From barber to border

It's been now what? Two months? Time really isn't in your vocabulary when your traveling and from "time to time" you tend to forget it. Yes finally I decided to write a blog so you (friends, travelers and a certain pink haired girl named Sarah) can keep up to date on the happenings as I search for the Big Dipper in the southern hemisphere.



As I write this down I count the seconds when I'm about to leave this land they call the biggest democracy in the world. 2 months in the making, India really starts to get under your skin. Can't say I like it that much that I would want to stay for two more. I've been haggled, harassed, tired, sick and so on. Yet, I love this country. It is a place hard to describe in one sitting and as one 40 year old traveler from Belgium put it:


"Visit India for one week and you can write and article about it. Visit it for one month and you can write a better article. Live in it for one year and you can't write one sentence"

Well put old chum. well put.

Not to totally let everybody down who expected this launch to be a one hour long read, I shall do a little recap of events of the two months. Start of from New Delhi where I arrived 3 hours late of schedule. Middle of the night in a new country full set of new rules to learn. Fortunately I had a place to stay ready and jumped on a prepaid taxi to go. Next few days went on with getting to know the accustoms and then it was time to hit Rajastan where I visited Jaipur which is a mini version of Delhi and couple of smaller towns called Pushkar and Udaipur. Anybody who goes to Udaipur will find out that a JAMES BOND MOVIE has been shot there because every local person wants you to know it. It might be even more important than the fact that it is home to lots of fine jewel craft and is often quoted to be the Venice of the East.



Fast forward to Goa where I stayed for a ridiculous three weeks just getting stomach bacteria, destroying my digital camera and soaking up the sun with a beautiful English girl who stole my heart in the final week and flew to London with it. Now she's keeping it arrested until she joins my travels in the near future.



From Goa my travels continued down south to the coasts of Kerala. To be more specific, Varkala. A semi touristic beach town with cliff views to the Arabian Ocean. A very good place to chill out and to have some great red snapper. Kerala is also home to the Indian backwaters but do to budget cuts, Timo didn't attend. So time to check out a hill station in Tamil Nadu. Ooty is a small place in the middle of... well not near anything you would know so let's leave it at that shall we. Anyway the surrounding area is full of fine foliage, tea plantations and lovely people. Spend the Christmas there and joining in the Indian dances made me a big hit. Maybe I was a Indian in the previous life because these people are some marvelous dancers.



From Ooty the journey took a turn to travel mode as I covered around 3 000 + km in 4 days and ended up in Varanasi. Now I've been here for almost a week due to a visit from the stomach bacteria that first emerged back in Goa. Now out of the hospital and ready for new adventures, I'm of to the barber to get a haircut because the border patrol might have a saying in my appearance. Next time I write it's in Nepali time.



More pictures at:
http://picasaweb.google.com/timo.laaksonen/