Somewhere between Vox & Hunter S. Thompson
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India
If anybody remembers my “travel plans” post about India, one of the big things that I wanted to do was to get to a place called the Spiti Valley in India’s Northern Himalayas. The Spiti Valley would have been cool, but it was just an idea; in reality I just wanted to see the Himalayas, in some way, shape, or form.
Life happened, and I ended up in Leh.
Varanasi is known as the holy city. It is said that all the Hindu Gods live here. After finding enlightenment under the Bodhi Tree, Buddha came here to do his first teaching. There is also a sizeable Muslim community here. The city is therefore packed with religious landmarks and temples.
First, on a clerical note, Calcutta was renamed, or, more accurately, respelled, officially in 2001. Spelling it as "Kolkata" is apparently more phonetically accurate to the Bengali pronunciation, whereas the "Calcutta" spelling was a viewed as a remnant of British colonialism. I'll be using the "Calcutta" spelling just because it's more widely recognized by Westerners... I think.
For this, we'll need to rewind a few months and go back to when I was still kickin' it in Hanoi... After getting my visa into Burma, it was time for me to apply for my visa into India. Living in Hanoi is great because, being a capital city, every country in the world has (or, had) an embassy right next to my house. I could have applied for the E-Visa, but I like to do things in person if I can.
Continuing on now, I know that my point of entry into India will be Kolkata, via Dhaka, Bangladesh. There is a cheap train that can take me across the border. From there, the plan is to continue on to Varanasi, The Himalayas, Jodhpur, Jaisalmer, and eventually, Mumbia.
