Jodhpur

Don't tell me you guys haven't heard of this shop, it's world famous for crying out loud

So back on the road we were. After attempting to book a coach ourselves and failing at the final hurdle as apparently our international cards are only good for around ~60% of card machines in India, we managed to get our ticket booked at a travel agents of a guy who we’d befriended a couple of days before, who also gave us some great recommendations on where to go and how long for. Our coach was due to leave around 7.30am, but to be entirely sure we were there with good time (Not knowing where the coach stops were and praying the rickshaw drivers knew their stuff) we decided to leave our guest house at 6am.

As we hadn’t checked out at this point and were also locked into the place (Thankfully no fire broke out..!) we had a tired conversation with the owner of the guest house, paid up and were on our way. Within a minute or two we were loaded into a rickshaw which seemed to have two people in the driver’s seat, and on our way at a remarkable pace. Within no time we arrived at a stretch of travel shops, one of which did bear the name of the company on our booking slip, so we were confident we were in the correct place. After handing over the agreed 100rs to the driver, who then looked at me and said ‘100 each’, prompting a laugh from me and a smirk from him as if to say he was only joking, honest. Any attempt, of course…

Not anticipating how fast we would actually get to this point, we ended up hanging around for about an hour, fortunately with a chai in hand. The coach eventually arrived, and we boarded. This was our first experience of a seater + sleeper bus, so unsure of what to expect other than two levels of seating/sleeping, we climbed aboard. The layout was quite clever, with a level just above the seats of beds, which allowed for minimum headroom but a bit more capacity. The bed sections even had little doors and curtains around them for maximum privacy on public road transport. But I digress – we had no such luxury, we had seats. Seats 20 and 21 to be exact. Which appeared to be the seat numbers for 3 other people also. Typical India. We grabbed the next seats along and got as comfortable as possible for our 7.5 hour journey.

The most accurate word to use to describe the journey would be hell. Perhaps with an ‘utter’ thrown in also. I believe the coaches suspension had been made of what used to be parts of the road surface, as it certainly wasn’t any form of spring or dampening in the slightest, and coupled with the abundance of holes, rubble, cliffs and roadwork’s on the road allowed for us to recoup none of the sleep we had lost from a very early morning. The amount of times my head bounced around and rebounded off the incredibly low ceiling/window/Diana became too numerous to keep track of, and I was counting down each excruciating hour hoping for the journey to come to an end as soon as possible.

Thankfully, we eventually arrived. Upon leaving the coach we were accosted by about 20 rickshaw drivers, all trying to attract our attention. We had no choice but to ask one of them to take us to our destination, but as per usual when first arriving to a town in India we had no idea if they’d have meters or we’d be playing a game of guess-a-fair-price. It seemed to be the latter. We haggled to a price we figured could be reasonably fairish, and hopped in the rickshaw. The noticed immediately a difference, these rickshaws seemed incredibly long and thin compared to all the others. Quirky.

Unfortunately the driver had no idea where we wanted to go, although of course, he said he did. After some stops and passing around my phone, we ended up going straight into the heart of the market. Here it became apparent the reason for the long, thin rickshaws, instead of the standard shaped ones – the market was just wide enough for two bikes and maybe a pedestrian to pass each other. This meant massive traffic, incredibly hectic navigation, and as our driver had no idea where we were going, somewhat annoyed people behind us.

Shockingly the coach didn't take us down this far

Eventually after asking more people, and me pointing out a sign for our hostel to him, we found the place tucked down a side street in the market. No complaints about location, it was certainly in the middle of the action. The hostel was named the ‘Bob Marley Hostel’, however using my deductive reasoning I came to the conclusion this was a fairly new name, as there were signs in a very similar wording and typeface everywhere saying Jagdamba Hostel/Restaurant was in this location, also backed up by the Wi-Fi name being JAGDAMBA. This may have accounted for why the driver had no idea where it was.

My only guess is that George Bush had a stab at decorating this place (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eKgPY1adc0A)

Once inside we were shown to our room, which was basically in reception. The room was fine though, and although it had its own bathroom, it appeared to have a 7 foot partitioning wall that didn’t quite reach the ceiling by another foot or so, which seemed to be a neighbouring bathroom. The room contained many cupboards and doors, doors to the window which seemed to overlook the car park, double doors to the bathroom, and doors to absolutely nowhere. It was painted blue, probably something to do with Jodhpur being mostly blue, but also had a blue lightbulb fitted which was pretty ineffective at anything other than creating puzzled expressions on our faces. Pretty good all in all, and we were only planning to be here one night as we were told there wasn’t much to do for longer than a day.

A few moments later the guy knocked on the door again, asking if we had paid our rickshaw driver. We replied yes, but apparently he was still hanging around outside. Diana went out to speak to him and he seemed not to be after anything, although after a conversation Diana had with someone she believes he was expecting to be paid by the hostel also for bringing us to the hostel, even though we booked it ourselves and practically showed him where it was.

So, introductions done and we’d moved in, we took this opportunity to explore. As Diana mentioned in the last post, I was ill at this time, with some form of sinusitis. Whilst I had little pain, and the constant nasal block was annoying, I had a problem far more prominent. Whilst in India, you really need all (well, most) of your senses about you. I was lucky enough that my sense of smell had diminished, and reliably informed by Diana that this was indeed a fortunate occurrence, however, one of my ears seemed permanently blocked. In a country where there is noise all around you, traffic alerts you to its presence not by slowing down, but by sounding a horn, and people are constantly shouting at you, there is little more disorienting than not having a correct sense of hearing. This, combined with the very narrow streets of Jodhpur, left me feeling incredibly vulnerable a lot of the time and a lot more guarded than I’d otherwise have been. But we only had a day, and it was now lunch time so we moved onwards to a rooftop restaurant down the road, where we got our first glimpse of the hilly area, multitude of buildings and the nearby hill fort.

Foreboding clouds also... 

After lunch, we proceeded along the market area. Diana had a requirement for sandals, after finding some good sandals previously in Pondicherry and the straps holding them now starting to fail after a month of trekking around in them every day. For anyone who somehow doesn’t know Diana’s footwear requirements, they’re fairly specific. This caused a situation of entering perhaps 15 shops, and holding the following conversation, whilst I sat quietly in the corner and played a game on my phone, knowing we would be here a while:

Diana: I’m looking for sandals in green colour.

Shopkeeper: Ah yes yes, no problem, sit down.

*Sitting occurs. Shopkeeper produces first of many boxes*

Diana: No no, not pink colour, green colour.

*I point at any part of her clothing to indicate the colour we meant*

Shopkeeper: Oh oh GREEN colour! No problem!

*Another box arrives*

Diana: Without the toe bit, with a strap.

Shopkeeper – now looking a little panicked: No problem!

*More boxes dragged down from shelves, shopkeeper frantically looking through them. Produces another for Diana’s perusal*

Diana: No this is more blue, light green only.

Shopkeeper: Okay okay.

*More boxes arrive, shop starts to look like an episode of Deal or No Deal*

Diana: No only green, this is red and yellow also.

*Another*

Diana: No heel, flat only, doing lots of walking!

*Shopkeeper gets desperate*

Diana: Well no, these are gold.

Shopkeeper: Yes but these are very very good price, normally 500 rs, I can sell to you especially for 200.

Diana: But these are gold, with a toe bit and a heel.

Shopkeeper: But very very good price, best in all Jodhpur, you won’t find this better price!

Diana: But I don’t want this... *Gets up to leave, I follow suit*

Shopkeeper: Okay wait one more one more.

Diana: Okay…

*Shopkeeper frantically produces anything he can, which is usually a chunky rubber croc-like sandal in turquoise*

Diana: No, more lady-like..! Sorry.

And we finally leave. This almost exact scenario happened in almost every establishment. In the end out of pure desperation, she settled on a pair with a bit between the toe, knowing that she hates the feeling and it is uncomfortable and will probably cause blisters. But the shade of green was right, so that’s the important bit anyway.

Whilst looking around we spotted signs mentioning a ‘Bishnoi Village Safari’. This seemed fairly interesting, so we made a note of it for later to look into how this operates, hoping to cram in as much as possible before we leave Jodhpur. On further discussions that evening, we decided rather than to rush it all we would ask to stay another night, as we weren’t in a massive rush and there was at least a little more to do than we first envisaged. We headed back to the hostel, and settled for bed, when we got a knock on the door and a load of people went into the bathroom, muttering the hot water was broken in the room and they were going to try and fix it. After 2 men, 1 lady and a child wandered through our room, they decided it couldn’t be fixed and if we wanted hot water we could ask them and they’d find us a free bathroom we could use. We didn’t even realise when we booked it we’d have the potential to get the luxury of hot water so I took note of this for later.

The following morning we confirm another night, and Diana casually asked about booking the village tour. Unfortunately we were then informed that there was other people who went that morning, had we said earlier we could have split the cost with them. With that in mind, we got the cost from them and figured we’d ask anywhere we could to see where the cheapest we could get it would be. Our main focus for the day was the famous fort, which we decided was in walking distance and we’d be silly not to do so.

After some wandering up narrow residential streets, up hills and being greeted by locals, I spotted a tiny sign saying ‘To Fort’. Somewhat confused by the lack of tourists in what was apparently the biggest attraction of Jodhpur, we continued along the path, up long hills and through imposing gates. After a while, it seemed we’d approached the back way, as suddenly we were on a path with hundreds of tourists, mostly from other parts of India, and we hunted down the ticket office as we were already 3 ‘audio guide’ stops through.

After finding the office and coughing up more than we pay on two nights’ accommodation, and leaving my credit card behind the desk as a deposit for the audio guide headsets which I was less than keen to do, we proceeded through. We popped our head into the cafe which cost a small fortune (they offered a snack they referred to as 'Samosa Bread', which intrigued me. I wanted to try it until I actually saw what it was, see below...). The fort was actually kept in very good condition considering its age and the sheer amount of tourists pushing through, and very interesting artefacts such as Elephant Howdahs (seats for Maharajah’s placed on elephants), colourful decorative rooms where the Maharajah would have been entertained, and some history on the surrounding area. The fort also provided an amazing view of the surrounding areas.

The legendary Samosa Bread. I have no idea if it tasted as good as it looks

All a bit blue really. No smurfs in sight

Seems this one somehow managed to sneak through proof reading, be more consistent!

Once we’d dominated this particular fortress, we decided to wander some of the lesser known streets on the way back to town, and found a little restaurant hidden on a rooftop up a very windy path out of the way of anywhere. Here we asked about the village tour also, as every guest house seemed to have a contact for it, but it was more expensive unless they found others to do it also. We took their number to ask later.

Heading into town, we were now also thinking about our onward journey. Our next stop is a town called Bundi, one we hadn’t planned on visiting, or even heard of until we spoke to the guy who gave us recommendations in Udaipur. After telling him what we were looking for in India, he immediately said we should check this place out, so we started looking up coaches, which I wasn’t looking forward to owing to the past experience. Once again, we did our research, tried to book the ticket and were kicked out at the final stage. We hunted down a travel agent and managed to find one near the centre of the town, by the clock tower.

Entering the room, a fairly small room with three people already inside who I assumed worked there as they were behind the counter, I asked about getting a coach to Bundi, knowing full well what the options were. The lady behind the counter, on her phone, said she could find out no problem, and continued playing a game on her phone. Not sure whether she would look into it soon for me or if she actually even heard, and not wanting to disturb her, we waited for a few seconds to see if she was just wrapping up. She carried on playing, but the guy next to her picked up his phone and made a call, which fortunately was related to our enquiry. Owing to the fact our journey would be overnight and we knew how uncomfortable seats were, we were planning to opt for sleepers this time, hoping it would be a little more pleasant. The guy quoted us for the tickets, almost double what I was expecting, and we left to hunt down another place, leaving the staff to play their games in peace. We found another travel agent, who managed to book the seats we actually wanted for only a small commission and was very helpful, and asked him about the village tour. He started recommending we didn’t do it and recommended something else miles away for far more money, so we thanked him and left before we were roped into something else.

Sorry, are we disturbing you?

Eventually we decided we’d book the village tour through our hostel, so returned and confirmed the price with them. All arranged, we headed to the rooftop where the hostel had its own restaurant, with a somewhat limited menu. The food was fine however and whilst we were up there, a German guy asked us if we could recommend a website for booking coaches. Letting him know our experiences, we end up chatting with him for a while and helping him work out the best route to Jaisalmer. Turns out, people had told him there were no trains so a coach was the only option, but a quick search revealed loads of trains available, I can only imagine someone getting a cut from a coach company was involved.

After a while two people he was currently travelling with turned up and somehow we end up converting the restaurant into a personal cinema, watching Slumdog Millionaire on one of their laptops plugged into the sound system, whilst the restaurant staff were sat around a table drinking whiskey. They seemed quite excited about watching it, until they realised the film was in English and hard for them to understand. There were no subtitles in either language, so we did our best to explain the English parts they didn’t get and they translated the Hindi parts.

We awake early the next morning to meet up with our driver who would take us around the villages and various other stops around Jodhpur. First stop was a place they made pottery. Unlike other pottery places we’ve seen where they use a motor or pedals to turn the wheel, this place had a stone in a rut on the ground which they turned using a stick, building up momentum, with the stone eventually just continuing to spin by itself, which seems a far more efficient manner of handling it to me. Within a few minutes he’d produced a very neat and tidy pot and a money box, and asked if we’d like a go, to which we didn’t take up the offer as I’d had a go before and I wasn’t particularly good at it. We had a look among all the items they had made, an obvious attempt to sell us items although no pressure on us at all or even a mention of money, which was nice. He showed us a ‘magic pot’, where he poured water into the bottom of it, turned it over and no water came out. He then showed us one that had been smashed open so the magic didn’t last long, and apparently they had a practical purpose to burn oils, so that mystery was solved fairly quickly.

Next stop was the Bishnoi village. The Bishnoi way of life involves following 29 specific rules and has focuses on protecting trees and the environment. The lifestyle is very simplistic and requires them to prepare their own food, shelter animals who require it and have a minimal impact on their surroundings. We had a look around their house and living conditions, were given tea, we asked some questions on their lives and were shown a ritual they perform where they drink opium in a certain way. He made a ritualistic turban which was shortly placed upon my head, and we watched the guy getting off his face. A couple of photos taken and we left before his utter inebriation kicked in. It wasn’t even lunch time yet.

Bishnoi kitchen with all modern amenities

Wacky head gear - a child looks on in awe

Also unisex - wonderful!

More grace and finesse than shooting up in an alley, same great buzz

Onwards, to a place that weaved rugs. En route our driver said we may see wild animals, such as peacocks and gazelle and deer. He seemed to promise we’d see them a few times, and each time state we might not as they’re wild animals. We tried to explain we understood the random nature of animals, and just looked out the sides of the jeep (I say sides as the jeep was completely open, about as basic as you could expect a vehicle to be. Certainly no doors). After a few moments of seeing absolutely nothing, we came to the conclusion this would not be a successful animal safari for us, however the driver had other ideas and pointed off into the distance. ‘Look, gazelle!’ he exclaimed. Diana and I both peered into the distance, unable to make out anything at all, and asked if he was sure as we couldn’t see them. Again it pointed to the same place. At this point I figured he’d had a few swigs of the opiates provided earlier, as there was nothing to be seen, but humoured him and took out my camera to try and zoom in and see it. Lining up the photo on 26x zoom to where he said, and showing him the screen with him excitedly saying ‘Yes there’, I took the picture and zoomed in further. Sure enough, there, highly camouflaged and what looked like a half marathons distance away were two gazelles. This stunt occurred three more times, with gazelle and peacocks perfectly camouflaged in the far distance, and the driver spotting them as if they were casually sat on the bonnet posing for us. I’m not entirely sure what other super powers he had, but his eyes were certainly incredibly on point.

The picture doesn't do justice to just how far away these were

Boo! Peacock! Honestly

We arrive at the weaving place and are greeted by three tiny puppies who seemed very excitable and friendly, as such, we didn’t actually get through the gate for a few minutes. Once we finally made it in, we went into a room with a man working on a type of loom, about 3 by 1 metres. The weaving was a very manual process, and involved a layering process where each alternating string was raised/lowered after each weave, locking the thread into place. Very interesting to watch, and apparently depending on the size of the piece, can take up to a month to complete. After showing us a wide range of rugs they’d made, again with a subtle hint of ‘buy something’ to it, we left, making sure to say goodbye to the puppies again.

Diana, leader of the pack

Some serious patience required. And string

Our final stop was a place that dealt with fabrics, but seemed to be a local community initiative, where local people would create pieces or alter pieces and they’d be bought by the company and inspected, tidied up where required and sold on. We first went to a room to see people working on improving the pieces, tidying up loose ends and re-stitching where required, and then taken to a room with seats to be shown all the pieces they had. Some of these items were sold in the local markets, others exported to large retailers all around the world and were clearly very carefully inspected for a more western market.

The tour was finished, and our driver took us back to the clock tower in the centre of the market, as it would now be impossible to drive a jeep down the narrow local streets. Not that I think that would have stopped him if we’d insisted, but we were quite happy to walk it and we wanted lunch at this point anyway. We found another hotel with a rooftop restaurant at the other end of the town, for what we hoped would be a fairly uneventful lunch. Unfortunately, almost as soon as we finished eating, the heavens opened and a torrential downpour ensued. Taking shelter in the reception until it passed, we decided we’d retire to our hostel for the rest of the day until we needed to get the coach.

We just about managed to make it back before the next rainstorm hit. We’d now checked out of our room so sat in reception for a while, working out a plan of action. At this point, one of the employees at the hostel thrust a letter into my hands, asking me to explain what it meant as it was English. The letter was on a nice paper (for my ex colleagues, around 150gsm, US Letter size, watermarked, off white but not quite conqueror) and looked very official. Within a few seconds I realised I was reading a cease and desist letter from California, on behalf of the Marley family, informing them they must stop using the name Bob Marley in any of their trading going forwards. I passed this information to the hostel owner without the legalese jargon and watched the colour drain from his face. As per my original suspicions, the name had only been changed 3 months prior. They had just finished getting signs made, business cards, new menus, decorations, and the part that actually landed them in trouble, online listings. Attached to the C+D letter was a print out of a page from TripAdvisor, where they’d evidently done a search on ‘Bob Marley’ and found this establishment.

After giving incredibly poor legal advice, as we are in no way shape or form lawyers, we believe the hostel is changing its name simply to ‘Bob Hostel’. The whole reason for the change in the first place was due to Jagdamba being hard for tourists to remember, to the point one tourist apparently got completely lost, couldn’t find the place after checking in and leaving his bags there, and having to crash at another guest house for a night to try and find it in the morning. The owner kept stating there was a similar named place in Pushkar was trading without problems, but we weren’t quite sure what he wanted us to do about this.

We retired to the rooftop, still raining heavily but with comfier seating, and waited for the hours to pass until we needed to leave to get our coach. I managed to wrangle a hot shower even though we were no longer checked in, and eventually the time came to leave. We found the closest rickshaw, who wanted a small fortune to take us even though we believed the stop wasn’t too far away, but he insisted otherwise. Not wanting to be ripped off, we found another rickshaw driver a little further down, except he spoke little English and had no idea what we wanted. He then took our coach ticket into a shop to ask someone else, at which point we had no way of telling anyone else where we wanted to go and were a little stuck but to wait and see what he said. As we weren’t sure exactly how long the journey would take, we wanted to get a move on as quickly as possible, but this guy was starting a small argument amongst 4 men as to where we wanted to go. Eventually he decided he’d known all along and took us for cheaper than the first, but at this point we were feeling the rupees we’d saved in the form of stress, so perhaps we should have just gone for the first guy after all. Either way, we made it to the coach stop and everything checked out okay, so after a short wait, we boarded our night coach to Bundi with our sleeping bags and pillows at the ready, looking forward to seeing what joys a sleeper coach would bring.

Bye bye you little posers

Jaipur- Part 1

So we landed at Jaipur airport in the evening, and took a taxi to the hotel. As we had paid yet again a fairly small amount for the hotel, we didn't have high hopes for it. However, we were very pleasantly surprised when the taxi pulled up outside a very quirky looking building, adorned with trinkets and souvenirs and the air around the building heavy with incense. The manager of the hotel showed us to our room which was so blue it looked like it had been decorated by smurfs, and informed us we just needed to call to reception for hot water (so nice being back in the modern world) and also to call for room service (luxury!!) otherwise there was a rooftop restaurant. On exploring the room, we also had a working TV, an actual duvet and a mattress and pillows that Lenny Henry would be proud of. After we had finished celebrating, we went to investigate the rooftop restaurant. The menu offered such delicacies as tomato cup a soup and maggi noodles (indian equivalent of super noodles), although with many traditional Indian dishes also. Okay, 5 star restaurant it was not but it was cheap so all is forgiven. And at least the chef was enthusiastic.

Our interesting hotel

First thing on the list of things to do was to get some laundry done, by an actual launderette as a nice treat for ourselves. We took the items to the laundry place down the road, which charged per item, and the man in the shop proceeded to count the items to tell us the price. “..17, 18, 19, 21, 22…” We stopped him and told him that he missed out 20 and needed to recount. So he started again. “..17, 18, 19, 21, 22…” After this happened three times, we counted with him and eventually got him to accept there was such thing as the number 20. Not sure whether this was an intentional error or not, but he did it very convincingly, and managed to do it again when collecting the items again.

The next day we went out to see what Jaipur had to offer. We looked at a map, found an area that looked fairly promising called MI road, and jumped in a rickshaw to head there. We explored the area and found a market place. I had decided I was in dire need of some indian style tops, so began hunting for them. However, shopping in India is not like shopping in England. In England, you can walk into a shop, barely being acknowledged by the sales assistants working there, and browse through all items which are on display at your leisure. If you don’t see anything you like it is no big deal. In India, there is always someone waiting to pounce on anyone that turns their head in the direction of the shop, and will drag you in to the shop where every item is neatly folded and stacked so there is no chance of being able to just browse. They will then start tearing out items of clothing from the neat stacks, if you like them or not, spreading them out over all surfaces and making a huge mess. I think the idea is that they hope you will feel so bad for causing such chaos, and knowing it will take them hours to refold all the items, and buy something as a gesture of appreciation.

As most people are aware, I have very specific requirements for my clothes. Not only the colour, but the exact shade, patterns and shape have to inspire me and sometimes even if these criteria are filled, if I don’t have an instant ‘spark’ then I am not interested, nor can I be persuaded. This is also very difficult to explain to a local market stall seller who is pulling everything off the shelves for me, and painful for everyone at the end when there is nothing they have that I want to buy. So we start the long process of trawling through every market stall, leaving a trail of disappointment behind us. Eventually, I see a top that I actually quite like…right shade, right pattern, great. Only thing to do next is to try it on. Unfortunately, the size isn’t great, I managed to squeeze into it but it was definitely too small for me. The market seller had a different opinion;

“Great size, perfect size!”

Despite my protests he insisted that I was wrong and nothing would persuade him otherwise. I started to try and explain my reasons but he was not having it, and we had to run out of the shop with the shopkeeper shouting down the road at me “Perfect size!!” A few days later I also realized I needed another bra, in which a similar situation occurred, and the man in the shop was insistent that any and all of the bras in his selection would fit me. Its strange how more Indian men know my size than I do myself.

Flower market in Jaipur

Anyway, so we carried on walking through the marketplace, getting hassled from every market stall we walk past, until somebody quietly asked “Excuse me, but can you tell me why tourists don’t want to speak to Indian people?” I turned around, feeling like it would be rude not to reply and thinking how nice it was not to be hassled into buying things. So we stopped to have a chat with this guy who said he was an accounting graduate who was spending a bit of time with his cousin working in one of the stalls. He assured us he did not want to sell us anything, he just wanted to sit down and have chai with us and have a chat. So we agreed, and conveniently the only place to sit was in his cousin’s stall. He brought us some chai and we talked for about half an hour, all the while thinking how nice it was not to feel like we had to buy something. Then the inevitable happened, and a selection of pashminas started getting laid out. And they did have a green one in the right shade and the right pattern, and it was soft. So their trick worked, and I bought the pashmina (although not without haggling them to under ¼ of the original price!). The guy who was basically our best friend at that point also told us as a gift he would arrange a rickshaw guide to take us around the city the day after, for only 400 rupees. I still have no idea if this was a good price or not, but we agreed to it anyway.  There was one final attempt of dressing me in a sari just because they wanted a picture of me in a sari, which was conveniently very expensive, but when this didn’t work we said our goodbyes and continued walking.

Trying to sell us the beautiful sari and hat combo

Not even 5 minutes later we were stopped by 2 guys in a rickshaw who asked us “Why do tourists not want to speak to Indian people?” Here we go again…. Although we are too polite and English to ignore it, so we get dragged in again. This time, the guy just wanted us to sit in his rickshaw and he bought us chai and we managed to get away with not buying anything off of him. He did have the loudest laugh and the most violent hi fives though, which were both used every 10 seconds, so we left with sore hands and ears. Having escaped the second guy, we walked further down the street and while buying ice cream, was approached a third time. This guy was older and didn’t initially seem like he had anything to sell, but told us he was a puppeteer and wanted to show us pictures of his shows, which were conveniently in his shop. We were then subjected to an albums worth of photos, most of which were him in Goa, and then he wanted to show us how his puppets worked and play us some music. We made a few attempts to leave but he didn’t stop talking, and again being English and far too polite, we did not feel we could go. We insisted we did not want to buy any puppets, and he accepted this, but wanted us to have miniature elephant souvenirs in exchange for something we had on us, or for us to buy him a beer. We told him we didn’t want to do this, and he started getting angry, so we made our quick exit and got into the first rickshaw we could find in case he started chasing us. We got back to the hotel feeling pretty bewildered, and unsure how we were going to dodge the people trying to sell us things when they all seemed so friendly and we are so bad at being rude.

Puppet skills

The next day, as arranged, we had a rickshaw waiting outside our hotel for us to take us to the sights around Jaipur. So we set off in his rickshaw which had a pretty interesting selection of music which the driver played at full volume. It started off with some hindi music, then moved onto techno, and then some power ballads, including cher and the backstreet boys. It felt like being in Luke’s car when he drives around Ashtead with the windows down playing magic fm radio. First off, Amber Fort. This is one of the most famous forts in Rajasthan, and although we are not fanatics of old buildings and architecture, it was very pretty with some nice views and had a maze of corridors to wander around inside.

 After this, we were taken to the water palace. Well, I say taken there, we were taken to a roadside to take pictures of it, and it was classed as an attraction. He also took us to an ‘elephant village’ which basically was an area of dusty land where they were keeping a few elephants for tourists to have elephant rides and other elephant based activities for a fee. I wasn't too keen on the setup, so we left pretty quickly. Finally we were taken to a temple, known as the monkey temple. Unfortunately for some unknown reason the rickshaw driver we had hired for the day had to leave, so we were dropped off there and assured we could get a cheap rickshaw back. The monkey temple was at the top of a hill and although we saw a few monkeys on our walk up to the temple, there were not many and there was no monkeys in the temple itself. The temple was nothing that amazing but it did have a great view of the city, so we left our shoes at the entrance of the temple and sat on a bench and looked at the view for a while. Some twenty calm minutes passed, when suddenly a little Indian girl ran up to us and exclaimed “shoe monkey up!” we followed her to the temple entrance and realized one of my sandals had been stolen by one of the monkeys. I stood there helplessly while Jonno and a small boy went to rescue it, and five minutes later came back successful. Crisis averted. We started wandering back down the hill and spotted quite a few monkeys, and were so entertained by them we ended up sitting on a wall watching them. Some of them came and sat pretty much next to us, they didn't seem bothered by us. We watched them running up and down trees, grooming each other, and stealing washing from the washing lines. When two dogs started growling at each other, one of the monkeys got excited by the prospect of a fight and ran up to a tree, shaking the branches excitedly. Then another tried to do the same but didn't have the same strength so barely got the branches to move, so skulked away sheepishly. Anyway, we watched the monkeys for a few hours and then noticed a car driving up and the monkeys gathering around it. A woman got out of the car with a mass of bananas, and started distributing them around. This made the monkeys very excited, and a few fights broke out. The car left, but the monkeys were now hyped up on bananas and were looking for trouble. One of them snuck up behind me, looking up at me, which I thought was sweet until it reached up and grabbed one of my earrings from my ear, luckily one that came out easily, and ran off with it. Another one tried to grab my bag from me, and the only reaction I could think of was to tell it off like a naughty child. In response to this, it hissed at me so we took it as our cue to leave. Somewhere around the temple there is now a monkey wearing one earring feeling very pleased with itself.

As we had been abandoned by our rickshaw driver we went in search of a rickshaw to take us back to the hotel. We managed to find one who agreed to take us there, only to take us to the marketplace and refused to take us any further unless we paid him three times the price. We refused, and got out of the rickshaw without paying him anything, which he didn't seem too bothered about, in search for another rickshaw.

The next day was the day before the Holi festival, and we had heard that there may be an event being put on for tourists in preparation. Somebody had told us it was being held at the polo grounds, so when a rickshaw driver approached us and we asked if anything was happening at the polo grounds, he said “yes, yes” and told us he could take us there. After a short ride in the rickshaw, he pulled up next to some big gates and gestured for us to get out. It looked pretty empty, so we asked what event was happening here. He replied “all the tourist stuff” and then sped away. We had a brief look around, but the place was deserted. Obviously the ‘tourist stuff’ wasn't here. We started walking back towards the town, which was a lot further than we thought. After about 45 minutes of walking, we managed to hail a rickshaw and asked him if there was any events happening that day. He took us to another venue, which had a poster for an event taking place the day after, on actual Holi, and looked at us expectantly. So there seemed to be no event happening. We headed towards the old town to explore there, where they were building a bonfire and had music playing, but not much action still. We walked further and came across a temple, where there was a crowd of people chanting, singing and playing the drums, which we decided to join. The group of people leading the celebrations were old men, but they were prancing about like they were thirty years younger, some of whom were already covered in coloured powder. On our walk back towards the town, the bonfire had been lit and people were dancing around it. It seemed like the celebrations had begun, and we were looking forward to the next day of more of the same.

Getting a Holi bonfire ready

View of Jaipur

Gokarna

Honestly, this one is particularly long. I'm sorry. The short version is, Diana has been ill and is getting better now, which shortened our stay in Gokarna. We're now at Palolem and plan to stay here for her birthday, and the day after we head to Chennai.

If you're patient enough, read on :)

Even on days where not a lot is planned, it feels like a lot is going on. I'll start by saying that unfortunately Diana has been ill the last few days with what is believed to be sinusitis, so the last few days have not been as enjoyable as they could have been, and Diana is now a walking drug cabinet. More about that further down.

We left Agonda to Canacona train station on the 21st of January. I had heavily researched the train journey due to the last one to goa being a bit of a shambles, and came to the following conclusions:

• There are two trains a day to Gokarna. One of these is at 3 am. We had one shot (one opportunity).
• The train consisted of purely 2S class carriages (second class seated).
• There were over 60 seats available on the train we were getting.
• I couldn't reserve one, because apparently banking with a UK bank isn't particularly useful with 80% of Indian online checkouts, instant rejection as the bank isn't from India. Ta.
• The train is, on average, 44 minutes late. To the point the website actually listed the time we should bother getting to the station.

Owing to past experience, we turned up 30 minutes early to when the train should arrive. An older Swedish couple were at the counter attempting to buy tickets but unable to understand the person's Indian accent. We let her know he was telling her she couldn't have a concession on this train as there was no senior carriage.

A few laughs as she handed over the amount for a full price ticket, 25 rupees each. That's circa 25p, seems more like a quota management system so the train doesn't get overly packed more than an attempt at profit, and makes you wonder why a concession exists in the first place. We buy our tickets and ask how long until the train, roughly an hour and a half (fine, I was expecting that and atleast we can relax) and we end up finding ourselves chatting to the Swedish couple for a while. Without going into too much detail, he barely said a thing as his English wasn't quite as good and everything he did say, his missus corrected him anyway. To sum it up, they had been to India 8 times and had never been out of Europe before, she took photos of strangers tattoos and then showed them to us (other strangers), and they had a hilarious story about a lawn mower that reduced them both almost to tears, yet wouldn't explain what the joke was.

Around now, a train arrives, with the route we're taking on the side. Unfortunately in my research, I forgot to note which direction the train was headed, and as it was around the time the train was due to arrive I grabbed my bags. This prompted almost the entire station to frantically grab their bags. Whilst running for the train, I asked someone where it was headed as it certainly hadn't been an hour and a half. North. Whoops. Panic not everyone, this is just the train expected to arrive 2 and a half hours ago. Everyone puts their bags back down, glares at me (probably, I wasn't looking) and attempts to restore their blood pressure to normal.

We are now informed the train would be in around half 2. Three hours after we got on the platform. And the only option we had. We wait. I made friends with the most timid dog in the world, who I've nicknamed Pepper.

The train arrives. We're in business. We get in the carriage and look for a seat.

Pepper - India edition

Everywhere seemed full, mostly because of people laying on seats instead of sitting. Quick look around and realising the only way to change carriage is to get off the train again, we manage to sit opposite each other, I take the gap between an Indian guy and woman with her two daughters, Diana sat at the edge of the seat where a man was sleeping.

Fortunately our train wasn't from platform 2...

Everything started okay, we had no idea what was going on but it turned into a strange Indian version of the three stooges. The guy sleeping sat up and another man sat at the end. It became clear the guy who was sleeping was an alcoholic or on something atleast, but definitely not completely coherent. The guy who sat down last randomly passed me his glasses. I looked puzzled as I had no idea what he wanted, the guy next to me took the glasses and proceeded to throw them off the train. Panicked, the man got up, to find he had just placed them on the floor. Hilarity and joking followed.

Then shouting in Hindi, no idea what was being said but the woman and her children swapped seats with some other Indian men. More Hindi, the vacant bloke smacked the guy with the glasses around the head. More shouting and the vacant guy puts his sandals on, clouds of dust flying off him, the woman and her daughter's move further away and we take their seats. Someone grabs the vacant guy by the scarf around his neck and drags him towards the train doors away from everyone. More noise, and the guy wanders off further down the carriage. A few more incidents followed but nothing wrong with some random, unexplained drama.

We're now at Gokarna road. So far our whole day has consisted of getting a train. Immediately a tuktuk driver grabs our attention to take us where we need to go.

Or so we thought. See, we booked a place called 'hotel international gokarna'. Looking this up on a map, this is about 10 minutes walk from 'Om Beach', which we were going to see. Great! To Om Beach fair tuktuk driver, on the double!

A fairly uneventful 10 mins pass, when we stop randomly. The driver looks at us and says 'passport, visa' and buggers off. Further ahead, there's a police checkpoint. Fair enough. I grab my bag with my valuables and passport and join the queue with Diana.

About 20 minutes of hanging around and we find out from a very grumpy British person they want to search all our bags, so Diana grabs our bags from the tuktuk whilst I hold the place in line. Another 10 minutes and I'm called in. They took my backpack and practically disassembled it, going through every tiny pocket, looking in folders and books, I assume a drug search of some description? He then proceeds to pat my large rucksack a little, which could have been 20kgs of Columbian marching powder for all he knew as he never so much as opened the top flap. I could go.

Diana's search was slightly easier. She lugged her bags through the door, placed them down, handed over her passport, and was told she could go. Along with every other female. Where's this gender equality, huh?

We're back on the road. Only this time, instead of just asking to go to Om Beach, I mention the hotel name. The driver slams on the brake and begins a u turn. Perhaps he knows a shortcut... We turn back towards the checkpoint but swing a left. I was concerned the police inquisition had all been in vain. Looks like a shortcut after all.

Just as soon as the tuktuk makes it to full speed, it comes to a stop. Now, my orienteering skills aren't perfect, but I knew we were around 2 miles from a beach here. Looked out the side of the tuktuk (I'd say window but that's quite a grandiose term for a hole) and sure enough, the 'hotel international gokarna'. A bit grander of an entrance than our previous hotel at Mumbai, but it'll do. The bathroom had a layer of dust over everything. Okay.

Even the TV was threatening

One thing was certain though, this was not Om beach. This was not a 10 minute walk away. We'd been duped. Or so we thought, until we realised later that there is a 'hotel international gokarna *beach resort*'. God forbid they could name this one 'beach resort international gokarna' or something.

Anyway, we wanted to try and find some accommodation closer to the beach, we were hungry and it was now dark. 'What a perfect time to explore!' we proclaimed, as we grabbed the absolute minimum and proceeded to find a tuktuk to the beach.

The route to the beach is confusing. It starts on a road towards the main town. You get as far as town, and the road bears right. To the left, narrow alleyways for pedestrians. And somehow tuktuks. Honestly, you could only just stand two abreast in this turning, and our driver whom I believe was Lewikesh Hamilton, two time Formula Rickshaw champion, took it, in the pitch black, like it was on tracks. I've never had so much respect and fear at the same time.

Then it's a sheer climb up unpaved roads, potholes, sharp rocks and blind bends we always took a precise racing line for. Thankfully nothing else was on the road, and our journey was completed in a three wheeled cage at around 230mph.

From here, on foot, we travel down approximately 3000 steps by vague torchlight to the beach. At this stage, Diana looked up and, short of the Sahara, saw the most fantastic display of stars we've ever seen. I've never been certain of constellations, seeing as stars are a myth in England, spread by the green party in an attempt to persuade the British public that we should look after the environment and turn off lights and stop murdering things, but I could make some out so clearly it felt, bizarrely, unnatural.

We continue along the beach, which was silent apart from the breaking waves and strange, unfitting rave music playing if you wandered close to a restaurant, and found a place to eat and ask about rooms. The waiter/owner/man was the most timid person I'd spoke to so far, and sounded like he knew what he was saying was correct, yet I was testing his responses. I don't know why.

We asked for prices of rooms. Now, the hotel we were at we were paying ~£5 for the night, which is pretty cheap. This place had a room for £2 a night, all were occupied so we couldn't see it, but we gave him the money for the following night, expecting very little. We ate there (also cheap, but not the greatest food) and returned to the 4000 steps up from the beach, for a downhill trip back to the hotel where I was certain we broke a new land speed record.

The next day we checked out and left our bags at the hotel to check out town. An amazing place if you want to buy typical hippy attire, including but not limited to bongos, out of tune guitars, hemp clothing and hacky sacks, but not a lot else as non Hindus are not allowed to go into the temples. We decided to go get our bags and head to our new luxury suite.

Let me tell you, firstly, both of us have hugely over packed for this trip. We realise this on day 1. It turns out, we really don't need most of the clothing we've brought, but apart from one near weightless top of Diana's, nothing has been disposed of yet. But there is little more exhausting than being in 33 degree sun, with a bag on your back and front, trying to negotiate down 5000 steps and across sand. Our new accommodation was about half the way along the beach, so not even close. And this time once we arrived there, it somehow had formed a damn moat. The sea wasn't anywhere near it, but must have been earlier that morning I guess? Either way, we had to wade our way to the entrance.

Anyway, we checked in. It was all we needed, but it wasn't much. The bed was a rock. Not metaphorically. The bed was a rock. But we had a mosquito net, power (when it didn't cut out), a fan and a wall thin enough to hear everything in the restaurant. The toilet was a shared Indian style toilet (more hygienic Molly..! No touching anything!) and the bathroom was a cupboard with a bucket of water and a jug. 2 quid, ok.

A bed to cause envy in the entire cast of The Flintstones

I'd love to say from here, all we did was chill on the beach watching the waves, but it was not long after this Diana was attacked. Fortunately she is okay now, but as soon as I heard the scream my heart raced and I had to fight off the attacker, who proceeded to just simply stand there, swaying and staring me down. Diana decided she couldn't stay here, went to gather her stuff and we were chased further down the beach. No serious harm was done, nothing was stolen, and I've attached a photo of the culprit below for photo fit purposes, you should be able to see him there.

Son of a... You'd better pray!

We returned to a restaurant to try and regain calm and order for a few hours, before going to sit on a rock to see the sun set and listen to the worst guitarists in the world playing the one chord they know.

For me, the room was fine and I was out like a light, however, Diana didn't sleep at all due to pain in her sinuses and gums. I woke up to her still in pain and she wanted to go to the doctor, so we locked up the room and across the beach, back up all 6000 steps, hopped into a tuktuk, the driver of which became a personal driver for a little while, and got to the doctors surgery. A couple of other people were here, but also waiting for the doctor. We were reliably informed he'd arrive at 10am (This turned out to be an Indian 10am, so around 10:30am).

The doctors surgery was as neat, tidy, clean and dust-free as an old flipflop. I didn't see the actual room Diana went into, but I'm reliably informed that old gloves and needles were strewn around, although boxes of new needles were around also, so I presume just laziness rather than re-use. A short while later, she's back, armed with Amoxycillin, some form of pain killer, and little bomb-shaped lozenges which, when diluted in hot water, smell like Vicks. Not bad for 300 rupees, and it seems to have helped now.

Not quite the luxuries of East Surrey!

Unfortunately, his advice for a speedy recovery included such things as 'stay in a dust free environment'. You saw the room. Hell, finding a dust free environment in India is harder than understanding string theory. Almost. We get our tuktuk back to the beach, ask him to wait whilst we traverse god knows how many stairs it is, get our bags, inform the timid bloke at the counter we had to check out (this time instead of a pond to wade through, it had developed its own moat?), back over the beach keeping a watch out for angry insects who don't want us on their patch, back up the bloody stairs with our over packed bags, into the tuktuk, back to where we started in the first place at the Hotel International Gokarna. The last couple of days have felt a little groundhoggy.

Moat to the restaurant/room

To prevent this, we didn't stay in the same hotel, but went a little further down the road and found another at the same price. Same thing though, maybe slightly cleaner. Managed to get Diana to sleep, and she's feeling better for it.

Today, we have returned to Canacona and onwards to Palolem, where for Diana's benefit we have checked into a proper hotel for a couple of nights (Clean sheets, hot water, soft bed/pillows, WiFi in the room. Luxurious!) to try and help her recover, although I have a feeling the two-for-one cocktails (have I mentioned this before?) could hinder the process. The journey was far less eventful, we arrived at the station, this time simply on time, to be told the train would be 40 minutes late. That all? Sure. To be fair, it wasn't far off, probably around an hour late. Glad we didn't get there earlier this time. We bought our ticket, a couple of cups of tea each (7p each, can't go wrong) and some more water, and proceeded to the platform to wait. Wildly uneventful, apart from a guy on the platform who was about as pretentious as you can physically be to a lady and who we thought was her partner but turned out to be her 'travelling friend'. You all know the sort of guy, it's the one the 'Gap yah' video is based around. Quotes such as:

• 'Yah my friend owns part of a rainforest...'
• 'I volunteered there and they said they didn't need help but UH MUH GUHD they needed help, they had no idea what they were doing'
• 'I brew my own tea cultivated with special bacteria, it has to have organic unrefined sugar but I left it in my room, you cant use normal crappy sugar' *just don't put any bloody sugar in it?*
• 'Whats your star sign? I can work out your rising star sign, its important you know it, you can find out on sites but I can tell you'
• 'I own a vegan gluten free goose that shits golden eggs and can tell you your rising star ... ' 

By this point, I had zoned out and the train was coming, so we wandered up the carriages and never did find out if he was in fact our lord and saviour, but I'm fairly sure he must have been.

Train journey was entirely uneventful, nice and calm, got off at Canacona and a quick tuktuk to Palolem. Checked in, had lunch, looked around the shops, Diana got attacked (by a human this time) and forced to wear a bindi, and now we're sat in our plush accommodation.

Hope everything is well at home, we're at this hotel for 2 nights (Don't want to bankrupt ourselves after all, this is over 15 quid a night! That's around 6 cocktails!) and then, depending on Diana's health, we'll look for something a little cheaper in the area, because £15 is £15 more than Diana wants to spend on accommodation really.

All the best to everyone at home, hope it's warmed up a little!


Jonno