Some mixed pictures in and around Pondicherry

12: Pondicherry

After a bus trip that lasted over 20 hours from Goa to Pondicherry we arrived our destination, but the good part was that the second half of the bus trip was in daylight, so we got to see much of the tropical and green hilly nature in Tamil Nadu between Bengaluru and Pondicherry. The weather is really tropical, and another thing that is quite usual to see along the roads are... monkeys... a lot of them! Our bus had to stop one time because of one little stubborn monkey that didn't want to get out of the way. It just stood there as if saying "give me something... I have all the time in the world..."

Pondicherry seems like a cozy and idyllic city at night. There is still a french impression over the city since the colonial time. Got to explore more in the morning.

11: Bengaluru

After getting fried by the hot sun in Goa we headed for Pondicherry which will be our final city before visiting Chennai and from there take the flight home (via Delhi and Moscow). We stopped by Bengaluru for some hours to change the bus that was going further down to Pondicherry. It is another chaotic (in a good way) Indian city.

...Still in Goa

It has been three days now since I arrived Goa, the weather in Goa is too nice to leave yet... Still enjoying the beach and the sun... In the mean time I got a new haircut ^^

 

 Sunset in Goa:

09 & 10: Palolem Beach & Patnam Beach

Getting out of the plane in Dabolim Airport in Goa was like jumping from a refrigerator into a sauna... we went from 15 C degrees in Delhi to about 30 C degrees in Goa...wow! Such an extreme change with just 2,5 hours of flight. We arrived Christmas eve about 20:00, and then took a cab to our guest house in Palolem Beach. Having traveled for a long time and being tired we decided to go to sleep about 23:00, and just when I was going to fall into a deep midnight sleep, fireworks started like crazy all over the place... Apparently the way people celebrate Christmas in Goa (I don't know for the rest of India) is to go to mass at 23:00 the 24th of December, and then at 00:00 Christmas is celebrated with fireworks!! Wohooo! (double new-years eve)... One thing is for sure, they celebrate _every_ possible religious celebration that exist in the world, here in India... (So I have been told by the locals).. Some pictures of Palolem Beach:

During the day we decided to move a bit further south to beach huts in stead of staying in a guest house. So we ended up renting a beach hut with a lovely view of the sea from the hut's tiny balcony... The sunset in Goa is amazing (taken from our beach hut):

08: Vrindavan

Two days in Jaipur was enough to see most of what the city had to offer. We continued further to Vrindavan where we had been invited to an Indian wedding. Indian weddings lasts for three days, but we only managed to be there the second and third day. Two days with music, incredible Indian food, dance and some rest charged us for the rest of our journey...

07: Jaipur

After a day in Mussoorie we headed back to Dehradun to catch a train to Jaipur, but when we arrived the train station... guess what.. no tickets - "the train is full, sir"... wh00t? - anyway, we managed to find a bus back to Delhi, and from Delhi we took a bus to Jaipur... The night bus we took to Jaipur was again an A/C bus that was supposed to give some heat in the cold night, but again, no heat, so I cached the cold :S - I should have been a bit more prepared for the cold north :)

The first day in Jaipur went really great, we hired an auto rickshaw for the day and visited a lot of places: The Amber Fort, another fort (don't remember the name), a monkey temple, and we got to see an "elephant farm":

Amber Fort:

Another fort:

The monkey temple:

The "elephant farm":

It's one thing to watch them on tv, but a completely different experience to stand by one and touch it... there was another full grown 40 years old male elephant by this one.. I managed to pet that one too ^^