TravelStream™ news feed for member dynamite_dinah on TravelPod's free travel blogs service http://www.travelpod.com/syndication/rss/dynamite_dinah en-us Copyright ©2009 TravelPod.com Mon, 07 Apr 2008 12:10:04 -0400 http://www.travelpod.com http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/dynamite_dinah/5/1206702180/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/dynamite_dinah/5/1206702180/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/dynamite_dinah/5/1206702180/tpod.html Mon, 07 Apr 2008 12:10:04 -0400 Back in Mother India for a bumpy ride through Karnataka

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Mumbai (Bombay), India

This highly congested city of over 16 million people is very cosmopolitain and modern yet with plenty of pockets of traditional Indian culture evident in the various areas and suburbs.  Whilst the streets are relatively clean compared to the rest of India and people use the pavements as there are pavements which are fairly maintained, half the people here live in slums contrasted with a growing wealth in other parts of the city.  That said the slum dwellers, who come from all over the country as economic migrants, escaping floods, drought, crop failure, persecution or just to earn an extra 10 rupees a day (12 pence) to send to their family, have a thriving community who all contribute to the economy and one of the largest slums is thought to turnover US$650 million anually from activity within it's confines alone including export of goods manufactured there!  There were two slums just in and near Colaba (an upmarket part of town where tourists flock) and it was painful to see the cobbled together shacks in which people live six or more to a room and the beaches just on the edge of the slum were ankle deep in rubbish (which people sort through and recycle for money) and used as the communal toilet - I could see several men just squatting on the edge of the water.  Having read Shantaram though I had a much better appreciation for the communal harmony of these places although it doesn't make it any less right, especially when towering above the slums were modern high rise offices and luxury appartments.I spent the day rediscovering Colaba and near by Kala Ghoda which is the where the main museums and British Raj legacy are based.  I even discovered the old Iraqi synagogue in this area.  Back in Colaba, I popped into one of the best hotels in the city, the Taj Mahal hotel built by the Tata family (who are important industrialists in India and now globally as I'm sure you know) to visit the bookshop there and somehow the grandeur of the dining room and the smell of the buffet there tempted me.  Once I'd wrestled with the idea of spending £16 on lunch there (equivalent to my weekly spend on food in India), I devoured a huge and delicious lunch which was comparable to any of the best lunches I've had in top London restaurants.  I took tea with a nice Parsi (descendants of Persian Zoroastrians and important business people in colonial India) lady who was visiting from Pune.  That evening I wandered over to the Chabad Centre (run by religious Lubavitch Rabbi and his wife) for a Sabbath meal.  I'd met the Rabbi and his wife three years earlier when they were based in another building.  I always like it when I travel and find a Chabad House welcoming me for a nice kosher meal for Shabbat... it's like a home from home (a bit religious but still) and that's the point of it.My second day in Bombay, I took a local bus (you see how confident I am now in the city) over to Malabar Hill, which is the upmarket part of the city to visit the Hanging Gardens - a pretty garden overlooking Chowpatty Beach and the long coastal curve Marine Drive with its high rise buildings and 5 star hotels.  Then I spent a while at the little but fascinating Gandhi museum where Gandhi had in fact lived before I lunched in the Cream Centre buzzing with plump middle-class families out for Saturday lunch.  I finished it off with a very expensive cup of tea in the air-conditioned Hilton Oberoi Towers.  That evening a guy came to the hotel and the hotel manager summoned me and they asked if I'd like to be in a Bollywood movie (they always need westerners as extras) but I'd already got appointments at a beauty salon the next day so beauty won out!So my final day, I wandered some more, took some flowers to the Rabbi's wife in Chabad House where I spent some time on their free but painfully slow internet, then I bought my only additions to my luggage for this trip in the shape of two tiffin boxes and two masala spice boxes, before heading over to a top salon in Colaba for a facial, haircut and manicure all for £16.  My last dinner in India was at Chabad House as they'd  invited me back.So that's it.... after a dosa breakfast the next day, I spent a hot, noisy, lung-clogging 90 minutes getting to the airport in a taxi and caught my flight home.Now I'm back in my London suburbs, I'm having the usual difficulty readjusting to the extreme quiet in Finchley, the clean pavements, the expensive and sanitised supermarkets and a soft bed.India is definitely changing in the towns and cities, even if it's just that everyone (even people in slums!) seems to have a mobile phone these days and some of them even have cameras.  But it will take a very long time for India to resemble anything like Western societies and economies, which is probably a good thing - anyway they'd all have to learn what a bin is used for first!  Seriously though, India will probably continue in its duality, with the poor in the countryside getting poorer and suffering the effects of global warming on their crops and availability of water and therefore their rural lives and the white-collar workers getting more affluent and fatter (food/fat equals wealth) and maybe seeing materialism replacing religion and family values.But no doubt, I'll be back!
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/dynamite_dinah/5/1206439380/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/dynamite_dinah/5/1206439380/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/dynamite_dinah/5/1206439380/tpod.html Mon, 07 Apr 2008 06:57:33 -0400 Back in Mother India for a bumpy ride through Karnataka

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Bijapur, India

Bijapur is a large, congested town with all the usual activity in the rubbish strewn streets.  I got a large, clean, bright cool room with the biggest bed ever and a good bathroom with hot water in a business hotel on the edge of the town.  Still not a luxury pad but defintely one of the best rooms I've had during the trip and not bad for 600 rps plus it had an excellent restaurant which is important for me when I'm travelling to areas with few tourists to hang out with as eating alone is always difficult here.   The skies opened once again and I was stranded in the hotel for the entire afternoon and evening as the monsoonal rain unleashed itself months before it was due.  Luckily I had a good selection of English speaking channels to watch on the TV.The next day, I walked up to the impressive Golgumbaz set in peaceful gardens.  Dating from 1659, it is the mausoleum of Mohammed Adil Shah, his two wives, mistress, a daughter and grandson.  The interior is pretty dull and the real gem is the seven storey towers at each corner of the hall topped by an enormous dome, 38m in diameter.  Apparently it's the second largest dome in the world after St Peter's Basilica in Rome.  I panted my way up the steep, winding stairwell to the 'whispering gallery' inside.  As I was there early, there were only a few people up there (thank goodness as Indian's like to make a lot of noise in monuments - don't know why!) and the echo of the slightest sound repeated at least ten times over.  The views from outside of the dome were also great with the large mosque and various ramparts of the old fortified town standing out amongst the built up areas.That afternoon, I took a rickshaw down to the market area which was bustling with every type of trade.  I had wanted to change my train ticket reservation to a day earlier to go to Mumbai but at the railway station they'd told me I couldn't do it as I'd booked it via a private agent.  Somebody helped me find the only private travel agent in town (it seemed) in some backstreet and up a few flights of stairs in a residential building.  You see how kind people can be.  The guy there spoke excellent English and we then spent four hours (I kid you not) trying to contact and then persuade the agent in Hampi where I'd booked the ticket to either cancel or change the ticket.  The Hampi guy was unco-operative and my Bijapur guy took great offence and said that as a foreigner they should be trying to help me (he said he wouldn't have made this effort for an Indian national).  He called up the IRTC who run the railways and made a complaint about the Hampi guy and lots of angry verbal exchanges took place - rather unusual for Indians - on my behalf!  Eventually we got it all sorted and my ticket was changed although I had to upgrade to 2AC (two tier air-conditioned carriage) as there was no more room in 3AC (three tier).  To be honest, if I'd known how complicated it would get, I would have just rebooked the ticket and written off the £5 I'd already spent on the first ticket.  But the guy was so keen to help and show that Indians are honourable that I felt obliged to sit there for all those hours until it was resolved!The next day I went to to the other side of the town to Ibrahim Rouza, thought to be one of the most finely proportioned Islamic monuments in India, built by one of the Shahs for his queen.  He died before her so he was buried here as well.  There are tall minarets which are said to have inspired those at the Taj Mahal and lots of filigree work.  I then twiddled my thumbs for the rest of the day and finally finished the epic book Shantaram, before catching a train to Sholapur in the state Maharashtra, where I was connecting (a few hours later) to an overnight train to Mumbai - the city where the Shantaram novel plays out.  I was quite excited to be making my third trip there as the book had really brought it alive for me.  I was even staying in the hotel (well it's a floor in an old building with 10 box rooms or so) above the hotel where the author of the semi-autobiographical novel had stayed!As my train to Bombay arrived pretty much on time at 10.30pm, by the time I'd found my berth and made the bed (you get sheets, blanket and a pillow in 2AC!) and chatted to the Indian guy opposite me who worked for IBM, it was time for bed.  The 8 hour overnight journey was uneventful and fairly comfortable and then we all got up as the train plodded through the outskirts of Mumbai (which takes an hour to cross).  The elderly Hindu gentlemen on the berths below me sat and meditated and did some yoga asanas for a while before we arrived at CST or Victoria Terminus as some call it - a huge and fine imposing Victorian train station.I hopped in a black and yellow taxi (they don't have rickshaws in inner Bombay) and we sped through the normally congested streets as the city started to wake up from its slumber.  I already knew the area of Colaba pretty well from previous trips, so I directed the taxi driver - taxi drivers in Mumbai don't know anywhere in their city - to the street where my hotel was based just opposite Colaba bay and Gateway of India monument constructed by the British.  After lugging my bag up four floors, I was shown to my cubby hole of a room (but with a comfy bed again!!!!) which had spectacular views over the harbour.
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/dynamite_dinah/5/1206262200/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/dynamite_dinah/5/1206262200/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/dynamite_dinah/5/1206262200/tpod.html Mon, 07 Apr 2008 05:41:41 -0400 Back in Mother India for a bumpy ride through Karnataka

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Badami, India

I said a sad farewell to Hampi as it really was one of the highlights of my trip with scenery which ranks in my top 20 in the world.  My original plan had been to leave the next day with a driver who had quoted a good price and I was trying to avoid taking yet more buses but he changed his price dramatically at the last minute - one of the miscommunications that happens so often.  I held back from wishing him ten daughters and that they all marry well (with big dowries!) - a good Indian curse and just packed my bag and took a tuk tuk to Hospet.  It was chucking it down still with rain and the rickshaw wallah stopped to let a lady standing on the roadside into the rickshaw without asking me if this was ok and then she hopped off about 15 mins later without a by your leave!  At the bus station, buses pulled in and out of the cratered forecourt splashing us all as they went through puddles and I found the bus to Baglekot or somewhere which was a two hour journey and then changed to one going to Badami, two more hours.  I'm so sick of buses, the noise of the engine and the pollution and the potholes and the sweaty plastic seats and the grimy windows.  Next trip to India is going to be all on the train, I've decided!!!Arriving in scruffy little town of Badami, this used to be the capital of the Chalukya empire between the 4th and 8th centuries.  Away from the more sanitised set up in Hampi, I was confronted in Badami by putrid smelling, congested streets teeming with people spitting, burping, idling around, selling flowers, watermelon and all sorts of wares, cows, lots of wild hairy pigs/boars, goats and a lot of scary looking monkeys.   The rain had filled the troughs that ran the length of the non-existent pavement with water and women were washing clothes and pots in them.  I'm never quite sure if these are used as gutters, sewerage or just water sources.After clearing out an ant infestestion in my rather bleak, dingy room in Mookambika Deluxe (nothing deluxe about this business hotel!), I hid away watching HBO on the little TV until the power went out (again!) and then I snook next door to the only restaurant (or so it seemed) in town for a rather unpleasant curry under the watchful gaze of several Indian families.The next day, I got on the most clapped out bus I have ever been on to go two hours down the road to a tiny village called Aihole.   Finally I saw two American guys, the only other Westerners in town, who were doing the same as me but going to another temple complex first.  Getting off at Aihole, I found a collection of small temples with some fairly uninteresting sculptures although to be fair my guidebook did say that this was one of the 'experimental sites for much of early Hindu Dravidian architecture'.  I did however start to wonder what the hell I was doing in this place.  Wandering around the little village, I was accosted by about 30 barefoot kids all shouting 'hello school pen' and 'hello rupee'.  This is the sum total of their English although a few of the older children managed 'your country'.  This week, I'm telling everyone I'm from Antarctica and it's going down well.  Last week I chose Mongolia and I think I got asked about 200 times in total.  It's more fun and the people nod knowingly repeating it back to themselves.  I figure I'm helping widen their geographic knowledge beyond England, USA and Australia!  I was a little anxious about how I was going to get back as the bus conductor had given me a time for the return bus but without conviction as I don't think he understood me.  Then a guy in the simple side of the road dhabba (like a worker's caffe but outside and the cooking is done on the floor) had given me another time.  In the end it turned out that the bus wasn't for another 4 hours!  With the sun beating down, I sat there contemplating my non-existent options!  Then a boy came over, he obviously went to a private school as he had a few more sentences than the other kids, he suggested I take a tempo (which is a large rickshaw designed for several people to share although they tend to squash 20 or so in) all to myself to my next stop for 150 rps.  No-one would ever spend that about of money to have a rickshaw all to themselves in a village like this, so when I agreed and he led me over to a driver, a whole load of other people tried to board.  I tried to indicate that I wasn't going to pay 150 rps to be squashed in with a load of other people who would effectively pay a couple of rupees each for the same journey and I selfishly shooed them away!  The 40 minute bone-jarring drive took me past women washing clothes or carrying firewood on their heads, herds of goats and children walking barefoot to school for the second sitting.At Pattadakal, I couldn't see the Americans so figured they must have got a rickshaw over to Aihole on discovering like me that the bus information they'd also been given was incorrect.  There was a bus of German tourists being ushered in as I paid the non-Indian entrance fee - 250 rps instead of 5 rps which is what Indian's pay and we have to fill in our name, country and even our age - when I refused to put in my age, the gate man got very upset like I was breaking some rule so I put in 110 and that seemed to satisfy him!  The group of temples at Pattadakal is a World Heritage Site and these were somewhat more impressive than those at Aihole with intricate carvings showing episoddes from the Ramayana and the Mahabharata.  The dark clouds that had been gathering during the morning started releasing yet more rain and I tried to find out from the security guards how I could get back to Badami, which was a fairly futile conversation as they just repeated everything I said back to me!  I saw a large jeep (kind of twice the size of a normal jeep) waiting by the roadside and asked the people waiting inside if they were going to Badami.  They were, so I got a seat inside and then as we set off constantly beeping along the whole of the 20km route, we picked up more and more people and children and live chickens until we were squashed in like sardines (well more than sardines if that's possible).  I counted about 40 people in this small vehicle, most of them were crouching on the floor or bent over double (and they are short) to stand in the jeep.  It was hot, bumpy and smelly for that hour back to Badami and I have huge admiration for these people who endure journeys like that everyday clinging onto their babies and children.  I felt a little guilty that my backside had taken up the space equivalent two slender Indian women!I spent another afternoon sitting in my room with no electricity listening to the heavy rain and thunderstorm.  When I ventured out around 7pm, I met up with the American guys again.  They were very camp and left it to me to go out into the rain to hail a rickshaw to take us to the supposedly upmarket hotel 2km out of town.  The hotel was bright, warm and clean which was the main thing but then we discovered that the restaurant which had been lauded as excellent in the Lonely Planet was only doing a buffet (for the German coach party), so we had no option but to have that and it was, as we all agreed, the most disgusting expensive meal we'd had all trip.  The curry has so tasteless and uninspiring.  All in all Badami was not turning out to be a great choice in my itinerary!Luckily the rain had stopped by the morning and I made my way through narrow laneways with old houses with brightly painted carved wooden doorways leading to dingy single rooms housing big families.  Accompanied by loads of curious children, I picked my way down the precipice of what had been the main road to the famous architectural monuments until a digger had left a deep trench all the way along and hadn't been back for what looked like months to fill it in!  Badami's highlight is its cave temples from around the 6th century.  There are four of them dedicated to Shiva and Vishnu and the last one dedicated to Jainism.  The caves overlook a large Tank where villagers were bathing and doing their washing and various waterside temples and ruins built into the hills opposite.  The views were pretty good but I'd had enough of Badami and after climbing up to see the temples cut out of the rocks, I went back to get my bag and then took two more buses for 3 hours to Bijapur.
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/dynamite_dinah/5/1205841840/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/dynamite_dinah/5/1205841840/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/dynamite_dinah/5/1205841840/tpod.html Fri, 04 Apr 2008 12:42:24 -0400 Back in Mother India for a bumpy ride through Karnataka

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Hampi, India

I was a bit worried when I got to Madgaon station as I didn't have a train reservation and there were lots of people waiting on the platform for this three time a week train.  It goes from Goa to Calcutta and takes a couple of days.  I was heading to Hospet as it seemed were thirty of so other western tourists - many still dressed in strappy t-shirts and shorts, really not appropriate for mainstream India!  I managed to get a seat in one of the sleeper compartments which converts to a daytime set up during the day (the middle sleeper folds down and everyone sits on the bottom berths).  The guy opposite me was going all the way to Calcutta and in true Indian style he had no reading matter to pass the time, he just stared out of the window and at me and chatted with other passengers.  Indians have a great ability to just while away time doing nothing at all!  The inspector came round and said I could stay in my seat as no-one had reserved it until after I would leave the train 8 hours later.The journey was really lovely as we were cutting across Goa through the Western Ghats and valleys and verdant green hills, giving way to cotton fields and rice paddies as we crossed back into Karnataka.  I got chatting to two english girls on a six month round the world trip before going to university.  I was old enough to be their mother!  It was funny listening to their plans and their expectations of the trip and apprehension of being inexperienced travellers.  At Hospet, we were accosted on the platform by hordes of rickshaw drivers and I negotiated for two rickshaws for four of us to get to Hampi.  At Hampi we stopped two travellers we met on arrival and asked them for a recommendation for one of the many guesthouses set up to accommodate the thousands of travellers who hang out in Hampi.  The rickshaw drivers were pissed off as they missed out on commission but we were very pleased with our choice at Shanthi Guesthouse, very near the river.  It was set in a courtyard, with clean, bright rooms with soft comfy beds.  The rooms were however stifling hot even with a fan as Hampi is baking at this time of year.  We finished off the day with dinner in a rooftop restaurant surrounded by heaps of other travellers/tourists.After an impossibly hot night in Shanthi and a very noisy fan, I spent the day chilling, reading and listening to music.  Hampi is a quiet little town with only about 5000 population and loads of travellers.  The town largely caters for this traveller scene and there are lots of little restaurants serving western food such as brown bread and marmite and beans on toast! Hampi is famous for its barren, rocky backdrop where the 15th century city of Vijayanagar was based.  In the Hindu legends of the Ramayana, this area was the realm of the monkey gods.  The area, which is now a World Heritage site, became the centre of one of the largest Hindu empires in Indian history and was heavily fortified attracting international commerce to its busy bazaars trading in precious stones.  The city was ransacked by a confederation of Deccan sultans in the middle of the 16th century and went into decline.  There are 500 or so monuments in the area set amongst an extraordinary landscape of giant granite boulders, lush paddies and banana plantations.I hooked up with a Scottish girl Morag and a German girl, Jenny.  Morag was at the end of an 18 month world trip.  We wandered around some of the closest temples and boulders.  The next day we started out very early at 5.45am to go and watch the sunrise from the top of a hill strewn with boulders.  I found it a hard and precarious climb.  The hill had a little temple on top.  I sat on a smooth ledge with a few other people and a troupe of monkeys who played happy families and were quite friendly (as some can be very vicious) with us, especially the babies who were curious to touch our sandals and bags!  The sun rise was worth the early morning start as was the 360 degree view of the temples, stark rocky hills, paddies and glittering river below.  We spent the rest of the day travelling around the main sites with a rickshaw driver, including the Royal Enclosure, various temples and the Vitthala Temple dedicated to Vishnu which was more intricately carved than other temples int he area.  In the courtyard of this temple was a superb carved granite chariot.  Sunset didn't really turn out to be so good as the clouds were amassing, which didn't bode well with the rain moving up from the south.  There was another power cut and dinner was consumed by candlelight.I spent yet another day doing nothing much!  I went down to the boulder-strewn river to watch the morning washing rituals of the town.  Some were bathing in the river (keeping their clothes on!) and some were washing clothes or dishes.  Drinking water is available in taps around the town which locals take to their simple homes in containers.  A life that millions and millions (maybe two thirds of India's billion people) do everyday.  As travellers and guests in the country, we had to remind ourselves that we had luxury of plumbed in bathrooms, even if basic.  Another citizen of the town was having her wash... it was Lakshmi the temple elephant.  This huge beast happily lay down in the muddy water and allowed her attendant and his small son plus many of the tourists to scrub her down - every inch was scrubbed with brushes and stones.  She seemed to  love it and each side took a good half hour.  At the end she trumpeted water over her head, spraying her back (see video below), before her attendant hauled himself and his son with her help onto her back and walked off up the steps of the ghats towards the temple.  What a thrill to watch!  The heavens opened soon after that and the dark thunder clouds released heavy sheets of rain for much of the day.  This kind of spoilt the evening celebrations for Holi and the ritual of collecting the firewood for the evening fire and burning of an effigy of a demon god.I'm enjoying hanging out in Hampi, it's rather indulgent and whilst it still feels very Indian, there is a calm atmosphere and the dirt is not as bad as other places and the people tend to leave us alone - although I still get asked 20 times I day 'Your country', 'your name' etc etc.The next day started out muddy after more downpours but it didn't deter the kids and the younger men and women and loads of travellers joining in the Holi celebrations.  Holi is the festival of colour celebrating some conquest or other of a demon and the start of spring.  It's mainly Hindu but many muslims, Sikhs, Jains, Buddhists and Christians get involved too.  Men get a bit stoned and drunk (although Hampi is officially a 'dry' town as it's an important pilgrim place).  Everyone throws powder or coloured water over each other.  I wimped out as I've been here for Holi before and I knew it takes days for the colour to come off the skin especially white skin, as many travellers discovered and carried on their travels looking like rainbows!  I elected to watch from a rooftop restaurant with a cute German guy who I spent the rest of the day chatting with as we dodged the rain downpours and craters of muddy water.  We followed everyone down the river at midday as they went to scrub themselves clean. 
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/dynamite_dinah/5/1205579580/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/dynamite_dinah/5/1205579580/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/dynamite_dinah/5/1205579580/tpod.html Fri, 04 Apr 2008 07:58:48 -0400 Back in Mother India for a bumpy ride through Karnataka

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Goa, India

Pranesh was accompanying his sister back to her home in Karwar, 3 hours away, to help her take a sewing machine up there, so he picked me up as we were getting the same train.  There was the usual banter on the train between passengers after we'd all fought our way on there and got a seat.  I got off an hour after them at Canacona, where I ended up sharing a tuk tuk to Palolem (supposedly one of the less developed resorts in Goa) with a crazy Italian guy who had been living there for 18 years.  He was on his way back from hippy Gokarna with some Russian bird in tow.  There are a lot of Russions visiting and living in Goa and the locals say there is a mafia/black market problem emerging as a result.  We went for a drink at this guy's house with the tuk tuk driver and some guy from one of the beach resorts.  The Russian girl instantly whipped off her t-shirt revealing her skimpy bikini.  Now I'm sure the tuk tuk driver was used to scantily clad westerners around the place, but my sensibilities were still tuned into Indian culture after two weeks there and I found it really offensive on his behalf!  The Italian guy pulled out a joint and I took that as my cue to leave and find a place to stay on the beach.Sweating profusely as I hauled my back down the long sandy beach, I headed for the last set of beach huts as I thought it would be quieter there.  The beach was heaving with Westerners, not too different from Thai beaches with huts nestled on the edge of the beach under palm trees.  I felt very overdressed as I plodded along in my salwar kameez and very out of place.  I really felt like I'd left India behind.... there was nothing Indian in sight apart from the staff in the little resorts and the ubiquitous cows sunbathing on the beach!  I got a hut at Cozy Nook which was a kind of hut with a big tent in it.  The best thing about it was the really comfy bed under a big mozzie net.  The bathroom was rather makeshift with a bucket and a cold water tap instead of a shower.I changed into my t-shirt and cotton trousers, the only western clothes I had, which were still not really appropriate next to the bikini clad women.  When it got cooler, I took a walk along the beach front - Palolem is less built up than in Northern Goa but the local authorities make a lot of baksheesh (bribe money) from the guys who own the beach huts so that they can stay open for the season.  At the end of the season they force everyone to dismantle the restaurants, bars and beach huts and bulldoze what's left.  This gives them the rights to use the land for development if they choose to in the future.The prices of everything were triple that of 'real India' and very westernised... I had dinner in a western place and get fed up of hearing tourists moaning and groaning about stupid things like - 'the cockerel woke me up too early this morning', 'I've been waiting for 10 minutes for the bill' and generally being unpleasant to the Indian waiters.  Most of these people were just in Goa for a beach holiday with no concept of the life and hardships of most Indian people who rarely are heard complaining.  I was also struck by the contrast of how overweight we Westerners look next to the skinny, muscular Indians.I spent the next day over at Patnem, a smaller much quieter beach and hung out in cafes and bars reading the most brilliant book, Shantaram.  It's an epic read based on the life of the author, who escaped from an Australian prison and ended up in Bombay in the early 80s where he lived in a slum, sets up a free clinic there, gets thrown into an Indian prison where he is brutally beaten, then sprung from prison by the mafia boss in Bombay who he then works for before joining him on a gun-smuggling trip into war-torn Afghanistan.  It's a total page-turner and the first four chapters especially capture the sights, sounds and idiosyncracies of Indian people and culture so well that I'd encourage everyone to read it.Being Sunday, there were lot's of Indians on the beach.  The contrast of the women bathing in the sea in their saris and salwars and the men in long shorts with the western tourists was marked.  That night the stormy weather in South India continued and a torrent of rain fell all night and the electricity cut out as often happens in India (most nights!).I relocated to Benaulim on Monday to be nearer to the train station in Madgaon for my early morning train the next day.  Benaulim is a long sandy beach that stretches for 3-4 km down to Colva beach and full of slightly older tourists.  I sat and read and drank sweet lime sodas most of the day and at one point watched a girl in a bikini in the sea getting upset with some young Indian guys who were taking photos of her swimming.  She started shouting at them and some other Indian guys came over and started a fist fight with the first group.  If I'd been close enough I would have gone over and told the girl she asked for it really... nudity of any sort (just simply having bare shoulders is offensive to Indians) is disrespectful to Indian culture and for the young guys who are not used to seeing bare flesh, of course they are going to be curious and not know that women exposing flesh is not meant to be an invitation to oggle!
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/dynamite_dinah/5/1205423820/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/dynamite_dinah/5/1205423820/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/dynamite_dinah/5/1205423820/tpod.html Thu, 03 Apr 2008 12:14:00 -0400 Back in Mother India for a bumpy ride through Karnataka

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Udupi, India

I reluctantly left the tranquility of Honey Valley Estate early that morning and the jeep painfully made its way down the track with the dog running all the way down with us - he even stayed with me for a whole hour until the bus came even though his owner had taken the jeep back up the hill - so it's true dogs are (wo)man's best friend!  There were no seats on the bus back to Madikeri so I hung on for dear life.  Then followed a 4.5 hour agonising ride on another bus on a very bad road where I had a great view from the front seat of every pothole as the bus wound its way down the mountainside at for the whole 120km journey.  At the destination of Mangalore, a large town on the coast, I just switched buses again to take one to Udupi on the main coastal road which was full of traffic, mostly goods carriers which plough the main arteries of India as every other vehicle overtakes them hooting loudly.  The road was also being dug up, so I closed my eyes so I couldn't see the oncoming trucks and the inches of space between us and them.  Eventually we arrived at Udupi and after 8 hours of travelling, I was wiped out with my skin thick with grime.I found a hotel with 24 hour hot water and scrubbed myself for a good 20 minutes - it was bliss!  Udupi is famous for being the home of South Indian cooking, especially for inventing the dosa and my meal at Woodlands restaurant didn't disappoint even though I was stared at by seven waiters in the empty restaurant for the entire duration of my meal!  On the way back, I bumped into some French girls I'd met at Honey Valley who were also staying in my hotel.  We went down to the temple to see the evening pooja but had missed it and I met the guide they'd used that day - Pranesh - who I arranged to show me around the next day.Udupi was stifling hot and the room was suffocating.  I was happy to get out of there for the day to meet up wtih Pranesh for breakfast.  Udupi is essentially an important temple town for Vaishnavite pilgrims who visit the Krishna temple there which is the birthplace of a Hindu saint.  The legend is that a Krishna deity turned around and allowed a low caste worshipper to enter the sanctum so now all people are allowed in.  The large temple is surrounded by 8 monastries and full of activity.  The pilgrims make massive donations to the temple from around the world, paying for the huge silver and gold temple chariots, 200 temple cows and every day thousands of people come for lunch which is provided for free.  The Lonely Planet devotes two paragraphs to this town which is a shame as it's actually very interesting.  No fear though as I had  Pranesh to show me around.  We first took a bus to see a Ganesh temple which to be honest was not worth it for the 45 minute bumpy ride (have you guessed yet how fed up I am of buses!).  Ganesh is the 'remover of all obstacles and bringer of good luck' so people bring their new cars and motorbikes to be blessed by the priests who bring sacred fire, water and coconuts to break under the vehicles!  On the bus back, Pranesh told me that he was 40 years old and his sister was married but now it was too late for him and his father was dead so no-one was taking care of marrying him off.  He said he wanted to confide in me and got rather tactile (which is a major no-no in Indian culture - well I suppose in any culture if you've only just met someone) as he told me about how he was sexually frustrated and how he masterbated in his room and wanted to go to Europe to 'experiment' but he was scared as he was inexperienced.  Believe me, I wanted the floor to swallow me up at this point and kept reminding him that he was my guide!!!! Against my better judgement, we explored the rest of the sights on his motorbike although I kept my eyes firmly shut.  We went to the little fishing village of Malpe, 5km away, where we saw boats heaving with fish mostly sardines and mackerel docking in the port and women with baskets transferring them to trucks.  Nearby some small piles of fish were being auctioned off to groups of local women to sell on at markets around the area.I made an excuse to shake off Pranesh for a few hours back in Udupi as he was doing my head in!  I picked up some emails and learnt some sad news about a family friend who had died.  In the evening, Pranesh picked me up and insisted we go to a Kali temple a few kilometres away as Friday was the day when people came, by appointment, to tell their problems to the goddess Kali (an incarnation of Shiva's wife Parvati and responsible for world order and in her form as Durga, she is the goddess of destruction and war).  A queue of people and family groups stood to tell their woes of infertility, divorce and other personal matters in earshot of everyone as the Brahamin priest 'interpreted' Kali's response/advice with some ritual pacing and shaking of holy basil leaves!This was not the end of a day of bizare sights.  We went back to the Krishna Temple just in time to see one of the massive chariots (at least 15 metres high) being pulled in a processional ceremony.  These celebrations are effectively sponsored by different benefactors to the temple and happen a couple of times a week in their honour.  The temple elephant led the procession around the temple grounds, but first a band and drummers led the deities of Krishna and Garuda out of the temple in a golden hand held chariot and they were taken up the ladder into this massive 'vehicle' - watch the videos as they show what happenned!  The chariot, looking like a hot air balloon on an ornately carved plinth, was hauled around the grounds by a 200 strong crowd of worshipers and lit by a generator which was wheeled around at the back of the procession!  Two young boys stood ceremoniously o n the plinth in a turbaned uniform and then coconuts were cracked open on the floor by the 'sponsor' family.  Half way around the circuit, the procession paused to allow the 3 meter 'demons' to dance around ahead and then a line of flares were  lit and some piece of white cloth was burned before some fireworks were set off.  Then the crowd strained to take the weight of the chariot again around the rest of the circuit and the deities were returned to the temple.  The whole thing was exciting and entrancing.That night the heavens opened and a massive storm and unseasonal rain unleashed itself on Udupi and the whole of South India.... people died in Kerala and crops were ruined across the country.  With the monsoon not due for two more months at least, climate change is really affecting people's livelihood.
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/dynamite_dinah/5/1205075280/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/dynamite_dinah/5/1205075280/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/dynamite_dinah/5/1205075280/tpod.html Thu, 03 Apr 2008 11:44:43 -0400 Back in Mother India for a bumpy ride through Karnataka

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Madikeri, India

I left early to get a bus up to Madikeri in the Coorg (Kodagu) region.  Coorg is a mountainous area home to Kodava people, animist tribes and refugee Tibetans.  It is a cool, green, lush area which some call the 'Scotland of India' and home to numerous coffee and cardamon plantations.  The bus was pretty busy and initially I had to sit at the back which is always a nightmare as every pothole of which there are thousands, jars the neck and back.  Eventually I found one nearer the front of the dilapidated bus.  Even at the front I was sandwiched between two guys for the four hour climb on the bumpy road.  I'm so pleased I'd decided not to stay in Madikeri as it was a pretty unpleasant, noisy, polluted little town.  I got a small private bus towards Kakabbe (a village with 1 little shop and chai place) which took two more hours.  The bus was packed to the rafters - imagine getting on a tube at rush hour and then multiply the density of people by two - we were sardines and I was lucky to be sharing a seat with 4 other people and several other arms, elbows and other body parts.  Nevertheless as we wound our way up the mountain doing 180 degree turns on bad roads, everyone was fairly chatty with each other!  I just put on my MP3 player and meditated through two hours of agony! The bus emptied out a bit towards the end until I actually had space to turn my head to look out of the window at the amazing views of valleys, thick forests under which the coffee was grown.  The conductor kindly grunted at me that we were at Kabina Kad Junction where I jumped off to find myself in the middle of nowhere.  There was a little cabin selling drinks and bits and bobs and twenty or so young men and a few women hanging around chatting and staring at me.  Five minutes later a jeep appeared down a track and collected me.   Ganesh (the driver) took me up the 3km dirt track for which I really should have invested in a sports bra!It was getting dark as I arrived so I could only vaguely make out the stunning landscape setting of the Honey Valley Estate, which produced coffee and has several buildings with small rooms/huts - very basic for guests.  Electricity is generated between 6pm-11pm and water available in a bucket for a few hours in the early evening.  Guests come from Bangalore and Mysore for weekends away mostly IT types and middle class families.  There are also travellers and regular visitors who return year after year from abroad to hike around the spectacular hills, forests and mountain ridges.The next morning, it was so nice to get up to peace - no traffic, no horns, no temple bells just a few dogs and the sound of the tree frogs and tribal workers on the plantation chattering happily whilst they spread out freshly picked coffee beans - red and green - on the drying floors as the sun rose.  It felt like a nice summer's day in the UK, with a lovely breeze by day and at night I even needed a couple of blankets.  It really didn't feel like India at all.  I spent the next few days lazing around all day chatting to different guests and eating great home-cooked Indian food.  The only downside was the basic accommodation and the beds were especially hard to the point that I had bruises on my thighs and legs.  Most overseas guests were travelling for several months and nearly all had been to India multiple times, like me, so I'm not the only one seduced by India's variety and madness!  I met two Indian guys who were having a weekend away.  Vikram was from an academic middle-class family in Mumbai with English as his mother tongue, he had also spent his 20s on the East coast of the USA and had been back for two years working at Ogilvy & Mather in Bangalore.  He told me that he managed a French team there who earned four to five times his salary and with three times more holiday than him.  Nevertheless, he reckoned all the opportunities lay in India to rise in the ranks even if pay was not equal.  He was there with another guy who lived in Hyderabad (although he'd spent most of his life growing up in Canada) and they were on a kind of first date!  We talked about the implications of being gay in India and there's quite a scene but it's still illegal to be caught in the 'act' over there.  Both of them were in high level jobs and had me laughing the whole time as they were culturally so plugged into the anglo-saxon culture, raving about Little Britain and all sorts of other stuff they follow on TV and internet. On one of my days at Honey Valley, I went for a 4km walk by myself with magnificent views of hills and valleys and lots of birds to spot.  Towards the end of my three days there it got more overcast and on my last night the generator cut out whilst we watched the hillside lit up by lightening and the first spots of rain fell.... not great for the coffee harvest. 
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/dynamite_dinah/5/1207582740/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/dynamite_dinah/5/1207582740/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/dynamite_dinah/5/1207582740/tpod.html Thu, 03 Apr 2008 08:12:43 -0400 Back in Mother India for a bumpy ride through Karnataka

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Shravanabelagola and Belur/Halebid, India

After a quick visit to the market for some fruit, I left the bustling town of Mysore and took a 3 hour government bus (that usually means a clapped out, rickety, dirty bus) to my next destination.  It was actually a nice journey, despite having my bag wedged under my feet.  Various vendors got on the bus to flog everything from cucumber sticks to nail clippers!  After a hot, sticky ride through beautiful scenery of palms, rice paddies and dusty villages with chickens, goats, men sitting drinking chai and women carrying washing on their heads, we approached Shravanabelagola (try saying that when you've had a few pints!).  On the rocky hill ahead I could see the head of the statue I'd come to see, poking out from a temple enclosure.  Getting off the bus in this tiny village, the guidebook was not so helpful as I searched to find the Jain Association guesthouse complex.  Finally I found it and was offered a basic room with no wash basin, grubby sheets at 135rps (about £1.50) and this seemed to be the only option available.Shravanabelagola is an important pilgrimage place for Jains (an offshoot of Hinduism) who are mostly based in North India.  Here in South India a 17.5 metre statue of Gommatheswara, sacred to Jains, was erected in AD980 which represents the saintly prince Bahubali.  I walked up the 614 rock steps cut out of a steep granite slope with fabulous views of the village tank.  Thank goodness I wore socks as it was hot, hot, hot.  At the top, I entered the tiny enclosure and was confronted with one of the tallest monolithic statues of this naked man.  His head and shoulders are disproportionate to the rest of his body and on the base there are inscriptions in ancient Kannada and Tamil.  With the evening sun casting its shadow on the statue, I tried to imagine the ceremony when millions of Jains around the world converge every 12 years here to pour milk, curds, saffron, ghee and gold coins over him from scaffolding erected especially for the festival.  The complex was very quiet with a few Jain worshipers and a Czech couple (the only non-Indian tourists I saw the whole time).I had a lovely thali in the one eaterie in town and went back to my sparse room to read the Luxury of Time by Jane Tomlinson and her husband which is such a moving and humbling book about her original breast cancer diagnosis and how she tackled that and the secondary cancer 10 years later and of course her determination to rise to the challenges of running the marathon and doing the triathlon.  The streets were quiet, no rickshaws beeping in this village but plenty of howling dogs all night to disturb the peace.The next day I was up at 6am for a solitary climb up to the top of the hill again, stopping to watch sunrise on the plains below and then I sat in the peaceful walled enclosure to marvel at the statue once more as the sun hit it from a different angle.  There were more visitors that morning including a Jain monk who was totally starkers as is traditional for Jain monks who are devoid of all wordly possessions and beyond feelings of modesty and shame.  Once down the bottom of the hill again, I indulged in a breakfast of a paper dosa (really huge table sized pancake type tube filled with spicy potato) and then I caught a bus to the nearby  Channarayapatna where I switched to another bus to Hassan.Arriving in Hassan, I was seriously hot, sweaty and exhausted with all the bus travel.  Hassan is a very chaotic, noisy town with nothing of interest for the traveller, so I didn't bother to get my bearings and just got a rickshaw to a hotel recommended in my guide book.  They said they only had double rooms available, so when I threatened to take my business elsewhere, a single room miraculously became free!  Hotel Survarna Regency turned out to be a good deal with TV, good fan, 24 hour hot water and a shower that actually worked.  Not bad for £5.  I decided I was too knackered to take the three cheap buses to the nearby temples in Belur and Halebid (the reason I'd come to Hassan) an hour or so away, so I splashed out on a driver for 900 rps for the afternoon.Well I've seen some temples in my time with the erotic Khajuraho temples being some of my favourite, but these Hoysalan temples were seriously phenomenal.  I got a guide at Belur who showed me round the Vishnu temple and I burnt my feet on the hot stones as I gazed in awe at the sculpturally exquisite and detailed carvings made of sandstone over every inch of the 12th century structure.  It was built to commemorate the victory of the Hoysalas over the Chola rulers and the images of all the Hindu gods, dancers and animals were a testament to the skill of the sculpters at the time.  Halebid was quieter and not as well preserved but still beautiful and set in nice grounds.
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/dynamite_dinah/5/1204636020/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/dynamite_dinah/5/1204636020/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/dynamite_dinah/5/1204636020/tpod.html Mon, 17 Mar 2008 09:20:34 -0400 Back in Mother India for a bumpy ride through Karnataka

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Mysore, India

Earplugs are of no use in India as driving here involves a liberal usage of horns, so there is rarely a moment in the day or night when there is quiet.  I got up early but well rested after a heavy day of travel yesterday and got an autorickshaw to the Lalbagh gardens, which I'd read were India's version of Kew Gardens.  Whoever wrote that hadn't been to Kew then, as apart from a few old trees, some bad bonsai sculptures and rose gardens which were locked up behind railings (they probably worried that people would pick the roses or leave the ubiquitous plastic bags found everywhere on the floor and would kill off this space!) there was not a lot to see.  I finally found a tuk-tuk driver who would put on his meter to take me to the City Market but the traffic was so heavy and the pollution so overwhelming that on sight of the market, I asked the driver to keep going and take me back to my appartment to get my bag and get the hell out of Bangalore.I got to the train station a few hours before the next train to Mysore and fought my way to the front of the queue with my little form (now I know the bureaucratic system to book a seat here!) to get my train reservation.  I always try to travel 2nd class be it on day time trains or the sleeper carriages on overnight trains (some of which keep going for 2-4 days!).  I find I meet more interesting people and after they get over the curiousity - in less touristy areas - of seeing a Westerner on a train and a single woman too, they smile and I nod or wiggle my head back to those who don't speak English and those who do speak English ask very intrusive questions, share snacks, borrow my book, lend out their newspapers which all produces a very congenial atmosphere for travel.  I also like the open windows and sitting at the open doorways to watch the beautiful countryside.  It's especially lovely in South India which is more fertile and green than in the North.  I spent a pleasant 3 hours on the train to Mysore as we sped past miles of rice paddies and palm tree groves.Arriving at the station we all marched down the platform onto the tracks to cross over to the exit and I got a tuk tuk to a hotel recommended in my book.  Dasaprakash is large basic hotel opening out onto the courtyard.  I was given a cell like room with a hard single bed (all beds in India are rock-like), off-white walls with lots of dirty marks on them, a table and chair and a tiny bathroom area with a shower that drizzled hot water from 7-9am every morning.  It was pretty standard and with a door that I could lock from the outside with my own padlock and lots of Indian families in surrounding rooms usually 3-4 to a room (Indian families travel or make pilgrimages in large extended family groups), it was quiet enough and set back from the busy street.  I found that I was slipping fairly easily back into Indian life and after two days even the room seemed acceptable.My first stop, as I surveyed the usual chaotic streets, was to a fabric shop with reams and reams of every colour of sari you can imagine.  Mysore is known for its silk production as well as sandalwood and incense, but my mission was to get a salwar kameez made from the cotton samples they had - these are usually ready for stitching by a tailor.  I love the synthetic and silk salwars but as a sweaty Westnerner I knew from experience that I'd suffocate in one of these and cotton was the best route to go.  I chose a green one with gold trimmings and the in-house tailor measured me up and I was told to come back the next morning to pick it up.  This is one area where Indians do work with speed!Hanging out in restaurants is not really an Indian thing, they just tend to eat and go even if it's a family meal in a restaurant.  You also would never see a woman eating alone in a restaurant or even a snack place.  As it was getting dark, I thought I'd find a place to eat with a family section, which is less intimidating and came across Indra Cafe's Paras which was heaving with locals and always a good sign of good, safe food.  Upstairs in the family section, I ignored the stares and two Indian ladies beckoned me to sit opposite them as there was no table free.  They had a few English words and tried to convey the difference between all the different snacks, some I knew such as dosas and chaat and puris but there were four or five of each type.  After my aloo chaat, I sat and read.  Again, it's a bit of a strange sight for the locals to see someone hanging around reading in an eaterie or anywhere really to just to pass the time.  Another foreigner arrived and he tried to explain to the waiter that he didn't want anything too spicy as he was feeling a little ill.  I decided to shock the onlookers and wander over to his table and join him.  We giggled as we were sure that everyone there was commenting on the looseness of us Westerners - a woman sitting with a single man who she'd only just met.... horror of horrors!  It turned out that this guy was French and we chatted in French and English for a few hours as people came and went several times all around us.  Fabrice was from Rennes and he was travelling for several months around India.  We arranged to meet up early the next day to take in one of the nearby sights.I met with Fabrice at 7am to take the bus to Chaumundi Hill which towers 1062m above Mysore with a Shiva temple at the top with a seven storey gopuram.  There were lots of monkeys swinging on the electricity lines and steps preening themselves and each other or cuddled up in pairs asleep.  There were already a lot of people up at the temple and as it was a special holiday, the children were all off school.  The holiday was Shivaratri, which I originally understood to be celebrating the birth of Shiva (hence the mistake in my video) but have subsequently found out is actually the one day of the year when Shiva is said to sleep, so people come to bring offerings and also stay up all night queuing to visit Shiva temples around the country and singing, drumming in the temple complexes to keep watch over him.  Having taken the bus up the hill, we decided to walk down the 1000 steps to the bottom and on our way down we met lots of people coming up in pilgrimage barefooted, some people even stopping to touch and kiss each step with their fingers as they climbed up!  We met two girls who stopped us and spoke excellent English (with strong Indian accents of course).  They were IT engineers just finishing their studies and applying for good jobs in Bangalore.  We talked about the marriages their families were trying to arrange for them with men of similar backgrounds, earning at least 60,000 rupees a month (that's about 750 pounds) which is lot in India.  Money is everything here, possibly now becoming more important than caste.  The dowry system still exists even though both this and the caste system were banned I think a number of years ago.Exhausted in the heat by the time we got to the bottom of the hill, we got a rickshaw back to town and had a south Indian thali at the restaurant at my hotel.In the afternoon, I went to the beautiful and vast Maharajah's Palace.  The old one had burnt down in 1897 and this one was designed by an English architect with lots of stained glass, mirrors and mosaics much of it sourced from Europe.  As I wandered around the palace, I came across a big group of girls and teachers from a college near Madurai in Tamil Nadu, they said hello and urged me to sit with them and then we spent half an hour doing group pictures which they begged me to send to them as having a picture with a Western lady was somewhat of a novelty.  They were lovely and wanted me to go on the rest of their trip with them!My next stop was the large Mysore market and I wandered along the rows of fruit, flower, vegetables and bangle stalls, past the vendors of coloured powders used in pujas and at Holi and the aluminium pots and cooking utensil section.  I love markets and this one was especially vibrant.I met Fabrice for dinner and we stopped en route by the palace which as luck would have it was all lit up for Shivaratri, which made my day as normally they only light it up on Sunday evening for an hour.  It was magical.  This vast palace and the surrounding walled areas were lit with what looked like millions of bulbs - it was like a scene out of Disneyland.  There were also queues snaking for at least a kilometer around the palace grounds as people waited in line (the only time you see anything resembling a queue) to visit the Shiva temple there - they queued most of the night!  Fabrice and I on the other hand went off for a very nice dinner in the Park Lane Hotel surrounded by a whole load of Westerners.... so I permitted myself to eat my curry with my left hand as no Indians were really there to watch and be offended!The drumming in the temples went on all night for Shivaratri and that along with a mozzie which decided to have a snack on my back, I got up in a ratty mood.  I made up for this with a lovely breakfast of Pongal which is a mushy rice type thing with curry leaves and mustard seeds, spring onions and spices - along with Upma which is a similar thing made from wheat kind of couscous substance, these are my favourite Indian breakfast foods.  With only two changes of clothes still, luckily it was so hot that my clothes had dried within a few hours overnight in the bathroom and I made an early start finding the bus to Srirangapatnam.  This fort area is on an island in the Cauvery River and was home to Tipu Sultan and his father Hyder Ali, who ruled much of South India during 18th Century.  The British defeated them at the end of the century in a bloody battle.  I negotiated with a tuk tuk driver to take me to all the sites; the Sri Ranganathaswamy Tample where Brahmin priests where doing poojas in the inner sanctum; the twin tower mosque built by Tipu  Sultan and his Summer palace, Daria Dautat Bagh set in beautiful gardens.  Every inch of the interiors of this palace was adorned with murals showing life at court and Tipu's battles with the British.  The final stop was at the onion-domed Gumbaz where Hyder Ali, Tipu Sultan and his wife were entombed.Another hot bus ride back to Mysore and a few hours later I took a bus to Brindavan Gardens.  The 45 minute drive nearly sent me over the edge, despite the freezing air-conditioned luxury bus, as with luxury you get speakers and with speakers you get ear-piercing Bollywood music.  The gardens awash with numerous fountains and water features are set below the River Cauvery dam and used as a backdrop to many Bollywood movie musical numbers (ironically after my little bus ride).  After a juice in a very posh but deserted hotel, I made a swift exit before they piped in film tunes to accompany the illuminated fountains at dusk.  On the way back the bus stopped at an Infosys office in the middle of nowhere and suddenly everyone was talking English around me instead of the local language of Kannada.
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/dynamite_dinah/5/1204540680/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/dynamite_dinah/5/1204540680/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/dynamite_dinah/5/1204540680/tpod.html Mon, 17 Mar 2008 08:07:17 -0400 Back in Mother India for a bumpy ride through Karnataka

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Bangalore, India

I'm back in the land of wide welcoming smiles, curious stares, indescribable beauty and incomprehensible insanity (to Western eyes).  Drawn to this vast subcontinent for a third time, I can't help being mesmerised and cradled by the kindness, madness, colourfulness and sensory overload that makes India so unique and alive.I've been here for a few weeks now and had some hesitation about writing this travelogue, partly because I seem to be constantly on the move and internet places have been hard to come by and stifling hot.  Another reason is that I'm not sure I'm seeing India in the same way as I used to.  The things I found fascinating or crazy or frustrating on my first two trips are just normal to me now and I wonder what I can share with you that will give you an insight into Indian life in 2008.  The idea behind this visit to India was to take a more leisurely look mostly around one state - Karnataka - after crossing five states in a month two years ago and the year before.  However, many of the places I am visiting involve taking a number of local buses which go about 10 miles an hour down unsealed roads, so whilst the distances I am travelling are relatively small in Indian terms, it feels like I'm travelling long distances for hours on end and I'm getting a fair shaking up on the dusty roads of this state.So back to when I set off from home, taking a last look at the orderly, relatively clean, peaceful Sunday streets of cold, damp London.  Sitting on the tube as everyone in the carriage avoided eye-contact with each other, I contemplated the scene in 15 hours time, when I'd be in the midst of what a first-timer in India might call chaos - dirt, dust, rubbish, endless tuk tuks chugging by hoping to pick up a fare, colourful saris, cows, men spitting red betel juice on the uneven excuse for a pavement, people interacting and only too happy to make eye-contact at length!  Now I know my friends and family think I'm totally mad, but I travel with the absolute minimum of luggage.  After the last few days, I wonder how anyone travels with any more than I have as I wedge the bag under my feet on a crowded bus and then later drag it up a hill to find an ATM in a hot dusty street dodging the oncoming traffic consisting of several motorbikes, tuk tuks and a random goat and cow with big horns.  All I take is a small holdall on wheels that could be taken on as hand-baggage were it not for the little bottles of shampoo, laundry detergent, mosquito spray  and of course the all important Swiss pen-knife.  The latter is my most important travel companion, along with a pair of flip flops for showering in dirty bathrooms, alcohol based hand cleanser in constant use, a clean pillow case, travel towel, washing line, mozzie net, probiotic capsules, grapefruit seed extract (to kill bad bacteria) and of course my camera and South India Lonely Planet book (plus a few pages ripped from my old Footprint guide - which is even better).  Other than that I just have one set of western clothes and one salwar kameez (three piece Indian outfit) and matching bangles from my last trip and some undies, trainers and a pair of walking sandals.  I'm a low maintenance girl!The flight to Bangalore was totally full.  I spent the night flight perusing my guide book (still not sure of my itinerary) and watching films on BA's great new flight entertainment system (lots more choice) including the gory, somewhat horrific No Country For Old Men.  I suspect many of the Indian people on the flight were on their way back from courses or doing business in the UK.  Judging by the gadgets they all had - MP3 player, latest Nokia phone, laptops - they were involved in some way in the outsourcing service sector boom which Bangalore is leading in India's economic growth.  Next to me were a couple of people travelling with a group of 30 from the World Economic Forum, visiting the Infosys compound for a week.  Infosys employs something like 65,000 people as is the hub of much of the outsourcing revolution.  Headquartered in a suburb of Bangalore in 32 hectares of manicured grass, clean roads with golf buggies, a handful of hotels and residences, the shiny glass buildings tell a different story of India's development to the India I was planning on visiting. Leaving the clean, cool sanctury of the efficient passport control, now a seasoned India traveller I knew the safest way into town at 5.30am would be by pre-paid taxi.  I told the driver to take me to a little backpacker hotel just so he didn't try to 'sell' a hotel room to me.  I actually didn't have anywhere booked for the entire trip including my first night.  The hotel staff were snoozing as I arrived and showed me to a room from which I recoiled slightly and decided not to take.  The funny thing is, this room was better than most of the ones I have taken since in small towns but I think that first night in India, however many times you've visited, is a bit of culture shock from the West.  Obviously, you can easily do 5* luxury (which Indian's lay on with great panache) but I tend to 'backpack' when I'm here as it's cheaper, less sterile in every sense and you get to meet more travellers and everyday Indian people.I waited in the hotel until it got light and then as only a crazy tourist can do (or may it's only me who is crazy), I trundled along the haphazard pavements of the MG Road pulling my little holdall in and out of pot holes to the startled looks of the few Bangaloreans already setting up their chai stalls or off to a hard day's work.  I got totally lost as my little map was of no help and none of the English speaking contingent seemed to be up and about to ask the way.  I was heading for the Richmond Road end of the city which was meant to be quieter and had a few serviced appartments which would supposedly be better value than the astronomically priced (by any standards) mid-range hotels in Bangalore.  The tuk-tuk drivers didn't have a clue what I was asking so I just kept going as the rush hour started to build and the deafening beeping of horns and roaring of motorbikes and auto-rickshaws started to spoil my meander through the city.  So finally, this weary, jet-lagged traveller found the hidden-away place she was looking for two hours later - yes I know I am mad - in the hope that there would be a room free.  Thankfully there was even though it was actually only marginally better than the room I'd seen earlier but this was three times the price about 30 pounds which would buy me nearly a week's worth of hotel rooms in other parts of India!  Casa Piccolo is based in a nice part of town full of Victorian era villas and run by some French woman who has a load of appartments dotted around four or five streets in the area.  I was so desperate to rest my feet and take a shower that the offer of on demand hot water was too appealing to turn down. After freshening up, I went for a walk around the main centre of Bangalore (again!) and like most of the big cosmopolitain cities but maybe more so, it was filled with a mix of the usual haphazard Indian stalls and activity but there were also streets hosting giant posters advertising the latest phones, designer brands and fast food.  It seemed strange to be wandering along the main roads and seeing boutiques and stores like Benneton and Hard Rock Cafe.  In contrast to the more conservative face of India, where women are pretty covered up in sari's or salwar kameez and men wear crisp shirts and where shows of affection between men and women are taboo, these places were frequented by jean clad, Westernised young couples, arm in arm and speaking English with the latest mobile phone glued to their ear.  Welcome to the new, if not still exclusive, side of India.I spent the rest of the day sorting out getting an Indian SIM card before meeting with Arun who used to be the marketing manager at LogicaCMG in India during my days doing the global marketing role.  We'd talked many times on the phone over 5 years and it was nice to finally meet him face to face and get an insight into the more 'professional' white collar lifestyle in India, where it is not unusual to have a cook and a nice appartment and go out for dinner once a week.  Indians work hard even in this business world - 12 hours days are the norm - but at least they get a weekend free unlike most of the population, although holidays are virtually non-existant - about 8 days on average and if you get sick after a few weeks you are more than likely to lose your job!So that was the end of my very long first day in Bangalore and I'd pretty much decided that the big city was not for me and I was keen to leave as soon as possible and make tracks to smaller, more interesting towns and villages.
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