Day 69 to 71: Do Buy in Dubai

Spending money and showing off how much money you have seems to be the main activity in Abu Dhabi and Dubai, these crazy cities surrounded by desert where fancy shopping malls house ice-skating rinks and indoor ski fields. We stopped by for a weekend to visit our friend Teresa who is an old workmate of Michael's from his Genesis days in Hamilton. Teresa has lived in Abu Dhabi for 3 years and we enjoyed being shown around and lunching at tasty restaurants and enjoying coffee at the opulent Emirates palace.

Day 65 to 68: Goodbye India

Mumbai was our final destination and like much of India, it surprised us. We roughly expected it to be a steamier, bigger, dirtier and more polluted version of Delhi. Central Mumbai was in fact very clean, with wide streets and a lovely waterfront along Marine Drive. Around the Fort area the buildings from British-rule days made the city feel similar to London or European cities. At times we did come across choking rotting fish smells which reoriented us, but most of the time there was no rubbish or unpleasant smells. We were in town for Republic Day, celebrating independance from British rule and we enjoyed seeing dozens of holiday cricket games in play at the Maidan Oval park. We joined tons of locals and Indian tourists to see temple cave carvings at Elephanta Island and spent our last evening in India strolling along Chowpatty Beach, where families enjoyed the holiday with toss-the-hoop games and snacks from street vendors.

Leaving India after 4 weeks is strange and a little sad. Random things we'll miss include:

Constant attention

Everyone wanted to welcome us to India and although the fact that we stood out made us uncomfortable initially, we came to realise that 99% of people stared at us because they were curious and interested, and if you are curious and interested in something why wouldn't you stare? We've visited monuments where other Indian tourist seem more interested in us than the sight they've come to see, so we've granted requests and posed in many holiday pictures. We've been filmed walking along the beach and the most memorable question would have to be "why is your skin pink and white?" asked of myself and Laurain, the Dutch girl on our Kathmandu to Delhi tour.

Dated Celine Dion sounds

After hearing the Titanic themesong play in a number of restaurants/cafes and even have someone walk along singing it behind us, we may not exactly pine for "My Heart Will Go On" but it was an amusing blast from the past that seemed to follow us around

Chai wallahs and masala chai

By far our favourite drink was masala tea and it was available absolutely everywhere..many a train journey was made more enjoyable by a cup (or few!) of cardamom-spiced chai

Friendly people

We met some wonderful people who helped make our time in India outstanding. Our driver Vidu in Kerala and Bhupendra, our tour leader for Kathmandu to Delhi humbled us by the gentle way they served us and made our enjoyment their priority. So many people just wanted to greet us and find out how we were enjoying our time in their country. In our last week in India I realised how often I smiled with my whole face in response to those who smiled at me and how welcomed I felt.

From Mumbai we fly to Dubai, where we'll spend the weekend in and around Abu Dhabi visiting our friend Teresa.

Day 56 to 64: Cruising Kerala in the Ambassador

Tropical temperatures and sunshine welcomed us to south India. Our first stop was Bangalore, the IT capital of India. It's not exactly a tourist mecca, but we'd planned to visit a childhood friend of mine who was unfortunately called away at late notice. We'd treated ourselves to a fancy hotel for the weekend so we decided to take things easy, plan our travels for the next week and enjoy the free wifi. Michael's stomach was not enjoying Indian food at that point, so it was good to get in a bit of rest.

We flew from Bangalore to Kochi, where we hired a driver and car for four days (our vehicle turned out to be the stereotypical Indian car, the Ambassador, which made for a stylish ride). Our driver Vidu was a lovely Indian man who really enjoyed driving people around and seeing them enjoy their time in Kerala, so it was a real pleasure to have him introduce us to the region.

We visited Munnar, where vividly green tea plantations spread across the hillsides. A walk high in the national park introduced us to plenty of friendly mountain goats which can only be found in Kerala. Our hillside accommodation near Munnar served up one of the most delicious Indian feasts we experienced on our trip.

Thekkady was our next destination, where we took a jeep safari into Periyar National Park and spotted monkeys and huge squirrels. We hiked for a few hours, but despite our guide's best efforts, the elephants remained in hiding.

A pleasant four hour drive brought us to Alleppey, where we farewelled our driver Vidu and boarded a houseboat for a relaxed overnight trip along the backwaters - miles of peaceful palm-lined waterways, with houses and villages dotted alongside. We stayed an additional day in the town area of Aleppey and enjoyed an autorickshaw trip to a beautiful palm covered beach about 15km away. We went for a big walk around Alleppey, where many locals greeted us with obvious curiosity and pleasure. It seemed that few white tourists spent time in Alleppey town once they had finished their houseboat trip.

We finished our time in Kerala with a very laid-back stay in the small fishing town of Fort Kochi, where we wandered sleepy streets on Sunday morning, pursued by autorickshaw drivers trying sell trips to spice markets - the main selling point being that "business is very slow on Sundays."

Our week in Kerala was very rewarding and we were glad we'd changed plans to include it - we had originally planned to visit Goa, but it sounded like we'd enjoy Kerala more than Goa's beach and foreign tourist scene. Kerala was certainly well visited, but the majority of the tourists were Indian. With the world's first democratically elected communist government and a 100% literacy rate, Kerala seemed to have greater equality than most other places we'd visited in India and we didn't see anybody living on the streets, which was very different from the poverty in the North.

Day 42 to 55: (Not) as calm as a hindu cow

Two weeks into our Indian experience and certain things have become our new normal. Vibrant activity, sharing roads with cars, rickshaws, tuk tuks, cows, goats, dogs, and the occasional pig, spatters of red betel juice on the ground from paan-chewers...and of course, people, people everywhere.

I expected India to be intense with the sheer number of people, the dirt, and the in-your-face poverty...as well as being a fascinating country with awesome spicy food. Overall we haven't found it as much of a culture shock as we expected. It is a buzzing place, which often appears chaotic to our western eyes. Almost everywhere we go people are curious about us as we are clearly foreigners, so we are becoming accustomed to not being able to blend into the background. Cities tend to have lots of rubbish about the place and pollution haze from the hordes of vehicles and it is hard and challenging to see lots of people begging and struggling to eke a living, when we comparatively have so much. I think I find street children the hardest to see, as they always run up to you and pull at your clothing. The best way to get through them is to completely ignore them, which feels heartless but is better than trying to shake them off like bugs.

Taking the metro on the weekend in Delhi was rather like joining a rugby scrum, particularly for men, as women have a dedicated carriage reserved for them which is much less crowded than the rest of the train. Train travel has been excellent in the upper class air conditioned (heated in winter) carriages and it was easy to sleep on the seats that converted to beds for overnight journeys, but the lower class carriages are not heated, and it did get very cold in the past few weeks. Winter fog made for some very long delays - the longest delay we encountered was when our afternoon train from Orchha to Agra was already 8 hours late before it got to us - so our tour group abandoned the train plan and took a 6 hour drive instead.

Exploring northern India has been a very interesting time and highlights for us include:

Treating our tastebuds

with delicious curries, breads, varieties of dhal, lassi and incredibly sweet sweets. We have been really enjoying hot samosas on train journeys and English tea has been replaced by cardamom-spiced masala chai.

Witnessing life and death rituals along the Ganges river

Floating along the Ganges was at times a sobering experience. The river was alive with the activity of boats, Hindus washing in the waters and the flames of funeral pyres where Hindus mourned and tourists clustered above to watch. It looked invasive, like spectating at a funeral. Our boat kept some distance from the burning ghats (banks) out of respect for the families. Although most dead bodies are cremated, certain exceptions (including pregnant women, lepers, those who die from snakebites and holy men) mean bodies are put directly into the Ganges without being burnt. We passed a shrouded body bobbing along, with head and shoulders above the water, which was a rather disturbing experience for us.

Peaceful Orchha and stunning Khajuraho temples

We enjoyed visiting the small town of Orchha, which had an impressive palace and many temples lining the river. An Indian cooking class was a great way to taste new dishes we can try to recreate when we return home. We also visited an awesome temple complex at Khajuraho - known as the kama sutra temple, the beautiful buildings are decorated with thousands of "instructive" figures.

A fog-shrouded Taj Mahal

We visited the city of Agra on one of the colder winter days and saw a mysterious looking Taj Mahal. Our other tour members were disappointed by the fog but we didn’t really mind, and as we were leaving the sun came out in time to light up the marble for a more contrasted view of the Taj.

Seeing Bollywood in action and on the big screen in Jaipur

The Amber Fort in Jaipur was a beautifully preserved palace complex where we enjoyed wandering and there happened to be a South Indian film being shot, so we joined the onlookers. Later that evening we saw the latest Bollywood film at the Raj Mandir Art Deco cinema – we expected to be a bit bored after an hour of watching the Hindi film without subtitles, but it was pretty easy to follow and we enjoyed the music, the dancing, and the cheesiness. Other highlights of Jaipur were a beautiful royal summer palace set in the middle of a lake and the Jantar Muntar observatory with astrological instruments built in stone, which are still accurate today despite being built over 300 years ago.

A serene lake city and a local festival

After our tour finished we headed south west from Delhi to the peaceful lake city of Udaipur. Islands in the midst of the lake have beautiful white palaces and the city is much cleaner than Delhi. An enterprising rickshaw driver took us from the train station to our hotel and offered to be our guide for the day, so we enjoyed being driven around viewpoints, gardens and spice markets. From Udaipur we took an aggresively driven bus to the city of Ahmedabad in the Gujarat region and arrived in time to enjoy seeing many children and families out celebrating the Makar Sankranti festival by flying kites. We also visited Gandhi's ashram and saw where he and his wife lived and from where they led their non-violence movement.

That wraps up our time in the north, we're now off to Bangalore to begin 2 weeks in south India.