Amritsar is home to one of the most beautiful temples around. The Golden Temple. Its also home to one of the most outrageous border crossings around. The Wagah Border between India and Pakistan. We endured another long hot and loud bus ride from McLeod Ganj in Himachal Pradesh to Amritsar in Punjab. We only planned to stay for one day in Amritsar because we only wanted to see the Golden Temple and the Wagah Border Ceremony. Fortunately for us, there isn't too much to write about from that day in Amritsar but there are a lot of pictures, so this is going to be more of photoblog! The Golden Temple is a very well known place of worship for Sikhs and upon entry it's immediately obvious why. The temple's gleaning golden domes shine in the sun and its white marble walkways and outer buildings are just as stunning. We quickly became a crowd pleaser upon entry into the Temple grounds, where many Indians asked to have their pictures taken with us. In Shimla only a handful of people asked to have their pictures taken with us, but in Amritsar, we lost count within minutes of being there. In fact in order to get around and see the temple we had to keep moving with purpose otherwise we would be asked for a photo op; it was a blast! After the Golden Temple we split a tuktuk with three other foreigners to go to the Wagah Border to watch the ritual changing of the guard ceremony, which over the years has become more of a sport than a solemn military event. Guards from both the India and Pakistani side march and kick their way to cheers from the massive onlooking crowd. We were lucky that we brought our passports (yeah we almost forgot to bring them to the border) and we were given VIP seating as foreign tourists, which got us closer to the action. As the crowds swelled the celebrations began with music pumping through loudspeakers and women dancing on the road that connects the two countries. In the distance we could see the border guards stretching and practicing their moves and we knew it was going to be one heck of a show. We'll let the pictures and the videos do the talking for us though!
2 Comments
To get to Mcleod Ganj we had to take multiple buses from Manali, which, in total took an absolutely grueling 10 hours. Needless to say, spinal realignments will be in order when we get to Australia. We were fortunate to have had a well deserved break in a bus station. Here is what a normal day in an Indian bus station looks like. After arriving in Dharmasala we had to take a 3rd bus up a steep winding road to McLeod Ganj, home of the Dalai Lama and the Tibetan Government in exile. We walked around found a hotel and settled in for 4 nights. One day we ventured out to the Dalai Lama's residence. On another day we hiked up to Triund, a 14km hike through two small villages, past a few chai stands, and around a few farms. The views were incredible all the way up and breathtaking once we got to the top! Along the way we stopped and had masala chai at one of the stands. At the top we made some Indian Mr. Noodles, watched some paragliders come out of the high Himalayas and enjoyed the company of a few Hindu mountain dogs. After our four night stay in McLeod Ganj we jumped on yet another seemingly endless bus ride to Amritsar, to visit the Golden Temple! Stay tuned!
ShimlaFrom Delhi we had planned to head north to the Himalayan Mountains to do some trekking and site seeing. We spent half a day arranging a night train to take us to Kalka where we would catch a toy train that would take us the rest of the way up the steep slopes of the Himalayan foothills to Shimla. We were told that Shimla was a big Honeymoon destination for Indians and when we arrived we felt like the only foreign tourists around. Shimla was absolutely swamped with Indian tourists but it had quite a nice charm to it. The views from the main town were really nice and people weren’t constantly approaching us trying to sell us stuff unlike what we experienced in Delhi. Instead we had a lot of the Indian tourists approaching us to have their photos taken with us! It was a concept that seemed really odd at first but we quickly got used to it and started to have some good fun with it! We didn’t do much in Shimla, but what we did do turned out to be a lot of fun! We had planned to send a few parcels home and to Australia so we went to a local tailor (yes that’s correct, a tailor) to have our items to send sewn into cloth packages, which were then sealed at the seams using hot wax! It was a lot of fun to watch the tailor and his assistant whip up the packages! While looking for lunch one day we were stopped by and older gentleman in the main square, he wanted to know if we needed help finding something. At first we were really apprehensive and assumed he was up to something but as we continued to chat with him we learned that he was only a retired college professor looking for a good conversation. He introduced himself as Madan and he recommended a few different restaurants for us to eat at and then politely mentioned that we were more than welcome to join him for tea at a restaurant in the main square. So we took him up on his offer and accompanied him for tea in the main square. Our conversations went from understanding the meaning of love to scientific explanations of existence to poetry! Let’s be honest the only poetry we know is the stuff we learned on Sesame Street years ago! It was a lot of fun and it turned out that Madan was written a book entitled ‘Endearing Approach’ and it’s kind of hard to describe but we understand it as a collection of poems that attempt to shed some light on our purpose of existence…we think. Anyway he used poetry throughout his entire career to aid in teaching mathematics to high school and college students. In the end we felt privileged to have met him and we are trying to find his book to buy online. He says that the publisher produces very few copies so they are quickly sold through Amazon, but he also said that the Royal British Library has a copy of it. Maybe one day we’ll get a chance to read it. ManaliFrom Shimla we took a bone-rattling 10 hour bus ride to Manali where we had planned to do a little hiking. Unfortunately Manali was even higher in elevation than Shimla and so it got quite cold at night! We stayed up in Old Manali where most of the foreigners stay. We’ve been lugging all of our camping gear around with us and we wanted to use it one last time before we sent it Australia to lighten our traveling loads. We had heard of and read a few stories of hikers who went missing near Manali. We guessed that the majority of disappearances were drug related, with Manali being the weed capital so we got some info from the Mountaineering Institute and planned to hike up to the source of the Beas Kund, the huge river that flows right through Manali. All of the people we talked to said that the hike was safe, well-marked and easily doable without taking a local guide. We are really comfortable planning and going on our own overnight trips so we went for it. To get out of Manali we took a local bus headed north and hopped off in a small village. Everything was uphill from there! We walked up to a small local ski resort where you could go paragliding for less than $10. We passed on that because believe it or not we still value our lives and continued up towards Beas Kund. We had read that the beginning of the trail was a 4x4 only jeep track; well that was written back in 2009 and now there is basically a 2 lane highway where the jeep track used to be. Luckily the highway is closed to general traffic and open only to authorized construction vehicles so as we walked up the hill dump trucks would pass us on either on their way to pick up gravel or drop some off. We walked up for about two and a half hours and finally we reached a huge construction site. We felt defeated. Even though everyone kept telling us to continue up the road to find the Beas Kund trail we stood there at this huge construction site feeling like we should turn back. They were building a tunnel, someone told us, and when we asked them to point out the trail to Beas Kund or to the Dhundi campground everyone pointed in a different direction and no one spoke more than a few words of English. We stood there, right in the middle of a massive construction zone, debating our next move when a young Indian (he looked to be in his 20’s) appeared from the forest on a hillside about 300 meters up from the construction zone. At first we didn’t think much of it; he was probably just a local farmer coming down into town or something like that. As he approached us he said, “Oh, I thought you were part of my group.” He went on to explain that he was guiding a group of Indians up to Beas Kund and that he could help us find Dhundi camp, where his group was set up. He spoke fluent English and made certain we knew that he was a real guide; probably because he knew that there might be some apprehension on our side. He introduced himself as Mowgli and took us up to the camp. Later on we were invited over for dinner by Mowgli, Raghav and Prem; three of the guides who run an adventure company called January the 14th and who were organizing this trip up to Beas Kund. We were warmly welcomed by all the Indians in the group and we enjoyed an amazing dinner and some really groovy campfire song and dance! That night as we tried to sleep the temperatures dropped… and dropped some more! We were freezing and we tried everything to stay warm in the tent. We zipped our sleeping bags together to share body heat, we put on all of our clothes and we even used our sleeping bag liners for more insulation but nothing really worked. Feeling sick and groggy we decided that it probably wouldn’t be a good idea to continue up towards Beas Kund where the elevation only got higher and the temperatures cooler. When we woke up and were having breakfast in the morning (all stuffed up and soar-throated) Mowgli and Rhagav came up to check on us and bring us a packed lunch for the day! Unfortunately we decided to turn back despite them offering us an extra sleeping bag and liner! We thought we would walk up a little ways to get some more views in another valley and then turn around for the day. When we were tried enough to call it a day we headed back towards the road we climbed up and hitch-hiked with a construction vehicle heading back down the mountain towards Manali. The next couple of days in Manali we tried to relax and enjoy a few of the sites around town before another perilous 10 hour bus journey to Mcleod Ganj, home of the Dalai Lama and Tibetan Government in exile!
I think we are going way too fast to be landing. The plane hit the runway with a bone-rattling touchdown and the pilot hit the brakes so hard that we both flung forward in our seats. Wow, that was rough. We must be in India. We had already adjusted to stifling heat in Abu Dhabi and Delhi would be no different. We called our hostel and arranged a transfer from the airport and within about 30 minutes a young man arrived with a sign reading something like, “Courtney and Andrew.” Our names were completely misspelled but you get the jist. Our first taste of India was quite exciting! Driving from the Delhi airport into Pahar Ganj in the heart of the city was like something out of a movie. Even after traveling for the last 9 months we felt like it was our first day out of Canada! Cars travel both directions on the road even on one way roads, roads are not only used by motorized vehicles but also by horse drawn carriages, cycle rickshaws and yes even elephants. We were a little tired from our night flight so we planned to just take it easy on our first day. This proved to be quite difficult. When we arrived at our hostel, which was located through a maze of alleys, it took about an hour to get checked in. First we had to walk to another building where we sat and waited for 20 minutes or so, then we were brought back to our hostel and sat and waited for another 20 minutes but at least they gave us tea. Then a guy showed up and took down our info and we were on our way. We spoke to one of the employees of the hostel and he started to recommend a few things for us to see in India, he recommended us visiting the government run tourism office for help on booking trains among other things. He then offered us a free ride to the place. Great! We thought. While we were on our way out our driver asked us if we were hungry for breakfast, which we were, so he dropped us off at a little place with pretty bad food and pretty high prices. We ate while he waited and then we continued to the tourism office. The office looked very official; it had air conditioning, government signs, desks and even computers. We sat down with a friendly man and we told him what we wanted to do and see: hike in Manali; visit the Taj Mahal, Varanasi, and the Golden Temple; trek in Sikkim and finally head to Rajasthan and then head south to Goa. We were absolutely shocked to hear that the weather in Manali was very bad right now (despite what the weather websites on the internet were showing us and what we read in our guide books). He recommended that we head up north to Srinagar and stay in a house boat for a few days, then return to Delhi and tour in a car through Rajasthan since there were no trains there. We asked for what that type of trip would cost and the price he gave us was astronomical in terms of what we had heard things would cost in India. Courtney and I excused ourselves from the desk to chat about his offer. We both agreed that this was one of those scams that we had read about, so we bailed. Unfortunately this wasn't the last. During our time in Delhi we were approached by people who were interested in getting to know us, students, dance instructors, people from Mumbai and they all had one thing in common: they wanted us to visit a local tourism office so that we could get some really good and valuable information on India. Turns out they were all touts looking to get us on outrageously expensive houseboat tours in Srinagar. Once we were used to them we had no problems telling them to leave us alone and that's when Delhi became quite fun! We loved visiting all the shopping stalls around our area! We wandered through the bustling Main Bazzar; Chandi Chowk, one of the older areas of the city; and Connaught Place, which has a combination of upscale shops and local markets. We even stopped by an interesting shoe shop where the shoes fall from a hole in the ceiling. One of the helpers asks your size and the shoe you like and calls it up to a stockroom in the ceiling and within seconds the pair of shoes you are looking for falls from the ceiling in a very comedic yet slightly dangerous fashion! We aren't very good at visiting historic sites so we've decided to try improving that here in India. We started with the evening light and sound show at the Red Fort, one of Delhi's oldest buildings that has stood through many different eras of rulers. We had heard the food was great in India but it took us by surprise even with our high expectations! It is absolutely fantastic! After we finish one meal we are already looking forward to the next one! We tried a lot of different things in Delhi and there isn't one thing I can think of that we didn't like. Fortunately we avoided Delhi belly, which is the common term used to identify one who spends three days in the bathroom after first arriving in Delhi. We had a lot of fun in Delhi but like any other city, it eventually wore on us and we grew tired of the hustle and bustle. Fortunately we've met a few people that live in the city that we hope to visit the next couple of times through! Here are a few more exciting pics to get you ready for the last leg of our year trip, enjoy! We flew with Etihad Airways from Johannesburg to Abu Dhabi. It was a great flight with delicious food and complimentary drinks! Once we landed we had to wait for our visas to get processed and book a hotel. Once everything was sorted we swung our packs onto our backs and headed for the door; as the doors opened we were hit with a wall of desert heat! Abu Dhabi is so hot! We jumped in a cab and headed for our hotel. We had decided to give ourselves a bit of luxury while in the UAE after 8 months of backpacking. Our hotel was super nice, especially compared to some of the places we’ve stayed in. It included a real bed and mattress, clean sheets, towels, TV, rain shower, complimentary slippers (which Andrew wore around town) and fast free in room wifi YAY!!!! It was really late and we hadn't eaten dinner so we ordered room service at 2 AM! In the morning we headed out to sight see; we planned to walk around then head to the beach. The concierge offered to book us a cab but we told him we wanted to walk around the city. He gave us a strange look and we quickly found out why. No one walks in Abu Dhabi, it is more or less impossible. It’s so hot, humid and sunny that walking is very difficult. We being budget travelers decided we would still try, and found it to be quite a challenge. We would walk only in the shade even if it meant walking directly beside a tall construction barrier that cast a shadow about 2 feet wide! Overall we were very impressed with how pristine a city Abu Dhabi is! Every building is unique, but they all have one thing in common; they are all new! After sweating our butts off we headed to the beach for a cool dip in the water. We were so excited to finally be somewhere where we could swim. We quickly changed out of our sweaty clothes and ran to the water. The beach front was nice and clean; however, the water was as warm as the air and had some enormous jellyfish floating in it! We had a good laugh and decided we would head back to the central market to meet up with our close friend Jacquie. Jacquie recently moved to Abu Dhabi to teach at a very prestigious school where the kids are descendants from the royal families. We were so happy to see her; we miss home so spending time with her made us feel a little bit closer to family and friends in Canada. She then showed us the proper way to tour the city…by taxi! We drove to the Emirates Palace, which you'll remember from the movie Sex and the City 2; which is an amazingly beautiful hotel with rooms starting at around $500 per night. They wouldn’t let us go inside as we were in beachwear (actually Andrew's shorts were a little too revealing by exposing his knees) but we got to see the courtyard and fountains, which were stunning! Later in the evening we enjoyed some food at a family restaurant with two sections: one for family and one for men. The first booth they sat us in was in the family section and we all had to sit on the same side. Once another booth opened we asked to switch. After dinner Jacquie took us for a drink at one of the “hidden” bars called Harvesters. We were told drinking is frowned upon/possibly illegal in the UAE but because the city is so international they have bars attached to all major hotels. The only difference is the bars are in the basement and somewhat hidden. When we went through the door into Harvesters the door man gave us a weird look. We then realized why. Harvesters houses the local prostitution scene. Most of the people in the bar were on “dates” with Thai "women". We enjoyed watching the customers/client interactions and over hearing some haggling for prices. Aside from this we had a great time dancing to the live band! The next day we got to see Jacs apartment, then we traveled to Dubai to see the Burj Khalifa or better known as the world's tallest phallic symbol. When you first see the building it seems as though it is as big as some of the surrounding ones because it is so far away. But when we got closer there was no doubting how big this monstrosity actually is! Our cab dropped us off in front of the mall; which has everything inside including an aquarium, skating rink, and every boutique store imaginable. Outside the valet sign read this "Normal, VIP and VVIP." I asked what each meant and was told VIP is for wealthy people and VVIP was for Very Very wealthy people. In a matter of minutes we saw a Rolls Royce, a Lamborghini and a Ferrari. Once we toured the outside of the Burj (because poor people aren't allowed inside...I'm not kidding) and mall we had to part ways with Jacs as she had a party to attend and we had to get back to Abu Dhabi to catch our flight to the mother land, India! It was sad saying goodbye but we had an excellent visit and will hopefully get to swing back through for another night at Harvesters on our way back to Canada, whenever that shall be! We arrived in Cape Town after dark but with the glow from the city lights we could see the outline of the mountain. The next morning we awoke to see the beautiful Table Mountain towering over the sprawling city. Our first day we spent walking down Long Street, the main street filled with shops, pubs, and restaurants. Our backpackers was in an upscale neighbourhood just off of Long Street with fairly easy access by bus or by foot to the rest of the city so we spent a lot of time wandering and getting to know the area. The next day Priscila, Rodrigo, Ivan (an ex Marine from the UK), Andrew and I climbed up Table Mountain. We started the hike right from our backpackers; for the first hour we walked uphill through the city to the beginning of the trail which is where people can jump on the gondola for a bank breaking 200 Rand for a round trip. The next two hours we hiked on one of the many trails that dog legs up the mountain. We were amazed at the beautiful views all the way up the 1010m climb. While we were climbing the weather quickly changed and once we finally got to the top the mountain we were socked in with clouds. After all that effort, to not get views was disappointing but we enjoyed our company and conversations while making our way up. Table Mountain often has what people call a table cloth of cloud resting over it. Once back of the backpackers we prepared salads, meat and vegetables skewers and all sat around Braiing for the evening. When we were in Warner Beach we met a South African couple, Pam and Rodney, who offered to show us around Cape Town once we had arrived. They picked us up from our hotel and drove us around the city and it’s surrounding areas. We visited Camps Bay, the fishing harbour of Houts Bay, vineyards on the backside of table mountain, some townships, we went for lunch at Table View an area where you get an incredible view of the city from across the harbour, we picked up their granddaughter Leila from preschool and we went up to signal hill for another stunning bird's eye view of the city. We had a blast with them and hope that they make it out to Canada some day so that we can return the favour! The following day we went with Mike and Suzanne to a Currie Cup Rugby Match where teams from each of South Africa's provinces play. It was a lot of fun but we had a hard time getting used to not being allowed to bring our drinks to our seats. Instead we had to go to the bar at halftime and have a couple. We figured out why they do this. Its because when South Africans get drunk at a rugby match they decide that they want to play rugby in the stands. |
Get updates by email!
Archives
January 2014
Categories
All
|