Luke and Lily's Travels

Hi Guys, Hope you’re all well. After our blissful week chillaxing in Goa, we jumped on a bus towards Goa’s capital Margao for a sleeper train to Kerala. The train, as we have come to expect in India rolled in an hour late, but in fairness it had been running for 2 full days before getting to us. Once we had settled and put our bags away we managed to go to the end of the of the carriage to sit out and take in the views of the Karnataka countryside. Pictures below. We arrived in the small town of Aluva at 3am, where this time we were slightly more organised and had a driver waiting for us. Our friend recommended before we left that we should book on an organised tour of Kerala as we had a limited amount of time there and the roads can be very dangerous when on public busses. Our driver was a friendly chap named Mr Saji, who had very little English apart from ‘you can pay now’. He drove us straight up to Munnar where we arrived at 6am pretty jaded and looking forwar...

Hi! If you’re still reading its time for our latest update! Rather than bore you with more details of long tiresome train journeys we decided to take the quick route to Goa and fly. Mumbai airport was lovely, organised and had a Subway which went down a treat. What didn’t go down a treat was our rather unexpected bar tab. Beer here usually costs 70 Rupees (about 80 pence) for a bottle, as it was Paddy’s day we thought we would treat ourselves to a cold larger and some free wifi and were flabbergasted to receive a bill for 1160 rupees (£13)! 2 beers! You would pay less in London! After getting over the shock and realisation that we spent more on beer than we have on our accommodation per night we hopped on the plane for a quick 50 minutes saunter to Goa. What were we expecting of Goa? A relaxing chilled out week, a new style of food and a beer on the beach. Did we get that? Yes. We first stayed in a small town called Benaulim, we had a great host in James who extensivel...

After the longest train journey of possibly our whole lives (around 18 hours), we arrived into Bandra terminus in Mumbai.! A little bit apprehensive after our time in the other touristy cities, we shouldn't have been as Mumbai was cracking. This time we stayed in a hostel, named Basit Backpackers Hostel, again we were slightly apprehensive that we would meet the old 'trustafarian' but we were pleasantly surprised! We bumped into a welsh guy named Nathan and compared stories of our northern India travails, then headed off for a streetfood tour of the Bandra Area. The first stop on the tour was the Chaat man, (Lily’s favourite) followed buy some rank sugar cane juice, then chicken kebabs, onion pakoras and a strange deep fried white bread sandwich (possibly the most unhealthy thing you could ever eat) and finally Pau Bhaji and Masala Dosa (Lukes Favourite) all of it utterly delicious (bar that drink). Pics below. Friday we headed off into the city. We go...

After yet another late arrival with greetings from aggressive tuktukers into Amritsar Station, we made our way to our hotel. A rather odd little room but very comfortable and really lovely staff that went above and beyond to help us throughout our stay. Once we were up and out, and put our first load of washing on (one load cost around £9 – shocking!) we headed into the heart of Amritsar. We wandered over to the Golden Temple early, to see what it was all about and take some photos. it was rammed, supposedly 1 million people visit there a day, we reckon a few thousand. After learning that we had to be bare foot and wear used sweaty orange bandannas we went in for a stroll around the outside and took in the peaceful tranquillity of the temple. The temple itself was stunning, the water reflecting its indulgent golden structure and sheer lavishness was pretty breath taking. There were hundreds of bathers around the outside (women in their small section on their own) blessin...

Just doing a quick foodie post as I thought the last few days of food has been excellent, a city of real foodies Lucknow whether it be decadent sweets and deserts or the finely minced gilawati kebabs that are so revered throughout India. If you have been reading the previous posts then you will no of our recent foodie experiences and the fact that we were being taken to tourist traps where the food was pretty good on the whole but you never felt like you were experiencing the proper cuisine of India, it was all a wee bit tame.  Saying that, it is pretty difficult to go headfirst into trying everything because of the obvious problems of our westernised bellies being not able to cope with food. The preparation standards with everything being washed or cooked using the pretty lethal tap water even cutlery and glasses have to be inspected closely. We have stayed mostly on vegetarian food which has been great in places but how I’m yearning for a really rich north Indian chicken/m...

  Hi Everyone Luke and Lily checking in again with our next instalment in the north of India, the title of the blog will become more apparent as we go through our last few days. Just a quick mention of our fleeting stop in Delhi we stayed at a lovely little hostel called ‘Backpackers Hostel’ tucked away in the back streets of Paharganj. After walking around aimlessly for 45 mins at 11 at night because nobody seemed to know where it was, we were very glad to find this cosy stopover for the night, friendly chaps at the desk and reasonably comfortable bed for the night. We also met our first ‘trustafarian’ – total hippy who claimed he had been lost in Delhi and was trying to find himself. Day broke and we headed back to New Delhi station (which is just bedlam) where we were catching a train to a small town in the north called Kalka. We were concerned during the journey when the train completely emptied at Chandigargh one stop before Kalka, but we carried on with slight tred...