Many western travellers are very attracted to Goa’s beaches and landscapes and spend most of the winter time chilling out on a hammock or sitting on one of the many bars and restaurants along the state. The average temperature here from October to March is around 30°C. Chapora and other towns in northern Goa are some of the hits for young travellers and backpackers and also the party scene for all those ravers and party-seekers.

We spent almost 2 weeks exploring every corner of Chapora and surroundings, making new friends and just relaxing under some coconut trees on the sea shore. It was our re-encounter with friends, parties, alcohol and, obviously, hangovers after many months of sobriety: a good way to remember our uses and habits back in Spain…

We highly recommend to stay in any of Chapora’s nice and cheap hostels, to rent a bike (a scooter is good enough but Einfiled’s, the indian Harley Davidson’s, are also available at very low rates comparing to any of the western countries) and ride around, north and south, to find the most beautiful places by your own: we are not going to disclose any secret in this travel blog, insider tips should not be put on every hand’s reach, but we can assure you that there are still secret-hidden beaches, which the common tourist never find. Good luck with your search!!

Our visit to Varanasi coincide with an auspicious time for marriages. We saw many Indian couples offering “puja” to the Ganges river and many other wedding ceremonies all around. While relatives sang and danced very happily, couples seemed to be in most of the cases sad and not having a very good time. We wondered why…

Marriage is a very serious matter in the Indian society. Love marriages are not very usual, and are normally prearranged by the families, who decide the perfect bridal couple for their son or daughter. Everything has to correspond, from the religion to the caste, the economic status, the language, the alimentary habits and the horoscope. If these premises don’t fit the marriage won’t take place otherwise the couple risks to be excluded of the family and society. Therefore the marriages are not based on love and become a mere trade transaction between families. It is not surprising then finding thousands of advertisements on the Indian newspapers, specifically organised by religion, caste and sub-caste and profession, looking for the perfect wife or husband.

The holy cow, known as Gau Mata or Mother Cow, has a special place on the Indian psyche. But why are the cows holy in India? For sure this is a question that most of us have thought at least once. During our visit to Jaisalmer we were staying at a very nice a cozy hotel inside the Fort. We noticed that a cow came everyday to the same house and waited in the entrance until an old men gave her sweets or food. We asked him why and he told us that cows are holy and everyone respect them and also explained to us the reasons why. Many centuries ago, when the Indian civilization was still nomadic and based on the agriculture, money wasn’t established yet on the rural areas and the cow was the way to measure someone’s wealth. Therefore it became the legal currency, exchanged for food and services, given for the marriage dowry or to pay the taxes. Besides, the cow’s milk was the main nutritious source for the majority of the country’s population. The cow’s dung was also used as a combustible in the house stove and as construction material when mixed with clay.

Aside the economical reasons, the cow is also considered holy due to the belief that Hindus can reach heaven just after crossing a mythological river grabbing a cow’s tail. Besides, the ceremony for the soul pass of a dead person includes the donation of a cow to the Brahman priest. This kind of tradition assures that the cows are treated with respect in the Hindu society. From our point of view, cows are also very useful because they eat literally everything they find: organic waste, plastics, cardboard… The garbage collection system in India is really bad or non-existent sometimes, luckily they have the cows to take care of it!

Goa is the selected place for many tourists to spend their long term winter vacations due to its mild weather, its scenic palm-fringed beaches, natural harbours, wide rivers and the occidental ambience all around the state. The coast line has everything, from white sand beaches and river mouths to Portuguese fort ruins guarding rocky caves. Goa’s inland is also beautiful, with tropical forests, paddy fields, coconut palm groves and small villages. Due to its colonial past, Goa has a character quite distinct from the rest of India. Goans are easy going and friendly people with a good sense of humour.

Apart from historical sites and nice beaches, entertainment is also assured in Goa. Hollywood movies and sport events are screened in many bars. Cultural events, such as music jam sessions or DJ sessions, are held on many hotels and restaurants along the coast. Motorbikes and scooters can be rented on daily, weekly or monthly basis to cover the short distances between all the touristy towns in Goa and the innumerable beaches, plus the scenic rides through rice fields, forests or over river channels and small lakes. Goa has long been known as the party scene for western ravers, coming here to enjoy the never ending full moon parties. Although its glorious days are over, the touristy infrastructure is still developing to allocate the every year bigger tourist demand. Nevertheless we where pleasantly surprised when we discovered that there are still beautiful and quiet hidden places in some parts of Goa, where you can escape from the tourist crowds and the noisy parties and enjoy the laid-back atmosphere and time passing by.

After the visit to busy Mumbai, our wish was to find a good place for a quiet and cheap stay. To relax, trek and work a bit on this travel blog to keep it up to date. We thought we have found the right place in Matheran, an environmental friendly town in the mountains where motor vehicles and plastic bags are banned. This thing surprised us, since it is not very common in India at all. After arriving there we realised that the town was by far not what we were expecting. We arrived uphill with a toy train, which was good fun, paid the compulsory 25 rupees entrance fee to town and wandered around the over lightened main street. Surprised by the lights, colours and products of the multiple surrounding shops, it seemed to us for a moment that we were in an fair. The town was busy and loud, even though that vehicles are not allowed inside. Most of the visitors were groups of young Indian friends, wanting to party and escape of the high temperatures of the plains. So we didn’t find the quietness we were expecting to.

Nevertheless, we did different treks, from a couple of hours to half day excursions, through beautiful forests and scenic point views, although the mist didn’t allowed us to get the best views. The trails were highly populated with monkeys and we had to “fight” once with one of them ,as he was trying to take our bag with him. The result: Hector felt down on a rocky place and hurt his leg. The monkey run away fast and without the bag. Hector knows now the fact, monkeys are real wild animals and not just sweet game fellows to play with.

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.

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.

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!!!

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.

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.

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!!!