Arrived to Helsinki, which looks surprisingly sunny and warm today. Now just the bus to Turku... I did find the Burger King at Zurich airport by the way. 15.60€ for a Double Whopper meal, but it sure was tasting worth the price. Especially with extra bacon. :P

What was left from these two weeks? Well, when departing I was not sure that I even wanted to go. Most of the friends who had visited India did not like it, and described it more as a landfill where everybody just wants your money.

Now after these two weeks I can say that a part of that is true. The cities are dirty, big part of the population is extremely poor, hygiene level is far from Western standard or actually from any standard. But you get used to it in a couple of days.

And the taxi drivers, salesmen and so on are extremely annoying, restlessly insisting that you use their services. Random beggers not so much. However, ignoring the taxi drivers etc, almost everybody else we met was extremely friendly and welcoming, going far from their path to help us.

Special thanks go to Serai Tiger Camp owner who made our first days in India so special and easy, spending his time with us and doing everything to make our stay comfortable. He was not the only one though, not at all.

Many times I was losing my nerves due to the massive difference between Indian and Finnish personalities. We Finns like to maintain our personal space and silence, and even on a bus stop stand a couple of meters from each other. Indians seem to like to pile up with each other, do not have any concept of proper queueing and for example waiting first for passengers to exit a train is completely impossible before rushing in. That's just a cultural difference though, not a big problem.

Every region we visited was totally different from the others, in any matter. And all of them had a lot of beautiful places and things. Too bad in two weeks we only could visit a couple of main regions of the country, leaving a lot for the next time.

And yes, the next time will definitely come, sooner or later. India did not climb to the top of the list of my favourite countries, I still love Latin America much more, but.. It did climb pretty high, and I want to see the rest of the regions too. Himalayas, South India, the islands and their diving waters and so on.

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Just arrived to Zurich after not so comfortable flight and sipping my morning coffee. It's "lovely" to have Swiss prices again, compared to Indian ones. My coffee just cost me about six euros, not to mention the six euro 0.5l water bottles. For comparison, one liter water bottle in India cost around 0.20€.

The flight was a good reminder to never forget to check in by yourself. I forgot to do it, and at airport counter there was neither aisle or window seats available. So, I spent the flight extremely happily at seat 23E of Swiss A330, middle of the middle row and in between two big guys. As an added bonus there was a crying baby on the seat front of me and an another asshole kid kicking my seat all the time from behind while not crying. AARGH. So, not exactly the most comfortable flight.. Happy I at least managed to somehow sleep most of it.

Some four hours more will be spent here at Zurich airport, then just a flight to Helsinki and a bus to Turku. I'm dreaming of finding a Burger King or something similar soon here at the airport, as I'm seriously fed up with the Indian vegetarian food and their cows being holy. I need a big cow meat burger. :)

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Seems like now everyone had clearly got enough of the early mornings, hard days and long train journeys. Today the alarm clocks were firmly silenced and ignored, and the first one of us actually woke up just before 11AM. There was no plans for this last day in India, except doing some shopping for tea, spices and souveniers in Delhi markets.

When we finally got our lazy asses out of the room we headed to Karol Bagh market and spent a couple of hours there shopping. Not so surprisingly most of the time was used in silk shawl shops.. And my bag is now filled with those, some of Iryna's which did not fit her bag and some of my own. Some Indian spice mixes were also found for spicy cooking at home. Not that Indian food would ever have been so spicy.. Where ever we even asked for extra spicy food it was still very mild. That actually surprised me, I was expecting India to be more at Thailand etc level where most of the food is extremely hot.

Now it is time to head back home, and I started doing so by taking an Uber taxi to Delhi airport and flying to Mumbai. The girls will fly directly from Delhi to Zurich around the same time as me from Mumbai, so we should actually meet at Zurich airport again. This will be a long journey home, so I choose to ease at least the first part and took a class upgrade for the domestic Spicejet flight. Their SpiceMax class is not exactly business class, but at least it offers priority check-ins, much better seats and a free meal. And the price for the upgrade for this flight was more of a joke, 13 euros.. :)

The cute stuffed pig in my pocket is getting every security guard's attention by the way. I sometimes carry the pig in my pocket looking out when travelling and so I do again, and every time I'm going through a security check the pig is making the security guards laugh, pet it and so on. :)

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Back to Delhi again, after the six hour train trip from Jaipur. The day was spent sightseeing the Pink City Jaipur and the areas around it like Amber Fort. Nothing special, just sightseeing, photos and so on.

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Arrived to Jaipur. The hotel seems to be one of the best ones so far, even if it cost way below 10 euros per person. We even have the luxury called shower curtain, which we have not seen anywhere in India so far. :p

Sipping Masala tea (looks like milk cafe, tastes like mild milk cafe with a lot of herbs and spices) at the rooftop bar now, not bad at all. :)

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One more 5AM wakeup call, this time to catch the 6AM train to Agra. We made it to the train, basically slept the two hour trip and woke up at Agra. The main reason for visiting Agra, Taj Mahal, was a bit far from the railway station as were the other sights of Agra, so we just hired a three-wheeler rickshaw taxi for the day. The eight hour hire cost was around eight euros, not that bad...

We begun with the usual tourist track of the area, first Taj Mahal and then Agra Red Fort and a lunch at a random overpriced tourist restauraunt. Guess the rickshaw drivers get nice commission from the restauraunt for bringing tourists into them, but we were just too lazy to complain about that.

Instead we choose to ruin our (nice) driver's day a bit, requiring him to honour the fact that he was hired for eight hours based only on hours, not just to drive between the two big tourist sites which would be nice and easy for him. After we had visited the main sites and still had a couple of hours before our train I checked for Geocaches around the area and spotted a nice park on another side of the river facing Taj Mahal. The location would give a nice view on the monument without any tourists around, but it was some 10 kilometers away. Naturally our driver was a bit unhappy of that amount of extra driving for same fixed price, but after arguing a bit he gave up and took us there.

The park was definitely a good way to spent a while in Agra: silent, beautiful and almost empty, totally opposite to the tourist crowds at Taj Mahal and Red Fort. We just hanged around for a while, took some photos and never found the geocache. It was tucked deeply into some hole under tree roots, and I definitely did not felt like putting my hand there. Especially after young kids run past me with sticks to forest, "Come, cobra, cobra!"..

About Taj Mahal.. I never understood why it was one of the seven wonders of the world or considered as the most beautiful building in the world. Yes, it is beautiful but.. It looks just like any other mosque. Blue Mosque of Istanbul is not any worse, neither is Al Umaad of Damascus. And many many others. Inside the Taj Mahal monument there is basically nothing, no wall carvings, no art, just the two tombs, so all the beauty is outside. It was forbidden to take photos inside, so the quick blindly taken snap below is the only picture from there.

Our way from Agra continued to Jaipur in the evening by another train. On the trains today we are sitting in the CC class wagons, which have normal seating instead of beds and they also offer food on the train. Actually pretty good food, and a lot of it. Iryna was just saying that she hopes this is the last time they feed us on this train trip, or she starts to believe they are also trying to make us fat for tigers..

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Today the day was just spent taking care of future plans and seeing a bit of Delhi. In the morning we moved to much decent hotel just around the corner from the previous one, managed our train tickets to Agra and Jaipur and so on.

Trying to visit the train ticket booking office at the railway station was again quite a challenge. The local mafia loves to cheat tourists with different kind of scams related to the tourist train ticket booking office, and the authorities are not doing much else than adding signs to the station wall telling that the tourist office IS open, IS located in the station building, the staff is NOT abducted by aliens and so on.

This time we were again approached by a "police officer" "guarding" the train station parking area and demanding to see our train tickets, telling that tickets would be available from the "tourist office" across the street. Well, he gave up right after I told him we have seen too many of that kinda jokes..

Concerning the continuous salesmen, taxi drivers, beggers and every other scumbag lifeform, I have just started using Finnish. "Juokse perseeseen" is really effective, much more effective than "No, no thank you" in English. :P

We also met a local couchsurfer today and he took us to see some things around Delhi. We started with Swaminarayan Akshardham, the largest Hindu temple in the world, and unfortunately there is not pictures from the temple as ALL electronic devices starting from pen drives were forbidden at the site. The temple was not a historical one, but built about ten years ago. Impressive it still was. Lodhi garden and Dilli Haat market were also briefly explored.

Delhi is much more hot than Mumbai by the way. Daytime temperature climbed to lovely 40C, and even now at late evening we are at stable 30C. And as it is still the monsoon season, it's also humid like in sauna..

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Today was spent separately, as the girls had to take a small roundtrip around India. Due to our stupid Jet Airways ticket changes we were pretty much forced to keep the Raipur flights in the itinerary. So, in the morning Iryna and Lyuda departed to the airport, flew to Raipur and then from Raipur to Delhi via Mumbai. Yes, via Mumbai, really useful Mumbai-Raipur-Mumbai trip. I also flew to Delhi in the evening, so we met again at Delhi airport.

I actually managed to dodge the bullet and just today agree with Jet Airlines that I in fact CAN skip the Raipur-Mumbai flight and fly only from Mumbai to Zurich and Helsinki on Friday. Otherwise I would have had an early morning flight from Raipur to Mumbai and late evening from Mumbai to Zurich. Meaning, I would already have to fly to Raipur on Thursday evening, spend the night there, fly to Mumbai, hang around the city the entire day and then fly home. Damn I'm happy of managing to change that to a simple flight from Delhi to Mumbai and almost directly to Zurich...

While the girls were taking their merry-go-around I spent the morning sleeping long, having breakfast at Leopold Cafe and then heading to the "Thieves bazaar", a market selling basically anything from car parts to antique furniture. I needed just a power cable to replace a broken one of my camera charger and a power socket splitter, which were easily found. I also choose to have my beard shaved by a small barber shop for 0.6 euros. These guys do shaving the old fashioned way with a knife, which is always a nice luxury to have. :)

The bazaar area itself was an interesting contrast to the touristic part of South Mumbai. Just a couple of kilometers and we were again way closer to the style of many Middle East countries. Salesman selling everything imagineable on narrow streets, goats roaming in between and a lot of people doing their business. Chaotic and unclean, but still nice. I guess I'm starting to like India, just like I liked Syria, Iraq and other places which India in many things resembles closely.

After returning back to the hotel I decided to take my first attempt of ordering an Uber taxi to the airport, as the company also operates in India. Uber Black service is supposed to offer luxury cars ranging from premium sedans to big SUVs and the price difference of the Black service is not really notable here. In India the term premium sedan is maybe not exactly at the same level as in many other countries, but the new Nissan Sunny was still a decent option compared to the old and small normal local taxi cars. Otherwise the attempt was not that good. The driver spoke only Hindi, and I mean ONLY Hindi, not a single word of English. Not to mention he did not know the way to the airport.. Well, we navigated there with my cellphone GPS, but a bit more professional driver would maybe have cleared the Mumbai traffic jams a bit faster. Now the ride took almost two hours for the 25 kilometers distance. I'm quite happy I departed well in time. Most of the local taxis don't do any better though, so that's not exactly Uber's fault.

Upon arriving to Delhi I started looking for Jet Airways counter to finish the flight change with them. Naturally with my luck there was none in the terminal which I had landed to, the counter would be in the international terminal eight kilometers away. And so were the girls, they were also landed to different terminal than we originally thought. Thus begun a small episode to move myself there, and once again I resorted to Uber due to local taxi drivers being just.. assholes. I offered one taxi driver 100 INR to take me there, "no no, it's 8km and besides you are a foreigner".. Yea. Right. Well, I paid some 50 INR to friendly Uber driver, got there, fixed the tickets and departed to Delhi with the girls.

Before finally ending up to our shit 10 euro hotel we witnessed a really creative attempt of Delhi tourist scams. Trying to cross the main railway station to the other side where our hotel was located we got approached by a guy in civil clothes but with police officer card. He told us the area would require special permit due to some festival, and we could get that for free in tourist office. He bargained a taxi driver to take us there and in the (remote) tourist office we were greeted by a friendly old guy who told us there has been problems in that area due to festival and it in fact was closed. He called the hotel and let Iryna talk with the hotel guys and offered to book us an alternative hotel.

The thing is.. Naturally the area was not closed, the police officer was not real, neither was the tourist office. And he had not called the hotel but his friend. Too bad for him that we have seen too many creative scam attempts and understood immediately what was the idea of the theatre. Well, it was fun to follow, we thanked for advice and walked to the hotel, which of course was open. Thanks at least for the free taxi ride near to the hotel, bastards.

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City sightseeing by walking, Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Vastu Sangrahalaya (yes..) museum and visiting in two very famous Irani cafes, Leopold Cafe and Cafe Mondegar. That pretty much sums up this day. Pictures coming soon.

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Well, that was an interesting way to travel. The bus we took was a sleeper bus, with full size beds. There was double bed on the other side of the aisle, single bed on the other side and they were actually relatively comfortable.

That would definitely be a nice way to travel if the Indian roads were not so bad and the bus suspension already a bit over aged..

Anyway, we arrived at seven in the morning to Mumbai which greeted us with horrible monsoon shower making our clothes totally wet. Well, I guess they will dry..

This time we choose to stay in South Mumbai, which is the most touristic and maybe the most civilized area of the city. The city here actually looks pretty much like many European cities, not so much Indian.. Which is maybe not a bad thing for change. The cheap hotel is not exactly making any of us happy, but at least it's a place to stay and relatively decent.

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