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This site contains the original blog posts from my trip to India and Nepal in 2009-10.
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Happy Travels!
A short note, for the time being, now that I’m back in Britain. I’ve had another little culture shock readjusting to…well, life.
But so as not to sound like a sad lament at being back, I thought I’d take a minute to point out a few things about Britain, besides the obvious, that are my ‘reasons to be cheerful’. So, in no particular order:
- Tap water you can drink without poisoning yourself
- Hot running water (a revelation!)
- Rubbish collections
- Pavements
- Toilets that flush
- The absence of emaciated stray dogs on the streets
- Road signs
- Cornish pasties
- Marmite
- Coffee that doesn’t taste like dirty dishwater
- And by no means least – music! I left my iPod at home – that was a big mistake.
There isn’t really enough time, or space, to tell you what it is about India that I liked so much, the rest of my blog will have to speak for itself. It’s too big, there’s too much; three months barely scratches the surface, and that’s a testament to how much it has to offer. I was incredibly lucky with the people I met there, all of whom shaped my trip in some way, all for the better. Special thanks to Yaeli, Neta, Brian, Stan, Scott, Becca, Mick, Geoff, Beth, Suni, Rachel, Tomas, Maren, Nadja and Cyril. “We Have Been Here!”
I was surprised how differently I felt about Mumbai on my second visit, though, and in the three months between my stays there, nothing had changed – nothing at all. Except me.
I’ll finish this post off by quoting my friend Suni, from Jaipur
‘Do you like India, James?’ he asked me
‘I love India’ I told him, without hesitation
‘Oh but you cannot love India, you must only like it’
‘Why?’ I asked him ‘why do you say that?’
‘Because India is mine’ he said, smiling, ‘and I don’t share’
Sorry, my friend. You’re going to have to.
Time goes by, so slowly, according to the Righteous Brothers. Sorry, brothers, you were wrong. Time flies, it didn’t wait for me, it didn’t stand still, and it’s my last day in India.
Mumbai seems less overwhelming the second time around – a sure sign that I’ve been desensitized to certain things over the past three months. I can now say that I like the city. And after Goa, where the humidity reached 90 per cent one day, the sea breeze is welcome. The humidity stopped bothering me a while ago, but you can forget doing anything more energetic than standing up when it’s at its highest. Or maybe, if you’re feeling really adventurous, walking a few hundred yards.
Still, after eighty-something days, I’ve figured that I covered just short of eight thousand kilometres, and spent two hundred and forty hours in transit. Amazingly, the transport within India has cost me about eighty pounds. Clearly that kind of money goes a long way here, quite literally.
It ends on a high note. Goa has proven the reasons for its popularity, and it’s easy to see why those that are able to return year after year, many of whom spend the entire season, from October to March, in the area. In fact it’s probably just as well I left it until last to visit – I might not have got much further, otherwise.
A few days ago I went on a day trip up the coast to Arambol, which has a similar feel to Chapora, except with a long sandy beach there, which Chapora lacks. For that reason, it’s a bit busier. The day my friend Becca and I went there, which happened to be one of the hotter days, coincided with the solar eclipse. As the moon moved in front of the sun, though, a big black cloud – the only one I’ve seen in months – moved in front of the moon, as well, and I thought by the time the cloud had passed the eclipse would be over. Happily, it lasted about two hours, more than enough time to half blind myself staring at the sky. There’s a nice freshwater lake near the beach at Arambol, too, with sunbathers leathering their skin nicely around its banks. And a jungle-like mountainside full of hippies, smoking, making fires, and listening to music.
The weekend turned in to a bit of a party…the parties are easy to find in that particular corner of the country. You even find the odd cow trying to join the festivities; one walked right up to the open doorway of the bar we were in, and peered over the threshold, looking for scraps. I slapped it on the back, and asked it - very politely - to please go away. Or words to that effect.
Unfortunately, the stupid, fat cow didn’t speak any English, so it just stood there, and stared at me with massive black eyes, as if I was the idiot. It soon got chased away by an emaciated dog, which was no doubt staking its own claim to the scraps on offer.
Saturday night saw a collection of musicians at the guesthouse who had an impromptu session there. It was great fun. Last night consisted of my final overnight bus journey, which wasn’t great fun. But I’m here now, waiting until it’s check-in time for my flight. I hate the waiting, and now want the journey over with as soon as possible. If I could have the last three months all over again though, I would; and that’s about the biggest compliment I can pay India at the moment, as I’ve just fallen victim to a robbery – someone stole my pen* – and I’m having to hurry through this particular blog, on the spot. I hope the pen runs out immediately.
It’s a little over 24 hours til I arrive back in London now, and everything that goes with it: the winter chill, gainful employment (I hope), and, presumably, the re-introduction of meat to my diet, which for one reason or another, I’ve skipped entirely since I’ve been here.
As my friend Brian said to me as I said my goodbyes to everyone:
‘A lesser man would panic, but you’ll be OK’.
*NB – I’ve since realised that my pen had not in fact been stolen; it was in my pocket the whole time. I’m sorry, India; I was wrong.
After a few nights on Kudle Beach in Gokarna I decided it was time for a change of scenery, so I made my way to the train station to get up to Goa. The station there is a barren strip of concrete in the middle of a field, and the minutes passed like hours, but the journey itself was plain sailing, and I spent most of it hanging out of the door for the breeze, and the view.
A motorbike taxi and three local buses in succession got me from Margao to Anjuna, now a tourist hot-spot well known for it’s nightlife, long sandy beach, and police raids on the local bars and clubs.
The commercial set-up in town is a little off-putting, with what seems like hundreds of hawkers trying to flog you anything and everything under the sun. No, I don’t want to buy a towel, or a throw, or a necklace, or a pair of sunglasses, or a fridge magnet. I haven’t got a fridge. After two nights I moved to Chapora. The day before I’d moved I took a local bus there, ten minutes down the road, to have a look around. It’s a bit calmer and quieter than Anjuna, and I liked it. It still retains some of its fishing-village atmosphere, and apart from the small stretch of main road in town, it’s quite unspoilt.
After an hour or so wandering around, I waited for a bus back to Anjuna when a familiar face appeared from around the corner. I had to look twice, but it was Stan, who I’d met in Delhi two months before. What were the chances?
‘How are you doing man, how was your trip?’ he asked.
‘Great! Absolutely brilliant’ I told him, without hesitation. He told me Brian, another friend from Delhi, was also here, so we walked back to meet him. I spent the day there, spent some time walking along the craggy, desolate beach to watch the tide go out, or come in, whichever it was doing. I can never tell. Later on, I walked up to Chapora Fort, overlooking Vagator beach, for sunset and then met Stan again for a couple of beers in town to round off the day.
We found a ramshackle bar on the main road, packed to the rafters with ageing hippies, long-term visitors, and a surprising number of Russian women, who are all young, beautiful, and lacking English. An interesting mix of people, let’s say.
After a while, as the beer worked through me, I found out the bar had no bathroom.
‘Piss?’ the barman said to me,
Actually, I’m James, I thought. ‘Yeah’, is what I actually said.
‘You can use back’. He pointed me in the direction of the back door, which led to a narrow alleyway, pitch dark, and full of rubbish. Which was moving. Rats! I took a couple of steps along the alley, and they ran toward me, squeaking and scratching in the filth. One ran over my feet and I felt it’s tiny claws scratching me as it scurried along. I waited, unmoving, and thankfully, the rabid little bugger didn’t bite me, which saved me a hospital visit.
The bathroom could wait. But I moved straight here from Anjuna the following morning. I think I’m going to like it here.
OK, so the forecast in most of India is dry, in January. But I’m referring to my alcohol-free New Years Eve, my first for, well – a while. This was mostly because I spent the main part of the day on the road, so I was shattered by the time I checked in at my guesthouse. Instead, I made do with a fantastic dinner, rounded off with the kind of ice-cream that makes chubby children hyperventilate with excitement, and gives dentists nightmares (probably).
Kochi itself is a quaint but bustling place. New construction on the island itself has been outlawed since 1976, but to look at the place you’d think it was more like 1776 since anything new had sprung up. Or been painted, for that matter. In fact, apart from the cars, buses, and the odd internet cafe, there isn’t much evidence of the 21st century. One street in particular, Matancherry Bazaar, is lined with wholesale tea and spice traders shops, and the air is full of the scent of tea leaves, sold by bored looking old men who probably haven’t moved from their chairs since the monsoon ended.
Of course, I took my share of pictures, particularly of the emblematic Chinese fishing nets on the waterfront. Operating the nets looks like a lot of hard work, and the fish they netted all seemed to be rather small, but it’s an interesting tradition and hopefully they will remain in use. After a few days in town, I had some serious ground to cover if I had any hope of spending a few days in Goa before my flight home, so in the space of three days I spent seventeen hours on sickly looking buses, to cover 600-odd kilometres of coastline, into Karnataka. Slow progress.
I’ve arrived now in Gokarna (which translates as ‘Cows Ear’) via a few quick overnight stops in succession: Calicut was first, a major cotton producing town. Then Kannur, which is home to some enormous beedi factories (beedis are small Indian cigarettes – harsh tobacco wrapped in a leaf) that were sadly closed to the public on the day I passed through. Finally, Mangalore, which, so far as I could tell, is noteworthy only for it’s ability to make you want to leave the place immediately.
Gokarna is another matter; a beachside town with four perfect beaches that are get more isolated the further you go from the town centre – thanks to a recommendation from Tomas in Varkala, I’m staying on one of the closest beaches to town, which suits me fine – a small bamboo hut on the beach. The area as a whole, thanks to it’s relative distance from an airport to the south, and it’s proximity to Goa further north (which sucks up the majority of tourists), is relatively untouched by mass tourism. That’s not to say it’s untouched altogether. In fact, the sign near the first beach – Kudle Beach – has been charmingly scrawled on with the following message:
“You’re 15 years too late. This used to be a nice place, before you all came and f***ed it up”.
Yes, quite. But I’m here now, and besides, you started it.
Incidentally, I weighed myself yesterday – as you do – and learned that I’ve lost eight kilos in weight in the past two months. This is in spite of eating like a horse for most of that time. So, if you’re feeling the effects of too many mince pies this Christmas, forget the gym and bin your diet books: Visit India!
They should put that in the tourist brochures.
Despite the ungodly hour I set off from Varkala, I was pretty pleased at having picked myself up by the scruff to press on with my trip.
Dan and I got to the train station just after 6am, both of us heading to Amritapuri to visit an ashram, and from there we’d go our separate ways. The ashram sits practically in the middle of nowhere and the high-rise accommodation blocks look thoroughly out of place in the middle of the countryside.
Amma, the ‘Hugging Mother’ is the guru of this particular ashram, and people flock in their thousands to receive darshan (blessings) from her, in the form of a hug (naturally). It’s an unusual place, a self-contained community where the residents muck in with serving food, doing laundry, and whatever other chores need doing – in between their daily routine of yoga and meditation. All in the name of self purification and personal growth, apparently.
I figured the place to be a psychoanalysts dream; firstly, mainly of the devotees – if that’s the word – dress from head to toe in white…is this the first step on the road to self-purification, or the last? I remain in the dark. I didn’t get a hug – I had a train to catch. This probably flies in the face of the principle of the place, that I’d prioritise a train ride over my blessings, but there you go. Call me insensitive.
My next stop was Alleppey, the self proclaimed ‘Venice of India’. It may be overplaying it’s hand there somewhat, but it’s OK for a stopover, mainly as it’s the starting point for many of the backwater boat trips and cruises. I had a race against the clock to reach my boat the next morning - I had to wait for a chemist to open – and the less said about that the better. In any event, I made it with a minute to spare, but without breakfast, and we set off for Kottayam.
The backwaters are often described as a ‘quintessential experience’, a ‘must-see’, and are lavished with as many superlatives as travel agents deem necessary to part you from your hard earned cash. I’m pleased to say, though, that the trip didn’t disappoint. Apart from the chunk-chunk-chunk of the boat engine, there’s barely a sound out on the water, bar the occasional bird squawking or the slapping of laundry against a rock. I also got to see the kettuvallam barges which are massively ornate boats you can hire for something in the region of $100 per day. I settled for the public ferry (this cost me fifteen pence for the three hour trip) thinking the view of the water is no different. That being, mile after mile of palm-fringed lagoons and waterways, vivid green rice paddies, only broken with the occasional house or two, or a tiny little shopfront. Stunning.
I got kicked off the boat at Kottayam, a nondescript town of no aesthetic appeal whatsoever, and I made the mistake of skipping the first train in order to get something to eat. It was a mistake because the next train was delayed by an hour, and when it turned up, it was packed to the rafters. I contemplated upgrading my ticket but it was only a short journey – which I spent wedged in the tiny, dark compartment between carriages, slowly melting away.
There wasn’t much I could do but wait for my stop.
I’m behind schedule. In large part, I blame Varkala. It’s almost too shanti (peaceful). Too easy to stick around, lie around, laze around.
But what makes a place really worth staying in is the company you find, and again I found myself lucky to meet a great bunch of people at the guesthouse. So, in particular: Cyril, Dan, Maren, Nadia, Rachel and Tomas – take a bow.
We often descended on the communal garden en masse, between daily activities of varying degrees of exertion, including yoga, massage and ayurvedic treatments, renting motorbikes and long walks along the beach and to the local temple. I speak for the group, though – most my ‘exercise’ has been limited to, depending on the time of day, lifting food/chai/beer from the table to my greedy face, ad infinitum. I loved it. Jayan, Sindhu and the rest of the staff at the guesthouse generally bent over backwards to make sure we were all happy, too, much to their credit.
On Boxing Day, the humidity rose until it could rise no more, and the heavens opened for a few hours of heavy rain. This forced some of us (against our will!?) to, er, lounge around the place, read, and drink innumerable glasses of masala chai. By sunset though, we were getting a bit restless – believe it or not - so a few of us wandered down to the local Cultural Centre to watch some traditional dancing, ‘Kathakali’.
It was a revelation! Incredibly entertaining stuff; the participants, who mostly mimed their performance to a soundtrack of drumming performed by three indifferent-looking guys, were excellent. The costumes were enormous, they each wore enough make-up to supply a small carnival, and the star of the show, ‘The Demon’, was a pantomime villain of epic proportions. Following our after-show dinner, we returned to the guesthouse and the large bottle of dark rum that was waiting for us.
The next few days followed a familiar pattern, with a few notable exceptions: Maren taught me how to play backgammon, Jayan introduced us to Carrom, a simple but addictive board game, and last night, my last in Varkala, six of us ventured down to the seafront for dinner. It was a good way to round off my week there, and having finally charged my camera, I managed to take a few great pictures as a reminder of the evening.
Later that evening I said my goodbyes and exchanged emails with everyone, thinking that by doing so I’d be too embarrassed to change my plans and stay yet another night. Tempting as it was, I still have a fair distance to cover in the next three weeks. And so this morning at 6am I set off for the train station.
That just leaves me to say thanks for a great Christmas, to everyone who was there.
Walking down a dark alley last night, on my way to the hostel, I bumped into a troupe of Indian Santas. They were armed with nothing more festive than a bucket, presumably with the intention of collecting money. For what exactly, I’m not quite sure, unless even Christmas well-wishes come with a price, these days.
‘Go and jingle somewhere else!’, I told them, with characteristic good cheer. Ah, the spirit of Christmas. I think they knew I was joking, but nevertheless jingled off into the darkness immediately, no doubt to terrorise some other unsuspecting tourists.
The reason I was heading back to the hostel at eight in the evening, was for a Christmas party arranged by Jayan, the hostel owner. Slightly unsure what to expect of a Christmas party in the middle of Kerala, I arrived fashionably late, and found a smattering of guests sitting in the gardens, waiting expectantly, for gifts, Santa, or more likely, some food and drinks. The place sooned filled and after we pulled a few tables together, we sat together and waited. Actually, I took no part in the furniture rearranging, choosing instead to sit gallantly while everyone organised things around me. Too many cooks, and all that.
The evening was a huge success. Jayan arranged for a small group of dancers to entertain everyone while we waited for dinner, and entertain us they did. Think Kerala meets Billie Jean, with a Bollywood soundtrack, and you’re not far off the mark. The dancing was accompanied by miming bad enough to make your eyes water, but the dancing itself was excellent. To my surprise and the dancers credit, they didn’t even come around asking for money after the performance. You see how cynical I’ve become after two months in India? No? I was always that cynical? Oh.
The food - I suppose you’d call it a thali - was served on a banana leaf, sans cutlery. Very green. And very tasty. And constantly topped up. I wasn’t even told beforehand that dinner would be served, so I’d already had one dinner, but the fish curry, rice, calamari and vegetables were too good to refuse, and I ate until I could barely walk. Luckily I only had a small flight of steps to negotiate later.
Now, I should point out that after two months here, I seem to find the occasional fellow backpacker deferring to me as some kind of authority on things inherently Indian, whereas in fact I’m nothing of the sort. Simon, from London, wondered how to eat without cutlery.
‘What’s your technique then, James, for eating with your hands? I’ve managed to avoid it so far’. It was an honest question, and the truthful answer would have been, ‘I don’t have one’. But, not to lose face, this is what I came up with:
‘Pick it up, and shovel it down you’. Before adding, helpfully, ‘and if you get half as much in your mouth as you’re getting all over your face, you’re doing OK’. As advice goes, I think I did well. He didn’t even drop much, a commendable first effort considering the inherent difficulties in eating rice and curry sauce with no spoon. You have to wonder about that. Certain foods, burgers, chicken wings, kebabs and such like, are conveniently palm sized. Rice and curry is a bit, well, sloppy.
Liz and Ganesh, another British couple, rounded off the meal with home made banoffee pie, my contribution to which was one small banana. Not that there’s a shortage of bananas around here, but sharing is to be encouraged. It was sweet enough to curl your teeth up inside your head, but was greedily devoured by all thirty of us. I should be able to get some sleep again some time around mid-February, which I’m looking forward to.
Christmas day today, and Santa brought a cool breeze for me in the night. Good old Santa! It’s a welcome break from walking around in a cocoon of humidity, and I intend to take full advantage by spending the rest of Christmas day doing, well – even less than I did yesterday. One of these days, I’ll have to get off my backside and do something energetic. But today is not that day.
Fifty five days into my trip and after covering something in the region of six thousand kilometres overland, (that’s around four thousand miles for the imperialists among you) I found a beach. OK, it’s not the first one I’ve seen on my trip, but it’s the first one that would be worthy of the front of a postcard.
Of course, the beach has been here all along, and if I’d chosen to head straight here when I arrived here in India, I could’ve got here in twenty four hours, rather than it taking the best part of eight weeks. But the scenic route was, well, exactly that.
I’m in Varkala now, which I stumbled across almost by chance. I’d been put off Kovalam, the place I’d initially earmarked for spending Christmas, after hearing rumours that these days, especially at this time of year, it’s overrun with people, hotels treble their rates at a minimum, and it is, generally, wildly overdeveloped. I ended up in Varkala simply by following the map north until I found somewhere that looked vaguely interesting, and a bit smaller. Kanniyakumari was good for a day, just to tick the box, but is a rocky and barren headland, notable only for it’s mediocrity. The country just sort of peters out into the sea, with no drama, and no circumstance.
Varkala – the resort part of it, anyway - sits on a cliff overlooking a small, sandy beach. It’s hardly an undiscovered backwater itself, there appear to be more westerners here than in the entire state of Tamil Nadu, and the clifftop is wedged with souvenir shops, restaurants, and the internet cafe I’m sitting in right now. But the clifftop location rules out enormous development, and restricts most of the accommodation options to small, two-storey buildings. My ‘dormitory’, is out in the open. It has a roof, but no walls (wooden posts hold the roof up). Which is no problem, it’s not exactly cold, and I have a trusty mosquito net to keep those greedy little bastards at bay.
It seems like the done thing in Varkala is, well, very little. There are enough restaurants to keep you occupied for a few days, most of which have tables outside for you to inspect the Catch of The Day, which I must say, looks quite appetizing. Sea salmon, grouper, kingfish, marlin, and squid are the mainstays, not to mention the prawns, which are roughly the same size as small cats. OK, very small cats. They probably taste a bit better though.
The beach is there, with the warm Arabian Sea, and the waves, waving all and sundry down to take advantage of it. If cabin fever sets in and I feel compelled to venture a bit further afield, I can hire a moped for about two pounds per day. But for the time being I’m quite happy with the relaxed way of life. There’s a Christmas party at my hotel this evening, and until then, I intend to eat, drink, and be merry. Which may be pre-empting the purpose of the party itself somewhat, but there you go.
That just leaves me, for now, to wish you a happy Christmas, wherever you are. I hope it’s a good one.
I promised not to write more until I’d recovered from my mystery illness. I have. The Black Hole of Chennai is now behind me.
I spent a few days in Mamallapuram, or Mahabalipuram (so good, they named it twice). This is a small fishing village on the east coast most famously known for it’s rock sculpture. In fact, there’s an almost constant background noise of the chink-chink-chinking away of chisels against huge slabs of dolorite rock, which you can see scattered around in various stages of completion. It’s intricate work, and not for the faint-hearted. Imagine chipping away at a few hundred kilos of stone for a few weeks, or months even, only to slip at the wrong moment. Oops, Shiva/Buddha/Jesus just lost his nose. Start again, Vikram. And to punish you for your carelessness, you can carry the next slab down from the mountain, we’re giving the bulls a day off. (No, I don’t know who Vikram is, either.)
Tamil Nadu has exceptional rainfall to the rest of India, with most of it falling in winter (now). This made it a soggy few days but the biblical sheets-of-rain that the full blown monsoon brings have not materialised. When the weather broke yesterday morning, though, I made a break for it too. To Pondicherry.
Pondy, as it’s commonly, lazily known, is a former French colony, and traces of French influence remain, predominantly in its architecture. I suppose you could say it’s just like France, if you’ve never been there. It’s like the part of France where the street signs are in Tamil, everybody looks Indian, nobody looks French, speaks French, or sounds French, and things are generally affordable.
Actually, the food’s good too, another area where some Gallic influence remains, because you have to hand it to the French, if there’s one thing they’ve mastered (apart from indifference) it’s food. I had an excellent lunch not fifteen minutes after arriving. Remarkably, I’m sticking with the vegetarian food (it’s been seven weeks). This is a testament to the quality of vegetarian fare, unlike in Britain, where you probably get more nutrition (and better taste) by eating the packaging it’s sold in. Quorn? Pass me a bucket. Hmm.. there’s an idea: Vegetarian? Concerned about your carbon footprint? Eat cardboard! The ‘green’ road to sustenance. (Ketchup optional.)
Ahem. I have a couple more days here before I move on again, hopefully directly to Kannyakumari, which is as far south as I can go without getting very wet, as I’ll run out of land, there. That’ll give me a few weeks to work through Kerala, Karnataka and Goa, where I hope to find some more backpackers, who have been conspicuous in their absence since I left Puri. Mind you, I did have a self-imposed exile, myself.
I’m a bit concerned about accommodation for Xmas and New Year, not finding it, but being robbed blind for it by profiteering hotel owners.
Wish me luck.
