About Indian Wedding, Taj Mahal, Train System and much more...

The last entry is 10 days ago. That's actually not much time but travelling in India, we can tell you, makes it feel like much longer!

INCREDIBLE INDIA! The Slogan of India Tourism...
INCREDIBLE INDIA! The truth...!

Indian Wedding

It is wedding season in India. And we had a lot of luck that on our arrival day in the two million city of Jaipur, next to our lovely guesthouse, the preparations for a wedding party were going on :-)
Yeah! Amazing we thought, because we always have been curious about how colourful and lively and funny those indian parties would be.
First we carefully watched the happening from the above balcony, with the Tandoori-oven for Naans, hot plates for Chapatis and frying pans for Puris right below. After a while some sari-dressed women showed us to come down and join the fiesta!
So did we...lucky ones...it was just amazing to be witness of all that kitsch like geese and doves swimming in an artificial, lighted pool, the boys dancing to Punjabi-sound, the groom arriving riding a horse and finally not to forget the huge buffet, from which we filled or better stuffed our stomachs.


WHAT A GREAT EXPERIENCE



Taj Mahal

The Taj was built by emperor Shah Jahan as a memorial for his second wife who died giving birth to their 14th child in 1631. 22000 men built it up during 22 years.

Standing in front of this white marble building let us realize its dimension. All the well-known pictures of this world famous monument do not submit its real beauty!!!
Goosebumps is what we had and speakless is what we were...and still are!
The 750 Rupees (15US$ / 22SFr.) entrance fee are justified. But it is just impossible to write down in words what we saw and felt!!!

WHAT A GREAT IMPRESSION


Train system

Agra-Jhansi: our first trainride. The ticket was already booked in Delhi two weeks ago, which was a good decision. We realized that when we tried to get two seats on the train to Ahmedabad on the 8th of February. Ahmedabad is the train gateway to the less touristy state of Gujarat which we wanted to explore. The next seats available were one week after our scheduled date.

Oh shit, we thought!!!!

We had to take a time-out and left the busy, confusing, overcrowded, piss-smelling trainstation to have a refreshing, creamy banana Lassi...
Mmmm...yummy for the tummy...

After a little brainstorm, a new plan was born: instead of Gujarat we travel south to Mumbai, the beaches and flipflops, away from freezing nights in Indias north. Fortunately we got the last two bunkbeds on a train from Bhopal to Bollywood on the 8th of February.

To get a first glance at Indias trainsystem, the booking forms, trainclasses and numbers, we spent at least two hours at three different counters in the smelly trainstation and 1.5 hours on the internet.
One of the major realization is that on certain (most) of the train lines, it's impossible to be spontaneous. So booking days or even weeks in advance is essential...

WHAT A TIRING DAY