As promised, pictures and story-telling time about India. Okay, so a little background about the trip, in case you guys didn't already know: I went to India for the past eight days, with Ching and both her parents; we were in Delhi, Kashmir (yes, where all the bombings and earthquakes have happened), Agra and Jaipur.

I don't know where exactly to start, but I'll guess we'll start from when we boarded upon Indian Airlines in KLIA on the 11th. Got on the plane, and the kid in me was pretty excited and all, becuase I hadn't been on an airplane since *count count count* perhaps when I was 12? And even then, that was only a short flight to Kelantan for my grandmother's second cousin's daughter's wedding.

Okay, okay, back to the topic before I start rambling. ANYWAY, no cute air stewards on board. Sigh. So we slept for most of the 8 hour flight, with one hours spent transitting in Bangkok. Did you guys know that there's a golf course situated in the Bangkok airport itself? Right next to the runway! Crazy. Dangerous. Preposterous. What's the point of that, exactly?

Arrived in Delhi at about 4-something p.m. Indian time, I think. [India's about two and a half hours behind M'sian time, so you guys do the counting. Heh.] It was colder than I expected, actually. It was actually winter over there in India, so by the time we got out of baggage claim, and immigration, it was dark outside. It's really dusty in India; we saw this car with like an inch-thick of dust on it. Everyone loaded into the bus which would take us to the hotel, and off we went for our first glimpse of Delhi.

And boy, were we in for a treat.

First of all, drivers in India are MAD. Their hands must be glued on the car honks 24/7. They drive recklessly, weaving in and out of traffic. If the road has three lanes, and is meant for three cars only, they squeeze four cars in it, sometimes even five. You can't go five seconds in India without hearing a single car honk, I'm serious. Imagine the peace we got when we landed back in Malaysia. Ahhh, bliss.

An interesting fact is, however, that about 99.9% of the drivers we saw in India were men. So what does that tell you? Besides the fact that there's probably gender inequality and/or imbalance in India, men are all not the great drivers that they make themselves out to be. You know how guys ridiculously automatically decide that idiotic people on the road are 'woman drivers'? Yeah, that.

Father: [honks when an inconsiderate driver cuts in front of him] Stupid idiot! Must be a woman driver, lah!
Me: You know, I'm not going to be driving you anywhere next time.

Back to the topic. So, we were just cruising [cruising is a very nice way to put the bumpy ride we had] to the hotel, when suddenly the bus pulls over and the tour guide tells us that because it's Sunday, the bazaar outside the hotel is really packed, and that the bus won't be able to get in through the streets. We all got down, and they told us we were going to have to take toot-toots [or however it's supposed to be spelt, or whatever it's actually called], these little three wheeled vehicles. All our bulky luggage got lugged into this little toot-toot, and off went our tour guide with our luggage in a toot-toot!

We all stood there, at the side of the road, in a foreign country, sort of stranded. It was pretty freaky for a while. The rest of us were initially supposed to take our own toot-toots to the hotel too, but it would be pretty dangerous. Foreign country, foreign people, foreign language. Foreign crime rate, lol. Yes, yes, I know I'm a worry wart. We had to go together in our tour groups, because goodness knows what could have happened if we all went our seperate ways. Better not play-play. In the end, we couldn't hail enough toot-toots for the fifteen of us [or so they say], and we ended up walking to the hotel! Fifteen of us, lugging our hand-luggage, through the crazy streets of India. Talk about our first adventure in India, man.

Highlight: The guy who worked at the little souvenir shop at the hotel was pretty cute. And funny, too. Lol.

Ching and I channel-surfed before going to sleep, watching this really interesting Indian dance competition, whose format kinda resembles the American Idol franchise, only it's dancing instead of singing. And Indian ads on TV are pretty unique, too.

12th Dec: Got up, and left the hotel for the airport after breakfast. Pretty much of our eight days in India were going to be used up for travelling from one destination to another, and that day was one of them. Boarded our flight to Kashmir. There was this really cute kid in the row in front of us, who kept on peeking behind and smiling at us.


Aww. So adorable.

Looked out the window, and got my first ever glimpse of snow in person! [No, the snow at Mines Wonderland does NOT count.]


Look at the snow-covered tips of the mountains.

Landed in the Kashmir airport, and took jeeps to the next place. Our jeep driver was kinda funny, even though he didn't mean to. He was such a stoner. Ching's dad would talk to him, and he would only get an answer about after ten seconds. Slow reaction. Lol.

We were off to the Dal Lake which is situated in a province called Srinagar in Kashmir, and we would be staying on house-boats, which I thought was pretty cool. So, we had to take these local gondola-sampan-like things called shikaras to get to our houseboats. I thought the houseboat was really cool. It was pretty gorgeous inside, and each houseboat had their own personal butler dude to serve them. Ours was Gulam, and he's such a nice, jolly fellow. I really felt like a queen in the houseboat, lol. Gulam would serve us our meals, course by course. Soup, followed by rice, then the meat of the day, and two vegetable dishes. Then, he would come out again with all the dishes, one by one, to ask us if we wanted second helpings.


A shikara. I actually enjoyed the shikara rides.


The houseboats on the Dal Lake.


The inside of our houseboats; that's the living room. Pretty, ain't it?


Our bedroom.


The ancient looking heater.

Our houseboat is heated up with a traditional heater, where you have to burn firewood in it to keep warm, and electricity goes out at intervals. No modern luxury, but I still enjoyed it, for some reason. I felt pretty comfy there, actually.

We left for these gardens in Srinagar, which horribly enough, I can't remember the name of. [Geez, I'm just awful.] Basically, it was pretty boring, because it was winter, and there was absolutely NOTHING to see there. Flowers were all dried up, if not completely non-existent. Only highlight was that Ching and I got dressed up in their traditional Kashmiri costumes. Lol, that was kinda fun.


Ching and I, wearing Indian costumes, with our typically Chinese faces. Lol.


Ah, and that's me, striking what I think is a Bollywood pose. LMAO.

We were bugged at night by door-to-door salesmen. Lol. That sounds funny, but I don't know how else to put it! They come into the houseboat, open up their suitcases of stuff to sell [jewellery, shawls, clothes, papier-mache items, etc.], and patiently wait for you to finish your dinner. Omg.

Highlight: Okay, if you guys had read the news here back home, [If. Because when I said this, Mary and Jo gave me the blankest looks EVER.] you would have known that there was an earthquake in Kabul. Well, guess what? We felt the tremors in Kashmir. In our houseboat.

It was about 3.20 in the morning, Indian time. And both Ching and I woke up, because it was freaking cold. Ching was at our heater thingy, refilling it with firewood, and I was just sitting up in bed. Suddenly, [Wahh, don't I sound dramatic? Teehee.] I felt the boat rocking pretty violently. And I was freaked out, let me tell you that. First of all, the houseboats are not floating in the middle of the lake, they're tied down at the other side of the lake. They don't rock at all, usually. Ching was busy fanning the fire, and she looked perfectly okay. So, I thought it was me just being myself, you know, being so blur as usual. I thought I was just IMAGINING THINGS.

Then.. the rocking got worse.

Me: [meekly] Errr, Ching? Don't you feel something?

*Ching stops fanning for a while, looks up at me*

Ching: Augggghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!! [Runs towards my bed, and jumps right on top of me. Yes, she jumps on top of me!]

*We hear people outside shouting*

Me: [whispering] What the hell?

Ching: I don't know!

Then, quickly, Ching runs over to the gigantic bag sitting on the dresser, slams it shut, drags it over to the door, and sits on it. Quick thinking, huh? Lol.

Finally, the rocking subsides, and the shouts stop. We hear Ching's dad coming out of the room, talking to Gulam. He doesn't come get us, so we decided that nothing was really wrong. And just as he walked past our door, we heard him talking.

Ching's Dad: Tsk tsk. They didn't even wake up.

LMAO!

Then, the next morning when Gulam comes in to put firewood into the heater, we ask him what happened. And oh my gawd, that was hilarious! He doesn't know how to say earthquake, I suppose. So, he sort of mimics the rocking for us, like a little dance, and then he puts both his hands to his ears and pulls down on his earlobes, and went, "Brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr." Haha! I swear you could practically see the big question marks on our faces then.

Finally, we asked Ching's dad at breakfast, and he told us that there had been an earthquake in Kabul, about 6.8 on the Richter scale. Ahhhh. Then, everything seemed so clear. Heh.

We put on more layers of clothes than we ever had, and walked out to the dock after breakfast that morning, where the ground and the trees were frosted with snow. Took a few pictures to prove to Suki that there is winter in India.

Suki, before we left: [incredulously] There's winter in India? There's NO winter in India. I seriously think you guys are being conned.

Right. It was FREEZING in India. Sometimes to the extent where I couldn't even feel my toes. I am a living testimony for all of you who don't believe that there is winter in India. So there. We hopped into the shikara again to take us across the lake [which actually looks more like a river to me, LOL.] as usual and boarded our jeeps again. We went up to Gulmarg that day, which is 8800 feet above sea level. And the sights we saw were gorgeous. Snow covered the ground, everywhere. For as far as you looked, the sky was a beautiful rich shade of blue, and the ground was pure white.

Arriving there in Gulmarg was scary, because all the locals just crowd around you. You don't really understand them, they're getting closer to you, and they look a little too menacing for my liking. One of them even jumped on the back of another jeep of our tour's. They all want to do something for you, and demand for tips in return. Tipping is such a major part of their lifestyles. We go to the toilets in the airports, the woman there opens the door to the stall for you, turns on the taps for you, tears off a bit of the toilet roll for you, and opens up the cover to the dustbin for you to throw the tissue away. And then asks for a tip.

We got sleigh rides in Gulmarg, where the handler of the sleigh would pull you over the snow. It was pretty fun, you know, because you don't do that kind of thing often. The sleigh did look kind of dodgy, and because you go bumping over the ground over the snow, your ass hurts like hell as a result. But I enjoyed it. It was like Jingle Bells. Dashing through the snow, in a one horseopen sleigh, o'er the hills we go, laughing all the way.


There our sleighs are.


My first touch!


Look at that snow, [okay, maybe not horse.] Sukkwan. =P


It was really beautiful there.

Highlight: The food we got in one of the hotels in Gulmarg was dee-leeee-ciousss. *smacks lips* We had kuru-kuru and meeeeeehhh. Lol. That's what our chef said. After awhile, we realised that he was trying to make the sounds for the chicken and the goat. Aaaah. Yummy.

Got bugged by the sellers again that night. We were quickly becoming used to running into the houseboats, so that they couldn't follow us in. They just don't take no for an answer.

The next day: Got a special shikara ride around the Dal Lake. All throughout our ride, the shikaras bearing the salesmen kept on surrounding us, shoving this and that into our laps. Goodness, what persistence.


Us, during the shikara ride.

The shikara handlers rowed us to a few floating shops on the lake. A textile shop, another shop of all sorts of things, and a papier-mache factory. Bought a few things, after bargaining like crazy.


Ching trying on a sari. =P Bollywood, here she comes!

We were free for the rest of the afternoon, so half of the tour opted to rent jeeps and go to the town centre for some REAL sightseeing. And boy, did we get more than what we bargained for. The real streets of India. No matter how small and narrow the streets are, a car will just come barging through at any moment, with a madly honking horn as warning. The distribution of wealth in India is horribly uneven. We saw a baby eating newspaper. The streets are dirty, and you can see shit everywhere. From cows, dogs, humans. All in the drains. All shapes, sizes, colours. Lol. I am not kidding! We learnt how to watch our steps pretty quickly after that. I nearly stepped into a humongous pile of cow dung. Phewww. Nearly.


The shops in town.


The cleaner streets in town. No, I did not take a picture of the extra addings in the drains. Although, I can imagine Wei Soon snapping a quick shot of the shit in the drains, for some reason. LOL!

Back to the houseboat; more salesmen coming to bug us. We both ran to our room, because then there's no way that they can follow us. Konked out in bed pretty quickly.

Packed the following morning, because we would be off to the airport to leave for Delhi again. Got up, took our last pictures of the houseboat, and with Gulam. The sellers came in to try to get some last-minutes sales. So such luck. We were already immune.

Salesman: Hello, madam. Do you like papier-mache? I give you nice tartaise.

Ching's Mum: Huh? What tartaise? It's tortoise, not tartaise!

Ehehehehehe. I caught that on video. Funny, I tell you.


Gulam! The nicest fellow we met in the whole of India, I have to say. =)

Left via jeep as usual, to the airport. Now, at this point in time, I have to say, I was really enjoying myself. But the Kashmir airport, it really ruined it for us. I have to state that we were really not acting like ugly Malaysians, and being rude and disrespectful, but it was when other people were being rude and disrepectful to us. We were all queueing up for the first body check, where we were seperated into two lines, men and women. The infuriating was, the security officials kept on letting the pushing and shoving locals cut into our queue before us. It happened once, twice, and that was fine. Still bearable, by my standards. But do it five, ten times? That's way too much. I know I was cursing in Chinese and BM. [Obviously not in English, because they understand.]

Ching: Itu anjing betina! [Translation: That bitch!]

We must have waited for practically half an hour over there. Finally, some of the women on the tour made a little noise, and after a long while, they opened up a new line to make the proceedings go faster. We had to empty out our backpacks, and since mine was especially messy, because I just throw everything inside, I took extra long in their little booth. They were especially fascinated with my Listerine Pocketpacks. Lol.

And then, they had a body check. Ugh. I hated it. Even though we were checked by women, it was uncomfortable, because they really feel you up, all over your body.

That's not the worse part. We queued up again, this time waiting for admission to the departure hall. Again, the queue-cutting happened again. Janelle, one of the women on our tour who's like this lil cili-padi, grabbed one of the women who was trying to cut into our line by the arm and told her to get into the line. She couldn't take it, and neither could the rest of us, but she was the only one who was so vocal about it. And instead of doing anything, the officials just stood around at the entrance, watched us and started laughing about it. Disgusting.

Guess what? We were queueing up to go for another body check. Ugh. And this time, it was even worse. It was five times worse. The official who checked me; ugh. I don't know what else to say. She felt me up, like the first one, but what made it even worse, was that she kept on staring and grinning at me while she was doing it. Omfg. She looked like this deranged horny lesbo bitch. *shudders* It was horrible. Ask Ching.

If that wasn't enough, we then had to empty out our bags AGAIN. Surprise, surprise. People cut into our queue again. We just got used to it after awhile. Sickening.

They made life difficult for Janelle after that, because it took her about another half an hour to clear the second security check. Poor thing. But I guess, the truth is, when you're in a foreign country, especially in a country like India, and a few other Asian countries, you just have to suck it up. Swallow up your complaints. Yeah, I know you do have to stand up for yourselves, but at times, it's just better wait another ten-fifteen minutes than to have them give you hell.

Finally got on the flight, with the Kashmir airport incidents being a horrible black spot on our trip. Reached Delhi airport again, and immediately boarded the coach which would bring us to Jaipur. Six bumpy, honky hours later, we arrived in Jaipur, the pink city [Because the buildings there are all pink; they smash bricks and make them into paint], and checked into the hotel. Had dinner at 11 p.m. and dozed off after watching a rerun of Friends on Indian telly. Oh, did I mention that they have Cartoon Network dubbed in Hindi? Haha, that was funny.

The next day, we went sightseeing in Jaipur. Damn, the tour should have been arranged for us to spend more time in Jaipur, there were so many interesting looking shops which we passed by in the bus. Sigh. We went off to this really huge fort, where we had to pay to bring cameras in. I didn't pay, but Ching got a free coupon because another one of our tour members paid to bring a video-cam in. So I don't have any photos to show of the fort, just yet. We left to take a few pictures of this water palace in the middle of a lake, and then later to the Hawa Mahal, which was now converted into a museum. Both these palaces belonged to this emperor who was 7 feet in height, measured 4 feet around the chest and weighed 250 freaking kgs! Omg. What did he eat back in the day?

Left in the middle of the day via our bumpy coach ride again, this time to Agra, which they call the city of lurvvvee. Reached our hotel, had dinner. This time watched 'Around the World in Eighty Days' on Star Movies starring Jackie Chan. Pretty funny movie.

Oh, and speaking of Jackie Chan! Almost everywhere Ching's dad goes, the Indian locals look at him and exclaim, 'Jackie Chan!'. LOL!

As for me, everywhere I go, people think I'm Jap.

Indian Local: [cooing at me] Konnichiwa! From Japan?

Me: [politely] Oh, no. From Malaysia.

Indian Local: [with a typical Indian shake of the head] Ahhhh. Malaysia girl very beeyootifulll.

Uh-huh. Right. Must be my small eyes. Sigh.

And when we say Malaysia, almost everyone sings, 'Malaysia, truly Asia!'. Omg. I'm not kidding. I was really surprised that so many people knew it. Not bad. Our tourism ministry is doing a pretty good job, that means.

The next morning, we went to see the Taj Mahal! Wheeeeeeeeee. I was so excited, because well you know, you always hear so much about the Taj Mahal and it's stories, plus it's one of the seven wonders of the world. Well, it surpassed all expectations. It's gorgeous. Really.


One of the seven wonders of the world. I wish I could say that the wonder was me, but sigh, it's the Taj Mahal. Lol.

It's made out of marble, and the details on it are so intricately carved. The colours you see on it; they're not paintings, but they're actually semi-precious stones embedded into the carved marble. It's so beautiful. Everything is made out of marble. Gosh. To think that they managed to build such a phenomenal sight back in the days, with their limited resources and technology. If I'm not mistaken, it took a total of sixteen years. And that beautiful structure is actually a grave for the emperor's wife, Mumtaj Mahal. That building is huge enough to house the graves of the whole of Petaling Jaya, I think. Lol.


That's at the entrance of the Taj Mahal. The coloured details are not paintings, but semi-precious stones. All so delicately done.


Look at the details on the marble, which runs all the way round the building.


And that's just one little round design on the side of the Taj Mahal. Just that little circle alone probably took a day to carve. It's really small; the diameter of it is actually the length from the tip of my thumb to the tip of my little finger when my fingers are stretched.


That's me with the building on the side of the Taj Mahal. There's one on either side, both symmetrical. I think this one is a mosque.


And me, sitting on one of the seven wonders of the world! Haha! We all have to wear the blue things on my feet. Shoes not allowed, so you have to slip those things that look a tad like shower caps over your feet.

People in India are really fascinated with Chinese people. Honestly. Everywhere we go, they stare. There were these three young boys in a mosque in the Kashmir town who were just staring at Ching, while she took out a tissue from her pocket and blew her nose. They just gaped at her! And then, at the Taj Mahal, there was this group of six, seven teenage boys who all wanted to have a picture with us. So we both stood there, while the guys each took their turn pose with us. And they wanted us to put our arms on his shoulders ala Bollywood. Lol. We should have charged them, haha!

Left Agra that same afternoon, and travelled back to Delhi. Reached Delhi at about 7 p.m., and went shopping in the bazaars. And we only had about an hour, so we rushed through the streets. Bought so many things that last hour. We were practically running from shop to shop, grabbing what we wanted quickly, paying and running off to the next place. Whew. Very adrenaline-pumping shopping spree through the cold streets of New Delhi.

Boarded our plane at 12.50 a.m. Tried to sleep but kept on getting woken up by Uncle Edmund, another one of our tour members, who repeatedly asked me if I wanted a blanket, or if I wanted water, or if I wanted breakfast. Lol.

We pushed up the window shutter when we were nearing KLIA. And I have to say, Malaysia is a beautiful country. All we saw when we looked out, was green, and neatly constructed buildings and roads. All we saw when we looked out in India from air view was brown squares of dust.

I enjoyed my trip, and I would like to think that I saw India through open, non-judgemental eyes. Would I go there again? Maybe not to the Kashmir airport. But it was a trip where I got to see another culture, something I never got to do, because Australia wasn't that much of a culture difference. But India, it really was. It was a good learning experience, but well, in the end, there's no place like home, really. People always say that, and know it deep down inside, but there's nothing like this trip to make me realise that. No place like home, no place like Malaysia. Malaysia IS home. Despite all our misbearings, all our complaints about the government, all our own judgments of our country, all our ideas on how the country should be runned, Malaysia is a truly wonderful country, a wonderful place to call home. Sure, it could be improved, but everything can be.

Well, through my eyes, you guys got to see a little of India too. =)

Oh well, off to help Mummy and the maids to prepare for tonight's dinner now. It's the celebration of the Winter Solstice Festival, and I'm going to make tong yuen (glutinous rice balls). Yummy. It's my favourite part of the festival. Eating the tong yuen, I mean. Was out with Manda and the rest last night, and Manda's sister, Debra told me that her friends say that each tong yuen you eat represents you aging by one year. Lol. Oh no. I never heard that one before. Have a good celebration, and take care.