Anna and Heidi Explore

We finally arrived in the tropical paradise of Goa. We spent a day in the capital Panaji which was very chilled and had beautiful colourful architecture remiscent of europe and lots of windy side streets to explore. The following day we missioned the local bus service up to Anjuna beach to celebrate Holy. Holy is a festival celebrated all over India where people have a great time throwing colours (powder paint) over eachother, everybody gets involved and its a real blast. A group of about 10 children attacked us from all sides and we ended up purple, green, pink, yellow and blue!!
Desperate to chill from the manic rate at which we had been travelling so far,we set ourselves up in Anjuna for 6days. The atmosphere wasnt what we were expecting - as the place was still in the aftermath of the tragedy of the english teenager. There were a few parties going on but they were eventually shut down by the police, one night we were listening to live music in a restaurant called 'Janet and Johns' following an immense seafood buffet and the police came in and shut it down at 10pm!
The first half of our week in Goa was spent in monsoon style rain which didn't allow us to get much sun, but as soon as it cleared up we got enough sunburn to last us the week. We hired mopeds to explore the north coast, Heidi taking control of the bike and loving every minute of it (even Anna commented on my excellent driving!)

Mumbai was our next stop, we travelled on the konkan express railway with some guys we met at the station, and ate like kings, it was some of the best food we ate whilst in India!! The trains are amazing with snacks, main meals, chai, coffee, cold drinks and all sorts of wierd and wonderful nik naks on sale. We also had a tranvestite join the train and come and harass Anna for 10rupees, he was really agressive. They go up to the Indian men and try to embarass and shame them into giving them money, sadly this usually works (but not on us!)

After hearing horror stories about Mumbai were glad to say none of them are true, we thought Mumbai was beautiful and clean with lovely recognisable architecture and an exciting buzz. It was evident it was and international and sophisticated city (we could tell that from the price of beer if nothing else). We visited the caves on Elephanta Island and spent our last night as bollywood stars! We were recruited by a western talent scout to be extras in a Bollywood film, we were picked up at 5pm, drove for 3hrs through horrendous traffic which made Anna sick and unable to work (she spent the night on the back seat of the car and was a prime target for lots of mosquito's!) Meanwhile Heidi boogied away with the other extras in a party scene in a Hindu film called 'Careful my dear'. After the slightly traumatic experience we got a few hours kip and borded a train to the north.

Our first stop was Udaipur in Rajasthan. Home of James Bond Octopussy, a beautiful mountain city surrounding the lake. We visited Monsoon Palace in the Sajjan Garh wildlife sactuary which was also one of the locations where James Bond was filmed. The palace was set on top of a distant mountain range, we watched a beautiful sunset, with panoramic views of Udaipur. We decided to treat ourselves to dinner at a Boutique hotel and had wine and a delicious meal of chicken and goat next to a pool on a roof top with views of the Lake Palace! We felt very extravagant and decided to return the following day to use the pool! We both got a henna and some new clothes to restyle ourselves as proper travellers!!
Next on the agenda was Jaisalmer. We booked what we thought was to be a luxury sleeper coach, but really our tiny double booth served only as a hard trampoline for the full 8hours of our journey, our bodies lifted several inches into mid air many times - Im sure you can appreciate how bumpy the Indian roads are! After a night of torture that we thought would never end, we finally arrived in the desert town, home of the golden sandstone fort and camel safari's. We booked a 2day safari, setting off at 7:30am we drove 50km into the Great Thar Desert. Our camels were called Cola and Johnny, Heidi's camel was hilarious with a wonky face and a bad temper! After a few hours trekking we stopped for lunch, our two guides Karim and Gagan cooked us lunch of magic chips, onion pakora, chappati's and spiced vegetables - very delicious, and eated in desert style with our hands. A further few hours and we were in the sand dunes right next to the Pakistan border. The sight of the dunes was amazing and it was very surreal to think we were actually in a real desert! We set up camp for the night exploring the dunes and sleeping under a million stars, it was the most beautiful sight and not one we will ever forget.
Camels are a very bumpy ride, and the experienc wouldn't have been complete without the spitting and farting for good measure!

Having spent so much time in the south we hadn't left ourselves long for the north so we had to scarper quickly to Delhi and Agra before our departure. Delhi was a shocker, having thought we'd seen all India had to offer we arrived and were taken aback by the rubbish and sight of people using the train tracks as public loo's right before our eyes. Delhi was bigger, dirtier, smellier and far busier than anywhere else (almost more than everywhere else put together!) and we were pretty glad we didn't have much time there. A short stint in Agra also gave us time for the Taj Mahal, this is truely a beautiful monument and we felt our India trip was strangely complete after seeing it. It really doesn't disappoint and is exquisite in the attention to detail in the carving of the marble and design of precious stones used for detail.

So to sum up!...India was everything we were and weren't expecting, the people are beautiful honest friendly and always helpful and once you get over the amount of rubbish every sight you see is full of amazing colour and vibrancy... Anything can happen and it always works out, (that is the beauty of travelling) and it did many times...

India...we'll be back! xx

Well...we've been moving around so much since we got here we feel like we're due some chilling out. After Fort Cochin we got a not very comfy coach with dripping air coinditioning to Bangalore - pub city apparently, obviously we didn't dabble - keeping ourselves fresh for the long days of sightseeing - yeah right! Until bangalore we'd only had one beer - Heidi was having withdrawal symptoms! And you'll never guess what happened in this bar...we befriended an Irish nurse called Mairead, keeping up appearances!
Our days in Bangalore were spent being ripped off by tour guides showing us the same things and hassling us into their friends shops to buy things so they could have a free lunch - cheek! Despite the rickshaw drivers Bangalore has an amazing buzz about it and we really took to the place, exploring the Bull temple (litterally a little temple with a giant sculpture of a black bull covered in flowers - really kitsch and quite a sight to see all the worshippers nealing before it!), Government Buildings, Presidents House, Bangalore Palace (built to look like Windsor Castle (I think)) etc etc... And then the pub!

Mairead joined us on our next journey to Hampi, also in the state of Karnataka. It used to be the capital city of the Hindu empire and of South India, and used to trade in litres of gold, rubies and diamonds until the Muslims looted the city in the 14th century and detroyed over 2500 of its temples. The mountainous landscape is covered in giant boulders dotted with the temples and has a sacred river running through it and lush vegetaion of sugar cane and banana plantations as well as rice paddies - excellent for trekking and exploring. One day Mairead led the way (and although we we're secretly scared of the bandits, we kept that to ourselves!) and took us to Hanuman Temple on a cliff top up 574 steep steep steps, there was a real sense of achievement after we'd walked for hours to find it and then finally made it up those steps in the blazing heat - we were all very proud of ourselves! The temple is also known as the Monkey Temple because when it gets cooler hundreds of monkeys make their way up to the temple - we met them all on our way down, they are very cheeky - one went for the contents of my bag but we managed to get a banana in its hand before it got me!
Hampi is also now a world heritage site and a place of pilgrimage, every morning pilgrims from the countryside and from further afar make the journey to Hampi to wash in the river, then they lay their sari's over the rocks to dry in the sun - a real spectacle.

We had our first (and only so far) sunrise yoga session and Anna went to see Laxmi the temple elephant having her bath in the river, she was so good, laying down on one side for a scrub then turning over for the other, she even lifted her feet for a little toe polish! We spent the rest of our days leisurely exploring and meeting locals and fellow travellers. The only shame about Hampi is that now it is very dependant on tourism and it has overtaken all other trades which will eventually be detrimental because a lot of the children see money to be made in tourism and work to earn money for their families and so don't go to school - so many of the little boys sell stickers (for 5 rupees) or work the river boat services or on their parents market stalls. The government has decided however to knock a lot of the roof terraces down (these are mainly restaurants on the guesthouses) to try to salvage the city before its too late.

All in all Hampi blew our breath away and we didn't want to leave - its the only place we've been sad to leave so far, usually we're so excited about the next stop but Hampi was amazing...

We are heading to Goa now for some sun sea and sand.....until next time!! xxx

(Sadly no photos on this blog as used up our monthly upload already but will add them to gmail and let you know when its done).

We are here...in India, our world tour adventures begin!!

We arrive in Chennai and are greeted by the biggest swarm of colourful Indian Sari's, as hoards of people await their arrivals. We cant believe that we are finally here and can't stop smiling or looking at each other to check its real!!

The taxi ride to out hotel was where the adventure began...We zoomed through the streets ignoring lanes, the bicycles, rickshaws, taxi's and trucks all have the same right of way, they all over take each other, beeping their horns as they go. This is a major feature of the roads in India! We arrived at our hotel at 3am and had to wake all the reception staff. Our first room wasn't to scary, with a western toilet and shower.

We spent our time in Chennai wandering around soaking up the culture and the atmosphere, Chennai is a big city and very very busy. We cant get over how many people there are - everywhere! The streets are full with people making their way with hundreds of small businesses from shoe shining to fruit selling...and there is a distinct smell of urine in the air, this is something that we are used to now after 1 week. As we crossed the river we could see women and children waving at us from one of the city slums, it was an amazing sight, tin roofs sprawled over a massive area.

Eventually we gave up walking because it was so hot and got an auto-rickshaw ride to the beach. Wading our way through the market we sat in front of the Bay of Bengal, it was a bit disappointing, the water was really dirty and the sand was covered in litter, but we were assured a nicer beach lay just south of the city. After many offers of monkey nuts and fluorescent candy floss, we made our way back to town for some food. We had to decipher the menu but the waiters were very helpful. Heidi had vegetable Biryani, and Anna had the 'with not spicy' option! This ended day 1, we went to bed absolutely shattered and jet lagged.
The following day we made it up in time to visit Chennai's Government Museum, which showed a collection of local history and 'modern' art (not so modern, the paintings were of 19th century British officials!)... Then we made it to the Central train station to board our 15 1/2hour overnight journey to Thiruvananthapuram the capital of Kerala. We didn't stay long in Chennai and may have been to harsh on the place but it was our first stop and so did offer our culture shock, it was also really filthy so we were up for leaving as soon as we could get a train. Choosing Thiruvananthapuram as our next stop was already veering from our original but loosely thought out plans...we are proper traveller's already!!
The train was an experience to be done many times over but never forgotten! We boarded at 4pm so there was lots of activity - men selling cold drinks, chai and many different foods from snacks to rice and chicken! By the time we decided to brave it, the lot had sold out - that will teach us to be so slow! We chatted to a really nice man called Gobi, from Tamil Nadu who told us the best places to visit. We climbed our way to our bunks in the rafters with the fans between us, getting very little sleep because of the noise and heat.

We arrived in Thiruvananthapuram at 7.30. Choosing our new digs was easy - the one 100m from the station, with our ridiculous bags we didn't want to go far!
Thiruvananthapuram was smaller than Chennai and we both had a much better feeling about the place.
Excitedly we set out to discover our new home. We visited the Sri Padmanabhaswamy Temple, the only private Hindu Temple in all of Kerela. It's a Monday, holy day and we've arrived during dharshan time so there were lots of people coming and going for worship. The men and women have to wear traditional dress and no shoes. We were not allowed in but were shown where we could take the best photos! We traveled out of town to visit the Veli Tourist Garden which houses sculptures from a local artist and a pathway onto the beach and Arabian Sea. The colours of the beach were stunning, the sand orange and the sea and sky melted into each other. We relaxed and watched as the fishermen bring in their catch, hauling massive nets out of the water by hand.

The following day found us in Quilon, we arranged our boat trip of the Kerelan backwaters for the following day and spent out time enjoying the more relaxed atmosphere of a small trading town rather than the big cities.

We are at a loss for words and don't know quite where to start on our backwater experience! The tranquility of the water was to good to be true, we chugged along taking in all the sights of the canals, lakes and rivers. Observing the different methods of fishing, from traditional Chinese style nets to diving for shellfish with a scuba mask. The number of fishing boats around was unbelievable too - at home the whole area would probably be worked by one company, here its hundreds and thousands of individuals. The backwaters are made up of a 900km network that lays right next to the Arabian Sea, passing the UK - Australia shipping route.

The riverbanks were inhabited with many villages and we could observe village life from a different perspective, all the locals waved to us as we passed and lots of children were playing in the water while women washed clothes. Through the trees we heard the many different temples blaring out through loudspeakers to their villages - it sounded energetic like horse racing commentary!!
Half way along the cruise the boat stopped at the Matha Amrithanandanayi Mission where one of India's few female guru's practices a darshan (blessing) where she sometimes hugs thousands of people in a night making their wishes come true.

We met some fellow traveler's and together made our way to Fort Cochin, the relaxed island of the City of Cochin - and made it out for our fist beer in India, Heidi was ecstatic as you can imagine! Over dinner we experienced out first storm and complete blackout. The following day we meandered the small streets through many spice dealer and visited quite a few local art galleries.

Anna helped the fishermen with their catch of the day (she only caught one fish though - a mullet) and then we said farewell to our new friends and caught the ferry to Ernakulam to catch our A/C coach to Bangalore - a cool but bumpy trip.

India is amazing, anything goes here, each person is making their own way through their days, all with a different activity but with the very evident purpose of survival...something we have to bear in mind when being hounded by stall owners who want our money. There seems to be a lot of freedom in India, not like home with it rules and health & safety regulations, its a real breath of fresh air!!

So far we have settled in, we know roughly what to expect and are loving the adventure we only wish we had more time here!!