6 March

The buzzing, vibrant streets of Mumbai brought our India adventure to a close. We spent the last day photographing the street life and sights. This place is India on steroids and wows the senses, from architectural wonders to the abject poverty of the begging street children. It’s all here, for shopaholics there are streets and more streets of bazaars and shops that cater for the deepest pockets, then add to the mix there are restaurant choices to suit all tastes. You can even learn to Bolly Dance.

Linda "don't like cricket"

Game at the Oval Domain, Law Courts background

Mahalaxmi Dhobi Ghat is the world's oldest and largest human powered outdoor laundry, the dhobi wallahs beat the dirt out of thousands of kilograms of soiled clothes and linen, mainly from hotels and hospitals.  Bollywood has also made a movie of Dhobi Ghat, wonder if it’s a soap opera.

Dabbawallahs outside Churchgate Station

Linda riding the train to the suburbs

The dabbawallahs originated in 1880, 5000 of them deliver 200,000 lunch boxes a day via bicycle, foot, hand cart or train from restaurants and homes. Lunches are delivered on time come rain or shine, using a sophisticated number system with about one mistake in six million, the dabbawallahs take immense pride in their work. The empty boxes, after lunch, are again collected and sent back to their respective houses.
Such is the dedication and commitment of the barely literate and barefoot delivery men who form links in the extensive delivery chain, that there is no system of documentation at all.

Chhatrapati (Prince of Wales Museum)

Bigger Ben Rajabai Clock Tower

Sunset at Chowpatty beach, not the best spot for an evening swim, the water here is rumoured  to have the toxicity of battery acid.

Last supper at Chowpatty with a Bhatura. The Bhatura felt like a fitting end to our adventure as this was also our first meal in India when we arrived in Delhi two months ago.

Bath time

And it's goodbye from us

March 4

Today’s adventure is the final leg of our journey towards Mumbai. The first stage was a two hour  bumpy and rattling bus ride to Alibag, it was a scenic treat along a palm fringed  coast where rural life was still at the bullock cart pace.

The bumpy bus to Alibag

Bullock cart on the beach

From Alibag we took to a shuttle bus to the ferry at Mandwa where we boarded our ferry for a two hour journey to our final destination the iconic Gateway of India in Mumbai.

Our trusty Mumbai ferry's sister

Final approaches to the Gateway

2 March

The hidden gem of Murud is the magnificent island fortress, Janjira, built in 1140 by the Siddis who were trader/sailors, possibly pirates who hailed from the Horn of Africa. Unconquered through history until now as nature slowly works away turning the ramparts into crumbling ruins.

Indian tourists heading for Janjira Fort

Dhow sailing to the fort

Life jackets?  We don't know what that word is

Sunday tourists queuing for a dhow ferry

The most unexpected site in Murud not mentioned in our guidebooks is the colony of fruit bats the size of crows that hang about in the trees along the beach, the other odd thing about them is they fly around like flocks of birds in the morning, a most unusual activity for an animal that is associated with dusk and the darkness.

Bats hanging around

Bats at sunrise flying around

1 March
We start today’s adventure with yet another 30km auto-rickshaw ride back to Ratnagiri railway station for our last leg on the Konkan railway, it was  a three hour journey to Mangao on the Mandovi Express through 243km’s of the most scenic part of our Konkan journey.

Train snaking along the Konkan Coast

View from the train

From Mangao the next section was quite tricky to organise due to language difficulties, it involved a two hour car journey tracking a river bed and densely forested hills the size of Welsh ones to our final destination of Murud. It was a tough long day of travel capped off with issues of super bad accommodation, a dirty prison cell might best describe it, so we had to move on with another 15km journey, late into the night before we finally came to rest.

28 February

We substituted our auto-rickshaw journey to Kudal railway station for the comfort of an air/con car, we couldn’t suffer another hour and twenty minute bone shaking, dusty, truck exhaust fumes choking ride, so it was time for a little taste of luxury.  The road winds its way through forests of mango and cashew nut trees with occasional glimpses of the palm trees and the Kali River below on the way to Kudal.

From there we once again board the Mandovi Express for today’s destination Ratnagiri, a distance of 196 km, 3 hrs from Kudal, then on to our final destination by road to Ganpatipule.  The Konkan terrain slowly changed from lush tropical to a red dusty scrub landscape and rocky outcrops, the train burrowed its way through this inhospitable countryside via a continuous string of tunnels.

Unfortunately the only option for the last 30km part of our journey from Ratnagiri to Ganpatipule was the auto-rickshaw one, which turned out to be not so bad, the road followed the coast lowlands of mangroves and banyan trees then climbed up and around cliff headlands revealing beach after beach of surf breaks and not a board rider in sight.  The beaches were almost pristine apart from the unfortunate ubiquitous India-wide ugly sisters, flotsam and jetsam.

Sunrise sets from the cliff top

Low tide sand collecting bullock carts

Fishing village of Jaigad

Ganpatipule in Hindi translates into Ganpati another name for Ganesh the elephant god, while pule is hindi for village, the 400 year old Ganesh temple on the beach is a major Indian religious tourist attraction.

26 February

On our last day in Goa, we hired a scooter to visit the beaches further north at Calangute and Baga.  It was quite a culture shock from the relative quiet of our beach stay in Candolim to the full-on mass tourism, packed beaches and crazy Calangute traffic, we were happy to survive this road trip with our limbs intact.

Larging it at Calangute

Today we say goodbye to Goa and continued our journey via taxi, the Konkan railway and a 35km auto-rickshaw road trip to Tarkali in Maharashtra state.

 Boarding the train to Kudal

Suddenly we find ourselves in another world where we appear to be the only western tourists, road signs are all in Hindi and very few people speak English.

It is not unusual to see bullock carts in the street and fishermen still paddling out in their canoes to circle net the beach with equipment that dates back thousands of years.  That said, fibre glass boats with outboard motors are favoured by fishermen in the commercial port of Malvan.

Canoe planks are stitched together

Paddling out the net

Beach crew hauling in one end of the net

A typical catch of the day

Washing the catch prior to shipping to market

The rest of our journey towards Mumbai will be on the Konkan railway, considered to be one of the world’s great railway journeys, the construction of it was completed in 1998, a major feat of civil engineering that finally linked the west coast from Mangalore to Mumbai with the rest of the Indian railway network.  This project was never attempted by the British railway engineers and went straight into the too hard basket, which is no surprise when considering a difficult terrain and extreme monsoon weather on this part of the coast. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Konkan_Railway

22 February

A 90 minute journey north along the Konkan coast took us to our next destination, Candolim in North Goa. First impressions are that this place is the Magaluf of Goa dominated by people speaking Russian with a hint of Essex, not a back packer in sight. Beach umbrellas out front combined with a backdrop of shabby beach shack restaurants make this a very lively place, combined in the mix is a comparatively new phenomenon of Indian lager louts. They flock here from other states where there are much tighter controls on alcohol.

We have beach umbrellas

Beach shack restaurants

Office work at the beach shack wi-fi

20 February

Today’s excursion was by local bus to the covered markets in Margao city.

The local bus Victoria gets some fine tuning en route we don’t want the wheels to fall off do we

No they are not worry beads these sad ladies are selling but necklaces of Salami

18 February

We had an enjoyable car journey of just under an hour along the winding road over the coastal foothills of the Western Ghats.  As we climbed the hills the vegetation changed from palm trees into forests of eucalyptus before descending back down again to palms and rice paddies arriving at our next Goan destination of Benaulim on the Konkan Coast, this is where we will be based for the next few days.

19 February

The beach at Benaulim is part of a 25 km strip of featureless sand that is lacking in both atmosphere and character, the plus side is that the hard sand below the high water mark is ideal for cycling for miles and miles.

We are however  fortunate to be staying at Palm Grove Cottages where the owner employs 2 gardeners to tend an organically grown tropical garden on a par with Kew without the glass.  It is a local attraction for tourists and film makers.  For us it is a top place to hang out in the heat of the day listening to the chorus of mad bird calls that are also attracted to hanging around this little oasis, an unusual feature of the garden are the pencil pine shaped 30 meter high Ashoka trees.

Palm Grove tropical garden

Ashoka trees

Catch of the day

Road to the beach

Para-sailing

17 January

Well we’ve talked the talk it’s time to take a ride on the wild side, we hired an Electra Silver Bullet complete with its thumpa exhaust and legendary rugged reliability, yes this is the most fun way to travel in tropical India making your own cool breeze.  We took the back roads through the hills to Cabo de Rama with a lunch stop at the relatively undeveloped Agonda Beach.

Silver Bullet with matching  hair

Pillion cam

The only unexpected hazard of the day was a giant monkey that leapt out in front of us trying to cross the road, he missed us but he wasn’t wearing a crash helmet and bounded headlong into an oncoming vehicle, unfortunately the monkey gets it.  Hanuman the monkey god must have been taking the day off.

The cost of the day’s excursion worked out to be half that of the entrance fee to the Taj Mahal.  As for simple pleasures, this has to be Paul’s number one India experience to date.

17 February

An after thought for anyone saddling up for the India Easy Rider experience looking for adventure and what ever comes your way, it will probably be a TATA bus lurching round the next bend on the wrong side of the road driven by a lunatic aiming to make you leave your body for a more spiritual trip. To avoid this hazzard we have noticed that most rickshaws, taxis and buses we have travelled in carry an icon of the Hindu smiley elephant god Ganesh, his job is to keep you safe from bad things happening.

Ganesh

14 February

A most unexpected event occurred this evening that made us aware that the concrete slab building was part of a temple complex, we were woken in the middle of the night by a strange ceremonial noise. We think it was designed to frighten the evil demons out of the newly formed slab, it’s difficult to describe the cacophony of sound but imagine an infant school band banging saucepan lids and drums mixed with a choir of reject singers from a talent show that were tone deaf and you might begin to get a flavour of it. The noise finally stopped around midnight and we would be most surprised if there were any demons left in town.

Heading further north we boarded the Matsyaganda Express for a short trip across the border from Karnataka into southern Goa to Cancona the train station for Palolem, our next destination for a few days.

We have finally hit tourism on a grand scale. Palolem is a beautiful crescent shaped palm fringed beach strung together with restaurants and thatched roof beach hut homestays,

Palolem sunset

Beach hut accommodation

Large numbers of tourists in this area have also taken to living the dream of riding the very much admired ubiquitous Royal Enfield in all its guises.

The Bullet

...and the 500

Storm clouds on the horizon

Forget seeing India by train or bus, the hard core riders of the Bullet say this is the only way to go, being a little bit crazy also helps.