China

no Facebook, no Blog. Difficult to communicate with the outside world, especially with this French keyboard. ;)
Marc and I spent the week in Beijing, visited the Great wall and the Forbidden city amongst the more famous monuments. We party hard during the night, since we made tons of new friends here.
We are leaving for Shanghai tonight, and then will go west into rural China for a couple of weeks. I am sorry it has been so difficult to update the blog.
Tzai Chen (french-chinese with a spanish accent)

Agra - Jaipur - Udaipur

Sorry guys, we have not been very good at postings pics recently. We've been through Agra (Taj Mahal and Agra fort pics coming), Jaipur (see some pics on facebook) and now Udaipur where we celebrated Holi (see Marc's facebook pics).
Who knew that a paint fight with the whole city would be so fun? ;)

Delhi

Marc went for the week-end to Mumbai, and I spent the week-end in Delhi. He's coming back tonight for some good northern indian food.
I didn't do my visiting alone though. I met a French-Moroccan girl at the airport, and did a lot of visiting and partying together with a group of French, Georgians and (of course) Indians.

:)

 

India's gate; a monument for the lost lives against Pakistan and Bangladesh

 

Parliament

 

 

Tomb of Muhammad Quli Khan

Qutb Minar; one of the most amazing pillars created by Man for the victory of Islam in India

near the Qtub Minar complex, is the mosque.

IIT Delhi

 The Red Fort (Lal Qila)

Aziza and me; everyone stared at us (well at her) because of her Moroccan look and hair. A lot of Indians stopped us to take pictures of us (her). We felt like rockstars!

Inside the Red Fort

story: This Indian dude was selling fake beards and was making a group of 30 Indians laugh with it. We tried it on and, long story short, we made fools of ourselves for 20 minutes. Every single one had taken his camera out and were taking pictures of us. We even had difficulty convincing them to take one with our cameras.

Chai (tea) in the smallest galley imaginable at the bazaar near the Red Fort, where kids on roofs starting throwing water balloons at us. Training for Holi ...

Indian folk; many hold hands while walking.

Purana Mila

Pondicherry

I would have believed the driver if he had told me we had driven all the way to France. Pondicherry still has the vibe of an Indian city, but the architecture is very french, as the pictures will demonstrate.

                                 The south of France, or the east of Tamil Nadu?

 

definitely the SoF

                                               A monument for the few French who died ...

                                   A monument for Mahatma Gandhi

                                       the beach of Pondicherry

                                           Sacred Heart church

Mamallapuram

On our way to Pondicherry were amazing temples and structures, especially at Mamallapuram.

                      The five Rathas; a complex with very detailed carvings of the gods

                                   Marc violating the sacred animal of India

                                          The Shore Temple

                                           A whole side of a mountain had carvings such as these. Goats and cows are everywhere...

                                                                beeeee?

 

some magnificent temples 

                                           a crowd of Indians

 

pretty impressive that the rock doesn't fall right? It illustrates the high technology of the time, when they still needed to chuck big rocks at enemies.

Crocodile farm

Marc and I went to see the crocs and the snakes. I thought it was worth putting a couple of pictures of them.

Another glance at Chennai

Chennai was a gorgeous place ultimately. Marc and I visited enough temples to convert to Hinduism now. 

                                                        Chennai traffic...

                                           A Gopuram, at the entrance of every temple as in Dravidian architecture.

 

The beach

A glance at Chennai

Marc and I still have a lot more pictures to post, but I will only post a couple for the moment. We are going to Pondicherry tomorrow morning, passing by the famous Mamallapuram.

Here are only a couple:

St Mary's church in Egmore, where the English settlement was first built.

Marina beach, 12 km.

Notice the "East India Company" on the coin.

Don't laugh! We actually confused me for an Indian at dinner. 

Krabi

Guys, here are some pictures of our kayaking on the islands near Krabi.
Fyi this is close to the location where James Bond's The Man with the Golden Gun was shot for Scaramanga's island at the end of the movie.

Kayaking next to the houses outside of Krabi

Marc 'kayaking'

Kev and Claire

We kayaked into a couple of caves, some with very old markings in them.

Some dude drew a man on the ceiling of a cave, some very long time ago...

Monkey Attack!

Monkey captured Tamara's water bottle. Actually, others distracted us while this one could creep onto a tree and get the water bottle. Too bad he couldn't open it...

We went camping for 3 days. We had some fancy tents that we could use for saunas during the day.

Mr Green caught a huge gellyfish, that we all patted.