Blog 3: Rajasthan & Goa

It’s taken a while but I’ve finally found the desire and the internet connection for Blog part 3. None of our Rajasthan hotels had wireless and we never had the time spare to go wandering to an internet café.

We’ve certainly been busy, particularly before we got to Goa. A real whistle stop through Rajasthan bookended by 2 Delhi stops. Highlights were many including:

• Some fantastic hotels. We stayed in two Haveli’s. These are either merchant or prince’s houses. One in Nawalgarh was the best room we’ve ever seen including ornate paintings everywhere, just amazing. Then near Tonk we stayed at the Raj Mahal palace which used to be the local prince’s country house, again amazing. We had an entire wing of the house. Ornate stained glass windows and paintings again. Even looked out over the local lake. Dinner and breakfast served on the lawn made us all feel like Maharajah’s
• The places to visit. Plenty of red sandstone palaces and forts in Jaipur, Delhi and Agra with the Amber fort near Jaipur being particularly amazing given the fact it was built high up in the hills overlooking what was a lake (come moat) which is unfortunately dry due to a number of bad monsoons. The best has to be the Taj though. Apparently they used around 40 million gold and silver coins to pay for the place. We managed to pick a very unusual rainy day but it was still amazing. You can’t believe how big it is. When you approach the gate you can see the Taj in the background and it looks quite big but you don’t realise the gardens in front are something like a half kilometre long. The muslim Mughal emperors and hindu Rajput princes certainly seemed to enjoy bleeding the population dry to build new cities, palaces etc. Shah Jahan who built the Taj was imprisoned in Agra fort (from where he could see the Taj) by his son to stop him building a black Taj across the river from the White one and spending poor Aurangzeb’s inheritance. Mind you lovely old Aurangzeb had to kill off his 3 older brothers first!
• The rides: we’ve been on elephants, camels, tuk-tuks, cycle rickshaws, cars, the Delhi metro, Canter safari’s etc, even a toy train at the Railway museum.
• The driving and the roads. We’ve had everything from ‘roads’ that require a mountain goat to 4 lane highways. My god you should see the local drivers. They put their seatbelts on only for the cops and the muslims at least must just be saying ‘Insha Allah’ the whole time because they certainly love to play chicken. For the hindus I guess they are hoping to get to a better status through reincarnation quicker. Our tour leader said he thought the road toll was around a million which seems pretty excessive but a few hundred thousand wouldn’t surprise me! It’s the only place I’ve seen a scooter take on a bus! Then there is the little extras like people parking in the ‘fast lane’, driving the wrong way down the highway (and I mean buses, cars, scooters, kids on bikes, ox-carts, camel carts anything that moves). Some of the trucks are so overloaded they have stuff hanging out the back by a few metres and so badly loaded they lean over! We saw a couple of truck accidents and suffice to say they don’t have a lot of safety systems in the cabs as they fold up like paper mache. Many of the cars fold their side mirrors in as otherwise they just get smashed off. Instead of looking everyone just toots the whole time. The din can be a little overbearing. One day we had brake problems so the driver just turned on the hazard lights and kept going until he could find a roadside mechanic to shut down the brakes to the wheel that was leaking. That qualifies as a repair! The most amazing thing was how long it takes to get anywhere. You’re lucky to average more than about 30 kmph even on the highways due to the number of blockages, slow trucks etc (no such thing as a fast and slow lane and the trucks are only supposed to go 40kmph
• The unusual roading extras. Of course there are the sacred cows that graze the median strip and just lie down if they feel like it. Then there are the herders of goats, sheep, cows, camels and everything else who just criss-cross the road whenever they feel like it. The weirdest would be the people who lay out a sort of long grass on the road for the vehicles to run over it. They then sit in the road collecting the seeds and taking the straw for the animals. Can be quite disconcerting to barrel along a highway and see a young girl sitting in the middle of the lane brushing the seeds up and pouring them from one hand to the other to get the chaff out. God knows what crap they get off the tires.
• The food. Never thought I’d be so looking forward to a steak! Thank god for the Goan Catholics is all I can say. The Portuguese brought in a healthy respect for the delights of beef as well as some fantastic fish recipes. Have to say the the Tandoori fish which was specially arranged in Agra was fantastic though. Even scammed the recipe (well sort of, no amounts just a list of ingredients). Hopefully we can try it on the BBQ at Hihi this summer.
• Lack of Delhi belly. So far only Sean has been bitten to any real extent and he recovered pretty quickly.
• The shopping. So far Ange has a lovely set of ruby and gold necklace, bracelet and earrings and we have a couple of Kashmiri carpets and a marble inlay table along with a few other bits n pieces.

Have to say I can’t quite figure out why so many people over the years have invaded Rajasthan as it is basically a desert. Bit like a hot dusty version of the Desert Rd! Certainly not a place I’d see any reason to want to stay in permanently let alone invade. However all those invaders have left a great spot for the tourists.

Trip down to Goa fairly uneventful although the plane was the obligatory 1 hour late. At least we were through the airport in around 20 minutes rather than the over 2 hours at Delhi. Then had to insist that the taxi driver (done this again a few times already) find the seatbelts that he insisted were completely unnecessary due to his fantastic driving skills. Apparently motorbikes consider it an admission of incompetence to wear helmets too!

What a difference in Goa. Tourists everywhere, it rains (quite a lot and heavily), hot and sticky and the obligatory people selling all sorts of tat. For some reason they can’t understand why we don’t want soapstone carvings, fake anklets, plastic necklaces, tie died sarongs etc. I’d buy if only they had something worth selling. On night one walked to night market and got caught in a tropical downpour. Absolutely soaked by the time we got home but it was a good laugh and we did manage to get a beef burger! Thankfully the restaurants are wonderful. Have skipped curries for a couple of days. Had the most fantastic Italian the other night. Wonderful not to have to pack up and move on every day or two though. Sean is living from swim to swim, doesn’t care where as long as he swims.

Sorry don’t have the software to play with photos much so they’ll have to wait until our return but so far we have closing in on about 800 from memory.

See you all in a couple of weeks.

Ange, Ray & Sean