NICARAGUA BLOG: No Keys, No Pants & No Luggage

After 23 hours back at our apartment, I already felt like I needed another holiday. My passport expires next year, and I am getting nervous at the prospect of not quite filling it up. The destination for our 5-day break was Central America’s largest country by area: Nicaragua. Sandwiched between Honduras and Costa Rica, Nicaragua is one of the poorest countries in the Americas, which added to the attraction, as we don’t opt for holiday destinations unless they are poor, war torn, uninhabitable, disease-ridden, or afflicted by natural disasters. It was also represented a milestone trip for me as I notched up my 50th country visited (only 146 or so left to go).

Isla de Ometepe was the first stop on our itinerary. We had taken 3 subway trains, an Airtrain, two planes, 2 taxis, a minibus, and a 2-hour public bus (standing all the way) to get there. Add to that was the ferry, which I am told took an hour over rough water. Thankfully I had taken some drowsy travel sickness medicine, so I swore the journey took less than 2 minutes. Anyway, after a long day travelling we were delighted to finally arrive at our authentic Nicaraguan guesthouse near the village of Santa Cruz.

Concepcion Volcano, Isla de Ometepe

We barely caught our breath on our arrival when word from other backpackers spread of a full moon party that night. Proceedings were already underway at the island's notorious party hostel, Little Morgan's. The month's fancy dress theme was "no pants." Thankfully it was the American meaning of the word rather than the British. The party was in full swing already by the time we arrived at Little Morgan's at 6pm. By 11pm they cleared the hostel and everyone was sent packing down to Santo Domingo beach to dance the night away under the full moon.

The island had been formed by two vast volcanoes - Concepción and Maderas – which sprung out of Lake Nicaragua creating the figure eight-shaped island. The two volcanoes dominated the island and were joined together by an isthmus. The lush greenery that flourished in the island’s fertile soil that surrounded the volcanoes made it very tropical looking. The fluffy clouds that blew over the peaks of the volcanoes by the notorious off-shore island winds made it very picturesque.

Just call me Valentino Rossi

We rented a scooter and buzzed around the island, taking in breakfast at a hippy hillside organic farm of El Zopilote, the green lagoon of Charco Verde and lunch at beachside restaurant. We kept to two wheels the following day as we cycled down a cobbled road (one of the better roads on the island) all the way to El Ojo de Agua (Eye of the Water), joining two clear water swimming holes shaded by a lush tropical forest.

 El Ojo de Agua (Eye of the Water)

Sunday Funday

Our next stop - San Juan del Sur - was a real gringo (referring to white travelers in Central America) town. The small, beach-side community is home to numerous gringo hostels, gringo bars, and travel shops selling gringo tours to nearby gringo surfing beaches or turtle watching. Even the locals’ favourite restaurant has been gringo-fied with Aussies, Americans, and Canadians devouring the famous $5 grilled lobster special that we sampled (and very nice it was too!). But Sunday in San Juan del Sur is all about Sunday Funday. The name speaks for itself. For $15 you were driven on the back of 4x4 trucks to three pool parties at various hotels, complete with a DJ, and enough alcohol to satisfy an army of Scotsmen. The admission fee also bought you the famous “Sunday Funday” vest, which was obligatory to wear unless you possessed a ridiculous costume. It was reported that backpackers through Latin America had spotted the t-shirt as far north as Mexico and as far south as Argentina. I’m guessing it’s as essential as the “Same Same But Different” or “Beer Lao” t-shirts are on the Southeast Asia backpacking circuit. At Sunday Funday we made friends while slurping cocktails, laughed at revelers getting thrown into the swimming pools, avoided the MTV cameras, and watched sunset from high up over the half moon-shaped bay.

Chilling out on the ferry back to the mainland

Staying in San Juan del Sur had come at a price. We had procrastinated our cultural visit to the impressive colonial town of Granada, mainly due to Sunday Funday. Instead, we decided to head back to the airport for our flight to Houston in a private taxi. As is the case in many of these countries, it’s the distance driven that is the cost rather than the time it takes. In other words, there is no extra cost to stopping en route. So we decided to make the most of it, and we negotiated with our driver to travel through Granada and stop for two hours prior to heading to the Managua airport. We had time to gobble down a bowl of fresh fruits, drink coffee, roam the Granada town center, climb the church bell tower, and get a feel for another one of Latin America’s picturesque colonial towns to put on our list which already included: Cartagena, Colombia; San Juan, Puerto Rico; and Antigua, Guatemala.

US Immigration isn’t exactly my best friend at the moment. It’s nothing to do with their obnoxious questioning and envy of my well-stamped passport, rather their inability to deploy a sufficient number of staff to work the desks. I waited 2 hours at JFK the previous week, which paled into insignificance in comparison with the farcical scenes at George Bush Intercontinental Airport, Houston. It is one of the major airport hubs in the US – mainly to Central and South America – yet the staff had implemented a policy not to expediting the queue for anyone who is dangerously close to missing his connecting flight. Worse still was their laissez-faire attitude. Fellow travelers eventually took pity on my tricky position and ushered me to the front of the line only for the jobsworth immigration officer to tell me off because I didn’t ask his permission. “I’ve been waiting in this queue for ages. My flight leaves in under 20 minutes. So, if it’s all the same to you, can you please pull your thumb out of your arse and stamp my passport? And make it pronto,” I didn’t say.

Looking at the customs line, I decided to abandon my luggage on the carousel in Houston and run for the gate. It was either my luggage of the slim hope of making the flight. I almost gave myself an asthma attack running at top speed to the furthest gate imaginable gate in the vast airport (note to oneself: must join a gym forthwith). I was greeted on my arrival by the airline staff who appeared to take some perverse pleasure by informing me that I had narrowly missed the flight. Great. No flight and no Marina as I had sent her off to the US citizens line at Immigration in the vain hope that it was faster than my line. We hadn’t brought our cell phones on the trip and had no wifi, or a way of contacting each other.

I caught a ride on one of those airport cars to customer service in another terminal who were able to tell me Marina hadn’t made the flight either. But there was no sign of Marina anywhere. Worse news was to follow when United told me the last flight back to New York that evening was fully booked and I’d be sleeping at the airport, as United wouldn’t provide accommodation. What had started out a lovely day sipping coffee in a beautiful old colonial town had suddenly gone decidedly Pete Tong. I rebooked us on the next available flight – some 13 hours later – and bolted to the other end of the airport to another terminal to try to get on the standby list for the last flight back to LaGuardia (New York). We were 5th and 6th on the standby list, but I knew we had a chance of getting on as there must have been others in the same predicament as us, and I could only hope that the Immigration hadn’t decided to improve their glacial pace in the past hour. There was one slight flaw in my great plan: I had no idea where to find Marina. I had to stand at the gate and hope she had the same idea as me. About 45 minutes past as I paced around the gate holding our position on the standby list. I was about to give up shortly before they allocated the standby tickets to the spare seats when Marina suddenly honed into view looking warn out from running around the airport, yet nonetheless pleased to see me. We were the last people to get called off the standby list onto the flight and managed to get seats in Economy Plus. Our luck had changed. Or had it?

The euphoria we experienced when we ran onto the plane was quickly extinguished at the realization that we had somehow inexplicably packed our only set of apartment keys in our luggage. Yes, the same bag that was still at Houston after we had been forced to abandon it in pre customs in a desperate attempt to catch the flight. We spent most of the flight formulating a plan of attack for the night, which included staying at a nearby hotel, turning up at a friend’s apartment unannounced after midnight (as every friend’s phone number is stored in our phones which we didn’t bring on the trip), or simply scaling the fire escape to try and break into our living room window.  Instead, we opted for the simple plan and tailgated a skeptical old lady into our building. We knocked nervously after midnight on the door of the owner upstairs, who greeted us in her pajamas looking a little disheveled amidst our constant apologies. We breathed a huge sigh of relief when she returned to the door holding up a key. We took it and raced downstairs. I put the key in the hole and tried it turn it. It seemed stuck. Then my heart dropped as I realized that we changed the locks last year and this must be the old key. D’oh! A few seconds later the owner leaned over the balcony dangling another key. This time it was the real one. We were home, at last. It had never felt so nice to be home. The bag arrived turned up 2 days later, but we weren’t complaining.

ETHIOPIA BLOG 1/4: Cairo... Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?

Ever since we first encountered photos the Mars-like landscape of the Danakil Depression, an awe-inspiring natural wonder on the border of Ethiopia and Eritrea, we knew we had to see it with our own eyes. So great was our excitement to travel to Ethiopia in December of 2013, that we booked our flights unprecendently far in advance (8 months, to be exact), no doubt patting ourselves on the back for our superb organization skills. Our Egypt Air flight included an added bonus – a two-day stopover in Cairo – giving us just enough time to check the Pyramids of Giza, Egyptian Museum, and Tahrir Square off our list. It appeared, however, that booking a stopover in Egypt turned out to be the Archduke Franz Ferdinand moment that ignited serious political turmoil in Egypt, which included mass civil unrest, martial law, 7pm-7am curfew, and even revolution that erupted in the summer of 2013. In light of this instability, we did contemplate canceling our trip to Egypt. But then again, when have we ever shunned danger, chaos, and a bit of adventure?

It turned out that our adventure began even before we left the United States. Upon a routine call to Egypt Air to select seats, Marina discovered that only her name appeared on the passenger manifest and the second passenger (i. e. me) was not on the reservation. A few conversations with Vayama, which progressed from disbelief to denial to anger to exasperation, left us resigned to the fact that we had to buy a brand new ticket for me from New York to Ethiopia (now, some 2 weeks before travel) at a vastly inflated price. There's nothing like a last minute panic. We certainly have learned our lesson about being too organized and trying to book 8 months in advance. 

Sipping mind blowing strong coffee 
on the balcony of our hotel in Cairo

After enduring an uncomfortable, red-eye flight on the dry Egypt Air flight, with minimal legroom and even less alcohol, our luck seemed to change when we landed in Africa’s second largest city. Cairo was awesome. Our hotel was situated just a couple hundred meters from the infamous Tahrir Square, the scene of many of the worst protests and clashes of the past couple of years. As a result of the troubles, it seemed we were some of the only tourists in the city. The curfew had recently been lifted and the pavements were awash with the city’s nine million residents. The streets represented one large stream of stagnant traffic. We navigated our way through the hustle and bustle of the city to Islamic Cairo. Meandering our way through the back alleys, we stopped at the well-known El-Fishawi Coffee Shop where we enjoyed a coffee so strong it would keep a mere mortal awake for a week.

Giza

The early morning wake-up call the following day was a blessed relief from staring at the ceiling in my jet-lagged/ caffeine-infused state. We had arranged a personal driver for the day to take us around the pyramids. Talking to him it quickly became apparent how hard the lack of tourists had hit the local economy. Our driver told us that he used to drive tourists to the pyramids daily, but now had one customer a month. He took us to Giza, Sakkara, and Dashur and waited at each location while we wondered around the desolate wonders of the world and took photos. On the way back, he dropped us off at the Egyptian Museum. We walked past the army personnel and tanks situated outside and walked inside the world-famous museum. The stark lack of tourists was pronounced. I’m not even sure there were 10 people in the museum besides us during the couple of hours we spent there. The museum was badly in need of refurbishment and looked more like an IKEA warehouse than one of the world’s great museums. The contents were fascinating, especially Tutankhamun’s treasures and the incredible Mummy Room containing pharaohs in open caskets, perfectly preserved over the past 4500+ years.

Egyptian Museum

The early morning wake-up call the following day was a blessed relief from staring at the ceiling in my jet-lagged/ caffeine-infused state. We had arranged a personal driver for the day to take us around the pyramids. Talking to him it quickly became apparent how hard the lack of tourists had hit the local economy. Our driver told us that he used to drive tourists to the pyramids daily, but now had one customer a month. He took us to Giza, Sakkara, and Dashur and waited at each location while we wondered around the desolate wonders of the world and took photos. On the way back, he dropped us off at the Egyptian Museum. We walked past the army personnel and tanks situated outside and walked inside the world-famous museum. The stark lack of tourists was pronounced. I’m not even sure there were 10 people in the museum besides us during the couple of hours we spent there. The museum was badly in need of refurbishment and looked more like an IKEA warehouse than one of the world’s great museums. The contents were fascinating, especially Tutankhamun’s treasures and the incredible Mummy Room containing pharaohs in open caskets, perfectly preserved over the past 4500+ years.

Jumping with joy at Giza

Our layover in Cairo was short and sweet, and we were soon moving on to Ethiopia. We arrived at Addis Ababa at day-break, having flown on separate flights from Cairo (due to our mishap with my ticket). We immediately caught a taxi to the Taitu Hotel, the oldest hotel in the country that was reminiscent of the colonial days. The hotel’s owner was a friend of a friend and showed us amazing hospitality. He desperately wanted to pay for lunch and even offered to lend us a substantial amount of money ($500 USD!) as we had trouble with the ATM machine. We declined his extremely generous offer but took him up on a free hotel shuttle to the airport for our flight to Lalibela that same day.

The rock-hewn churches in Lalibela

In order to fly to Lalibela we had to stop overnight in a town in southwestern Ethiopia called Bahir Dar on the shores of Lake Tana. It was our first night in Ethiopia and could hardly have been further away from home. It’s almost preposterous to eat dinner in New York before 9pm. In true New York spirit, we left our hotel at 9.30pm only to discover the entire town had closed for the night. It appeared the only ones getting a good feed that night were the plentiful mosquitoes in our hotel room. 

As the propeller plane landed at the Lalibela Airport, we were immediately struck by the natural beauty of our surroundings. Lalibela’s highlights were the awe-inspiring rock-hewn churches (carved out of single blocks of stone), dating back to the 12^th century. We spent the majority of the next day exploring the UNESCO World Heritage Site. After satiating ourselves in rock-hewn churches, we strolled about a mile along a dusty dirt track to the edge of town, where we discovered a newly opened restaurant that had a greater architectural resemblance to a scene from a Mad Max movie than anything from during King Lalibela’s reign in medieval times. The restaurant was the design brainchild of a Scottish schoolteacher and her Ethiopian husband. When she invited us to a Christmas celebration at the restaurant the following night, it appeared to be the perfect venue to enjoy mince pies followed by roast turkey with all the trimmings. Unfortunately, we never got to sip mulled wine while looking out over the stunning Lalibelan valley on Christmas Day, because we opened our email that evening to discover that our pre-arranged trip to the Danakil Depression had been spontaneously rescheduled for a day earlier. So we had to cut our time in Lalibela by one day and depart for Mekele.

Church of Saint George, Lalibela, Ethiopia

Ethiopia or dystopic future Australia?

As it turned out, we spent Christmas Day slumped in the back of an old uncomfortable minibus for about 9 hours on unpaved Ethiopian roads. Our painfully slow and bumpy drive to the northern city of Mekele was made only more tedious by having to listen to the most boring middle-aged Belgian guy I’ve ever met. His conversation sent me to sleep like several pints of 9% Blue Label Chimay at lunchtime. But neither enduring the man who gave me temporary narcolepsy nor missing out on an Ethiopian Christmas dinner could detract from what lay ahead of us in Mekele… 

Breakfast in the Mad Max restaurant overlooking western Ethiopia

INDIA BLOG 2/2: McDonalds, horrific bus journeys, Hotel Ladies Venture, and a dangerous creepy-crawly

With the onset of the ‘Delhi belly,’ what I really needed was a day of sightseeing around the capital in the searing summer heat (not!). Our train arrived at New Delhi station at 6am, so Marina and I had 11 hours to get out and see some of the city once we found somewhere safe to store our bags for the day. We dropped off our backpacks at a guesthouse luggage room in Paharganj (main backpacker district in Delhi) for a whopping 40p for the day. The first stop on our agenda was somewhere that was clean, served food, and most importantly had strong air conditioning after our week in the freakishly hot Rajasthan. Yep, you guess it: McDonalds. It was the perfect choice. At the entrance, I kicked aside the rubbish on the pavement with a fierce left-footed strike and opened the door. The first blast of cold air almost knocked me off my feet. The restaurant was spotlessness inside – or at least seemed that way after a week travelling around India. The tables looked clean enough to eat my dinner off. We had found a little oasis of cleanliness in the midst of Delhi’s filth. I felt a million dollars as the cool air hit me from all angles. I started to hallucinate and imaged myself walking on the top of clouds in a dream as I strutted to the counter and boldly ordered a Maharaja Mac with large fries and a Diet Coke. Following this, we made our way on Delhi’s air conditioned metro to the striking Akshardham Temple, which was truly not a sight to be missed and possibly the most beautiful temple we saw during our stay in India.

The bus north into the hill country of the state of Himachal Pradesh later that day was supposed to be a gentle bus ride to the cool, laid-back hippie retreat (and home of the Tibetan government in exile): Dharamsala. In reality, it turned into the bus journey from hell. Our “door-to-door bus” didn’t depart from the end of the Main Bazaar in Paharganj, as promised. Nor was it direct. But the rest of the terms and conditions were more or less spot on. “No air conditioning” was, just as we imagined, a bus with definitely no air (the gentle 45C heavily polluted Delhi breeze doesn’t count). The driver spent several hours navigating the Friday night rush hour before we were truly on our way up north.

Before we left Delhi, I was well dosed up on a cocktail of drugs; however, come midnight my lethargy had turned into a high fever and as the night progressed, the effects of my last Imodium tablet were wearing off. To make matters worse, the bus driver navigated the winding mountain roads at breakneck speed, indiscriminately throwing the rickety bus from side to side as he navigated his way uphill. It wasn’t long before I was able to add car sickness and nausea to my list of aliments.  

Sleeping at a Tibetan refugee intake center in Dharamsala

I was practically falling apart by the time I stepped off the 13-hour bus journey to Dharamsala. It seemed just my luck that the morning of our arrival coincided with a public holiday in the neighbouring state of Punjab. The entire state had also decided to escape the heat and head into the mountains for the weekend. As a result, a reasonably priced guesthouse was not easy to find and was going to take some work. The first Marina knew that I wasn’t complaining of a dubious case of man flu was when we mistakenly walked into a Tibetan refugee intake center as we searched for a room to stay. We pleaded for a room and told the guy at reception that I was sick. He informed us it wasn’t a regular guesthouse, but somehow took pity on me and very kindly offered me his room to sleep for a few hours. Despite being literally just a bare mattress on the floor, I was very grateful and crashed out well into the afternoon.

Luckily, within a day or two I was fully recovered, and it gave us a chance to explore the town. Dharamsala, or to be precise the small hillside town ofMcLeod Ganj, has been a home-away-from-home for the Tibetan people since India granted asylum to their spiritual and political leader, the Dalai Lama, in 1959, after he was forced to flee from the Chinese who entered Tibet. To this day, Tibetan families save up enough money to allow one family member to flee the country (illegally), usually over the Himalayas to Nepal. From Kathmandu the refugees are sent by bus to Delhi and on to Dharamsala. Board and lodging are provided on their arrival, and they are taught basic computer skills as well as English.

To help develop their English skills, volunteers drop by the center in the afternoon to engage the refugees (many of whom were political prisoners in Tibet before fleeing to India) in conversation. Marina and I did just this one day and individually listened to stories of our students’ (also ex-political prisoners) fascinating tales of their month-long trek to freedom. We also checked out the highly depressing Tibetan museum that showcased the Tibetans’ struggle for independence from the Chinese oppressors as well as the temple where the Dalai Lama currently lives. In fact, we missed seeing the Dalai Lama by a whisker, as his motorcade went directly past us one day, but I was busy trying to help decide on another handbag for Marina while she patiently negotiated yet another fifty pence off the asking price.

I immediately understood why Marina had spent two weeks in Dharamsala on a previous visit when I noticed the abundance of jewelry shops. After deciding against the handbag that cost me my only sighting of the Dalai Lama (I’m not bitter as you can tell!), we hit the jewelry shops where she totally redeemed herself with her amazing bargaining skills, especially with all the Kashmiri salesmen. It was quite an experience to witness. Each item took on average of around 45 minutes to negotiate. She kept everything very lighthearted, took her time, and joked around as each party inched closer and closer to a meeting point. Every few minutes the seller’s “absolute last price” became his “absolute, absolute last price.” With each one of Marina’s belly laughs and flick back of the hair, the price dropped another few dollars. Yet even when it came to the “absolute, absolute, absolute last price,” Marina still looked like she was ready to walk away unless he was willing to compromise further. Finally the seller relented and she picked her jewelry for a fraction of the price I would have ever achieved.

For the majority of our stay in Dharamsala we stayed at a basic guesthouse called Hotel Ladies Venture, which despite sounding like a brothel, was actually a pretty regular guesthouse on the inside. We moved there after an incident at our first guesthouse on the first night. As we were getting ready, I heard a piercing scream from the bathroom where Marina was showering. It was followed by a loud thud on the ground. It was the kind of scream that could only have been two things: an attacker or a creepy-crawly. I quickly ruled out an intruder, as the bathroom window was smaller than some jail cell windows. The scream had been one of pure terror. I manned-up, fulfilling my husbandly duties and ran into the bathroom, flip flop in hand all ready to pounce on the perpetrator. By the volume of the scream I expected to find a hairy tarantula dangling precariously over Marina, or even a cobra reeling up hissing. Err… no. What I witnessed was Marina lying on her backside having slipped in her haste to escape from the evil clutches of a daddy long-legs, which was scuttling away as quickly as its legs could take it away. Panic over.

Hiking Triund, 2875 meters above sea level

The best day of the holiday was when we woke up at dawn and hiked up to a mountain village of Triund, which was the peak of the mountain that overlooks Dharamsala. The day-trek took nine hours in total (admittedly with a slight detour via two nearby villages – Bhagsu and Dharamkot - en route back to McLeod Ganj). Armed with a packed lunch, an iPod, personal speakers, and a thin, plastic poncho of the kind people worn on a wet day at Thorpe Park (theme park), we meandered our way up the mountain until we were well above the clouds. At the summit, we could see the next (snow-capped) mountain over in the range, its vastness impressive as it towered over where we stood (2,875 meters). This was our first ever view of the Himalayas, and it was pretty damn unforgettable.

 We were back in Delhi for the final day of our holiday after a week chilling in Dharamsala. We had a lot to see in Delhi and not much time. The Lonely Planet suggested visiting the Sulabh International Museum of Toilets that was supposed to “showcase the advancement in toilet facilities in India since 2500BC.” We weren’t sure whether this was a misprint in the book or simply a poor joke as we hadn’t notice any kind of improvement in bathroom facilities (the hole in the ground, no toilet paper, no soap, and eye-watering smells all too prevalent). Instead, we opted for 16^th century Humayun’s Tomb, described by the Obamas as “spectacular” after being taken there on their recent state visit to India. If it was good enough for Barack it was good enough for us. To be fair, it was very impressive with the main tomb looking like a smaller version of the Taj Mahal.

  

I boarded the Virgin Atlantic pristine new Airbus back to Heathrow with the same feeling as the last time I left India back in 2008: I was sad to leave after taking a while to acclimatize. India really grows on you more than any other country. The dirt, grime, clearly visible human disease and deformity, stray animals, constant hassling, honking, craziness, warm beer, and sheer incredible mass of people are all quite overbearing on your arrival.

  

After a while though, you forget about all of that and concentrate on what makes India such a fascinating country: its vibrancy, colour, culture, people, landscape, food and so on that make it a must for anyone, like us, who wants to see and experience all different parts of the world. India is unique. On top of its obvious plus points, it is generally much safer than many second and third world countries. When leaving an ATM you don’t have to scour the area for potential problems as though you are a secret serviceman ahead of the President’s arrival (as is the case in Central or South American, in particular). Violent crime is rare in India. The worst that happens to the vast majority of tourists is they get scammed for one thing or another, or simply overpay. To a westerner the amounts are usually insignificant and are often more of a wake-up call than a real hit to the wallet. You come to the realization that most of the locals are simply very poor and are only trying to make a living. But at least in India it’s all done with a smile. We’ll be back!

INDIA BLOG 1/2: Indian Train Journeys, Neck Braces and Chai Tea in the Rajasthan hot season

After two overnight plane journeys on Virgin Atlantic from Newark via a 13-hour layover in London, we arrived at Delhi's Indira Ghandi International Airport last Sunday morning. We grabbed a cappuccino at Cafe Coffee Day (India's Starbucks) at the airport and took the swanky, new express train to the New Delhi Railway Station. The moment we stepped out of the metro building, a wall of heat hit us and the madness was all too apparent. Approximately half of the population of India also had the same idea as we: to catch the overnight train straight out of the city. The railway station resembled a massively overpopulated refugee camp.

First port of all way the Tourist Ticket Office, which Marina said was located on the second floor of the New Delhi Train station. As we approached the stairs leading to the second floor, a large India man stepped over a couple of people sleeping (I assume they were alive and therefore sleeping), pushed aside of couple of beggars, and blocked our path. "Foreigner Ticket Office closed! Two months ago now closed. For train ticket there is new office now. Here, I take you. Not far away." A seasoned Indian traveler, Marina was having none of this bloke's nonsense and wasn't falling for the oldest trick in the book even though we were fresh off the plane. While searching for the legitimate ticket office, we met a really cool Colombian couple trying to buy tickets to Varanasi, that we ended up hanging out with the rest of the day in Delhi until our departure that evening to Udaipur - the "White City."

Traveling in India by train is one of the quintessential backpacking experiences. We boarded the overnight train to Udaipur in Sleeper Class (fourth best class and without A/C). Vendors walked by selling meals and chai at every stop and we gazed out of the open windows at the real India. Despite the designated seating, the Indian passengers typically spend half of their journey attempting to change seats. It seemed like everybody on board bought the wrong ticket and it was a mad scramble to change seats. They would try any tactic to acquire or keep the best seat possible. 

In our carriage, was an old lady who was actively trying to convince a middle-aged woman (who had a lower bunk ticket) to switch with her, as she said she couldn't climb up to the top bunk. No such luck. The middle-aged lady pointed to her neck brace and the old grandma was forced to move elsewhere. Once the game of Musical Chairs was over and the old lady was clear out of sight in another carriage, the middle-aged lady whipped off her neck brace and put it away safely in her handbag, no doubt for future use on her return journey.

The only other foreigner in our carriage turned out to be a wannabe hippie called Henry who spoke with a plum in his mouth from that well-known bohemian enclave of London: Richmond-Upon-Thames. Initially, we were pleased to make conversation with another Westerner, but soon our eyes were glazing over as we exchanged worried looks that we may have another 12 hours of Mr. Charisma Bypass. Fortunately, Henry did us a favour when he knocked back a valium tablet at 8pm, and 12 hours later, we had to shake him awake to get off the train at Udaipur the following morning.

Udaipur made our wedding day in New York last year feel positively chilly. Even in the early hour of the morning, we were drenched in sweat carrying our backpacks around searching for accommodation. We stumbled across a decent guesthouse with a room that had huge windows overlooking the lake and famous hotel and small islands. As we settled into our new abode, I asked our host whose name was Raj but liked to call himself Raj from Rajasthan in case I couldn't remember a 3-letter word, for an extra chair for the room. Soon, Raj's assistant delivered a tray of tea to us. I stood there confused for a moment and then realised that he heard "chai" when I said "chair." I gratefully accepted the chai and dispatched him off for the chair. Ten minutes later, he returned with another large pot of chai, at which point I gave up and sat down cross-legged on the floor drinking both pots of chai.

Over the next couple of days, we took in the main sites of Udaipur including the City Palace, spice market, boat ride on Lake Pichola and a visit to Jagmandir Island, as well as the Jagdish Temple. We caught the early morning 'deluxe' non A/C sleeper bus to Jodhpur, the "Blue City," but needless to say the bus didn't match up to its description in any way shape or form. The five-hour bus journey to Jodhpur dragged out to over seven hours on what I can only imagine was the hottest day since weather records began. We only had the energy to sweat in the unbelievable heat on the bus. There was no relief sticking your head out of the open widow, as it resembled sticking your head into an over on full blast. Some locals said it was 45C; others said 50C with high humidity.

Arriving in Jodhpur, exhausted from over-sweating, we broke our own rules and decided to splurge for a room with aircon. However, in each room with promised A/C, it seemed the A/C turned out to be broken. Guesthouse owners tried their best to convince us that the air conditioners worked, despite their only expelling hot air. "'I'm not lying to you, it works," we were consistently told by a series of owners. I've come to realise that when a local tells me he is not lying, he is in fact telling me a big pack of whoppers. We eventually had to settle for a room with a postcard view of the fort and the blue-colored skyline but with just a 'water cooler' (basically a glorified fan) that only served to push stifling hot air around the room.

The following day, it was a blessed relief when the temperature dipped down to 42C, which enabled us to do some sightseeing in Jodhpur. We hiked a tuk-tuk for several hours to take us to the Jaswant Thada memorial, Umaid Bhawan Palace, and the very impressive Mehrangarh fort. Driving through the narrow lanes of the old city was like the opening sequence of a James Bond film. Our driver weaved and swerved through a never-ending sea of cars, cyclists, pedestrians, stay dogs, and cows, skillfully evading them by millimetres rather than centimetres. We finished the day with yet another slap up curry at a roof-top restaurant. 

Meal time is always the best time of the day. The first obstacle is finding two or three dishes on the menu that the restaurant is actually able to serve. I have come to realise that the menu is more a historical list of meals served at the restaurant over the years, rather than what is currently on offer. When ordering, it is sooner rather than later that the waiter gives you an apologetic shake of the head stating "no chana masala." This became a bit of an in joke between us and I struggled to keep a straight face as my third, fourth and fifth choice meals were not available. Perhaps I should not have had such a wide grin on my face, as the first bout of Delhi Belly was soon upon me!