Catch-up: India

My trip has been split into two parts. I initially went to the Netherlands and visited friends and family there for about eight days. After I flew to India to begin the two and half months of wandering around with my sister Laura.

This is to catch you up to speed on India since I am now starting this blog in the middle of the trip. I will write about Amsterdam and Holland in another catch up post. So far I have been in India for about ten or eleven days.

(Some of this might look familiar to some of you because I just copied some parts out of facebook and email messages)

Only been to three cities so far. Laura and I made a loop starting in Delhi, then to Varanasi, Agra and now back in Delhi.

Delhi was my first experience of India. It is busy and crowded, I was super overwhelmed at first. On my first day we got in a small fender bender (which is uncommon, Indians are great drivers).

Varanasi was a good change of pace, relatively laid back compared to Delhi. It has so much incredible/perplexing religious ceremonies and happenings. This is the city where many Hindus come to be cremated on the Ganges river. Seeing it gave me mixed feelings, it was super interesting but it also broke my heart when I saw a young boy sobbing and I was reminded that this is someones funeral.

Agra is quite touristy, people are very persistent when trying to sell things to you here. The Taj Mahal is here it was very impressive, and even though it was quite expensive we had to see it because it is one of the things in India that everyone sees. If you don't see them I expect people will say: you went to India and you didnt see 'X'? Then they will laugh at you. I dont want that. The evening before seeing the Taj I ate dinner with my sister and a Belgian we met on a rooftop cafe where you could see the Taj Mahal. It reminded me of Aladdin where he can see the Sultans castle from the window of his hideout. In India it is quite common for kids to fly kites, they even do battle in the air by trying to cut the other kite's strings. On the rooftop we made friends with a kid, and he let me fly his kite for a bit. So it was more like a mix between the Kite Runner and Aladdin. And someone cut our friends kite out of the sky. Too bad.

Back in Delhi now. Resting. More to come soon.