Cairo

July 19 was all about waiting. We got to the airport in Delhi at 7.30am and got through immigration super quick then had to wait 3 and a half hours for our flight to Dubai with nothing to do but eat Subway. Then a 3 hour wait at Dubai, but that was ok because there was heaps to look at, and magazines to read that you were pretending to choose between to buy. Then however was a 2 hour wait on our plane to Cairo when they discovered an engineering problem that took an hour to fix and then begging on the intercom when passengers decided not to take the flight, and the pilot had to beg them to stay otherwise it would take another hour to get their luggage off the plane. So they were guilted into staying and we all cheered!

When we finally got into Cairo late that night, we crashed at our hostel. The next morning we woke up to blue blue sky and the heat, but the good kind, where you walk outside and feel like you've walked into an oven...not the kind that makes you dripping wet with sweat. Trust us when we say oven heat is better...

After our delicious free brekky we headed out to check out Cairo.

Walking along the Nile we decided to go on a felucca cruise. Habibi was our captain. He turned his Nubian pop music and made us dance with him. The Nile is wide and blue, and the part we sailed on was surrounded by highrises. No reeds or date palms, or crocodiles, or little baby Moses's floating in baskets.



Habibi- our vey excitable Felucca captain

Cairo itself old and grand- lots of old buildings and statues. And men on bicycles with big trays of bread on their head, can you see the guy in the picture above???

After our felucca cruise we were just ambling along when we started chatting to this Egyptian guy who said he owned an art gallery and had just been to Australia, he then said to welcome us to his country he would invite us to his daughters wedding. We were like.....'oh um thanks, but we're sorry we are seeing the pyramids..' '' but it's Egyptian hospitality, please, it would be an honour, just come afterwards...' And he grabbed us by the arms to take us to a shop so we could right down the address. Only when we got to the shop he dissapeared and left us with Mohammad who was a papyrus artists (he copied ancient Egyptian paintings on to papyrus) who wanted to show us his work before we got the address, the door was closed and tea was brought for us and before we knew it we were being asked how much we would pay for his work....'Um no we are just admiring...maybe we will think about it' 'But what about as good luck for my sisters wedding'.. After tossing him a dirt cheap offer in the hope he would give up in disgust, he surprisingly took it up, and we walked out with two masterpeices on papyrus and no wedding details... needless to say we were a bit more wary of random strangers coming up to us with offers of Egyptian hospitality.

Midan Talaat Harb

Dahshur

We organised a day trip to the major pyramids around Cairo. The first and the furtherest was at Dashur built between the 4th and the 12th dynasties. The temple behind Jon is the Red Pyramid.

Inside you had to climb down a 300m ramp to get to the tomb.

Down inside it smelt horrible, it made your mouth and nose burn and eyes water. But we were in a tomb! You could see where people had left graffiti from the 19th century 'Henry Smith 1848'

Jon looking over to the Bent pyramid. It really was bent.. only we never took a good picture of the bentness..

Saqqara

Step pyramid of Zoster.

Camels







Giza

Manali

Quick note> For some reason, and because I'm a couple of stubbies short of a six pack in the computer department, the entry for Amritsar is before Bombay, even though I wrote it after and it occurred after Bombay... so if you haven't seen it yet you have to scroll down past Bombay..

July 13-17

Manali is at the base of the Himalaya mountain range, and is green green green. We felt like we were in the 'Sound of Music' 'The hills are alive.....with the sound of music.....lalalala!' Actually maybe that was just me, Jon hasn't seen it, but he still dug all the greenness and mountainess and fresh airiness though.

We got met at the bus stop at 6am by Kim from Kunal lodge, and usually we're pretty wary of touts at bus stops or train stations and ignore them, but he was nice and we weren't to grumpy from our trip and the price was definitely right .

He took us to his lodge which was near the Hadimba temple-so there were lots of locals going to pay their respects, and the temple was surrounded by pine trees, green flowery meadows and babbling creeks (could so hear them babbling from our room!). Queue more Sound of the Music.....

We were amazed at all the openly growing marijuana plants, pretty much they were everywhere, gardeners would show them to us proudly, and everyone was very keen to help you acquire some if you hadn't already.

Manali was pretty touristy, it was by far the most amount of tourists we'd seen anywhere else in India, it being the right season to visit and all, unlike any other part of India.

We were pretty far from the action though and it was nice and quiet in between new and old Manali, we had an awesome local cafe to eat in that served yummy MoMo's and played continuously on repeat some classical Hindi music.. this helped to drown out the Sound of Music soundtrack anyway.

We recovered from our dust induced blocked upness, only to fall ill from poisoning....

Indian beer is poison, I am sorry to any Indian readers or anyone who likes it. Everyone that we drank with that night was ill.

One day after we had sufficiently recovered from our poisoning we decided to kill ourselves and walk to a local waterfall, .

Man with his donkeys on the way to our waterfall, this was the nice bit, before it got steep and we got puffy and red in the face...

Beneath the waterfall.

It was worth the near death experience.

We also checked out a festival at the Hadimba temple for a goddess that was an incarnate of Kali and involved sheep and cow sacrifices. A local man told us it was better then in the days they used to have human sacrifices for the festival. In this picture they are all waiting for the free meal provided by the sacrificed.

We were a bit over taking pictures by this point and did not take as many photos as we had been.

We were sad to leave after four days, we would have loved to do some more walks (even if they killed us), gone white water rafting, explored other towns and just do nothing, but we had a plane to catch, and it wasn't going to catch itself, so it was one night bus to busy hot smelly Delhi.

Bollywood

Mumbai, shmumbai, everyone calls it Bombay. July 1 -9

Well we made it to Bollywood all in one piece just for the torrential rains to make rivers out of Bombays streets (no one calls Bombay Mumbai). But we like the rain, its a cool 28c! (I never thought I 'd say that was cool, but it is, I even wore a cardi..what will we do when we get back to Melbourne?!), it doesn't smell bad, all the smells have been washed away. The best way to describe it is like it's a tropical London- all old fashioned Victorian buildings that look like they should be in Britain, red double decker buses, old 60's style taxis, old crumbling apartment buildings... but with palm trees and monkeys.

The people are trendy and everything is 3 times as expensive as anywhere else in India.

The first day we got recruited for Bollywood by our guesthouse owner. So the next day us and an Irish couple were taken off to the studios. The Irish guy had already done it.. and he got to dress up as a Mughal emperor from like the 1500s for a movie and got a cool costume, lots of bling and a fake beard so we were pretty excited to see what we would get to do...Unfortunately it was nothing that cool.

We were extras at a surprise wedding on a popular TV show. The guys got free shaves while me and the Irish girl were taken to wardrobe- the other girl couldnt fit into the tiny Indian dresses, and it was so bad.. we were trying to explain to the wardrobe guys that she wouldn't fit, and they didn't get it.. they were saying to her boyfriend- 'make her put it on'.. like he should control his girlfriend. By the way.. why would it be all guys in the wardrobe department? A girl would know how to fix the problem. I got a red dress, Jon got a cool pinstripe suit!. But when we went back to the set, the directors were like -'no you cant wear a red dress you will clash with the red and white decorations'. So they gave me a see through light pink dress! It was disgusting! But they were like it doesn't matter. And the Irish girl got to go on in her daggy tshirt and pants..in a wedding scene! ? It was so odd, and I got to go on in my manky pink thongs, because they couldn' t find shoes to fit.


Anyway the life of an extra is far from glamorous. It a lot of standing around and sitting around.. being called on set, then for some explicable reason being told to go off set without even getting on.... it was a long day. We got to watch the dances though..I love Indian dancing.. the other extra loved me cos I could do the Indian head wiggle move! We didn't get any makeup either, so I don't know how we will look.... so we were a little disappointed with the experience but we got 500 rupees each- A$12.50, which is jack all in O z but paid for 2 night s accommodation, dinner and our laundry....if we weren't in Mumbai we couldv'e lived off it for a week!

Another day we got the 1hr ferry to Elphanta Island to see the carved temple caves. Which we weren't terribly impressed by. Its a Hindu temple hewn out of a cliff. And we'd already seen similar ones at Ajanta and Ellora..where there were 20 caves at each site. It was still kinda cool- in the only worthwile cave temple there was an incredibly serene 6m 3 headed Shiva statue- kinda looks like a 3 headed Buddha.

The best bit was all the monkeys, so many of them. But not scared of humans.. infact we were probably more scared of them.

We saw a monkey steal a bottle of Fanta from a guy, and sit down, unscrew the lid and drink it, which was hysterical. But then it wasn't so hysterical when I brought a corn on the cob, and they started to take interest in me....We walked away down the stairs back to the jetty when we were ambushed by a snarling monkey, and while Jon tried to hit it wi th our umbrella, another monkey appeared from the other side and lunged at me. I screamed and threw my corn cob at it. It was probably funny if you were watching..

View from ferry of Taj Mahal hotel, and India Gate.

Marine Drive-4km walkway around the bay...with people sitting the whole way..




And at the end, Chowpatty beach.


Probably not our idea of a beach..but a beach none the less.

The view from the hanging gardens out over Chowpatty.

On Monday we were meant to be leaving we were super organised and got up early to go to the station, we brought our suburban tickets to Bandra where our Amritsar train was leav ing...the guy at the ticket counter said our train would be next leaving from platform 1 so off we toddled... got our seats, nice and relaxed cos we had plenty of time... half an hour went by.....50 minutes... and we realised we were on the wrong train. We asked some other people and they told us just as we suspected. And a nice guy checked his little timetable book for us and worked out that by the time we got the right train to the right area our Armistar train would have left :(

So feeling dejected we got off at Vishii, and waited for a train back into the city.. we started chatting to a girl and her mother and they told us to get on their train to get back, and we told them our story and they invited us to their house for lunch! We agreed and th ey were so excited. But when they got to their house after a maze of little tiny alleys and chickens, they found their brother had taken the keys to school and they attempted to bash the padlock with a metal bar. The poor girl Maya and her Mum were nearly crying that they couldn't get in, Maya had really wanted to cook nice Indian food for us and Jon had to take the bar off her to stop her breaking the lock, we said we'd take them out for lunch, so we shouted them masala dosa's (new fav indian food- thin crispy pancake with spiced potatoes and cahew and sultanas and tomato and coconut dipping sauce....mmm so good when you dont feel like curry!)and ice cream ! They were so sweet, Maya waanted to improve her English so we asked her lots of questions, she is 17 likes dancing and wants to go to Switzerland. We met the younger brother that had the key too, and they all came and waited at the station for our train back to the city and hugged, kissed (sweet) and touched our toes goodbye(bit strange). So it ended up being a nice afternoon! Back at the station we could only rebook our tix for 2 days after.... Jon, Maya, Arun (who had the keys) and Rita their Mum



We used our extra days to go on the net, drink tiger beer, go to the infamous Leopolds, eat delicious brownies, and realise we had the perfect juice and chicken shwarma stall right around the corner from us, too little to late....so sad. The important thing was that when the time came, we had enough time to get on our train!

The curse of the Golden Temple

Bombay to Amritsar, Punjab 32hours

Surprisingly it went pretty fast, we were in a sleeper carriage, so there were compartments for 6 to sleep in, so if we were not sleeping we read, or ate the yummy food at all the stations or just looked at the scenery. We sat with a Tupperware saleslady and her drunk/sick, husband/brother, we werent sure, they didnt speak English, but their drama was very entertaining. And some Hare Krishnas, who when they werent humming or singing Krishna songs, which were actually pretty nice to listen too, were trying to give Jon literature to read. Lucky their English and our Hindi is no good, otherwise we would have been in trouble, judging them from watching them talk to all the Indian passengers.

When we got to Amritsar, the first thing we noticed was the dust, it was all invading, throat itching, snot blackening, eye crustifyingly bad. Our thonged and Croced feet were black.

We got an awesomely apartment sized room though for a bargain price with AC. Which we were pretty chuffed about, until that night when we had a mosquito invasion. We dont know where they were getting in, but we spent half the night squashing and smashing them with the brick like India Lp and our shoes.. and then when we we had finally won against the blood suckers and the wall was covered in their little squashed bodies, the power cut off and we were stuck in a sauna, unable to open a window for mortal fear, more mozzies would get in.....So when after finally we got to sleep and woke up we were itchy, all blocked up from the dust and soaking wet, we were less then happy...should have stayed on the train.

After brekky we got a deathdefying cyclerickshaw to the Golden Temple, Holy shine of the Sikhs, the guys that wear the turbans. Everyone must have their hair covered and remove their shoes and wash their feet. We walked around the outside of the Golden Temple with hundreds of other pilgrims, and around the gardens and communal dining halls. The temple feeds and houses hundreds of pilgrims and travellers for free everyday and its very open and friendly, regardless of religion or nationality. Maybe we should have stayed there instead of being gleeful about our supercheap AC room. Maybe the temple was getting back at us..........maybe....ofcourse it could just be a simple case of you get what you pay for.

We also visited the Sikh history museum, and learnt about their very proud fighting past. They suffered and fought some very nasty battles in the past, with some pretty gory pictures to illustrate.

After soaking up the the temple we decided in the afternoon to organise an autorickshaw to the border with Pakistan to see the closing of the gate at the border crossing. We thought it would be a pretty somber affair..but it was more like a some kind of sports match with hundreds of India cheerleaders, waving and screaming and dancing on the border crossing to Indian pop, while the Pakistan side stayed true to our preconceptions.

The pop was loud, and Indians all estatic, there was an MC, getting everyone more riled up, running around, blowing kisses and being mock angry if he didnt think one part of the crowd was partying hard enough. The set up was a semi circle arena with a road running through it so the arena was in quarters, Indian guards stood to attention infront of the crowds and in the midst of dancing Indian women, to the left in the picture, who were dancing and gesturing at the Pakistan side who were sitting quitely in their half arena waving the green and white Pakistan flag, all in white in contrast with the colorful rowdy Indians. We sat in the mixed section with the families but there were all male and all female sections and a tourist section, which we didnt know about but are glad we didnt, because we got to cheer and be crazy with everyone else, and we taken in by a Rajastani family wed met earlier that day in a park in Amritsar, picure below. The little boy was adorable and did not burst in to tears when he saw our pale faces like some other babies we had met did. We had to sit down on the super hot sunbaked concrete for the closing ceremony which was pretty much unbearable by the end. The ceremony involved guards goosestepping to the gate while someone let out an ear peircing call contiously, shaking hands with the Pakistan guards and pulling down the flag for the day, all while the Indians went crazy screaming and shouting in nationalistic pride some chant that we have no idea what it means.

It was very entertaining, and not something we had planned on doing so it was a nice surprise to see.

That night we went out for dinner and had a typical Punjabi meal, tandoori chicken. We learnt that what most people think of as typically Indian food is actaully Punjabi cuisine. And this is because so many Punjabis emigrate overseas. And indeed we met alot of locals who wanted to emigrate for work and study...one even wanted our business card?! so he could catch up with us in Oz.

We only spent one full day in Amritsar. With less then a week to go in India we were keen to get up to the mountains and the cool refreshing air of Himcal Pradesh..........

Colorfulness in the womens section.