Rajasthani Ramble

Posted on July 4, 2011 by neveradahlmoment

Rajasthan – Land of the Kings. Land of the sweaty armpits more like! Travelling through the hottest part of the country on the cusp of summer is strictly for mad dogs and Englishmen only, but those willing to brave the fifty degree heat are rewarded with a region widely considered to be the ‘real India’.

Our circuit of this sandy state began in Jaipur, which has the world’s largest sundial and a whole street selling nothing but cooking utensils. After we’d finished marvelling at the oversized timepiece and dazzling array of chapatti pans, we made our way back to our hotel along a disconcertingly empty street. Suddenly a gang of grubby-faced street urchins streamed out of a side alley, running towards us in a herd, screaming and then grabbing at our belongings as they caught up with us. Our first reaction was to walk briskly away from them with our heads down. As were were employing this rather pathetic tactic one of Pip’s bags split open and her newly purchased jeans fell on the floor. Big mistake Street Rats – no one tries to steal Pipa’s shopping!

Drawing her recently purchased souvenir umbrella, she wielded it like a sword, catching one of the children in the chest and causing the others to draw back. The kids were clearly startled by this aggressive foreigner, but quickly regrouped and formed a semi-circle around us. “Get away from us you little shits” shouted Pip, now adopting a fencing stance.

This amazing display of bravery brought us precious seconds to pick up our shopping and make a dash for it across four lanes of traffic to the relative safety of the other side of the road. We looked back to see the kids being rounded up and scolded by adults. Presumably they were saying something along the lines of  “next time you see an English couple, go for the man’s stuff, their women are tough!”

After that little encounter we decided that Jaipur was not for us so jumped on a bus to our next stop, Pushkar.

Pushkar is a small sand-locked town with one of the only Brahma temples in the world. The whole town surrounds a water tank where the local women wash their silk and a camel fair happens once a year which draws traders from all over the world. None of them make for as good blog material as the scam that the locals try on us tourists.

Before you’ve taken four steps from the safety of your hotel a local man will approach you, shove a flower into your hand and escort you to the local water temple for a blessing. You arrive, cupping your flower as if it were a newborn mouse, and then hand it carefully to a holy man who sets it afloat on the lake, and then offers a blessing for each member of your family. How lovely, you might be thinking, but unfortunately these holy men are about as pious as Soho sex workers, and start demanding huge amounts of rupees for each one of your family that they have blessed. “Surely they are worth it?”, they ask earnestly.  Luckily we were warned about the scam so politely returned the flowers and pushed the holy men in the water.*

A five-hour taxi journey out of Pushkar and we were in Bundi, which is so small and remote that we were pretty much the only westerners there. The lack of pasty-faced foreigners might have also been down to the temperature of the place, which was mildly cooler than the surface of the sun. After about 11am we were rendered so useless by the heat that we could only just summon enough energy to raise a glass of beer to our parched lips and then crawl back to our hotel room for a blast on the air conditioning.

Being a proactive couple we made the most of our downtime and asked our hotelier to teach us Hindi. Over the next few days he taught us a fair amount including how to count to 100, ask the price of something and compliment a woman on the size of her breasts. These lessons served us well for the rest of our trip, cutting down the price of our rickshaws and bringing a look of surprised glee to the face of many an Indian.

It was wedding season in Rajasthan while we were travelling through, and it was in Bundi that we witnessed our first wedding procession, which is nothing short of a street riot. The groom leads the way, riding a garishly decorated horse, followed closely by his male friends, all drunk as skunks and dancing wildly to music blasted out of a massive sound system. The bride and her friends bring up the rear, all staring disapprovingly at the men.

Pip and I were quickly manhandled into the separate groups and encouraged to dance while they all clapped and whooped around us.  The people of Bundi now believe English men to dance with their feet firmly rooted to the ground while alternating between clicking their fingers and clapping.

We left Bundi by sleeper bus at midnight, and seven bone-shaking hours later, we arrived in Jodhpur, famous for lending its name to the leggings worn by horse riders everywhere. We were disappointed to find that not all of the residents of Jodhpur wear jodhpurs, but the town itself made up for this, being a beautiful blue colour and containing a network of bustling sreets, each one devoted to the selling of a different thing. The highlight was an amazing fort which stands imposingly on a hill overlooking the town, which we could not visit during the day because Christian Bale was in there, dressed up like Batman, presumably the for new movie.

We had heard rumours of sati on our travels around India – the practice of a Hindu widow throwing herself on the funeral pyre of her husband, killing herself and honouring him, and it was in the fort that we saw the first evidence of this. On one the walls were a chilling cluster of handprints left by the former ruler’s wives as they had left the fort on their way to do their duty at his cremation. It sent a shiver down our spines!

And on that rather sombre note, it is time to wrap up this blog, and leave the rest of Rajasthan until next time. Check back in a few days!

Michael and Pipa x

*that last part of that sentence is a lie.

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Would you Andaman Eve it?

Posted on May 16, 2011 by neveradahlmoment

Namaste from Delhi, where we are spending a few days with our friend Andrew on our way from Rajasthan to Varanasi. Andrew has been playing the dutiful host, taking us to Embassy pool parties, reacquainting our digestive systems with steak and cheese and showing us the best place in town to buy a portable hard drive. Now back to where we were at the end of the last blog – thousands of feet above the Bay of Bengal on our way to the Andaman and Nicobar Islands.

When the explorer Marco Polo wrote about the Andmans he described the locals as being cannibals with the heads of dogs. Bullmastiffs to be precise. More than likely this uncharitable description was designed to keep others from coming to the paradise he had found. Every one of the 200 islands has miles of white sandy beaches; mangroves swamps and lush jungle, lapped at by luminous turquoise water. The surrounding seas also contain an amazing array of life making it one of the best places to dive in the world. And as far as we could see, not one bullmastiff.

Marco Polo may have played-up his description of the locals, but genuine monsters do lurk in the islands in the form of saltwater crocodiles. They were only discovered last year when one of them killed an American tourist while she was snorkeling off the beach. Her boyfriend saw the whole thing, but when he went back to town to raise the alarm, the locals (who knew nothing of their crocodile neighbours) suspected he had killed her and promptly locked him in the town jail. Luckily his girlfriend’s camera washed up a few days later, which had landed on the sea bed at such an angle that it had captured the whole incident on film. They caught the offending croc and sentenced him to life imprisonment in the local zoo where we paid him a visit. He looked thoroughly depressed but not very repentant.

As you can imagine there wasn’t much snorkeling going on on the Andamans, but there was still plenty of diving, which is one of the main reasons we were there. We were both complete novices, so had to start off learning the basics of breathing underwater, managing our oxygen supply and what to do if it runs out. By the end of the first day we were diving a coral reef a few meters down. By day five we were swimming fin-to-fin with sharks, moray eels and octopus and qualified to dive down to 30 meters.

We also did a night dive with torches to illuminate the sleeping fishes and crustaceans which only come out after dark. We also waved our hands around like idiots to create amazing luminous trails created by the phosphorescent algae. We took many pictures of our underwater escapades but unfortunately our water-poof camera (bought from a local shop) was not quite as resistant to fluid as the back of the packet suggested.

The diving and scenery were spectacular and relaxing, but what really made our time there were the people we met. We spent ten days on the same resort, and so met lots of other divers and travellers. We then hopped over to a smaller island for a couple of days with some of the group and went in search of a secret beach and tried our hand at spear fishing on one of the reefs. None of the tropical fish looked particularity palatable so we dumped the spears and went snorkeling instead, looking over our shoulders all the time to check for pesky crocs!

After the Andamans we flew to Delhi to spend some time with our friend Andrew who has been working as a publisher out here for the last year. He has clearly embraced Indian life, meeting us off the plane dressed in full white kurtha and introducing us to his beautiful and bubbly Indian girlfriend Vibha.

They were amazing hosts, taking us to the local restaurants, bars and clubs which we would have never found on our own, and introducing us to momos – little steamed parcels of fish, meat and vegetables. We also had our eardrums pounded with Bollywood baselines pumped out from Vibha’s custom car stereo.

During the day, while Andrew worked, we used his driver, Praveem, who took us around the sites of Delhi. No need to go into great depth, but there’s more of a Muslim influence in the north, because it was conquered by the Moghuls back in ye days of olde, so the architecture is Islamic and the dress codes at the sites is stricter. Pipa was conscious of this before we went out, but even so, she was still made to don a floor length blue and white polka dot nightie at one of the mosques, much to her annoyance. Apparently polka dot nighties are soooo 2010.

We used Delhi as a base, from where we travelled down to Agra to see the Taj Mahal, which has rightly earned its place as one of the seven wonders of the world. It is very big, very beautiful and very popular. We got up at 5am to avoid the crowds, and saw the sun rise over the white marble palace which was stunning. Unfortunately one of my flip flops broke, and it was too early to buy new ones, so i had to buy the shoes off the feet of a rickshaw driver. The irony being that as soon as you get to to Taj Mahal you have to take your shoes off anyway.

The rest of Agra is not quite so beautiful, so after seeing the Taj and taking a tour of Agra Fort, where the Taj’s creator was imprisoned, we spent the rest of the afternoon chilling  by the pool. That night we got a six hour taxi all the way back to Delhi, driven by a man who kept himself from falling asleep by chewing copious amounts of Betel nut, and then driving like a wired maniac. We made it back alive, and were then treated to a very fine mutton biriyani by Andrew and Vibha Ji.

We then spent one more day in Delhi before moving onto to Jaipur in Rajsthan where we shall pick up next time.

We hope you are all well. Love to you all as always and we shall speak soon we hope.

Michael and Pipa x

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Mud, sweat and beers

Posted on April 21, 2011 by neveradahlmoment

Namaste from the Indian capital of Delhi, where we are staying with our friends Andrew and Vibha. They have been great hosts, introducing us to momo dancing, Bollywood basslines and showing us a side of the city we would never have seen on our own. Thanks guys! More on that next time, because the blog is still lagging a few weeks behind us, so let’s bring you up to speed.

On the way down from Ooty on the old steam train we adopted a resourceful Canadian called Kristen who was traveling around India alone. Brave girl. She told us that earlier in her trip she had met an Indian man who had invited her back to his village so he could give her some Ayurvedic treatments.  She agreed, and stayed with him in his tiny mud hut, sharing his food and receiving a daily massage and ‘lessons’. A week later she emerged into the blazing sun, covered in essential oils and mosquito bites, and made her way back to town. Personally I would have been tempted to press charges on him but she says she felt reborn and enjoyed t experience.

On the train journey to Kerala with Kristen we learned a valuable lesson on using Indian railways. Up until then we had been travelling in Sleeper Class, where you are allocated a seat which converts into a bunk at night, and you lie like a sardine, attempting to sleep through the liberal use of the train’s horn.

Feeling brave and adventurous with our new Canadian friend we decided to try our luck in General Class to see what conditions were like in the cheapest carriage. The answer to that question is cramped. Every square inch was filled with people or produce, forcing us to stand with our huge rucksacks in the only available space – the toilet, which smelt a bit like Satan’s left armpit.

Talking to keep our spirits up and sipping neat rum to numb ourselves from the smell, we quickly formulated a plan to get ourselves bunked-up to a higher class carriage. When the train stopped at the next station we made good our escape, tip-toeing precariously through the mass of bodies, the damp undersides of our rucksacks brushing against the face of a poor Indian chap who was sleeping on the train floor. Our mission was a success though, and after popping 500 rupees in the pocket of the ticket inspector we spent the rest of the journey in a spacious air-conditioned carriage, still drinking the rum of course.

Kerala is bloody hot. So hot that you have to take at least four showers a day just to stay the right side of sanitary. The scenery more than makes up for it though, with beautiful old colonial towns, long sandy beaches and vast expanses of backwaters where life has stood still for hundreds of years.

Our first stop on our Keralan tour was the quaint little town of Fort Cochin, a port used by the British in ye days of olde. Here we helped the local fisherman bring in their catch using traditional Chinese fishing nets, and then, after selecting a few choice specimens, got them cooked on one of the grills on the street with a bit of butter and garlic. Lovely.

We also spent some time with a nice couple called Jade and James from East London who we met while browsing antiques in the old Jewish quarter of Fort Cochin. We ate a lot of Italian food, swapped stories of our travels and taught them advanced Shithead (a card game) strategy over some beers.  Fort Cochin also had some lovely Jain temples which we would have visited, but  alas, one of the girls was menstruating or ‘cursed’, which forbade us from entering. Quite how they would know was a mystery but we didn’t want to offend anyone.

Bidding farewell to the East Londoners we headed to Allepeppey which is right on the backwaters of Kerala. The monsoon clouds which sweep up from the South are stopped by the Western Ghats, forcing them to dump their rain in one go and thus creating a huge area of lakes, canals and channels. Life is slow, relaxed and rural, with the calm only broken by the rice barges which chug up the channels, ferrying tourists around the lush watery paradise. Our meager budget did not quite extend to a barge,  but we rented a sweet little gondola which could go down some of the smaller channels and was a great way to see the sun come up, even if our captain did insist on blasting out Akon and Michael Jackson at 20,000 decibels.

Next stop was Varkala, a small cliff-top strip of shops, bars and restaurants which overlooks a beach where the waves are big enough to surf and the seafood is good enough to eat. The town itself was a bit of a disappointment, and the touts were not in great spirits at the end of a long and not particularly prosperous season, so we were glad when we met up with James and Jade again. James and I attempted surfing and managed to kneel on the board for about three seconds,  and then at night we gorged ourselves on seafood and drank beer out of teapots in the unlicensed bars.

We also did a cooking course, learning how to throw together tarka dhal, vegetable jalfrezi, paratha, vegetable biryani, samosas and a dessert made out of bananas and milk whose name escapes me. Despite one of the main ingredients being our own sweat, the food was delicious, and enough to feed us for the next three meals.

We should be proficient fisherman by now, because in Varkala we yet again helped the men bring in their catch, this time using a huge drag net. We then watched with mild amusement as an argument erupted after one of the men, (wearing the world’s tightest lungi) blamed the size of the catch on a decision that one of the other fisherman had made prior to our arrival.

Pondicherry is an old French colony, where the guidebook assured us we would eat the juiciest steak and drink the finest wine that money could buy. Well the steak and wine wasn’t quite as delicious as the guidebook promised,  but if you ignored the hooting traffic and bright yellow rickshaws you could fool yourself into believing that you were in a picturesque French town. The buildings were very pretty, there was great coffee and the policeman still donned the Kepi hats that the french wear. We also stayed in a lovely french-style villa with hot water (big luxury for us) and a television which certainly added to our enjoyment of the place.

A half hour motorbike drive from Pondi was Auroville, a self-sufficient community started by ‘The Mother’ back in the 1960s. There is no religion and each one of the 5,000 inhabitants works towards the good of the community, while striving for a greater sense of oneness, dude. In the middle of the vast settlement is a huge golden globe, which houses the world’s largest crystal which the Aurovillians use to meditate around. You’re only allowed to view the globe after you have watched a video, and I don’t know whether we were brainwashed by that video, because afterwards we were rather seduced by the idea of living alongside these alternative-lifers.

Next stop was Chennai. No person has ever had a good thing to say or write about Chennai, so  we arrived there late at night, got driven to our hotel by a rickshaw (piloted by a very drunk driver), stayed one night and then flew to the Andaman Islands the next day. And that, our friends, is where we shall pick up the journey next time.

Hope you are all well and that we speak to you soon,

Michael and Pipa xxx

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Ooty walla walla, Ooty bang bang

Posted on April 5, 2011 by neveradahlmoment

Namaste from The Andaman Islands, in the Bay of Bengal, where we are trying our hand at diving!

Like a corny American soap opera, let’s recap on where we were last time – in Hampi, with the boulders, the Hindu temples and the conservative dress codes for women. Men could walk around in Speedos, but for women anything below the ankle or wrist was deemed far too provocative. Despite its conservative outlook, Hampi was spectacularly beautiful and one of our favorite places so far, so it was with a heavy heart that we said farewell and caught the train to Bangalore.

Banglaore is famous for being the IT capital of India and as a result of its wealth feels like a relatively modern city. There is still the chaos, which we have come to know and love, but amidst it are skyscrapers, hotels and coffee bars which offer little oasis’s of tranquility. After six weeks on the road it was nice to go shopping in a mall, stock up on toiletries from Boots and drink real frothy coffee. We even ate steak, a rare treat in a country where cows are sacred and given more respect than many of the human population.

Alas, woe is me, for ironically it was in Bangalore that I succumbed to the inevitable Delhi Belly. Feeling invincible after surviving six weeks of Indian food without so much as a belch I cockily bought some sliced water melon from a street seller. Big mistake. It tasted wrong while I was eating it, and four hours later and my digestive system went into meltdown, rendering me weak and pathetic for three days. We have heard that some of the more unscrupulous fruit sellers inject their produce with water to increase the weight, and this water is not of the bottled, mineral variety, so it may have been this which took down my digestive system.

After Bangalore it was to Mysore- sandalwood and essential oil capital of India. It was here that a brave and charismatic auto
rickshaw driver who called himself ‘Masterblaster’ allowed me to pilot his three-wheeler taxi through the crazy city streets. Then, after we had all changed our underwear, he took us to what can only be described as a backstreet oil-den. This illegal operation was run by three Indian tough guys who gave us the hard-sell, while rubbing various oils into our arms and wafting them around our noses. There is something very bizarre about receiving a massage from the Grant Mitchell of India while he stares provocatively into your eyes and talks to you about oils. We politely declined his wares and left quickly, but we had a great time with Masterblaster as he drove us around town, showing us the sites and blasting out Akon through the soundsystem in his customised rickshaw.

When we returned to our hotel an Indian wedding was taking place in one of the conference rooms, and on seeing us curiously peeking through the door, the father of the bride generously invited us to join in the celebrations. As we entered the room all 200 guests turned to stare at us, and from that moment onwards their eyes never left us. Within three minutes we were stood in front of the crowd being filmed and photographed like one of the family. The women rounded on Pip to give her a bhindi and asked her about her toe rings, while the men surrounded me, firing direct questions about my job, my father’s job and our marital status. We were then told it was customary for guests to make a large cash donation to the bride, to which we responded to by laughing nervously, to which they said,’ No really’ to which we said, ‘we are very poor’ and then quickly left.

On the Mysore tourist trail is the Maharajah’s Palace, a grand building which gets illuminated by thousands of light bulbs once a week. While walking around the grounds we decided to have a nose around in the back garden and came across the elephant stables. On seeing us the keepers ushered us over and enthusiastically encouraged us to clamber on the backs of the elephants via the beast’s knee. The activity was definitely not on the official tour, and we rode them bareback without saddles, which was pretty hairy in both senses of the word.

Next on our tour across South Central India was Ooty, an old British hill station, in an idyllic setting high in the mountains surrounded by eucalyptus forests and tea plantations. The air is cool and fresh and it gets so cold at night that we had a log fire in our room, a bit of a change to the 35 degree heat we’ve become accustomed to, and really refreshing! Back in its heyday Ooty would have been a beautiful town with large colonial wooden houses where the plantation managers lived, and a boating lake where they whiled away their free time. Call me an Old Rajaphile (many people do) but bring those days back! Glimpses of the old Ooty can still be seen if you squint hard enough, but much of it has been plastered over and rebranded to attract Indian tourists. The best example of this is Jolly World, a theme park that looks like it has just been through a nuclear explosion and then reopened the next day. Another classic was the Thread Museum; a huge indoor garden of flowers made of nothing but silk thread, weaved together over several years by someone with a lot of time (and silk) on their hands.

The surrounding area was beautiful though and we had a good day’s trek around the plantations and eucalyptus forests; and rode a horse around the boating lake which was lovely, even if our guide did repeatedly punch the horses in the face for being
disobedient. The train journey out of Ooty, down the mountains was spectacular. It’s the same steam engine that used to transport tea from the plantations, and it clunks and whistles its way down through valleys and mountains, arriving at the bottom four hours later. Many people go to Ooty just for this experience and it definitely made the trip.

From the bottom of the mountains we moved onto Kerala, to see the backwaters, but we will save that for the next blog. As you may have noticed we are behind, and just to reassure you, it’s not that we don’t love you, but we have started to up the pace of our travels a bit and we haven’t been anywhere long enough to write it.

Hope all is well back home, lots of love, Michael and Pip xxx

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Monkeys, Monks and Masala Chai

Posted on March 7, 2011 by neveradahlmoment

Hello everyone, from Hampi in central Karnataka!

Last time we blogged, we were just about to catch a night train south to Gokana, to join the dreadlocked westerners living simple lives alongside the locals. What we found was a little different.

We arrived at four in the morning and checked into a place recommended to us by a Swedish author who we met over breakfast. We awoke to find ourselves in a Yoga commune and living alongside some very strange characters indeed! Pick of the bunch was Chris the Litter Nazi, who spent the entire day picking up rubbish and then burning it. His outfit for this noble task was a pair of ultra-tight black pants, which he had tucked deep into his buttocks, presumably to extend the boundaries of his tan.

The rest of the population of the beach were demonstrating a real and serious dedication to alternative living.  Everywhere you looked there was bongo-playing, bracelet making, yoga classes and the smoking of fragrant cigarettes. We managed to escape the commune on several occasions, to visit Gokana town and the famous Om beach – so called because of its resemblance to the sacred religious syllable.

After four days we arranged to travel to Hampi by sleeper bus – a large coach with cabins and very basic beds. When we turned up at the bus stop two buses arrived– one was a super-deluxe air conditioned white bullet, the other (ours) was a tin shed on wheels built in the early part of the last century, with a driver who was unnervingly buoyant for someone who was meant to be sober. After some quick negotiations with the driver of the deluxe coach we handed over 200 rupees (three quid) and were shown to our air conditioned cabins.

Despite our opulent mode of transport, the eight hour journey to Hampi was not good. Sleeping on a vehicle traveling over Indian roads is not possible, especially when there is a cattle grid every two miles. There was also no toilet so trips were made to the rear cabin with an empty plastic bottle in hand. On one such trip another coach came up behind us and its lights lit up my illicit toilet break, much to the amusement of the driver and his mate.

The journey was worth it though – Hampi is truly breathtaking. Mountains of massive boulders dominate the landscape, cut through by a wide torrid river which irrigates expanses of lush green paddy fields and banana plantations. The landscape is stimulation enough, but then dotted amongst the boulders are the remains of the greatest Hindu civilizations ever to have existed.

In the main temple lives Lakshmi – a large elephant that blesses you with her trunk if you give her a rupee. We have been told that she has been trained to only accept notes from westerners, and from our experience this sounds about right! One of the best experiences we have had so far is getting up early to watch Lakshmi take her morning bath in the river, along with the locals, who all wash there together.

In the late afternoon you then climb masses of steps and precarious walkways to reach one of the temples to watch the sun set, rated by many travelers as one of the best sunsets in the world. Afterwards you chat with the holy men, who offer you a blessing, a cup of chai and marijuana.

This morning I went for an early morning run and came across a herd of cows in the middle of the road, which is a very regular occurrence here. Something in my erratic jogging style must have startled them, because they set off on a canter as soon as they saw me, running slightly ahead of me down the road and through the next village. The locals gave me some bemused looks, and were presumably wondering what this sweaty Englishman was doing driving cattle through their village.

Next stop on our journey is Mysore, near Bangalore, which we’ll stay in for a couple of days, and then onto the backwaters of Kerala for some serious chilling on a houseboat! Catch up with you all there!

Love to everyone, Michael and Pipa xxx

 

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Snakes, rattle and roll

Posted on February 20, 2011 by neveradahlmoment

Hello everyone, hope everything is good back in Blighty!

Just beyond the north end of Palolem beach, a great man called Jo-Jo has built his bar on an isolated spit of sand. He has good stories to tell and an extensive cocktail list, although all he can make is Old Monk (rum) and coke. He tells us he is an architect and had a major role in the Bourne Supremacy, but none of this can be verified. As the day goes on his measures and stories get taller.

Next to Jo Jo’s is a cave where an old hippy called Gosh lives. He has bronzed skin, long grey hair and a much younger wife. Gosh wafts around the place in nothing but a loin cloth, teaching yoga and dishing out reiki on humans and animals alike. We like Jo Jo and are intrigued by Gosh so intended to spend a bit of time in the beach huts nearby, but not before heading to Cola Beach for Valentine’s Day.

There are two ways to get to Cola. One is to take a taxi around the headland at a cost of 300 rupees – about £4. The other is to wade across a river with your bags above your head, climb up a dusty ‘path’ patrolled by three aggressive bulls and finally trek through snake-infested scrub land, with more bulls lurking in the bushes. Embodying the backpacking spirit of saving money at every opportunity we chose the latter, and arrived at one of the most beautiful beaches in Goa remarkably unscathed.

We intended to spend one, maybe two nights at Cola, but it was so nice that we spent a whole week there! We did a lot of reading, took the kayaks out for some dolphin watching and some rather unsuccessful fishing trips; and played a lot of poker, using our malaria tablets as chips.

We also got our ugly mugs on Indian TV again after a holiday show which was filming there asked us for an interview. We hit it off with the programme’s presenter, South African model Sarah- Jane, who has offered to show us around Mumbai when we get up there.

A week on a paradise beach left us yearning for some wildlife in our lives, so we hired another motorbike and scooted inland to an animal sanctuary. Here we wandered in the wilds of the forests taking our chances against the frogs, lizards, snakes and jaguars. We also climbed a very precarious ladder to take position in a watchtower overlooking a watering hole. The animals obviously weren’t that thirsty because all we saw was some sort of giant squirrel. Thankfully the nice people at the wildlife sanctuary had captured a few deadly snakes for us to gawp at, one of which made repeated bids for freedom, all of which looked like they might be successful.

Anyway, that’s us for now. As you may have noticed we haven’t done that much since our last update, which should tell you that we have properly settled into the laid-back Goan lifestyle.

We leave our latest hut on Tuesday to head further south to the beaches of Gorkana, and then East to ancient temples in Hampi. This will give us our first expereince of the (in)famous Indian railways, and a taste of real culture. We feel like we have eased ourselves into India now, so lets see if we can properly rough it!

Love to all, Michael and Pip. xxx

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Lights, camera, action!

Posted on February 11, 2011 by neveradahlmoment

Hello friends, hope you are all well! We’ve now left behind the touts, tourist shops and Russians and moved down to South Goa. We live a simple life in a small wooden beach hut in a secluded cove, which has eight other huts, wooden fishing boats and a restaurant run by a Buddhist monk who can walk on water.

We share our new hut with an uninvited roommate – Boris the spider, who could well be poisonous. We also have an Indian tortoise on our balcony, who we have managed to capture on film!

Sometimes when we wake up in the morning there is a homosexual photo shoot going on outside our beach hut. The Indians love pulling cheesy poses for pictures, and none more so than the gay couples who holiday in South Goa.

One morning when we poked our head around the cove there was a film being made, starring big-shot Indian actor Archania Taryn. They were shooting a dance scene and we were asked to join in as backing dancers. All the other dancers had learned the routine, so we were just told to ‘feel the rhythm’ and ‘freestyle it’, which we attempted. The film’s called Archu Mechchu (like and loving) – watch out for it in the cinemas!

We’ve also taken on the might of the Arabian Sea in a couple of kayaks, battling against the tide in search of a secluded beach. An eagle joined us for part of the journey, flying backwards and forwards in front of us with a snake in his talons. We like to think he was guiding the way, but he may well have been looking for a good place to eat his dinner. When we got to the beach we did a bit of climbing and watched the sunset while precariously perched on a rock.

We then had to kayak back twice as fast because the light was dying. Dolphins were swimming beside us all the way back against the sunset, which was an amazing experience.

There are stray dogs everywhere here, all of which we call ‘Dogface’. One particular Dogface leads us back to our hut at night when we’ve had too much beer and shmokey pancakes.

Soon we move even further down south to a beach which is essentially a hippy commune. Yoga on the beach every morning, guitar round the campfire at night and no food which has been within fifty meters of a chemical. When we were there last night it felt like we were in The Beach!

Anyway, we won’t bore you any longer. Love to you all and we hope you enjoy the pictures!

Peace love and good vibes, Michael and Pip xxx

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Peace and love, dudes

Posted on February 8, 2011 by neveradahlmoment

Hello everyone hope you are all well. We’ve managed to find some time and technology to upload our blog, so here it goes –

We’re in North Goa, staying in a hut made of palm fronds, overlooking the beach. We share it with a little frog called Jamima. Hopefully Jamima is not a poisonous jungle frog.

The weather here is amazing. The sun shines relentlessly all day long so the pace of life is very slow. Many of the hippies who came to Goa in the 70s are still here, teaching yoga and dishing out massages to oily tourists. It’s a bit like the healing fields in Glastonbury, but with less mud and more cows.

The Russians have invaded Goa. The men spend the morning working out on the beaches and the rest of the day strutting around flexing their pecks at anyone who cares to look. The women are svelte supermodels, who according to Pip have amazing ‘wiggles’. I couldn’t possibly comment.

Everything is cheap which makes it very difficult to spend a lot of money, although Pip is doing her best. A rabbit fur waistcoat is an essential travel item apparently, and a woman simply cannot do with less than thirty five sarongs! Despite this we are still getting by on about twenty quid a day.

Everyone gets around on two wheels so we’ve rented a Harley Davidson style motorbike to take us to the beaches and points of interest. Driving up the narrow coastal roads, dodging palm trees, goats and cows rates as one of the best experiences we’ve had so far.

People do try and rip you off left right and centre so you have to be switched on. The men who work at the local petrol station now know that if they try to shortchange Pip then she will use British charm (screaming in their faces)  to get her money back.

We’ve been here a week and we’re leaving north Goa now to head down further south. We’ve done about 0.1% of the coast and so have a long way to go! If it continues like this, then long may it continue. In the meantime enjoy a few pictures.

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Namaste!

Posted on February 1, 2011 by neveradahlmoment

Friends, family and lost people of the internet, welcome to our travel blog.

First thing’s first, a credit to Angus Stevenson (colleague, confidant and communications god) for the title. He has a life-long dream to open an Indian restaurant by the same name, and hopefully this digital diary will also serve up a few spicy treats for you to digest.

We fly tomorrow (Tuesday 1st Feb) morning and are planning to travel around India and SE Asia until our money runs out, so we’ll probably be back next Thursday. We want to make the most of the trip so we’ve written a list of things we want to do while we’re there – a Bucket List if you will.  Some are serious, some are very silly, but we really do hope they all happen –

Appear in a Bollywood movie

Bribe an official

Catch a fish and eat it

Learn to sail

Stroke a manta ray

Do a number two in the desert, then cover it up

Catch a ping pong ball in our teeth

Scrub down an elephant

Sleep under the stars

Say something dramatic and then spit out some chewing tobacco

Fire a gun

Beat an Indian man in a physical contest, e.g. arm wrestle

Swing through the jungle on a vine

Stay in a five star hotel for free

Perform in front of a crowd

Ride an Enfield motorbike into Kashmir

Stay on a houseboat

Hand-rear a baby orang-utan

Work in a bar

Swim in the sea at night

Surf

Attend a wedding

Swim with sharks and/or dolphins

Get a tattoo

And that’s all for the time being. Hopefully when we have more time we can work on the blog design and upload pictures, but for now we send you a whole lot of love and we’re looking forward to seeing you when we return.  xxx

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