Canadian girls escape from the clutches of bugs, rats and bikers!
Phew!

What a title!

First off, let me apologize to our loyal readers. Last night I was not in fine form, and I truly apologize for the lack lustre writing performance…I know there is no excuse, but we were both whipped! Let me tell you why.

Sit back, have a cup of chai tea, Kashmir tea or good old hot chocolate (for all of you deep in the grips of winter…sorry…38 degrees here yesterday with humidity of about 102%….) and let’s settle in for a good fireside chat.

Yesterday morning Sonja scooted off to her yoga class. We had arranged to meet her for breakfast at 10am at our local watering hole next to our duplex luxury townhouse. Even though we were awake at 7:30am, none of the stores open until 10am. We think it is because they are open so late due to the heat of the day, they take a siesta and then reopen till late at night. Amber and I went and rented two scooties from Belinda, our innkeeper. They were 200 rupees each, which is about $7.00. Don’t worry, we also made sure that we had helmets with them!

We strolled down the lane to see about internet access, but the only one open was charging more than we wanted to pay, so we went back to the hotel, waited for Sonja and had a bite to eat.

Can anyone guess what Amber had for breakfast???? Another banana pancake! lol

Sufficiently sufonsified by pancakes again, the three of us headed out with full intentions of going to Old Goa. We have since learned the road to hell is paved with good intentions….or at least the road to Baga beach is! On the way we decided to stop and check out the “Mind-Body-Soul-Psychic-Fair”. It was on the way, so why not!

It was at the Banana Republic hotel, and it was not exactly as we thought it would be. Basically there were 5 people at the “fair”, each with their own specialty. Sonja decided to relax by the poolside while Amber and I had our cards/palms read and our faces and heads massaged.

The fortune teller predicted great wealth, riches and continued good looks for both of us…so the men in our lives should be grateful for that. Unfortunately he did not have the winning lottery numbers for us, so back to work when we get home I guess….

Scalp massages nearly rendered us into rubber women it was soooooooooooo relaxing.

Off to lunch now. We stopped at the “Non-Spicy-Food-Restaurant” on the beach front overlooking the ocean in Baga. Can you tell who picked this one? Ha, fooled you, Amber did not! Sonja did, but Amber certainly was happy with her selection.

Nestled amongst the umbrellas lining the beach (topless no less!) were throngs in thongs…. Amber got an eyeful, but decided against taking any pictures for fear of her lens cracking when snapping the cracks of those on the sand….

The restaurant was at the end of a cul de sac that bordered a wharf of sorts. There were piles of fishing nets everywhere and boats chugging/drifting into harbor. The salt was so strong, the wind blowing it into my eyes made them sting and water.

You can imagine my shock and surprise, when Amber didn’t order off the pancake menu! She went out on a semi-limb and ate rice…. I went more mid line spicy and Sonja took the plunge with prawn vindaloo and she started to sweat!

It was super windy there, but certainly very touristy and Mexico-y.

Sonja then needed to make her way to a travel agent to book her ticket to Bombay, and Amber and I went to go find an ATM. Here is where things started to get interesting…

As you will see by our pics and video when we get back, the driving is a gong show. First of all, it is on the left hand side of the road, and then the lines are only a suggestion, and people pass others into oncoming traffic, with traffic hurtling towards you. Anyhoo, it was a far cry from the quiet country roads we had taken to get to Baga beach. The problem is, there are zero street signs, and every corner begins to look like the next with people hawking their wares.

So, the navigator in me just threw my hands in the air, (not while driving of course… 😛 ) and drove a bit, stopped, got directions, and then continued. We finally found what looked to be a promising ATM for Amber to visit. She parked her scootie and went inside. There are two types of license plates here for vehicles. White ones for locals to use, and yellow ones for tourist vehicles. Never the twain shall mix. If you are caught driving a white labelled scooter, you risk getting pulled over, fined and the bike confiscated. We found that out earlier, so when we got our scooters, we secured the correct ones for us. As I sat there waiting for Amber, there were two couples from England negotiating prices for two scooters for themselves. I noticed all the bikes in the row were white plated ones. I tried to catch the eye of the man negotiating with the local man, but was unsuccessful. I sauntered over to one of the ladies and approached them.

They had been in India once before, but hadn’t rented scooters, so they weren’t aware of the licence plate policy. I gave them some friendly advice/information to either use or not use at their own discretion and went back to my bike. The one woman looked a bit upset at this new turn of events and broached her husband to tell him about it prior to the deal being sealed.

At this time, I was reminded of a conversation Amber and I had with a man on the plane going to Bangalore from Texas. He told us that we should do what we can to avoid “trouble” with locals, as it can get sticky, messy and dangerous. I knew I was flirting with potential ugliness by advising them of the difference in plates, but the champion of the underdog I can be, I wanted them to have the information before making their decision. The whole do unto others bit and all.

The husband then approached me for more information, and so I explained it to all four Brits. The local guy caught wind of what was going on, and didn’t like the fact I was messing in his nest so to speak and confronted me.

“Why are you making trouble for my business?” “Why are you messing with my deal…?”

I replied that I wasn’t making trouble for his business but that I thought it would be fair for the tourists to know the real truth and be able to make an informed decision. He again got pissy and cranky and looked over at his shoulder to his “posse” in the alley beside his business.

Amber was still in the bank machine unaware of the brewing storm outside, and I certainly couldn’t leave our bikes, or leave her there, so I tried to placate him while she returned.

The posse was swelling by the minute and my six shooter wouldn’t handle seven, unless there was a successful through and through, so as soon as I spotted Amber, I made my move.

Again, being in “code white” she was practically a lamb to the slaughter as she walked through the angry mob. “La la la la la la la…my those flowers are beautiful…the sun is shining…all is well with the world, except I have been thwarted by yet another non-international ATM…”

She said hello, started to tell me she needed to use the phone to deal with her debit card issues, and I cut her off at the knees, arterial spray everywhere and said, “We can make the call somewhere else….we need to leave NOW…just trust me and GO GO GO GO GO !!!!”

Being the good world traveller she is, she complied, not knowing if there was a bomb scare, terrorist attack or if I really needed to go to a washroom…..

Off we sped on our bikes weaving through traffic like pros, dodging goats, chickens, cows and “local” breed dogs, we left them in the dust with the English tourists in their midst as sacrificial lambs….

We have to go catch our plane now….so the rest of the story later….plus added feature of how to successfully perform spider slaughters….How to cut a spider in less than 8 pieces, in less than 8 seconds….

Annie and Amber!

The eagle has landed……
Hello from India!!!

Where shall I begin!?!?

This blog details the exciting trip my great friend Amber and I took to India in 2006.

Here we go!  Sit back, grab a beverage and travel with us across the world…….

We started off in Calgary, got our tickets from the agent…she was quite disappointed to tell us that if we wanted to sit together, there were only two seats left together on the whole plane, and boo hoo…they were in the emergency exit aisle….awwww….so we suffered with three times the leg room of everyone else….someone had to make the sacrifice, and we were just the girls to do it. More of the plane adventures later….

So we go get a nice hot cup of one of the Fivebucks coffees….and lo and behold, we were labelled as bomb making terrorists for wanting to bring our hot drinks through security. No can do. We had to gulp them or toss them, only to have another Starbucks just on the other side of the security fence. So, through we go, no problems, until they wondered why we were setting off the alarms when walking through the metal detectors. Turns out we had buns of steel afterall…or rather the zippers in our tear away pants were causing a problem…but quickly resolved.

After we boarded the plane, we settled into the trip nicely. We had an amazing view of the toilet and then it became a sport watching people try and open a push door! One poor woman didn’t quite figure it out in time, and was sans a receptacle de barfo! The poor flight attendant had to wrinkle her nose as the dealt with the mess, and spray the room with copious amounts of air freshener.

Then, we became “those girls” who started causing problems for the flight attendants. I was accidentally ringing my buzzer and the purser would come….and then Amber practically started an electrical fire when she spilled her apple juice on the tv remote and all down my pants. We then had to make them aware of the fact that my chair was set to auto recline. No sooner was that dealt with, but the people in the row next to us started to tell the poor purser of their misfortunes with their tv’s etc. He settled it all by getting us drunk on champagne. lol

Our stayover in London was supposed to be 90 minutes, but was shortened to 20 as I needed to have the old body cavity search when they found my fork and explosive sunscreen that was 1oz over the legal limit. Who says cavity searches can’t put a smile on your face? 🙂

Our next leg of the journey was another gruelling 10 flight. My keen eye however detected a flaw in their seat assignments….Amber and I were in a row by ourselves, and beside us there was another row with no one in it. Amber quickly saw the vision I had for us, when I prodded her into sitting in the other row by herself. No sooner where we situated, the wheels went up, our heads went down, and we woke up 7 hours later somewhere over the United Arab Emirates to be fed some curry samosas for breakfast.

Our breakfast came with some sort of green soupy thing that we didn’t know what do with. I asked the guy beside me if it was a dip for our fruit….he said no it was a lime pickle dip for our samosas, like a ketchup. Alrighty then…. It was then, even before we landed that Amber discovered she didn’t like curry….it was going to be the start of a culinary adventure for her to find things without curry in it!

There was no one else on the plane with our good fortune, unless you were in the ultra first class that had actual beds in them!!! Crazy what you get for an additional $4000 per ticket. We however, got free socks, toothbrush and eye goggles!

Upon our arrival to Bangalore, we gathered our chainmail wrapped backpacks, where Amber discovered how much heavier her pack was when the day pack portion was zipped onto the reg portion. I became sad to find out we weren’t in Nepal, and I couldn’t get a Sherpa for her…..Robaxacet will become her next best friend perhaps….

Sonja greeted us with a big smile and open arms for which we were grateful. We were also greeted by 900 taxis, palm trees and weird Mr. Mee-ah-gee type trees (remember them from Karate Kid?). Driving at night wasn’t so bad as we only had to dodge homeless people sleeping on the streets, there were no cows out and the dogs were curled up on the sidewalk. Later that morning was a different story however!

We went back to Sonja’s hotel room for a shower, and a real toilet! YAY! I forgot to mention how sorry I was not to have my camera at the ready for when Amber saw her first squattie! She did however take a picture of it for proof for her girls back home. For those of you who don’t know, in other countries there aren’t always regular toilets. There are toilets on the floor that look like urinals laid down that you need to squat over top of, for both #1 and #2!

We went for breakfast for only a dollar, for all three of us, where Amber confirmed her dislike of curry… We all enjoyed some lovely chai tea though.

I should have placed a bet with myself how long Amber would keep her vow of not doing her souvenir shopping on the first day…..it wasn’t 20 minutes after we left Sonja napping, Amber was haggling over some stuff…can’t say what and spoil the surprise though. Laden with things, we trotted back to the hotel to get ready for our flight to Goa. Soon, she started unloading some of her packed things into my pack to make room for her purchases….I quickly warned her that I wasn’t going to be her sherpa for her purchases and she only laughed……..help!

Her turn to laugh at me came a few hours later when we were on our flight to Goa. I was in the aisle seat, Sonja in the middle and Amber at the window. The curried cucumber and tomato sandwich I had was not sitting well in the midst of being tossed in the air….we had hit some air pockets, and my lunch was getting tossed around pretty good. Subtly I searched for my own receptacle de barfo in case I needed to make a deposit. I was a bit cranky and ordered Amber to sit back so I could see out the window to get some perspective and bearings. We landed soon after and I went from a whiter shade of grey/green to my regular pasty self.

No sooner had we landed, than Amber was snapping pictures of our plane/airport, when we turned a corner, saw a “No photos allowed” sign, adorned with a guard holding AK-47’s….or where they AK-46 1/2’s? Not sure, but they were big, black and looked deadly. Not sure where Amber hid the camera with lightening speed, but she did walk with a bit of limp for a few minutes!

The next few moments are spent moaning about how hot and sticky and did I mention hot we were? Good thing no one had an egg at this point, or we could have fried it on the pavement. Another good thing is we are here in spring, and not the hot summer season, where it is 47 degrees per day…whew! We are suffering through 35 degrees….

The lanes here only show 2 lanes, but it certainly only a suggestion, as sometimes there are 4 or 5 cars, trucks or scooters across each lane, driving on the left hand side, avoiding cows, goats, dogs and others.

We went to Anjula’s open air flea market last evening. It is the largest in India, and we only saw 10% of it, but probably saw all the same things three times over. Bananna and apple pancakes don’t have curry we discovered, so Amber had them again for breakfast today with chai tea.

We felt like old people as we were in bed by 7:15 at night, complete with our mosquito net above us. Lucky to have that, as it kept out the frogs, coackroaches, centipedes and moths too. I was attacked by a frog outside our room last night when I took it’s picture. As it leaped for my throat, fangs bared….( I think it was a vampire frog!) I protected myself with my thumb and let out a blood curdling scream…Amber was too scared to come rescue me as I heard the bars being put across the door and the key in the lock turning…she had already decided I was to be the only sacrifice that night. She would save herself for tomorrow night’s frog ceremony! If only she could find enough garlic to eat today for her own self preservation…. She is sitting here laughing at me as I type this, but they say that laughter sometimes stems from nervous truth!

We are now off to find a travel agent to get us tickets to fly to Dehli, as we have polled taxi drivers, hotel owners and the general unwashed masses (literally) and the consensus is that it will be more long and ardorous than we have to spend in our time budget this trip. I say “this trip” for I can already understand Sonja’s desire to return. There is no way we can even appreciate 10% of what this country offers in only two weeks.

After that, maybe rent a scooter for this area (it is much less populated and dangerous on the road here, don’t fear) and do some toodling around before hitting the beach for maybe a dip and then a massage.

Love to all, we really enjoy reading your comments.

Ciao!

A&A in India!

Almost done….
There is such a thing as Indian Standard Time here. 10am really means 1130…

We packed up our stuff onto the roof of another cab, with a sleepy cab driver and headed out to our Holi Holi Holi party being hosted by a couch surfing friend’s place not far from the airport. I had avowed that I wasn’t going to get painted again, as I still wasn’t quite finished scrubbing off the other paint, but only 10 minutes later I was covered. As were Sonja and Amber! Blue, purple, yellow, red, green, orange powdered paint (the good kind) soon was everywhere.

Their party was being catered, drinks flowing freely and as well a beverage named Bhang. It was a fruit leaf plant liquor that apparently after about 8 small cups you start to “fly”. Then you crash and have a four day hangover. Amber is now starting to crash five hours later…. lol

There were some sort of crepe thing with veggies and spices, some sort of Indian nacho dish and a guy also named Amberish. It was held in the court yard of a posh apartment building that also was home to a famous Indian movie star we got to meet. Sonja wrote down the name, but I can’t remember it right now. There were armed security guards as well as a TV crew filming the party. We all took pictures in various states of being painted as well as some short video.

It certainly was a fun and appropriate way to end the trip. Such a celebration was the capper for us, and the start of their new year.

We were fortunate enough to have the Host and Hostess offer to keep our luggage in their apartment, as well as to let us shower when it was time to leave. We were painted with the good paint (allegedly) but we still bear the scars of blue, green and pink in our hair, our pores and over parts of our body. Let’s just say that Amber could hide quite nicely in a pumpkin patch and not be discovered! I look like I have been violently assaulted and have bruises all over my face. My arms are another matter. Here in the Indian airport everyone knows why we are like this, but come London, we will either fit in with the punks or will stand out like sore thumbs! hee hee

Our pictures will tell more stories than we can cover here, and we will add just a few final notes of things that have popped into our heads post blogging…

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They have sweet candy here that is made from gourds (pumpkin type vegetables) that is flavored with rose oil…..yummy….NOT! Ick! Amber’s breath smelled like a car air freshener for a long time, and not in the good way…

Corriander soup tastes like eating smog….

The longest word we found was Dharmachakrapravartanamudra which is ?????? 50 points to the first correct pronounciation and meaning of the word.

Travelling by air here is the way to see India in large quantities efficiently.

Fruit bars are meant to feed the bears, not for your own consumption.

Barter Barter Barter

Get the Dukerol diarrhea shot! Awesome! No Dehli belly for us!

It is always nice to travel the world, but it is especially nice to have friends to share this with and people we love to come home to.

Thanks for following our trip, and we will see you soon!

Love always,

Annie and Amber
xoxoxo

Perspective and appreciation start to set in for real now…
Howdy,

After breakfast with Sonja, we hopped into a trusty cab off to the airport. We were able to send a quick blog before boarding and then hopped on the plane. The security there at the airport was stellar compared to in Bangalore where they never even compared out ticket to our passport or anything!

Ever been somewhere super hot and they have those super fine misters to cool you down? Our airplane had them on the inside! YAY! It was super cool and relaxing on the flight, with no real events to speak of until we started our descent. The smog we were trying to cut through was so thick, it required our plane pullout a knife to lead the way through.

Having been to Los Angeles I thought I had seen smog and pollution, but never have I seen anything like this…and flying over the stick huts and tents and freaky places right away put Amber and I on hyper alert. As we neared things, our spidey senses started to really tingle and we made an executive decision to upgrade our accommodations to that of a 5 star hotel, not the local flop house that was the original plan. Once we did that, we signed up for our tour of the Taj Mahal and two other fort/shrines and hopped a taxi to our new home. Even more were we reaffirmed of our good decision as we passed unbelieveable poverty, filth, criminal looking people and just plain scariness.

When we reached our hotel we were pretty freaked out. I am still shocked at how shocked I was, as I thought I had been desensitized with my various trips, and even with what we had seen in Goa and Bangalore, but I was 100% wrong. Dead wrong.

When we pulled up, our hotel was like an oasis in the desert to two weary travellers. Going to the front desk and checking in, then heading up to our rooms, we passed security guards at the door, gun detectors before being able to go into the elevators. We felt much better! Our room was on the 18th floor and we could barely see out of it due to the pollution. ICK! Upstairs for dinner as we did not want to venture out at all. Bed time was super great as we crashed hard! Off to the Taj Mahal tomorrow!

See you there!

A & A