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Published: February 10th 2008
Jaipur
Camel & its driver transporting goods along the road Hello everybody, the last few weeks of our Indian journey have differed somewhat. The first two weeks comprised frenetic travelling across the incredible state of Rajasthan and then onto Goa via Mumbai. The last two weeks have involved chilling out on a beautiful, palm fringed Goan beach, the latter being a great antidote to the former.
After leaving Rishikesh, we had a nine hour bus journey back to Delhi which gave us a taste of things to come. We stopped in Delhi for the night before catching the early train to Jaipur, the capital of Rajasthan. Fortunately we had arranged a pick up from the station with our hotel, as after alighting from the train we were mobbed by at least 50 rickshaw drivers. We've learnt that rickshaw drivers don't listen, because despite telling them countless times that we'd arranged a pick-up they still persisted with their attempts to get us into one of their "air conditioned, Indian helicopters" (and onto the hotel of their choice). The bloke at our hotel laughed when we told him we'd been mobbed at the station. He said that when they send a pick-up, the driver can't hold up signs showing the name of
Jaipur
Fruit and veg for sale in one of Jaipur's famous bazaars the guests, or other rickshaw drivers will copy it and hold up the same signs! They're definitely enterprising we'll give them that!
After checking into the hotel we headed for Jaipur's old city. Known as "the pink city" it lived up to its billing, at least at street level, as all the buildings are painted a salmon colour. This is a tradition which began in 1876 to welcome the Prince of Wales, as pink is the colour of hospitality.
The city had a different feel to many of the places we had visited in India, and the proximity of the desert was evident by the camel carts plodding through the congested streets.
Jaipur is full of colourful bazaar's selling all manner of goods, and it seems that women are the same the world over, as the shops and stalls were packed with ladies haggling over jewellry, saris and spices. We spent time exploring the sights, visiting the impressive City Palace and Hawa Mahal. Outside the City Palace we caught our first glimpse of a snake charmer, its one of the first things I'd associated with India as a child, so it was great to see one in
Jaipur
Andrew at the City Palace the flesh. The charmer was encouraging tourists to stroke the back of the snakes head, although we decided not to, after seeing the Cobra dart aggressively at a French tourist who tried to touch it - luckily she had sharp reactions!
That evening we decided to see our first Bollywood movie at a famous meringue shaped cinema. The film was called Halla Bol (He Has Balls! - and no it wasn't that kind of film, it was balls in the sense of courage!). Unfortunately it wasn't one of the all singing, all dancing films that Bollywood is so famous for. We still enjoyed the experience, although we didn't understand much of the dialogue. The atmosphere was more lively than the cinemas at home, with the audience cheering and clapping at various stages of the film.
The next day we had a 5 hour train journey to Ajmer where we had to change to get a bus to our next destination, Pushkar. At Ajmer we had to deal with another pesky rickshaw driver who decided it was OK to keep our change. It may only have been a small sum but its the principle goddammit! We had to demand
Jaipur
Girl daydreaming at the City Palace our money back in a prolonged argument - the cheeky get.
Immediately after this altercation, a hotel tout sat next to us on the bus to Pushkar. However we did most of the talking as he took the full force of our frustrations on the difficulties faced by tourists in India. He probably couldn't wait to get off the bus so he could get away from us, so the tables were turned somewhat!
We arrived in Pushkar, and were immediately greeted by the usual touts, one of whom thought it was OK to lie and tell us he was the manager of the hotel we'd booked (sorry to keep moaning about touts!).
Anyway, Pushkar was a wonderfully picturesque town. The centrepiece of this holy, temple filled city is a beautiful lake lined with bathing ghats. Its very small, with a nice vibe and therefore is very popular with travellers. We spent most of our time on rooftop cafes drinking tea and lassi's, watching children flying kites over the spectacular skyline.
On our second morning we decided to climb up to a hill-perched temple to get a view over the town. Unfortunately the climb was cut short
Jaipur
Snake Charmer at the City Palace because a gang of pre-pubescent boys took a liking to Kim and started to shout "C'mon baby, Come here baby" to her as we were walking up the hill! They were irritatingly persistent (there's a theme developing here!) and would walk when we walked, sit when we sat meaning we couldn't get away from them. The presence of these stalkers was beginning to offend my masculine sensibilities, and we decided to go down early before fisticuffs broke out (only joking!)!
After two nights in Pushkar, we headed to Jodhpur, the home of those horrendous riding trousers, which was another long, tiring bus journey. This was probably one of the friendliest places we'd been to in India so far. We walked through the narrow streets of the old town and were greeted by lots of young children who wanted to shake our hands and, not
all of whom asked us for money!
One 6 year old asked me to play cricket in the street, and I was promptly bowled third ball (I'm not bitter, but I thought he was a bit of a chucker!) and then hit for 6 when it was my turn to bowl. I walked away
Jaipur
Chaos in the streets of Jaipur with my tail between my legs as I was laughed out of the alleyway!
As we wondered back to our hotel, a young kid sitting on a wall shouted out "
Hi Champ, how are you?" All I could say in response was "How did you know my name?!"
Jodhpur is dominated by a huge fort called Meherangarh which sits on top of a rocky outcrop overlooking the town. It was previously occupied by the Maharaja's and they obviously had it pretty good judging by the opulence of the palace and the artefact's within. The fort has commanding views over the "blue city" and the stark desertscape beyond.
After another two nights we caught a six hour train to Jaisalmer, a town in the far west of Rajasthan, approx. 90 km from the Pakistani border.
Again it is a town dominated by a fort, this time made from sandstone. The Lonely Planet had waxed lyrical about the fort describing it with every possible superlative, however on first inspection we were a little disappointed. We had read that parts of the fort had been damaged due to water drainage problems and poor conservation work and unfortunately some of
Jaipur
Rickshaw-wallahs chewing the fat the new construction work is pretty crude and unsympathetic. The quality of some of the blockwork would make a British brickie shudder and the deficit in modern building standards is highlighted by some of the exquisite stonework on ancient parts of the fort.
We spent half a day wandering through the fort before arranging a camel safari in the Thar desert for the following day.
We set out by jeep to where our guide and camels were waiting. Abessa was our guide, a 45 year old man who had lived in the desert his whole life. Our camels were called Mahendra (Kim's) and Mehra (Andrew's) and were 6 & 8 years old respectively. We soon discovered that Mahendra was very protective of his girlfriend Mehra and on the appearance of strangers would blow out his tongue from the side of his mouth as a warning. It looked like the inner lining of a football (or a hubba bubba bubble) and was a bizarre site. Mehra seemed to be constantly chewing, so much so that I was surprised that she didn't have a jaw like David Coulthard!
Kim had some initial difficulty in getting on the camel, but
Pushkar
View across the lake once we were away the ride was much more comfortable than the elephants we'd ridden in Nepal. We soon stopped for lunch where Abessa knocked up a cracking curry with chapatis, cooked over an open fire. He had some great cooking skills, especially given the very basic conditions he was working in.
After the extended stop, we trekked across the desert scrubland to Abessa's home village for a cup of chai. Whilst looking around, a women asked us to help her with the building she was constructing. This involved stacking up cow dung mixed with sand and water to form the walls, which is certainly a new building material on me. The village was used by our hotel as a camel station for safaris and you could see the impact of the proceeds from tourism; most new dwellings are now being built from stone, not cow dung.
The final trek of the evening took us to some sand dunes where we camped for the night. We pitched our tent and Abessa cooked our tea on a campfire as the sun fell and the sky turned to a beautiful red. It was amazingly beautiful and we really enjoyed the
Pushkar
Sadhus at the lake silence after spending so long in the incredibly noisy Indian towns and cities.
After a fantastic dinner of curried vegetables, rice, chapatis, pakora and crisps (we were eating solidly for about 2 hours - we must be the only travellers who have put on weight in India!) Abessa decided it was time to sing some songs round the campfire. He entertained us with Rajasthani songs about weddings, love and the importance of a camel belt! He asked us for some songs and we chose an eclectic mix of "Help" by The Beatles, "When the sun goes down" by The Arctic Monkeys and Craig David's "7 Days" (we know the last one was unforgiveable but nobody could hear us for miles!) We also thought we'd add some variety by rapping the theme tune to "The Prince of Belair" which Abessa seemed particularly to love!
Once we'd completed our diabolical musical performance, we turned in for the night under a sky of incredibly vivid stars.
The next morning we woke up to a beautiful sunrise and the views across the dunes were stunning. Abessa rounded up the camels and we made the final trek across the desert to where
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Kim looking out over the rooftops of Pushkar we would be picked up by the jeep. The camel safari was a fantastic couple of days and was made really special by our guide. To say thank you we gave him some sunglasses and he looked as cool as a shower in an Indian hotel!
Our next destination in Rajasthan was Udaipur, which we reached via an overnight stop in Jodhpur and then a 7 hour bus journey. The city has the reputation of being Rajasthans most romantic place (we met a bloke who had just proposed there) and this description is justified by the beautiful palaces, temples and streets clustered around a picturesque lake. There are two striking islands on the lake, both of which contain high class hotels, although they were previously palaces.
On our first night we were confined to our hotel because a muslim street procession was being held for the Hossein - Hossein festival. Fortunately the hotel had a rooftop so we could get a good view of the floats being carried by hundreds of young muslim men who surged through the streets with menacing looking lathis. Occasionaly the floats would get stuck and swing precariously from one side of the street
Pushkar
Andrew tucking into some Indian sweets to the other nearly taking out spectators watching from nearby balconies. It was very entertaining, and we shared the experince with an interesting American Buddhist convert named Jim.
The next day we spent sightseeing and sitting on rooftop cafes - its a hard life! Udaipur is where Octopussy was filmed and many of the hotels have a nightly showing, so on one evening we spent 2 hours watching one of the cheesiest films ever made - Bond is backed up by a gang of lycra clad women acrobats for petes sake!
The following day we caught a bus to Ahmedabad, a large city in the state of Gujarat. We only had an afternoon to explore the city and took in the frenetic market place and fort. We visited Gandhi Cold Drink who produced the best lassis we've had so far - they were so nice Andrew had to have two! In the evening we had a Gujarati Thali (from which apparently all Thalis are derived) which was unbelievably good and tasty and cost 75p for the both of us.
Onto Mumbai, which was another epic and delayed 9 hour train journey. We rang our hotel to tell
Pushkar
Children kite-flying on the rooftops them we'd be late, but they thought we had already checked in. Given that we were on the train, we were a little surprised especially as we had confirmed our time of arrival the previous day. The hotel manager told us that a frenchman called Andrew had checked into our room, however we decided to go to the hotel to have it out as we didn't have anywhere else to go and reasonably priced accommodation in Mumbai seems to be in short supply. We arrived and asked for the manager, after waiting 10 minutes for him we asked where he was, only to be told that he was finishing his dinner - probably not the thing to say to already irate customers! One of the young lads on the reception desk showed us their reservation chart and it turns out the manager had lied to us because a belgian named Claudius had checked into our room. The manager then came down and told us some more porkie pies (which I've missed a lot thinking about it) and unfortunately we had to get very angry in order to secure a room. It was hard work and not what we needed after
Pushkar
Kite flying on the rooftop a long train journey.
Bad start aside though we liked Mumbai. The city is very cosmopolitan and feels much more like a capital city than Delhi. It was the first place for a while where you could buy beer without having to hide it under the table or cover it in napkins because the restaurant or bar was unlicenced.
We spent a day walking through the city, visiting The Gateway of India where the last British troops left on Indian independence, a Gandhi museum, and admiring the impressive colonial buildings. The buildings are reminiscent of late Victorian/Edwardian buildings at home but have an Indian twist. We strolled along Marine Drive to Chowpatty Beach where we relaxed for a couple of hours and got chatting to some Indian blokes. Its funny how whenever you talk to Indians the conversation soon turns to marriage and family. People seem to be particularly interested in the high divorce rate in the West and how often we visited our parents. One chap put Andrew on the spot when he asked whether we would be getting married! Maybe he knew something!
The next day we headed for Panjim, the state capital of Goa.
Pushkar
More children kite flying This was another delayed train which took 14 hours in total, although we had
finally arrived in Goa! We've worked out that to get to Panjim, we'd travelled (during the day) for 76 hours on trains and buses over the previous 15 days, which was pretty tiring and we were definitely ready to relax on the beach.
Panjim was a pleasant city with a colonial Portuguese feel. It was Republic Day when we visited so everything was shut and we spent a good portion of the day looking for a beauty salon that was open so that Kim could get her legs waxed and her hair cut in preparation for the beach!
We've come to the end of our stay in Palolem, South Goa, a beautiful beach lined with palm trees. The last couple of weeks have been very chilled and have mostly featured sunbathing and seafood eating. Despite feeling like a different country, there are still things that remind us we are in India. This is the only time we've seen cows on a beach. Indian blokes bathe in the sea in their pants, just like on the Ganges. There is lots of cricket played on the
beach (I've been roped in to play a couple of games for the Big Banana's bar - but no I don't know if they live up to their team name!) and of course there are plenty of touts trying to sell jewellry who will only accept the 15th "No, thank you!"
Our stay in Goa has been made extra special as we are now engaged! Last night I asked Kim to marry me at a headphone party (no outdoor music is allowed in Goa after 10pm) and she said yes. We're both very happy and have already been out shopping for an engagement ring to replace the makeshift Casio watch that I used as a stand-in last night!
We're looking forward to Kerala and we fly out to Australia on 24th Feb. It will be very exciting to see Dee & Dave and we plan to rent a van to drive up the east coast which should be brilliant.
Take care everyone and thanks for all your messages of congratulations.
Andrew & Kim
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Dee
non-member comment
I'll have you both in a pair of "those horrendous riding trousers" before you leave here if it's the last thing I do - and you will like them! See you on the 25th - can't wait Dx