Different India

---

Dear all, from now on I will be writing in English, so that my pals from Bangalore can enjoy too! Lisa and I have already seen much of India and I can say that we begin to like it more and more. At first the different culture is really hard to cope with: people behave dissimilar from the European way and it seems that if you ask someone for directions or anything else they do not seem to have any clue. You might wonder why for me this was also the case because I already spent much time there. Well: life at the university is so much different from the average life outside the gates of the campus that I had to get accustomed to that AS WELL (right, Erix!?).
Well I left you all writing about the monsoon so I will start from there. In Kerala we spent a magnificent time on a houseboat (20 july to 21 july) and were treated like a king and queen. We had our personal cook, whose name was something like Yogashi. He would ask us whether we thought it was time for our lunch and dinner and when we told him we were up for some food, he’d vanish in to the kitchen where he prepared a wonderful dish with fresh fish from the backwaters. After lunch we took a dive into the rivers and cooled down a little bit, because the monsoon was graceful with us and had given us the most wonderful whether since then! Sunny sky and a nice cool breeze! Yogashi took us to an island where we could feed monkeys: really cute. After chilling on the backwaters we took our first (short!) 8 hour train ride from kasargod to thivim in Goa which is about 480 kilometres. The ride was really chill and sleeper class rocks! Train riding in India is not stressful at all. We arrived in Goa pretty early, where we took the first bus to the beach in Anjuna. We found a great hostel there for Rs 250 only (3,70 euro per night for 2 persons) and stayed there from 22 to 27 july. We saw the abandoned beaches and beach shacks which were nothing more than some palm leaf covered huts. We were the only two tourists on the entire beach, because it was out of season. While we were lying there, suddenly we were overwhelmed by the presence of 7 shop owners who would begin to show everything they sold. Can you imagine: a completely deserted beach with 2 white people surrounded by sales man and women. We rented a scooter for three days and went to old Goa to visit Portuguese churches and on the way back where we stopped to buy some water, they just lit up a tandoor. We felt hungry, so we asked if we could have anything out of that oven. They served us a whole chicken, grilled in that tandoor, together with fresh (garlic) naan: my favourite (sorry Lisa for my bad breath). On Sunday morning at 7:30 we attended a Catholic Church mass which was held completely in Hindi. The only 2 words we understood were fellowship and amen! Afterwards we went to Baga beach and found that there were actually more tourist than only Lisa and I. We had no swimming clothes, but we just plunged into the water with our normal clothes on: lovely! We had some dinner at a local beach shack which actually looked okay. Funny was to notice that when we set foot in there, they turned the techno music up to maximum volume, haha :s
The next and last day we did nothing interesting which was good because monsoon decided to drop some (read: a lot) of rain that day! At night we had a date with two other backpackers who stayed at the same hostel. They knew a good beach shack not far from the hostel and we decided to have dinner there together. They were both twice our age, but we had a lot of fun and beer. We left kerala the 28th and after a 35 hour train journey from thivim via kota and jaipur we arrived 29 july at jodhpur (rajasthan). In the train people walk around with all kinds of food and at stations I was able to buy some snacks: delicious! Especially the samosa’s (fried pastry filled with potato, vegetables and spices) and a type of snack called pakora (some kind of deep fried dough filled with feta cheese or potato) are really yummy. Yesterday, Lisa felt a little bit ill and we relaxed in our hotel room. I walked the market to buy her some apples and bananas (0.30 euro per kg) and to see all kinds of colourful clothes in a not so colourful city which has a wonderful fort by the way. The scenery here is so much different from the green kerala and has an enormous desert like atmosphere and whether (although at the moment it is rather cloudy).Today we visit the spice market and the fort from Jodhpur. After this we plan to go to jaisalmer to see more of the desert. Thanks for reading! Greetings from Rajasthan!

Freek

---