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  • ResenärTravel 2020 - TBC
    1111111
    Dag 44

    Mumbai Dharavi Slum

    18 februari 2020, Indien ⋅ ☀️ 32 °C

    We woke up nice and early and set off to get to Bandra junction train station to catch a train to Mahim junction where we would meet our tour guide for todays tour of Dharavi Slum, one of the largest slums in the world. We got to Bandra and got on any train heading in the direction of Mahim, which we found out as wrong as we sped past Mahim junction without stopping...we got out at a random train station and an Indian commuter decided to take us under his wing and ensure we got on the correct train to Mahim, what a nice guy! He even advised us to wear our backpack on our front to avoid the notorious pickpockets on the Mumbai inner city trains. We eventually got to Mahim and took a seat in Cafe Coffee Day, the exact meeting point for our tour.

    At around 9:45, Yahya arrived outside with three Irish girls, we went out to meet them to start our tour. Yahya worked for a company called ‘The Local Tours’, a company that we had been recommended by Jen, who Tom used to work with. It is a very socially aware company and they recruit university students that live in Dharavi to run the tours as a means of earning money to pay for their tuition fees, so it was a nice company to do it with. Yahya explained to us all that Dharavi was not a sad place to live, in fact a very desirable place to live for people in India. Over 1 million people called Dhiravi home and it has a booming economy, with a GDP of over $1 billion per annum with textiles, leather and recycling industries being its biggest income. Yahya explained how when Dharavi was founded, from dried up marsh land, people from all over India rushed to buy the land due to its central location in Mumbai, and now the land is very expensive at over a quarter of a million rupees per square meter. We walked round the streets and many alleyways of Dharavi and saw first hand each of the major industries at work and also where people were living and it was right what Yahya was saying, people were more than happy living here, in fact they loved living here. We got an awesome lunch in Yahya’s favourite place and then finished the tour near to a barber shop, so ever the opportune, Tom and I decided to get our hair cut, 80 rupees for a haircut!

    The man who would be doing the haircut had bright orange hair with matching beard, so hopefully he was better than whoever does his hair! We played rock, paper, scissors to determine who would go first....for the first time in ages, Tom won, so I was up! I’m not going to lie about 2 minutes in it looked like he had absolutely butchered my hair, but he turned it around eventually and he actually gave me a good cut! After my haircut was finished the man decided to give me a very thorough/violent face wash, involving a pink machine that resembles a polishing machine....it was not pleasant and he was pummelling my cheekbones and nose with this vibrating device. It was then Tom’s turn and that is when we found out he could only really do one style, as we both got practically identical haircuts. Tom then endured the same torturous face wash machine, and tried to pay up....however he was trying to double the cost saying that the face wash (that we didn’t ask for) was additional. Paying no more than the agreed price, we left Dharavi after having a great morning.

    We made our way back to Mahim junction and got a train to Charni road where we walked to Chowpatty beach. A little bit of a disappointment if I’m honest...it wasn’t exactly the nicest beach but I wasn’t really expecting much in the centre of Mumbai. We continued walking along the beach to find the hanging gardens that Tom had read about...again a little bit of a disappointment too. However, it was the highest point in Mumbai, hence the name “hanging gardens”, due to its location there was a observation deck nearby that we went up to get a view over crazy Mumbai - this was pretty nice, and free too! We then walked back through Mumbai traffic to a nearby train station, stopping off for a bit of air con in H&M and got a train back to Bandra where we got our now standard order of Chinese Bhel, this time with noodles on top for not additional charge...we were becoming locals here.

    After this long hot day, we went back to the hostel for some chill and then back to the same place for more Chinese Bhel, and then we went over the road for an Orea Shake, which was unreal! With the taste of chocolate in our mouths, we then made a desperate trip to the shop for biscuits then back to the hostel for the night.    Läs mer

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  • ResenärTravel 2020 - TBC
    11211
    Dag 43

    Night Train and Mumbai City

    17 februari 2020, Indien ⋅ ☀️ 30 °C

    We went from a very uncomfortable 4 people on our bench to an unbearable 5...by 1am we had said goodbye to any possibility that we would get any sleep tonight. The guys who got on at the station had taken it upon themselves to start moving everyone’s luggage around from the racks to make space for people up there...however they hadn’t clocked where the luggage would go instead. They tried to move mine and Toms’ bags but I told them absolutely not and that I wanted eyes on them all night. They tried a couple more times before giving up as they realised that we were serious about them not touching our stuff. To our amazement, they all got out bits of cardboard and plastic sheeting and laid it out on the floor...these were their beds!! One of the group asked me to move my feet, bearing in mind they were in the aisle as there were 10 other pairs of legs and feet where mine could have been I asked him ‘where would you like me to put them?’ Confused, he tapped my legs and feet for me to move them. Again I asked the same question and his mate translated...I’d had enough with them completely. He eventually gave up probably realising that even white peoples’ legs weren’t detachable.

    We got absolutely no sleep and he prospect of the next 7 hours on this train in this position was haunting. However, the time did tick by and we just battled on, already saying that we’d never do this again or make the same mistakes with the tickets. We were about an hour from Mumbai when a lot of the passengers got off, it was at this point we saw their suitcases...they were big 10 litre paint tubs filled with clothes and all sorts of things. At the stop before we got off, some cross dressing men got on and started clapping and hassling people for money...it was really weird. It was almost as if they were blessing people and getting money for it, but it was just a money making thing. We eventually got off the train at Mumbai LTT station and were being hounded by the various taxi or tuktuk drivers, all of whom were trying to guess where we were going...a pointless exercise. I went over to the prepaid Tuktuk counter and said where we wanted to go, it was done via google maps so I went round and put it in the computer. The guy then clicked on the longest route possible - I told him to choose the short one as it was way cheaper (6km rather that 10km)! He reluctantly did so and we got to our hostel in the Bandra part of Mumbai for 122 rupees. We were zonked and felt jet-lagged and just passed out on the sofa at the hostel as we couldn’t check in just yet. When we got ourselves sorted and check in we had a little nap before we got into seeing Mumbai.

    We walked to Bandra station, stopping off to get noodles for 30 rupees at a very local, busy store. Shocked by litter on the journey. Didn’t want to buy ticket due to the queue, so we just hopped on a train heading south and hoped it went to Churchgate Junction. The train was boiling hot and at each stop it was a massive rush to get either on or off by the locals. Eventually we got to downtown Mumbai and began walking, first the post office, then the main train terminal and then the India Gate and Taj Palace Hotel, all of which had been built whilst India was under British rule and they were all the nicest buildings we’d seen so far in India. After the bad night we’d had and the hot weather in Mumbai, we both mutually decided to dive into a McDonald’s and get an ice cream for just 20rupees each. It felt like being back at home somewhere, being able to be sat down without vendors hassling you whilst you ate and enjoyed some food in air-con!

    Soon enough though, we were back on the streets and walking back towards the station to get back to Bandra. After a hectic walk back through the markets, we made it back to the hostel and had a hot shower - our first hot shower since Hatton in Sri Lanka! We cleaned up and went back to the lunch place and grabbed some more street food and just chilled out for the rest of the evening coming up with the plan for tomorrow. We’d been recommended to do the Dharavi Slum tour, so Tom organised this and we got an early night.    Läs mer

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  • ResenärTravel 2020 - TBC
    112211
    Dag 42

    South Goa to Mumbai

    16 februari 2020, Indien ⋅ ☀️ 30 °C

    We both enjoyed a lie in this morning, enjoying these really comfortable beds as we knew the following night we would spend on a night train. We were out of bed at 9am, the latest wake up time on our trip so far and made our way over to Palolem beach, a 10 minute walk from our hostel. The beach was huge, but quite crowded so we were both pretty happy that we decided to base ourselves in Patnem instead. We walked half-way along the beach and grabbed some veg noodles at a food vendor in a car park just off the beach for 80 rupees and then grabbed a 5L bottle of water to fuel us for the morning. We continued along Palolem beach reaching the island at the end that you could read at low tide, however the tide had already started to come in when we got there so we gave it a miss and decided to actually just head back to Patnem and enjoy our last beach day for a while there.

    Back at Patnem we enjoyed the water, the sunshine and the peace for a little while (even though it was scorching hot) before I looked at our tickets for the upcoming train. I woke Tom from his doze to tell him the tickets for our trains tonight were actually waiting list tickets not actual tickets for the train. We’d not been told about any of this as we’d paid for the tickets a couple of days earlier. We were in a Pool Quota waiting list, and bottom of the pile for that. We did some googling and discovered we wouldn’t have beds on this 11 hour overnight train to Mumbai. This made us both so frustrated at how the Indian rail system works and how anybody actually gets anywhere! We decided that we’d go to the train station in Cancona early to see what we could do. Of course we still had time to have our favourite Thali from the Nepalese restaurant, so we devoured it for the last time and went to get ready at the hostel. We’d asked the guy earlier in the day if we could grab a quick shower before the train, but it was a different person manning the hostel this afternoon and he didn’t like the idea of it! This day was going from bad to worse! We eventually just decided to get a shower as the hostel was empty, and then set off on the walk to the train station via the ATM for some much needed cash. I only had 30 pence on me and Tom only had about £2...not quite enough to get us to Mumbai.

    When we got to the station, there was a crazy guy there, either drunk or drugged up, causing trouble for everyone. The station master was armed with a big wooden bat if he started to kick off more...luckily the police were called and he was taken away. This left the station master to be barraged with questions by me about what all the different codes on tickets meant. Eventually it made sense (Indian sense) and we’d be refunded for the waiting list ticket but we’d have to buy a general class ticket if we still wanted to get to Mumbai tonight. We took a brave pill and got them , only £2.50 each, and awaited the arrival of the train, getting some snacks in the meantime. It hit 20:30 and we went up the platform where we’d been told the general carriages were and we both jumped on before the train had stopped to try and beat some of the locals on so we’d get a seat. It was immediately uncomfortable. Hard benches with a tiny amount of padding, racks above to store luggage where people were sat and very little air. We went for about an hour or so and stopped at some random station where they were selling chapattis and curry through the window of the train, so we grabbed one to share and it was actually pretty good. Once finished we noticed that other who had the same as us didn’t have the little bag or plate they were given. I went on the hunt for a bin but found none - a fellow passenger then motioned for us to just throw it out the window - something that I couldn’t imagine doing, but obviously normal for these guys...we just held onto it for a bin later.

    About another hour later and we’d both tried to get some sleep with no luck, but at least we had some of our own space to move about and get comfy. This is when the whole night took a turn...we got to a station just before midnight and what felt like half the Indian population got into our carriage....we were in for a long night.    Läs mer

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  • ResenärTravel 2020 - TBC
    Dag 41

    Exploring South Goa by bike

    15 februari 2020, Indien ⋅ ☀️ 32 °C

    We woke up after having an amazing sleep in these beds, got ready and asked the owner of the hostel to arrange our mopeds for the day. He led us to a restaurant not far from the hostel where a man was waiting outside stood next to an old moped that looked like it was falling apart....I’m guessing that’s why we got it for 300 instead of 400 as the guy next door was trying to charge us. I put the helmet on (that had a hole in it and half a visor) and Tom got on the back and we drove off...where we soon realised that the speedometer or fuel gauge did not work either! It took me a little while to get used to driving the moped after driving a Tuktuk for a month but I got used to it pretty quickly.

    We drove to Cabo de Rama, an old Portuguese fort 24km from our hostel. We arrived and there was a wedding or funeral taking place so we didn’t see the church but we climbed the old walls of the fort which weren’t very well maintained but pretty cool. We sat on the walls enjoying the coastal view and we saw a beach in the distance that looked really nice, so decided to check that out next. So we found the beach on the map, jumped back on our moped and made our way in that direction. We had to drive across really rough terrain to get to the “parking area” where we dumped our bike to walk to the short trail down to the beach. At the top of the trail you could see down onto the beach and it was glorious! Possibly one of the nicest beaches I had ever seen. Gorgeous white sand, clear blue water, surrounded by palm trees and best thing being there were no people there! We walked down and enjoyed this little bit of paradise for a while, and I mean it was paradise.

    1 o’clock came around very quickly. We had enjoyed this beach for a few hours now and as much as we didn’t want to leave we also wanted to check out some other places. So we got back on our moped and drove to Agonda beach where we ate lunch at a cute little restaurant, Tom had the veg noodles and I had the veg rice. We then went for a stroll along Agonda beach, a nice beach but pretty busy comped to the beach this morning. We dumped our stuff on the beach and enjoyed the beautiful water for a while, we even tested each other to see how long we could hold our breath underwater... the answer is roughly over a minute! Then we decided to check out another beach called Butterfly beach, however the roads we awful and we were running out of time before sunset so we decided to skip Butterfly beach and head to Talpona beach, about a 16km drive... we got there and again played some stupid games in the sea, we even had a running race on the beach, with an audience of course (as you couldn’t do anything in India without an audience). We played around in the water whilst the sun was setting and I tried to get a silly picture of Tom jumping out the water with the sunset in the background....he jumped up and as he was midair the wave beneath him disappeared meaning the drop was actually much further down, *SPLAT*. Tom had completely backslapped the water! Ouch! It was however a gorgeous sunset and a good Instagram picture.

    What we didn’t consider however, was that once the sun had set we wouldn’t be able to dry off and we would have to drive back to the hostel in the dark and both freezing cold...DUH! We eventually got back and thought we would have a nice shower to warm ourselves up...but the water at the hostel wasn’t working so we had to have a bucket shower, which was far from pleasant! For dinner tonight we decided to just go to the Nepalese place again (our logic was when you find somewhere good in India that didn’t make you sick just keep going there, as reducing the number of places you eat at reduced your chances of getting food poisoning). The food was just as good as the previous night, and after dinner tonight we both got a ginger, lemon and honey tea to wash it down with. However, as the guy was preparing it a weird guy came off the street chatting to him...the guy making our tea was obviously used to this guy, presumably the local psycho, so didn’t take much notice of him at all. However, Tom and I certainly noticed him, especially when he picked up one of our teas and gave it a huge sniff! We were joking about who would get that tea, both of us keeping our eyes on which one he had touched but the waiter took them both back to the kitchen to add something else...so we will never know who drank the one that the man sniffed. Oh well, it was delicious! We made our way back to the hostel where we wanted to get some good rest in these amazing beds!    Läs mer

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  • ResenärTravel 2020 - TBC
    Dag 40

    Gokarna to South Goa

    14 februari 2020, Indien ⋅ ☀️ 33 °C

    I woke and quickly checked the train times from Gokarna. For some reason, the train was actually an hour earlier than we thought it was so it wasn’t quite the chilled wake-up, pack-up and leave we had planned but we packed our stuff up and checked-out the place, paying the 800 rupees we owed for the accommodation...they didn’t realise we forgot to pay for lunch yesterday so we got away with that one! We walked over to Gokarna town and haggled a TukTuk to the train station for 180. We got to the train station bought our tickets for 35rupees and waited for the train to come...it was obviously an hour late but it eventually turned up. We each bought samosas on the train and watched the world go by as we entered the state of Goa.

    After the 2 hour train journey we arrive at Cancona station where we would be getting off to go to Patnem, South Goa. We decided to walk to the hostel as it was only a 3km walk, but it was boiling hot and we regretted it by the time we got to our hostel, Base hostel. It was a small hostel, but very nice, hidden away from the main road with hammocks and a chill out area outside. We got into our room, used the shower (unfortunately it was cold) and chilled on the extremely comfortable beds for a little while where I sent my dad a happy birthday text.

    After a little while we decided to go and check out Patnem beach. We had decided to stay in Patnem, instead of its busier neighbour Palolem as we had heard that Palolem was quite busy and developed, whereas Patnem was more quiet and less commercial. When we got to the beach, we were both surprised at actually how it was still quite resorty. There were quite a lot of people, overpriced restaurants and resorts but the beach was beautiful nonetheless and the water was perfect after our morning on the sweaty train. We had a nice short walk along the beach, and tried to get to another beach, but the tide was too high. We chilled out for a while with the occasional swim in the sea to cool ourselves down (it was very hot today) before we decided it we’d had enough sun for the day.

    We went back to the room for showers and got dressed to go out and get some dinner. We both actually made an effort tonight, both wearing deodorant, aftershave and a shirt! We actually felt clean and western again, which was quite nice. We watched the sunset at Patnem beach, watching people playing around with their frisbees and then we went to Woodo cafe, a Nepalese restaurant that we had checked out earlier on, for some dinner. We ordered a Thali each which was amazing, I even upgraded to the “special Thali” where you got a paneer curry included. My favourite curry was the carrot curry they had included, it was amazing and it’s safe to say there wasn’t any waste on our plates...in fact after food we ordered veg and cheese momos... this was going to decide if we went to Nepal or not, if these momos were good we would go, if not we would keep our flights to Myanmar. The momos came and they were amazing! We are going to Nepal!!

    After food, we made our way back to the hostel, chilled out and then got into our comfy beds to get some sleep!    Läs mer

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  • ResenärTravel 2020 - TBC
    11111
    Dag 39

    Gokarna Beach Hopping

    13 februari 2020, Indien ⋅ ☀️ 33 °C

    We woke up and were out at by 8. We walked over to Om beach where we had been the previous day and enjoyed a Masala Dosa for breakfast to fuel us for our walk to the more remote beaches we had heard about. We found a path at the end of Om beach and followed it through passing through jungle and desert like terrain in the process with beautiful coastal views. After a while in the already scorching heat, we arrived at half moon beach, a beautiful beach with a little shack serving food, however nobody around.

    We decided to continue to the final beach, “Paradise beach” and chill out on half moon beach later on, on our way back through. Following a path that was actually guided by red paint on the occasional rock, we walked through similar terrain to the previous path, albeit this time a bit more risky and eventually we arrived to Paradise beach. It was a beautiful beach, slightly rocky but beautiful nonetheless, however as we stepped foot onto the beach we felt eyes on us straight away. Paradise beach was quite well known for Hippie travellers coming here and spending day upon day camping here, getting high and inevitably meeting other people with dreadlocks. We were not disappointed, it was as if we were Leonardo Dicaprio and the French guy from the beach. Clearly nobody really wanted us there (it’s because we didn’t have dreadlocks I guess). There was one guy in particular on this beach who had dreadlocks down to his ankles and was wearing an all in one black oversized shirt, he walked towards the sea taking off this shirt to be completely naked underneath. He then got out of the sea after ‘cleaning himself’ and got his homemade fishing rod to go and catch his own fish...he was unsuccessful but at least he tried. We enjoyed the beach for a little while, went for a swim in the perfect water before leaving this little bit of paradise with all it’s hippie inhabitants.

    We went back to Half moon beach and there was no shade at all, so we went to a cafe where Tom got a ginger, lemon and honey tea. We thought we’d try and book some trains as we’d heard that they get booked up. The apps we were using were the right ones, however, like everything in India they didn’t make sense. One even took the money and then didn’t give us ticket!! We spent some time on the helpline to the train company, but couldn’t understand a thing. For whatever reason we then got our tickets whilst on the phone... We went for a swim and then made our way back to Om beach for some more relaxation and swimming in the sea before heading back to Kudle beach. We chilled out back at our place and then went to watch the sunset where we met with Tobias, the German guy we had met in Hampi. We went for dinner together at a place Tom and I had seen yesterday, got some biscuits to enjoy after dinner and then called it a night.    Läs mer

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  • ResenärTravel 2020 - TBC
    11111
    Dag 38

    Overnight bus and Gokarna

    12 februari 2020, Indien ⋅ ⛅ 32 °C

    I probably got about 30 minutes sleep on the night bus. Nothing to do with sharing a very thin bench like bed, but the fact that these buses are rough...really rough. They bump around, they’re noisy, and for some reason the Indian road network has speed bumps every couple of kilometres on the highways, so lying down you constantly get tossed up in the air. We arrived at where they announced was Gokarna. I quickly checked the map and saw we were at least 20km from Gokarna. With sleepy heads, we got off and we’re told that another little mini van would take us the final leg. We had to get our backpacks out of the boot of the bus, so the guy came to open it. Tom’s was at the front, but mine had slipped back and was in the depths of the bus, so I crawled in and retrieved it...the guy who had opened the back up then asked for a tip, the cheeky sod, and even gave me a ball park figure of 30 rupees. We just laughed at him and walked off to the next bus. This journey was actually ok considering it was 3:30am. However, when we got close to Gokarna he stopped and turned the engine off and the lights on and told us to get off. We were still a couple of kilometres away but as it was early and cool we decided to walk. A french guy on the same bus was staying 7km away and there were no Tuktuks around so he asked the bus driver what he was meant to do - the suggestion came to walk - he was very unhappy.

    We walked to the beach and tried to come up with a plan of action. We had decided not to book anywhere as Tom had heard that you could just rock up and stay in a beachside shack. As it was only 5am nothing was open and we thought about maybe getting a hostel for the night, but decided against it and just made our way over the hills to Kudle Beach. We sat on the beach for a while watching the cows and the dogs all waking up and the sun rise, our first here in India. Tom went to see what he could find for accommodation and came back about half an hour later with some offers. One place would do 200 rupees a night but was full of cockroaches, another was 600 a night - no cockroaches, but well over budget, and the third was 300 per night no bugs and the closest to where we were sat...deal! We went in and it was all ok for £3 per night, and as we were exhausted we both passed out on the bed until about 9am. When we woke it was getting quite hot so we went out and checked out the beach in the sunshine, now with lots more people on it. The water was amazing though, and we just relaxed for a couple of hours.

    It began to get really hot, probably up to about 35° so we dragged our stuff back up the beach towards the shade of a tree. Even in the shade it was boiling, so we decided to just get lunch at the cafe which our accommodation was behind. We sat and planned out the next couple of days as we were wanting to take things much looser in India in terms of plans and just move on from one place when we felt like it. We had lunch and absolutely forgot to pay for it but didn’t get chased so all good there! We decided to go and check out Om Beach, just a half hour walk over the hills and when we got there, we were pleasantly surprised as we’d previously heard it was full of Russians. It was nice and quiet and the water was gorgeous! We spent an hour swimming round and messing around and decided to go back to Kudle Beach for sunset.

    On the way back, a beach guard stopped me and asked to look in the bag. We’d heard how the police had cracked down on drug use on the beaches. After he looked through a couple of items I asked if he was looking for drugs and he said yes. He also said to the other guard that it was all clean - good to know! We got back to our beach shack to get showered. I walked into the bathroom and heard a strange scraping noise, looked right down at my feet and there was a massive black snake slithering it’s way away from me towards the toilet!! I spun round urging Tom to get out over and over then said simply - there’s a snake! We got out the room to reassess and decided that we’d go back in to check I was right. Tom couldn’t see it at first; but then did behind the toilet. We both decided that we couldn’t sleep in that shack for the next couple of nights as we didn’t want to wake up with a snake on our face. We grabbed all of our stuff and upgraded ourselves to a 400 rupee a night beach house with bricks and mortar - looked sturdy and snake proof.

    We got showered and cleaned up, we’d spent 4 days in boiling hot Hampi and a night bus without a shower as the one in Hampi was non existent, this was our first shower in 5 days, we felt truly grim. We checked out the beach for sunset and then walked back over to Gokarna town for some dinner and to find Tom some flip flops which he managed to haggle down to £2. We grabbed some dinner on the rooftop restaurant and I FaceTimed home where Mum, Harry, Bob and Sally-Anne were having lunch in Ilkley. We had a long chat about stuff here and there, but it was nice to be briefly transported back into home world, a world where every meal isn’t curry! We walked back over to Kudle beach and got a well deserved early night.    Läs mer

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  • ResenärTravel 2020 - TBC
    12
    Dag 37

    Hampi Chill Day

    11 februari 2020, Indien ⋅ ⛅ 27 °C

    Again, Tom slept very well last night but I did not, I’d woken up feeling terrible, so we agreed to just take it easy today. We packed up our things as we were checking out and heading to Gokarna this evening on a night bus, and then made our way to our favourite local place for a Masala Dosa breakfast. Went back to the hostel and chilled out on the day beds enjoying the view of the rice paddies directly in front of our hostel. Just after midday we decided to check out the swimming spot near to our hostel, not having particularly high expectations for it I was really blown away with how beautiful it was when we got there. We enjoyed the warm sunshine and before no time went into the water. Not a crocodile in sight and it was so refreshing! After a little while after chilling out on the rocks and soaking up the sunshine was made our way back to the hostel to chill out for a little while as I still wasn’t feeling 100% and I’d need as much rest as possible as I doubted I’d get any sleep on this night bus.

    We decided that we’d pay up as we didn’t want to get held up when it game to leaving. Finally the hostel owner turned up. It was 2295 rupees to pay between us and we tried to pay separately, but as usual, change was an issue. So I paid him first and got change, but then figured that if I just paid for Tom too, we’d get more change as they always round things down here. I asked him to give me another lot of change so me and Tom would figure it out between us. The hostel guy took us both by surprise with what he did next...he said to Tom “hey, give me your money”. He wasn’t prepared to give us the full change without having everything first. He was so aggressive and I asked him if he thought we were going to run away. They guy said no, so I said for him to calm down and not be so rude. Both of us were left shocked by the whole experience and we would certainly be writing a savage review as the hostel made us both ill and it was dirty. This could usually be overlooked if the staff are good, but all of them were money grabbers.

    An hour or two had passed and we decided to walk to the shops to get some snacks for our night bus tonight. We got a bag full of snacks and it only cost us £1, total! On our way back we stopped off at our favourite place again for Veggie Thali and it was not a disappointment, it was delicious - we sure were going to miss this place!

    We went back to the hostel got our bags said our goodbyes to people (despite most of them heading to Gokarna in the coming days) and we left the hostel and walked the 2.5km back to Hippie island and the exact spot we would be getting the TukTuk to the bus station. The TukTuk obviously didn’t leave at 18:30 like it said it would, but eventually the driver crammed 7 of us into a TukTuk and began to drive into the middle of nowhere. After a bumpy journey through various little towns and driving on the wrong side the of the road we stopped in the central reservation of a motorway, apparently this was the bus station. As he dropped us off the TukTuk driver, who crammed us all into 1 TukTuk instead of two and drove like a psychopath asked us all for tips...the Polish woman in the TukTuk refused saying that we had already paid for the TukTuk, he then turned to George and I who backed her up by saying we would definitely not be tipping, especially as he was quite rude! We waited here for an hour until finally the bus arrived. We threw our bags in the luggage hold and got onboard to find our 2 seats that we booked. However, there were only beds on the bus, so we ended up having to share a single bed...    Läs mer

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  • ResenärTravel 2020 - TBC
    1
    11111
    Dag 36

    Hampi by bicycle

    10 februari 2020, Indien ⋅ ⛅ 27 °C

    I woke Tom up at 845, after we both had an amazing night sleep, probably getting 10 hours! We got ready and made our way to our favourite food place (I.e. the only food place we had tried in the area) and got a Masala Dosa for breakfast before returning to the hostel to take out some bicycles out. After our unnecessarily thorough induction by our host on how to ride a bike and how to lock one up, we were on the road. These bikes were much better than the last bikes we took out in Kalpitiya, so we were going much faster this time. We were passing through beautiful scenery, rivers and rice paddies to the left, and enormous boulder mountains to the right. We had pinned a few things on our map the day before to go visit.

    Our first stop was Kishkanda Temple. It was right on top of one of the boulder mountains so inevitably there were steps to climb - only 570 this time unlike Adams Peak. However, the heat was extreme so it felt like miles and miles to the top. Eventually we got there and were treated to a 360° view of the whole of Hampi. With it still being quite early in the day, the dust and heat hadn’t hazed up the air, so the view was clear and we could see miles. At the top there was a little ceremony happening with people gathering round a very old man with face paints on seemingly getting religious advice. Inside the temple, people were offering food to a man who then gave them oil and salt. They would then smear the oil on their face and hair and then sprinkle the salt over their heads. It was obviously quite a sacred place for a lot of people, so we just observed. After a while we headed down, with all these Indian people coming up calling out “Jai Sriyam” over and over again, obviously some prayer. When we were asked what country we were from they started chanting “Jai England”. No idea what it meant, but it was quite a nice chant. We hopped back on our bikes and headed to a couple of other temples, one of which was abandoned which looked cool but was a bit creepy. We messed around here for a bit, and drank the last of our water...it was now getting boiling hot outside, at least 35° so we sought refuge at a little shop and bought some more water and some snacks.

    To get further out of the heat, we cycled to a little cafe which was overlooking the rice paddies and chilled out here for a bit. I wasn’t feeling too well as I think I’d caught a cold the previous day, so I just lay down as Tom read his book and we ordered a couple of cups of tea, one Mint and one Ginger Lemon. They took ages to arrive and then one did and looked all milky so Tom went to sort out the order and eventually we got them. We chilled here for a bit waiting for the heat to subside, and then hopped back on the bikes and took a back road towards the reservoir. We’d heard that there was a swimming spot and even a big boulder you could jump off into the lake. We took this back road and surprisingly there was nobody on it, busy rice paddies and little villages to the left and right. It was the best thing we’d seen so far in Hampi, and maybe even India. Eventually we got to where the two Hampi reservoirs were. We were so happy to see some water after being so hot all day and tried to find the swimming spot. We couldn’t find it!! So we thought it might be on the other side of the lake, we cycled down over a bridge and then I saw people round the corner to where we were swimming. We went straight back, locked the bikes up and went to the place.

    There were a group of Indians, a few British and a group of guys and girls from Sudan. There was some debate as to where was safe to jump in and if there were rocks. Tom went to be spotted in the water and dove down to see if there were rocks...there was one but it shouldn’t be in the jumping zone. We went to the top of the rock where there was a bunch of Indians and one of the group from he Sudan. Still nobody was sure really where to jump. I always try and jump high and far out in this situation, so I geared myself up and became a flying guinea pig with a running start of course. I hit the water and thankfully there were no rocks, good job Tom! This set the ball rolling for others and I was followed by the Sudanese guy, Tom and an Indian guy fully dressed. After a long day on the bikes, the water was amazing even though we’d read online and on signposts that the waters were infested with crocodiles, there wasn’t even a lizard in sight. We played around here for a bit and jumped a few more times.

    The brits who were at the lake were all the things I hate about travelling. They were at this beautiful lake, in the gorgeous sunshine and all they were doing was getting high...periodically checking if we wanted any. Of course we said no, but when offered chocolate biscuits we took the chance! After chilling here for a bit we went over to the Hippie Island where we’d seen a sunset spot on the maps. Eventually we got there down the bumpy roads and then had yet another boulder hill to climb. It wasn’t too difficult this time and we managed to get an amazing spot right on the edge. Both Tom and I FaceTimed home to catch up as this was the best signal we’d had in a couple of days. We enjoyed the sunset and cycled back to our place on the bikes and promptly went for dinner back to the same place where we both got our own thali as it was amazing and we were starving. As I wasn’t feeling too well, we went back to the hostel and I just rested up as Tom wrote some diary and read his book. It had been a long day out on the bikes and in the sun, but we’d seen loads of Hampi, time for a good sleep.    Läs mer

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  • ResenärTravel 2020 - TBC
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    Dag 35

    Hampi Temple Exploring

    9 februari 2020, Indien ⋅ ☀️ 28 °C

    We woke up after having a pretty good sleep in our double dorm bed, got a breakfast masala dosa at the restaurant we went to last night and then made our way over to Hippie island, where we would get the ferry to cross the river. However, as we were walking a peculiar man approached us, showing us a scatty piece of paper reading “Ear Doctor”, with some references from his previous happy customers and then started to shove a metal instrument into Tom’s ear and started to pull out wax and show me how dirty his ear was....as Tom had blocked ears anyway from the beaches, he thought he’d ask him to do the other ear whilst he was there. We knew the inevitable demand for money was coming, but as soon as he tried it on we walked off...it was his decision to go into Tom’s war in the first place. We began to walk towards the ferry point and noticed 2 guys walking a different way... we had heard of a way you can just walk across the river without paying so thought that’s what they were doing...indeed it was. They showed us how to cross, walking through waist level water to get to the other side we came out triumphant having saved ourselves 20 rupees each.

    As soon as we got to the other side we were hounded by TukTuk drivers trying to sell us a tour of the temples to which we politely said no to as we were going to get a moped and drive round ourselves...(we were originally going to rent a moped from our hostel and drive round to the other side but we were informed that it’s was forbidden to take a moped from this side of the river over to the other side and we would have to get a moped there). We looked around the street for a little while trying to find somewhere to rent a moped from (with a hundred TukTuk drivers pestering us at each second) and we soon realised there was nowhere to rent mopeds from. We decided to have a few minutes to collect our thoughts and decided what we were going to do, but one TukTuk driver just wouldn’t leave us alone and was insisting on showing us this map of the temples for the 50th time...I was getting really impatient so just said to him “will you just please stop talking!!”...he left with his tail between his legs and we decided to just get a TukTuk tour to show us round the free temples. Eventually, after a lot of negotiation and fake walkaways (our bartering technique) we came to an agreement with a driver to take us round all the free temples for 400 rupees.

    We were told the Tuktuk tour would take us around 3 hours, and we’d visit all the free sites in Hampi including hidden tunnels, underground temples, ancient bazaars, ruins, step wells, queens baths, the list went on and on. In the Krishna temple we were both walking around taking in the really well preserved temple when a middle age lady approached us with her daughter lingering behind. The (we assumed) mother started to ask us lots of questions about us; how old are you? What do you do for work? Which country we were from? Do we have wives at home? What qualifications we have? Etc. We soon realised that she was trying to set us up with her daughter, we had heard about this- Indian parents trying to set their children up with Western boys but we just said for them to enjoy their day and carried on.

    After about 3 hours of seeing the temples and ruins of the ancient city of Hampi our TukTuk driver told us that we were finished..and I think Tom and I were secretly happy as we were a little templed out. On the drive back the TukTuk driver stopped outside a temple that were having some form of party. It was a colourful, vibrant and noisy affair with free food! We were given a large metal place and presented with a portion of rice and various curries, we sat on a wall adjacent to the temple and ate this tasty food before going up for seconds! Satisfied with the tour and the free lunch our guy managed to get us, was paid him with an extra 100 on top. However, he still requested more and also requested any foreign currency we had as he was collecting... a little cheeky, but nice try!

    We then walked to the Hampi Bazaar where I got into negotiations with a woman about buying some vests.m as it was so hot for even T-shirt’s. She practically emptied her entire collection onto her shop floor and I found various different polite ways to tell her each vest she was showing me was awful...I eventually found 2 which would do and managed to get them both for 400, a bargain that I was pretty happy with after she firstly asked me for 1,200! We aimed to walk to the top of a boulder mountain for a cool viewpoint. On the way Tom grabbed a cucumber - the woman initially wanted 20rupees but he got the smallest one for 10. Thinking it would be a nice non spicy meal, the woman then decided she’d sprinkle it with salt and masala powder! We walked on a bit following the river and we sat at a temple for a while to get out of the heat. Soon after an Indian guy came up to us and started talking about wresting and asked for our water (definitely not) and then he asked how we get so white. We both responded saying that we were white people, but he didn’t get it and then asked if we used some sort of special cream...all a bit weird.

    We walked through Achyutaraya Temple which was really impressive and dead quiet, so we stayed here a while before climbing the boulder mountain - Matanga Hill. The boulders were massive when you got up close to them and the views were amazing on the climb up. As usual, I entered mountain goat mode and started clambering all over the rocks, jumping from one to another. Tom however has a much stronger sense of self preservation so took a more sensible route up to the top.

    After this long day of being in the Tuktuk and doing plenty of waking, we decided to call it a day and head back before sunset, crossing the river on foot to avoid the charge and we walked back to the hostel as the sun went down. There were a few more people at the hostel tonight so we grabbed as many people as we could and went back to our little place for a feast and to get to know people.    Läs mer

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