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Published: January 29th 2008
Indian Visitors Milling Around
The Indian people love to visit their cultural relics, it was nice to see.Christmas Day in Aurangabad
Some people may have been wondering on Christmas Day whether there was a more perfect place to be celebrating Big J’s B-Day than where they were. Perhaps there was somewhere out there more fitting, more appropriate, and more enjoyable than their particular gathering. You see, some of us are not lucky enough to be able to enjoy the comforts of home and family at Christmas; some of us are living far from where we grew up, some of us are traveling, some have no family to go to, some of us are traveling, and some of us are stuffed toys. This is a story of three such souls this Christmas: two travelers and one fun loving Santa.
After finding Mumbai to be a tad on the dull side, or more politely speaking, hellishly boring, Paul and I headed out into India proper in search of a good Christmas destination. As we were going to head to Goa for New Years we decided to head to the next best attraction in the region and soon found ourselves on a morning train to Aurangabad.
Now, trains in India really are something special; they’re not like trains
anywhere else that I’ve seen. I wouldn’t say that they are uncomfortable and thankfully we were not in any of the really packed out trains that tourists are always warned about (going back to my point in my previous journal about travel warnings in India being about as useful as an Appendix transplant) so our journeys were always enjoyable, but the prison-like iron bars across the windows, the dirty interiors, the toilets (less said the better), and the outrageously large amount of attention we received throughout the ride made us feel ever so slightly like new inmates in a prison.
The trains do have hilarious characters on them though, particularly among the “staff” (I presume that the salespeople coming up and down the train were not paid by the train company but I could be mistaken). Every now and then, at regular intervals of say. . . 10 seconds, a drinks seller would pass through the carriage. They would always yell out their product of course which meant that you would hear them coming from two carriages away which would indicate to me that they really didn’t have to yell it constantly, but who am I to criticise the
sales methods of India? Imagine walking along yelling “chai chai chai chai…” so loudly and constantly that it sounds a little more like “aichaichai”. I guess it’s hard to put into words the precise accent but, believe me, it sounded more like a carhorn than a person (speaking of which, being on a train happens to be the only possible physical state in which you are not able to hear constant car horns in India). When the chai (tea) sellers reached Paul and I they somehow got the idea into their heads that the only reason we weren’t buying their tea was that we didn’t know what they were selling so they would switch their call to “tea tea tea tea”, still at full two-carriage volume of course, and stand in front of us for half a minute while looking pleadingly at us. When this didn’t work they’d try the “chai chai chai” line again before realising that we really didn’t want another cup before they headed on. Of course, this delay in their carriage walking resulted in a chai-seller traffic jam which then snowballed into a full-on pileup because each and every subsequent seller would try to make sure
Looking Along the Length of Palolem Beach
We had a really good week here, I won't forget it. we understood what chai was.
I can happily report that Paul and I now know one Hindi word: Chai.
The ride to Aurangabad went well and we spent most of our time playing cards while trying to figure out where all the different passengers came from. Collected on the train were uncountable numbers of different traditional dress styles, castes, colours and ethnicities. As a first experience of countryside India I would definitely recommend a seating class train ride simply for the exposure to so many different people.
Aurangabad itself is a nothing; there is not a great deal to do in the city itself, particularly in terms of restaurants, cafes or bars, but there are quite a few attractions in the surrounding areas. The main reason for coming to the place is for the Ajanta and Ellora caves which are slightly north of town and we diligently visited them (they were interesting enough on occasion, particularly the Kailash temple at Ellora which is the worlds largest monolithic sculpture, but I’ll let my photos tell that story) but the more interesting stuff was closer to town; that was where we celebrated Christmas, Australian style.
When categorising the
Our Room
That's right, we are the leaders of ladies. . . important aspects of Christmas, listing what is important and not, you will probably run into a wall of confusion (if anyone can illustrate such a wall I’d love to see it) as I did. Really, what are the five most important things that you
must do on Christmas day that are still possible in a far flung town in the middle of a foreign country in which no one celebrates Christmas? Paul and I came up with the following:
1. Tour: We went on an ever-expanding autorickshaw tour to the old city sights of Aurangabad. Those who’ve been around Thailand, India, Malaysia or many other countries like them will know what I’m talking about, it’s when you get a driver to take you to one attraction for 50 rupees and when you attempt to get a ride back to where you started he appears and offers to take you for only 40 but then he offers to take you to a second sight along the way for an additional 20, and then a third for another 15, perhaps a fourth sight or maybe fourteen jewellery, pashmina, gold, gem or tailor stores as well, before he finally drops you home
Entry Gate to the Bibi Al Maqbara
Behind this lies the Taj Mahal, the poor man's Taj that is. Depite being built later than it's more famous cousin this mausoleum just doesn't quite match up to standards in terms of both granduer or beauty. and charges 200 rupees. You finish the trip fulfilled with the knowledge that you’ve seen all that there is to see, you’ve spent twice as long on the road as you expected and you’re maths skills need revising. We didn’t go for the full trip on Christmas day as we had lunch plans, but we did manage to fit in the baby-Taj (a mausoleum built in the same style as the famous Taj Mahal but on a significantly smaller and less grand scale), the famous waterwheel of Aurangabad (an intensely boring puddle of water surrounded by junky shops with a small, round griding stone which “mystically” turned by water power, wow, that certainly was an amazing feat of engineering there), and some boring archway or something, I forget exactly.
2. Shop: As we were leaving the waterwheel we were accosted by a group of Indian students from an Engineering college down the road who were as bored by the attraction as we were (they asked us what we though of the place and kind of smiled when we gave non-committal answers and polite but understated praise of the marvelously boring place). One of the guys was particularly brave and
Bibi Al Maqbara
It's beautiful all the same. was asking dozens of questions in an effort to impress all of the girls around him with his English skills (it worked wonders), he even introduced us to the two teachers who were escorting them on their “field trip”. Talking with the students had put me in a really good mood, particularly considering the oddity of them visiting anything on Christmas day, oh hang on, so were we, so as I walked along the tourist stalls outside I was definitely in the mood for impulse shopping. Like some sort of Christmas miracle I spied in one of the stalls something that really ought not to have been in a small random store in a random small city in the middle of completely non-Christian India, a poor lost soul waiting to be bought: he was Punjabi Santa. Within seconds and without bartering (we were talking a matter of mere cents here) Punjabi became the third member of our very Indian Christmas party.
3. Eat: No Australian Christmas would be complete without a massive meat-filled feast of Ben Hur-ish proportions. Because of where we were it was impossible to get the usual lunch of King Prawns, Barramundi, mounds of random shellfish,
more deserts than you could even want to attempt to taste, and whatever other random foodstuffs we can come up with on the day, nevertheless, Paul and I tried our best and came up with the best approximation available. We headed down to the only western-styled restaurant in town (it happened to be a really friendly place which also served great curries and imported wines, we went there a few times while we were in town) and ordered ourselves sizzling Chicken plates and gorged ourselves on what turned out to be as big a feast as we ever would have eaten back home. The owner of the restaurant was incredibly friendly and as soon as we entered he wished us a Merry Christmas as though he were our father. The restaurant was even done up with Christmas decorations (and Yogi Bear masks for some reason) and he offered to take us to an Indian “Christmas Party” that night (in the end we didn’t go to the party because we found out that it was just a trance party which had nothing at all to do with Christmas and would be completely devoid of westerners, not the sort of thing to
be doing on Christmas but it was nice that he invited us), but best of all, and this came as quite a shock to both Paul and I, the owner ran away and disappeared for ten minutes before he reappeared in the restaurant and promptly gave us both Christmas presents! We couldn’t believe our eyes; we had barely even met the man and he was as Hindu as they come but he went to some effort to buy us presents. We were impressed to say the least. Even Punjabi Santa had a great time (he ate more than either of us, not to mention how much he drank), in fact, Punjab was so popular that the restaurant owner actually wanted to keep him. Thankfully Punjab was wise enough to stick with Paul and I, he knew that there was more partying to be done.
4. Drink: Although it’s not everyone’s cup of tea, it is traditional in my family that you drink good wines on the big day so it would have been remiss of us to forget to have at least one bottle of Vino. Hindsight may be twenty-twenty but when it comes to alcohol you’re going to
Up On the Pedestal
We walked around, inside, through and anyway else that we could think of walking around the mausoluem. have blurry vision anyway so foresight was sufficient for us and Paul had brought a good bottle with him from Australia (Coonawarra Shiraz… ahhh I miss those). I’m not sure if the restaurant had ever had dealt with a BYO (they took a while to discuss the cost of corkage) and I am certain that our waiter had never opened a bottle before but that couldn’t stop us. Our Christmas feast was complete as Punjabi, Paul and I ate, drank and were merry.
5. And Drink More: After lunch the three of us party people were well in the mood, as is usual on Christmas Day, so we moved on to the most bar-like place we knew in the area. It was a small restauranty type place which always had more mosquitoe than patrons, more waiters than patrons, more patrons than beers on tables, and in general was completely unlike any pub or bar in Australia. We’d been to the bar on multiple occasions despite the mozzies and we’d tried all the different beers that Maharashta (the province we were in) had to offer; it turns out that the word “beer” is usually mistaken for “water” in that area
Detail of the Carvings
Carvings adorn almost every face of the pure marble structure. so 90%!o(MISSING)f all drinks were practically non-alcoholic (advantageous as the beers were a cheap substitute for purified water) so we had a limited choice of drinks. That didn’t matter on the day though and we happily found ourselves laughing and cavorting the afternoon away.
Christmas day went off brilliantly and it was easy to forget that we were in such a non-Christmas part of the world. After a couple of beers we rang home before thinking about dinner. In the end we decided to head back to the same restaurant as where we’d had lunch and we all got authentic north Indian curries to top off the day. In lieu of spending Christmas at home with my (newly) extended family I really couldn’t imagine a better substitute than the weird combination of activities that we fitted in this year.
Introducing Mr. Punjabi Santa
Punjabi Santa, Punjabi, Punjab, PJ, or that red thing hanging from Matty’s pants as he was variously called turned out to be the most rebellious character that we ran into in all of India. He was constantly getting into trouble, particularly with the ladies, and absolutely everything untoward that happened on the
trip either happened to him or can be blamed on him, except for the odd occasions where Paul misbehaved of course (I was always perfectly well behaved of course, honest). Given that he’s a six inch tall “Santa” doll which was so well designed that he looks as precisely unlike Santa Claus as a doll could while still being recognised as Santa (orange skin, a Rudolph the Reindeer nose, eyes that are on his hat and not on his face) Punjabi manages to have a great time at any party, particularly if drinking is involved.
Basically, Punjabi Santa was a great guy to travel with, and a great person to blame things on.
Punjabi Hits Goa
Aurangabad had been. . . what’s that adjective. . . interesting but we now needed somewhere different, somewhere that was not known for its “ancient temples”, “caves”, or “culture”. What we needed was a party. Starved for attention, other than the attention of a mostly crazy, half-Indian, half-English, Mohawk-inverse-mullet wearing man who incorrectly guessed the nationality of ever single western patron in the bar (including when he said a German hello to a French family, that went down well), we
were getting restless and we had to move onwards.
To that end we made a 36 hour transit via Mumbai (where we had a good lunch and a few beers with another good mate from Australia who happened to be in town and who happened to accidentally walk past the restaurant we were in at the right time) after which the three of us were walking up a small and sandy road towards Palolem Beach in Goa. Goa is where the party scene exists in India; it’s where alchohol is freely available, bars can stay open late, restaurants serve food from all over, beaches abound, and westerners proliferate the scene with their beachside cultures. Kind of like Thailand, something like Vietnam, some parts like Australia, occasionally like Ibiza, Goa has a place for everyone and anyone who wants to chill, relax, party, rave, or just go swimming.
At the very southern end of Goa (the province is very small and you can easily drive across it in an hour or two) is Palolem Beach, a place which used to be renowned for its tranquility and untouched serenity. Long and slender coconut palms reach out over the clean sands
and shade small sections of the clear waters where the calm Arabian Sea laps gently on the shore. A paradise on Earth waiting to be swam in, Palolem attracted backpackers many years ago and since then it has been built into a thriving hub of activity; all day long the beach is packed full of sunbathers, swimmers, diners and walkers. Indians and foreigners alike filled the beach in droves; it looked like the perfect place to celebrate New Years Eve.
Our first night in Goa was going to be the true test as New Years would only be good if the entertainment options were sufficient. This was where Paul shined through with his smooth skills with the ladies. In the late afternoon we had been walking along the beach to see what was around (and so that Punjabi could look at the girls on the beach, what a perve) when two Israeli girls stopped Paul and asked him to take their photo for them. Now, we should probably take a vote to prove this point but I’m of the opinion that Paul doesn’t really look that Israeli, also the loud English that we were speaking was probably a good
The Mystical Waterwheel
Wow, doesn't it look exciting? I can think of nothing more thrilling than low water pressure and un-chlorinated water. At least we ran into Punjabi out the front. clue, but despite this the girls used Hebrew when they talked to him. Eventually they cottoned on to their mistake and asked in English but the few seconds where Paul and two girls were dumbly staring at each other was magic in my eyes. After taking a few glamour shots of the girls, and a few of us as well, we were all set to keep on walking when Paul came out with one of those wonderful lines that you don’t see coming: “would you like to go out for dinner?” Sure, why not, I’ve got nothing better to do.
Dressed to impress (well, Punjabi chose to stick to the same old clothes that he’d been wearing in Aurangabad) the three of us headed out that night with the intention of painting the town red, white and green (still in the Christmas spirit and all). Although the two Isreali girls turned out to be the world’s most boring travelers - after being in Palolem and India for five whole days they were still yet to go swimming or eat Indian food because “they weren’t sure if it was safe” - Paul and I eventually found ourselves heading to Cocktails
and Dreams - a beachside bar - and later on at another place called Café del Mar where we ran into Freddy, our friend from back in Mumbai who likes to go onto dance floors while wearing headphones so that he can dance to his own music if the DJ isn’t any good, who subsequently introduced us to ten or so great people that we partied with for the rest of the week. This was the start of a trend which continued for the following six nights: eat a fantastic Indian dinner on the beach, go play pool, cards or have a chat in a quiet bar until midnight, then head on to Café del Mar where the party kicked off and everyone liked dancing. Every night was different, sometimes we went home early, sometimes late, one time I was feeling off and was falling asleep at 7pm and yet somehow managed to stay out later than any of the other nights (a pair of crazy Indian swingers and their business associates can be blamed for that one), sometimes things were quiet, often they weren’t, but on every single night Paul, Punjabi and I had a blast. Goa certainly is
party central.
Two Santas and One New Years Eve: Punjabi’s Big Night
Caution: only read this if you don’t mind hearing about youthful partying and all related occurences. (That means you should probably stop reading Nana) In the words of Punjabi Santa:
New Years Eve. . . man was that a good night! It started slow, built up big, somehow got huge and eventually became the best night ever. But where did it start?
I went out fairly early with Paul and Matty and we picked up some dinner at this little restaurant on the beach. Paul was all dressed up in his best, he’d even gone and gotten a barber to shave his scraggly beard but the silly boy hadn’t gotten his point across properly and the barber had taken off too much of it. Still, the goatse look awesome, if he didn’t pick up then no one would. At the time I couldn’t tell why but Matty was wearing two shirts, a button-up one over the top of some T-shirt that he wouldn’t show me, didn’t he realise that we were in the tropics? It was hot babuji!
Dinner was tops, simply Christmas Pudding. . . Or Close Enough
Traditional Indian "ice-cream". . . it was really tasty actually. Sort of like western ice-cream but not at all fluffy and in a whole bunch of new flavours. perfect. We got a whole Lobster and a Red Snapper, we picked them ourselves, and the cooks there cooked them up Tandoori style. Ohh that was tasty! We got some local wine to go with it as well. You know how they say that you shouldn’t have red wine with fish? Well, that might be true but you shouldn’t have Indian wine with anything! It was so bad that Paul couldn’t even finish his glass. I didn’t care though, I finished it off by myself just so that I could get the party started.
After that great dinner, and a scotch of course, it was New Years after all and I could guarantee that nowhere else would give us good drinks at proper prices, we headed into Cocktails and Dreams to see if things were going off already. The fireworks were starting along the beach already, every now and then you’d here a crackle and bang from one of the restaurants where some rich pundit had bought himself two seconds of fun, actually, we saw one box of fireworks which had fallen over and was shooting straight along the beach for a while! I suggested we stay indoors for
Friendly Waiters at the "Bar"
Celebrating Christmas with whoever we could find! a bit. It must have been 10:30 or 11 by then, I forget, Matty had the watch, but the bar wasn’t really kicking off yet. Sure, people were around but they were all still eating dinner. We sat ourselves at the bar, got some beers, and I started chatting to these two pretties beside me. English I think, cute as hell, pretty fun too, and Paul finally got up the nerve to come and talk as well. We were going alright there I thought but the bar wasn’t what we needed for midnight so we asked the girls to come down to Café del Mar with us. We thought it’d be big down there and it sure was pumping. I mean, it usually doesn’t start up until midnight there but it was packed out completely, you could barely make it to the bar to get a drink. People were dancing on the tables, dancing in the aisles, dancing in their seats, it was happening. Paul picked up two beers for each of us, he said it meant we wouldn’t have to go back to the bar as often, I said it just made it easier for Matty to spill beer
all over himself (he’s useless like that).
The music was cool but I wasn’t really paying much attention to that. There were so many people around; it was great! We ran into the Scottish girls that we’d met with Freddy a couple of nights before but they weren’t really in the party spirit so I tried to get them up and dancing. After a while though I just thought I get back up to the front where everyone was up on the tables and such (the bouncer kept trying to stop people from getting up there but every time he got involved and pulled one person off another five would jump up, he was losing that battle and he soon gave up completely. Girls, guys, Europeans, Australians, Americans, Mexicans, Indians, North Pole-ians; we were all going mental, five hundred people packed into one small deck area. Two more beers appeared in my hands out of nowhere; it was time to pull out my Punjabi dance moves.
At five minutes to twelve the pumping techno music stopped for five seconds and a slightly muffled “5, 4, 3, 2, 1” went out across the crowd which instantly jumped up into
Now That's a Smile!
Check out this waiter! He was really happy to be celebrating. a whole new level of partying. Fireworks started going off everywhere around us and along the beach; hundreds of them exploding together, filling the entire area with explosions. Flares and rockets, big bangs, small fizzes, and even the monstrously large fireworks you see in professional shows were going off constantly. On the ground the explosion was even bigger as people surged around hugging, kissing, hi-5-ing and yelling “Happy New Year”. Matty, Paul and I went down onto the beach to see if we could run into some of the girls that we’d been talking to earlier and we found thousands of people packing out the area around the bar. The entire beach, all the way down to the water’s edge and a good 30 meters either side of the bar, was full of Indians celebrating and dancing. Matty and I got out and started dancing with the locals, showing off our style, ok, I was showing off some style and Matty was gyrating like a retard.
To say that we were having a good time is so much of an understatement that I probably ought to edit it out of this sentence; we were having a massively, intensely, insanely
good time. After 15 minutes or so though the bar clientele started changing as all the westerners headed up to the north end of the beach where there was supposed to be a big bonfire and dancing party. We found ourselves surrounded completely by overly interested Indian men (they have a fascination with showing off to westerners for some odd reason) so we decided to move down to the bonfire. By this point Matty had the most ridiculously large grin on his face and he had for some reason started speaking with an Irish accent (he swore that he wasn’t doing it deliberately, it was just coming out that way for some reason) and Paul was singing. Lolloping down the beach to the best songs from “Pirates of Penzance” at maximum volume must have made a grand scene for the other partygoers.
At the bonfire we chilled out a bit and had a sit down with some of our friends. Chatting away, Paul and I were talking to a really gorgeous Norwegian girl (I thought I was getting closer to her than Paul was, I was sort of wishing he’d go away and leave me to it, come on
Pillars at Ajanta
The Ajanta caves are a series of Buddhist cave temples which were carved out of the hillside around a riverbend. The caves are absolutely enormous and were excavated entirely by hand. man, she was holding me in her arms!) I’m not sure where Matty went, probably off dancing like a monkey again. We sat around for ages, chatting away, having a laught, it was a really cool way to start the new year. It wasn’t as intense as del Mar had been but I don’t think we could have kept up with that all night anyway. After a bit thought someone suggested we go dancing! Oh I love dancing. That’s when disaster struck.
Paul got up, the Norwegian girl got up, they went off to the dance floor, and poor Punjabi me, I was left by myself at the bonfire. How could they just run off and leave me! Don’t they realise that a six inch tall man can’t walk as fast as them? It took a good five minutes before Matty came out and found me. He explained that Paul had thought the girl had taken care of me, yeah right, good excuse. Some silly girl leaves me face down in the sand and Paul doesn’t even notice! At least Matty came out and got me, after that though I tried to ignore that girl.
Anyway, we all
ended up inside on the dance floor with a cool group of English guys and girls. We pretty much danced the night away to tell you the truth, we were there for ages. At some point or other Paul came up with the idea of “going Indian” so we all dressed up using the party streamers. The only problem was that everyone forgot which part of the world they were in and somehow ended up looking like Apaches. It was good fun though. Eventually we realised that our legs couldn’t keep dancing all night, not before Matty and I did a funky little dance for all the ladies though, so we went back out to the fire and chilled out. Paul was still talking to the Norwegian girl, or trying to, it was late and she was tired so he sort of just sat there while she slept on his lap (I suppose that was the gentlemanly thing to do, she had to wait for her friend before she could go home or something, I forget). At some point I was pulled aside by someone who said that he just had to introduce me to the “real Santa”. I didn’t
Girl in a Doorway
Inside one of the 20-odd caves at Ajanta. really care if he was real or not, anyone who dresses up in a Santa costume at Christmas time is just complimenting my fashion choices in my opinion, so I went and met him. Sure enough, he had my beard down but I suspect that he couldn’t deliver presents even half as fast as me! It had been such a massive night, so much dancing, so many good laughs, so much excitement from everyone, and in such a wonderful location down on the warm beach. I was really tired myself and I crashed out, can’t quite remember where but it was someone else’s floor, Paul disappeared somewhere and I think Matty went home early by himself (he’s such a well behaved boy isn’t he? By that I mean that he’s boring). It was by far the best New Years that this Santa has ever had!
I would have to say that having a mascot is an absolute must for any travelers. Dolls, T-shirts, bobble-heads, toys, dishcloths, or even nymphomaniac, alcoholic, party fiends like our Punjabi Santa, holiday mascots make for a hell of a good time at parties. I mean, how often has someone seriously asked you “is that
The Inside of One of the Oldest Caves
Inside the more modern caves there were statues of the present Buddha while in the old caves the style was much less specific. Instead of human forms they only carved symbols such as footprints or stupas like this one. a Santa in your pocket or are you happy to see me?”
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