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 [View Full Entry]

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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 [View Full Entry]

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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 [View Full Entry]

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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 [View Full Entry]

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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 [View Full Entry]

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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 [View Full Entry]

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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 [View Full Entry]

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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 [View Full Entry]

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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. [View Full Entry]

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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 [View Full Entry]

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