All I seem to do in India is relax and eat.

A hearty welcome to you!

Time passes so fast and I'm doing so much that updating my blog always seems to be the least of my priorities... I guess that's how it should be though. I do love writing it and letting you all know what I've been up to!

Since the last update I've visited many a place.. With much joy and gleefullness I bade New Delhi goodbye and headed up to Himachal Pradesh, to Manali. Manali happens to be the drug capital of India, and it's not uncommon to see marijuana bushes scattered around and locals rolling hash from it. Drugs (and the hippie tourists that follow them) aside, Manali itself is a little bustling hub. There is New Manali, where all the buses drop you off, and there is a small market and a wee Tibetan colony and a couple of monasteries. I stayed in Old Manali, a 2,5km walk up from New Manali, which at this time of year is prettyclose to being dead. A small collection of guesthouses and cafes dot the hills, serving steaming cups of chai and selliing woollen products to keep the freezing tourists warm. I spent most of my time in Manali doing small hikes around the area, drinking plenty of beer and just rejoicing in the fact that there were no people around me at all. And that was absolutely glorious.

After some down time in Manali, I moved on to Dharamsala on a 10 hour bus ride on a bus that I was sure would fall apart at any moment and that tethered my bottom into a state of utter numbness. On this bus I met Khalil from Greece, Stani from Bulgaria and then a Mexican couple (I don't know if I ever even knew their names...) and together we endured this experience. After a swift bus change in Dharamsala, we climbed up to McLeod Ganj, our final destination of the day. As per usual, as we got off the bus, we were swarmed by touts who claimed they had the best and cheapeast room in town. And for once, I took advantage of one. Khalil and I teamed up, and followed this little Nepalese dude through McLeod to the guesthouse where he lived with I'm assuming his Dad. We made a deal, and for mere pennies Khalil and I secured a room for the next few nights. We then detoxedfromour bus ride by devouring a tandoori chicken with butter naan and beer.

McLeod is the home to the Tibetan Government in exile and the Dalai Lama when he is in India. Lucky for us, His Holiness was in town for the wee we were there, and was holding a conference. I'm sure we cold have registered and attended the coference, but we settled for heading to the Temple every once in a while to see the talks via live video feed. Even though the Dalai Lama wasn't there in the same room, just the fact that he was 150 metres away on the other side of the temple complex was pretty powerful. I spotted Demi Moore leaving the conference one afternoon. And yes, she is just as hot in real life as she is in the movies and pics.

McLeod has accumulated a huge Tibetan community, and is where the refugee centre for Tibetans who have left Tibet is. I spent a lot of time talking to Tibetans who lived there, and heard some really incredible stories on how they managed to cross over without being spotted by the Chinese guards patrolling the border. I spent time watching documentaries on Tibet and joined conversation classes to chat about the situation there, and enjoyed plenty of good Tibetan food. That week was a true eye opener for me, and I realized how blind I'd been to the situation in Tibet whilst I was there. But in hindsight, what could I have done whilst I'd been there? Nothing really. A local in Tibet caught talking to me about almost anything could be grounds for arrest, and Tibetans are terrified to talk to foreigners. Monks have no religious freedom, and Tibetans have been made a minority in their own land. It's an awful situation, but I'm glad I've been there, and I'm glad I went to McLeod to learn about it some more. I watched Kundun in McLeod after many years, and it got a whole new perspective now that I'd been to Tibet. I recommend it, it's a very good film about the life of the current Dalai Lama u until he had to flee Tibet in 1959.

I had originally planned to spend a couple of nights in McLeod before returning to the heat of Rajasthan, but as many a tourist before me, found myself staying there for a lot longer than originally planned. In addition to spending my time hanging with Tibetans, I sampled cakes from this amazing little Tibetan bakery, ate delicious japanese food for lunch every day at Lung Ta, drank an abudance of beer and lemon, honey and ginger tea and gorged on momos.

Finally getting sick of the cold weather, I headed back down to Jaipur for Diwali! I now regret not going to Rishikesh from McLeod, as that's where The Beatles spent time in (apart from Ringo. He and his wife got bored of the vegetarian food after a month and left. Tee hee.), and am now too far to go back. I have ambitious plans of making it to Pondicherry and Kerala before I leave.

Anyhoo, back to Diwali in Jaipur! I joined forces with Ajeet again, and then met Nathan from Canada through him. Together we spent Diwali at Rakesh's (he is the manager of Chitra Katha hotel where both Nathan and I were staying) roof top, having gorgeous food served to us, along with plenty of rum. At one point a bottle of Absolut joined the festivities. The soundtrack of the evening was fireworks and loud bangs as every one in Jaipur let loose and had a blast lighting everything up well in to the night. Even we finished the night with little sparkler fireworks and bombs. Nathan almost blew himself up and then proceeded to disappear into the Jaipur night only to reappear at 4 am. The next day Anna from Sweden joined us and we visited Ajeet's fort and his wee, wee baby. I have never seen anything as small as that baby. Size of an sheet of A4. Whisky was consumed, as was food that gave me a stomach bug and delhi belly!

With Ajeet working, Nathan, Anna and I found a way of entertaining ourselves; America Day! Armed with our Chucks, we headed to KFC for lunch, which was followed by watching Bridesmaids and collapsing. This was followed by ice cream at Baskin Robbins (oh mint choc chip...) and then we headed to the World Trade Park, a gigantic mall, and far more western than any I've seen before. There we dined in the food court, and then went to the movies and saw Gravity. Good film, but it completelyquenched all of my desire to ever go into space. And seeing Sandra Bullock wearing very littleclothing floating around a space ship is always most pleasant.

After a bit of a hassle, Nathan and I found ourselves saying goodbye to Anna an heading to Jaisalmer to go on a camel safari in the desert. A night spent on a sleeper carriage, and found ourselves in the sandstone city of Jaisalmer. We found our cheap guesthouse that smelt like a barn, and then went to explore the fort. And in the fort we found our safari! A couple of hours on camels to get to the dunes, then camp out under the stars, and then the next morning a camelride back to our jeep. Nathan and I were joined by Paluica, a Jamaican living in Manchester who was incredibly good company an would eep us entertained by singing Florence + The Machine songs. That safari was an amazing experience! The ride is hard work on the thighs, but worth it. After snapping plenty of photos in the dunes whilst the sun set, our camel drivers started cooking, and madeus a delicious, yet spicy veg curry with rice and chapati. I tried my hand at making chapati, and it wasn'ta huge success... Oh well. And after listening to camfire songs and talking, we headed to bed. One of the camel drivers tucked Paluica and I in and made sure we were comfy. It wasn't so cold, and waking up around 3 am and seeing the stars after the moon had set was truly amazing. It seemed as if the stars were raining on you.

The next morning waking up with half of the desert in my sleeping bag was less amazing, but the cup of fresh chai by my blanket was. After showring and hauling most of the desert back with me in my rucksack, I bade my desert companions goodbye and jumped on a bus to Udaipur, where I am now. Udaipur has been given me much excitement for two reasons: I shall do a cooking course here tomorrow, and they filmed most of Octopussy here.

From Jaipur, with love

India. 10 days after arriving I'm still taken aback by all the sounds, smells and sheer amount of people. The endless traffic, paired with the blaring of all the horns and people pushing their way through and trying not to get mauled.The smell of chai, pan masala, rubbish and urine. The sheer level of poverty on the streets. It's overwhelming to all of the senses.

I began my Indian adventure in Varanasi, one of the holiest Hindu city. And it was miserable. It's a very dirty city (I've heard an Indian call it dirty!), and it rained the entire time I was there. I spent two days walking around the narrow streets that were covered in a layerof mud and poo, avoiding people selling me there junk, trying not to get in the way of an ox or a cow or it's shit. The ghats of Varanasi were brilliant though; I spent 90 minutes at the burning ghat watching people bring the bodies to the river and then burning them. And the Blue Lassi Shop and the banana and chocolate lassi *u*

After Varanasi I hopped on my first Indian train to Agra. An overnight train in a sleeper carriage (top bunk is a must!) for a 12 hour journey that cost less than 4€. Once I got to Agra and my guesthouse,  rushed to the Taj Mahal in order to make it to the gates before 8.15am to get in for free and save 750 rupees. And I made it! Massive savings were made. The Taj Mahal was amazing. Big, bold, with nothing but the sky in the backround kind of takes your breath away.

From Agra I headed to Jaipur in a second class carriage at 5am. And boy that carriage gets full! 4½ hourslater I arrived in the Pink City, with a numb bottom from the train journey. In Jaipur I stayed in two different guesthouse due to one being full for one night, and it was a cheaper option two stay at one for 3 nights and 1 at the other. I arrived at my first guesthouse, and met my dorm mates: Kiran from Malaysia and Andreia from Portugal. In the afternoon, together we got a tuk-tuk and went to Monkey Temple for sunset views of the city, and so any monkeys it was insane. Met quitea few monkey mummies who were extremely protective of their young ones. Tried to avoid them and their rabies.

The next day I changed guesthouses and spent the better part of the day walking around the Pink City, taking in its sights and sounds. 6 hours later I returned to the hotel, starving and dirty. A rest and a walk later I collapsed in the hotel thinking I'd pass out and that my dormmate would turn up to one dead to the world Stella. Instead I was still awake when Evan from Minnesota turned up, and he'd met Sam from Texas and a couple of rickshaw drivers, Ajeet and Raj, and they were going for beers and invited me along. So off I went to the rooftops of the New India Guesthouse with the guys and had beer. The ride back to the hotel was rather surreal, Evan and I were in Ajeet's super pimped up tuk-tuk (he has installed a massive subwoofer in the back of it) listening to country music with his tuk-tuk's disco lights on. Trippy.

Evan and I got Ajeet to be our driver for the next day, and in the morning we set off in his pimped out tuk-tuk with tunes baring from behind us towards Amber Fort, a huge palace like fort 11km from Jaipur. It was pretty impressive, and it was astounding how big it really was. FromAmber Fort we stopped for lunch at a small local restaurant, with a huge tandoori oven by the street where they made the chapati and naans. It was pretty cool to see the guys work around it; and one of the guys was sporting a pretty impressive moustache.

The afternoon was spent seeing the sights in the city centre, and then nap time, before setting of the Nagargarh Fort for the sunset. After a lengthy ride, we made it in time for sunset and gorgeous views of the entire city. After a Pepsi and a smoke later we made the descent down to Jaipur down this extremely windy road down the hill, with Britney Spears blaring from the speakers and the disco lights on in full force. That was an amaingly surreal moment.

Ajeet took us for the best dinner of the trip so far. We went to a local favourite, Thali House, which serves all you can eat thalis for amazinglygood value. For 105 rupees (1,3€) you got a sweet lassi and a thali consisting of dhal, veg, some warm youghurt sauce, pickels, chapati and rice and these doughballs. And it all kept on coming. The food was delicious, and I lost count of how many chapatis I ate. After a few rooftop beers with Evan I slept very well that night.

The next day was spent mostly browsing the shops and returning for lunch at the same place as the day before with the tandoori oven. For the evening Ajeet managed to get us all tickets to go and see A.R. Rahman in concert. He is huge superstar in India, and thanks to Slumdog Millionaire, is known in worldwide for the song Jai Ho (The good version doesn't have Nicole Sherzinger in it). So after some gin and whisky at the New India Guesthouse, Evan, Ajeet and Ajeet's brother, Ranjit and I set off to the concert. And it was amazing! The lights and the music and the whole show of it was brilliant and vibrant. It didn't even matter that I didn't understand Hindi. And then Jai Ho came at the end, and a firewors galore erupted from the stage and everyone was dancing and singing along... In the end we were all standing on our chairs.

The next mornign I sadly had to take a train to Delhi and bid Jaipur goodbye. But I'll be returning once I come back to Rajasthan because I promised Ajeet. So it's all good. And tomorrow I'll be bidding Delhi goodbye (thank god) and making my way up to Manali on a bus. Only a mere 16 hour ride.

I've made up a game to play with all the people who ask me where I'm from and what my name is. I make up random countries and then give them a very Finnish name that confuses the living daylights out of them. And I still eat curry every day.