Trip to India
 

Each year, I take a 1 month vacation to somewhere poor, in return, i learn to be humble and really enjoy the culture shock.
Japan - super clean, advanced and polite
China - an universe of it's own, extremely poor, uber rich in diff. areas (more on this on next thread)
Philippines - amazing dancers and great beaches
Thailand -bangkok, enough said
Vietnam - 1000000 of mopeds.. anyhoo.

I went to India with some relatives, it was out of the blues so we took a tour. Went to Agra (famous Taj Mahal), Jaipur, and new Delhi. I did not go to Mumbai nor the famous Ganges river

5 days in India, first stop, some Marble temple. It looks really small, but it's HUGE inside.

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Unlike Christian churches with lots of status inside, temples / palaces etc in India are actually really really empty with NOTHING inside.
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Streets of New Delhi
Took a ride on these bikes. The streets are super dirty, more on this later
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you see tons of these 3 wheeled motorcycles.
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surprisingly, they say "keep distance"
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this is an ambulance... it looked like more of a tour bus that retired and they bought it in an auction to use it as an ambulance.
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i do not know how they can have power lines like that above of the houses. How it's not a fire hazard i don't know.
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Due to many cultures / religions, cows are sort of not used for any meals, and some other religion / Pakistan they don't eat pork, so Mcdonalds doesn't serve neither ( i was told). This was the only Mcdicks I saw.
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Mahatma Gandhi is famous as you all know. He was killed and in India, they burnt his ashes and threw it into the Ganges River.
Year round people bring flowers to show their respects.
all places you go to, you are not allowed to wear shoes, so you either wear socks or go bare foot.
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a candle is lid for him.
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how can we forget snakes. They don't actually listen to the music, it's the vibration.
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so what happens? tourist comes over, they open the lid, and then hit the snakes on their heads until they stand up.
I guess whatever works to help them make a living.
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some famous water castle somewhere, low tide = not able to visit
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famous building, it's red and it has 953 windows.
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females are not allowed to talk to men so thru these windows, girls would flirt and look thru them back in the days. when the windows are open, they chime and hence "building of wind or something"
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Another building and we had to take elephants.
from the bottom of the hill, people would talk to you for a good 15 mins to get you to buy 3 dollars worth of postcards. (while u're on the elephants and shitting all over the floor, they'll be chasing you ducking the shit)
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very nice structures, the arches
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eg// u know they always have a picture of some chick with an elephant head, here's a brief short 'take it with a grain of salt verison"
some myth figure was taking a shower and while she was asking the kid to look out for her, another kid was peeking thru a window looking at her showering. She then found out and cut off the head of the child (not knowing the kid was another kid of her own). Anyhoo, long story short, she said to go out to the forest and with her magic powers, she'll glue the head of the first creative you see and it was an elephant, that's why there are always pics of an elephant head mythical pictures all over India / statues...

looking thru the windows
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tons of kids asking for money, one kid almost stole my dad's mont blanc pen and my dad grabbed his arm and yelled at him.
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museum for some astronomy which using the sun, would tell you which sign you are.
they also had some world largest sundial which was down to the closest 10 seconds.. ~yawn
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carpet making
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you're not allowed to wear shoes, so you had to take them off
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more building structures.
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this was simply amazing. all of them were diff shapes, really mind blowing. (not just one window neither)
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"why aren't there any zoos in india"
"it's called the streets"
everyday, we would see all the creatures in the 12 zodiacs (except for dragons)
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People tend to NOT fix things in India, they just let things rot and fall apart. DOesn't help when you see 30 + people peeing everyday everywhere.
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more buildings
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Entrance to Taj Mahal, queen was about to die, and she asked the king to not remarried. he said yes. took him 21 years to build in remembrance of her.
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entrance, it doesn't look so big but DAMN, look at how TINY we are in the pics.
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no shoes, white marble eveywhere, all shipped from 300KM away and we are talking about many many years ago.
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i'm so tiny
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after like the 5 monument you're like meh. but taj mahal is huge.
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some chick did hanna
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like france they have an arch in remembrance of some war.
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some place also, and people usually sit here to wash their feet.
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India is NOT a vacation, it's an experience.
Curry 3 times a day for 6 days, and it's a MILD laxative.
India will never grow, there are no places I want to visit no more, all these buildings were built many years before and if it wasn't for this, it would be nothing.
oh, fun facts, ganges river is a river with vitamins from A-Z and it's as polluted as an industrial water sewage and yet people still use the water to cook, shower and use it as a toilet. It's told people must visit it once in their lifetime.

Will post my China and Hong Kong trip later.

sounds like you had fun................................./sarcasm

nice. but japan isnt exactly poor.....

you spent a whole month there?
nice
i see that you've done many southeast/south asian countries
you should try south america for a change

u need to spend a good month in india. most states have different culture, u wont be able to tell people from south /north / east/west are from the country .except they all dance to bollywood.

next time i go, ill try to go to hills of the north and leh etc.
and south.. ie. goa and stuff..

I'm currently in India for a couple more months of traveling. I would argue you need 2 years to do all of India. I'd say 4 months would suffice to get a taste.

Well, you could spent 10 years in China and only do a tip of an iceburg. Sadly, I don't have much time to spend 4 months in India.

I have been to Aruba, Trinidad and Tobago, and of course Cancun, but i'll see which part of South America i'll end up going.

that was cool, post more!