Mild Observations About India so Far (Joe's grumbles)

Tanya wants me to make sure this is a solitary post, nought to do with her at all.

1. People here suffer from OCD. It's the only explanation for having a clean hand and a dirty hand. Honestly, why have a dirty hand anyway? Just have two clean hands and be happy with that.

2. How often do you need to phlegm on the ground? How congested with snot do you need to be to spit it out every two minutes? Normal pavement turns to swampy grounds when men, women, children, dogs and cows are projectiling every few minutes.

3. Impatience. It's everywhere. Even a cow butted Lorna with it's head, even though she had the right of way. Honking horns and pushing into queues. What do they need to do so urgently that they can't wait 30 seconds for someone to cross the road safely?

4. Cows in India are arrogant. You can see it in their eyes. They know they're worshipped.

5. I've never seen so many people lying around doing nothing. I thought we'd be the ones laying around all day sunbathing.

6. The ocean (or any water feature) seems to be India's bin. I've seen people on a train wait til we cross a river to throw their rubbish into the water. It's disgusting!

7. Men in India hold hands and cuddle when walking down the street. It's seen as friendship here but I can't see me convincing people back home to do it. I've never had my bare knee patted so frequently by men whilst sitting on a moving vehicle.

Most of these things are at their very worst in Mumbai. The beach in Mumbai is literally covered in rubbish and was a real shock to see. The people were very rude there and there wasn't much to see. Delhi had so much more character and so much more to see and do. Although I have to point out that one of my favourite experiences of India so far was when we were walking home to our hotel through the slums and came across a festival celebrating the elephant god Ganesh. The slum locals could have seen us to be intruding but invited us to dance with them and celebrate. It was amazing and we saw the best character of the city that night.

So it wasn't all grumbles...

First 3 weeks of India

Hi all,

We arrived in Delhi safely but were a bit overwhelmed by the smell, noise, heat, humidity and did we mention - the smell!

It was really weird to see cows wondering the streets and traffic going out of it's way to avoid them! The cows are worshipped here and they exploit that at every opportunity.. they're quite arrogant looking!

We did a day tour and went to the Gandhi museum, the red fort, Lodhi gardens, Lotus temple and so began the papparazzi photographs of everyone taking our pictures (we have since found out it's because we look like 'white chicken')

From Delhi we went to Lucknow which was our first experience of a train. It was interesting. It's every man for themselves at the train stations... wouldn't have been any 'women and children first' off like the Titanic...pushing galore! Even saw a guy put his arms through the bars off the window and try and grab someone's bag!

At Lucknow we went to La Martiniere school which looked like the Harry Potter school. Except they didn't learn magic here, it was more normal subjects like Maths and English and that. Met the headteacher and had a quick tour to the basement where the tomb of the founder was kept. We went to the residency, which was destroyed in 1857 during the war of independence and it was quite eerie as it was as though people had just left it. We spent two days in Lucknow and enjoyed the bit of calm we had there. Next was an overnight train to Varanasi...

Anyone who has read Joe's status on Facebook knows that this was where he was quite ill. This was not a pleasant experience although I won't go into specifics - it involved a moving train, 13 hour journey, hole-in-the-ground toilet!

In Varanasi Tanya and Lorna did a tour of the ghats. It was really interesting. Even saw a cremation and all the rituals that followed it in the Gange river. Joe stayed in bed. The next day we all managed to get up at sunrise for a boat ride down the Gange, watching all of the locals bathing, washing and brushing their teeth in the river. We were highly advised not to do this as a litre of normal water has five hundred bacteria and a litre of Gange water has 1.5m bacteria!

We then got a train to Agra and the first stop was the Taj Mahal! Amazing and inspiring - cannot really describe how surreal it was to see it. From here we had a driver for 8 days. He was called Rocky and was immediately friendly, funny and knowledgable.

We went to Jaipur, which is so far one of our favourite places - it felt like real India! We saw the Krishna parade, which was incredible! So many colours, floats and music and dancing! Everyone seemed really happy! From here, Rocky took us to Pushkar...

After the madness of the first few places, Pushkar was a nice break. Chilled out, but half of it was flooded, so we were a bit stuck in one half only. We climbed to a temple on top of a massive hill which had incredible views. On the way down we got caught in our very first monsoon downpour. Next stop was Jodhpur...

This was labelled the Blue City and it really is. We walked up to Mehrangrah Fort, which was amazing. The view over the whole city was well.. blue. In the evening we went to a rooftop restaurant overlooking (from beneath!?) the fort and had our first beer (it's been really difficult to find them here!) Tanya and Lorna were picked from a crowd to do some Indian dancing in front of the entire restaurant. Photos will come later.

Rocky then took us to Udaipur. On the way we went to Ranakpur, where we met some of Rocky's friends. It was a village in the middle of nowhere that had obviously never seen any tourists. Suddenly we were inundated by twenty family members staring at us and using universal signs to communicate.

In Udaipur we stayed in a five star hotel - very different to our basic hovels (there was a mix up and we got upgraded!) We loved it here and enjoyed the views over Lake Pakola. One evening we went to a traditional Rajasthani dance and music performance. Some very random bits i.e. men on piggy backs dressed as the devil squawking, but then also some very unique fantastic dancing with symbols and ten massive pots on dancer's heads.

And then what can we say... Mumbai. Less said the better. It incorporated all of the worst elements we had seen of India and has inspired Joe to write his own grumbling page after this one.

From Mumbai we got a 22 hour train to Goa. It was of course only meant to last 12 hours but due to monsoon (well done Tanya for checking the weather!), there was a rockslide on the tracks and we were stuck at a station for five hours.

Goa is everything you expect it to be. Relaxing, chilled, beaches, palm trees, cheap alcohol, good seafood. It's not noisy or dirty enough so tomorrow we're moving on to Hampi! But we really love it here. Tanya and Lorna have finally got sunburnt (so are no longer white chickens, they're semi-cooked chickens!)

Today we had our very first day where we weren't stopped for photographs every three minutes, although we did have to walk 3 miles into the wilderness to experience that peace!

Photographs will follow but I hope this was more interesting than the first one! The next page will be Joe's grumbles about experiences so far!

Lots of love to you all, hope everything is going well back home!

Tanya and Joe x