(Beijing, China, 4th of January 2017)
At last, the day finally came when it was time to get back out into the world again. We have been home in Sweden for three weeks and have celebrated Christmas and New Years Eve. We have had time to spend time with family and friends and now we are ready for new adventures. This time we are going to New Zealand and Australia and we are bringing our racing bikes.
We have packaged all our luggage in newly purchased bicycle panniers. This will be the first time we cycle with luggage and given that we are not particularly well trained right now, after 3,5 months without cycling in India, it will be exciting to see how it goes. The only preparation we have made is that we have been doing yoga, running and swimming in India, and participating in fifteen spinning classes during our weeks in Sweden.
Our flight departed from Kastrup at four o’clock in the afternoon and we got pushed all the way to the airport by our daughter Moa. At Kastrup we visited our friend Karin in the SAS lounge where we had a beer and ate a little while waiting for our flight´s departure.
Our first destination was north,to Stockholm, where we had a short stop before continuing on to Beijing with Air China. We got food almost immediately after take off and it was packed in Sweden – one last really good Swedish meal consisting of salmon, potatoes and a tasty sauce. Yummi! Beijing is a very large and modern airport with very comfortable seating. If the temperature just had been a bit higher, it really would have had a top grade.
/ Christel
(Goa and Delhi, India, 25th of november to 11th of december)
Our long trip in India will soon be over and we spent our last weeks in one of our favourite places in India, a beach in Goa. We had planned to go back to Palolem beach, where we spent some lazy weeks in October, but when we got there the place was all changed. The beach was now filled with tourists, new bungalows were set up everywhere and also a lot of sunbeds and we decided to go to Patnem instead, a smaller beach a couple of kilometers to the south.
(Lotus Nature Cure, Varca, India, 17-25th of Nov)
So, again Christel had booked us a one week yoga retreat, this time at Lotus Nature Cure in Varca.
The week at the retreat has been very intense with focus on detoxing, massage and yoga. The retreat is not that big, it has 4 guest rooms so at a maximum 8 guests could stay there (if sharing rooms). However, this is not an disadvantage as you get as much more attention from Dr Patil (who lives at the retreat together with his family.) and his staff. You can book a stay for 4 or 7 days and there is no weekly ”startday” so guests are coming and leaving all the time so you meet a lot of people. During our stay we meet Bridget and Gemma from Australia and Mona and Renée from England.
It has been a nice experience with daily nose rinsing, massage (almost all days during our stay!) and two yoga sessions a day, one in the morning, and one at Varca Beach at sunset.
Christel attended all yoga sessions for 7 days but Johan, who does yoga, but not loves it totally, skipped two sessions which he replaced with morning runs instead.
This is what a day at the retreat looked like:
7:20 God morning Juice
7:30 Some drops of Gee (tastes like fudge) was put in each nostril and then we had to lay still on our backs for 20 minutes.
7:50 Nose rinsing
8:00- 9:30 Morning yoga with Dr Patil.
9:30 Breakfast
10:00 One and a half hour massage, some days including a steam bath..
13:00 Lunch (Always served with a disgusting drink made of Kokum-berries, but good for digestion we were told..)
17:00 Heading for the beach in Dr Patils car.
17:30-19:00 Sunset Yoga and meditation on the beach
19:30 ”Snacks” (Mixed fruit)
20:30 Dinner, always soup and sprouts.
As the ATM-system collapsed when the PM in India made a move against corruption by making most notes unvalid overnight we have had major problems to get our hands on new cash. Very few ATMs has any new cash to withdraw and it is very hard to find working ATMs as they tend to run out of cash after about 2 hours. This has changed our way of travel, we now always ask if the hotel we will be staying at can pay for transfers to airport and other expenses. If they have a restaurant that is even better because then we can have some meals there to put on the bill.
When we stayed at the yoga retreat we walked or went by bike on a daily basis to all ATMs in the neighborhood only to find that they were out of cash. Wen we got close to the end of our stay at the retreat we finally got lucky, we found a ATM that opened every day at 15:30 so we could withdraw the maximum amount there for two days in a row. The maximum amount per withdrawal is 2000 rupees and that is not that much when you are travelling. BUT our last day at the retreat we got lucky, we passed by a ATM that just had opened, NO QUEUE AT ALL, we were all alone at the ATM for 10 minutes and we succeded to make nine withdrawals after each other before we were satisfied. Now we were prepared to leave for Patnem beach for two weeks, and there even was a good chance for some shopping (for Christel…)
(Kochi, India, 15-17th of Nov 2016)
It was time to move on to the north towards Goa were we want to spend our final three weeks in India. We did not want to get on a 16-hour train trip so we decided to get on a flight from the city of Kochi to save us a lot of time.
After a three hour train trip (the last one for this trip in India, but we will come back for more.) from Kollam we arrived in the city of Kochi (Cochin) which is one of the larger cities in Kerala.
We spent a lot of time in Kochi walking round looking for ATMs (with cash, but none were found.), sightseeing, or talking to our lovely hosts at our homestay ”Aroma”. We also visited indias largest mall, a deserted place with a amusement park at the top floor.
Our hostess got us tickets to a Kathakali show (in the front row). This was a really nice experience, the artists perform using only miming and ”guttural sounds”. You also get the opportunity to be there before the actual show starts to see the actors put on their makeup, also this was amazing and very colorful.
(Kerala Backwaters, India, 14th of Nov 2016)
After a nice breakfast served by our cheerful waiter Sunny (we have only known him for 24 hours but he has given us so many smiles in this short time that we will not forget him in a long time) we took off to our houseboat that departed from a nearby city named Kollam. On the boat we had a room with AC and en suite. The boat also had an upper deck with two “verandas”, one of them covered by a large sunbed.
(Varkala, India, 5-13th of Nov 2016)
We now have spent more than a week in a small village, Varkala, which is situated along one of the beaches in Kerala. As usual India delivers and this has, as you will find out, certainly been a very eventful stay. Read More
(Varkala, India, 11th of Nov 2016)
In India everything is possible.
In Varkala, where we are staying right now, it is really hard to find a restaurant where there is alcohol on the menu. The government has only given permission to sell alcohol to some chosen restaurants as this part of the country, Kerala, have had huge problems with alcoholism. But if you want a beer that is really no big problem as most restaurants serve alcohol anyway,. You will be served the bottle wrapped in a sheet of newspaper or you will get it (as in the pictures) served in a teapot. The price for beer served in these creative ways is twice to what you pay in other parts of India and on top of that the beer is not that cold as you would prefer and the “bubbles” disappear rather quickly.
Except for the fun of drinking beer from a teapot we would not recommend it. Stick to fresh fruit juices and sweet lime sodas!!
(Varkala, India, 9th of Nov 2016)
India never stop challenging or surprising us (in a fascinating way).
This morning we, together with the rest of India, woke up to the news that all Indian 500- and 1000-rupee notes have been declared invalid over night and will be taken out of circulation right away. All ATMs are closed for at least one day, maybe two, this so new notes can be distributed to the banks and the ATM-system. The invalid notes will be replaced by new ones that are harder to falsify as part of the Indian governments fight against corruption. This move was first announced last night and all of India was, as we, taken by surprise. Read More
The temple was really strange – we have never seen such a large amount of Buddhas in one place before, in all kind of materials and in a big mess. And it was all mixed with a lot of other figures and in the middle of everything a full size elephant, we hope it was not a stuffed real one – though we have read somewhere that it could be.
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