Goa.

We made it to Goa around 2 weeks ago, and have spent time off our bikes, enjoying the beaches, meeting new people and relaxing.
Our plan is to stay here until after new years, and then head for Chennai, on the east coast to get the boat to the Andaman islands around the 5th of Jan. From there we will get our Thai visa's, get the boat to the islands, and try and hitch a ride to Thailand.
There are no public boats which go from the islands to Thailand, but a lot of regular cargo goods ships etc. We met a cycle tourer in Istanbul who's friend had done this ok, by just throwing the people a few hundred rupees so we will see.
Goa is not really like India, it's more a western county plodded in India. Everything is different, there's LOADS of tourists maybe around half the people within Goa aren't Indian. We've been enjoying being able to talk to people, as 99% of the people here can speak English, which is a huge change from all the countries we've spent the last 4 months in.
Apart from that, not much to report, we've got some decent pictures, which we'll be uploading on here in a couple of days when we come to the netcaf with our cameras.

Heard about the snow in the UK. Seems mad to think that it could be snowing somewhere.. we spent xmas day lying on the beach which felt a bit weird, but no complaints!

Happy Christmas people!

India continues

we are now in the town of sawai metaphur. the roads have been horrendous mostly so far so has been really slow going. lots of pot holes and tracks. our bikes have been feeling the strain and moes front rim which was old when we left england, has finally bent. so we had to buy an indian front rim... about 4 inches thick, made of steel so super heavy. its hilarious but very strong built to withstand the pot holes of india. However roads did get better as we went further south, and we finally reached ranthambore national park. It is amazing here the landscape is incredible. we went on a safari a couple of days ago and out of sheer luck saw two wild benghal tigers only 15ft away from us!! so amazing got lots of cool pictures. As the roads are ridiculously bad hear and we wont be able to get to Mumbai for another 2 months at this rate we have decided to get a train. we are planning to get to Mumbai and then cycle down to goa and then to chennai. hopefuly the roads will be better down south and we will be able to actually cover distance without destroying our bikes. However we will have to face the 24 hour train journey with our bikes in the luggage appartment, it should be very stressful. We also stumbled across the maharajas palace whilst cycling to this national park. the hotel is called banwar villas in karauli and is probably the best hotel ive ever stayed in! We met the princess who kindly treated us to free meals and a massive discount on the price of rooms. The staff were all amazingly kind and i will definately be returning. the website is www.karauli.com and i definately recommend everyone should go there. The town of karauli is lovely we visited the local temple and experienced the intense hindu ceremony. Another cool place we stayed at on our way a cool little hindu temple near karaugon. the hindu monk raguberdas let us stay there and fed us. Everyone here is very kind and we have been treated well everywhere we go.
Sorry we havnt been updating the blog regularly their are very few computer caffes around this area and most of the computers dont actually work. But hopefuly when were down south their will be more computers and better roads!