Travelog for: Godnatt nalle

And look, here we are again on our way back to India... at our Stopover at the airport of Dubai.

Mona and Uli always fly this way with Emirates and now I know why. Because the stuff ist really really friendly and attentivly, even to toyvoyagers like me!

Oh momma, the last weeks back in Chennai were sooooooo extremely boring!

It was some kind of monsoon time, I guess, because it rained cats and dogs almost every day.

And very soon after we were back in Chennai, Uli and Mona, both, got sick. The doctor called it Dengue Fiever and they did nothing but sleep all day long....

zzzzz....zzzzzzzzzzz....zzzzzzzzz......

and so we didn't make anything exciting and I couldn't make any updates on my own... I really got upset, I tell you.....

But since few days my hosts have recovered more or less and we used a holiday to the way down to the beach of Mahabalipuram.

The Hindu People were celebrating Diwali these days.

Diwali (or Deepavali) is a major Hindu holiday, and a significant festival in Hinduism, Sikhism, Buddhism, and Jainism.

Many legends are associated with Diwali. Today it is celebrated by Hindus, Jains, and Sikhs across the globe as the "Festival of Lights," where people light deyas (small clay pots filled with coconut oil and a cotton like string(wick)is inserted) to signify victory of good over the evil within an individual.

Diwali is celebrated on the new moon day (approx fifteenth day) of the month Kartika.

In Hinduism, across many parts of India and Nepal, it is the homecoming of Lord Ram of Ayodhya, after a 14-year exile in the forest and his victory over the evil demon-king Ravan. In the legend, the people of Ayodhya (the capital of his kingdom) welcomed Ram by lighting rows (avali) of lamps (deepa), thus its name: Deepavali.

So today, the people put out lights and candles, employees gets benefits and presents and also the children gets presents, in all the shops you get special Diwali Offers and in Chennai they burnt fireworks, 2 days, NONSTOP!!!!

It's unbelieveble, really!

So, WE escaped to the beach, away from the chaos.....

At the end of october my hosts had to got to Mumbai, former known as Bombay, for the registration as an expat.

So we tvs were very excited to see another indian city.... And WOW, what a city that is!!!

According to extrapolations carried out by the World Gazetteer in 2008, Mumbai has a population of 13.662.885 and the Mumbai Metropolitan Area has a population of 20.870.764 !!!

The population density is estimated to be about 22,000 persons per square kilometre.

So Mumbai is India's biggest city and surely one of worlds most expansive Real Estate areas.

Mumbai is so much of everything you can imagine.

It's unbelievleably dirty and ugly,
but beautiful and facinating.

You get every kind of Designer Shop there like Prada or Luis Vuitton
and on every street's corner little children, holding Babys in their arms, coming to you sitting in the three-wheeler to beg some money.

You sometimes can hardly breathe because of the smog (people say, to breathe one day in Mumbai is like smoking one package of zigarettes)
and it is home of the worlds biggest film industry, called Bollywood, who produces 1 movie each day in the average.

Not only thousands, but millions of people (54% of the population) sleeps literally on the street or in slums built of carbage. They came from the villages on the surch for work and a little wealth and a better future for their children.

And everybody, who visited Mumbai once, wonders, when this city will collapse?!


We stopped at a true Landmark of Mumbai, The Gateway of India, which was built to commemorate the arrival in India, on 2 December 1911, of King George V and Queen Mary and was completed on 4 December, 1924.

Opposite of the gate, there is the Taj Mahal Palace Hotel, that has hosted a lot of famous people thru all times.

And none of us could imagine, that just a few weeks after our visit, a terrible terror attac happend just inside this nice hotel.

Over 100 people died in Mumbai, it was one of india's very black days.

Humans can sometimes be just so cruel and stupid, I just cannot believe.....

We also visited one of Mumbai's beaches, this one is called Yuhu Beach.

Sometimes it really gets very dirty there, because people uses to throw their carbage into the sea....

Mommy, slowly but surely I felt like a hostage...

I am still with Mona, I am not lost but somehow I felt like stucked... grr....

But then Mona had this smile on her face, she and Uli packed their suitcases and she put us tvs into her backpack and we startet a journey.....

We tvs all wondered where we might go, we guessed, we were on an airplane and it took hours and hours, till we saw the lights again....

And mommy, imagine, where we were!?

We went to AUSTRALIA !!!

We were in Sydney, at the airport and we went straight to a hotel, to catch a little sleep.

Early next morning we went back, to the domestic airport and flew to Brisbane, which should be the start of our australian vacations....

juhuuuu.....

We had a real nice long walk thru Brisbane, which is the state capital of Queensland.

This city has a lot of nice old buildings and we found really a lot good offers in the shops ( to be honest, my hosts were pretty excited, we tvs got a little bored going shopping...) :-)

But it was a beautiful day and in the evening we went to the cinema to see the movie "Twilight", because we read all the books from Stephenie Meyer with Mona before.

On the last picture you see the hotel we stood in. It is a heritage buildung and was a hospital in former times.
The hotel is placed very central and was just very charming and nice...

Today we had a lot of fun.

We went to a nice museum, where we lernt a lot about the history of Australia and it's nature and animals.

Later we drove with the big wheel to have an overview of Brisbane, that was just amazing! And hey, you can't imagine, how high that was... but I was very brave :-))

Than we had a walk in the beautiful botanical garden...

It was really a great day!

Merry, merry Xmas,
my dear beloved ones at home!

I miss you guys very much and hope you had great Xmas Holidays!

Today we went on and took the greyhound bus to a nice town by the sea called Noosa Heads, but before I didn't forget to throw a letter into Santa's Mailbox to place my last minute wishes.

(between just the two of us, my only wish was, that you, my friends at home, are feeling great and having a good time!)

The second Xmas day we spent at the main beach of Noosa Heads and it was just a lovely day.

I tried to get some teint, but whatever I do, I just got brown face, hands and feed, but I stay pretty white at the rest of my body...  I just don't know why??!?!?

oh, mommy...

This day was soooo incredibly special!

We went to the Australian Zoo, which was founded by the famous but late Steve Irwing, the "Crocodile Hunter",  and we met a lot of different animals like Wombats, Crocs, Snakes, Parrots, Turtles......

I was allowed to feed an elephant, I could pet a Koala and I met some very friendly and relaxed Kangaroos, who invited me to hang out with them a little bit.

We talked about my journey and the kangaroos were very impressed (even it does not seem like on the photos...)

Today we made a beautiful trip by boat thrue the so called Noosa "Everglades", the backwaters of noosa.

It was just amazingly green and the water was so dark, that the plants and trees got reflected like in a mirror...

All this area is a national park and the nature is under protection!

Again, another fantastic nature exploring day!

All together we went to Fraser Island today...

Fraser Island is an island located along the southern coast of Queensland, approximately 300 km north of Brisbane. Its length is about 120 km. It was even inscribed as a World Heritage site in 1992. The island is considered to be the largest sand island in the world at 1840 km². Its resident human population was 360 at the census of 2006, but a lot of different animals live on that island and it's rainforests.

We drove with a big Jeep along the beautiful beach and it was great fun. We even saw a wild dingo at the beach, while we had a little break....

Lucky us, the driver knew the ways very good, because you could easily get stucked in the sandy "streets" of the rainforest, and so we enjoyed the ride and the fantastic smell of the woods.... till we finally arrived at Lake McKenzie, which is a fresh water lake, that is sooooo incredibly cristal clear!

I felt in love at once with this place and would have liked to stay here for the rest of our vacations, but unfortunatly we had to drive back in the afternoon... :-(

And imagine, on our way back along the beach, we could spot two wild dolphines in the ocean. I made a picture for you guys....

So far, I truely LOVE Australia!

Yesterday we took the greyhound bus from Noosa to Brisbane and than we caught the flight from Brisbane to Sydney, because....

we did not want to miss the New Years Fireworks in Sydney!

So today we did some shopping with our host in Sydney, till we really got too excited and pushed them, to search for a "waiting place" in the harbour, because we wanted of corse to have a good view!

Lucky us, at 4.30pm we still were allowed to go thrue the gates into the harbour between the opera house and Sydney's famous bridge, but soon it was completly filled with people and we started waiting..... and waiting.... and waiting.....

The people surounding us were really friendly and they came from all over the wolrd, so we didn't get bored and it felt like some kind of picknick atmosphere. That was really nice....

And at 9.00pm, we were very surprised, there was the first, beautiful fireworks show! It is especially for the kids, so they don't have to stay that long awake.

After the first show, boats with thousands of lights crused up and down the waters, and everybody got more excited.

Suddenly...

10... 9... 8... 7... 6... 5... 4... 3... 2... 1...

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!
I wish you all the best in Life and Love for everyone!

The firework show around the bridge was fantastic and we were so glad to see it live, that I had to dry a little tear in my eye.

This was really a very special New Years Celebration!

Lucky us, after the fireworks in the night, we did not have to walk very far to fall into the bed, because the hotel the Radisson my hosts booked were very near by the harbour.

On tv we could see, how thousands and thousands of people get squeezed into the trains and subways....

But anyway, we slept the next morning very long, ordered room service and enjoyed the beginning of the new year!

Later that day we went for a nice walk thru the city and the botanical garden, to end up again in the harbour and the part of the city called the Rocks.

What a beautiful day....

Today we went to the Darling Harbour and also did some more shopping.

My host were so thrilled by the prices of electronic stuff, they say, the newest cds or nintendo wii games and e.g. the ipod nano is sooo much cheaper than in Germany, even cheaper than in India, so they bought a lot of things, and clothes etc. ...

And Australia is also very famous for opal stones and opal jewellery, which is why they bought some of these for their family, too.

Aside from fantastic shopping opportunities ( the EURO - Australian Dollar exchange rate was also pretty good ;-)  ),
Sydney is a fascinating city, too.

Sydney is not only the most populous city in Australia, with a metropolitan area population of 4.5 million. It is the state capital of New South Wales, and was the site of the first British colony in Australia. It was established in 1788 at Sydney Cove by Arthur Phillip, leader of the First Fleet from Britain.

It lies on a submergent coastline, where the ocean level has risen to flood deep river valleys (ria) carved in the hawkesbury sandstone. Port Jackson, better known as Sydney Harbour, is one such ria and is the largest natural harbour in the world.