Since we managed to get a last minute tourist visa for India, we could fetch our flight to Cochin. The south of India is definitely the hottest we had with 45°C. After an hour bus ride we arrived in the part of the town where our hostel was located. India's streets are pretty close to mazes in some parts, it took a lot of walking around to get there.
The next day we had Indian food for the first time and not taking too much from the red sauce makes it amazingly good food. We did a bit of shopping which works like this: you have Tuck tuck drivers and they get coupons or money if they drive you to specific stores which are waaaay too expensive and then your ride gets cheaper or free, depending on how many stores you agree to be driven to. That is so lucrative for the drivers that they even offer you to split the money 50:50 with you if you have 2 hours to spare. The problem is that you have to spend 5-10 minutes in the store and Indians are very good salesmans so I wouldn't recommend doing it. The rest of the time we basically chilled and ate. Then we took a 2 day train to Kolkata, a city in the northeast of India. The train ride was interesting, for the first time we, and especially Paula, got to feel how established sexism is in India. She got stared at all the time no one would talk or answer her, and if she asked a guy stuff he would answer to Max or look confused at him. And one time Paula tried to smoke in the train at the doors like the guys do ... It was a bad idea as Max hat a mob of four very upset man viciously talking to him that he should stop Paula from smoking. We arrived in Kolkata so tired that we took a quite expensive hotel right next to the train station. Then it took us over a day to book the train ticket because there is a certain amount of tickets reserved for foreigners, but they can't be booked in the normal ticket office, there is a special office half an hour away. But the food was still good and cheap. In India you can have a full meal for as little as 0.65 euro. From Kolkata we took another train to Raxaul to cross the border to Nepal. You should definitely get dollars if you want to cross the border, because if you don't you will have to pay a almost criminal exchange rate from 90 Indian Rupees for 1 USD. The official course at that time was 62 for 1 USD. But in the end we made it and had a Bolivian style bus drive to Kathmandu.
0 Kommentare
Hinterlasse eine Antwort. |
AuthorPaula und Max Archives
Oktober 2016
Categories
Alle
|