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Published: November 12th 2006
Ok guys and gals, I know you have have been waiting eagerly for an update on our trip, especially considering that the only thing Chris and I have informed you of is about what happened in Mumbai and that was some seven weeks ago - shocking I know, but that's what happens when there's so much "fun" to be had...
Anyhow, to make this easier for me and less painful for you, I am going to try and summarise the highs and lows of all the places we visited in India after Mumbia. If you can't be arsed reading all the gaff below and are interested in just checking out the pictures, then tuff cos I haven't got any! I'm only joking, please check out the "India" link for pictures:
India
Goodbye Mumbai
After Mumbai, Chris and I caught a 5.30am train to Goa. Our hosts in Mumbai told us to make sure we gave ourselves plenty of time to get to the train station in case of any last minute changes (ie platform number etc), and that we should leave the apartment at 4.30am to get to the station for 5.00am. With bags packed by 4.30, a tired Chris and bleary-eyed Kal left the apartment, having posted the keys through the letter box back into the apartment. We strolled down the stairs and got to the bottom to find that the gate was locked and the "24-hour" security guard was nowhere to be seen... god only knows where he had got to, everytime we passed him during the day, he was asleep, so I'm guessing he hadn't gone home to bed!! Anyhow, with the gate locked, security guard missing and somewhat shockingly, windows on all floors screwed shut, we woke up one of the other tenants, who only chuckled when we asked what would happen if there happened to be a fire... after scratching his head, rubbing his hairy belly and a bit of yelling out for the guard he went back to bed.
The time by now was about 4.45am and assuming that it took half an hour to get to the station, the prospect of our missing the train suddenly entered our minds. I began to work on the gate and with my superhuman strength set about bending the bars apart, hoping that I could create a gap big enough for us and the bags to fit through. Unfortunatley, I only managed to create a gap in the gate big enough for us to squeeze through, the bags would never have fitted... meanwhile Chris was upstairs and using "brains" (rather than "brawn") had began working on the first floor window, pen-knife in hand, unscrewing it open. The time now was about 4.50 and having jumped from the window, 10 feet to the ground and with bags aback we ran to the nearest taxi only to find that the driver was asleep inside!! Things at this point were definitely not looking great, we couldn't believe this was happening to us four days into our travels, if this was a sign and a sample of things to come then this was going to be a hectic and somewhat stressful six months!! Anyhow, as it happened it didn't take that long to get to the station and the tired and bleary-eyed driver delivered us with plenty of time to spare.
Goa
Having arrived in Goa, we set up camp and stayed at Angelina's beach resort in Baga, 5min walk from the beach and about 25 mins from the next closest beach in Calangute. We expected to stay only three or four days in Goa but ended up staying close to two weeks. We met loads of really cool people, partyed hard, recovered from the partying on the soft sandy silky shores and... got ripped off by many market sellers!
Chris and I hired bikes for a few days and scooted further up north and down south to check out a few of the other beaches, namely Arambol (there's a lovely warm freshwater lake behind which there is a forest in which supposedly a westerner has been living in a treehouse for the last four years and makes an appearance every two months to pick up groceries), Anjuna (beautiful palm trees and rock formations), Candolim (home of a tanker that has been ground ashore for the last two years), Fort Aguada (a place to go if you have a few spare bucks to burn) and Benaulim (a very quiet beach if not also a little dirty). I had never driven a scooter before and had some adrenalin fuelled hairy experiences - awesome fun!!!
We tried lots of delicious dishes at very decent prices in some really nice restaurants (Brittos). The only negative would be that the music appeared to be the same everywhere and everyday... and even worse always blinkin boy bands: Boyzone, Blue, Backstreet boys, Boys to men (you get the picture!).
A quick hello to all the great characters that we meet in Goa: Karen and Linsey, Raj, Jodi, Jonesy and Martin, the three Irish Phils, Bob and Bart, Dani and Dave, Vincent, Vicktor and all the other friendly locals - especially the ones in Tito's night club!!
Delhi
After Goa, we chose to endure a 26 hour train journey to Delhi. Delhi is about 50 times worse than Mumbai in almost every respect - traffic, nasty smells, roaming cows, tooting horns etc etc, and infinitely worse for bed bugs but that is most likely due to the place we chose to stay at. We should have realised the joint was a bit dodge after seeing mosquitos and a rat in the first room that was offered to us...
One of the nights, Chris and I ate a McDonalds and went to the cinema to check out a Bollywood blockbuster called Rocky. The movie had all the Bollywood essentials: romance, gore, comedy and lots of song and dance - what made it more amusing and somewhat nostalgic was that some of the dance scences were actually shot with lil old grey haired grannies in London's very own Piccadilly Circus!!
Dharamsala
A 13 hour journey by sleeper train followed by 5 hours on the bus took us from Delhi to Dharamsala via Patankhot. Mcleod Ganj (a few kilometres north of Dharamsala) is actually where we stayed for the six days that we were there, soaking in the amazing scenery, breathing in the fresh mountain air and getting familiar with the three main streets where all the shops, restaurants and bars seemed to live!
With only three main streets, it was very easy to bump into people and like Goa, we met a few characters (Gilad, Trevor and Joel) who we chilled out with in the evenings, sampling some of the tasty local delicacies followed by a few sessions of pool.
Mcleod Ganj also happens to be the residence of the Dalai Lama since 1960 and the headquarters of the Tibetan Government in Exile - it was interesting to see how the Tibetan culture had made its mark in the area, with plenty of Tibetan Buddhist monastaries and nunneries dotted about amongst the native Indian Hindu temples. During the day street stalls sell Tibetan vegatable momos - the traditional momos contain yak meat, however one would be hard pressed to find any yak in the area and I guess there would probably be an uproar and a few rolling heads if the momos contained any cow, the obvious yak substitute!! The Tsuglag Khang complex contains the Dalai Lama's actual home as well as the Namgyal monastary which is where young Tibetan monks congregate every afternoon/ evening to meditate, chant sacred songs and perform debates. This was an amazing sight and Chris, myself plus many others sat around and watched for almost three hours intrigued by the amazing spectacle being performed infront of us. Those on the trip to Tibet last year will recall how fascinating it was to see the debating at Sera monastary, this was pretty much the same if not a little better because we got to see it from start to finish!
Chris, Joel (Aussie dude) and I spent one day trekking to the base camp of one of the nearby snow capped summits (Triund, approx 2700m). As we approached base camp we could hear thunder in the distance... by the time we arrived a dufus cloud decided to block our view of the summit... and as we timed our descent a mass of fog and hail decided to fall around us. As luck would have it, the dufus cloud decided to shovel off just as we arrived back at the bottom... cést la vie!
The following day, I booked mysef to have a back-crunching Tibetan massage to help the recovery process.
Amritsar
A couple of incredibly terrible bus journies, which took some 12 hours in total, brought us to Amritsar late in the evening. Upon arrival we were accosted by local touts who were trying to sell us accomodation and various other stuff. Being the organised duo that we are, Chris and I hadn't booked anything and we were trying to get our heads togther to try and figure out what to do. Unfortunately the constant interruption by the touts meant we couldn't really do any figuring of anything out. Close to the point of simmering and with my newly found Hindi language skills I politely told the touts where to go... unfortuntaley this didn't really go down too well and I could tell that one of the touts was impressed with my Hindi, but not so impressed with what I actually had to say... fortunately one of his mates held him back as I tried to backtrack and explain in clear English that I really didn't know any Hindi and that we just wanted to be left alone!!!
On the way down from Dharamsala we met an Aussie couple, Rikki and Matt, who were also travelling. We joined forces with the Aussies and having cunningly escaped the bullying touts set about a mission to find some accomodation. For some bizzare reason everwhere semi-decent seemed to be fully booked so we had to settle for a room with a dodgy electric shock emitting shower and a squat bog (Asian style toilet)! This was my first exeperience of using a squat bog on our travels... and an experience it certainly was!
The following day Chris and I went to see the Golden Temple, an amazingly beautiful and sublimely peaceful monument which is also the most holiest shrine of the Sikh religion. Later in the day we rendezvoused with Rikki and Matt to observe the India-Pakistan border crossing ceremony at a place called Wagah - an absolutley crazy and sweaty experience!
Agra
Agra, home of the beautiful Taj Mahal and the mighty Agra Fort both built by the moguhls back in the day was our next point of call. A couple of friendly locals called Bobby and Guru offered to be our rickshaw driver/ guides and zipped us around town.
If anyone is still reading this then I'm impressed! Since starting to write this bit of the blog two weeks have actually passed by with jungle trekking in Chang Mai, sky high zip-lining in the Bokeo Nature Reserve, two day long boat journies along the Mekong River and a few days getting wasted. I feel like I'm never going to finish this, so to make it even easier for me I'm going to write short bullit points (as advised by Ms Peel - thanks Gal!)!!
Taj Mahal
- BIG! But not as big as I expected!
Agra Fort
Marble school
- Met an interesting old character by the name of Dr Kaur who runs a marble school in Agra. Dr Kaur apparently is quite an important person in the field of marble restoration work and has met many important people and won various awards for his work on the Taj Mahal. Dr Kaur's forefathers were involved with building the original Taj Mahal.
- Purchased a 15 inch diameter octagonal marble table top piece comprised of white, black and green marble ornately spattered with a handful of semi-precious stones.
Rajasthan
Jaipur
- Known as the Pink City due to the pinked washed building walls. Much cleaner and a little quieter than the likes of Mumbai, Delhi and Amritsar. Other than visiting a few forts, there wasn't much for us to do, so Chris and I decided to clamber and scurry along the walls and rooftops of old derelict goverment buildings - probably not the smartest or most useful thing to do to pass time but we had fun!
- Met a highly entertaining local called Shieke who offered to be our rick-driver for an afternoon. Shieke's spoken English was impressively good, he looked like he could be a James Bond side-kick, especially when you consider his driving skills, zipping along the tightly packed roads, narrowly avoiding the other randomnly placed vehicles, cows and kebabs!
- Met a very interesting aura reader called Guru Ji, who revealed some very interesting things.
- Somewhat effected by the reading, I generously parted with $101 US and gave it to an orphanage charity. Still affected I also parted with my baseball cap and gave it to Shieke (god only knows why?!).
Jodhpur
- Met a couple of lovely Swedish ladies called Chrystal and Ele who kicked about with us for a couple of days.
- Visited the Merangarth Fort behind which lies the old city which is also known as the Blue City (I'm sure you can guess why!).
- Went on a two day desert trek to one of the villages north of Jodphur. Soooooo unbeleiveably pieceful and quiet. Interesting to see the village way of life - some very old traditional habits are still practised such as, for example, boys and girls getting married to each other at the age of 10. The newly wed young uns don't actually live with each other until they are of a certain appropriate age, until then the boy and girl live separately with their respective immediate family members.
Udaipur
- Home of the James Bond classic, Octopussy, Udaiper has an amazing scenery and many beautiful palaces.
- Every evening at about 7pm, all the guest houses and restaurants play the Octopussy movie, we therefore ended up watching the classic three consecutive nights.
- Bumped into Ele (from Jodphur) and Trevor (from Dharamsala) and knocked about with them for a wee while.
- The guest house we stayed at owned an overly freindly puppy alsation who liked to bite.
- Attended a couple of early morning yoga sessions.
Pushkar
- Supposedly one of the holiest places in India and home to the only Brahma temple in the world, I struggled to see anything remotely holy about the place.
- After enduring the worst bus journey of our travels so far, Chris and I arrived only to be greeted by an army of touts and a lil Bramhin dude who kept trying to shove flowers in our hands. Following the toss of a coin, we chose a guest house to check out. We stopped off en route at the holy lake and decided to get the Brahmin "blessing" out of the way.
- To cut a long story short, the "blessing" involves repeating a few mumbled sentences, throwing some rose petals into the lake and washing your hands and face in the water... in exchange for the largest sum of money that the Brahmin can get out of you for blessing you and your family members (which I guess must have been said during the mumblings).
Varanasi
- We paid a silly amount of money to fly from Delhi to Varanasi for basically a days worth of exploring the city.
- Met a lovely American couple by the names of Scott and Alyssa with whom we wondered around town, had dinner and got a boat ride in the evening.
- It also happened to be the passing of the big 29 for Mr Fawbert and despite being in another holy city the four of us decided to go on a search for some much needed alcohol. We eventually found a shop selling beer and spent Chris' birthday evening sat in the middle of a stinky narrow road quietly sipping on our beverages with other law-breaking locals.
I trust that you are all are well wherever you are. A belated Happy Divali to you all, belated Happy Birthday to Bav, Claire and Cyrus and Happy Birthday to Mark and Arthur over the next few weeks. And, I guess, Happy Birthday (belated or not) to anyone else who has recently had or is soon to have a birthday.
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Val
non-member comment
Party on!
Cool to finally catch up on what's been happening. thought you had disappeared into a jungle somewhere! Glad that you are having fun. Enjoy the travels and keep us up to date. Val