Sep 16th, 2009
by amarsha.
Here are some pictures from our recent trip to Matheran, a beautiful hill station not so far from Mumbai. The entire landscape of this place comes to life in the monsoons. Lush greenery for as far as we could see, cool, misty breeze, waterfalls, it was awesome.
It rained incessantly all the time we were there but it didn’t dampen our spirits. We got ourselves some cool transparent rain jackets from a local shop for 20 rupees each. They look sort of futuristic, straight out of a sci-fi flick. They actually are these huge plastic bags cut out in 3 places to make space for arms and neck to pass through, very useful and practical. We went out on some walks and saw some amazing views, had a close encounter with a mischievous monkey who I saw coming towards me for the chikki I was eating. But Gareth hit him with his bag, just-in-time, and he didn’t dare coming any closer. It was scary! We learnt the hard way that we really shouldn’t eat anything on the streets.
What I liked the most about this place was that no vehicles are allowed inside the town. It was so good to get away from the pollution of Mumbai. The only way into the town was by walking or riding on a horse. On our way back we hired horses. The distance was about 3 kilometers to get to the taxi stand. This was my first time riding a horse; I thoroughly enjoyed it.
-Amarsha
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Posted in: Mumbai, Newly Married.
Aug 30th, 2009
by gareth.
A quick update from Mumbai. The last six months have been good to us. We arrived in the city back in March, fresh off the train, with a ton of luggage and no house to keep it in. After almost three weeks living out of suitcases and hotel rooms we managed to finalise a nice place in Borivali – our first house together :) Somewhat distant from town, it’s in a nice quiet area, and close to the National Park.
We’ve had fun setting the place up, buying a few plants and cushions and what-have-you. We had a bit of trouble with the gas connection (it’s in the landlord’s name, and he’s out of town), but in the end Amarsha managed to organise a black cylinder, and things have gone along swimmingly ever since. We’ve got an official marriage certificate (at last!), and I’ve just got my visa extension, after a short trip to Delhi and a lot of help from Mamaji & his family.
Besides this we haven’t really accomplished much else – only been out of town for our honeymoon, in fact – but we’ve been enjoying plenty of fresh juice, grilled masala sandwiches, coconuts, mangoes, vada pav, pav bhaji… all the good stuff you find here! It’s been good to catch up with some old friends too, although we don’t see nearly enough of most people, living way out here in Borivali. I get daily opportunities to practice my hindi, and more intensive practice whenever Mummy Papa come to stay :)
We’ve had them here twice so far, which has been really nice. Last time we took them downtown to meet Rohan, and for a drive out over Mumbai’s flash new Bandra-Worli Sealink Bridge – a big bridge which links two parts of the city by a road out over the sea, as… ah… the name suggests.
Anyway, that’s me running out of material. I could write another page, but you wouldn’t want to read it :) They say a picture is worth a thousand words, and we have a few of those too…
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~Gareth
Posted in: Mumbai, Newly Married.
Apr 17th, 2009
by gareth.
Here are a couple of videos which we shot with our new video camera during our honeymoon in Goa, way back in April. I know they’re a bit old now, but I thought I’d put them up anyway, for the sake of posterity if nothing else :P
The first is a short series of clips taken around the hotel and on a boat cruise from Panaji. I hope this gives a better impression of the layout & atmosphere of the place than still photographs can :)
Download in AVI format.
The second is a clip of Amarsha practicing swimming in the hotel pool. Keep in mind she's just learning. This was only her 3rd time in a pool this year - 5th time ever - so I'm understandably proud of her :) When she started she was afriad of waist deep water; now she's swimming widths of the pool unaided!
Download in AVI format.
Apologies for the poor quality; I had compress the embedded videos to a size you can feasibly load in your browser. If you have a fast enough connection you can always use the link to the AVI file, which is much higher quality, but be prepared for > 100MB apiece.
~Gareth
Posted in: Honeymoon, Newly Married.
Apr 17th, 2009
by gareth.
Our honeymoon in Goa!
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With all the chaos of moving to Bombay and searching for a house it took us a long time to organise anything resembling a honeymoon, but in the end it was worth the wait! Bogmallo beach was a welcome break from the city; the perfect spot to chill out for a few days.
We stayed in a nice 5 star hotel by the beach. Initially we booked beach huts (also managed by the hotel), but on arrival we were disappointed with an apparent discrepancy, let’s say, between price and quality. Amarsha made a few phone calls to the travel agent and managed to pull off a minor miracle; we were upgraded to a really nice room in the hotel for no extra cost :)
In the end I had a lot of fun, getting sunburnt and teaching Amarsha how to swim in the hotel pool. We took in a tour of Old Goa, went for a rather unique boat cruise from Panaji, sat on Miramar beach soaking up the sun, and even managed to fit in a quick visit to Vasco de Gamma. After our little break we returned to Bombay feeling refreshed, and at least a few pounds heavier from all the good food in the hotel’s complimentary buffet!
~Gareth
Posted in: Honeymoon, Newly Married.
Here are some pictures clicked in & around Jammu city, shortly after our wedding.
In this set:
- The splendid Bagh-e-Bahu gardens and their weird half-fish aquarium.
- Our first Holi together, with plenty of colour (and egg! ugh).
- Our exciting trip to Lake Mansar with my family, over a particularly exciting road.
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PS. Apologies for posting things out-of-order. We’re still catching up with the small backlog of photos from several months ago, and we’re back-dating posts to keep everything in chronological sequence. New stuff should appear at the top from now on.
All these pictures are on picassa – if you click a picture while the slideshow is playing it’ll take you to the picassa web album, if you prefer to browse that way.
~Gareth
Posted in: Jammu, Newly Married.
