Wow... what a trip...
First, the visa process is insane. Something like 160 countries allow US citizens to just show up with a passport and you can go in... India is apparently not one of them. I would think they would be begging for more US tourists and business people to come to their country, but I guess not. I didn't get my visa until 24 hours prior to my trip and everything was pre-paid.. so that was stressful
I couldn't get good flights, so I had to fly from Shanghai to Beijing, then Beijing to New Delhi India on Oct 29 and arrived at the airport around 2am on Sun Oct 30th... The hotel in New Delhi was crap... seeme dlike a $50 hotel with no hot water and flooding bathroom and a twin bed... all for $150 USD. Up at 10:30am to start the Incredible India adventure... OCT 30:
The first place I visited was called Akshardham Temple. This was a really cool place to visit because normally when you go see famous temples... they are all hundreds or thousands of years old. They are cool historically. But this temple was just built 6 years ago in Nov 2005. So, it is sparkling brand new. It was built by 7000 artisans and 3000 volunteers. It's design begain in 1968, and construction begain in 2000. It is an amazingly beautiful place that is dedicated to Hindu religion. Like most temples in India... no cameras are allowed inside... and you walk around barefoot in it. Very cool experience. Just snapped a shot of it from the outside.
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By the way, In Delhi I had the coolest guide in the world... a 20 year old guy name Tarun. He drove me all around Delhi like a pro and was just like hanging out with a buddy. He took me to some place for lunch in New Delhi that was some of the best Indian food I have ever eaten. Butter chicken, daal, mutton biryani, frshly baked naan. Awesome!
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Next, we headed to visit Gandhi's home in Delhi. We stopped at a burning pyre left in memory of Gandhi's work against violence. Lots of people here, but not much to see.
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Tried to go into Gandhi's house... but it was closed... just got the obligatory photo outside it.
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Next, since we had time... stopped at a Hindu temple dedicated to the supreme Hindu God Vishnu - The Protector. Again, no photos allowed inside... but one shot from the outside. A pretty cool temple, and I got the lucky red dust stuff put on my forehead by some Indian guy inside.
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One of the most interesting things about being in Delhi was just looking around at the streets. Delhi has about 17 million people in it and is the world's 8th largest metropolis. But driving around and looking at the city, you would never know that. It looks to me like some small and dirty, underdeveloped village in rural China. There are hardly any buildings over 2 stories tall in the entire place! And it is not surprising to see poor naked young kids or cows and ricksshaws on the streets anywhere in the "city". Below are just a few shots from the city.
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a typical street in Delhi.
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driving by an overpass... very few of these and you can see lots of people on the steet.... this was near a train station.
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driving by, we saw many young kids running around naked or mostly naked. Here was a young boy naked and crapping on the side walk... Notice in the far background is a $100K USD car... a black Porsche Cayenne.
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Coming up out of a new underground walking pass we happened upon this dog. It is something like 85 degrees every day in Delhi, so I don't know why he needed to wear a sweater...
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OK... I was just joking here since I saw this corner... little did I know this would come later.
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But take a look at that!!! All over the streets of New Delhi around Connaught Place, wherever you saw one of these columns they all look like a major ass blast corner. The guide Tarun said it is actually from spit and not fecal waste, but I am not convinced after my own experiences... We also saw 3 people puking on this one street in day time... not likely drunk, so even the Indians get food poisoning there.
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rushed off to the Hazrat Nizamuddin train station in Delhi to catch a 3 hour train ride to Agra (where the Taj Mahal is) around 5pm. Grabbed a local cola called Thumbs Up... but I would say it is more of a thumbs horizontal... not horrid, but not recommended.
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What I also don't recommend are the public restrooms in India. Here is the one on the train platform. Notice the crap on the floor and the floaters inthe clogged toilet. There were 3-4 for of these all in the same condition and made the whole platform REEK of human filth.
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Inside the train, the toilets are just a hole in the floor of the train. So your waste just gets dropped on the ground. Although they have signs asking you to not use the bathroom while th train is stopped, everyone does... so again... the train stations all stink.
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Arriving in Agra, 3 hours south East of Delhi, the Radisson hotel was an oasis of beauty and cleanliness for only $130 USD per night. MAN I needed this after that train ride.
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They had an outdoor Indian buffet featuring cuisine from all regions of India which was very cool. Just slightly chilly at night there... maybe 68 degrees farenheight... as opposed to 85 degrees in the day time. But a good Kingfisher beer and some spicy Indian curry warmed me up and prepared me to face Day 2 in Agra tomorrow...
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OCT 31.. the start of my scary time in India...
Started out with an awesome venture over to the Taj Mahal. For those of you who don't know, "Taj" means "crown" and "Mahal" (pronounced like "male") means "palace". So this literally translates to the crown of all palaces, though the king at the time did not live here. It was built as a memorial and mausoleum to his third wife who was a muslim from Persia. Completed in 1653 by the Mughal (Mongol) emperor Shah Jahan, it is an Islamic building.
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You enter the complex through the West Gate which you can see in the background and make the approach up along these waterways and gardens. The entire complex and all buildings are designed to be 100% symmetrical. The idea was for you to be able to look at the Taj Mahal building from any angle and see the exact same scene from any direction.
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And there it is... the famous Taj Mahal. The center building is actually the mausoleum which holds the bodies of the emperor and his third wife. You can't see the bodies and the inside is not that pretty compared to the outside... just plain stone. But the outside is amazing.
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I'm not sure why, but the guide said we should do funny photos like this... Seems every Indian likes to do this... This is plucking the Taj.
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And this is me and my fat belly jumping over the Taj. This was tough to jump that high. I didn't get a very good shot of this.
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I liked hanging out on this side... seemed there were no people. I actually sat down and just stared up at the perfect and pristine beauty of the Taj Mahal for about 20 minutes here... truly amazing and 100% worth the hassle to get there. This is by far the most amazing man-made thing I have ever seen. The 20,000 workers it took to build it did a very good job!
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So, as noted, the Emperor didn't really live here... where did he live? In the Agra Fort across the river from the Taj. So, next I headed over to the Agra Fort. This is the view outside the fort walking up to it.
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Just on the drawbridge outside the fort, you can see a bit better the beautiful red sandstone from which it was built. Originally it was a brick fort here since 1080 AD, but it was rebuilt by an Indian emperor around 1573 - around the same time as the Taj Mahal from the sandstone found in the deserts of Rajasthan (NW India). It took 1.4M workers to complete.
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Inside the fort you can only see about 25% of it, as 75% is still used by the Indian military today. But many rooms that are open to the public have cool carvings in the walls.
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Back outside the fort I was set upon by a gang of Indian Paparazzi. This was pretty common for me throughout Delhi and Agra. They obviously thought they had found the next Bollywood star.
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With limited time left until the scheduled departure of the train back to Delhi, I made the poor decision to stop at Indian McDonald's to see what it is like.
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You'll notice on the menu there are no hamburgers... only chicken and fish are served... since the cow is sacred in India you really don't find any beef anywhere in the country.
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And here I am about to make the biggest mistake I have made in the last year... to bite into a Kickin' Spicy McChicken sandwhich form an Indian McDonald's. I didn't know it at the time, but I am pretty sure this is the bad boy that caused my Food poisoning to set in about 7 hours later. More on that to come...
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Then after rushing through lunch to make it to the train on time... I had to sit on a dirty train platform in Agra for an hour with more naked Indian boys urinating directly onto the platform next to me.
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As you can see, I am less amused by it this time... and you can see the quality of the train in the background which gets packed full of Indian families when you ride it. At least I was still feeling fine for the 3 hour ride back to Delhi.
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My Delhi guide, Tarun, met me at the Delhi station and took me immediately to the Red Fort in Old Delhi. It was built around 1638 by the same Mughal emperor who built the Taj and was the capital of the Mughal empire until 1857 when they were kicked out by the British. At this point.... my stomach started telling me something was going to be wrong very soon.
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Just out of the Red Fort is an old street called Chandni Chowk. It is very famous and touted as a unique experience market street... but it was just another dirty, crowded Indian street to me... and I KNEW I needed to find a toilet fast... but there were no restuarants to find...
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I thanked God that I was lucky enough to stumble into a homeless public bathroom for this... this was a nice one with a single stall and a working toilet. Very fancy... the first one I was in had no doors and had about 35 Indians in there washing their butts with water while I blasted into an open metal trough. HORRID smells abounded... I had to go every 15 minutes down this street....
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And there was one time I couldn't make it to any toilet and hit the side of the road... with men, women, and children walking by and watching me squat in the grass and blast out my ass. horrid.... horrid.. and I was starting to feel nauseas as well. We had planned to go to the orignal restaurant for Tandoori chicken that night and get some good butter chicken curry (which probably would look exactly like the photo to the left anyway)... but I begged to go to any western restaurant in a 5 star hotel instead.
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Tarun took me to some coffee shop instead and I could make it no further... I ran into the bathroom... which thank heaven was western and puked into the toilet... and out came the Chicken Maharajah Mac sandwhich from 7 hours earlier... in convenient bite-sized chunks... and thus began a horrid night of vomiting and diarrhea which lasted until 11 am the next day in the car to Delhi Airport, where I went to a medical center and got IV shots of antibiotics and anti-vomiting drugs which helped for the journey on 2 airplanes (Delhi to Mumbai, and Mumbai to Goa) and a bumpy bus to get me to...
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The Park Hyatt Goa Resort & Spa...
I was here from Nov 1 evening through Nov 5 afternoon.... and walking into this lobby was a Godsend... I still felt horrible, but I knew I could recover here... unfortunately I felt bad the whole time so I couldn't really enjoy the food or drinks... but... it was a beautiful place.
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The ares of Goa in southwest India along the beach was actually the territory of Portuguese India for about 450 years until it was annexed by India in 1961. The beachitself reminds me of California beaches with yellow sand and sort of murky green-brown waters... not the radiant blues of Thailand... and no way you can snorkel off the beach... far too murky as the sand is kicked up by the surf.
This was the last day there when I was starting to feel a bit better... but still uncomfortable in the abdomen.
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There was a big line up of beach chairs along the beach which fits the requirement... but it was just way too far from the hotel rooms to get here... The whole resort had these massive green lawns between the resort buildings and the beach so even though the resort went right to the beach, you had to walk a good 15 minutes to get to the beach.
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The pool was actually very cool. It wound all over the resort with multiple levels including water slides between levels... unfortunately it was a bit noisy as it seems Indians like to travel in large groups and there were often 30 guys in the pool playing with a ball and shouting during the day.
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Throughout the grounds were many lagoons with crystal blue waters... obviously they had a combination of mosquito killer and blue dye in them, but they were very pretty.
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I don't want to bombard you with photos of the sunsets... but they were absolutely gorgeous. I sat out each evening by the pool resting my stomach and watching the sun go down.
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OK.. but just one more... they were very cool to watch.
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I can't say I would recommend Goa when there are more beautiful places to go in the world, but if you have to go to Goa, then I can recommend this hotel. A good place to recover from food poisoning...
Then I had to suffer a 27 hour trip back to Shanghai with 4 flights... Goa to Mumbai, Mumbai to Delhi, Delhi to Beijing, and Beijing to Shanghai.... each with its own adventure of delays and multiple hour layovers... aiya. I will not choose to go back to India. They need about 20-30 years of infrastructure and more tourist-friendly places before I could really enjoy it. But it was certainly an experience.
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