Sikkim

Sikkim - beautiful northern region of India surrounded by Nepal, Tibet and Buthan. You need a permission to enter the state, but getting one is very straighforward, so no problem at all and it is really worth to see it.
We saw Gangtok - the capital, Rumtek with the biggest Buddhist monastery and Pelling, where we saw one of their festivals and met a few very nice people.

Gangtok

Rumtek is famous for its monastery and also for its masked chaam dances , that are held to celebrate major festivals. It's very beautiful and peaceful place, full of monks. One day on our way back to hotel we met a Spanish monk. After a short conversation he invited us to his room where we spend around 5 hours talking about meditations, life, ego, etc. He said he spent 9 years meditaiting in a forrest in Burma!!! Unbelievable! He was completely outside the normal world - no civilisation, no electricity, no TV, nothing! Just the forrest... He left Burma a year ego, wrote a book and now he is planning to open a Tibetan Yoga centre in Spain. Fantastic man!

Way to the Rumtek monastery

Monastery


Spanish forrest monk & I ;)

We were very lucky to arrive to Pelling when one of their festivals took place, which includes mask dances in tribute to Kunchenjunga.

Warriors chaam dances

Children watching the show...

We also almost became teachers in the local primary school with around 200 children of which 60 are orphans. Everything was agreed with the school principle, when an old Lama, who is in charge of the school, arrived and said that if we wanted to teach, we had to pay them... So we decided to leave Pelling and look for another place , where our work is more needed.

Children singing their school anthem before lessons start

Darjeeling

Darjeeling - beautiful little town, famous for its great tea is placed at an average elevation of 2134m, from where you can see 4 of the 5 world's highest peaks, especially Kunchenjunga - world's third-highest mountain and India's highest peak. If you're lucky you might also see Mont Everest! Well, you can see when the weather is good... Unfortunatelly we weren't that lucky ;-( What's more, we felt like we were living in an enormous cloud! ;-) But anyway, the town is really pretty, cool temperature and people are lovely.


Darjeeling...
Monastery at the Ghoom Station

living in the cloud...

Darjeeling's hills covered in tea plantations...

From Varanasi to Darjeeling

Almost 50 hours of journey!!! Thanks to Mahananda Express!
Our train was supposed to come at 9 pm, but had 18 hours delay!!! The railway station was outside Varanasi so we arrived there 6 hours in advance cos we thought it could be a nice place to see. Actually it turned out to be a long street with many shops and nothing more! No hotels, no restaurants, nothing...
First we were told our train was ONLY 10 hours late, so we decided to spend the night at the station... Then in the morning we were said the delay is 18 hours! You can imagine how pissed off we were! But what could we do? Nothing except waiting , waiting and waiting... Finally 3pm, when our train arrived! Then another 20 hours in train and we got to Siliguri, from where we took a Jeep to Darjeeling, 3 hours... It was around 50 hours door to door. Dirty, hungry and extremely tired we finally reached our hotel. Ufff!!!! After shower we felt like reborn!!!

But we saw some nice things on the way...

Varanasi

Varanasi - one of the holiest cities in India, where thousands of Hindu pilgrims come wash away their sins in the Ganges. It's very popular spot for many tourists willing to see the most intimate rituals of life and death, that take place in public, on famous ghats. For example at down you can see pilgrims performing puja to the rising sun or body cremation...

As for us - it was too comercial, we felt quite embarassed (even that it wasn't our fault) when our boat was that close to pilgrims that they had to pushed us away to continue with their prayers.

Varanasi...

Tourists at the famous ghats...

Pilgrims at down performing puja to the rising sun

Body cremation...

Dehli

Dehli - Pahar Ganj - absolutely crazy!!!! It looks like an enormous market, crowded with locals, tourists, travellers, touts, touts, touts, sacred cows, cars, moto-rickshaws, cycle-rickshaws, bicycles, motors and so... Lots of colours, smells, noises, heat!
First you love it, then you hate it and start thinking how to get out of it!? ;-)

In all this turmoil we found a great place to rest and chill out - Everest Bakery Cave - always full of travellers from all over the world, very nice food and lots of books... You can easily spend there few good hours reading, eating and chatting with people.

Red Fort in new Dehli

Boys bathing near the India Gate

Little Indian girl

Colourful bags - paradise for girls ;-)

India...

It's very hard to describe how is the real India like. You can have an impression that it's not one huge country but many smaller ones... they differ from each other in many fields - language, traditions, clothes, temperature, people, etc.
It's like in the famous Jain story...

Five blind men wanted to find out for themselves about that marvellous beast, elephant. When they were led to the animal, each one approched and felt with his hands that part he found within his reach. The man who felt the trunk said: "Ah now I knowan elephant is like a snake". The one who felt the body said: "Not at all, it's like a wall". The man who felt the tusk disagreed declaring: "The elephant it's like a pole". The other two shouted: "No the elephant is like a rope" and " The elephant is like a pillar". And so they argued, unable to come to any agreement.

And this is exactly how we find India...

As it's very hard to run two blogs at the same time so we decided to update you shortly what happened in the past 6 weeks and promise that form now on we will do it regulary...

Yeah, yeah we know ...

... no new posts, no pictures, no nothing ...

well ... one thing we didn't know - uploading pictures in India takes hours, whole days even ;)

At the moment we will concentrate on the Polish version to keep our friends and families updated.

All the best

Ula&Lukasz