Archive for the ‘India’ Category

  • 07 Jan

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    48 hours in Mumbai

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    Arriving in Mumbai at 6:30 am on a Sunday morning was one of the best things we could have done. At this time of the day streets were calm and silent, shops were closed and people was sleeping. Just few ottos and taxis surrounded Victoria Terminus, our arrival point and one of the prettiest train station buildings we have ever seen, so we could really enjoy the walk we did around the massive structure. After stopping for a quick coffee and having left our backpacks in the station cloak room, we took a bus to the main touristy district in Mumbai, Colaba, in the southernmost peninsula, by the Gateway of India monument. There we started the search for a place to stay. Hotels in Mumbai are really expensive and crappy, compared with what you could pay and get somewhere else in India. It is very difficult also to bargain the price. After a while we managed to get a 2 x 2 meter room with no windows or space for our stuff and for the highest price we have paid so far in India.

    This wasn’t any inconvenience for us to enjoy as much as we could our stay in Mumbai. The city is big, really big, and crowded. But the nicest area in town concentrates around the large and irregular coast line, exactly where the English empire established their capital city long ago. The old name of the city, Bombay, describes perfectly in Portuguese how that coast looks like: “good bay”. The colonial style buildings (university, museums, palaces and private houses) provide the city with an European ambience to make of Mumbai the international metropolis it is nowadays. Many foreigners established here long ago and many others still do, so travellers can move freely on the streets without being noticed, and few people will stare at them as it happens in other places in India.

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    Very interesting, and one of the first experiences on that sense that we have had, was to take the 2 storey tour bus which took us all around the bay and the most important buildings at night, with explanations about Mumbai’s history (past and present), architecture highlights and way of life.

  • 05 Jan

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    Ellora caves

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    After spending the night in Aurangabad’s youth hostel (the only one we have stayed at in India so far), we took a bus the next morning to the World Heritage-listed Ellora cave temples, just 30 Km away from Aurangabad. In contrast to the Buddhist Ajanta caves, the excavated caves at Ellora represent both Buddhist, Hindu and Jain faith in chronological order, dating from 5th to 11th century A.D. There are 34 caves excavated out of the basaltic rock of the Deccan rock-cut architecture, 12 of which are Buddhist, 17 Hindu and 5 are Jain. The spectacular architectural, sculptural exuberance and the religious harmony (the coexistence of India’s three great religions at one site indicates a lengthy period of religious tolerance that still nowadays is found all along the country) makes it a unique monument of universal value. The masterpiece is the amazing Kailasa temple, which is dedicated to Shiva and is the world’s largest monolithic sculpture, excavated from the top of the rock down to the bottom by approximately 7000 workers over a period of 150 years. Just for you to have an idea of it’s grand scale: Kailasa covers twice the area of the Parthenon in Athens and is 1 and a half times as high!!!

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    If you are thinking to visit them, keep one thing in mind: try to get there as early as possible to avoid crowds of noisy school children, to avoid also the strong heat during the day and to actually be able to visit all the caves, ’cause it takes quite a while to walk from one to another.

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  • 04 Jan

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    Ajanta Caves

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    On our long and chaotic trip from Rajastan to the Ajanta caves we crossed oceans of red chillies drying out under the sun on the sides of the railway tracks, women dressed in colourful saris collecting the harvest and happy children running along with the train. The sun was strong and time was passing very slow. After long hours on buses and trains we finally arrived to Jalgaon, where we stayed overnight in a pretty small single room for both of us and the hundreds of mosquitoes who called this room home. It was them or us, so we decided to impose our strength and bigger size to kill them all. Bad karma for us, although our visit to the sacred caves on the next morning should help us to clean our sins.

    We started at 5:30 in the morning, earlier than we normally use to wake up on any other day, and walked the few kilometres distance to the local bus stand. It was there where we met Cato and Jamie, a couple of very friendly birdwatchers who stimulated this interesting hobby on us, since then we pay much more attention to the birds we see on our way and it’s really good fun. With them we continued our way to Ellora caves in the evening and shared the most of the time together that day. About the caves… gorgeous caves with a very fine style were excavated from II B.C. to VI A.D in the rock surface of a mountain overlooking a narrow river on the bottom of the rocks. All the caves where carved for religious purposes. The location of the valley provided a calm and serene environment for the Budhdist monks who retreated at these secluded places during the rainy season. The bad thing of the visit was the big number of school kids who were also visiting the caves, staring at us and screaming around instead of admiring the carved works, which made our visit a bit less satisfactory. It reminded us some of the cultural excursions in our childhood, when us and the rest of our class didn’t really care about that painting or sculpture our teacher was trying to explain to us, and we were really excited about loosing one day of school on a day trip. In any case, the caves are amazing and a visit to them is really worth, even if they are not on your way.

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  • 02 Jan

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    Travelling after New Year’s Eve: impossible mission

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    What’s happening?? that’s what we kept asking ourselves every time we tried to book any transport out of Udaipur. The answer was quite simple, although we didn’t realise until somebody explained to us. Booking a train or bus ticket for the first days of the new year was almost impossible. It had to be done in advance, at least one month prior to the departure date for some of the destinies, and of course we hadn’t done such thing. We didn’t even decide where we wanted to go after Udaipur and we certainly don’t plan much our trip in advance but just let it flow. It was the 2nd of January and all the transports to big cities where fully booked. On one hand it’s the end of the winter holidays for the Indians, everyone has been visiting the family and these days they are going back to their places (remember, 1000 million people population in India). On the other hand, all the tourists are moving to other destinations, after spending New Year’s Eve in any of the hot spots. So what we do then? We spent hours surfing the net to find a train ticket, went to the railway station twice and also asked in many travel agencies. The result was always negative, we could not travel down south on the date we wanted, at least not on the easy and direct trains or buses. So after considering the few options we had, we decided to head to the Ajanta and Ellora caves, both in the Maharashtra state, linking buses with trains and more buses in a never ending 26 hours trip. Aaaggghhs!!!

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  • 30 Dec

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    Travel agencies’ pros

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    Travel agencies have good things also, such as getting free information about travelling: train or bus schedules, transport connections, availability on trains and other interesting things. Ask in several agencies to get the information that you need and then decide whether you want to buy the tickets from them or directly in the train or bus station, avoiding thus paying their commission. There is people who prefer to pay the extra charge and to not have the hassle of arranging everything themselves. Suit yourself!

  • 29 Dec

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    Travel agencies’ cons

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    Buy your tickets always from the providers (local train-bus station), not through travel agencies. Those will keep a high commission and sometimes even cheat by giving false information or raising the prices to their convenience. When we were trying to go from Udaipur to Bundi, travel agents kept on telling us that only private buses were going there. We couldn´t believe that and continued asking around until we found out that there were also train and local bus going there. They were lying in order to get a commission, such a bad thing…

  • 26 Dec

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    Evergreen Lodge in Udaipur

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    The Evergreen Lodge and its attached Natural View Restaurant have been some of the best we have found so far in India, first of all because of the good time we had during our stay. Our room was simple and cheap and the food was delicious. The staff were friendly and helpful and some of them could speak really good English, what favoured communication and inter action with them. The peaceful atmosphere by Udaipur’s Lake made from this hostel a wonderful place to stay, rest and update our travel blog, and the sunny terrace and the small green courtyard were very practical to lay down, read a book, meet other travellers or just do nothing. Definitely, Evergreen Lodge is a good choice to stay in Udaipur, at low prices and with a very good quality.

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  • 25 Dec

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    Resting in Udaipur

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    Our trip is being quite good so far. Since we don’t have any time limit (we are travelling until we run out of money), we can allow us to take things easy and stay as long as we feel like in any place, so if we like Udaipur, we stay until we get bored of it. It is also nice to settle down in a place after so long travelling, unpack your bag, get to know your neighbours, the hostel staff, the people in the surrounding shops and restaurants… It is great to walk around and greet people on your way, but not like on the first days when sellers greet you continuously to pick your attention to their shops. It’s a different feeling when you have been staying in the same place for while, you know the people, you know the streets, you know this lovely place to eat, you feel as a local. After a while travelling your body and mind need a rest. If you find the right place to do it, it becomes a delightful experience to just sit down, relax and enjoy as the time passes by.

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  • 24 Dec

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    Udaipur

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    Udaipur is Rajasthan’s most romantic city and a perfect example of the Rajput’s (a maharaja dynasty) passion for the fantastical and fairy tale. The streets are full of intricate havelis, gorgeous palaces and misty temples. The grand City Palace on the banks of the lake compliments the palace along with the Monsoon Palace on the hill above, where Maharajas used to spend the rainy season when the Lake grew high. But the most remarkable building is the Lake Palace, one of the sceneries used in the James Bond movie Octopussy. People in Udaipur are so proud of it that every hotel offers screenings of the film daily.

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    Backpackers concentrate on the Lake Pichola shore, either in Lal Ghat or Hanuman Ghat, two areas full of narrow lanes paved with tales of a heroic past, and from where sunset and sunrise views are amazing. We found a very quiet hotel in the Lal Ghat, away from the noisy main streets and we felt so comfortable on it. As the time passed by we couldn’t scape to the magic of this wonderful city, so we surrendered and stayed longer than expected

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  • 23 Dec

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    Jodhpur

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    A brief visit to Jodhpur was enough for us to realise once more that we prefer small cities or towns rather than big, noisy and traffic-packed cities. We arrived early in the morning and left again in the evening towards Udaipur, so we spent just the day walking around the city. As other times, we left our luggage in the train station cloak room, so we were free to climb the steep streets that lead to Meherangarh Fort on the top of the city.

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    From up there, there were amazing views and we could understand why they call it the blue city, since all the houses are painted in sky-blue colour (traditionally blue signified the home of a Brahmin and the colour is also thought to repel insects).

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