2 MID-LIFE CYCLISTS IN A MOTORHOME: April 2016

Sitting on Diana's bench

Firstly I must apologise for not updating the blog sooner, selling your house when you are several thousand miles away can be a little bit stressful so all my energies went in to dealing with that instead of writing my blog. Thank you for the many messages I have received asking how things are going and I'm so pleased so many people enjoy the blog. This is a brief recap of what's we have been up to since Novembers post and normal service will be resumed from May's post. The last few months turned out to be quite eventful one way and another.

With Hilary, Ray, Irvine & Julia

In December we had a fantastic trip to Dehli, Jaipur and Agra. The Taj Mahal was even more stunning in reality than it appears in pictures and our only minor disappointment was that we didn't get to see it at sunrise as it was too misty. We enjoyed an elephant ride up to Amber fort, a Tonga ride outside the Taj Mahal and a rickshaw ride through the streets of old Dehli. We stayed in a beautiful modern hotel in Agra and then by contrast a stunning old heritage hotel in Jaipur with beautiful murals on the walls. It was an incredible trip seeing the most incredible sights but it was a shock to see such poverty alongside such wealth. It really is a country of extremes.

Amber Fort in Jaipur

The 5 days were so packed with trying to see as much as possible and with 5 to 6 hour road trips in between the 3 cities we were all exhausted when we arrived back in Goa. With nothing more taxing facing us than the walk to the beach each day it didn't take long for us all to recover.

The house sale became quite stressful as our buyer was pushing for a quick exchange however they weren't prepared to wait for our purchase to catch up so we agreed to deal with the sale and purchase seperately. We were all ready to exchange on the 24th December but as they were looking at a completion date of the 29th January we were confident our purchase would catch up.

Elephant ride up to Amber Fort

As it turned out one of the three solicitors in the chain didn't work christmas Eve and our solicitor was then off until the new year so we had an anxious wait until the first week of January when the exchange finally took place. This is when things started to get really stressful as we were suddenly getting last minute issues that needed resolving before we could exchange on our purchase so there was a real risk that Darryl and Lisa were going to have to move all our belongings in to storage and find themselves somewhere to live at very short notice. After many emails throughout January and a somewhat frantic phone call to our solicitor we finally managed to exchange contracts just one week before we had to leave our house so we were able to get the same completion date. It was a huge relief which we celebrated with a rather large honeybee.

Red Fort in Dehli

It seemed somewhat ironic after all the stress that on moving day we had nothing more to do than lay on the beach chilling while poor Darryl and Lisa had all the hard work to do.

In February we decided to take a short trip now that there was no longer the need to ensure we had wifi everyday (in anticipation of another solicitors letter) and booked an overnight sleeper coach to Mysore in southern India. As we had been missing our cycling we had booked to stay at a home stay where they did cycle tours. We spent 3 days with Stephen (crazy Yorkshireman) and Manjula, who run Mysore BnB and Mycyle tours. We had a fantastic time and got to experience Manjula's amazing cooking while staying in their lovely home.

Inside the Golden temple, Namdroling Monastery

Mysore palace was beautiful and we had ensured we would be in Mysore on a Sunday as the palace is illuminated for half an hour on a Sunday evening and it was fantastic to see. We took a taxi to see Namdroling Monastery known as the Golden Temple at Bylakuppe which is the largest teaching centre of the Nyingma lineage of Tibetan Buddhism in the world. Walking inside the main temple was one of those wow moments. The incredible golden statues, the big gong hanging from the carved wooden surround and all the paintings were incredible. We also did a half day cycle tour with Stephen around the island of Srirangapatnam which was fantastic and Stephen gave us all the history of the area while we rode and we saw some amazing sites.

Nandi Bull at Chamundi Hills, Mysore

Our last day there was spent climbing the 1000 steps to the top of Chamundi hill to see the Temple of the Goddess Chamundeshwari and the Nandi bull sculpture. A brilliant trip to Mysore which we would definitely recommend. We enjoyed our last month in Goa socialising with our friends and just relaxing and it was with great excitement that we flew home on the 15th March. We had only seen the house we had bought twice back in September so we were a little bit nervous as to wether it would live up to our expectations. Darryl took the day off work to pick us up from the airport which was handy as we didn't have a key to the new house! Darryl and Lisa had done an incredible job and almost everything had been unpacked so we had nothing more to worry about than unpacking our suitcases.

It was a great relief to discover that we loved the house as much as when we first viewed it so all we have to do now is plan the decorating. Our normal plan would be to spend a month at home seeing friends and family before heading off in Herman again but Darryl and Lisa are getting married in Las Vegas on 17th May so we will set of for the Eurotunnel 5 days after we get back from America. This gives us 2 months to crack on with some decorating and plan our forthcoming trip as we have decided to visit Portugal this year. It looks like we will have plenty to keep us occupied until May.