Beachside Living

Greetings everyone from sunny Patnum Beach in the Indian State of Goa! We just arrived early this morning after a 16 hour "Sleeper" class train aka lowest class train cart from Kochi. Our trip yesterday into this morning was quite an experience, but I can get into that a little later.

Anyways after living the "tea life" in Darjeeling we came down the mountain via jeep. Upon our travels we have met some very interesting fellow travelers. On our way down from Darjeeling we traveled with a couple in their 60s who have been living on a boat sailing around the world for the past 10 years. It was very interesting to hear there stories of their travels all around the world, they were coming from the Maldives were they NEEDED to stay for 6 months in order to repair their ship.... what misery ha. Anyways we ended up getting to the airport in good time for our flight to Chennai.

This time around we took the airline named Spice Jet. It was a very uneventful trip getting to Chennai with a layover in Kolkata. Our place name was Pepper. Each plane in the Spice Jet fleet is named after a different spice. Here on Indian domestic flights you need to pay for snacks and drinks so along with our complimentary bottle of water Lisa and I feasted on Cup of Noodles Masala Spice. It was the best Cup O noodle I have ever had in my life. Upon arrival in Chennai we just stayed at a random hotel near the airport for the night and the next morning took another flight to Trivandrum in the state of Kerala.

Upon arrival to Trivandrum we were picked up by our pre arranged taxi and taken to Kovalam Beach. We stayed at the "Beach Hotel" in Kovalam. Kovalam is a very touristy beach area, but it was particularly nice staying there because the hotel was extremely close to the water. Upon arrival Lisa and I immediately went to the restaurant hotel which claimed itself to be a "German Bakery" with also some German Dishes. I immediately ordered the Kartoffelsalat with Frankfurters, upon arrival of the dish I was of course disappointed. The potato were hot, overcooked, and drenched in some sort of broth with onions, and the frankfurters tasted like salt water. Last time I am ordering German food in India! ha All in all Kovalam was uneventful with lots of swimming and tanning time. After two nights we decided to move on to the beach town of Varkala.

Varkala is a very unique Beach town in the fact that it is the only beach in India which is backed with dramatic cliffs. So all of the hotels and restaurants are perched close to the cliff to maximize beach views and the beach below is unspoilt with just pure beach. The first night we decided to stay at a hotel recommended by a random guy we ended up speaking to at an internet cafe. The hotel was called New Heaven and cost 300 rupees ($6.60) per night. We arrived at New Heaven and the hotel actually wasn't that bad it just happened to be very far away from the beach we wanted to be at and as well the Mattress was just basically a sheet spread over a wooden board oh and the bathroom was classically teaming with Cockroaches. After one night we decided we had enough of that and moved into an awesome hotel with Beach views, porch, wifi, and comfortable thick mattresses with cockroach free bathrooms. The price was about 4 times as much but it was totally worth it. At the beach there were many tourists from all over the world. In our travels we typically have not come across many Americans more British and European travelers. At Varkala Beach we stayed for five nights in total with our days busily spent with deciding on what restaurant to eat at , reading, tanning, napping, drinking ice coffees, playing LOTS of Chess on Lisa's iPad, swimming, body boarding, and just general chilling out.

After our rest and relaxation in Varkala we decided to move on to the town of Allepey to rent a House Boat. At Allepey train station we took a tuk tuk aka rickshaw to the Boat Jetty. I walked down the boat Jetty and inspected 6 different giant houseboats, some with AC, some with two three bedrooms, one floor two floors etc. These houseboats use to be rice barges but the tourism industry in the area has exploded with the appeal to rent a houseboat outfitted with all home amenities and just explore the backwaters of Kerala. Upon weighing all the options I bargained a good deal on a house boat with One bedroom, AC, living room, flat screen TV (dont know why you would need a Flat screen outdoors) comfortable seating and all food and drink included. We left the jetty at 1130 AM and began our 24 hour cruise through the backwaters of Kerala. The houseboat was awesome. All you need to do is just chill sit back relax get served food and snack intermittently throughout the day and just enjoy the surroundings. Our chef was amazing and made some of the best food we had in all of India. Our dinner was an awesome coconut Dal dish (lentils), spicy kerala chicken (heavily seasoned with local spices similar to jerk chicken), curry potatoes, rice and chipatis ( like pitas) it was the very very good. At night we could just chill in our AC room on the boat, close the door and even though we were in the backwaters in the middle of nowhere Kerala we were in pure luxury. The next morning we had breakfast in the front eating area outdoors on the boat and took a tuk tuk to the train to head to Kochi.

After arriving in Kochi we headed to this awesome home stay called Noah's Ark which was very centrally located to all the main sites. We have stayed at many different homestays through our trip. Homestays are basically exactly how they sound staying in a local familys home similar to a bed and breakfast. Basically you get the hospitality of staying in a home with the services of a hotel. So it has been great to get the inside hints tips and tricks from the locals running the homestays wherever we go. In Kochi there were many different Churches to see, and small cute little roads with restaurants and cafes. It has a large Portuguese influence from back in the day. We also saw a Katakala performance which is a typical Kerala dance/performance using many costumes and face paints. Overall Kochi was a pleasant city to stay in for two night before we continued our beach hopping.

Considering that this is one of the busiest travel time of the year we booked our train tickets 3 days in advance of our trip and barely got tickets. We could only buy tickets to Goa in the "Sleeper" class of the train. This is by far the lowest and cheapest class in the train possible. Many people have visions of overflowing dirty prison like train carts from India, that is exactly the train we took. It was our only option, without severely throwing off our itinerary of our last 2 weeks in India. We had two seats on a bench with one person hovering over us on his own platform. There are basically open air cabins with three platforms jutting out which people can sit and sleep on, and they are "murphy'd" so you can pull them up or down to create more space. Our train was supposed to leave at 1255 PM and arrive at 130 AM. In reality, our train left at 1 and arrived at 7 30 AM. Our extremely uncomfortable ride was elongated another 6 hours. We though we were going to be on the train for 12 hours but it ended up being a grand total of 18 hours. 18 hours of sweating, with 8 people hanging from different places through out the cabin, 18 hours of smelling other people sweat, 18 hours of smelling backed up toilet systems, 18 hours of extremely uncomfortable bench seats. The whole experience was "safe" in terms of nobody really bothering us but I stayed up throughout the whole night to make sure our bags were safe. At night the floors and walls sparked with cockroaches, and the moonlight beamed in from the steels bars over the window area. When the train is moving it isn't that hot as the breeze comes in but the most annoying part, which led to our massive delays, was that the train just seemed to stop at random train stations for 1 hour here or a half our there for no rhyme or reason. We though it was to clear the track for other trains but no other trains came we just stopped and sweated it out in the train cart. At night my legs were getting bit like crazy with mosquitos and probably all the cockroaches roaming the floor. Anyways when 730 AM finally came around Lisa and I literally ran out of the train, vowing to never take the "Sleeper" class level train again in India.

This morning after no sleep at all last night we checked into our hotel room at 8 Am slept for 4 hours then hit the beach for the rest of the day. The beach here in Patnem/Palolem is amazing with tons of restaurants right on the beach displaying fresh seafood nightly, which we will partake in after we leave this internet cafe.

Overall life is very good here and we are looking forward to the next 7 days of beach life, then heading to Mumbai for 3 nights then off to China!

We miss everyone back at home and wish everyone the best overseas!

Goodbye and NAMASTE for now !

Rudy and Lisa

New Pics

We've made it to the beach! After 6 flights and 6 hours up and down a mountain in one week, we're on India's southwest coast along the Arabian Sea.

Check out our newest pictures: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2110984&id=15805500&l=ebf128b2c0

Much love,

Rudy and Lisa

Darjeeeeeeling!

Greetings from the land of tea in India, Darjeeling! It's in the foothills of the Himalayas and a nice change of pace (and weather) from our previous travels in Rajastan.

After relaxing at a guest house outside of Udaipur with amazing views and food, we headed to Ranthambore, a tiger reserve. The claim is that there are thirty something tigers at the park so we figured we would be able to see one. Tigers actually are most active at daybreak and dusk. People come to the town strictly to visit the reserve and there are tons of jeeps and 16 person open roof canters that get assigned to one of 5 different zones on morning and afternoon tours. All these jeeps and canters follow along the same paths with their loud diesel engines searching for tigers in the brush. We would randomly stop the car and be quiet to listen for the tigers, and then drive to another spot and do the same thing. During our sunrise tour our guide heard a monkey warning call signifying tigers could be near and he ended up driving so fast trying to get there first that he got a flat tire. So we had to get out of our jeep in a supposedly "Tiger Infested Wilderness" during the fifteen minutes it took to change the tire. In the end it turned out that the tiger crossed out of our zone anyways. From talking to other people, we weren't the only ones to leave not seeing any tigers.

Needless to say we were glad to move on to something different. It took us 3 flights and a 3 hour drive up the steep, bumpy, one and a half lane road to get to Darjeeling but certainly worth it! We arrived on Rudy's birthday and had dinner at a colonial restaurant that had Chinese food and fried pork! In Rajastan the only meat was chicken, so it's been good to have some pork again and reconfirm that Rudy and I are not vegetarians.

Darjeeling has beautiful mountain views and cooler temperatures that allow us to break out our fleeces and warm up with some tea. We have done a lot of walking around in the fresh air. We went to the highest zoo in the world which had tigers, leopards, bears and a black panther! This was really awesome to see since we were just at a Tiger Reserve and didn't see any tigers. There was also the Himalayan Mountaineering Institute that trained missions to Mt Everest and had a really cool museum with all the actual equipment from the different missions, including the first group to reach the summit! The sherpa that got to the top with Sir Edmund Hilary founded the Institute.

On a clear day they say you can see Everest from here. It's been cloudy for the most part and actually HAILED the last two days! We were able to observe the hail from the inside of a heritage hotel having the traditional English high tea. In the different places it's been interesting to see remnants of British colonialism. Converted colonial buildings into hotels, riding a " Toy Train" the British built in the late nineteenth century to reduce the time to get to Darjeeling from five days to one, and a Brit was the first person to plant tea in Darjeeling.

There is one tea plantation near town. It produces specifically for the luxury department store Harrod's in the UK. The way we walked to get there was no so luxurious. Trying to follow the map, and asking different people directions we ended up in a neighborhood literally carved out of the side of a mountain with steep walkways, sewer lines running into the water canals that were also full of trash. Miraculously we made it through the chaos and into a see of tea bushes.

Women do the picking here which was something I saw with the wheat harvest in Rajastan as well. In the peak heat and sun these woman are working in the fields while it seems that there are 4 men to do the job of one. In a country of one billion people, employment is an issue and there are fewer women than men. The one real industry we have been able to observe is the tourism India, one of India's largest, and it still appears to be male dominated.

After our cool days in the refreshing, mountain air we head to South on the coast of the Arabian Sea to do some beach hopping. Our access to Internet at each place we stay is always varied but we hope to post more pics soon and write again soon.

Three weeks in and loving it! - Lisa

Pictures !

This the first installment of pictures from our trip. We just uploaded them and have not been able to tag/label each picture yet. We will get to that as soon as time/internet speed permits.

Enjoy !

Lisa and Rudy

Link : http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2110372&id=15805500&l=1f7f672518