aurungabad and goa: pictures to correspond with the previous post

so i promised pics and here they are:

first batch are from our trip to aurangabad, the ellora and ajanta caves... the rest are from goa. short captions to follow.

the start of the trip: 5 am and our driver was the only one asleep...



would you believe this is a two lane highway? spot the oncoming car and/or the actual road...
so, here's some pics of the Ellora caves... i was put in there to keep everything to scale...

and these would be toads in a hole... that i may or may not have tripped in...



this was day two at the ajanta caves: the first sign of treehugging in india!



inside the caves one can't use flash photography... this is an attempt to preserve the paintings that have been around for oh, i dunno, about a thousands years or so...


again we got to pose for pics... this time i also got one... and ended up feeling awfully pale afterward.





so we're all complaining that the ac isn't working in our lovely van...



so now that we've arrived in goa i thought i'd post a little bit of what we see on a day to day basis: mainly cows, burn out buildings.... and garbage... all surrounded by lovely palms and vines and topped off with stifling humidity.

this is basically the result of a portugese (and therefore catholic) colonial history married to a strong hindu background: purdy temples built like churches...


here's the local market which is far too tempting with lovely shiny objects and spices... sadly we thought we'd bartered quite well but upon arriving back at our guesthouse, leena (the caretaker) nearly died laughing when she found out how much we actually paid... so sad.


hot real estate near vagator beach...
the dogs around here are quite persistent...



the hike up to chapora fort...



and the has monsoon descended upon us already... yay.

oh and there are loads more pics where these came from... all you gotta do is head on over to diana's blog: www.dianadoesasia.blogspot.com or to eugene's at www.iabhorallpeople.blogspot.com... or follow the links on the side of this blog :)

here are the pics i promised ...

chillin' like villains...

ok... so no one hazarded a guess about aurangabad... which saddens me a little, but i'll ignore that and move on...

this is gonna be a non-pic post i'm afraid. i forgot my camera chord back in the apt and i'm too darn lazy to head back and get it... so perhaps tomorrow you can see some purdy pictures.

after our day around mumbai we packed ourselves into a very small 4x4 ( a toyota qualis, i think?) and braved the highway to aurangabad at 5:30 am on thursday morning... 'twas crazyness... as i've said before there are few rules of the road, save for:
1. if s/o is ahead of you and you wish to pass, blare your horn as long as
possible while moving ahead of them into oncoming traffic and swerving back
into your lane only at the last possible second
2. the only time you don't follow the aformentioned rule if the traffic ahead
of you is a large mac truck
3.honk for no reason whatsoever, just to wake up any sleeping passengers
4. avoid the cows

anyway, the purpose of our 3 day trip were the elloraand ajanta caves, just outside of aurungabad. they're these massive caves full of hindu, buddhist, and jain temples, built into these caves which have been cut out of sheer rock face and run deep into the mountains... the carvings and surviving paintings in some are amazing and apparently took years to complete... i can only imagine how many people they had working on them.(there are tonnes of pics for these so i'll post them tomorrow)

and again we were the centre of attention with people constantly asking for pictures with us or just walking up and taking one as though we were part of the package tour. the weather was pretty damn hot too so walking several kilometres each day in the blazing sun for hours was SOO much fun. luckily it wasn't humid at all so it was somewhat more bearable than mumbai...

after the cave we headed back to mumbain (another 8 hours stuffed into a car) and after developing pics for our driver nahesh (?? dunno what his name was actually, we just called him 'bo') we hopped onto the skeeeeziest night train i've had the privilege of riding in. (actually it was my first ever train experience... hahaha)it was a sleeper train that arrived in goa the next morning at 11 am, and was so grotty!oh and i'm pretty sure the worst thing i've EVER smelled are the mumbai train stations... (i'll let people sit and imagine that thought for a second)

so now that we've arrived in goa, and have found the weather very much to our liking, we've decided to stay here at least 4 or 5 days... which is perfect after all the hectic running around we've been doing. we've done next to nothing all day, some folk went to town to shop in the market and eugene and i wandered around anjuna (northern goa) near our awesome little guest house and got accosted by crazy lamani women who attempt to guilt trip you into buying something (theyr'e quite effective but i drive a hard bargain... ahh, who am i kidding, they probably totally ripped me off!)

but now it's 9:30 pm and we're heading off to Tito's, some legendary goan bar to dance the night away... but not drink as it's the elections right now and no one is allowed to serve alcohol past 10 pm. urgh. PLUS after the 31st there's a complete ban on alcohol until the 5th of june. goa will be VERY quiet for a while.

ok enough talking... pics tomorrow, tonight we party !

we are the tourist attraction

i made it! krista masd it... and have yet to perish from the heat so all bodes well (it's only been three days so the optimism has yet to wear off) (and by the way... about that pic... i can't edit it... so just tilt your head a little and you can see the indian coastline from the window of our virgin atlantic plane and purdy little clouds... and dirty brown water)

we arrived at high noon on the 22 and were confronted with a wall of sticky heat as we left the airport, and proceeded to experience one of the scariest taxi rides of all time. i don't need amusement parks anymore, the pure adrenaline rush one experiences from seeing oncoming traffic in your lane less than 10 metres in front of you and swerving into spaces that i'm pretty sure sarah couldn't sidle through is absolutely mind-boggling.

anyhoo, got to the hotel, found we had a massive dorm with 2/3 of the total fans working... and couldn't be bothered to find anything else, so plopped our slightly overwhelmed selves down, changed and headed off to the market. big mistake. we should have taken a cue from the fact there were no other white people to be seen... anywhere. anyway, we lasted about half an hour and decided that we were just too green to handle that experience and headed back to colaba where we were staying. the rest of the group (dee, eug, megan and andrea) didn't arrive until midnight, and having travelled for 30 hours everyone crashed till the am when angelee finally arrived and off we went to the elephanta caves off the coast of mumbai.

so, it turns out we're in the middle of the indian summer hols (which mean all the tourists go home....) so allll the posh families are out seeing the sights and find us white kids (and a couple asians to boot!) so much better than the world heritage site we're all visiting... so we've got these little kids coming up to us asking names and wanting pictures... so cute but after the 30th family you kinda want to see the sights. eh... the benefit of it all is we got an invitation to chai, then dinner, then maybe a wedding (?) in kolkata... so sweet! hook us up. anyway the caves were awesome and after sweating profusely and being nearly attacked by an angry monkey (hannah, my love for them has diminished a little) headed back to the hostel for another stinky night.

anyhoo... running out of time, this is taking forever so will post more from aurungabad! (prizes to those who can figure out why we're going there...)

i swear it's not cos i'm lazy...

just to let the folks back home know, i haven't been able to log onto this site for some strange reason, and thus haven't been able to post any pics or tell lame travelling stories... my apols.

so when i get a chance i will do.

oh, and just to clarify the basketball posts are by my sister to let me know how the suns have been doing... now that they're out you won't have to read them anymore.

aight, i'm off to watch some telly and re-pack me bags... off to mumbai tomorrow night!

that last post is completely unrelated to this blog...also innapropriate

unfortunate

meghan please dont ever write HAGS again....

At YVR and FREAKING OUT

hey y'all...

i'm sitting at yvr right now waiting to board, and showing the parents how to access my blog... quite the process.

i just want to let you all know that you need to send me your addresses/contact info so should i feel the urge to write to you, i have somewhere to send it.

nice and brief, you'd almost mistake this post for one of krista's... but you can tell it's mine cos you can actually understand what i've written :)

HAGS

right now it is 30 degrees in goa and mumbai....thats not that bad....i might acutally not die after all.

oops i forgot my vow to never sign my posts...... let that last misatake be forgotten....

message for zen

i know the purpose of this blog is not to send personal messages to people but its a big flashy way to do it so im gonna anyways. megs i promise to just do it this once..

zenner hows the 20th sound??? me and the boy will come and meet up with ya where ever you want in london. say trafalgar square at the main entrance to the national gallery???? and say 1:00??? hows that sound? im picking a generally easy to find location point. megs you better be there to meet us as well. both of ya let me know if that works for ya!!

phone numebr 07768740645 (that spelling mistake there is to keep meghans world in tact)
once your here if theres a problem!!

see ya both soon!

kris

my poor lil' blog has been hijacked....

good lord krista... a little bit of power and it goes to your head in all of 5 minutes... no i don't regret it, so long as i don't have to trail behind and re-write your posts so people are actually able to understand what you've written.... so far you're not doing too badly but i can only assume that this properly-spelled facade really won't last too long...

and i was looking for pics i have of you and i and they don't even exist! minus ones of us ACF or Anjelina Jolie night.... apparently we never take pics together... so if ANYONE ELSE has a quality shot of the two of us i'd be more than happy to post that.

ps. get some dukoral... it'll clear up that verbal vomit in no time

and again

this has given me yet another activity to fill my work days with, yeah me and yeah meghan for making the previously mentioned mistake

another side thought

i bet in 2 days or less i can make meghan regret she gave me posting priveledges!

hmmm

im starting to wonder if meghan and i are going to be the only ones actually reading this blog....

out of curiosity.....

why is meghan licking me in that photo???? and was this seriously the best photo she had of the two of us to post??

....confused....

two bloggers for the price of one... even if the price is free.

and holy shit krista, that wasn't too bad... i see nary a spelling mistake. you must have really been trying hard there.

so yes, welcome to the site... it's gonna be rather dyslexic now with the combined powers of awesomeness and rambling... luckily she's pretty succinct so you'll be able to tell the diff between my longwinded posts and her nice brief ones.

welcome to me!

well ive officially joined meghans blog so your all in for a wild and crazy ride of innapropriate stories and bad spelling

krista however...

so i was lurking through random india blogs and wikitravel: india (it's for those who are just too damn lazy to hold up their 1500 pages travel guides for more than 10 mintues) and i found this pic. it's pretty awesome and hopefully will sum up the coming trip quite nicely.

however...it seems like a whole lot more is written than the english version, so i'm curious to know exactly what's being said...

regardless, let this be a message to anyone who tries to mess with us lovely young lasses. eugene will kick your asses... oh who am i kidding, we're gonna be the ones saving his. oi vey.

ok so i just found out the coolest thing, i can translate all this into hindi... i think. so now all i have to do is find someone who actually speaks it to prove whether or not what i'm writing makes sense... sooo...

डेस थिस अच्तुअल्ल्य मके सेन्स?

whee that was fun. ok angelee, anyone? get on it.

anyhoo i promise to start posting more interesting stuff as i get more time but right now i'm gonna go focus on dealing with my pain of the canuck's loss tonight. bloody niedermeyer.

ok, here we go.

i've officially created a blog for THE TRIP... daunting, no? and now the challenge is to actually maintain this f*cker on a somewhat regular basis. pretty sure it will start out strong and then taper off into one line posts with a bunch of pictures. oh well.

so to all of you whom i send an email to announcing the birth of my blog, i expect posts and messages from the real world keepin' me updated on the goings on back home... seriously!