A late holiday arrival, Mumbai, Markets, terrace of 5* hotels overlooking the bay, stinky hotel room with added cockroaches for effect, South Indian breakfast, Gateway of India, more markets, more shopping, heated taxis, Indian double decker busses, walking chai wallahs, ceiling bridge, cricket match mayhem on the street, walking amongst the Mumbai crowds, groups of office boys finishing their day, beggars, couples, police armoured vehicles, poltergeist looking lit up horse drawn carriages, walking massage wallahs, eggless omelettes, fashion street, Leopold Café, mojitos, Café Mondegar, 12 hour bus journeys, mosquito attacks, Grumpy Indians when we spray mozzi repellent in the bus (sorry guys!) touts as we get off the bus, Vagator Beach, kingfisher beers at 10am, terrace overlooking the bay again, French omelettes, parties till dawn, sunrise and moonset over a bridge on the back of a scooter… The list goes on! Beach mani pedi, public leg threading (ouch!) policemen cage dancing at junctions, “do you have a drinking problem?” notices over bus driver seat… Indian boys shaking their moves to the bar beat on the beach, contrasts, moustaches and 70s wardrobes, children in Saturday night Fever jackets, wine shops on dry days, families and pets on bikes, party people with no party, dirty feet, Melody taking to India like a fish to water, gore handling spices better than Indian men, Mac Maharajahs, quotes from students: people who urinate in public should be hung til dead! Delhi Belly – finally hit me… more 12 hour bus journeys, coolness of the mountains, Manali & Vashisht, German bakeries (what the hell, what about French ones??) Biking trips turning into motocross events, chai on side roads, waterfall/honeymoon stops, cows encounters with Frenchies, Taj Mahal and veils, big spiders with 5 legs, Faulty Towers motorway stops, Brief Encounter with the Dalai Lama, personal space… or lack of! How can I fit 2 months of India into one blog??!
I’ll give it a go!
Since the last post I’ve had many chances to ride bikes again, in Delhi itself! Wao, now that is like driving in a video game, where people wait in bushes ahead of you to jump out – people? Not to forget the dogs, cows and other “wildlife” – main rule is always the same, don’t get eaten by the big busses and trucks, you lose everytime, game over! But it’s so much FUN! There is just no way you lose interest. Give me Delhi anytime instead of a boring motorway back home! Love it.. Also driven a car, slightly more challenging as wider, and personal space is pretty much inexistent here. Better have a good notion of distances too cause they ain’t too patient round here! But I’m surviving it well with a mix of calm, skill, and a note of road rage which I’ve always had in me… 
My dear dear Melody came to see me and get a taste of India, and I think she was probably meant to visit the country much earlier. She just settled straight away. Loved it. Loved Delhi and the trees, loved Mumbai and the walks, and the strange British post offices and she made me notice lots of stuff I wouldn’t have otherwise. We had a great great time in the 10 days she was here, and didn’t laze around. After a slightly off start (told me she was arriving Thursday morning, she was actually leaving the UK on Thursday night.. hum hum! Booked flights for Mumbai for an hour after her landing, just didn’t do – last minute rescheduling of the flight and… That was it. That was all the drama of our holiday together. We managed to spend 36 hours in Mumbai, and loved it, wandering around on foot in the centre, getting the typical black cabs, tasted the pure contrast between our hotel room – grotty, smelly (seriously smelly) and cockroaches infested (ok, we saw 4 and they were tiny – still!) and the beautiful Meridian Hotel and its roof terrace bar on Marine Drive (Mumbai Bay)…
Next evening we hopped on a bus headed to Goa and were pleasantly surprised when we saw the sleeping arrangement, all good… Till the bus hit the first bump. I mean, serious bump! Both a bit sleepy, we were rudely awaken by the ceiling hitting us! Giggling, realising that that was a first in the history of awakening… 12 hours later, looking pretty crap, arrived in Vagator, the lovely beach I’d found on my last trip. With heavy bags, scorching heat, and tired heads we went straight for a bar and ordered a couple of beers… Refreshed we set off to find a hotel in much better moods. Found a great little purple room in a guest house, had more drinks on the terrace, again, overlooking a beautiful bay, and then it all got too much and… blackout – time for a nap. 
Our time in Goa was shared between a beach party where the music stopped after 40 minutes of us arriving them – cash flow/bribes problems - beach time, shopping on the back of an Enfield (next time, will think of storage – bags – practicalities of shopping and motorbikes…)
Anyway, it was lovely there, and after 3.5 days of chilling, we were ready to leave (there was more to see right!) We headed back to Delhi in a terrible flight, storm raging over Delhi, me without chill pills, and even Melody said it was pretty full on, so no it WASN’T just me… I had to get back to work the next day but miss Melody was by then very much brave enough to hit the town by herself, visited the Red Fort, braved a restaurant – thing the next visitors didn’t dare to do! – chatted to families, shopped til her enormous suitcase was full to the rim and… my pretty butterfly hand luggage!
Finally it was my weekend again and we taxied off to the magnificent Taj Mahal for the day: 4 hours on the way, 4 hours on site including lunch, 6 hours back… but so worth it, and a good chance for us to have another long girly chat in the car right! Before she.. boohoo, got back to the airport on Saturday night around 12am and jetted off back to Exeter…
We had such a great time, it was so full on, so active, so much fun, and she was such a cool travel buddy, calm and collected in India’s craziness, cool as a cucumber in fact. Great great time!
After that it was a bit uneventful till the Frenchies arrived (I really should stop calling them that!) and the fun started again. Fun slightly tempered down unfortunately by a holidaying bacteria – Doctor said they come out in summer, guess she was a tourist, and fancied a foreign visit, so hop she hopped into my stomach and… Finally! Delhi Belly! I love the fact that because I’m in India, I don’t feel at all self-conscious about it. Bound to happen right! 4 months with nothing, it just had to. Timing is everything though: Got it on Sunday night from a bite of chicken (pretty sure he was guilty) from a local take away shop called “Royal Kitchen” – Royal, my a$%^$! The girls arrived on Wednesday. On Saturday night we were setting off on a 12 hours bus journey up to the hills and Manali – fun fun fun!
Well I soldiered on anyway, and managed for it not to spoil the whole holiday! We enjoyed the mountain fresh air, the gorgeous views, peaks after peaks after peaks, so huge… snow topped mountains, the girls felt right at home… We rented an Enfield, my friend Roman came to join us on his so we just needed an extra one, and headed up a mountain road, only for it to turn into a dirt/rock track. Between Amelie and a crossed knee ligament, Anais with a dodgy stuck nerve in her back, and me with my… well, you know! We were one healthy party! Quite humorous.
After a few days in Manali, we headed for Daramshala, with a 12 hour.. taxi this time – yeah yeah, luxury… pff! Think the bus might actually have been better in the end! Anyway. Stopped on the way in some small side of the road town and got some lunch… hum hum.. Amelie joined me in my misery for a few days, lucky her.. (did nothing to me, was already at my worse – and Anais was surprisingly unbugged!) 
Oh I just read through that last bit there, might be a bit negative!
Let’s try to summarise and “positivise”! So we were in Manali from Sunday morning til Thursday morning. On the way to Daramshala we saw some really cool scenery, going through a little road up and over mountains, in between, through valleys, it was pretty beautiful and we spent most of the time stuck to the windows, trying to click pics… We were glad when we got to our destination (who wouldn’t be after a 12 hours or so ride!? We stayed in a guest house managed by monks, really clean (a rare thing in cheap accommodation! Rs260 a night!) We took it very easy there, finding the good spots for coffee and crepes in the morning, shopped around the market that went on… forever? I don’t know we never got to the end! We found a nice little restaurant on a rooftop which we went back to 2 nights in a row, and yep… That’s about it.
Chilled, chatted, had a few beers in the nice weather… On Saturday Anais got some bad news from home in the morning, and we decided at once that it was time to go and visit the Buddhist temple, to have a little thought about life, its meaning, the universe and anything… On the way there, I stopped the girls at a junction where a lot of people seemed to be expecting something… There was a crowd on each side of the road, people holding what looked to be praying cloths or something like that. I asked a couple of German people on our right if they knew what was happening, but they seemed to have been in the same case as us: Wondering what had brought all the people, and waiting patiently for someone to explain! So I asked another guy, and he told us that… hold on to your panties… the Dalai Lama was setting out on a foreign trip that morning, and that he was going to be passing by!! 5 minutes later, there he was, in his car, waving at us in his orange and red robes, specs and everything, and us, not 2 metres away, on the good side of the road!! Waoo! Can’t really explain it, but we felt pretty good about that! In a bit of a daze after that, thinking it had been meant to be, this little visit, getting all spiritual! We went on to visit the temple and give a turn to the prayer wheels, and a little bow to Buddha… 
Well… Back to reality, as we got out of the temple, we got thirsty (long way back up to the village) so we headed for a bar, got a few beers, chatted the afternoon away, reminding me of looong days spent at the café we use to squat as teenagers.. And then it was time for me to leave them and hop on my bus back to Delhi and its sweltering heat.
All alone again now (naturally ;-)
It’s the 27th of May now, oh my, my birthday’s in 4 days! (gentle reminder haha) The heat is, and listen carefully cause it’s Jenny the cold blooded lizard talking: un-flipping-bearable at the moment. It just cooks, or bakes or grill, or whatever. It’s just not sane to stay outside. I’ve always said I disliked AC, but now, now I can see and understand its use (will still always complain about it back home in our midly tempered climates!) but here, it’s a blessing!!!
Work is going ok, and if I can get my passport renewed in time, I will be staying on. As long as things go well. I like it here. I miss my home and friends, definitely, but I don’t think leaving India after 6 months is fair. I keep on being told of those beautiful places I have to visit, like Ladakh, where, if I can get 3 weeks off, I’ll definitely be heading to on the back of a bike!! Problem? Getting 3 weeks off is kind of a challenge… We’ll see how work goes and things…
Anyway, this is a really long post, it’s probably not that great to read, sorry, I was trying to catch up on lots of things, but well… Plus it’s Sunday night, I have a SHIT timetable this week, my brain is melted by the heat, I’m playing the hermit in my bedroom, hungry, but not tempted to go to the kitchen cause there’s no AC there!! So yeah… That’s it for today, but I’ll be back with better stuff next time!
I hope everyone is doing well, I send you all my love
Take care xJ
No comments:
Post a Comment