India

November 8, 2012

Home Sweet Home

After an exciting 12 hours in an airport hotel in Delhi watching movies and doing nothing and a 9 hour flight journey we made it home safe and sound. We were lucky that the weather put on a good day for us and we had a beautiful view of sunny London as we flew in over the city. I have to admit I was totally dreading coming home to winter, the drudgery of commuting to work and the overall greyness of the city. Seeing the London Eye, Big Ben and even my office as we flew over the Thames was a perfect reminder of why we live in this amazing city.

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November 5, 2012

Palaces, Paintings and Ponies

The last stop on our tour of India was the lake city of Udaipur in Rajasthan. We had intended to go to Jodphur also but once we settled into our hostel and saw the pretty city we decided to stay and relax instead. It was a bit of a journey from Amritsar (two consecutive overnight trains with five hours in Delhi in the middle) so we spent te morning of the first day in Udaipur recovering.

Once we had our nanna naps we headed out to the City Palace that Udaipur is famous for. Built high above the city right next to Lake Pichola the palace is now two luxury hotels. They do also have a museum but we opted just to walk around the gorgeous grounds and have tea and cake at one of the cafes. From there we walked around the windy streets and browsesd the shops as we made our way down to the lake. We crossed one of the bridges in the narrow part and made our way to one of the Ghats. There are several Ghats surrounding the lake where people come to bathe and wash their clothes. From the ghat we had a beautiful view of the City Palace over the lake and of one of the floating hotels (where you can stay for £1500 a night) so we sat and relaxed there for the rest of the afternoon.

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October 31, 2012

Golden

Our detour up to Punjab for the wedding meant that we got a couple of days to spend in the state and so we headed to Amritsar. I am so glad we did as it is home to the Golden Temple one of the best buildings we have seen in our travels in India. We arrived back in Amritsar at 1am after a train journey from Bhatinda and once we checked into our hotel we were out for the count. We had both picked up a flu from being on the go and all the partying at the wedding had worn us out so we spent our first morning in Amritsar recovering and watching TV in bed.

We weren’t completely slack though and in the mid afternoon we headed off to see the famous Golden Temple. The temple is a Sikh temple which meant no shoes and head coverings. We dropped our shoes off at a little counter and hoped to buy a little scarf or bandana as the guidebook said the palace was rife with shops selling them. However we couldn’t find any so we decided to go for the ones that the palace provided. I was a bit iffy as I’m not sure if and when they get washed and I had visions of getting head lice but since we were there and all the locals were doing it we thought ‘why not’. With our head scarves on we headed in one of the main gates to view the temple everyone had been talking about.

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October 28, 2012

Tying The Knot – Indian Style

Going to an Indian wedding wasn’t always on our travel plans but when Hamish mentioned him and Michelle were going to one in Punjab and it probably wouldn’t matter if we tagged along we changed our itinerary to fit it in. Don’t worry – we weren’t wedding crashes, the groom Karendeep is a close work mate of Hamish’s said more the merrier. Karendeep lives in Melbourne but is originally from Bhatinda and when his parents thought it was taking him too long to find a wife they did it the more traditional way of arranging a bride. It wasn’t a blind wedding though and Karendeep had met his bride Jasimeen several times and was happy about the match. My feelings about arranged marridges as side (I dont really agree with them) it was promised to be one hell of a party. There was the ‘engagement party’ that evening with the ring ceremony followed by the actual wedding and further celebrations the next day.

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October 26, 2012

One Day in Bombay

Due to travel plans to make it to a wedding up in Punjab it meant we only had 24 hours in Mumbai between when our overnigh sleeper arrived and our very early flight departed. Our second overnight sleeper bus was a bit more comfortable – this time the beds were wider and we even had our own LCD TV’s in our cabin. Very swish! It did mean that we got more sleep but the downside was our very swish bus broke down – twice. The first time was somewhere in the middle of nowhere and we stopped for two hours while they tried to fix it meaning that we arrived in Mumbai late. The second time it broke down was on the outskirts of town with an hour of our journey to go. We jumped off and got into a taxi and spent another hour (and very expensive cab ride) making our way across town to our hotel and finally arriving at midday – five hours later then expected.

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October 25, 2012

Temple Town

Our next stop after Goa was Hampi and to get there we had our first overnight sleeper bus. We didn’t realise when we booked but the bus actually had flat beds so when we got on I thought we would be having a comfy sleep. Turns out top bunk sleepers are squishier and bumpier than normal recliner seats and I ended up only getting about an hours sleep.

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October 19, 2012

Home Cooked Meal

Throughout our trip we have had the chance to test out many delicious curries and Indian meals so when we saw a sign advertising for cooking classes Dad, James and I  jumped at the chance to learn how to make them. We signed up for a lunchtime class that went for three hours and taught us to cook five dishes – all of which we got to eat at the end.

We arrived at the home of Mukti, our teacher for the day, and were welcomed into her kitchen with a drink and she explained how the day would work. We were joined by two Polish girls who had been travelling India after a wedding so we had lots to chat about as we waited for the class to start. The first meal we cooked was a mushroon masala and I stepped up to help Mukti and one of the other girls out while James and Dad played scribe and photographer. The meal was fairly simple to make although it did have a lot of ingrediants just to make it perfectly spicy. The second meal was a Paneer Mutter which basically means ‘cheese and peas’. Paneer is an Indian cottage cheese and is used as a substitute for meat quite often in their vegetarian meals. This one came with a Masala based sauce using many of the same spices and ingrediants as the last one.

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October 17, 2012

To Market To Market

For much of our travel we have been behind ‘the season’ and I can’t tell you the amount of times something has been closed or unavailable because of it. However, now, we are finally in the season! This means we aren’t the only people eating I’m restaurants or wanting to do some activities and something we wanted to do was actually open. This time it was the Ajuna Beach Flea Markets.

Open only on Wednesdays we got to go to the first one of the season meaning that not only did everyone want our business but we had better bargaining power. The markets were placed between the palm trees right next to the beach so we spent our time wandering through the hundred or so stalls that where there. Many of them were selling the typical touristy goods such as ali-baba pants or Jewellery but we did find a few selling something different. Dad discovered that you could pledge money to buy a village a few chickens and we walked past a hippy trying to sell us trance music.

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October 15, 2012

Old Spice

After saying goodbye to Mish and Hamish it was only a couple of hours before we met up with more company – this time in the form of my parents. Needless to say I was very excited to see them and after the hello hugs and kisses (and a few happy tears) we settled down with a Kingfisher beer to catch up. They had just finished a week long trip around the Golden Triangle (Delhi, Agra and Jaipur) before making their way down to Calangute, Goa. The catch up continued as we walked along the beach for another amazing sunset and then had a delicious seafood dinner with a few more celebratory drinks.

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October 12, 2012

Palolem – the Place to Goa

We had a few days from our time in Kerala before meeting up with my parents in North Goa so we decided we would check out the South of the sunny state. We were also lucky that our itinerary aligned with Mish and Hamish’s so we had two great partners in crime for some relaxing days by the beach. I was excited to head to Palolem because it was famous for its relaxed backpacker vibe and its beach front coco-huts but when we arrived we found out we were a week behind the peak season (again) and they weren’t built yet. We settled for a little room as close to the beach as we could and went to explore.

As we wandered down the beach and discovered it was a little bay with palm trees leaning towards the sun, bars and restaurants lining the beach and of course just to remind us where we were a herd of cows wandering the waterfront. We had a day before the others arrived so we spent it checking out the place which mostly included relaxing on the beach, taking shelter from the sun in a beach side bar followed by a bit more relaxing on the beach.

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