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Published: January 23rd 2011
So New Year had come and gone, and it was time to give Northern India another go. Because the flights were way too expensive, we resigned ourselves to a nightmare overnight bus journey to Bangalore, 5 hours waiting on a train platform, and then 25 hours cross country to Mumbai. After not sleeping on the bus, we wanted a nice quiet train journey but no, instead the locals decided to play cards next to our bunks, while simultaneously practicing their English skills and trying to make conversation. Its frustrating sometimes - at least in China nobody had the ability to talk with us; now its impossible to have any time to yourself - people have no compunction about tapping you on the shoulder while you're listening to your ipod...and the conversation is always the same - "which country?", First time in India?", "are you married?". Sarah gets ignored some of the time for the sin of being female, but Paul get no such luck. Don't get me wrong, the people here are very friendly but still, sometimes...
Anyway rant over, we eventually got to Mumbai and were pleasantly surprised. Yes, its expensive but its a cool city. We went to
the Gateway of India (through which the British left at the end of the Empire), and wandered around streets whose architecture made it look like Central London. I know precisely nothing about architecture but it looked very impressive. We saw Victoria Station (2 million people every day), the Prince of Wales Museum, and roughly 1000 cricket matches being played. We also took a day trip out to the slums - we thought it was going to be a guided tour so were a bit put out when the driver stopped and told us it was too dangerous for him to leave the car and that we should get out and explore!
While a little bit nerve-racking, it was nevertheless amazing to see how people live in the slums...if anything Slumdog Millionaire doesn't paint a harsh enough picture of quite how much poverty there is. At one stage later in the day, while driving around the Bangladeshi slums, the driver warned us he couldn't stop the car, and that we had to take quick, subtle photos - it was just too dangerous to linger.
From Mumbai we took a train to Ahmedabad, the gateway to the North West border
with Pakistan, and then got to the Little Rann Wild Ass Sanctuary. We had arranged a homestay with a local guy who took us out on safari into the desert to see whatever wildlife we could find, as well as the people who live in this inhospitable terrain. We saw the Ass, loads of deer and birds (flamingos and pelicans). On the subject of people, we watched a family harvesting salt (the sanctuary floods with saltwater every year) and that for every tonne of salt they produce they get the equivalent of two English pounds. Crazy stuff.
In this province there's little meat, and almost everybody lives as a vegetarian. We had some ideas of losing some weight but the amount of foods ridiculous...i think we made the mistake of finishing our meal on the first night, so the hosts thought they hadn't served enough...now we just get piles and piles...good stuff as well!
From Little Rann we went to Bhuj, a town nearly destroyed in an earthquake a few years back - its quite surreal wandering through buildings still suffering god knows what damage. One day we took a jeep out into the desert again to see
how the local communities lived. It wasn't quite the experience we hoped for (it was more like going to a shopping centre - everybody wanted to sell us something) but we did get to within about 30km of Pakistan. My idea of a day trip didn't go down too well with Sarah.
In Bhuj we met an English couple who had a similar itinerary to us, and we arranged to all travel together to our next stop - the Sasan Gir Wildlife Park. This is the only place in Asia that still has wild lions and luckily we managed to see one (although in the photos it could be anything from a dog to a dinosaur). There was also some amazing scenery, crocodiles, loads of deer, monkeys etc. We missed a leopard by only a couple of minutes though - extremely gutted.
Gujarat is a completely dry state, so we decided to now head to Diu, a former Portuguese port which for some reason has cheap booze. And for the past 4 nights we have sat here eating sea food and drinking beer. We did see the fort, and walked to a couple of secluded beaches, but the
main thing was to relax.
An overnight bus tonight will take us to Udaipur, which is where the Lake Palace from Octopussy (James Bond) was filmed, and from there we intend to have a look around Rajastan. My impressions of this region when we first came to India were not good - it will be interesting to see if that's changed at all.
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Anneka g
non-member comment
Hi hello!!!
Still enjoying your blogs, you guys do make me chuckle! Shame about the Xmas present! Hope your feeling better... Sure your used to it by now! Can't wait for the next installment. Take care miss ya xxx