January 2019

We'd been planning a holiday for ages and had managed to find some great housesitters who kindly agreed to arrive on New Years Day. We decided to go to India for some winter sun and we fancied a bit of laying around on a beach! This was our first 'proper' holiday since we'd arrived so we wanted to relax and enjoy it! 

We've both been to India before so we didn't just want to head to Goa for our beach holiday. We decided to be much more adventurous and explore the Konkan coast by local bus and boats. It was quite hard work and involved a lot of long, sweaty, bumpy, white-knuckle bus rides through the jungle but that was the fun of it and it was well worth the hassle. We were almost the only western tourists we saw in the whole month and it was quiet even for Indian tourists (quiet for India that it is - only a few hundred people as opposed to a few thousand!) 

So... we experienced lots of gorgeous empty beaches, lush tropical jungle, dry dusty deserts, friendly fishing villages and, of course, LOADS of amazing food.

Anyway, I'll stop yakking on about it. Here's some pics of us lying around of various beaches. Sorry for the boring holiday post!

Mumbai -

Foooooood -

Shopping -

Mumbai - Murud by boat and bus

Murud - Harihareshwar by boat and bus

Harihareshwar - Ganpatipule by bus, boat and hitchhiking (a very, very long day!)

Ganpatipule - Malvan by bus

Malvan - Vengurla by scooter

Vengurla - Tiracol by scooter

Tiracol - Devgad by scooter

We headed back to Malvan to return the bike before getting the bus to Kudal and a sleeper train back to Mumbai for our last couple of days of shopping and eating. We crammed our bags full of spices and curry powder, as well as lots of other Indian goodies! And we were ready to go home!

We returned home to a clean and cosy house, two happy housesitters and two even happier pets! There had been almost no snow over January but it was certainly cold and we couldn't even show off our tans! If you're even still looking here a few pics that we got sent whilst we were away -

Welcome home!

Until next time!