Goa at last

We've been travelling mostly by train for the last two days. Two l-o-n-g days. We left Kochin on the 27th and boarded the train headed towards Goa. We were not able to get a single ticket to cover the complete distance, so had to make an overnight stop in Mangalore. This was not necessarily all bad, as arriving in a new place at 3:00 a.m. is not always the best idea anyway. Plus, Mark had read that there's good food in Mangalore!

We knew it was time to leave Kochin when we finished seeing all the sights and started to roam from restaurant to restaurant. As mentioned in the last blog, we haven't really quite figured out timing here for food, so we figured we'd better not take any chances! Dessert at the first place (life is uncertain, eat dessert first!) was an interesting attempt at banana cream pie. The drinks on the other hand, were fantastic. Musumbi juice is similar to orange juice, but magically, it tastes JUST like Orange Julius!! My guess is, there's a pile of sugar in it, but I'm pretending it's healthy.

Then, to the next restaurant, which served up delicious lime ginger soda. But better than that, there was a lending library, where I picked up Dan Brown's The Lost Symbol. There was a lot of travel ahead, and books are required for this task.

Finally to the dinner restaurant, which was fairly new and nicely decorated, with clean white paint and three large orange etched-glass art panels on one wall. There I had a tasty fish curry and Mark had a vegetarian meal consisting of black bean curry, okra, and green mango and beet salad. It's hard to linger when there are no post dinner drink options - they didn't even have tea or coffee on the menu to go with their famous chocolate cake! - so we headed back to the hotel relatively early, where I hunkered down with my book and Mark headed out to the free live DJ concert in the parade grounds across the street from our place. He mentioned that it was odd to see that the audience was comprised almost solely of young men between 15 and 25 dancing around with very few women out. I guess they were all home cooking, cleaning, washing, and ironing clothes.

There are two ways to travel: the easy way, and Mark's way. Okay, that's not really fair. I'm in general agreement of our travel choices. I do find it interesting though that many (most?) people will take the easy option. For example, you can take an auto rickshaw (tuk-tuk) directly to the train station for 250 rupees. Or, you can take an auto rickshaw to the ferry terminal for 80 rupees, take the ferry for 5 Rupees, and walk to the train station from the other side. It's not the easy way, but it's definitely the way the locals would do it. On the walk to the train station, we stopped at a good looking vegetarian restaurant, had some of our newfound favorite musumbi juice, and picked up some snacks for the train trip. There's something about travelling that makes us hungry!

Travelling by train is INFINITELY better than taking the bus. We went what is called "3 Tier AC" which means there are 6 people sitting in a section. Each person has a berth, but during the day the middle bunks are put up out of the way and most people just sit up and chat. We were officially seated in separate train cars, but once the conductor came around he arranged for us to sit together. It was very pleasant to hear the chug chugging of the train with a complete abscence of the honk honking of the traffic. Plus, the chai wallah came by often, along with the coffee wallah, snack wallah, juice wallah, and dinner wallah. I finished "A Fine Balance" by Rohinton Mistry - a very good, if very depressing, read. I sat and pondered it for some time before burying myself in The Lost Symbol. It was a great way to help the 9 1/2 hour train trip pass by quickly. We also spent some time watching the world go by outside the window, and took some time to actually reflect "Hey, that is INDIA out the window!". The sunset was beautiful, and the countryside seemed very serene and mostly untouched by the garbage that we see so much of in the cities.

We arrived in Mangalore late - at 10:30, and bargained with a tuk tuk driver to get into town. Maybe the driver was pissed at us for getting a good price, because he drove like a bat out of hell. We made it to the hotel in record time and thankfully in one piece, but I think he might need to take some Defensive Driving Classes.

The hotel price included breakfast, so we went up to the 7th floor, which offered a good view of the city, not to mention some good food! Very traditional Indian breakfast of idli, dosa, sambar, chutney, boiled egg, and "sweet". (Still not sure what that was, but it was tasty. Kind of like sweet polenta scented with green cardamom.) And of course, very sweet chai. I think my teeth may rot out here!

We had a few hours to kill before getting to the train station for the next leg of travel, so went to a lovely chapel that was located in a nearby college. The ceiling and walls are all painted with incredible 110-year old frescoes. Sitting in the pews, my neck was getting kinked looking up for so long to take it all in!

A walk through town took us to a clothing shop that actually had prices. I got a salwar kameez, that I'm sure you'll see in the photos soon. The funny thing about these suits is that they come with no sleeves. Well, that's not entirely true. They come with sleeves that are not sewn into the outfit, but they are just tacked on to the back. That way, if you want them sewn in, you just take them to the stitcher and he/she sews them in for you!

Snacks purchased, we were again in the tuk tuk on the way to the train station for leg 2 - Mangalore to Margao, Goa. This time it should have been only a 4 1/2 hour trip, and it was, except that the train was 1 1/2 hours late to the station. If only we had known, we could have had some of that delicious Mangalorean seafood we'd read about. As it was, by lunch, we were still too full from breakfast, so missed out. Too bad!!

We spoke of what to do when we arrived at the train station in Margao. Push on to the capital, Panaji, a 45 minute bus ride away? Or stay in the town with the train station? Since we arrived at 8:00, we figured we'd be okay to push on. Sadly, by the time we negotiated with the tuk tuk driver and arrived at the bus station, we just missed the 8:30 bus. Oh well, we'll take the 9:00 bus. Except that the 9:00 bus didn't arrive. We pulled out of the bus station at 9:30, to arrive in Panaji at 10:30 with no place to stay. The few places we called were sold out, so now it was time to figure out where to stay. A very friendly taxi driver took us to a couple of places, and we finally found one that had a room. It was kind of sketchy, but at 10:45 at night, you can't be too picky. I call it the the "Thou Shalt Not" hotel, as there was a list of 10 rules posted on our door. Neither of us slept well, and we were not sorry the check out time was 8:00 a.m.

We are now ensconced in a new, slightly better, place. It really is high season here, and accommodation is not easy to fine. Such is life - we're still having a great time, eating great food, and, perhaps the very best of all, this province seems to have relaxed liquor laws and we actually had BEER with lunch! Beer definitely makes lunch better....

Kochi - our longest stop yet

We hope everyone had a lovely Christmas and ate some extra turkey for us. We arrived on the 24th, and unfortunately, were caught off guard by the fact that Christmas Eve dinner is the big event here. By the time we decided to partake in the fancy buffet dinner at a nearby hotel, it was sold out. Too bad.

Christmas morning dawned and we exchanged our Christmas cards, thought about friends and family, ate candy canes and headed out to call home. My mom's line was busy, but we managed to get through to Mark's folks and chat for about 15 minutes. It was great to catch up and hear how things are going at home. Sorry about the weather - I guess I shouldn't complain that it's pretty warm here, hey?

One of the unique things about Fort Cochin is that it has had Portugese, Dutch, and British influence. The architecture is a melange, different from other places that we've seen so far, and it's quite beautiful. We wandered all over town during the day, checking out the sights. There are a couple of old churches, a Dutch cemetary, an excellent palace/museum, and the oldest synagogue in the Commonwealth - built in 1568 - among other things.

The waterfront is about a 5 minute walk from our hotel. Along part of the seawall, there are complicated cantilevered Chinese fishing nets that apparently take 4 - 6 people to operate. I'm skeptical that they're still used as I haven't ever seen them in the water. However, they are pretty to look at and are the unofficial symbol of the town. People stroll by in the evening, pick out a fish from the row of stalls and have it cooked up for them at the open-air restaurant across the street.

At one point in our wanderings around town, we came upon Dazzler Hair Dressing & Gents Beauty Parlour. What a great opportunity for Mark to have his van dyke trimmed for Christmas. He now looks very respectable indeed, and for only 30 rupees!

It seemed like we walked forever yesterday! Late in the afternoon we stopped at Koder House (fancy schmancy hotel that used to be a residence) for a cold Kingfisher - ahhhhh! and then off to our hotel for a wee nap before dinner. We're having trouble figuring out the pattern of dinner here. When we wander by at 6:00, places are dead. There's nothing more unappealing than eating in an empty restaurant, so we figured we'd have a little rest and head out later. Oooops! We very nearly slept through dinner! We hopped out of bed and headed for the wine degustation at the fancy hotel next to ours, but it was dead in the wine bar, and the kitchen had just closed in the (gorgeous) main restaurant. What? It was only 9:30. What to do for Christmas dinner? We ended up at the next best place, the Old Harbour Hotel where they squeezed us in, as it was packed. By the time we were seated and our dinner of shrimp curry (Mary), and fish in orange cardamom sauce (Mark) arrived it was close to 11:00. Many of the menus state something like "your meal will be made to order - please enjoy the relaxing wait of 30 - 45 minutes". Mark unwisely chose to drink wine with dinner - India's wine makers have a lot to learn still! I was smart enough to stick with Kingfisher blue. Curry and beer - life is good.

The restaurant was quite beautiful, with a lush outdoor seating area lit by glowing candles. Our table was on the terrace overlooking the garden, which was very pleasant and probably far less mosquito laden. We made our way back to our hotel close to midnight which I'm sure is a record for me after Christmas dinner, and each had a slice of authentic Indian Christmas plum cake to round out our day.

As an aside, our waiter spoke English quite well so we asked him why alcohol is SO difficult to find in this country. He explained that it costs 10 laks (1 million rupees or $25,000) for a liquor license for one year, so most restaurants remain unlicensed, and for home consumption, there are only a few government liquor stores in any one city!

Our plans for our next move are made and tickets are in hand. Off to Mangalore and then Goa by train over the next two days. Can't wait to see what riding the rails is like here!

Merry Christmas from Kochi

We are about as far away as we can be from a White Christmas, which is making it far more bearable to be without family and friends. I can pretty easily pretend that Bing Crosby, Christmas turkey, and Christmas pudding don't really happen at this time of year.

Back in Alleppey (was it really only three days ago?) we went punting from 7:00 a.m. to 1:00 pm. It was lovely to explore the narrow shaded waterways that only the smallest boats can navigate. Our guide, Thara, was in his mid twenties, spoke English quite well, and both answered our questions and offered us tidbits of information. For example: There are now 850 houseboats in Alleppey (the larger canals are over-run with them) and to wash and iron the sheets of those houseboats, local families receive a whopping 5 rupees per sheet (that's 8 cents). And a rice farmer makes only 100 rupees per day ($2.50 Cad). So, the next time you think you aren't paid enough, think again! I do wonder how much Thara made for his six hours of paddling us around, since we paid at the guest house. At any rate, it felt very decadent to be sitting in the covered two person boat watching the world go by.

That changed rapidly as we left our guest house and headed for the bus station. Next stop Varkala, a 3 hour bus ride away. For the first time, we weren't getting on a bus at the origin station, so we had to battle with the rest of the folks for a spot. I managed to snag a stand up spot at the very back, which was bearable, but I wondered how I would fare after 3 hours! Mark was lucky enough to be standing beside someone who got off within 10 minutes, so he got to sit. Sitting in a hot, crowded bus with your backpack on your lap (mine was on the floor at least) wasn't a lot of fun either. After an hour, I managed to get a seat as well, and after about 1.5 hours, the bus emptied out. The last 30 minutes were not bad, but I was getting kind of tired of being on the bus. When we finally did arrive in Varkala, a glorious beach was one minute's walk from our hotel, and it was well worth the bus ride! The water was cool enough to be refreshing wtihout being cold in the least. Ahhhhh!

Not only was there surf, sand, and sun, but best of all, there were SUNDOWNERS! The first gin and tonic of our trip! It wasn't Bombay, or Sapphire, or Tanqueray, but it resembled gin and tonic enough for us. Sadly, the second round turned out to be white rum and tonic as they ran out of gin. I guess they figured that we wouldn't notice - HA! But switching to mojitos wasn't that much of a hardship!

Fresh seafood abounds in Varkala. At dinner time, you can walk the "stroll" along the clifftop path, and all the restaurants have the fresh fish of the day on display. Pick your fish, they cook it in a multitude of ways, and voila! Dinner! Mark had butter fish cooked in Keralan spices in a banana leaf and it was amazing. I had a baby tuna and felt very guilty about it. The fish was far too small to be killed, but I ate it and have to say, it was tasty grilled in a bit of butter, lemon and garlic. I promise not to eat another one though.

The next morning we donned our bathing suits for a swim in the surf. But, as luck would have it, the fishermen were hauling in their catch! It was very cool to watch - a group of 30 - 40 men were split in two groups on the beach. Each group was pulling on a bundle of lines which were connected to a net, and they were doing a type of chant. One guy would call, an the rest would reply. Very cool. Eventually the net came ashore full of fish of all types unknown to me. The only thing I recognized was the squid, oh, and the assorted plastic garbage of course. Too bad we had no camera.

The afternoon brought us ayeurvedic massages, which were pretty darn amazing. I was brought into a treatment room, and stripped off all of my clothes. My masseuse did a little prayer with some oil, and worked on my scalp and head for a while, and then I lay on a table that was covered in a plastic sheet. A lovely smelling warm oil was poured on me, and in some ways I felt like a turkey being basted in oil for Christmas dinner. Just joking of course, it was very blissfull and relaxing. The smell of the product that they used on my face was beautiful. This was a fantastic way to spend an hour and 20 bucks!

We needed a break from the bus, so we were going to take the train from Varkala to Fort Cochin, but sadly, a lot of other people seemed to have the same idea. What a good time to try a ride in an Ambassador long-haul taxi. It's a pricey option, but what the heck, it's Christmas so we thought we'd splurge. It was still noisy with the honk honk honking, but 100 times more comfortable than the bus. And now, here we are, at Christmas Eve in Kochi. Soon it's time for a sundowner (if we can find one) and dinner. Merry Christmas everyone!!

Wildlife viewing in Periyar

According to the guidebook, Periyar Wildlife Sanctuary in the Western Ghats can be a bit like Disneyland. Okay, so thankfully it wasn't that crowded, but there were still more than enough vacationing yahoos. But I digress.

We decided to head off from the peace and quiet of George Thomas's house with a 4-WD vehicle and an unknown driver that spoke no English. Some might question the intelligence of such a move, but as mentioned in our last post - life is an adventure! Truly, we had nothing to worry about as this was all arranged through George and his son-in-law Manoj. Upon our departure there seemed to be some confusion as to the direction of our destination, as our driver had to stop and and ask for directions a few times and make a u-turn or two, but after approximately 4 hours of driving (to cover about 120km!) we made it to Kumily, the small town on the park's northern edge.

On the way we passed through Erumily, a major pilgimmage stopover, and saw all kinds of festive looking folks crowding the streets with their singing and dancing. A little later, the road started some serious climbing and the hills were a welcome change in scenery. Lovely, lush and green, the foliage slowly changed from rubber and palm trees to tea plantations.

We arrived at the Mickey Homestay and were warmly greeted by Sujatha, a very lovely woman with sparkly eyes. She showed us our room, which was comfortable enough, and then we spoke to a guide that worked for the place. His English was that tricky kind composed of real English words, tacked together into vaguely recognizable sentences. For example, one of the things we wanted to do was take a boat ride at 7:00 a.m. on the lake, to see if we could spot any animals. Well, to do this, one must purchase a ticket for the park entrance, and then go into the park, and then purchase a different ticket for the boat. We had a driver, so we figured that he could take us to the gate and we'd figure the process out. Our guide said that the driver would "go too fasting. Too much pumping, pumping and jumping, jumping. Better to go with tuk tuk. It goes fastly in park". Thankfully we took his advice though we didn't quite understand it, because we never would have managed this trek on our own. First, our friendly guide lined up at 5:00 a.m. to get our ticket for the park entrance. We toddled out of bed at a lazy 5:30, took the tuk tuk at 5:45, and got to the front part of the line by 6:00 a.m. There we waited with the hordes in a big traffic jam. At shortly before 6:15, when the gates open, the engines started up. Vroom vroom, it was like being at the start of the Indy 500, except in vehicles that have engines that could barely power your lawn mower. Once the gates opened we were off! We raced up the road in the semi-darkness with the other cars, jeeps, and auto rickshaws, all vying to be at the front of the line. The road is full of booby traps - speed bumps (turns out that pumping pumping is bumping bumping) and cattle guards that I swear are set to see if we can be thrown out of our vehicles. The experienced drivers, though, know where they are and when and how much to slow down. Our driver was an excellent racer. Once we arrived at the end of the road, we ran (okay, jogged) the 500 meters or so to the boat ticket gate. There is a rodeo-style chute that you have to line up in that I kid you not, was barely shoulder width across and was completely enclosed overhead as well. There was no cutting in THAT lineup! Turns out we were #4 and #5 in the line, thanks to our good driver and our reasonable fitness.

The boat trip itself was not much to write home about, except to say that to our astonishment there was a lifejacket for each of the 150 passengers, and the crew made sure every one of us had ours tied on right. Who says safety rules are lax in India? The other point about the boat trip was that sitting right behind us was a family of a dozen assorted aunties, uncles, nieces, nephews and the family clown. See reference to "yahoos" above. I can't help but think that the noise coming from the boat did nothing to aid in the wildlife sighting. We weren't completely skunked though. We did manage to see some jungle chickens, a few grazing bison and thankfully even an elephant bathing in the lake. "Very good lucky", our guide told us later.

Another thing that Mickey Homestay helped us out with was a cooking class. For a whopping 500 rupees ($12.50) we both attended the Campfire Cafe cooking class on the evening that we arrived. There were only three of us, and we were quickly put to work. But before we could do any chopping at all, our teacher had to sharpen our rusty knives. He smacked a couple of rocks together until there were shards on a piece of bamboo, and then rubbed the knife along it until it was sharp enough to give you a nice, clean wound. Maybe the rust that comes off on the vegetables adds extra iron to your diet? Anyways, were were put to work chopping, spicing, frying, grating coconut, and my personal favorite, making parotha. It is a delicious bread that is difficult to find in Vancouver. And now, with any luck, I can make it. The recipe is as follows: 1 kg. flour, 3 glasses water, 1 spoon sugar, 1 spoon salt, and some cryptic cave-painting-type diagrams of the process. I should be able to recreate this at home, no problems, right???

Before I forget, Santa and his band of merry men made an appearance at the cooking class. We saw another appearance yesterday while walking back to our homestay and are still a little unclear on the concept. They just seem to show up, and dance around and make general noise (or is that an Indian X-mas carol?) and then go away. Odd.

Sadly, something we ate either at lunch or at the cooking class finally got to both Mark and I (Mark first and more severely) and we spent an unpleasant night sharing the bathroom. All I'll say is that Mark was happy that Indian bathrooms come with both toilet AND a bucket.

We spent a pretty low key day in Kumily after the boat ride but by 6pm we were feeling better and managed to get out to see a Kathakali performance. It's done by dancers that study for 7 years - and they have amazing control of their eyes and facial muscles. The stories are told through expressions and hand gestures only, and fortunately the evening included a great description of the storyline. I'm not sure I'd want to sit through an entire traditional performance that lasts from 7:00 pm until dawn, but an hour was quite good.

Upon our return to Pathanamthitta, we visited with the family and I "helped" (which might in fact of hindered) Leda (sp?) make chicken cutlets (deep fried meat patties) which she makes from her home and sells. I also got to go gold shopping, and it's not for the faint of heart. Sunglasses should be a requirement in those shops! So much gold!!

We left this morning and are now in Alleppey - houseboat central. Will take a punt around the canals for a few hours in the morning and then hit the road for Varkala. We'll see how it goes as far as accommodation goes. It's getting a little close to Christmas, although it hardly seems like it here. While there are X-mas stars, cakes that say Merry X-mas, and funny Santas here, it's just not quite the same......

Vaikathu House, Patanamthitta

Hey folks! When we last left you, we had endured a 20 hour bus ride to finally arrive at my friend Julie's family's home in Patanamthitta. George, her 76 year old father, is the only one around, as her brother & his family had to go to Delhi. No problems though, George speaks English well, and is very good company. And the house is really amazing, as you can see.

We spent our first afternoon here wandering around in town. Our present residence is located approximately 1 km from town, so it was a very enjoyable walk - especially after sitting in a bus for what seemed like forever! It's a town like many other towns in India that we've seen, either up close and personal or from a bus window. Lots of dusty shops selling all manner of things. Right now X-mas stars are big, and always, jewelery shops are the largest and most prominent. There is a LOT of gold in this country.

We arrived back home at 7:30 to find that George was a bit worried about us. We can make it all the way from Vancouver to Patanamthitta, but he was worried about us finding our way back to the house. We ate a delicious dinner of fish and chicken curry, and by 9:00 pm I was down for the count. It's amazing how tired you can be from sitting on your butt on a bus!

Yesterday started out a little bit unorganized. However, in the end, we went to Kottayam to take a private boat ride through the backwaters of Kerala.

It is December of course, and Santa made an appearance on the water. Since skin here is dark, they have Santa masks complete with red hat and beards attached. It's a little bit creepy seeing these masks in the shops (usually hanging up). At any rate, Santa and his cohorts came by on a boat with blaring music, and I think he was throwing candy for the kids.

We also got to try our first Toddy. It's palm "beer", and as George pointed out, it is for drinking not smelling. I took a whiff before he poured my glass, and I made a bad face. It's definitely an acquired taste but if you can get past the smell, the flavour of the milky, slightly effervescent beverage is quite pleasant, kind of like a shandy. We were also told that there is morning made toddy, which is better than yesterday afternoon made toddy. Who knew! I can't imagine what yesterday morning toddy would taste like!

Our lunch stop included fish curry on kappa(?) (curry spiced tapioca root). This was a lovely change from rice, and it was very tasty. The main was an entire fried-up fishy - flat and not too big, tasty, but lots of bones. The leftovers were thrown to the very obedient small dogs that were sitting near our table in the shade. The dogs were very well behaved until the food was tossed to them - then it was no holds barred growling and snapping. Keep your fingers out of the way!

The waterways offer a sneak peek into the lives of those who live there. The water is used for transport, but also for the washing of dishes, clothes, and people. One of my favorite sights was the tractor on the two boats - Dave, I hope this inspires you.

Once we left the canals and got on to Vembanad Lake, we went past some pretty glorious looking resorts. Perhaps on the next trip!

Next stop - Periyar Reserve on the lookout for a tiger. Life is an adventure!

Mysore and beyond

Where did we leave you last? Oh yes, Mysore. Tuesday night after our internet session, the plan was to go to our hotel, get the memory stick and the camera’s USB adapter, have dinner and then update the blog. What REALLY happened was that we found a place for our first sundowner – large, cold Kingfisher beers on a rooftop patio – with not another soul there. This is NOT a drinking culture, it seems! However, that didn’t stop us from having our one (!) beer each along with a few pappadams to snack on. It was delicious, but maybe wasn’t the best thing for our jetlag. We passed out on the bed at the hotel at 6:30, and didn’t get up until it was too late for dinner and all the internet cafes were closed. However, look at the posts again, and you’ll see there are now photos up. Yay Mark!

Since we were leaving on Wednesday evening, we figured we’d better get our butts in gear and see the Mysore Palace first thing in the morning. To prepare, we fueled up on a breakfast of pooris – puffy light bread --served with subji (curried veg.). You might think it’s an odd way to start the day, but it certainly was tasty! And we’re getting pretty good at eating with our right hand. Who needs utensils?

The Mysore Palace is a spectacular structure that must be seen to be believed. The photos really don’t do it justice. In fact, we have no photos of the inside because visitors are required to check their camera, and their shoes, outside. Have I mentioned that Mark takes a while to go through museums and the like? We emerged three hours later. To be fair, the audio tour was quite good.

On our way out, we passed a couple that we had met in the Bangalore Airport. They had bike boxes and were going to CYCLE around India for three weeks. Brave? Or crazy? You be the judge! We know that they made it as far as Mysore, which is more than I would ever even attempt! To their credit, they still seemed to be enjoying themselves.

Something we’ve noticed here. It’s not NEARLY as fragrant as I expected it to be. Sure, when you’re near a public toilet, or an open ditch, it can be pretty stinky, but overall, it’s pretty pleasant. Also, English is very widely spoken. A very pleasant surprise, indeed!

Okay, so after the palace we were off to find a bank. This is the first time we are traveling without travelers cheques, and we needed to find an ATM to test it out. What do you know? Money comes out of the machines here too! The only catch is that the limit is 10,000 rupees ($250) which makes the $5 service charge slightly unpleasant.

We left town in the late afternoon on the overnight bus to Trivandrum. Our seats were near the emergency exit so had loads of leg room– in fact, a bit too much. However, one Bollywood video and 15 hours later, we were in Trivandrum, which is where I thought we were to meet my friend Julie’s dad. Uh oh. Communication breakdown. He actually lives in Pathanamthitta – a further 3 hour bus ride away, and mostly in the direction we’d just come from…. After waiting around in Trivandrum bus station, and then figuring out how to use the pay phone, we determined our error, got on another bus without time to grab any breakfast, and nearly 24 hours of traveling later, we found Mr. Thomas. Whew!! A shower has never felt better!!

India - first impressions

Hi everyone. We landed in Bangalore at 5:00 a.m., waited over an hour for luggage, and got rooked at the airport by the "official" taxi stand that was really a car and driver rental. Paid twice as much as we should have, but at least we made it to town okay. Not sure why the Indian government wastes paint on the lines in the road - drivers don't pay any attention to them. And, we think there's an untapped export business that could boom in India. They should just remove their turn signal light bulbs and sell them to countries that actually use them. Or they could trade them for new horns, since I"m sure those have to be replaced often because of overuse.

Bangalore - hmmmmm. What can we say about Bangalore? It was interesting for the first couple of hours, but by about 7:00 pm we'd decided that we would leave first thing the next morning (this morning). After checking in to our hotel, we immediately headed out to wander around town. This place is the opposite of Vietnam. In Vietnam things started hopping by 5:00 a.m. Here, nothing opened until 11:00. Very strange, indeed. We had some good food for lunch - it just wouldn't be a Mark and Mary blog if food didn't factor in now, would it? Lunch was a paper dosa (thanks for the recommendation Per!) for Mary and samosas for Mark - de-lish! And lots of chai.

Dinner was another delicious affair with pooris and coconut gravy (which tasted much better than it sounds) and masala dosa and stuffed pratha and lassis. We're leaning towards vegetarian fare in order to minimize risk of sickness. So far, so good. No Delhi belly or trots or stomach pains for either of us so far. The Indian guy puking out the window on the bus this morning reminded Mark to stay vigilant.

The bus ride to Mysore this morning was a bit of an adventure. We thought we'd get up early, go to the bus station, get a ticket at a central kiosk, then pick up some snacks and get on our bus at the alloted time. Perhaps not surprisingly, it didn't work out that way. The station has 50 - 75 buses idling or slowly rolling towards the exit and we were directed to one of them by the locals. We jumped on, and then paid once the bus started rolling out of town. A bit chaotic, but it seems to work. No time to pick up snacks though. It cost a whopping $2.00 for our four hour journey... You guessed it! We were NOT on a tourist bus. But at least there were no goats or chickens! Nice to get out into the countryside for a bit though.

We are now in Mysore where we felt like we were in a Bollywood movie as were driven around in an auto rickshaw by a driver and his little brother, Mustafa. Mustafa must be all of 12 years old, and befriended Mark. He took us to the "real" India - the market that was not so busy and lucky us, only happened once a week. Uh huh. Right. At any rate, it was fun, and no harm was done. I am now the owner of some some lotus oil that is apparently the base for all mosquito repellent. Just a drop will do you - I'll let you know how that goes.

Later we wandered around another market where we were accosted by all manner of kids that wanted to know "what country?" and when we replied Canada, asked "French part or English part". It was humorous to reply "French part" in English and watch them practice their French. Ha!

Time to sign out now. Sorry, we forgot the adapter for photos, so will edit this post soon to add them.

Cheers,
Mary & Mark

Using internet time up

In London. Heading for a pint very soon.
Managed to get practice for India. Sat beside stinky people on plane AND on tube. Yuck.
Time to find a pub - shouldn't be difficult.
Better post next time when I'm not up against the ticking time clock of the internet place, but at least y'all know we made it this far.
Cheers!

4 sleeps to go!

So the last time I posted, we had 96 sleeps to plan this trip. Not a lot of planning has been done, and now we have only 4 sleeps. YIKES! Where did the time go?



We are making headway this evening. Our backpacks have been brought up from storage and dusted off. We've thrown things like toilet paper, wet ones, day pack, temple socks, pro-biotic pills, money belts, sunscreen, bug repellent, adapter, camera charger, extra memory card, thumb drive and lots of other things in a laundry basket, which will make packing easier (theoretically). Next it's time to decide what clothes not to bring. It's easy to choose things to bring, but less easy to take stuff away. In the long run though, it's better to pack to light and buy what you forgot than to carry too much stuff. I also called India tonight, to book a hotel in Bangalore (aka Bengaluru). That's a bit of a stray from what we usually do, but we're getting old and soft in our advancing age, and it's kind of nice to know where we'll be staying the first couple of nights in a VERY foreign land.



In a mere five days we will be in London, visiting our good friend Per. Friday night we'll kick off our vacation with a visit to St. John Bar and Restaurant. Check out the menu! Pig's Head and Potato Pie anyone?
http://www.stjohnrestaurant.com/menu/feasting/



Here's hoping the weather is less snowy than it is now!

Step one: Design the blog

Design might be a bit of a stretch. How about, make sure we can remember how to do this? That's a little more accurate, for sure.

We are leaving our comfy church home in Vancouver for India, Bangalore to be exact, via London, on December 10th, 2010 to return home on January, 10th 2011. It seems like a long way away, but really, it's only 96 sleeps from today.

There's much to do in those 96 days, like plan an itinerary. We've decided to concentrate on southern India, as the country as a whole is far to large to see in one month. We're pretty sure that we'll be able to fill our days without much problem. And we're also pretty sure we'll love it and return another time to see the north. We'll have to, since we're missing the Taj Mahal this time around.

Shantaram is on the reading list, another thing to do. I finished chapter one this morning, and know that I will love it. Even though it is a very thick book, I'm pretty convinced that I'll get through it before we leave.

Vaccinations are another thing to do. Not my favorite thing to do, but a necessary part of travel.

At least we have our trusty Lonely Planet South India book already - I'll have to balance Shantaram reading with Lonely Planet reading I guess.

Okay, time to post this to make sure it still works. Bring on the adventure!!