Jaipur day 2

Great day today. Woke up late and arranged for a driver to take us to Amber Fort. The drivers name was Sam and was a breath of fresh air. He was funny, knowledgeable, and most importantly, not a crook. The fort was wild. India just lets you walk around aimlessly in their historical monuments. It really gives you the feeling of being an explorer. I got to hang out with a snake charmer, and take some good pics of the water palace. Our driver actually bought us food and chi. He is picking us up tommorow to go to monkey temple. The next few days should be pretty jam packed. Me and Sunni are sitting on the porch with three french girls watching a lizard eat ants and waiting for dinner. I'll post again tommorow. So far Jaipur is everything I hoped India would be.

Amber Fort

Lake Palace

Snake Time

Sam in his "tuk tuk"

Jaipur

We got into Jaipur yesturday after a 6 hour train ride. The train was quite an experience. We shared a AC sleeper car to with two Indian Engineers. They gave us lots of advice for what to do on our trip and made some great conversation. Jaipur is so much better than Dehli. It is cooler, less crowded, safer, cleaner, and our hotel is incredible. We are staying at the Krishna Palace. It is a little guest house that treats you like royalty. They have great room service and the guy who owns it picks you up for free from the train station. Staying here make you feel like you are at home. Today we adventured into the old city. We spent the day walking around, and talking to people. We met a guy who was the 9th generation priest for a Krisnha temple. He gave us a tour and took us on the top of his temple so we could have a better view. There is an outdoor museum in the middle of old town of huge ancient astrological instruments that were absolutely fascinating to look at. We found a park full of homeless people and hundreds of monkeys!!! One of the mom monkeys came after me for trying to take pictures of her baby. It was terrifing. We got caught in the first monsoon rains of the week. It was crazy, all the streets started flooding and we got soaked to the bone. After the rains stopped we ate dinner at a revolving resturant in town, it was kinda of cheesy (and made us nauseous), but the view was great.

People ride on top of the train!

Our sleeper car

Old City

Master samosa chef

Who wants to eat some garbage?!

Monkeys in "homeless" park

Revolving resturant

finally calming down

After what was certainly the most massive culture shock in the world (and I was in a car accident in africa) i have finally calmed down. I absolutely freaked out when I got here and made several classic mistakes that ended up costing me some cash and a nights sleep (i'll explain later), but I am much better now. Me and Sunni went all over the area we are staying in today. It was a Monday, so it was much calmer and we able to see so much more. We found a bunch of temples and meditated for a little while a big Ramakrishna one. Then we went to Lodi Park, which is where all the young love birds go to hold hands and make out. It was quiet and peaceful and you can sit inside big 500+ year old buildings without any hassle (plus it's like 20 degrees cooler in the park). I think this is best place I have been in India so far, but I still have a lot to go. We are taking a train to Jaipur tomorrow, so wish us luck (the train station makes me very nervous).

Ramakrishna temple

Lodi Park

I AM STILL ALIVE

sorry for the lack of updates. It was a bit of a whirlwind through bergen and copenhagen. i am currently staying in the worlds worst hotel in new dehli with sunni. prisoners have cells better than this. as usaual things have not gone as planned. most of our train tickets were waitlisted so i had to rebook with an agent in town, everything is so seedy and crazy here that i hope i have not been ripped off. time will tell. the city is nuts. busier that the busiest street in nam with cows all over the place. me and sunni wandered into a temple and got cool orange dots on our fourheads. we are gonna go sleep now and hope we don't die. get back as soon as i can with pics from bergen and denmark.

oslo live pics

irish pub

goofy dancers on stage for diplo

santigold

olso at night

oslo+refugees+diplo+sanogold=awesome!

Oslo is great. It is dirtier and much less classy than Sweden (but somehow more expensive). Our hostel is super seedy. It is in the middle of what seems like a Sudanese refugee camp. It is completely surreal. The hostel had a few heroin addicts nodding off in front of it while we were waiting to sign in and we were told not to use the lockers in our room because they were not safe. The hostel looks nice, but it's run by idiots. I am down the street paying to use the net because theirs is down. After checking in we wandered into an Irish pub that was full of actual Irish playing traditional Irish drinking songs. We hung out there for an hour or so and then went to the Oslo live festival. It was out doors right next to some old castle. The opening act was a white Olso rapper!!! And he was actually pretty good. Then some dj and then DIPLO! He was great. I danced around like crazy but Steve stood there like a brick wall. All of these ridiculous guys were dancing together by us and Diplo ended up letting them dance on stage. Then Santogold. She had a full band and two back-up singers\dancers. She was great live: lots of energy, dancing and bass (plus she is incredibly hot). After the show the whole city came to life. Everyone waits to go out unitl like 11:30 at night. I think me and Steve woke up the girls who were sleeping in our room when we got back, I feel bad because we were just complaining about being woken up the night before. I have lots of good pictures but this stupid web cafe won't let me use my camera so hopefully the next hostel will not suck as bad.

sweden pics

Stockholm is beautiful but confusing. After spending three days here I do not feel like I understand it in the slightest. The city is so amazing that you almost stop noticing it. We went to so many museums that it is hard to keep track but here is a list off of the top of my head:

• modern art
• national
• vasa (cool ship that sunk hundreds of years ago)
• armory
• royal palace
• a bunch of cool old churches

I have a feeling that we only got to see the tourist areas of the city. It is a little disapointing that I can't leave saying that I know the "real" Sweden. It has still been a blast and I doubt that I will forget any of it. I think what shocks me most is the lack of shock. This place amazing, but still not all that different from the USA. I guess i'll have to get all my culture shock in India.

vasa ship museum

everything in sweden looks like this!

changing of the guard

iant calder outside modern museum

finaly the sun goes down!!!

royal palace (it is tacky and ugly in side, royals have NO taste)

on the boat back from the palace

sweden

Stockholm is beautiful. The streets are lined with amazing buildings. Every block seems to have a copper topped church that was built 300+ years ago. It is so calm and relaxing. I slept by the river today after going to like four museums and it was fantastic. The night life is a little weird though. No matter where me and Steve go the city seems to be "dead". This is clearly a hip place and we can not find any decent night life. We went to what should have been a cool bar called KGB tonight and it was a bust. We gave up. No luck last night either, but we did have lot of fun aimlessly wandering the city. I'll post a ton of pics soon. Everyting here seems to warent a pic.