SUICIDE
Is a big issue here, in Bangalore - hence the caps.
There's been 17 suicides in the past few weeks. It's exams time. Suicides actually outnumber homicides and road deaths in this state - and if you've witnessed Indian roads first hand, you'll know that is damn amazing.
The academic pressure in India can be incredible for a lot of students - it is such a big thing over here. There are posters in many public areas of the top students, their faces plastered all over town - not to mention newspapers and other print media. One poor girl committed suicide after gaining entry to a prestigious University, but only in her second choice of study programme.
So what to blame? (must blame, damnit) Academic pressure from society? Parents? Terrible reporting from the media which sometimes sensationalises the issue and other times provides explicit details of the method? The sheer number of people here leading to these pressures? A developing country - economically and socially? I'd say all of the above.
recap: Kolkata
Probably my favourite city in India so far! There are a lot of preconceptions about Kolkata in the world - I know I had my own - but it's far from a poverty stricken hell hole. Sure, there's poverty galore in parts, as with most big cities in India and the world, but there is also very wealthy areas, very interesting streets, great shops, an unmistakable vibe and awesome architecture.
I spent quite a bit of time in Kolkata just walking around the city and its parks and monuments – it’s very walkable and the traffic is pretty congested so it makes sense to use the waiwai express. There’s a massive park in the centre with areas where young couples go to make out away from the paternal eye of Hindu society. There are also groups of young guys hanging out – everywhere, like most of India – statistically this isn’t surprising, India is one big sausage fest. We got a lot of attention from people, asking us where we were from and what our “good names” are. Most of these interactions were very cool and everyone was nice and friendly and keen to share some advice on their city and country…sometimes after the fifth or sixth of the morning they got a bit tedious though.
We also did the usual mix of palaces and grand buildings – all were super – nothing overly memorable. The national museum was very large with lots of different areas and some very cool stuffed animals – from birds and small rodents to tigers and elephants! It did remind me a lot of a museum from the 1960s in NZ though – especially their display of planets and minerals – not exactly Te Papa standards.
My Kolkata set at flickr!
recap: Varanasi
The spiritual city, maybe. I guess it depends on your background and point of view...personally I don't find throwing bodies tied with stones overboard into a river to be overly spiritual. Definitely interesting though!
We stayed in a guest house right on the Ganga's banks and also right beside a ghat (where they burn corpses). There are about 30 Ghats in Varanasi along the riverside - all seemed quite busy. There was definitely a Varanasi smell, which mostly comprised of burning body/insense and general rubbish - it stayed in my towel for 2 washes after leaving! And Indian washes tend to be fairly hardcore.
The Ganga is renowned as a spiritual river which the locals use as their lifeline. They wash in it, beat clothes with its water, swim in it, drink it and of course dispose of their dead in it. It touches every day and every milestone in their life. It also happens to be so polluted to be labeled toxic and even some priests/Brahman cancel religious festivals to protest its pollution. I guess the pollution is inevitable when it touches so many Indian's life’s on its journey from the Himalayas through India to the sea.
Cruising down the river on a boat at dusk was interesting. We saw the body collectors (always from the lowest caste, the untouchables or the outcastes) gathering the bodies which had surfaced and beaches on the opposite river bank - they simply get sunk again, hopefully to decompose before rising again.
I think that's enough dead body talk for now 
Check out the flickr set for more photos.
recap: Chitwan National Park, Nepal
This post is to recap on Chitwan National Park which is where we stayed in Nepal before crossing the border into India.
We stayed in Sauraha - a town generally known to be the most touristy, although being off-season at the moment it was fine. After a lengthy game of guest house bargaining we settled on a relatively cheap and slightly nasty place on the river - mainly because the guy who operated it won us over with his jungle knowledge and trustworthiness.
The next day we left with two guides (Park law dictates two guides as mandatory now for any group, after a spate of deaths) for a day long jungle trek by canoe and foot - not some packaged touristy jeep ride thing.
As we started off, dark clouds were rolling over the hills separating Nepal and India, and thunder rumbled in the distance. It's easy to see how locals believe(d) thunder is a product of the Gods...it's much louder and more powerful here than in NZ! Luckily, the weather stayed relatively fine though and as usual, very hot. Torrential rain would have brought out the leeches.
There are quite a few tigers in the Park, along with rhino, deer, wild boars, peacocks, all sorts of bird life, crocodiles, sloth bears, wild elephants, and lots of other fauna and flora. We saw most of these, but sadly no tiger - they're very elusive and you really need to spend 4-5 days in the jungle to see them. It was exhilarating being in the natural habitat of wild animals - there was one time when walking through grass about 2.5m tall where Suda the guide in front suddenly gave the stop signal. After a few seconds of silence there was a slight rustling in the grass several meters away and then a thumping of ground as an obviously massive animal took off, thankfully, in the opposite direction to us. Suda gave chase to see where it went and saw a huge wild boar crashing through the tall grass with its tusks. These puppies weigh up to 200kg and reach 6" long.
We stopped for lunch in a small clearing under mango trees. After eating, four Government elephants and a baby elephant with their mahouts (drivers) came past where we sat, so Suda called them over and the elephants had a break with us. The baby elephant was so cool, very inquisitive, and ate all the under ripe mangoes we had shaken down from the trees - it would even get its trunk into our bags and pockets to find them! It was awesome to spend so much time with these amazing animals in their natural environment - we just had to gather some more mangoes after they'd gone!
Back at the guest house, we had the best "Nepali set meal" we've had in Nepal (in my humble opinion), with chutney made from mangoes we picked in the jungle and a curry made from ferns we picked as well. And of course the obligatory dal baht (a lentil soup/curry) and rice.
We did some other things in Pokhara as well - a jungle entry on elephant back which was cool as it allowed us to get a lot closer to animals (elephant smell masks human smell), I got my first straight razor shave from a barber, saw a Nepali stick dance/culture show which was classic Nepal (complete with midway power cut and fake English accent), and just chilling out by the river which borders the Park.
See more photos on my Flickr page for Chitwan.
crossing the border
Short post this time as I don't feel like spending much more time in this internet cafe and half the letters on the keyboard don't work properly.
So after a nice 6-7 days in Nepal we crossed the border into India with no hassels...the border more resembles a festive gate, not even more than a few armed guards, which is weird for India where some of the train officers carry fully automatic weapons (crowd control?). Makes sense though, everything around here is festive - although some of the buses are falling apart you can bet they'll have impossibly clean and colourful fabrics and flowers all over them.
After a long day and a half of travelling, and navigating the beast that is the India Railway network, we're in Varanasi at the moment. The so-called spiritual city, although a friendly/cynical Indian man on the train said all that had gone and has been replaced by money and greed. Probably how it has been for ages since it became a tourist destination and the Ganges got that much more polluted (it's labelled toxic now).
The people so far in India have been great though, there seems to be less of the whole "lets charge westerners 300%!" mentality. Although the stares are out in force - an almost blank eiery stare from most people not so used to seeing white faces. And they don't stop staring! White girls especially get the treatment.
I gota go - it's getting too hot - supposed to be around 45 at the moment. Ugh. I'll get some more photos up soon promise - just got to find a relatively modern computer!
PEACE
Day 5: Poo Status = OK still
It feels like I've been here for months...so much stuff has happened in the past few days. And yay, not sick yet!
We spent our last day in Kathmandu visiting this town about 40mins taxi away called Bahktapur. It's like a smaller and more authentic Kathmandu with it's narrow streets and alleys, it's smiley children running up to you and yelling "HELLO, HOW ARE YOU!?" and of course the sometimes nice smells and other vibrancy. They charge some stupid $10 USD fee to get in to the main square (essentially the whole city) so Dave and I snuck through random side streets to avoid the guard post. This was fine, until an official came up to us a few hours later and asked for our ticket - so we claimed ignorance and left the "pay area" for a bit then snuck back out!
We travelled by bus to Pokhara which was an OK 6 hour trip - it was a tourist bus so no constant stopping and overcrowded craziness (probably will have enough of that in India). Met up with the others (found them surprisingly easily on the other side of the road) and celebrated my birthday!
Pokhara is to Kathmandu like what the Coromandel towns are like to Auckland - more relaxed etc. It's a cool place, although the part we're staying is quite touristy - luckly it's not peak season.
We had a crazy day today - so much stuff, it was awesome though. Hired motorbikes and rode up a mountain near Pokhara for early morning views of the Himalayas and the general Pokhara valley. It took about an hour and there were quite a few hairy moments on those windy roads. Words simply don't do justice to the vista. I don't have time at the moment but I'll crank up some pics soon on flickr. Then we went to some bat caves which had zero bats but was a cool climbing cave - got dirty and felt like I'd had an adventure. Then we went to some other caves (biggest in asia apparantly) and this mint waterfall. A few other things inbetween too.
Ran out of time on this one - we've off to Chitwain national park tomorrow to see us some tigers, rhino etc. in the wild - 7 hours of bus ride away. Then after a few days there we'll move on to India probably. Peace.
we made it!
Sitting in an internet cafe in Kathmandu at the moment. It's all good. Well, all good apart from accidently giving a taxi driver in Bangkok $90 USD instead of 90 thai baht! I basically payed him for 40 trips! That sucked - lesson: dealing with similiar looking currency when tired = bad.
Kathmandu is freaken amazing though. The size of the streets, the constant tooting, the intensity, the tightly packed shops, the laidback shop sitters, the smells, the poos and wees. I've seen similiar in Thailand, but this is next level. Every local I've met so far has been very friendly and nice - although that sounds cliched, it's true. And even though the touts are pushy as hell (but where aren't they), they fall back to joking easily.
Had an awesome day yesterday with a guide around Dabur (I think?) Square. It was well worth it to pay this man, Ranjan Mishra, to show us around the temples and explain the overwhelming complexity of Hindu dieties and religious practices. We finished off the evening with some beers on a roof top with Ranjan, over looking the city and the local temples. He was great - very upfront with everything, intelligent and answered all questions.
We had to get home relatively quickly after that as the power was being cut off to the city at 8pm - a measure on behalf of the Govt to save energy. The streets continued to be busy though, with heaps of people going places and candles lighting the fly-ridden raw meats, vegetables and other assorted stuff.
Enough words...see some more pics at my flickr site.