A touch of Class and the return to OZ…

It’s no easy journey to get to the Land of Oz from India the land
Of roundabouts.
Everything that you do in India must be done in
a roundabout back the front sort of fashion. Curt calls it the land of opposites
because you have to think back the front to enjoy it.

Therefore I suppose it makes sense that we had to bribe someone to actually be able
to buy tickets to Singapore and it involved a mad bus ride downtown, some baksheesh and complicated transferal of funds.

But we did it and then suddenly , all too quickly we found ourselves
No longer in India but in the picture perfect, cardboard city of Singapore.
It didn’t help our arrival in Singapore that I was strung out on valium and Curt was horribly drunk or that we both simply didn’t want to be there and wanted to be in India still desperately. But what did help was the rather lovely five star hotel we had booked to ..you know …ease the pain.
God Damn. Showers! Endless hot water. A huge bathtub that needed to be soaked in several times by me.
What also helped was some serious shopping on Orchard Rd, at the Singapore outlet for Topshop, which helped ease the pain of not returning to London as soon as I had hoped.Several hundred singaporan dollars later and we were feeling much better.
What helped even more than that was the seriously kind offer of Ben and Bianca our lovely friends from Christmas in Gokarna to come and stay with them.

Bollywood Baby

BOLLYWOOD Jan 2007

Well you all knew we would end up Bollywood superstars if we did actually make it as far as Bombay and we do so hate to disappoint!

It turned out lucky that I was too unwell to travel with Curt to Bombay's slums because otherwise I could never have been scouted to appear as an extra in Bollywood.

I had gone for a walk, miserable and sick around Colaba, to clear my head and try and decide on whether or not we would have to return home to Australia when I was stopped by a cool looking guy called Ali who asked whether or not I would appear as an extra for a shoot the next day at the Taj studios.

I explained that I was going to catch a plane that night to Dubai and walked off only to return a few seconds later and ask for his card "just in case".

That night, I ended up in Bombay hospital instead of on a plane to Dubai and after talking with the doctors made the difficult decision that I was going to have to return home to have tests and so on and work out whats really going on with me.

Bombay hospital by the way was great, quick and easy and my prescription cost me 7 rupees to fill. It astounds me that India could be so fantastic and a country as rich a England be so pathetically hopeless when it comes to health care.

So I'm not on the plane and Curt and I now have no set time to depart Bombay. So we team up with our man AJ, quite seriously the most lovely guy! who had become our constant companion and sound friend for the time we were in Bombay and organise our little Bollywood adventure. That is to say I may have met Ali and therefore got the ball rolling but wthout AJ's enthusiasm and infectious joy of adventure we probably wouldnt have had the heart to organise it as Curt and I were quite stressed out and down.



But it was the coolest thing and Im so glad we did do it.
We ended up with another girl Kat and were driven into the studios by a crazy german guy who not only scouted but regularly acted.

It turned out we were to appear in Anand Sami Khans new music video, although we didnt actually know who he was or what we were doing for most of the shoot.

Turns out Adnan Sami Khan is one of Bollywoods most famous singer/songwriters and reputedly the worlds fastest keyboard player as well (!??)
Obviously because we are so sheltered and boring in the west none of us had any idea who he was but his audience apparently reaches over 2 billion people throughout India, Pakistan and Asia.

http://www.adnansamikhan.com
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adnan_Sami

However this being India the shoot was hysterical without any of the hysteria that I'm sure would accompany a Hollywood shoot of the same nature. There seemed to be five people for every job ( as with everything in India ) and while we had a great time, eating yummy food, chatting to other extras who were all very interesting, one being a journalist , another a artist based in Calcutta the shoot seemed both creative and fun and completely shambolic at the same time.

In the end Curt was singled out to do a walk on part, they tried to comb his hair ( unsuccessfully) and dress him in 20s gear for a nostalgic scene while they tied o get me into a dress with a bust size of double AA which I thought was hysterical.
Eventually I now appear in a very strange shawl and a pair of jeans in the supposed 20s scene.

AJ partnered me and we had a great time, sitting at our fake cafe table and saying a long list of swearwords at each other while trying to look like we were having a polite conversation. I nearly managed to get Aj to laugh while we were actually shooting but his determination to be in the shot won in the end.

It was excellent fun and we will keep you all posted for the release of our upcoming debut!

Bombay Sapphire

Mumbai Jan 2007

Bombay.....God what can I say it blew my mind and Curt and I loved it. For everything about it was contrasting, exciting, difficult, fucked up and fantastic.
It was also a crazy time for me and Curt as we were constantly weighing up whether or not we would be able to continue to Dubai and onwards to Guatemala or try and get me to Australia and at any one point we seemed to be doing one or the other. I was too unwell to visit the slums so I'm throwing this over to Curts Views.

Mumbai - Curtis View

So we arrive, tired from Goa to Mumbai and while looking around we meet a fellow traveler at the airport by the name of AJ, and promptly share a cab to Colaba - the place to be for travellers.
As usual we find ourselves under prepared arriving into the the city at late without a hostel/hotel organised and in the middle of the busiest week of the year.

Luckily our new found Friend turns out to speak Hindi, which saves us buckets of money and sorts us into a clean reasonably priced hotel for the night.

So we settle into our room and then wander 500m up the rd to the infamous Leopold's for a few jugs of the cold stuff. We head out to 'Koyla' a splendid roof top bar with 360 views of the city and outstanding Sheesha's. After that myself and AJ try to quickly squeeze one last drink in at the Taj Mahal Hotel where I hand over the ridiculous price of 560 rps for a round! defiantly the most expensive beer in India.

The following morning we organise a tour of the largest slum in Mumbai, easily the most interesting and value for money tour/experience I've had in India. We get taken to the slum in comfort via a A/C 4x4. After stopping briefly, to buy books and Pencils for the school kids we head on in.

Some small Slum facts to chew on:

The Slums take up 8% of the space in in Mumbai, and 55% of Mumbai live there.

The largest Slum turns over 622 million pound PA.

They recycle all kinds of plastics, bottles, computers, and medical waste (yes drips, needles etc - by hand!)

Most people work where they live.

And the average wage per month is 2000 rps. Thats: 57 AUS Dollars, 23 Pounds or 45 US Dollars - for those who cant convert)

The slums take up 430 acres and thats not including the pavement dwellers.

It really was one of the most amazing things to see such recycling on a large scale. The people are blissfully happy and really interested to see and meet us. We take a lot of photos and at the end of the day we are quite impressed with what we thought initially would be a depressing scene. It really was a city within city.

I would highly recommend doing this tour, one of the best things I've done traveling and the school teachers really appreciated the gifts for the children.

One last tip bit for those who have read Shantaram: our tour guide was purely Prabakar. He knew everyone and everyone knew him in Mumbai, he can get you the best deal on the street for anything you want and hes a funny fucker to boot! This guys your man.

Lastly, 80% of the 300 - 500 rps that you spend on this tour for a couple hours, goes back into the slums. So Get on it!

The coolest little temple town....

We departed for Hampi on what turned out to be a completely horrible bus ride, probably the worst for me. I couldn't handle it at all and consider it by far the worst experience I have ever had in India or even while travelling. Much worse than asthma underwater or say being sick in South America. I'm not actually convinced this was worse than other bus rides I've been on but I am utterly convinced that I can no longer handle that sort of ride. Terrifying , sickening and non stop with mattresses in the back ( as a deluxe sleeper) rather than seats. I tried to get off the bus early but the driver refused to leave me as we were in the middle of the night in the middle of nowhere with zero people close by and obviously it wasn't safe.

We ended up having to get off early though anyway as it gave me a full blown anxiety attack and stayed in Hospet a small town pretty near to Hampi which would have been our final destination. There was nothing good about Hospet ( bar the surprise hot water in our hotel ) and we ended up having a massive fight with our hotel owners that left us dispirited and sick of India.

Which is why it turned out so lucky that Hampi was one of the best places we have been while travelling! It is a holy town and the site of some of South India's best temple ruins. Its also just a great feeling , groovy backpacker town and we were very happy to be there...

Some of the temples were more memorable than others, the main temple for instance was one of the coolest holy temples or ruins I have ever seen. Each one of the many pillars in the temples music and banquet hall made a different sound when drummed, cymbals sounds, deep bass sounds even the do Ra me on one set. It meant that in the kingdoms hey day ,146 musicians would drum on the pillars and 146 girls would dance for the king to the music and the sound could be heard almost a kilometre away where the peasants would gather and listen....

Hampi belonged to a king, known in slang as the Playboy King, as he used to find beautiful peasant girls with whom he would make a deal. He would tell them to run as far as they could in one direction and however much land they covered before he caught them would belong to them after he had spent the night with them.

Hampi was also well known for its slave trading, for its horse trading and for its sales of beautiful girls who were tied up in long rows opposite the long rows of horses tied up....

We also visted the main temple in Hampi where we played with the temple Elephant ( the first elephant that Netty had ever seen) and where wild rabid monkeys tried to attack Curt.
He had however the day before had been able to play with normal happy monkeys who had been hanging off one of the other temples.

We were also lucky enough to witness the departure of a holy man on a pilgrimage , something that was happening all over India that day. Crowds of people and children, much music and the Holy man deep in a trance.

We could have spent much longer in Hampi but unfortunately we were getting near the end of our trip in India and needed to make it back to Goa by the tenth, to Arrambol to chill out for a few days prior to Nettys leaving. We now couldn't use our return tickets by bus so ended up choosing the train and leaving Hampi a day early...which was hugely disappointing.....
A magical place everyone should go to!

The Good, the Dark and the TRULY GROSS side of India........

The Good, the Dark and the TRULY GROSS side of India........
Celias View Jan 5th 2007

We spent our last couple of days in South Goa hanging out mostly on Patnem Beach just around the headland from Palolem.

It was much quieter although the sea itself was still a bit average as it was in Palolem but there was one huge drawcard as far as me and Netty were concerned , a great beachside restaurant called Home.

Now this place was in no way the place to go to get great Indian food or any element of India whatsoever actually but if you wanted to just lie back in a comfy circle of cushions, drink lattes instead of Chai, eat yummy bitter lemon tart instead of cashew sweets, have bruschetta instead nan and watch the sunset over a beautiful empty arabian sea than it was absolutely perfect!

Me and Netty even trekked back super early before our departure to Hampi just to have poached eggs, hollandaise sauce and spinich. Hollandaise Sauce!

On the way back to Palolem though I stepped barefoot on what turned out to be the base end of a used syringe. Nice. It had been left there for any small child to pick up and when I civic mindedly picked it up with my shawl and asked the restaurant owner whose path I was treading through to dispose of it , he simply threw it back on the ground when he thought I wasn't looking....Sigh....

Straight after that I stepped on something even MORE GROSS if possible when the bottom of my havanas which I had put back on after my first nasty experience got stuck to something which turned out to be a dead squashed rat. Ugh...

And then when you really think it couldnt get any grosser Curt and I happened upon a very sick cow making its way towards us with pus pouring out of its nose. It was yellow and had flecks of blood all through it and was COMPLETELY GROSS!
but because I was mesmorised by the gross cow in person what do you think I managed to step in that it had left on the ground? That right....yellow , blood flecked cow pus!

Celias View....

South Goa, India, New years Eve, 2006

After a week of slacking at the beach which had followed on from another week of slacking at the beach we decided to head off one night earlier than planned for Goa so we could meet up with my old manager from STA, Sam.

She had been spending most of the month of December at Palolem in South Goa and although we had plans to actually travel further north we ended up falling under Palolems rather sleepy spell and have now spent almost 8 nights here the longest of anywhere in India!

So what have we been doing?

We spent the second day here doing the most active thing we would achieve in South Goa by renting out mopeds and driving several beaches north. Netty and Curt managed to navigate their way through treacherous Indian driving but we were perhaps a little over ambitious to go so far as we managed three stacks ( none serious) and some mild arguments before we finally made it back just in time to return the bikes.

It was a really lovely way to get around Goa though and

South Goa is gorgeous, slightly reminiscent of Greece or Turkey with really high barren red mountains that drop into palm filled beaches.

It was also pretty much empty which really surprised us as not that much is empty in India, let alone in high season.

We drove around to a abandoned Portuguese fort and a very empty beach called Agonda before heading back to Palolem.

We have also managed to eat our way from one end of the beach to the other. It was a real shock after Gokarna to be in a place with so many restaurants and bars ( Alcohol making an appearance back into our lives after being banned in all the other states we have been too!) as well as far too many shops!.

We spent large amounts of time sunbathing, small amounts of time swimming ( the sea is actually quite murky and horrible after Varkala and certainly after the crystal clear water of Thailand.

We did have one slightly weird overlying cloud which was of a supposed Terrorist threat for Goa on New Years Eve. We had met a steady trickle of people in Gokarna who had left Goa due to a terrorist warning that had been released on the Israeli FCO website quickly followed by the British and the Australian websites and then the International press. We had heard from fellow travellers that Palolem was pretty much dead but when we arrived we found it kicking along nicely. The threat was fairly specific , centred on four of Goa's beaches and thought to be aimed at clubs on New Years Eve , in a sort of Bali Style bombing.

So what to do? At first we weren't overly concerned but a last minute raise in the level of warning by both the UK and Aus websites coupled with India's complete denial of any such threat only then to put over 2000 armed guards on Goan Beaches ( there were only about 50 on ours but still....large army presence does slightly change a party vibe and for more than one reason :-)

So we elected to keep it simple and party on the beach, with firesticks and vodka and a ever changing gang of people walking past and give the big clubs a miss anyway since they were mainly trance style things anyway............

An excellent New Years only marred by the two groups of Indians who got into a physical fight over who got to talk to us and now we are finally, post new years, ready to get up and move on to the next place.

We are finally leaving the beach and heading inland . Our time in India is getting dangerously short.........

Happy New Years everyone ...Hope you had a amazing time where ever you are....

Ps Helly ..You and Juan are in our thoughts xx