Five cities in a week, and now in continent number two!

This was written on Monday (24th) night and Tuesday (25th) morning at two airports whilst on my journey between the two halves of my gap year. I'm sorry it hasn't been posted until now, but Internet has been very rare and I have only just got my personal Internet stuff sorted. Anyway, these were my musings at the time whilst waiting for my planes and running on a severe lack of sleep (so excuse any incoherent bits please). As you have hopefully figured out by now, I am in Uganda and am enjoying a very relaxed week whilst I settle into this beautiful and extremely hot country which will be home for the next five months or so. But for now, here is what my last week in India looked like:

Phew, this last week has been exhausting and I can barly remember the start of it! I have been super blessed to have been able to explore more of this beautiful country and I now have the travelling bug even more, as well as some key tips for travelling around India. Monday night we could get out of Dharamshala (city one) and arrived in the city of Shimla (number two) early Tuesday morning. Shimla is the capital city of Himachal Pradesh and I love it! I found myself longing to study it as a geography case study because it is such a fascinating mountainside city. 

This photo doesn't show much of the craziness sadly, but you may be able to get a taste of the way this city is clinging to the hillside for dear life. It looks like an slight tremor would send the whole 1.5 million inhabitants careering down the valley. Apparently earthquakes are rare, which is a relief; monsoon isn't, so I can't imagine how this city survives on such a gradient with so much rain. It is truly fascinating and if I ever come back to India, it is on my list of places to go to go sure. We only spent the day there, but we were able to see much of the city which is surprisingly European feeling - the cobbled streets, old buildings and an Anglican Church reminded me of quintessential England whilst the overall landscape was quite French alps-esque (in my opinion anyway). We even got to see the Himalayas (apparently the mountains where we have been living don't technically count, so I have seen the foothills and the official ones now).

Perhaps the most comfortable (and longest - about 15 hours) bus ride to Jaipur followed on Tuesday night which was extremely windy and picturesque and as descended the mountains. The next morning we were in the desert in Rajasthan, Jaipur to be exact. Wednesday wasn't the best day due to sickness (not mine) and a lack of plans. Top tip for travelling in India - don't be spontaneous!! Book your tickets through an agency (we spent over an hour trying to book train tickets to Jaisalmer beforerealising it was impossible at such short notice) and make sure you know where to find a hotel room. We managed, and in the process discovered why Jaipur is called the 'Pink City'.

I love the buildings so much! Not all of them look like this, but whole areas of the city are all this colour and style. Having been forced to stay overnight in Jaipur we proceeded to leave the city on an afternoon excursion up into the hills, and it was the best decision! Almost every ridge of every hill had forts running down them, which you could properly explore with no 'red tape' holding you back. Seeing Jaipur from this perspective was awesome! My geography nerd came out again and I took so many photos, trying to capture the cramped and quite geometric city - I'm sorry it's not as good as the real thing!

It's crazy! And so I fell in love with Jaipur too. Thursday night we got an overnight bus to Udaipur, another city in Rajasthan loving called the 'White City' or 'Venice of the East', although you can't see why as clearly unless you take a boat trip on the lake and see the palace (the second largest in India). It was pretty impressive and this is only a portion of it because I couldn't fit it all in the frame. Sadly we didn't have time to go into the place so I can't give any more details about it.

The rest of the city is also European feeling. Apparently the city was designed by French students (I think form Paris) and by Indian ones, so the French-y feeling makes sense. It is a classic tourist place full of stalls to buy things you don't really need, and you can wander down small winding alleys to your hearts content. We noticed that if you an older hippie traveller, then Udaipur is the place for you! 

One really cool thing we did there was have a complimentary nail art session whilst in an art shop. Many of the artists in Rajasthan specialise in miniature art work, and it is really very impressive to see! Whilst browsing, the owner offered to paint a peacock on my nail. I know this isn't a good photo, but hopefully you can see the crazy detail of it - he even did my name along the nail rim. 

Friday night I headed back to Delhi on my own to have an extra day with a family we know there. Top tip about buses to Delhi: make sure you know exactly where they will drop you off and double check if there are two places in the city with the same name! Having Old Delhi and New Delhi can be confusing when neither is specified but both parts have 'Khanna Market' I discovered. It was heaven to be in a house with hot water, big comfy pillows and duvet and to have my own room - but also weird as I don't think I've had my own room since leaving England. I even got to eat proper cheesecake and call home, what more do you need? On Saturday we went To see the presidents gardens which were open for the last weekend. They are very much like a garden in England or France, but still the flowers were beautiful and the size was quite overwhelming. Unlike the British garden experience, here we had a strict path to follow so were in the biggest continuous flow of people and were whistled at every time you paused for more than 20 seconds. It was quite bizarre!

Yesterday was our final day in Delhi and having been reunited with my friends on Sunday, we did the necessary trip to Agra to see the Taj Mahal. It was nice not to be on the verge of throwing up like I was last time I was in India with mum nine years ago! We had a slightly stressful time though, but all in all it was good fun and it really is a spectacular building.

Two tips of you do Agra: 1) Dont take laptops, rape whistles or tripods in because they will just send you back out to deposit them in baggage area and then you have to queue all over again - poor Kris found out the hard way and it put quite a downer on our time there. 2) If you want to do a round trip from Delhi to Agra in a day then leave very early and leave very late. Just incase any of you are going anytime.

So, this is it! I am now in Africa, sat at Addis Ababa airport waiting for my connecting flight to Entebbe! I am so happy to be back in Africa - if I could be anywhere in the world it would be in Africa (worked out well, huh?) but I would want all of you to come and bring home to Africa. The first half of my gap year is closed, and the second is just starting. The last five months or so has been such a wonderful time for me, especially in my faith - it's been life changing, as cliched as it sounds. I have grown and become more rooted in my relationship with God and my identity in Him, but the coming months will test that now I have left the 'bubble' of India and having other fellow believers around me all the time. I am entering this time completely unsure of what the coming months will hold, and I will keep you updated as they are revealed to me more and more, but having a blank canvas for God to work on is pretty exciting, at least for me! Lets see what Africa holds...

So long, fare well...

How has five months gone so quickly? Five months ago today I was frantically shoving the last few things in my rucksack and saying goodbyes at Heathrow. Today (and yesterday too actually, which was very hard) I am saying more goodbyes as I leave what has been my home here in north India. Time really flies! 

I have so much to fill you in on. When was my last blog? From Bangkok? I'm sorry I have been quiet for so long, but things have been very busy for me with abundant travels and very little free time. From Bangkok we moved down to Mae Phim, a little tourist town on the coast of Thailand for our 'de-briefing' week which was idyllic. It consisted of lots of free time to process all that had happened in Thailand and Cambodia and all the ways God had worked in me personally, in our team and in the work that we did. We also had plenty of time just to be and relax in the sea and on the beach. Here is one photo to make you all a tad envious...

Then we travelled back to India and to our home here in Himachal where we were greeted by warm friends and very cold weather! The Himalayas are crazy - for a couple of days in the middle of last week we had strong sun so I managed to get a tad sunburnt in my face, and the next day we had sleet and snow. We currently have snow and sun which is a more pleasant combination, but I've decided that I much prefer snow when you have a house with a heater to go into after to warm up - we don't have any heaters here, and for the last two days we've had no electricity so we can't even use the small electric one we have. That was interesting with trying to bake brownies with no oven, so we've been eating brownie mix for dinner and some had it for breakfast this morning too!

On Saturday we had a celebration of all that the last months has held for my family here and it officially ended time. So much has happened in all of us that the afternoon was not long enough to reflect and thank God for all He has done. Many of us girls wanted to have one last time being Indian so we went all out and got saris! They are so fun to wear, you feel super fancy. But there's a reason you don't find Indians from the north wearing saris very often, because they do not fit with the climate. We were crazy to wear saris in the snow, but it made the celebration even more festive. 

So now it's time to move on and finish my time in India. This time next week I will be on my way to or at Delhi airport waiting for the second half of my gap year to start in Uganda. Until then, a couple of friends and I will be travelling around north India being tourists for a week. We were meant to start yesterday to Shimla, but had to postpone our departure by 24 hours due to the snow so we are on the road now to the capital of Himachal. From Shimla we will most likely go into Rajasthan for a coupler of days before seeing the Taj Mahal and ending in Delhi. This is our rough plan, but who knows how it will actually turn out! 

I have really loved my time here, and its safe to say it has been pretty life changing! It has been a huge blessing to me: I have grown in my beliefs, I have friends who I will always treasure, I have met some hugely inspirational people, I have seen some wonderful ways God is being served in Thailand and Cambodia and I have been able to live in this beautiful region and country and call it home for a while. Who knows if or when I will be back, but this part of India will always hold such wonderful memories!

Neck Nominate

This is a one off blog which isn't related to my travels at all, but a new Facebook craze has made me break the purpose of this blog. 

Those of you who are on Facebook will most likely be aware of this thing called Neck Nominate, but I shall explain for those of you who aren't or who have mercifully missed this new craze. It is very simple: you are nominated by a friend and you have 24 hours to film yourself 'necking' a drink which is normally a pint of something alcoholic, then you post the video on Facebook and nominate one (or several) of your friends to do the same. Over the last two or three days I have seen over a dozen of these videos on my news feed and its making me really sad, hence the blog. As you can guess, these trends spread really fast. It's troubling to think that something like this which encourages competition from drinking the biggest quantity in the most unique way is so popular and acceptable! 

But I still have hope for humanity! There's a video of a guy form South Africa who twists the idea and for his nomination he hands out food and a drink to a guy on the street. It's so uplifting to see in the midst of all the self-centred alcohol driven videos. He got me thinking about how this craze could be turned around to encourage something beneficial instead. 'Necking' is also known as 'downing' and is all about consuming and putting the drink away. Well, lets stay with the theme of 'putting it away' and look from another angle at it. Put away the inequalities and injustices of this world - things like hunger, loneliness, disease, poverty, trafficking. Give things out instead of of consume them, but for the purpose of 'putting it away'. Why not do something worthwhile which will bring a genuine smile to someone, rather than a slightly tipsy grin and a few likes on Facebook.