So peace ended when Krystle and I arrived
into the Rishikesh bus terminal. Once again, we had to guess and in vain ask
several locals which bus we had to take. Finally a couple of French girls
helped us find it. We arrived in Haridwar train station when it was already
dark and took us a little while to locate the train we needed to take to
Jaipur. We had bought second class tickets, the only option available for that
date, which consisted again of very narrow bunk beds, six of them crowded in a
small space. During the twelve hour ride, the doors of our wagon were open and
a draft of cold dessert air kept us shaking all night. We had not brought
sleeping bags and had to wear everything that we had: jackets, double pair of
socks, scarves as blankets.
In Jaipur, the pink city, people are pretty pushy
and unfriendly. We had arguments with an unscrupulous rickshaw driver and a
tourist-hating tour salesman. Yet the Amber Palace, its main attraction, was worth
the visit. It is a lavish building that was used for a mere few years and is surrounded
by a fortress. Bands of birds fly perfectly coordinated above it and people
enjoy rides on colorfully painted elephants.
Amber Palace
A couple of buses away from Jaipur is
Pushkar. This quaint town is famous for the annual cattle sale that attracts
thousands of people. We were there for only twelve hours, enough time for a
night camel ride and dinner. After dinner, while walking back to the hotel in
the tiny downtown area, a cow attacked me. I tried to pat her, as I did in Rishikesh
with all the cows, and she suddenly turned her head and knocked me in my elbow.
I am not sure if she got scared or was vengeful, as if she could perceive how
many of her kind I had eaten when I was a child…
Another bus took us to Agra. Agra is a dirt
and uninteresting city, except for the fact that somebody built the Taj Mahal
there. So, we caved in as many people do, and lined up early and paid a high
price to get a few shots. We had to be sneaky to get the pictures we wanted,
while the guards yielled “No yoga poses!” –yet, they allowed a group pose in
Santa hats.
The
last stop was Bangalore, in the south of India. To get there we flew from Delhi.
The bus ride from Agra to Delhi was the ride of hell. A mere 267 kilometers, it
took us nine hours of a torturous ride in a substandard bus with no suspension
on a less than perfect road. My organs rattled so much inside of my body that I
believe they may have not come back to their original place. We spent the night
at one of our friend’s from the course home, Yruti. Bianca, another classmate
from Brazil, was staying there too.
In Bangalore we visited another classmate, Gowrisha,
and met his wonderful special friend, Lakshmi. They took such great care of us, brought us to
a wedding celebration (where we got to wear sarees and bangles), made delicious
food for us and had us stay at their beautiful homestead. The whole Bangalore experience
was so peaceful that we felt in a different country. A different India.
Gowrisha's homestead
And then… The sad return to Bangkok…
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