Nat is off adventuring!

Ok India has been absolutely amazing but I'm counting down the hours til we can escape! I have had the best time ever and seen soooo much stuff, but the hassle in the north is just getting too much...!

We arrived in Varanasi today which is a fascinating place. We took a rowing boat trip down the Ganges to watch the cremations going on at the Ghats and a huge Hindu ceremony with people dancing n swinging fire round their heads. It was quite a sight, despite the 80 million mosquitos we had buzzing round our heads. The only down side is that our hotel is in the centre of town, far far away from all the restaurants and other backpacker places. We wanted to go to a different one but our rikshaw driver insisted it was too dangerous down there and this hostel would be much better. Rubbish. Its too dodgy to even leave the hotel, and I suspect we might be the only people in it... We ran next door into the internet cafe but are gonna have to go straight back to the hotel after this. I would die for a beer right now but its a bloody 'dry' city and even if it wasn't, we couldn't get to a bar anyways. Argh! Going slowly mad!

Its the accumulation of a few days irritations really... We were in Agra yesterday. We saw the Taj Mahal which is BEAUTIFUL and Agra Fort which is pretty cool too. I've never seen anything like the Taj Mahal, it looks all magical like its growing out of the ground.. brought a tear to the eye (a combination of that and the fact it was 6.00 in the morning). However, we were driven around all day by the most miserable git of a rikshaw driver, I'm not sure he cracked a smile once. He took us to the post office, all I wanted to do was post 3 cards and 2 small packages. We were there for at least an hour and a half. I have never been so stressed in my whole life! Argh just thinking about it now am getting all agitated!!! They wouldn't serve us for aaages, were just ignoring us.. Then told us we had to seal our envelopes... they don't have tape, just a bowl of dodgy glue stuff for everyone to use. You have to stick your fingers in it and wipe it all over the envelope. Its so SO disgusting and painstakingly difficult to make stick! Why oh why could they not just have some sellotape?!! Anyhoo when I eventually got back to the front of the queue they made me come inside to the customs guy who made me open them all again to check what was inside. Fantastic. It turned out I couldn't send the one to Pippa because it had something edible in it, so I just had to send one to Dad. A woman had to wrap it up in cloth, stitch it all together and seal it with wax, which of course I had to pay her for. Then I had to fill out an extensive form 2 times over because they don't have a photocopier. Then go and stick 3 stamps on every envelope with the rapidly diminishing pot of glue (they poured water in it so it became a liquid with lumps of mush in). Argh sorry to rant but the whole episode was too distressing for words....! We gave up on Agra and went for a well deserved pizza hut with all the phatso Americans =/

Then we got an overnight train across to Varanasi. We faffed about for ages trying to work out if we were on the train or not. Finally made it on and were in 3 tiered bunkbeds. It all seemed bearable til I woke up at about 4am with some random Indian spreading his belongings out across the bed i was sleeping in!! WHYYY?!?! He was rustling papers about and flapping all over the place! There was an empty bed right next to me! I got up and moved to a different section. He was really bizarre though... He put some awful Bollywood music on his phone at top volume and blared it out waking up Claire and a few others who were in our compartment, then just walked off n left it... When he came back he was giving everyone evils, then Claire saw him stick a pen nib right up his nose, leave it there for 5 minutes then sneeze it out again. What is wrong with everybody?!? The whole train journey was a bit of a nightmare.

Here we are anyways... This time in 2 days we should be in Nepal, yay!!! :D

India has been amazing though and I definitely want to come back. Rishikesh is the best place that I've ever been to. Despite Claire being a bit ill we visited the Ashram that The Beatles stayed in, went to a wedding party, i got my palm read and met loads of really cool people from all over the place! There was a beautiful Ashram that I would love to go back to for a couple of weeks, was so cool!

Anyhoo, I better get going, I think this computer is going to give up in a minute.. Miss everyone loads and speak to you sooon! xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Thisafternoon we finally made it up to Rishikesh! It is absolutely amazing, my favourite place so far deffo moleffo. It is a little town at the foothills of the Himalayas, with the Ganges running through it and the most amazing views I've ever seen! They're just massive, looking over the valley. Instead of the irritating Bollywood music that they play everywhere else, theres nice calm music floating abound the town. And rather than smelling of open sewers, theres incense blowing around from all the shops and stalls.

We're staying at 'Mama's Guest House' (I think its called). Mama is the sweetest little person I've ever seen! Our room is oks, its under a quid each a night and she's going to cook us dinner herself in an hour or so! Hehe I've never been so scared in all my days- I actually thought that she was going to electrocute herself earlier. We asked for a heater in our room as it gets freezing cold at night up here. She went and got one that looks at least 30 years old with the plug missing, just bare wires on the end. She started sticking them in the plug holes to see if it worked... omg she's absolutely mental. Hopefully her son is going to get it working laters.

We went for a walk through the town to see what was going on. There are an unfortunate number of stairs which we were trying to tackle when we saw the cutest puppy I've ever seen! Everyone knows the sheer amount of excitement that ensues when I see a puppy... but seriously, it was actually the BEST one i ever saw. I took some photos of it and this little boy who owned him came out to see what was going on.. He only looked about 5 years old and was totally intrigued by my camera. We ended up sitting with him for about 45 minutes while he messed about taking photos. Haha he absolutely loved it, a budding photographer in the making methinks! I'll try to upload all the photos soon!

Hopefully we're going to go on a Beatles tour to see where they wrote the White Album and go white water rafting down the Ganges in the next couple of days before we leave to go up to Mcleod Ganj.

Before heading up to Rishikesh we were an hour down the road in Haridwar. I think it's supposed to be the 7th holiest city in Hinduism or something like that... It was pretty cool. Having got over the general stress of arriving in a new city (tis always so traumatic!) we went to a few Hindu temples and down to evening prayers at the Ganges. Although there were cable cars up to the temples, we thought it'd be nice and peaceful to walk 1.5km up to the first one. Was a big mistake! We have never got to many stares... Then we hit an orange bloke on the path, literally a man painted orange with a huge golden costume on and a club in his hand. He roared at us and made monkey noises, almost scared us half to death, then daubed some kinda orange powder across our foreheads. We were abit taken aback, then he demanded 100 rupees for the pleasure! Thats quite a lot- about the same as our hotel room for tonight! We just walked away but he wasnt best pleased =/ Then I got attacked by a monkey, who ran at me, grabbed my backpack, opened it and nicked all my 'holy food' that I bought to take to the temple..

Argh I think I understand where dad's fear of monkeys comes from now, they're bloody terrifying! At the 2nd temple they were all over the place. Literally hundreds of them. They were just running out and latching onto people, trying to steal their food and hanging off of their saris! We ran away from the temple practially in tears! There are a fair few of them around here as well although they seem to have slightly better manners. I hope so anyways..

Evening prayers at the Ganges was interesting. It must've been SO cold in there but hundreds of people were jumping in and splashing about! Torches were lit and prayers were said in Hindi. We bought little flower basket things with a candle in the middle. You light the candle and float it down the river, I think that it is supposed to get rid of your sins and bring good luck to you and your family. It was all rather stressful with people fighting over saying the prayers with us and demanding 200 rupees for their work.. it was still nice though. We got cool dots (pujas i think they're called) painted on our heads too! The whole of Haridwar was a little bit crazy. They just wanted money for everything! And there were A LOT of poor people and begging kids about =/ Tis so much calmer up here!

Um our 2 days in Delhi were oks.. it stinks. Really badly. Tis just totally chaotic. The best part of the entire city was a tiny Nepalese cafe next door to our bug-infested room. Anyhoo I better get going, Mama is making dinner in a half an hour! I hope its not some kinda spicy creation =/ Speak to you all soon! xxxxxxxxxxxxx

So we're sat at Trivandrum airport waiting for our flight up to Delhi. It was supposed to leave at 11.45 but its 2.33 now and we're still just sat here... I think it's meant to be leaving at half 3. Apparently theres all sorts of crazy fog in Delhi and there have been absolutely no flights entering or leaving the airport... fantastic. Ah well, shouldn't be too long now.

The scary thing is that there is a tv with all the news headlines on in the airport! Up in Kashmir, not too far north from Mcleod Ganj where we are headed, there are mahoosive snow snorms and sever avalanche risks. All the tourists there are stranded in the snow! We thought we had better rethink our plans so have come to the internet cafe =/ It looks like Mcleod Ganj is ok, just raining til friday... crap not sure what we're doing now. I guess we might wait to see what time we get to Delhi and maybe head up to Haridwar first instead. Also, it looks like theres protests in Calcutta and people are smashing up taxis in Mumbai! Ahh think maybe its best to avoid watching the news in this country! I don't think its anything too serious.

Anyways! We had an interesting few days in Varkala. Its ok there but not really as nice as Palolem was in Goa. The beach happens to be at the bottom of a hugeous cliff face, and all the hotels/bars/cafes/toilets are at the top. As humourous as it is sitting and watching all the fat tourists huffing and puffing up the cliff, its not so funny when you have to do it yourself with sunburn and sand caked all over your face. In Goa our hotel was literally 5 seconds from the sea, we had lovely sunbeds and were waited on hand and foot, was brilliant! Here we had to sit wedged in the sand and there were all sorts of crazy undercurrents in the sea =/

Ahh we saw the funniest thing I've seen in aaages yesterday though. There were all these tourists having a yoga class on the beach by the sea. Right next to them were all these guys having an Indian v Tourist football match. Haha all the yoga people were stretching and meditating and the football kept flying in n knocking them over. One of them was right in between their goal posts doing a headstand... Ahh how we laughed!

Anyhoo I better get going. I'll write again asap, hopefully not from within a snowstorm =/ Miss you all loads! Speak soon! xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx