Jodhpur with its blue city

With Yann we took a train from Old Delhi Railway Station at about 20.50. But guys, if you need to travel anywhere else in India from Delhi, careful: Delhi has 3 different railway stations that I’m not really sure if it is stating in your guide book. Make sure that you take a train at the correct train station.

We reached Jodhpur early in the morning and there was nothing open by that time. So, we walked around the city, tried to find a place where we could have our breakfast before heading to the Meherangarh fort.

By 10.30 am, we decided to walk through the Old City to reach the fort. Apparently, it wasn’t that far, it was just much complicated to find the way through the Old City, through the narrow roads. The city was still sleeping and it was nice to wander around.

Meherangarh Fort is a significant fort, built on the top of the hill with 400 feet above the city and is enclosed by imposing thick walls. Inside its territorial boundaries, there are several palaces which are known for their intricate carvings and sprawling courtyards.

Since Laurent would join us in Jodhpur, we decided not to spend the night there. We took a train straight to Jaisalmer.

பிக் கிச் பிரோம் டெல்லி / Gros becs de Delhi

Safdar Jung Railway Trip

Sunday - 17th February 2008




From Safdar Jung Railway Station and return at the same station: 2 hours trip and we can see almost all of Delhi. The fare is about Rs8/- (less then RM0.80). The video is showing a little part of Delhi. Buy One Free One: with what we paid, the image and sound and the odor is free. Unfortunately there is still no technology that can add the odor into the image that we take. Pour Michel et Fredy, je suis desole que vous aviez manque cette experience.

Enjoy the video and big kiss from New Delhi.

G

Saturday - 16 February 2008





On occasion of 60th jubilee year of the Indo-Swiss Friendship treaty, the Embassy of Switzerland New Delhi presents G, Galatea String Quartet: Yuka Tsuboi (Violin), Sarah Kilchenmann (Violin), David Schneebeli (Viola), Julien Kilchenmann (Violoncello). The group is coming from Zurich and does the concert also at Kolkata, Bangalore, Goa & Varanasi.

Enjoy the music and big kiss from New Delhi.

Moritz Leuenberger

Friday, 8 February 2008












Life still continue with a little bit of dinner left and right. Last Friday Momo was in Delhi. Ohhh ya, I forgot to introduce Momo to you guys. Momo = Moritz Leuenberger came to India for the 60 years anniversary of friendship treathy. He is a Enviroment's Ministre of Switzerland.

































Go back to Old Delhi with Sugu and Anabell. They are our friends from Malaysia. Anabell comes from New Zealand but lives in Kuala Lumpur and Sugu is Sugi's brother and we've met Sugi in Abuja by the time we were posted in Nigeria. Sugu and Anabell are staying not far away from our apartment in Kuala Lumpur, considering they are our neighbours.

Old Delhi is one of the fantastic place to take a lot of nice picture and going there now is something that I love to do.

Big kiss from New Delhi / Gros becs de New Delhi.

An endless story

Since last week, I’ve been reading the story about this tollgate which is newly open at Gurgoan-Delhi highway. I found out that is so annoying that they can’t stop complaining about the fact that they have to pay for using the highway. Few weeks ago, when the highway wasn’t open but ready to use the people kept asking the government or who ever was handling this highway property to open it as they couldn’t stand anymore with the traffic jam. It is normal while they were suffered all this time during the construction work need to be done and they had to stay hour and hour in the traffic but now it is a different story and I think it is also an endless story.

They are so proud to have this new highway which is 27km long and they said it is a ‘world class’ highway. Everything has to be a world class here. The tollgate has about 15 counters on each side, means it is huge thing but it doesn’t help much as the traffic in Delhi is craziness. Now that the highway is open as well as the tollgate, people start complaining to spend so many hours in the traffic and so much money, and they asked for more tollgate attendant to show them a correct way to go to avoid the traffic. Funny haa….it is even written in the newspaper. By using the highway definitely we have to pay ‘a little amount’ as to give a support for maintenance and technical fees. There’s nothing in the world that we can have for free.

We’ve been there once. We came back from Jaipur and had to wait for few minutes until we could pass through. We observed a little how these people drive. Well, honestly speaking some of them need to go back to school. They don’t want to queue up: in one lane there are three queues, so who is big and strong definitely can go through easily. There’s no way for them to follow the rules and there is no way for them to solve this problem until the people are educate enough to understand a simple thing like ‘queue up’ or ‘wait’. I keep telling myself that this is India and don’t try to understand anything. That’s how you make your life easier.

Big Kiss from NDH/Gros becs de NDH

Pushkar & Ajmer

It was a week after Christophe and Sandra left, Michel and Fredy arrived by knocking our door. The visitors have come and go and now the life goes back to normal. To have a normal life isn’t that easy as we are always planning to discover this Incredible India. I have a feeling that after all these time: started to get use with what we have and what we can’t have, what can see and what we cannot see. It is all about time. The last travel we had with Michel and Fredy, taught us about how to see the thing and accept it as it is and then only we can enjoy what we have seen.

The car broke down again this time. It seems the same problem that we had last time on our trip back from Manali. It was 5.45 am and was cold. We stopped in the middle of no where; there was just an engineering school not far away from where we stopped. After a while that they have tried to repair the car, we found out that the car won’t make it not even for 1 km a head. So, we decided to continue at least until Agra, at least to see the Taj Mahal. If they came all the way from Switzerland, it would be bad if they don’t see the famous Taj Mahal. First, we had to find the transport which can carry us straight away to Agra, and there he was the school bus driver offered us his help by sending us to our destination with only RS.100/- for all of us.

Finally we managed to reach Taj Mahal and decided to continue our trip until Jaipur on the same day and headed to Pushkar on the next day.

Well this time, I will speak only about Pushkar. Bewitching Pushkar has a magnetism all of its own, unlike anywhere else in Rajasthan. It’s a Hindu pilgrimage town, a cluster of pale onion domes, with 400 milky temples, where regular pujas (prayer) create the town’s episodic soundtrack of chanting, drums and gongs, and devotional songs booming out from crackling speakers. The town curls around a holy lake, said to have appeared when Brahma dropped a lotus flower. It also has one of the world’s few Brahma temples. Pushkar is only 11km from Ajmer but separated from it by Nag Pahar, the snake mountain.

The desert town clings to the side of the small but beautiful Pushkar Lake, with its many bathing ghats (steps or landing on a river) and fabulous temples. Pushkar town remain amazingly small despite the constant stream of visitors, and it’s a twisting maze narrow streets filled with interesting little shops, food stalls, hotels and temples. Fortunately, there’s virtually no motorized traffic in the main bazaar, making it a pleasurable place to explore at leisure.

Ajmer is a bustling, hectic town around 130km southwest of Jaipur. Ajmer contains one of India’s most important Muslim pilgrimage centres – the shrine of Khwaja Muin-ud-din Chishti, a venerated Sufi saint who founded the Chisthtiya order, which still exists as the prime Sufi order in India today – and has superb examples of early Muslim architecture. But Ajmer’s combination of high-voltage crowds, commerce and traffic, it’s very much a pilgrimage site rather than travellers’ hang-out, which accounts for the dearth of good accommodation and that was why we chose to stay in Pushkar. Apparently, Ajmer gets busy during Ramadhan and the anniversary of the saint’s death

Big kiss from NDH/Gros becs de NDH