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Published: March 29th 2009
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As soon as we came back from the camel ride, and due to lack of train tickets for the next day, we were forced to start travelling straight down to Goa, the beach parts in India. We felt it was only fare to take a little holiday after the rough travelling on the back of a camel!
So it was that we took our first 12 hour Sleeper Class train down south!
Crowded is something you stop feeling after a while, because you can’t even think in personal space anymore. There are so many people that personal space is reduced to nothing. You notice it in traffic, cars almost touch each other before evading the imminent accident. And in trains you feel it at it’s maximum.
As we got in the train, we took a little tour to see the different classes: first class is top class, a/c class is spacious enough to breath at ease, sleeper will allow you to sleep only if you are really tired, and you’ll have to put up with a thousand sellers that would offer from water to full meals. And then there is seating class. We don’t go there. Not Indians enough to
learn how to suffer through that.
We enjoyed the Sleeper class though (as it was the only one we could afford anyway). In the end the sellers were an interesting part of the scenery, and sharing the train with mostly all the classes in India was a trip on its own. We got used to the dust and dirty of the seats, and the toilets were breathable little much than a few seconds at a time (smell that, in the end, we got used to it as we got, now and then, whiffs of it travelling through the wagon, anyway), but we could handle it!
We arrived to Jodhpur the next morning, where we were to wait for another night train- this time to Mumbai.
Jodhpur, the Blue City, as it is known, has a beautiful palace (we heard, never been there though), an amazing fort (must be, otherwise they wouldn’t charge that much for the entrance ticket we didn’t pay) and a great place to buy cheap stuff (although the only thing we bought was food, and street food in India has very standard prices: cheap, anyway)
We did go to see a Memorial (Jaswant Thada, 35 rupees
The Memorial
Jaswant Thada with the right to take your camera in) and the Mandore Gardens, witch are supposed to be great and full of amazing carvings on rock, but we mainly slept on the shade of a cenotaphs (old burial chamber of ancient rulers of Jodhpur). At some point we heard some shooting. Later we found out that the locals were shooting blanks to scare away the monkeys that were around the gardens.
Great city. Lots of things to do. We know because we didn’t do them, as we kept on getting reminded of, during the rest of the trip, by people who did them. We left the afternoon of the day we had arrived in another nice and cosy train down south, this time to Mumbai.
Mumbai was another rush, but this one was going to be even worst. To start we got off the train on the wrong station. That is, thinking that we were closer to where we wanted to go: the train station that would connect us to a train going to GOA. It turned up to be a station on the outskirts of Mumbai but, nevertheless, it served us to know that the coming weekend was a
holyday weekend, so all trains and buses to GOA were full. No way out of Mumbai.
Fortunately, and after spending the morning AND the equivalent of a day’s budget on beer and snacks on a well deserved air con bar, we found this incredible guy, who came out of nowhere, that took us out of that place and, after what seamed to be like a full day’s trip on a local bus, took us to a State Bus Stop, from where we got to a bus to the border of the State, a few hours away from GOA. Exactly that was how it felt.
The guy’s name is Max. An incredible person who, against all bets, took us the right way out of a city that was about to trap us for almost 5 days. He took us to the right bus, and he even got sure that we were being charge the right fare. And he did it all out of kindness! Amazing! Right on the verge of giving up on Indian mankind! Thank you Max!
So we went from a local bus to a state bus, to an interstate bus to a taxi that finally got us into
Sweets on the street
We couldn't resist buying samosas and some sweets to take into the Gardens for lunch the chosen beach: Anjuna.
Goa is a lot like the north of Brazil. Being a former Portuguese colony that shouldn’t be a surprise. But to see that even the people here look like Brazilians is very disconcerting.
It’s like no other place in India (in the end you realize that every place in India is a little like no other in the world, anyway) People here are more relaxed and you get a lot less hassled from sellers and taxi or rickshaw rides. The beach here is as beautiful as Thailand (or almost in some places) and the food never stops being spiced beyond any reasonable point, like everywhere else in India. That’s a constant here: excess in flavours. Hot is almost to the point of breaking a hole in your mouth; sweet promise to compensate for a life time of brushing your teeth, nothing is mild in India.
In Anjuna we rented two scooters and explored the area, in particular the little bars that were everywhere.
Some times at night we got live music on the beach, strawberries daiquiris and the best Cesar salads in India (to finally escape the curry for a change!) We found a favourite
restaurant, where we enjoyed the seafood and a beautiful tandoori fish.
Finally, the Wednesday that we were to leave Anjuna we got a chance to see one of the best markets in GOA, that only happens in Anjuna on Wednesday. So we strolled through a very crowded and hot market where everything was for sale. We bought some sheets with Indian patterns and some other little souvenirs that we could bargain to an affordable price. In the end we had to leave to take the train but it was one of the best experiences in GOA!
After 7 relaxing days on the beach we headed even more to the south, to the backwaters of Kerala.
The land of the “nappies” (as we called them)! That’s where we saw most of these sort of loose long skirts that can be folded into the form of that that can only be described as a nappy! Nearly every single man wore them. The funny thing was that the material cloth used looked like the classic old fashioned style of nappies that where pinned up with a safety pin. We could understand the nappies, in the heat of the south the skirts are
a lot more breezier.
Kerala is a state famous for its net of water channels surrounded with fields of palm trees, that in the past used to be the way to travel from village to village. Is set in a beautiful jungle, and you can rent a boat (not the ordinary boat, one double deck one, with three rooms with toilets attached, a kitchen, a lunch area and three guys attending our very demands, excuse me!) and quietly sail through the channels in the most relaxing way. And so we did. So after a long journey to Alleppey, the village from where most of the boats can be rented, we rented a very nice boat (as described above) and spent a beautiful day strolling through the channels, stopping to buy fresh coconuts to drink out of, and later at sunset drank champagne while paddling on a smaller boat. This is living!
After that amazing ride we took another boat, a local transport boat, that led us inland through more channels, passing through villages that live next to the water and live from rice plantations manly. This trip was even more impressive, running through smaller channels, filled with life. The irony
was that the second trip cost us only 1% of the luxury one… to be expected in India!
Next: Tea, wild animals and a splash!
At the same time, on the same channel!
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