International Banality: The Money Shot

Namastee Readers i trust you are well. So in the last two weeks James and i have been busy getting some good solid tourism under our belts, and boy does it feel good. Theres nothing quite like indulging oneself in a bout of good solid tourism. Its like a full time job sometimes this tourism lark, except we dont do any work and generally sleep in until 11 but other than its tres hard work! Yes indeed. SOoo anyway after Pondicherry, we went to Varanassi via Chennai (Madrass) . We were forced to spend a few days in Chennai due to the trains being full but it was ok. Its a big city and used to be a stronghold of the British Raj, the frogs tried to take it a few times but we beat them back to their little retreat of Pondicherry so that was good (It was amazing how many french tourists there were in Pondicherry i think they secretly want their empire back too - lets face it imperialism is cool..........only joking) We checked out the museum in Fort St George and walked around the place. There is a massive beach which everyone plays cricket on, but other than that its just a standard Indian city. Yer so then 48 hours on the train to Varranassi the holy centre of the hindu world. It's an interesting place, religous people (the vast majority over here) travel to Varannasi to bathe their sins in the holy river gangees, or if they're old they go there to die (they believe that if you die there you will break the cycle of reincarnation - did you know that in the sixth phase of reincarnation we are all cows?) anyway once dead they are cremated in public, we watched a few cremations it was a bit weird to be honest. Yer so after Varranssi started to do our head in we went to Agra and saw the TAJ MAHAL!!!! yer where we took the TOURISM MONEY SHOT!! The picture everyone has been waiting for yes you guessed it! : Its a snap of ME standing in front of the TAAAAJ!!! to be fair its impressive and lived up to the hype (the building not the photo) it really is an impressive thing, although ive learned that the moghul emporer who built it was tres vain and did it for himself and not his wife. SO anyway After that we travelled to Delhi where we are now, New Delhi is western like and old delhi is normal indian. We hope to go on lash tonight (its friday). But we bought a stella yesterday and it cost 300 ruppeees!! Thats about $4.50 expensive whereever you are so we'll see. Oh and i bought a Domnioes pizza yesterday, i had some left and was sitting on a cycle rickshaw. This kid leaned out of a passing bus and asked for it. I tried to pass it to him but the bus swerved out of reach, so i threw it to him. Unfortunately the box flew open halfway to him and he got the pizza full in the face. The poor kid wasn't happy but i thought it was TRES funny!!
SOme PIX

James on the slightly european looking promenade in Pondicherry.

James on one of the quality bikes we hired to ride to the hippy village of auroville down south. I had to get another one because the brake broke on the first one. I had it covered but a local tried to help me fix it and ended up bursting the back tyre.

Varanassi on the river gangees. We hired one of those boats. The front is devided up into sections called Ghats. Different Castes and religions can use different Ghats. Muslims quite like varannasi too.