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Halfway around the world in 1 year
Welcome to Sotje62 ! My blog intends to make the world a smaller place. Automatically and real-time, the blog traces Beatriz and myself's whereabouts, it might just tell you a thing or 2 that interests me - therefore not you, that's the privilege of having a blog - but read new blogs on the top and click on the pictures in the side bar to see older blogs, the blog,and Beatriz and I hope you grow a good 'travel' appetite. Sotje62 travel blog is in Vlaams (donker gekleurd) and in English (light coloured). So read what you understand and again what you like.
21-04-2009
What they say about Goa - part 2 (English)
Goa part 2.
19th April. Baga beach.
Tonight we go to the saturday night market in Arpora and we get another taste of how much to trust an Indian word.
We ask the first local how far it is to the market. 30 minutes, it is 18H30 so we have just 30 minutes before dark. We ask for the price of a taxi and it is 100 rupees. There is daylight and because we budget as much as we can (100 rupees is only 1,5 gbp) we decide to walk to the market.
It is 19H00 and the sun sets. We ask a second person how far it is. 1,5 km a local says, and then take a right. Doable. We keep walking this small road. Afterwards taking a right means take a left but we figured that one out.
It is dark now and it becomes very dangerous cause Indians are reckless drivers. 1,5 km should be fine. We walk 15 minutes more and arrive in what seems to be a wonderful resort area with huge appartment blocks, accompanied lakes on both sides of the road, luxurious gates decorated with elephant statues made of wood. Wonderful place !! We walk 15 minutes more and no sign of any populated place. We ask a mango juice sales man that tells us it is only 500m more. 500m later, no sign of a market.
This goes on and on and everywhere you go or ask for directions, the same thing happens! And they sound so convincing. Most of all they like us to take a taxi. I guess they feel like there is a taxidriver in all of us.
After Walking 1,5 hours and dodging taxis (and one cow). Seeing a cow coming at you in the dark is pretty scary. But it was a nice one because he was the first to go to the other side of the road..
We arrive at the market. Ja man, advice comes with a lot of salt here.
It looks like an amazing place. Lots of colours, lots of clothes for sale, jewelry, etc. And we saw the most white people together in one place since arrived in India. Lots of English!!
After the market we go for a drink in a chiringuito. Beer is not for sale because of the elections, gin is. The conversation starts what to do tomorrow and it looks like we are gonna change our plan. The original plan to go to South Goa becomes less attractive cause we are full of lying on the beach. Tough life aint it!!
Instead of going to South Goa, the idea to go straight to Kerala comes up. Still we keep it undecided and agree to go to South Goa and then make up our mind whether to go to another beach or to go to Kerala.
I am in Kerala while writing this so you have the answer, from South of Goa we went to Kerala. It took a lot of us though to get here. We did 1000 km in 30 hours and we booked the general compartment on the train, several buses, and one boat. In my next blog I ll tell you how tough it was to get here. It was hardcore traveling.
That is all for now. Enjoy the day and greetz from Bea and me from Fort Cochin, Kerala.
16.09.09. Half-Round the world in 1 year / Kick off. 9th of April 2009, Mumbai, India’s biggest city, is our best destination to take the train south to Goa, Kerala and Bangalore. From there we go 4,000 km by train back to north India, see Karnataka, Rajasthan, the Taj Mahal, Varanasi and Nepal. In Nepal we do small treks in the Himalayas and visit Kathmandu. Over de friendship highway, the route goes from Kathmandu to Lhasa by jeep, maximum altitude 5250m and we get to see the Mount Everest. In Lhasa we take the train through China, see the Terracotta warriors in Xi'an, and go 3,500m north to enter Mongolia and arrive in Ulan Bator. In Mongolia we camp in the Khovsgol area near the Russian Siberia, and renew the Chinese Visa to go back south. The clock says 4 months when we trained through China and see Yunnan, South China with its wonderful terraced rice fields. We enter the tropics and after 6 months travels we are in Vietnam. 2 months after that, we should have seen Angkor, the beaches in Thailand & Maleysia ...<e.d. 25.10.09. There is a change of plan after Angkor: we fly from Bangkok to Manila, we go to the Philippines!!> and on a ferry to Indonesia. From either Kuala Lumpur or Bangkok, we find our way to Sydney and work for 3 months. We will have traveled for 1 year when we are in Oz and ... and ... and ... that is how far we planned. But we were supposed to come back in 1 year but we are only half around the world. Beatriz and myself love Asia!! So much for planning ahead and scheduling. Let's just see how we get on and the more exciting our trip will be. Wish us good luck on the trip!!
