With Panjim closing around our throats and a minor incident with bad food... we made an escape to Candolim to see what all the fuss was about. Sorry to say we don't see it. It's not a pretty place; the beach is no way the picturesque cliche you might imagine. Instead, it is a barren, baked stretch of copper sand that is washed by a rough and dirty sea. The rusting hulk of an oil tanker lies just out at sea - Candolim's idea of sightseeing??? Behind the bea...

So it was that we left Palolem after 4 days and travelled to the state capital Panjim for two nights. We had been looking into booking onward train tickets down the coast to the state of Kerala but had no luck finding available seats. In Panjim we found our worst nightmare. A small and unsociable town that is both closed off from you in a "locals only" atmosphere but also closed around you, because as we were to discover - it is a very difficult plac...

Lisa and I arrived in Mumbai airport after a marathon 9 hour flight and were quickly thrust into the chaos of the terminal. It took us a long time to navigate the rabbit warren of arrivals only to learn that we needed to collect our bags when we had been told they would be forwarded automatically. Back at the luggage belt we soon realised our bags - along with some others had been "mis-placed". A porter was quick to run away in search of them. Some 30...