Moving around

India is a vast place and we're only seeing some parts of south India. In Oz we always had a car or camper to get around. Here we go the large stretches sitting or sleeping on a train for sometimes 12 hours. Shorter distances are okay by bus as well though not nearly as comfortable. To see the Ellora caves we went for 30 km in an autorickshaw that even managed to get up over the mountain.People flock to the cities in search of a better life but they're an unhealthy place to live, crowded, dirty and noisy. Mysore is at least a reasonably relaxed city and all the roof gardens here to have a Kingfisher are a nice perk.
We escape out of the city to Mudumalai national park. It's a serene place where we go hiking in the early morning with a guide to enjoy the great nature and spot some animals. The spotted deer are very common as are the buffalo but we also see a wild dog and, in a flash running by, a black bear with her two cubs. In the late afternoon we go out to a different place near the river to catch the elephants. Big as they are they walk quietly and you won't hear them coming so we're lucky the guide spots the big lone male before he smells us and we make an evasive circle to get out of his way. The lone male is quite dangerous and we're told one has killed 2 people and tore up a car door with its tusks. As the sun is setting and the sky turns to nice streaks of orange and blue we walk along the grassy plain with a mountain backdrop. Lots more deer come out and a big wild boar.It is our lucky day we find as a group of 4 elephants come into view, one still quite small. They cross the plain majestically and it feels very special and exciting indeed to be just walking here among these creatures.

A different world

So, was everyone right after all when stating: 'you should do India first and then hang back and relax in Oz'?It would seem that way when arriving at Mumbai; the hustle and bustle at the airport and taking a taxi into the city. So many people all of a sudden with many living on the streets in improvised tents of plastic sheets, the poverty really in your face.It will take us the best part of two weeks before starting to feel comfortable traveling around in India.
The food is a lot easier. I've always loved the Indian cuisine and here you just get really tasty and fresh made thalis at the most basic looking 'hotels' as they call eating places here (with no beds). The variety is so rich in vegetarian spiced dishes, just order any 2 or 3 interesting sounding ones of a little menu (if there is one) with rice or chapati and never be disappointed. The prices are just unreal it seems impossible that one can get the ingredients, cook the food and serve you for the little sum you pay.
Also quite distinct is the sense of history you get in India after coming from such a young culture as the Anglo-Australian is.Here we walk in beautiful cave temples carved out of rock in the sixth and seventh century and painted with ancient religious stories. Our photos are noticeably more colourful than the ones from Oz.

Standing in front of a dream

From Mumbay we travel by train to Aurangabad. I love traveling by train, seeing the country pass by and meeting nice people. The landscape outside is just as the pictures in magazines you see of India, tinted in a golden brown. I always thought, that those were taken with a special filter. Even the leaves on the trees are not green, but with this dusty glow.

In Aurangabad we take a tour to the caves of Ajanta. The bus ride of only 100km is just scary. Many times you see a truck or bus coming your way on your side of the road, honking their horn and flashing their lights. Motorcycles are being pushed to or in the curb to make way. But every time it seems to fit.

When we enter the horse shoe shaped cliff where the caves are hewn into, I can't believe I'm standing there. This is a picture I saw a long time ago in National Geographic and I thought, 'I want to go there some day'. I didn't even know it was this place! It's magnificent and incredible what the monks have created there. All with simple tools. The caves are elaborately sculpted and painted. You just stand there in great awe.

Watergirl

Just before we left Australia, Harry read a brilliant tip in our Rough Guide to India; purify your own water! So we went to one of the great OZ outdoor stores and got a beautiful ceramic water filter and a tip to buy some chlorine in India. So every time we need some drinking water, we take a liter of water from the tap, leave it for a half an hour with a drop of chlorine to kill all what's alive in it. After that we hook up the filter to the drinking container and start pumping away. Beautiful fresh water with no funny taste. Better for the environment - that is already wasted with too much plastic. And healthier for us, as the Rough Guide mentioned that in a test some of the Indian brands of mineral water contained plenty of pesticides.
So the Dutch milkmaid is transformed to an Indian water girl (can't carry the container on my head yet, though).

New Year in India

We arrive on schedule around 8 in the evening at Mumbay airport. As the guide book suggests we get a pre-paid taxi to the city. They are funny looking yellow and black ambassadors. Our driver doesn't know the place, but after a couple of stops and enquiries we find our booked hotel in a back alley. In the street the new years party is already starting up. Lots of young wealthy Indians are grouped around the ice-cream parlour. We crash on our beds for a quick pick-me-up sleep, but when the clock strikes twelve and the fire works crack up the night sky, we're still exhausted and overwhelmed by the chaotic crowds outside. The next morning we regret our laziness.
The first of January we do as the locals do and join the dressed up families strolling around the Gateway of India. We are as much a sight as the impressive arc. We keep walking past the gigantic Taj Mahal Palace hotel right into a colourful shanty town. Ashamed of the realisation that poverty can look so beautiful. All the extremes are here right next to each other and very confronting.
Halfway January the Harvest Festival is celebrated, a little bit New Year for Hindu's of Southern India. We don't get to see the pink coloured streets, but there are plenty of bright yellow cows with golden horns lingering in the streets. In front of the doors there are beautiful intricate chalk designs made as a sign of welcome.

The edge of the outback

Back in Cairns, we still have the camper van for some more days. To make the most of it, we head west to sniff a bit at the outback. First we cross the green wet tropics of the Atherton Tablelands. After we leave Mareeba, the earth turns red and flat. And to make the experience more real, the road is alternately bitumen and red dust. Just before we arrive at Chillagoe, we see a sign with a warning that after this place, the next gasoline station is at 560 mile! We don't have to worry though, Chillagoe is as far as we go. It's quite a pretty place after the couple of desolate villages we crossed. We stay at a nice Eco camp, just out side the village.
The following morning we join a cave tour with a ranger. He's so passionate of working in nature and loves to tell us all about the special features of the cave, the trees and plants surrounding it and the animals that conquer the harsh environment. After the tour we walk around a bit more between the caves, a huge balancing rock and some aboriginal rock paintings. But the heat just takes all your energy, so we cool down in a village bar with a cold beer.
When turning back towards the coast, we get stopped in the middle of nowhere by a cop for a breath test. Luckily the beer had worn of already, so we passed it and continued on a real dirt road crossing some hills. On the map it looked like only 15 km bad road, but we ended spending most of the afternoon on 48 km over tree roots and rocky surface (we didn't tell the rental company).
With the heat and the dust we got a pretty good impression of the outback. Flying over the desert when we left Australia via Sydney and Darwin, it only sunk in how grand this outback really is.

The wet world downunder

After Harry's been doing two days diving practice in the pool in Cairns, we're ready to head out to the Great Barrier Reef. We board the fast catamaran Seaquest, that bounces on the big waves to the magic place. Plenty of people getting sick on the way there (I'm one of them) , but as soon as you get down in the clear blue/green water, you just forget everything. First all the divers get ready at the back platform. After they disappear in the deep, the snorkelers jump in. It's another world; so tranquil and colorful. The reef is just under the surface, so for a snorkeler it's almost as impressive. Seeing the coral in the beams of the sun and all its amazing inhabitants. Following a crazy patterned parrot fish biting bits of coral. Drifting over steep depths to other patches of surfacing reef. Finding yourself surrounded in a school of small glittering fish going one way and turning all together the other way.

After a second time in the water, the catamaran lies alongside the overnight ship. Here we spent Christmas eve. The certified divers go for a night dive. The lights at the back of the ship attract small fish. These attract the big ones and we get a spectacular show with first some travellis and later some pretty big sharks. I'm happy I'm not one of the night divers swimming between these animals.

The next morning Harry has his first dive at 6.30. I go in the water after breakfast and get to see a white tip shark, pretty close! Pity I didn't see the turtles when snorkeling. I did see Harry though, with his diving buddy Felix, moving around way under me. That was fun!

On the way north

We are driving now through mango orchards and banana farms. The caravan parks we share with many traveling fruit pickers. Some detours more inland take us through National Parks with impressive waterfalls and refreshing rock pools. Here we see the funny platypus and the shimmering Ulysses butterflies.
At the Wallaman waterfall, the highest in Australia, we do a speed hike down the canyon to the bottom of the fall and up again. The German couple we meet first on the way down and later halfway up just shake their amazed heads.
The last stop we make before reaching our goal, Cairns, is at Paronella Park. A dream made real by a Spanish immigrant in the 1920's. He build a whole castle next to a waterfall, surrounded by beautiful gardens, a tunnel of love, filled with tiny micro-bats and a lane with good luck bringing Kauri trees. We get a tour by an aboriginal girl, who explains how they used all the different trees and plants. After the tour we get a little show of traditional dance and music. It's all part of a special project sponsored by Paronella Park. Here the aboriginal kids can learn and practice the skills of their ancestors. It's inspiring to see how passionate they search for this knowledge and share it with the audience.

A small disaster, with a happy ending

On route we make a little detour to Agnes Water and 1770 (the name of a village). Here Cook set his first footsteps on Australian soil. I expected something interesting, but besides a beautiful bay in 1770 was there nothing specially note worthy. We did have a great lunch with bay view and very relaxed music. After asking the chef what we were listening to, he wrote a whole list of recommendations. The latest CD of Jon Butler Trio we bought later in a music store and enjoyed much.

A bit more north we cross the Tropic of Capricorn, not that you notice directly.

When we stop at Roslyn Bay to see the beautifully formed rocks in sun setting light we notice an impressive catamaran. A closer look takes us on a pier, where I mindlessly drop the car keys...and they slip through the big gaps between the planks and disappear in the murky harbour water. My panicky yell alarms the couple of the catamaran to the deck. Halfway our story the woman jumps in her bathing suit and snorkel gear and slides in the water. It only takes her two dives and she emerges with our keys! Amazing!

A long wait for the girls

After a short drive through never ending fields of sugarcane we arrive at Mon Repos, a 1.5 km strip of beach where the female loggerhead sea turtles return to every 3 to 4 years, to bury their eggs in the sand. The ranger station just behind the dunes provide a nightly tour so you can see these moving rocks come out of the water, slowly and awkwardly move to the dunes, start digging their egg chamber and start pooping out around 120 eggs each lay. They get very disturbed from noises and especially light, until they have laid around twenty eggs. Then they are calm and the rangers and volunteers can do their research tasks and invite the visitors to stand around the turtle in a big circle.
We sign up for the tour and visit first the interesting exhibit in the station. Then the long wait begins, entertained by movies about the turtles and the research projects on them. As the ranger tells us, these girls live in the wild and come up on their own time; with no guaranties. We sit and wait and almost give up on getting lucky this evening as we notice some excitement in the exhibit hall. Yes, a turtle is coming on shore and so many have gone already so now the whole group can go to the beach. The rumour goes, it's a very special kind, a flat back. But before we get to the beach we hear that she has been disturbed and returned to the ocean.
Another wait sitting quietly high up in the dunes now, we are lucky. Another turtle moves our way, a loggerhead this time. We wait some more till she's busy with her eggs. While we are standing around our turtle two more are coming up on either side of us. So we have to be really quiet now. How exciting!
And the long wait get an extra reward. Our turtle has been a bit lazy and laid her eggs under the high water line. Here the eggs can't survive. Normally the rangers wouldn't intervene, but now the loggerhead is on the edge of extinction, they do as much as they can to keep the turtles survival. So a volunteer is carving out another chamber higher up in the dunes and we get to carry all 138 eggs to this new save place. Maybe one of these eggs will be the one that makes out of 1000 to mature. I would love to come back to see the hatch ling crawl out of the sand and make a run for their little lives to the ocean. Must quite a sight. But this experience was magical also, helped by the full moon coming up spectacularly during our wait in the dunes.