Muscat, the capitol of Oman is an awesome city in which I could easily live. The food is great, the roads are excellent and the people are very friendly. It’s hot, damn hot, but a dry heat not the humidity of Hong Kong. It has great history and the Sultan seems pretty cool. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muscat Although we only had 5 days in Oman and 2 days were spent diving, we tried to pack in the sights as best we could. Muscat did not disappoint. We checked out our local Qurm Beach, the Old town, the Oil and gas museum and …
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Highway To Muscat, Oman
Leaving Abu Dhabi on the top notch highway to Muscat, Oman, we pulled over for the call of nature. The down side is we pulled into desert sand and sank axle deep…. I have spent a lot of time in deserts and learned that one must help each other in the desert or things go wrong quick. We had just gotten nicely stuck when locals started pulling up, most in peristome white dishdashes. Within 5 minutes, out of nowhere a huge truck shows up with a giant strap. They wrap the strap around the front axle and voila – we …
The best laid plans…
To paraphrase Robbie Burns – the best laid plans of mice and men often go awry…. Due to the older 2 girls doing their Junior Open Water Scuba course, we decided to leave our beloved Cavelossim Beach and head down to Palolem Beach so they would be closer to the pool for their pool dives. It would also be closer for their mandatory 2 shore dives (confined water dives). Also we were going to go dive at Netrani Island for their 2 Open Water dives and departure from Palolem was 5 am, so departure from Cavelossim was going to be …
Goa!
As this is a family trip, we all realised that too many temples/forts/historical sights equals not much fun, and we suspected the beaches of Goa did equal fun We did not leave the hectic life of HK to replace it with alarm clocks elsewhere. We had promised ourselves to find nice places to chill and hang out. So it was off to the famous beaches of Goa! Due to visa issues, impossible flight routes and 20+ hours of flight time, my choices of Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan were shelved. As we have both travelled for a year or more solo, …
Jaisalmer – The Golden City
Jaisamler is the Golden City because everything is made of sandstone and the desert sun makes it shine Golden. We are in the Thar desert which is the 18th largest desert in the world, 9th largest subtropical desert. It is the most populated desert in the world and the least populated part of India – funny! 40% of the Rajasthan population live here. It makes a natural border between The nuclear armed enemies of India and Pakistan. Everywhere was military bases and personnel. India has twice the military size of Pakistan but nukes even it up as both have between …
Jodhpur – The Blue City
Jodhpur is known as the Blue City….and I had just thought it was named after funny looking trousers. It was also beginning g to seem that every city in Rajasthan was “The City of……”. It wasn’t until we got up above the city in the fort ( yes kids we are off to see another fort/palace..), that we saw why…. While in Jodhpur we saw the Jaswant Thada – a memorial to a whole bunch of maharajahs. Our guide was great – he pointed out that almost all the faces were painted the same they just changed the crazy Rajasthani mustaches …
Udaipur – The City Of Lakes
After one easy day/night in Pushkar, it was off to Udaipur, the city of lakes, founded by Udai Singh in the 1500s. Oh yeah – the lakes are man made as the Thar desert isn’t far away….That being said, the lakes are beautiful and our hotel was lit ( this is my 13 y.o word for ‘cool’). There was a corporate event there that night and we ‘shazamed’ some very ‘interesting’ Indian dance music – look out the next t8 e you see me…. The City Palace Started in the 1500s by Udai when Udaipur was the capital city of …
Jaipur – The Pink City
Health improving we moved on to the capital of Rajasthan – Jaipur – the Pink city. We learned quickly that ‘pur’ Means city and the first part is the name of the dude who founded the city, in this case Jai Singh. In 1876 the Prince of Wales (later Edward VI) visited and the city was painted pink. Why? I do t know. The Main Street of the old city is still super pink. Did I say ‘health improving’? By lunch M.C. was in a bad way and returned to the hotel. Delhi- belly was taking over with the oldies. The …
Delhi
A night or two before flying to Delhi from Kathmandu I read a few blogs about India, it’s scams and in particular the Delhi airport. We had spent over 8 hours collectively working out the e-visa and had a vertitable shit show upon leaving Nepal where they stopped us for not getting ‘stamped in’ when we walked across the Tibet- Nepal border. We barely made the plane for a USD$2 fine for each of us! I was not looking forward to the Delhi experience!
Upon arrival almost everything about Delhi surprised us! Smooth sailing at the airport including the e-visa ( the customs guys were awesome!), and our hostel pick up ( secret password – big mango!). The drive to our hostel was pretty easy and the route was lush with trees and beautiful temples (the Laxmi Narayan in particular). The only thing missing was head wobbles. We knew the backpack area was a little grim but as we wandered down the back alley all we could smell was urine and rubbish accompanied by constant shouts and honking horns. It’s true -India is an assault on all the senses….it took me a day to realise that the wall at the corner was a place for guys to pee…..
Just a bit behind and to Kaia’s left was the pee wall. Note the excellent wiring – power outages were regular. A right turn at the end of this alley it got much darker and there was our hostel…
Paharganj By Night
That night M.C. And I ventured out to the main bazaar of Paharganj. This neighbourhood is the cheap cheap backpacker area and all the neon signs are for cheap hotels. This area is intense at all hours.
Paharganj by Day
One afternoon while everyone was chilling I set out to explore the rest of the Paharganj area. Tons more cheap hotels and more little shops selling the same stuff. Also the everpresent smell of urine, cooking and garbage. Accompanied by flies…always flies. Without the family I still got looks but none approached me to ask where I was from. Perhaps I looked enough the part to get away with maybe being local….
It was gritttier – saw a dog get hit by a motorcycle, a legless man begging in the middle of a 6 lane road, cows everywhere and lots of garbage. Poverty abounded.
Updated travel map
Here”S the latest map – where we have been and where we are going (till end of September). In the interim, trying to figure out why our map is not updating directly on our blog. All fun and games… sort of!
