Bullseye’s Blog

Moving on from Jaipur, we drove for a day to reach the capital of India, Delhi.  Delhi is the busiest city I’ve ever been in by far – always chaos, always something going on.

A couple days  I stepped outside the hotel to find some sort of Hindu parade coming down the street of the bazaar where we are in Pahar Ganj.  I’m not really sure what it was about, but it was pretty interesting to watch.

We also got out for some climbing yesterday, just outside of Delhi at Dhauj rocks (near Faridabad).  It was really nice rock, with loads of trad routes between 10 and 30 meters tall.  I bagged my first too legitimate trad leads, which was really fun.  Without a guidebook I can’t say for sure what grade they were, but I would guess around French 4 or in American grading 5.6 – easy but good for starting to lead.

Anyhow, now I’m in Manali, waiting for the rest of the group to catch up and relaxing in the cool mountain air!

105 degrees and humid.  Too hot to drive, too hot to sleep, too hot to do anything but sit in a restaurant and order cold drinks – welcome to Jaipur.

We moved on from Mt. Abu yesterday, which while still fairly hot, was cool in comparison to where we are now.  I didn’t get a chance to take any photos in Mt. Abu so I won’t linger on it long, but it’s known as a place to get away from the heat in Rajasthan, and is a popular honeymoon spot for newly married couples.  We had hoped to do some climbing in Mt. Abu, but unfortunately all we found were some unprotectable slab climbs that weren’t worth the effort.  We spent the three days lounging around, walking around the town, and generally being pretty bored.

Now we’re in Jaipur, which is about 500 km northwest of Mt. Abu, but much hotter as it’s at a lower elevation.  Jaipur is known as the “Pink City” but really it’s another hot, dirty Indian metropolis.  We hired an auto-rickshaw for the day today and drove around to see a few tourist sites – the best of which was a palace complex:

We also stopped by a factory where they make textiles, and I got some presents for my family (getting Christmas out of the way early).  We also hiked to the top of a really (too) tall minaret so we could get a view of Jaipur

That pretty much leads me up until right now – we are here tomorrow as well, which I plan to spend reading by the pool and trying to keep reasonably cool.  Then on Monday we drive to Delhi, which is supposed to be slightly more hot than here, if that is even possible.  We had a whole week alotted for Delhi, mostly because the a good portion of the group needs to hang around the Chinese embassy and work out their visas.  Seeing as how I don’t need to do that, I plan to spend a day or two climbing, a day to see Delhi, a day to go to Agra and see the Taj Mahal, and then I’m going to hopefully take the first bus to Manali and take it easy in the mountains while I wait a couple days for the group to catch up.  It’s a cool 56 degrees there today, which sounds GREAT.

I’ve arrived safely in India, and have been with Hot Rock for the past week or so.  The journey over here was not as bad as I expected, the whole thing was more than 24 hours of traveling, but the plane was about as good as you can get in coach and the rest went without any major hiccups.  The first thing I had to do when I got to Mumbai was to find the train station and get a train down to Goa – I took a taxi from the airport and stepping out of the air conditioned passenger lounge was like stepping into a completely different world.  The most striking thing about India is how dirty it is, and how many people live in what we would consider really poor conditions.  I’ve traveled quite a bit in the third world – Egypt and Syria were pretty dirty and the people quite poor, but this is really a whole new level. 

The train ride itself was fairly enjoyable, although I was dead tired.  Luckily I shared a compartment with a middle-class Indian family, they seemed pretty trustworthy so I was able to go to sleep for four or five hours without having to pay close attention to my luggage.  Riding an Indian train is a different experience – I road in sleeper class which isn’t air conditioned and is where most middle class Indians would travel.  As you sit there looking out the window there’s a neverending procession of people selling food, drinks, toys and whatever else you can imagine.  Unfortunately the one wallah they did not have was the beer wallah, much to my dismay, because a cold brew after a 24 hour plane ride would have been JUST the ticket.   If I was more awake I would have been all over the food offerings, but the couple things I did get were really good – thats definitely an upside to this country – the food is delicious even in the worst places.  Finally we got to Goa and I got off and took a taxi to my hostel (at which I seemed to be the only guest), and then immediately passed out for about 12 hours.

Finally the next day I got an Indian cell phone and gave Danny, the trip leader, a call and took a five minute drive to meet up with the truck – which was looking as beautiful (or as dingy) as ever.

I spent the next couple days doing pretty much nothing, just relaxing and sitting on the beach, which was really beautiful – and with warm water!  It was almost a surprise when I went in, since I’m used to the cold Atlantic in New England.

One awesome perk of our hostel was that they rented out scooters and motorbikes by the day, for only $3 dollars.  Indian driving is chaotic, but I got used to it pretty fast and zipped around the nearby beach towns to go to restaurants and shops with other people from the group.  Unfortunately I also wiped out on it once, and had to pay the guy about $10 for it to get the paint touched up (in the end that was still a steal, India is so cheap!).

Finally we left Goa, and that’s where I’m going to leave this post.  We’ve traveled north about 1200 km to Mt. Abu to do some climbing – but I’ll get to that next time.  Here’s a parting picture that pretty much sums up how relaxing Goa was: