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Published: August 6th 2007
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After a short flight from Sri Lanka, my first stop in India was in a smallish city with a large name, Tiruchirappalli, or Trichy for short. For the tourist Trichy has a small temple perched on a large rock in the middle of the city, and another large temple complex on its outskirts. But the cheapest flight I could find to a half desirable location in southern India was the main reason I was here.
The only difference I could see from Sri Lanka so far was the mysterious south Indian head wobble. If you ask them a question you’ll often get this head wobble in reply, I think it means yes. They wobble their heads from side to side, with the forehead going in one direction and the chin the opposite, repeated a few times. It still amuses me to see this…
After a few days in Trichy, I took a train north to Pondicherry. Pondy is a city on the coast with a French colonial past. Aside from a few French street names, a “bonjour” from a rickshaw walah was the only French feeling this city had put on me.
Then came Mamallapurum, a beachside travellers
hangout just a short bus trip up the coast from Pondicherry. The beach was filthy, but my guest house had a pool and there’s a bit of an ex-pat community here that I enjoyed a hanging out with. So I stayed for a week of drunken nights and days spent lazing by the pool shaking off well earned hangovers. During one of these drunken nights a few people were talking about the Andaman Islands and how nice they are. So they next day I booked a flight to the Andamans.
The Andaman and Nicobar Islands chain are located about 1000 km’s to the east of India and about 300 km’s south of Myanmar. The island chain got hit by the tsunami in 2004, with the Nicobars copping the brunt of it and the Andamans coming out of the disaster relatively unscathed. You can get to the Andamans by boat, which takes roughly three days if it’s running on time. Or you can fly there in two hours for double the cost. At $140 return for the flight, I chose not to sit on a stinking boat for six days.
Port Blair, the regional capital, is just like any
other Indian city; noisy, crowded and filthy. With the Andamans being famous for beautiful beaches, I left the city and took the ferry to Neil Island to sample a few the next day. Neil is a small island surrounded by near-deserted white sand beaches and turquoise waters. With an Aussie named Nick and two English men, one a seemingly washed up actor, and the other a photographer for Rough Guide, I spent about a week here relaxing on the beach and touring the island by bicycle by day and boozing at night.
Next came Long Island, a six hour ferry ride north. Long island has a small village on the western coast and a virtually uninhabited beach on the east coast called Lalaji Bay. With Nick, a French and a Czech couple we took a small fishing boat armed with groceries and cooking supplies around the island to Lalaji Bay. With our camp spot on the waters edge at the southern point of the bay, good company, the occasional buffalo swimming by and only the sounds of the ocean and birds in the jungle to break the silence, the scene at Lalaji was perfect. I’ve had some of my
best times traveling here.
Another short ferry ride south took us to Havelock Island. Aside from the main islands, Havelock is one of the larger islands open to foreigners, and with beautiful beaches and good scuba diving options, gets the bulk of the Andaman’s tourists. It also has beach no. 7, which was apparently awarded ‘best beach in Asia’ by Times magazine. I don’t know how they judge this, but I personally found Lalaji to be nicer. Although no. 7 was still quite nice. After more lazy beach days, my new accomplices left, and I managed to motivate myself to get three days of scuba diving in.
From Havelock, I went back to explore Port Blair and its surrounding area. Then I took a flight back to Chennai, on the mainland. In Chennai I took a visit to AVM film studios, Tamil Nadu’s answer to Bollywood. Which was pretty good, exploring flimsy sets, and even standing right next to the cameraman while he’s filming some cheesy soap or movie scene.
I had originally planed to go to Goa from here, but after my time on the Andamans, I’d had enough of the beach party lifestyle.
Moving
on from Chennai I pretty much trained it up the middle of the country to Bandhavgarh National Park (BNP). With some 56 tigers in its 104 square km core, BNP is said to have the highest concentration of tigers anywhere in the world. On the afternoon I arrived, I went on a jeep safari into the park and saw two tigers at a water hole, a mother and a sixteen month old male cub. Although with about twenty other jeeps in front of us we didn't get the best view, nor was it the experience I was looking for. The following morning I went into the park again by jeep, then got on an elephant to try and get a little closer to a tiger, it seems elephants and tigers aren’t really phased by each others presence. I saw the same cub that I’d seen the previous afternoon. Watching a tiger only a few meters away from atop of the elephant, without the convoy of jeeps jostling for position and scaring the shit out of any unsuspecting tigers taking a drink at a water hole was a much better experience. In the afternoon I went in the park again and
saw another three tigers, a mother and two cubs at only meters away. One was so close; he could easily have taken two strides to reach me to chew my head off. I think that the parks here are poorly run, with what seems like no restrictions on how many jeeps can enter the park at any one time and the way they all scream around trying to get their passengers better views than the next jeep, which I’m sure gets the drivers the best tips. But, it was a lot cheaper than anything similar in Africa and I had seven tiger sightings and there were lots of dear and other animals running around. So I got what I was looking for.
After BNP I went to Khajuraho, which is home to a large temple complex. Covered in stone carvings of erotic scenes, orgies, and the odd scene of beastiality, (two men doing a horse!) the temples here are unlike any I’ve seen. Sorry, no photos.
Next came the city of Varanasi, one of the holiest cities in India. Varanasi sits on the river Ganges, where Hindu pilgrims come to the ghats from all over India to
wash away their sins. It is also a place where a lot of people come to die. Dieing here, it is believed, offers liberation from the cycle of birth and death, called moksha. Bodies are then cremated on the ghats with their ashes and any other remains going into the river, which not far away, people are bathing in…
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Cheyne
non-member comment
Boring
I don't know if you seen your team in the FA Cup it was 2 hours of my life i wont get back. Anyway nice pics gav keep 'em coming. All The Best.