The last half of India!

It has been a long time since the last blog - been very busy! But I can now update the blog with the last bits of India.

Goa - was a lovely little resort town and was very much needed after the hectic nature of Mumbai. Was great to chill for a few days but it started to feel a little holiday-y and so we moved onto HAMPI!

Hampi - an incredible place and still remains a highlight of the trip. A tiny place located somewhere in the middle of Southern India, it seemed like the town of Bedrock from the Flintstones. Amazing temples everywhere, monkeys walking the streets, limited electricity and really friendly people. The walks were amazing and we attempted a bike ride to other places on the second day. Unfortunately, I was still getting over a chest infection I caught from Tanya and ended up collapsing by the side of the road nearly passed out. Luckily I managed to collapse on the doorstep of the only hospital for miles so I was able to be saved! Ended up having a blood test etc in a tiny little run-down lab... funny looking back but a bit shit scary at the time!

But Hampi was generally a great place and would recommend everyone to go there.

It was also our first experience of the famous monsoon rain. We got caught in it one day and got absolutely soaked! We ended up running in the door of some elderly couple's house. Tanya assures us they invited us but I really think we just terrified an old couple! And when attempting to run back to the hotel both Tanya and Lorna managed to fall straight into a pile of puddle-shit-mud. Was very funny but Tanya had the camera so I wasn't able to get a photo!


Mysore - a wonderfully colourful, clean city but not really 'India' as we thought it would be. The palace was gorgeous and huge and when lit up at night time was one of the best sights we have seen. We met a really friendly man called San who just stopped us in the street. It was bit cringing though. We had been telling people we were from Wales because noone knew where it was and so we avoided the cockney slang and 'awright mate' that the Indians seemed to do all the time. Funny at first, but not after the thousandth time! Anyway, so we are from Wales. Except when I said this to San I didn't know he was extremely well educated and taught by a Brit. He started asking me info about Wales and asked for Welsh words. I had to blag some Welsh (not easy, by the way!) and make up information about the place. But he seemed content and we had a lovely couple of meals with him - and the other day got invited to his wedding!

We also saw our first Bollywood film here. Bodyguard! Was amazing, even though we couldn't understand a word. The cinema was filled with men, but everytime the hunky male lost his top or did some fight scenes the place was filled with wolf whistles. You can smoke in the cinema! and talk! and use your mobile phones! You can also touch up unsuspecting tourists apparently. A man sat next to me and tried to touch me in a naughty place, but ran off when I shooed him away!! Was not a nice experience! But the film was great!

Ooty - this is a very green place in Tamil Nadu. Typically people only come here to do hill treks and that's all we did really. It was very cold. Very wet. Very British. But a lovely different place for a couple of days. We also met fellow tourists for the first time since we got here. So it felt good to be social again.

Alleppey - this was our first taste of Kerala, famous for being the 'nicer' part of India. This is also the jumping off point for the famous backwater trips into the villages. After checking out of the Lonely Planet recommended Johnsons homestay (manager was a rude arse and we had met some much friendlier managers at the bus stand), we did the day trip. Was again Incredible (although I'm realising how much I'm using that word in this blog). Just lovely to float through the villages with lovely scenery and see a bit of real India - although this is one of the most touristy attractions in India so how 'real' it is I don't know! But a nice relaxing day and LOADS of food!

We stayed with a couple of young guys called Sanil and JayJay for the remaining time and had some quite heavy drinking sessions with them. The place we stayed in was some very simple but nice bungalows quite near to the backwaters and in it's own space. We felt secluded from everyone and it was great!

Also in Alleppey we found an amazing restaurant called Dreamers. The staff were really friendly and it was the best curry we had in India. We also got to experience the drinking beer out of a tea cup for the first time! Was warm, flat and generally not recommended.

Alleppey was also our first experience of teaching in India. We spent a day helping out at a boy's school. It was a good experience although very different to what we're used to. Really rammed home the point of how spoilt we are in our country and in our schools. Their book corner was just a wall with a few magazines and they used pencils instead of pens. They were very grateful to get our donation of a few hundred pencils as they're seen as quite expensive over there. For more details Tanya has written on her own 'teaching blog' so check that out.

Varkala - officially the most touristy place in India. But extremely bloody lovely all the same. The weather was hot all the time, the drinks and sea food were lovely and cheap. There was a beach. There were coconut trees. And somehow we managed to spend nine days there although we didn't realise it at the time and can't now tell you what we did there!! I can tell you that one day we spent by another hotel's pool, one day we walked to the end of the tourist track and met some fishermen that climbed trees to get us fresh coconuts. One day we walked to Varkala town to see what was there. Not much. And one day I spent watching rugby all day (...) It was all very pleasant and again we met some nice people to spend time with. And it went extremely quickly.

Kanyakumari - back to travelling after the mini holiday! a lovely little fishing village located right on the tip of South India. The most southern place of the sub-continent and overlooking three oceans coming together - the Indian Ocean, the Arabian Sea and Bengal Bay. We visited Gandhi's ashes, saw the sunset over the three oceans, visited some monuments and statues and things and saw some fishermen in action. It was really good and was nice to see a bit of village life.

Kanyakumari is also the starting point and terminus for the famous Indian railway line. If you went from here to Jammu in the North it would take about 60 hours.

Enarkalum - we only went here and it seemed to take forever. The place was just a stopping off point but seemed alright. The hotel was expensive but pleasant and we went for a really nice meal. The city seemed like a nicer, cleaner version of Mumbai.

Munnar - another of the favourites! We stayed in a gorgeous little cottage place called JJ Cottage. The place was like a sunnier, happier version of Ooty and it was Incredible. Lots of hills, trekking, eating and sightseeing occured here. This place was also a bit of a bonus because we didn't think we would fit in another place before flying on so we were extremely happy to have come here (thanks Michael and Annie for the tip) The sights were lovely and the walks were knackering! Another one we would recommend to everyone!

Kochi - Fort Cochin is a lovely little colonial type place with a big fishing culture. You could walk around the whole place three times in a day. We ended up doing a tour where we visited Chinese Fishing Nets, a Dutch cemetary, a Dutch museum, spice markets, Jew Town, a beach where the Tsunami hit, Portugese museum and a ginger factory. We also saw some Indian martial arts which were really impressive and of course ate loads. It was a pleasant place to finish our trip of India and all that was left to do was to look forward to Indonesia...

We loved India and would definately return. It was so huge and everywhere was just so different. It's definately a lot more westernized than we thought it would be but there is so much to do and see. The people also make it what it is and they're extremely friendly for the most part.

We have already started planning our return trip!

Mild Observations About India so Far (Joe's grumbles)

Tanya wants me to make sure this is a solitary post, nought to do with her at all.

1. People here suffer from OCD. It's the only explanation for having a clean hand and a dirty hand. Honestly, why have a dirty hand anyway? Just have two clean hands and be happy with that.

2. How often do you need to phlegm on the ground? How congested with snot do you need to be to spit it out every two minutes? Normal pavement turns to swampy grounds when men, women, children, dogs and cows are projectiling every few minutes.

3. Impatience. It's everywhere. Even a cow butted Lorna with it's head, even though she had the right of way. Honking horns and pushing into queues. What do they need to do so urgently that they can't wait 30 seconds for someone to cross the road safely?

4. Cows in India are arrogant. You can see it in their eyes. They know they're worshipped.

5. I've never seen so many people lying around doing nothing. I thought we'd be the ones laying around all day sunbathing.

6. The ocean (or any water feature) seems to be India's bin. I've seen people on a train wait til we cross a river to throw their rubbish into the water. It's disgusting!

7. Men in India hold hands and cuddle when walking down the street. It's seen as friendship here but I can't see me convincing people back home to do it. I've never had my bare knee patted so frequently by men whilst sitting on a moving vehicle.

Most of these things are at their very worst in Mumbai. The beach in Mumbai is literally covered in rubbish and was a real shock to see. The people were very rude there and there wasn't much to see. Delhi had so much more character and so much more to see and do. Although I have to point out that one of my favourite experiences of India so far was when we were walking home to our hotel through the slums and came across a festival celebrating the elephant god Ganesh. The slum locals could have seen us to be intruding but invited us to dance with them and celebrate. It was amazing and we saw the best character of the city that night.

So it wasn't all grumbles...

First 3 weeks of India

Hi all,

We arrived in Delhi safely but were a bit overwhelmed by the smell, noise, heat, humidity and did we mention - the smell!

It was really weird to see cows wondering the streets and traffic going out of it's way to avoid them! The cows are worshipped here and they exploit that at every opportunity.. they're quite arrogant looking!

We did a day tour and went to the Gandhi museum, the red fort, Lodhi gardens, Lotus temple and so began the papparazzi photographs of everyone taking our pictures (we have since found out it's because we look like 'white chicken')

From Delhi we went to Lucknow which was our first experience of a train. It was interesting. It's every man for themselves at the train stations... wouldn't have been any 'women and children first' off like the Titanic...pushing galore! Even saw a guy put his arms through the bars off the window and try and grab someone's bag!

At Lucknow we went to La Martiniere school which looked like the Harry Potter school. Except they didn't learn magic here, it was more normal subjects like Maths and English and that. Met the headteacher and had a quick tour to the basement where the tomb of the founder was kept. We went to the residency, which was destroyed in 1857 during the war of independence and it was quite eerie as it was as though people had just left it. We spent two days in Lucknow and enjoyed the bit of calm we had there. Next was an overnight train to Varanasi...

Anyone who has read Joe's status on Facebook knows that this was where he was quite ill. This was not a pleasant experience although I won't go into specifics - it involved a moving train, 13 hour journey, hole-in-the-ground toilet!

In Varanasi Tanya and Lorna did a tour of the ghats. It was really interesting. Even saw a cremation and all the rituals that followed it in the Gange river. Joe stayed in bed. The next day we all managed to get up at sunrise for a boat ride down the Gange, watching all of the locals bathing, washing and brushing their teeth in the river. We were highly advised not to do this as a litre of normal water has five hundred bacteria and a litre of Gange water has 1.5m bacteria!

We then got a train to Agra and the first stop was the Taj Mahal! Amazing and inspiring - cannot really describe how surreal it was to see it. From here we had a driver for 8 days. He was called Rocky and was immediately friendly, funny and knowledgable.

We went to Jaipur, which is so far one of our favourite places - it felt like real India! We saw the Krishna parade, which was incredible! So many colours, floats and music and dancing! Everyone seemed really happy! From here, Rocky took us to Pushkar...

After the madness of the first few places, Pushkar was a nice break. Chilled out, but half of it was flooded, so we were a bit stuck in one half only. We climbed to a temple on top of a massive hill which had incredible views. On the way down we got caught in our very first monsoon downpour. Next stop was Jodhpur...

This was labelled the Blue City and it really is. We walked up to Mehrangrah Fort, which was amazing. The view over the whole city was well.. blue. In the evening we went to a rooftop restaurant overlooking (from beneath!?) the fort and had our first beer (it's been really difficult to find them here!) Tanya and Lorna were picked from a crowd to do some Indian dancing in front of the entire restaurant. Photos will come later.

Rocky then took us to Udaipur. On the way we went to Ranakpur, where we met some of Rocky's friends. It was a village in the middle of nowhere that had obviously never seen any tourists. Suddenly we were inundated by twenty family members staring at us and using universal signs to communicate.

In Udaipur we stayed in a five star hotel - very different to our basic hovels (there was a mix up and we got upgraded!) We loved it here and enjoyed the views over Lake Pakola. One evening we went to a traditional Rajasthani dance and music performance. Some very random bits i.e. men on piggy backs dressed as the devil squawking, but then also some very unique fantastic dancing with symbols and ten massive pots on dancer's heads.

And then what can we say... Mumbai. Less said the better. It incorporated all of the worst elements we had seen of India and has inspired Joe to write his own grumbling page after this one.

From Mumbai we got a 22 hour train to Goa. It was of course only meant to last 12 hours but due to monsoon (well done Tanya for checking the weather!), there was a rockslide on the tracks and we were stuck at a station for five hours.

Goa is everything you expect it to be. Relaxing, chilled, beaches, palm trees, cheap alcohol, good seafood. It's not noisy or dirty enough so tomorrow we're moving on to Hampi! But we really love it here. Tanya and Lorna have finally got sunburnt (so are no longer white chickens, they're semi-cooked chickens!)

Today we had our very first day where we weren't stopped for photographs every three minutes, although we did have to walk 3 miles into the wilderness to experience that peace!

Photographs will follow but I hope this was more interesting than the first one! The next page will be Joe's grumbles about experiences so far!

Lots of love to you all, hope everything is going well back home!

Tanya and Joe x

Planning for India

Hi all. This is the first blog of many (hopefully!). After hours of deliberating and looking at maps and websites I now have got a rough guide to our stay in India.

We fly out on August 15th to Delhi. From there we're going to get a sleeper train to Varanasi. I don't think we'll be staying there for too long so after a few days maybe we're looking to get a bus to Lucknow for a few days of sightseeing and history and culture n that. From there we're getting a 10 hour bus to Agra where there's a few things to do and see.

From Agra, we'll get a bus to Udaipur. From there we'll get a 16hour bus to Mumbai. After a few days we'll move on to Goa for a couple of days rest and relaxation.

From there we'll be going to Mysore on the way to Pondicherry. Then we swing back around to Kerala where we'll spend the remaining time.

We then fly out from Kochi.

This is just an estimate and I'm sure plans will change once we're there. If anyone else has any suggestions that would be great!

Joe and Tanya