Profile
Blog
Photos
Videos
Claire & Dave's Big Adventure
- Blog
-
Location Date Europe 1430866800 North America 1429484400 South America 1429311600 Asia 
1411858800 Africa 1411772400 Oceania 1227225600 -
-
Following Munnar, the plan was to go to Palolem in Goa and spend some more time beaching it in the sunshine before we flew to South Africa.
We arrived after a long journey which involved passing twelve hours between trains in a shopping mall. And wow, what a place. In the right season Palolem has a beautiful long crescent shaped golden beach, lined with palm trees and backed with inexpensive beach shacks and food stalls. The little town behind the beach has lots of tasty seafood restaurants and plenty of bars and hangout spots to spend the evenings in after a long day in the beautiful Indian sunshine. In the wrong season, specifically the monsoon season when we arrived, Palolem is pretty much shut. The beach is obviously still there but there are no beach shacks and the usual clear blue waters are monsoon churned grey waves battering the sand. On top of this the rain didn't stop for the entire time we were there. It was pointless staying, and after 2 days we left.
We vacated via a small metal 12 seater bus filled with over 100 people to the very boring town of Madgoan where we caught the train on to Hampi.
So that's about 4 days where we've done nothing exciting, seen nothing worth seeing and spent most of the time either on buses or trains or waiting for them. This is the problem we've had a lot of in India. It's just so difficult to get from A to B due to the trains having such a confusing booking system that requires booking journeys weeks in advance. It's fine if you can afford to fly or pay extra for travel agents commissions but as mentioned in our last post, we are too tight to pay for those things!
Anyways, onto Hampi...
Things we have learned
1 Beaches are no fun in the rain
Planes used - 4
Buses used - 24 (+3)
Trains used - 19 (+2)
Metros/subways used - 28
Cars used - 5
Minivans - 8
Russian Campervans used -1
Horses used - 1
Camels used - 1
Taxis used - 8
Cable cars used - 1
Bicycles used- 1
Tuk tuks/autorickshaw used - 27 (+4)
Scooters used - 5
Elephants used - 0
Ferrys used - 4
CycloRickshaw - 1
Bamboo HouseBoat - 1
We arrived after a long journey which involved passing twelve hours between trains in a shopping mall. And wow, what a place. In the right season Palolem has a beautiful long crescent shaped golden beach, lined with palm trees and backed with inexpensive beach shacks and food stalls. The little town behind the beach has lots of tasty seafood restaurants and plenty of bars and hangout spots to spend the evenings in after a long day in the beautiful Indian sunshine. In the wrong season, specifically the monsoon season when we arrived, Palolem is pretty much shut. The beach is obviously still there but there are no beach shacks and the usual clear blue waters are monsoon churned grey waves battering the sand. On top of this the rain didn't stop for the entire time we were there. It was pointless staying, and after 2 days we left.
We vacated via a small metal 12 seater bus filled with over 100 people to the very boring town of Madgoan where we caught the train on to Hampi.
So that's about 4 days where we've done nothing exciting, seen nothing worth seeing and spent most of the time either on buses or trains or waiting for them. This is the problem we've had a lot of in India. It's just so difficult to get from A to B due to the trains having such a confusing booking system that requires booking journeys weeks in advance. It's fine if you can afford to fly or pay extra for travel agents commissions but as mentioned in our last post, we are too tight to pay for those things!
Anyways, onto Hampi...
Things we have learned
1 Beaches are no fun in the rain
Planes used - 4
Buses used - 24 (+3)
Trains used - 19 (+2)
Metros/subways used - 28
Cars used - 5
Minivans - 8
Russian Campervans used -1
Horses used - 1
Camels used - 1
Taxis used - 8
Cable cars used - 1
Bicycles used- 1
Tuk tuks/autorickshaw used - 27 (+4)
Scooters used - 5
Elephants used - 0
Ferrys used - 4
CycloRickshaw - 1
Bamboo HouseBoat - 1
- comments