Just got back from a two day camel safari.. it was something else, I tell you. The thought of riding a camel through the desert sounds incredible.. and it is, but also very painful. The back of a camel is much wider than a horse, thus your legs are spread very far apart while riding. Within 20 minutes your muscles feel sore, after an hour they hurt quite badly. After four hours, one winces with every step the camel takes. And then the camel drivers son runs up beind your camel and yells, sending the camel into a fast jog/trot. The pain of ones behind crashing up and down against the saddle is hardly bearable, except for the wonderful retreat from the slow side-to side shift the body does on the saddle which causes something of a chaffing effect.

The mounting and dismounting of a camel is probably the funniest part of the whole safari. To sit, the camel first bends it's front knees, then folds his front feet under him, still standing on his hind feet. The rider meanwhile, is suspended at a 45 degree angle, hanging onto the horn of the saddle for dear life. Then, the camel folds in his back legs, and finally slides forward into a sitting position. It is then safe to dismount. The entire process is repeated in the opposite order to stand up.

Although the trip was painful, it was a definitly a highlight. We would stop for a meal and relax under the shade of a tree with chai while our camel driver cooked up a tasty meal and made fresh chapatti (Indian Flatbread).

At night we slept under the stars on sand dunes.. it was beautiful, and wonderful to be away from the honking and traffic and smells and people trying to sell you things.

The person selling our safari promised us we would be in a group with other young people who spoke English - two Australians and two Canadians. Turns out we were with an older Polish couple, a guy from China and a guy from France. All of them had terrible English. We were also promised a guide with good English - (he didn't seem to understand a word I said). We are also promised mattresses (we slept on a thin sheet right on the sand)..

Oh, and the guy from China was promised to be in a group with only Asians. Ha!

I guess it's welcome to North India to me! I am used to travelling in the South where it's much more laid back and you can generally trust people and they don't try to take advantage of you as much.. Here they will tell you anything to get your business.. I suppose it makes each day interesting.

I've in India two months now and I never know what to expect or what will happen in the day, but every night I go to sleep surprised by the adventure I found myself in during the day.. for example, on the way back to my hotel tonight, the Rickshaw driver decided to teach me how to drive..

Since certain people are complaining I never update this thing.. perhaps I should give it another go. Most days coming online is the last thing I feel like doing, and when I do get online, the internet is not exactly first-class.

Some highlights that I can think of off the top of my head of the last month..

Spending nearly two weeks on various beaches on the West coast - Gokarna, Palolem, and Arambol was awesome. It was weird going from chaotic, busy, intense India to lazy beach life where you can lay in the sun and actually read a book, and I found switching back to "real" India very hard. It was like culture shock all over again, readjusting my mindset.. it took me a few days to get back into the swing of things, because the beach life is easy, and everyday life in India is not. Each day is a battle to communicate and get a fair price and find the right bus and jump off the train at the right station when all the signs are in Hindi or a local language.

At Palolem beach our hotel hosted a silent disco one night, which was a very cool experience. There are laws here that you can only play loud music outside until 10pm so they have these discos where everyone wears headphones. There were three DJ's and you could switch the channel on your headphones to pick whichever music you wanted. It is so funny to look out at a sea of hundreds of people all dancing to their own beat.. everyone is in their own little world and it looks ridiculous.

After the beaches we went to a place called Hampi, which is famous for its ruins. It was a gorgeous place with the craziest landscape I've ever seen. Think of mountains made up of boulders. Beth and I rented a motorcycle one day and puttered around the countryside taking in the views and watching the local village life. It was so nice to get away from the hustle and bustle and honking mess of the towns and drive until you can't find any traffic. Only in India can one learn how to ride a motorcycle and then rent it two minutes later. I think I paid 3 dollars for the whole day. I should mention however, that it was an automatic bike, so I suppose it's not that big of a deal. The big was an old antique that had very little power.. sometimes the person on the back had to hop off because it couldn't make it up the big hills with two people on it..

Since Hampi we have spent some time in Mumbai (maybe I will talk more about it later. Still trying to process it..)

And then took our first overnight train to Udaipor, Rajastan. To be honest I was a bit nervous about the train and prepared myself for the worst, but it ended up being completely fine. Enjoyable even. You should google a picture of a Sleeper Class Indian train. Words can't really do it justice. During the day you all sit on benches, and then at night the bench becomes one persons bed, and you pull out another bed from the wall to make the middle berth, and the third person has to climb up to the third bed which is at the very top. You have to cross your fingers that you get a top berth because otherwise it can be an awkward evening of trying to get people off your bed so you can go to sleep. A lot of people also walk on the train without tickets so they kind of perch wherever they fit. I was fortunate enough to get a top berth so I could go to sleep anytime. Beth had a man sitting at the foot of her bed for a good chunk of the night, which is very good to keep ones feet warm...

Local man: "What's your name?"

Jenna: "I'm Jenna"

Local Man: "Oh, Hi Imjenna"

I have been called Imjenna all day. It's getting a bit hard not to giggle everytime he calls my name. I tried to correct him twice, and then gave up.

India is probably the most beautiful place I have ever been. I think about a week ago we boarded a bus for an 8 hour journey to a Hill Station called Ooty. I was in awe the entire ride, the scenery changed every few minutes from bustling city to jungle to rivers to palm trees to forests to hills and valleys and mountains. We stayed in Ooty for three days, met some other travellers to spend time with, and did an 18 km trek through the hills and tea plantations. It was absolutely breath-taking. We then headed to a place on the coast called Fort Cochin, which was nice but very touristy. It is a fishing town so at night we would go to the beach and pick out a fish for dinner, and then take it to a restaurant to grill it for us. Probably the tastiest fish I have ever eaten.

Yesterday we arrived here in Allepey, a smallish town on the backwaters. They call it the "Venice of India". I'm not sure if I'd go that far but it is nice, we went to the beach last night to watch the sunset and have dinner. Today we hired a local man to take us in his canoe along the small canals. It was so neat, paddling by little villages along the water, seeing the children paddle to school on their canoes. We stopped for lunch along the way and had Thali on a banana leaf, and of course, more fish.

I made it! After 24 hours of travelling I finally arrived in India. I can't even pinpoint my first impressions because I don't think I've really absorbed anything yet. We are staying with a friend and his family this week, so we are definitely easing our way into Indian life. It's been wonderful staying here, because the family has taught us so much about their culture and traditions in just a few short days. They really want us to understand why things are the way they are, and every night when I go to bed, it is like information overload, all these things are swirling around my head..

enough about that. some stories from the day..

This morning they took us on a Safari at a Tiger Reserve. Now I can't even explain the mayhem that ensued. First of all, there was major fighting on the bus, because one family tried to take all the window seats, leaving only the aisle sheets for the rest of the people boarding the rickety old safari bus. Clearly the newcomers were upset, and some guy tried to tell them to move, but they refused, and lied and said they didn't know each other, they had come seperately. This was obviously not the case, but they fought hard and the man had to try and figure out who was part of the family.

Madness ensued for another 10 minutes, and finally we were ready to set off. And set off we did, the driver drove pedal to the metal straight through the forest.. if someone on the bus saw an animal they would shout, then the driver slammed on the breaks, everyone would jolt forward, and then he would reverse in order to view the animal. As soon as a few photos were snapped, we set off again, speeding through the bushes. I am sure the scarce amount of animals that we saw were scared off by the speed of our bus. Since we were in such a hurry we caught up to another bus ahead of us. Our driver, the impatient man that he was, would rev his engine and honk the horn.. really a smart thing to do on a wildlife safari, I'd say. This revving of the engine continued throughout the rest of our safari. I haven't laughed so hard in ages.

I think I am really going to like it here. Once I learn how to cross the road that is.

Oh, and today is the Harvest festival. For the last three nights there has been incessant singing and wailing from the nearby temple. The family I'm staying with is constantly annoyed and making fun of the poor singing. The loud singing is played on loud speakers from around 9pm until 6 am in the morning, sleeping is a challenge to say the least.

Today they are thanking the cattle for their contributions to the harvest.. (plowing the fields?) so the people cook food to feed the cows.. the only day of the year they eat a proper meal. Here in the city most don't own cows so they find a stray or go to the cow orphanage (don't even ask. that's all they told me).