Can I Get a Double Dose of Delhi?

December 22, Day 5: Delhi day trip

In the morning, we watched part of an Indian film on tv about young school boys saving stray dogs and doing an underwear protest which really funny! We ate something similar to dosas this morning, a spicy potato pancake with yogurt. Breaking news today in Delhi, a woman was gang raped on a public bus and her boyfriend beaten while everyone on the bus did nothing! There were huge riots over Delhi protesting this big tragedy. 

A Riot heading our way!

Thought this was funny because Delhi traffic and driving is everything that is RASH. 

First, we went to the Baha’i Lotus Temple which was beautiful! Before we went in, we saw a man giving another man a tattoo on the side of the street -______- terrifying. At the temple, we had to take off our shoes, and Dilpreet dropped our shoe key into a crack in the floor which Daryl had to lay on the floor to pick up which everyone stared in amusement passing by. Young school girls and others looked at Kim and I like we were celebrities because they rarely see Chinese people!! It was such a cool experience and interesting!! We also saw a lot of men wearing glitter vests which seems to be a fashion trend! I saw one of the first people who didn’t cover their legs in India, who seemed like an asian female tourist, didn't seem to feel out of place in such a modest country! We had to stand in a long endless queue until we could go inside the Lotus temple. We had to be completely silent out of reverence for those in prayer. 

 Soon after, we drove to the handicraft markets where we had lassi and tried Indian ice cream. It was something similar to cold vermicelli noodles on top of some ice cream. I didn’t like it…we had to pay for public toilet use here too! We also bought some scarves here.

  
Afterwards, we drove in the crazy traffic again to The Ambience Mall again for bowling!! So much fun, it was such a trendy bowling place, very upscale and full of young people, neon lights and good club music! They had a bar too but we didn’t drink. The first game I got 72 and the second 100, 2^nd place!!! Akash was really good, and it was just a lot of fun with everyone. After we ate pizza and we could not finish the mushroom one. We even tried a chocolate banana crepe and were stuffed to the brim! 

December 23^rd, Day 6: Another Delhi Day

This morning is our first late morning and we left the house around 11am. First, we stopped by the Sikh temple which was a very cool experience for all of us. First, we had to wear our scarves around our heads because everyone needs to cover their heads, guys and girls. They provide some little head bandanas for people who didn’t bring anything. Arveen seriously looked like Princess Jasmine in the marketplace from Aladdin! 

Exciting things at this temple: we had to be barefoot before we went in, there was a big lake of pure water that you can wash your feet in or people bathe in (separate area for women). We ate this oily rice pudding substance when we entered the temple area. Apparently they give out free food to people but we didn’t get it since it’s bad to waste food if we can’t finish it there. Inside the shrine area, we give money and bow at the holy scriptures. It's made of gold inside and there were lots of people praying and sitting on the floors. 

After, we went to Jaipur market after battling traffic and haggled for a bunch of souvenirs. We tried this mixed fruit juice, but it’s never just what you think it is here, it was definitely mixed with a bunch of spices. We made a stop next to get food and we tried Indian McDonalds! It was really similar to American McDs.

 But get this, there were people advertising a new place and to my flabbergasted self, it was for BUBBLE TEA (BOBA)! It was a cute place called Chatime and the people were so friendly working there and they were all male for some reason which was peculiar! It was Dilpreet’s first time having boba but he didn’t really like it, he preferred the milk tea over his passionfruit green tea boba. They had so many good choices the place was amazing. I got my regular jasmine green milk tea and it was so good. Since it was new in India, they had this visitor book for people to sign and they were so excited to have us sign it. 

We watched Life of Pi at 8:35pm and it was so so good. Since we still had so much time to kill, Kim and Akash got massages/facials for an hour while the rest of us waited. Arveen and I treated Kim’s glowing facial for her 21^st BIRTHDAY because it was that today! It was greaaaaat. Going to Bangalore tomorrow at 5 in the morning -_- kill us now and it’s 2:45am as I blog.

Getting friendly with Elephants!

December 21^st, Day 4: Amber Fort and other fort

This morning, we woke up really early around 6:30am because kim needed to shower and we STILL had no hot water…she had to take a cold one L but we ended up getting breakfast (quick toast) and setting off to the Amber Fort.  We made one stop before the fort at this beautiful picturesque palace that sat in the middle of a lake! It was still early so the sun wasn’t too high and it was gorgeous. We took pictures there, people were selling coconuts, and there was a little girl who was crying to come with us, very good actress, she nearly got into the car with us! 

  

We also got to see workers pounding marble stones, who work 12 hour days for cheap labor and only earn about 3-4 American dollars! It's really sad seeing how hard some people work for so little a day. Hopefully it's enough for them to live on and provide towards their families. Just sad to see the economic disparities firsthand in the cities. 

 view from the elephant ride

On to the Agra fort now, THIS IS WHERE WE RODE BEAUTIFUL ELEPHANTS!!!! It was amazing because all the elephants were very obedient with their guides, decorated with colors, and were all female because they are easily trained into walking in lines and after one another. Males would be too rowdy haha. 

I was paired with Paremveer and it was so much fun! It wasn’t a short ride either and you sit on a little bed like contraption on top of the elephant. The elephant is so big and wide that you don’t feel too unsafe, but it does rock side to side quite heavily. Paremveer was quite scared to be honest :) 

The Amber Fort was the prettiest palace so far, other than the Taj Mahal. 

There were secret passageways in the palace because there were 14 wives, a saffron garden (Asian Viagra), and only one king, the tour guide says you can imagine why they needed them. The wives were dressed in 5kg of gold and beautiful garments so heavy they were just pushed around by 4 guards all day in a beautiful carriage. 

It has a winter and summer palace, the winter had many mirrors and the summer palace had the magic picture, decorated with beautiful gemstone designs. The magic picture had carvings of butterflies and flowers that were parts of animals in their designs. 

 

We had to drive quite a bit for lunch and we had trays of different Indian food that was so delicious. The bathroom wasn’t so bad, there was tissue!! Also in previous bathrooms, I had to do the Hong Kong style (learnt it there) way of flushing the toilet by pouring water into the toilet to flush it manually. Next stop was the last fort, which was private property of the 14 year old king, which looked more like the ruins of a fortress. We also bought pashmina scarves here for such a good price!! You use a ring test to see if it’s real pashmina by passing the whole scarf through the ring at once. 

After this, we drove for about 7 hours…YES SEVEN HOURS, back to Delhi. I had to use the bathroom so badly as well so I slept most of the time. Exhausting day it was! Had a bit of more indian food at Arveen's aunt's then slept not long after, got to try another indian sweet, a donut like pastry!

Jumping Jellybeans We're in Jaipur!

December 20, Day 3: Agra and Jaipur

Woke up around 6:15am today and had a toast, Puri bread, orange jelly I didn’t try, a spicy macaroni dish, and some curry sauce. After, we set off to another fort in Agra where we had to take off our shoes to go in! We bought postcards here. This fort was special because it had a prayer/tomb area where the King was granted three wishes by Salem and his wife finally bore a son after being barren. There was more filigree designs and people were very reverent when receiving a blessing. 

We had lunch at Rainbow City, where we tried South Indian Dosas. It’s a big crepe-like dish filled with potato and I had the onion marsala flavored one. I also had the mango lassi which is delicious! A famous Indian dessert delicacy is the Golab Jamun, which is a very sweet donut ball which has some paste inside, and in sitting in syrup.
 I wasn't a big fan because it is very sweet!

We then had to drive for another 3 hours at least before we got to the third fort of the trip in the Pink City, Jaipur. A 14-yr old recently became king which is crazy! We saw some really cool weaponry and bejeweled scabbers. We saw different clothing of the royalty and one of the kings out of the 14 kings was really fat, 4 feet wide!!! We took a picture with a Christmas tree with the King’s guards, and saw a traditional Indian puppet show! 

Also, there was a snake charmer who had two cobras in his basket to charm. Arveen and I were invited to go sit next to the snake charmer while he charmed the snakes. WE DID NOT however accept the offer to hold them. They instantly went in to bite repeatedly at the charmer when he finishes charming them. However, they were defanged. Later when the snake came out under the basket it made a HUGE poop which was green and white…we were very surprised it could poop. 

We got henna from a not so nice lady, but it didn’t show up TOO well after we peeled off the dried up henna outer layer

Buland Darwaza, Great Gate of Agra

Holy Area for Prayer

Later, after the tour with the stylish tour guide, I really had to use the bathroom because my stomach was hurting…so I went to the public bathroom there…let's just say it was a nightmare with no tissue. We went to a few shops outside and bought more elephant figurines, tea lights, turtles, postcards, and bangles. We also went to have dinner at a very fancy place near our really nice hotel in Jaipur. It was outdoors and had live traditional Indian dancing and entertainment. The female dancer picked Kim and I to go up on stage to dance with her and another audience member.  We were dancing in the circle so it wasn’t as embarrassing but still we were really bad compared to her! She seemed to like us and we even asked her for a picture with us, her name is Indira. We came home and no wifi, hot water, and discovered a broken flush for such a nice hotel! 

Oh well, when in India! :) 

Adventuring in Agra

December 19- Day 2: Agra (Taj Mahal and Agra Fort)

Woke up at 4:15 am with only about 3 hours of sleep before leaving for Agra! It took us three hours at least to get there and we were so tired. I slept a lot of the way; we went in a 12 seater van that was very bumpy. We got to Agra around 10am and we had breakfast at the hotel, naan bread and another kind of bread, with a potato curry sauce and yogurt. Starting the tour in Agra, we had the choice to get a camel-driven cart or an electric cart to the Taj, so we chose the camel! We were even able to take turns riding the camel but only me and Curtis took the opportunity. I went first and nearly slipped to my death trying to get on the camel. I only had two long poles to step on to get on the camel’s back with my yellow slippers on so it was terrifying!!! I had two people helping me and I still nearly fell! Eventually I got onto Raju (my camel) ok and it was so awesome riding a camel! It felt very funny moving up and down to the camel's walking speed. 

We went to see the Taj Mahal and had a wonderful tour guide who taught us a lot! We learnt that the Moghul emperor Shah Jahan built it out of love for his third wife Mumtaz Mahal (“Mumtaz= Excellence”), she was supposed to be very beautiful and bright. The Taj Mahal is well-known for its beautiful symmetry, as there are mirrored smaller palaces; the wife’s body is buried in the middle of the building line of symmetry. Filigree design was popular inside the palace, gemstones and part of the Qur’an design the palace. Nailian gemstones were used so that when light shone on it, would light up and it was so beautiful! The Blank oynx stone can tell if silver or gold is pure or not. Also, the most precious gem, is the Black star of India which when moon shines on it, a star appears. There are three black stars, the normal one, sapphire, and ruby. The tour guide briefly got into a huge loud argument with a few people over something about not telling me what to do, so that was a bit awkward and scary. 

OH so at the Taj, we had to wear shoe coverings and then we had a photographer follow us around to take professional photos for us, a lot of people do that job to make money from tourists. He took all these individual posing shots for us and then some group ones. Afterwards he developed them, we choose, pay, and we get them on a disc. It was so great because they were amazing pictures! Kim and I got so close in a picture with a monkey later that day too, amazing! Arveen got in trouble by Dilpreet when she tried…hahah. There are less beggars than I thought around the touristy hot spots of Agra, but it was still difficult to see all the dogs laying around that were stray, and all the children/poor selling tourist items. You just have to ignore them because they are very smart and persistent, amazing at reading people’s emotions/faces. 

One of the side mrirored palaces next to the Taj Mahal

Closer look at the Taj Mahal design

Along the way in the city, you see so many monkeys hopping around in public as well as cows. We had a late lunch at a nearby indian restaurant and had similar food to the morning. I went to the bathroom with Kim and oh my, it was our first hole toilet! After meals, you get sugar crystals and mint leaves to chew on which refreshes you after a meal. I thought it was to wash your hands with due to misinterpreting someone else's actions whoops! Restaurants are equipped with napkins, but they are so thin and cheap that it falls apart when you use them. 

We caught a quick dinner where we had Indian and Chinese, but the Chinese was Indian-style. We got mixed meat fried rice which was good, garlic naan, and chicken tikka marsala. We tried a salty yogurt lassi which wasn’t that tasty, but the sweet one was.

A magical day all in all!