Well, this is all very annoying. Here we are in the “high tech capital of India”, in a very swish internet cafe (which we had to pay to join) only to find that you can’t actually read anything off any memory cards etc.

The machine is locked down so that you can only run the applications they choose, and their “digital briefcase” data storage is “being upgraded” (as we all know, that’s just another way of saying “has never really worked”).

So I’ve got some beautiful pictures from Periyar Wildlife Park, of wild elephants, fantastic scenery, amazing views from mountains, strange photos from inside the clouds at Kodaikanal and I can’t touch them! I’ll have another go when we get back to Bangalore at the weekend.

Since the last update we’re spend a night on a houseboat in the backwaters of Kerala, had a couple of days at Kumily near the Periyar park, and a couple of days in Kodaikanal. In the latter, the weather was cold (max about 8C, minimum was freezing) and because we were at 2100m above sea level, the entire place was shrouded in cloud, which made everything very strange. A bit like being back home in fact.

Tonight we’re going to Hospet (and then on to Hampi) to view the ruins and temples there. We’ll be coming back here at the weekend.

More then…

We moved on from Panjim on Sunday, getting a cab to Margao in the south of Goa where we caught a train to Ernakulam Junction.

The train journey took 15 hours, so we were booked into a 3-tier air-conditioned 2nd Class carriage, similar to the one we used to get to Goa from Mumbai.

A nice old couple shared the section with us, helping us out when it looked like the food seller had forgotten our order.

The journey passed peacefully until it got dark and we moved to out bunks. One of the other passengers snored….. like a warthog! All night. Not good.

Even less good was the infestation of cockroaches, who decided that the best place to play hide-and-seek was above the top bunk in which I was residing. I woke in the middle of the night to see several of the critters jiggling about inches from my face, which made it quite difficult to get back to sleep, certainly not helped by the Darth-Vader-with-a-cold impressions coming from the snorer.

We arrived at Ernakulam Junction at about 4:30am, and got a cab to our guesthouse, the very pleasant Chiramel Residency in Fort Kochi.

After sleeping for a few hours, we caught a ferry back across the harbour to Ernakulam and wandered around a bit, still a little dazed from lack of sleep.

That evening we ate at Fort House (another nice place to stay in Fort Cochin) where we had some excellent garlic prawns and dal.

Tuesday was spent checking out what Kochi had to offer, including a visit to the old Synagogue and the “antique” shops around Jew Town. We ate at the very disappointing Addy’s just around the corner from the Chiramel Residency. The food there was very bland and the service wasn’t up to much.

Wednesday saw us visit the Mattancherry Palace (aka Dutch Palace), again in Jew Town followed by a visit to the Kathakali dance performance at the Kathakali centre.

The performance was fascinating, and once you got used to the wordless nature of the play and concentrated on the expressions and movements of the dancer it was very enjoyable.

We followed that with a return to Fort House for more excellent food.

Today we’ve had a slack day, Vic’s bought some more clothes (to replace the ones she sent home last week, no doubt), and I’m here in an Iway internet cafe uploading more pictures while Vic samples the delights of Ayurvedic massage.

We spent New Year’s Eve having an excellent meal of Goan prawn curry at Samantha’s, followed by a brief trip to the Surf Club, which sadly was hosting some awful live music, and finally on to Liquid Sky, a little club/beach-shack which was playing some good music and had a very friendly atmosphere. We’d polished off a few beers before we set out so were well fuelled for the night, finally making it back to Ivon’s at around 3am. Vic was rather worse for wear the next day but has now completely recovered.

I hope you all had an equally good New Year!

We finally bit the bullet and moved on from lovely Arambol yesterday.

We’re now in Panjim, and will get the train from Margao to Kochi in Kerala on Sunday.

Karen and Nils, the couple who were in the next room to us for our last 3 weeks in Arambol also have a website with some pictures of Arambol and other places in India. Their site is in Dutch but is very good even if you can’t read the language.

I’ve uploaded (at great expense) some more pictures for you all to get jealous about :)

The pictures start with this one

I’ll try to update some older blog entries to include illustrations but can’t say when I’ll get time.

There a a few brands of beer available in Arambol. The main two are the nationwide Kingfisher, and the Goan brand pilsner, Kings. Kingfisher tastes a bit chemically, and Kings only seems to be available in the smaller 325ml bottles. Both cost around Rs20-30 for small bottles and Rs40-60 for large 650ml bottles.

Some places also sell Fosters (brewed in India) at the same price as Kingfisher, and another cheap Goan beer called Arlem which has a strange taste like it’s been smoke-damaged.

The food available here in Arambol is generally of a very high standard. Most places to a standard range of Indian veg and non-veg dishes such as Dal Makhani, Dal Fry, Kadai Paneer, Palak Paneer, Aloo Gobi, Aloo Mutter etc, some “continental” food (e.g. pasta, chicken steaks, pancakes) along with some “israeli” dishes such as humus, falafel. Most also have a variety of fresh seafood cooked in various ways. Quite a few do Tandoori food served with chips and salad (which we find a bit strange).

For breakfast you can anything from a full cooked English breakfast, through to banana pancakes and fruit salad served with muesli and curd.
Continue reading Food in Arambol →

As we’ve travelled around India we’ve found that many internet cafes here use Windows 98, probably due to it being easier to copy than Windows XP, as well as it not needing much in the way of horsepower on the PC.

We’re carrying two main gadgets: a Canon Ixus 430 camera and my Sony Clie UX50 PDA which I’m using to write the blog. I also have a dual format (Sony MemoryStick and CompactFlash) card reader made by Sandisk which connects to a PC by USB. The card reader works without additional drivers in Windows ME, 2000 and XP but in Win98 requires drivers to be downloaded. Unfortunately, the driver setup file that is needed is almost six megabytes. Why it needs to be so large is anyone’s guess. 6mb takes an age to download at an net cafe (most of which use a single modem with Microsft Internet Connection Sharing) so it isn’t really practical to download drivers everytime we want to use the card reader.
Continue reading Making the tech to work on Windows 98 →

We’ve been following news reports about the tsunami and earthquake with great interest. Our plans were to head down to the coast of Kerala on 9th January, reports say everything is okay but we may go up to the hills and mountains in Kerala instead. After that, we might skip Pondicherry and try to get to Bangalore for our flight back to Delhi on 1st Feb.

Our next flight after that is scheduled to be the one to Sri Lanka, but we’ll wait a while to see how things develop there before working out what to do. We’d still like to go but if the country is still going to be in chaos, we’ll obviously have to skip it.

There have been more tsunami warnings here, which is a cause for some concern, but we’re looking forward to celebrating the New Year.

Our thanks to everyone who has sent emails or phoned to check that we’re okay. If anyone would like to donate to the disaster relief effort,you cando so via the International Red Cross web site.

We went down to the beach around lunchtime yesterday and took up our usual position on our sarongs on the sand.

We chatted to our friendly beach-seller, Suresh, for a while and at around 1:30pm were lying dozing or reading when we suddenly felt water on our feet. The tide had suddenly come in very quickly. We grabbed our stuff and moved it a little way up the beach but seconds later another wave came up and lifted some of the bags and books up and started dragging them into the sea.

I grabbed the floating items and we ran further up the beach away from the tide, asking if this was a normal occurance.

We headed back to Ivon’s to dry out, and spoke to Martin, who thought it could just be a high tide.

We’d been back at the room for only a minute or two when my phone rang. It was Vic’s father ringing to ask if we were okay. “Funny”, I thought, “how does he know we just got wet?”

He had heard about an earthquake off Sumatra and that it had affected India and was obviously worried. Fortunately we were fine, and with Goa being quite far North as well as on the West coast the area wasn’t badly affected.

We put the BBC World Service on the radio and listened to early reports, and then went back down to the beach where the water had subsided. We started telling people about what we’d heard and as we watched the water came back up the beach, about 15 minutes after the first surge.

Further surges carried on throughout the day and evening, and the fishermen moved their boats back along the beach as a high tide was expected anyway as it was a full moon.

So we were very lucky. Some of our other future destinations were not so fortunate, including Kerala, Pondicherry, Chennai, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Malaysia, and Indonesia. Our thoughts are with all the people affected, and their families and friends. Lots of people here in Arambol have friends who are in Phuket or Koh Phi Phi and are naturally worried for them.

BBC News report on the waves hitting India

Wishing all our friends a very Merry Xmas and a Happy New Year.

May everyone have as good a time in the New Year as we’re having now :)

The picture above was taken at Samantha’s restaurant on the beach at Arambol, 23rd December 2004. Here’s another one taken around the same time.