Travelog for: Yomi

Hello!
I am the horse Yomi. I have lived for some years in Hamburg but now I want to see the world. I hope you can help me with my plans. If you want to host me, please contact my friend Jenny.
I am 13 cm tall and my weight is 70 g.
Here are some photos

This is my friend Sonea. She hopes to become a TV soon.

At the moment she is as excited as I am about my first destination. I will go and visit India and the Himalayas. I will leave tomorrow and have a rest now. I should be in good condition tomorrow!

I have finally started to India! On Monday Jenny and I chose the envelope which should be my home for the way to India.

After this I tried to go into the envelope and find some comfortable way to stay inside.

My good friend Sonea also wanted to look inside. I think I will really miss her...

Now it was time to close the envelope and make ready to go to the post office. Good Bye Jenny and Good Bye Sonea! Hello India and Hello world!

Heeeeelllllooooooo Mommy.....

Look, I made it to INDIA... what a ride.... 

I am still so excited, I met some other tvs at my hosts home, and they are way more expirienced than I am, so they told me a little about their journeys and about india, while I relaxed....

Our big trip at the end of may will be pure fun, I guess...
To be prepared for it, each of us tvs has a partner for the trip, so we do not get lost and can take care of each other.

My partner is Mandy Sheep and she seems very kind.

So, I am looking forward
and sending you a big hug and lots of kisses, mommy.

yours Yomi

Today we made a little trip around the city of Chennai...
Imagine, 7 Million people live here, but when we drove thrue, it seemed more to be a very very huge villiage...

And I was really toughed, as we passed by the fishermen area. These people are one of the poorest who live here and they are not really accepted by the other citizens.

The Tsunami in Decembre 2005 destroyed a lot of their houses and about 13.000 people died along the beach area of chennai.... Kumar, our driver, told us, that there were everywhere dead bodys laying on the streets and still today, the families are faced with problems.... Some still have no actuall home, but just tents from plastic bags.....
That's so sad....

Near this area, there is the St. Thomas church, we actually wanted to visit and how give so much hope to this people....
This building is really beautifull, don't you think?!

As we visited the church, a very friendly couple just got married and I was allowed to take a picture of them....
And we all wished them good luck and all the best...

Finally, we all were waiting so long for it.....

Tomorrow we will start our trip into the north of India.....
jiiiipppiiihheee....

Jaipur - Agra (Taj Mahal) - Delhi - Manali - Keylong- Sarchu - Leh ..........

We will be back at the 9th of June.....

Today we all helped packing the suitcase, everyone is now in charge of something.....

Mandy and I are in charge of the tv's travelbags.....

Thanks to god, we don't have to travel in the suitcase, we have our very own, very comfortable backpack..... (as comfortable as if can be, with such a travelbunch!)

We'll surely have a lot of fun..... I will tell you everything later.....

BYE BYE.....
...we are off.....

Hello Mommy,

yeah, we are back and it was an amzing journey....wow...
we saw sooooooo much and it will take me a while to tell you everything but let's do it step by step....

After we had a very long trip on saturday 24th, we first slept out on sunday.... That's the way I like it... 

The Jai Mahal Palace Hotel was just beautiful!

But I also saw a very nice Waterpalace on the way, I just can't remember it's name.

Than we explore the city of Jaipur.

I especially liked the JANTAR MANTAR, which is near the city palace. The Jantar Mantar is an observatory begub by Jai Singh in 1728, which at first glance looks like a collection of mammoth, bizarre sculptures.

Each construction has a specific purpose, such as calculating eclipses. The most striking instrument is the sundial, with it's 27m high gnomon; the shadow this casts moves up to 4m per hour.

Jai Singh liked astronomy even more than war. He build five observatories and this one is the largest and best preserved.

After that I was really exhausted, but I could relax at the hotel's swimming pool.... yeah...

Monday we spent on the road....

Because there were some people called Gujjar, who demonstrated in a town near Agra and killed several others, the normal road from Jaipur to Agra was closed, so we had to take the long way over Delhi....

It took us 10 hours, so we arrived in our hotel in Agra again very late.

But it was not as boring as it sounds. We saw a lot of funny vehicles at the so called HIGHWAY....

Near Agra I saw a nice building called Akbar Tomb.

Oh, this should be the great day!
We woke up very early on tuesday, because we were all so excited to see the Taj Mahal.

Imagine, we could even see it from the hotel's room, far far away....

We made as much noise as we could to wake up our hosts, we just couldn't wait!

But than the big disapointment!
At the entry to the place of the Taj Mahal, the guys said, we tvs are all not allowed to go inside. In fact, humans are only permitted to take their camera with them.

These guys were very rude and sticked to their silly rules, Mona and Uli couldn't do anything.

That was soooo sad!

But our hosts went in and took some pictures for us.
And they told us a little bit about the history of the Taj.

Did you know these facts:

The Taj was built by Emperor Shah Jahan as a memorial for his second wife, Mumtaz Mahal, who died giving birth to their 14th child. in 1631. The death of Mumtaz left the emperor so heartbroken that his hair is said to have turned grey overnight. Construction of the Taj began in the same year and was not completed until 1653. In total 20.000 people worked on the building. The construction bill is believed to have run to 3 Million Rupee equivalent to about 70 million US dollar today.

As the Taj was ready, Shah Jahan let cut off the right hand of every worker, who built it, because he wanted to make sure, that they were not able to built another copy of Taj for any other man.

And soon after the finishing, Shah Jahan's son became the Emperor and put his father into jail.
He said, it is a big crime to built such an expansive building, while the folks have nothing to eat and die because of hunger. He put Shah Jahan into the Agra Fort from where he could see the Taj from his window every day, untill he died.

We went to this place, and Shah must had the same view, we had as we took this picture of me and the Taj in the far.

Still today it is a shame, that the goverment earns so much money every year from the visitors of the Taj Mahal, but Agra is still such a poor city.

It is very dirty and many people have got nothing to eat.

Around the place of the Taj a lot of beggars are, and you have totally to watch out, not to be cheated by shopowner and other people on the streets.

So this was a not so nice expierience allover....

On our way to Delhi we than found another nice building. It is not as old as the Taj, but looks a little bit like it....
It's a hindu Temple near Agra.

On wednesday we went to a very interesting exibition called "Fluxus in Germany" at The National Gallery Of Modern Art" with the famous artist Joseph Beuys.

It was some kind of weird, but I really liked it!

Later we visited some tombs, like the Humayun's Tomb, which again remind me a little bit of the Taj Mahal, although it is made of red sandstone instead of marble.

Today we saw the Red Fort in Delhi, but because of the security check at the entry, just Roderich and Carl, could slip in.

I didn't care about that, I wanted to do some shopping!

So later we walked thrue the market streets of Old Delhi...and.... mmmmh.... were a little surprised by some disgusting smell, till we saw the reason for it.....

To be honest, I felt a little sick after that....

After we did so much city hopping the last days, we today start off vor our trip into the himalayan mountains.

We took a very small plane to get there and I was allowed to sit next to my hosts, so I could see india's capital from above and I was totally amazed by the mountains, as we arrived in Manali.

First we checked in at the Ambassador Hotel and than we took a little walk into the town. The weather was just great and much less hot than in Delhi.

I guess, it's because of Manalis altitude of 2700 m above sea level.

Today was great.

We first went to a place, where Mona, Uli and Repa gone for a white-water-rafting.... That was nothing for me, but we watched them.

And I wondered about the smell, that lies over the valley...???
Than I found some plants, that grows there on every corner, like herbs.... Strange greens, don't you think?!

Later we visited some other places in Manali and, near by, the village of Vashisht.

In this area lives a lot of tibetan refugees, so you also find typicall tibetan houses and buddism temples. 

Oh, I love the area of Manali.
Everything is green, the weather is chilly and the people are friendly.

Today we first visited some old temple and a cute, little castle.

I totally enjoyed the little tea break, because the indian Chai is real great.

About 2 km uphill past the castle is the Roerich Gallery, a fine old house displaying the artwork of eccentric Russian painter Nikolai Roerich, who died in Naggar 1947, and his son Svetoslav Roerich.

The distinctive Roerich style falls somewhere between surrealism and russian icon painting.

It was very interesting!

A five minute wark uphill from the gallery (which was extreme steeply), is the Urusvati Himalayan Folk & Art Museum, which houses a collection of embroidery and folk art.

And later we also saw some beautifull waterfalls, called the JANA Wateralls, hide in the mountains.

Today we just relaxed... the weather was not that good, so we played some cards and I learned some more about the culture!

Indian wiskey "Old Monk" and a book about....

We are on the road again and the first part of the route goes from Manali over the Rothang Pass, which is in an Altitude of about 4000 meters or 13050 ft, to Keylong.

Keylong is 115 km north of Manali and in about an elevation of 3500m.

Imagine, it took us 7 1/2 HOURS to drive 115km, just because the Leh-Manali-Road is partly so bad, and sometimes there are some streetworking in progress and you have to wait, till the way is free again.

Anyway, the landscape is breathtaking and I really enjoyed travelling, although we all were totally shaked and had a little head pain, because of the altitude.