Udaipur & Goa

Udaipur

After Pushkar we took a quick five hour train ride to Udaipur, described as a “fairytale” city within India.  We settled into our guest house and did find this city to be more relaxed than the previous Indian cities.  It is built around a lake and is known to have lots of castles throughout the city.  We enjoyed exploring the lake shores and were able to walk the streets without too much hassle.

One fun activity of Udaipur—Steve got another haircut!  We’ve managed to experience haircuts in most countries thus far, but this was quite neat.  It was in an actual barber shop (there were lots of people cutting hair in the streets in other Indian cities, but we couldn’t find this in Udaipur!) but all the man had was razor blades and scissors.  He did a great job of cutting the hair without the usual clippers, and the use of the straight blade was quite neat.  Unfortunately we were out without a camera this day, so no pics of this international Muff cut!

On our final day in Udaipur we headed out to the famous City Palace.  This is one of many beautiful castles in this city and is still used by the royal family on certain occasions.  We had a very relaxing afternoon within the confines of the palace, spending lots of time sitting in the little gardens throughout the grounds.  We have found that one of the things we miss most in India is time to relax in green spaces, as parks are few and far between, so this was a nice way to spend an afternoon.  The castle has beautiful views over the lake.

Our final evening in Udaipur was spent watching the James Bond movie “Octopussy”.   As a tourist draw, most of the hotels have advertisements and banners stating we need to come and watch the nightly playing of Octopussy at their place! If you want to know what Udaipur looks like, look no further than this movie!  It was filmed in the early 80s in Udaipur, and the city essentially hasn’t changed at all.  It was probably the best portrayal of city in a movie that we have ever seen.  It was also probably the worst movie we’ve watched, and we’ll never get those three hours back, but we did get to see James Bond in India so I guess it’s all worth it!!

Goa

Our trip continued with a flight from Ahmedabad, Gujarat to Dabolim , Goa.  Goa is a state in India but the entire area is often referred to as if it is a city or township.   Leaving Ahmedabad was very easy with no issues or hassle getting to the airport or flying into Goa.   Our flight was directly down the eastern side of India flying over Mumbai. Our previous plan was to ride the train to Mumbai and then continue on the train to Goa.  The waiting lists for the train from Mumbai to Goa was forty to fifty people long for each of the trains with little information regarding the possibility of actually obtaining a ticket on the train once we arrived in Mumbai.  Rather than deal with the uncertainty of the train and two full days on train rides, we decided flying was the best option to reach our destination. 

The fun ensued again when we arrived in Goa to continue to circus of obtaining a ride to our hotel.  The airport had a prepaid taxi stand outside the airport where people can pay the fair to a specific place they want to get to based on the fares listed on the board beside the taxi stand.  This sounds easy except the stand is outside the arrivals gate and forty five tuk tuk men are shouting and hounding everyone asking where they are going and we need to ride with them.  The process feels like trying to get into a sporting event and as you approach the arena, the scalpers start to appear and every single one of them has great tickets at a cheap price, except the scalpers are not as frantic or feel you are locked into a business deal just because they asked you what country you are from or what is your name.  So much excitement!!

We haggled with some taxi men and purchased a ride to the Best Western Devesthali where we spent the next four days.   The location of our hotel/small resort was just south of the airport. What we were told is the town north of the airport is party central for British tourists and India tourists alike.  The region south of the airport area is more laid back.  We settled two kilometers south of the airport in our place which had a very nice pool and restaurant.  The room was one of the best we have stayed in on our travels.  Our hotel area was almost empty except for three other guests.  It was as if we had the place to ourselves to relax by the pool.

The hotel provided shuttles to two of the beaches in the area. We wanted to explore a little bit of Goa outside the hotel so we decided to take a ride to the beach that was further away. The second beach was seven hundred meters from the hotel and within walking distance for the next day.

The beach was very nice and had few people at it when we arrived. A large resort backed onto the beach, a few beat up restaurants and souvenir shops were also setup on the beach, but otherwise it was undeveloped.   The two of us were the only two foreigners at the beach. There were fifteen or so locals at the beach who were also enjoying the good weather.  We were enjoying our swim in the nice water until we had realized a man who was looking at us when we arrived at the beach had followed us the two hundred meters down the beach to where we were swimming and was now standing in the surf staring at us.  As this had become more of a usual occurence in India with some weird interaction with people, Steve finally went up to him and just asked what he wanted or if he was selling something. The man did not understand what we were saying and finally walked out of the water a little ways down the beach.   This was another half creepy, but we are sure innocent encounter that was a daily occurrence in this country.  As we went back to sit on the beach and dry off in the sun, we noticed  the other groups of people in the water had moved down the beach closer and closer to us to have a better look at what we might be up to.   We encounter more curious people, but a weird and uncomfortable vibe none the less when trying to relax on the beach.  

The following day was a national holiday in India called Holi.  It was explained to us that this was the colour festival and one of, if not, the biggest holiday of the year in India.  When we walked to the beach the next day, people were covered in bright neon face and body paint in celebration of the holiday.  When we arrived at the beach the setup of food and people was similar to what could be compared to Canada Day at the beach.  We setup at the restaurant at the beach where we had some fantastic rice and Dutch beer. It was great because with the hundreds of people at the beach, no one cared that we were there, did not ask us questions and seem more than happy that we were there to be part of the fun and festivities for the day in the afternoon. We sat for a while at our table under the shade.  The beach was a very nice, in a bay with surrounding palm tree jungle. We wish we had brought a camera with us, but had decided not to as taking pictures was a dodgy issue as once the camera came out people often wanted us to take their picture so they could get us to give them money.  This was a spot where we could have taken lots of fantastic pictures as no one would care or would be more than happy to have their picture taken.  

We had really enjoyed our time in what we experienced in Goa. The people seem a lot more laid back in Goa compared to the rest of the country. The hotel staff was very nice. It was refreshing to talk to the hotel staff about India without having the conversation directed to how many rupees we should pay them for a tour of the area or the market we should go and visit.  A couple of days by the pool and relaxing were a great setup before our time in the Himalayas of Nepal.

Panoramic view of Udaipur and the lake

Bogmallo Beach in Goa

Little beach side restaurant where we enjoyed Budweiser's (made in Goa!!)

Bus that we saw on our way from Udaipur to Ahmedabad....can you find us on this bus???  (We are NOT on this bus, don't worry Mom!!)

No posts for the next two weeks as internet will be patchy.  Next post from England.  Have a great March Break everyone!!

Pushkar (Camel Time!!)

A camel video to start off your interest in our time in Pushkar!

Our travels continue in Pushkar, population of approximately 14 000, in the province of Rajistan which is in northern India.  We rode the train for two hours east of Jaipur during the middle of the day.  It was more pleasant to not have to take an early morning ride because the train had warmed up and it was not freezing cold inside of the train.

The train ride was to Ajmer junction and not straight to Pushkar, as the train does not go all the way to Pushkar. We travelled by taxi for the 12km trip to Pushkar at a cost of about $4 which was always nice. We decided to go to Pushkar as it had been recommended by people we had met as being a quieter town and a good change of pace place from the million plus populated cities that we had just visited. One of the more appealing factors of Pushkar is there are no tuk-tuks.  This means tourists are not constantly hounded by tuk-tuk drivers, or when walking down the streets having to hear the constant horn honking of the tuk-tuks as they drive around.  There are very few motorized vehicles in Pushkar other than motorcycles, which was a nice change.

Before we took our cab ride to Pushkar, we wanted to double check some of the details of our train tickets to see if we had moved up on the train ticket waiting lists for our travels later on in India.  While waiting in line at the ticket booth inside the train station, there are always crowds of people.  It was stunning how many men try to cut into the ticket lines thinking they are being clever and no one is going to realize what they are doing.  Steve would have to over and over again tap the men on their shoulder and get them to get out of the line where they just cut in front of the two of us and go to the end.  Most of the men are standing almost on top of each other to prevent people from cutting in line and lots of arguments would ensue as people acted as if they were innocent of trying to cut into the line.  We did eventually get our train tickets sorted out as the train employees have been more often than not very helpful in sorting out our travel plans.

Pushkar is a very nice quiet little town that is situated around a lake in the middle of it.  Bathing ghats are built up around the lake as it is a holy site for the Hindu religion similar to the ghats in Varanasi.  Being a special city for the Hindi religion, there are lots of rules in this town--no meat, no eggs, no liquor, no shoes near the lake and no smooching (seriously, there is a sign that says no smooching!!)  Monkeys the size of large dogs were located all around the lake and it caught us off guard a couple of times when a monkey would come galloping by because of the size of the monkeys and how different they were from the ones we had seen previously in India!

The second day we were in Puskhar we took a two hour camel ride just outside of town into the desert. Ang and Steve each had a camel and a kid on the back of the camel who were the guides. These kids were very friendly and had lots to say.  We were impressed by how large the camels were.   It was fun ride up and down the sand dunes on the camels and the two hours was the perfect amount of time on them as our bottoms and legs were pretty sore by the end of the trip.   We were lucky to have met some Irish girls before arriving in Pushkar who were unfortunate enough to book a two day camel safari, where you spend a night in the desert in tents.  Sounds really interesting, but you after two hours of galloping around, we understand why those girls were so upset about their longer ride!

The following day we had a very interesting experience sending a parcel at the India post office. We wanted to send a couple of small packages to Canada and hoped this could be done at the post office.  That might sound silly but one never knows here until it happens!  When we arrived in this barren looking office, Ang is attempting to ask for padded envelopes or boxes and they kept saying no.  The interesting part was one of the employees took our things and said he was able to put the items into a small box for us, and he went to wrap them up in the back room.  It took the man almost twenty minutes before he came back with the box and we were wondering what could be taking him so long.  We realized when the package was brought back to us was that the box was sealed for mailing with not brown mail paper and tape, but a cotton type of paper and the man had sewn the clothe around the box to seal it up!  It was very impressive and quite interesting to see it completed. We then noticed some other boxes that were ready to be sent had been covered by the same cloth and the ends were sealed with what looked like candle wax.   Things are done very differently here, and its half the fun just seeing how the everyday things get done in other parts of the world.

From our observations, the ways goods are sold is each retail person has their niche. One person is the water and toilet paper person.  Another man is the fruit person, jewelry guy or the clothes guy.  Our favourite person, though, is the man with a cart full of nuts and popcorn.  We found our first popcorn man about a week ago in Agra, but had a neat experience with a popcorn kid near the Pushkar lake yesterday.  We told the kid we wanted two bags and he began the process of popping the corn kernels.  The other times we had bought already popped corn, so didn’t get to see the process from start to finish.  First he started a wood fire on the side of his cart. On the fire he had a metal cauldron with salt in it from which the popcorn was cooked.  It was fun to watch the process of him stoking the fire until it was ready (he used old popcorn to start the fire!), pushing around the kernels in the salt and creating an excellent popcorn that Ang was very pleased to have some fresh kernels of her favourite treat!  The boy was gracious enough to allow us to take some picture of his process.

We did enjoy our time in Pushkar and hope this is a sign of things to come for the rest our trip in India. We are now out of the “Golden Triangle” tourist track so hopefully this means less of the tourist track hassle and a feeling that we are getting a better handle on how things work in this country!  Five hour train to Udaipur tonight, a town that is located on a lake and is supposed to have a fairytale castle!

Streets of Pushkar.  And remember, this is a quiet place compared to the other Indian cities we've been to!  There is a fruit cart in the bottom right corner, for your information.

Ang and her camel Rambo.  JJ is Ang's camel guide.  These camels are huge--as big as Ang standing when they are sitting down!

Steve with his camel John and his guide.  Our camels are named "John" and "Rambo"...hehehee!!

Our popcorn friend, as he's starting up his fire.

Laundry video

Laundry service in Varanasi, enjoy!!  Oh, and remember what we said about how dirty the water can be....brings a new meaning to "clean clothes!"

Toto, we're not in Kansas anymore!!

Sorry for the delay in posting.  We do love the chai masala tea, but our recommendation would be to not drink it luke warm from the streets (see below for more details, not that we’re sure you want them!)

We left Kolkata on an overnight train to Varanasi, leaving Kolkata at 8pm and arrived into Varanasi around 10am.  We were in the 3AC class, which means the bunks are arranged into patterns of six—lower, middle, upper.  Steve had the lower, Ang had the middle.  We were actually pleasantly surprised at how clean the train was, and rode for the first few hours sitting with a very nice young Indian family, trying to keep their one year old occupied!  They got off the train around 1030pm and we turned in for the night.  On the Thai trains, a man came along and converted the seats to beds and made your beds with fresh linens, but on this train you needed to convert the beds and make them yourselves, with a stack of blankets and sheets, wrapped in paper to confirm they were clean.  We went along just fine for a few hours, until a family of 8 came into our little area of six bunks and tried to arrange themselves.  We are quite confident they either didn’t have tickets at all, or at the very least didn’t have tickets for our class, cause they had put at least two or three people to a bunk.  It was at this point that the man’s phone went off, and apparently no one taught him how to use a quiet voice in the middle of the night!!  We were also awoken a bit later when another person arrived, who felt it was a good idea to turn all the lights on at 2am!  We did manage to get a reasonable night sleep, despite all of the above, and were happy to arrive in Varanasi unscathed. 

After securing a pre-paid autorickshaw (the Indian equivalent of a tuk-tuk!) we headed off to find a room.  We actually had to go to three places, as there was a Hindi festival in town and all the rooms were booked out.  We guess this is a good time to tell you a bit about Varanasi as a city.  Varanasi is a very very old Indian city, based on the banks of the Ganges river, or The Ganga as it is called in Varanasi.  This river is very sacred to the Indian people, representing a god in the Hindi religion.  After talking to the locals, it is very common for people of the Hindi faith to make a pilgrimage to the Ganga river in their lifetime, and we happened to come on one of the holy festivals of this town. 

We found a room and set off to explore, trying to get our bearings.   This city is very old, literally buildings upon buildings and little alleyways branching everywhere.  They are stone streets (with lots of stones missing!) and lots of tight corners to accommodate all the growth.  You will literally be walking down an alleyway that would barely accommodate two people wide, but also have to battle with bikes, motorcycles, tuk-tuks and even cows!  We came to one such corner where a Mom was eating some weeds and her calf was jumping around—you would NEVER walk this close to a cow at home, so you just go really fast and hope they don’t get startled and kick you!  We made our way down to the banks of the Ganga river and set out for a walk.  Along the banks of the river are a series of steps called Ghats that you use as entrance to the river.  The locals and pilgrims will go down to the Ganga for religious reasons, but also to bathe, cool off and even do the laundry (see the video!)  We walked for a while (the Ghats go for a few kilometers) until we met a young Indian guide named Raj.  Raj took us on a sunset boat cruise down the Ganga which we really enjoyed.  We purchased some locus flowers and candles, which are to symbolize a wish—you light your candle, make a wish and set it free in the Ganga to make your wish come true.  We were able to see the whole of the river as well as take in the big evening ritual of this festival.  It was a big procession of boats mooring around to watch the holy men worshipping the river.

Since Raj was such an informative guide, we booked our sunrise cruise with him too.  Six am was early to get on the river, but it was really neat to watch the river come alive.  When we first got on the boat, there were maybe another 10 or so tourists walking around, in addition to a few boatmen.  But within 30 mins the locals were starting to come down to bath, the laundry was starting and you got to feel the energy as the sun came up.  After our boat ride, we had a delicious breakfast and took in some of the sites with Raj.  He showed us the Muslim area of Varanasi, where the locals specialize in making silk.  We visited a silk shop and saw all the different products they make—Ang even got dressed up in a saree!  We said goodbye to Raj and wandered around the city ourselves that afternoon, attempting to stay out of the cows way!

Our final day in Varanasi again saw us in a boat, this time heading out of the town of Varanasi towards a Royal Fort on the edge of the Ganga.  Our boat ride allowed us to glimpse a bit more into the activities that take place on the Ganga—we saw locals fishing, kids swimming, and farmers bringing their buffalo down for a bath!   It was a interesting boat ride and the walk around of the fort included military memorabilia dating back a few hundred years in the museum at the Fort. 

We had purchased a bottle of water after we left the fort to drink on the way back in the boat ride to cross the river. When we finished it, the boat man wanted the bottle from us to fill up with water from the river (we did offer to buy a bottle of water for him, too, but he refused).  One of the sad facts about the Ganges River is it is extremely polluted.  We had read that water safe for bathing should contain less than 500 bacteria in every litre of water.  Samples of the river have shown to contain more than 1.5 million bacteria per litre.  The man was proud to fill up the water and show he had a strong stomach by drinking two litres of water from the river. He even offered us some. We politely declined and waited for the third eye to appear on his forehead from the effects of the water contaminants.

The next day we took a day train to Agra, the city most famously known as the home of the Taj Mahal.  Our day started off with some excitement, as since we weren’t able to book a train right from Varanasi to Agra, we had to go to  a train station just outside the city, about 12km away. When hiring a tuk tuk man,  we attempted to stress this to the cab driver that we did not want to go to the main train station but the other train station before starting out. It’s often difficult when trying to communicate with the drivers, since we are speaking to them in English and they are helping us by trying their best in English that sometimes the details need to be repeated and stressed to ensure we both understand the details of the transaction.  In the end he took us to the wrong train station anyways.  We did not realize this until we were arriving at the station as every street looks the same and is chaos so we could not figure out what was happening before to try and correct the mistake.  At the station we were able to communicate to him we wanted the other station and we raced across the city.  As we passed what we thought must have been some type of toll on the road, he threw coins onto the road at full speed in the tuk tuk as he wanted to make sure we made our trip.  It’s safe to say until the destination is reached or the transaction is completed, we really never know what could happen, not taking anything for granted.  Auto rickshaw rides are crazy enough in this town, but when you are late for a train, watch out!  We arrived with time to spare and boarded our train.

 This time we were in sleeper class. The sleeper class trains are used just the same during the day, but the beds are folded up. (We have tried to take some pictures of what this looks like, but its difficult to do when people are staring at you anyways because you are foreigners and then taking a picture makes things even more awkward. Hopefully we can get a good one.)  The sleeper class is described as, “What the rest of India rides on in the train.”  The windows are open, garbage is everywhere and the walls and floor of the train have probably not been cleaned since the cars were first put on the tracks.  The situation was actually better than we expected and we met some nice people from Bangladesh who were excited to speak with people from Canada and tell us a little bit about Bangladesh.  

We arrived three hours late into Agra, which is not fun considering we did not have accommodations booked and it was 10pm.  We got lucky as we exited the train, running into another tourist who happened to have reservations so we shared a cab to the hotel, as they had sent someone to pick her up.  This may sound like a weird situation, but at the train station and most places in India there are tens of thousands of people with a handful of “western people”.  Its difficult to figure out what is going on and not being able to read the signs most of the time and hawkers trying to sell us stuff every chance they can. Seeing another tourist and trying to talk to them to figure out to do can be a big relief and minimize some of the headaches of logistics. We were very thankful for the help (and she was equally happy to run into us!).

The hotel we stayed at was just outside the gates of the Taj Mahal and we had a very nice view of it at breakfast from the roof top restaurant.  Another added bonus of the rooftop restaurant was the monkeys in the trees around the building which were entertaining to watch.

Most of our day was going to the tourist train ticket office to purchase tickets for our trains around India. We decided to go right to the station as everyone was telling us they were sold fake tickets when using travel agents in the towns.  When we had finished buying our tickets, with a cost of around one hundred dollars to cover over 5,000km of India, we were quite happy with the outcome.

We visited the baby Taj in the afternoon which was much more enjoyable than we expected. There was no line at the ticket booth, maybe three hawkers at the gate trying to get us to buy rubber cobras and other junk, allowing us to walk into the grounds with little to no hassle. The grounds of the baby Taj were beautiful with manicured lawns and the mausoleum in the middle was in great shape considering its age. Our time here for a few hours was great as we could walk around the grounds freely without being harassed and were able to admire the detail of the architecture of the buildings and its grounds.

From the baby Taj we were driven to the park area, and the term park is used loosely, where we were able to see the sunset from behind the Taj Mahal across the river. Our tuk tuk driver was good enough to point us that it was not worth spending the money to go into the garden behind the Taj to sit and take pictures, but rather walk down the road beside the garden and get the same view for free.  It was actually quite enjoyable to sit on the benches and take some pictures of the Taj Mahal as the sun was setting at the end of the day. We also go to watch some people navigate the barbed wire fence behind the garden while carrying large bundles on their head or herding goats.   

The next day we were up early to arrive at the Taj for 7am to beat the crowds. We agreed with the tuk tuk man at our hotel we would pay him for the day to take us to the Taj and Red Fort which are two of the main sites in Agra.   The first part of the tuk tuk ride was about ten meters from our hotel entrance to the perimeter of where vehicles are allowed drive up to at the Taj grounds to prevent pollution.  This was a joke and he was telling us part of the fee.  We said we would talk about that later…

When visiting the Taj Mahal, everyone has to purchase a ticket in one line and then stand in another line for security to enter the Taj grounds.  This sounds simple but as your stand in line, Indian men are trying to cut the line everywhere with pushing and shoving, hawkers are saying they are the best guide in India and we need to hire them for the Taj tour and so on.  It’s a lot of nonsense and frustration that was nice to be done with half an hour later after we were inside the grounds.  The lines at 7am were long, so we can only imagine how the day would have went if we waited until later!

When we entered the grounds, we took some good photos and braved the crowds inside the hall for a view.  The crowds had to keep moving inside while an employee would continually blow a whistle to keep people going. The mentality here with crowds is that of a ten year old boy. No patience, me first, push and shove for your spot, that is tiring and frustrating.  It’s a nonstop battle to move around in any crowded place that was no different in the Taj grounds.  We were happy to make a visit to this historical monument but were also glad when the ordeal was over!

The Agra fort was impressive considering we thought it might be another old ruin, of many more to come in India. The size of the fort, detailed mosaics of the buildings inside the fort and the fact that half of the structures were carved out of marble made it even more impressive it was constructed hundreds of years ago. We had a good tour and enjoyed the variety of rooms, gardens and architecture which we decided made our visit worthwhile of the hassle to visit a major tourist attraction.

When we left the fort we were expecting to meet our tuk tuk man from the morning again at the spot outside the gate where he dropped us off.  We waited for about ten minutes for him and then decided we could not wait any longer with the constant barrage of tuk tuk men telling us we needed to get into their car, men selling trinkets and the rest of the circus that goes on outside a tourist site.   We walked home as there is a road that goes from the Taj to the Red fort that vehicles were not allowed on and we thought this would be a nice way to walk outside and get some exercise. We made it back to our hotel with little hassle.

The hassle did begin when the hotel manager came to our room around seven that night saying our driver was there to see us.  Steve went downstairs to find out what was going on when the driver was furious, demanding where we went and that he had waited five hours until the fort closed at sundown for us to come outside.  It seems that this guy expected us to find him in the crowd and madness of the tuk tuks, asleep in his vehicle. We were supposed to have known the number on his tuk tuk that that made his green and yellow tuk tuk different from the thousands of other identical looking vehicles.  It’s like saying we shown know his yellow cab from all the other yellow cabs in New York City traffic.  This man was furious saying how could we not know to wake him up and make him wait all afternoon.  A good argument ensued with his ridiculous claim and he was paid the few dollars he wanted and we were more than happy to pay to get this guy out of our hair.  As soon as he was paid, in an instant he was already talking about how we should pay him to take us to the night market, we should pay him to take us here and there in a now totally happy and changed mood.  What a joke!  We could not believe that he really thought everything was ok and that people could expect to act in such a way and for tourists to want to do more business with them.   Well, you win some you lose some—in this country, anyways!

The next morning we boarded a six am five hour train east for Jaipur with thankfully no issues or drama.  However, the call of the chai wallah was far to much for us to resist, which likely caused us to miss this Indian city altogether!  Ang felt unwell almost immediately after her luke warm chai (remember—boiling water is a good thing, luke warm milky tea is a bad thing!!), whereas Steve came down for the count that evening.  Oh well—just another Indian adventure to add to the blog!!

We are now in Pushkar, in the heart of the desert.  Camel stories to follow!

A panoramic of the Ganges.  This is our boat man, Raj.

We know this isn't the best of pics, but there were literally hundreds of people in boats to watch the festival. 

Bath time!  This isn't the busiest ghat picture we have, but at least you can see the various activities going on in the morning as the river and Varanasi wake up.

Varanasi Starbucks!  (AKA chai wallah)

Our Taj Mahal morning.  Note: it gets cold in India!!

This is just to capture how busy the Taj really was.  Remember, its only a little after 8am in this picture and they say most tour groups don't show up till after 9!

Ang in a saree