We arrived in Mumbai early December and it was with much delight that we found a more cosmopolitan city.
After 6/7 weeks of being immersed in a completely different culture in the North of India, it was with some joy that we found western type food, simple things like a salad or a chicken sandwich we ate with great delight. Don’t get me wrong, i like a Thali or a Punjabi Style Vegetarian Curry but not every day…. variety is just not omnipresent in the North and there is hardly any meat to be found (though you probably wouldn’t want to eat it anyway) I don’t know how the locals do it, everyday eating the same or similar foods, i guess it’s what they can afford and they seemed content enough to be eating it.
We also found many Western type shops (which was great as i needed new earphones) and Bars. One Bar in particular which we frequented on a couple of occasions called the Irish House was very popular with the locals, Mumbaikers as they are called. They loved trying to be as western as they could with the way they dressed, talked and consumed food and alcohol.
All this cosmopolitanism did not come cheap, Mumbai is an expensive city, our budget doubled for the few days that we stayed there. It’s a great place but not traveller friendly.
We walked around as best i could on my crutches seeing the sites, such as the Taj Mahal Palace Hotel, India Gate, Victoria Station or CST as it’s referred to locally and admiring all the other amazing buildings that the British built in the 1800s.
We took in some cricket too, not any game of note as such, just watching locals in the central park in between Fort and Churchgate areas but that was good fun.
We stayed in a hotel on Marine Drive which is where the locals take their promenades, it’s a 2/3km stretch and you can see many people just sitting around chatting whilst hawkers are trying to sell you Chai, water, snacks etc..
After 3 nights, we left Mumbai for a few days to go and visit some Caves.
We took a train to Arangabad and when we arrived, it’s was like being in the North all over again, not the prettiest or tidiest of towns! We were only using the town as a base to visit these Caves so we made do. We arrived in the afternoon and so visited the main monument there to pass the time, it’s called the Bibi-qa-Maqbara or poor man’s Taj Mahal as we re-christened it. It has a marble plinth and that’s it, the rest is limestone. From a distance it looked ok but closer up you could see it was in need of repair as the limestone was crumbling away. It was like a stumpy-squashed-together Taj.
So the next day we went to the first of two caves, the Ellora Caves. These were carved out between as early as AD 600 and were very impressive and worth the visit. It’s difficult to describe how difficult these would have been to build especially the Kailasa Temple which is huge, basically take a mountain side remove 200 thousand tonnes of rubble whilst taking care to leave behind the sections that would later be used for sculpting without any room for error.
The day after we visited the Ajanta Caves which was a bit more of an ordeal as they were further away, basically a 5hr round trip in a bus for a 2hr visit, at least we saw the countryside!
The Ajanta Caves were just as impressive and much older, the first cave dating back to 200 BC. Although the complex is smaller, it is built around the steep face of a horseshoe shaped gorge. It also had something like 450 steps so with my crutches it provided a little challenge. The carvings here are maybe not quite as impressive as Ellora but the attraction here is the frescos that can still be seen after 2000 years or so.
We had a good time visiting the caves and back we went to Mumbai for another 2 days before catching our flight to Goa.
We flew from Mumbai to Goa which is possibly the shortest flight we have been on, i’m sure we were landing straight after take off!! and made our way to Calangute late at night. Calangute is not a place we would have chosen to stay but we did so as we wanted to be close to Wend’s school friend Helene Derkin or simply H as she is called now who lives about 4km from there.
We had a couple of beach days before meeting up with her for the first time, we went to her house and chatted for hours about this and that, after another couple of beach days (this was all rest for my injured foot of course ;-) we met up with her again and went to H’s husband Derrick family reunion of sorts in some hotel reception room before moving on and going to a place called Cantare just around the corner from where they live. It was a really cool Jazz Bar with live band and we had some ‘nice’ G&Ts whilst enjoying the music till late.
H invited us for Christmas which was really cool, it was a real treat for us to be in a family environment on Christmas day.
We had an amazing lunch and even had mince pies and xmas pudding, couldn’t believe our luck. It was the first time we had wine in 3 months, we also got served champagne, how spoilt where we, and just to top it all, we then had an evening swim in their new pool.
We stayed the night in a really comfy bed. H and family are so lovely and we really enjoyed being with them, they’re just easy, kind and fun company so it was with some sadness that we left them on Boxing day and made our way up to Arambol.
We came up to Arambol to meet up with some mates we had made back in Agra so we could see in the new year with them. Arambol is the most popular beach with travellers these days in Goa and you could say that it’s hippy central. It feels like being in a festival so it has a great vibe and just what we were looking for, unlike Calangute which was full of oldies living in the sun (no offence to the oldies, just not our scene). So we met up with Graham and LeeRoy and also with their new friend, Ilari from Finland. We stayed up late and drank too much on a few occasions but we had great fun up there with the guys and after all, that’s why we went there. Of course in the day, we chilled on the beach, did some swimming, we saw some dolphins in the distance doing flips and jumps, we even went on some quite long walks, by now my foot was getting better and I no longer needed the crutches. We saw in the New Year on the beach with lots of fireworks, sky lanterns and rum.
They say that it is difficult to leave Arambol once you are there and i can understand why but we left on the 2nd Jan as planned before we got stuck.
We made our way back to Calangute for 2 more nights so we could see H one more time and visit Old Goa, we also wanted to see the Hobbit part 3 which we enjoyed in a nice Cinema in Panjim.
On the 4th, we made our way to Patnem in the South of Goa to relax. It’s much more peaceful here, no all night banging parties and we are enjoying the very laid back, no hassle atmosphere here. Finally saw some great Indian Classical Music with Sitar and Tabla which was a real treat. Yesterday, we went on a boat trip and saw some dolphins up close.
As i write, we have another week of beach time before making our way to Kerala on the 15th.
Mumbai
Arangabad
Ellora
Ajanta
Calangute and Xmas
Arambol
Old Goa
Patnem
After 6/7 weeks of being immersed in a completely different culture in the North of India, it was with some joy that we found western type food, simple things like a salad or a chicken sandwich we ate with great delight. Don’t get me wrong, i like a Thali or a Punjabi Style Vegetarian Curry but not every day…. variety is just not omnipresent in the North and there is hardly any meat to be found (though you probably wouldn’t want to eat it anyway) I don’t know how the locals do it, everyday eating the same or similar foods, i guess it’s what they can afford and they seemed content enough to be eating it.
We also found many Western type shops (which was great as i needed new earphones) and Bars. One Bar in particular which we frequented on a couple of occasions called the Irish House was very popular with the locals, Mumbaikers as they are called. They loved trying to be as western as they could with the way they dressed, talked and consumed food and alcohol.
All this cosmopolitanism did not come cheap, Mumbai is an expensive city, our budget doubled for the few days that we stayed there. It’s a great place but not traveller friendly.
We walked around as best i could on my crutches seeing the sites, such as the Taj Mahal Palace Hotel, India Gate, Victoria Station or CST as it’s referred to locally and admiring all the other amazing buildings that the British built in the 1800s.
We took in some cricket too, not any game of note as such, just watching locals in the central park in between Fort and Churchgate areas but that was good fun.
We stayed in a hotel on Marine Drive which is where the locals take their promenades, it’s a 2/3km stretch and you can see many people just sitting around chatting whilst hawkers are trying to sell you Chai, water, snacks etc..
After 3 nights, we left Mumbai for a few days to go and visit some Caves.
We took a train to Arangabad and when we arrived, it’s was like being in the North all over again, not the prettiest or tidiest of towns! We were only using the town as a base to visit these Caves so we made do. We arrived in the afternoon and so visited the main monument there to pass the time, it’s called the Bibi-qa-Maqbara or poor man’s Taj Mahal as we re-christened it. It has a marble plinth and that’s it, the rest is limestone. From a distance it looked ok but closer up you could see it was in need of repair as the limestone was crumbling away. It was like a stumpy-squashed-together Taj.
So the next day we went to the first of two caves, the Ellora Caves. These were carved out between as early as AD 600 and were very impressive and worth the visit. It’s difficult to describe how difficult these would have been to build especially the Kailasa Temple which is huge, basically take a mountain side remove 200 thousand tonnes of rubble whilst taking care to leave behind the sections that would later be used for sculpting without any room for error.
The day after we visited the Ajanta Caves which was a bit more of an ordeal as they were further away, basically a 5hr round trip in a bus for a 2hr visit, at least we saw the countryside!
The Ajanta Caves were just as impressive and much older, the first cave dating back to 200 BC. Although the complex is smaller, it is built around the steep face of a horseshoe shaped gorge. It also had something like 450 steps so with my crutches it provided a little challenge. The carvings here are maybe not quite as impressive as Ellora but the attraction here is the frescos that can still be seen after 2000 years or so.
We had a good time visiting the caves and back we went to Mumbai for another 2 days before catching our flight to Goa.
We flew from Mumbai to Goa which is possibly the shortest flight we have been on, i’m sure we were landing straight after take off!! and made our way to Calangute late at night. Calangute is not a place we would have chosen to stay but we did so as we wanted to be close to Wend’s school friend Helene Derkin or simply H as she is called now who lives about 4km from there.
We had a couple of beach days before meeting up with her for the first time, we went to her house and chatted for hours about this and that, after another couple of beach days (this was all rest for my injured foot of course ;-) we met up with her again and went to H’s husband Derrick family reunion of sorts in some hotel reception room before moving on and going to a place called Cantare just around the corner from where they live. It was a really cool Jazz Bar with live band and we had some ‘nice’ G&Ts whilst enjoying the music till late.
H invited us for Christmas which was really cool, it was a real treat for us to be in a family environment on Christmas day.
We had an amazing lunch and even had mince pies and xmas pudding, couldn’t believe our luck. It was the first time we had wine in 3 months, we also got served champagne, how spoilt where we, and just to top it all, we then had an evening swim in their new pool.
We stayed the night in a really comfy bed. H and family are so lovely and we really enjoyed being with them, they’re just easy, kind and fun company so it was with some sadness that we left them on Boxing day and made our way up to Arambol.
We came up to Arambol to meet up with some mates we had made back in Agra so we could see in the new year with them. Arambol is the most popular beach with travellers these days in Goa and you could say that it’s hippy central. It feels like being in a festival so it has a great vibe and just what we were looking for, unlike Calangute which was full of oldies living in the sun (no offence to the oldies, just not our scene). So we met up with Graham and LeeRoy and also with their new friend, Ilari from Finland. We stayed up late and drank too much on a few occasions but we had great fun up there with the guys and after all, that’s why we went there. Of course in the day, we chilled on the beach, did some swimming, we saw some dolphins in the distance doing flips and jumps, we even went on some quite long walks, by now my foot was getting better and I no longer needed the crutches. We saw in the New Year on the beach with lots of fireworks, sky lanterns and rum.
They say that it is difficult to leave Arambol once you are there and i can understand why but we left on the 2nd Jan as planned before we got stuck.
We made our way back to Calangute for 2 more nights so we could see H one more time and visit Old Goa, we also wanted to see the Hobbit part 3 which we enjoyed in a nice Cinema in Panjim.
On the 4th, we made our way to Patnem in the South of Goa to relax. It’s much more peaceful here, no all night banging parties and we are enjoying the very laid back, no hassle atmosphere here. Finally saw some great Indian Classical Music with Sitar and Tabla which was a real treat. Yesterday, we went on a boat trip and saw some dolphins up close.
As i write, we have another week of beach time before making our way to Kerala on the 15th.
Mumbai
Arangabad
Ellora
Ajanta
Arambol
Old Goa
Patnem
 |
| Nutella Momos!! |
