133 Days of India

In this post we pretend to summarize our experience in India, we will share some aspects that we think are important to consider mainly when travelling on a budget like we did. For that it is important to understand the budget and how it evolved/improved.

BUDGET

Our budget and expenses are ALWAYS for TWO people.

● Total budget for 11 months - $12000/10950€

● Monthly budget in India - $650/590€

● Daily budget in India - $20/18€

TOTAL EXPENSES

First Month - $847/773€ + $500 (transports scam)

Second Month - $715/652€

Third Month - $515/470€

Fourth Month - $370/338€

It is important to refer some of the reasons for the budget to decrease from one month to the other:

● In the first month everything is new and it's easy to get scammed like we did in Delhi.

● It takes some time to get used to the hygiene conditions of the restaurants so we ended up eating in more expensive ones.

● Bargaining is a skill that we developed by experience.

● Due to the transports scam, we had all out trains booked for the first month. Therefore, our stays in each place were short (3/4days). Short stays are usually more expensive because there is no time to think and to live as a local.

● We stopped booking our guesthouses/hotels online after realizing that all prices are negotiable.

● Booking our own transport tickets proved to be much cheaper.

● After a couple of months, the restaurant/guesthouse/transport conditions is not as important as it was before.

● As soon as we started volunteering, the budget dropped significantly as food and accommodation were provided by the hosts.

NORTH VS SOUTH OF INDIA

We feel that it is important to distinguish between north and south of India as our experience was completely different in each place.

● People in the South are much more relaxed than people in the North, they are always smiling and their behaviour is much less agressive.

● Religion is, in general, more present in the North.

● The South has more nature sightseeing and the North has more historical cities with forts and palaces.

● The North is very well connected by train. The South, due to the moutains, has less train stations but it is still well connected by bus.

TOURISTIC INDIA

India is a new world when it comes to the tasting and smelling food, busy and crowded streets, the constantly vibrating and painful hornes and dirty and smelly streets... Travelling in India is a fascinating experience for life where we are constantly put to test.
Having the possibility to be out of our confort zone is the most thrilling and wonderful experience that we all can have. Sometimes it is hard but at the end, the good is always much more than the bad. The greatest thing is how our mind gets used to a different reality and smoothly makes us feel confortable again.
Although, travelling for such a long time in India, requires to most of the travelers a place that we can call "home" at least for a few days to recharge batteries, to have time to relax and to chew our thoughts about all the amazing experiences.

Good places to relax from Crazy India:

Pushkar - very touristic guesthouses with western toilets, hippie clothes, western and Indian food and a lot of foreigners wandering around. Still a little sense of religion with a few temples and a holy lake.

Manali - Located in the Indian Himalaya, Manali is the place to be in perfect relaxation. Manali has a strong influence from Tibet and Nepal. Since many locals came from Tibet, it becomes easy to taste some Tibetan food and Tibetan clothes. Manali has a wide range of nature sports like trekking, hiking, rafting, camping, fishing, etc which requires a higher budget. But even for travellers with a short budget like us, Manali is still worth it. For a cheap price, it is easy to rent a scooter and explore the beautiful roads that cover the mountains. It is also possible to do very nice walks through pleasent parks and forests where it is easy to get lost.

Goa - Goa is no longer the party scene that used to be before. The police has stopped the famous beach parties during all year. Only in Christmas and New Year's eve there are some parties going on but unfortunately it gets really expensive for the Indian reality. Usually, by this time, travellers avoid to be in Goa. Only tourists that come for a short period and with some money on the wallets come to Goa in the high season. Anjuna remains the only place that has some parties during the year. Most of them happen in Curlies and in Shiva Valley, two bars in the Southern part of the beach.
In Goa, the main places to visit, are Arambol and Anjuna Beach where most of the travelers stop to enjoy the sun, to relax on the beach and to get some craziness. Arambol is, by far, better than Anjuna, it's more compact and everything is on a walking distance like vegetables, fruits, general stores, restaurants, bars, etc... and it is way cheaper than Anjuna in terms of accommodation. Although, Anjuna has the parties...

The reason why Goa is getting more expensive is that now a days, it became a popular vacation place for people from Russia and for the Indian middle class that has a very peculiar way to enjoy time at the beach, like screaming or staring and taking pictures of western female tourists in bikini.
The South of Goa is definitely more relaxed than the north, in the South there are not that much Indian tourists. Also, the landscape and beaches are by far much more beautiful than the beaches in the North.

Gokarna - Gokarna is the hippiest place in India. Really cheap when compared to Goa in terms of accommodation. The vibe is really good with Kuddle and Om Beach leading the preferences to stay. There are two more beaches, Half Moon and Paradise Beach, where it is possible to feel the wildest feeling of being on the beach. No restaurants or accommodation around, the way to get there is by boat or a beautiful walk on the rocks and through the wild forest around that on a tiny path gets us there.

TRANSPORTS

TRAIN

India has a very big railroad system that actually work very well. The train was our favourite way to move from one place to the other.
Initially we got scammed in Delhi by one "travel agency" so we ended up paying three or four times the price of the 7 tickets that we bought to travel through the Rajasthan. After realizing that, we learned how to book tickets online. We had to create an account in IRCTC and in 'makemytrip.com' (those accounts are linked), since we started to buy our tickets we tried several classes:

2AC - two beds/birth on top of each other, offers bedding sheets plus pillow and sometimes has a courtin. Confortable but expensive. It had air condition but it gets cold so you end up covering yourself.

3AC - Same as 2AC but three beds on the top of each other instead of two. Cheaper than 2AC but still expensive.

Sleeper - by far the best option to travel in India. It is the same as 3AC but without AC and more than half the price. It does not offer bedding sheets and pillow, and sometimes it gets cold at night, it is better to have a fleece or a sleeping sack.

General Class - the cheapest and craziest way to travel in India. There are no births available only hard seats where most of the times there are 4 or 5 people seated on a seat for 3. Usually people travel on this class without carrying a ticket, so there are always people sleeping on the luggage space above the seats and on the floor all over the carriage. You might have some unwanted company like little cockroaches wandering around and be prepared for a lot of eyes pointing at you as you might be the only westerner in the carriage.

Links to book trains:
- www.makemytrip.com
- www.irctc.com

BUS

Private bus AC Sleeper - Expensive and not worth the price. It has double and single births. We travelled in one or two of this class but imidietely switched to non AC or government bus. In long journeys, the bus has several stops, some for toilet necessities and also to get you to expensive restaurants for dinner.

Private bus Non AC Sleeper - more affordable and confortable enough in case there is no train. The stops are made in cheaper restaurants.

Private bus Non AC Semi-sleeper - tipical bus with reclining seats cheaper than the non AC sleeper bus. Nice choice for short journeys (3 to 7 hours).

Government bus (KSRTC) - we used these buses in the south of India. The buses are very very basic and old, seats are hard and do not recline, forget thinking about space for legs, though it is the cheapest buses for travelling and takes you to the point. Good for those o travel with short budgets. Sometimes it is not possible to book online, first come first served.

Links to book buses:
- www.makemytrip.com and www.redbus.in - Nice to check timetables for private buses but it is impossible to book with a foreign visa card. Ask in the guesthouse if they can book for you in order to avoid travel agencies fees.
- www.krstc.com - possible to book with foreign visa card.

GETTING AROUND

With time we learned how to negociate tuk tuk prices but even though we avoided it. In general, cycle rickshaws are cheaper but whenever we can we use city buses or metro(Delhi).
Walking carrying our backpacks is also part of the fun.

SHOPPING

India is well known by its colorful and smelly markets. It is very easy to get amazed by the cheap prices as soon as we are in India. Throughout our journey in India, we stayed in some places where we should have bought more stuff but we always thought if we could find cheaper in our next stop. Also, travelling for a year with a small backpack makes us think a lot about what to buy because weight and space is defenetly to consider.

Based on what we experienced, Pushkar and Jaipur are the best places to buy cheap things. They are very different from each other. Pushkar is more touristic and smaller than Jaipur. Both places have factories that provide most of the shops in india. For example, in Goa everything comes from Pushkar.
Pushkar has good quality and cheap silver plus all the kind of clothes, bags, sarongs, funky stuff, etc... all targeted to the western and hippie style.
Jaipur is full of Indian style fabrics like Sariees, carpets, scarfs, shoes, etc.
If you plan to buy leather items, Jaisalmer is defenetly a place to visit.

FOOD

India is very well known about the food. It is something that everybody talks about but sometimes, there are some concerns regarding the spicy dishes that might upset our western stomachs. We came to India very well prepared for any type of problem our stomachs could have but fortunately we didn't have to use any of the medicines.
We went to all types of restaurants and street food without thinking twice and we never ordered "not spicy"... at the beginning, a simple samosa would help us to go to the toilet but nothing major... with time our mouths and stomachs got totally used to the new flavors and now we even like spicy.

Food is in general very tasty and the colors are very attractive, we noticed that in the south there is much more fried food than in the north but menus are big and there is always an option. Sometimes, in cheaper restaurants there is no menu.. those restaurants usually serve meals that consist in rice, dal (lentils) and some vegetables.

Some of our favorite options are:
- Masala Chai
- Masala Dosa
- Malai Kofta
- Paneer Butter Masala
- Chana Masala
- Palak Paneer
- Chapati (usually Naan is expensive for our budget)
- Fish/egg curry
- Onion Pakora
- Chutney sauce
- Stuffed Aubergine/tomato

RELIGION

We know that religion is very sensitive subject, we don't intent at all to disrespect anyone. What we are writing is based on situations that we lived and we are pretty sure that others might had totally different experiences.

We visited Hindu temples, Sikh temples, Catholic churches and holy lakes and cities. Usually when a person visits a religious site there is always a special energy in the air even for people that don't follow that religion. That actually happened when we visited the Sikh temples and the Catholic churches. Unfortunately, we never felt that energy when visiting an Hindu temple. We never felt welcomed and people always tried to rip us off. There are even temples with rooms where we could not get in just because we were westerns or not hindu. On the other side, when we visited a Sikh Temple we felt welcomed and that the temple was open to everybody. Actually, Sikh temples offer food and shelter to everybody it is just a matter of showing up. We went in the middle of the afternoon so they offered us a sweet but we could have gone by dinner time and we would have eaten for free with people from all sorts of religion. People were nice to us and we definitely felt peace.

From all the places we visited, these are the most religious ones:

- Varanasi
- Tiruvannamalai
- Madurai
- Pushkar (be aware of scams around the lake)

SAFETY

Usually when people travel to poor countries they always think it will be dangerous and that it is unsafe. That is definitely a wrong concept... During all this time in India there was not a single moment where we felt unsafe. In the beginning we felt a little bit uncomfortable in some places but that is only our mind messing us up... our mind is not used to see people in such poor conditions and immediately associates it to danger. But with time, we understood that those people would never do anything to us, they are just people that are in the street and they simply live in different conditions.

We believe that people would never steal us and there is one strong reason behind... Karma and religion. People believe that they were born in a low cast/poor because they did something bad in a previous life. Therefore, they would never do anything bad in this life in order to reborn in a better position in the future.
Based on conversations with other travellers, we noticed that girls travelling alone should be a little bit more careful. Some indian guys look at western girls  with bad eyes and sometimes the situation can get out of control. Just avoid being in dark streets and isolated places alone.

"INDIA IS ONE OF THE HARDEST PLACES TO TRAVEL." WAS IT HARD?

Before planing this trip we were having a very confortable life. Although, we felt that there is much more in the world that we wanted to discover, to see, to live and to learn from it. We thought that India would be a nice choice to put ourselves out of our confort zone.
When someone plans to travel in India, the expectation is not that everything will be smooth, easy, clean and perfect. Usually only people that are looking for adventures and to get out of their confort zones come to India, so we were actual "looking for"/expecting some hard moments.

Hard doesn't necessarily means bad, there is always something great beyond the hardest experiences. Like the sun that shines brighter when seen from the top of a mountain, but of course climbing the mountain can be hard.

We learned through India what 'hard' means, with all the episodes and experiences that we had to takeover, like travelling in General Class in trains, sleeping with rats and cockroaches in our room, having shower with a bucket, Indian style toilets, travelling in trains and buses for more than 15hours, being chased by tuk tuk drivers starving for money, walking on the dirtiest streets that we have ever seen and eating always what is cheap on the menu.
We now know that what can be hard for a moment can become a lesson for life.

There was only one moment, at the beginning, that we felt like giving up and that maybe traveling in India was not a good choice but that happened on our first night after leaving the airport and reaching the hotel around midnight, when the hotel seemed to be located in the worst place that we had ever seen, dirty, dangerous and full of homeless people sleeping on the floor. Of course that happened because we were still too conected to our confort zone. After that night our mind started to change and step by step it adapted itself to at diferent reality.
Yes, we still see the garbage and the homeless people in the streets, we are still aproached by the tuk tuk drivers as soon as we step into the street, while writing this post we just killed 5 or 6 cockroaches that were in our room but it simply does not affect us the way it did before.
Yes, sometimes it was hard but it was much more rewarding than hard and we are sure that we learned a lot with all those things we saw and experienced. Things that will make our future much easier...
For sure we leave India stronger and knowing better what we are capable of.

No doubt that there are always the easiest and the hardest ways in life, but the greatest and most rewarding achievements come from the hardest ones.

Thank you India for all this amazing experiences, we will miss you...

Love
Kika&Pedro

Gokarna

Gokarna was one place that was always in our mind. When we were travelling with Agata and Mateusz we decided to forget the visit to Gokarna and head straight to Hampi. Since our ticket to Thailand was only on the 17th of January we decided that we should not leave India without visiting Gokarna and actually being by the beach would be nice to settle all our thoughts.

Our stay in Gokarna was more introspective than usual. With our time in India getting close to the end, we used our time to think and evaluate the general experience. We thought about the good and the bad experiences, about our favorite places, etc... but let's talk about Gokarna.

Gokarna is one of the hippiest places in India, it has five beaches but the one in the town doesn't really count as a beach because it is not used to sunbathe and it is full of Indian people doing religious ceremonies. We stayed in Kuddle Beach, the closest to town and from there we could walk everywhere. Om beach, 20 minutes walking from Kuddle beach is a beautiful beach and it also has some huts and restaurants it is actually the most famous one in Gokarna. After Om Beach there is the Half Moon Beach and the Paradise Beach. Half moon has only two restaurants and Paradise Beach has no infrastructures at all. There are some travellers staying over night but they put hammocks between the trees and live with very little food. The environment in Gokarna is much more chilled than in Goa, there are a few shops in town but not much... Because we were in our last days in India we couldn't stop thinking about how nice it would be to have some memories of our trip so we lost our mind and bought some presents for us and shipped it to Portugal...
During our stay we had amazing walks between the beaches through wild forest and rocks. Gokarna ended up being a very nice and affordable place to relax and recharge batteries for our trip to Thailand.

Volunteering - Tiruvannamalai

This is, probably, the hardest post to write so far... we want to explain feelings that we never felt before and mixed emotions that are burning inside but it is very complicated to describe something that even we don't understand. Volunteering with children was something that we always wanted to do but due to all the associated emotions it's hard to give the first step. After a few months in India, we felt that we were ready to try it and spending Christmas with the kids sounded a good idea... we were obviously nervous and affraid that we would not be able to meet the expectations but we were two and we could support each other.

Before arriving to the orphanage we thought that we could try to make even a bigger difference by collecting some donations from our family and friends and offer the kids a true Christmas experience. When we created the post on facebook we were excited about that possibility and got really happy with people's response.

We arrived in Tiruvannamalai on the 17th of December, we met Sathyan (the orphanage owner) in his guesthouse (Sunshine Guesthouse) at 6am. He said that the first two days we would stay at the guesthouse and after we would move to the orphanage. During our long conversation he said that there was another couple volunteering in the orphanage and curiously they were also from Portugal. We didn't believe him and even asked him to confirm in his files but yes, they were from Portugal. We were lucky that he said that the first two days would be in the guesthouse, Pedro arrived a little sick and even got high fever so it would be nice to be in a confortable room to cure his cold and we would not take the risk of passing it to the kids. Sathyan's guesthouse was amazing, very pretty and relaxed and the room was the best we stayed in India. Pedro recovered fast and two days later we were ready to meet the kids.

We went to the orphanage on a special day, the chief of police of the area was going to visit it. He was one of the big sponsors of the orphanage and he had offered them laptops. In India all kind of ceremonies are really formal, when we arrived we saw the kids all dressed up and with a lot of talcum powder in their faces... Some even had lipstick... when they saw us for the first time we could see curiosity in their eyes... they immediately started to ask our names and where we were from. They also introduced themselves but it was absolutely impossible to memorize any names. A few moments after, the chief of police finally arrived, we sat in the back chairs and the kids showed him some of their talents like yoga, singing, dancing, etc. When the ceremony was over Ivan and Inês recommended to see the pictures and watch a movie in the computer room. During the movie, the kids started to get closer to us and some of them were holding our hands while watching it. We were able to see how sweet they were and how they need love... We ended up having dinner with them, they eat on the floor in the same room the girls sleep. The meal was typical Indian, rice and dal, simple, but they all eat it with love. On that night we still had to sleep in the guesthouse but we would move the next day.

Now that we were living in the orphanage, we had a lot of things to do. We talked to Inês and Ivan about the donations and we all started to plan how it would work better. Luckyly they also had raised some money so we could get even more things. We started by going into town to have a look into the possibilities, we visited a few stores and we ended up starting by buying a Christmas tree to decorate with the kids. It was the first time they made a Christmas tree and they were really excited about it. On the first day we mounted the tree, put some lights and a huge star on the top. We could see that they were happy about it. On the second day we made the decorations, all of us drew our hand on a paper and painted it as we wanted. Everybody was excited about decorating the Christmas tree, incuding Esther (house mother). On that night they even went to bed late, usually they go at 21h/21h30 but they went at 23h... poor kids... during school they wake up at 5h30 in order to wash the clothes, take care of the animals and prepare for school.

The following days were to buy everything... we bought individual presents and group presents. For the guys the present contained a coloring book, coloring pencils/pen, sunglasses a watch, a cap and candy for the girls it also included the coloring book and pencils/pen, candy plus bracelets, nail polish, earings and hats. The group presents were games like UNO, pictionary kids, scrabble, badminton sets, cricket balls, school material, jumping ropes, football/volleyball balls and piano keyboard. Since the kids had never experienced Christmas before, we decided to put the presents under the Christmas tree as soon as they were wrapped, that way we would create anxiety and excitement. They even asked us if the fact of having their names on the present meant that the presents were actually for them and started to jump when we said yes.

For Christmas day we prepared rice pudding and chocolate balls (brigadeiros), it was an adventure to cook such big quantities but somehow we made it. Even though, the kids didn't like the sweets that much, the work was still worth it...  the same way sometimes some Indian food is weird for us, our food is weird for them... maybe if we had put double the sugar they might have liked a little bit more.

For us Christmas eve and day were still  days of mixed feelings, we were extremely happy that the kids were having the best Christmas of their lives but it is impossible to avoid the moments of "sadness" when we thought about how much we would like to be with our families. On Christmas eve we wanted to call our families and to do that we had to go through millions and millions of people that were walking around the Tiruvannamalai mountain barefooted.. in a normal ocasion we wouldn't even had tried to go into that crasiness with the motorbike but we didn't want to go to bed without speaking to our family.. a way that usually takes 10 minutes took 1h but the important is that we didn't give up and we slept in peace.

We still had money left from the donations, we talked to Sathyan about where we could use the money and between redecorate the toys room and buying bicycles we chose to buy a bunch of bycicles. With Sathyan's help, we were able to afford seven bicycles. We could not contain our excitement... after buying them we ran to the orphanage waiting for the bicycles to arrive... and if we thought that Christmas day was a happy day, the bicycles day was Nirvana. We had never seen suck happiness and smiles.. in just a few seconds the kids jumped into the bicycles and rode them in the street in front of the orphanage. Some were riding the bicycle others running and jumping while screaming and laughing at the same time... even Mommy was riding the bicycles. When we asked one of the kids if he was tired, his answer was "tired?! Nooo... I'm  HAPPY and JOY!!!!" And jumped at the same time.
That day, that answer and all those smiles made every decision make sense...

Everyday, during our stay, we connected more and more with the kids, bonds were created and feelings became even more intense. Even tough we knew the kids were not for adoption we couldn't avoid those types of conversations. We know that it wasn't the right moment for us but when we stabilize, it is for sure something we will consider.

We didn't plan any event for new years eve, we just decided to spend it playing cards and throw some fireworks at midnight but it was our time to be surprised... right at midnight, all the kids and Mommy showed up with two cakes, chocolates, a card signed by all of them and a present. We were all very touched by that nice gesture and the four of us had that special knot in the throat trying to contain tears. Yes, it was not a new year's eve for drinking and partying with friends but none of us would have trade it for nothing... it was their way to thank us and to say how much they loved us.

Since the kids were on holiday we had plenty of time to play, teach and learn with them. We think we played more UNO games during this period than in all our lives but even so, we didn't get tired... the hours spent playing UNO, teaching some of them how to ride a bike, trying to play volleyball or badminton, making musical instruments, watching movies or making stupid faces are now memories that we will all carry with us forever. We also had the opportunity to participate in their karate lessons but only Pedro and Phil (another volunteer) tried it. It was much harder than we thought... Phil also taught hip hop to all of us, it was a funny class full of energy and crazy jumps and flips.

With the end getting closer, difficult questions started... "why are you leaving?!", "when are you coming back?!".. it became really hard to face those questions and to find the proper answers but when one kid said "you know my name? Keep it in your heart... your name here! (Pointing to his heart)" everything became even more real... yes, we will leave... our life will continue but it will never be the same... After that kid's sentence it became hard to look at the kids without that big big knot on the throat but we were lucky that our last day would be spent outside of the orphanage playing in a park.. that way we were all distracted and not really thinking that we were leaving the next day.

We said goodbye on the 4th of January, before they went to school.. we could see that some of the kids were holding their tears and we were trying to hold ours (luckyly we had sunglasses). We (mainly Kika) cried other times while saying goodbye but this time it was different... it wasn't like in 1h everything would be fine. After leaving the orphanage, we went on a 5h bus trip and almost all the trip was in silence, sometimes we tried to explain what we were feeling but unsuccessfully.. there were a lot of unexplained emotions in us... it has been four days that we left the orphanage and it's still not easy to think about them or to explain some things... it is something that people need to try/do to be able to understand...

To end this post without starting to cry here it goes a brief description of Tiruvannamalai.. Tiruvannamalai wasn't in our guidebook, we heard it was a very spiritual place and the mountain that is next to, it is magical/holy. The city itself is a typical indian city but while driving around we could confirm the spirituality around the mountain... there are a lot of ashrams and curiously a lot of westerners. They are all nice people but because we don't practice yoga and meditation the way they do, sometimes it was hard to connect/talk to them. A lot of them said that they were there because the mountain was calling them and we tried to understand but our ultimate answer ended up always being "ok".. maybe we need to experience a few days in an Ashram to understand. About the mountain, we don't know if it's magical or not.. we asked Sathyan how long it would take to climb the mountain and his answer was "the first time I took 5h, the second time I took 2h... it all depends on your head and mind and if the mountain calls you or not..." we kind of laughed a bit but the fact is that we planned four times to climb the mountain and it never happened... first time, Kika got a strong belly pain, second time our plans got changed because of the bicycles, third time we ran out of gas on the motorbike and while trying to start it Pedro got injured on his toe and the fourth time Pedro woke up with a big diarrhea... we believe we could have gone on the fourth time but at one point we said that the mountain wasn't calling us and that it wasn't the right time to go up... we accepted it but it but it will always stay in our mind.

A very special thanks for your donations, they caused such happiness and joy that we will always keep in our memory the smiles and happy faces that we witnessed.

Together we made it. Thank you so much!

Love,
Kika & Pedro