I broke free from Anjuna Beach for a while today & paid a visit to the Goan state capital of Panjim. It was a 4-hour excursion that was a decade & three visits to Goa in the making – ashamedly this is my third visit to Goa stretching back to 2002 & I...
Riding The Rails - India Sometimes Sweaty. Sometimes Attritional. Always Interesting. Always Colourful. Always 100% India On the Hospet to Goa train, India. September 26, 2012 ; I estimate I’m over half way there. Half way to the beach in Goa that is. It’s 11:00...
It was some ten years ago now on the beaches of Goa not long into my first visit to India. He was a memorable character so I remember the conversation with him well. I was a India greenhorn. He was anything but – he’d spent most of his vagabonding days in...
Mysore, in the southern Indian state of Karnataka, has a few things going for it but few look beyond its fabulous palace, a dynastic seat of power right up until Indian independence from the British in 1947. And for good reason – it’s pretty special,...
Kerala India’s Laid-Back State. The Best Place In India To Escape India Itself Chinese fishing nets, Fort Cochin, Kerala, India. September 19, 2012 ; Picked up as one of the 50 must-see destinations of a lifetime by the National Geographic Traveler, Kerala in...
It’s pretty safe to say that Fort Kochi (Cochin) in the Indian state of Kerala is a place steeped in history – it was a spice trade centre for over 3,000 years & it was here that European colonisation of India first took root. In many places...
Unfortunately it has been a slow & frustrating couple of days since I finally left the beach at Kovalam, some 160 kilometres further south down the Kerala coast. I’ve taken three bus trips in as many days (although none for longer than 2 hours) to get here...
I’m just about beached out & I’ve had it too with listening to Arabian Sea waves crashing on the rocks below my room balcony. Don’t hate me; after a while it does get tiring. Forget what I said about it being therapeutic upon arrival some days ago now. It’s not....
Today was my third day by the Arabian Sea here in Kovalem in the laid-back state of Kerala, southern India. I took my camera out and took it for a stroll down the coast from Kovalem’s Lighthouse Beach to Vizhinjam, a small fishing village. While it was only a...
It’s September 11, 2012, & I’m in the midst of taking it easy looking out on Arabian Sea waves crashing on the rocks below the balcony of my Rp700-a-night (€10) guesthouse room – it claims to be a hotel but it’s a hotel only in name. The noise of...
