China!

We arrived in China last night, and are now in Yangshuo, a city in southwestern China. As you can see, the scenery is pretty unusual. Apparently this type of topography is called karst. I am not sure what we expected from China, but we've found it to be surprisingly developed, and are pleasantly surprised to find the hottest, strongest showers since Argentina! It'll be hard to leave.

The Delhi transportation scene is pretty intense (this bus is packed inside, hence the roof riders). We also saw as many as 12 people somehow crammed into autorickshaws on the highway between Delhi and Agra (note, there's room for about 3 adults, if you squish a bit, in the backseat of an autorickshaw. 3 is also the "legal limit" for passengers). Take the crowding, throw in some cows and buffalo on the highway, motorcycles carrying families of four, and totally insane driving (no seatbelts anywhere, believe me, we have looked hard every time), and you've got a typical car trip. Mom, I don't think you'd like it very much.

Made it! We went to see the Taj Mahal at sunrise. Our photos aren't as stunning as the postcards...there was a pretty thick fog (some of this was fog, some was unfortunately pollution we think) but not so much that you couldn't catch the reflection in the pool.

We had an authentic 24 hours in Agra, hanging out with our taxi driver, who suggested various meal items for us to try and was a pretty big character. He played us some popular Indian music, including a song called "Singh is King," (featuring Snoop Dogg) from the movie of the same name, on his cell phone/mp3 player. We're looking forward to putting it in our Netflix queue.

Snake Charmer

Jeff, posing with two new friends outside of a tomb on the way to Agra from Delhi. We arrived in Delhi after taking a 13 hour overnight train from Bikaner. It was rough. They were all sold out of first class tix, so we got second class sleeper tickets. There were people everywhere...sitting many to a "bed," and an unfortunate number were sleeping on the floor outside of the toilet in standing water. My unclean bunk was looking pretty good in comparison, after I came back from my trip to the toilet. After nearly being crushed trying to exit the train (we should have followed the crowd and passed our bags out the train windows rather than trying to move counter to the flow of human traffic coming on to the train as we tried to get off with our backpacks), we had a number of station mishaps, couldn't get a train ticket to Agra, and ended up hiring a driver for an outrageous fee to take us to Agra and back to see the Taj Mahal. Never was there more pressure on a monument to impress us, after that saga!

Our "hotel" in the desert. That's the moon up there, not the sun!

Scenes from a desert village.

Camel Safari

After the rat temple, camels are a welcome sight. Although they smell a little like sour milk, they are pretty sweet. We did a 2 night, 3 day camel "safari" out into the desert near the Pakistan border, riding by day and camping by night, which was really unique and fun. However, riding a camel is not very smooth, and I had some battle wounds in the tailbone region before day one was through.