Namaste!!Hello from India.

Our last update finished with us reaching the Nepali border. We intended to take a bus from the border to the main city in the area, Patna, so that we could then get a train from there to Varanasi. Unfortunately, as soon as we arrived on Indian soil, we were informed that because of elections, (which had taken place 4 days earlier), no public buses or trains were available. The government uses them to transport people to election polling stations. So this put us in a bit of bother, as well as the fact that we were the only tourists in the whole area due to the border crossing issues! People instantly swarmed around us with all sorts of solutions for a certain price of course! We ended up having to hop in the back of a jeep ; wedged in with about 15 other locals and drove along the most crater filled road we have ever come across. The staring from everyone was unbelievable....it felt like some of the people here had never seen a white person before! This jeep brought us to a tiny village where we got a rickety old bus to Patna, the main city in the area of Bihar. Both of our seats were broken so every bump we hit, and there were quite a few, was hilarious as we would fly off the seat and the whole thing came apart! We met a few nice locals on the bus and they were delighted when we had a whole book about India to show them with lots of pictures! Due to the issues in Nepal it was a last minute decision to come to Patna and we were not very prepared so we had no accommodation booked. We traipsed around the centre of the city with about 5 rickshaw drivers chasing us for business and searched for a hotel that was available. They were pretty much all full!! Crazy stuff.It was getting dark and we eventually found a place that was quite nice, although the same could not be said for the rest of the city.

Once settled in our hotel, we had a look at what our Lonely Planet had to say about the area of Bihar.......not good! It described it as follows: 'Bihar remains the least literate and most lawless part of India. It is one of India's poorest and troubled regions and is wracked by widespread government corruption, sporadic inter-caste warfare, kidnappings, extortion, banditry and violence. All this keeps it well off most travellers radars.' We were up at the crack of dawn the next day and headed straight for the train station as fast as God made small apples!!

Next destination, the holy city of Varanasi. It was scorching hot here and that's the first thing that struck us....45c was definitely the hottest we have ever experienced. It just so happens that we are in India during the hottest heat wave they have had in 50 years but we're getting used to it now. And a day at 38c is quite refreshing!!Varanasi is the holiest place in India and possibly the world for Hindus. The river Ganges flows through the city and along the river there are many ghats or cremation platforms. In Varanasi only two ghats are used for cremations and the others are used for bathing and laundry. We were staying right beside one of the bathing ghats so it was fascinating to sit and look out over the river and watch all the various rituals being carried out. At night, many lighting candles were placed in lotus flower holders and sent down the river. This was all part of their prayer or puja and it was so peaceful to watch the lights slowly floating down the river. We took a boat trip at sunrise down the Ganges and watched as people bathed and drank from the holy river. Cows also joined in and spent a lot of time in the water due to the heat! The most famous temple in Varanasi is a large Shiva (one of the main gods in Hinduism) temple and this was heavily guarded by the army due to concerns about potential terrorist attacks. We lit a few candles on our last day for all of you and sent them happily floating down the Ganges!

We took an overnight train to Agra, the home of the Taj Mahal. As soon as we got to our hotel we ran up to the roof top restaurant to catch our first glimpse of the Taj! It definitely lived up to expectations and we were very excited about seeing it up close. We had planned on seeing it the next morning but unfortunately it was closed! So we kept ourselves busy by visiting a very impressive Fort in Agra. The Taj Mahal is situated on the bank of a river so that evening we went there during sunset for our first up close view. The next morning we were up early and met up with Keith, a lad from Carlow who we'd met a couple of nights earlier. We all headed down to watch the sunrise over the Taj. It was truly spectacular and we wandered around the grounds for a while. Surprisingly we were allowed to go in where we saw the tombs of Shah Jahan and his wife, Mumtaz. Shah Jahan was an emperor in the mid 1600's and he built the Taj Mahal in 1653 as a memorial to his wife who died giving birth to his 14th child.

Although we had a rude awakening on arrival into India, things have definitely improved! We've experienced a lot in the past week and are slowly getting used to the craziness of life around us. Dodging cars, motorbikes, rickshaws and even cows is an everyday part of life! One of the biggest things to get used to is the dirt. There doesn't seem to be any rubbish collection system in place so rubbish is strewn everywhere. I was told to throw my empty bottles of water on the ground at one stage when I asked was there a bin nearby! They were surprised and found it funny that I was looking for a bin! We really want to buy a t-shirt that says 'no thank you' in Hindi but can't find one. We have to say it at least 50 times a day to people selling things but most of the time we just try to have a laugh with them so they don't mind if we don't buy anything. The food is top-notch here; we love the curries and try to have a different one every night. This keeps it interesting! We're total veggies and pioneers since we've come to Nepal and India which is definitely a shock to the system!! No Delhi bellies yet TG! They're cricket crazy over here so luckily we know a bit about it since our time in Australia. It's always good for a bit of banter with the locals.

On to Delhi next so we'll update you again soon.

Hope you all had a fab bank holiday weekend!

Love always,

Linda and Ger xxx