Agra Club Golf Course, India (Agra)

T and I had a couple days to kill on the way back to Dehli. We figured we take the time to really immerse ourselves in Indian culture, so we hit the links.
The greens were uncannily well watered. The fairways, not so much, understandably so.. sometimes the lie was a little thin.
Caddies are mandatory at the Agra GC and provided some useful course info. Here's one explaining the relationship between the ball and it's "home" in the cup.
Where some have stray dogs, India has cows. Where some have canadian geese, India has more cows.
My play was a little poor. I figured the shirt was the problem.

Varanasi, India

Varanasi sits on the Ganges river. Despite a bit of a hygiene issue, the Ganges is considered deeply spiritual by natives of India. As such, many choose to cremate their loved ones on the river, their ashes falling in. Understandably it's disrespectful to take pics of the cremations, so use your imagination here.

Similarly, it is seen as a soul cleansing experience to bathe in the river. The bathing takes place in the early morn. Our guesthouse offered free sunrise rowboat rides along the river, for a sneak peek. Unlike the cremations, it's cool to take pics of the bathing, as long as you can accept yourself as someone photographing a man washing himself.
Stretching back about a click from the riverside is a network of alleyways, before you hit road. It's pretty cool to get lost wandering the markets and restaurants in these alleys.

In true Indian style, there are cows and bulls chilling around the alleys like stray dogs. There are no stray dogs. For the most part these large bovines are peaceful creatures, accepted in homes as part of the family.
On occasion however, they know not their own strength. Such was the case when one reared it's head in anger catching Thirnan in the kidney with it's horn. T still has flashbacks of the fire he saw in it's eyes and the raw animal power thrust into his torso. Shortly thereafter we encountered a small calf in the alleys named Snowball. T avoided eye contact and backed away slowly.

Now with all these cows and bulls, one might expect cow patties littering the alleys. It seems there's a bit of an industry in drying them out for fertilizer or fire starters. Here's Paul checking the purity of one batch.
100% pure, totally uncut, he's never seen anything like it.

Varanasi.. at night.
Cruising along the river in the evening.
We met a fellow canuck by the name of Meghan. Some may recognize her as the Albertan representative in the 03 Canadian Amateur Hair-Stylist competitions. She still contends the Ontario representative used illegal scissors and should be stripped of her title. Regardless she gave T and I the best cuts we've ever had. sorry Sal (my barber).
Me doing a little jump-rope to shed some pounds. Gotta keep those ribs looking sharp.

Marieke's vacation time - all of it

As some of you may have noticed, my mug has been omitted from all India pics to date. It's because the one know as Marieke came for a mid-term review of my travels. After 3 days in Mumbai, Marieke had had enough culture and wanted what she came for - some beach time, so we headed to Goa. 9 days were spent there, soaking it all in before heading to Dehli and the infamous Taj. Here's how it went down...

MUMBAI
Wanting to look my best for Marieke's arrival, I picked out my finest pair of boxers and combed my hair to perfection.
As already told in the tales of Paul and T, caucasians are kind of a big deal in India. With Marieke's german background and coming off canadian winter, her skin was it's whitest white, prime for locals to take photos aplenty. We sold a copy of this one for 6 bananas. That's the Gate of India behind us.
on the end of a pier.
Chowpatty beach.
kid making a living.

GOA
Goa's full of beaches, some say more beaches than one can handle. Having researched it thoroughly, Marieke decided the beach for us was Palolem, the party beach in the south.

Palolem - at night.
from the stoop of our hut.
Our time in Goa consisted of an endless hunt for beaches. When Palolem beach got old we rented a moped and headed north in search of other beaches.
Beaches with hot sand.
Beaches with dogs to play with.
Still unsatisfied with the amount of beaches, Marieke insisted we rent a moped again, this time going south in hopes of finding still more beaches.

Resort beaches where we could pretend to be guests.
Protected beaches for turtle nesting areas..
..with no one around to witness Marieke secretly practicing her frisbee skills..
.. and get pics for to apply as next week's Sunshine girl.
Despite all the beaches reached by moped, Marieke's thirst was still unquenched. Thus she insisted we rent a kayak to look for more beaches by water.
Now I ask you, does that sound like a girl who's had all the beaches she can handle? I think not.

To Marieke's great delight, we found a secluded beach, all to ourselves.
Look for this one in next year's christmas cards.
DEHLI
Being in India, Marieke decided she should see the Taj, so we headed up to Dehli for a little more big city India. We toured around town for a little sight seeing.

Humayan's Tomb.
Marieke relaxing by Humayan's tomb, and shortly thereafter being defecated on by a bird. They say it's good karma.
The Red Fort. India has a lot of forts.
Lodhi gardens.
India Gate, the second.
Masjid.
Marieke spending some time with her fans, after all they're the ones who make it happen.
Chandni Chowk
Marieke thoroughly enjoying a popsicle, they were good.
We hired a cab and took a day trip to Agra to see the Taj. 5 hours there, 4 hours back, long day. Was worth if of course. I have a feeling you might be pretty familiar with pics of the Taj after Paul and T's upcoming post, so I'll keep it to one.
M

Agra

Leaving Jaipur we headed to Agra for a day trip to see the Taj Mahal.

The building itself is nothing special on the inside however the outside definitely makes up for it. Not really much else to say.

Enjoying a few bevies with a sweet view not such a bad day at all.

Jaipur

From Jodhpur we headed to Jaipur Markless. Jaipur turned out to be a really eventfull stop with lots to see. Bike rickshaws were more common here than in previous cities visited so we thought we would give one a shot. You really end up feeling sorry for these guys because they really are working it in the heat. Especially pulling Paul and myself being that we are definitely bigger than the average Indian.

The old Pink City is probably what Jaipur is most famous for. This older part of Jaipur was great for just walking around an exploring at your own pace.

While walking through the Pink City a man approached Paul and just started talking to him. This is very common in India basically everywhere and 90% of the time the person is just trying to sell you something. As it turns out this guy was a University student in the town that had just finished his final exams for the semester and had nothing to do. He offered to show us around the city as a tour guide for free and in exchange we would be helping him with his english. He was a good guy so it worked out really well for the group of us.

The Monkey temple was probably the coolest thing that we got so see in Jaipur. This temple just outside the city was completely overrun with monkeys everywhere.

The Temple involved a series of pools that men, women and monkeys would all bath in. Just in case you were wondering the colours in this picture are correct the pools were quite green. I tried to trick Paul into going for a swim but no dice.

Apparently goats can jump pretty high, I did not know that.

Floating Temple

Amber Fort

Our friend ended up taking us to this Elephant temple which for a small donation we could get up and close to about 6 elephants. It made for some pretty good pics.

The last thing we ended up seeing in Jaipur was this fort atop a mountain overlooking the whole city. The view did not disappoint.

We ended up arriving at the fort just around the time that it was closing for the day. In order to get inside and check out the amazing view from the top one of the workers insisted the we bribe him. 10 Rupees ($0.25) was what he was after and we obliged on condition that we could document it.

Funniest picture from India so far.