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Published: November 13th 2005
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Claire on the beach
Taking in the sunset after a hard days relaxing. Well, as of now we've reached Goa and all is well in the Claire and Marc camp - sandy white beaches, palm fringed coves and ace bamboo beach shacks are our wold today. However twas not always so, we'll try and fill you in on progress......
Day 1 - Leave Le Heathrow:
All went well after Marc managed to get food poisoning at the aiport before we even got to India - Spag Bol at Wetherpons can be very nasty in the wrong circmstances. Still after chatting to a fellow traveller in the lounge and readying ourselves we were off on BA127. The flight was pretty good apart from the lack of movies for Claire and the slightly odd meals (lamb stew - but not in a good way), as we watched the in screen map and saw India get nearer and nearer the excitement grew and then we were there..
Day 1 - Bombay:
Without question nothing ever prepared us for Bombay when we got off theplane. First of all the toilets in the airport - a hole...a hole in the ground with only a jug of water for toilt paper - i'm sure seasoned travellers know about
Our Island Paradise
View down the beach where we were living. this already but from my sheltered covetry life it was wierd. Anyway after getting the bags we managed to bypass the entire airport security system by walking around the side of it and the xray machines and headibng to thomas cook without making eye contat wih the gaurds. and then it was out into th city. anyone not familiar with bmbays road system cannot understand what goes on - i thought i'd seen bad in rome and other big cities, but not like this. i think as long as you constantly use your horn and try your hardest to disregard western stylr traffic laws you get on ok. i do have to hand it to the taxi men of the city though - they do a fine job and although pretty much all of the cars were indented to bits i didn't acually see any collisions. our particular driver didn't seem to impressed to get the hour long run with 2 backpackers to the supposed tourist district of colaba. by the time we go there it was pushing late afternoon and after being bunddled out of the taxi by the gateway of india we immeadiately got hit with much beggers, people trying to be our friend, hindu blessing people - everyone seeming to want our cas. evntually we got out of the madnes and found our way to the hostel area where we got a room for about 1000rupees - steep but we didn't know any different. fairly good room and a western style toilet !! that evening dinner was curry - and althouh being really good i was still suffering from spag bol and no being totally ok with the malaia tablets so managed only a small bit. attempts to explain this to our waiter didn't work and so we left with some funny looks. I think the highlight of the day was one rouge trader who tried to pull me in by saying i bore a resemblance to 'that film star rick ponting' - ace.
Day 2 - When Bombay goes bad
mainly due to our lack of knowing hat to do we had the bright idea of getting up super early (4am) to find a train from a staton in the middle of knowhere to ge top goa. this was a good plan but the train ended up no existing - so we were then at dadar train station north of bombay at 4.30 wih no train to get and only 400 irrate indians and lots of goats or company. as usual everyone wanted to be our friend fior the right price - which in this case was 300 rupees to get us to CST - the main station from where the train ctuially leaves from. this dispite 'peter' wanting us to only pay 30 at the start of the trip. eventually through the goats and hunger and tiredness we got to CST and it was horible - no idea where to go to get tickets and people lying about everywhere sleeping. the best we could manage in the end as a 100% hike up on the face value of a ticket from a tout - not pretty and definately a steep learning curve. still we kept on smiling and laughing and finally got on the 8 hour tain to goa (it took mch longer).
going to cut dowm on words now as i want a swim
Day 3 - Panjim
hotl republicca - good: no shower, grotty and dark but it wasn't bombay so we loved it.
evenng meal - hotel something or other, th point about that place was it had cool beer (the best we've ever had), excellent chicken xiacuti and fellow travellers (the first we'd seen siance we arrived really). I think after chatting to few of them the general concensus was we had thrwn ourselves in at the deep end , but things must only get better.
Day 4 - Goa
And they did - Panjim goas capial was nice enogh but no great shakes, quite a big indian tourist spot from what we could gather - but then we got a bus (of sorts) to the place where i;m writing this - which is to be fair.. paradise. both of us agree this had to be the most picturesque, beautiful place ever. as i look up from my monitor the beach is a couple of yards away the sea is 30 yards away, the sand is white and palm trees are everywhere. theres nohing more o it - perfect. shame really we have to leave tommorow to go back to bombay (boo) to get the 37 hour train to calctta. slight change of plan than before but we didn't realise quit how big india is, and quite how difficult it is to get anything done. so it's sight seeing by train, which some other travellers told us was one of the best ways to see a country anyway.
i kind of took over this blog as claire got ored and went for a swim - i'll get her to put some stuff on later.
marc - sorry about poor grammer - bad keyboard
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Piccies
How about some piccies please?