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Published: August 11th 2011
We've now added pictures - enjoy!
Well, here is our first update from India. We are a little later posting this than we anticipated as internet coverage has been a little sparse. We spent a couple of nights in Mumbai. It was a very entertaining introduction to Indian driving but was built up, claustrophobic and had extremes of poverty and opulence side by side. The people were very warm and welcoming and curious about why white faces were in their neighbourhood. We found a nice wee taxi man who showed us all we wanted to see by day and accosted an English couple in a restaurant that evening to give us the gen over a few Kingfisher beers.
Next stop was a 2 hour flight to Kerala, right at the southern tip of India. Much more relaxed, hippie beach resorts where we could chill out. Rooms to rent for around £6 per night but took a while to get used to cold showers and over-firm mattresses! Had a day trip to an elephant sanctuary where we managed to ride one and feed them bananas. Fantastic to drive between the coconut palms, bananas, papaya and pineapple trees and, of course, sample
each of them. Enjoying also sampling the local curries which even appear for breakfast. Beer in Kerala is essentially illegal so restaurants serve it in mugs and hide the bottles under your table- reminded me very much of some patients in Muirhouse!!
We moved up through several places in Kerala but were frustrated by lack of progress- driving covers only about 30km/hour so seems to take forever to get nowhere. We chartered a rice barge houseboat and went for a 2 day cruise in the backwaters which were heaven on earth. So relaxed and beautiful- a must for any India visit. We felt a bit overindulgent/colonial as we had a staff of 3 and 2 double en suite rooms but only cost £75!!
Decided to head up to north India as we were getting nowhere fast by car and it turns out that India is massive! Got a flight from Kochin to Delhi yesterday and arrived in Delhi last night to find our hotel in a street which resembled a football crowd mixed with a farmyard and a grand prix! Very entertaining but a bit intimidating when you are tired from driving all day! Decided that we will spend
Mumbai
cycling to sharpen his work tools - brilliant idea!5 days seeing north India on a guided tour then head over to south-east Asia a bit earlier than planned. Had a tour of Delhi this morning and was very pleasantly surprised that it has fantastic open spaces with beautiful buildings and is very well laid out. Had a 5 hour drive to Jaipur in Rajasthan this afternoon where our driver did well to avoid cows, monkeys, camels, goats, pigs and, of course, millions of other crazy drivers, pedestrians and rickshaw operators. Apparently Indian drivers use their horns once every 100-200metres. That means our guy must have used his horn 1250-2500 times in five hours. Mmm, relaxing. Karen managed to sleep through most of it though!! It seems that we have developed a new form of backpacking for “over 30’s professionals” where you just hail a cab and get the driver to take you wherever you want to go for whatever he wishes to charge. To be fair, a car and driver costs about £20 or so a day, and I don’t fancy driving! It’s just a bit like flying to Edinburgh airport and hailing a black cab to Aviemore!!! Simples!
We head to Bangkok on Tues 16th August and
will have plenty time to see SE Asia.
Thanks to all for texts/emails. Keep them coming! We hope to blog more when we get out of India.
Stevoline- have great stag/hen dos.
Bat- we found a beer called “Haywards 5000”. Have saved you the label.
Ben- Happy 8th birthday!! Hope you have lots of fun!
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Bat
non-member comment
tell 'em that england are whuppin' india in the test series and will soon knock 'em off world-number-one spot. i bet you can't put down a hayward 5000.