They say people are slave of their origins, and I found this to be true in the majority of cases. Those lucky enough to break free from this condition will discover a whole new world while eventually continuing holding hands to their own.
A process very difficult to go through in India where history has deep roots, where birth will dictate who you'll be, leaving little room to whome you could become and where among millions of people is very difficult to save your own little space.
For us, simple spectators, the journey begins:
Varanasi - The Sacred City
Varanasi is a city which longs to progress but it's dragging along a heavy religious background. The river permeates the spirit of this city everything rotates around its holy water which can give life and take it away at the same time. The "sacred" Ganges influences people's everyday life forcing each individual to make their way to the river every morning to cover their sins, the colourful flowers sellers and the many women dressed up in their vivid coloured saree distract us from a normal day made up of specific steps to take, and while the seabed conceals another body, or a "pira's" flames burn abother life away...you cannot help to stare in dismay, fascineted and skeptical at the same time.
While leaving the city you're left fascinated but a slight sense of reliefe nocks at the door, reassuring your belonging to another reality and as the train exits the city you just don't feel the need to look behind.
Accomodation: Hotel Surya
http://www.hotelsuryavns.com/There's a swimming pool but will cost you 100Rps
Agra - The "Wonder-land"
Holding one of one of the seven wonders, Agra hasn't got much to offer except the Taj Mahal: an impressive building, so white to appear unreal. You can appreciate the skills of a talented architet and the demonstration of a man's love for his passed away wife. It's probably the combination of these two factors that make this place a spectacular building.
Jaipur - The Pink City
Jaipur is the capital of Rajasthan, its popularly is dressed in Pink thanks to the colour of the old city buildings. This fascinating city with its romantic charm takes you to an epoch of royalty and tradition. The capital is steeped in history and culture. Here the past comes alive in the magnificent Amber fort where once lived the maharajas or the Palace of the Winds (Hawa Mahal), blushed pink, whose name is inspiring and whose 953 windows allowed the ladies of the court to watch the activities on the street without being observed themselves. The bustling bazaars of Jaipur, the Rajasthani jewellery shops, possess a timeless quality and are surely a treasure-trove for the shoppers. Walking along the porches with countless bazaars can be disorienting especially when you're invited into each shop the second you lay your eyes down on one of the items, and it doesn't matter if you're not interested, the owner will continue explaining why he has the best stuff while you walk away.....
But at sunset, when all shopkeepers close their doors and the streets empty out, the city gets ready to set up a magical show: the sun, set the sky on fire, painting the orizone in red and the buildings melt in the light exploding in a pinkish glow which spreds out through the norrow roads offering a unique experience.
Udaipur - The "Venice Of The Est"
Built around the azure waters of the lake Pichola, Udaipur, with its ornately decorated palaces and exquisite lakeside gardens, is captivating.
Appropriately called the "City of Lakes", Udaipur credits also the fame of "Venice of the East".
It's probably for this reason that offers such a romantinc ambience.
Its founder Maharana Udai Singh buitlt this Romantic City Of Lakes making of it a mirage in the dry lands of Rajasthan.
After fighting at the ticket counter of the train station in Jaipur, we eventually reached Udaipur by bus. The city is cleaner and more quiet than others, our hotel offered a nice view on the Pichola lake and of the Lake Palace.
This marble palace seems to floats majestically and ethereally on the glistening waters of the lake.
Walking up to a higher point of the city offers a breathtaking view: at sunset the lake steals the colours of the sky and blushes, in a little while you're ejcting into a fairytales world made of legendary castles and heros.
Johdpur - The Blue City
After a rough bus ride we got at our guest house in Jodhpur at dawn. The city is introduced by its fame of Blue City, a name evoking heavenly belonging, but becoming reality in the indigo tinge whitewashed houses encompassed by the high old city wall. This blue dot stands as sentinel to the great Thar Desert, position that grants her the privilege to be caressed by the sun all year long and entitling her as The Sun City. Within the city atop a rocky hill, stands the massive fort (Mehrangarh Fort), 120 m above the plains.
Our first view of the Fort was at night from the rooftop restaurant of our guesthouse and we couldn’t help but to be fascinated by its grandeur.Walking through it you can still hear echoes of its past beauty and enjoy the work of unparallel architects expressed in the numerous sprawling courtyards and intricately carved windows and walls. The remaining furniture and the thousands of mirrors in the countless rooms revive the regal splendour of a bygone era. Walking along the narrow roads of the city offer a spectacular show of colours, and you just can't help to stop and stare fascinated while a woman in her shimmering purple saree hangs her green and fuchsia sheets on the balcony's parapet composing an unusual picture which blows in the wind while the blue background highlights each tonality.
At night while facing the fort, and sitting comfortably on a sofa in a rooftop restaurant you can enjoy an exquisite Saffron Lassi, and as a cooler breeze mess up the pages of your book, you realize that beyond the massive fort rests the desert, taking a pause from the insisting heat of the day, and that another spectacular city with amazing stories to tell lies ahead: Jaisalmer.
Jaisalmer - The Golden City
It's early morning and we step down the train, tired after a night spent travelling we make our way through the crowd in search for our taxi. Train stations in India are small cities in the city, crowded at every hour of the day, with Chai vendors screaming out at the top of their voices, Samosa sellers, people sleeping in every corner, tourists are usually gathered in one corner of the station waiting for who knows what train, whereas Indians seems to lay down wherever there's a free spot. It's remarkable how often people travel, and are used to cover long distances, I guess this is normal in countries with a massive territorial extension, the concept of far is different there, as well as the meaning of long journey.... Anyway, we spot our taxi driver holding a paper with our name (spelled wrongly, obviously) and head toward our hotel. Reached our destination, it's still early morning, our rooms are not ready yet so the owner invites us to have a cup of tea on the roof top terrace. We climb up the stairs and while the sun start rising a wonderful scenery opens up in front of us. The massive fort stands higher than anything else in the middle of the city, everything seems to reach out for it, so we sit down sipping our tea while the sun wakes up everything around us... (also the people sleeping on the bench next to us). We jotted down a plan for the next two days, booked our tour in the desert and a minute later we were already out to see the city. We make friends with the hotel's owner who offers to accompany us during our tour, which will also mean stopping by in some silver shops here and there, but this is an unsaid clause of every agreement here.... While walking he explains us that he owns two guest houses and he's planning to build another one, we were amazed because, as he will explain to us, he doesn't know how to read or write, never went to school, but travelled a lot and learned a lot during his trips. With his business sustains and give work to all his family member..... While walking along the narrow roads of the city our sight is captured by the beautiful Havelis, that bring you back in time when merchants crowded this city and the numerous caravans passed by and stopped after a long journey through the sunset on their way from Persia, Egypt or Africa. Jaisalmer is the door of Thar desert and it's a holder of many Jain's architectural treasures. We get on the jeep and head toward the desert while the city fades away at our back we look in front of us, only to see a straight road whose end is lost in the horizon, I decide to stick my head out of the window but the high wind forces me to put sunglasses on, so I rest my head on my arm and I try to look beyond the horizon while the warm wind mess up my hair... after a long drive we get to a little village. The guides were waiting for us along with their camels, they assigned one to each one of us and our journey began... The Thar desert is absolutely fantastic, while the sun burns on our skin we rode through what looked like a prairie, then rock places and sand dunes. The scenery changes very often, making of this desert something very special, but the real idea of desert is given by the golden sand dunes that shimmer from a distance. After reaching the designated spot, we leave our camels and take off our shoes for a walk on the sand, our feet sink in the hot sand at every step while a light breeze mess up our hair. We enjoy making friends with the locals so we start playing with our guides, and later on we all sit down on the highest dune waiting for sunset. I ask one of the guides to sing something for us, not knowing they'd ask us to return the show..., I looked my friends and said: "We gotta sing now....!" - We sang a stupid Italian song but they seemed to enjoy it....! As the sun was approaching the horizon we all stopped talking and each one of us took his seat ready to enjoy a spectacular show, someone watching from a distance would have seen ten people seated in line on a dune staring ate the horizon, as if expecting something extraordinary to happen... but as a matter of fact, it really was extraordinary...
Amritsar - The Temple
In Jaisalmer, three friends part of our group, went back to Delhi, their Indian experience ended there. Their train was in the evening our bus at mid noon so after a quick goodbye we jump on the car that would bring us to the bus stop, when we got on the first bus we where unaware of the long an tiring journey expecting us to reach Mc Leod Ganj, our final destination, but before that another stop: Amritsar!
Since there's no direct way from Jaislamer to Amristar we had to stop in several cities and change transportation.
Anyway, from Jaisalmer our first stop was Bikaner where a train was waiting for us.
The drive to Bikaner was really nice, we drove through the desert and enjoyed a nice sunset, but few kilometres before our destination the bus got a flat tie.
We all got off the bus and helped out the driver to change the tire, I was directing the traffic with my torch. Before getting on the bus again I looked up and saw one of the starrier skies I had ever seen, with no lights around the milky way appeared so to real to be almost touched.
In Bikaner we parted ways with other two friends, one of them would live India two days after, the other stopped a couple of days for health problems, he'd catch up with us later on that week.
Because of the flat tire we got to Bikaner late, fortunately our train to the next stop was late so we could jump on it the minute we got to the station.
We arrived to Bhatinda early morning, and went straight to the bus station, next stop would be Amritsar. Few minutes to get some breakfast (mango juice with coconut biscuits) and five hours later, we eventually got to our mid destination (around 11:30 am -10 hours later we left Jaisalmer).
Amritsar is a sacred city to sikhs. To be honest the city in itself didn't impress us so much. The town derived its later name, from the holy tank or the Pool of Immortality, in the centre of which now stands the Hari Mandir or Darbar Sahib – nowadays more commonly known as the Golden Temple.
The temple is open 24 hours a day and priests read from the Sikh holy book continuously which is broadcast by loudspeaker.
The best time to visit the temple is at sunrise when the sun catches the golden dome (said to be 750kg of gilded gold). The temple is meant to represent an inverted lotus flower, a symbol of the Sikhism's aim to live a pure life. The temple is not just symbolic for the Sikh's however. The guru that commissioned the Golden Temple wanted to create a place of worship that united all religions. There's also a "people's kitchen", which is one of the world's largest free community kitchens.
We decide to stay in Amitsar only to see the temple and leave few hours later to the next destination, so before dawn we're already on another bus, here begings a very, very rough drive....
McLeod Ganj - The Exile
It's 2:30 am and we're in front of our hotel screaming at the top of our voices hoping the night guadian would open the door for us.... but let's start from the beginning.
We left Amritsar late evening, our bus is completely full, not even one seat, Ale is lucky enough to find one, a very kind indian men offers me his seat, Raf manages to sit on the lagguage in the corridor but Andrea has to stand the all time.
The bus is old, but it's our only option, we have five hours trip ahead to get do Dharamsala where a taxi would hopefully bring us to McLeod Ganj.
The road to Dharamsala is really windy and the bus driver seemed to be in a hurry caus drove terribly fast. At every stop new people got on the bus, we asked ourselves how so many people could fit and we descovered later, when we all had to get off the bus in order to pass on a bridge, that there were passengers on the roof of the bus too, I wondered how they could not fall off with that Formula 1 way of driving. We eventually got to Dharamsala at 1:30 am, nobody was around, but we managed to wake up a couple of Indians sleeping in their taxi and asked them to bring us to McLeod Ganj.
We will discover that the road is very steep and the car doesn't make it to go up hill with us and our lagguage on, so we have to get off the car several times and reach for the car few meters ahead (al this happened at 2:00 am after several buses, trains, taxis and 24 hours later we left Jasalmer, so you figure our conditions.....). I don't know how, but we eventually get to our Hotel, which is closed of course, then is when we start screaming and calling the night guardian, who comes to open the door in his underware and with a night cap, after 24 hour we rest again our head on a pillow.......
Coming soon....
Manali - The Clouds
Here for pictures!Thanks to everybody: Andrea & Raffaella, Erika, Stefania, Beatrice, Mattia, Alessandro e Luca - We had a great time!!!!
When I think about Sicily I find it difficult to say that it's simply an island of Italy, a simple stretch of its culture... Now, it's true that Sicilians, the southern in general, often represent the Italian abroad... and allow me... not always appropriately... Who around the world, for instance, doesn't know about "The Mafia", people wearing a "coppola", playing the mandolin, speaking with a thick accent and threatening to kill their own mothers for not keeping their mouths shut... while eating spaghetti....
White sand, crystal blue water, palm trees gently leaning on the water, the sound of waves breaking on the shore and the warmth of the pulsing sun up above your head... but wait! A phone rings.... rings... and rings... in a moment an unpleasant letter "e" with its satellite saying "Internet explorer" stands between you and the palm tree, you look better and catch sight o a trash bin and countless folders crowding up your view... and then… there you are, reality kicks in: you've been staring at your tropical island windows desktop! You’re not on a paradise island but it's only a cloudy Monday morning in your office...... Has this ever happened to you? No...!? You're not a day dreamer? Well, whatever is the case, all the above can be found in Costa Rica, a strip of mountainous and volcanic terrain linking Nicaragua to Panama, a jewel right in the heart of Central America!
When we got to Sanna's place on Thursday, she was grilling bread slices and screaming at them, like her encouragement could speed up the grilling process.
