Good-bye north India (forever)

Finally, I am in a 'real holiday', all that happened up to now I would rather call 'survival training'. People in the North of India are doing their best to scare even the most adventurous and good-natured tourists away and make them never want to come back again.

I kept on wondering how the compulsory lying and cheating agreed with their believe of karma. Possibly the northern people don't care if they get reborn as cockroaches in their next lives.

Some 'golden rules' to observe when you are traveling the North:

1. Argue about EVERYTHING you pay money for (attn.: they will even cheat you even on the price of a bottle of water).

2. Do NOT believe anything anybody tells you until you see it with your own eyes (train is not going, hotel is closed, tourist attraction being very far away so you need a rickshaw...)

3. Do NOT TRUST anyone, especially if they seem nice and (almost) normal - these are the most dangerous ones; speaking of which: never trust travel agents, especially not in Delhi!
I got nicely scammed for a rather sizeable sum of money by a Dehli travel agent - supposedly from a 'government-approved agency', don't know where they bought that title from...
Take special care with Kashmiri travel agents, they are the most skilled and have no shame to bill you 3 times the price of what their services are worth (apparently Karma does not apply to Kashmiri folks since they are Muslim).

4. Bring a winter jacket if you are going this time of the year.

5. If something seems expensive, it is. If it seems alright, you're still paying double of what it's worth.

6. EVERYBODY is getting commission, get rid of any Indian company if you need to buy something or you will always lose money.

7. Keep answering 'Yes' to whatever anyone is telling you and never stop walking - it will save you a lot of time, believe me.

8. Alternatively, pretend to be deaf.

9. Go South.

But I do not mean to say that everything was bad, we saw some very nice places including the Taj Mahal, Ranthambore National park (the promised tigers didn't care to show up, however), and mystic Varanasi.

I then went down South and spent a few days in Aurangabad seeing these amazing temples that were carved into stone with hammer and chisel over 6 generations during the 5th - 10th century (they are a World Heritage Site and truly impressive, read more )
Apparently, when the workers got bored they started carving pornographic scenes to amuse themselves - see pics.

Here a selection of pictures of the past 3 weeks (click to see album):

India North