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.

Jodhpur, India (Rajathan)

Jodhpur was our next stop in India and it came with a added bonus...

Mark returned from traveling with his lonely self (dramatized photo of actual event) and was eager to spend some quality times with his good friends. The time apart for Mark had not gone well as he is easily frieghtented.

Jodhpur is an interesting busy city with lots of markets and historical sites. The most notable attraction being Mehrangarh Fort, definitely the most impressive fort so far.




This temple was referred to be some of the locals as the mini Taj Mahal. We later would find out that was a bit of a stretch but cool regardless.

This guy makes a mean pair of shoes you can count on that.

This palace built by the royal family and at one time was just a residence. Now however it is both a residence and a hotel. Unfortunately you were only able to see a fraction of it if you weren't actually staying in the hotel. Collective disappointment was high.

By the end of a couple days Mark set off to tackle another part of India on his own once again. Lets hope he doesn't get lost.

Udaipur, India (Rajasthan)

After a great time in the south, we headed up north to the province of Rajasthan. It was a long 2 days of travelling, taking back to back overnight bus and train, so we were pretty spent when we got there. We ended up checking out a guest house our rickshaw driver's dad ran, which turned out to be new, clean, and really cheap (200 Rs for the double room, about $5). The view from the rooftop restaurant was great, though the food left something to be desired.

Though the city was actually pretty big, it had a small feel because most of the sights were all on the lake. All the streets were very narrow, many of them only accessible by foot.

Like a lot of cities in India, everyone does laundry and baths in the lake, which is absolutely filthy. Apparently it's less evident after the monsoons because the water level rises significantly.

T put it best..."I would rather drink the water from Lake Ontario than bath in this water."

There is a palace up an a hill above the ghats which over looks the lake. On the lake there are also 2 palaces, one of which has been turned into a swanky hotel. A chunk of the James Bond movie Octopussy was filmed in Udaipur, and it's become standard at every guest house to play that movie every single night. No other movies are available.


Dinner on a rooftop restaurant, lovely.

The second day there we booked our rickshaw driver to take us around the city. His English was excellent and he was a pretty good guy, a little pricey, but we figured worth it. Of course, he gave the job to a friend of his who barely spoke English. The tour turned out to be fine in the end, however we've found these kind of sneaky deals standard issue in India.

Above is a local vegetable market, below T is testing out some

We finished off the tour with a trip up to a palace on top of a hill which overlooked Udaipur. The palace was nothing special, but had a great view and a great sunset.