april showers bring may flowers...

2 days ago we arrived in vietnam...
we took the train from varanasi to delhi for 12 hours (this time with AC (one learns from their mistakes i guess)... event though we had to flight(yes indeed...fight!) for getting blankets in the freezing cold train...

anyways...we made it to hanoi, had two great days until now (toda lachem!) and compared to india everything seems easy and going smoothly...we feel like we live the life of Riley right now..

life is good so far.

last days in india...

venturesome varansi

since its been some days, i will start where i stopped...

we were supposed to take a taxi from pushkar to ajmer and further the train from ajmer to agra to see the taj mahal...

Gopal, the guy who booked our taxi and whos slogan was "tired of being ripped of?", said the taxi is gonna arrive at 2.30 am(!!) so we have enough time to get to ajmer bc our train was at 3.45am...

2.30am. 3 girls. with huge backpacks. in the dark. in the middle of nowhere. and it smells like shit. (literally).

no taxi.

2.45am. no taxi.

we call gopal and he goes "yeah yeah dont worry. the taxi is on the way"

sure.

3am. no taxi. we start to be pissed.

after about 9 phonecalls to gopal, who was such a flake, the taxi came with squealing tires...

and another near-death experience started.. after a few kilometers he stops infront of a semi naked indian on the road.

the man opens the door and tells us to move over.

turns out this is our actual taxidriver who forgot to set up his alarmclock.

thing is... carlights are overrated in india.

so we are driving on the road and suddenly there is a car infront of us which you cant see at all in the middle of the night...also light posts are overrated.

trucks are passing us and they are so big, we are swinging off the road...

i was sure that nirvana is about to come.

so we keep flying over the road of pushkar, scared to death with a naked guy in the car. incredible india.

we finally made it to the train and to agra..

to make a long story short..we saw the taj mahal. it really was impressive.

same night we take the train to jhansi to head to orchha..

and orchha was great. just a few cars, no honking, a lot of temples and the nicest host in our hostel we have ever had. (YES DJ!!we talk about you guys!)

we rented bikes, drove to a nature resort and outlasted the monsoon in a temple...

next stop varansi.

after a 19 hours trainride, 43 degrees, no AC (never again), we survived also this trip and had one bottle of water for the three of us for about 5 hours bc the train was delayed, we arrived in varansi.

craziest town i have seen in india so far. its one of the holiest places for hindus where they get burned after their death to reach nirvana. It is believed that once nirvana is achieved, a person will achieve the afterlife, rather than reincarnating.

so 24/7 you see smoke coming up from the ganges or you walk through the street and they carry the wrapped bodies of their relatives right next to you.

talking about the ganges...the official limit where water is not considered safe for bathing is 500 faecal coliforms per 100ml...the ganges has 1,5mio. faecal coliforms...

scary.

so we have 3 more days here in varansi who will be full of surprises and intense. cause we get the kind of feeling thats the thing with india... you never know how its gonna hit you.

pictures (jaisalmer, pushkar)

just a quick one... (with pictures especially for dschohaen..)

we are still in pushkar, did all the relaxing stuff yesterday..
swimming in the pool, eating, had a reflexology massage, eating, went to a yoga class, eating, swimming, eating, swimming...

plans changed, we will head to agra this night to see the taj mahal tomorrow, then further to jhansi and orchha!

OMMMMMM!

packed pushkar

we survived.
after a 12 hours bus ride with a break of 10 min in total, through desert, monsoon and an apparently suicidal driver we arrived in pushkar.
the place seems to be pretty crowed with tourists and backpackers and...hot!

apropos hot...before pushkar we were in jaisalmer, a town in the desert close to pakistan where u could do cameltrips and stuff.
we actually went there because of the cameltrips, but they seemed to be very touristic with folklore dancing and shit, we decided against it...

we just stayed there one night and again..the heat was almost unbearable.

at 4pm we took the bus heading to pushkar and were lucky to have a seat...

thing is, people stare! and not the european staring every woman knows from some idiots on the street, i mean STARE!!!
they are standing totally bended over in the bus just to look at you...and if you stare back, they dont mind. its not that they feel embarassed, it just motivates them to go further.
going further in india means..burping!how charming!

like the spanish worldchamps said( yes yes, this is for you lucky winners)...

india is not for beginners.








we love it though.

blue city

finally we made it to Jodhpur, the blue city...
actually we wanted to arrive here a day before, but since our little european stomaches are not used to the food and spices...lets say it like this...we had to postpone our bus trip to the next day with lots and lots of medicin in our backpacks...
so now we are in Jodphur, its freaking hot and since there was no AC in our room and the heat was unbearable, the owner of our hostel invited us to sleep on the roof top with his whole family...

so we spent the night on the roof top, woke up by the monsoon, packed our stuff and spent the day in the city with its little blue houses.

tonight we will take the night train to Jaisalmer where its suppose to even hotter (dont think hotter is even possible) and are thinking about a camel tour in the desert where we will spend a night in the desert...

i know, we will miss the worldcup final, but since germany is not playing anymore, screw it.

bombay.big time.

after the big mess with the girl who wanted to rent our appartment over the summer, we finally arrive in doha.
nobody knows why (and nobody really cares why) but karma is a bitch and we get upgraded to business class...we intended to study the "lonely planet", but were so impressed with all those functions and buttons in business class, we just enjoyed the flight...bed up, bed down. bed foward, bed backward.white wine.bed up, bed down.white wine.

even though we kind of didnt really want to leave the plane, we now it to bombay.
its hot.its rainy.its dirty.but great.

tomorrow noon we will take the train to Ahmedabad and then the night train to Udaipur, "the blue city".

actually it was the idea to go to Jaipur, but since its further away and we had to assign priorities, we decided against it and for watching the footballgame.whoop whoop.

btw...in india everyone seems to cheer for germany.

we gotta go cause its time for a beer.

morgen isses soweit...

woop woop.