Tuesday, May 26, 2009

The Journey

countless beds in hostels, tents, buses, trains, and bungalows
thousands of photos
hundreds of mango and banana shakes
days of poker
dozens of UNESCO world heritage sites
dozens and dozens of monkeys
a few good friends, and a million interesting people
cold showers, dirty feet, sunburns and bites and sights so awesome
that they were spiritual
8 countries
143 daysWe have no idea what the future holds, but after all that, what we do know (in the wise words of my students), is that we are the lucky dogs.

Mumbai Goodbye

From Goa, we got on the train one more time for a trip up the coastline, drinking sweet chai from the chai wallahs all the way. We arrived at CST, formerly known as Victoria station, and walked the 3 blocks to our tall and skinny hotel. We only had two days in Mumbai, not enough time to tackle the city properly, and so we decided to leave it largely for another trip. Instead we walked the neighborhoods around our hotel, enjoyed the big beautiful buildings, sent postcards, bought gifts, ate good food, and did our best to enjoy the last moments of our trip together.

Getting to the airport for our 11pm flight was only supposed to take an hour and a half... it took us nearly 3 hours in hellacious traffic, and we arrived to long security lines and the sinking feeling that we'd miss our flight. One last close-call border crossing, which in retrospect seems appropriate. Needless to say, we made it.

Goa

We had planned to take an overnight bus from Hospet, a bigger and much less lovely town outside of Hampi, to Goa province. We had carved out a few days here, at the end of our trip, for a beach vacation. A single overnight bus was headed west from Karnataka and then would make the run up the coast in Goa, stopping at several towns along the way. We were originally planning to go all the way north to Arambol, but after chatting with another couple sharing our bunk space, we were convinced to stop first in the south, at Palolem. A miserable handful of bruising and dusty hours later, the bus screeched to a halt and we were bundled out into a cold and pitch-dark night. It was 4:30am, and we were somewhere on the side of the road.

The couple who had convinced us to come to Palolem mentioned that a beachside bar was open 24-7 so we grabbed a ride there and parked ourselves at a table with our packs and some juice, and some nice German folks, waiting for the sun to rise. Ben went down to the water to make sure we were really at the beach, and then made friends with the young Indian guys working the bar; I tried to keep my eyes open. Finally at long last the sky began to lighten and we walked down the beach looking for just the right place to stay for a few nights. We found it in the nice family who ran the Co-co Huts and rooms where we paid $5 a night for a tiny shack of woven mats and mosquito netting up on stilts above the sand, and surrounded by palm trees. It was perfect.We had beautiful sunsets (of course), and romantic fresh seafood meals on the beach.Ben played pick up volleyball everywhere we went...& just in case we forgot we were in India:We spent a day on buses traversing Goa province before settling in at Arambol for our last few days of paradise. Pierce and Hannah met back up with us so we could spend two last days together, celebrating the vagabond life :)

Hampi, Karnataka

The landscape around Hampi is full of ruins set in a fantastical landscape of lush green and wild boulder formations. We were a little ruin-ed out by this point in the trip, though, so we spent our first day just soaking it all in, and the second day exploring the area by motorbike. To get to our hostel, we would take a little ferry boat across the river, to and from the main town.
Here was the view from the porch swing outside our door:We explored the main temple in town, dedicated to Shiva, which was full of mischievous monkeys. We learned a lot from our guide about the architecture and culture of the empires who had based themselves in and around Hampi over the centuries.The temple complex is ancient, more than 1300 years old, predating many of the other ruins in the area which are remnants of the Vijayanagara empire. In the temple was an elephant, named Laksmi (after the goddess of wealth), who would give you a blessing, a "kiss", in exchange for a coin.When we rented a motor bike for the day, we were able to make a big loop through the area, checking out ruins both royal and religious. Here's just a sampling of all the things we saw that day.
The royal elephant stables:An underground temple to Shiva:Many adorable school children:Locals going about their daily lives, dwarfed by the landscape.Many statues with barbie proportions:Hampi was a visual feast, and we ate and slept well besides. It held a different vibe than anything we'd run into in the North, and we soaked that up along with the sunny skies.

Travel Logistics: Heading South via Kolkata and Bangalore

Our train arrived late to Kolkata (Calcutta), which was a shame because we only had a day and a half there to start with. To escape the crush of taxis and touts at the station, we grabbed our
packs and dashed to a ferry boat which took us across the river and left us off near the district where we could find accommodations. Near being the operative, and, as it turns out, relative, word. We walked many blocks, got some round about directions from time to time, and eventually made it to the Sudder Street neighborhood we were looking for. The hostels, there, however, were pretty bad, and expensive! There was also a bomb squad searching outside one of them, which was a little concerning. We stuck our heads into many before finding a rickety old building with little rooms available. Our room was a skinny little spot up on the roof. That night we walked a few blocks to a very modern area where there were big business buildings and nice restaurants, and we treated ourselves to a really good meal.

Ironically, Ben got sick that night. 3 weeks in India and the night we go out for a fancy meal, his stomach rebels.

The next morning, while Ben rested, I went with Pierce and Hannah to check out the Victoria Memorial, a huge marble building that looks like Victorian England meets India. Accurate, I suppose. There is some sort of museum inside, but we just checked out the grounds, as we wanted to get back to our neighborhood in time to visit the Indian Museum. Our walk to and from the Victoria Memorial took us through the Maidan, a huge, open stretch of land through the middle of the city. There are sports stadiums and parks, but mostly just open grass with a few trails. Walking through it, we passed pick-up sports games, hungry kids, businessmen, and shepards with flocks of goats. It was a surreal and enlightening walk. The Indian Museum also held a mish-mash of culture for us... art ancient and art modern, fossils, geology, and a hall of cultural dioramas that were fascinating and extremely un-PC.

After our morning of touristing, we returned to the hostel to fetch our bags and Ben. It was time to head to the airport. Kolkata has a fascinating history and the guidebook described it as a cultural center that deserved weeks of visiting to truly soak up. Regretfully for us, not this trip.

Our flight south was smooth, and we arrived in Bangalore with no complications. One long and confusingly expensive taxi ride later, though, we realized that a new and more distant airport (which we flew into) had been built since our Lonely Planet -- the most recent edition -- had been published. Ah well. Too smooth of a travel day would have been boring. We all made it in one piece to comfortable beds and hot-water showers... our last for the next two weeks!

The next day we scooted around town in heavy Bangalore traffic, looking for train tickets. After some sticky, smoggy hours, we scored some for that night, an overnight ride that would take us to beautiful Hampi.

Sunday, May 24, 2009

Varanasi -- that's Benares to you if you're my parents' age

Varanasi, a holy of holy cities on the Ganges river, was where we landed after an overnight train trip from Agra. Arriving a few hours late, we stopped first thing to buy onward train tickets through the providential tourist quota -- it had been impossible for us to secure the tickets online or at another station. It took us some time to meet up with the man from our hostel, but once we finally did, he whisked us away via auto-rickshaw, through the modern city and up to the outskirts of the labyrinthine alleys of the old city. We then followed him through twisting alleys, around cows and goats and dogs and carts and kids and laborers and shops.When we got to it at last, we found our hostel -- 6 floors of cheap cells and odd colors and a rooftop cafe -- perched a few alleys back from Manikarnika, the main burning ghat. This ghat was piled with firewood, and at all hours, wandering the neighborhood, you might hear the rhythmic chanting and hurried footsteps of a funeral party bearing a loved one's body, covered in a sheet and flowers, down to the waterside. We pressed ourselves to dirty stone walls and tried to offer respect by not staring when these processions rushed by us.

Early the next morning we took a boat along the river before sunrise to see the ghats begin to fill with people and pilgrims offering puja.
We spent that day and the next mostly wandering. It was the best people watching you could imagine. The Ganges is the lifeblood of Varanasi, despite major pollution, and it washes the clothing, food, and people of the city. On the many ghats which line the river, boys and men play pick-up cricket, goats and cows sun themselves, clothing dries, people mourn or make offerings, and trade is busily plied. On our last night, we ate at a restaurant that had live music, two men playing the sitar and tabla (drums). It was mesmerizing.

When it came time to move on from Varanasi, none of us were ready to leave, and indeed, for a while we thought it would never happen! After a stressful race into the train station and search for our platform, we found that our train was delayed and delayed and delayed.... we played cards for 5 hours, taking turns standing outside on the platform to listen for announcements while dodging families of rats and the occasional cow who had wandered through the waiting hall and out onto the platforms. Luckily, soon after our little snack shop shut down, and only some 6 hours after its original ETA, our train pulled in. We were on our way to Kolkata where we had found the cheapest flights South, to Bangalore.

Tuesday, May 19, 2009

Taj Mahal

Day 2 in Agra brought us views of the Taj Mahal by both sunrise and sunset, terrorist attacks in Mumbai, and an electricity brownout that left us with an infuriating dearth of news.

Our early-morning visit to the Taj was wonderous. There was a thick mist pouring over the back walls, muffling sounds and generally making things eerie and beautiful. Really, all I can do is try to show you.Even after leaving the enclosure we could enjoy. This was the view from the rooftop of our hostel:When we got back to the hotel, we were able to catch about an hour of news before we lost electricity. The Indian news was in shock over what was happening, but from the start they were raising a hue and cry against Pakistan, something we found a little frightening and reminiscent of the days following 9/11. There was little reaction from most Indians whom we met that day, but throughout the week, a few more people mentioned to us, with either sadness or anger, the "trouble in Mumbai" and we have seen remnants of vigils here and there on street corners throughout the last few weeks. There continues to be a lot of anger and grief covered in the news, but as travelers passing through we have not seen much of it.

That evening we took a ride through the fort area of town before ending up across the dirty trickle of water which backs the Taj, and catching our final views of the monument as the sun went down in a smoggy sky.The Taj Mahal is the most photogenic building I have ever been near -- it is impossible to take a bad photo and it just seems to glow with its own loveliness. The others were more or less moved, but I believe it is the most beautiful building I've ever seen and I felt totally at peace contemplating it.

Fatehpur Sikri

After we successfully arrived in Agra and checked into our hotel, we caught a bus out of town to visit Fatehpur Sikri, which had been a Mughal capital for all of 14 years, 4 and a half centuries ago. They built it on land prone to drought, so the palace and fortifications were abandoned before too much living in them, or a good old fashioned sacking, could create too much wear and tear; it's beautifully preserved.

The bus left us off in the marketplace of the small, living, town of Fatehpur Sikri. After picking our way through some tiny, fly and refuse-filled alleys with adorably dimpled children squatting over the open sewer, we reached the hillside where this magnificent mosque, the Jama Masjid, rose above us.

After checking out the mosque we wandered through some abandoned ruins behind the hillside, including this tower covered in faux elephant tusks which now sits, somewhat forlornly, in the middle of a field.

Finally we walked along the ridge to enter the royal complex itself.In that last, fabulous, room, the king would stand on the center platform and have four experts stand on each elevated corner platform and he'd debate them all in whatever their subject of expertise was!

On the bus ride back to Agra we saw peacocks wandering the fields like a few stray chickens might on a farm back home.

Friday, May 15, 2009

Bundi

From Udaipur, we were looking for a smaller town to relax in for a few days, something more like Pushkar, and a break from the fairly punishing pace we'd kept up, with exhausting overnight buses whisking us [conveniently] from one town to the next. We settled on Bundi, where we arrived in the pitch black of a chilly 5am. After knocking on a lot of doors, we found rooms in a unique guest house run by a mom and her two daughters, extremely unusual in India.

Bundi didn't have quite the peace and loveliness of Pushkar, but it was a good stop nonetheless, a better taste of small-town India than we've seen anywhere else I think. We strolled through the market areas of the newer side of town, and around the small lake in the older part of town which was overlooked by its own castle and fort perched dramatically on the hillside above town. We followed the antics of the ubiquitous monkeys, did laundry, played cards, and generally slowed our pace for a few days.

On our last afternoon, Ben and I made it up to the castle and had a great tour of the buildings and old art-gallery, painted directly onto the walls of a building the king had specially set aside for housing the works of arts he commissioned there. To the right is the imposing front entrance, the elephant gate.






Above is the room where the king would have met with emissaries. There is a little room behind a carved screen where the queen could have listened in so as to provide private advice later.Above is the central courtyard of the palace. On the left you can see several platforms... the lower one would have been used to mount horses or camels, and the higher one to mount war elephants!Above is an interior chamber, and you can see how much damage has been done to the murals by people trying to scrape off the gold leaf. The palace has only recently been protected, and it is unclear whether it will be restored in the future.
This painting has a cool trompe l'oeil effect... check out where the animals' heads are locked in combat!
This second painting is one of a long series depicting that womanizing trickster, Krishna. Here he has charmed the dresses off all the court ladies and hung them up in the tree!

That evening we embarked on our first train trip of the India leg, a little apprehensive as we were still unsure about the intricacies of the India Rail System. Our tickets said "RAC" which means that you are guaranteed a spot on the train, but you don't know what spot, or where, or whether you'll have a berth to yourself, or have to share. The train arrived an hour and a half late, and we could not find a soul who might have worked there and who could help direct us. We wandered up and down the platform for about 5 minutes, at which point the train began to pull away and we leapt into the first open doorway that passed by. It was a second class, wooden chair car. The people there were extremely nice, clearing a bench for us and wobbling their heads in welcome. After an hour the train made another, longer, stop and we were able to find someone who worked there and search his list for our names. Despite our concern, the system worked perfectly, we had berths at last, and eventually settled down to sleep the rest of the trip through in a sleeper car, the main travel class for Indians, and our main means of transport for the next week or so. It has 6 berths to the left of the aisle, and 3 to the right. To the left you can see what they would look like, with the middle bunk up for daytime, or down for sleeping. (Train photos from seat61.com/India)