Note that I tend to add several blog entries at once, so be sure to keep reading until you hit a blog entry that you’ve already read before (and make sure it isn’t an updated version of that entry).
Also, fyi, the timestamp on the entries is US/Canada Eastern Timezone (ET, GMT-5).
India is GMT+5½
From Aurangabad on Tue I take a 2 hour bus to see the Ajanta caves, then a 2 hour bus further to a train station for a 24-hour train to Varanasi, arriving Wed Mar 5 at 19:15
and stay one night
Then a night train to Agra, arriving Fri Mar 7 at 6:10
Then a night train to Jodhpur, arriving Sat Mar 8 at 7:20,
and stay one night at the guest house.
Then a night train to Jaisalmer, arriving Mon Mar 10 at 5:30
Then a night train to Bikaner, arriving Tue Mar 11 at 4:40
and stay 2 nights in Bikaner, inc. 1 night camel safari
On the evening of Thu Mar 13 I take a night train to Delhi and on north to Chandigarh to visit a friend’s friend’s Sikh parents (arriving Fri Mar 14).
Which will probably only leave 2 days in Delhi at the end.
You may have noticed in some photos that I’m wearing a wood (sandalwood? rosewood?) bead necklace…
I bought it in from a girl on the street in Chennai (surely overpaid at Rs20/$0.50) hoping that would deter further bead necklace salespeople –
but I fear it probably had the opposite effect, as in this tourist was gullible enough to buy one, maybe he’ll buy more! Grr…
On Monday I moved from Benaulim beach to Arambol beach, one of the northern-most beaches in Goa (which is a comparatively small state for India).
The move required an auto-rickshaw, 2 express buses and a local bus (3 ¼ hours total), plus some time in one of the towns to hit an ATM and top-off my Indian mobile.
Hanging out on the beach with new friends, listening to live music in the evenings, etc. Non-busking western saxophonist on the beach for sunset last night!
Much busier here than in Benaulim, way more stores and restos and Internet cafes along the road leading to the beach (the village of Arambol is inland over 1km).
I burned some more photos to DVD to free up 2 full memory sticks and now it looks like my first DVD might be corrupt?! This was on the laptop of my Quebec friend Nicole, who I ran into again here (having first met her on the train from Mysore to Bangalore); now she’s in Rajasthan at an Indian wedding, crossing paths with her daughter who is also travelling in India…
(I bought 3 blank DVDs for Rs100/$2.50)
I’ve had surprising trouble getting on the Internet here – either the connection is down, or hotmail has been down, or power outages, or simply closed (they open late, close early).
Update a few hours later: I’m trying again, but the power was out, though I did get to use one of the computers on their battery back up, but the Internet is painfully slow so more highlights from recent places will have to wait 2-3 more days until Mumbai.
I decided to stay an extra night here, so my next move will be tomorrow back to Madgaon (Margao) to catch an 11-hour night train to Mumbai, where I will be for 2 days.
I did take a second yoga class here, which was great, way better than the first one! The yoga instructor makes all the difference…
Note that “Highlights of [town]” blog entries are usually out of sequence wrt other entries, i.e. they tend to happen after I’ve moved on.
For example, the recent Highlights of Kochi and Bangalore entries came after my general Hampi and arrived in Goa entries, which does NOT mean that I went to Kochi and Bangalore after Goa…
None really, sorry. Tourists, skip this town.
The city market was fun, but nothing special (compared to other markets).
Quite disappointing really overall (not even good Internet cafes!) as it is too Westernized – see my previous posts about it.
Yesterday was not fun, what with, umm, stomach issues, on the train yesterday (at least the toilet was pretty clean on the train, being in one of the better classes).
I arrived in Margao (Madgaon), the main train station town in Goa, in mid-afternoon exhausted and not feeling well.
So instead of 2 auto-rickshaws and 2 buses up to Arambol beach, I took the fastest route to a beach, which was a 10-15min auto-rickshaw ride to nearby Benaulim Beach (only 6-8km away from Margao).
I slogged along the beach to find a room at the beach huts, and the 3rd or 4th one did have one available (albeit with the tiles ripped out of the bathroom for renovation).
I drank 1L water with oral rehydration salts, took a brief swim, huddled on the padded lounge chair (free!) to watch sunset, and then slept off and on until the next morning (no dinner).
Today my stomach feels better. I had an exciting porridge breakfast (mmm), and a slightly more substantial lunch.
I was going to try to move to Arambol today, but it turns out check-out is at noon (not 24 hours from check-in) so I am staying another day (which is also safer, methinks).
The beach here is very wide, with light rolling waves and a good breeze. Lots of restos on the beach, but spread out enough to not be manic.
This is the main part of Benaulim beach (my bungalows/hotel is a 5 minute walk north of here, where it’s a little quieter)
In these first 18 days, I think I’ve experienced just about all the main transportation modes except for boats and internal flights. No camels yet either.
In increasing order of size/cost:
There was no night train from Hampi. I should have considered the night sleeper bus (apparently you get a sleepable bunk – not reclining seats). Then again, The Book says to avoid night buses. Then again, I’ve met plenty of travelers who like them.
In the meantime, some more Hampi photos:
– the river, with laundry drying, looking from my side (Hampi Bazaar) towards the calmer other side (there’s a small boat crossing)
– giving a monkey a drink (yes, that’s my hand); the cap on the water bottle is loose so that it dripped (one monkey later bit a hole near the bottom of the bottle, so I closed the cap and used that as the water “spout”
Unfortunately, I had brought the wrong spare SD card (memory) for the camera and had no space half-way through the feeding frenzy (I had nuts and bananas for them too). Part of that problem was that I had organized the photos by location in a separate folder, so when I popped the card in it said no photos to display and I assumed it was empty, instead of checking that there was room for 500+ photos…
Hampi:
it’s a World Heritage site.
Communicating in English:
Note: there is a movement in India to make Hindi the official country-wide unifying language, but south India is resisting the idea because English is the common second language – hardly anyone speaks Hindi in the south. Recall that virtually every state (certainly in the south) has its own language (a Dravidian language in the south, which is very different from Hindi).
Alleppey and backwaters:
In the backwaters village homestay, Thomas’ mother did the (excellent) cooking. She also gave cooking classes (no time for me though).
Tip: skip the night in Alleppey and head straight for Chennamkary village homestay!