In heaven - and its called Goa...

It is warm, it is chilled, it is soooo nice.
I expected something like Thailand since Goa is such a household name and I also went to the 'most developed' beach, Palolem.

Well, Palolem itself is not my favorite beach around here, although it has nice shops and shop-owners who actually let you look around in their shops peacefully without hassling you with their selection of goods (which is usually of a taste you would not even give your grandmother as a gift) - I spend my days in Patnem beach only 10 mins walk away.

People seem to be fine, you have your usual share of pink English but they are surprisingly quiet, there are hippies, young hip families and single moms, and also retired people and/or retired hippies.

There are just little beach huts and beach restaurants, not one hotel building in sight (actually, every off-season most of the huts have to be taken down and can only be set up again in the next season, where the owners need to negotiate their spots anew).

In the evening they have little tables and cushion chairs on the beach, they light a few candles, sometimes they provide a Shisha, nice chilly music in the background and this is it. Sooo romantic, sooo relaxed. No 'Goa parties' (these times are long gone, and the police is omnipresent controlling on the one hand the 10 pm curfew for music and on the other the Indian lechers who like to stare at foreign women in bikinis).

I met up with Susi, a friend who I have not seen in ages and we have a very nice time here. Speaking of - its time to hit the beach!

Good-bye north India (forever)

Finally, I am in a 'real holiday', all that happened up to now I would rather call 'survival training'. People in the North of India are doing their best to scare even the most adventurous and good-natured tourists away and make them never want to come back again.

I kept on wondering how the compulsory lying and cheating agreed with their believe of karma. Possibly the northern people don't care if they get reborn as cockroaches in their next lives.

Some 'golden rules' to observe when you are traveling the North:

1. Argue about EVERYTHING you pay money for (attn.: they will even cheat you even on the price of a bottle of water).

2. Do NOT believe anything anybody tells you until you see it with your own eyes (train is not going, hotel is closed, tourist attraction being very far away so you need a rickshaw...)

3. Do NOT TRUST anyone, especially if they seem nice and (almost) normal - these are the most dangerous ones; speaking of which: never trust travel agents, especially not in Delhi!
I got nicely scammed for a rather sizeable sum of money by a Dehli travel agent - supposedly from a 'government-approved agency', don't know where they bought that title from...
Take special care with Kashmiri travel agents, they are the most skilled and have no shame to bill you 3 times the price of what their services are worth (apparently Karma does not apply to Kashmiri folks since they are Muslim).

4. Bring a winter jacket if you are going this time of the year.

5. If something seems expensive, it is. If it seems alright, you're still paying double of what it's worth.

6. EVERYBODY is getting commission, get rid of any Indian company if you need to buy something or you will always lose money.

7. Keep answering 'Yes' to whatever anyone is telling you and never stop walking - it will save you a lot of time, believe me.

8. Alternatively, pretend to be deaf.

9. Go South.

But I do not mean to say that everything was bad, we saw some very nice places including the Taj Mahal, Ranthambore National park (the promised tigers didn't care to show up, however), and mystic Varanasi.

I then went down South and spent a few days in Aurangabad seeing these amazing temples that were carved into stone with hammer and chisel over 6 generations during the 5th - 10th century (they are a World Heritage Site and truly impressive, read more )
Apparently, when the workers got bored they started carving pornographic scenes to amuse themselves - see pics.

Here a selection of pictures of the past 3 weeks (click to see album):

India North

Namaste - my first week in India!

As many say: it's impossible to describe this country, you have to see it. And smell it. And - especially - taste it!

Everything Indian-experienced friends predicted or warned me of happened of course: arrival in Delhi at 5 a.m. and the hotel taxi nowhere to be seen, found a taxi into town with apparently vision-impaired driver who hit the rail on the side of the highway and continued driving as if nothing had happened, he had no clue where the hotel was, after driving around for a while he dropped me in the darkest quarter of Delhi so I had to find it myself, the street full of garbage, beggars, stray dogs , all very scary - but I found the hotel, which did not have my reservation (even though I got an email confirmation), and so they put me in their most expensive room, which was a total dump etc. etc. But I was still happy I had arrived in one piece.

The next day I set foot out on the street and after 5 mins I thought my head would explode. My hotel was in the middle of a busy bazaar, people approaching me from all shops I walked past, "come here, look here, Madam", kids following me, clinging to me begging, Rikscha drivers stopping offering their services, the air dark with exhaust fumes and smoke from little fires that the beggars burn on the sidewalk to warm themselves (it was actually quite chilly), this all happening simultaneously while I try to find my way.

Crossing my first street was a big achievement. Approximately 5 lanes of traffic, donkey-carts, mopeds, rikschas and people all going into different directions, blowing their horns like mad, no sign of a traffic light or even a pedestrian crossing - the best method is to stand behind a local and when he starts, close your eyes and run as well.

I got through the chaos, and moreover was really lucky to meet the right people. At the end of the day I was all set with a new family accommodation, a 20-day-travel plan with all reservations and bookings made (which apparently is difficult to manage yourself because it is high season).

So now I am on a tour of Rajasthan, sharing hotel rooms, a car and our very nice chauffeur Sureis with Ilaria, an adventurous girl from Italy. It is an intense time filled with impressions and information, every second day we arrive in a new place - but it is the best way to see some really impressive parts of India in not too much time and without too much hassle.

We started with Pushkar, a beautiful pilgrim town, where we successfully completed all the typical tourist activities in a day: meeting some Sadhus (holy men), but also plenty of locals, who showed us the tents in the desert where they live; I took some more or less successful (but fun) music lessons of sitar and flute, then saw the sunset on a camel and got my hands painted with henna, drank countless Chais, went shopping... At the end of the day I even met a Brazilian tourist guide who is studying music in Varanasi, so I got my second Sitar lesson already arranged plus a local tour guide for the city :)

The next stop was Jodphur, also very beautiful with the massive Maharaja Fort, then Udaipur with the magic palace on the lake, which was not quite so magic because there is hardly any water in the lake at this time of the year - it was the palace surrounded by mud, and today we arrived in Jaipur, especially famous for the Hawa Mahal (palace of the winds) and its excellent shopping (the latter will take more of our time tomorrow than the sightseeing I reckon :)

To see a small selection of my pictures, click on the album below:

India 2010