India - a summary
Time spent in India: 31 days
Summary itinerary: Delhi - Rishikesh - Missourri - Agra (Taj Mahal) - Jaipur - Pushkar - Udaipur - Goa (Palolem Beach) - Hampi - Goa - Mumbai (Bombay)
Delhi: we stayed in the crawling, winding, buzzing streets of central Delhi. Came to grips with the more extreme aspects of India straight off the bat - the poverty, the scams, the constant attention, haggling, transport (transport was a drag until we discovered the excellent new Metro system), the noise, the traffic. Highlights included the Bahai Lotus Temple and the Red Fort
Rishikesh: (one of) the spiritual hubs of yoga (a little cheesy at times). Beautiful Ganges valley through pre-Himalayan mountains. Beatles’ ashram, great bakpacker crowd, dominantly Israeli
Missouri - only briefly visited at nightfall. Tibetan-cultured Indian family holiday destination - happy, lurid and prosperous with too little conservation of the hill station / Tibetan element
Agra - home to one of the Wonders of The World, therefore given to high prices, not so much by the man on the street (off-season) but by the government - a whopping 750 rupees to get up close to the Taj, and 250 to get into the nearby fort - but worthwhile, but hard to justify at those prices. I stayed out of the Taj whilst Katie, Daz and Tom stumped up.
Jaipur - voted our worst stop yet (paradoxically, we spent quite some time there). Not the market shopping paradise it’s claimed. Local population is hard, rude, greedy and the streets are filthy. Not a happy place. Home to a really impressive fortress some 30k out of town. Loved the hotel we stayed in, the Pearl Palace, a large place with a really friendly and personal owner who rides a beautiful Royal Enfield.
Pushkar - another spiritual Indian place, where Gandhi’s ashes were scattered. Great backpacker chillout where every restaurant offers ’special’ menu items (beer or ‘bhang’ - hashish - flavoured items).
Udaipur - stumbled quite fortunately on a great hotel (Minerva). Where Tom and Daz did their tailoring. Two palace hotels on the lake, hard to get into not because of the watery location, but because of the cost!
Palolem (Goa) - the right balance of bar-buildup and unspoiled beach. Local fishermen an interesting sight, and easy bike rental (2 quid a day) makes it a good departure point for untouched beaches nearby or ito neighbouring Karnataka
Hampi - a real oddity. Piles of boulders seemingly fallen from the sky, covered in sprawling temple/palace complexes and interstitial banana fields and rice paddies as far as the eye can see. Town protected from expansion is small and very friendly, the backpacker it attracts are peculiar, fascinating and very open, and there are some FANTASTIC small hotels, notably the Garden Paradise
Mumbai - suprised us in its westernised civility, buildings, layout, old (Raj era) municipal buildings. Money talks and drugs are offered on many a street corner. Home to the Gaylords restaurant!
Related:
- Twitter summary 28/03/2008
- I’ve been truly sucked into the asynchronous, broadcast instant messaging of Twitter. It’s a little bizarre, but very compelling, especially when you have a desktop client running in the bottom right hand corner (I use Spaz). Here is a dump of twitters posted in the last week. I’ve left out the ones I used to coordinate meeting with people. You can directly follow the ’stream of consciousness’ here I’m wondering what happened to Channel 4’s big, audacious move into radio? “radio silence”, as they say… 10:15 PM March 21, 2008 loving the new Cut Copy album. As good as the rumours said it was 01:09 AM March 22, 2008 note to self: don’t eat a whole G+D banana split when trying to work - i feel like I might pass out. mmm, auspicious heaviness… 06:50 PM March 22, 2008 Just watched A Scanner Darkly. Amazing. Amazing cinematography, soundtrack by Radiohead, great cast, and a story by Philip K Dick, a genius 11:36 PM March 22, 2008 @mbites Elvis Costello will sell you an empty box http://tinyurl.com/35b4g8 01:20 AM March 23, 2008 @dubber needs mentors? jeeesus, what about us mere mortals - stop hogging the IP! 02:44 PM March 25, 2008...
- India on the road - Part 2
- Barely a day after posting my diatribe to Indian driving, I decided to set off on a 5 day trek into Goa’s neighbouring state, Karnataka, having been recommended a special spot called Hampi by a fellow traveller in Goa. Hiring a bike proved a little difficult, not simply because it had to be a private bike to travel interstate, but because word had spread that I’d trashed a scooter earlier that week. But in the down season, money moves mountains, and for the princely sum of 350Rs/day (4.50 quid) I had a bike to take me to Hampi - a solid 150cc with new tires, dodgy electrics but most importantly, a decent engine, good brakes and good suspension. I set off early the next day down the Goan coast, heading inland (east) after about 20km. The Goan roads are mostly new and well tarmacked, and the government has severely limited construction along them; so for the most part they carve through a dense - almost tropical - forest. I’d opted to get off the national highway (NH) road when I turned east, taking a small lane through a nature reserve north of the NH which most local maps didn’t list (but Google...
- China wrap-up
- Stats: Time spent in China: 30 days Spending whilst in China: £570 (£18/day) Photos added to album: 500 (maxed out Google’s limit!) Stops: Beijing (the whole 9 yards - vibrant, friendly, fantastic treasures, cool art scene, fantastic eating, thoroughly modern and efficient post-Olympics infrastructure; shame about the air pollution that all typically deprives it of blue skies) Zhengzhou (a mallrat hell hole with non-English-speaking locals largely unreceptive to foreigners, pricey electronics superstores, ugly signage and dilapidated concrete housing) Xi’an (lovely open city with great eating, a lively Muslim Quarter, the tedious Terracotta Army, great trekking to nearby sacred mountains, warm people and good nightlife) Nanjing (a buzzing but not altogether pleasant city, home to the gut-twining Nanjing Massacre memorial and museum Suzhou (relaxed, open, ever so pleasant canal-veined town home to preposterously manicured, finicky Chinese gardens copied all around the world) Shanghai (a busy, charmless metropolis too caught up in its affairs to offer a backpacker much - but after the sun sets, blessed with great nightlife, though you have to seek it out) It may be a post-Olympics afterglow, we felt very welcome indeed (and not for our money!), and were surprised by how much curiosity awe were generating;...
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