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Published: January 12th 2006
Well after waiting eagerly, my folks finally arrived in Delhi and to help ease them in to the vagaries of India I had booked us all into a fancy 5 star hotel (against our wishes of course!). It was a tough life cocktails by the pool, air conditioning and a bath...ahhh! Next up was helping my dad celebrate his 60th birthday, so we had the best curry and Kingfisher beers we could find (plus a cake of course!).
We soon left our Delhi bellies behind and headed to Amritsar the place of the Golden Temple which was well.... very gold, rather cold and to top it off we had to don fetching orange mini-turbans! It had been my dad's dream to come here and luckily it was worth the trip especially seeing the 30,000 person a day kitchen at the temple and eating with pilgrims. Gilly and I hastily arranged transport for the arduous trip to the Himalayas and the home of the Dalai Lama for our best attempt at a white Christmas! Our big day had started with a relaxing Tibetan massage and a walk in the mountains. However, our meal had a distinct lack of turkey but we
made up for it with curry, beer and beet root juice (I blame dad for that one!). The next morning we made a quick dash to the local temple where we heard the Dalai Lama was attending morning prayers. Couldn't quite believe we saw him just a few feet away.
After chilling ourselves to the bone we headed for warmer climates and to Agra the home of the Taj Mahal and another fancy hotel. The Taj was awesome and somehow exceeded our expectations. On route to our next destination we made an impromptu stop at a National Park famous for birds, we were a bit skeptical of what we would see on our cycle rickshaw with our trusty guide. However after seeing upteen eagles, owls and kingfishers we decided he wasn't too bad at his job. On the way out of the park I asked if I could cycle Gilly and the guide back in the rickshaw. All was fine as we sped along the narrow path surrounded by water, the picture of serenity was soon shattered as I lost steerage, balance, coordination and we promptly crashed upside down in a rather thorny bush (boy did Gilly laugh!). We
finally arrived in Jaipur with a slightly bruised ego but a few beers soon repaired the damage ;o)
Leaving the tourist trail behind we hoped on a plane and headed down to the south of India (well actually more like 4 hours delayed and sprinting through Bombay airport for our connection, it is India after all!). My godfather David had very kindly invited us to his newly built house in Kerala. We arrived just in time to see the in the New Year from a beach side restaurant. David's place was more of a palace than a house and lovely to have a 'home' for a while, especially one so close to lovely beaches, great food- thanks so much David! We spent our days relaxing by the beach or pool, and sampling fresh tiger prawns and fish bigger than our bellies. We did manage to tear ourselves away to visit the tip of India or their Lands End with a whole manner of temples and excited Indians.
Well all good things come to an end and my parents stay finally ended with a teary goodbye at the airport; as they headed back to London and we flew to
our next adventure.....South East Asia.....Gilly can't wait for Pad Thai!
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Jonesgirl
non-member comment
ooooh!
Wish we could have been there with you! V. impressed with your yoga techniques Gill :-) And the cake doesn't look too shabby either, Dave....