Hey,
over the last weekend I experienced the most intense shock I’ve had for quite some time… While I was visiting the Amber Fort in Jaipur together with Ana I was taking lots of pictures and as the sun was shining, I had my Lens Hood on the objective which turned out to be essential…
Ana and me went through the Fort and at one point we were going down a small stairway when I suddenly lost my balance and crashed full force down onto the stairs… As Ana was in front of me, I guess I did not see the sand on the stairs due to her shadow, thus stepped right on the sand and boom… I had my D90 in my right hand and thus tried not to land on it… Instead I landed with my full weight on both elbows (ouch!) and next thing I heard was a real ugly sound of breaking plastic… Totally in panic I turned around to see that the Lens Hood had broken into two pieces BUT neither the D90 nor the objective seemed to be damaged 🙂
Still being under shock, really hurt, I got up to check upon the D90 and focused on the next visible thing: An exit sign. After I had checked that the D90 took the picture as wanted I felt relieved but saw some Indians standing next to the sign who had thought that I was taking pics of them and therefore started to pose for me… Somehow I managed to make a few pics in order to satisfy them and then walked a bit shaky away…
Gosh, I just don’t want to think about the camera being broken and am unbelievably relieved and happy that I used the Lens Hood. I guess when the cam touched ground it did so first with the Lens Hood which, due to its breaking, took most of the energy and thus saved the objective and body 🙂
Next item to shop: A new Lens Hood 🙂
Take care, Strothi
BTW: I’m fine, got a little scratch and my left elbow is still not entirely alright, but it’ll be soon! 🙂
Dear friends,
as promised here some impressions of our trip to Jaipur 🙂 After I had successfully convinced Ana to finally leave Delhi we had to take a train early on Saturday and catch one back to Delhi right the next day as Ana had to work Friday and Monday whereas I’m really flexible in terms of when and where to work… 🙂 As the train to Jaipur needs 5,5 hours from Delhi, we opted to start on Saturday at half past four in the middle of the night in order to reach Jaipur in the morning.
Catching that train became a little tricky: I had ordered a cab to be at my place at half past three so that we would have enough time to get to the station, but in contrast to all the times before, it just didn’t show up. So I called the driver, but his number wasn’t working. A few minutes later the driver called me and it became clear, that he had no idea where to go due to a severe lack of being able to communicate in english! My Hindi skills didn’t help us much as well so I told Ana that we should just go to the Market. As he wasn’t there I pulled her further to the only open gate in my area and luckily there he was… But that wasn’t the end of the story. On our way to the station I already had a feeling that I should have checked twice for the right station, but the ticket was in my backpacker in the trunk. Guess what, having 25 minutes left I found out shortly after our arrival at New Delhi Train Station (NDLS) that the train would leave from Old Delhi (DLI). Great… But remembering my adventure with Navarun a few weeks back I was sure to still be able to make it. Some lucky driver got hold of me and charged me about ten times the price of the way but at that moment all I wanted was to get us to the station. Sitting in the car, I was a little shocked to see the remaining time and thus prepared myself to not reach the station in time only to find out later that the clock in the car was ten minutes ahead of time…
Finally we reached the station, got into our wagon and started our journey 🙂 The train had beds to sleep on as you can find them as well in Germany, though I was a bit too long for them… Still, Ana and me did the best out of it 🙂 When we were supposed to arrive time-wise in Jaipur, I asked a guy whether the next station would be Jaipur. He replied „yes“ but didn’t mention, that it was not the „central station“ but the one before. As the hotel had said that the walk from the station to the hotel would be a ten minutes walk we opted for doing that, not knowing that a) we were at the wrong station and thus b) the map couldn’t help us. Finally I got that we had gone off at the wrong one and hailed a rickshaw driver who finally brought us to our hotel… 🙂
After this kind of stressy/chaotic journey we were very happy to find the hotel to be a great place! Especially the restaurant on the rooftop was a very nice spot to chill and enjoy great food. So in case you’re going to Jaipur, stay at „Hotel Pearl Palace“ or stop by at the restaurant! 🙂 After we finally got into our nice room, we took some rest and then started off to see the „Pink City“. Everybody had told us about „Old Jaipur“ and its beauty so we thought that it was a good idea to walk there and grasp a bit of the atmosphere in town – stupid thought!
Walking over to Old Jaipur turned out to be a quite longer walk than expected plus Old Jaipur was kind of really disappointing. We had an Old Jaipur in our minds with calm little streets and nice architecture. Guess what, while indeed everything was „pink“, there was so much noise, traffic and people on the street that caused us to dislike it. The only plus: Within half an hour we met three very nice locals that gave us good hints on what to do and what not and so we decided to drive out of the city to the „Water Palace“.
[smugmug url=“http://strothi.smugmug.com/hack/feed.mg?Type=gallery&Data=10499968_G5DTA&format=rss200″ imagecount=“5″ start=“5″ num=“1″ thumbsize=“Th“ link=“smugmug-lightbox“ captions=“false“ sort=“true“ window=“true“ smugmug=“true“ size=“M“]
Well, now you see my pics which look astonishing, still the Water Palace itself was unreachable thus nothing big to do. Luckily I pulled Ana over to some kind of a temple further up the street and that was really great. Over there, the atmosphere was super relaxing, lots of nice people and nice architecture – YEAH 🙂 As we spend the entire afternoon over there I was lucky enough to take some night shots with my D90 and in these moments I know why I spend that much money for my camera… 😉 We ended the day on the rooftop of our hotel enjoying a great dinner and fell pretty much being dead into the bed…
[smugmug url=“http://strothi.smugmug.com/hack/feed.mg?Type=gallery&Data=10499968_G5DTA&format=rss200″ imagecount=“21″ start=“21″ num=“1″ thumbsize=“Th“ link=“smugmug-lightbox“ captions=“false“ sort=“true“ window=“true“ smugmug=“true“ size=“M“]
After a very relaxed morning we decided to go to the „Amber Fort“ which is a bit outside of Jaipur. The Fort itself was really great to see and we had a great time over there – with a small exception… 😉 In order to avoid the chaos from the day before we got back to our hotel in time and went to the right, the central station 😉 The way back went flawless and we arrived home safe and sound 🙂 My personal success story was, that some guy who travelled with us was quite interested into the stuff I was reading and doing (sorting pics/reading german news) while trying to kill the remaining hours on the way back. As he wasn’t speaking any English we had to communicate in Hindi. And what shall I say, with my limited Hindi skills, my little notebook from class and lots of helpful gestures we talked for about one and a half hours over Jaipur, India, Delhi and Germany!!! 🙂 Kind of strenuous, but really great! In Jaipur one of the guards had told us some details after he had found out that I’m speaking Hindi as well and I actually managed to understand it quite well! 🙂
[smugmug url=“http://strothi.smugmug.com/hack/feed.mg?Type=gallery&Data=10499968_G5DTA&format=rss200″ imagecount=“36″ start=“36″ num=“1″ thumbsize=“Th“ link=“smugmug-lightbox“ captions=“false“ sort=“true“ window=“true“ smugmug=“true“ size=“M“]
Alright, now we’re back in Delhi, working… Today I send out a few e-mails in order to do some interviews for my project and already got 2 confirmed – great. What starts to bother me more and more is that I have to start of preparing myself to leave Ana, Delhi and India today in two weeks!!! 🙁 That’s going to be hard, as I really would like to stay here for some time, but that ain’t possible (even though soooo many tell me to just do so). But once being back in Germany right from the first day I’ve each day up to x-mas planned with work/fun stuff and in January I will start working for the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research while doing all the usual stuff aside from that. Guess once I hit German ground, my „chilling and relaxing-time“ I had here in Delhi is going to be over for the following half year. So many things to do, so many things to think about, so many uncertainties… Wait and see. The only thing that is for sure: It’s not going to be boring… (But did it ever get that far anyways…?) 😉
Take care, Strothi
Moin alle zusammen,
kaum aus Jaipur zurück und schon gibt’s wieder so viel, über das ich bloggen will, aber keine Zeit dafür habe, aber naja… Heute mal zwei erfreuliche Meldungen: 1. Der gute Horst (Köhler), unser aller Präsident hat erklärt, dass er seinen Karl Otto nicht unter das Zugangserschwerungsgesetz setzen will, weil er noch „zusätzliche Informationen braucht“. Kurz und knapp hat die Zeit das in einem schönen Kommentar beleuchtet, lesenswert 🙂
Ich hätte mir ja gewünscht, dass der Horst einfach mal sagt: „Jungs, dat is Verfassungswidrig, da gibt’s keine Unterschrift!“ und Punkt, aber das hat er sich dann doch noch nicht getraut. Naja, macht nix, kann ja noch kommen 🙂
Darüber hinaus scheint auch das SWIFT Abkommen auf der Kippe zu stehen, wie Jens drüben beim Spiegelfechter erklärt:
Gut, mal abwarten, ob das wirklich so kommt. Wenn ja, dann wäre das ja mal selten positiv 🙂
————–
Update: Und zack, da ist’s passiert: Unser toller Innenminister hat sich um das Bundesrats-Votum und die Proteste von FDP und CSU keinen feuchten Kehricht geschert und sich fröhlich enthalten. Und schwupps, da haben wir nun das Swift abkommen…
————–
So, alles schon ein zwei Tage alt, aber trotzdem wichtig 🙂
Mehr zu Jaipur und anderem Zeugs kommt später.
Und weg, Strothi