Days 34-37
I would like to start this post about how wonderful my wife is and her contribution to this blog. Every post that I write in this blog is not really mine but ours. Not only does she help to give me a lot of post material and inspire me with a slant to take but she also proof reads the entire post, correcting the grammar and making sure that it makes sense to those reading it. Believe me there is alot of work in that and a lot of correcting to do! I am telling you this now because in my post (Goa) regarding the Danish women that got ripped off she has been extremely worried that you readers were mislead by how badly the these two ladies got scammed in Delhi. So just to put the record straight the Danish women paid about $106/£66 per day not including entry fees to sites or meals where as we have been spending $40/£24 all in. I did exaggerate how much, but they still got pretty badly stung.
Now back to our travels. It is Saturday (29th) and we are still in Goa but have moved location to the Southern Goan resort of Palolem. Allegedly it is more quiet than the Northern hippy scene but to be honest this place seems to be a lot more happening. Although it's the off season the place is awash with tourists and the restaurants are relatively full. The beach here is also much prettier than Anjuna, on a gentle Crescent Bay washing on to a palm fringed beach, typically tropical.
To get here we had to catch four hectic buses across Goa totaling three and a half hours on Wednesday 26th . Goa is India's smallest state and as a result I was fooled into thinking it would be easy to get around, well it is not. The beaches are away from the main population centres and the terrain with its inlets and mountains does not help transportation. But I guess they all combine to make the beaches still relatively rural and quiet and as a consequence fantastic. My wife mentioned that the Orange County beaches would have been similar back 50+ years ago before the white collar surfers and millionaires took over, minus the cows of course!
Palolem is definitely worth the effort, the beach is wonderful and the people here are great. It is more compact than Anjuna and the restaurants seem to have a more ready supply of fresh seafood, which has been useful in rebuilding our protein levels after our illnesses and going veggie for weeks. With that said many of the tourists here are little bit left field for our liking, yoga is in every other overheard sentence and the smell of marijuana is on every other breath. Also the thicker vegetation here leads to mosquitoes in abundance. These little pests presented me with the opportunity to test a device that I had read great reviews about on amazon.co.uk: Mosi-bands. Mosi-bands are wrist or ankle bands laced with deet, the instructions tell you to rub them on exposed skin and then wear them on your wrist or ankle. I duly followed this instructions and was wearing the band. Later that evening I had a mosquito bite me 2 inches from the band, the next evening my wife got a bite one inch from her band. Therefore my conclusion and advice to anyone else is to not buy mosi-bands as they are completely useless.
Taking life easy is our main purpose here and as a result the stories and experiences we have had are sparse in comparison to the previous few weeks. Beach lounging, perusing cheap but quality restaurants, and drinking cheap low quality beer have been our main pursuits here. But this is India an there is always something unexpected waiting around the corner. So we have two unexpected events. The first of which was a minor accident my wife had. On Thursday afternoon we were exploring the far end of the beach where it is rocky and my wife was busy taking photos of the beautiful scenery, next thing I hear yelping and shouting going on behind me, my wife subbed her toe rather badly on one of the rocks, while taking photos. Stubbed toes are a regular occurrence at home on furniture and the like so I assumed her pain would pass after a few minutes. But it didn't and she began limping her way around the beach. The toe in question also started to swell and yesterday a nasty bruise appeared, so a quick internet diagnosis and treatment states that there is nothing really can be done with a broken toe only rest and painkillers so she has bravely decided to ride it out until it gets better. The offending photo is below.
The other unexpected event was India directly intruding on my telephone call. I haven't mentioned it until now but I play the Irish Tenor Banjo and my class was restarting Thursday evening so I thought I would give my teacher a call through Skype to let him know where I am and to apologise for my absence. He already knew my situation so we were having a great conversation mainly about silage and the lack there of at home this year, and then it started. Firstly there was the firecrackers, which I am sure he thought was gun fire, but we persisted with the conversation. Then came the crazy Indian techno music and if that wasn't bad enough then came a hoard of drummers, all right outside the Internet cafe. He eventually commented, "Is there someone with a bodhran there?" I replied, "Bodhran? Its more like a Lambeg.... or a a dozen of them". The music though continued to get louder and we were forced to end our call, but that is typical of India. It discovers that you are phoning your music teacher and it decides "I'll show you what music really is!" which would be crazier and louder than anything in your own country
The music as it turns out was for our old friend Ganesh, apparently his festival isn't done yet and they are still parading with stuff down to the beach to launch into the waves. Yesterday was bigger again when a full life sized deity of Ganesh was launched into the Arabian sea by about 2 dozen locals. I have just learned this morning though that the festival doesn't actually finish until tonight. I am not sure how they are going to top the last few nights, but I am sure they will give it a go.
Our journey continues tomorrow when we have a early start to journey back inland and back up to the Deccan plateau to our next location, Hampi. We also decided that eight weeks is enough to see all that remains in India and we have booked our flights to South East Asia in mid October when we will be flying to Kuala Lumpar in Malaysia.
I have also decided to do an India Diaries series where I will review certain aspects of our trip, first up will be Transport, I have been working on this post for a while and I hope to have it up later today.
I would like to start this post about how wonderful my wife is and her contribution to this blog. Every post that I write in this blog is not really mine but ours. Not only does she help to give me a lot of post material and inspire me with a slant to take but she also proof reads the entire post, correcting the grammar and making sure that it makes sense to those reading it. Believe me there is alot of work in that and a lot of correcting to do! I am telling you this now because in my post (Goa) regarding the Danish women that got ripped off she has been extremely worried that you readers were mislead by how badly the these two ladies got scammed in Delhi. So just to put the record straight the Danish women paid about $106/£66 per day not including entry fees to sites or meals where as we have been spending $40/£24 all in. I did exaggerate how much, but they still got pretty badly stung.
Now back to our travels. It is Saturday (29th) and we are still in Goa but have moved location to the Southern Goan resort of Palolem. Allegedly it is more quiet than the Northern hippy scene but to be honest this place seems to be a lot more happening. Although it's the off season the place is awash with tourists and the restaurants are relatively full. The beach here is also much prettier than Anjuna, on a gentle Crescent Bay washing on to a palm fringed beach, typically tropical.
To get here we had to catch four hectic buses across Goa totaling three and a half hours on Wednesday 26th . Goa is India's smallest state and as a result I was fooled into thinking it would be easy to get around, well it is not. The beaches are away from the main population centres and the terrain with its inlets and mountains does not help transportation. But I guess they all combine to make the beaches still relatively rural and quiet and as a consequence fantastic. My wife mentioned that the Orange County beaches would have been similar back 50+ years ago before the white collar surfers and millionaires took over, minus the cows of course!
Palolem is definitely worth the effort, the beach is wonderful and the people here are great. It is more compact than Anjuna and the restaurants seem to have a more ready supply of fresh seafood, which has been useful in rebuilding our protein levels after our illnesses and going veggie for weeks. With that said many of the tourists here are little bit left field for our liking, yoga is in every other overheard sentence and the smell of marijuana is on every other breath. Also the thicker vegetation here leads to mosquitoes in abundance. These little pests presented me with the opportunity to test a device that I had read great reviews about on amazon.co.uk: Mosi-bands. Mosi-bands are wrist or ankle bands laced with deet, the instructions tell you to rub them on exposed skin and then wear them on your wrist or ankle. I duly followed this instructions and was wearing the band. Later that evening I had a mosquito bite me 2 inches from the band, the next evening my wife got a bite one inch from her band. Therefore my conclusion and advice to anyone else is to not buy mosi-bands as they are completely useless.
Taking life easy is our main purpose here and as a result the stories and experiences we have had are sparse in comparison to the previous few weeks. Beach lounging, perusing cheap but quality restaurants, and drinking cheap low quality beer have been our main pursuits here. But this is India an there is always something unexpected waiting around the corner. So we have two unexpected events. The first of which was a minor accident my wife had. On Thursday afternoon we were exploring the far end of the beach where it is rocky and my wife was busy taking photos of the beautiful scenery, next thing I hear yelping and shouting going on behind me, my wife subbed her toe rather badly on one of the rocks, while taking photos. Stubbed toes are a regular occurrence at home on furniture and the like so I assumed her pain would pass after a few minutes. But it didn't and she began limping her way around the beach. The toe in question also started to swell and yesterday a nasty bruise appeared, so a quick internet diagnosis and treatment states that there is nothing really can be done with a broken toe only rest and painkillers so she has bravely decided to ride it out until it gets better. The offending photo is below.
The other unexpected event was India directly intruding on my telephone call. I haven't mentioned it until now but I play the Irish Tenor Banjo and my class was restarting Thursday evening so I thought I would give my teacher a call through Skype to let him know where I am and to apologise for my absence. He already knew my situation so we were having a great conversation mainly about silage and the lack there of at home this year, and then it started. Firstly there was the firecrackers, which I am sure he thought was gun fire, but we persisted with the conversation. Then came the crazy Indian techno music and if that wasn't bad enough then came a hoard of drummers, all right outside the Internet cafe. He eventually commented, "Is there someone with a bodhran there?" I replied, "Bodhran? Its more like a Lambeg.... or a a dozen of them". The music though continued to get louder and we were forced to end our call, but that is typical of India. It discovers that you are phoning your music teacher and it decides "I'll show you what music really is!" which would be crazier and louder than anything in your own country
The music as it turns out was for our old friend Ganesh, apparently his festival isn't done yet and they are still parading with stuff down to the beach to launch into the waves. Yesterday was bigger again when a full life sized deity of Ganesh was launched into the Arabian sea by about 2 dozen locals. I have just learned this morning though that the festival doesn't actually finish until tonight. I am not sure how they are going to top the last few nights, but I am sure they will give it a go.
Our journey continues tomorrow when we have a early start to journey back inland and back up to the Deccan plateau to our next location, Hampi. We also decided that eight weeks is enough to see all that remains in India and we have booked our flights to South East Asia in mid October when we will be flying to Kuala Lumpar in Malaysia.
I have also decided to do an India Diaries series where I will review certain aspects of our trip, first up will be Transport, I have been working on this post for a while and I hope to have it up later today.
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