So India has it got better or worse? Well I grudgingly admit that it has got a bit better. We have spent the last couple of weeks in Goa. Starting off in Palelom, which is billed as Goa's most idylic beach, and it is very beautiful and by far the best beach we have seen in India. We settled into our Beach hut over looking the Arabian Sea, we were then forced to spend the next 7 days lounging on the white sands below palm trees, swimming in the very warm sea and eating great Goan food. It was a much needed pit stop. We also managed to drag ourselves out of bed to go to a few yoga classes on the beach and even a bit of dolphin spotting one day.
Anjuna was our next stop, where we were planning on visiting the huge flea market and getting in a bit more yoga, however it turned out that the flea market was full of tat (big suprise) that you can pick up just about everywhere in India, it was also full of package tourists which was an odd sight, not crossed paths with them for a long time. The yoga turned out to have either stopped for the season or was stupidly expensive (bloody package holidays). Fortunatly we were staying in a great hotel with a pool and satelite TV, so we had a few more days R&R, we took this to a new level by treating ourselves to a day at a spa. We had Deep tissue massage, facials and reflexology, and I am happy to report that there was no oil up my bum or touching of inappropriate places. Our nights were spent at one of the video bars in town, sad to say we went back to the same one several times but the food was great and they did a good mix of movies!
Panaji, we decided to splash out and stay at a pretty fancy hotel, furnished with colonial furniture, very olde worlde, within minutes we had managed to lock ourselves out of the toilet and had to go get some help, how many Indians does it take to break down a bathroom door? answer 4, very funny!!! Panaji is an old colonial town, and for once lonely planet didn't lead us astray when they said it was a nice place to walk around. We also went on a little day trip to Old Goa which was a very attractive and well preserverd place, you might think it is contradiction in terms to say this about a place in India but there you go. When we were leaving one of the churches we were asked to fill in a tourist questionaire which we happily did, and were entered into a free prize draw (as if they ever give prizes out, they know that people will be leaving so they will never have to give anything away). Most of the day we were followed around the churches by Indian tourists I think that they were hoping that we would cross ourselves or say a prayer or maybe start speaking in tounges, now I know how they feel when we go to their temples. Our last day was pretty uneventful, with the exception of a phone call, we won the prize draw, alas as we were leaving the next day and we couldn't have our prize (a day trip somewhere or a dolphin cruise), the chap on the phone seemed very dissappointed for us.
We are currently in Mumbai, it is a huge city over 16 million people, it also has some amazing buildings their train station looks more like a palace (I think the Brits can take credit for that one). Other than mooching around the city we have been making use of the western facillities, great cafes and bookshops.
Overall India has gotten better but we are still not in love with it, and Heather wishes the men would stop trying to touch her!
Also we are not struck on our fellow travellers sense of style, for some inexplicable reason they seem to all want to look like Indian peasants, wearing bizarre baggy trousers, the idea I think is to look like a local, but in 5 weeks we have only seen white people dressed like idiots, not a single Indian.
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