India - Bombay

We headed off from peaceful Udaipur in the direction of Mumbai - the big city of India, spliting the journey at a city called Baroda. Once again the state of the road was a pleasant surprise. It was a beautiful tarmac motorway most of the way,lined with stone work and marble stalls. We are very tempted to buy a slab of marble while we're here to make a coffee table out of as it's so readily available and probably very cheap. Baroda however was not so pleasant! Described as a cultured, harmonious university town, it is in fact a pretty dirty, smelly and unfriendly place. You don't seem to be able to get away from the beggars and children constantly tugging and pulling at you to get some money. We had a bit of a hunt for a reasonable clean hotel, which was also difficult to come by. We ended up in the aptly named Swastic Hotel with Nazi symbols everywhere! We were greeted by stares, not a smile to be seen which is not our general experience of India so far, and very brash, un-trusting hotel staff. We decided only to stay for one night, but when we discovered wireless internet in our room we were so exited, and stayed two nights spending all day on the web only venturing out to eat!! Brilliant!

Our drive to Mumbai was to be the final long drive in our van until New Zealand, as the plan is to stay in Mumbai and sort out our visas for NZ and arrange the shipping of our van, get our medicals etc. Quite a daunting task. To be honest we were not really looking forward to Mumbai as we were expecting another smelly, dirty, hectic and very expensive city, where we knew we were probably going to have to stay for at least two weeks. On the other hand it was quite exiting because we knew this was one step closer to getting to New Zealand which is getting more exciting by the day.

The road this time, despite suposedly being the best in India and lined with toll booths, let down its reputation! It took us 10 hours to get to Mumbai which we expected to be just a short hop. It was a very pretty drive though, through quite a rural and very green, hilly part of India. We stopped off for lunch in a roadside "Dhaba" which is always quite a fun experience. The menu is quite often in Hindi and we really have no idea what we are ordering - we just pick things at random and see what we get! The great thing is Rhona is feeling much better these days and is managing to eat curries and other spices quite regularly now - phew!

Entering Mumbai felt sort of like entering Glasgow - on a very big scale! We crossed the bridge onto Mumbai island, marking the edge of the urban sprawl, and then passed a sign saying 'Mumbai 53km'! The highways into the city are brilliant and not too crowded which is the most common problem in Indian cities. High rises both fancy and completely decrepid line the sky and we were very exited to see the sea for the first time in ages! Rickshaws are banned in the centre of Mumbai and are replaced by hundreds of black and yellow taxi cabs. Red buses, almost like London buses are also numerous. Its crazy to say, but in one of the biggest and busiest cities in the world there is a real sense of peacfullness. Modern shops and coffee houses can be found everywhere, which can be a refreshing taste of home when needed. We have found the hustlers and sellers a lot less pushy and in fact people generaly leave you alone after you say no once. The people are very friendly, and will make pleasant chit chat whithout ending with "Look at my shop". We have spent our evenings so far miandering along the sea front, enjoying the atmosphere whith hundreds of locals, while horses and carts decorated brightly speed along the sea road.

Our first day here was a Sunday. We got up quite early and made our way to the train station for our first Indian railway experience. Because Sunday's are quiet we decided we'd try traveling second class, (20p return for both of us), which on a week day would normaly be packed tighter than sardines. The trains here are super efficient and leave so regularly you never need to hang around waiting. We jamp aboard the ancient carriage and sat ourselves on the metal bench seats. It was great fun. We love the way everyone just hangs out of the open doors when the train is moving even if there are loads of spare seats! Our stop was about 30 mins away where we had arranged to go to the church that our church in Hastings is closely involved with. We felt so completely at home at once there! We were greeted by so many people as we walked throught the door and the service was so lively and passionate! We spent the afternoon with the pastor Franco and his wife and children which was really special and we would really love to return again.

We spent the next day traveling across town for a meeting with the shipping agents, which was very sucessful. Everything is under control in that department, and shipping our van should now be relatively easy. The day after we had our medicals performed which we need for our visa applications. That was fine and we should be getting our certificates in a few days time. At one point we were approached by a man on the street, and asked to be extras in a Bollywood movie in the making, which we thought would be a fantastic laugh, however it was a full 12 hour day and happened to clash with our medicals! Bummer!

Its also pretty amazing how, though highly illegal, we get offered marijuana and coke, almost as often as taxi's! And that the red light distict is listed as "must-see", "women at work for so many years!", tourist attraction by taxi drivers along with all the other temple's and historic sights.
Our map of Mumbai isn't very good, and we've managed to get lost the couple of times we weren't using a taxi or train. The best was when we ended up in the middle of a large bazaar market! It took us ages to push our way out of it again through throngs of people. It was great to see though, and we didn't have the hassle of trying to walk past all those stalls without buying anything!

Following that, we got a bit of bad news, in that we've found out that once we've submitted our application for visa's they take between three and twelve weeks to be processed! This changes our plan once again, and could possibly make things very tight for Simon getting to NZ in time for his course starting, not to mention being in India without our passports for all that time. So.. we are not completely certain what our next plan is, but we will probably be in India for another four weeks and possibly will visit the south as originally planned, whilst waiting for our visas. Our van can only be shipped once we leave India (something to do with customs), and so we will still have our transport. The shipping agents can make instant arrangement to put the van in its container and seal it for sending as soon as we have our plane tickets to NZ.

We decided to do a bit more sightseeing around Mumbai to take our minds off the complications, and took a small passenger ferry to 'Elephenta Island' about an hours boat ride away. There aren't actually any elephants there but some ancient caves and temples carved into the cliff face. It felt like we were in an Indiana Jones movie, walking into these huge rock-cut pillared caves. They were truly enormous, and had huge carvings of various gods and other creatures all over the inside walls. Quite spectacular. We also walked up to the top of the hill where they had two huge old war-time cannons to protect the harbour. They were joined together by long underground passages and rooms, and if we had thought to bring a torch then we probably could have made it from one to the other (about 200m apart)!

We have now decided that it is not a good idea to submit our visa applications in India, it seems to be possible to do it after we arrive in New Zealand on visitors visas, where we can be a lot more relaxed about it. So with that decided, we are now going ahead and putting the van on the next available ship, and flying the relatively short hop across to Singapore. We have had another meeting with our shipping agents, and have booked our flights for Thursday the 31st July, and the van will be departing on 3rd of August. We'll still spend a couple of weeks relaxing around Singapore, and going to a stunning island off the coast of Malaysia, before catching a plane from Singapore on the long haul down to Auckland. we'll wait until then to update the blog further, so unless we run into some complications, the next time you hear from us we should be in New Zealand and mission accomplished! Here's hoping!

India - Rajasthan

Jaipur was a city of luxury for us, we stayed in an amazing hotel (compared to most of the other hotels we have stayed at), with air conditioning and everything! The city is also quite historic and is surrounded by hills each with ancient forts and temples on them overlooking the city. The old city walls have always traditionally been painted pink, and so has been dubbed 'The Pink City', and glows when the sun goes down. They have been renovating all the pink walls, and old buildings, fixing them and making them more pink, and we thought that it all started to look a bit tacky. We stayed for just three nights before re-thinking our budget and getting bored. We had a day of sightseeing where we went to see the old city palace which was rather dull, another viewing tower for the ladies of the palace which was just completely covered in scaffolding and builders rubbish, but was quite cool none-the-less. It had some tiny passages, staircases and cubbyholes with minute wooden shuttered windows that the ladies could watch the processions below from without drawing attention to themselves.

Lastly we saw an ancient astlology and astronomy site. It was basically full of enourmous sun and moon light measuring equipment, including the largest sundial in the world (27 meters high!), all built out of stone and marble. The instruments were built near the beginning of the 18th century and still work perfectly today. The large sundial measures time accurate to 2 seconds!! Unfortunately the day that we went it was pouring with rain and none of it was working at all! This was very interesting though, and quite a bit different to all the normal palaces, forts and temples that we have become quite accustomed to. A highlight was walking to the top of the big sundial, and getting the view of the old city and looking down on all the different instruments scattered around the area. Walking around town that day was quite interesting as the heavy rains combined with poor drainage caused many of the streets to be flooded. Wading through them is a bit of an unknown quantity - you don't know what you are walking through!

We found ourselves getting quite irritated by all the hecklers around here, you can't walk for 1 minute without about 5 rickshaw drivers telling you where you should be going, and how cheaply they will take you there. You can also almost guarantee that anyone coming up to you to talk, no matter how honest they seem is going to try to extort money out of you. One time a friendly man came up to us and said, "can I just ask you something? Why do western tourists not like to talk to Indians?", "we do" we replied, "it's just a bit irritating when they're just after our money." "No, no, no" he said, "I just like to talk and make friends....anyway would you like to see my shop..."! Another time someone caught us coming out of a restaurant making very friendly conversation and ended up piling 'gifts' of beautiful hand made puppets on us. We said we couldn't give him anything for them but he said "money is not important, I want you to have these things", he wouldn't take them back, but when we said we had to go he said, "so what can you give me?" When he realised we weren't going to give him anything, he took all his things back and cleared off! This has become quite typical of very many of our experiences with Indians.

On our first night in Jaipur, we found a roof top restaurant (most of the restaurants around here seem to be roof top) just around the corner from our hotel that was just fab, we almost just decided to go there every night! All the tables and chairs were individualy wrought iron in a kind of modern art style which was quite cool. We could have just spent all our time between our hotel and this place infact! Sadly, a lot of our time was spent trying to sort out our New Zealand visas and the shipping of the van from Mumbai, now that it is all a bit more difficult than before. It is possible though and it will be done!

We are just realising how excited we are at the thought that we are going to New Zealand and that Simon is doing his flying course. He has had 'I believe I can fly' stuck in his head ever since finding out, and keeps driving down the dotted line in the middle of the road as though it was a runway!

Our Next stop is Udaipur, about 400 kilometers south of Jaipur, but we are in a bit of a dilema. Basically, we are trying to sort out the shipping of the van to New Zealand, but the shipping agent can't do that unless we have our flight tickets to Auckland to prove that we will be there to pick it up; We can't book our flights until we have our NZ visas; we can't get our visas until we have receipt that the flying course fees have been paid; we can't pay the fees until our bank gets its act together, and we are waiting to hear from them. To add to that, we don't know if we will even be able to arrange our visas in Mumbai, or if we have to go all the way back to Delhi to do it. Oh well, we just decided that we have to keep moving in the general direction of Mumbai, and if one or both of us has to go back up to Delhi then so be it.

Udiapur is a very beautiful city - they call it 'the Venice of the east', due to its position on a lake with palaces out in the middle of it. Indians had a great mindset back then, whereas in Europe they would designate a small lake island a protected reserve due to a rare species of plant that might only live on that island, the Indians just build a stonking huge palace on it covering the entire island! It gives a very fastastical and romantic feel though. Unfortunately at this time of year the lake is mostly dried up, and it is not until the end of the monsoon that it starts to get full (before promptly drying up again!), so it is not quite as beautiful as it could be. The locals are very proud that large portions of the James Bond film 'Octopussy' was filmed here, and most of the guesthouses show it in their restaurants every evening, and have done so since nineteen seventy whatever when it came out by the looks of things! We watched it the first evening we arrived on our guesthouse roof top terrace, and we must say it was extremely cool to watch a fairly well known iconic film, during which we would look to the left and say "oo, that's over there", then to the right, "that was down there!"

Our guesthouse is very handy being only about £2.40 a night. Our room kind of reminded us of the servants quarters that people in Kenya had, but that's fine, it's very pleasant, clean, quiet, quite pretty, and does good food. We found out that we can infact submit our visa applications in Mumbai, which is good news, but we may spend as much time as we can here sorting things out rather than in MUmbai which is the most expensive place in India to stay by about double the nearest competitor.

Now that we are eating out every day, we are discovering that almost any restaurant you go to is basically a carbon copy of all the others. They all just do Indian food, and then all kinds of Italian, Chinese, isreali and continental food with a strong Indian twist. We just resigned to the fact that once you have found a decent place, you're just as well going there every night! It is rather tiring though having no variety what-so-ever.

We did the tour of Udaipur with its impressive stone carved temples, and city palace overlooking the lake. All very grand and ornate, infact the whole city is really beautiful and much quieter than any of the other cities in India. We think it is definately the nicest in India so far, and one of the best cities on our trip. We also got an elephant ride here which Rhona has been going on about ever since we arrived in India, so that was good and a lot of fun. When we were lumbering down the street, our elephant would keep getting distracted by things, like fruit stands where it would try and pinch some snacks! The stall keepers didn't seem to mind though, and they would give it mangoes which kept him happy!

We spent four nights in Udaipur overall as it was so relaxing, and have really tried to make the transition from living in the van to living out of a rucksack in preparation for the month of backpacking through South East Asia before going to New Zealand. It felt wierd to be packing the van away so soon, almost like it was signalling the end of an era. Well we have to move on and it's the only way forward, so we'll just look forward to what will happen next!

Total distance travelled: 10,537 miles

Max temp: 35 degrees

Scottish Highlands to the Taj Mahal!

Walking along the high street of Shimla was like walking along the high street of any old town in Britain. It was built by the Brits and became the summer capitol of all of India, when all the Viceregals and officials came up here to escape the oppressive heat of the plains in Delhi. It is litterally perched on the top of a very steep narrow ridge up at 2200 meters in the himalayan foothills. The views either side would have been amazing if not for the fact that it was pretty much foggy the whole time we were there. The buildings were all very typical stone built Victorian architecture with bay windows, slated roofs and all. We could so easily have been in England - the weather, temperature, and there were even lots of Indians walking around! The only difference was that being in India and surrounded by forest, there were heaps of Monkeys everywhere.

The problem we had was that being on such a steep slope, there was nowhere flat to park the van and camp, and the hotels were all comparatively expensive. We found a half decent one and stayed there for three nights before deciding we couldn't afford to stay any longer and moved on. We walked up to the very highest point in Shimla which is through the forest up a very steep hill to a Hindu temple, dedicated to Hanuman, the monkey god. coincidentally there are lots of monkeys all over it, although we think that is possible more down to the habitat. It was very cool to see the monkeys climbing and swinging on everything so close up though, and the babies were so cute! This was far more interesting than the temple itself!

After that Simon went to see the 'Viceregals lodge' which is where the rulers of British India lived at the full extent of their power, and held meetings whilst they were there in the summer. Kind of like the 10 Downing Street equivalent. It just looked like a really grand Scottish castle which was quite amazing. It was completely untouched and unrepaired, with all the origional cast iron outside staircases that looked less than safe, and huge gardens that they couldn't keep up with. overall it was much more origional yet complete than anything you might see in Scotland. It looked ideal to have a posh cup of coffee and a piece of shortbread in. Unfortunately, it is in India and they have converted it into an advanced study college, and actually gives off a bit of a Cambridge University college feel. We were given a tour of the inside where we saw the rooms where famous meetings with Ghandi had taken place, and the table they used to redraw the borders of India at independance. A very big chunk of Indian history really.

That evening we decided to treat ourselves, and went to the poshest hotel in Shimla - the Oberoi Cecil for dinner. It was very posh! It would be the equivalent to one of the fanciest places in London, tailed butlers and all, with rooms costing hundreds of pounds. We weren't quite sure what we were celebrating, but we decided that it was for our new future family member! The next day Simon found out that he got on his pilot course in NZ so it could be for that as well. We just thought that if we can't do this sort of thing in India, then when will we be able to do it? To put it into perspective, with starters, breads, mains, wine and everything it came to around £30 - about the same as a normal meal in UK! not bad! We'll go back to dhal and rice tomorrow!

After Shimla, we waved goodbye to the beautiful cool mountain air that we had enjoyed for the last two weeks, and set off on the huge 12 hour drive down to Agra, one of the hottest parts of India - in the middle of summer! Luckily (or unluckily - we're not sure yet) since the monsoon has come in the temperatures have dropped a little, so instead of 50 degrees, it's only around 35, but the humidity is something else. Even at night time you are just constantly sticky with sweat - it's desgusting!

We arrived in Agra around 8 pm, and found a guide-recommended place that had parking enough for us to camp, but it turned out was a mosquito infested patch of boggy mud for us to park on. We went to the reception and they wanted 600 rupees a night!! (we normally only pay 50-100) They wouldn't budge below 500, and due to the late hour we had no choice but to stay there. Needless to say we got eaten alive that night, and we also discovered that the toilets were gross, the showers were cold, pool was green and the restaurant was rubbish. We kicked up a bit of a fuss and refused to pay, but they didn't seem to see how their top class establishment could be thought of as below standard, and called the police! Eventually we just paid them off and left promising to tarnish their name wherever we went, but they didn't seem to care since they had their money! So, anyone planning on going to Agra - don't go to Mayur Tourist Complex on Fahetabad Road!! We found a hotel around the corner with air cooler for 400 rupees!

Anyway, we headed off for our tour of Agras sights with our cycle-rickshaw man who had attached himself to us. 1st stop - Taj Mahal which was quite spectacular, and so much more impressive in real than in photos. It was worth getting a local guide who showed us how the floral designs that covered the entire building were all intricatly made up of tiny pieces of semi-precious stones all from many different countries. Inside the mausoleum, even though you are not allowed flashes or lights, he took in a torch, and showed us how as you move it over a flower design, each gemstone would light up and glow individually - it was so beautiful. Amazing to think that it was all just for one persons tomb! It was built by Mughal Emperor Shah Jahan, for his wife Mumtaz Mahal who died giving birth to their 14th child in 1631! Supposedly Shah Jahan wanted to build a mirror image Taj on the other side of the river in black marble (way more expensive than white) for himself, but his son Aurangzeb overthrew him and imprisoned him in Agra fort for spending all the kingdoms money!!

We went on to see Agra fort next, 2 km up the river, which has good views of the Taj. The classic thing to do is to get a picture of you on the rampart with the Taj Mahal in the palm of your outheld hand - we did that... It was getting a bit hot at this point, so we turned down our rickshaw drivers offer to take us to all the other sights in Agra and went back to the hotel!

We have been quite surprised by the quality of the roads outside of town, in that they are actually quite good. There has just been an explosion of national highway building in India lately, and if any of them are not dual carriageway, then they are being made so. The problem is that Indians don't seem to inderstand the concept of dual carriageway being that one side is for one direction, and the other side is for the other direction. They (mainly motorbikes and rickshaws, but also cars, buses and lorries) just use each side as a separate road. Normally you can see them coming, but at one point Simon was driving, and we had been trying to get past a lorry for ages, and eventually he pulled over and we began overtaking. At this point Rhona started freaking out, Simon looked at her, then at the lorry, then questioningly back at Rhona who was by this point practically sitting on the headrest covering her face, then looked forward, and there was a rickshaw driving up the wrong side of the road straight for us! We weren't going too fast and he had stopped by this point so we were ok, but it definately keeps you on your toes!

So that was on the way from Agra to Jaipur - our next stop in Rajasthan where we are now. We have passed a major landmark on our trip, and have driven over 10,000 miles since we left Hastings which is pretty cool.

Total distance travelled: 10,005 miles

Max temp: 35 degrees

The Great Escape

When we drove over the mountains the first time, we found that although very beautiful it was quite a tough experience. The roads were bone-shakingly awful, we were stuggling to breath, couldn't sleep, and had constant headaches from the altitude, the dust was so thick in the air that it just infiltrated everything until you could feel it gritting between your teeth, and the isolation of it kept us a bit worried. Long before the end we were quite keen to be getting off the mountain and into the comfort of civilization, but at an average speed of just 10mph (in some sections we were only able to make around 3mph), the end was a long time coming. So understandably we were a little grumpy about having to do it all again - and we'd seen it all already! But we set off, this time planning on doing it in just two 12 hour days. We kind of got it into our heads that we just had to do it, and stangely came around to the idea more then. What we didn't expect was that we would actually find it much more enjoyable the 2nd time, and the 2 days seemed to go by very quickly.

For a start, because we had already done it, and then stayed in Leh for 4 nights at high altitude, we were much better acclimatised than we were first time around, and even at the top of the highest pass we didn't feel the effects of the altitude at all. We managed to get a system going to combat the dust, as whenever a truck went past, or the wind blew kicking up a cloud, we would quickly wind the windows up and close off the air vents, before opening them up again when all was clear. That seemed to work well. Unfortunately though, the roads hadn't got any better, and not too long after we started up the first pass, we heard a crack from the back of the van, followed by a clattering every time we went over another bump. We found out that on one of our rear wheels, 2 of the 3 leaf suspension springs had snapped, leaving it hanging on just one. There was nothing else for it, we just had to nurse it even slower over the remaining distance back to Manali, hoping that they final leaf spring didn't snap as well.

At one point, we came across a couple of motorbikes stopped at the side of the road. We slowed down to make sure they were OK, and it turned out he needed some tools to fix something on his bike. We tried all ours, but they didn't quite fit, so we left them to it. A short while later, having collared someone else to help them, they overtook us, but literally 5 minutes after that they were stopped at the side of the road again, this time with a flat tyre! We once again offered our tools, but in trying to fix it he put one of our screwdrivers through his new inner tube! Once again we had to leave them, this time with an army truck that had stopped, but we never saw them again, so hope they are OK?! Talk about having a bad day!

All the way along the road there were groups of workers employed to just live up there all summer and repair the road. It looked like horrible work using the most basic tools to break up rocks and shovel dirt into holes in the road. Everytime we past a group they would try to stop us and we realised that none of them had any water or food for the work they were doing. This was quite a shock and we wish we had brought more food with us to give out. It seems that they survive on donations from truck drivers and other road users. We had nearly run out of water by the time we reached our mid-way camp! They must work every light hour of the day and probably get paid 50p a day or something.

If anything, the views seemed to be better this time round. Maybe just seeing them from an opposite angle gave a different perspective? The sky was the most amazing deep blue colour we had ever seen, compared to the first time which was rather more overcast. This alone made it quite spectacular. At the high halfway camp at Sarchu, the first time we had felt so rotten and didn't sleep, but this time we felt fine. We almost wanted to stay there for a few days! It was great to feel the cold (down to around 2 degrees), and the stars at night were just stunning.

When we got back to the Rohtang pass, thankfully it was open, and it sort of felt like a gateway back into India! Ever since crossing it a week before, and moving into Ladakh, everything has felt so different, peaceful and disconected from the rest of India. This was like a wake up call, because all of a sudden the crowds were back in full force, and people were trying to sell us everything. When we got back to Manali we were surrounded by all the shoe fixers, masseures and snake charmers (it's ok, Rhona soon got rid of them), and we just said "welcome back to India!"

The next day we spent in a garage trying to get our suspension fixed, and we realised the disadvantage of taking an old van. That is that when it breaks, it is near impossible to take anything apart as it is all rusted and fused together. In the case of our van, 12 years sitting on muddy building sites in GB hasn't done it any favours, and it took between 1 and 5 people 5 hours to get the old suspension off! In the end they had to cut the last bolt with a welding torch! They of course didn't have the right replacements, so we got a bit of a customised mish-mash of different suspension springs that went together to make it about the right strength, but now one side of the van is higher than the other. Nevermind, after waiting 8 hours for this one, we weren't particularly inclined to insist that they take the other side off and do that as well!

The garage was infact just a dusty patch of oil soaked ground, swarming with flies by the road with a tin hut next to it. As we were there all day, we got our usual attention from the many Indian tourists who wanted to see the van and take our pictures. Some of them were very pleasant. One man (a local taxi driver) insisted on buying us tea and crisps for our wait which was very kind. He took us to the cafe down the road, but when Rhona asked where the toilet was, he took her behind his car parked on the main road, and said "there!", "we are very open in India!". Rhona wasn't convinced, and made him take her to a 'proper' toilet which we had to pay 3 rupees for!

So the next morning we planned on leaving Manali to go to Shimla which is another hill station town at around the same altitude on the way back to Delhi. Hopefully we will be able to stay there for a while relaxing and sorting out things for the shipping of the van to New Zealand and hopefully onward Visas etc. Simon has found out this week that he is on the flying course in New Zealand so that is some good news and we are definately going there! Rhonas nursing registration is still not sorted out, and she is still wondering what she will end up doing in NZ now that she is not quite as 'employable' as before!

Total miles driven: about 9200
Max temp: 26 degrees


Min temp 2 degrees