By train from New Delhi to Mumbai (Bombay) for a few days.

Eighteen hour night train to Mumbai – sharing 2^nd class compartment with Max, American who is freelance journalist for the NY Times, moving from Delhi to Mumbai. Intelligent, informative, interesting and charming company.

BOMBAY! Seashore hotel in Colaba, touristy and backpacker part of town. French restaurant with whole grain large round loaves of bread, yippee.

View from our room, Gateway to India

Inside the Seashore Hotel, nice and clean

Another view from our hotel

The monsoon season had not yet ended.

Fishing boats in Bombay harbor.

Feeding pigeons at The Gateway to India

The Taj Palace Hotel on the Colaba waterfront

Ferry across Mumbai Harbor to the village of Mandwa past 2 oil or gas platforms, rusted tankers, rusted dredgers. Not much there but peaceful and a good break from the noise and bustle of the city. Could not find a café for lunch, and a kind local man invited us into his house, introduced us to his 96 year old father and gave us 3 bananas each.

Ferry boats in front of the Taj Palace and Gateway to India

Our ferry to Mandwa

Leaving Mumbai for Mandwa

One of a number of oil platforms in Mumbai Harbor

Standing guard at a local house on Mandwa

Nice old colonial house at Mandwa

More fishing boats with Mumbai in the distance

Back to Mumbai and 4 days hiking around town – very crowded market adorned by Rudyard Kipling’s Dad’s friezes.

Frieze created by Rudyard Kipling's father almost 100 years ago

Kalighoda area of current art scene, old synagogue, David Sassoon 200 yr old Library, gorgeous corner view from hotel room – harbor, Gateway of India, street life and hundreds of crows. Fed the crows from the window ledge. 1^st look at whole families living on the street. Moms are street sweepers. At night parents spoon the little kids and by 8 yrs old they are sleeping separately on the pavement.

Mumbai City from Colaba area

Next: 6 Hour Train to Goa........

Dalai Lama and the Golden Temple

Back to our friends at SB Inn in Delhi for a few days, then north, first to McLeod Ganj, home to the Dalai Lama of the Buddhist Yellow Hat Sect, then Amritsar and the Golden Temple of the Sikh religion.

Only transport choice was 12 hour overnight bus, scary! The climb into the Himalayas is a wild experience! Many switchbacks and only the heavy beat of the Punjabi music kept our hearts steady. Arrived early a.m., pretty tired, and walked to Om Hotel with its great view, rooms and restaurant.

 

Om Hotel room

Om Hotel restaurant

McLeod Ganj is a small town highlighted by monks and temples, clean air, sourdough wholegrain bread, and a peaceful atmosphere. We walked to the nearby Bhagsu waterfall, and were treated to a timeless scene of monks scattered the length of the river below the waterfall, swimming in their jockey shorts while their robes dried on the grass. Prayer flags adorned the height of the falls.

Bhagsu Falls

 

 

 

The clouds formed and reformed over the mountain scene. The Dalai Lama was not in town, but all the same, the later visit to the Tibetan temple left us with a strong, peaceful impression.

Parking for bikes and cows

Monkeys at the hotel

We decided to use the toy train to get to Amritsar, which involved a 20 km taxi ride, at the start of which a pair of lemurs darted across the road! 20 km later we learned that a landslide had closed the track, and were given the choice of bus or 25 km more taxi to the station the other side of the slide. Took the taxi offer and had a beautiful ride of hills and river, lots of landslides, a one way/one vehicle width tunnel and a one vehicle at a time on the crumbling, elevated bridge over same river. Neither the tunnel nor the bridge had any official coordination, it was strictly Indian good manners which kept the whole thing operational. Amazing people!

Taxi driver left us at the small station, where we had a lengthy conversation with the station manager, using our 1 word of Hindi (Namaste=hello) and his no words of English. When we tired of that game we went to look for a cup of tea and that endeavor consumed the next 30 minutes; however we succeeded and again carried on several conversations with the barber, shop owner, and unidentified other village citizen -- all without the aid of language. Back to the station to wait for the toy train (narrow gauge). Sharon gave 2 bananas to a really skinny sadhu (holy man) and he made camp on the station platform, ate his bananas, called a cow to feed the peels to, and promptly went to sleep. He later joined us on the train and managed a complete wash and clothes wash in the train toilet. We were impressed with this guy. We thought we were travelling light! Toy train was a local, trundled through the countryside with many glimpses into houses, and way of living, and also some quite nice views including a very large lake and the first of many rice paddies.

 

 

The train finished at Patankot which is still about 50 km from Amritsar. At Patankot station we had to climb over several sets of train tracks to get to the station. Seems the toy train is a leftover from the Raj.

Short train ride to Amritsar, and short walk across the street to the Grand Hotel which has seen the likes of Indira Gandhi and Nehru. The staff encouraged us to go to the Golden Temple that evening which was very good advice. What a fabulous place, really impressive and memorable.

The Golden Temple

Best part was the music (live), nightly procession to ensure safe storage of the holy book, and the next day eating lunch served by Sikh priests in a room with about 1,500 people. The menu was an absolutely delicious coconut rice pudding and lentil stew and chapatis.

Devotees entering and exiting the dining halls

The lunch is free to all and that enables many people to come to this holiest Sikh temple where they can sleep in the alcoves and eat 3 meals a day supplied by an army of volunteers and donations. A Sikh truck driver in Knoxville, Tennessee many months ago gave Sharon $20 to donate to the Temple so we added our part and handed over the money. Again, as with the Buddhists in McLeod Ganj, we were impressed by the sincerity and the positive energy of the Sikh religion.

Back to New Delhi for a night and then off by sleeper train to Mumbai (Bombay).

Rajasthan - Jaisalmer and Bikaner

 

After a couple more days in Delhi we booked a train to Jaisalmer and the Desert Moon Hotel. Most stations have a booking office with a desk for foreigners. This helps a lot in areas where English is not commonly spoken.


Cows are everywhere!

The countryside to the southwest of Delhi is mostly rice paddies but this soon changes into scrubland and semi-desert. Most of our journey was at night and by morning w ere traveling through flat land with lots of small antelopes and peacocks. Ox carts had been replaced by camel carts with big wheels and heavy loads.

Camel cart

A range of hills appeared to the northwest and we could soon see Fort Jaisalmer standing out at the end of the range. Jaisalmer was smaller than expected with the huge fort dominating every view. Karim from Desert Moon met us at the station and it was a short jeep ride down fairly good roads and by lots of cattle and pigs to our hotel.


Fort Jaisalmer from our hotel

Desert Moon is a nice clean hotel with large rooms, nice bathrooms at an excellent price. They have a good restaurant on the roof with great views of the fort. The food is basic Indian and the staff are really nice. They will even do room service! The birdlife around the hotel is also wonderful.

The town and fort is just a short walk from Desert Moon. The people along the way were really friendly and the whole feel got more and more medieval as we approached the fort. There were many cows, pigs, and various other animals along the way, all living in harmony with the human population. It is a steep climb up to the fort but really worth it once inside. The numerous views from the fort are quite spectacular. A few restaurants have balconies where you can eat while enjoying great views of the city. The prices in Jaisalmer were a bit cheaper than Delhi and the food just as good. One really nice thing about For Jaisalmer is that it is a functioning village with houses, hotels, restaurants, and temples inside the walls.

Fort Jaisalmer

The pigs process the garbage before it is removed

More cows

Sharing breakfast

Back at the hotel we arranged a camel safari through the desert to the west of Jaisalmer not far from Pakistan. The trip only cost $50 for the 2 of us and included transport out to the camels, a six km trek by camel to a campsite, dinner, open air beds, breakfast and transport back. Our guide, Karim, from Desert Moon took great care of us. He had the camp prepared when we arrived, dinner was already on the stove and our beds laid out for a night under a full moon. The moon was bright enough to take an enjoyable walk in the desert and experience some surreal scenes among the dunes. We took another walk at first light and returned to tea and breakfast at our camp before returning to Jaisalmer. There are longer safaris but this was just perfect for us.

My transport 

Ready to hit the dunes

The camp

Karim making breakfast in the high tech kitchen

Breakfast is served

One of the little people

A couple more days in Jaisalmer was enough to see just about everything there was and we decided to move on. We took a local bus to Bikaner enroute to Amritsar. This was an experience! The roads are ok but the driving is something we are not used to. The continuous super load horn and the weaving through traffic was pretty harsh. The bus got quite full and obviously not many westerners travel this way as we were the center of attention for most of the trip. We were glad to get off in Bikaner. We had planned to carry on to Amritsar but there didn't seem to be any direct way to get there from Bikaner. For some reason the train didn't go there and the bus info was really sketchy so we decided to stay the night and go via Delhi the next day.

We checked in at the Bikaner hotel where they insisted on payment up front. The room looked ok so we paid but once we were in the room we discovered that not much worked at all. No AC, no TV, broken toilet and an opening in front of a really grotty swamp cooler could not be closed so mosquitoes were coming in. We told them we changed out mind and were going to another hotel but they refused to refund the money. We did not want to create too much fuss so I just told them I would spread the word on the internet and walked out. We have since discovered that in India there are many great hotels which do not rip you off and do not want your money up front so just refuse to do it or go to another hotel where you are treated right. The people here are nice, you do not have to accept crap from the few Bikaner Hotel types.

We found a really nice hotel nearby and in the morning got the train back to our old base at the SB Inn in Delhi and made further plans from there. The places we wanted to see in the north were Mcleodganj and Amritsar, the order didn't matter so we decided it would be easier to get a bus to Mcleodganj and then the toy train and train to Amritsar from there. So next post will be the trip to see the Dalai Lama's home in exile in Mcleodganj.........