Sweating from Calcutta to Delhi

Kolkata

Our trip in India started in Kolkata, previously known as Calcutta. We were supposed to arrive at 1am at the international airport but our 2 hours flight was delayed for more than 2 hours. People we knew that have been to Kolkata frightened us so much about the city that we did our homework: we booked a very nice and expensive inn where we could arrive at 2am (although we actually arrived at 4:30am) and we previously found out that we could take a pre-paid taxi from the airport.

So we paid our taxi before we actually took it, we went with the ticket and we took the taxi to our Best Inn. We drove for around half an hour on huge empty lanes in the middle of the night, on a city that looked like a post-apocalyptic English city without survivors. We arrived to our Inn and we rang and rang the bell until the guy that was supposed to wait for us waked up and opened the huge metallic door. And of course, our pre-paid taxi driver made something up to ask for more money even though we had already paid.

Anyway, we arrived in peace and we had our night of sleep. On the morning (after a couple of hours) we were woke up by the guy that worked there. We managed to understand that we have to fill two strange forms where you specify how you eat your eggs or if you have the bread with butter or with honey.

Then I tried to communicate with the guy and understand where we eat the breakfast. So I started simplifying and breaking the English but still what he said doesn’t make any sense. I ask “You bring the breakfast or we go somewhere to eat the breakfast?” and he answers “Yes, yes, you bring the breakfast”.

So after breakfast we went outside to move to a more central area and then we were confronted for the first time with the poverty of Kolkata. With its English constructions falling apart and all the garbage and the crowded streets, our first impression of the city is reinforced; this was really how I imagine England after the apocalypses.

It’s poverty beyond our imagination and no matter that we heard a lot about the city; we were completely shocked. So many people developing their entire life on the sidewalk: begging, sleeping, cooking, eating, shitting there. The line between food stall, toilet, sidewalk and street is completely blurred and we walked avoiding stepping into a poll of urine, bumping into people or being run over by a car. The heat, never ending honks, the traffic and the crowds created a feeling of claustrophobia even in the open spaces which were crammed with open markets selling Chinese stuff.

We tried to visit some sights, we entered to the Victoria Memorial, and walked in B.B.D. Bagh but most of the time we tried to avoid the heat and the crowds, walking a few hundred meters took too long and was too tiring.

The Victoria Memorial

I had my birthday in Kolkata!

After a couple of days we took a night train to Bodhgaya.

Bodhgaya

Bodhgaya is the place where the Prince Siddhartha sat under a tree, obtained Enlightenment and became Buddha. You can see there an offspring of the original Bodhi Tree and an interesting temple that was build close to the tree. But since it’s one of the most important places for Buddhists, there are pilgrims from all around the world and there are temples of virtually every kind of Buddhism in the world.

Because of the pilgrims, the town has also a myriad of stalls selling Buddhist souvenirs and clothes and of course an army of beggars.

A beggar at the entrance of Mahabodhi Temple

We stayed two days, having a pleasant and relaxed time there. And then we moved to the main town, Gaya, where we had to take an early train. The way to travel from Gaya to Bodhgaya is with autorickshaw: a kind of motorcycle with a closed space for two or three passengers but that actually transports an unlimited number of people. Once you’re in and you’ve arranged a price, you have to start fighting with the driver to actually get to the place you said. The driver may want to drop you as soon as possible but he might be a tout as well and might have in his agenda to leave you at the place he receives a commission.

The problem is that there are too many places with almost the same name. If, say, Raj Hotel enters in some guidebooks, you’ll see popping up like mushrooms: New Raj Hotel, Raj Guesthouse, The Raj Hotel, First Raj Hotel, and every other variation on every corner.

When we were in Gaya, we asked for the Vishnu International, and we found ourselves in front of Vishnu Resthouse. We managed to get to the right Vishnu but the driver tried to ask for more money claiming that it was our fault.

On the following morning we waited our 4-hours-train to Varanasi that was 7 hours late…

Varanasi

So we arrived late evening instead of at midday. Varanasi is situated on the banks of the river Ganges and it’s one of the holiest cities for the Hindus. They believe that bathing in the Ganges frees from sins and that dying there ensures release of a person's soul from the cycle of its transmigrations. So all kind of ceremonies, including bathing and cremations are conducted on the ghats: kind of open spaces with steps that sink in the Ganges.

So as soon as we arrived at the guesthouse, we got a nice map and explanations from Rahul, the owner of the place. However, instead of walking around and see the ceremonies at the ghats, I stayed in bed for 2 days with fever and a terrible diarrhea.

On the meanwhile Iohi walked the city, entered to Kashi Vishwanath Temple or the Golden Temple and attended to an evening ceremony in Manikarnika Ghat. Then she tried to go the Brown Bread Bakery, a bakery that supports a local school and where you can volunteer to help in that school. And it’s the number 2 of the things to do in Varanasi according to Lonely Planet site. But, there are two Brown Bread Bakery one in front of the other, like the place and its reflection. It’s just that you don’t know which one is the real one. And they both claim they are the real thing. Iohi even checked the schools that they support; each one has a different school! Later, she heard the story: the owner of the original bakery had some problems with the place he was renting, so he decided to move the bakery. Then the guy who had the property decided not to remove even the sign and maintain the Brown Bread Bakery exactly as it was creating two places with the same name and blurring the copy from the original.  

Next day when I more or less came back to life, I visited the Golden Temple. I had to pass a strict security check to go inside, where I was asked about Israel and its relations with the Philippines! The guard was completely puzzled when I told him that I had no idea. I thought maybe the Indians have some issues with the Philippines and I didn’t want to screw it up and being kicked out of the temple. Anyway when he started talking about the Muslims I understood he was referring to Palestine.

I still wasn’t feeling so good so we spent some hours seeing the city on a cycle-rickshaw. The advantage is that when you’re on a rickshaw they can’t drive you crazy about taking a rickshaw!

Agra

Later we took the short four-hour train to Agra.

We stayed for only one day: we saw the famous Taj Mahal (and there's a reason why it's so famous) and the not so famous but pretty cool Agra’s fort. And then the heat, the souvenir sellers and rickshaw drivers drove us completely crazy and we were more than happy to leave the city.

Taj Mahal!

Agra's Fort

Delhi

In Delhi, it was Iohi’s turn to be sick. Now she had exactly the same I had (only that I was still not entirely ok). And we didn't  do much; we just tried to recover. And then we fought with the guys of the same company that sold us the Reliance internet net-stick. We bought it in Kolkata and we were very happy with our portable internet. But it stopped working after a week, and no one knew anything there. They even had the great idea that we should go back to Kolkata to the store where we bought it! Then we went to the Reliance main store where the system was down and then… just fuck it, it was too noisy and too hot in Delhi and we traveled anyway to Rishikesh, which was slightly higher and cooler.

All the pics in Iohi's picasa!

Spicy Sichuan province

From Kanding to Moxi

So I was saying before that we decided to go to Chengdu through Moxi. In our hotel, we were offered to join an excursion to Moxi for roughly the same price than a minibus ticket. So we joined a group of young people from all over China.

The trip started with soup for breakfast that we politely declined, so the guide (which was also the owner of the hostel) got immediately everyone out and led us to take hot soy milk with fried dough instead, which Iohi even liked.

This guy really knew very special places to see on the way to Moxi: there were no Chinese tourists in July! (which was amazing), and the places were clean (astounding as well) and in every place we ate something different.

We went to hot springs where we boiled eggs in 90 C degrees water and warmed up our legs –but that water wasn’t 90 degrees... And our guide had some laughs asking me and Iohi to pick up the cooked eggs with two wooden sticks from the hot water. At this point we felt to have completely mastered the chopsticks, but the task wasn’t easy at all! Then we were driven to a field from where we reached a beautiful lake that I assume it was the cleanest place in whole China. And there we sat and had yak yogurt.

Possibly the cleanest lake in China

Later we drove over 3800m and we saw the snowy peaks of the Gongga mountains all around us before we reached the Yanzi Gou red stones, rocks covered by some kind of red microorganism. Before we arrived in our final destination, we stopped to eat cold noodles with a super spicy sauce prepared on the moment and served with bread to extinguish the fire. We ate the noodles with some real bamboo sticks that he had cut to use as chopsticks!

Spicy cold noodles

And then we finally got to Moxi that surprisingly was hardly the highlight of the excursion. They were kind of building the town when we got there! Virtually every person of the city was repairing either the facades or the streets. Even it seemed that the main attraction that day was to see how they pour asphalt on the main road.

We originally wanted to see there a national park where you can walk over a glacier, but the place didn’t make a good impression on us. Having bad experience with national parks we decided to skip it and we just traveled to Chengdu, capital of the spicy Sichuan province.

Chengdu, warning hot!            

We finally arrived in Chengdu and I have to say that it was hot, very hot. We were finally on the sea level, and we had a too warm reunion with the summer we were avoiding for the last weeks. We also met again the high season, everything was crowded. Even the hostels were pretty much full of Western people.

In Chengdu, we finally stopped asking for shaola (less spicy): it didn’t help, we either received the same (I think that sometimes even spicier) or we get plain food without spices or salt. And of course we got used to the mala, the lethal combination of chili and Sichuan peppercorn that I described in the last post. We discovered that dan dan noodles have to be eaten spicy.

The famous Dan dan noodles

We visited the Jin Li night market and we ate everything we saw there. Well, we didn’t eat rabbit heads, but we did try, some other day, sliced spicy rabbit together with a dish of eggplant on fish sauce and of course, as always, rice.

But we did more stuff than just eating in Chengdu, we also went to tea houses!

After these experiences, we decided that we had to take cooking classes in that city. We found out about the existence of the Chengdu Museum of Sichuan Cuisine, which had a restaurant and cooking classes. It was actually in outer Chengdu, it took us half day just to get there, we first went to the wrong bus station, and then we had to take 3 different intermediate distance buses. We arrived there starving, so we first enter to a kind of fancy restaurant inside the museum and the food was … not special at all, only expensive. In any place on the streets of Chengdu you could have something better for half the price. The kitchen was a big industrial place and the cooks looked sad and bored. The lessons consisted of learning how to prepare one dish, and it was kind of expensive. We didn’t want to have cooking lessons there, even the food wasn’t that good and the actual museum… was also only one room.

Leshan and Emei Shan

From Chengdu, we did two side trips before coming back to take the train. We went to Leshan and from there to Emei Shan.

Leshan has an amazing park from where you can contemplate both the Grand Buddha, a 71 meters high buddy, and also millions of Chinese people contemplating the Buddha. The Buddha, which is the largest one in the world, is quite impressive but the whole park has many different Buddhist carvings and it’s pretty interesting, and importantly it’s big enough to dilute the quantity of Chinese tourists.

From Leshan we traveled to Emei Shan, yet again a sacred Buddhist mountain (this time not only Tibetan). Climbing Mount Emei is a pilgrimage that Buddhists have done for a long time and in the last decade became very popular among tourists.

You can climb up to the top and down in from 3 days to a couple of hours and it depends not really on your stamina but on how many of the available transportations you take: there are several buses that can get you to upper places and several cable cars.

We realized there that the foot climbing path is actually stairs. So the adventurous hiking trek is basically a huge stairway with expensive tea houses and snack shops on the sides.

We “did” Emei Shan in 4 hours. We obviously didn’t get to the top but we couldn’t stand more time the light but persistent rain that didn’t allow us to see any landscape but stairs and especially we couldn’t bear the crowds of Chinese tourists.

The only memorable part of the “trek” was the fine specimens of Chinglish. There were signs asking for “One step closer to civilization” over the urinals in the male toilet, and “Don’t joke the monkeys” in areas where the monkeys can behave aggressively.

The best of Emei Shan: the signs

Back to Chengdu

Back in Chengdu we decided to eat in the most prestigious restaurant in the city, Ginko. This was our failed logic: if the food everywhere is so incredible tasty, in a prestigious restaurant should be super incredible tasty! But, surprisingly or not, the only incredible thing was the bill.

We ate the famous tea-smoked duck, which wasn’t so different from the Beijing duck for our Western palatals; a dish of Kung Pao chicken, which wasn’t even worth of a picture, and some shrimp which were shrimp.

They did excel in changing our plates five times during the meal, and in keeping my beer apart only to pour me (sometimes) when my glass was empty. From then on, we stuck to the street food…

Xichang – a nice stop over

To get trains out of Chengdu or any other means of transportation came out to be pretty hard. We managed to book a train to Xichang, a nice and small city outside the realm of the guidebooks.

It was a nice experience; we were received by over-friendly volunteer teenagers which gave leaflets (in Chinese of course) about the celebrations they were holding in the city that week. One of them, the only English speaking teenager, felt her moral duty to help us. She not only came with us on the bus, but she also paid (and we fought to pay the tickets!), and walked with us 20 minutes till the hotel. On the meanwhile she practiced also all her English repertoire: from presenting herself to asking where we are from, etc.

The city has a small old area between walls and a nice market, and it’s the home of the Yi_people. By the time we arrived, they had started a series of celebrations that ended with a parade with torches around the city. We were 4 days ahead of the torch parade but we managed to see some kind of rehearsal (but no fire).

Iohi trying an Yi skirt

Lake Lugu

We spent one day in Xichang and then we took a bus to Lugu Hu. Lugu Hu is a quiet lake between mountains on the border between Sichuan and Yunnan provinces. There are several villages around the lake where Mosuo people live. They suppose to be organized in a matriarchal society, but as far as I know, they just don’t get officially married and children are mostly raised by the mother’s family. Their leaders are still men and not women. Anyway, the matriarchal thing serves to publicize the place, and the place is beautiful.

We were in a small village called Wazhiluo, in Wind’s Guesthouse, in front of the lake and with fields of corns, sunflowers and pumpkins everywhere. We planed to stay one or two nights, just to go to other parts of Yunnan province, and we ended up staying 5 nights.

We kept eating amazing food; after all we were still in Sichuan! There were a lot of barbeques and I even ate a frog on the grill! And one occasion we ate in an open kitchen where they served us soup of fresh fish that I choose from a bowl of swimming fish. There, we finally had the chance to see how they prepare real Sichuanese food!

How to prepare a Sichuanese Fish Soup:

You need:

1 handful of Sichuan pepper corn

4 dry red hot pepper

1-1.5 kg Fish

1 small cup of ginger

1 small cup of garlic

4 zucchini

Tons of oil

You do:

1. Clean the fish, leaving the skin and cut it in big pieces.

2. Fry fish with ginger, garlic and Sichuan peppercorn for a couple of minutes in a wok.

3. Add some boiling water just to cover the fish, some salt, stock and the sliced zucchinis.

4. Cover the wok and cook for 20 minutes.

5. Add more boiling water to make it a soup and boil it a couple of minutes more.

6. Serve! (You can add parsley and cilantro at the end; we saw it that way in some other places. You can also replace the zucchini for any other vegetable)

After we walked a lot and we biked almost the whole lake (60 km), and when we decided to just hang out for some more days, we happened to find in our hostel a Spanish-Argentinean couple we met in Mongolia two months before! So we enjoyed the scenery and their company and some days later we traveled together to Lijiang in Yunnan province.

But we didn't ride 60 km in that bike

 More pics in Iohi's picasa.