Small Change of Plans...and Planes

So here Dara and I were thinking that we had finally gotten this whole India travel thing down...and of course we were wrong because why would anything be easy in India?? ha

To start from the beginnning, we woke up super early in Jodhpur, thinking we had 3 hours to see the whole city before catching our flight to Mumbai. We went up to yet another fort [actually our favorite so far) and did the FULL tour in 2 hours, despite our first real struggle with the heat and stomach issues. We are superwomen! The palaces in the fort were beautiful, and definitely worth the effort. Then on to the clocktower, and quickly exploring the markets, bargaining for all your gifts along the way! Then we ran back to the hotel and jumped into a tuk tuk to the airport...and were walking in when we were stopped with 2 words, "flight cancelled." That's it. No suggestions of alternate flights, no news of when the strike that caused the cancellation would be over, and no help with ideas for other ways to leave Jodhpur.

Plan B. Dara and I jump in a tuk tuk to the train reservation office, only to elbow our way to the window and find that there are no seats available in the overnight train to Mumbai for the next 2 days...awesome. We had learned that some seats are reserved for travel agents so made our way down the street...backpacks and all...to a "travel agent," if you would call the random guy at a desk on the crazy street that. He also informed us that there were no train seats...but did give us an idea of taking the train back to Jaipur and catching a flight from there.

Us being super travellers, we went back to the train station and booked a train to Jaipur for that night and decided that it would work best to fly from Jaipur directly down to Goa, and just hit Mumbai on the way back for our flight out. Within 2 hours, we had rebooked the whole last end of our trip. What was a 2 hour flight, has now turned into a 16 hour travel extravaganza. Yay for being flexible!

Note, we had been travelling in what is called 3rd class AC (bc it has air conditioning, and is slightly nicer class). Unfortunately, only "sleeper class" was available for the train to Jaipur that night, so we were about to get super Indian as we napped for 6 hours in the open air (no air) cars overflowing with locals. A true backpacking experience, for all of $3.

However, silver lining, we are en route to the beach!! And once again facing a 2 hour delay between connections, hence why we are blogging right now, because we have learned that NOTHING in India goes as planned (or is on time). But we are excited for our lassis on the beach (our new favorite smoothie type drink) and checking out for a few days in our beach front huts...well deserved!!