Goa

We finally arrived in India around 5am, stepping out into our first of many monsoon down pours. Piling our gear into a taxi, we at first thought we would never get to the hostel after becoming caught up in a parking lot traffic jam, surrounded by a cacophony of honking buses and taxis. Freeing us from the parking lot, the 90minute drive from the airport to Vagator beach took us past the capital and into a rural jungle, the journey slowed to dodge cows lying in the middle of the road. This was something we would learn was normal, even on highways, due to their sacred status.

Turkey

After a difficult night on the bus from Bulgaria to Turkey, partially due to crossing the border in the wee hours of the morning where we all had to exit the bus to get processed and x-rayed, we entered Istanbul as the sun rose, mosques announced the call to prayer and the city awoke. Leaving the bus was one of the happiest moments in our journey, even though we still had a plane trip to Kuşadasi. Transferring to the airport turned out to be very easy, catching the nearby metro straight to it, however this meant we now had 7 hours to wait for our flight.