Hello,
We just got back from our short trip to Khajuraho. It is an interesting place. The architecture of the temples is so cool, and the carvings are so intricate. It all looks so cool. However, they are known for their, shall I say, "erotic depictions". Really, I think that the temples themselves are awesome, I am very surprised actually that
the Indians play up the erotic part so much. I guess they do it for the tourists, but personally, I felt a bit violated by the things some of the vendors were showing me and saying to me. But I am a stuffy American, maybe they have more success with tourists from other areas.

We hired a driver and drove there, since there is no train and we were not going to go on a bus again! Not after our bumpy ride from Bikaner to Delhi. I don't think I have mentioned that here yet. I will have to fill you all in later, it was quite the experience...

Anyway, we were told that the drive would take about 5 hours. It took over 7 and it was such a horrible road! It was also further than we thought that it was, so when we thought we were almost there and saw a sign that it was another 120 km, we were bummed.
Our hotel was good though, our rooms were right off the garden restaurant. Our tv was messed up (so was jorns and lise's) oh, by the way, I learned how their names were spelled. Our beds were pretty hard, or firm you could say. But that is to be expected.

We had a pretty nice time getting to know jorn and Lise better. It was fun and pretty nice. There was also an "authentic" Italian restaurant right across the street from our hotel. It was really good. I was so glad because Kevin got his appetite back and finished his meal and half of mine nearly every time we ate there! We ate there 3 times in our 2 days that we were there! They had real mozzarella cheese, and even had gorgonzola my favorite! Gee, it was good.

These temples had really high domes with carvings all the way up. Some were even like temples within temples, with the carvings on the inner temple as well as the outer temples. I wonder how they were built whenever I see structures like that. The domes were so high, but inside, the ceilings weren't. I guess that they were just hollow, or they would be too heavy. Also the insides had these multi dimensional ceiling sections that were also really intricately carved. I thought it looked like a puzzle box or something.

They aren't sure why these temples were different. There were originally 84 temples or something like that, there. But now only 25 remain. Mostly Hindu temples but there were also some Jain temples. But both had the same architecture, though the Jain temples didn't have the Kama Sutra carvings. Personally, I think that they were built by some Hindu fundamentalists or something, an off shoot of Hinduism, and worshiped only particular gods, the ones that were more "erotic" in nature. Of course I probably am wrong, they were just so different and interesting, almost confusing. Maybe the workers who built the temples were just tired of getting underpaid and decided to make some interesting carvings in protest, or as a joke. Our Lonely Planet book also stated some interesting ideas as to why these temples were the way they were. The most prominent one being that they were a sort of manual for the Brahman boys, who went to all boy schools and they didn't teach verbally about the birds and bees there. Whatever.

The only sour spot in the trip was when we decided to go see Raneh falls. It is about 18 km outside of Khujaraho. We drove out there and our driver pulled over where the booth was to pay, though the actual falls were another 2 kms. Kevin got out and Jorn started to open his door, which was on the street side... He got it open just a few inches when we all heard this horrible sound. Two guys on a motorcycle had been speeding past the car and hit the door when Jorn opened it. They must have been going fast and were super close to the car! I mean, Jorn opened the door just a few inches and they hit it!! They crashed, but were okay, just one had a scrape on his knee.

Our driver got out and spoke to the guys and we thought everything was worked out. Well, we knew we were not in the USA anymore when we decided that we weren't going to go to the falls after all, because it cost more than we wanted to pay and Jorn and Lise were a bit shaken up by the accident. The car door was bent a bit too, it didn't swing shut anymore, though it would shut if you pushed it. So we pulled forward through the gate to turn around and the next thing you know a whole group of guys closed the gate and wouldn't let us through! Then, when our driver protested, they all started yelling and getting really animated! I don't know what they were saying, but we knew that they wouldn't let us go until we probably paid them. Our driver was very calm and handled it well. He went back out and talked to the guy who was driving the motorcycle and it looked like it would all be okay. Our driver got into the car and looked upset, he said they wanted Rs 3,000! Kevin was vexed , he knew that it wasn't our fault. So he asked if the police were coming. Our driver said they were on their way. So Kevin responded, "then we will just wait for them." But then we all saw the look on our drivers face and knew that having the police come wasn't going to help our situation at all, just make it worse. We were four white "rich" tourists. The more people involved, the more money they are going to want. So Lise said they would just pay. Our driver said "only give Rs 2,000", and they took it. We were glad to get out of there, though Kevin and I were both pretty dissapointed that we didn't get to see the falls, but oh well. Stuff happens sometimes. (we found out later that our driver had already talked those guys down from Rs 5,000!)

The drive back didn't take as long, our driver took a different route, but the road was pretty bad and full of trucks. So many were broken down on the road, broken axles and stuff!! That is how bad the roads were!

We were exhausted when we got home yesterday, I am not sure why, I guess sitting in a bouncy car for 6 hours kinda wears you out. But we still had a nice little church meeting in our room.

I am always a bit surprised when we go on a little sight seeing trip and I am so happy to see our little Visitors Hostel when we get back. I guess it really is home for now.

It is getting really hot here and my jeans I brought are just too heavy to be comfortable in. The only other bottoms I brought were my capris. So I bought a nice cotton wrap around skirt to wear. I wore it for the first time today and though it comes down to mid calf, I felt.........
...uncomfortable I guess. I have only seen girls show their legs above their ankles here about 4 times. I felt like I was wearing a bikini or something. I know I was silly, and it was probably in my head that everyone was looking at me. I think that my need to stay cool will override that worry though!

So, I know that I didn't finish telling about the exciting points of our longer trip. But I am going to skip to near the end now and tell about the "luxury private bus" that we took from Bikaner to Delhi.
There is no train to Delhi from Bikaner and we had originally planned to take a night train back down to Jaipur and then take another train up to Delhi (an extra 400kms or so!). But then the guys at our hotel in Bikaner told us that we should take this "private" bus. It was faster and really nice. It was a sleeper bus so we could just "sleep on our way there if we got a bunk". They even got us the tickets. So we get on the bus around 9 pm on Friday night. It was like a regular tour bus with a few exceptions. There were bunks up top with curtains to make them more private, and NO bathroom on board. I guess that I was pretty naive in thinking that an overnight bus that was driving on an 11 hour trip would have a bathroom.
So of course I had to go to the bathroom about an hour and a half into the ride. We both were really tired too, so we just went up into our bunk and laid down (after I thoroughly wiped it down with wet wipes). The bus kept stopping and picking up more people as we went along. I figured that it just had a few places that it stopped to pick up its ticketed passengers and once we left town we would just go straight to Delhi. So we kept stopping and picking up more and more people all along the way until the bus was completely full and people were sitting and standing in the isles on their sacks of clothes and grain! I think they would just pick up anyone who was willing to pay something for a ride. I don't know if it was the road or the bus but it was the bumpiest ride I had ever been on! There was no way we could actually sleep, and I was completely miserable with my full bladder. So when I had held my bladder for around two hours more, I HAD to go! So Kevin and I climbed and squished our way through all the passengers at the next stop and Kevin asked if there was a bathroom to a bunch of guys sitting outside the bus. They all looked at me and then started laughing and said "no!" "no bathroom, go around corner, that is bathroom!" I decided that I could hold it. There were too many people there for me to go squat somewhere!
It was sad, because we were in the desert and kept passing long stretches of empty desert where I wouldn't have minded relieving my bladder, but the bus didn't ever stop there, only in the towns full of people and buildings. Oh, and no matter how late at night it was, there were always a bunch of people in the streets doing stuff! I don't know when these people sleep!
Finally, I really couldn't hold it anymore, every bump was torture and there was a bump about every second! (not exaggerating). So at the next stop, Kevin and I got out. Right there next to the bus was an empty spot between buildings. All the men were using it as the bathroom, so I went through it and around the back of a building where no one was, and made Kevin keep watch and finally went. WHAT A RELIEF!!
Kevin did manage to sleep for about 20 minutes on the bus that night, but had bruises on his feet from them banging together! Crazy! So it was also really cold because our window wouldn't stay closed, it kept opening more and more as the bus bumped along and we couldn't get it to latch. So when the bus stopped around 6 am, we decided to get out and get our jackets from out luggage which was stowed under the bus. We waited until some of the people started getting off so we could get down from our bunk, and went outside. We found our bag and I pulled our jackets out, and put the bags back in and the guy helping us looked at me and said, "no, take bag, last stop." Kevin said, "what? is this Delhi?" "yes Delhi." The guy said. We were two hours early, and it was still dark. You don't know how unusual it is for transportation to be early here, or at least to us. Our friends the Smiths weren't going to pick us up until 8 am. So we sat at a bus stand and waited.
So, an interesting experience, but not one we will repeat.

Well, thats all for now. I hope that these stories aren't sounding too negative. You should know that I am laughing as I write most of them, though some are frustrating. It's all good.

Today is different!

Hey all,

So today was a bit different from most other days. Yesterday a guy knocked on my door and asked if I was free the next day (today) from 3 to 5 pm. He wanted to know if Kevin and I would be extras in a movie. The film is about the ground breaking of IIT Kanpur campus. It is for their 50th anniversary. So Kevin and I got to go along with Yorn (Leese didn't want to go) and a French teacher here, Clementine, to go pose as Americans in the film.

It was interesting and a nice change. They used this crane, I am not sure of the correct name of it, to lift the camera man. He sat on the chair and was lifted as they put weights onto the opposite side. Kevin took pictures, I will post them as soon as I can. We just had to look interested in the dedicatory prayer that an Indian priest was giving. They gave us chips and bottled water and juice and had us sit in the shade between takes. It was just off campus, so they had a car pick us up and drop us off too, we felt special. It was kinda cool.

Our internet is fixed too. They came today and were working on it for over an hour. I am still not sure what was wrong. They just said it was a serious problem and could we just change rooms? I said that we would if we had to, but would prefer not to. I mean, we have a ton of stuff we have accumulated in the last two months and I have put up clothes lines and stuffed all the crevices leading to outside to try to keep the mosquitoes out. Plus we have extra mattresses and blankets arranged on our bed in an attempt to make it a bit soft.

They said, okay, we will just run the cable from the next room. That meant that they took a super long cable and plugged one end into the computer, ran it out through the window and along the back porch, around the dividing wall and into the window of the next room over. So funny, but hey, at least we have internet now!

I am excited to go to Khujaraho tomorrow. We still haven't heard about our hotel yet though. I am sure we can find a place to stay though.

I will tell you living here even for such a short time has really made me realize some things. Like how thankful I am for toilet paper and public toilets, but also that sometimes it is nice not to be so government regulated. We can see and experience things here that would never be "allowed" in the USA. When you know there won't be guardrails and 10 huge warning signs that there is a drop off ahead, then you are a bit more careful, and you are just fine. And you get to enjoy the scenery without a big sign or fence to obstruct it. I was just thinking about that today.

March 25^th 2009

Today is the third day that our internet doesn’t work in our room. I asked them to come take a look at it today and they said they would come right away. An hour later they still hadn’t shown up. Then I got a call from the front desk asking me if anyone had come yet. I told them “no”. Still no one came today and seeing that it is 10 pm. I am guessing that they won’t come today. Oh well, I guess that that is just like most other things here….. I will have to ask them a few more times before anyone will actually come.

Today might just be the most boring day of my life. I tried to do some things, I taught my one violin student this morning. I cleaned our room, I went to lunch with Kevin, I read, I played about 50 games of Spider Solitaire. I am just extra bored today, I don’t know why. Today isn’t much different from other days, besides that I am more tired today. I am probably getting sick again, that wouldn’t be much of a surprise.

I also went out and used the computer in the lobby to try to check my email and say Hi to Cassie and mom Player, because it was their birthdays this week, but there was a man waiting to use the computer and he seemed a bit impatient with me. I thought it was best if I kept it short. So I am writing this on Microsoft Word and will copy it onto the blog once our internet is working again, that may be a while.

When our hot water heater broke (each room has its own 5 gallon water heater), it took over 2 weeks for them to come and fix it. They came and looked at it a few times, but didn’t do anything. I guess because the light would turn on, so they thought it was working even though we told them it wasn’t. But it did get fixed eventually.

Eventually…… that it the word I need to remember here. Things usually do get done, eventually.

We are planning a small trip this weekend to Khajuraho. It is a town that is about 250 km south of Kanpur. It is full of temples with intricate carvings. Many of the carvings are “erotic in nature”. It is a small town and it sounds nice. We are waiting for our reservation inquiry to be returned from the hotel that we want to stay in, hopefully we will get it tomorrow. We are going with our friends we met here, Yorn and Leese. They are a couple from Canada. Yorn is here teaching Civil engineering this semester . They are a lot of fun and interesting people. I am excited for our trip with them. It is good to have some friends here that we can discuss our experiences with. Because we have all had similar experiences we can talk about them openly with each other. That is nice. I like to tell you all about them too, but it is nice to have a two way conversation sometimes, and it helps me remember things better.

Jorn also is a pretty good photographer. He showed Kevin and me some pictures that he took right here on campus that are amazing! He has a really nice camera, so when you zoom in they are even more amazing! Most of them are of the birds here on campus. He said that he would give us some of them, I will try to post them. He took most of them on a remote edge of campus where the Ganges has a canal that runs off of it. There are no buildings there, just fields, and apparently a lot of cool birds and deer.

Did I mention the mosquitoes? I HATE them! They are everywhere, swarms of them. The worst is when I hang the laundry out to dry and go out the next day to gather it. There are tonz of them on the dark clothes. You can’t see them at first and then you disturb the clothes line and they all start swarming. The first time kind of freaked me out, it was unexpected. At least now I know. I don’t know why they only gather on the dark clothes though.

Tonight there are a bunch of them in the room. I have killed about 15. I still don’t know how they get in here! I stuffed plastic bags in every crevice I could find the second week that we were here. Somehow they still make it in. It is like they wait by the door and every time we open it, they all rush in.

It was really funny because the other day Kevin asked his mentor/professor here why they didn’t have screens on the windows and doors here with all the bugs and mosquitoes. His professor said “well…….” and just got this look on his face like a light bulb just went off. Like that thought had never crossed his mind. Wow! What a good idea! Screens! Or something. He didn’t finish his sentence, just left it at “well….” .

So it was my birthday a week ago. The big 31. To me that is big. I am officially in my 30’s. Now I must admit that I missed having my close friends and family around me on that day. Actually it didn’t hit me until the day after my birthday. Our dear friends, (I don’t remember their last name so I just call them the “Sundars” because that is the dads name.) threw me a little surprise party! I went that afternoon to give the son, Stephan, his daily violin lesson at 4 pm and they were all hiding in the kitchen, along with Kevin. They had gotten me a cute little chocolate cake and made lunch. The cake was real! I mean it tasted like cake! It was delicious and moist and even had a layer of mousse. That was what I really thought I would miss this year for my birthday. Sheba ordered it special from a bakery. It was really sweet and quite a nice surprise.

I told Kevin I just wanted to watch a movie on the computer and have Dominos deliver a pizza for dinner. We had ordered from Dominos before, but for some reason this time it was very difficult. I won’t give a play by play but basically, it took over 3 hours, 4 phone calls, 3 people, and a lot of frustration to get our order. We were sure that they had forgotten us (for the second time that night) when our doorbell buzzed at 11:20 pm. We had started all this business just before 8 pm. Of course they got our order wrong and it ended up costing almost twice as much as they had originally told us. It was useless to try to argue the price with them though, we knew that so we didn’t even try. Our pizza crust was filled with a (delicious?) mayonnaise like filling too. We didn’t know what it was, well what it was supposed to be, we knew what it was….GROSS! So we just ate the toppings off the top. Actually we had ourselves a good laugh about it, though Kevin did apologize a few times that night. What did he have to be sorry for? He tried to please me and was very persistent about getting that pizza! What more could he do?

Last night as we were leaving to go to meet with Yorn and Leese the “bug truck” passed right in front of us as we went to cross the street. This truck sprays heafty clouds of bug spray into the air. It shoots out the back and clouds up the whole street. I was scared of it. I think that it might kill people if they breathe it in in the concentrated form like that. Even hours after one has passed the air is barely breathable (to me). Sometimes Kevin will come home and his clothes will reek of the stuff. I think they spray it more often in the academic area. We held our breath and ran through as fast and far as we could before we drew our breath in. Leese told us that when she was exposed to it, she broke out in hives! I hope we don’t develop some weird disease…..

Things sure are different here! It keeps you on your toes that’s for sure!

Our next stop on our trip was Jaipur. We got there around 11 pm that night. Pretty good, we were only 40 or so minutes late! (the trains in India are NEVER on time, our train to Agra was supposed to be 3 and 1/2 hours long, but took 6 hours!)
We got to our hotel, Hotel Pearl Palace. It was really nice! And only 800 Rupees a night. That is about $16. It was my favorite place out of all the places we stayed on our trip. They also had a rooftop restaurant called "the Peacock" it was beautiful! The food was pretty good too. They had more variety than we had seen anywhere else. They had a lot of European and eastern Asian dishes, cause of the tourists I would imagine. We ate there every day.
On Sunday we had made plans with Cara and Andrew to meet at 12:30 at the Hawa Mahal (Palace of Winds). We waited for around 30 minutes, then Cara showed up pretty upset without Andrew. Turns out they got seperated while walking to meet us from their hotel. We spent about an hour trying to figure out where he was, but we didn't want to leave our meeting spot because we figured he would come there. Our rickshaw driver who dropped us off was waiting for us to decide if we wanted to hire him for the day. He let us use his cell phone a few times and was very helpful. I felt bad when Andrew finally came and we decided not to use the driver. He wouldn't take any money for his help though, which is quite unusual because that is what most people seem to want here. Really nice guy.
Those two getting separated made me think of getting separated from Kevin. I didn't like that idea. We made a plan for if that happened to us. Luckily, it didn't.
We did have a good time though, looking at the sights in Jaipur. The Hawa Mahal is really cool. It was a palace that gets more narrow with each floor, so the top floor is just one row of tiny round rooms with windows looking out to the main road. It was built for the wifes and concubines to be able to watch festivals and things outside of the palace, because they were not allowed outside of the palace. They were also not allowed to be seen, so the windows are all latticed to they could see out, but no one could see in.
We also went to Jantar Mantar. It is an observatory begun in 1728. It is full of huge instruments like sundials and astrological star finders. It also has 12 structures that stand for the zodiac signs and only one works at a time, the one who's sign it currently is. Lucky for me, it was March, so the sign was Pices! I am a pices so my structure was working, it was cool.
We were going to go to the city palace, where the Maharaja still lives (though it is now just a title, no political power). But found out that the 350 rupees ticket that says "City Palace and Museum" is really only for the museum. Once you go to the museum, they offer you a ticket into the actual palace for 2500 rupees! Our rickshaw driver told us, we weren't sure if it was true, (one thing I really don't like about being here is that I don't feel I can trust anyone!) so we checked. Sure enough, after asking about 3 or 4 people, including the ticket guy who wouldn't say, we found out it was true.
We heard that the palace in Bikaner was better anyway, so we opted not to go to the City Palace.
We also saw Amber Fort and the Water Palace. They were cool, especially the fort, but it was up on the mountain and you have to hike up to it and it was HOT!
The next leg of our trip wasn't my favorite I am sorry to say. We went to Ajmer and Pushkar on Holi. Not the best idea, but it was in the middle of spring break so what could we do?

This is my first official blog post! It only took two months of me living here in India to realize that there are a lot of little things about living here that I don't want to forget. I also thought it might be interesting to some of my family and friends to hear about them from my perspective.
Kevin and I are going to keep a list at the bottom of the blog about things in or about India that we like, don't like, or haven't made our minds up about yet. Just interesting tid bits, ya know.
I will update the list every few days, or as we discover more things. Even if this doesn't entertain you guys, it will certainly entertain Kevin and me!
I figure this is a better, and easier way to let everyone know what is up with us here. I found myself writing the same stories over and over in a bunch of different emails to a bunch of different people. I realized that first of all, what a waste of typing and time, second of all, maybe everyone doesn't want to read all that. So here is my solution. I will type it all up here and you can read it at your own discretion. Sometimes I am brilliant, it just may take a while for me to get there.....

We just got back from a trip around the Northwestern, or just Northern, part of India. We went while Kevin was on spring break from IIT. We traveled to Agra, Jaipur, Ajmer, Pushkar, Bikaner, and Delhi. When we got back we were exhausted! Lots of traveling on trains and cars and buses(that is a story in itself!) Also a lot of "locals" wanting our "business". That can sure take its toll on your nerves too.
It was really great to see so many beautiful things though! In Agra we saw the Taj Mahal, of course! It really is gorgeous! We arrived there on Friday afternoon, but the Taj is closed on Fridays. Oops, I forgot about reading that in our Lonely Planet book while planning the trip. All the information just kind of ran together after a while.
So we drove around the city in an autorickshaw and our driver took us around "back" of the Taj. It was pretty far away, but as close as we could get and actually see it over the wall, I guess. It is next to a river, so we were on the other side of the river. We wanted to get even closer, so we got out and started walking towards it. Well, the river is pretty much dried up this time of year and all that is left is the black goey stuff that has developed (sadly) from all the junk and trash that has been thrown in there over time. It smelled very...potent, okay I will just say it. It smelled really awful! After a few minutes, we couldn't stand it anymore and turned around to head back. We got a good picture of the Taj from there though, and of my face because of the odor. It is pretty funny, see below.
That night we ate at the restaurant on the roof of our hotel. Hotel Sheela Inn. We were really excited when Kevin ordered spaghetti with tomato sauce and actually got that! No strange Indian spices, just delicious noodles with chunky tomato sauce! It was delicious. I have to write about that because we have found that it is very difficult to actually get non-Indian food that is actually non-Indian. It either is very literal, like the egg rolls (a roti with a fried egg on it, rolled up) or has Indian spices in it, so it tastes Indian, not Chinese or Italian, or American etc. We are a bit obsessed with food here, I guess.
On Saturday we woke up at 5:45 am so we could get to the Taj Mahal in time for sunrise. It was just down the street from our Hotel, so we were going to walk there, but a bicycle rickshaw driver was very persistent about us using his services. After he followed us for a while, we just said okay.
As we aproached the gate and ticket booth, we were in awe. No, not because we saw how beautiful the taj was(you couldn't even see it from there), it was because of all the white people!! There were so many tourists, and we hadn't seen more than 3 non-Indian people for about 2 months! It was weird just because after a while of being in one environment, you get used to it. By the time we got our tickets and shook off the many shop owners who wanted us to come to their marble shop, the line had doubled, and by the time the doors opened it had doubled in size yet again (so 4x as many people as started out). I would guess roughly around 150 tourists.
I think that was the place with the most tourists that we went. The other places that we visited had tourists too (well, in Jaipur at least) but not nearly so many. But man! We got to see one of the 7 wonders of the world. I will post pictures soon, as soon as I figure out how.
We also saw Agra Fort that day too. We got a tour guide for that, and we were really glad that we did, because we learned a lot about the history of Agra and of Akbar, who built the Taj Mahal for his favorite wife. Akbar is really big in all the areas that we traveled, but he died at the fort in Agra.
Our guide had us pay the equivalent of about $10 to see the "secret" palace of Akbars favorite wife (the one he later built the Taj for). He told us that they only let celebrities in there. I don't know if that is true, but we didn't really care. Things are so inexpensive here in India, we didn't mind shelling out a few bucks to see something cool.
It was cool. It was dark, but the ceiling and walls were all covered in tiny rounded mirrors. Our guide lit candles and held them up and moved them around. The whole room sparkled and looked like stars! It was really beautiful. He also showed us where she had a fragrant pool of steaming water that she sat in a hammock over and got a massage. That sounded like a really nice idea. I am still trying to talk Kevin into putting something like that into our house.
We met a really nice couple at our hotel that afternoon while we were at lunch (Cara and Andrew). They were also traveling to Jaipur that night on the same train. So we planned on meeting in Jaipur on Sunday to do some sight seeing together!
I guess I am done for now, I'll write more about our trip later. That was just the first two days!