India Diaries - Transport

As promised in my Goa 2 post I have written a review of certain aspects of our travels and the first to get the review treatment is transportation. It is essential to making a journey like this possible and India's range of travel options can conjure almost every emotion possible. I will go through our thoughts on each individually .
Trains

I am not sure whether I should  approach Indian trains in a positive or negative light. On one hand you have this rail network that is the largest in the world criss-crossing the entire country and taking you almost anywhere in relative comfort surprisingly quickly and efficiently. On the other hand getting a ticket can be a nightmare, train stations are chaotic and dirty, your fellow passengers are sometimes not the most pleasant and cockroaches and mice can be travel companions in the cabins.
Getting a ticket for your desired train is the first problem that you will encounter. If you can remember our first experience with getting the ticket at new Delhi Station in my Delhi 2 post proved to be extremely frustrating. However we got wise to those scams fairly quickly and then encountered our next problem; booked out trains. Unsurprisingly in a country with over a billion people the trains book out months in advance. However a few tickets are held in reserve and become available a few days before hand which are the Foreign-tourist and the Tikal (urgent) tickets that you pay extra for. These are the tickets that we are generally chasing and usually at a ticket window that is being queue jumped by the locals. If and when you eventually get the tickets the next obstacle is the train station. To be fair some stations aren't too bad but others are so bad they if they were operated as land fill in the west they get a closure notice. Easily the worst has been Mughalsari in Varanasi and Old Delhi Train Station. At Mughalsari our train was late and we got a full view of what life there is really like, rats and rubbish everywhere, people living in the station, waiting passengers urinating of the platform all accompanied by the putrid smell of all these things combined.
Once you get on the train though things generally start to improve, this can depend a lot on your travel companions. Indian manners and hygiene habits can be somewhat different to western standards. A number of gentlemen with extremely long and dirty toe nails have felt the need to put their feet on our seat while we were sitting on it. We have also heard of children going for a pee in the cabin and the urine going everywhere. And of course there are also thefts on the train, we haven't suffered from this but one lady we met today had her money stolen while she was sleeping, they took the money out of her bag which was behind her head.

Generally the trains keep decent time, the latest we have been is 3 hours, which in the wet season on an overcrowded rail network isn't bad. In comparison I remember being on a train between Bulawayo and Harare in Zimbabwe and being 12 hours late. Sleeping is another benefit of the trains, not only does it wile away the boredom of hours travelling but it can also off-set the cost of a night's accommodation.  As I mentioned some of the passengers have had dubious habits, but you can have an interesting conversation with them and they will be able to fill you in on quite a bit about the country. Let's also not forget the little narrow gauge trains still running on steam up to the hill stations which are wonderfully nostalgic operational antiques with wonderful views of the mountains (when its not raining).
Overall I am going to give a thumbs up to Indian Railways because without them our trip would be a lot more difficult and their efficiency is excellent compared to other countries as under-developed as India. So despite the experiences the railways have forced us to endure, I think we can put a lot of it down to "an experience" and it serves as a reminder as to how lucky we have it in the West.
Bus

Generally Buses are the poor man's option when the train is not available, usually due to the train being booked out or a lack of a railway network. The most intriguing thing about the Indian buses is a sleeper compartment that exists on longer distance buses. The bus will be set up the same as a standard bus with two rows of two seats and and aisle down the middle. However above these seats is a row of sleeping compartments, each is a small cupboard into which you can climb into, lie down, stretch out and allegedly rest your head for a few hours. We have heard that they are absolutely horrible with sleep unsurprisingly, a near impossibility. Jolting suspension, the driver's choice of music, (usually some sort of Bollywood rave that he plays at full blast) or the stifling heat inside the compartment all combine to make sure sleep is not going to happen. In fairness the seats below aren't a lot better but at least you get a back to your seat don't you? Well yes, but sometimes the reclining seat doesn't work so well and the seat back just falls back if you lean on it, not ideal. The roads sometimes can also deteriorate quite badly or disappear into a mud track which makes life very difficult for passengers. With that said the road conditions that we have experienced are generally very good in comparison to a lot of other countries. Other advantages to the bus is that you can turn up last minute and usually get one, its cheaper than the train and while usually not as fast as trains they get you to your destination fairly quickly.

Auto Rickshaws (Autos/Tuktuks)

Ahh the Auto where would be without it? The Auto-rickshaws ferry passengers short distances of a few kilometers but they can also take you for larger distances and you can hire them for a full day. An auto is a three wheeled device steered via handle bars on a single front wheel, with the small squealing engine providing power via a spindly looking drive-shaft to the rear wheels. The whole thing is built on a flimsy steel chassis with passenger seats in the back, the driver sits up front and there is a cloth roof to keep the rain out. Two additional passengers can sit by the driver and anything up to 5 people (maybe more!) can sit in the back, although two seems quite snug to us! They are small and maneuverable around the crazy Indian traffic and the first few rides in one are an experience similar to dodgems, but as time goes on it just becomes normal and what would have appeared as crazy driving before then becomes the standard. I have tried to examine the workings of these small machines and the more I investigated the more worried I became about the safety aspect of these things so I decided to stop, otherwise I would be doing a lot of walking in India! For a start the chassis is as flimsy as a biscuit tin so any collision with almost any other road vehicle and the auto would almost certain come off worse...way worse. Ah, but they can turn very quickly to get out of trouble, which is true but this feature combined with a bit of speed means they could quite easily topple over and with a cloth roof, not much protection for anyone inside. As I said I better stop because we would be lost without them. The other feature of the Auto is the driver, they come with a wide range of personalities but they have one thing in common, charge foreigners 7 times (minimum!) the Indian price. Any fare has to be negotiated hard in advance, passive rather than aggressive negotiating usually works best. If your chosen auto driver is playing hard ball with the fare, walking away usually makes them see sense, as only a few metres away there are hordes of other drivers keen to get the fare. Tips are regularly asked for at the end but they always receive only a glaring look from myself. They drivers are also in on every local tourist scam as they receive a commission for taking tourists to gem, clothes and tour operators shops, which they are always keen to avail of. With all that said if your nerves are good and you don't mind a bit of bartering they are the way to go for short distance around cities.

Cycle-Rickshaws
Rickshaws are 3 wheeled leg-powered machines which are basically a bicycle with a carriage on the back for passengers to perch themselves. The driver known as a rickshaw-wallah has a hard job, not only does he have to cycle around plump passengers and their shopping but he has to breathe in the air of some of the world's most polluted cities. We only took a cycle rickshaw twice in Old Delhi, but it takes so bloody long that we never really bothered again. Watching the effort that one small skinny man goes into pulling the two of us around in the rain while we sat under cover in his rickshaw is a painful experience that also influenced our decision.

Taxis

Taxis are much the same as the West, a hired car that charges to take you to your destination, they usually are more expensive than Autos but are faster, safer and cleaner then their three wheeled counterparts.  They are almost exclusively painted black and yellow and are Hindustan Ambassadors, which are based on the same design as a Morris Oxford, one of the cars my father used to drive many years ago. The taxi drivers are never involved in any scams and you can sit happily in silence free from the stress and noise outside. Overall they are more civilised and orderly than the Autos. Their exclusive use of the roads in Mumbai probably explain a certain calmness that exists there like in no other city in India. We only usually take them when travelling long distances such as to and from airports or when we need a bit of relief from the road outside. However our enjoyment of a thrill and our money mean that if available, the Autos are our short range transport of choice.

Jeep
Jeep travel involves travel in a jeep, same as in the West! Except they squeeze 10 other people into the jeep and drive on extremely poor quality roads. The only time we traveled by Jeep was to and from Darjeeling and the jeeps were a necessity to get there as the road conditions are quite poor in parts and constantly changing due to landslides. I had no problem with travelling like this as the tightly packed seats meant that when we shifted around the haripin bends there was no movement of the passengers as our hips and shoulders were all wedges against each others. My wife though does not like heights so a lot of the trip was heart in the mouth for her. The jeep drivers I also found to be very accommodating chaps, our driver from Darjeeling even arranged an Auto rickshaw with Indian fare!

Plane
I pretty much already wrote a review of Indian carriers in my Mumbai post and that is they and the airports are on a par with anything in Europe apart from the leg room. In fact I would say the carrier was ahead of Ryanair, no additional charges for luggage or checking in, no annoying CEO constantly telling us if you don't like it go to someone else and no trumpets for landing before the grossly over estimated arrival time.

Hopefully I will be able to do a review of other aspects of our travels such as people, accommodation and food in the coming weeks, but I will keep you posted. 

Goa 2

Days 34-37
I would like to start this post about how wonderful my wife is and her contribution to this blog. Every post that I write in this blog is not really mine but ours. Not only does she help to give me a lot of post material and inspire me with a slant to take but she also proof reads the entire post, correcting the grammar and making sure that it makes sense to those reading it. Believe me there is alot of work in that and a lot of correcting to do! I am telling you this now because in my post (Goa) regarding the Danish women that got ripped off she has been extremely worried that you readers were mislead by how badly the these two ladies got scammed in Delhi. So just to put the record straight the Danish women paid about $106/£66 per day not including entry fees to sites or meals where as we have been spending $40/£24 all in. I did exaggerate how much, but they still got pretty badly stung.
Now back to our travels. It is Saturday (29th) and we are still in Goa but have moved location to the Southern Goan resort of Palolem. Allegedly it is more quiet than the Northern hippy scene but to be honest this place seems to be a lot more happening. Although it's the off season the place is awash with tourists and  the restaurants are relatively full. The beach here is also much prettier than Anjuna, on a gentle Crescent Bay washing on to a palm fringed beach, typically tropical.

To get here we had to catch four hectic buses across Goa totaling three and a half hours on Wednesday 26th . Goa is India's smallest state and as a result I was fooled into thinking it would be easy to get around, well it is not. The beaches are away from the main population centres and the terrain with its inlets and mountains does not help transportation. But I guess they all combine to make the beaches still relatively rural and quiet and as a consequence fantastic. My wife mentioned that the Orange County beaches would have been similar back 50+ years ago before the white collar surfers and millionaires took over, minus the cows of course!

Palolem is definitely worth the effort, the beach is wonderful and the people here are great. It is more compact than Anjuna and the restaurants seem to have a more ready supply of fresh seafood, which has been useful in rebuilding our protein levels after our illnesses and going veggie for weeks. With that said many of the tourists here are little bit left field for our liking, yoga is in every other overheard sentence and the smell of marijuana is on every other breath. Also the thicker vegetation here leads to mosquitoes in abundance. These little pests presented me with the opportunity to test a device that I had read great reviews about on amazon.co.uk: Mosi-bands. Mosi-bands are wrist or ankle bands laced with deet, the instructions tell you to rub them on exposed skin and then wear them on your wrist or ankle. I duly followed this instructions and was wearing the band. Later that evening I had a mosquito bite me 2 inches from the band, the next evening my wife got a bite one inch from her band. Therefore my conclusion and advice to anyone else is to not buy mosi-bands as they are completely useless.
Taking life easy is our main purpose here and as a result the stories and experiences we have had are sparse in comparison to the previous few weeks. Beach lounging, perusing cheap but quality restaurants, and drinking cheap low quality beer have been our main pursuits here. But this is India an there is always something unexpected waiting around the corner. So we have two unexpected events. The first of which was a minor accident my wife had. On Thursday afternoon we were exploring the far end of the beach where it is rocky and my wife was busy taking photos of the beautiful scenery, next thing I hear yelping and shouting going on behind me, my wife subbed her toe rather badly on one of the rocks, while taking photos. Stubbed toes are a regular occurrence at home on furniture and the like so I assumed her pain would pass after a few minutes. But it didn't and she began limping her way around the beach. The toe in question also started to swell and yesterday a nasty bruise appeared, so a quick internet diagnosis and treatment states that there is nothing really can be done with a broken toe only rest and painkillers so she has bravely decided to ride it out until it gets better. The offending photo is below.

The other unexpected event was India directly intruding on my telephone call. I haven't mentioned it until now but I play the Irish Tenor Banjo and my class was restarting Thursday evening so I thought I would give my teacher a call through Skype to let him know where I am and to apologise for my absence.  He already knew my situation so we were having a great conversation mainly about silage and the lack there of at home this year, and then it started. Firstly there was the firecrackers, which I am sure he thought was gun fire, but we persisted with the conversation. Then came the crazy Indian techno music and if that wasn't bad enough then came a hoard of drummers, all right outside the Internet cafe. He eventually commented, "Is there someone with a bodhran there?" I replied, "Bodhran? Its more like a Lambeg.... or a a dozen of them". The music though continued to get louder and we were forced to end our call, but that is typical of India. It discovers that you are phoning your music teacher and it decides "I'll show you what music really is!" which would be crazier and louder than anything in your own country

The music as it turns out was for our old friend Ganesh, apparently his festival isn't done yet and they are still parading with stuff down to the beach to launch into the waves. Yesterday was bigger again when a full life sized deity of Ganesh was launched into the Arabian sea by about 2 dozen locals. I have just learned this morning though that the festival doesn't actually finish until tonight. I am not sure how they are going to top the last few nights, but I am sure they will give it a go.

Our journey continues tomorrow when we have a early start to journey back inland and back up to the Deccan plateau to our next location, Hampi. We also decided that eight weeks is enough to see all that remains in India and we have booked our flights to South East Asia in mid October when we will be flying to Kuala Lumpar in Malaysia.
I have also decided to do an India Diaries series where I will review certain aspects of our trip, first up will be Transport, I have been working on this post for a while and I hope to have it up later today.

Goa

Days 30-33
Today (Tue 25th) we have just spent chilling and relaxing in Goa. We have been doing some of the mundane things that backpacking involves like doing your own laundry and spending 2 hours waiting to get our meals served and we still haven't had dinner (hang on, I will just go down and order it, spend an hour writing this post and it should be ready by then....right I am back). But that's all the joy of Goa, things seem to get done when they get done at their own pace and that suits us just fine after the stresses of Indian travelling.
We had a surprise in our over night train to Goa from Mumbai on Saturday evening, an upgrade to first class! Our names weren't on the seating list outside the carriage but we made our way to the seats designated on our tickets anyway. After half an hour the ticket inspector came around and told us we had an upgrade. We obligingly made our way to the first class carriage and we were glad to find that the beds were wider and we had a lockable door instead of a curtain. Apart from that its much the same as 2nd class certainly not worth almost double the price you will pay for the upgrade. Without all the curtain twitching and moving around though we did get in a very solid nights sleep.
My wife commented that in any other country if you got an upgrade to first class your reaction would be "Hooraay". But in India it is "Wait a minute!...what's going on here?" Our suspicion lay with our fellow passengers, a couple of Danish girls. They weren't particularly young but had never done any serious travelling before and arrived in Delhi to be a bit overwhelmed by the whole experience. As a result they went to one of those scam "tourist offices", who kindly arranged the first 3 weeks of their holiday for the bargain price of 60 000 rupees (£700/$1100) each!. To  put this into perspective we have spent less than this combined after 4 weeks, plus it didn't include all their meals or admission fees. In other words they got shafted! So back to our tickets, we had heard that these "tour operators" are very keen to keep their clients in the dark about getting ripped off and that means away from other independent tourists, so we suspected that they somehow saw the passenger list for their train, saw that other Westerners were sitting next to them,  and upgraded us to 1st class so that we couldn't tell them how badly they had been stung. Sounds implausible we know but in this country anything is possible!
If that was their plan it worked well because we never got to telling the Danish girls our expenditure and we never seen them again in Goa as they were whisked away by their pre arranged hotel's driver. We on the other hand were wondering how to get to the beaches. We had acquired a 2012 Lonely Planet from a couple of Australian guys we had met in exchange for a breakfast in Darjeeling, it was proving its worth since we got it, but surprisingly the information on how to get to beaches in Goa was very poor. We also half expected those ever helpful touts to be there to try and pick us up at the train station but there was none. So we figured out we had to make a journey by train and bus to the alternative beach resort of Anjuna. For a place that is so well frequented by tourists we did not expect it to be so difficult to get to, but there you go. We got here eventually via a taxi that picked us up, and a sweltered midday hike with our full packs following an ill placed drop off 1.5miles from our desired hotel.
Each state in India has its own unique history, but none more so than Goa. Apart from the previous 1000 years of history or so that it has, it was first discovered by Europeans when the famous Portuguese explorer Vasco da Gama landed in 1498. Incidentally we saw his crypt in Bellem, a Lisbon suburb in May of this year. A colony was soon founded by the Portuguese in Goa and it remained Portuguese until the 1960s when they refused to give it up to the independent India but after protests and an invasion they were forced to relent and Goa was soon to be governed by Delhi. As a result today Goa still has a strong Portuguese air about it, mainly by the presence of Catholicism. Rosary beads replace the Hindu idols hanging from the rear view mirrors and Portuguese style churches are everywhere around the coconut grooves and rice paddies, which is refreshingly familiar and idyllic.
Anjuna is full of accommodation, but its "not the season" so its mostly empty accommodation and as a result we are staying in our cheapest place yet at 500 rupees a night. Its on top of some lovely cliffs and a 5 minute walk from the beach so it great. Anjuna is a lovely laid back place, the beach is nice although quite narrow and rocky in parts. So we spent a few days around here chilling out as best we can.

After arriving I donned my Tyrone jersey as a rallying point to see if there were any other GAA supporters around, and we duly set about scouring hotels to see if they had Setanta Sports Asia, which has the rights to show the All-Ireland final in Asia. We haven't seen or heard of any of other Irish tourists in India so no one recognised the jersey and Setanta didn't seem to feature on any of the hotels TVs. But I would have been hard pushed to get them to change the channel anyway with the Cricket World Cup, English Soccer matches and the Singapore GrandPrix seemingly dominating the TVs. The next challenge then came to find a place with internet which I believed would be quite easy, but it wasn't as most internet cafes were closed. Eventually we found a place with free wifi, so I set about following the match via text updates on www.rte.ie.
As for the match itself any of my Irish readers will know that Donegal won after scoring 2 early goals which poor old Mayo couldn't recover from. So I would like to extend congratulations to Donegal on wining their second All-Ireland and as neighbours just to show there is no ill will between us I would like to dedicate the following song to their win: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dL_PXBt85rY which I went to great lengths to ensure that it was played at our wedding in California last year. Also I can't wait for Tyrone to meet you next year!

After Donegal's win the fireworks started in Anjuna. I was surprised at this development as I couldn't really remember too many fireworks for Tyrone's All-Ireland wins, and I was pretty sure that there would not be any in old Portuguese colonies on the far side of the planet. Unconvinced that the celebration was Donegal inspired, my wife enquired with our waiter and it turns out it was the end of a festival  for the Hindu God Ganesh, the four armed elephant headed god. He is the God of Wealth so he is a popular fellow and there has been a month long festival on going in this part of India and Sunday night was the culmination of the festival. It involves parading down to the beach with each family's icon of Ganesh and following an enormous amount of fireworks (which was the highlight for me) on the beach, the head of the family wades into the sea to deposit the icon of Ganesh there.

The amount of firecracker wrappers and marigold garlands, strewn across the beach was ridiculous, I can imagine that the HBPD would have half the city in jail if it happened in Huntington Beach. We were worried that the beach would be unusable for our next days lounging around. Miraculously enough the tide more or less cleaned the whole beach of the previous nights celebrations and we spent a lazy Monday on the beach.

On a side note I have also reached my own significant milestone. While wondering around Dublin airport I decided to take advantage of the weak Euro and the duty free and I purchased a  Connemara Peated Single Malt Whiskey to act as my companion through Asia. On every evening that was required I would take a whiskey or two, not only would this put me to sleep quicker but I also maintained to my wife that it was keeping me healthy. That was until we reached Darjeeling and we both became horrifically ill and the poor old bottle of Connemara started to become a burden, because apart from being hideously heavy I was now worried that drinking any of it would set my bowels off again. I eventually warmed to it again and now I have finished it. Even after living in Ireland for 7 years, my wife reckons I finished it quickly, I on the other hand am quite ashamed that it took over a month but am pleased that I no longer have to carry its dead weight around!

Our plan now is to head to the southern Goan beaches tomorrow, which apparently are even more laid back than here, this will involve, well... more laying back! Oh life is tough but we deserve it after the insanity we went through in the North. Now that dinner should be ready...

Auranagbad

Days 27-30
We are now back in Mumbai after 3 hectic days sight seeing around Aurangabad. At the moment we are just hanging about trying to kill time before we catch our train to Goa tonight. We had a good few days in Aurangabad even though it was not at all relaxing with all the cultural stops and very early starts. Still it leaves us ready for a week in Goa.
An early start at 4:30 am on Wednesday (19th) was more than adequate space for pulling out of Mumbai at 6:10 however you can never be sure especially in India. It was our first train trip by standard 2nd class, and we were nervous that it would provide us with too many interesting moments that a journey from A to B requires. Still it was the only class available to Aurangabad so we were going to have to make do and it didn't involve sleeping on it so decided to go for it. As it turned out, it was fine and apart from uncomfortable seats there was no big dramas. In fact it was a lot more entertaining than our experiences in 2nd Class Air-Con. For entertainment here was a baby being passed around the carriage that was the image of Pebbles from the Flintstones, then there were the kids performing dance routines and songs for money, and of course a man who had disgustingly long fingernails who got into a fight about a seat with the Flintstones baby's family. The conductor had to be called and after a lot of to-ing and fro-ing he eventually relented and we were soon on our way through the beautiful Western Ghats up to the Deccan Plateau which forms the core of inland India.
Up on the Deccan plane lies our destination, the city of Aurangabad. The city gained its name from our old Mughal friend Aurangzeb who decided to make it his capital for a time. It was logical enough thing to do as it would have been more central in the Mughal Empire than Agra and Delhi and he had spent much of his time here expanding firstly his father's (Shah Jehan) and then his own lands. After his death though came the city's decline, he would have done well to perhaps check the history books as a few hundred years previously, One of the Delhi Sultans, Tuglaq decided that it would be a good idea to move his capital here from Delhi. This attempt also failed but we visited the site of the old capital today so I will go through what happened in a few paragraphs.
On Thursday we visited the Ajanta caves, 105km (60miles) to the north of Auranagbad. The caves were built by Buddhists beginning at 200BC and were used and expanded up until 6th century AD when the site appears to have moved to Elora. The site of the caves is on the bend of a gorge cut by a river into the basalt rock. As if the gorge had laid down a challenge to them in rock cutting by the river, a group of Buddhists decided that it would be a good idea to cut devotional caves into the shear face of the cave, and for good measure to decorate them with frescoes. The affect is amazing, by the time they were finished 30 caves were cut into the gorge. The caves fall into 2 basic types, the chaityas which are chapel type buildings with stupas at the rear, and the biharas which are monasteries based on a square courtyard area with a rear sanctuary of Buddha. The chiseling required defies belief and this is all before the days of hydraulics or pneumatics. Stupas, columns, altars, statues and decorations are all chiseled out of the stone with the finest of detail. Not content with all the chiseling and scraping the cave dwellers decided that it would also be a good idea to start painting frescoes in the caves, many of which are still intact today. The low light and gradual wear of the pigments though means that you certainly don't get the same affect of the originals but it gives you an idea of their original splendour. After hours of wandering the caves in the sweltering heat we decided we weren't warm enough, so we hiked up to top of the opposite river bank to get a panorama view of the caves entrances and the gorge waterfall.

After another early night and early start we had three sights to see yesterday. We hired an auto rickshaw for the day to see the sights around Aruagabad, however the first action of the auto was to break down, he was promptly replaced by another one and we were soon on our way to the ruins of Daulatabad 15km from the Aurangabad. Daulatabad was a fort and city made famous by Tuglaq who was the Sultan of Delhi in 1327. In his infinite wisdom he decided that after conquering it, it was going to become his capital and proceeded to move it here from Delhi. The logistics of moving the buildings the 1300km to his new capital were going to prove too much and he made do with marching the entire population south. The march involved extreme hardship, many people didn't want to go including one blind man who was punished by the Sultan and had his legs tied to a horse and dragged to the Deccan, however only one of his legs ever got to Daulatabad. One in six of the marchers died and the whole operation proved to be completely pointless, as 2 years after they reached the new city the water ran out and Tuglaq decided to march them all back to Delhi again. The remains of the old city remain today and while they are over grown you can see what the crazy sultan had in mind. There is a series of ramparts which seem pretty impenetrable on their own, expect that they also surround a giant rock which has a fortress on top. The rock was steep enough for the defenders though and the bottom half of it is chiseled into a shear face which drops into a nasty looking moat. Even at 8.30 in the morning the climb to the top was tough and sweaty but there are great views of the city's ramparts and the huge minaret of the old city towering below.

After a quick bout of photos we made our way down and we were soon on our way to the Elora caves.
After the Ajanta caves appear to have went into a decline around the 5th and 6th centuries AD, which coincided with a revival of Hinduism, the local leader decided that a fresh start was required and although they still had Buddhist caves in Elora the main ones are Hindu as well as a few Jain caves. Not satisfied with the amount of chiseling required at Ajanta, the builders of Elora weren't going to use a rock that had been precut by a river instead they went straight in and down into bare rock. The main cave, the Kailasanath Temple required a crazy amount of work to complete. Its size reminds me of a medium sized quarry gouged out of the rock, and this is before the age of dynamite or any real machinery. Not only did they carve out all that rock but they left behind a huge mound of rock which they then proceeded to chip and carve into until they had gouged out a huge temple, two life sized elephants, two 7 metre pillars as well as side caves and temples. The amount of work required by hand and chisel is just bewildering. Photos don't do it justice mainly because it is hard to get a good view of the entire temple complex and its difficult to put the scale of the place into perspective. The remaining caves are impressive too but after seeing the mighty Kailasanath Temple they all seem to pale into significance. The only question remaining is: Which is better Elora or Ajanta? My wife thinks Ajanta but I on the other hand think that the Kailasanath sways the balance. Either way it's a close call and they surely must be a challenger to the rock carving in Petra, Jordan as the greatest rock carving in the world and if you happen to be on the Deccan with a spare couple of days check them out.

After the Elora caves we grabbed lunch and headed for the Bibi Ka Maqbara, which is better known as the "Mini Taj". In some sort of attempt to recreate history or greatness Aruangzeb's son Azam Shah decided that he would build a mausoleum for his late mother as a replica of the Taj Mahal that his grandfather built in Agra. Even though it was for his dead wife, Aurangzeb wasn't the most flamboyant of chaps and he decided that the money could be better spent building his armies or expanding his empire. As a result the building which wasn't shaping up to much of a replica anyway floundered and instead of marble, whitewash was used to get the white affect. The result is well as you can see for yourself in the photos, nowhere near the greatness of the Taj. The plaster and maintenance aside, its a lesson in proportions, the minarets dwarf the main structure which looks too thin and and scrimpy anyway. To be fair though it would be a mightily impressive building if the Taj didn't exist. Thing is though the Taj does exist and this was intended to be a replica and deserved to be judged as such therefore the other nickname it is known by does it more justice than "Mini Taj" and that is is "The poor man's Taj".

Today we had another 5am start for a 6am train to Mumbai. It was quite uneventful except for an Indian family who got extremely confused by which seats they were in and after a lot of counting of seats they eventually saw the seat numbers and sat down. Another bout of confusion followed when they realised that they were all a row out and had to shift again, it was a full half hour after they entered the train before they were seated in their correct seats!
Mumbai is now more of a drag that previously because we don't really want to be going through here again however our 2AC sleeper to Goa doesn't leave until 11.30 this evening so we have a lot of time to kill. We will be resting up in the hippy hangout of Goa for a week. Hopefully the weather and our insides will be kind enough this time to give us the rest we feel we deserve!
Meanwhile Indian politics seems to lurch from crisis to crisis. In a bid to raise capital the government has put up the price of diesel and are going to allow foreign retailers into India. This has caused consternation on the news channels, people are talking about a general strike, non ruling party politicians are pulling out of the government and the opposition are calling for the Prime Minister to resign. Not that different from "Coalgate" a few weeks back, which seems to have been forgotten about. The Prime Minister even went on TV last night and gave the insightful words to the public " Money doesn't grow on trees". And I though Irish politics were bad...
In any case I won't have another post before the All-Ireland final, which takes place tomorrow so I am now putting it on the line: I am going for Donegal! Just don't mention Leo McLoone's punch on Joe McMahon last year, Jim McGuinness's attitude or their attempts to win matches 0-1 to 0-0. Actually come on Mayo! No really I would be happy to see Donegal win and they can rely on support from their neighbours in Tyrone. But I would be equally happy for Mayo who have endured a lot of disappointment over the past 50 years or so. As for the match itself hopefully I will be able to listen to it online in Goa, I would be overjoyed if I could find somewhere that was showing it but I think this is an impossible ask.

Mumbai

Days 24 -26
We have arrived in Mumbai safe and well and we are liking it a lot! The streets are clean, our hotel is in a great area, its relatively hassle free and most importantly there is no rain and although its hot, not so bad that we cant walk around.
As we left Darjeeling on Sunday morning the rain still came down, now well into its fifth day. We were also hearing that Sikkim was having the exact same weather so we were glad that we had made the decision to leave the mountains and fly to Mumbai. I would also like to comment on Marmot jackets (I must get the exact type). Now I spent a fair bit of cash on that jacket, which as anyone will know is a big deal for me :-) but I didn't mind because I thought that it would work ok. To be fair in Ireland i never had a problem, but when faced with the Monsoon in India it reached product failure - it leaks! The back of the hood leaks water down the back of your neck and is extremely annoying. So my advise is only buy Marmot rain jackets if your are jumping in and out of light rain for short periods otherwise buy a poncho!  
We were worried about reaching Siliguiri airport in time, with different potential interruptions, but in the end none transpired and we were at the airport 4 hours in advance. While we were checking in we saw Indian labour v. Western technology and processes in a nutshell. There is a huge labour force in India and while that should mean that a lot of things get done it doesn't always work out like that. Instead what happens is that there is someone for every single job or maybe two or three! For example if you go into a restaurant there might be 7 or 8 waiters standing around in a deserted restaurant and they will stand over your table until you are done a little annoying and disconcerting. In any case as we were checking in at the airport there was no less than 5 helpers for the checkin clerk. The other 5 guys were luggage handlers, two of whom put our bags on the scale (which wasn't working!). Once the clerk checked us in a guy on the other side of the scale took our bags off and there was 2 other guys waiting to be handed our luggage and they took off with our bags off to luggage land. In the west this whole process is handled by the check in clerk and a series of conveyors but in India labour is cheap!
Our flights were pleasant although seriously lacking in knee room, I would enjoy seeing my brother getting into a GoAir seat! We transferred in Delhi airport which delighted in telling us it was the World's second best airport! In fairness it was nice although I would suggest that they should give free Wi-Fi and they could be up to No.1. After our second flight and a snooze for myself we were soon in Mumbai and after a taxi to our hotel we were soon sound asleep.
Mumbai is the city of dreams, home to the world's biggest film industry Bollywood and people flock here from across India with dreams of stardom. As a result Mumbai is the largest city by population in India (and fourth in the world) with 20.5 million calling it home within the metropolitan area. Most of these people however end up living in the many slums and Mumbai is home to Asia's biggest slum Dharavi. Originally a small fishing village Mumbai or Bombay as it was then known was taken over the East India company in 1665. Although because it was separated by the rest of British India in Bengal is never really flourished until the East India Company managed to take territory that could link it to Bengal in the early 19th century. Bombay as it was then known then took off as the major port for India, it was the closest to Europe and with the railways starting to link India, Bombay was the premier location to trade with on the subcontinent. The British built numerous civic buildings and churches in various unique architectural styles usually combining Indian with European styles. In 2000 Bombay had its name changed to Mumbai, but even this wasn't enough to stop sectarian tensions boiling over on a number of occasions. These rampages leave 100s or 1000s dead when they erupt although none received as much coverage as the attacks by terrorist groups on the trains and of course the most famous of all in 2008 when sea borne terrorists took over the Taj hotel and shot anything that moved leaving 173 people dead.

The terrorists were all killed bar one who is awaiting execution and security has been seriously tightened around the city, which was evident from our stroll along the waterfront to the Gateway to India. The Gateway was built in 1924 to commemorate the visit of George V visit. Its built in the Indo-Sarcenic style and this along with its location at the head of Mumbai sticking in the Arabian Sea gives it a very grand stature. We were surprised at the reduced requests for photos at the arch from Indian tourists and we decided we would do a sight seeing tour all the way to our next location, the train station. And how impressed we were with Mumbai, the streets are clean, there are clear footpaths to walk on, no tuktuks and most importantly virtually no gawkers or hawkers. The walk took us past some fine looking colonial era buildings all the way to our destination, Mumbai Central train station known as Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminius formerly known as Victoria Terminus.

Undoubtedly the legacy of the British period in modern India is the railways and Victoria Terminus must be the crowning glory of the network. As a railway station it is ridiculous, looking more like a college, it actually reminded me of my University, Queens in Belfast, however there is much more to it than Queen's Lanyon building. Although it was designed by English architect Frederick William Stevens in the same Victorian neo-gothic style as Queen's it seems to also have the traditional Indian styles of Mughal and Hindu thrown in as well as a bit of European Baroque for good measure. The result is amazing but crazy, its fantasy really.

Our actually purpose of visiting the train station was to try and get our tickets and after another visit today we finally have them all to Aurangabad and then to Goa. Following our excursion to the train station we headed to the cinema to catch a Bollywood film. While waiting to get into the theatre my wife actually got pointed out for littering by the security guard at the cinema! Surely a first in the history of this country, but it was all the more funny by the fact there were no bins and she had only left an empty water bottle on a table. The guard lead my wife behind the food stand where there was a random plastic bag and told her that was where she was to throw her rubbish. Clearly obvious for any member of the public who wished to deposit rubbish. I laughed out loud at this but it drew no reaction from the guard, it all made perfect sense to him!
The film itself was a comedy, about the love between a deaf and dumb man and a mentally disabled woman. No film company in the west could ever get away with it but apart from a few cringe worthy politically incorrect scenes (which the audience thought were hilarious!) it wasn't too bad and we quite enjoyed it. It was also set in Darjeeling so alot of rain seemed to feature. It was also quite easy to follow despite the fact that it was almost entirely in Hindi.
Apart from drinking nasty overpriced larger out of a very strange contraption in the famous Leopold's bar and a fantastic Chinese lunch this afternoon the only thing of note we have done is to visit the Prince of Wales Museum. An enjoyable enough museum, nothing really groundbreaking apart from a very detailed and delicate ivory box and a stuffed White Tiger, but apparently you can see a live one in the Delhi Zoo.

Tomorrow we are off very early in the morning to  Aurangabad  to see the Elora and Ajanta Caves and from there to finally relax (we hope!) on the famous beaches of Goa.
I searched the internet yesterday to try and get the hurling final results. The hurling final is actually on the 30th, but I was shocked to learn about the death of Ulster and Ireland rugby player Nevin Spence. He was a promising back and only 22 years old. He died in an awful tragedy along with his father and brother in an accident, where they were all overcome by slurry fumes on their farm in Hillsborough County Down. As a farmer's son I know that there are many dangers on a farm but these silent deadly fumes lurking in slurry tanks are one of the scariest. My heart goes out to the remaining family members. May they Rest In Peace.

Darjeeling!!!!

Day 22
This is just a quick post to let you know whats happening as our plans have changed again and much to our frustrations we are still in Darjeeling. It has been raining here constantly for at least 72 hours and counting.... It seriously hasn't stopped once! As a result there was a landslide on our chosen route to Sikkim and the road is now closed so we are still in Darjeeling. After a readjustment of our options we have decided to take a plane south to Mumbai tomorrow, where we will arrive tomorrow night.
I once saw a documentary about the world's wettest place, Mawsynram, Meghalaya State in the East of India, which is a few hundred miles from Darjeeling. One of the things that I found difficult to believe was that residents said that it once rained for 2 years without stopping. After being in the midst of the wrath of the Monsoon in Darjeeling I can now believe it. In Ireland it can rain every day for 50 days, but it doesn't rain all day everyday! Of course there are times when it can rain all day maybe even for two days but it will stop and give some respite before hitting you again with another shower or some drizzle. Here it has rained non stop for 3 days solid, usually heavy, sometimes light but one thing has been consistent and that has been water coming from the sky, and still it comes! It is extremely frustrating and to compound this as we were dreading setting off this morning through the downpour the restaurant owner told us about the landslide and there would be no jeeps going to Pelling in Sikkim. So along with the landslide, my wife's trepidation about the mountain roads and the the prospect of getting stuck in the hills we have resigned to defeat from seeing Sikkim. Also the prospect of staying in damp old Darjeeling is not a great one either, so unfortunately we have had to accept that we will not get to see the Himalayas on this trip. :-( Which is a serious disappointment as the mountains would be a definite highlight of any trip to India.
On the back of this we decided to head south with a trip to the Andaman Islands via Calcutta which was to come next on our itinerary. We began searching flights to the tropical islands in the Bay on Bengal, however the flights appear to have shot up by 3 times their original price, so we decided against this option. Our only other option appears to be to take up our Southern India leg of the trip and we decided on booking a flight to Mumbai (Bombay) via the local airport in Siliguri, which is a  3 hour jeep trip back down the mountains but at least after that we skip a torturous train journey across India. A bit of careless booking later (by myself!) means that we are leaving sooner than intended, but it worked out as it will see us arrive in Mumbai by tomorrow evening.
Our current predicament aside as I am sure you are aware world events have got a little bit nasty as they tend to do from time to time. I am not going to comment either way on the subject and hopefully the whole episode should blow over soon, and our travels in India hopefully should not be affected. Also sorry for the lack of photos in this post but there has been nothing worth photographing only grey white cloud!

Darjeeling

Days 18-21
We're on our fourth day in Darjeeling and unfortunately after initially looking promising the hill station has gradually went down hill since we have been here. Its still a fantastic little town but the weather has deteriorated badly along with our health meaning that our activities and sights have been limited. I would have liked to do a post much sooner so I would like to apologise to any regular readers. In any case I will take up our story from where we left off.
Our late train from Mhugal Sari Train Station just got later and in the end the train arrived at our destination station 4 hours late, before we caught a jeep to Darjeeling. The hills start very abruptly and steeply seemingly rising straight up out of the hot plains and as if to illustrate the affect of the monsoon, the hills were shrouded in cloud. It was 3 hours of ascending through switch backs and bumpy roads. Our newly acquired German friend and I were enjoying the amazing view as we went up however my wife was terrified, not helped my our drivers technique of negotiating the switchbacks. This involved driving as fast as the road would allow him up to the bend and then taking a wide line and allowing momentum to take him around the hairpin.
After making our way through the tea plantations and quaint villages we reached Darjeeling and to our surprise when we arrived there was no touts or rickshaws. One taxi driver enquired for a lift however we declined his 200 rupee offer and again to our surprise he wouldn't haggle so we set off on foot to our guest house. Our guest house was substantially cheaper than our previous locations as there is no need for AC in the hills. The guest house has a panoramic view around Darjeeling including the tea plantations and India's highest and the world's third highest mountain Kanchenjunga. Unfortunately for us, all we have managed so far was a brief glimpse down onto the tea plantations as the clouds have been relentlessly swirling and building obscuring our view. After much soul searching though we have decided that we will stay up in the hills until we catch a glimpse of the mountains.

Darjeeling itself was first founded by the British East India Company, however after their Army of Retribution during the Mutiny/Rebellion of 1857 the company was dissolved by the British Government, and governance of India was taken over by the British Crown under the name the British Raj. The Raj developed Darjeeling as it is today, which was a summer retreat from sweltering Calcutta and they built a little piece of England in the mountains with churches, Victorian houses and weather to match. A narrow gauge railway was built to whisk the great and the good of the Raj up to the mountains which is still in operation today and along with the similar railways to Shimla in the North and Ooty in the south was declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO. The railway is still operated as a steam train and is known as the Toy Train, but unfortunately a ride on the toy train would be entirely pointless in the current conditions as the only view would be of white cloud.
Darjeeling looks like an Alpine resort as it is perched on the side of a hill. However it has the feel of an affluent Nepali town as the population is made up of mainly ethnic Nepalis with a few Indians and Tibetans thrown in. The people of the area have been campaigning for an independent state for a few decades and this reached it peak after a few political assassinations. The Gurkha symbol of the crossed knifes is everywhere and the people  look and behave differently from the rest of India. This comes somewhat as a relief as the stares and hassling are greatly reduced, although there are Indian tourists here which means that they do take photos of us, mostly on the sly and are also quite starry. The town is extremely clean (by Indian standards!) and there are no cows gallivanting the streets, although there is still a substantial feral dog population, they appear to be much better fed that their counterparts on the plains. The town also shuts down by 9pm along with the clouds wandering the streets give the town an eerie ghost town feel at night.

Our activities here have been light on the ground but we did make it to the zoo on Wednesday, which is small but has a lot of rare animals. Although we intend to do a safari later on our trip, the chances of seeing a tiger are rare so we thought at least this would be a good opportunity to see one in India however he didn't make a showing for us as he was hiding in one of his enclosure's caves. Although to brighten our day we did see the even more elusive snow leopard strutting about his enclosure and a Himalayan Bear which looked keen on jumping out of us enclosure! Next to the zoo is the Himalayan mountaineering institute, which is a small museum documenting the mountaineering activities throughout the 20th century. Interestingly Sherpa Tenzing Norgay, one of the two first ascendants of Everest lived in Darjeeling and he was a director of the Institute before his death in 1986.

By this stage in the day my illness was starting to come on, although it was the evening before it got in full flow (literary!). With a cold fever and fluid flushing all directions with a viscosity completely unsuitable for any hydraulic pump, I struggled through the night before feeling gradually better throughout yesterday. My improvement though, was mirrored by my wife's deterioration and as I was holding in my first full meal yesterday evening my wife was going through the very same symptoms as I was.
Sitting having breakfast this morning suddenly a very familiar sound erupted to anyone in the North of Ireland, a pipe band! We looked out and what was coming towards us only a full on pipe band (Yes, Bagpipes!). The colours of the coffin were also familiar, that of the Indian Flag saffron (which looked very orange to me!), white and green!. As it paraded past us in the familiar rain we enquired what is was from the restaurant owner. He told us that this was the funeral of a Freedom Fighter who fought against the British. Now I have heard about funerals for Freedom Fighters who fought against the British before but I had never heard of one headed by a pipe band! But maybe Northern Ireland could use this as an example as the way forward .

Keeping or getting anything dry in Darjeeling is proving near impossible as the rain is near constant and the fact that we are living in a cloud means that any clothing hung out to dry appears more likely to get wet than dry! But a slight respite in the rain and with my wife appearing to be on the mend we decided on climbing Observatory Hill above the town. Although as we suspected there was nothing there to observe only cloud there was a number of temples and to lift my wife's spirits there a couple of troops of monkeys to greet us and scavenge for food. Now I am not the greatest fan of these creatures, viewing them as somewhere between a mix of feral cats, rats and magpies. But my wife thinks they are "the cutest things ever!" and had a great time feeding them popcorn amongst the temples.

From here we head on to the mountain state of Sikkim and hopefully a glimpse of the mountains.
The All-Ireland hurling final ended in a draw last Sunday so hopefully Galway haven't missed the boat for beating the seasoned Kilkenny this coming Sunday. Also congrats to Andy Murray on winning the US open, even though he has the personality of a crow at the end of the day it was thoroughly deserved.

Varanasi

Days 15-17
We are currently in Darjeeling in the foothills of the Himalayas after coming here from Varanasi, however I will keep the two locations to separate posts as they are such a contrast.
Before leaving Agra we decided to get our hands on some sweets/candy that we had seen advertised on TV. The sweets are called "Londonderry"! We nearly fell off the bed laughing when we saw the advertisement, so we decided that we should seek them out for different reasons. My wife merely wanted to taste them. I on the other hand wanted to write a letter to the company that the sweets should be renamed "Derry/Londonderry", "Maiden City, "Stroke City",  or maybe just "Saunter on". At the very least they should launch another few brands of sweets called "Derry" and "Doire".  We asked a restaurant owner about these sweets and where we could get them and apparently they were available on every street corner. I tired to explain the humour around these sweets and why it was funny to us but his reply was "Yes but you can also get "Dairy Milk". Either my story was lost on him or he thought how ludicrous is it having a city without a name that people can agree upon. But India also has controversies over city names as they have renamed all of their major cities. We were having a chat with some South Indians we had meet in our guest house and I had mentioned "Madras" in the conversation, I was immediately interrupted and corrected with "Chennai!" In any case we found the controversial named sweets at the next shop and for the record they taste quite similar to Wurther's Original.

Varanasi also known as Baneras is a Hindu holy city on the banks of the River Ganges. It is the city of Lord Shiva (the destroyer god) and each day thousands of Hindus go down the steps of the ghats on the shores of the river to bathe and wash their sins away in the sacred river.We were not expecting to like this city as it has a fearsome reputation as being dirty and crowded even by Indian standards. When I was in Nepal 10 years ago I meet a Dutch guy who had just come from Varanasi and to say that he wasn't impressed is a serious understatement. He thought that it was absolutely disgusting as the bathers share the water with raw sewage and dead bodies sometimes wash up on the ghats. So armed with this perception and fearful of what we would find there so we decided to just book in for one night at the hotel.
Throughout our trip so far we have had frequent lashings from monsoon showers. The monsoon is caused by the hot air on continental India building up during April and May, this invites the cooler moist air to rush in from the ocean until it forced up by the great wall of the Himalayas. Upon rising it cools and bubbles up the clouds of the monsoon, spawning the greatest wet season on the planet. In a cruel twist of fate for the mountains the great rains which they help spawn, in turn create the humongous rivers of the Ganges and Brahmaputra, which along with their tributaries erode the mountains and carry the Himalayan dust and rock down to the sea. However it is the silt rich flow of the Ganges that brings life and fertility to the crowded plains of Northern India, and it is here at Varanasi that we first encounter this river in full flood from the aforementioned rains. We had imagined that we would see the ghats with their temples hugging the river side but the river was swollen a full 6 or 7metres (maybe more!) and most of the ghats along with many of the temples were completely covered.
This made sightseeing on the ghats nearly pointless and almost impossible. Normally you can walk along the ghats for 4 miles but the height of the swell made this impossible.Undeterred we tried to make our way around at least some of the ghats via the side streets, however this proved difficult as the banks of the river are steep and it was extremely hot and sticky. At 7pm every evening a ceremony takes places on the Dasahvamedha Ghat, we decided to investigate. Despite our best intentions, an Italian couple asked us to team up with them in a boat to watch the ceremony from the river. Although it only cost us 125 rupees, it proved to be a total waste of money as we could have viewed the ceremony better from the shore. To be honest we weren't even sure what the ceremony was all about, it seemed to consist of a lot of chanting about Shiva and Krishna and waving flamed mini Christmas trees around. To our horror the Italian even tipped our boatman, who had done nothing except pull the boat with ropes about 10 metres into the water!

There is a citywide 11pm curfew in place in Varanasi and a lot of visible armed security. We discovered this security is for the temples and shrines, some of which are the holiest in Hinduism. If a right wing rival religious group decided that it would be a good idea to damage any of these shrines it would undoubtedly cause the underlying tensions between the religious groups to erupt. When these revenge killings boil over the numbers that are left dead are staggering. In 2002 some Hindu activists were burned in an accidental train fire, however rumours spread that Muslims were responsible and 2000 were left dead in "reprisals" . In 1983 Indra Gandhi was shot dead by her Sikh bodyguard after she ordered an attack on the Sikh temple. 3000 Sikhs were left dead after being mostly burned to death in revenge attacks. And of course the worst came after the Partition of India between Pakistan and India, when whole groups of Muslims, Sikhs and Hindus trapped on the wrong side of the new border decided to make their way to their new homeland. The refugees had to journey through rival territory and many were butchered, trains of refugees arrived at their destination full only of hacked, or burned corpses. In the end the most conservative estimates put the number dead at 0.5 -1million after a few months of savagery. So understandably the Indian government is keen to avoid any repeats of these catastrophes.
At sunrise 1000s of pilgrims come down to the river each morning to wash away their sins and this spectacle gives inspiration to many visitors but to others they see this as a bunch of people taking their morning bath. Unfortunately as two practical minded people we proved to be in the later category! This mass bathing is supposed to be best viewed from the river however with the river so swollen and fast the small row boats are not allowed out on it, so we declined against getting ripped off again and viewed bathing from the shore. However we did get to see a good sunrise over the Ganges and sure an early start never hurt anyone (except my wife!). As for the bathing itself I was decidedly unimpressed one way or the other. It just looked like mass bathing to me and the fact they were doing it in a dirty river didn't bother me much, as I thought we had encountered more revolting sights in India. My wife on the other hand though that it was revolting, helped in no small part by a ghat we had been had walked on the previous evening which we had to tiptoe around human, dog and cow excrement.

We then headed off to the main burning ghat to view the funeral pyres. A young Australian had explained to us in great detail the previous evening about how he had watched the skin blistering on the corpses and any other gory details he could think off. So we were expecting we would react to this in some way, either with sadness, disgust or horror. We reached a view point overlooking the pyres and there they were, burning remains blistering and sizzling in the morning sun over their wooden pyres. Once fully burned the ashes were cleared up and dumped in the river. Then another pyre would be built, and another corpse would be brought along to go through the same process. It looked like an industrial operation. Also there did not appear to be any family around, or any sorrow or grief, just about a dozen or so guys hard at work burning bodies. Neither of us felt much at this whole process, apart from anger at a boy who tried very cheekily to get us to "donate" to help buy wood for the pyres. My wife's reaction to an Irish wake was much worse, but as we discussed afterwards that was because of the personal aspect to a wake, where as this seemed so impersonal and public.
So all in all Varanasi has was thoroughly disappointing for us. We were expecting to have a reaction one way or the other but after all the dirt, squalor, and scamming we experienced we must have built up an immunity to it. We caught our train that evening from Mughal Sari train station 15km from Varanasi. Our train was 2 hours late and it left us with my worst view of Varanasi and that was the sight of hundreds of rats, the tracks themselves were swimming with these vermin and was really a shocking sight.

It was time to get off these plains as the smell, squalor, crowds and attention have worn our senses for too long. So we are off to the foothills of the Himalayas and the British hill station of Darjeeling. Where the cool damp air, tea and pubs should give us a bit of relief and a taste of home, which along with the sight of the snow clad peaks will inspire us to continue our Indian Odyssey.

Agra

Days 12-15
Before catching our overnight train to Agra we went to a performance of Rajasthani culture in Udapuir. It consisted of music and dancing with the various outfits from the difference areas of Rajasthan. There was also a performance from a puppeteer but the highlight came at the end when one of the ladies finished the show with unbelievable display of dancing while balancing pots on her head. At the climax she had a total of 6 pots on her head. Which were taller (and probably heavier!) than herself! It was nice way to end our stay in Udapuir as it was a relaxed and enjoyable place.

 We could only get 3rd class AC coach to Agra, which actually isn't that much worse than 2nd class AC. It has an extra bunk per seat and the beds are a little smaller and consequently a fitful nights sleep for me, however my wife slept soundly. We awoke to a much greener environment than Rajasthan. Crops seemed to be grown a lot more consistently in the countryside. I could only recognise rice and maize but I am pretty sure than there was also millet among others. As Agra shanty towns started to meet us we were treated to our first sight of that most Indian of stereotypes, public defecation. There was at least 4 guys squatting down having a dump on the track next to our train. One fully grown man was facing the train and giving us a full frontal as he relieved himself. I had known that we would see this in India but was still shocked, not so much at the act itself but more how unashamed this gentleman was. Although after thinking about it, he was going to have to give a full frontal to someone and he may as well give it to a trainload of passengers, most of whom he would never see again as opposed to facing the shanty town where he lived with his friends and family. Some of whom were sitting only a few metres away playing cards. It was not the last time that Agra would expose us to this, just this morning on the way to this very internet cafe we came across a grassy area by the side of the road where a child was also squatting, we soon realised we were in the walking along an open latrine and there was human feces everywhere.
After checking into our home-stay in Agra we decided we would spend the afternoon checking the route to the Taj Mahal as we planned to be there by sunrise the next day. After following the badly explained route by our host we reached the West gate of the Taj after what seemed like a long time. On deciding that we could go a shorter route back I foolishly made off in the direction I though we should through the side streets to the south of the Taj. These were a complete an utter maze and after 30-40minutes we were now hopelessly lost in a run down residential warren. There was no tourists, tuktuks or land marks to help us out of there. To make matters worse it was getting dark. We asked a few locals for directions, but still we couldn't find a way out. Our stops for directions had now attracted a host of local children in our wake. We started to get worried but kept moving. At last in the distance we seen lights and the noise of a main road, we seen a collection of tuktuks and negotiated a price back to our home-stay, and we could relax. Although I don't think at any point we were in any real danger it was a frightening enough to be playing the Pied Piper through an Indian neighbourhood and I was very cross at myself for letting it happen, especially with my wife there, and it was definitely an experience that I will learn from!
The next day we awoke at dawn and got a taxi to the Taj, after paying 15times the Indian entry fee to the Taj we entered the complex through its entrance gate and there laid out before us was the gardens, paths and pools all leading the way to the Taj Mahal, and what a jaw dropping sight it is. Trying to describe the Taj in words seems futile, words just don't do it justice! I will use one word to describe its effect on us and that is mesmerising. During our 2 and a half hours in the Taj the whole time we could not take our eyes of it. There are other buildings in the complex which are magnificent in their own right but the gleaming marble perfection of the Taj continually draws your eye. There is the word to describe the Taj, perfection, it is without a doubt the worlds most perfect building and easily the prettiest I have seen. The proportions, symmetry and presentation of the Taj are whats makes it this. The complex's other buildings, the gardens all leading up to the marble square (plinth) on which the Taj sits give it the perfect platform to show it off. Then the minarets and domes complement each other perfectly and along with the ridiculous symmetry combine to make the Taj the fantastic building it is. There are many more taller and larger buildings. In terms of architecture it was not ground breaking, Haia Sofia in Istanbul was built over a 1000 years before hand and had a much larger dome. Countless baroque buildings are much more ornate. The Gothic English and French cathedrals are much more dramatic, but none even come close to the perfection of the Taj. After taking countless photographs, wandering through the gardens we had exhausted the Taj but we still wanted to gawk open mouthed as the morning sun made the Taj glisten like a mirage of heaven.

And indeed that is how it was built to be, as an Islamic image of heaven when it was commissioned by the Mogul Emperor Shah Jehan. It is a mausoleum for his favourite wife, Mumtax Muhal who died after giving birth to their 14th child. The Taj itself was completed in 1653, 22 years after her death. Shah Jehan actually ended up there himself after his son Aruangzeb over threw and him and left him imprisoned in the Red Fort across the bend in the Yumua River. He spent out his days staring at the Taj until his death, after which his remains where brought to the Taj to rest alongside his wife.

After returning to the hotel we got breakfast and our helpful host was panicking that we would not be able to get tickets for our next destination Varansi, so we took a tuktuk to the train station. The tourist line was headed up by Indians most of which seemed to be cutting the queue, there were a few other tourist in the line and we decided to apply some Western standards and stop the queue/line jumping and cutting by stopping all the guys who wandered to the front of the queue and told them, "there is a line, go to the back". They seemed to get the message and after a nod they would disappear off to their own queue. In fairness some Indians were eligible to be in the tourist queue such as "freedom fighters", not sure if that would work for Translink! After our policing of the queue it soon got moving and after a dash for a photocopy of my passport we soon had our 2AC tickets for Varanasi and where on our way to the Red Fort.
Agra Fort (or in Agra "the Red Fort") was the seat of the Mughals until Shah Jahn decided to make it Delhi and built another Red Fort there. However officially for his son, Aruangzeb Agra was actually his seat of power but he spent most of his time expanding the Mughal empire. History doesn't paint a great picture of Aruangzeb and after his father took ill he seized power by defeating him in battle. He then proceeded to kill all his brothers and imprisoned his father in the Fort. Maybe the guilt got to him and that's why he spent his time battling all over the Indian subcontinent, it unlikely though as his religious fanaticism meant that he disapproved of his father's alliances and influences from Hinduism. However his campaigning meant that at the height of his powers he reigned over 1/4 of the world's population and collected a tribute of £38,624,680 - in the year 1690! Meanwhile a small battle in some uncivilised corner of Europe was taking place. After his death the empire broke up and the Mughals remained in Delhi until the rebellion of 1857. The fort itself is much more impressive than the equivalent one in Delhi, the marble places, harems and mosques are still in tact. Unlike in Delhi which were destroyed in 1857 by the brutal razing armies of the East India company. However impressive as it is, visitors are constantly drawn to the edge of the fort where you can see out over the river to the domes of the Taj, even from here the sight of the Taj dominates!

Clouds meant that we declined the sunset view of the Taj, but perhaps we will have more luck this evening before our train journey to Varanasi. For those of you that don't know Varanasi is the famous Hindu pilgrim city on the banks of the Ganges where thousands go down the steps of the ghats each morning to bathe in the River. Its not everyone's cup of tea as there is raw sewage and feces in the river along with the pilgrims. I can say now we definitely won't be joining them in that river!
Meanwhile in Indian politics the "Coalgate" controversy rumbles on and the latest I have heard is that Parliament is still stalled with the opposition constantly shouting for Prime Minister Singh to resign. Its highly unlikely that anything worthwhile will be done about it. With the example that it sets at the top level it is hardly surprising the corruption and scamming that takes place in this country.  On the home sports front good luck to Galway and Joe Canning when they take on Kilkenny in the All-Ireland hurling final on Sunday. Also after everything I am starting to lean towards Donegal for the football final, as after all they are a neighbouring county of ours and gave us support when Tyrone where in finals, but I still could can be swayed, so let me know if you think I shouldn't! Also looks like Alberto Contrador is back to his rightful place as a grand tour winner after his ridiculous ban, great to see the world's best cyclist where he belongs. Also disappointed about the world's greatest tennis player being knocked out of the American Open "but eh Roger, at least you looked good losing!"
Also I have gotten a few emails of support, thanks a lot guys, and also the comments should be working now, let me know if they still aren't.