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Amravati
New monument half finished We left Mamallapuram on 22nd March to catch the train from Chennai to Vijayawada in Andhra Pradesh. The part of Chennai that we whizzed through was huge, sprawling and like Bangalore: that unique Indian mix of high tech and third world - shiny, glass fronted skyscrapers, surrounded by indescribable filth and deprivation on the ground. The train journey was uneventful apart from an incident involving a ticket inspector and one of the many vendors who walk up and down the trains plying their wares. The inspector suddenly flared up and lashed out at this guy, shouting and hitting him. Why he did this was a mystery, but what impressed us was the apparently unquestioned authority that these officials wield. Bus conductors too, rule their buses with iron fists.
The landscape we passed through on the plain here is much the same as that throughout central India: parched semi-desert, interspersed with cultivated irrigated fields and groves.
One of the reasons we stopped at Vijayawada was to visit Amaravati, an ancient site revered by Buddhists, where a giant stupa was built in the 3rd century BCE. Very little remains, but there is a museum that houses some exquisite remnants of the structure. These,
Araku Valley
Climbing in to the Ghats together with a miniature replica of the stupa and some pieces of the perimeter wall, which helped to get a sense of the huge size of the original.
Our next move was to Vishkapatnam, or Vizag as it's called locally, mainly to take the train up the Araku Valley and into 'tribal land'. Vizag is vey much like Vijayawada, only bigger. As we headed North towards Orissa we became more of a novelty with less English spoken and written, and it became more tiring for that. The city had nothing very special to offer us, aside from Cafe Coffe Day's cappucino - the best! Other than that, it hadn't much to commend it apart from being typically Indian. It was becoming more difficult to get information - the Lonely Planet has no map, so we were slightly disoriented and had some difficulty navigating around town. Finding somewhere to eat was also a challenge, but we didn't starve!
On then to Rayagada via Jeypore in order to see a few of the indiginous tribal peoples who live in the area and who sell and shop at the weekly Chatikona market. The journey there was beautiful, through a landscape of tree covered
Chatikona market
Chicks dyed for sale boulders and small thatched village encampments. The market experience, though, was grim. No sooner had we arrived and barely started up the track towards the stalls, when we were accosted by someone trying to sell us 'tribal' brasswork. He trailed after us the whole time we were there, ignoring our lack of interest and pleas to be left alone. The tribal women were small and aboriginal looking, with eight or ten large brass rings round the edges of their ears, nose rings in each nostril, joined by another ring below their noses, and their hair tucked under at the back and held in place by rows of decorative clips. They wore a length of fabric as a lungi, tied above the breasts, and several of them had chickens tucked in slings close to their bodies, like babies, with just their heads poking out The men were equally short, with long hair tied back. They had gathered in groups to feed babies and to shelter from the sun, and there was a group of young Indian lads (non tribal) who stood across the track laughing and jeering at them. It was an extremely unpleasant experience - we had really just gone
En route to Puri
Puncture stop at sunset to gawp at these people - and we never want to do anything like that again. We were putting them in the same category as wildlife - ironically, a category we ourselves have at times felt we belonged to here.
Having travelled to Andhra Pradesh it was time to head into Orissa, so we had a 12 hour overnight bus jaunt to Bubaneshwar. It went along the same route that we had taken the previous day, and then on up into the mountains. They were very beautiful, and far more impressive than the Western Ghats. The latter part of the journey was through the night, and the road surface was one of the worst we've made a long distance journey on in India this time. We passed many small compounds of mud huts with thatched roofs and woven walls and fences. It was great seeing people settling down for the evening at dusk - many villages had no electricity so often all the illumination was from candles, lanterns, or cooking fires. During the night, in the wee hours, we passed a couple of village festivities.One was clearly attached to the local temple, with bells clanging and a bearded orange-clad holy
man being feted with a huge hand held roman candle. The other was in a village 'square', where a performance area had been set up, and a dance/drama was unfolding to rapt spectators squatting on the ground. As we sped by, we caught a glimpse of a giant blue papier mache bird swaying to the music. Extraordinary glimpses of the nocturnal life of Eastern India.
After a journey of stops and starts due to a slow puncture that needed inflating every 30 minutes or so, we finally arrived at Bubaneshwar at 4.20 in the morning, just in time to catch the next bus onward to Puri where we would meet up with Jess and Bert.
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