Photos from Xmas and Kitesurfing
View from our Christmas Eve walk
Presents under the tree
Launching the kite
Getting ready to go
Geoff heading out to sea
Updates from November, 2006
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decoy
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solid
merry christmas one and all!
in vagator at the moment. stayed up till 5 in the morning and some ludicriously priced rave. the trance scene here is utterly dreadfull. music that sounds as if it was produced by ltj with music maker on the playstation one. only bad. the place i went to is still belting out its hardcore beats. it in fact doesn’t stop for a full three days. they take their 24 hours trance sessions seriously here. thankfully our hotel is situated right next door to the party so we can enjoy the regular beats as we sleep. or try to anyway.
its a bit crap here to be honest, might go to palolem for new years.
have a fun christmas!
love julio
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decoy
epic journeys
Your epic 40 and 25 hour train journeys makes our Christmas trip to Devon seem like a short excursion, it being a mere 4 hours away…
Shame you didn’t take a video of the epic pizza hut dancing for the enjoyment of fellow bloggers.
Things are pretty quiet back here in blighty. That is, apart from the hoards of crazed shoppers rushing around desperately trying to purchase ludicrous amounts of presents. Mercifully, due to our “secret santa” regime, I’ve been spared the worst and actually completed most of my shopping relatively early.
Work Xmas meals were good. Food at the Half Moon nr Knaphill was excellent and the Lloyds evening had live music from Sera Golding & The Men In Black, who were most skilled.
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solid
the golden triangle.
Â
after a palacial flight from Bombay we arrived 2 hours later in jaipur. we flew with kingfisher airlines, a fairly new offshoot of the makers of kingfisher beer, a staple throughout india. on a par with british airways for pleasantness.
jaipur was a seething cesspool of noise and corruption. coming from the south where a taxi minion would take a refusal of his services on the chinand move on, i was taken aback by the insane tenacity of the jaipurian taxi-wallahs and bicycle rikshaws, some going as far as following you around for hours continually bleating about about their “indian helecopter”.
not much to see in jaipur apart from a much fabled pink city. the attraction being ofcoase, that its all painted pink. after a disasterous attempt to find it on the first day, which i blame entirely on the crappy maps in our respective guide books which sent us miles in the wrong direction, we went back to the hotel to rest, vowing to tackle it the next day. on the morrow we finally made it though it took miles of walking. i had become so affended by the constant barrage of transport goons, that i had decided to walk everywhere.
the pink city was if possible more dirty and smelly than the main town. its pinkness was infact non-existant, most of the buildings having turned a rancid shade of brown. there were countless shops and mini bazzars all selling pretty much the same thing. lucy bought some cheap bracelets. i sat on the sidelines soaking up the ambiance. it was what you might describe as livley, if by lively you meant to describe the roads like a river of cars and choking smoke,the screech of a thousand horns going off in your ear and every person who spots your pale skin leaping in front of you with the glittering eyes of a fanatic and gesturing wildly at their identakit shops. there were some palaces/temples or some such but finding them in the tumultious city was nigh on impossible. we eventually found a palace but it was pricey to get in and was apparently crud inside, on the plus side though, i found chap taking people’s photos with a 150 year old camera outside. i had mine done for a small fee. looks rather classy if i say so myself.
the place we were staying was next door to a really nice hotel which was unfortunatly fully booked. our place was a bit crap and filled with wierd surly staff. we made a point of going across and eating at the other place though. one nice thing about our place was the open roof which i would wonder of a night. all the roofs in jaipur are flat and the aquitecture is very nice, hints of arabian nights about it. gave flo a call with my super cheap new indian mobile.missing flo a lot since her departure. doesn’t seem the same without her.
the next day we went back to the pink city so that lucy (who liked jaipur for some reason) could get a bag and there was a possibilty of elephants being around in some location of the city. in the end both of us got a bit tired of it all and headed back to the hotel. tomorrow ho for agra!
as we left the pink city for the last time, on the way out we passed a man sitting on the side of the road screaming violently and hitting himself in the head. i sympathised. a couple of days more i would be hunked down next to him a broken man.
the train to Agra was at 2.00am. yay! to add to the excitment we didn’t know exactly when our train was set to arrive, so we could easily snooze right through our stop. intence! sleep was tricky and we arrived shattered. the cold at night up north is crazy! huddling on my bench a thin sheet keeping the morning frost of me, i considered the purchase of a couple of blankets might be wise.
agra, home of the taj mahal, is assentually a village with a touristy center. it is surprising that it isn’t more industrialised considering it is such a tourist mecca. on the first day we went for a bit of a ramble in a park, the first bit of greenery i have strolled around in india. quite nice if a bit run down, we met some small street urchins who followed us around a bit, demanding i take photos of them. we came to a rise and getting to the top we had an impressive view of the Taj. it is a majestic building, sadly tarnished by the smog of the nearby town, but still very nice. it costs rp750 to get in though, so we decided to give it a miss. content with exterior views.
the trouble with travel is one can end up going too quickly. days are are filled with booking onward travel, finding a sutable room, and the neverending quest of finding somewhere to eat that won’t give you dysintry. most of the days filled like this and it becomes less like traveling and a series of hoops you have to jump through. bit of a pain, and not much room for actual enjoyment of ones suroundings.
the origial plan was to go to delhi for christmas and then ninja it down to goa and have new year there. feeling a bit phaged by all the moving around i footed the idea of skipping delhi and heading strait to goa and there take a leasurely route around the south. things were looking a bit dicey though with trains to goa being booked by every christian in india. thanks to lucy’s perseverance and a helpfull guy behind the train counter we managed to scrounge a couple of tickets to goa on some speed train taking a mere 25 hours. nothing to a 40hour man like myself!
we are currently in a nifty hotel next door to the taj, in a very quiet area of the town. its nice to have a relaxing atmosphere. though nights are still broken by the bitter cold and the early morning yodeling from the muslim prayer towers.
the night before we went to pizza hut to eat. it took us a while to get there becouse once again the glaring inaccuracies of the lonely planet/rough guide maps came into play. the reason we went was becouse we were craving something substantual and familier. it was pretty run of the mill, substandard fast food. however after we had finished out meal and were waiting to pay the manager got up and announced something to general applause. we clapped, not clear what was going on. then five of the serving staff lined up and started to dance frantically to bollywood music. it was hilarious, and actually not bad. on a par with some of the bollywood dancers i have seen. this went on for quite some time with indian girls leaping up from tables and joining in to the dance fest. i felt my foot twitching but avoided ambarrasing my self. all in all a much more interesting place to eat than it’s english counterpart.
our train tomorrow is at six. must get an early night.
love julio
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carotte
yay!
live has managed to set us up with wireless! i just switch on the new shiny lap top and there is the net ready to be surfed!
I had the cega christmas meal yesterday and geoff had his in stevenage so liv and han came over to babysit – the pibs sleped through lik a baby! then promptly woke when i got home. running out of battery so il blog later as don’t know where the lead is…
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solid
hail!
ahh yes the indian head wiggle. i was going to mention it before but it slipped my mind. it does seem to mean any number of things, and i have imployed it regulaly in my comunications with the natives.
not got to hampi yet, but no doubt we will in the near future. i swam out to geoffs rock but the tide must have been higher when you were here as there was a thick layer of barnicles which sliced my hands and feet to ribbons in my attempts to clamber up. we went all the way to the right of the beach though and swam across to the fantastically named “monkey island” (it looked like the one in the game aswell!) and leapt from boulder to boulder for ages. great fun!
just heading back to mumbai today. the mumbai-goa train journey has now become as familiar as the barnham- chichester route and just as tedious.
julio
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luu
palolem
hey, really like it here, hot but breezy, and the sea makes u feel less clastaphobic as in the cities and trains.
i did like mumbai, very colourful, felt abit unsafe in the boxy prison we we stayin in on th first 2 nights. overall indias not as bad as i thought it would be- referring to the poverty and smellyness! the only down point i can think of is the constant staring from everyone.
were heading back up to mumbai tonight to see flo off, it’ll be strange her not being here. then i think were going to try and do the golden triangle up north. would have liked to stay longer here because u meet so many cool people and the locals are so much friendlier. maybe we’ll come back before SE Asia.
the foods lush, and already i want to buy so much stuff in the bazaars and little street stalls but dont think my bag could carry much more.
chow x
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dodman
Letter from St Joseph
It’s so hot and sweaty here there seems little point in taking a shower because the small effort required to dry the body afterwards is enough to bring on a fresh rush of pore opening and perspiration sluicing that leaves in its wake a sense of futility. This is particularly the case in the late evening, when what is sought beyond all else is restful comfort, of bodily ease, in a full length, generously wide bed, with the promise of a gloriously deep sleep, rather than a tangled tossing and turning in an oily pit of goat odour.
I’m reading Shantaram, and according to the author, the Indian head waggle – the sort of side to side movement done in a rolling figure of eight fashion – isn’t simply their way of saying yes or no or they don’t know, but a universal gesture of welcome and conciliation. He found that his relationships with Indians became transformed once he learned how to copy the gesture.
Down at the local ’boutique Malbar’, which is run by an Indian family, I asked for some onions and was told they were out of stock. I wasn’t surprised, since the onion boat is long overdue. His words were accompanied by the inevitable head waggle. I did a shadow waggle in response, and was then offered a couple of onions from their own kitchen.
Those mosquito bands work a dream, but the flimsy plastic catches are about as crap a contrivance as a human mind could devise. I’ve sewn mine together, as shown in the photo. When they run out of steam, I plan to impregnate them with pure citronella oil.
The swimming is great here, as is the fish eating.
Outdoor kitchen
Mossie bands
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carotte
Hail,
good to see you managed to pick up the luu jul! looks nice on palolem – have you swum out to geoff’s rock yet? have you seen the bats at night? it looks ike flois sitting on the rocks around where the bats are, an they charge around at night. are you going to hampi? it’s a good place to go to get a bit of temple in free of charge – nice little hamplet too – don’t forget to visit the mango tree eatery – westernised but worth a visit non the less. Have you been booking the top bunks like i mentioned?
We are in wales at the moment for the gibbs famill xmas reunion – uch food and merriment!!! complete with goeff’s special father christmas house choc cake and huge tree sitting on a huge pile of pressies!!!! Geoff has become a little jaded with the whole pressie thing – even though his whole contribution to the present buying was to forget to get his brothers dvd – and has decided to broach the subject of either no pressies next yearof of doing secret santa ike we have, therefor only having to get one pressie. We’ll, the vast veriety of foodstuff for luncheon awaits! Geoff has just got back from visiting a van shop to check out the different types of camper van for our trip round europe next year (providing he can persuade work to give him an extended holiday!)
well, hope all’s well in the seychelles dod – hail to mama and mamie – rio is fine and being fawned over by all and sundry – i barely have to hold him at all except for food and sleep!!
Luu-Â you look a little porky on the photos (not that i’m the slimest!!!) maybe lay of the starchy food’s in india!!! having said that, i am off to stuff cheeseand choch cake!!!!
have fun annd keep blogginng
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decoy
drive mode
Hail Jul
Have you encountered drive mode? It seems to do exactly the same as Softick Card Export II, but without a fee of $15.
Actually, on closer inspection is seems that they didn’t include it on the TX, but it seems are though if you can find the files, you can transfer them over to the TX and it should work. I’ll have a look tonight and see if I can email you the files.
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solid
so, we are on the way back to goa. a mere ten hours seems like a walk in the park in comparison to our last journey. twenty six hours from kochi to mumbai, not to bad i think to myself, reasoning that i would be asleep most of the time nestled in the complimentary blanket and pillow that came with our seats on the previous train journey. but no. leaping onto the train we discover no blankets, just the bare seat to huddle on. as it was around afternoon, i assumed that they would supply the blankets later. food was plentifull and meals supplied on order. these proved to be fairly turgid watery slurry with rice. the somosas and bajis sold by the shrieking train minions were much nicer. in a pinch im sure one could survive on chai alone what with it being mainly comprised of suger. night arrived and the blankets didn’t. a blasted cold gripped us and we lay shivering most of the night. i managed to work work how to switch of the fans that were coursing the wind chill factor, but some cretins on a nearby bunk couldn’t work out the simple mechanism of closing the windows so we pretty much froze huddling under out thin sheets. in the many hours we had to kill, flo read an intire book and i drained the battery on my gameboy playing for 8 hours strait. after a scinterlating 26 hours or so, i asked a train minion when we would be arriving. “five!” he gestured wildly and cackled at some private joke. as it was around 4.00pm i was pleaseantly surprised, only an hour late was good time on an indian train. come six i asked a different person. “five o’clock” he said. “umm?” i said, looking at my watch. “in the morning” he added as an afterthought. and so the long day wore on. after forty hours on the train it felt like our limbs had atrophied to the point that we had trouble walking. pretty grim all in all.
after that, me finding a hotel that was assentually a collectioin of airless little boxes was a poor tactical decision, and led to flo and i contracting cabin fever.
 we collected lucy and are heading down to goa as i type. it isn’t the first time and i doubt it will be our last. as we have vague plans of comiing here for christmas.
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in palolam again. just as nice as last time but a bit cooler. really like it here. nothing quite like waking up and leaping into the cooling waters.
liv can you send me a card exporter for the palm? the trail i have has nearly run out and i think i need it to put a new one one the palm as nothing has bluetooth here.
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solid
well thats a much better time!
 the reason i got it wrong was when i checked the email you sent me when you bought your ticket lu, it had 00.40 enscribed in it.
anyhoo, no worries ill see you at the airport. after you have picked up your baggage just walk strait out. ill meet you where the taxi’s are.
 my mobile is working now that i am in mumbai, so text any queries.
see you anon.
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decoy
luu flight details
hail Jul,
Just to clarify:
Flight BA0199 Operated by British Airways Departing from Heathrow (London)
Mon 4 December 2006, 21:30Arriving at Mumbai (Bombay)
Tue 5 December 2006, 11:40 (Local Time!)Number of stops 0 Flying duration 8hrs 40mins Aircraft type Boeing 747 jet -
luu
flight times
i hope you read your emails/blog before you get to airport, im flying with BA and my flight numbers BA0199, be there!!
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decoy
kitesurfing at east witterings
Geoff and I went windsurfing/kitesurfing yesterday. First, we headed down to west witterings to take advantage of the lagoon at low tide. As we arrived we noticed some signs saying that whilst windsurfing was allowed during the off season, for kitesurfing you had to be a member all year round. Ignoring this sign, we decided to head further up the beach to avoid anyone complaining. However, as soon as we’d set up, along came a goon on a kitesurf to tell me that I wasn’t allowed. After some discussion, we decide to head to the satanist-free east wittering.
It was a bit choppy, and absolutely knackering, but really good fun. I got one really good run, zipping over the waves and picking up quite a bit of speed. I think i’m slowly getting to grips with the new kite. I’ll post some pics later as T took a couple of photos.
Unfortunately, after getting out and packing everything away, I developed some sort of seizure in the lower back and have trouble bending over. Looking at myself in the mirror this morning I seem to have developed an S shape in the spine similar to what Dod had recently when he pulled something in the back whilst planting leeks or something. Any exercise suggestions, Dod?
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luu
Hello!!!
Hi everyone,
India sounds interesting juls, looks a bit chilly on that beach? the dancers look good.
I cant wait to get out there, Chris has gone to Meribel to do his season and everyones at uni so im sat here twiddling my thumbs.
Btw my flight doesnt arrive at 00:40 like you think, it arrives at 11:40 on the 5th, im assuming thats local time? i depart from heathrow at 21:30
see you on tuesday
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solid
in kerela
ahoy there. at present i am sitting and typing in the rather pretenscious art cafe in kochi. classical music plays in the background and travellers simper in their saris.not that this is a bad cafe, having just sampled the food, i am forced to admit that i like it here. its a little slice of home, more accuratly according to flo, like totness. this bit of kochi called fort coshin is really relaxed and pleasent, the bit we are staying in is about 20 minutes away and is noisy and a bit crap. too late to move though, we are heading back to mumbai on the morrow to pick up lucy on the 5th.
im looking forward to this train journey especially as it stands at 26hours non-stop it will rival the tan-goeff kashmer experiance as the most hellish journey of the year. the trains have been a fun experiance, and a really good way of speaking to lots of cool idian chaps who are not after your money. the last train trip, from mangalore to kochi (a mere 10 hours) was a bit grim becouse straped for time we had to stump for second class. this means one has to huddle on a seat made of wooden slats with the great unwashed. you can’t move of course as soome fiend will leap into your seat in a blink. it turned out not to be too bad as we made friends with our section of the coach. this included two it students traveling back from taking an exam. a young kid coming back from school, a wierd lecherous man who i had to physically distance from flo, and and intire football team including coach, who were to a man, deaf and dum. so, on paper our compartment could seat 8. on our seat comfortable for 3, sat 6. same for oposite us. above our heads perched in the luggage racks, limbs dangling like some perculiour plant, were another 6 or so people also crowded the aisles, fill the compartment with a humid fug composed mainly of sweat. it was an alright journey though. chattering away as most spoke very good english. we only struggled when it came to my inept attempts at sign language.
my phone apparently ambarassed at it’s inability to get a signal, committed sepeku the other day, its screen dimming in a most tragic manner. somehow i managed to resurrect it today but i am considering getting a new phone when i get a sim. right im off to head around the town.
see you later.
julio
some picsin no perticular order:
the kerelan back waters complete with bathing elephants
small beady eyes!
a nausiating couple
flo on mumbai station with our light luggage
believe it or not this is a sea slug
gokarn in all its melevolent glory
kerelan kathakali dance -
carotte
the luu
Liv – luu seems to be having trouble posting, or indeed logging on at all (she may not be able to read…) Possibly e-mail her and give detailed, short word explanation?
Â
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dodman
Ablutions, excretion, false dawn, fruitless
Bathtime
Potty training
Wales play the All Blacks
Barnham banana
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dodman
No doubt
Well, we made it to Om and Half Moon Beach and another one still further away and can confirm the malign influence of Gokarn extended well beyond the town boundary. Although it seemed to be the people rather than the topography that caused this, even without people something unpleasant still hung in the air.
This is all subjective, of course. We know a Frenchman who spent a couple of his formative years in Bognor Regis and remembers it with incomprehensible fondness.
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