Blogs from Karnataka, India, Asia - page 6

Jet lag has caught up with me big time tonight. I must have been running on excitement up until now, my body distracted from jet lag confused exhaustion into thinking it's fine to go with 2 hours sleep a night! Last night I just could not get to sleep at all. The heat, the noise from the ceiling fan spinning fit to bust and knowing that it's really 8 pm not 1.30am, my mobile phone obviously lying to me! Since normally I'm not asleep until well after 1am my body said 'No, what ARE you doing, just no!'. As I'm room sharing I can't just flick on the lights and read, so spend a very long night tossing turning instead. At least I'm awake in time to go up the tower to bird watch for a ... read more

Feb 24 2017. We arrived at the Madgaon railway station at 6:30am to be greeted by the following announcement:"Your attention please. 12133 mangalore express scheduled to leave 7:15 is running 1 hour late. This result is deeply regretted". Our tickets indicated that we were in coach AB1 3AC which meant there were three tiers of sleeping or 6 people sitting in a section. 2AC is preferable as there are only 4 to a section however this was a short train ride so it didn't matter. However by the time we got on, there were 8 people already sitting in our area. We were taken along to the same seat numbers in a 2AC coach and were soon joined by some of the others who were in our earlier seats. Everyone was making comments about "Indian railways". ... read more

All it took was overnight train ride on the Hampi Express from the big city of Bangalore to Hosapete and we were in a new world - the Indian countryside of the Deccan Plateau - ox carts, palm trees, rice fields, over laden vehicles and red dirt. In the three days since we had left home, we had covered some familiar ground but had some new experiences - ordering a cappuccino and cheese plate high over the Pacific in Cathay Business class; eating genuine dim sum in a hole in the wall in Kennedy Town, Hong Kong; finding out we had a defective camera card; getting a bit worried after repeated rejections of our bank cards in Bangalore until we used an Bank of India ATM ( wait, that one was not a new experience), painlessly ... read more

Geo: 12.314, 76.6759 After yet another overnight train ride, this time returning to Mysore from Hampi, we arrived at our hotel (Parklane) and were able to check-in immediately upon arrival at about 9:30am. What a relief! Our room, an air conditioned refuge, was huge with a balcony that we didn't use because it overlooked the quintessentially noisy, busy, dirty street. Jim and I don't typically like cities so we keep our stops short such as this one for three nights. It was Republic Day in India - a big holiday - so the Mysore Palace a short block away was to be lit with its 100,000 lights. We sauntered over before it was dark joined by the throngs of other tourists and locals to view this spectacular sight.The air was alive with celebration and anticipation as ... read more

Incredible India Southern India 1 of 3 Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Kerala Many of our friends have expressed their frustration with long-haul travel in recent times: the long journey to the airport, exhausting queues at check-in, shoes off, shoes on, belt off, pull up trousers, belt on and empty pockets at security, three-hours of waiting around in that other world of make-believe in the departure hall before takeoff, and then the traumas of immigration on arrival. Maybe they’re right. Immigration with the new Indian eVisa at Bangalore was the final straw for us, queuing for ages as passenger after passenger struggled with inefficient fingerprint machines, retina cameras and the like. They do love their bureaucracy: passports and photos on arrival at our hotel too. But then, we British left them with that legacy didn’t we? We ... read more