India Holiday Vacation

Liz and I traveled for two weeks after Christmas at Shishya. Over night houseboat in the Kerala backwaters where we saw rural lifestyle of people living there, sitting on a beautiful beach in Goa for five days with a unique parasailing experience and where we met an Indian man whose response was “Petersburg Pilot” (local newspaper there) when I said I was from Alaska, shopping in Jaipor (where camels are used instead of horses drawing working trailers and things) and seeing how beautiful things were made, with sightseeing of old forts and palaces built as old as the 1500’s and randomly meeting the artist that made the piece of art Liz walked by on her way to work every day in Chicago at a small roof top restaurant. We saw a Bollywood movie with a joke about Alaska in it, and among other things a failed attempt to see the inside of the Taj Mahal.

In between these places with overnight trains (one closed the doors before we got the car and it started leaving and we were screaming from the outside for someone to open it! Someone did thank goodness… that would NOT have been a good train station to get stuck at night!), crazy rickshaw rides, bus rides (only one available round new years was the local bus which was cheap and long and crowded and bumpy overnight with all the smells of India streaming in…) long taxi rides, plane rides (one was late… and luckily so was our train we needed to catch!) late trains (sitting in cold Agra station with your train 10+hours late over night is not fun when there is a bathroom in the room smelling up everything and everyone. The Taj wasn’t even open that day so it was a lot of unnecessary chaoticness!) shopping all over, meeting people from all over the world (everyone we saw that wasn’t Indian were carrying lonely planet books!) and of course consuming lots of delicious food. Some Indian people wanted to rip you off but some were genuinely nice. Of course no Indian vacation is complete without getting a little sick, too. The trip was an awesome experience but it’s so nice being back at beautiful Shishya!

December 25- night train to Delhi
December 26- flight to Goa
December 26-night train to Kerala
December 27-Night in Alleppey, Kerala
December 28-House boat over night
December 29-night bus to Mangalore
December 30-taxi to Goa
January 4-flight to Delhi
January 4-night train to Jaipor
January 7-early train to Agra to see Taj Mahal
January 8-taxi back to Dehra Dun

So many stories in between!

Please check out the rest of my pictures here!