Agra to Delhi

After Jaipur, we took the early train to Agra, where we stayed in the "Taj Plaza" about 1/4 mile from the Taj Mahal. We can see the Taj from our room, which is great. The Taj is the best sight we have seen in India so far, and is immaculate. They take very good care of it, and even make you wear booties over your shoes to go inside. Kristin was very excited about her booties, as you can see from the photo. The Taj was built for one of the wives of the Emperor Shah Jahan. She must have been a looker, because this place is nice! If you ever go to the Taj, check on the moon patterns - it closes for 2 days before the full moon and 2 days after (including the day of the full moon) and is also closed on Fridays; so it could be closed a full week. Luckily we made it by a day! The next day we went to see the old fort which is very impressive and has a nice view of the Taj, and the Baby Taj (not as big or pretty as the real one). We also found a beer guy down the street from our hotel who has the coldest drinks we have had since we left. He doesn't like Ben though because he tried to haggle over the price the first day and failed - but we ended up turning around and buying them anyway. The next time Ben went to buy beer from him, he tried to double the price on him! We also saw another monument - the name escapes us - that had big lawns around the building filled with peacocks, gazelles, and monkeys. Naturally, our camera was dead so we didn't get to take a picture of any of it, but I was extremely tempted to go around the lawns and pick up the Peacock feathers that littered the area.

From Agra we took a train to New Delhi. We read mixed reviews about it so were not sure what to expect, but once we arrived it didn't seem any more dirty than other places and actually a little more modern. We found a budget hotel in the Main Bazaar which was right across the street from the train station - nice when we arrived at 10:45 pm. Since our hotel was pretty centrally located, we decided to just walk around the entire next day and take a break from the tourist sights. Most of the touts here seem to take No for an answer after the first or second time which is a nice change of pace from some of the other areas we have been. The tuk tuks do not want to turn on the meters for foreigners though; so we have to haggle with them to turn it on or get a price that seems somewhat reasonable. There are quite a few people staying in our hotel (he actually had to deny people the night we arrived and move us to another room the next day since someone else reserved our room) and we met a Brit named David who was really nice. He had already been here a couple of days and we decided to walk around together - it was Monday and most tourists sights were closed due to Eid (marking the end of Ramadan). We took the metro (Spotless, Quick, Easy, and Air Conditioned!) to the Laxim Temple which is Hindu Temple. There was no charge to get in and it was amazing!! We hit it right when they opened the gates for people to worship the various forms of God which was something special to see. The Hindus believe in one God that can take many different forms (something Ben and I did not fully understand before arriving here) so within the temple there are different forms of the same God that people pray to and provide donations. The temple was huge; behind it was a place for kids to play around on slides, climb huge artificial rocks and lions which was all surrounded by water fountains - but they weren't turned on. We decided to swing into a bar and have a beer since it was so hot before moving over to the India Gate for sunset. When we got to the India Gate, I was bombarded with people wanting to take pictures with me. This has happened a few times before at major sights like the Taj, Red Fort, etc but I think this was a bit different; people just started pushing there friends near me and taking photos. Finally Ben came in and dragged me out of the chaos! The India Gate is actually a war tribute but you would not normally guess it from all the food stalls, cotton candy, toys, etc. From the Gate we went to the Old Fort since David heard there was a light show that started around 7. When we got there, it was like a carnival! They had Ferris Wheels, Game Booths, Plays going on, etc. Ben won a package of cookies from a ring toss game, but was not so lucky with the baseball game where you throw the ball to knock off all the cups. Actually, he didn't hit any cups on his first game. We had a really good time and ended up being on a local TV network when I was taking a bite of something we got from a food stall. I can just see the caption: "Messy American Eater at the Fair!".

Welcome to India!

We flew into Mumbai at 4:30 a.m., which was not the best. After a struggle to find our hotel, we finally got there, but they wouldn't let us check in until 8. Neither of us had slept in about 30 hours, and were exhausted. We finally got into our room, and slept until about 1. After walking around Mumbai, we both decided we did not like this city. It is the business capital of India, and not the best tourist destination...and very expensive. It is a bit of a shock to see cows roaming aimlessly in the streets, people going to the bathroom on the side of the road, and how crowded it is but we were slightly prepared for this from stories of other people's experiences.

We decided to leave the next day for Jodhpur. Unfortunately the guy thought we said Jaipur, so we got tickets to Jaipur instead. Oh well, $#%^ happens. We just decided to go there instead. It was a 22 hour train ride, which was surprisingly nice. We had sleeper trains, and it went bye faster than you would think a 22 hour ride would. Jaipur was much better, we found a great hotel, that was only $12 a night. We also found the nicest Tuk Tuk (a small 4 stroke rickshaw) driver, named Naeem. He took us around for two straight days, to all the sights, and his choice of restaurant, and shops. We bought some nice stuff, and sent it back via Indian post office(hope it makes it)! The only hang-up was the antique guns we bought in Petra. When I pulled them out at the post office to ask if I could send them, Naeem and the other guy kind of freaked out, and advised me that I should not show them to anyone else, because they are illegal...WHOOPS! Anyway, everything else got sent.

At Jaipur we saw the city palace, which is called the pink city, because of the color of the wall around it. We also saw the Wind Palace (pictured), and the water palace, which were both beautiful. We went to a museum and a fort as well. We liked Naeem so much we called him the second day to take us around for the day again. Having your own guide and taxi for a day for $6 is hard to beat. If your ever in Jaipur, we have his number and email!

One night we had a hankering for some MEAT, as most of the places are vegetarian, since Hindu's don't eat meat. We found a very expensive restaurant and gorged ourselves on some Chinese and Indian dishes. It is hard to keep the money situation in perspective in India, as everything is soo cheap. $1 U.S. dollar is 47 Rupees, so when I say the restaurant was really expensive, our meal was around 600 Rupees, or $13, which is real expensive, as main dishes are normally around 60-90 Rupees. Since we are so used to haggling with everyone for everything to do about price we have found ourselves fighting to talk a Tuk Tuk driver down by 10 Rupees. There is nothing like spending 5 minutes arguing with a guy over 10 Rupees(20 cents).

Hollywood in Jordan

After a little scare in Cairo, we arrived in Jordan. We arrived at the airport at 6 a.m. in Cairo for our 10:30 flight to Amman, to find our flight was cancled. After waiting around for a couple hours, we were able to get on the next flight out, and arrived in Amman. We stayed one night in Amman, and headed to Petra in the south of Jordan early the next morning.

Petra is amazing! Some of you might remember some of the scenes from Indiana Jones that were filmed at Petra. Petra is also one of the New Seven Wonders of the World.

The Nabataeans constructed it as their capital city around 100 BCE. The site remained unknown to the Western world until 1812, when it was introduced to the West. We both think that Petra blows the pyramids of Egypt out of the water. We did two days at Petra, because the site is so big. The tombs, houses, and temples of Petra are carved straight out of the side of the mountains and cliffs. The multicolored cliffs are huge, and it is amazing that someone could carve these huge structures out of solid rock. We took a ton of pictures, so check them out at our Flickr page.

After spending two days in Petra, we took a tour to Wadi Rum which is probably most famous for the scenes from Lawrence of Arabia. We organized the trip through our hostel, and ended up having a very good group of fellow travellers. There were two brits, two Aussies, two Danes, one Swede and one Canadian...Aye! The were all great to travel with, and we had a good time, and learned to play a new card game (cribbage). We desperately needed a new game, as our ongoing Gin game is in the 7000's, and we were getting tired of it, even though the stakes are high. (loser does the dishes for 1 year after we return.

Wadi Rum is a desert, with crazy rock formations, and the sight of the famous "Lawrence of Arabia", played by Peter O'toole for those who have seen it. We visited the Lawrence spring, and Lawrence's house...both of which were unimpressive to say the least. The desert is the highlight of the trip for sure, and was beautiful. We rode through the desert by old Land Cruiser's, and I mean very old. The guide was nice enough to let us try and drive them after our lunch brake - Kristin was by far the worst driver out of everyone but got to drive the fastest and longest amount of time! The clutch and brakes barely worked, and no power steering in the desert doesn't help either. Not to mention the dashboard was missing, so they had to hotwire the car every time we wanted to start it again.

The sunset and stars were some of the best we have seen, and we both decided to pull our cot out of the tent and sleep under the stars on the sand. After hiking up and Kristin running down some sand dunes, that about capped off our trip to the desert, and we headed back to Amman for our next flight to India.

The flight, was the best I have ever been on. Royal Jordanian Air is an amazing airline. Ben did not want to get off the plane, since it was 4:30 a.m. when we arrived in India. Each seat had a t.v., with choice of movies or t.v. shows, or games. We both watched the new X-men, new Terminator, and half of the new star trek.....not to mention free BOOZE, which comes in handy at 3:00 a.m.

That was it for Jordan, overall it was a great country, much less of a hassle than Egypt and Morocco, and great sites....even if it was a little more expensive. That concludes our "muslim" part of the trip, on to India!

Dahab, Egypt

After our trip up the Nile, we took a "12 hour" bus ride up to a city on the beach of the Red Sea called Dahab. The bus ran a little more like 20+ hours, but the city more than made up for the hassle. Dahab is a backpacker friendly city, which is very laid back. We stayed at a hostel for about $8 a night, right on the beach with views of the sea and the mountains.

Kristin naturally forgot a bathing suit, so we had to buy one in Dahab which was an adventure trying to find one that actually fit - it is pretty ugly but works. We instantly loved the city, which reminded us of Charleston. We could rent snorkles, mask, and fins from our hostel for about $2 a day, and there were two great spots within a half mile from our room to go. Great reefs with all kinds of coral, fish, and eels. One spot was called "Eel Garden", and we spotted three different kinds of Eels, including a 8 or 9 foot Giant Moray Eel, that was huge. We only stayed for 3 days, but we could have stayed for a couple of weeks if we had the time.

Of course Thursday was GAMEDAY, and you know we started tailgating early...about 5 a.m. your time! We tailgated SC style with some rum, and the only fried chicken we could find(roasted). The hostel threw a birthday party for the guests, and Kristin did some dancing, that the Egyptians were pretty impressed with. It gave the evening a Gameday type atmosphere!

Ben got to listen to the game after talking the hotel guy into keeping the internet cafe open until about 3:30 a.m., since the game didn't start until 1 a.m. in Egypt. It was a win, and we will take it!

We kept running into 2 guys from Seattle in Cairo when we first landed - Matt and Tim. They ended up being on our fellucha trip to Luxor and on our bus ride to Dahab; so we ended up staying together in the same hotel to hang out along with a French couple we met in Luxor. They are going to Petra afterwards too, so we will see if we run into them yet again there!

Ben, Matt, Pasquel, Audrey, and Tim

We snorkled all three days we were there, and it was very relaxing,and cheap after the hustle and bustle of Cairo, and the big cities.

Fellucha Trip and Luxor

After we got off our train at Aswan, we went over to the Tourism Office to get more information about fellucha trips. The man was nice and helpful and arranged a meeting with a captain for us later that afternoon. So we checked into a hotel to drop our stuff off before walking around and our hotel obviously tried pushing their fellucha trip on us for 115 pounds a piece (about $23). We declined saying we already had a meeting with a captain set up but would keep it in mind. When we met with the captain there was a Canadian and two other Americans wanting information on it as well such as how much, what is included, etc. We all were looking at the trips up the Nile for two nights and three days so were trying to get on the same boat - since it holds a minimum of 6 you have to pay for 6 regardless of how many in your party. The 2 Americans did not think they would have time to do the trip so bailed out which just left us and the Canadian which we could not afford. Therefore, when we got back to our hotel we called the fellucha guy - Ako - and set it up through them since they already had 5 people signed up to leave the next day. We walked around the town for a bit, which really is not very big, and I was actually able to find some real saffron (as opposed to the powder most souqs in Morocco were pawning off as saffron) and we loaded up! Then we grabbed some dinner which was on of the best we have had in Egypt at Aswan Moon right on the Nile.

When we got to our fellucha the next day, we found our old buddies from Cairo, Matt and Tim, sitting on the same boat! We had two guides that steered the boat, but the trip turned out a little different than we expected. Lonely Planet made it sound like you got to see a bunch of sites while you sailed up the Nile, stopping at a few temples and various Nubian villages, etc. But we just sailed for a few hours then stopped for dinner and crashed for the night - apparently they can not sail after 8 pm. The food was great though! The next day we all thought that we would have to start sailing early to make up time from the day before (there were also 2 women from India and an Australian named Adam with us but the 2 women left the fellucha after the first night). The guides however did not seem too worried about it as we sailed in circles for a couple hours, then stopped and they charged their cell phones in a village while the kids played and swam near our boat. Then we did a few more circles before landing at our drop off point where a bus was going to take us to Luxor. Even though it was not what we expected it was pretty relaxing and we got a lot of reading done. When the minivan picked us up there were already people in it - after we picked everyone up we had an impressive 17 people in the van with all our luggage thrown on top. The van did stop at two different temples for us to see - the first was Kom-Ombo which we walked around, but the second was fairly expensive so we decided to pass. We arrived in Luxor a little after 2:00 and walked around to find a hotel. We found one that had AC and explored the town for the rest of the day. Then we woke up early to tackle the Valley of the Kings on the West Bank of Luxor. The Valley of the Kings holds about 62 tombs of Royal Tombs which can be overwhelming, but one ticket is good for seeing 3. King Tut's tomb was a separate ticket of 100 pounds and by far the smallest tomb in the Valley so needless to say we did not venture in that one. We found three that were fairly big and had most of the writing and paint still intact You were not allowed to take pictures inside but we tried to snap a few which all turned out blurry (you can try to see them on Flikr).

From Luxor it is onto Dahab on the coast of the Red Sea, which will take a 15 - 18 hour bus ride; exciting!!!

Walk like an Egyptian

Since we rushed the last post on Cairo, we thought we would expand a little bit more. We stayed at the King Tut Hostel and they actually picked us up from the airport which was nice to not haggle with a cab driver at 1 am! The next morning we met 2 other Americans from Washington, Matt and Tim, who gave us a quick update of what they found around town so far. Then we were off to explore the Egyptian Museum. As we were trying to cross the road, a local named Alladin asked where we were from and if we knew 'walk like an Egyptian?' Assuming he did not mean the song, we said no and he told us that you just have to start walking and 'pray to Allaah'. He was right, you really just have to start walking if you see the slightest break in traffic and hope the cars avoid you - something neither of us got really used to. We got to talking with Alladin and he was nice enough to walk us to the Egyptian Museum, since we were going to wrong way. The Museum is really impressive and has tons of artifacts. Unfortunately we did not get to see the Mummy exhibit since they were charging an additional $100 pounds per person (more than the ticket to enter the musuem). On our way back from the Musuem, we did not find a whole lot of food places open so we stopped at McDonalds living on Ben's dream of a Quarter Pounder in every country. Later that night we walked through Islamic Cairo for a few hours through all the souqs and markets they have around there. One thing that is striking here is that everyone seems to beam a smile at you and say 'Hello, Welcome!' and seem to be a little offended when you are not quick to respond with a Hello and Thanks. They also seem to like to speak to you about where you are going and are very helpful on pointing you in the right direction - after informing you that they like Obama and there is a nice shop to visit on the way who is run by their uncle or cousin or brother, etc.

When we woke up the next morning and after the post office experience, we had a bit of a scare since our cards were not being accepted at the ATM's we were going to. We tried about 4 different ones that all said they accepted Visa without success so wrote our bank a frantic e-mail. We only had about 20 pounds between us (about $4) and due to the time difference really were not able to do a whole lot. Apparently we just needed to use certain banks for our cards as not all ATM's that say VISA will work - which we found out at about 10 pm. We splurged on dinner after we got money out, but overall the day was pretty uneventful.

So when we woke up we decided to go see the pyramids of Giza. It's pretty impressive to see the huge blocks that make up the pyramids and to think they built them so long ago. We got to see the Sphinx too but with so many touts arounds we did not want to stay in one place too long. Actually going inside the pyramids is extra and from what we were told not entirely impressive so we skipped that part. There were a couple temples, etc that you could go through for free to get the vibe of the inside - but you couldn't stay in there too long because it was HOT!

After our day at the pyramids, we grabbed dinner near our hostel since we had to pack up and catch our 14 hour night train to Aswan (we did not realize it was that long when we paid the hostel for 4 nights but oh well!). Luckily we had the whole cabin to ourselves so we were each able to stretch out across three seats! Once we reach Aswan we will take a fellucha trip (kinda like a big sailboat) up the Nile to Luxor.