Heather’s quick conversion formula: multiply the number of rupees by 2 and then move the decimal 2 places left to get the dollars!

It’s kinda fun how inexpensive it can be to travel in India.  And even so, in order to stretch ourselves through a whole year, we have officially become rupee pinchers.  Sometimes this means that we stay in some adventurously sketchy places, and often it means that we are still amazed at how far some small change can go.  Here are some examples of ways we save money, and how much some things cost.  The rupee, right now, is about 49 to the dollar (I think).  We round to 50 for the simplicity of quick estimating.  The guesthouse we stayed in, in Udaipur was Rs 130 per night (about $2.60), which was the least so far.  Other places we’ve been, have been as much as Rs 500 for ‘budget’ accommodations ($10.00).  We took the bus to the animal hospital every day for Rs 6 each, each way (12¢).  For breakfast we would buy a few samosas each (Rs 20 for 4), and a kilo of bananas (Rs 15).  Some fresh veggies and rice or more fried stuff for lunch was usually about Rs 50 or less for both of us.  On dinner we typically spend 100 to 200 rupees, the higher end being places that serve fantastic, all-you-can-eat thalis (meals).  I just bought 2 train tickets from Delhi to Guwahati.  In sleeper class, the 40 hour trip was a little over Rs 1300 for both of us (yep, $26.00).  The 4-hour trip from Agra to Delhi costed us less than $4.00.  Used books are a little more pricey, at Rs 150-ish.  We save about 150 rupees per day by filtering our own water (which also minimizes our contribution to the growing trash and plastic bottle problem in India, which we are quite okay with).  It’s Rs 10 per day to store our backpacks at the train station, Rs 15 for a glass bottle of Coke (medicinal! ha), 1 rupee for a packet of laundry soap – good for 10+ pieces of clothing, and Rs 20 to 60 for a sweet pair of earrings.  We save money by skipping out on air-conditioning in hotels and trains, taking local transportation when we can figure it out, eating on the street and in restaurants with only Indian food (which is always dang good, so no problem!), walking a lot, and not stocking up on too many souvenirs (sorry all you hopefuls).  Good times.

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We’d never even heard of the city of Udaipur before we decided to come here.  But Madonna’s been here and a James Bond movie was filmed here (everyone is proud of this and we could watch screenings of the movie every night if we wanted to), so I guess it is we who are slow.  This place is amazing!  We are staying in the old part of the city (the coolest, though touristy part…sigh), and feel like curious kids every time we go walking anywhere.  It’s like a maze.  Windy little alleys that lead to hidden doorways and staircases and rooftops and courtyards.  Even stalls for the cows that wander the streets all day, can be found tucked in small nooks.  Up and down hills, and all crammed up to the man-made lake that, along with the white palace in the middle of it, is the city’s main attraction.  We always just want to wander and poke around, seeing where this or that leads, taking in the sights and smells of all the little shops and bazaars along the way.  The architecture seems really old, and doorways, windows, etc. are often very ornate.  It all feels very middle-eastern to us.  Udaipur is in Rahjasthan, which is dry and hot, hot, hot.  But oh, so colorful: bright sarees, big turbans, buildings in every shade, decorated camels, and lively paintings on so many walls.  We are staying with Johar, in his paying guesthouse, and he takes care of us like we are old friends: making us cold rose lassis (yogurt drinks), piling all 3 of us onto his motorbike to go out for dinner, and showing us his favorite parks, where we hang out and talk until much too late.  There is a ‘hidden’ girls school between the guesthouse, a Hindu temple, and a lot of other buildings haphazardly crammed in around us.  I can only see it – down into the courtyard of it – from our rooftop.  It’s pretty big – it has columns and a big open area where the girls sing every morning….and I still have no idea where the access to it is.  You’d never know that it was there.  We hear that it is so green here after the monsoons and so beautiful when the lake is full.  Maybe we will have to come back someday.

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The Photo Gallery is finally up!  And I’ve fixed the RSS feed, and comments feature on the ‘Ask’ page….so check out photos, and ask away.  (And of course, like posts, we’re not caught up on photos…so keep coming back to look for newer stuff.)

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It began with a dog-bite.  The poor girl was broken up pretty badly, her injuries swelling with infection.  She was scared and was finally letting me talk to her pet her, when I discovered that one of her wounds was full of maggots.  Ick.  When Julie came around, we tried to get a closer look at the extent of the dog’s injuries.  And well, you wouldn’t like it if someone started poking and prodding you when you were miserable and in pain either.  So she snapped, and I didn’t get out of the way quite fast enough, and ended up with a wrist poked full of holes.   After a quick washing up and bandaging job in the surgery prep room at Animal Aid, I got to ride in the animal ambulance to the people hospital.  Walked in.  Told someone at a desk why I was there.  They took down some basic info (I am now Heder on my Indian hospital records), and I paid for everything (minus drugs) right up front.  Then I got sent off to a consultation with a doctor.  He asked some questions about what happened, my vaccination history, etc.  And then without ever even looking at my arm, wrote me a prescription and sent me off to the pharmacy.  Eh?  I’m confused about what just happened, but proceed dutifully.  At the pharmacy I pick up all the things I’ve been told to take, and some things that they will need to treat me.  Ah, I get it now.  Back to a treatment room, Spence and the ambulance driver in tow,  where a nurse looks at the prescription in my hand, digs into the stuff I’ve just bought, and finally takes a look at my arm.  Ten minutes later my deep holes are all swabbed out with gobs of gauze pre-soaked in iodine, I have a rabies shot in my bum, and I’m excessively bandaged up again.  It aches like crazy.  At some point, the doctor did pop his head in for a minute, and at another point both Spence and the driver were on the tile floor, trying not to faint.  Didn’t like the sight of a few tendons and blood vessels, I guess.  And with that, we were off.  I took the rest of the day off, and am now taking all the scheduled injections of rabies vaccine.  It’s dang cheap here…might as well.

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Being on the go and seeing sights can get old.  So it was with great relief that we arrived in Udaipur this week, with the intention of staying for a few weeks to volunteer at an animal rescue just outside the city.  Animal Aid is a non-profit rehabilitation center, started by a retired couple from the U.S. and their teenage daughter.  Their hospital collects injured strays  – cats, dogs, donkeys, cows, monkeys, pigeons, parrots – nurses them back to health and returns them to their home on the street, if appropriate.  We are mostly working with dogs, and no matter how starved or crippled, mangy, or ugly, their forgiving and happy dog natures always come out, and we are greeted daily with many happy wagging tails.  It is a big work, and it is good to mix with so many other passionate, caring, hard-working people.

On another subject, we split paths with Steve also this last week (the other half of Walters Creative, Kjrstin, left about the time we left Hyderabad).  He is headed off to do more intensive photography work in Hyderabad, and then back to the U.S. to join up with Kjrstin, where they will be responsibly pregnant.  We will miss the amazing photography that we’ve been enjoying, but say big congratulations and wish them the best!

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We finally figured out how to get reservations for ourselves on India’s vast train network, even during the busy summer holiday (from school, for Indians) season.  And good timing, before a very long trip north from Hampi to Udaipur, in Rajasthan.  But in the meantime, we’ve gotten very good at India’s very complete bus system.  The buses provide travelers like us the chance to not have to be too pre-planned in our adventures.  There are buses going every day – and often every hour or more – between most towns within 1 to 10 hours distance.  We just have to keep asking around, till someone points us to the right bus.  There are private, overnight and long-distance buses, with all levels of luxury and comfort, but we prefer the open-air, rickety, stripped-down-hunks-of-metal government buses, because they are super cheap.  Plus, they take the cake when it comes to providing a memorable experience each time you ride them and they are a good way to see both countryside and cities, with all their sights and smells.  The buses  have seats with legroom for hobbit-size people.  Then they are packed with people and their stuff: chickens, boxes, luggage, food, bags of bricks or who-knows-what, until there is little breathing room, and people are hanging out windows and doors.  If you’re lucky, there will be blaring Hindi music, or you will get to watch a Bollywood movie.  The screen might be tiny, but the speakers are plenty big; anything to keep one’s mind off the suicidal driving.  It is a rocking good time, every crammed minute of it!

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This town is a haven for the backpackers who travel India, and for good reason: it’s really cool.  Hampi is nestled in an ancient city that was sacked a very long time ago, yet many of the deserted buildings, palaces, aqueducts, temples, baths, bazaars, elephant stables, and remnants of a much larger, old abandoned, royal city remain.  There are also some amazing giant boulders all around Hampi – a great place to stop and do some climbing: perfect for Heather; perfect for Steve, photographing Heather.  The temples and ruins are built all throughout.  One of the days we were there, we rented motorbikes to further explore the area, and found some really cool “waterfalls.”  The river near the town seems to be lazy and slow, but in one area, the boulders are piled just so the water falls over and around them, and down into the spaces created by them, carving and polishing the rocks in crazy amazing ways.  We were told by the locals that the river is raging during the monsoon, making it impossible to cross.  Sounds like I need to come back someday with my kayak!

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We read somewhere that spending a night in a houseboat in the backwaters of Kerala is one of the top 10 things to do before you die.  It doesn’t make our top 10 list, although it was pretty cool.  We worked our way up the western coast to a town called Allepey, which is a good entry point into a huge area of canals and narrow lakes that make up the transport system for a huge rural area known as the backwaters.  Tiny villages plunked on narrow strips of land with single rows of coconut trees, and rice paddies beyond them, are all connected only by boat here.  We spent a day and night on a wicker houseboat, made to look like an old rice barge…just the two of us and the captain and the cook.  It was probably the most touristy thing we’ve done so far, which probably explains why we weren’t quite as into it as the writer who led us here.  We’re not into tours, or being waited on, or the feeling that every step of the way is staged, just for us.  That said, it was very scenic and peaceful, the food was excellent, and Spence thinks it would be a fun way to live for awhile if we had our own boat, exploring the vast networks of water.  He’s a duck.

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Well, we went to the very bottom of India.  There is a town right on the tip called Kanyakumari, and we arrived there via a bumpy bus to check it out for half a day before heading west to the coastal state of Kerala.  On our way south to the Cape, we got to witness the most amazing display of green energy production.  Apparently there is plenty of wind in the southernmost part of India, because we drove through an area with thousands and thousands of windmills.  Some people say that windmills ruin the view.  I think that they are absolutely beautiful and seeing them makes me happy.  It was quite surreal, looking out the bus window this morning, with the green green of palm  and banana trees all around, and then white turbines sprinkled throughout and on every hill, all around and as far as the eye could see.
In Kanyakumari, a.k.a Cape Comorin (2 names, like many places in India – thank you Brits) we stashed our backpacks at the train station and then wandered around the markets and monuments by the sea.  There was a statue of a famous Hindu poet, pitched on an island about 100 meters from the shore.  The breeze was really nice and we dipped our toes in the cool water at the very tip of India.  Some Hindus believe that the water there is holy water and can cure any ailment.  We met a guy who was there on vacation, gathering up many gallons worth of it in old soda bottles to take with him back to the north.  We’re not so convinced of its healing abilities with so much garbage floating around in it.  Oh India.

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It’s been hot.  When it’s summertime in India, Indians head for one of the many hill stations for milder temperatures; and since it was conveniently on our way to the more southern parts we were headed to next, we decided to do the same, and spend a few days in the jungley, mountain-town of Kodaikanal.  The bus trip up was a crazy, narrow, and windey adventure by itself; through big trees and waterfalls, and big drop-offs.  And when we arrived in the rain, it was hard to believe that there could be such a cool, green escape, only a few hours from the furnaces of the valleys below.  Heather says it was the perfect place to spend her birthday…we did some hiking, ate chocolate, (Lots available, ‘cause it doesn’t melt here.  Of course!) and relaxed in our incredible scenic hostel, plunked right into the side of a mountain.  We even got to spend and extra day, since all the buses in the whole state just happened to be on strike the day we wanted to leave.  Nice.  The whole place was very atmospheric, and easy to love. There is even a big international school in Kodai, so who knows, maybe we’ll be back someday!

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  Tuesday, February 7th, 2012 • 12:05 pm
So, we're back in the USA... ...for now – and these are the adventures we still need to fill you in on: rice farmin' in Malaysia, wedding fun with the fam, Ouray Ice Climbing Fest 2010....and more if we keep procrastinating this!

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Spence & Heather...
...are two like-minded souls who have an itch to really live, no matter where they are. They are currently living out of a backpack, traveling the world in search of good experiences and adventure. This is their personal blog, and everyone is welcome!

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