Me and Sue at Cavelossim beach

Dona Sylvia Beach Resort

Pool side basking!

Soaking up the rays!

We are officially enjoying our last full day in the resort! The weather has been beautiful and we have both been spending our time relaxing, reading, embracing the sunshine and eating fabulous food! Sorry, not much in the way of blogging this week...but unless you want to hear about what they served at the buffet or the current status on my sun tan... I've got nothing!

India has been an amazing adventure...full of fascinating places and overwhelming places!

We have been enveloped into the crush of humanity in some of the most chaotic train stations which are beyond description. I have seen extreme poverty side by side with extreme wealth...such a large gap with few in the middle. We watched open cremations by the Ganges river and dodged large groups of chanting family members carting their deceased loved one over their heads through the streets of Varanasi.

I watched the sunrise over the misty breathtaking Taj Mahal, that seemed to float in the morning clouds, and we nearly met our makers in more than one traffic mis-adventure! I was chased by a monkey, found a large lizard residing in my jacket, woke up to a mouse scampering past my head, fought off a hungry pack of crows trying to eat my lunch, was almost gored in in the stomach by a cow and watched a dog kill and eat a baby goat. I road a horse through the hills of Udaiper, complete with unintentional show jumping, and ran on the back of a camel through the Thar desert at sunset! I even saw a wild Bengal tiger!

I will never forget the smells...a combination of garbage, pollution, cow/human waste, incense and spicy curries wafting from the street vendors. My lungs have pretty much just taken up a 30 day smoking habit due to the thick pollution and I am looking forward to ridding myself of my smoker's cough. We took 6 planes and 7 trains and travelled thousands of kilometres across the country. We met some fantastic people and had a great experience....and the icing on the cake: 30 days of delicious Indian food and neither of us got so much as an upset stomach!

Tomorrow we are flying into Mumbai... I know, crazy, but that's where the plane lives that will be flying us to London and then home! I 'll post an entry once I arrive in Calgary so anyone who is concerned will know we successfully escaped from India!

 A great country, an amazing unforgettable trip but....get me the hell out!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

So here's the plan.

We have cancelled out train tickets from Goa to Mumbai. We decided against showing up in a train station that was riddled with bullets and grenades 4 days earlier. Who knows if it will even be running with any normalicy.

We have cancelled our Colaba area hotel....who knows what the safety or situation will be in 3 days??? CNN says there are still gunmen on the loose so we decided not to show our white faces in downtown Mumbai.

We have decided to stay an extra night in our resort, thankfully they are not fully booked.

On Dec 2 we have booked a ticket from Goa to Mumbai with Kingfisher Airways arriving in Mumbai at 17:20pm...We will camp out in the airport for 8 hours until Dec 3 at 2:45am when our flight leaves for London. The airport is running more or less as per normal today, domestic flights at any rate, and in 4 days we hope everything else will be up and running too...primarily our british airways fight home. Cross your fingers.

A summary of the air travel hell we will encounter flying home:
Arrive in Goa airport 14:00 fly to Mumbai arrive 17:20
8 hour layover
9.25hour flight to London
8 hour layover
9 hour flight home.

TOTAL TIME FROM ARRIVING IN GOA AIRPORT UNTIL ARRIVING IN CALGARY AIRPORT : 50 HOURS
Ughhhhh....

We are really dissapointed that we won't be able to see Mumbai. What can you do though? At this point we just want to get out of here as safely as possible.

Until then: we keep an eye on the news, try to sun ourselves without thinking too much about the trip into Mumbai and enjoy the beautiful weather!

We are currently on the beautiful beaches of Goa that stretch along the west coast of Southern India. It was a long 3 days in transit while we re-traced our steps across Rajasthan to get back to Delhi and fly in to Goa yesterday afternoon.

Our resort is beautiful....white sand beaches and great food so far!
The weather is hot and sunny and we are relaxing and resting after the chaos we have been completely immersed in for 3 weeks.
Our plans for the next 3 days don't extend beyond: suntanning, sleeping, eating, swimming, strolling along the beach, drinking cocktails...Repeat.

This morning I woke up at 8am and turned on the TV to CNN to see the news of the terrorist attacks that happened in Mumbai about 10 hours before. As of now the entire city of Mumbai is shut down. The train station that was bombed is the one we will be arriving in by night train on the morning of Dec 2nd and we fly out of the Mumbai airport about 20 hours later. Both the train system and the Mumbai airport are currently closed and for now so we will just have to keep an eye on things to see what will happen. We have 3 more days here in Goa. On the evening of Dec 1st we have tickets on the night train from Goa to Mumbai CST station. If things are either unsafe or not operational we will have to come up with a backup plan. Fortunately, Goa is a popular European resort destination so there will be flights from here to Eurpoe and the UK which hopefully we can get a ticket on and then make our way to London for our final fight home should we need to. Hopefully things will settle by then. I will keep you updated!

For now: Things here are business as usual and I am off to suntan and read by the pool :)

This afternoon at 2pm we ventured into the Thar desert for sightseeing and a camel trek to the sand dunes to watch the sunset.We stopped at some interesting monuments on the way to our camels...the first one was the Bado Bagh Cenotaphs at the Maharajah cemetery. These cenotaphs constructed by the various rulers. One cenotaph has been erected for each ruler...it is a sandstone carved structure on top of the tombstone. The oldest among them is the cenotaphs of Maharawal Jait Singh who reigned from 1470-1506. This tradition was discontinued when in 1947, one of the prince died of a mysterious disease. This was taken as a bad omen and thus this tradition came to it's end. We were nearly alone in this collection of over 40 sandstone structures, each elaborately domed cenotaph housing the tombstone of a King or Royal family member.



Look for the female figures to the right of the horse mounted king. The figures represent the number of wives he had.


We followed that up with a visit to a beautiful jain temple called Amarsagar. It is the oldest and the most beautiful temple dedicated to Lord Parshwanath. There is a small dome which is crowned by a water pot containing a lotus flower and its walls are intricately carved with animal and human figures.



Arar sagar temple. Women are forbidden to enter Hindu temples while having their period...notice the mis-spelled sign...a common and sometime amusing site in India!

We then drove out to the camel farm and took about an hour trek into the desert to some beautiful sand dunes. The camel boys jumped on the camel with us midway along and brought the camels to a run which was super fun and interestingly enough, unlike a horse, where trotting makes the ride bumpier on a camel as soon as they start to run the bumps disappear and it makes for a great easy ride!


Gorgeous sunset over the Thar desert.

Tomorrow we begin our journey back to Delhi for our flight to Goa where we planned a vacation from our vacation! We have the day to spend here in Jaisalmer then catch a 4pm train to Jodhpur. There we will stay the night and leave for the airport in the morning to fly back to Delhi. From Delhi we stay the night again and fly out the next day to Goa...where a beautiful resort and white sand beaches await us! Ahhhhh....

The stunning view of the fort from our hotel roof top restaurant.

On top of the fort looking out onto the city.

Fort streets.

Inside the old palace.

Sunset view that greeted us on the walk back to the hotel.

Relaxing on the patio off of our room!

Jaisalmer lies in the middle of the Thar desert, at the most westerly edge of Rajasthan, less than 125 miles from the border with Pakistan. We actually flew into the air force military base instead of an actually airport and were met on the runway by a large group of men with guns who escorted us off the runway, waited with us for our luggage and then escorted us out of the base. Jaisalmer is Rajasthan’s oldest living fortified city and staying here is like taking a step back in time to the days of the Arabian Nights. The first thing you notice when you enter the city is the huge really impressive yellow fortress built across the top of the hill that is in the centre of Jaisalmer...it seems to rise out of the desert like a sand castle. It is called the golden city due to the yellow sandstone used to build the fort...amazingly enough, a quarter of the city’s population is still living in it! Some 2,000 people (and I'm guessing an equal number of cows) live within it's walls.... we have seen so may forts so far but all of them long since abandoned so it is cool to see how they once functioned and how people live in them. Inside the fort you'll find a bizarre labyrinth of streets, alleyways, courtyards, temples and palaces. It's not only the oldest fort in Rajasthan, dating from the 12th century, but it is the oldest inhabited citadel in the world. Unfortunately, it is now facing ruin. For the past 20 years, Jaisalmer's old buildings have been collapsing on an alarming scale, victim to the overuse by the people living and working in the fort as well as the tourist industry. The sheer volume of people living in the fort and particularly the hotels and guesthouses are putting too much pressure on the city's ancient drainage system and the increased water consumption has left the fort infrastructure in danger of collapse. Seventeen of the 99 bastions of the fort have already collapsed...the fort walls are subsiding and palaces and havelis have come tumbling down. The city is now one of the world's most endangered heritage sites.

For this ethical reason me and Sue chose to stay at a guesthouse outside of the fort as not to contribute to this problem... Our hotel has a wonderful roof top patio which gives us an amazing view of the fort(something you can't get while staying in the fort!) We arrived at 2pm after a quick flight from Jodhpur( so glad we weren't on that long train!) We walked into the fort and spent the afternoon exploring it's streets and alleyways. It is nice and quiet here and very laid back! We even found a cute little clothing shop and I found some surprisingly nice clothing all hand made by this man and his wife...some of the shirts you could slap a designer label on them and sell them for $150 in Calgary - but here $4! We just had dinner at the hotel at the rooftop restaurant and tomorrow plan on taking a an afternoon/evening desert safari to see the sites and watch the sun set behind the dunes!


Puppy trying to make friends with a disinterested cow.

This morning we signed up for a 5 hour trek through a bunch of rural small villages outside of Jodhpur. Our guide, Deepak, grew up in a small village and was really knowledgeable showing us around and he spoke great english so that was a plus! We visited 6 different homes throughout different villages to see how rural India lives. We went to the house of a potter who works with his sons to make water pots, a family cooperative that are weavers of rugs, a family farm (the ladies of the family dressed Sue up in the full dress and costume that the married women wear), a group of family's that live off the land and grow and farm just to survive, and a UNICEF funded lunch program/educational center for some of the poorest children.

Learning to weave!

2 weird experiences on this foray into India!

The first was as we were driving down a quiet rural highway and we see something colourful off in the distance...as we get closer we see a small child, maybe11-13 months old, sitting all alone smack in the middle of the road. We stop and I ask where his mother is and the guide looks around and guesses somewhere working in the fields...but seriously, I know children here are left to fend for themselves with more independence that North American children but really...who leaves a little baby, not even old enough to walk, in the middle of the road?? Totally ignoring the chance of being hit by a car there are wild dogs everywhere whom it would be helpless against. We leave the baby behind and drive up about a mile of 2 ahead to see a woman running down the road asking our driver if we had seen her baby. He reminded her of where she had left him and she ran on back down the road. How weird is that? Who loses a baby??!!!

The second strange experience was when I had to pee in front of an audience. A large curious audience! About 4.5 hours into our adventure the pot of chai tea I had for breakfast caught up with me and I had to go NOW! I asked the guide, when we stopped at the UNICEF house, where I could use a bathroom. He beckoned the lady who was running the program to show me so she, along with the entire school house of children..10+ kids following closely behind took me out back to a field behind the house and pointed to the ground... then they all proceeded to stand about 4 feet from me and watch intently and giggle while I peed. Very weird.

Sue getting dressed up and the little girls who made me take endless photos to they could see them on the digital camera!

Goat induced traffic jam.

On the top of the fort...notice the great blue houses below.

Common site in India: Cow eating something that is neither food nor nourishing. Here a delicious plastic shopping bag.

How to jack a car in India.

Cool blue streets.

On the walk down from the fort...the old city peeks through.


View from the top!


Seriously...who shows up at the airport without confirming their departure time before hand??? Who does that?! As it turns out we are officially retarded. We booked our flight to Jodhpur two months ago and then just waltzed into the airport this morning without a care in the world and also without at any point checking or confirming the flight. How this escaped both of us is beyond explanation. Anyway, our 9:05am flight had been rescheduled to 11:40am weeks ago and we ended up waking up at 6:30am and sitting for 4 hours in the Udaipur airport completely unnecessarily with no one to blame but ourselves! Oh well, lesson learned. The flight itself took 35 minutes and was uneventful. On the bright side, we had a train booked for the 24th for a long 6am-1pm trip heading to Jaisalmer- which we were dreading... India trains, as we have learned, are always late! They always leave on time from the origin station but as the trip progresses they get later and later so if you are getting on later in the trip the more delayed it will be... a few days ago we realized that the train from Jodhpur to Jaisalmer starts in Delhi(a loooong way from Jodhpur) so in reality, by the time it gets to Jodhpur to pick us up the scheduled 6am with turn into 8,9 or 10am and who knows when it will arrive in Jaisalmer. So...anyway the plane we were on to Jodhpur was travelling onward to Jaisalmer after it dropped us off... to our surprise! When we booked the tickets a few months ago the Jaisalmer airport had been shut down for some time due to problems with it being too close to Pakistani air space due to the conflict there. Apparently it has been open for a month now and has a daily flight to Jaisalmer taking 50mins. We got on the computer immediately at the hotel in Jodhpur and booked 2 tickets to Jaisalmer for $100 each and cancelled our train from hell. Yeah!

We headed into town this afternoon to see the giant Jodhpur fort and the old blue city. Jodhpur is the second largest city in the state of Rajasthan, India. It is also known as the Gateway to Thar (due to its location on the edge of the Thar desert), Sun City (due to the many sunny days), or the blue city (due to the large number of blue houses). Founded in the mid-15th it is protected still by a high, fortified wall that stretches for more than 10kms – accessible by gates in eight different places. It was quite spectacular and in excellent condition...and had stunning views of the blue houses surrounding it below.

I also, on a whim, stopped to have my palm read. This really bizarre man, who would stop the reading occasionally to hork up a chunk of phloem and spit it in his garbage can,(super disgusting but made us laugh at it's grossness/inappropriateness) read my palm for several minutes sprouting out statements regarding my health, personality and disposition followed by a few predictions. Then at the end of the reading he says in this large run on sentence " you are very fertile.. you can have lots of kids even in your 40's and 50's if you want.. I read nothing else in your palm... I am done here. Goodbye" then he basically shut himself off, handed me receipt and ignored us as we walked away. It was strange experience! Also, he fortold that I will live into my 80's and have high blood pressure in my 40's and 50's as well as a list of other life details! I plan on getting a second reading, perhaps in Jaisalmer, to compare and contrast the two. Very amusing and highly entertaining for about $4 canadian!

We wondered around the old city for a bit until the chaos and livestock got the best of us as headed back to the hotel where I had a great buffet feast!

Shopping Chaos. India's answer to Safeway at 5:30pm

Tomorrow we have scheduled a 4 hour tour of the surrounding small villages starting at 8am and then we plan on spending a lazy afternoon here at the hotel reading in the courtyard and enjoying the beautiful weather and blue relatively smog-free skies of Jodhpur.