Advertisement
Published: November 1st 2009
Edit Blog Post
New Delhi & Agra
India was everything it’s made out to be and more, a melting pot of culture, religion, color, smells and taste - a literal smorgasbord for the senses. With the extraordinary fusion of so many people, the country becomes something of an experience from start to finish.
We have traveled twice to India in the past months; the first was a long weekend trip to New Delhi and Agra, a four day whirlwind trip of the major sites and back to work for Monday morning…the second was a month on the beaches of Goa....
Just off the “Main Bazaar” in New Delhi is where we had an US2.26c a night room for the first few nights. This road consists of dirt covered with people, carts, tok toks and dogs heading in every different direction - In fact this is rather typical of the country as a whole - rarely did we find ourselves alone at any stage outside our room, the sheer volume of people creating an unstoppable flow is incredible!
We enjoyed the inevitable major attractions tour on one of the days with the compulsory stops at many overpriced souvenir shops. At night time we
ventured out in a tok tok into the crazy city and aimlessly headed off for a bit more excitement, finding some amazing Indian food and places to drink. On one of the days we went for a simple walk which turned into a 6 hour epic as we discovered more and more of the market downtown area, eating at roadside stalls we became the attraction ourselves as we pulled up a milk crate and ate with the locals…
On the third day we caught the train to Agra to check out the mighty Taj Mahal, there was of course as most of you now know an ulterior motive in going to the Taj, but that was being kept quiet with great difficulty - hiding a ring whilst backpacking is to be honest a pain in the arse! Not only do you have to keep it safe in a country which prides its self on the art of pick pocketing, but also keeping it hidden from Tanya which involved the ring being moved between socks, toothpaste containers and stuffed inside my shoes while they were on my feet!
The Taj was AMAZING! We were the 3rd & 4th people
in the gate so we got the “money shots” with no one in front of it; we took in the sunrise while sitting on one side and then took a stroll back up through the gardens with my excuse that I needed to go to the loo. (not a unreasonable excuse for anyone who knows me!) Finding the ring in the bottom of my right shoe and safely in the pocket, we took another leisurely walk back down through the gardens and I managed to get down on one knee and pop the all important question… (Tanya said yes - 😱 yay)
A car back to New Delhi the next day, some more scrumptious food and a plane back to Dubai our trip was over….
Goa
Needing to save money for the month there was no option but to get out of Dubai and head for India. Work in Dubai had been slowing down and the company told us to take 4 weeks no pay to get over a rough patch, so we found ourselves asleep on the floor of Mumbai airport for 13 hours on our way to Goa’s beaches for the time…
We stayed in Calangute
beach for the first week we spent our days chilling by the water with an endless parade of hawkers walking past to keep us entertained….. Nowhere else in the world could you be offered Heroin in a little bag while in your bathers about to go for a surf! Choosing a place to spend the day at the countless beach shacks that line the water is hard, enticing you to use their sun beds thereby securing them as the sole suppliers of massages, food and beer to us all day long - at rock bottom prices of course!
Moving on after the first week to Arambol in the very north of Goa - we had heard it was a place to just relax. More of a village atmosphere with some rather hard core back packers hanging around, the place was more of a hippie retreat stuck in the 60’s than a part of India.
We got ourselves a room up a small hill halfway around the headland towards the next beach, looking out in-between coconut trees at the ocean and having our washing stolen by monkeys were some of the fantastic pleasures of the place. Now basic it was,
in fact it was a room -concrete floor, bed on one side and a pipe coming out the wall with cold water from the well in the other, but for 2 bucks a night u can’t go wrong! Big balcony with a hammock strung up and local restaurant at the bottom of the stairs………We spend the days swimming, playing chess/cards and escaping on the moped to every beach we could find within an hour’s ride of our place. Food was amazing and the beer was great - we celebrated Anzac day with drunken 5 person moped ride down the one and only street in town!
India was fantastic, so ridiculously cheap - the flights there and back were more than what we spend for the whole month! The place is dirtier than you could ever believe but once we were over the initial shock of it all the charming nature of it really comes to life.
- Please click on any Pics to bring them up full screen - Click on "Journals by Cas Tan" in the green bar near the top of the page, to see our other pages - Add Comment" down the bottom if you would like to msg us
Advertisement
Tot: 0.318s; Tpl: 0.019s; cc: 10; qc: 57; dbt: 0.0605s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.2mb