Finally, the day comes when we have to wave goodbye to paradise and return to civilisation once more. To be honest, tempers were beginning to fray due to too many card games lost on my part (!) and feet were itching to move on, so it’s probably for the best. Panaji comes and goes uneventfully and we board a 10 hour sleeper train bound for the big smoke.
We arrive mid-morning and after some map-reading confusion, pay 20Rs for a five-minute death trip by taxi to a place we thought was miles away. Our crazed driver drives too fast and we nearly kill two pedestrians who are forced to leap off the pavement James Bond style while this nutter just honks his horn.
This is Mumbai, destined to become the worlds 2nd largest city by the year 2000. Three thousand people move to Mumbai every day, most of them setting up homes in ghettos around the edge of the city. Half of the city’s 15 million inhabitants don’t have access to tap water or electricity. A recent report claimed that breathing the air here is reportedly like smoking 20 cigarettes a day and it certainly smells like it. The oppressive heat is a lot like Hong Kong. We have a day to spend here, bags lodged in the train station, before we catch a flight home this evening.
We find some useful ‘Emporiums’ where we can wander in the air-con cool and spend our last Rupees. I impulsively buy a designer shirt on VISA. It is to replace the shirt I lost to the monkey in Agra and to make up for the fact that my single other shirt now smells so bad I fear I won’t be allowed in the aircraft. I have all my photos developed at a little street lab and looking over them in a dingy back street bar provides some nice reminders of our paradise lost.
In our long and, as it turns out, expensive, taxi-ride to the airport across rush hour Mumbai, I see an advert which simply says “Rule #1: There are no rules”. It’s a jeans advert, hand painted by Indians, but for me it succinctly captures, better than any other phrase, the real India I have experienced. There are certainly no rules to the road and the only good thing about rush hour in Bombay is that none of the crazed Indian drivers can reach top speed…
And so to the airport which provides luxuries at a price. A poor meal and a long wait are all that is left of a great holiday, finishing as always, just as we really got started.
But the sun setting over the dusty streets of this huge mother city is beautifully alluring despite the painfully memorable ghetto sights we are constantly bombarded with. Our own “paradise” back home, so far away, is regularly brought into sickening contrast. But there is no room in the traveller’s emotional toolbox for guilt at how differently we live. For one thing, the Indians enjoy their lives too much for any of that to matter. For another thing, Indian life throws so many beautiful and awe-inspiring sights at you in such a short space of time, that you can only wonder at how unlucky anyone who has never been there really is.

Deserted headland, on way to our hut

We have arranged to escape the hotel (having had our laundry done) and negotiated an out of season discount on one of a number of tiny beach huts laid along the headland cliff. Our hut is up a steep slope but has a gorgeous sea view and lots of privacy. It is very basic with just a table, a bed, a bench outside on the ‘veranda’, an electric light and a fan. There is a small toilet next door shared with our neighbours and a trough full of spring water for showers. We’re camping now.
The mattress is a bit damp since it hasn’t been cleaned up for the start of the season yet. A dose of Lizzie’s sample-perfume over the mattress is enough to make it appealing to lie on! We head off for curry and a host of items from a little shop including playing cards, candles and incense sticks. Then we sit out on the veranda, covered in unromantic DEET but with candle lit ice-cold beers and a palm-fringed view of the sea below. Can’t say fairer than that.
Our neighbours are a Dutch couple who’ve been touring Africa for seven months but have come to India to finish their year off work. We tell them Goa is an easy place to start.

Getting back to nature

We spend the days walking along the headland, sun bathing, crashing through jungle, bathing in cool pools and enjoying the many cafes. All around us people are building their chalets and restaurants for the new season. We’ve come at the right time for it all to be friendly and convenient but for the beaches to be empty enough to enjoy the paradise for what it is.
I brave the shark steak (fresh) at the “Lake Paradise” which turns out to be absolutely gorgeous. I’m well impressed but Lizzie still thinks it’s a bit fishy. We find a handy English book swapping service so trade our well-read and well-travelled volumes for fresh challenges. The time passes quite slowly when just relaxing in a place and the pressure to move on is gone. The feet are itchy but it’s a pleasant way to end the holiday.

Goa, sunset, off-season

Goa is a region of India which, unlike the rest of the country, gets more than it’s fair share of package tourists. Not wishing to join these at their high-rise resorts (although the season is young) we have selected a small fishing village called Arambol on the coast where we are hoping to stay for the last week of our holiday. After arranging a train ticket back to Bombay on the 28th, we board a local bus and prepare for all manner of difficulties in getting out to Arambol by public transport.
The bus station at Mapusa is over-crowded and extremely complicated. Eventually we end up on a bus we think is going near where we want to be. It turns out to be a good choice and uses a ferry to get over the wide-mouthed river estuary which most of the other buses circumnavigate. From there we make our own way the last 13km by auto-rickshaw through green and flat farmland.
Arambol is a quiet little village set by a palm-fringed beach. The weather is cloudy but otherwise idyllic. We install ourselves in a mad little beach hotel run by a Portugese/Indian woman who warns us about drug raids in the area. The fellow guests are uncommunicative.
There are a number of excellent bars and cafes and very few tourists around. Life in Arambol is all about enjoying food and drinks and watching the sun set. And fighting mosquitoes: we stock up on coils and sprays to rage war.
The next day we find a secluded beach along the headland and sun bathe there. Clear blue sky, crashing waves and hot, hot sun. We are just about alone until the peddler boys come through with coconuts, sarongs and henna tattoos for our purchasing pleasure. We decline but they insist on sitting with us for ten minutes incase we change our minds.
Later I’m forced to tend my sunburn over a cool beer in the “Lake Paradise” beachside restaurant while the sun sets on another peaceful day.

The remaining flight to Goa passes without delay and we find ourselves in a hot and dusty airport at Panaji. Some tout offers us 100% discounts at his hotel resort which looks quite posh. I ask him if we really can come for free but he quickly realises his mistake and changes his patter to 50% discount. Not nearly so good.
So we get in a taxi and head off to the city of Panaji. It seems like a ghost town for our first few hours there and every service we require (like money and restaurants) seems to be closed. Then we realise that it’s Sunday and we’ve lost count of the days. Just have to wait till tomorrow…
One thing which can’t wait though is the fact I need another jab today and there are no doctors anywhere to be found in this empty city. We’ve got a room in a small hotel which seems to be being rebuilt around us. I propose to self-inject myself but the thought gives me the creeps. Not knowing how deep to push the needle in, we get by in the end by me stabbing it in and Lizzie pushing the plunger. Even got rid of the air bubbles like they do on TV. Arm’s a bit sore but I presume it’s okay. I’m silently thankful that no more doctors or hospitals will need visiting as part of our holiday.

After a wet day exploring the sights of Udaipur, including the fabulously opulent City Palace, we return to sleep at the hotel and I begin to feel distinctly unwell. At first I think it’s the beer at lunch time. Later I think it’s definitely flu-like. Later still, I think it’s rabies and fatal. I’m wearing all my clothes, sweating like a rapist and not sleeping much. Liz is slightly concerned when I wake up in the middle of the night and my T-shirt is totally drenched. I tell her this is normal for flu. Anyway, no point in worrying a doctor, the symptoms are uniformly fatal…
In the morning, I wake up to find I’m still alive and miraculously not foaming at the mouth – it’s just a sore throat and fever shrouded in paracetamol. We have a great breakfast of omelette and lemon lassi and then I go back to bed. Lizzie goes shopping and probably enjoys the freedom.
At 4pm, after endless packing, we catch a taxi to the airport. It’s the smallest airport I’ve ever seen and is a tarmac landing strip with no planes. There is no-one around but we are early. I take more paracetamol and eat some chocolate but I’m beginning to feel better, thank goodness. Much later, after a confused paper check-in process and manual baggage loading, we board the plane which has arrived from Jaipur. It stops once at Aurangabad en route to Mumbai. Inside the walls are decorated a tasteful brown paisley but the curry is good.
Can’t stop laughing at the front page headline on the free newspaper, Delhi Midday, we are given on the flight: “Onion price crisis hits Delhi!”. Apparently, a bad harvest is putting the bhajis in trouble. The best thing is it’s written in Indian-English which means when you read it you have to assume the voice of an Indian waiter and slip “Poppadoms? How many lager?” into every other sentence.
Bombay airport is entrenched in monsoon rain but it is still 27°C at 10.30pm. We’ve toyed with getting a hotel here but given our previous success in Delhi, trying to find one at night in Bombay seems just too intimidating. It will also cost us a fortune to get into Bombay, just to come back to the airport tomorrow. So we choose the easy option and bed down for the night here. Unfortunately, there’s no lounges available so we have to make do with hard marble floors and wet rucksacks. We joke that I bring Lizzie to all the best places… Dream that I could put a 5-star hotel on expenses but we’re still students.
Sleep comes unnaturally for four hours and then the noise and the air-con prevent any further rest. As soon as it opens, we’re in the four-star Oberoi for full breakfast and that cheers us up despite the expense. From rough sleeper to guest in 20 yards. Luckily and amazingly my flu is gone.

Sacred cow?

It is 5.30am. Outside it is raining. We have caught up with the southward progress of the monsoon and it is not a pleasant find. We are on a bus which has been on the go since 4pm yesterday, with one stop for ice cream at 11pm believe it or not. We’ve made a friend on the bus – a mischievous looking teenage boy – who says he has a friend with a good hotel in Udaipur and he is going to stay there too. Would we like to join him? Regardless of whether or not it is a great hotel, what I like about his scheme is that he can get us to it at this time on a freezing cold and wet morning when hoteliers everywhere must surely be in bed. How any of the other Westerners on the bus, who are sceptical of his offer, can hope to find a different hotel without a lot of hassle at this time, I don’t know. We don’t hang around long enough to find out.
After a teeth-chattering rickshaw ride, we arrive in a dark alley and discover that as well as it being black as night outside, Udaipur has a power cut. We end up having a rather comic welcome to the hotel by two people whose faces we can’t actually see. Somehow, out of chaos, a room and a candle are found for us and we gratefully fall soundly asleep.
At 11am when we wake up again, it is still raining. Hard. Udaipur looks thoroughly depressing compared to the glorious dry heat of Jaisalmer. We begin to wish we’d stayed up there longer. Our hotel friend promised us a window view of the Lake Palace – a fabulous maharani’s hotel, the spectacle of Udaipur and the backdrop to the James Bond movie ‘Octopussy’ – but all we seem to have instead is a wet building site.
We head off to explore, aimlessly and hungrily. Eventually we come across a small restaurant where we can relax. We have decided our prime objective now is to get to Goa (further south and on the coast) as quickly as possible. The route involves an unappealing 16 hour bus to Mumbai, then a ten hour train to Goa. Given our current exhaustion and disposition towards buses we give in to an idea which we have been harbouring: we could fly to Goa. A quick visit to the Indian Airlines offices (after getting lost and being rescued by the Geographer – how annoying…) confirms that this is a good plan and we can leave the day after tomorrow for $140. We still have to stay the night in Mumbai but planes don’t have bumpy back seats.
We spend the evening on the roof at the hotel for a pleasant dinner and compulsory Octopussy showing on a video with poor tracking. Not the best but still interesting. The hotel ‘owners’ seem to be a rabble of exuberant young lads, our friend being one of them. They are quite funny at times, sinister at others.

In control of my beast

The night is not too cold but blankets are definitely required. In the morning, sunrise brings the heat early. My morning ablutions are of note, not only because of the fantastic “open” view nor because they are solid for once. No sooner have I laid my turd than a big black “dung” beetle is making a valiant bee-line for it across the sand. He hacks a lump off with his claws and rolls it away like a giant snowball in the sand – proudly taking it back to his family. I’m happy to provide and with automatic waste disposal like this, who needs flushing toilets?
This morning all the camels have got the hump. They chew cud noisily. We get tea, toast, eggs and oranges for breakfast which is fantastic. Then we strike camp and move off again. This time the pace is quicker and Dadya regularly gets the camels to move at a fast trot, which is far more painful on the bottom. In fact it reminds me a lot of the back seats on the buses. Lizzie later admits that the bouncing sensation is quite pleasurable but I don’t agree – it’s painfully bruising – especially when I fall off and have to have my camel re-saddled.

In the middle of the desert

At lunch time we arrive at a small settlement of huts – a real desert village. We are invited in to a very small but incredibly comfortable and tidy mud hut where a woman and her many children is cooking around a fire. Presumably part of Dadya’s extended family, she prepares food for us (in exchange for using the supplies we brought) while we play with the children. I can’t get over how clean and pristine a mud hut can look. Not that I’ve thought much about it before. There are even cupboards and cabinets made out of mud (or more likely, camel dung). There is also a lot of textiles and thick blankets. I don’t know how many people sleep in this hut but it must be cosy. Sharing lunch with these people is possibly the closest I’ll ever come to seeing how people live so differently to me. It is a magical time, away from the tourist trail and away from everything we could call ordinary life.
We snooze in another ’shed’ outside and at 3pm we’re off again. After a short trek back to the road, we gladly relinquish our camels but reluctantly leave the desert and head back to Jaisalmer with aching muscles and half a ton of hot sand in our pockets.