Oh India...

So time to catch up...
we left Kenya Dec 9 after a great month with great friends. a definite highlight would be a fabulous safari with great traditions of sundowners which you enjoy the sunset and wine with good people. Hard to top. It was hard to leave at this point as up to now it's been a really fun vacation hanging out with friends, not too scary at all. Thanks to Kari, Marty, Angie and Bryan for being great hosts, for great memories, and lots of laughs!

So after flying for part of the night we land in Mumbai on a not much sleep at all. our plan was to get our of there as soon as possible, which was a good plan. There was a lot to take in just from the view of the taxi. People sleep on the pavement next to the roads as we drive by them. And oh the smell, wow! not sure how to describe that, but you can use your imagination. the worst bathroom smell X100-not all the time though,but definitely in spots. So we got to the train station. We have 2-3year old children looking up with the big eyes asking for money, we have women holding their children asking for money, everywhere, people asking something from us. Definitely overwhelming with new things that we just don't see in Calgary nor would it be acceptable. Unfortunately it's acceptable and common here. Still not really sure how to make sense of all that...
so after a 4 hour wait in a train station we board a train for the next 10 hours. It's hot! we share this space with six people. It's noisy, there's people selling things and yelling down the aisle the entire time as well as people still asking for money from you, your skin sticks to the plastic and we're trying to sleep with our bags under our heads...10 hours! Definitely a experience, I think the next time we train I'll have to supress my Thompson cheap gene and spring for the less crowded ac part! We did have some interesting conversation with our train mates though, we got advice on our life, we should be responsible, own a house and have children already...we're already old! Maybe one day! So on this train the one thing that doesn't get yelled down the aisle is what stop it is. there are signs but these you don't see until you're pulling out of a station in the day light. So we took the advice of our train mates with our stop. it had already been 10 hours which was the time we were expecting it to take. Yeah, well we got off at the wrong stop, probabably and hour early. Good thing though we didn't have any place we had to be. It just meant a little delay before we hit the beach. We're currently in Goa, sort of SW India. we got to our destination yesterday, all the hostels are X3 upping their rent for the Christmas season so we spent yesterday trying to find a place that isn't going to rip us off, and we did. So we're here until Jan 3. We'll use this place here as our base. we rented a scooter for the time we're here so we can go and explore India with the wind in our hair! Well more my hair then Ben's! I'm getting the look from Ben here!
So now that we're here, it's 34C, humid and we, well more me, smell! Good thing is everything else smells too, good I guess... Food is great yet a bit spicy for this Calgary girl but I'm sure I'll get used to it. We are about 1 km to a rocky beach, we enjoyed a sundowner yesterday watching the sun through a haze of pollution, still beautiful in its own way though.
I guess that brings us up to date. Time to go scoot!