India Part 2

Okay, probably too late but I feel that I should finish it anyway. Here is the conclusion of my trip to India, several months late.

So we went to Varanasi, Per was more or less sleeping the whole way and after first being 2 hours late to the station the train ended up around 9 hours late, compared to the trip which was supposed to take 8 hours...

Then we got to Varanasi, the holy city where everything is dirty, where are people selling drugs everywhere and people take care of their needs, spread ashes from the dead and clean in the same water; the Ganges. But Varanasi is a very emotional city with a lot of feeling.

Per managed to get well in Varanasi and after a few days in Varanasi we boarded the train to Mumbai; the largest city in India. The train took us from east India all the way to the west coast, a train ride that was supposed to take around 24 h, we got there 5 minutes late! I must say that the Indian railway company kind of impressed me there.

In short, downtown Mumbai is beautiful with almost everything being huge colonial buildings. Mumbai was a really nice break from Varanasi and the much more rural areas in the north.

Ice-cream!

Managed to pierce my pants trying to do cool aerial maneuvers...

Mumbai is one of the few places where cabs are the standard instead of tuk-tuks.

Per and I was jumped by some Indians that insisted on putting red dots on our foreheads and giving us bracelets, at first they didn't want any money for it but after putting it on they of course wanted money...

Dhobi Ghat, huge laundry area in Mumbai.

We did not spend a lot of time in Mumbai and our next destination was Goa, where we would finally have a few days off and just relax.

Don't have much pictures from there, we hung out on the beach, I did some shopping in huge flea market and we just relaxed in general. I think this pictures describes Goa pretty well, it's the place where even the cows go to hang out on the beach.

After Goa we where going to fly to Bangalore, our last stop in India, unfortunately I had managed to book a flight that instead of taking us directly to Bangalore from Goa went to Puna and Hyderabad in between (it was cheaper at the time I booked it and I didn't see the extra landings). So our 1 hour flight ended up as a 4 hours flight, but I did manage to book with the better airline Air India which gave us a complimentary meal/snack between each landing. 

But we eventually got to Bangalore, and the chock coming to and going from the airport, had we gone to Europe? Everything was so new and well-maintained, it didn't last completely though. The Indian standard started showing more and more when we came into the city but Bangalore turned out to be a much more modern (and richer) city than the one's we've visited before (okay, maybe Mumbai is nicer ). This is mainly due to Bangalore being the IT-capitol of India with a ton of companies being located there.

But Bangalore didn't have much to do except shopping and hanging out, we met up with Per's sister and her family which we spent some time with but one day we dedicated for going to Mysore.

Mysore is the home of the Maharajah of one of the southern provinces and they have a huge palace there that we wanted to see! 

Also visited a train museum.

And the summer palace, located just outside of Mysore. There was a lot of curious school kids there! 

And last, before going back to Bangalore, we went to Brindavan Gardens. A beautiful garden located just below a dam, it is allegedly one of the favorite spots for recording Bollywood-movie dance scenes. 

And after everything the last weeks, this was very nice.

The day after, Hallvard and I went to airport and flew back home to Scandinavia, Per stayed a few more days with his sister. This concludes my journey in India, I've skipped a lot of details but I must say that India is a wonderful country, the food is amazing, the people (who are not trying to make money out of you) are really friendly and the general feeling is really incredible. India is another world, go there!