Happy New Year everyone! I hope you enjoyed yourselves last night and are feeling optimistic of what 2011 will bring. Given that 2010 was one of the best years for Mal and I, we hope that 2011 can match it with health and happiness.
So we're almost at the end of our Indian adventure and I am....................thrilled to be leaving!!!!
Thankfully our Southern Indian adventure was really nothing like the North. We left Delhi and fley to Kochi which is in the province of Kerala- think county Clare for location. We chilled out in a place called Fort Kochi for a few days which was a lovely sleepy fishing village and just caught up on sleep. Given there wasn't much to do other than chill out, do some souvenir shopping (well, if I must) and eat! Although we were still dodge from Delhi so we took it fairly handy on that front.
We had been told by friends that we definitely had to do a 'Backwater' tour of Allepy which is basically villages built on the sides of rivers that come in from the sea. Grand so, we'll have one please! We got a transfer and were thrilled to see that our driver called Prabaker drove a jeep. No more bashed up tuk tuks for us, and a bit of luxury.
So off we went - brand new spanking jeep with the plastic still on the seats and us both stuck to the plastic after 2 minutes. Plastic in cars+ heat of 30 degrees = don't mix. Why do people keep the plastic on? Why?!!! Come on people,live life. Take it off.........
Anyway, twas only an hours drive according to Prabaker. Conversation goes as follows;
Us - hello prabaker, you know the way yes?
P - oh yes sirs. It is 1 hour away. We go to the jetty for the boat.
Us- oh great, and you have the name of the boat.
P- yes sirs, velly good sirs. this way please.
2 hours later and no joke, having asked 14 different people on the street (Prabaker thought nothing of it to suddenly, sans indicator, whip off the road onto the footpath, and shout at some passerby for directions.
Needless to say, each time this happened, we were horned out of it from the mad look of the drivers behind us who hurled abuse and gave little calm prabaker the bird). After 2 and a half hours, and many phone calls to the boat (he didn't have the name of the boat) we finally got to the jetty and our home for the night.
We climbed on this beautiful houseboat where we were going to spend the next 24 hours and settled in. And off we went...........Now, Id love to be raving about this amazing trip but I can honestly say it was one of the most boring 24 hours of India!!! How so? Well for one, our gorge houseboat was huge so it meant we couldn't drive down the smaller backwater rivers and see the families, houses etc. Instead we sailed up and down this massive wide open lake about 2 miles and hour, for a day and a half. We saw a few birds flying around and that was kinda of it. Then the rain came so yer man on the boat closed the curtains and then we definitely couldn't see anything! We laughed at just how boring it was. Mal and I played 110 cards for the entire time! So what I would advise is, do a day trip on a small boat. It's less expensive and you get to see the good stuff - families working, smiling children running on the banks, fishermen untangling their nets and freeing their fish into containers. Shame we missed it.
Next stop was Goa and boy were we pleased to see a beach and some sunshine....We had some time to chill out here so we decided to explore a little and spend half in the north in places called Baga, Calangute and Candolin before hitting Palolem in the south on Christmas Eve. We eventually settled in a place called Candolin where we relaxed on the beach and stayed in a really nice place called Casa Sea Shell (sounds lush doesn't it!).
My thoughts before I went to Goa was that we were going to be surrounded by young hippies wearing very little clothing and dancing around all happy hippy style. Not so in Northern Goa!Candolin etc is more older folk from Newcastle (aye aye pet) who love their 'egg beans n chips' and many an aul biddy who wears clothes far to young for her, downs vodkas to beat the band and sings very bad karaoke in bars. You know the ones I'm talking about!
Mal and I are not headwrecker hippies who wanna go off the beaten track and chant 'ommmmmmm' for a week but I must say, we really enjoyed chatting to the locals and was lovely to get to know them a little over the few days. I bought a few things from a souvenir shop from a man who was just so nice, so happy and so friendly. I reckon most of the tourists walk into these shops all brazen and sunburnt, hardly look at the lovely locals, don't bother to try and say hello in their language, haggle to buy a bangle for about 5p and then leave. The knackers.
We found the locals to be just fab. One women called Anita (at least that's what her name sounded like and what I called her) used to greet me by name and a big cheesy grin that showed off her gap filled teeth everytime I walked by. When we stopped and chatted, she told me all about her family. She looked about 19 but had 4 kids aged between 12 and 2 years. Needless to say Mal and I ended up practically buying Anitas store out to give her a few bob. Its the 'Frank' in me. Our taxi man Sanjeet who drove us from north to south told us all about his own family, gave us his address, kisses on each cheek, hugs and asked for an Irish T-shirt to be posted to him! HOW could you refuse? The cuteness. Carrolls Irish Store, Ill be in, next week!
Palolem was a lot more relaxed and we chilled out on the beach and met up with some folk from clontarf who come every year. was really nice to have a few beers with some familiar faces especially at Christmas.
On the 25th itself, we spent it on sun loungers in bikinis (well, Mal in his shorts) sipping diet coke and eating club sandwiches! That evening, we had a some bubbly on our porch before dinner which was 'unique'. Chicken Roulade turned out to be cold and far too salty for us - we couldnt eat much of it but hey, we drank wine, clinked glasses, toasted our families and wished each other a Happy Christmas! A Ger special Turkey & Ham dinner with all the trimings, gorge sprouts and the ever famous delicious stuffing, it wasn't. Really missed that.
Next stop - Mumbai for 3 days over New Years and then we fly to Dubai. More on Mumbai as it happens xx
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