Incredible India

When last I spoke to you guys I was in Khajuraho in India. This was a pretty cool place. Here you can find some 20 temples (from over 80 that were there originally) with most depicting the various elements of the Kama Sutra! Quite an eye-opener I can tell you!

From here, we travelled to Varanasi. This was more like the 'proper' India I was expecting in Delhi. In other words, absolute bedlam! We arrived at 1am and you would have thought it was London rush-hour at 5:30pm! Varanasi will certainly live long in the memory - although possibly for some not so good reasons. When we were there we floated on the Ganges river and watched some ceremonies taking place on the Ghats (stairs) that lead down to the river. They also perform cremations and stuff on the banks of the Ganges too - and, incredibly, people drink the water straight from the river!?! How they manage not to get sick I really don't know.

After Varanasi most of the group left for Nepal. So after a tearful farewell to Kat, Carrie and Bishal, Tracy and I continued back by sleeper train to Delhi. We were fortunate enough to catch the celebrations of Holi while we were in Delhi. This celebrates the end of winter and the start of summer (although, what kind of 'winter' has 35 degree celcius heat is beyond me, but, I digress) with a festival of colour. People buy coloured powders and either mix them with water or throw them dry over one another! Some of the people were just covered head to in a shocking pink or a dark green, or any other number of various hues! Really funny to see, and although we managed to avoid getting 'whacked' there were a couple of close instances in the back of our transportation!

So, after an afternoon of being ejected from the Claridges Hotel swimming pool and an evening of drinking with Tracy, I bid an emotional, fond farewell to her and India and made my way to Hong Kong.

Impressions of India are highly favourable (despite the hit-and-run attack of our Varanasi tuk-tuk driver on a cyclist, which was the only downside to the whole two weeks). I would definetely like to come back in the future here. The food was just incredible (I think a conservative estimate of one stone would be roughly the amount of weight I have put on in two weeks!). And believe it or not, my friends, I ate veggie (with the exception of one meal) for the entire two weeks - hope you are suitably impressed!

Right, thats all from me for the moment. From Hong Kong its on to Beijing. Looking forward to speaking to you soon.