The great Taj Mahal

After a long search in the Varanasi train station we found our night train to Agra, the city of the great Taj Mahal. One of the wonders of the world. I didn't have alot of expectations and tried to wait to be disappointed, rather than expecting the glorious sight it actually was. We found a driver who took us to the hostel, which was really empty. Most people only stayed for a night, mostly going to bed early to get up early in the morning and then head onwards to the next stop. We didn't. It was unbelievably hot while we were staying there. And so dry. So... hot...

We had a relaxed afternoon and walked around, while Christina searched for nice things to shop. We checked the price to the Taj Mahal and were pleasantly suprised, that the price was "only" 1000 Rupees (about 13€) - people had told me it cost more, or they had paid more. But in the end we hired a guide and so it was after all more expensive.
So after starting in a too hot night we moved to the common room which had alot of beds aswell and a strong fan, where we were able to sleep. Better than in our room at least. That fan wasn't powerful at all and so the room was just too hot to enjoy.
In the late morning we headed out, had nice breakfast and headed for the Taj. We bought tickets, got a guide and were happy, that the price included a small water bottle, a shuttle express to the Taj and some other things. Such a good deal - thanks ASI!

Streets infront of the Taj Mahal, all white buildings and of course more clean the the rest of the city

View from the restaurant to the Taj in the evening. Quite good!

All the things that are forbidden... Hands? Oh gloves... Books? Newspapers? Other nationalities?!

Entrance gate to the Taj Mahal grounds - everything planned, all the numbers and so on. A masterpiece!

It looks kind of empty without the towers...

We stayed there for some time, enjoying the sight. A guide was more or less not needed. Alot of other tourists had guides and they all told the same old stories. I bet all of them have a master of history (as our guide claimed). Anyway if you go inside and wait at some spots where alot of people are standing around you should be able to hear a few words and annecdotes the guides say and know almost everything aswell. At a few spots there was security making sure no one just lingers around and the flow of visitors keeps moving (like in the Mysore palace). We found the "only" flaw of the Taj and saw some other neat things (optical illusions etc. on the Taj). It is actually really pretty. We were lucky, that most of the construction was over or at least was only on the back side of the Taj Mahal. I had seen pictures of other travellers, who were there just a few weeks earlier and the front view of the Taj Mahal was partly obstructed by construction (or reconstruction/ restauration) work.

View over the garden infront of the Taj Mahal (from the Mahal itself)

The optical illusion! The zigzags make the column look, as if it had edges, but its round!

Christina and I at the backside of the Taj

Two more pictures of the Taj Mahal

Our guide had left in search for more customers and to tell them the same stories. Must be kind of dull I think. On the ther hand, if you earn good money while only repeating something you learned long ago isn't too bad I guess.
So we took some more pictures walking around and left the Taj Mahal to go towards town. We looked at other sights from the outside, because all of them cost about 500 Rupees, supposedly the Taj Mahal Ticket would give you a discount, the 500 was the discounted price. I guess the one fort might have been worth it, but it was still way too hot to enjoy anything. We walked past it to the train station, got our next tickets to Jaipur, booked a hostel online and headed in search for something to eat. The Lonely Planet map wasn't really helpful and so we didn't find anything where it said something should be. So we took a rickshaw and he took us to a lassi place (at least we asked for one). It was McDonalds...

The Red Fort of Agra (it actually is really big!

We got a coke and went in search for out hostel in the streets of Agra. Christina tried to d some shopping, but found nothing she liked. In the evening we tried going into the opposite direction of the Taj and find something more local to eat, but were sent away by locals. They got a rickshaw driver to take us to some place. After he had passed about 20 restaurants we told him to stop and drop us at the next one. We had nice Biryani and Tali and walked slowly in the dark of Agras alleys back to the hostel. Our host had given us a better room, because he heard we had slept in the common room. It was better. So we had moved to the ground floor and slept well. The next morning we took a train to Jaipur. We were at the station on time, yet way too early. The train had an hour delay and so we waited. In the train some nice guys gave us some snacks to eat and we talked to them about the games we were playing (they were confused why we also shuffled the deck after a game, eventhough cards hadn't been used). In all we arrived in Jaipur about 2 hours late...

Holy Varanasi at the Ganges

As we arrived via train in Varanasi (it was a 23h long drive), we waited for the cab and attracted alot of attention, as usual. But a friendly indian guy waited with us, translated stuff with our driver and told us a few things about Varanasi. He was a student at the college in Varanasi and was excited to talk to foreigners and test his english with us.
Finally we found our taxi and after some searching in the streets we also found the guest house, which was hidden in a small alleyway. The owners were great. Really friendly people, warning us about current scams and other troubles. A few they told us after it happened, but I guess to warn someone about everything would take a few hours, if not days...

Ceremony at the main ghat

Making a new ship for the river

Anyway we had a nice stay, visited (of course) the holy river ganges. There are alot of places to go to the ganges, burning ghats is where the dead are being cremated publicly (if you don't belong to the family, you can't go too close).
Here is one of the places people will try and scam you. They say they help the poor and those without family to get wood, so they can be burned at the ganges aswell.
But it's not true. They will lead you to a place where you can see the burning bodies and if you are lucky will tell things about the ceremony. At the end they'd ask for 750 Rupees (for one kg of wood). We gave about 50, he started running after us and demanding more money. Friends of his joined, while he pursued us. But when Will and I sped up they eventually stopped following us.

The burning ghats - well wood stacked for the cremation

Other ghats are where devotees wash themselves and their sins away. Other places are for devotion, with temples, shrines and places for puja (roughly service to the god).
Some are more commercial where boats are attached to and start river tours and other drives for tourists. From here we also started our sunrise boat ride. Some said it is something you should do as a tourist. But the captains want alot of money and the friend we got from the guest house wasn't really helpful, he just gave us in the hands of his guy and wanted a big tip later... 

Raja Ghat (taken while on the sunrise boatride)

Sleepy Jakob infront of the rising sun

Foggy Varanasi on our sunrise boat trip

Buffaloes going for a swim

Temple under water...

One important thing was the evening puja/ ceremony at one of the main ghats. Here several priests performed their rituals infront of a big crowd. Boats tied close to the bank and alot of balconies filled with tourists. At the end alot of hindus walk Down to get a blessing, recieve something blessed or just to dip inside the ganges. I aswell walked down on the last evening with Christina and we both wet our hair with the water, I tried copying a hindu ritual: you get holy water/ liquid, drink a sip and use the rest to stroke over your hair. So I drank some of the Ganges. Not too tasty, but I did not get sick!

The Ganges shortly before I went in for a dip...

In Varanasi we had really good lassi, there are a few Shops making them traditionely and very good! We also found an amazing dosa Café in the small alleys of the City  (there are alot close to the river of Old varanasi). They also made them like Crêpe - so with cheese, Ratatouille, nutella and stuff like that. Very good
It seems to be a very open place for drugs. You might not be able to go somewhere in Old Varanasi without someone offering you Hash, Marihuana Opium or mushrooms. Supposedly there is also a temple, where people offer marihuana and it is burned there directly. I didn't g there, but I guess those priests have a great time at work!

The last day Christina got a henna. Me being open minded and her urging me to get one (well ok, she just said: "Come on Jakob! Do it!"). So I did. Later we found out, only married men (and only at the wedding itself) do men get hennas. Not just for fun like women do. Well... I'm not married. A shame really...

The freshly made henna

A pretty Bunny-goat (because it has big ears like a bunny!) - so pretty

Will and me, goofing around at the main ghat (daytime, no ceremony going on)

In Varanasi Christina and I split from Will. He wanted to go to Nepal sooner and stayed there while Christina and I left for Agra, the city of the famous Taj Mahal!

Random pic of the day: A monkey hanging around - Eier schaukeln ( germanliterally: swinging your balls - relaxing and doing nothing)

Jalgaon/ Fardapur/ Ajanta

Early morning I arose to my alarm and checked our position. Luckily I had reception and saw we were about an hour late, so we could sleep a little longer. Well the others could I rarely can fall asleep once I'm up.
I wanted to go to this place because it is supposed to be beautiful - Ajanta is known for the caves important to buddhist monks. So William and Christina agreed to do this stop with me and we checked in into a small hotel and got it pretty cheap (I guess almost no other room, if at all, was booked). We tried to get a train onward and realised almost everything was booked. The only option was 2AC (expensive with only 2 beds per wall) to Varanasi. Our plans to visit a tiger park on the way were gone when we found out, that the parks only opened in the second half of october!
So we booked the train (or tried and tried and tried). Finally my visa card was accepted by the website of the indian railway and we had the tickets. Before that we tried with all our cards and different options. No use. It took so long, that even the tickets for the 2nd AC class were getting scarce... luckily, in the end we succeeded!
Then we headed out to the caves. We took an auto and were unbelievably annoyed by all the money to spend to get there. Apparently we have to pay a charge to walk over a parking place and be talked to by all these vendors, then we have to pay for a bus to get to the cave entrance and then we have to pay 500 rupees. This price was again raised a few months back from 250. We should have done some research...
Wait... 500?! So this site also belonged to the Archeological Survey of India. Thank you ASI...
I tried argueing with the people untill the security guard came and he realised I had payed and only wanted to know why it was so expensive not causing any harm, other than wanting them to understand my english and talk to me. They couldn't so I gave up and we went inside. Guides talked to us and wanted more money, when we said we already paied 500 and we can't pay more they told us to complain to our embacies, that the foreigners prices are so high...
Anyway we ditched them and went inside the caves. It was very interesting. Each cave had a big statue of Buddha and each of these statues had a different hand gesture. Sometimes involving both hands, sometimes just one. As far as I can remember it was always a different one, implying that these all have a significant meaning to buddhists or at least the monks. And maybe each cave being used for one sort of ritual or something like that.

A panorama of the valley (taken from on of the last caves if I remember correctly)

A small look on the all the caves and the small valley they surround

Even outside the monks show buddha and in the background 2 indian men holding hands

A smaller Buddha (the big ones were mostly too dark)

A bigger Buddha

Two elefants at the side of this gateway into a cave:

There were over 30 caves in total, not all of them were open for visitors. In a few caves the ASI had small exhibits about their work here, not really saying anything other than "we are working at the cave" "look here, we have cool tools to restore this cave!" So yeah... kind of cool I guess.

A small modell of the valley and the caves

Anyway... The caves were cool and some really impressive to walk through. We were almost always way too long in the caves. At least comparing our time in a cave to that of other groups and people. There was a big group of indian women, all dressed in pink sarees, who started half an hour after us and were finished 2 hours earlier I think... We took our time and let the feel of all the caves sink in. William said he could very well imagine meditating here in the caves, so calm and far away from all the busy traffic in India. If it wouldn't cost that much...

The pink ladies walking to the next cave

A Buddha monkey, waiting to meditate in peace... (not sure if Buddha monkey is actually a thing...)

A small Buddha statue on the side of one of the caves

Inside a cave, small paintings showing Buddha and other small carvings

Cool looking doorway

CHristina and me infront of the last cave entrance

(or at least one of the last - not the same doorway as before!)

Shortly before the caves closed it started pouring. Luckily we were near some houses and got refuge there. We waited till it had calmed down and the took the same route back. Paid for a bus and when we wanted to complain about our "parking ticket" (we had paid in the beginning) no one was there to complain to. Grudgidly we retreated back to Fardapur, had nice dinner and waited for the next day to head back to Jalgaon and get into the fancy train to Varanasi!

It took quite a while for a bus to arrive and bring us to Jalgaon. In Jalgaon I searched for a post office. Finally I gave up and took a tuktuk to one. In the post office no one knew how much a postcard to Germany costs so they sat me down and the work in the post office stopped. Everyone was staring at William (who joined me for fun) and me. Then they told me it cost 30 rupees. 30? I told them it just cost 15 in Kodaikanal. Kodaikanal doesn't have a train station, their trainstation in Jalgaon is 2 km away, how can it be more expensive?! Because I wanted to send the postcards I paid and heard them apologize and say it's the system not them. I told them to tell their Boss it's a stupid system. Jalgaon is closer (by airmiles) to Germany than Kodaikanal and has a better infrastructure, it shouldn't cost more. It was the most expensive a postcard had ever cost me in India. While I was discussing even more Indians had shown up. About 20 were standing infront of me, while I was talking to them, William had to restrain himself from laughter. I finally bought the stamps, gave them the cards and left. They told me they would complain on my behalf about their system.
Then we waited at the train station and I felt like in a zoo. Here apparently it is once more rare to see foreigners and so everyone stopped and stared at us. The entire stairway to the other platforms was filled by people looking down at the foreigners who were waiting on their delayed train. William got really annoyed and started asking for money for even looking at us. When one man wanted a picture of Christina she asked him for 10 Rupees and he actually gave it to her!
When we found out at which platform our train left we moved there and weren't in the center of stares any more. Not as many people walked by here.

The train class was kind of a joke. We got sheets, a blanket and a pillow. Additionally the side beds had curtains for each bed, which was nice, but no power outlets! The horror for Christina and so she always asked other people to use their outlet. The food was cold and bad and they actually charged more than it should have cost (never happened to me in the sleeper class, or the price was still cheap by restaurant standards). I was really desillusioned by the great fancy 2AC coaches and felt validated, that the sleeper class is unbeatable in price and comfort. Because the other classes don't really offer more comfort (except the curtain, which I wouldn't pay extra 1500 Rupees for)...
With a delay of 3 hours we arrived in Varanasi, the holy city at the Ganges.

Colonial lord Jakob and Foto-ception: Will taking a picture of Christina taking a picture of me