carefree diet led us to an unforgettable brush with food poisoning. So incapacitated were we that a doctor had to administer hypodermic antibiotics to us in our hotel room. After a few hours we were in well enough shape to receive several hours of intravenous at his clinic to replenish our fluids. They say it happens to a lot of tourists but we wouldn’t wish this on anyone!
Thanks to our medical magician we were back on our feet just one day after our waking nightmare to visit Agra and the famous Taj Mahal. The Taj was beautiful and just as we’d imagined: a magnificent architectural feat of marble and symmetry. Crossing this off the list we travelled back to Delhi for an onward flight to Varanasi, one of the most important religious places in India. We found this ancient pilgrimage city to be quite different from cities in Rajasthan and exploring the old city with its very narrow alleys was fascinating. One of the must-dos while in Varansi is to witness the early morning bathing in the Ganges which starts around 6am when locals begin their hard day washing their clothes or bathing in the frigid waters.
The culture and history in India is incredible and reaching your destination is half the fun, it’s always an interesting experience. We’d see crowds of cows, bulls, monkeys, pigs, and dogs (occasionally rapid) not to mention immense amounts of rubbish, insane traffic, and an infrastructure in flux. Another thing you must be very comfortable with is people, especially children, approaching you for money or the hoards of persuasive salesmen trying to hock you something, even if they just seem to be making casual conversation at first. We had our bargaining skills put to the test, and we’ve had months of practice! Entering a store you are warmly welcomed and often offered a tea or chair to relax, making you feel somewhat obligated to make a purchase. And beware if you do agree to buy something because that’s when the absurd prices come out, which makes walking away from any deal at least once a must to get a better price!
It’s unsurprising and forgivable when comparably poor merchants or swindlers try to make an extra buck off wealthy tourists, especially in a country where capitalism is given free reign on such a massive scale that huge wealth gaps and deplorable poverty emerge. This can be hard to take in, and no amount of generosity from visitors can change the situation but that doesn’t mean it isn’t appreciated, even depended upon. India offers so much culture that a mere three weeks felt rushed, and we only saw a portion of the north. You could easily spend months travelling throughout this vast and incredible country (and we met many people who have done just that) but by this point in our trip we were beginning to miss home.
Travelling truly does open your eyes to some of the good and bad in the world that you may have otherwise missed – and that seems to be what it’s all about – but there’s simply no feeling like returning to the place you’re most welcome, where you have the most friends and family. We’re coming home just in time for Christmas, the only thing standing in the way is three flights and a couple thousand kilometres… it’s funny looking at the world now, knowing how much is out there and how much we’ll never see, while at the same time it seems like a smaller, closer world.
