We’re sitting on the shaded rooftop terrace of the beautiful haveli hotel ‘Seventh Heaven’ in Pushkar (despite phoning a week ahead we couldn’t get a room) listening to Janis Joplin blaring out of the speakers. It doesn’t get much more relaxing. We’re hanging around before jumping on a local bus to Ajmer and our 2am train departure to Delhi and back to hectic Indian life.
After the eventful 7 1/2 hour bus journey with the 2 flat tyres we made it safely to our guest house in Udaipur, a beautiful small city in southern Rajasthan. These few days were a bit of a holiday from the holiday as the fast pace we’d been setting around Rajasthan so far meant that we just felt like not doing much for a while, and this seemed like the perfect place to not do much at all! We had a room on the quiet side of town, with windows along 2 of the walls (joy!) overlooking Lake Pichola and the City Palace, which looked beautiful at sunset.
The bus journey from Jodphur to Jaisalmer (the ‘golden city’) was our first really long distance bus journey and it was actually pretty good! The journey was supposed to last 6.5 hours but the driver got there in 5! It’s pretty lucky we couldn’t see out the front of the bus because the driver must have been picking up some crazy speed to be so early! Because we were early the pick up from the hotel that we’d arranged wasn’t there, but some other bloke convinced us he was from our guest house and drove us there, the whole time telling us how bad our guest house was and that (surprise, surprise) he had a place that was much cheaper and better. Thankfully he did actually take us there, but waited outside to make sure we were happy with the room before he left.
After treating ourselves to a night in a very nice hotel in New Delhi to allow Alexandra to recover from her twisted ankle we filled up on the huge posh buffet breakfast (knowing that we wouldn’t have the chance to eat a full fried breakfast, followed by cereal, followed by pastries, followed by fruit, followed by cheese and crackers, followed by coffee for some time), jumped in a taxi to the airport and caught our flight to Jodhpur, the ‘blue city’.
Unfortunately on our first night we were unable to get into our guest house of choice in the old town and we were stuck in one of the new areas of the city which meant loud traffic noise and lots of smog. Fortunately the ‘rooftop restaurant’ is about as common as a dodgy bathroom in guest houses across Rajasthan. So we spent the evening relaxing and enjoying the view while having dinner on the roof.
So we made it onto the train to Jalgaon and met a really nice guy on it who works for a pipe making business there, he was pretty keen to tell us all about it and fortunately we managed to feign interest in large industrial pipes and farming irrigation for a polite amount of time. In return he gave us some good train travel info.
When we got to Jalgaon we jumped on a local bus to Fardapur (aka middle of nowhere) which is the town closest to the Ajanta caves. We only had the day planned for Ajanta and had to be on a bus at 7am the next day, so despite our lack of sleep we jumped in a car and headed for the caves.
There were numerous times during our week in Mumbai when I thought to myself “shit, I was almost just killed by that bus/taxi/crowd/horse drawn carriage!” when in fact I wasn’t at all. This being our first visit to one of India’s major cities, it just took us a day or two to acclimatise to the sometimes overwhelming combination of the closeness and craziness of this incredible place.
Our overnight train from Margao arrived exactly on time, which was unfortunate because that time happened to be 4.05am and we soon found out that Mumbai before dawn is quite a contrast to the Mumbai we’d be battling with later that day.
We met a fellow traveller (another Alex) in Margao before we boarded our train and we decided to meet up again at Mumbai’s CST Station to see if he could get a room at the same hotel we’d booked ourselves into. It was a short walk from the station to the hotel so we waved away the few taxi drivers that were hanging around outside and set off, map in hand. Unfortunately there were a few unexpected obstacles between the deserted station and the hotel, namely people – lots of people – sleeping across the entire pavement. With me concentrating on the map, a well timed shout from Alexandra stopped me from introducing myself to the first Mumbai residents I’d come across by falling onto them with a 20kg bag on my back! After that near miss, and one wrong turn, it took us slightly longer to find the hotel than we’d hoped, and I (being the map reader) was feeling the pressure to get us to the hotel as the nocturnal wildlife of rats and overly territorial dogs seemed to be closing around us. Luckily for us it was only one wrong turn and we were able to regain our bearings and get to the hotel where, after a minor argument with the ‘cheerful’ (Lonely Planet’s description) reception staff about our very early check in, we finally made it to our room.
The train ride to Hospet from Margao was our first experience on the Indian railways. We arrived in good time to make sure we could figure out the station and stocked up on supplies for the six and a half hour journey. Only once the train arrived at the platform did we realise that the sign indicating the intended position of our carriage was totally wrong. A backpack-laden sprint later, we found our seats and settled down for the trip. It was an interesting first experience. I don’t think the sound of ‘chaiiii?!’ being shouted loudly into my left ear will ever leave my memory, as one of the numerous chai-wallahs dragged his feet for the thousandth time along our carriage. We were booked into a sleeper carriage, but there was certainly no sleeping to be had on this one.
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We’re sitting on a train (our first Indian train journey) on the way to a new state, Karnataka where we’re off to visit the world heritage listed site of Hampi. We’ve been in India for a week and a half and have spent the whole time in Goa.
We had a pretty lengthy journey to India, we drove to Melbourne from Phillip Island, narrowly made our flight to Sydney (we were held up by road works through Melbourne), then to Singapore, overnight in Singapore (we stayed inside the terminal and had to trust that Air India would collect our bags from BA lost property and get them on the flight!!), Mumbai, Goa and then a taxi journey to the capital city, Panjim. All in all it was pretty tiring but basically uneventful. We arrived with all our luggage, in one piece!
For my 30th I was given the best surprise present ever by Alexandra, a ride day on a Suzuki GSXR-600 at the Moto GP Circuit at Phillip Island!
The weather was a bit scary, as it began to rain heavily 5 minutes before my first ride and it was unbelievably slippery out on the track, but it dried up over the course of the day and I actually ended up being able to catch and overtake a couple of people by the end!
There wasn’t any timing allowed, but we think I was about a minute off Nicky Hayden’s circuit record of 1:30.059, not too bad I suppose.
It’s been nearly two months since the last blog post so here’s a quick breakdown of what we got up to in Australia.
We arrived in Sydney in time for Morgan and Brad’s wedding at the beginning of December. We were so happy to be able to be there for it, a beautiful wedding and a fantastic day! It was great to catch up with the bride and groom and other school friends I haven’t seen for a long time.
While we were in Sydney we had a little Sherlock Holmes reunion with Bruce Nelson and Sarah Smith… very weird to be meeting up in Sydney, but it was a fun night of schnitzels and steins at the Löwenbräu (our second visit, thanks Janna, for the first!)
The rest of the time in Sydney was filled with going to the beach, shopping, eating and catching up with friends. Thanks to all who made time to see us!
Next, my parents, Anthony and I drove inland to take a little tour of the town I grew up in, Armidale. While we were in the area we stopped at the famous Thunderbolt’s Rock in Uralla and the biggest tomato greenhouse I’ve ever seen in Guyra. We spent a day on the land thanks to our friends the Wrights who took us around their properties at Black Mountain and Inverness.
We headed north for Christmas and new year at the beach in Queensland… fortunately the weather was with us and we had plenty of sunshine. Didn’t really get up to much, just plenty of eating, drinking, reading, swimming and sleeping. Perfect holiday!
From Cairns we flew down to Melbourne… see Ant’s next post for details of what happened there!
