India
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Travel Tips: India
Good luck navigating the train system. It is a mess and trains can be up to 8 hours late. Some good things: On local trains, there is always a ladies only car. In the train stations there are ladies only lines to buy tickets and also ladies only waiting rooms. Find these and you will feel much safer. Indian men are disgusting. I was groped so many times.
Get to Varanassi by train. We stayed at Yogis. It was awesome and neat the Dharamsala Ghat. You can just have the rickshaw driver take you to the big ghat and you can find a place to stay from there. Yogis is nice but there are other decent places as well. Do NOT wear sandals in Varanassi. The streets are covered in cow shit and dead rodents and trash. You do not want to be wearing sandals I promise.
In Calcutta, we stayed at the Salvation Army. The only reason to go to Calcutta is to volunteer at the Mother Teresa home or go to Bangladesh. If you want to volunteer you can ask almost any foreigner on the street and they will tell you the process to volunteer. Also, eat at Curd corner for breakfast. It is good. The restaurants on either side of curd corner are great for lunch and dinner as well.
In Bombay, we only stayed the night but we stayed at the Salvation Army again. Bombay is REALLY expensive.
In Goa, we went to Colva beach. It is a quiet beach with only a few foreigners and even less gawking Indians. I don’t remember the name of the place where we stayed but there are loads of great places. All the foreigners hang out at Boomerang. The owner’s name is Peter. He is super cool and beats up any Indians that give his bikini-clad customers a hard time. He serves good food and the bar is open at night until no one is left. It’s the only spot along the beach where you’ll find normal beach chairs. To get there you walk to the main part of the beach. Just follow the road from William’s Beach Retreat (prawn sizzler is amazing there) until it dead ends into the beach. Turn right and walk till you see the normal beach chairs. It’s a ways down. There’s a road to get there and anyone there can show you the back way on the road for future reference. You can buy bus tickets to various markets. We went to the one in Anjuna. I was really glad we didn’t stay too long in Anjuna. The beach isn’t as nice. There is lots of coral and most of the people that are there are hippies. Many of them are as old as my parents. The market there is amazing though and only on Wednesdays. A definite must do.
We didn’t make it all the way down to Pelolem but I only heard good things. Probably worth a trip down.
People in India are really pushy and you will get ripped off. Be very very careful. Here is my tip for not being ripped off when hiring a rickshaw.
1. Try to find a tourist police man to help you
2. Stand next to the big guys with guns. The rickshaw drivers are scared of them
3. Ask other foreigners how much they paid
Good luck. India is pretty brutal but it’s pretty amazing too!