Wednesday 5th November. It's not vacation, it's a boot camp! We are getting up at 5:25, because we need to catch train to Gwalior and then another one to Jaipur.
My throat is still sore, so I look into notes with advice from Robo. From list of medications I decided to buy Azithromycin as it matches my symptoms and promises solution in 3 days (with feedback in 2 days - if it does not work Ciprofloxacin will be next :-) ). Now just to find a pharmacy... We ate breakfast our hosts prepared and paid for the stay (+ meals and bottled water). We gave colonel postcard with Cardiff castle as we enjoyed our stay here. Our driver from yesterday was waiting for us (we made arrangement yesterday). I asked him to stop at open pharmacy, but he was not sure as it was about 7:00. Later on he showed us one closed pharmacy, but then he found open one on next street. Normal garage. Since then we knew garages are fully fledged shops :-) 3 pieces of Azithromycin were for 90 Rs. I will take one later if throat does not get better. We arrived to train station early. But that does not surprise me, I just need to be everywhere on time and with some reserve. About 30 minutes later couple from Netherlands staying in our guest house arrived and there was still plenty of time... Our train arrived, we found our coach. It was not very hard because displays at platform show where each coach will stop. We got in, it was AC Chair coach. We even got bottle of water and breakfast! We were bit surprised, but I decided to eat mine even I was not hungry. Zuzka did not touch hers, so I took it for later.
Tuesday 4th November is the most important day in our Indian trip. We came to India, because Zuzka dreamed about visiting Taj Mahal for 10 years - since she built model of it as school project (that helped her to decide she wants to be an architect). So her dream is finally fulfilled. And I have realized there is not better place in the world to propose. So apart of wanting to fulfil Zuzka's dream, it is important place to go for me too. I hope magic of Taj Mahal will work :-)
Monday 3rd November. We are going to Agra today. Original idea was to go by train, but as we checked availability of only train we could go, we found there was quite long waiting list. So we decided to go by plane through New Delhi instead. We got up at normal time, because our flight is at 11:00 so we are not in hurry. After we paid for accommodation at the reception we asked for a rickshaw. A boy staying there went outside and immediately returned with a driver. I did not think it will be so quick. So we got in and instructed him to go to airport. Streets were not as quiet as they were yesterday. But the biggest difference were policemen standing next to road in periodic intervals, every one has stick in hand. I don't get it. Maybe to beat drivers if traffic jam occurs :-)
Driver asked if we want shopping. "No, go to airport" was our answer. So we continued to the airport. As we got there rickshaw stopped at the furthest possible place at the parking lot. We paid 100 Rs (9km) even meter shown 80 (I have read somewhere that taxi/rickshaws have tariff charts, so it seemed OK, but we have never see them). Accepting higher price motivated driver to ask for more "Give me 50 more" he asked without any bad feelings. He tried to explain, we are two and we have luggage. Somehow these reasons did not sound as good to me as they might to him so he did not get more. We walked back to road with barrier and policemen. We were asked for ticket so Zuzka tried to find one. Unfortunately she had (we both had) a lot of papers and she could not find correct one at that moment. After about minute policemen lost their patience and let us pass. We knew the next check at the terminal building will be tougher. And it was - we gave policeman one piece of paper (as usual), but this flight ticket was for one person only. So we needed to find another ticket. Fortunately we had it :-) Departing terminal is as small as one for arrivals. Just a bit bigger. There is no display or chart with flights and what is worse there is no sign of Jet Lite anywhere. But they would not let us in if our flight did not exist, would they? Hence I went to ask to the closest matching airline - Jet Airways and they were willing to transport us to New Delhi at given time :-) Pleased with that we sat and waited for 2 hours as we are used to in normal sized airports in Europe... (a few flights more and we started to understand that we are doing something wrong - too many security people told us we are early. That cannot be coincidence).
Sunday 2nd of November, 5:15 in the morning. Alarm clock does not make any compromises. We decided to wake up early to accomplish everything we planned for this long day. I cannot say I am well rested as it was hot during whole night.
We take shower (Zuzka found that warm water is available, you just need to wait longer). Quick breakfast from our supplies, moving stuff between big and small backpack, apply sun screen and DEET (stuff to avoid mosquitoes) and we are nearly ready to go. We are locking big backpacks that will stay in room and then attaching them to window handle (that is only unmovable part here IMHO). Ajanta and Ellora Caves are our plan for today. And they are only reason we arrived through Mumbai. All of other places we are going to visit are closer to New Delhi. We decided to rent a car instead of using taxi or bus that would be cheaper (in case of bus much cheaper) because Ajanta is 110km from Aurangabad and Ellora about 30-40 I am not sure how much exactly. Then you need to spend 3-4 hours at both places, so we were afraid we would not be able to visit both of them in one day. Everybody suggests to visit them in two days, but we thought both of them are closed on Monday (in reality only one is closed on Monday, other is closed on Tuesday).
So it is finally happing. Zuzka was dreaming about trip to India for 10 years. All her friends who she asked to go with her exhaled deeply. They are safe now :-) And I, who never thought about going to India and was afraid of it since I have promised I will accompany her, am staying in cold weather at Cardiff bus station waiting for bus to Heathrow. So it is finally happening...
It took me some time to get courage, but now I am looking forward to our India trip nearly as much as Zuzka. It is the most exotic place we have ever been to. As was said in India - Lessons Learned we have only 12 days and our program is full. Surprisingly I am more optimistic that everything will work correctly than Zuzka, but we are about to see soon. There will be surprises, but we hope they will be only positive ones.
We have returned from our short trip to India a few days ago and I would like to write about what we have learned about India which can be useful to others. Complete report with pictures will follow shortly. We have been there only 12 days with flying there and back so I am not going to claim we have learned everything or this will be complete guide. Contrary we have learned only basic things and I am sure even those are not correct :-) I have decided to write separate post about this only to help future readers to find complete information at one place. Otherwise it would be split to several posts and quite hard to find.
This text turned out to be quite long, so if you are not interested reading it completely, you can jump to the most interesting part.
It does not happen often that we have nice weather here in Wales. So it was a bit suprising when we have found sun is shining yesterday morning. I've checked forecast, it said "not bad" so we started to think what we could do.
From 2 alternatives: Cardiff Castle and Kidwelly Castle we picked later (we can go to Cardiff Castle any time and we have been there before). We found trains, cross checked forecast, prepared something to eat and got off.
We needed to change trains in Llannelli. A slight glitch happened there - train was late. Every five minutes it was announced it is late bit longer. Finally, after 30 minutes they got enough of guts to tell us what I've already knew - service was cancelled (I have not travelled by train for the first time in UK. Last time it took about 2 hours of announcements "Train is approximatelly 10 minutes late" even everybody knew no train is going happen and in the best case bus will come to take us). So we found bus station and we could continue. Bus services cannot be compared with services of railways. Really kind and helpful driver, no little lies, just correct stuff. (OK, I am not really fair now, an attendant in train from Cardiff was really helpful and nice too.)
But overall - whole trip was very good and satisfying. We still had enough time to see what we wanted. And maybe we could be late bit more, because at the beginning heavy clouds were over Kidwelly and blue sky started only later.
We spent whole Saturday 26th and morning 27th of July in Oslo. Weather was unbelievable - clear sky and hot.
We bought 1 day Oslo Pass that allowed us unlimited travel by public transport and free entry to most of attractions in Oslo. Our exploration could begin.
I have a lot of photos from Oslo and I struggled for a while to decide how I am going to split it to pages. Previously used Morning/Afternoon won't work so I decided to make a split on areas of interest regardless time, location and how many times we have been there.
Friday 25th of July we are getting up soon again. Not as soon as yesterday, but we need to catch ferry to Bognes at 9pm (plus/minus). It is about 80km away and it is not highway anymore. This time we arrived 15 minutes before ferry leaving and we get only to 3rd queue.
After reaching Bognes we need to get to Bodø airport before 3pm. That is another 220km to go. I hope it is clear now why I do not have many photos from this day. Simply there was no time for that. And we arrived to Oslo quite late so there was not time to shoot there too.
Thursday 24th of July we did not have luck with weather - low hanging clouds obscured otherwise wonderfully looking hills all over Lofoten. Lofoten are beautiful archipelago, especially with fair weather. But also weather we ended with led to some attractive photos.
Lofoten was driving force during our planning - if we did not want to go to Lofoten we would pick completelly different route probably through Stavanger or who nows. So I have good reason to talk about our weather in bad way.
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