Retrospective on India

We took a look back on our 6 weeks in India to gather our Top 10 and Flop 5. So here they are:

TOP 10 (not in any particular order)

- 2-days winding road up through various passes at 5000m to link Manali to Leh (Laddakh) with amazing otherworldly landscapes

- The stones and flags inscribed with Tibetan mantras that are spread into the wind, in Laddakh

- All the tourists gradually leaving Leh to leave it to its natural state of Tibetan peace

- Taking out our GPS and telling a taxi driver in Varanasi where he has to turn next

- Getting better and better at bargaining, till you drop the price to 1/4

- Seeing the cremation of the deads at the Ganges in Varanasi

- Not getting sick despite the not-so- clean places where we ate at sometimes

- Chilling for a week in trendy art cafes in Kochi. Enjoying clean streets, and just a different kind of India

- Achieving the headstand in the ashram after the first day of vegetarian food, meditation and chanting

- Being offered a curry on the train by local people with whom we could hardly exchange a word.

FLOP 5

- New Delhi’s chaos, dirt, spitting and fake tourist offices. We were afraid of getting cholera just by walking the streets and tuberculosis just by taking public transports

- Streets in Delhi not having name tags and houses not having numbers, making us feel even more confused than we were

- The average speed while travelling by bus not exceeding 25km/h! (thank God there are trains travelling (sometimes) twice as fast!)

- The sad tendency of not wanting to trust or talk to anyone in fear of another scam or annoying seller

- The quality of the trousers we bought on the street being so bad, that we had to throw them away after two weeks!

Caro & Dave