Since certain people are complaining I never update this thing.. perhaps I should give it another go. Most days coming online is the last thing I feel like doing, and when I do get online, the internet is not exactly first-class.
Some highlights that I can think of off the top of my head of the last month..
Spending nearly two weeks on various beaches on the West coast - Gokarna, Palolem, and Arambol was awesome. It was weird going from chaotic, busy, intense India to lazy beach life where you can lay in the sun and actually read a book, and I found switching back to "real" India very hard. It was like culture shock all over again, readjusting my mindset.. it took me a few days to get back into the swing of things, because the beach life is easy, and everyday life in India is not. Each day is a battle to communicate and get a fair price and find the right bus and jump off the train at the right station when all the signs are in Hindi or a local language.
At Palolem beach our hotel hosted a silent disco one night, which was a very cool experience. There are laws here that you can only play loud music outside until 10pm so they have these discos where everyone wears headphones. There were three DJ's and you could switch the channel on your headphones to pick whichever music you wanted. It is so funny to look out at a sea of hundreds of people all dancing to their own beat.. everyone is in their own little world and it looks ridiculous.
After the beaches we went to a place called Hampi, which is famous for its ruins. It was a gorgeous place with the craziest landscape I've ever seen. Think of mountains made up of boulders. Beth and I rented a motorcycle one day and puttered around the countryside taking in the views and watching the local village life. It was so nice to get away from the hustle and bustle and honking mess of the towns and drive until you can't find any traffic. Only in India can one learn how to ride a motorcycle and then rent it two minutes later. I think I paid 3 dollars for the whole day. I should mention however, that it was an automatic bike, so I suppose it's not that big of a deal. The big was an old antique that had very little power.. sometimes the person on the back had to hop off because it couldn't make it up the big hills with two people on it..
Since Hampi we have spent some time in Mumbai (maybe I will talk more about it later. Still trying to process it..)
And then took our first overnight train to Udaipor, Rajastan. To be honest I was a bit nervous about the train and prepared myself for the worst, but it ended up being completely fine. Enjoyable even. You should google a picture of a Sleeper Class Indian train. Words can't really do it justice. During the day you all sit on benches, and then at night the bench becomes one persons bed, and you pull out another bed from the wall to make the middle berth, and the third person has to climb up to the third bed which is at the very top. You have to cross your fingers that you get a top berth because otherwise it can be an awkward evening of trying to get people off your bed so you can go to sleep. A lot of people also walk on the train without tickets so they kind of perch wherever they fit. I was fortunate enough to get a top berth so I could go to sleep anytime. Beth had a man sitting at the foot of her bed for a good chunk of the night, which is very good to keep ones feet warm...
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