Important Notice

Being bore by the templates by blogger and disappointed by the skinny add-ins I transfered my whole blog including comments etc. to Wordpress. The new domain is now http://mfornell.wordpress.com.
Anyway the old domain shall lead you to my new blog as well. If you are not being automatically forwarded please klick on the link mentioned above.

A land of breathtaking beauty

On the southern end of the Khasi Mountains, almost at the border to Bangladesh, there is Cherrapunjee, the wettest place on earth. The average annual rainfall in the area of Cherrapunjee that is drained by numerous valleys and vertical canyons is the highest reported rainfall on planet earth. The canyons and valleys, some of them are more than 1000 meters deep, are home to deep jungles with an amazing variety of plants and insects. In the rainy season (June – August) when more than half of the annual rainfall comes down the canyons are drawn by breathtaking waterfalls and rivers carrying the water to the planes of Bangladesh.

Whereas the stream beds are almost waterless in the dry season they are dangerous and impossible to cross during monsoon. By strategic planting and training of the rubber tree Ficus Indicus that flourishes alongside the streams with its roots growing from all parts of the tree the Khasi ancestors with their experiments had perfected the art of making those living root bridges. These bridges are trained over 20 to 25 years to become fully functional and cross fast flowing rivers and streams. They are very strong and can carry up to 50 people at one time and are still being used by the villagers’ everyday. Perhaps they can last for 500 years and more after being well formed and supersede any comparable steel construction.

After a two hours trek and the crossing of two other root bridges the Umshiang Doule Decker Root Bridge named after the Umshiang River that is crossed can be found. These bioengineering wonders are unique and supposed to be exclusive to Meghalaya in the whole world.

Click here for more photographs: http://www.flickr.com/photos/13626255@N08/

After an interesting stay in Manipur I got back to Meghalaya now where I went on a trip to Cherrapunjee, the wettest place on earth today. Obviously it also rained today otherwise it would be like a joke and so we were not able to enjoy the view on the waterfalls... Therefore we decided to jump into a tourist resort in mid of the jungle for two nights from where we did a trek to one of the unique living roots bridges over here. These bridges are amazing and probably unique in the world. Tomorrow we gonna do a one day trek to a double decker living roots bridge. The place is so beautiful and untouched that even decided to cancel my flight to Darjeeling that was already booked for tomorrow. Depending on the schedule for the movie I am gonna make I will either go to Delhi directly or stay a few days in Darjeeling or Sikkim as well. Nothing can be said for sure here.
Manipur by the way is a totally unsafe place as I have realized. Even I had a permit there were many restrictions. Nevertheless I was with a kind family who member of the local government and had the possibilities to assure a relatively safe stay for me. Anyway it is a strange feeling seeing the vehicles carrying machine guns driving around and stuff...

Big update to my Flickr gallery

Today I was able to connect my laptop with the internet in a cyber cafe in Kolkata so I could upload a lot of photographs that are visible in my flickr gallery which you can find here http://www.flickr.com/photos/13626255@N08/. I will give titles and folders to the photographs later but they were taken on the train trip from Delhi to Gauwhati, in Dimapur (capital of Nagaland) and Kolkata...
The picture above shows Kolkata 24 hours after the rain that 'washed Kolkata out' stopped. It shows that streets were still flooded. Meanwhile Kolkata is almost back to normality.

Something between crudity and black humor?

The banners on this local train in Kolkata are promoting for Life Insurances whereas the travellers do a perilous job hanging outside the train. Numerous people die or get seriously injured regularly when falling from trains...

After a couple of bad days today finally brought some good news. Kolkata which has been "washed out" during the last 72 hours is getting back to normal. Rain has stopped and the water is on the way back...
Also from the Northeast I received positive news. My permission is going to be ready by tomorrow. So probably I'll go back to Imphal (Manipur) by day after tomorrow when I received a final confirmation on my permission. This time I got very good assistance of one high government official there in Manipur. I am in regular touch to her and they gonna provide me security serice as well as the safety situation in Manipur is reported to be worst...

Kolkata flooded or: "Enjoy the rain"

The situation here in Kolkata has changed dramatically within the last 24 hours. Yesterday I went to a cinema to see the film "The Bourne Ultimatum" as I have seen in a newspaper that it gonna be shown here. I was really happy to see the last movie of the Bourne Trilogie, oh yeah! But well, when I was to leave the cinema I was shocked, everything was flooded and there was no taxi in sight... always it`s like this when you don't need them taxi and rickshaw drivers are bothering you all the time and when you really need one there is nothing in sight or they are not willing to carry you...
24 hours later the situation has become even worse, almost the whole city is flooded, with me inside the mess. The water line in the streets has reached at least half a meter and more and the rain is not going to stop. Anyway the Kolkata people seem to be quite pleased about the rain and one guy told me, "leave your stuff at your hotel and enjoy the rain"!
At least regarding to my Manipur permission there is some good progress, my friend and others are working hard to get my valid permission issued for tomorrow or day after. There are a couple of people who really want me to come there and as soon as I get permission I will rush to the airport and catch a flight...

stranded in Kolkata

Well, after some days of big hassle in the Northeast I had to go to Kolkata, where I arrived yesterday. Actually I wanted to spend more time there in the northeast but I was facing problems with my permissions which were somehow not valid. Finally the authorities asked me to leave this area, I had to follow this order and so I came to Kolkata, a place I did not plan to visit.
Anyway I am not unhappy to be here to Kolkata, okay the weather sucks. Rain since 24 hours, and this morning a lot of areas of the city were at least partly flooded but meanwhile the situation has set to ease.
Like in Rajasthan I am not able to upload pictures from here and will do so later...

I am still alive

Well guys, just wanted to give you a live signal from my side. I am in Shillon right now, the capital of Meghalaya and heading for Nagaland now. I hope to capture some good tribal life over there but let`s see... I just have a permission for Dimapur and try to get permission for tribal villages from there.
Anyway Shillon is a very interesting place. Much different from India. The people here are very modern and western orientated. The city itself could almost be a european place the people look more like Chinese people than Indians.

I begin to understand cricket and I am irritated by the electricity watch

It's almost 1:30 in the morning and I am still awake as I normally go to bed when the electricity is off. But something has changed... since yesterday there is no powercut at night. Earlier it was possible to set your watch after the power cut. There is one in the morning between 7AM and 9AM, one from noon till 2PM and another one from midnight till 2AM...
Also I slowly begin to understand the Cricket game. Cricket was always like mystery to me but since there is the International Cricket Championschip in South Africa and India bet Pakistan two days ago but was bet itself by New Zealand this night I am watching Cricket on television during all meals.
Except of these excerpts of Delhi life there aren't many news here. Since three days I am staying at my place mainly as we had to edit a film and some other stuff... On the 18th I am going to Assam and Manipur now. The tickets are booked but I am still not sure if it is such a good decision to go there as Assam is facing the heaviest monsoon rain falls since decades and millions of people lost their home there.

New Image Gallery

Well, there hardly any news about me these days so I have just decided to launch an image gallery to provide you more pictures of my journey through India. So whenever I have time I try to upload some to the Flickr gallery that you can find here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/13626255@N08/
I will also set a link somewhere on this blog...

Anyway it looks like that I'll be going to Manipur and Bihar, two of the poorest states in India, on September 18th. It's not 100 percent confirmed but it looks like. I'll keep you up to date.

Today I spent most of my time with getting my broken camera lense replaced. After several hours of roaming around I was successfull finally. I found a camera store which seemed to be quite reliable to me. There I got my Sigma 24-70 / 2,8... but who cares about the type, I guess you just wanna see pictures. Anyway I am quite sure that I made a good deal and got my old lense replaced by a much better one. Unfortunately I did not fell from the camel earlier. However I hope this lense will last for the next 4 1/2 months at least. Hopefully I won't fall from an elephant or so next time... on the other hand there are still lenses that are better than this one, so let's see...
btw: above you see a picture of Akshardham temple, probably one of the safest temple site in the world. Unfortunately they do not allow people to do photography in the temple and temple's area. I also failed to apply for a special permission...

Two days earlier as expected I returned to Delhi this morning. Unfortunately I had to cancel my camel safari on the fifth day due to an accident when I have been thrown off the camel. So yesterday was actually one of the worst days in my journey. Although I fell on my head I was luckily just slightly injured... just a few wounds, no fractures but my camera lense was broken unfortunately.
Anyway the tour started on 6th of September in the town of Palodhi which is right in the middle of the Great Thar Desert. Already there in Palodhi we were facing some problems with my camel when it got naughty like in the following picture...

Well, the following days the camel did quite a good job acutually. In Rajasthan desert you can not expect to see big sand dunes everywhere like in Sahara for instance. So sometimes you'll also see lot's of plants and crops and corn fields as most of the desert people there live from agriculture and livestock farming. But a few sand dunes can still be seen there...


Although the sand dunes were not that imposant I had a very interesting journey exploring rural desert life. And this is what I mainly wanted to capture with my camera... the way people are living in the desert, their housings, their colorful dresses, etc. Therefore I experienced an exciting five day trip in which I did not only see rural life but also felt it myself when sleeping on sand dunes and having meal with locals... okay often it was really ordinary and not always very delicious but this is hard desert life.
So also the people where really very poor they tried their best to offer me reasonable hospitality. On the other hand I have to say that I sometimes felt like being an animal in a wandering circus, everywhere we reached people came staring at me, okay I was quite an exceptional guest but they didn't stop it. Sometimes it was very disturbing...

As described earlier I was facing the accident on the 5th day of the journey and had to cancel the trip suddenly. Fortunetaly it happened in a village that is linked by a local bus. For around 500 kilometers it took me around 22 hours to reach Delhi by today morning. First I was going on a small local bus that was achieving all the little villages till I reached a bigger place from where I had to take another bus to Bikaner. For the 50 kilometers to Bikaner I had to travel on the roof top of the bus what was actually more comfortable than travelling inside the highly overcrowded bus... Travelling on the roof top of buses is illegal in India and very dangerous but everyone does it and the bus companies are just interested in getting high profits. Safety is not of any interest...
From Bikaner the torture went on when I had to fight hard to get a train ticket as I couldn't do any reservation in advance. Fortunately I succeeded to get the ticket but missed my connection train some 100 kilometers before Delhi due to some delay. Till now I have not seen a single train of Indian Railway Company travelling on time. The system seems to be very ailing.

In the moment it is impossible to upload more stuff as Jaisalmer still seems to be in the stone age or so... The slowest internet I have ever experienced in my live, actually they charge me for waiting in front of the PC... And the computers somehow do not recognize my USB devices.
Tomorrow I'll be starting for a 150 kilometer and 6 to 7 days camel safari through the Great Thar Desert. I don't expect to find any hotspots or cyber cafes on the dunes so there won't be any update for one week. Therefore I promise to upload lot's of pictures when I reach back to Delhi.

The trip from Jodhpur to Jaisalmer was quite curious... Arriving at Jodhpur train station I found thousands of people sitting and sleeping on the platforms, inside the terminal building and in front of the station - they were everywhere. Earlier I was told that the trains could be quite crowded these days as there is a festival or sth like that here in Jaisalmer or nearby... but I did not expect that many people.
Also I still wonder how a train could already arrive crowded although Jodhpur was the starting point... Anyway this time I was travelling on 3rd AC which is an air conditioned coach that can be entered with reservation number only so I didn't care about the crowd.
After arriving with a delay of just half an hour I was welcomed by an awesome desert city which I will explore in detail now...

For this panoramic view on Jodhpur's fort I had to get up early this morning as you have the best light in the mornings. Not only the light but also the temperatures are good in the mornings. At 8 AM it starts to get extremely hot so today I was very lucky about a sudden heavy rain shower in the early afternoon. So finally I got a booking for the train from Jodhpur to Jaisalmer which is some 300 kilometers away and close to the pakistan border. Again I'm going to spend the next night in the train...
Anyway the hotels here are quite good actually, much better than those I have experienced in Lloret de Mar, Spain. The guys who went there as well will know what I am talking about. And I like the rooftops for there stunning views as the one you can see above.

No, I have not been jailed... I am just sitting in the train from Delhi to Jodhpur. I was travelling on the Mandore Express train which is claimed to be a 'superfast train'... well here in India superfast mean like travelling with an average speed of around 50 km/h. So it took me almost 14 hours for a distance of 623 kilometers...
Despite many warnings and also because the high classes have been sold out I decided to travel on sleeper class which is actually one of the lowest. Coaches are not equiped with A/C therefore the 'windows' are just barred without any glas. Expecting another torture the journey was relatively comfortable... okay it took me some 20 minutes to find my train, coach and seat at Old Delhi railway station but when I finally reached I was surprised to find a coach that was not overbooked. I really had a bed for my self, it was an overnight train by the way...
Travelling on Indian trains you'll also get to know to lot's of people... also funny ones.
Jodhpur itself is a beautiful place in the colorful state of Rajasthan. It has a nice old town and an amazing fort on a hill in the middle of the town... tomorrow night I'll be heading for Jaisalmer another amazing place in Rajasthan. Actually I am planning to take another night train but right now I can't reach the online booking system of the Indian Railways, so let's see how I'll reach there...

In regard to Neeraj's post I have uploaded this picture which I took a few days ago. It has been taken at the railway track were the three children died under a running train like this on 15th of August what I didn't know when I went there two days ago. Now knowing what happened here just a few days earlier it is even more dramatic as it seems that nothing has been changed. Children are again playing on the railway tracks with their whole families living very close by. How many more have to die before something changes? I seriously doubt anything will change.

Taken at a railway station in Old Delhi this picture stands for itself. Just have a look how people there are living near the railway track... comment most welcome!

Getting to the Delhi City Centre was almost like a torture. It took me 3 horrible hours for just
16 kilometers (air-line distance). Reason was a Hindu festival, so everyone used to be on the road. For a while I started to regret that I have accepted the invitation of my friend Umesh to come to his place today. But nevertheless it turned into a great and interesting afternoon and evening.
First I was with my friends family to celebrate the Hindu festival - although he has actually become a Buddhist now - and then we went to celebrate the birthday of one of his wife's friend. It was a very exciting experience to chat with all those young people there. I was involved into discussions about religion and other stuff... and made a lot of new friends there (real friends, not like those guys from the streets)^^

Today I have reached the city centre of Delhi in a new record time of just 1 1/2 hours - because it was Sunday and the roads were empty compared to normal days. Again my trip brought me to Old Delhi first were I visited Jama Masjid the big Mosque in Delhi and one of the biggest of it's kinds throughout India.
After spending a bit more time in Old Delhi and having some Chai's, Shakes and other drinks I stopped my journey at a railway line. So here I could get to even more new "best friends" who used to live there near the railway line in their tents. Although they have almost nothing, they seemed to be happy persons laughing into my camera. But actually they're working hard to earn their little living at one of the most dangerous places, the railway tracks...