Ode to the Cow

I temporarily gave up meat over the holidays after watching Food Inc., a documentary on how food is produced in America.  With particular references to how cattle is mass produced, injected with hormones and then slaughtered, I was so horrified with how they are treated that I couldn’t eat a burger for weeks!

Compare that to India, where cows are considered sacred and are free to roam around wherever they want.  As a result, you see cows everywhere.  On the road, on the sidewalks, on the beaches, at the temples, anywhere.  There’s almost no distinction between cows and people, except that the cows probably have a few more rights than people do.  You could be lying on a chair on the beach, and a cow will peek its head over your shoulder and start going through your bags.  Or be walking on a sidewalk and have it come and push you over.

Funny how one man’s deity is another man’s dinner.

From Beach Town to Rock Town

Taking the overnight sleeper bus from Mapusa in Goa, we head to Hampi, the once proclaimed Hindu capital of India.  Throughout the night, the bus stops, picking up foreigners along the way, and though we were the first and only ones to get onto the bus in Mapusa, by morning, the bus is full. 

Hampi has scenery unlike anything we’ve ever seen.  Giant boulders dot the land and are arranged haphazardly into different piles sprinkled across the area.  Some of these boulders are stacked on top of each other as if they have been arranged in that fashion, only you have to negate that possibility as some of them are over 20 meters high.  And against that enigmatic backdrop, is a town filled with temples and ruins.

Hampi also appears much poorer than the other places that I’ve seen in India.  No chance of wi fi, banks or fast food here.  We stay in a guest house that is located right beside one of the main temples.   Prime real estate for a bargain price of $7 a night.  And as a religious center, there is no meat or alcohol allowed in any of the restaurants.

At sunset, we go to one of the temples and watch a young girl, followed by a group of women, pray in what looks like a small ceremony to the Gods.  Barefoot and starting from outside the temple, she walks a couple of steps, looks up to the heavens and then lies face and belly down on the ground with her arms outstretched above her head before she gets up and repeats the process.  The ground is wet with water and filthy with cow dung, but neither she nor her small contingent of female followers seem to care.  She continues until she finally reaches the alter in the temple.  As I watch her, I feel overwhelming sadness for this girl, but I’m not really sure why.  We later find out that everyone in Hampi engages in this ritual – the purpose being to punish your present in order to benefit your future.

 

Because of the heat (the locals consider it winter, but we’re dying here, it hits 34C during the day!), our days consist of temple and ruin hopping in the morning and late afternoon and a long siesta from around 11-4 pm where we take a small boat across the lake and chill out in a much more relaxed part of town.  We bought a chess board in Goa and have been playing anytime we get a chance.  Vic was a freak chess prodigy as a kid and it really is ridiculous how good he is.  He even beats the computer on the chess app on my iPhone!  (when I asked him how, he said the computer makes a lot of mistakes)  Anyways, my goal is to catch him sleeping one day and win just one game by the end of this trip. 

Delhi Belly and Anjuna Beach

I usually don’t heed many warnings when travelling through less developed countries.  I use local tap water to brush my teeth and wash fruit when I shouldn’t, eat street food as it comes my way and never using hand sanitizer (insisting that it is simply not good for you).  But as with all travellers who throw caution to the wind, my time had finally come.  

I woke up in the middle of the night, overcome with an unfamiliar nauseous feeling as I quickly ran to the washroom and threw up as I had never thrown up before.  Spasm after spasm, my stomach convulsed into sharp and exhausting knots.  In the background, I heard a yell from the other room as Vic noticed a giant cockroach that had crept under our mosquito net and onto our bed.  As I cleaned up the mess, Vic was madly scrambling around the bed trying to find our elusive creepy crawler.  “Wow,” Vic said when I got back into the room, “I’ve never seen you throw up before.  Between you throwing up and me looking for that cockroach, that was just about the weirdest twenty minutes ever”.   

That one trip to the washroom turned into two and then three and then four before I lost count.  I started hallucinating and was convinced at one point I had caught meningitis, “tell my family I love them if I don’t make it to morning”, I moaned to Vic.

Fortunately, I did make it to morning and, my stomach completely empty, I finally felt better as we packed up our bags and headed to our third beach town, Anjuna Beach.  Anjuna Beach is another hippie/backpacker town, an even older and larger version of Arambol.  On one end of the beach, bikini and speedo clad foreigners strung out on “E” are dancing to loud trance and techno beats.  They are the leftover remnants of the previous night’s party and though it’s 2 pm, the party is still not over for them.   

Getting ready for the next beach party

On the other end of the beach, Kenny Rogers lookalikes sporting g-strings are doing everything from yoga, to running, to practicing circus tricks.  And in between it all is the more usual sea of foreigners, Indian vendors and cows.   Back at our room, the same dude keeps knocking at our door at all hours trying to sell us hash.

Coach from Survivor

We only get to spend 2 days and 1 night in Anjuna before taking the overnight sleeper bus to Hampi and to depart the province of Goa for good.  

I leave Goa having learned two new things.  Firstly, that the hippies of the 60’s are still alive and well, are still wearing the same outfits and  partying it just as hard as they did back in the day. 

And secondly, how to tie a mean turban… 

Goa

The overnight bus ride to Goa was long and windy as the bus travelled throughout the night.  Twisting and turning and driving probably way too quickly, the driver had no problems at screeching to a halt in the middle of the road on several occasions.  Half asleep, I wondered how many more times the driver could clamp down on those brakes as he had been doing before they would finally give in and kill us all.  The perils of Indian transport!

When nightfall turned to dawn, the scenary was mesmerizing.  Overnight, we had gone from the busy city of Mumbai to a countryside landscape of rust coloured earth with rice paddies surrounded by giant fringed palm trees and the beautiful sight of the giant orange sun blazing over the horizon.  (as lovely as the sight was, there was also the unfortunate sound of a busload of people throwing up from the ride)

Arambol, Goa

Our first stop in Goa was Arambol, a hippie backpacker beach town. Filled with beach huts along the cliff side and hundreds of stalls selling alternative clothing, this is the place where you can find the original hippies who apparently found Arambol back in 60’s and decided to never leave. 

We spent the afternoon hanging on the beach and exploring the town before enjoying a night of fun and certainly interesting live entertainment.  At one point, there was a bare chested Italian in long dreadlocks violently belting out Italian folksongs about birds and penises.  It was all very lively, fun yet a bit creepy all at the same time.

We spent two nights in Arambol and then go to a seaside beach hut in the quieter beach town of Mandrem, a gorgeous stretch of sandy beach where we fall asleep and wake up to the sound of waves crashing against the shore.

Mandrem, Goa

The Train Ride to Churchgate

The High Court

The first thing that we do when we reach Mumbai is to book the first means of transport to leave the city and head to the beaches of Goa as quickly as possible.  We end up getting seats for the first overnight bus departing in the evening and spend the day doing a walking tour of the major attractions in Churchgate and Colaba such as the Oval Maiden, the National Gallery of Modern Art, Victoria Terminus and the Gateway to India. 

Gateway to India

To get back to our hotel, we have to take a one hour local train for 8 rupees (that’s around $0.20).  Taking the train in India is in itself quite an experience.  You have locals jumping on and off the train while it is still moving and it’s quite a sight seeing a local running across the platform carrying a huge bundle of clothing on his head and and eventually jumping onto the train as it is pulling away from the station.   

In India, the train compartments are divided by gender.  I rode with Vic in the men’s carriage on the way to the city centre but due to the incessant staring and getting “accidentally” bumped into (which coincidentally, is always an elbow to boob or a hand to ass grab) and since we were riding back during rush hour, we thought it would be best to split up on the ride back. 

The women’s carriage was fantastic!  Filled with women wearing colourful saris and girls selling trinkets and jewellery, my compartment had lots of space, digital screens that tell you what the next stop is and I find a nice seat by the window.  The men’s compartment was a different story altogether.  It was a standing only compartment and since it was rush hour, poor Vic had to spend the entire ride crammed like a sardine dodging people coming in and out carrying anything from towels to sheet metal. 

Vic came out of the ride exhausted with sore feet from standing for an hour. I came out with two hair clips and a bottle of nail polish.   

 

Not always so bad being female in a supposedly patriarchal society.   

And the Winners are....

So here is the run down of our trip.

There were a lot of places that Vic and I wanted to go to and a lot of things that we both wanted to do.  We had a lot of overlap in many of our top destinations such as Mongolia, Russia, China and Tibet so those countries were in with the exception of Tibet thanks to our good ole friends at the Chinese embassy who pretty much scared us out of going.  In addition to those countries, I wanted to do Sri Lanka, Myanmar (Burma) and climb Mount Kilimanjaro whereas Vic wanted to hit up India, Bangladesh, Nepal, Vietnam and Cambodia.

Taking into consideration time, weather and trip logistics (the ease and expense at which we could travel overland into certain countries), we came up with the following itinerary.

Starting off in Mumbai, we are going to travel through Southern India for about a month eventually ending off in Bangaluru to see the World Cup Cricket match between Canada and Australia.  We will then be flying to Bangladesh and Sri Lanka for a couple of weeks a piece before heading off to Hong Kong to see our friends and family.  From Hong Kong, we will be travelling through China for 17 days towards Beijing before taking the Trans Siberian Railway from Beijing through Mongolia and Russia ending in St. Petes.

We decided to shave off a couple of our Asian destinations and spend a month being a bit more shee shee poo poo by spending our last month in Europe before heading back home.  Thus from St. Petes, we're going to Helsinki (Finland), taking the boat to Estonia and then busing it to Latvia and onwards to Lithuania.  We originally wanted to end it all off by spending a week in the Amalfi Coast in Southern Italy, but due to not being able to book an available flight through my Aeroplan air miles, we will be either ending it off in gay Paree or Athens.

France and Greece are amongst my favourite European countries so not sure which will be our final destination.  Savour a macaron and spend a day in Montparnasse before walking the Champs or drink ouzo in the magical cobbled streets of Athens.  Hmmmmm, tough decision.  Will have to get back to that one.

Mr. Leung, Mr. Wong and the Chinese Embassy

My hubby got denied when we first applied for our Chinese visas.

It started out with a phone call from Mr. Leung.  Mr. Leung called Vic a couple of days before we were supposed to pick up our passports and asked him what type of visa we wanted.  We wanted a 6 month double entry visa which was already stated clearly on our application.  Communication with Mr. Leung was not easy due to his English speaking ability but by the end of the convo, we were pretty sure he told us to look for Mr. Wong at the Embassy.

Finding Mr. Wong at the Embassy was not an easy task.  I won't go into particulars but let's just say there were a hell of a lot of people at the Embassy and the people working behind the counters were definitely not the friendliest bunch of campers out there.  After about an hour of searching, asking, and waiting, Mr. Wong finally came out  and took me to a back room.  He then proceeded to tell me that Vic couldn't get the China visa for now and that if he wanted to, he would have to submit additional information including his resume, job description, social interests and affiliations and his opinion or views on Tibet and Taiwan.  And then he would have to get interviewed.

I don't know what kind of ridiculous system they have going on at the Chinese Embassy for picking out potential troublemakers, but whatever system they are using, it totally sucks cause Vic is the LAST person they should be interviewing.  So when Vic asked me what he should put down for his opinion or views on Taiwan, I typed in the following.

"I understand that Tibet has nice rugs and clothing and that Taiwan has good food and bubbletea."

Five days after submitting all Vic's information, we find ourselves back at the Embassy.  Mr. Leung proudly hands Vic our passports, Chinese visas and all, "Welcome to China," he says with his thick accent and a big toothy grin.