We spent two weeks in Goa, India staying at the Nanu Beach Resort (photos 6, 8) in South Goa. The hotel was On Betalbatim Beach (photos 10-18) situated in the middle of nowhere. This was both good and bad – it was great not being in the middle of a developed resort, we had piece and tranquillity and for most of the time the whole beach to ourselves. On the downside you couldn’t just wander outside of the hotel to go to another restaurant etc.

The hotel itself was nothing special, it was showing its age and in need of a bit of an update. The air-con for instance was definitely no longer very affective and very noisy. The air temperature was very warm even at night it was just too hot to sleep without having the air-con on. There was one night when we had to switch off the air-con as it was so noisy only to discover that it was actually the air-con in the room below us that was keeping us awake! It was so loud that our room was vibrating! I eventually got up in the middle of the night and went to the hotel reception and asked them to sort it out. After a while when they’d done nothing about it I went back to reception and told them I wasn’t going to leave until something was done and if they couldn’t do anything then they’d have to give us a new room! Needless to say they did something about it then.

There was one good restaurant, Martins Corner, a short taxi drive from the hotel which we went to a couple of times. The food there was great and very cheap, you could get a meal for two that in an Indian restaurant in the UK would set you back about £30-40 for about £7!

The food in our hotel wasn’t anything special. The majority of it was vegetarian (90% of Indians appear to eat veg only, probably because of the cost) with one or two token meat dishes. The meat dishes would often be an attempt at a western dish and were best avoided but when they did do Indian meat dishes they were no better. Here in the UK we are used to very good Indian food (chicken tikka marsala is after all the biggest selling dish in the UK) but in India the quality of the meat available cannot compete. One night I had their lamb rogan josh (well mutton not lamb so goat really) which looked really appetising but on eating it you soon discovered the meat was still on the bone making it fiddly to consume and the sauce itself contained many small bone fragments. You soon learned to eat the veg only dishes, which were actually very good and very tasty. However living on vegetable curries for two weeks has had a rather unpleasant affect on my bowels!

One day on the beach one of the local hawkers approached me and as his English wasn't great he handed me a card to read. It turns out he was supposedly medical trained in cleaning the middle ear! I had to read the card twice just to make sure I'd read it correctly and before I knew what was going on he had his tools in my ear scraping away. Of course I couldn't move in case I got injured and so let him get on with it. He was showing me all the wax that was being removed which quite surprised me. When he went on to clean my other ear I let him get on with it thinking he's doing a great job. He starts babbling on about something and then hands me another card to read which says he has found stones in my ear and it costs 250 rupees to remove each! I can feel his tools scraping against a stone and so ask him to yes please remove them. He removed two stones and then demanded the 500 rupees (about £6.50), I manage to haggle him down a bit to 400 rupees but after handing it to him he shows that I'd only given him 300. I am sure he used some slight of hand to make one of the 100 notes disappear but I couldn't prove anything. Anyway, I was feeling quite pleased that my ears were now nice and clean. Later that day whilst walking down the beach someone else wanted to clean my ears and although I told him I'd just had it done he too got his tools into my ear before I could do anything about it. This guy scrapped around and pulled out a huge blob of wax which most definitely did not come out of my ear! I knew then that it was all just a con and the wax and stones they inserted themselves through some slight of hand, not difficult seen as you cannot see what they are doing. I met many more of these 'ear doctors' and told each one of them to get lost in an ever more aggressive manner.

If you ever go to Goa and want to do a bit of site seeing then don’t book any organised trips by your tour operator. Every hotel has a number of ‘resident’ taxis outside which are very cheap and very enterprising. We booked our first taxi driver to take us to Anjuna Flea Market (photos 21, 22) it was a good hours drive from our hotel and on the way back the driver up-sold us a detour to Old Goa (photos 23-35). Old Goa is the old 16th century capitol city and has a number of church’s and cathedrals as a tourist attraction.

All the taxi drivers are on commission from local stores and they’ll always want to do a bit of a detour to various shops on the return journey to your hotel. You don’t have to buy anything but humour them, one of our taxi drivers showed us what he got for delivering tourists to a shop – 12 visits got him a spare tyre for his taxi! One taxi driver took us to a tailors, we didn’t want to go but Emma agreed without realising it and before we knew what was happening we were ushered inside. The tailors will make anything you want made-to-measure for very cheap prices. They bring out the Next Directory, you select what you want and then the fabric you want and a couple of days later it’s ready. We did a trip to Ponda (photos 46-69) to see some of the spectacular Hindu temples and booked it through the taxi driver that took us to Anjuna and Old Goa just because he was a nice chap.

The only trip we didn’t do with a taxi driver, but we could have, was the trip we took to Hampi. As it needed a couple of nights in a hotel at Hampi there was some comfort in knowing everything was pre-booked. Hampi was an 8-hour train journey away (photos 70-80) so there was a whole days travelling to get there and another whole days travelling to get back with just one days site seeing in between. One day probably isn’t enough to do Hampi justice (photos 83-159) but it was well worth it anyway. The train journey alone is an adventure in itself – there was one point when I was listening to my iPod dozing off a bit when I opened my eyes only to see a mouse sat on my backpack cleaning his whiskers!

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Cows at Betalbatim Beach [map](1)	Cows washing in the river [map](2)	Cows washing in the river [map](3)	Sunset on Betalbatim Beach [map](4)
Sunset on Betalbatim Beach [map](5)	Thunderstorm at our hotel [map](6)	Rice fields behind hotel [map](7)	Emma having a drink at sunset [map](8)
Emma having a drink at sunset [map](9)	Fishing boat on Betalbatim Beach [map](10)	Fishing boat on Betalbatim Beach [map](11)	Fishing boat on Betalbatim Beach [map](12)
Betalbatim Beach [map](13)	Betalbatim Beach [map](14)	Emma in the surf [map](15)	Betalbatim Beach [map](16)
Emma on Betalbatim Beach [map](17)	Sunset on Betalbatim Beach [map](18)	Ear cleaning con man at work [map](19)	Kingfisher - The King of Beers(20)
Anjuna Flea Market [map](21)	Anjuna Flea Market [map](22)	Old Goa [map](23)	Old Goa [map](24)
Se Cathedral, Old Goa [map](25)	Basilica of Bom Jesus, Old Goa [map](26)	Basilica of Bom Jesus, Old Goa [map](27)	Basilica of Bom Jesus, Old Goa [map](28)
Tomb of St Francis Xavier [map](29)	Basilica of Bom Jesus, Old Goa [map](30)	Se Cathedral, Old Goa [map](31)	Se Cathedral, Old Goa [map](32)
Se Cathedral, Old Goa [map](33)	Gary at Se Cathedral [map](34)	Emma being hassled by a beggar [map](35)	Margao seen from Monte Hill [map](36)
Monte Hill, Margao [map](37)	Typical truck [map](38)	Margao Street [map](39)	Spice stall, Margao Market [map](40)
Sugar stall, Margao Market [map](41)	Margao Market [map](42)	Typical bus [map](43)	Auto-rickshaws [map](44)
Family shopping trip on a scooter!(45)	Shri Shantadurga Temple, Ponda [map](46)	Shri Shantadurga Temple, Ponda [map](47)	Shri Shantadurga Temple, Ponda [map](48)
Shri Shantadurga Temple, Ponda [map](49)	Shri Shantadurga Temple, Ponda [map](50)	Shri Shantadurga Temple, Ponda [map](51)	Shri Naguesh Temple, Ponda [map](52)
Sacred pool, Shri Naguesh Temple, Ponda [map](53)	Shri Naguesh Temple, Ponda [map](54)	Shri Naguesh Temple, Ponda [map](55)	Emma at Shri Naguesh Temple, Ponda [map](56)
Shri Naguesh Temple, Ponda [map](57)	Shri Naguesh Temple, Ponda [map](58)	Another Temple, Ponda(59)	Another Temple, Ponda(60)
Inside another Temple, Ponda(61)	Another Temple, Ponda(62)	`Monkey boy` Sahakari Spice Farm [map](63)	`Monkey boy` Sahakari Spice Farm(64)
Elephant at Sahakari Spice Farm(65)	Elephant at Sahakari Spice Farm(66)	Elephant at Sahakari Spice Farm(67)	Big spider(68)
Cooling down at Sahakari Spice Farm(69)	Emma on her bunk in the train from Hampi(70)	Train from Hampi(71)	Train from Hampi(72)
Dudhsagar Falls seen from train(73)	Dudhsagar Falls seen from train(74)	Dudhsagar Falls seen from train [map](75)	View from train to Hampi(76)
View from train to Hampi(77)	Emma on train to Hampi(78)	Chili fields, view from train to Hampi(79)	Gary on train to Hampi(80)
Tungabhadra Dam(81)	Tungabhadra Dam(82)	Mustard Ganesh, Hampi(83)	Mustard Ganesh, Hampi(84)
Early morning in Hampi(85)	Gary at Hampi(86)	Gary at Hampi [map](87)	Hampi(88)
Hampi(89)	Virupaksha Temple, Hampi(90)	Hampi(91)	Guide ar Virupaksha Temple, Hampi(92)
Virupaksha Temple, Hampi(93)	Virupaksha Temple, Hampi(94)	Local washing her doorstep(95)	Erotic carvings on Virupaksha Temple(96)
Inside Virupaksha Temple(97)	Monkeys in Virupaksha Temple(98)	Monkeys in Virupaksha Temple(99)	Virupaksha Temple, Hampi(100)
Sacred Elephant in Virupaksha Temple(101)	Emma meets the locals(102)	Hampi(103)	Peanut Ganesh, Hampi(104)
Water hole, Hampi(105)	Narshima Statue, Hampi(106)	Narshima Statue, Hampi(107)	Linga, Hampi(108)
Rickshaw in Hampi(109)	Lotus Mahal, Hampi(110)	Lotus Mahal, Hampi(111)	Lotus Mahal, Hampi(112)
Gary at Lotus Mahal, Hampi(113)	Elephant Stables, Hampi(114)	Elephant Stables, Hampi(115)	Elephant statue, Hampi(116)
Elephant statue, Hampi(117)	Hampi(118)	Strange bug(119)	Hazara Rama Temple, Hampi(120)
Hazara Rama Temple, Hampi(121)	Hazara Rama Temple, Hampi(122)	Hazara Rama Temple, Hampi(123)	Hazara Rama Temple, Hampi(124)
Mahanavami Dibba, Hampi(125)	Pushkarni, stepped drinking water tank, Hampi [map](126)	Pushkarni, stepped drinking water tank, Hampi(127)	Emma in Queens Bath, Hampi(128)
Queens Bath, Hampi(129)	Emma in Queens Bath, Hampi(130)	Queens Bath, Hampi(131)	Overloaded tractor(132)
Elephant causing traffic problems(133)	Hampi(134)	Vithala Temple, Hampi(135)	Vithala Temple, Hampi(136)
Stone Chariot, Hampi(137)	Stone Chariot, Hampi [map](138)	Stone Chariot, Hampi(139)	Stone Chariot, Hampi(140)
Musical Pillars, Vithala Temple, Hampi(141)	Vithala Temple, Hampi(142)	Vithala Temple, Hampi(143)	Emma in Vithala Temple, Hampi(144)
Vithala Temple, Hampi(145)	Vithala Temple, Hampi(146)	Vithala Temple, Hampi(147)	Vithala Temple, Hampi(148)
Kings Balance, Hampi(149)	Tungabhadra River(150)	Sunset at Matanga Hill, Hampi(151)	Sunset at Matanga Hill, Hampi(152)
Climbing Matanga Hill, Hampi(153)	Sunset at Matanga Hill, Hampi(154)	Sunset at Matanga Hill, Hampi(155)	View from Matanga Hill, Hampi(156)
View from Matanga Hill, Hampi(157)	Matanga Hill, Hampi [map](158)	View from Matanga Hill, Hampi(159)	Doing the laundry [map](160)
Doing the laundry(161)	Local fishermen on Betalbatim Beach(162)	Local fishermen on Betalbatim Beach [map](163)	Local fishermen on Betalbatim Beach(164)
Local fishermen on Betalbatim Beach(165)	Child collecting stray fish(166)	Local fishermen on Betalbatim Beach(167)	Local fishermen on Betalbatim Beach(168)
Children collecting stray fish(169)	Caught fish(170)	Sorting the fish(171)	Fish ready for market(172)
Fish basket(173)	Fishing boat on Betalbatim Beach(174)	Colourful cow on Betalbatim Beach(175)