Travel Blog Posts
January 7th 2011
Well, that's the end of my three months in India. It's been a real experience and I'm glad I did it after a few years of plucking up the will and courage to go. I'd say that my trip could be split into two halves. North India was an adventure. South India was a holiday. Mumbai is both literally and metaphorically, somewhere in the middle. North India (by which I mean from Kolkata in West Bengal to Jaisalmer in Rajasthan) is a lot more hectic and in most cases, less westernised than the South. I suppose there is a case for saying that the North is more like the "real India" than the more tourist orientated South of Goa and Kerala. I'd be hard pushed to say that traveling in the North was "fun" but that ... read more
January 6th 2011
Madurai is my last stop before I head back to the London winter. Madurai, widely known as The Temple City is one of the oldest continually inhabited cities in the Indian peninsula, dating back 2500 years. It's centrepiece is the Hindu Meenakshi-Sundareswarar Temple, which towers over the city. I spent my last train journey in their old fashioned First Class compartment, which is basically the same as Sleeper Class, only with a lockable door. My "roomy" was an Indian man who worked for an NGO in Madurai, and he was good company to talk to about life in India and the UK. I stayed at the Aarthi Hotel, which is just in front of a Hindu temple. Twice a day the temple elephant turns up outside the hotel restaurant for breakfast in the morning and his ... read more
January 3rd 2011
It was a nice train journey down from Kochi to Thiruvananthapuram. The train passed through miles and miles of tropical palm trees, waterways, and lush green fields, while my fellow passengers went out of their way to offer to buy me coffee, share their food, and chat with me. My train pulled into Thiruvananthapuram and I headed for the pre paid auto-rickshaw stand, ignoring the drivers who tried to intercept me on the way to the booth and were quoting well over the odds prices. The drive down to Kovalam was the most entertaining journey yet in India. For a start, the driver was clearly mad as a hatter. In addition to the most daredevil and dangerous driving I have ever seen, he periodically burst into some mad over-enthusiastic song at the top of his voice ... read more
December 26th 2010
Kochi was my first stop in Kerala. Kochi dates back to at least 1102, and in 1503, was captured by the Portuguese, thus becoming the first European colony in India. Over the years Kochi passed from Portuguese into Dutch, and then British hands, before becoming part of India in 1947. It is the third largest city in Kerala with a population of almost 600,000. The most attractive part of Kochi, is Fort Cochin which is just a fifteen minute journey over the harbour from the Ernakulam district, where I am staying. Ernakulam itself is unremarkable, only the thing that really strikes me about it is at there is a complete lack of dogs! Street dogs are everywhere in India from North to South, East to West, but I haven't seen a single one in Kochi. On ... read more
December 20th 2010
I spent my final few days in Palolem hanging out with my friends - easting, drinking, teaching them draughts, and going for the occasional swim in the sea, which for me is very rare. On my final morning in Palolem I also managed to catch up with Marc, who had arrived the previous night in Patnam. After some breakfast Marc offered me a lift on the back of his bike up to Madgaon so I could catch my train to Thivim without having to spend two hours on the bus first. Before long I was racing down winding Goan lanes, with a surprisingly warm breeze through my hair. Even at high speeds it seems the Goan air is hot and humid. I was worried the Police might pull us up for me not wearing a helmet, ... read more
December 13th 2010
I made it to Madgaon Station in Goa at 5:30am on the 7th. I was very lucky to get off the train at the right station. The train had left Pune about forty five minutes late, and in my experience of trains here never making time up once they start getting behind schedule, I'd been thankful of the chance to get more sleep and set my alarm for 6am. For some reason I eventually thought better of it and set my alarm for 5:15, which turned out to be just as well, as the train actually pulled into Goa ten minutes early. I decided to spend a day in Benaulim as it was near the train station. Benaulim was very relaxed and nice enough, although it didn't have much in the way of scenery and had ... read more
December 6th 2010
I've spent the last two days in Pune, the second largest city in Maharashtra, and the eight largest in India. I suppose I've been here out of necessity really. I'd booked tickets and planned to meet up with a friend of a friend who was going to show me round the city, but we couldn't meet in the end due to him being posted to another city through work. Pune is a really nice place. It's not really a place one would come to visit from a travelers perspective, but it would definitely be a nice place to live. It's an ultra western city, at least as much as Mumbai, perhaps moreso. The roads leading away from the centre are also lined with some very grand houses. I'd booked a hotel in the Koregaon Park area, ... read more
December 3rd 2010
I flew to Mumbai from Amritsar rather than take a 46 hour train journey. I love travelling on the trains but two days is pushing it by anyone's standards. From the airport I had to take a hour long taxi ride where the driver got lost and repeatedly tried to talk to me in Marathi, so I couldn't really help him! We were slowly heading in the right direction though and got there in the end. I got to see some great scenery on the way was we crawled through the roads leading to the Arabian Sea, it was a very pleasant way to get lost. I love Mumbai. It's like London if it was moved to the seaside and the central heating turned up to 35 degrees. With a population of 14 million, Mumbai is ... read more
November 28th 2010
Having completed the mad dash across Delhi and caught my train with minutes to spare, I was on the train to Amritsar. After about ten minutes of screaming the potential brawl between the passengers over luggage space didn't materialise, and everyone settled down. Except for the family next to me's two year old son, who ran riot the whole train journey. His exasperated Granddad at one point sat down next to me and asked me to take his grandson back to England so he could get some rest. Funnily enough the only time the boy settled down was when he saw me, came to sit next to me, and grabbed my hand! The family thought this was really cute and his mother brought him back a few minutes after his next rampage across the train and ... read more
Delhi and the Interchangable Railway Stations
Published: November 29th 2010Asia » India » National Capital Territory » Delhi
November 26th 2010
During the last day in Jaisalmer I took it easy and hung round with my friend Marc until it was time for me to leave for the train station. I was going to jump in an auto-rickshaw, but Marc offered me a lift on his new Enfield Bullet. Hmm. Auto-rickshaw, or an up to 70 kmh ride through Indian traffic with a guy who has driven a motorbike about five times in his life, wearing no helmet, no mirrors, and with a 45 litre backpack tied on to my back. Well there was only ever one option wasn't there. The bike decided to be temperamental starting, but not as temperamental as the nearest cow - who reacted to the sound of the bike starting by headbutting me out of the way from behind in its rush ... read more
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