we stayed in goa for 3 days, and that was good enough for us. we stayed in south anjuna beach. We met a guy and he said a lot of backpackers seemed to stay more in the south, and we were in the north. The people here were not really our scene. a bunch of isreali's, crazy party ravers, definitely just a weird crew. All wasnt lost though. On the first day we went to the huge flea market they have on wednesdays. it was really pretty awesome. Since we knew we'd be stopping here towards the end of our trip, we let ourselves shop a bit knowing we only have mumbai to go, then home. there were these 2 japanese girls rolling veggie sushi and we had that, it was a hit. After that we spent our time sleeping on hammocks, going to a really dirty, crappy beach and drinking beers at a resturant at night that played movies on a big screen. i also woke up one morning, achey as hell and pain on my back. i guess i got bit by a big bad spider and it made me feel sort of bad for a few days. We were sick of being sick on and off. The whole time, especially knowing it was close to the end, i would crave the most random foods and daydream about everything i could eat when i got back home. All i wanted to do was brush my teeth with faucet water and wash the india grime off of me that never seems to really come off.
Our final stop in Kerala was Kochi. We heard good things about the place and I had been reading how its pretty much the best place to ride the backwaters. We decided to stay for only 2 nights. We left Varkala before dawn broke and hit the train for a smooth 3 hour journey north. After being driven around on the island in a tuktuk we finally found an alright cheap room in a house. After getting lunch, gieves went back to the room to sleep and I took an adventure around fort cochin. This area has tons of amazing culture. There is a lot of European and British-ruled era architecture. Everything is pretty spread out so it makes for nice long walks. The Northern tip of fort cochin is filled with huge Chinese fishing nets and little wooden stores with tons and tons of little trinkits. This, in fact, is the town I saw my first ‘Merry Christmas’ sign! Kochi and Goa actually have a lot of Christians inhabiting the towns. Being in a tropical place for the whole season makes it not seem like Christmas can really be near at all, but it was a nice thing to see out here. For the following day, we had booked a half day boat tour of kochi then a half day of backwaters. After falling asleep oh so early that night, I awoke at 630 feeling like death. I had a temperature of 101 degrees and felt so achy. It was Gieves turn to go out and get water and other stuff for us, and when he returned he wasn’t feeling too great either. I slept through the whole day, woke up around 6 and decided to try and go with g to get some soup. My temp went down a little bit and I felt like I needed something in my stomach. When we got there and ordered, however, I started feeling worse and worse and left before I even took a bite. By the time I got to the room I was vomiting and right back in bed. Slept more. After sleeping pretty much 36 hours straight total, I awoke and felt so much better, but weak. We grabbed some food, and headed to do just a half day backwaters tour before we had to catch an afternoon train for a 16 hour ride to Goa. The backwaters were absolutely amazing. We drove about 40 minutes from kochi to the best place to go out on the waters. Even though we were both just feeling better from being sick, it was great to be outside under the palm trees in a boat. We rode through thin canal waterways that led to huge paddy fields. We stopped in 3 different villages. One village the men were hand making rugs with huge, rusty machines. In another, an older woman was taking the hair/threads from the inside of coconuts. She attached them to this wheel and kept moving back. As this man cranked, the hairs became twine like. They showed us necklaces they made from them and it was truly amazing. In another village we drank some amazing chai and sweet pasteries. Kochi wasn’t too shabby, even though it was short and sweet and I was sick for a big part of it. The backwaters and sweet architecture really made up for it.
On the hottest day you could ever imagine, we walked from our hotel down the beach up a huge hill to catch a local bus. Happily we sat down in the back with our bags, happy we were alive. The bus took us to town and we found the train station and bough some tickets for the next train out, only a 45 minute journey up north. We decided to spend 6 days in Varkala which was our longest stay thus far. From everything I read it sounded perfect, and it really was. Varkala has 2 main parts, the biggest (and best) is a road that no cars or rickshaws can go down that is right on top of the huge cliff. We thought Kovalam was mellow, but this, by far, was paradise. We found this amazing vibed and cheap (6 bones) hotel with its own hammock and complete with mosquito bed net. We found the BEST tuna sandwich we have ever ever had (and ate it quite a bit! Whoops for too much tuna!). We also found the best museli here and ate fresh fish caught that day pretty much every single night. When you walk up to the restaurants (the cliff is full of gems) they all have ice where they have the fish and you pick which one you want. So many kinds, red snapper, snapper, butterfish, etc. We also ate so much fresh fruit. How could we resist? After over a month of traveling nonstop and not being allowed all this glorious food, we divulged ourselves. And happy for me, we did leave all the pervs behind! It was a very heavy tourist place but still the amount of people was pretty slim. Seriously, paradise. The beaches were chilled, even though the currents were super rough and gieves and I both got our share of being viciously thrown by the ocean. On our second day, we met this irish couple named zoey and joseph on the beach. That night we met up with them for dinner on the cliff and had a few drinks. At the restaurant we went to, they built this small little tree house so the 4 of us sat up there for a few hours chilling out. It was great. After a while we decided to go see if people were on the beach or at this other place they had hungout the previous night. We walked up to a restaurant called ‘the chill out lounge’ and were surprised to see a good 30 people sitting around all these tables put together, partying, with 2 acoustic guitars going around. We had a blast and had so much fun, met really cool people. The next night was a night off, then the following we did the same thing again but this time our group was off from the middle table and about 10 of us hungout all night. It was nice being in that environment. No where else in India had anyone experienced a gathering like that and it made everyone that much more happy. I was truly sad to leave Varkala. We had our own little places, the place we stayed at felt like home and I wasn’t sure what was ahead of us, but knew that it would be pretty damn hard to beat these beachy cliffs.
There was no better reward for us then jumping on that plane and landing at Trivandrum airport. We made it to Kerala, alive, and were glowing. Kerala lies on the Arabian sea on the southwest coast. We were met with more then luscious palm trees, bright colors and a very hot afternoon. We drove on a long, green palm tree lined street and headed 15 minutes south to Kovalam. We found a place that was right on the beach (falling asleep to the waves was just what the doctor ordered) with tons of little hotels and restaurants. We paid a little more then usual for the hotel but took advantage of it all. We’d wake up early and get an amazing breakfast at a German bakery, spend the whole day in the sun then at night retire with a drink and some fish and some american tv channels! It was bliss. The best/sometimes annoying thing about Kovalam was: the fruit ladies. These ladies are ruthless! They wear a basket on their head of every tropical fruit you can imagine and go up to everyone on the beach asking what they want. Right after we got there I met the fruit lady known as Mary and said maybe id buy some the next day. “Promise me! don’t go with no other fruit lady, okay?’ ‘Okay Mary’. That is how she became my fruit lady. If you weren’t in the mood for fruit she got all upset and would say, in an hour? As much as she was annoying sometimes there was something I really liked about her. And she did make one hell of a fruit salad. ‘bahnana, mahngo, pupuyah, cocoonut’. On the last day we chilled with those ladies for a bit, ate our last fruit salad from them, took some photos and parted ways. Kovalam was a great town to start our journey in Kerala, but the beaches were not the greatest and the Indian men who would walk in groups, well they were just horrible. Snapping photos of woman in their bikinis, holding each others hands while their eyes ogled woman. I was ready for the next beach town and hoping we’d leave all those pervs in Kovalam.
Varanasi was not about to let our trip out of the city an easy one. Varanasi is a big jerk like that. Our whole plans for Nepal had shifted a week or so before when we sat down and tried to book a ticket back. The big picture was supposed to have us taking a train and buses to Nepal , kickin it there for 10 days, then flying to Delhi, staying the night then flying to the city of Trivandrum in the very far south. Even though it was more then we wanted to pay cause of airfare and all, we knew this would be the only thing that would work for us considering 10 days (including travel) is not near enough when you have to take a journey that is s a full 24 hours . So when we sat down and booked the airline ticket from Katmandu, it kept emailing us that what we wanted was not available. After 3 attempts of not being able to get what we wanted, we decided to let go of the headache it was giving us from the start and figured maybe it was a sign that we weren’t supposed to go. We were wanting to see the Himalayas in a big way, so our new plan was to get out of Varanasi by train to Delhi, then take a bus up to Dharmasala. It is the home of the great dalai lama and scores of Tibetan refugees live there. Well, the way it worked, we get to the train station in Varanasi just to learn it keeps getting delayed. And delayed again. We sat around for at least 6 hours til the train finally came. Not only were we waiting too long on the platform, throughout the whole night we kept stopping and what should have been a 15 hour trip turned into over 30 hours. With that, gieves slept over half of the time and a couple hours before we got to Delhi started feeling real sick. We decided we’d take a bus from delhi that following morning if he felt better and took a cab to a part of the city I heard about that was all Tibetan called majnu ka tilla. We booked a room and ended up staying there for 3 days while gieves was violently ill and I myself was feeling pretty shietty. It ended up being one of the better places we could have probably picked to stay. A lot of good soups and a break from the spiced up Indian dishes we had been having for over 3 weeks. Also a bunch of good Tibetan shops and good people. How could a place be bad with a bunch of sweet faced monks walking around the town.
After we had to leave that room since we were indecisive and weren’t committing to anything we decided that only having a few days left before we were going to fly south, we’d stay in delhi for a couple more nights, check stuff out, then try and change our flight to go down to the beautiful paradise aka southern India early. From being sick and all we were jaded at that moment on northern India and needed a good vacation from our vacation. We changed our tix to get to Kerala 5 days early and jumped in a rickshaw to paharganj which is a huge market area. After finding a room we jumped in some tuktuks to scope out India’s capital. We were hesitant about delhi. Although I got some inside scoops from Divya and was stoked on that, most of the travelers we had met didn’t have one nice thing to say about the place. To us, we really liked it. Yeah the pollution is so horribly bad, but it was the first city we had seen in WEEKS that was for the most part clean and organized and had grass and was spread out. We hardly even saw any cows that we had been dodging and weaving our whole stay and were confused by their absence. Wanting to take a break from forts and palaces, the first place we went to was the Indira Gandhi museum. After reading some things about her while in India I was excited to see the memorial. It was a really moving experience. The museum is at the home she lived in and where she was actually assassinated by her Sikh bodyguards in 1984. After museum one we decided to go to the national gallery of modern art. It was in fact a pretty amazing gallery and we saw some beyond amazing Indian art. I found myself writing name after name of artists I wanted to check out so that’s always a good sign. We saw some other cool sites too and were really digging the vibe.
One of the craziest things that happened was eating lunch at this rooftop restaurant in Parahganj. It was on November 26th, the year anniversary of the Mumbai terrorist attacks. It was a very somber day for everyone in India. As we sat eating, I looked down below to the very busy center of the market and noticed people being abruptly stopped by police and getting pushed back to little alleyways that lead to the middle. Sirens and announcements in Hindi started, and some police cars and ambulances pulled up. Everyone started getting pretty worried, but the waitress came up and told us it was just a police drill. Within 10 minutes, there were bomb sniffing dogs, about 100 officers with guns, a swat team and scores of fire trucks. They definitely were checking shops but it didn’t really seem like there was a central area in the square they were concentrating on. Although it seemed pretty weird to me, all this chaos and some of it seemed like maybe there was a real threat, we saw some officers laughing and some other things that looked a bit hoaxy it made me feel a bit more at ease. Everyone was on roofs just watching, and an officer actually ended up coming up to the restaurant and told the manager to have everyone move away, stop looking and to not film anything that was happening anymore. After about an hour of being stuck there, they slowly started letting people walk back in the streets. I overheard the manager tell people something and I called him over. He said he heard it WAS in fact a bomb threat that was called in, but he supposed it could have been a test as well and they just wanted to show the people how fast they could get to the scene. The later as a way to restore India’s faith back in their military after what happened on 26/11. He also said right below the restaurant where the ‘test’ was there was an actual bombing 4 years ago and he saw all the blood and bodies lying on the ground afterwards. It was a Pakistani bombing, most likely against tourists. It was too much. I was a bit relieved after that deal to be flying out the next day. I guess we’ll never really know the real deal. Nothing happened that’s all that matters.
From the start, I was pretty excited about going to Varanasi. It’s one of the holiest and oldest cities in the world and is built on the banks of the Ganges river. To my big time disappointment, from the very start to finish, Varanasi proved to be the most difficult time thus far. It ended up being one of those stops that would have been best avoided for the most part.
It all started with the train. The time from Agra to Varanasi is about a 13 hour train ride. When we booked the ticket we were numbers 4 + 5 on the waiting list. I read somewhere that sometimes the waiting lists can go up to 100 and you would still usually be all good. When we went to the train manager to ask what the status was, we were 1 + 2 on the w.l. and he was just like sorry looks like nothing will open up. After being confused and asking what we have to do next the only answer was: general admission. Well shiz. It was 11 at night, in agra, and we didn’t know what to do. We didn’t want to get a hotel and even if we did who knows when a seat on the train would happen? All I know about general admission is that they are the dirt cheap, sardine packed trains that about 100 people run and push to get into the doors and get a ‘good spot’. Our friend had taken this car once, not by choice, and said luckily it was only 2 hours because she was literally standing, smooshed and trying to read her book but could barely move her arm to turn the pages. How would we do that for 13 hours, overnight? We scoped it and I don’t even know if it was possible to fit in that car. Through this whole trying to figure stuff out time, Luis, the other half of the sweet couple from argentina we met at the taj, kept coming up and asking what was going on. Finally, we had no choice but to jump in their car after he insisted we come in so we can at least be on our way and figure it out. Usually the ticket guy seems to come around an hour or 2 after you get on the train, but of course he was right there. We were trying to figure out if we sleep on the floor or what. Luis and Florencia were like ‘no way! We will share’. So them being so amazing, they got on one of the top bunks together for the night and gave gieves and I one to share. The ticket guy came around, saw we clearly didn’t have a ticket for the spot, and fined us about 700 rupees, about the price the 2 tickets would have cost to begin with. Although the night, in all honestly, was so crammed tight and freeeezing cold (sleeper had no control of temp and is beyond drafty, I could barely feel my face it was so cold. No blanket or anything, we were so unprepared) we were so grateful to them that we were at least on our way. In the morning the train cleared out so much that we had free reign to sit where we liked. We were free and were on our way.
After getting off the train, we told the duo we were taking them to dinner while we were there, no questions asked. We exchanged info and we went off to the hotel. Long story short, the place we picked sucked. Mice, the worst shared bathrooms probably in India’s history, and plumbing that smelled like dead people. Even after changing rooms it didn’t get much better.
Off of the bad things, I feel like there were some moments there that stopped me in my tracks. We took a sunrise boat ride down the ganges one morning and saw the city slowly waking up, doing their rituals. We met up with Luis and Flor and had a most amazing time and just laughed til we were surrounded by happiness. We watched a bunch of neighborhood kids playing a game of soccer and dodging over cows and homeless men, I guess one of the most touching moments for me, of the whole time we have been here, was walking to the burning ghat Manikarnika. Bodies are burned non-stop here , all day and all night. This ghat has up to 200 cremations each day. People are said to have ’been beyond lucky’ to die here so they can be burned at these holy ghats. There was even a huge room next door filled with older and sickly people just waiting to die there. Just to be burned at this ghat. Pretty intense. Each body is wrapped in cloth and placed in its own stack of wood. It takes 2-3 hours for the body to be reduced to ashes. Relatives (males only, woman are not allowed) watch the process. The hindus believe that if you die here, you are guaranteed release from the birth and rebirth cycle. Also, it is strictly prohibited to take photos here, but who would want to do that anyways? The ghat was crowded with funeral parties and mourners. It was definitely beyond somber, yet at the same time it seemed like all these families were happy their loved one was here, burning their body away on these wooden logs on the holy rivers edge. They are okay, and almost seem positive, about death. So unlike our culture, where we bury our dead and spend months trying to get over it. For them it happens, then its time to move on. The craziest part I learned was that not all who die are cremated -- children under ten, lepers, sadhus, pregnant women, and snake-bite victims are offered directly to the river. Such is life.
What kind of trip is India if you don’t stop and see the taj mahal? Since all the new friends we have met on our journey thus far said agra as a town sucked, we decided to make it just a day trip and not spend the night (and save the mulas). Our train got to the station a good 3 hours late which was a bummer, cause I wanted to see agra fort as well as the taj. This really cool Belgium couple we had met in Jaisalmer and had dinner with in Jaipur suggested us going to this hotel they stayed at to keep our things there. We started hearing horror stories as well about how some hotel restaurants in agra had been known to give people bad food or bad water so they would get sick and stay a night in their hotel! We were told this hotel was a thumbs up so we went and paid a half day price and made our way to the taj. In all honestly, photos do not do the taj mahal justice. It is the most beautiful building I have ever seen in my life. We ended up staying til sunset (our train was to leave at 1130 that night) and soaked it all in. it was hard to leave. As soon as we left the gates back onto the street, however, we were mobbed with people trying to sell things. At one point I had 4 guys around me trying to sell me garbage. It wasn’t hard to leave that. The other great thing about Agra was that we had met this hippie couple from Argentina who was also leaving on our night train to Varanasi . We planned to meet up in the city, went and booked some more reservations, ate some good (non-poisonous) grub then heading for the station for train 2 of the day.
Jaipur definitely started us out on the right foot. After taking a night train from Jaisalmer, we arrived in the real early morning. There was a worker snoozing in the office and gave us a room right away (we were soooo thankful) and we instantly slept a good portion of the morning/early afternoon away. After waking up and getting it together, we decided to walk the town to find a book store. I was not crazy about the thought of going to Jaipur just because its another huge city and the capital of Rajasthan but decided it was worth a shot. After leaving the hotel, we turn the corner and this guy in a rickshaw stops by. Where are you goin? We tell him this bookstore, and he tells us it’s a far walk, but not at any point does he try and scam us, but tells us how it is. ‘you can walk, but its pretty far, and trust me, jaipur is not a walking town’. something about him sparked something in us, and we asked him to being us. Little did we know this changed our whole trip. From here on out he fell in love with shakeer, a tall lanky Indian man who in a weird way looked like a young Michael Jackson. After bringing us to the book store, he said it was almost the perfect time to go to the monkey palace for sunrise. Sure, why not. As we pull up about 30 minutes later, we are in awe. We see the palace with towering walls and you got it…HUNDREDS of MONKEYS!!!!!!!!!!! We start walking our way up and get closer and closer. There monkeys are HUGE. The kind of monkeys with beg red booties. Baby monkeys, ancient monkeys, running around climbing walls. After about 10 minutes of walking up and almost approaching the top, we see this huge group of kids, teenagers, on top. Slowly, one by one, they start to watch us approach. They start laughing and saying all these things we cant understand, more and more kids, I would say about 55 kids at least. I was hesitant to walk up. Were they ridiculing us? What are they even saying? As we keep walking we see an older man, the teacher staring in amazement as well. He gets up, asks gieves if he has any American money he can give him rupees for, then hugs him. Around this time, all hell breaks loose. They are running up to us, smiling, asking us questions, hugging and shaking our hands. The teacher comes to me and leads me over to these 3 girls sitting by a ledge and they get all nervous. I think they wanted to talk to me but were too scared to do it themselves. Their friends start taking photos, before you know it, I am surrounded by at least 30 kids, gieves snaps some photos on film. We are so frazzled. They are acting as if we are CELEBRITIES. After a while and 2 or 3 more goodbyes (after we’d say goodbye they would run back down to where we were) they go to gieves and ask him to sing. Please sir sing an american song! Under pressure…gieves starts beatboxing. Beatboxing! The kids go NUTS and start cheering. Finally on our departure one of the girls the teacher led me to ran to me, and gave me a pair of earrings she had. No words can describe how crazy it was, and how excited they were, and it was a moment I will never forget, it was one of the weirdest, craziest, silliest most touching moments of my entire life. Needless to say, we loved monkey palace.
After monkey palace Shakeer brought us through the pink city markets. It was CHAOS and I was very thankful to watch my surroundings from the rickshaw. He was right, besides the markets (which I wanted no part of anyways) Jaipur really isn’t a walking city. When he dropped us off, we enjoyed the few hours with him so much we asked if he would take us around the next day as well. He was glad to. One thing I have learned about Indians is that they are very truthful. They tell you how they feel. The ones I have met here briefly in this small frame of time in my life are peaceful and very compassionate. Shakeer has a heart of pure gold. He called me ‘boss lady’ just because I was so sweet he told gieves they needed to do what I said and even on the second day snuck away from us at a temple cause he ‘forgot’ something then when we met back up he had bought for us a ball of yarn for bracelets we were trying to find. Also on that same day, he took us to another special place. Earlier we had stopped at the amber fort where we saw elephants for the first time really in India. After leaving the fort, we went to where the elephants lived. It was beyond amazing. As sad as it was them being chained up, I got so close to the magnificent beasts my heart melted. The man who works there had a kind heart and kept bringing us up to the elephants, letting us rub their trunks and hug them and take photos. What a moment!
There was a lot more we saw in jaipur, but those were definitely the best of them. I loved my time there, mainly because I got to see so much of the city because of Shakeer. Driving around on the rickshaw was definitely the best thing we could have done, and it kept us sane in that city.
