Aurangabad - Back to the real India

Superb train ride from Goa to Mumbai was colourful, lush, green and never boring even though it was 13hrs long.  Stunning scenery , lots of rice paddies, rivers, bridges and people going about their daily lives. Sarah saw her first shack like dwellings cuddling the railway lines as we entered Mumbai.

 

 

 

Aurangabad is a 40min plane ride from the mad, chaotic, traffic dense Mumbai. It is a city of a million or so people with long streets full of colourful shops and restaurants. Actually the last 2 days has been a blast of colour again. Many more women in saris, men in traditional dress, cows with painted horns...so good.
Aurangabad has muslim areas with mosques, Hindu areas with temples and the famous Ellora Caves which have Muslim, Hindu  and Buddist temples side by side.
The caves are incredible. It is quite something to be wandering around temples 2000 years old.
We drove to Ajanta Caves yesterday. 100km took 3 hours . The roads are under construction...well at least 80km of them are. We would have been better in  a 4WD. Luckily the caves are worth the drive.
These caves are Buddist caves carved into solid rock.

Dinner last night was hilarious.  The Greenleaf restaurant. Nice food, 4 waiters per table attending to our every need...and a mini Effiel Tower glowing behind us. We have since found Giza Pyramids, The Statue of Liberty and today a mini Taj Mahal. The Taj is genuine...built for a moghul's mother. The others are a tad bizarre.
It is Navarati festival time. Everyone celebrates the end of the monsoon and the goddess Durga. The Hindu festival spans 9 nights. 3 of the nights are dedicated to Dandiya...mass dancing Bollywood style by mainly teenagers. Sarah and I joined in though. Great fun..although friggin’ tiring. A song set goes for 40mins if not longer.You repeat the same dance the whole time. Today...our calves, archilles and knees are suffering.

 

Sarah has now experienced the selfie culture. She is quite a hit with local tourists, especially with the blonde spiky hair. Again there are only a couple of other European tourists here.

Finally experienced a monsoon downpour. Sarah has been so keen to experience it but the weather has been hot and sunny.  We visited the mini Taj in pouring rain today.Great experience with mainly muslim visitors. Lots of  thunder and lightning this afternoon. Some good  flooding, locals sheltering under trees, in bus shelters , tuk tuks stuck in puddles and families on motor bikes soaked as they left a fun fair and market. We were luckily in a car - our driver called it his tuk tuk as we drove for 2 days with the windows down and no AC on. Our car plus driver  for one day  cost     He picked us up at 8.30am and dropped us off at 6.30am - he drove 100km each way on terrible pot holed roads. We gave him a big tip and made his day!

Slowly slowly in Goa

No fast moves in Goa. We can see why people keep coming back to this place. Beach, sun, food, gin and newly discovered good Indian wine (even a Rose).

Everyday there is more activity as Goa awakens from it’s monsoon slumber. We hear that the first charter flights from the UK arrive Oct16th. Thank goodness we will be gone by then.

We’ve had the pleasure of having this place to ourselves. We have often been the only guests in a restaurant and have received very personalised service. We have settled on Octiva Restaurant as our favourite. It is set off the main road in a tree lined street. The open air restuarant is built beside a large family home. ‘Mum’ is in charge of the gardens. There are beautiful pots everywhere. The son who runs the restaurant worked for P&O cruises for 14 years . It has been so interesting chatting with him about Goa, India, cruising the world. He makes the best coffee - real espresso from a machine coffee. Tonight I am going to have crab...which he has offered to get fresh for me from the market. The young men who work for him live in the family home. They seem to work crazy hours but I guess they get board and food. I’m not sure what they get paid but the head waiter here could easily transfer to a 5 star restuarant anywhere in the world. It seems poor form by me to be in jandals and a sarong receiving such immaculate service.

We had a big day on the bikes 2 days ago. drove up to Panjim the capital. A pretty Portguese town. India is one massive roadworks in action network. There are flyovers being built from one end of the country to another. Many going straight over existing roads and villages. Long term it will be good but right now it means many kms on bumpy bypasses. It is much more enjoyable driving the secondary roads that are lined with coconut palms, locals, cows, goats and villages.

You can feel people waiting for the end of this monsoon. It must be so hard for local villages. There was a massive downpour the other night. We had just arrived at our ‘local’ when the skies opened. The open air dining area has a tin roof. It was so noisy but also very cool to be safely cocooned under a roof while the walls streamed with walls of water. The team here enjoed our company - we were the only guests again. We arrived the waylocals do onthe back of our bike with me holding an umbrella. we left on our bikes with a much bigger umbrella!

Sarah arrives tonight. Lots of delays on her journey but at this stage we plan to pick her up at 3am tomorrow morning. A quiet day by the pool tomorroe i think.

Red ants

Quite heavy rains today after a sunny day yesterday. We managed a long walk on the beach, in the rain, with the whole beach to ourselves. Cavelossim beach is like a white-sand version Waikanae. But without the wind, cold and pine trees. It is long and wide and very clean. We finished our walk with a swim and goodness me a lifesavcr came out of the trees to watch us! There are lifesaver stations the length of the beach, every 500m or so. Quite an impressive service in the middle of a monsoon downpour.

Craig’s just bug sprayed our motorbikes. Instead of street dogs taking refuge on our bikes from the rains...it is red nippy ants!

A few more shops opened up today  - I think this place will be much more lively in 10 days time.

We’ve lived on fish since we arrived. Quite a nice change from the full vegetarian diet of Rajashtan. The fish and prawns are yum! Fresh from the sea and cooked on sizzling platters with a few veges. Craig has discovered hanging chicken! Crazy too - these meals are all under $10.

  

Craig at Fisherman’s Wharf

Fishing village

We are on to our 3rd hit by credit card fraudsters. We have hardly even used the cards as we arrived with USD in cash. So - the hit rate on us is high. Thank goodness for the  Westpac fraud team. They’ve picked up each episode before we even noticed. Sarah is bringing our new cards over but we’ve started using our Onesmart card as all the others have been cancelled. Not sure if just bad luck or there is some breach on Booking.com or one of the other sites we have been regularly using. Bit of a pain really.

We have booked a 2 bedroom villa for when Sarah arrives. Across the path from our current villa. It is 10 steps from the pool! We managed to negotiate a price outside of the usual  booking companies so was much cheaper...$88 for the 3 of us. Comes with a lovely cleaner and all the other mod cons one needs on holiday.

Quite different scenery compared to Leh! 

We are tiki touring again tomorrow. Going inland to a waterfall. We rode inland an hour to Salaulim Dam a couple of days ago. It was a beautiful ride through lush rice paddies, coconut palm forests and little villages. Whenever the rain got too heavy we just pulled into a cafe or bus stop, and like the locals waited it out until the rains slowed. The dam was impressive - a huge lake flows into a vortex type dam system . The  pictures don’t really show the power of the pull down the ‘drain’ into the shutes and turbines. I’ve never seen anything like it. The lee side of the dam has been made into a botanical gardens.

Kathmandu ponchos coming in handy

This is us sheltering in a church doorway fromt the rain. Figured it was okay - we are friends with Tricia and Tony McK! 

The vortex...like a sci-fi movie where you are transported to another world.

Cards - we have remembered how to play Uka. It is so nice sitting on our porch each evening. No people around, no tooting horns, no wind,  just crickets and us.

Goa - quite a change from Leh!

We are settled into our villa in Cavelossim, South Goa. It is the low season until the end of Sept. 1st Oct prices double! We found this villa on AirBnB. $60/night (things are dearer down here than the rest of India) Our money gets us into a gated community, villa with kitchen and balcony. A small supermarket at the gate - so have purchased cereal etc. We ‘cooked’ breakfast for the first time since our trip started yesterday. We did think we would cook dinner too - but it is still easier and cheaper to visit local restaurants. Most of Goa is shut down - so only 1/5th of the usual shops and restaurants are open. Actually it might be closer to 1/10th. The locals are renovating, cleaning and preparing for the onslaught to come in Oct. We love it as they are not pushy or annoying - they are not in ‘hard sell’ mode. I imagine it is a tad more extreme come the busy season.
I have been thinking about how off-hand we as NZ’ers can be to tourists, who we often think of as an intrusion to our lives, and interlopers to NZ. We have been welcomed so openly by everyone we’ve met. We were out and about on our scooties yesterday and had to stop on the side of the road during a monsoon downpour. We were soaked and trying to put on ponchos.  The local shopkeeper had a wee chat and as we left to hit the road again called out - “take care, be safe” . So simple but so nice.
Goa is one coastline of stunning beaches, dense groves or forests of coconut palms, rice paddies and other crops. You can literally see the weeds and foliage growing in this humid climate. The gardeners and builders have a non-stop job keeping on top of maintenance. Black mould is on a lot of the houses in the villages. I don’t know how they would ever get rid of it.
We biked to Palolem Beach yesterday. A beautiful, horse-shoe shaped beach. The village road leading up to the beach was really busy. It must get super crowded in the high season. The beach is lined with beach huts which I guess are guesthouses and restaurants. They were all shut up. We just had to share the beach with local tourists, street/beach dogs and some cows! The water looked clear and clean ....unlike Kerala beaches a few years ago.

Our wee villa

Monsoon rain on  palm

The non-stop working gardener clearing up after rain last night

Palolem beach...with cows!

Palolem Bech with beach huts in the distance ...and cow

Leh Ladakh something very special - Julley

Just booked in for our flight to Goa after a night back down at sea level in Delhi. It is nice to feel slightly more energetic. India never ceases to surprise you. You go through 3 security checks and pat-downs as you make your way to the departure gate. We looked over at a long line - and over longingly at the Business Class line (which was nil). The guard - a very nice young man with a gun caught my eye. He said “I saw you in wellington” - I went sure I am from Wellington NZ. He indicated that we had met in Wellington in India....anyways it got us through the Business Class line quick smart!

Internet connections up in  Leh are not the best. It is the only thing that you could possibly say was not 100% or 10/10.

So - this blog entry covers 5 days.

The flight into Leh is something out of this world, and you are literally on the top of the world. It is like flying into Queenstown and kissing the Remarkables - but these mountains are 6000m high and 360 degrees around you, and you fly over them for ages. We saw K2 rise up out of the mountains.
Hard to think about this region as India as it is very Tibetan in its influence. Buddism, prayer flags, monks and monasteries everywhere. Monasteries cascade down step mountains, clinging on to goodness know what. Temples and stupas are all over the landscape. It is a combo of the NZ Desert Road and a high country station in Central Otago but on steroids.
Leh itself is a cool town. The houses are all made of a mud bricks painted white and they have the most gorgeous wooden windows and doors. The head of all the windows are intricately carved wood (kind of like a marae pou - they even have a koru type design on them). The town is fed by water from the mountains. It is crystal clear and water flows down water races all through the town.
We spent the first 2 days going very slow. Flying in to such a high altitude was not our best move. The breathlessness is crazy - you feel like a serious asthmatic. By day 3 we were starting to feel better. We hired a scootie (scooter in kiwi) and spent each day exploring the outskirts of Leh. The roads are amazing - looked after by BRO - border road organisation. We biked on brand new asphalt roads which we assume get relaid after the snows each year. BRO have very engaging signs to keep motorists on their toes.
Everywhere you go you are surrounded by massive mountains. The landscape is desert but in another couple of weeks it will be covered in snow and the roads impassable.  At times we turned off the main road and followed the road up the valley. There was usually greenery either side of the water source and sheer mountains rising on up beyond that. A little bit like the 1km wide strips either side of the Nile.
We rode up one side of the Indus River on the road to Manali ,visited Thiksey Monastery and drove up the 2nd highest motorable pass in the world (very freaky!). We were way higher than Mt Aoraki. We went west to Alchi on the road that would take you to Pakistan through Srinagar.We found a lush valley and motored to Phyang. We visited a little place called Chilling. Not much in  Chilling but you travel 20km up a river valley that resembles the grand canyon. You are actually in the Hemis high altitude national park. On the way to Chilling we stopped to skim stones in the Zanskar River. An Indian Army Adventure wing were there too, learning to raft. Again - the hospitality of the Indian people starred. A young corporal came over with 2 glasses of water on a tray. I just cant imagine us treating tourists in NZ like this.
Motorbiking is such a special way to explore the region. The roads are superb . You only share them with army trucks or other riders on Royal Enfields - and the odd crazy driver hooning in a Suzuki Swift. The Royal Enfield tourists do a big loop through Srinigar , Leh and Manali. Looks great - but I wonder if we see more by exploring off the main roads.
I decided I couldn't leave Leh without checking our the Kashmiri carpets.They are so nice...ooops ended up buying one after 2 days of negotiating . The shops and restaurants here are an eclectic mix of old, new, modern and traditional, Chinese, Israeli and Italian. There are French and German tourists, we didnt hear a Kiwi accent but  heard a couple of Aussies, and lots of Indian domestic tourists enjoying motorbike journeys , rafting and trekking.
The Ladakh folk have a super word that is the equivalent of Kia ora - Julley. Pronounced Jule-lay, and not Julie as I did the first time I used it. The poor woman in the restaurant couldn't work out what I wanted to order.
The military presence in Ladakh is huge. You pass  3-4 large bases on the hour journey out of Leh. Signs like “Trespassers will be shot and killed”  can be quite sobering. Talking of sober - there is very little evidence of alcohol  being part of the Leh society. It is quite refreshing.  We didnt miss our nightly beer or gin ...part of that was feeling half-pie due to altitude I suspect.
So today we fly to Goa - Mountains to Sea. We are staying in one place for 11  days which will be nice. We plan to just enjoy the local environment. The weather is likely to be damp but we are hoping the monsoon will stop soon. Then Sarah arrives for her virgin tour of India. Exciting.

Not coming home skinny!

Guests of Indian families get spoilt. We have been given free accommodation and fed for the last 3 days by staff at Welham Boys. We’ve just worked out how important sharing, caring for guests and providing food is over here. It is considered an honour to provide these things for guests. The provider sits and watches you eat, (it has taken us a while to get used to this) Our new friends take huge pride in us enjoying their food. (Hence we have had to eat a lot!) 

We tried to suggest that in NZ we share kai together but quickly realised that was not the Indian way. Guests eat first and if there is anything left, the friend then eats.

I was wearing my Fabindia skirt when i met the principal. Turns out it is her favourite shop. Somehow during our breakfast together she sent a staff member to the shop and bought me a beautiful scarf. She is seriously cool. A divorced, sassy, saavy, principal of a boys’ school. Would have loved to spend more time with her.

Dehradun a city of schools

We are up in Dehradun near the foothills of the Himalayas visiting a brother school of HIBS. Welham Boys. Dehradun was until recently a sleepy hill station town. It got made the capital of a new region and is now a busy city. It’s leafy and clean and bizarrely there are over 300 secondary schools in the immediate vicinity. Most of them private boarding schools like Welham. They reckon a new school opens up every week and that business men have figured out that they can make good money on the back of owning a school! 

The town - albeit a city of 700,000 looks like a  typical chaotic Indian city  but the schools are an oasis of calm behind security walls and guards. The kids come from all over India.

Here at Welham all staff live on site. The campus of boarding and staff housing is impressive, although still has that slightly unfinished Indian infrastructure aspect to it. 

We arrived here yesterday to find out that they had more or less evacuated the school a day earlier. They are fearful of Dengue fever - not that many are sick 600/700,000 - but misinformation and exaggeration of claims is par for the course here. The reporting in local papers is hilarious. Might have been nice that they warned us though! Anyway we are staying in guests quarters, with a man servant attending to our every need. He’s a bit perplexed when we get up to clear the table and make our own cup of tea. 

We are off to lunch with the Principal today. She’s a woman heading a boy’s school in India - kinda cool! Interestingly their ethos is very like HVHS and HIBS - lots of caring for others and growing well rounded kids.

 

We went to a Tibetan monastery yesterday with a local historian - all arranged by the school. It was fascinating and so interesting to talk to yet another liberal, sensible academic. There is not much love of the Modi government by the people we are meeting.

We are off to Mussorie today a hill station made famous by the British. It was a summer get away from the heat of the plains. 

Outdoor theatre

3 basketball courts

School boarding hostel 

Every mode of transport used to keep this city moving

Tuk tuks, rickshaws, metro, trains, buses, uber, ola, taxis, private cars, private taxi with driver, bullock and cart, hand trolley.... This place moves millions of people all over Delhi by every mode of transport that you can imagine.

We travelled 1/2 hr across the city via Uber for $4. I have no idea how on earth they make money.

Delhi is very modern on the inside but outside it still retains the grime and 1/2 finished building project aspect to it on the outside. Old Delhi looks like it did 30yrs ago. People making a living on the street - selling eggs, giving haircuts and shaves, fixing shoes, tailors mending trousers with old singer machines. A guy having a piddle at an outside urinal..or just pissing on a wall! There is so much life to see as you walk around. While Rajasthan was saris and silks and beautiful colours, Delhi is jeans, shirts and suits.

The poverty is not as confronting as 30yrs ago. In some places it is no worse than downtown Auckland; in other places you do see a family that appear to live on the street - but the begging is nearly non-existent.

We walked past a couple of the Old Delhi guest houses that we used to stay in - not exactly luxurious! The local food stalls are good though. We ate a thali at a little restaurant - all for $2. The rotis and Nan come straight out of a tandoori oven.

 Egg seller

 Shave anyone?

Making nan

Nuts, dried fruit and spices

And our flash hotel swimming pool

 

We had to buy new clothes for the hotel!

As I write this Craig is on to his 5th course at the buffet breakfast in our hotel!

Bye bye Jodhpur

We’ve loved Jodhpur. Probably our favourite place in Rajashtan. Its got lots happening but without the population and chaotic traffic. Bazaars, kite flying, walking around lakes and parks, navigating monsoon flooded streets and chilling on the roof top restaurants with views out over the fort.

Durag Niwas Guest House has been great. A relaxed easy place to stay with interesting and friendly owners. And two cool dogs Chilli (sausage dog) and Pepper (pug dog)

We spent a few nights at Gopals rooftop restaurant and got asked for interior design advice. The wooden windows we chose were in by the time we returned to Jodhpur from Jaislamer, and last night we chose natural wooden furniture and suggested chairs with bright lime or orange cushions! Fun.

Night sky over Jodhpur 

Our trek around the fort

Blue buildings

Kite flying and fighting

Blue city and kite flying

Stepwell street flooded

Swimming in stepwell during monsoon 

 downpour. The boys can get away with swimming because the police are all hiding from the rain. Noone is meant to swim here!

Stepwell the day after monsoon rain and flooding 

 Our tuktuk driver after a massive bomb

 

The stepwell cafe rooftop and a nice Sav

Flooding