To Beam: LOL, me and the rest of India by the smell of Bikaner.
So, we went to Jaissalmer, now more then a week ago. It is a deserttown near the Pakistani border, tourism accounts for 90% of the income. The trainride to the place was nice, till 2 hours before arrival where dozens of touts boarded the train. These Mofo's just go and sit next to you and while reading (me) and sleeping (gf) they start to tell about the hotel that is the "best". I and some italians got realy pissed at them and we nearly had a good'ol trainbrawl. The weaklings left because of my great posture (and some 300 kilo of sicilian brute force
).
In Jaissalmer the one thing to do is to take a camelsafari. We took one with an English couple and 3 guides for 3 days. It is VERY heavy, we did 70 kilometers in 3 days with temperatures seerig to 44 Celcius. My Camel was nice however and we realy got to know eachother. By the second day I got used to its farting (trust me, these babies fart like there was no tomorrow.). We slept under the desert stars and that is great! There is also more life in the desert then I thought. At night we were surrounded by desertdogs, lizards, lots of birds and a throng of mice. After this all, we went to Bikaner, very tired.
Bikaner is a weird city. Less tourism means some friendlier people, but less english, but more poverty means more desperate touts, thus more annoyance. 42 Celcius means the "swamp" of Bikaner vents out a terrible smell, the worst I ever smelled. The Swamp is actually a "pond" size of 4 footballfields where swans and flowers would provide a nice scene. In reality it is the place where Bikaneri drop all their Garbage and is also the main sewage collect reservoir. Terrible.
Near Bikaner we also visited the Rat-temple where 100.000 rats roam freely and are honored. Also smelly to say the least, but also bizarre. We saw the very rare white (albino) rat and that should mean luck. They were wrong.
The heat of Bikaner was compensated in other parts of the country. Delhi and northern India were sufering very heavy rains, with some plces claiming 300MM in 12 hours (Holland has 700MM in a year). It was therefor impossible to travel North from Bikaner. We had only to go to Delhi and try our luck on getting to the mountains there. WE took a nighttrain to Delhi, which was doable but sucked sleepwise. I got to meet a group of Indian officers in the army and they were nice (and rough!!). We had some great chats about military (though the Pakistani point of view on this may differ...). Back in Delhi we opted for a nightbus to Shimla, in the mountains, recommended by our also recommended hotel. The bus was sadly a minibus with zealous drivers who needed it full whatever the waitingtime...aaaaarggh. The ride was awful and I slept zero hours.
So In shimla, we were rained upon by water as well as 40 touts (yes, just for us 2 tourist disembarking a minbus). We got to a closeby hotel, without touthelp naturaly, which was nice at first glance but heavily sucked later. As the toilet smelled, the blankets provided stank and the matrasses were too thin. To make it worse we both ate something wrong again. I had minor trouble but the gf some more...stuck here in Shimla we hope to catch a bus to Manali day after tomorrow. Leh is alas off the list as it will not allow us return to Delhi in time...
On the bright side, this survival is very much a lesson, and a wise one indeed. Hope you all enjoy the holiday season as well and see you in 8 days or so.
For those who wonder, I will be back in time to go to The stratumseind on next Friday the 20th.
