After leaving jobs in America, we decided to broaden our vistas by taking a meandering three month trip through Asia. If we enjoy it enough, we'll keep going.
We've traveled before, but not for this long. I'm sure we'll make mistakes along the way because we're learning as we go.
After our whistle stop tour of Tamil Nadu and Kerala, we were happy to spend some time eating home cooked food in Ahmedabad and then headed for some enforced relaxation in Goa. Ahmedabad is an expanding city in the heart of the Northern state of Gujarat. We’ve been here before, seven years ago. It has a lot of residential building, road expansions and commercial growth. We were lucky enough to be there during the nine day dance festival of Navaratri (which literally translates to 9 nights in Sanskrit). Imagine thousands of people, all dressed in vibrant, beautiful colors, dancing along a similar theme and moving in unison around various concentric circles. Those are the ‘garba’ dances that take place during the nine nights. It was a pleasure to witness and although some of the moves are ... read more
After lounging in Pondicherry for a week or so, it was time to get on the road to explore what South India had to offer. We had planned ten day’s travel with the first five to focus on historical places of interest, with the next five being focused more on scenery and relaxation. We fit a lot into a relatively short period of time but are happy to be settled back into some home life at my Dad and Step Mother’s house in Gujarat for a bit of normality (and clean clothes) after a couple of weeks on the road. Here’s what we’ve learned. Booking through a good tour company is a great way to explore unknown areas of the world. We had previously booked most of our trips through online resources like Trip Advisor and ... read more
We spent two days Fisherman’s Cove moving between the pool, the spa and the restaurants. By the end we were ready to feed our more adventurous side so were happy to be picked up for the hour drive to Pondicherry. Lessons learned. Don’t go to a temple at 3pm in the afternoon. We stopped at Mahabalipurum just outside of Fisherman’s cove. The town is famous for its stone carvings and has a temple overlooking the ocean and planned to take a look around. However at 3pm any time outside of the car is spent baking in an all encompassing heat that makes a leisurely stroll unrealistic. 2. Don’t do your morning walk after 8am. Like point 1, the heat makes exercise unpleasant after the ... read more
The flight… Long but uneventful. We watched Spy (decent), Hoff My Chest (a BBC mock-umentary staring David Hasselhoff playing David Hasselhoff in an attempt to revive his career in England) and fell asleep to Mad Max. Obviously things have got civilized again in the world (?) as it was the first flight in years where we had a proper knife and fork instead of their useless plastic cousins. Arrived at 3:30am to a busy Chennai international airport. After such a long flight we were thankful that it only took about half an hour to collect bags, get through customs and immigration. My niece / wonder-friend, Dhvani had kindly organized a car to pick us up and we were thankful for that as it looked a little random if we were to get a taxi provided by ... read more
