20 - 21/1: Udaipur

We arrived quite early in de morning at in the station of Udaipur. In a few minutes we were surrounded by lots of tuktuk - drivers and city guides (off course). Some of them tried to show us the hotel of a friend. Since we were looking for one we picked one out and went to see it. When we arrived, the room looked nice and the tof roof restaurant wasn't bad as well so we decided to stay.
The old city of Udaipur is small. Everything is at walk distance, which makes it very nice. The narrow streets are filled with shops. The city is less dirty then others .. but maybe that's just my imagination. The city palace of Udaipur is really very beautiful. The lake palace looked very nice from distance but we couldn't visit it because it now hosts a hotel which is not very happy with non-paying tourists.
The first evening we had to stay inside the hotel because there was a Muslim festival going on and the hotel gate was closed. We had a nice view over the festival from our hotel room windows.
The second day we went to Ship Gram, this is a tourist park with different kinds of houses, found around India and it also hosts a lot of handicrafts. This park is a very small version of "Bokrijk" in Belgium. We had some delicious dinner in a restaurant close to our hotel with view over the lake.
In the evening we took the night train to Ahmedabad.

19/01: Pushkar

In the morning we checked out from the hotel in Jaipur and we went to the Holy village (it is a very small place) Pushkar.
The village is full of temples, "Holy" man, tourist shops, restaurants and cows.
First we went to the Holy lake, where the brahms ('Holy' man did a ritual with us ... seperate). After that they wanted us to tell them an amount of mony to give to "charity". I luckily gave nothing but Jan gave "just a little bit to much".
So if you ever go to Pushkar, go look at the temples and shops but please skip the Holy lake ... it is full of trash anyway!!
After this dkjfjsabfjsjkfs we still had some very nice pasta (vegetarian food because meat and also alcohol is not allowed in Pushkar) and took the taxi back to Jaipur. On the way we stopped a Marble Wholesale shop and there we could really buy very cheap nice marble!
When we were back in Jaipur we took the night train direction Udaipur to arrive there in the morning.

17 & 18 / 01 - Jaipur

We started off Jaipur with a city trip going over the most important / famous palaces and temples... After a quick stop at a tower that overlooks the old city, we ended up at the City Palace Complex. It contains several courtyards, some gardens and other buildings. Inside, you find several museums about clothing, armory and some artwork. Most impressive were 2 giant silver urns that were used to transport water when some Indian king went to visit King Edward in England. They are in the Guiness Book of World Records as the largest silver objects n the world. Next to the palace, you find a open air observatory (astronomy). We skipped this since it didn't look that interesting without a guide and we had to pay yet again to enter.
From here we moved on towards the Hawa Mahal or the 'Palace of Winds'. It's more like a big wall from where royal ladies could overlook the daily activities on the street. We noticed that here too, everywhere the walls are filled with scribblings by people with lack of respect. Too bad we thought once again. Our rickshaw for the day took us by Albert Hall (a large museum) that was closed for one year due to restorations. Onwards we stopped at the 'Doll Museum'. It looked very closed at first sight and we payed it a visit more out of respect for the school for deaf and mute that hosts it.
A little further we arrived at the Birla Mandir or Lakshmi Narayan Temple. This was definitely worth the visit. It's a beautiful white temple with 2 great statues in it. Since we had to leave our stuff at the gate once again, we quickly payed it a visit separately.

Our second day in Jaipur was more off a excursion day. We drove off towards the mountains and went to visit some forts in the neighbourhood. The first stop at 11km from Jaipur was the Amber fort. For the lazy ones, you can go up the steps towards this fort on a elephant. We took the foot-wagon and in about 10 minutes you are on top. It's a maze of stairs and rooms with courtyards with a great view on top. It also houses several temples.
Another rickshaw drive further up in the mountains took us to a small apartment complex. It houses 5 separate apartments and each one is nicely painted all over the place. The restaurant here is also worth a visit.
The next big fort that was awaiting us was Jaigart fort. This complex houses the biggest movable canon in the world, that was ironically only fired once to test it out.
Driving back towards the city, you can catch a glimpse of the water palace lying in the lake.

We stopped in the old part of the city for some time-filling shopping at the end of the day. Same as always... "yes friend, what you want". After a while, we ended up in a small shop in some alley of a guy that was making jewelry. After getting out of there (with a little money less and some jewelry more), we concluded our day in the pizza hut where the pizza hut boys surprised us with a little dance: Happy birthday Elise :-)

Agra: 16/01 The Big Day of Taj Mahal

The alarm clock was already ringing very early that morning. It think it was around 5 in the morning. Why? We decided to see the Taj Mahal at sunrise.
At 6 we were all ready to go and at a quarter past 6 we arrived at the Taj.
It was still dark and i think only one more person was there that time.
We picked out a nice spot to sit and wait until i was more clear. At around 6.30 it began to become clear and around 7:00 - 7:15 the sun was really coming up.
Seeing the sun coming up at the Taj Mahal was a very nice experience. It was so nice and quite (but also very cold) ... until a crowd of Indian tourists came haha.
I made some pictures to see the evolution of the Taj Mahal during sunrise and i hope to have some nice ones.
Legend relates that after the Taj was finished, the right hand of the building chief was cut off because he wanted to be sure that no copy of this wonderful building would ever be made. (still some copy's are made ... but none of them can reach the beauty of the real Taj Mahal)
After this i discovered my camera's picture settings were set to Small. I Really hope i still can make some printouts. Dad??
Aroud 8 we were back at the hotel, had some breakfast and checked out. We went to Fatephur Sikri with a hired Taxi. The guy would drive us around for the whole day for a fixed price. Tis was a really good option for us cause this way our backpacks could stay in the car.
Fathephur Sikri is a spook city. It was abandoned shortly after building time. For a long time, people thought is was because there was no more water but now some say it was for political reasons.
It contains some nice palaces and gardens.
The taxi driver took us back to Agra and there we went to see the Agra fort ... well ... the view from the lake. All entrances to forts, Palaces, ... are really expensive for Tourists and so we skipped this one. The legend relates: the emperor, who build the Taj mahal for his wife, was locked up in the Fort by his son. He wanted to build a black copy of the Taj for himself and then the city would have been broke. From his room in the fort he he could see the Taj Mahal.
After the fort we did some shopping and we took the train for a five hour trip to Jaipur.
The train trip began already with a fight about somebodies luggage and it was never really comfortable. happily, somebody from the hotel we booked in Jaipur was waiting at the station!!

Delhi - Agra: 15/01

We went to see the Red Fort. This very big fort was really worth visiting. Sadly everywhere you can see a lot of trash and discusting spitting corners (= overal is er veel afval em vuil en in veel hoeken speken de Indiers het rode goedje uit dat we kauwen)
We also went to see two temples close to the fort ... but they were closed for working.
After a nice meal we went to the busstand where we took the bus direction of Agra at 14:00.
The bus was really going very slow ... Delhi seems to have some bad traffic jams. (= file)
We only reached Agra around 19:30.
Because we didn't book a hotel we went searching for one. After seeing some cheap and bad rooms ze found one that \wasn't too bad. Service was not the best but we had a good bed!!
We went for dinner and had a very good time laughing with the boys of the restaurant.

Merci!!!

Merci allemaal voor de verjaardagwensen en leuke berichtjes.
Ik heb een hele leuke verjaardag gehad. 3 mooie forten bezocht, beethje geshopt en nen armband gekocht en 's avonds zijn we in de pizza hut gaan eten. Daar hebben de pizza hut boys voor ons een dansje gedaan ... super grappig. Het is gefilmd door engelse jongens die ook in ons hotel in jaipur zaten en het zal wel op youtupe terecht komen :)
Die engelsen gaan trouwens naar dezelfde plaats in goa als wij ... dus die zullen we nog wel tegekomen.

Trouwens ... de berichtjes komem btw echt wel aan ... ik moet we gewoon eerst goedkeuren voor we op de blog komen .. amders krijg ik veel spamberichten ... no worries dus

voor de rest alles ok hier. seffes vertrekken ze hier van in van ons hotel in jaipur. ga proberen de blog nog wat aan te vullen de komende dagen.seffes naar Pushkar voor een bezoekje en dan deze avond de nachttrein naar Udaipur. Hopelijk valt het wat mee op de trein want van Agra naar Jaipur was het al ne fight op den trein en het was ni echt comfortabel. Gelukkig was het "maar" 5 uur haha.Alle tot een dezer!!!
groetjes,
Elise en Jan

Delhi: 13-14 January

13/01:
We arived in Delhi around 12 o’ clock (noon).
A long row was waiting for the passport check but finally we got out. We took a prepaid taxi to the address we got from Kamal, our host in Delhi. Because of a marriage in his family his house was pretty crowded and so we stayed with a friend of Kamal: Kaushi. He is a loyer in Delhi and was very nice and friendly. Around 3 we arrived at his apartment in a richer neighborhood. We were quite tired because of the long trip but we filled our time well by going to the Lotus temple and resting a little bit. The lotus temple is made of white marble with 13 pools around it. All religions can come here to pray, meditate … as long as they do it quietly. The outside might be very nice, the inside on the other hand was not really special and quite crowded.
It was much colder then we thought it would be so we were quite cold. After putting on some more clothes, it was a little better.
In the evening our Kaushi arranged a meeting with some other Couchsurfing travelers: two French girls and a Mexican boy. They were traveling all over the world and it was nice meeting them and talking a little bit. We brought some Belgian Chocolates: the famous Guylian Sea fruit (zeevruchten) and everybody liked them very much.
At last we went to bed, tired as we were….

14/01:
We slept a little too long but I think we needed it.
We took an Auto - rickshaw to the city centre market: Connaught place. Traffic was really heavy and made us think of our stay in Mumbai.
We went to see the the Mosque but there a guy proposed to see old delhi with him as a guide. It was the the known story: you don’t have to pay me but if you are happy with my tour, you just give me something. We took our chance … Actually the tour was nice. We saw some of the houses in the maze of little streets in old Delhi. Some of them were really beautiful. He also wanted to show us some very nice (cheap?) shops were we bought some stuff. I’m sure that he got a commission on them, because he insisted on taking us there over any other place. It was a good feeling too that we were not the only ones that fell for it, we passed some other Belgians there too. They must have been as surprised as we when they heard some Flemish. Afterwards he took us to (in his words: a house bigger than the mosque) a big bazaar filled with wholesale of spices. That was rather a harsh attack on our lounges. Even the Indians around were coughing all the time. The best part must have been the top roof though. It gave a splendid view over Old Delhi. On this roof, we met the other Belgians again. So, these tours are probably pretty much the same. At this point, we had a first thought about what we would pay him. He started off the tour with pointing out we didn’t really have to pay him anything, we would soon find out that the reality was a bit different: He told us we should take care of the money matter first and added the fact he charged 650 rupees an hour. Obviously, we were disappointed to hear he charged so much. We were even more disappointed when he didn’t feel 1000 rupees were enough. So, if you ever take this kind of tour, make sure you agree on a price first, or be prepared to be heartless and don’t give in to the begging for more (We failed and gave him 300 more). After taking us back to the street, we took a regular rickshaw back to the mosque (this is a weird feeling… sitting in the back of somebody trying to move through the traffic with everybody looking at you… WHITE GUYS!). In the rickshaw, we catched up with the Belgians (yet again). So we jumped off, and joined them for just a little while more. Even though there were some people praying, you could still visit the mosque. It was pretty peaceful apart from the massive amounts of pigeons (duiven) and some children doing the take-my-picture-for-some-cash trick. Back at the main road, we found a little clothes-market. It was actually quiet, probably because it was not ran by Indians, but by Tibetans (that’s what we learned from the free Tibet posters hanging around). And they had some pretty nice stuff too. You can have a look around here without repeating “no thanks” every 20 seconds.
By now, we were starving, so we headed back to Connaught place to grab a bite. We did some window shopping here too: There are loads of western-like pricy shops here. I’m thinking adidas, nokia, levis, … After having some Chinese food, we headed to the lounge bar upstairs called Spirit. Here we met up with Kamal, who would have hosted us normally if he didn’t have family over to visit him. After another busy day, we returned to our host and hit the bed as soon as possible.

More will follow this evening. Now were going on a city tour through Jaiupur.

Byyyeee

greetings
Groetjes aan iedereen

Elise en Jan

Departure

We are leaving!

With a swift combination of bus, train and plane, we should be in Delhi pretty soon. I should probably getting ready right now. And so I shall.

You can get a better picture of our trip if you take a look at this nice google maps thingie:

The Thingie

We'll try to make sure you hear from us again!

Jan & Elise

Info Udaipur

Jaipur - Udaipur 405 km (night train)

Udaipur is famous around the world as a romantic city, the City Of Lakes or Venice of The East. The Pichola Lake, Fateh Sagar, Udai Sagar and Swaroop Sagar in this city are considered some of the most beautiful lakes in the state.

Places of Interest:

• City Palace: Standing on the east bank of lake Pichola, is a massive series of palaces built at different times from 1559 A.D. The balconies of the palace provide panoramic views of "Jag Niwas" (the world wide famous Lake palace hotel), Jag Mandir on one side and on the other the city of Udaipur. Its main entrance is through the triple-arched gate - the Tripolia, built in 1725. The way now leads to a series of courtyards, overlapping parations, terraces, corridors and gardens - a harmonic profusion hard to describe. There is a Suraj Gokhda, where the maharanas of Mewar presented themselves in the times of trouble to the people to restore confidence. The Mor-chowk (Peacock courtyard), gets its name from the vivid mosaics in glass decorating its walls. The chini chitrashala is noteworthy while a series of wall paintings of Krishna are on display in Bhim Vilas. There are numerous other palaces such as Dilkhush mahal, Sheesh mahal, Moti mahal and Krishna vilas - in memory of a princess of striking beauty who poisoned herself to avert a bloody battle for her hand by rival princess. Now the palace contains many antique articles, paintings, decorative furniture and utensils and attracts thousands of visitors every day.
• Lake Palace - Originally known as the Jag Niwas, took three years to build and was inaugurated in 1746. Nothing but marble is used in the composition of this palace. It is now a luxury hotel.

• Fateh Sagar Lake- Lovers Paradise : Fateh Sager Lake is one of the most romantic vicinity for young lovers, it is situated in the north of Lake Picholas. It is the most peaceful and relaxing place to spend leisures for much of the travellers and Udaipur localities . This beautiful Fateh Sager Lake bestow with infinite beauty of the Aravali hills at the backdrop of serene lake body. It was originally build by Maharana Jai Singh in the year 1678 AD, but later on reconstructed and extended by Maharana Fateh Singh, As lot of destruction was caused, due to the heavy rains. Whereas, today Fateh Sager Lake is the most preferable site for endless wanderers, the mornings and evenings are very much refreshing around the lake, and in the middle of lake, you can see a grand Nehru park, which is a popular garden island, showcase an image of boat shaped cafe. The lake is one of the major attractions of Udaipur, these are some real moments that you will going to witness, once please your eyes with the precious sapphire of Udaipur.

This info is not complete...