Mike and Cathy Travels

Mumbai, maddening but marvellous. The traffic is terrible taking 2 hours to go 20 miles but even in the thickest tangle there is much more good natured than you'd ever get in the UK. We are staying with 'family' who were neighbours to Cathy's parents in 'Bombay' back in the 1960s. Cheers from Nalini  In the garden with  Ammu A typical street On the Mumbai local train at a quiet time, with our amazing guide from Khaki tours. We did two trips, one to elephant island and one walking tour of historical Mumbai and both were full of interest and insights. Unofficial accommodation  (count the satellite  dishes ) With Ravi and Shoba at the banana leaf South Indian Restaurant. Lunch with Dilip, Sumir, Gayatri and Kapu  Rasmalai ...yum At the top of Gilbert hill On juhu beach  Carvings of Shiva and Parvati on elephant island  The amazing Britania restaurant where the Parsee owner at age 97 still waits...

First important news. We are all still speaking to each other after 11 days, phew! The birds here are exquisite. Another hard day in paradise... This is the beach in flat island which we went on the dive boat for the day.  The dive manager brought his family as well so it was a mixed group. The children spent their time building dens in the mangrove. They have great of freedom here because there are no snakes or scorpions to harm you here. Cathy sent a happy couple of hours snorkelling with Nemo and friends, this island has a reef in about 1 metre of water. Mike went on to do a baby shark dive. Then we all got together for a BBQ and went to swim here in the crashing waves. This is Paul and our new dive buddies Cliff and Gina from Oxford sorting their gear before we set off. My goodness is there a lot of faffing around connected to diving, Sigh!!! What a set of bathing beauties in their wet suits. Irresistible aren't they? This is during our vi...

Here we are in Mauritius at an all inclusive Tui holiday resort( yes that does include beer, wine and G&T).  Principle problems involve which restaurant to dine at and which flavour of rum to have as a night cap - its a tough life. Cathy is mostly resting as the amount of work she's done over the past month is not far off what she would have been doing before she retired. So a bit of sun and relaxation is just the thing. Still finding time to do a bit of cooking ... Mauritian curry is great, influenced by Indian and French cusine. Mike is having a ball with diving (d id the PADI qualification over the summer culminating in the open dive at stony cove near Lester ) We are on holiday with our old friends Paul and Wiz - We both love the birds - most obvious are the weaver birds and Cathy seems to have found a new friend here...

Amazing thing - you go away for 7 weeks at the end of the summer and guess what? The weather changes. Suddenly the earlier evenings and later dawn are becoming very apparent. Frost on the windows in Austria (alt 900m) Trees - lots of trees Cathy doing her 'incognito celeb' look Still sunny and we are able to get out and about to enjoy the views. Great sweeping views of the valley and dappled sunlight in the trees - but still with pockets of frost in the darker places. Hard not to burst out into - 'The Hills are alive...' A 360 panorama from the top of the hill (+1,000 ft from our site)  However, the weather was going off so we headed out for the last few days across Germany towards Calais. Brew house in Duren, in Germany near border with Belgium Across Germany we had the usual problems of trying to dodge the worst of the traffic / road building. Looks like all EU is much like UK in terms of how badly they organise road repairs - perhaps e...

Well, our last post had us traveling across Austria to Hungary, on a Sunday morning. This was great because most of Austria is closed and they ban lorries from traveling (with some exceptions) on a Sunday, which makes the motorways and roads much quieter.   Back to what now seems as 'Good old Moson'. A sunny Sunday after noon in mid October with the temperature in the mid 20s. We 'bobbed' about in the spa and caught up with our domestic chores. Having saved our washing for over two weeks we were a bit 'put out' when we discovered the site washing machine in bits. The solution was a lot of hand washing and the great 'wishy washy' line of Hungary. Cathy had yet another round of teeth bashing on Monday, Wednesday with a final flourish on Friday. So you might think that this would be a bit boring - sat in the same place for a week - but we had been traveling long distances with few breaks. The time taken for teeth meant less time for getting around ...