Laurie and harri's Travels

Gallery: Houseboat heaven

laurie_and_harri — Sat, 6 Oct 2007 17:46:00 GMT

Cruising the backwaters

Kerala

laurie_and_harri — Sat, 6 Oct 2007 16:51:00 GMT

Hi Everyone,

Since we last wrote anything we've travelled quite a long way. From Palolem to Gokarna and then to Kerela. Gokarna is a holy town and full of temples and religous sites. We actually stayed at Om beach where there aren't any temples but there were a couple of Germans who bored us to death! We were lucky enough to meet them in Calangute and then they turned up in Palolem and joy of joys they were on the same train to Gokarna. We were pretty stuck with them but thought we could have a few drinks and have a good night anyway. Turns out they don't serve alcohol at Om beach and we spent dinner desperately trying to keep the conversation going by saying things like ' I wonder if it'll rain tomorrow?' What's Munich like?' Have you been to London?' 'Yes, I spent 4 hours at Heathrow once, nice airport' .....awkward silence. Thankfully they left in the morning.

After a few days chilling out there (finally found some beer!)we took the train to Cochin and then a ferry to Fort Cochin. It's probably the least Indian feeling place we've been to yet. They can't serve beer legally in most places so we drank special tea which suspiciuosly tasted a lot like beer, in fact it is beer but served in a teapot. We also went to see a traditional Kathakali performance. The commentator/singer/triangle player was probably the campest man we've ever seen (an Indian Dale Winton) and he was pretty pissed off that he wasn't performing. The whole way through the show he was shooting daggers at the performers. When he burst into very enthusiastic singing/wailing we had to hold in hysterical laughter while everyone else lapped up the spirituality. You find there are a lot of wannabe gurus around who wear patchwork trousers and go on about how it's all a different world, totally alien, peace. We have to stop ourselves from hitting them.

After Cochin we headed by rickshaw (our driver took pleasure in driving the wrong way up a busy bypass while we were screaming in terror!) to Allepey, the lonely Planet describes it as 'a slice of Venice in India' Turns out it's a pretty shitty, dusty and dirty place with two stagnant canals running through it. Still this was the place to go on a Keralan Houseboat. It has to be one of the most relaxing ways to spend 24hrs. You have your own palace floating through the backwaters whilst being cooked the most delicious keralan food. We bought massive prawns from a local fisherman and had them for dinner. Only downside was when they moored the boat for the night next to the house of the local nutter. But it was fine once he'd stopped shouting and talking about five little boats at seven o'clock in the river sea time machine.

We had the biggest meal ever on that boat and our chef was brilliant.We haven't really talked that much about the food and it's usually fantastic. Everything is so cheap, breakfast is usually 2 omlettes, coffee and toast and it costs 75p. Lunch we try to have curry with rice, a vegetable dish and a roti or naan bread and that's about 1.50. Dinner we might splash out and spend 2 quid for both of us. It's incredible and you rarely get bad meal. (harri's worst was a lasagne completely made out of cheese, Laurie's was a chicken curry decorated with a random assortment of bones!)

We have just arrived in the Periyar national park and we're off to do some trekking (might involve some collapsing and coronaries as well!)

We'll try and write more soon if we don't get eaten by tigers, trampled on by elephants or Laurie dies of shock after seeing a small to medium sized spider.

Hope everything's good in the motherland!

Goa

laurie_and_harri — Sat, 22 Sep 2007 20:45:00 GMT

Hey Everyone,

We've now been in India for 2 weeks now and hectic, hot and slightly insane seems to be a theme here. It's been the Ganesh festival for over a week and everyone gets very into it. It's like Christmas on acid with elephant headed statues everywhere. It seems to consist of open ended trucks (covered in extremely tack fairy lights and flowers) being driven down the street at about 1.5 miles an hour with a group of men banging drums and dancing wildly in front and a group of sedate women walking quietly and praying to the statue in the back of the truck. Then you have the children who run to the middle of big crowds and then set off fireworks that seem to be a relative of semtex. You generally find yourself showered with hot coals as you hit the floor in terror.

On one particular night we were with an Irish couple and after a pretty relaxing dinner we scootered down to the beach to watch the drowning of Ganesh. Just as we got to the sea front some little bastard put a firework directly in front of us on the road, it exploded in our faces and pretty much knocked us off our scooter while they all fell about laughing...... it was a laugh or cry moment I think.

We were then accosted by a seemingly sweet man in a red turban who was totally hammered.

To Laurie 'My friend where you from?' 'England' 'ENGLAAAAAAAAAAAAAND YEAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH' To me 'My friend where you from?' 'England' 'ENGLANNNNNNNNNNNNND' to the Irish couple 'where you from my friends?' 'Ireland' 'England?' 'no Ireland' 'ENGLANNNNND YEAHHHHHH' 'no Ireland' 'ENGLANNNNNNNNNNNND' 'oh for fecks sake... yes England' 'ENGLANDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDD' I guess he loves England

He then gave Laurie a hug and I made the mistake of giving him one too... that's when we nicknamed him mr Goan Hot sausage as he jiggled up and down against me... yukkkkkkk. He then disapeared only to return with 10 of his friends all wanting a hug and no doubt a jiggle. We pretty much ran into an onslaught of firewrks to get away from them!

Down on the beach it was a scene of total madness about 2000 people were blessing about 800 statues before the head men of the families carried them to the sea to drown them. (For days afterwards you're having a nice swim when suddenly you get hit by a bit of Ganesh floating about)

After this we went for a couple of drinks with the Irich couple. On our way back home we had our first (and hopefully last) encounter with the Indian Police. They were waiting on the Calangute roundabout blatantly to pull over tourists and get bribes. This nasty guy with a huge mustache asked Laurie for his licence he then insisted it wasn't the right licence and said there would be a fine for this. It was getting pretty tense at this point as we knew they were only after one thing and it feels pretty unfair but there's nothing you can do. Luckily for us they pulled over another scooter with a huge Jamaican guy on the back, Mr Arsehole Mustache went over to investigate when this Jamaican guy started kicking off saying 'do you know who I am, you f*ckers? Do you know who I am, you don't want to f*ck with me'

They wrestled this guy to the ground and we just looked at each other not knowing what the hell we should do now?! Laurie suggested we got the hell out of there, so we sped off home! I think they were so preoccupied with this irate boxer type they probably didn't even remember us (I hope so anyway) It seems we owe our money and possibly freedom to a big extremely angry Jamaican guy!

Anyway we're pretty exhausted, we've been doing a lot of swimming drinking and sunbathing (it's a hard life!) so I think we're going to string up our hammock and spend the afternoon snoozing,

Hope everything's good at home, keep in touch.

xxx Laurie and Harri xxx

7 days in Mumbai

laurie_and_harri — Tue, 18 Sep 2007 21:00:00 GMT

Hi Everyone,

We have just completed a crazy stay in Mumbai and have now moved done to the much more tranquil beaches of Goa, although as our luck would have it as we arrived at the beach we've got our first bout of bad weather.

Mumbai was a great experience but we don't really know how to describe it without putting you off for life! Every morning we were woken by either a pack of dogs howling beneath our window or a (very very sick) man vomiting in the sink outside our room, I was sure one day we'd find him dead with his head in the sink, but he survives another day! We then checked how many bites we had received over night and went to the toilet/shower room to wash the many layers of sweat off our bodies. We usually headed out (stepping over the local heroin addict usually slumped near our hotel) for a coffee and some breakfast (we try to have curry but a surreptitious egg and chips makes a welcome change) after that we would manage to walk 2 paces outside Leopolds (the main traveller bar and cafe) before we had at least four guys screaming "sir, madam, morning! come see my antiques/ shawls/ t- shirts/ bracelets/ dvds etc etc etc. We managed to uphold the good old english politeness for sometime and say no thankyou over and over again at least until the dreaded drum seller would latch himself to our sides for the next mile. We tried many tactics with these guys,

"No thanks I don't have room in my bag" - "try a small drum muy friend very small, very strong"

"I already have a drum thanks" - "What about big drum you have big drum? you have small drum? You have this drum?"

"I want a drum but my girlfriend won't let me have it, sorry" - " No no sir you must have drum small drum, maybe big drum.."

In the end we started walking faster and faster and trying our utmost to ignore this poor guy desperately selling these goddamn drums.

Laurie now has a small drum sir in his bag....

So where were we... ah yes after escaping the drum men we would make our way to the tourist attraction of the day which are all very beautiful and majestic but you have to step over sleeping families and general faeces to get there then once you have arrived there will be more hawkers selling you chai, postcards and funny magnet things (laurie bought these and I have to wrestle them of him constantly, grrrr)

We would then head back to our hotel and the hawkers had turned into hash dealers and although they are very friendly, they are very persistent much like Laurie was when convincing me to but some (over my dead body Joanna!!!). Our silver lining was this great little local restaurant which we went to most nights, you got a bottle of whiskey for about a quid and food was around 50 to 70 pence a dish. It was the best indian food we've ever tasted and the staff were great. Laurie would also like to point out that he had the best kebab he has ever tasted at a street seller nearby, we'll post a video of them making the rotis (flat breads) it's incredible.

So after dinner we generally went to watch the cricket or the football (Spinney we caught the Blackburn Chelsea game.. COME ON THE ROVERS!!) and had a good few drinks and then tried to sleep in the oppressive heat and we think bed bug filled bed, then started the whole thing over again the next day.

This might sound like a living hell but it really was so interesting, there was always something going on and new people to look at and talk to, everyone is incredibly friendly (apart from some of the other travellers who have irritatingly got the red dye between their eyebrows and flounce about being 'spiritual' - bloody hare krishna wannabees) and there is a certain atmosphere that you can't help but enjoy (slightly excited/consuumed with fear).

We will post some photos tomorrow and let you know how the weather is (in keeping with our national obbsession)

ps Laurie's got the shits!

pps Laurie typed that, he's very proud?!! Still claiming it wasn't the kebab... hmmm.

Laurie and Harri

XXX

Day 1

laurie_and_harri — Wed, 12 Sep 2007 23:04:00 GMT

Hi Everyone!

We have arrived in Mumbai and as we expected it is very hot, sticky and chaotic. Our first hotel was not exactly the Ritz and we had to drive around Mumbai for about 2 hours tryng to find it. You see some crazy stuff on the streets at night from the biggest rats ever to barn owls(very strange and unexpected!)and hundreds of people asleep on the pavement. We have now moved to the tourist area of Colaba which is full of hawkers and beggars, it's really hard not to give money to people but I guess we'll get used to it.

Anyway we're off for a curry now and to find a bar to watch England V Russia although they'll probably want to watch the 20/20 cricket so a bribe may be in order!

More soon.....