Toby Clark
My first trip to India - I've been wanting to go for years, and now that I've gone freelance I can finally find the time to do it.CasperCCC
Travel Blog Posts
April 13th 2006
I've never found a city that is quite as nonchalant about the history that surrounds it. It makes for stunning contrasts. Right next to the most hectic market - or, to be accurate, series of markets, one bleeding into the other - is a huge, six hundred year old fort that is big enough to be called a town in less laid-back countries. In fact, for a country as in-your-face as India, it has a damn good line in understatement - "Hill Station": three hours drive up a mountain road. That's just not a hill. Similarly, to me, a fort is a military building that's bigger than a bunker, but not quite ready to be a castle. In Delhi, it's somewhere with 30 foot high walls, big enough to fit not one but four palaces, barracks, ... read more
April 12th 2006
Apologies all for the delay in getting the last blogs done. Didn't have time in India, and now I'm back home it's a bit too depressing to relive the journey! Anyway, it's not too painful, as most of it was written in my 5rp notebook bought in Cochin, and it's better than waiting a few weeks and realising that I've forgotten everything that happened. Anyway, most of this is verbatim from my extremely culture-shocked first night in Delhi. I was sitting in a restaurant called the "United Coffee House", eating a mixed tandoori platter, looking at a room that was a weird cross between a stately home, faux-Murghal, and a Mecca ballroom, listening to an Indian man playing a Japanese keyboard and singing quality MOR tunes. (You haven't lived till you've eaten curry to a cabaret ... read more
April 10th 2006
Darjeeling, I think, was a bit of a missed opportunity. Had a hacking cough, which didn't help, and the weather was pretty miserable, which really didn't help. Would invariably be nice in the morning, have a mid afternoon rainshower, then clear up for a bit in time for an early evening drizzle. Amazing to think that just a few hours drive away are the scorching hot plains of West Bengal. The biggest missed opportunity, though, was time. Darjeeling might not have been my favourite place that I visited in India, but I think it's the place that I'd most like to go back to. I can see how people spend months in the hills around West Bengal. The list of things that I'd have loved to do but didn't is considerably longer than the list of ... read more
April 7th 2006
Sadly saying goodbye to Kolkata, I jumped on a train to Silguri - the gateway to Darjeeling and the Himalayas. Another blockbuster journey - 13 hours on a sleeper train, half an hour by cycle rickshaw to the jeep stands, and then a mad three hour jeep ride up tortuous mountain roads. (Hill station my arse. I've seen hills in England and they don't take three hours to drive up. It's a mountain station, and there's no two ways about it.) It's pretty tiring, the travel, and although the sleepers are ok, you still don't get a lot of sleep, with the train stopping every hour or so and new passengers getting on. Met a very nice bloke from round here, who was travelling from Kolkata back to his home in Siliguri. What I didn't realise ... read more
April 6th 2006
Well, my last day here, with a train booked to Silguri (gateway to Darjeeling and the North Eastern States) for 7.30 this evening. A case of perfect timing. I'm still hugely enjoying Kolkata, but I'm also really looking forward to moving on and getting my first glimpse of the Himalayas. And getting away from this incredible heat. 39 degrees, apparently. And I still haven't worked out why I like it so much here. I just keep coming back to the word 'charisma'. It's got such a buzz about it - hectic but still, in its own way, very laid back. Full of chancers, but they'll fleece you with a smile. Market traders who will try and sell you your own shoes, but who will at least haggle over the price. The classic experience was being asked ... read more
April 3rd 2006
Unbelievable. Humidity and pollution so high that walking the street is like being repeatedly slapped around the face by a warm and rather dirty flannel. And the streets - so hectic they make Mumbai look like Milton Keynes on a quiet Sunday, and Bangalore like Worthing on Sea off-season. The traffic is gridlocked, every pavement is crammed with stalls, touts swoop on you as soon as you stop moving, and the beggars are spectacular. You almost feel like clapping them on the back and saying 'well done'. (But I think that might be in poor taste.) The traffic is an experience in itself. Everything is knackered, from the taxis pouring out black exhaust fumes to the old boys pulling the human powered rickshaws. Forget auto rickshaws. Or bicycle rickshaws. This is the real deal. For a ... read more
April 1st 2006
Arrived in Bangalore from Hampi at about 7 in the morning, desperate to get back to civilisation and a big city. Meaning that it was a real shame that I arrived in Bangalore. It would probably be a nice place to live, actually - clean, fairly modern, lots of shops. As a place to visit, though, it's pretty underwhelming. Bland. No personality whatsoever. And notably less smiley than most other places I've visited in India. That said, the Lalbagh Gardens were very nice - big municipal gardens with thousands of different plants from all over the world. And the tiffin house just down from my hotel did the best dosas I've had since arriving in India - absolutely spectacularly good. And, for that matter, the best grape juice I've had in India. Actually, as an aside, ... read more
March 28th 2006
Ok. The longer Hampi post... What was really striking about Hampi was that just a few hours on from the train journey, I find myself in some past life, Quantum Leap style. From Panaji, an Indian town that feels more like somewhere on the Med, to the India you see on travel documentaries - cows by the score, oxen-pulled carts, huge temples, crumbling buildings, and touts, touts, touts and then, for good measure, a few more touts. It is a very, very strange environment. Like stepping back 500 years. Or maybe like going to the Glastonbury Festival three months after its finished. Or, maybe, it's like visiting the former centrepiece of an incredibly wealthy and populous civilisation that has fallen into ruin, and slowly been recolonised by Hindu pilgrims, travellers, and the assorted stalls, travel agents ... read more
March 28th 2006
Early start for my train journey to Hampi. And another trip across the Western Ghats. Thank god I went sleeper and not A/C this time - the big difference being that the sleeper cars have open windows, aside from a few bars across them, as opposed to the tinted plate glass windows on the A/C carriages. And when you're crossing the Western Ghats, open windows are the way to go. The scenery was absolutely magnificent. Huge rolling expanses of forested hills, green spotted with an autumnal brown, and fading into multiple shades of blue gray as they disappeared into the distance. Again, I made the decision to look, and not photograph - I took a few shots, but they couldn't possibly do it justice. It never ceases to amaze me that there are countless millions of ... read more
March 27th 2006
Got off train Got hassled by rickshaw touts Got out of station Got hassled by more rickshaw touts Got in a rickshaw Got to Hampi Got hassled by hotel touts Got a room Got my bearings Got bitten by the most vicious mozzies in all of India Got dinner Got food poisoning Got no sleep Got better Got hassled by tour touts Got bitten by more mozzies Got hassled by rickshaw touts offering tours Got a rickshaw tour Saw some old stones Got a train to Bangalore... read more
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