The Indian Jungle

And then we moved to our third stop - Sariska Natural Tiger Reserve. There aren't actually any tigers there any more, but Eden-like fields like this with antelopes, wild boar, lots of peacocks and even jackals. I think J will talk better about this later...this was my first time in a jungle. I'm hooked and very much looking forward to Brazil now.

And below is a rare animal that becomes very aggressive if restrained from having its tea with chocolate brownies on a regular basis!

The mountains behind..

A spirited (if slightly porky) couple. We are just outside a very ancient temple in the Reserve. We've just 'gone native', see the threads on our hands and red marks on our foreheads.

Journey to the Hill Fort

Fast-forwarding a bit: we left Delhi on our way to our next destination - Kesroli Hill Fort. We travelled via a sleepy (or seemingly so) town called Alwar, where we discovered this beautiful old palace? castle? complex they call it. As most of the things in India it is rather run-down, but somehow it gives it an incredible charm. You almost feel like you are in a ghost town - the delicacy of its carvings, the aristocratic feel of marble everywhere.People, however, seem to be taking little notice of this beauty. I suppose it's like me walking through Green Park in the mornings. Do I notice the history and grandeur around me when I'm late for my 9 o'clock meeting?......

Kesroli 14-th century Hill Fort where we stayed until this morning. Going through the very poor villages that surround it you would never guess that just 2 kms away is a place that charges per night the amount that the locals earn in a month. Did it feel weird? yes. did we somehow feel guilty? yes. did we enjoy it nevertheless? immensely.

This is a view from our terrace. What else can I say?:)...

Another view from yet another terrace that was adjacent to our room (I said to J that if we wanted to find a hotel with as many balconies as this one had, we couldn't find anything better! Katya's heaven - balkonchiki....). I spent the whole day there, leisuring under the sun in 33 Celsius heat reading 'The Bridget Jones's diary'. Yes, exactly that! I found it in a previous hotel on a shelf left behind by a previous traveller. V. convenient I say.

We went for a walk in a near-by village the following day. I can tell you for a fact - I had never had such amounts of admiration from so many males!! We had literally crowds of boys of all sorts of ages following us, trying to touch me (v. naughty) and shouting 'Katrina, I love you baby!' Very sweet and eventually very tiring - who could have thought?:)

Sunset from the top of the Fort's roof.

Day two...and three, four, five

First of all to explain, my blog and J's below are not in the exact order. We wrote the blogs separately.






Only now managed to get the internet connection that is not ridiculously expensive, not ridiculously slow and generally available.
A lot has happened since our first day. My initial idea – to blog in detail about everything we see – is definitely out of the window . So we've decided to upload as many pictures as we can and let them speak for themselves:). So, my most memorable experiences over the last few days:
Red Fort in Delhi - a dilapidated, but very majestic palace for a Mughal emperor (he was 2 meters tall and weighted 250 kgs, but (!!!) had 108 wives. And we’re pitying obese people, eh?;)


The gracious building behind Jonny is part of the fort (by J's happy facial expression you can tell he's imagining himself as that emperor..)



Me making bread rolls in a Sikh temple (that orange…ehh..thing on my head is not my idea of a good Indian style by the way, but a requirement – for both men and women - to cover heads).

We then ate that bread with dahl (lentil soup) sitting on the floor with all sorts of interesting characters. If you think that such massive feeding is for very poor people, you'll be very mistaken. People of different classes, ages and even nationalities come to that temple. It's more of a community thing in my opinion. By the way, we were made very clear that women ('unlike in Muslim culture') are of exactly the same status as men for Sikhs. And it does seem true - they don't sit separately, they behave in exactly the same way, well, at least in the temple.

All properly fed, happy and making friends:)

In the middle of nowhere

When we had done lazing about all morning at the hill fort, we decided to go for a walk. This direction (below) looked the most inviting.

It was a warm afternoon. We started walking and soon we were joined by Manjeet on his bicycle. Manjeet was a local schoolboy who wanted to be a chemical engineer and enjoyed ambling alongside us and then back the whole way. I persuaded him to teach me a few words of Hindi and very soon I was reciting numbers up to ten and saying 'Apa naam?' and 'Mea naam Jonathan' and 'Aapki umma kya hai?' (How old are you?) at least ..I think I remember it right?? For me there's something so special about learning the first few words of a new language - I feel a kind of pleasurable tension filling my head and jaw as I try to get my mouth around them, a sense of a whole new universe available to me. For every language, the feeling goes (mainly) after about 200 words, when I suddenly realise it's a slog, and that 'what time does the next train leave?' is pretty much the same dull universe. It only reappears once I get way out past all that stuff into advanced level. Anyway, the words felt magical, the little etymological explosions of 'do' for two, 'saat' for seven and 'aat' for eight and 'meya' for I and 'tum' for you.

It was a beautiful walk, across fields, past naughty boys (see K's blog) and brightly coloured women in saris in the fields. When we returned, Manjeet asked to have his photo taken and wanted it taken with Katrina...

The New New Delhi

Driving out from Delhi, we pass through a building site as far as the eye can see. Delhi has been built and rebuilt over the millenia in slightly different spots by at least seven different regimes - New Delhi being the seventh, city of the British and the postwar Indian republic. But now it looks as if another is emerging, in Gurgaon, south west of the city. The road quickly widens to a 12 lane motorway, garlanded in massive construction plots, in gold-red dust where the tiny figures of workers toil. Striking, angular buildings of steel and glass: the banks and multinational corporations rearing up on either side, with neat car parks and their hectare of well-watered grass, before another set of foundations or unfinished building breathes its dust into the sky. For the next twenty miles, hoardings and jerry-built shacks scream 'PROPERTIES to BUY', 'DEVELOPERS', 'EARTHMOVING EQUIPMENT'. Adverts offer 'Royal Living' and 'Postmodern Pleasures' in apartments with pictures of ergonomic architecture resembling something out of a Star Trek set. Then every so often, the old India returns to claim the land: our driver has slowed, labouring the horn, and almost in the towering shadow of the Citibank a herd of sheep and goats cross the junction, their drovers in bright red turbans, unhurriedly herding the animals forward to a further crescendo of horns.

We accelerate again, and then, when we ask to stop to take a pee, the driver says, 'Yes, Macdonalds next left,' and drives us into a little plastic world where the bushes are tidily cropped around the car lanes to exactly the same height as they are in the Haringey Macdonalds. We order a Chicken Maharaja burger and a McTikka Aloo, and sit meekly while well-dressed Indian children play in the back garden. Above us in the corner, a large flat screen TV plays the video to Michael Jackson's 'Black and White', in which a giant white baby sits atop the globe, looking playful and tender.

Food and cockroaches

No, so far no creepy-crawlies or terrifying spiders!:) but huge amounts of dust. So every time I opened my eyes at night (of course I couldn't sleep properly because of the jet-lag) I thought I could feel someone creeping over me. At one point I woke up in terror as something swept across my back.......it was J's hand nervously moving in sleep:)!

Anyway what else did you expect me to start blogging about?!:)). Now to the more important topic - food, or more specific - curry (I can just see your, people, months start salivating no;). First curry was consumed on the plane (not bad actually if a bit too late - almost midnight by the time they served it!- generally, Jetairways wasn't bad actually. This comes from the person who’ve never really flown on a non-budget airline). The second curry was served at the restaurant that Jonny wrote below - it's called United Coffee House. Nothing to do with coffee (or being particularly united either!:D), but it was a splendid, old fashion, colonial looking restaurant with lots of we-feel-like-at-home westerners and wealthy Indians.

I have to say the best thing out of the whole meal was the very first course - samosas. These were not your usual saggy and often too spicy corner shop versions. No, these ones were very plump with crispy dough and lots of big chunks of potatoes, peas and fresh herbs.

Then (and yes! I actually jotted all of this down to re-lay it to you my friends:) we had Aloo Chat (J's favorite by then) - very spicy Indian style cold potato salad - lots of flavour, not just hot. I suppose my Russian heart sang at that point – po-ta-to salad hehe.

For main course we had the tenderest tandoori pieces of lamb, chicken and fish that both of us ever remember tasting in London, Careez Handi Gosht (melting-in-your-mouth pieces of mutton in rich tomato sauce) and a lovely quirky Dewani Handi – mini sweet corn, cauliflower, curd cheese etc). Of course all the above was wiped off with thick and oily roti breads (slightly burnt, but even more 'real' somehow)

I was going to have a chocolate brownie (yes, they do even those, non-Indian version though:)! but thankfully J dissuaded me. I almost toppled over when I stood up from the table anyway hehehehe (here's for all the weightwatching efforts of the last few weeks girls;)...

I leave you at this point, another helping of curry dinner is awaiting (I promise to report on other things later as well:) ..maybe...as at the moment I'm just following J everywhere like a good Hindu wife!;) it's a lot and a lot of fun though, especially when it's about 25 Celsius.....

First Day

This is us on the point of leaving; I wouldn't like to show you a picture of what we looked like immediately on arrival. A long journey and no sleep but a beautiful view of the Afghan/Pakistan mountains:

After a nap we went via a restaurant to Old Delhi to really exhaust ourselves and get our body clock back on track. The autorickshaws we took whirred like dodgems, hurtling into the mass of traffic that came from all directions, managing to swerve at the last moment before they upended a cycle rickshaw or a scooter. We got off and walked. There were no other Westerners to be seen. It was evening and the streets were dimly lit. It's always a time I feel melancholy and romantic, attuned to the possibilities of a place. The old town loomed up around us, a jumble of geometries against the night. In the spice bazaar, porters shouldered heavy sacks across our path, while others sat on the sacks and smoked through cupped hands. When we went in to a little alley of the main street, the air was thick with spice, so thick that I could not only smell it but feel it on my lungs and started coughing. I told myself I was being feeble, but at just that moment a porter next to me rasped out a cough, and I noticed sellers sneezing and coughing as they weighed out quantities of powder.

I'd been told that people would hassle us, pick at our clothes, crowd around us. But although the traffic is as chaotic as predicted, and the streets are thronged, people were mostly just friendly. When I caught someone's eye, they sometimes wanted to say hello, and sometimes to offer their cycle rickshaw or their 'tourist office with free map' (a.k.a. hard sell on expensive camel tours, I imagine). Only once, when I stopped to take this photo, did a crowd form, and that was because I was showing the photo to the 'photees' and others wanted to come and look.

Prayers to Ganesha

We created a little shrine to Ganesha and burnt some incense, which all the Gods are said to like. We offered him some sweets - to be specific, some delicious Kalev chocolates from Tallinn.
We anointed his forehead and trunk with some butter, and we prayed to him, asking him to remove obstacles from our journey, and to give us a wonderful beginning to our Indian trip. We also asked him to place a barrier in the way of thieves who might want to get into our cosy flat.

Three more days ...

We're off on Wednesday evening. I'd like to say that this weekend has been a riot of preparation, but unless you count popping into the local outdoorsy shop to try on hip sunglasses and then run away from our reflections, it has mostly been lazing about. Oh, and I did a list of what I should throw into my rucsac on Wednesday morning.

You can see a bit of the shape of our journey by looking at the links on the left. These are the four places we've booked so far. Delhi Bed and Breakfast, which we chose because it seems engagingly quirky and will throw us straight into an Indian family home, is apparently run by one of the best gossips in Delhi. The website certainly suggests that he has limitless energy! Then it's on to luxuriate in an elegant room at the 14th century Hill Fort in Kesroli. After that, we've left it open for the next 10 days to allow us to be flexible/be ripped off/worry ourself senseless about accommodation (delete as applicable). We'll go via Jaipur and end up in Udaipur, where we will stay in Jagat Niwas Palace on the lake. The day before our flight to London, we'll fly back to Delhi and stay outside the city at the wonderfully named Tikli Bottom, run by a retired British naval officer and his wife. There we plan to do some more serious luxuriating. Katya has already planned her reflexology and massage sessions.

The Story of Ganesha

When the great god Shiva returned to his house after a long absence, he found a portly young man lounging by the doorpost. The young man refused him entry. 'What? Deny me?' raged Shiva. He lopped the young upstart's head off and ground it to a pulp under his mighty heel. The commotion brought his wife Parvati to the door. 'Shiva,' she screamed, 'What have you done? That is your own son, Ganesha.' Stunned, Shiva promised to replace the head with that of the first being he came across. He rushed away, and returned with an elephant's head, which restored Ganesha to life. And that is why Ganesha is elephant-headed, and why he is the Lord of Obstacles and of the Removal of Obstacles, because of his defence of his mother's honour. He is a chubby fellow. Hindus feed him sweets at the beginning of a journey, or at the entrance to a temple, so that, mollified, he will remove the obstacles on their path. Sitting on my desk at home, I have a little silver Ganesha from my travels in Indonesia, and Katya and I are planning to pray to him and leave him some sweets before we start on our travels.