byebye india

Bine in Agra

Fernando and me in Delhi

Well.... the Taj Mahal

ok, here i go.... sittin in the internetcafe w/ fernando, not wanting to go home coz than i have to pack my things and tomorrow morning i have to leave.
i'm not in the mood for sentimental things, so forgive me if i keep this short.
i had one of the great times here and i'm already missing india and it's diversity of everything.

i'll see some of u very soon (joepieeeee) and others hopefully in the near future.
thanks for sharing my experiences on this blog.

I hope the nxt blog will be from africa or latin america (fernando?! ;-)).....).

Luv,
ANke

Bye-bye India!!

Camel-safari and jaipur

Camel-safari .....!!

"Hamaram Cuju baira uaid he"

(this is what I learned in the local rajasthan language: my camel cuju is the best camel. ;-))

Eating delicious thali in the desert (I even helped to make the chapathi-bread)

Sunset

Bine and me in the Amber Fort near Jaipur

Me planning the nxt sightseeing just outside Amber Fort

Camels and bazares

while the internetguy in jaipur is working on my photo's and trying to upload them i find the time to tell u about my days in jaisalmer.
it is situated in the west of rajasthan, pretty close to the border w/ pakistan, which could be seen by the huge amount of military people present in and around jaisalmer. the city is situated in the great-thar-desert and was found in 1156. it is called the "golden city" because all the houses have yellow-sandish colours. the fort of the town is situated 80 mtrs high and is made of sandstone and is really pretty. the rajphut-decorations are especially beautiful on the houses in jaisalmer. the fort is endangered though, because inside the fort live a lot of people and there are many tourist-shops, which threaten the soft sandstone buildings. that is way we decided to not spend the night inside the fort but outside in a hostel.
the biggest 'event' was our camel-safari of 1 1/2 days. we were a group of 9 people (bine, me, 4 german girls, a german couple and one japanese guy) and 7 camel-guides. each one of us had his own camel (mine was called cuju). we left jaisalmer by jeep and met the caravan in the desert, which was not only sand but also some small rocks and plants. my guide naru made me a turban and helped me to mount the camel.... it is high!!and than we left. was quite different to ride a camel, but for sure exciting. at noon they made lunch and we sat in the shadow of one bush while the camels were wkling round and eating. After lunch we rode another 2 hrs before reaching a sanddune where we stopped and stayed for the night. watching the sunset in the desert from a dune and then eating while it was dark, seeing a show of dancing and singing of jipsys (dt:zigeuner) - we had to join- and than sleeping under the sky, watching the stars. i don't think i have top say that it was amazing, right?! btw, it was pretty cold during the night, but i was friends w/ my camelguide, so i got 2 blankets (dt: decken) instead of one as all the others did ;-)....... the following morning we woke up by the sunrise, had breakfast and went again on the camel. by than my legs and bum were already hurting and i had muscleache. we are just not used to riding a camel..... but it was much fun and me,bine and one of the girls were singing and yelling on th backs of the camel (hit the road jack, backebackekuchen, knallrotes gummiboot, nackidei (BINE!), ....) -> great!
after 3 hrs in jaisalmer after the return of the safari we took the night-train to jaipur which is in the east of rajasthan. it took 14 hrs. when we entered the train there was a drunk man lying on one of our beds, hugging his whiskeybottle- we were promised to have a ladies-sleeper....! Aaaarrggggghhhhh! of course nobody could really help, not even the 5 militairs that went there w/ me. luckily the 4 girls from the safari were in the compartment next to ours and there was also a man from holland. after some discussion we managed to convince the 2 indian men to switch seats w/ bine and me. poeh! the first hrs we felt as in a zoo- w/ us being the exotic animals. if we had asked only 1 rupee each we would have made a lot of money! but after one very firm announcement of bine and my relativation of it (knowing the indian tempers) everything was fine and we could even sleep. it was for sure an adventure.
now we are on our 2nd day in jaipur. the city is much bigger than the ones we saw before, as it's the capital of rajasthan. we 've walked over the local bazares and saw lots of nice things. today we'll go to the amber fort which is situated outside jaipur.
tomorrow we'll take the bus to agra, see the taj mahal- 2nd time for me, but bine wants to see it, and maybe this time i will find time to see it from the inside?!

Tata,
ANke

Ps: the car-reader of this internetguy can't read 1GB-cards so i have to put the photo's of the camels and the desert some other time. sorry!

Jodhpur- the blue city

Monsoon palace in Udaipur during sunset

Udaipur, pichola-lake from the boat (Left: Lake palace, right: city palace)

Jodhpur, the blue city, woman on the street

View from the Meherangarh fort onto Jodhpur- it really is blue!

Bine on the wall of the fort.

okay, yes, here i am again. and this time i'll at least write smt so that u can have stories AND pixx..... :-)... oh well, the pixx doesn't seem to be working so well. I'll try again later.
anyways.
the days we spent in UDAIPUR (see earlier posted pixx) were amazing. it really is a romantic city (too bad, that I was w/ bine ;-)) with it's two lakes and the castle in the middle wich nowadays is one fancy hotel. our own hostel was 'klein aber fein' and runned by a dutch-indian couple. it was situated in the quieter part of town at the backsite of the famous city-palace. we walked around a lot and talked to a lot of people, that, of course, wanted us to buy chappals, jewels, sarees, books,...... but it was actually quite nice and not disturbing at all. the nxt day we were invited by them for the tea and we just enjoyed talking and bargaining in a peaceful manner. as udaipur is known for it's silver-jewels of course we also bought somethings (hey, we ARE girls!). then we met two german guys and spent the day w/ them. while Bine was getting a massage I went w/ them on a boattrip on the pichola-lake (see the photo's). It was great fun! the same night we took the sleeperbus to jodhpur.

we arrived early in the morning (5am) and thus were tired yesterday. but nevertheless went to the gigantic Meherangarh-fort that is situated on a hill and can be seen from our roof-terrace. It was really amazing. Rajasthani buildings and architecture are quite impressive! and there, while just wakling up the hill inside the fort all of a sudden Fernando ran up to me. he was an AIESEC trainee in pune too and left 1 1/2 months ago for his travelling. what a conincidence that i met him... and how nice!!

Jodhpur is called the blue city, because a lit of houses are painted in blue. In earlier years only the Brahmans, caste of the priest and thus highest caste, was allowed to paint it blue, but nowadays also others castes do so. Besides being a sign of the Brahmans the blue colour is supposed to turn away mosiquitos, too. (I swear, they still bite us!) yesterday we tried some sweets (gualb jamun and more which particularly bine loved) and it was very funny, coz these people from the shop didn't seem to deal w/ foreigners so often. they were extremly nice and yet so indian in their way of doing. no adaption to tourism yet, quite nice once in a while! today we went to gardens outside town (Mangore gardens) after spending the morning on the crowdy and noisy local markets. Then we had a lassi (yoghurt-drink) on the market and now the updates for u. Later we'll go backt to the hostel and have dinner. The hostel is really nice, run by a family and u feel more like living in a family then in a hostel. Tonight i asked them whether i can eat their food and not the one the woman cooks for us, can u believe i miss spicy food?????

xx. Bine and ANke

more pixx- from udaipur

Me in some shop on the streets

In the saheliyon-ki-bari garden

Bine and one of her first cows ;-)

Jagniwas-island which nowadays is a luxurious hotel

On the local spice-market

pixx from diu

the second time.... :(

Portuguese church in Diu

Me in the old fort in Diu which was build in 1600 by the portuguese

Sabine en me at a "place of remeberance of the dead" for Hindu's on the cliffs in Diu

Fishermen in small village on Diu island breaking the ice ;-)

Ps: After arriving in Ahmedabad this morning (7 am) we were lucky to catch a bus right away that brought us to Udaipur, the lake city in Rajasthan. In the nxt days I'll write smt about it. It's great! Today was chilled, just walked around and had a look at the small shops and talked to the local people. We enjoyed it very much. But now really tired as we spent the night in the bus. Luv. ANke

Diu- voce fala portugues?!

First let me assure everyone that my farewell was GREAT! we had a nice dinner, almost all my friends were there and than we went to party. i danced a lot and i enjoyed it very much that everyone came along. i even got presents from my flatmates ( a cool shirt and a bracelet) and CDs w/ my favourite car-music from trude (the songs i always wanted to hear whike being in the car w/ trude, ta2 and martin).

In BOM w/ Ibrahim (Ivorycost) and his flatmates i had lots of fun too and yet another clubparty. sunday was chilled and talking a lot before meeting bine on monday morning (?).

........ first stop with bine is in diu, small island in gurjarat, arabian sea. we missed the flight from BOM, because bine's flight from delhi arrived 3
hrs late....... and i was waiting for her at the airport for 5 hrs (wanted to be on time) so we had to spent a night in BOM, which was fine, but as BOM is really chaotic, dirty and noisy it was kinda shocking for bine. but hey, we managed and the nxt day flew to diu. here the weather is great, 30 degrees and no clouds, beaches and really relaxt. almost no traffic and you can def. see the influence of the portuguese which gave the island to india only in 1961. a lot of old people (and some younger ones) still speek portuguese. that's too cool, because like this i could get us better prices for almost everything as they are soooo impressed that a german girl can speak port. the rikshaw-driver wanted us to oay 150 INR from the airport to the hostel but at the end we only paid 80. haha! yesterday we rented a scooter---- a pretty old one. and it was my 2nd time driving (after hampi). but bine trusted me and i think i did a pretty good job;-). but than we had a flat tire and had to call from some village, at the scooterrenting nobody picked up.... how good, that the rikshaw-driver from the airport had given me his number (he practically forced me ;-)) and we called him and he was so nice to come right away,took us back to the hostel. the guy we rented the bike from than went w/ me on his bike to the scooter and put the reserve-tire, w/ his hands. i already wondered how that could be safe, but hey, this is india. so i drove back home, picked up bine and while driving the tire blocked and we couldn't move anymore. luckily we weren't really fast, but it was one hella experience. and there he was again..... our private rikshaw-driver ;-). for the second time he had to take us home. this time i made sure i got a different scooter and that one was ok! at night we had very very nice dinner w/ people we met at the hostel (erti, D, jaron, israel, Kathrine, Belgium) and had a beer on the roof of an old church which is now a hostel (and of course highly recommended in the lonely planet;-)). today we cruised around a lot and early in the morning went to the fishersvillage on the other side of the island. it was amazing to see how they 'worked' on the fish and we played w/ children. than all of us went swimming in the sea and spent the whole day on the scooter just cruising around, stopping wherever we wanted to. great fun and really relaxed! lunch again was very nice and in 2 hrs me and bine are going to take the nightbus to ahmedabad. diu is a really nice place and you can meet a lot of people here. i wish we had more time, but there's sooo much we still wanna see....

Diu- recommended in ANke's planet.

Time to say good-bye

sad but true. today is my farewell in lovely Pune. tonight me and some friends wil meet at a nice restaurant in koreagon park (area where we used to live before) and then we will go out for some party.
right now i'm not in the mood to write what's really on my mind, but those of you who know me know, that i'm emotional at farewells. and now, when it's even my own farewell........
today i have to organize the last things and try to make everything fit in my bag. tomorrow in the afternoon i will leave pune and take the bus to mumbai (BOM). there i will meet some AIESEC-trainees that i got to know the weekend that i was in BOM. I can stay at the flat and on sunday i will have a small sightseeing tour in BOM. monday morning Bine will arrive and we will start our trip......... -----> YEAH! First we will stop in Diu/Gujarat which is an island. And there we will decide on our future travelplans.
So keep an eye on my site, i propably won't write as much as i did anymore while travelling but i promise to have interesting stories ;-)

Tc,
ANke

Ps: I'll be landing in Duesseldorf on 25th of nov.