Delhi to Mumbai

Hello everybody and happy new year to you all!

Hope you had a great Christmas and new year, looking at the messages and photos on facebook it looked like great fun! Whish I was there, then again Xmas and new year in Goa, could be worse hey!!
Right back to the blog, I know I have been crap at updating it, and now that we are in the land of fast internet connection, Thailand, I will endeavour to update our travels more frequently! One more new year resolution!

So where were we?? I think in Delhi. We spent a few days there and then joined a new group and truck to travel to Mumbai. It was not as good as the previous ones, the crew were not leading and there was some grumpy people on the trip who quite frankly should have booked with Thomas Cook 2 weeks in Spain, as the overland adventure was not for them. Still we made friends with some nice chaps, became professional 'shit head' players and had some good laughs, always helped with few beers and magic juice (Vodka & Mango juice yum yum!).

After Delhi we arrived in Bikaner and went to the rat temple. I did not particularly want to get up at 6am to have rats crawling along my bear little toes (temple obliged you have to take your shoes off!), but had a bottle of gin bet with Anjli, so I had to do it!!. It was gross, they feed and look after the rats in this temple, they are supposed to bring good luck, I think they are barking mad personally!

We then drove to Jaiselmer which is a gorgeous city, Golden walled city. Chilled and visited the place and then went on a camel safari with Mr Desert, interesting guy full of stories, who was once the equivalent to the Malborough face of Indian cigarettes! After a couple hours on the camel back we stopped at our camp site to watch the sun set in the sand dunes, very beautifull. We had dinner around the fire and then slept under the stars - Andrew and I moved our beds on top of a dune, and it was very romatic, us in the Thar desert with just a materas and blanket looking at the sky and rumbling camels.... also a bit nippy and weird to find a wild dog asleep on our bed the next morning!.
It was fab and really good fun (thanks to the special cookies we found in Jaiselmer!) to sleep under the stars, a great experience which I would love to do again. After that night, we headed back to Jaiselmer on our camels and I asked my little guide to go fast, very fast! Little did I know how I would regret this the next day ... 1 hour of trotting on a camel leaves you with a funny way of walking for the next 48hrs!! Still it was good fun at the time!

We then went to Jodhpur, our guest house there was great and we met some cool guys giving us great advise for the next leg of our travels. I love this about travelling, there is a real sense of community, you meet nice people always very helpfull, have a nice time and some fun with them, exchange memories and then you are off again.
The fort there was grand but that's about it, for some reason I imagined horses and jodhpur trousers everywhere (7 years of horse ridding in this unflaterring trousers have marked me!), but nothing like that. ocal market was ok but then we have seen so many!!

After that was Pushkar where we had a very relaxing time. Pushkar is one very holy city in India and there they do not sell alcohol (dam) or eggs ... not sure what the connection is there! Still we had a laugh when a dodgy priest gave us blessings around the sacred lake and a little bracelet to mark the occasion, and when he asked for the magic donnation (which we knew was coming, they do that all the time ...), Andrew pretended to be a policeman from the fraud department and I gave them a lecture on false Gods like money, whish we had thought about this lines earlier on our trip as it would have saved us lots of hassles and roupies!! In Pushkar you can also go tracking, but we decided to just sit in one of the many opened cafes, watch the world go by (very interesting and colourfull .... local people, tourists, camels, monkeys, cows, nik nak stalls, all sharing the same streets in an organised chaos!), and enjoy the special lassis which helped a lot with the relaxation!!

After Pushkar, we headed to Udapur. A lovely and quiet city with a big temple and hotel in the middle of the lake - it is where a bit of the James bond Octopussy film was filmed. We relaxed some more there, walked leisurely in the narrow streets, went to the city palace which was amazing.

We then set off to Ellora after a very long, painfull and frustrating drive! Ellora is famous for it's caves and like the pyramids in Egypt the construction of one of the monilithic caves is a bit of a mystery and may be a gift from the Gods. I have to say it was so impressive, a huge temple carved from one rock, with so much intricacy and details that it must be from the Gods! We could have stayed longer there as there are more than 30 caves, Hindu, jains and Buddhist, and could have moved onto Ajanta to see more caves, but we had another option more appealing, which was to drive to Nasik, 200km further down and visit one of India only wineyard, called Sula wines.
We got there late in the day but it did not matter as suddenly it felt like we left the Indian dust / dirt / noise / chaos to arrived in a peace sanctuary. There red, white, rose wines and cheese were on abundance .......... it was heaven. After 2 months of not having any descent wine and any cheese except paneer, Frenchy felt like being back home and dare I say it was better than ...... Only joking, we just spent an great evening there drinking away, and gorging on cheese, crackers and later on an amazing Italian dinner. It really makes you realise how at home we take things for granted!!!

The next day was a bit hard to wake up, sore head but worth every drop of lovely wine! We went for a walk near a sacred water tank chilling and then we heard music and saw the groom on his horse (traditional for Indian's wedding!). I stared to take pictures of the band playing, people dancing in the streets and of the groom (who looked so miserable!), and before we knew, we were invited to the wedding! Andrew took part in the Indian dancing which was so much fun, saying this I did not look any better trying to wiggle my hips! After the dancing, we went to the ceremony and saw the bride arriving! It made our wedding look so small with our 120 guests as there the hall was full of people may be 400 people or more! It was fun as we were treated as special guests, made to sit at the front, given gifts and decorated on our foreheads! We even had our photos taken with the bride groom and their families. Two little girls kept us company and took us to help ourself to a lovely buffet - well looked lovely but nearly blew my mouth out, so spicy, then you have to be polite and finish it all off, nightmare!. We had a great time there and somehow it summarise Indian people for us; so welcoming, nice, inclusive, friendly, smiling and humble. Would we invite strangers to our wedding, certainly not. There they were just happy to have us and laugh with us, dance and share their food, quite humbling experience really.

After Nasik, was Mumbai. We got there late again as the crew are so crap at driving and finding hotels ... I was so cross with them. One time cross in India is not a bad result knowing myself I think I did well!
We stayed in the Colaba area, which is where it all happens (and also where the shootings happened a few weeks before). We went to cafe Leopold's, which I really wanted to see, not for the shooting but because I read Shataram and the guy spends all his time there, was interesting to go, like walking on his footsteps.
We met Miss Corner's friend there after nearly 2 months of talking to him by text, Raj, a lovely gentleman who then took us to another bar (we felt like locals) called the Ghetto where we laughed so much with the bar owner. The next day we chilled try to book a train to Goa (not possible as fully booked oups!), went to a heaven shop called fabIndia. Was good, did not buy anything just got cute outfit for Lisa Lou, and rajastany shoes, she is going to look so cute! We then went back to Leopolds and notice this time the bullet marks on the walls and ceiling, felt very very strange about this, I suppose you are used to see atrocity on TV but being where it all happened and seeing the marks of it put things into perspective.

After the next morning sightseeing (doby ghatts are so funny, it's where all the clothes are washed in Mumbai, amazing place ran by men only, interesting concept, India gate, Taj hotel, hanging gardens, malabar hill etc), we departed for Goa having found an overnight sleeper bus. We traveleld sharing a tiny sleeper with Andrew and made friends with David and Martin, nice Sweedish guy and crazy Irish buddhist guy! We 1st stayed in Mandrem beach and spent Xmas eve there, in the swimming pool, drinking away!
On Xmas day we moved to Arambol in a guest house on the beach ... at night the sound of the waves were helping us to fall asleep, amazing! We loved it so much there that we decided to move back our flight to Bangkok (painfull as bank holidays in UK). To summarise our time in Goa, it was 1 week relaxing on the beach, between the sea (so warm it's like getting in your bath) and a sweet lake (fresh water) with nearby a natural mud bath place (which we used a lot and looked very silly all covered in mud!!), toes in the sand, eating, drinking, having fun.... We also went round Goa on bikes which we rented and the sense of freedom and fun was awsome + Andrew my husband is a very sexy bike ridder!
New years eve was eventful, fireworks, fresh seafood dinner on the beach, sand in toes, no wories about what to wear, which party to go to, what make up to put on etc... my idea of heaven. Only black spot was Andrew losing his mobile at 11.45, so as everybody was huging and fire works were going off, here I was, sat on a chair being grumpy whilst Andrew was trying to find his mobile in the sand with a torch, comical looking back! Dare I say that we did not find it!

We left Goa on the 1st January 09, with another overnighth bus (with broken seats & windows! Nice) and spent our last day in India and in Mumbai with Raj waiting to catch our overnight flight to Bangkok.

It was very very sad to leave Goa as we had a amazing time there. Great people, scenary, sea, sand, relaxing atmosphere- after a week we felt like home there, all on our door steps and starting to know the people working in bars!.
This sadness was enhanced because we also were leaving India that night too. India has been the first leg of our adventures and it was a great introduction to our travels.
We both had a great time going round this amazing country, full of contradictions, colours, friendly, smiley, helpfull people (who also try to rip you off every 5 min!), full of dust, dirt, noise, a country of organised chaos which can be fantastic and also frustrating at times. India has been overall a very humbling experience.
Seeing people with so little, so poor, yet somehow so rich in their heart smiling at you made us feel very spoiled westerners and from now on we will make an effort to appreciate life more and not take things for granted so much ................another new year resolution!

But enough of looking back, our adventures continue and Thailand is next on the map! Can't wait
Lots of love from the Roses!
xxx