The preferred breakfast food of Indian deities.

We’ve been outrageously lucky along the way – no real illness and nothing more dangerous that avoiding young men with guitars in hostels. Or men on beaches wearing budgie-smugglers. Lots of interesting toilet anecdotes that Chris has strongly suggested I don’t blog about (available on request). Tons of gorgeous, interesting, funny, friendly people. It’s fair to say that most days during the last ten months, I’ve spontaneously thought how bloody lucky we are to be able to do this and how much fun it is.

But it’s almost over – we’re on our way home. We have one night with the sights and sounds of Mumbai (pollution and beeping respectively), a final breakfast of masala dosa then next stop Heathrow. We hit Cork two days later. So the travelling won’t stop, but curry for breakfast will.

Since we came down the hills when we left Ooty, it’s been exceedingly hot and humid, which only encourages me to join the dogs wave-diving on the beach but not much else. Spent a week in Fort Cochin, which was pretty but twee – no animals loose, and the only unpleasant smell fish down with the fishermen near the non-working Chinese fishing nets on the beach. Mozzies a real pain there, so we moved to Verkala, where the cliffs are fringed with coconut trees and the sea foams like champagne, with birds of prey coasting at eye level on the up drafts. Stayed in the show hut of a wee group of bamboo huts, listening to the sea and watching everyone passing by on the cliff path. All pretty idyllic stuff but to be honest, about the only thing that’ll make my heart beat faster is the arrival of Johnny Depp bearing a dripping bacon butty…

We’re both ready to come home, which is just as well as we get back to the UK on April 7th and head to Ireland and the Lake District after that. Both looking forward to seeing the people we love again soon. A small cock-up on the house front sees us flat-less til the week after I’m due back at work, but as the tenants haven’t declared a republic we can live with that. Brian and Rich arrive here (Kovalam) for a proper holiday in a few days and we’re going to spend some time on a houseboat in the Keralan backwaters. We’re dead excited about that and it gives us an opportunity to stay up late playing revenge games of Uno.

Ooty underwhelmed at first, despite two paracetemol and a nap before we went out. Our guest house overlooked the lake, so we walked that way into town, to see that it was an open sewer feeding the lake. The council elected to deal with this in a novel way, but taking out the sewage at regular intervals, so it turned to dust and you had to breathe it as well as step over it. Passed the bazaar, (smelled of shit), some shops (smelled of piss), the market (smelled of vomit), and the ‘Hygenic Chicken Stand’ (an apocalyptic smell of unsurpassed putrefaction). Had some lunch, not voicing our fears that we’d spent all this time to come to another shithole, even if it was cooler. But then we walked back a different way, past the Main Bazaar, a bustling market selling tea, saucepans, fruit, hats, ear warmers etc booked into a much better (unsmelly) hotel and all of a sudden we reached tipping point. It’s taken a while to get there, but we’ve finally fallen in love with India.

Ooty’s not some crumbling old colonial place, it’s a proper market town, getting on with it’s business and mainly curious/friendly towards us. Most of the tourists here are Indian, all wrapped up in sweaters to protect themselves from the 20C cold. In the mornings, proud parents parade their babes in arms all swaddled up in tiger-striped fleeces and woolly hats. For some reason, they love Chris – he’s a regular baby-magnet. You have to love a place where animals just wander around the place so casually. Each morning a cow down the lane does a round of the jewellery shops while the shopkeepers sprinkle water outside their shops to keep the dust down. Goats can pop up anywhere, napping, having a scratch, but usually eating – spotted them eating the jasmine garlands on cars or motorbikes more than once. Pootling round the town has been fascinating. Every house, bike, jeep or autorickshaw proclaims the owner’s religion, and it seems like every second building is a temple and most hours are wail o’clock. In the morning woman paint intricate designs in rice flour (kolams) outside their houses to bring good luck, and the horses have their morning constitutional at the racecourse. The town seems pretty prosperous, with lots of people down from the hills buying and selling and very few homeless people. Had to admire one guy on market day with a novel approach to getting dosh – his woman was making a racket on a drum outside each shop in turn until they got some money to go away, he was tall, bare-chested, with an unfeasibly large soup-strainer of a moustache, and had a six foot whip he was cracking overhead for extra emphasis. Well I would have admired, but was too busy hareing in the opposite direction.

The place is dead by 9pm but as we’ve both been ill with colds, that doesn’t matter. Think our bodies went into shock when the temperature went under 30C, but it felt sooo good to pull on socks and fleeces it was worth it. And it’s fab to be feeling the love again.

From Goa we aimed to head to Tamil Nadu to one of the old hillstations in the south, mainly for more bearable temperatures but also because of the magic of the name – Ooty, so called after Snooty Ooty the Madras governor back in the day when the colonial types in Madras (Chennai) escaped the summer heat to sip pink gins while overseeing the tea plantations and complaining about the locals.

India has a fabulous rail system – dead cheap and reliable, covering most of the country but it’s an enigma to unwary traveller. And impossible to fathom for people with flexible travel plans. Here’s a very short version of our travels so far. In Goa we found it impossible to work out online how to get to where we needed to go, we we quickly decided to work for a midpoint. You can’t book tickets online if you want to get the tickets reserved for tourists and bypass the fact that trains are always overbooked so we headed into Panaji to try and book in person. This was complicated by the fact the the address of the central booking office isn’t online anywhere and no one local we asked knew it either. We headed instead for the Tourist Dept but it was teabreak, so we had lunch and came back. With the address details, we went to the reservations desk at the bus station, paid for a numbered token to wait and waited for 3 hours in a room that closely resembled the old smoking room they used to have at Bangkok airport, just replace the smoke with sweat. After 3 hours our number came up and accompanied by the usual entourage we get in a public place, and some fresh queue jumpers we got our ticket quickly but not from the station we hoped for, but presumably the only relevant one. Next day we took a taxi for an hour, got to the station, train was late, announcements as unclear as they always are, but got safely on train. We did bump into an English couple there who have a home in Goa and they were about to leave on the train to Delhi, until Chris stuck his head in the train and tipped them off. The journey was fun despite the uncomfortableness of the seats and the general crush. You’d think my fat ass would help, but not enough. There was a school party coming back from a sports competition singing, clapping and someone chimed in playing some bluesy numbers on the mouth organ. The old dears opposite us tucked into snacks and passed round an unmarked bottle, booze being forbidden on a train. As is taking food from Hasidic Jews, judging by the warning posters (but they just call them strangers.

That train took us to Mangalore where we planned to spend two nights. That was one night too much, but the morning after we arrived, we were on the case to sort out our next move. After accommodation, trains and then buses failed us, we were onto Plan Z and at about 9pm about to kill one another we booked ourselves onto the Getmeouttahere Express, taking us to Coimbatore. Not someplace we wanted to go to, but closer to our destination. We set off on the 7.45am train, for a less pleasant journey cos it was much more crowded and hotter so we were delighted to finally stagger off with aching bums at 8pm in 30C.

Two days later after another long wait for tickets and frustratingly inconclusive conversations with people in the ticket office, we are now proud owners of a real ticket to Mettapalayum at 5am tomorrow and a wait-listed ticket from there to Ooty. We’re 15 in the waitlist but no one can tell is if that means we can get on the train (we reckon that’s unlikely) or more usefully, when we can book a real ticket to get to Ooty. So the rough plan is to get up at stupid o’ clock and take the train tantalisingly close to our goal. Fingers crossed we make it..

As in any city, there are whopping contrasts from the families who live under a tree by day, belongings on top of the bus shelter and sleep on a hessian sack by night and the middle class school girls escaping the heat by hopping into a cab. Felt like the wicked witch of the west a few times when we were being hit on by begging kids but one night we observed what happened when a couple stopped to talk to a bag seller. Within a minute, the bag seller had latched onto the woman’s arm, so she couldn’t leave without buying, the man’s pockets were being scouted by a five year old and a queue of supplicants was forming, including the newspaper boy, a old man begging, more kids etc. Last we saw of that couple, they hurled themselves into the moving traffic to escape. Suspect they’ll think twice about stopping next time. Interestingly, the beggars don’t bother the local middleclass people at play, presume they get short shrift. Chowpatty beach at sunset is where the middleclasses congregate, powerwalking women gossiping, kids in helmets riding their bikes followed by adoring parents, couples smooching, everyone on their mobiles, talking, texting, or taking a picture of the sunset, girls in trainers, with ipods in ears, water bottle in hand, jogging in full shalwar kameez.

Wandered round on foot taking in the sights from the Gateway of India (next to the Taj Mahal hotel, which you may have seen on telly last November, is still being reconstructed), had a beer in Leopolds (didn’t realise that it was where the shooting had started ’til we were sitting down), watched guys playing cricket on the Oval at midday, and went to the Ghandi museum. Some great material there, including Ghandi’s few belongings, which puts you could put a few hundred of into my backpack. No toothbrush, though which explains the lack of teeth. My favourite item there was a letter Ghandi had written to Hitler in the summer of 1939, saying that Hitler was the only man now who could stop war breaking out and had he considered non-violence?

From Mumbai we took the overnight train to Goa. All comfortingly familiar after journeys in Laos and Thailand, but with the addition of a chai wallah, a chai masala wallah and a coffee wallah, all coming up and down every five minutes, shouting their wares. Each drink is wickedly hot and sweet enough to send you into a diabetic coma if you’re that way inclined. The Indian penchant for adding sugar or salt to drinks (cos you’re sweating so much) didn’t really make sense to me til I had my first salty lime soda after we’d nearly gone into meltdown trying to find an atm in the business district in Mumbai one lunchtime. Realising we needed aircon and liquid we ducked into a cafe and ordered lime sodas. When the heats got to you, the salt really does put something extra back. And, as I only twigged yesterday, it’s a virgin marguerita, so all of the goodness of the original but no inappropriate dancing.

Getting to Goa was literally a breath of fresh air. Dusty but fertile and more prosperous than expected. Unlike say, Laos or parts of Thailand, the houses are almost all brick built, there are quite a ferw cars and the motorbikes aren’t the bottom of the range ones. Everyone is selling to you, but very few beggars. We spent a few happy days holidaying on Anjuna beach before moving down the coast to Candolim. Much more package holiday territory here and lots of fat, red, shiny old Brits with blurry tattoes. With the comforts of home (‘English cuisine’) and copies of the Sun available (‘Yesterday’s news, tomorrow’ according to the newsagent) we could be almost anywhere, but then real life intrudes. Woken up this morning by a procession going down the lane by the hotel, men in red and saffron turbans, dischordant music and and elephant in full makeup and sparkly top. It is Saturday, but it seemed a bit early. Can’t say we’ve seen the party side of Goa. We did realise last Saturday after a few beers on the balcony looking at the moon rising that a. it was Saturday and b. that was a full moon, so in all likelihood there was a full moon party about to kick off at a beach near us. Unfortunately it was time for bed, so we were well rested when we were woken up by the survivors crashing home around 5am and could admire their stamina before turning over.

Soz, no photos atm but soon so long as the power doesn’t keep cutting out

The end of the road, Jackson Bay

The wop wops. Driving down a road where every road branching off has a No Exit sign. Old machinery growing in fields. One-lane bridges even ones you share with a train. The constant smell of warm honeysuckle in the North Island.

Avos for breakfast, lunch and dinner. So cheap, so yummy. The size of the sauvignon blanc section in the bottleshop. We did our best but hardly made a dent. Fush ‘n chups. New World’s budget gingernuts – twice as thick as a normal gingernut, making for vastly improved dunking. Monty’s Radler – the first beer I have truly loved. Allegedly a Bavarian beer but with a citrus tang. Perfect with curry. Genius. And for Chris, Monty’s Celtic, a red beer like Smithwicks. Fergburgers- not so much a burger as a burger experience. Watties baked beans – much tastier than Heinz.

Utes and their contents. They’re utility vehicles, like pick-up trucks, invariably with some machinery unidentifiable to non-country types, some rope, an axe or a saw and a dog. Dog co-pilots. Porches with old sofas out front. Or sofas on top of buildings. All the better for watching the world go by. The Kiwi prediliction for appalling puns in their shop names. And that’s before you consider the obvious stuff like the jawdropping scenery, the animals, the trees, the inability to do get stuff done quickly cos you’re having a chat. Sweet as…

Coming to Newtown in Sydney, which is like a sunny Camden was a bit of a culture shock. Firstly cos it’s head-bubblingly hot (25C one night – eeek!), secondly cos there were people on the streets wearing completely non-functional clothing, with tattoes of Winehousean proportions and there are so many adult shops they had to open a superstore. Felt like I’d just come up from the country for the first few hours, but soon we considering Japanese or North Indian for dinner while watching a man walk his pet goat down the street. Civilisation has some undeniable benefits apart from the people-watching. Did our chores and have taken the opportunity to have a few days apart. Chris is sweltering in Canberra and I’m sweltering in Kiama, a wee seaside town south of Sydney. It’s a long weekend, Monday is Australia Day, so town is full of screaming kids with icecream faces. It would be heavenly just to pop into the campervan and drive off…d’oh!

Not the Mount Cook lily

The constant rain has started to interfere with life, a thought that should gladden anyone who’s sick of us having too much fun. We did luck out when we went to see Aoraki/Mount Cook and finally got to see the iconic peak after passing close enough to see it many times and seeing nothing but cloud. But Milford Sound was a pancake of a different complexion, mainly grey. The drive to the sound is up there in the top ten drives you must do (where do people find the time?) and it was pretty stonking. I do vaguely recall doing it on my last trip here but it was very early and there was no coffee so I may have napped at critical bits.

While the rain was on the insinuating variety that runs up your sleeves and down your neck, it was worthwhile freezing your bits off on the open deck of the boat for the best view. Even in the mist, you could see it was an excellent day for waterfalls. Got up close to a pod of friendly dolphins who played in the boats wake – never seem them before, great to get close and hear them expelling water through their heads, the sound echoing off the water. Saw more seals. So blase about seals these days, I wouldn’t get out of bed to see one but was very excited the other day to see my first live stoat. And a brown owl. Both wisely avoiding the wheels on the QE11.

Also went traditional for NYE with a wee pub crawl in Queenstown, NZ’s adventure capital. Hemmed in by mountains and an enormous lake, the wind often brings the screams of people jumping off stuff which can be disconcerting at first. Caravan parks were crammed, festival-style, so I was kept awake for two nights by the snoring of the guy three tents down. Kiwis don’t believe in losing any of the comforts of home camping with the family and lots of families will have three generations going back to the same places for 30-40 years every summer holiday. The carparks look a bit different too. Though raining, NYE was a good night, chatting to people in pubs and observing Kiwis at play.

Both Australia and NZ have what seems to me at least to be a weird relationship with alcohol, in that according to all the government signs in pubs, no one is supposed to ever get drunk in a pub and most public areas have liquor bans but I’ve seen hardly any drunkenness in NZ. Oz seems different but I have as theory about Ozzie pubs. Generally they’re inhospitable drinking barns with surgical quality lighting, with notices admonishing you from getting drunk and warning you that you won’t be allowed within a 30 metre range of the bar if you cause any trouble. If only the lights were turned down people wouldn’t need to drink so much to find the other bar patrons attractive and cop off and they wouldn’t be able to catch the eye of the bloke on the other side of the bar and start a ruck. Simple! Kiwi pubs are much more like English and Irish ones and even serve recognisable measures. Queenstown was crawling with coppers and they were checking bags for booze in the public areas, but there was a suspicious number of ‘coffee drinkers’ in the booze-free areas. The atmosphere was very good natured and yes, pretty drunken but wouldn’t frighten a small child. Down by the lake, hugging strangers and generally doing what you do when the New Year is rung in, everyone else was oohing and aahing apprectiatively at the fireworks and I’m waiting for them to start, until I realise this is it. Oops, city girl you’re not in London now. Been spoiled by some incredible fireworks over the Thames, at festivals etc. And from the balcony at home – the kids in Streatham let off bigger ones in the carpark every autumn. Ah bless.

Obligatory festive shot

We’re in Timaru, south of Christchurch and plan on hanging out hereabouts for the next couple of days. We had all kinds of weather over the last few weeks but as most of it was wet or otherwise unpleasant, we decided to skip north sharpish, so we spent Chrismas Day in the sun. No point in being on the other side of the world and not being warm and dry, except for the bit when we hit the beach. It’s a bit odd getting Christmassy without the normal signifiers (three months of TV adverts, tramps in Santa hats, everyone pissed on the nightbus, queueing for transport for half your holidays) but we’ve made an effort. After some judicious decorating we’ve turned the campervan into a mobile disco circa 1980 (photos will have to wait til usb connections reach NZ) and Chris may have to be prised out of his antlers before he gets bagged by the coppers. I even made a Christmas playlist on the ipod, but so far we’ve had ‘Last Chrismas’ by Wham and ‘Christmastime for my penis’ by the Vandals, which I’ve honestly never heard before so I may have to rethink the music…hands up, which of you gave me that.

So hope you all have a happy Christmas and spiffing New Year, we’ll be thinking of you!

Love
Mod & Chris

Kayaking in Abel Tasman National Park

Kayaking was a blast and we got to experience all kinds of weather and conditions from ‘Pitpony in a kayak’ (head down and row like buggery) to ‘I’m really quite good a this kayaking lark ‘ (zooming along with tide and wind doing all the work) and everything inbetween. When the going felt tough, we just asked ourselves ‘What would Tom Crean do?’ and burst into tuneless song, mainly the Hawaii Five-0 theme. Saw lots of wildlife, seals, birds, trees, caves and were lucky enough to finish in full-on sunshine and blue skies, after starting in lots of rain. Had blisters brewing on my hands and all my clothes were stiff with salt, so felt well hard but thought I had reserves of energy left until we got to dry land and I spent most of the weekend asleep.

Can’t begin to tell you how luxurious a weekend in a hotel was. The decor was very ‘old lady in a time capsule’, but having a sofa, real bed, ensuite and a bath felt so decadent as to distract from the retro wallpaper. Even had a balcony, with view over Nelson, but I was too busy napping on top of the papers on the sofa to care overmuch. Better still was three days of not having to get up and lug a backpack before the body has woken up. Or that miasma you encounter in some hoStels that whips me back to uni in Cork flatsharing with teenage boys. Or the Germans annexing the hostel kitchen.

For two weeks we were officially homeless/hostelling as we made it to the south island and picked up Queenie Mark 11 (or QE11 for short) in Christchurch two days ago. Hadn’t realised just how much we missed the old girl. As soon as we took off from the rental place and I heard the familar but reassuring thunk of something not nailed down falling to the floor in the back, I knew we were home. For the next 37 days at least.

Ever since back in the day when my planned career path was emigration, I’ve always considered myself a townie, but recent evidence might suggest otherwise. Typically two days in a proper town and I’m all antsy, craving some big-screen green. Even curries or other delicacies rarely available outside civilisation can only stave off the itchy feet for a max of three days. And despite the crushing remarks I’ve made about small towns (think I over-empathise with the kids who live there every time I go thru’ one and imagine I can hear the clink of them saving up their pennies for a one-way ticket to the nearest Big Town), we’ve had the most fun by far when we’ve been in the arse-end of nowhere. Or, as they call it here, the wop-wops. So with QE11, we’re again venturing bravely to places where men are men and shorts are short. Hurrah! (Except for the shorts bit, sometimes it’s downright disturbing).