Our first friend

In the past, whenever I've traveled I've made some friends. When you travel alone or with a friend, it's very easy to meet new people. When you travel with your wife, it's not as easy. For one, we were generally on the backpacker path in which couples are at a minimum and married couples seemed to be almost non existent. Secondly, you usually end up making friends at night when drinking at bars. In India, there just weren't that many bars and well, Huyen and I rarely drink. Those two things combined meant that Huyen and I had another month of basically just each others' company. Yes, I know, Huyen is a lucky woman.

On the bus to Agra we met our first friend -- Nate.



In a case of it being a very small world, Nate taught English in the Mekong Delta in Vietnam. This obviously gave us an immediate thing to talk about. When we arrived in Agra we shared a rickshaw and ended up at the same hotel (Nate, being a way better backpacker got a way better rate on his room then we did). Over the next couple of days we ate and toured with Nate who turned out to be a very cool guy despite the handlebar mustache.

More of Agra...

Most people only think of the Taj when they think of Agra. However, there's actually a ton of other cool sites like the Red Fort and Baby Taj.


To me, the Red Fort is really interesting because the rich dude who paid for the Taj was actually overthrown by his son and imprisoned in the Red Fort. He spent the last years of his life staring at the Taj with this view:


(PICTURE: The Taj is out there somewhere.)

There were two common themes among all the sites:

1. We would inevitably be harassed by freelance tour guides as soon as we set foot near the site. The guides would grow increasingly angry at us when we told them we didn't need a guide. We had our travel book which gave a brief history, and frankly that's all I could really retain after seeing so many sites.

2. The ticket agents would try and scam the site. They had this little scam going where they would take your new ticket and then give you back an old ticket someone had put into a special "return ticket" box. The scam is so simple and brilliant. Basically the ticket agents would take our new tickets and return them to the cashier for money. It doesn't affect tourists (unless you want to keep your ticket as a souvenir). Instead, it just rips off the Indian government.

Here's some other pictures from sites...

The Taj

The Taj Mahal was impressive. I'll let the pictures do the talking on this blog entry:

Laughing Yoga

My friend Kevin Rodin (also known as Huyen's new swim teacher) told me that he and his wife Beth tried to go to laughing yoga in Kolkata. I was intrigued by the idea of laughing yoga and asked someone in Kolkata about it. This one guy told me how it was very healthy to laugh and that since Indian people don't laugh much, it was good to make oneself laugh in yoga class. When he told us this, my first thought was, "Indian people don't laugh a lot?". After he said that I started to notice that indeed, people didn't seem to laugh as much in India as in other places I've been. For example in Vietnam, everyone always seems to be laughing (except when they're stone faced on their motorbikes).

In Kolkata, we tried to find the laughing yoga and failed miserably for two hours. Perhaps the laughing yogis were watching us search for them and this inspired their laughing. Well, in Varanasi we signed up for regular yoga and it turned out to be a laughing yoga class. The guru was the weirdest dude I've met in a long time. Besides his dyed purple hair, he just had this comical look to match his big belly. I found myself giggling because all around his yoga studio were pictures of him featured in newspapers around the world. The pictures were clearly from a few years earlier when he was a tad bit trimmer. Anyway, he started to lead us in laughing yoga which was actually a lot of fun. We did thing like making funny faces and forcing ourselves to laugh. It wasn't too hard to make ourselves laugh though because everyone looked utterly ridiculous, especially the guru.

Just as we started to feel good and relaxed, a joke was played on us -- the guru said he had to go and had his assistant take over the class. His assistant, a girl, looked like she hadn't laughed since, well ever. She had the most serious look on her face and started to instruct us like a drill sergeant. Needless to say, there were no more laughs the rest of the class.

Our Cyclo Driver

If you ever go to Khajuraho, keep your eye out for this guy. Without a doubt, he was the most honest driver (taxi/cyclo/rickshaw) we had in India. On our way into Khajuraho he rode us around through the town and showed us about ten different hotels. On our way out of Khajuraho, he picked us up at our hotel (on time) and took us to the bus station. He then proceeded to just hang out with us for forty five minutes as we waited for the bus.

The guy was very open about his life and told us how it was a "miracle" how tourists came to his city in the middle of nowhere. I liked his attitude because he treated tourists as people to be respected and thankful for. Frankly, this is how I think people should always treat tourists who come from far away to see another land and culture. Personally, whenever I meet a tourist (which has happened a few times since returning to the states) I try and be as friendly to them as possible as I think it is pretty cool that they chose to come to our country and spend their money and time here.

Anyway, the point of this blog is that this guy was pretty cool and if you go to Khajuraho you should hire him. I can pretty much guarantee he'll be waiting by the bus stand.

Walk like an Egyptian...

One of our more bizarre interactions in Khajuraho was when we visited the most famous temple. Standing guard at the doorway of the temple was this guy:


(PICTURE: Me with the security guard.)

While Huyen and I were inspecting the carvings, the security guard came over to us with a huge smile and started to explain what everything meant. The guy was trying so hard to summarize thousands of years of Hinduism into just a few minutes which is obviously not an easy task. To make matters worse, his English was quite poor. However, what he lacked in communication skills he made up with gusto.

While he was telling us about Shiva and the other Hindu gods, he kept looking over his shoulder to see if anyone was stealing the relics he was supposed to be protecting. After he finished giving us his mini tour, he insisted that Huyen and I take pictures with the same poses as in many of the sculptures. Heck, we're always down for some funny pictures so we took these:


The area we are standing on is the same place that dancers and performers would entertain the king hundreds of years ago. On this day though, the only person really being entertained was the security guard.

Biking

(PICTURE: Ride like the wind, Huyen. Ride like the wind.)

Let me tell you one of my secrets for traveling: no matter where you are, it's always more fun to have your own two wheels. Huyen and I have rented bikes in Thailand, Myanmar and India. Whenever we do, it always ends up being one of our favorite experiences. In Khajuraho, we would wake up at about 5AM and bike around so that we could avoid the heat. Having your own wheels allows you to:
1. Avoid all the rickshaws and cyclos who harass you for your business.
2. Gets you off the beaten path.

With our bikes, Huyen and I went to some of the furthest temples in Khajuraho where nobody else was out. We were also able to bike into an old village and meander through alleys and back roads.

I was especially happy with my bike in Khajuraho because it was basically personalized:


*They had no helmets in this city. Thankfully there was very little traffic and decent roads so we didn't have any issues. When we asked for helmets we basically got laughed at since it was like 118 degrees.