Lakshman Julha (Rishikesh)

by Vincent

Lakshman Julha viewed from our room

The pedestrian only suspended bridge. In fact, many motorbikes take it as well.

Being a blond girl in India is like being a celebrity.

Yoga, meditation, massage, etc...

Funny monkey face

Celebration of the anniversary of the birth of Krishna

A guy making Chapatis

Sadhus. It's always hard to know if sadhus in the street are "real sadhus" or homeless people who became "fake sadhus" to be able to get some donations.

Streets of Lakshman Julha

With Francoise and Ramu, who is from the family where we stayed in Nokha.

Big fire for Holi festival!

Our faces after Holi...

Night train in India. Sleeper class! Not very comfortable with all the bags but OK.

After 18 hours and a night in the train from Nokha, we arrived at Haridwar, in the Nort-West of India. From there we took a bus to Rishikesh and then a short rickshaw to arrive in Lakhsman Julha. Famous among western people for its ashrams, meditation and yoga center (there was the international yoga festival when we were there), Lakshman Julha is a small and quiet place located on the shores of the Ganga, in the mountains, at the very beginning of the Himalayas, not so far from peaks over 7000m. The Beatles also contributes to make Lakshman Julha famous since they stayed a couple of months in an ashram where they wrote the White Album.

But when you arrive in Lakshman Julha, you wonder if it's the world capital of yoga or of rafting. There are rafting agencies everywhere! We stayed a few days there, enjoying the calm and the tranquility after the chaos of the others places we had been in India. We spent our days relaxing on the beach, on the terrasses of restaurants, cafes and "German bakeries" (for some reason, there are a lot of "German bakeries" in touristic places of India but it has nothing to do with a real German bakery). My parents, who had stayed there a week before, had booked for us a very nice room in a hotel with a great view of the Ganga.

Another occupation in Lakshman Julha is to observe the others tourists. Some of them are quite funny. It is full of western people on a kind of pilgrimage who went to an ashram for a month or so to do yoga, to meditate, or to think about life. Most of them are dressed with large and colorful pants and shirts that are sold everywhere in India. Maybe they want to try to look local like that? However, there is absolutely no Indian wearing that kind of clothes! Indians living in Lakshman Julha must think that all western people have long hair, rastas and piercing!

It's crazy what love can make you do: Berit managed to convince me to take part in a yoga class! She also tried an ayurvedic massage but she wasn't really satisfied even if it was better than the torture of Nokha.

We also met Francoise, the cousin of my father I had never met before, who organized our stay in the Indian family. She lives in Lakshman Julha a couple of months per year and knows everybody. Everybody knows her as well. She was really nice and it was good to have the advices of a local!

On our last day, it was Holi, one of the biggest Hindu festival of the year. Holi is the festival of colors: during that day, people throw scented powder and paint to each other. We got prepared and bought some very cheap white clothes for the occasion. After less than 5 minutes, we were covered of paint! It was really funny in the streets where its was like a "paint war". People were hiding in balconies and where throwing buckets of paint on passengers (and of course tourists were the favorites targets...). After some time being the victims, we came back to our hotel and that time, from the balcony, we were the ones who trew buckets! Verry funny festival!

3 days in the life of an Indian family

by Vincent

Visiting the "Temple of rats" with Morli and Sarender. This temple is inhabited by hundreds of rats. Nice when you know that you always have to remove your shoes when you enter in a Hindu temple...

Manisha prepared us a lot of delicious meals

A guy making "Paan" in the street. Not recommended!

The women of Morli's family

Berit trying a Saree. They wanted her to keep it!

Berit, not so sure how she will end up after an Indian haircut...

Oh my god, what's happening to me?

Morli's family preparing breakfast for us

A nice temple in Bikaner A lot of decorations!

Some rests of fakir instruments in the fort of Bikaner

Inside the fort of Bikaner

An old palace converted in a luxury hotel

Kind of vehicles you meet on the roads of India

Visiting a factory in Nokha, with the 2 boss

Instant of life in India: waiting for the train to leave Nokha in front of 25 people who are doing nothing else than watching you!

My father has a cousin that I've never met who lives in India a few months per year. Her name is Francoise but Indians know her under the name of Gurupriya. We would meet her later in Rishikesh. She had a friend with a family in Rajasthan and, since we were traveling in the region, she asked us if we would be interested to stay with them a couple of days. Interested by the idea of seeing Indian life from the inside, we accepted the proposition with enthusiasm and were ready to live a different experience.

The family was living in Nokha, a small town close to Bikaner, in the North of the Thar desert. There is no tourist attraction at all there so they don't see western people everyday. We arrived by train from Jaisalmer at 8pm and started to wait for someone of the family who was supposed to pick us up. After 15 minutes, there was still nobody and we had at least 20 people around us, starring at us, asking us questions and wondering if we had a problem: a western couple there, it was necessarily not normal. One guy even invited us to sleep at his place.

In fact, I had misunderstood the meeting time and nobody would come to take us because they were expecting us to arrive the next day! But after some calls, everything was arranged and we eventually met the family a few minutes later.

When we arrived at their house, a lot of people were waiting for us: all the family, plus the friends, the neighbors, etc. We said hello to everybody, shook hands and tried to remember names and family relations. It's actually quite hard to understand family relations because they all call each other "brother" or "sister". We were offered a delicious "Thali", and ate it on he floor with our hands, observed by the fascinated audience. Then we went to bed and were wondering what we would do the next 3 days...

Actually, Ramu, the friend of Francoise, had planned everything for us, remotely by phone from Rishikesh. The first day, we visited Nokha as well as all the others family members and friends we hadn't met the evening before. Every time, we were offered a "Chai", were taken in photo and always welcomed so well. "Guest is god", as they say in India, cannot be denied.

At one point, they took us to a beauty salon. The day before, we had met the two guys owning it. They had proposed us to cut our hair and we had answered politely "Maybe", for not saying "No", and thinking that we would never see them again. One of them started to invite Berit to seat. She didn't want to cut her hair but accepted to be nice. The guy, who couldn't stop saying "Ladies and Gents, Unisex!" (the only thing he knew in English), started to cut the hair of Berit in a teatrical and grotesque way in front of an impressed audience. It was the moment of his life. I think he had seen some american series on TV and tried to act the same. I had an interior laugh whereas Berit was wondering what was happening to her. I was also feeling quite lucky that they hadn't chosen me.

I was wrong. A few minutes later, the other guy asked me to follow him to another room. That was my turn. You can say "No" 10 times but it's just useless. He took me to a massage room so I started to think that I was more lucky than Berit: it's not so bad to have a massage after all, what can happen? I was imaginating a nice Ayurvedic massage. I was wrong again, it was a torture. I don't think that guy had ever made a massage before. He used a wooden instrument and pressed it strongly on all of my body. That was really painful but I didn't want to show it. Fortunately, it lasted just 5 minutes. After that, I said "Thank you" to him...

But it was not finished for me. I had an haircut as well, and then he shaved my beard! But it was not finished, not yet... Before I had the time to understand what was happening to me, I had my face covered with some layers of creams. I was having a facial treatment. Just the cucumbers slices were missing!

During that time, Berit had to refuse eyebrow trimming and arm waxing but she didn't manage to refuse the massage. She kept marks on her body for a week! We will remember a long time this visit to that beauty salon...

The next two days, we continued to visit places, sights and family members in Bikaner and Nokha. It was very tiring but very interesting as well. We shook others hands, drank others "Chai", refused others "Paan" (kind of sweets rolled in a leaf which was impossible to chew) and we have always been welcomed the most nicely way possible.

The family also insisted for visiting some friends of them owning a farm and a factory making electric cables. They were one of the richest family of Nokha. One more time, we have been received very well, made a visit of the factory, met the engineers and employees and took photos. It was a bit like being a president or a prime minister visiting a factory of his country. Except we were nobody and were dressed with our dirty and smelly traveling clothes!

At the end, we have a very good memory of these 3 days which were like nothing we had experienced before. We met some really nice people who were always offering us their smile, their good mood and their laughings. "Guest is god" cannot be more true than in India.

Jaisalmer...and a camel ride in the Thar desert!

by Berit

Shades of camels in the Thar desert...

Our guide and me!

That's how it looks to ride a camel! Sometimes Vincent's camel wanted to itch his back but he was also sharing his sweat with him in the same time... 

Beautiful dunes

Waves in the dunes 

More beautiful dunes... 

Us! 

Walking on the dunes... 

On the way to the sunset and dinner place 

Jumping in the sand! 

Enjoying the sunset 

Preparing the delicious dinner 

Jaisalmer and its huge fort

The fort at sunset

The "Cristo Redentor" attitude by Vincent 

Streets of Jaisalmer 

A "haveli", a typical house from India

A nice site close to Jaisalmer

After a 6 hour bus ride where me, Vincent, a big Indian woman and a small Indian man shared two seats in the bus, we were very happy to arrive in Jaisalmer, a desert city close to the border of Pakistan. The most popular activity in this city, except getting lost in narrow, labyrinth streets, is to get on a camel and hump off into the desert. We didn't want to miss the main attraction, so we booked a "sunset trip" in the desert. After a short car ride, three camels, one for each off us and one for the guide were waiting for us. Vincent got to ride his own, while the guide was holding mine. I started insisting on riding on my own too, since I had just as much experience riding camels as Vincent (which is zero experience...) The guide explained in broken English that if I really wanted to I could, but he had bought the camel a few hours earlier that day, and he didn't know if it would be jumping, running or biting, or all of the three. So I stopped insisting and we started the ride.

The further we went the nicer the sand dunes became. It was really beautiful and peaceful. Vincent did quite good riding his camel, except he kept trying to make it move faster, but the camel refused. Slowly, and little by little we got to the end point of the ride, some nice dunes with a good view of the sunset. While we strolled around on the dunes our three (!) guides prepared dinner on a bonfire. Rice, curry and chapati (bread) on one little fire, everything made from scratch!(Something to learn for us norwegians with our hotdogs over the fire...?) Good food, bonfire in the desert and a sky full of stars; we were feeling very happy to be on holiday.

Jodhpur, the blue city

by Vincent

Jodhpur, seen from the fort. No wonder why we call it the blue city.

The fort of Jodhpur

Traveling by night bus in India is fun (or not).

Spices and rices...

The cow gang in the street!

Calling parents in the street from a small shop...

Berit with a lot of kids while visiting country side villages

Trying pottery. Not so easy!

Visiting a weaver community. It takes up to 3 weeks to make a carpet...

The opium ceremony in the Bishnoi family

Berit trying a turban. 

A guy smoking in the fort

Inside the fort, a lot of decorations

To go from Udaipur to Jodhpur, we traveled for the first time in India during the night and by bus. And of course, it's like nowhere else in the world. Instead of a seat, we had a kind of box for both of us, with a closing door. It looked a bit like the frozen food compartment of a supermarket. Obviously, night buses in India don't have any place to put luggages so we had to take them with us in the box. They don't have toilets either. So we had very little space left for us but we managed to be comfortable anyway. But the problem of traveling by night bus in India is not really the confort, it's the state of the road: the roads are so bad that we've been jumping in our box all night!

After 8 hours, we arrived in Jodhpur. You have to guess it because the driver will not announce anything. He dropped us in te middle of nowhere in Jodhpur at 5am. Fortunately, we found a rickshaw to drive us to the hotel. Close to the hotel, the rickshaw driver went out to ask for directions but he forgot to put the hand brake (I don't know if rickshaws actually have hand brakes...). The road was a bit steep so we started to move backwards. We started to wonder if we just had to jump out of the rickshaw or wait to hit a wall when someone coming from nowhere managed to stop it for us.

After sleeping a bit more in the hotel, we went to see the city, famous for its huge fort and the blue color of its houses. The city itself is not exceptional and we don't realize that it's blue when we walk in the streets but the fort and the views from it are really worth it. From there, we can see clearly why we call Jodhpur the blue city.

While we were walking in the steep streets, on our way to the fort, a guy invited us to his home. As usual, we didn't really know what he wanted from us but accepted because he was very nice. We sat on the floor in his living room and started to speak. "Which country?", "Married?", "Work?". Then he told us about his family and didn't forget to mention that his wife was doing beautiful henna tattoos. When we left, he invited us to see the money collection of his son. He had notes and coins from all over the world and from very unusual countries like Liberia, Bolivia or South Korea but, strangely he had only two missing: Euro and US Dollar, so he asked us if we could complete his collection...

The second day, we went on a tour with a guide in the country side to see life and communities in the small villages. It was really good to see other things than cities in India. Every community is specialized in a type of work. We visited shepherds, muslim pottery makers, weavers, as well as Bishnoi family. Bisnoi people live with 29 principles such as being vegetarian (not even eggs), protect nature and animals, etc. We call them the "first ecological people". They also drink opium by the way. The guide, who was from one of these villages, was very good and explained us a lot about life in the country side of Rajasthan.