Good afternoon,
If someone could tel my mom about this blig that would be sick, I think I lost her email address, oops. My life at the moment in brief:
Things are going really well now, we're all pretty jet-lagged still, so we haven't been having the greatest sleep, but I know I've only got a few more days like this before I'm over it so it's chill. When I am asleep I've been having the most vivid and crazy dreams that all involve Victoria and my friends. I'll wake up and I'll be like oh, I miss my leather jacket, I'll just walk over to my closet and...wait a minute, where am I? is that a pack of wild street dogs I hear fighting outside?
I know Jo has been having the same kinds of dreams.
It helps that it's actually so different here that there is absolutely nothing to remind me of home, the only thing I have to compare it to is other places that I've traveled to. It's like another way of life, I'm just a guest in this culture and I just HAVE to accept everything I'm seeing and doing.
Example: There is a buddhist monk dressed in saffron robes from head to toe using the computer beside me as "Smack That" by Akon is playing on the stereo. It's 26 degrees outside and about 20 feet down the lane there are a few cows munching on some garbage outside the district gates. And as far fetched and bizarre as that would be at home, I mean REALLY bizarre at home... it's normal here, life as usual. And I LOVE it.
We're headed to Jaipur tonight by train, and we bought sleeper tickets so we get bunks to sleep on! I'm SO stoked. We haven't seen any gross bugs yet, but loads of gross dogs and cows that wander wherever they want to, and people just ignore them or touch them as they pass for good luck or something, I don't know. I'm still figuring these things out.
Wish us safe travels to Jaipur, I know we're al realy excited about our first train ride. I'll talk to you about it in a couple of days.
Talk to you soon,
-Ben
Friday, November 30, 2007
Thursday, November 29, 2007
Tuesday, November 27, 2007
let me tell you how one falls in love
Delhi is beautiful in its disrepair. The dust seems to be getting at everything, and eating away at the very bones of the city. Things crumble and flake and not a single vehicle, be it car or rickshaw, escapes the rust. It doesn't help that all the buildings are from the early seventies and people walk around in clothes that are at least 30 years out of date.
The smog is as thick as smoke here. It's like a heavy fog has descended on the city, but the black in your nose and ears lets you know it's merely pollution. It also changes the lighting so that it always looks like dusk. Now explain that one.
The smells are overwhelming. Depending on how close you are to the nearest garbage heap, the air either smells like spicy incence or like sewage. The good smells make up for the occasional stink. Even the money smells like it would be good to eat. I'll try to hold off. (Renee pointed out that a recent study of *Canadian* money, revealed every bodily fulid can be found on it...)
People drive like absolute lunatics. There must be official rules for driving, considering there are actual lines on the road, but you'd never know it after actually driving around a bit. People somehow manage to squeeze 6 or 7 cars into three lanes, side by side. It's terrifying. I've already lived through so many close calls (sometimes in an unprotected cycle-rickshaw!). As far as merging goes, the rule seems to be honk instead of watching for other people. And these Indian drivers seem to think that squeezing your car in between another and the wall, when that space is only about 4 feet wide, is a fantastic idea.
The food is very tasty. We made it into central Delhi (which is a whole other story in itself) and ate dinner at a rundown vegetarian place, that seemed to be pretty popular. We had aloo masala and butter naan. Delicious! I want to go back. Possibly right now. Although I'm not too keen on eating with my hands.
I'm loving it here. And I love talking to you guys back at home, but I must head off as we plan to see the Red Fort today, among other adventures.
-Amelia
The smog is as thick as smoke here. It's like a heavy fog has descended on the city, but the black in your nose and ears lets you know it's merely pollution. It also changes the lighting so that it always looks like dusk. Now explain that one.
The smells are overwhelming. Depending on how close you are to the nearest garbage heap, the air either smells like spicy incence or like sewage. The good smells make up for the occasional stink. Even the money smells like it would be good to eat. I'll try to hold off. (Renee pointed out that a recent study of *Canadian* money, revealed every bodily fulid can be found on it...)
People drive like absolute lunatics. There must be official rules for driving, considering there are actual lines on the road, but you'd never know it after actually driving around a bit. People somehow manage to squeeze 6 or 7 cars into three lanes, side by side. It's terrifying. I've already lived through so many close calls (sometimes in an unprotected cycle-rickshaw!). As far as merging goes, the rule seems to be honk instead of watching for other people. And these Indian drivers seem to think that squeezing your car in between another and the wall, when that space is only about 4 feet wide, is a fantastic idea.
The food is very tasty. We made it into central Delhi (which is a whole other story in itself) and ate dinner at a rundown vegetarian place, that seemed to be pretty popular. We had aloo masala and butter naan. Delicious! I want to go back. Possibly right now. Although I'm not too keen on eating with my hands.
I'm loving it here. And I love talking to you guys back at home, but I must head off as we plan to see the Red Fort today, among other adventures.
-Amelia
Welcome to India, AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH.
I'd like to get something out of the way right off the bat:
India is absolutely...the most different, animated, wild and chaotic place I've ever been to. ever. Okay let me rephrase that, what litle I have seen of India is the most different, animated, wild and chaotic place I've ever been to.
Out of all my travels(which are numbered admittedly) I have never seen such a diverse group of people and animals live side by side so openly and oderously. Is that even a word? well, you know what I mean any way. There are people and cows and dogs and cats and garbage and birds and insects and every kind of automobile or wheeled machine, everywhere. I can tel you right now that everything I've seen of this country could be documented and sold to National Geographic. Everything that enters my vision is a beautiful and/or bizarre photograph.
The roads in Delhi are jam packed with absolutely every wheeled mechanism invented, all vying for the same road space, all honking and yelling at every chance and every close call. And believe me there are close calls(read: accidents) all the time. Don't worry, there seems to be a method to the madness, although I have no idea what that method is.
We(Amelia, Joanna and I) Are staying in the tibetan district of New Delhi called Majnu-Ka-Tilla, at a hostel called Lhasa(laza) House. The staff are super friendly and the district is really a series of connected alleyways free of a lot of the insanity that is Delhi, i.e. cows and traffic and mountains of garbage. The area we're staying in is pretty far from downtown, but the subway is only a 15 rupee($.30) rickshaw(three wheeled bicycle taxi) ride away!. We went downtown today and we all agree that where we're staying is awesome, downtown is so loud and so crazy, and for our jet lagged and sleep deprived minds it would be more overwhelming than it already is.
The flights here were fine, although the flight from Beijing to Delhi has to be one of the weirdest plane rides I've ever been on. The plane was full of East-Indian people, and they all seemed to know one another, and they all talked and walked back and forth in the isles talking to different friends and family. The poor stuardesses couldn't keep up with the demands of snacks and drinks that were being demanded constantly. It was a very loud, boisterous ride the whole 7 hours to Delhi.
Amelia and I arrived in Delhi first and decided to wait for Joanna's flight that landed 2 hours later. Unfortunately her flight was delayed by two hours and Amelia and I thought it would be better to wait for Jo than to make her face Delhi alone. That brought Amelia and I's total time in transit to about 36 hours. That is a long time without a lot of sleep, let alone the 13 hour time difference. In a bizarre coincidence, I ran into Hannah Couper, an english girl that Jo and I made friends with in Vietnam last year, waiting for her mum in the airport. It turns out that she's here for a few months as well and were going to try and meet up and some point. The world is a small place, I mean what are the odds? it was really weird.
Delhi is definitely the most polluted city I've visited and it looks permanently foggy outside. It was very confusing to our jet-lagged brains that because of the pollution, sunrise and sunset look exactly the same, so it felt like the day was done and we could go to bed, when really it was 10am. We slept for a few hours in the morning and then ventured downtown.
I am exhausted and overwhelmed and overjoyed all at the same time right now.
I can't really believe I'm here right now, It feels like no time has past since I was traveling last time, and all of my travel habits have come back to me like I'd never left. I think that maybe it's such a huge change in scenery and lifestyle that I can't really put the two lives together, one at home, the other traveling.
OR...
I'm just exhausted and overwhelmed, and trying in vain to make sense of the enormous change of pace my life has just undergone.
I think it's time to put the keyboard down, I'm starting to get philosophical, and that's a bad sign, trust me.
Thanks for reading,
I'll talk to you soon.
-Ben
India is absolutely...the most different, animated, wild and chaotic place I've ever been to. ever. Okay let me rephrase that, what litle I have seen of India is the most different, animated, wild and chaotic place I've ever been to.
Out of all my travels(which are numbered admittedly) I have never seen such a diverse group of people and animals live side by side so openly and oderously. Is that even a word? well, you know what I mean any way. There are people and cows and dogs and cats and garbage and birds and insects and every kind of automobile or wheeled machine, everywhere. I can tel you right now that everything I've seen of this country could be documented and sold to National Geographic. Everything that enters my vision is a beautiful and/or bizarre photograph.
The roads in Delhi are jam packed with absolutely every wheeled mechanism invented, all vying for the same road space, all honking and yelling at every chance and every close call. And believe me there are close calls(read: accidents) all the time. Don't worry, there seems to be a method to the madness, although I have no idea what that method is.
We(Amelia, Joanna and I) Are staying in the tibetan district of New Delhi called Majnu-Ka-Tilla, at a hostel called Lhasa(laza) House. The staff are super friendly and the district is really a series of connected alleyways free of a lot of the insanity that is Delhi, i.e. cows and traffic and mountains of garbage. The area we're staying in is pretty far from downtown, but the subway is only a 15 rupee($.30) rickshaw(three wheeled bicycle taxi) ride away!. We went downtown today and we all agree that where we're staying is awesome, downtown is so loud and so crazy, and for our jet lagged and sleep deprived minds it would be more overwhelming than it already is.
The flights here were fine, although the flight from Beijing to Delhi has to be one of the weirdest plane rides I've ever been on. The plane was full of East-Indian people, and they all seemed to know one another, and they all talked and walked back and forth in the isles talking to different friends and family. The poor stuardesses couldn't keep up with the demands of snacks and drinks that were being demanded constantly. It was a very loud, boisterous ride the whole 7 hours to Delhi.
Amelia and I arrived in Delhi first and decided to wait for Joanna's flight that landed 2 hours later. Unfortunately her flight was delayed by two hours and Amelia and I thought it would be better to wait for Jo than to make her face Delhi alone. That brought Amelia and I's total time in transit to about 36 hours. That is a long time without a lot of sleep, let alone the 13 hour time difference. In a bizarre coincidence, I ran into Hannah Couper, an english girl that Jo and I made friends with in Vietnam last year, waiting for her mum in the airport. It turns out that she's here for a few months as well and were going to try and meet up and some point. The world is a small place, I mean what are the odds? it was really weird.
Delhi is definitely the most polluted city I've visited and it looks permanently foggy outside. It was very confusing to our jet-lagged brains that because of the pollution, sunrise and sunset look exactly the same, so it felt like the day was done and we could go to bed, when really it was 10am. We slept for a few hours in the morning and then ventured downtown.
I am exhausted and overwhelmed and overjoyed all at the same time right now.
I can't really believe I'm here right now, It feels like no time has past since I was traveling last time, and all of my travel habits have come back to me like I'd never left. I think that maybe it's such a huge change in scenery and lifestyle that I can't really put the two lives together, one at home, the other traveling.
OR...
I'm just exhausted and overwhelmed, and trying in vain to make sense of the enormous change of pace my life has just undergone.
I think it's time to put the keyboard down, I'm starting to get philosophical, and that's a bad sign, trust me.
Thanks for reading,
I'll talk to you soon.
-Ben
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