INTOLERABLE INDIA - Heading North - GOA, HAMPI, MUMBAI, VARANASI

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ANJUNA

So we arrived in Goa a little earlier than expected, and before our booking into the resort so we went to Anjuna - supposedly party town with beach raves etc. Our train got in pretty early and we were quite far from Anjuna so had to stump up a tuk-tuk all the way there for Rp500, but we were too tired to moan!
As usual there was a festival on so accommodation was far and few between, we did find a nice place run by this crazy old lawyer lady, a tad pricier than expected but it was pretty much the only place decent open at that ungodly hour.
We didn’t do much in Anjuna, we went to the beach by day and settled into a movie bar at night where we watched Slum Dog many times, and tried to find the elusive raves, of which we heard about but could never find!

There is the most amazing flea market on every Wednesday. It was a hippy/traveller paradise of cool things, clothes, jewellery, souvenirs - you name it, it was there! So that was a lot of fun… plenty of European hippies here selling there home made things. Great place and well worth seeing. Very much like being at the stalls at Glastonbury!

That night we did manage to find the beach party, we had to climb over some rocks and things to get there, with our ears seeking out the way, and we got there only to find it was a just a large beach bar with some tunes (good tunes to be fair) but no one dancing, it was pretty lame. So we left!

BENAULIM

Finally it was time to go to our long-awaited relaxing FREE holiday at luxury resort… well as you all know that was not the case, and we got booked into the wrong resort and had to lump it in the very lowest class resort they had! TYPICAL!!!
We had been assured by the manager that they would try to move us if one of the other resorts had a spare room, but of course that didn’t happen.

We had to be given the spiel by a salesman on the first day we were there, trying to get us to buy one of their time-shares, obviously that wasn’t going to happen but we had to go along according to the terms and conditions of the prize.

The place we ere at was nevertheless still a step up from the other places we’d been staying and had a mini kitchenette so we could (kind of) cook, no oven or anything so all the roasts we planned were out the window.

Yet again we chilled most of the time, by the pool, free of gawkers and hawkers. The unfortunate thing about Indian beaches is you never get left alone, either some lady trying to sell you fruit, or a girl trying to sell you jewellery or a man selling massages, or worst of all, a man (or group of men) just blatantly staring at you tongues flapping in the wind. So were glad to rid of them for two weeks.

We had the great news that my mum would be coming out for a two week jaunt. So we had to plan what to do to have some fun. The holi festival (Colour powder festival) was coming up and mum changed her flight to arrive that day especially for it. We had rented the coolest jeep we could find to pick mum up and to go back to Anjuna for the market again as I was sure mum would love it!

So we went to Panjim the state capital of Goa and tried to find somewhere where the festival was in full force. The holi festival is a Hindu festival of colour celebrating the arrival of spring. Holi means colour and everyone gets coloured powder and water and throws it all over the place, and wipe their brightly coloured paws all over you. Jolly good fun and a great photo opportunity. We found a town square type place with a live Indian band and great music blaring from the speakers and a whole hoard of people dancing and throwing up colourful dust everywhere… we had found our festival!

It was great, strangers coming up and greeting you by slapping you in the face with some pink, blue, green, and purple! Me and mum even got our boogie on with the locals in the sandpit dance floor and got showered with yellows and pink. The only downside is that due to the unrelenting heat the festival usually stops around midday; but that was fine as we had some serious shopping to do at the flea market! Great pictures were taken but the flip side is that you might destroy your camera in the process with all the powder. So some serious dodging had to be done!!

We had a dip in the sea before throwing ourselves into shopping as we had all been up early (and mum had been travelling all day and night) so we washed off in the sea and hit the market, which mum ended up buying half of!!!
We stayed in Anjuna that night to save the long journey back south to Benaulim for the next day when we were all rested.

HAMPI

Mum and I had come up with a plan that would keep everyone happy as I wanted to go to Hampi, Gareth wanted to go to Bombay, and Mum wanted to go to Varanasi. So we all got a few days each. Perfect!
It was a 10 hour bus ride to Hampi, on a bus that we did not have sleeper beds, just recliner seats, and that had bad arse bed bugs or something as I got covered in massive horrendous bites all over my lower back and arms - wherever had been touching the seats, and mum’s came out the day after and dint clear up for a week!

Hampi is a one street town with very cute little back lanes with guesthouses scattered around, we found a little place next to the river with a great view of the area. The scenery around Hampi is simply breathtaking. Boulders cover practically every inch of the land, its clear it used to be a river bed or under the sea at some point. Its one of those places that doesn’t look real and it’s spectacular. Remember the film The Flintstones?? This was just like that! Not only is the scenery great but the temples are magnificent, much better than any we have seen in India so far, not that dissimilar to Mamallapuram, but a much bigger scale and a lot more of them too.

We arranged with a tuk-tuk to give us a tour to the main sights for the day and then to take us to the other side of the river for the remaining sights the next day. All the temples were great, and still in beautiful condition, although some had be desecrated by the Muslims, heads chopped off the gods, that kind of thing.
The next day mum and I headed out, without Gareth, to the other side of the river. It was a totally different scene, lots of rich green paddy fields along with the same staggering boulders (on the other side it much more sand and dusty). We started off climbing a million stairs up to the monkey temple. We had bought some bananas to give to the naughty animals but had them snatched off us by a massive langur (black face monkey) not half way up the steps! The view up the top of the temple was overwhelming. Boulders as far as the eye could see, and from that perspective they looked like nothing more than pebbles scattered across the land.

The rest of the temples were pretty naff in comparison the old beautiful ones of Hampi town. They were new, and not really anything to look at.
The Hampi experience was ending, time to get another bus, this time to Bombay/Mumbai (whatever you want to call it)

BOMBAY

We were cleverer this time round and booked a sleeper bed so we could actually get some horizontal rest! And luckily this time there were no bed bugs! The driver was terrible though- driving very fast, breaking very hard, beeping all the way through the night and tossing us all over the place, so it wasn’t that restful in the end!
We arrived late in Bombay, and drove through the now famous huge slums, with children on the side of the main roads all squatting in a line doing their morning poos. Lovely… what a welcome!

Finding a hotel was rather hard, everything was a lot more expensive than we expected, especially in the Colaba area (where the Taj hotel is) Gareth checked out the cheapest option in the book but it turned out to be derelict and a drug den! There were guys everywhere trying to get us to look at their places or sell us drugs! Mum and I stayed firmly in the car while Gareth carried on hunting, and while him and the driver were on the prowl a gas station attendant slashed the taxis tyres! (this is standard practice apparently!) It was not and good start. We eventually found Moti Mansion which had a triple room for around £20 a night. That will do!

We dropped our bags off, had a shower etc and went to go to the nearby sights - the Gate of India, and the infamous Taj Palace Hotel. At the gate we were approached by a chap selling taxi tours of the city, taking us around various sights in Bombay including the dhobi ghats (open air washing) Ghandi museum, Victoria terminus and a few others not worth mentioning. The tour was quite expensive, we had been told by the lovely hotel manager (Raj) that it should be Rps400 total, but this chap wanted 400 each, and told us that the tour included all the entrance fees which themselves amounted to 400 per head. Oh how we were scammed once again!!! There were no entrance fees anywhere… but don’t worry he got his just desserts, we didn’t pay the full whack, and his manager got an earful off us…

The sights were ok, the dhobi ghats were really cool. Loads of men washing and beating clothes out in the sunshine in lots of concrete tubs, there are men to wash, men to dry, men to iron, men to carry loads from one place to another… makes a change from the women doing all the work!
Down the road from the ghats was a fishing village, the very same one that the terrorist had used in November, so we weren’t allowed to go in as there were police on guard but we did manage to get a few cheeky snaps.

We went to a Jain temple and then onto the Ghandi museum which was in the house that he used to stay in when in Bombay. It was informative, lots of pictures, and letters from him to various people, even one that he had written to Hitler urging him to stop his killings.
The Victoria terminus train station was built by the British (as all the beautiful building in India are! ) it is a great big gothic styled building, complete with gargoyles. It reminds me a bit of a typical English boarding school!

We finished up the day by heading out to the numerous shops on the main Colaba road next to our hotel. Mum yet again bought half the street!! We also went to the market area where every street handles a different trade pretty much.
The next few days we did the shops and had some clothes tailor made, and sampled the grub and also went to a very, very nice restaurant with the best thali (all you can eat meal with lots of different vegetarian dishes) we’ve ever had!
The day before we left Mum and I got scouted by casting man wanting us to be in a Bollywood movie!! But they were filming the next day and we were leaving, boo hoo... oh well, I have his card and should I return I was told to call him!

VARANASI

Well the time had come to leave and head up to Varanasi which is a very important town for Hindus, and millions of them come to wash away their sins in the Ganges river, or cremate loved ones. It is said that if you die in Varanasi you go straight to heaven and do not get reincarnated (or something like that) and therefore escape the cycle of birth and death (???).
Anyhow, mum wanted to come and so there we were. It was a short plane ride with a quick half hour stop in Delhi and onto Varanasi.
The city was not what we expected at all, we were thinking it would be a small stretch of houses lining the river and that was it. What we found was a huge sprawling city (2.5million), the loudest place with the most traffic I have ever seen (and that is saying something). Mum had checked the book and found an old Maharaja palace that was converted into a hotel, it sounded lovely, but the reality was awful, it had obviously been converted in the ‘70s and the décor was ugly, ugly, ugly! Not at all sympathetic to the building or in keeping with the original use of the building, but the prices were! Needless to say we did not stay there. Our taxi dude took us to hotel Surya which was a beautifully restored mini palace thing, in its own private gated garden, with pool, café, internet, and shop - like a little village within the city in which we did not have to deal with the Indian people that much. ALL GOOD!

It was already quite late in the day so we settled down had some grub and went to bed to get some rest. The next day mum and I went to visit the ghats (riverside steps for washing, bathing etc) and to see what was what. We got taken around by out two tuk-tuk chaps Nireej and Dinesh, who are training to be guides (they arranged the rest of our Varanasi activities too). We got to see quite close up the cremations, where people are laid upon various woods depending on your wealth, i.e. if you’re rich you get sandalwood. The bodies are submerged into the Ganges then cremated and once incinerated the ashes are put into the Ganges. This process goes on 24 hours a day.

That night we all went to the ghats to watch the sunset and the nightly prayers - where half of the town comes out to sing and make offerings. Tourists rent boats and get rowed up the river to watch from the water. It really was quite a spectacle, at least 2 to 3 thousand people there, all facing the water on the steps, with 7 monks doing some sort of rituals with incense and fire, and music blaring from speakers. As with so much of India it is hard to describe, its one of things you have to see with your own eyes to full comprehend, I hope our photos do it justice.
We too bought some lotus flowers with candles and offered them to the Ganges on behalf of people we were wishing for.

Then it was time to go back as we were coming back to the ghats for sunrise the next day. Sunrise on the ghats is a time where people come to wash themselves and wash their clothes and start the day’s rituals, whatever they may be. It was great people-watching and seeing traditions and day-to-day life of pious Hindus. There were people of all ages all along the river’s edge cleansing themselves and praying for good luck that day, and even a bunch of guys sitting on top of a pillar doing some hilarious ‘laughter therapy’ - mum joined in for a giggle too!

The next day we had arranged for Nireej and Dinesh to take myself and Mum around the sights of the city - the temples mainly but we also visited the Muslim district where families weave rolls of material and then hand-stitch intricate details.
The temples were nice, apart from the first one where two men took a sneaky pic of me, followed by a group of school boys who also took a pic of me, and then a man tried to kiss me! That was no fun, and I got very upset at the disrespectfulness of it all, not just on myself but that these boys would do this in their place of worship, they have no respect for anything it seems, I really didn’t expect to be so accosted in a temple, it was the most violated I have felt in this country, and there have many of these occasions unfortunately, none quite as bad as someone trying to kiss me though.

Nireej was greatly disappointed in his fellow Indians and from then on came with us to the rest of the temples, just in case, but it was so much better having him there as we could ask him all the questions we had about various things and he explained the rituals etc.
The old town where the Muslim community create their textiles was really quaint, small little streets and in every house there is a spinning or weaving machine - not a real machine, and old wooden thing that still needs to be operated by hand. We got taken to a shop that sells and exports these handmade fabrics and yet again mum did not fail in the purchase department!

Near Varanasi is the town of Sarnath, where Buddha gave his first sermon after achieving enlightenment. That was last on the list of things to see, so mum and I spent the last day before leaving there exploring the Buddhist ruins (from around 5AD some thought to be as old as 200BC!!! ) and walking around the stupa that marks the spot that Buddha gave his sermon. There was also a great little museum there with lots of old relics from as early as 3AD, statues of Buddha and other deities, some other similar things and also a massive 3metre wide stone umbrella! Again, you have to see it to believe it, unfortunately photography was not allowed…

So that was that, the next day mum flew back to Bombay to catch her plane to Paris, and Gareth and I caught our train to Agra to finally see the Taj Mahal.

Stay tuned to channel blog; it’s going to get really interesting now!!!!!

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