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Published: January 3rd 2007
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The journey to India began in HCM City where we arrived on the overnight train from Nha Trang at 5am. At this ungodly hour we caught a taxi to the airport and tried to sleep there - why oh why do they make it so hard to sleep on the chairs? They should take a leaf out of Singapore's book and provide 'couchettes' and 'Relax Zones' instead of plastic chairs and constant unnecessary announcements, grumble grumble. Once through check in we enjoyed our $3 cups of tea (they even charged Tom extra for the milk) and waited for our Singapore Airlines flight. The food on the airline was really good but they lost a few points as Liz's TV didn't really work, oh and for showing episodes of My Hero. At Singapore Airport we went to check out the Rainforest Lounge in terminal Two which has showers and Jacuzzis and all sorts of luxury. Unfortunately when we arrived they had run out of hot water but were being very cagey about it so let us pay our money and wait around for about 45 mins before letting us in on the secret. We got a refund and Tom got a free
Singapore Sling out of it (his big pink girly drink of choice) so was not a complete loss.
Four hours later and we were back on the Singapore Airlines and on our way to Bangalore. Or should that be Bengalaru which is the cities original name (Bangalore being the Anglicized version of the word which means, apparently 'city-of-boiled-beans) which it is currently in the middle of decided whether to return to officially using it. Luckily like all good cities it also has a number of unofficial but catchy names. The most original and best being 'The Garden City' (I wonder how many of these there are in the world?) however it is becoming less and less apart as the city morphs into 'Silicon City' and the flower beds are dug up to make way for IT companies and international call centers. The city has a population of about 6.1 million and is the third largest city in India, apparently the pollution is so bad that they used to have to provide oxygen stations at the side of the road, hopefully this has improved a little in time for our trip. The city is supposed to be very modern and
clean, full of air conditioned shops and restaurants so we are looking forward to an easy, if thoroughly un-Indian introduction (or reintroduction in Tom’s case) to India.
Having arranged for some accommodation in Bangalore and an airport pick up we were a little bit annoyed that non of the taxi drivers holding up signs outside the gate had our names on their cards, however we eventually discovered that whilst some lucky people get collected from outside the arrivals gate, other less important folk get met outside the main door whilst plebs such as ourselves have to join the scrum of card-waving people outside. We had arranged this pick up because we had been traveling since 5am that morning (more if you consider that we were on the train all night) and as predicted the ATM at the airport wasn't working and we had no foreign currency so we were happy just to let the guesthouse organize it for us. Actually the accommodation is described as a 'Serviced Apartment' which means that it also has a kitchen and a little balcony, an added bonus was the discovery that a lovely man called Visal also lives there and made us a
great breakfast of omelets and sugary Indian tea in the morning. With the superior knowledge of one who has been in India for two whole days I can confidently say that Indian food comes in three flavors, spicy, very spicy and very very sugary, the later referring to drinks, except orange juice which comes in sugary or salty. Visal's family comes from Bihar which is in the north of India near Nepal, this apparently takes four days by train. What a huge country this is.
Visiting India for the first time is a strange combination of the familiar and the exotic. Life in Bangalore is certainly the most Western in India yet where evidence of Indian culture is most evident - the Hindu temples, the mosques, the saris the food, all of that - it is so instantly recognizable that it doesn't seem that unusual. I suppose coming from a country with a large Indian population. reading so many books and anthropological texts about the place and visiting 'little indias' in places like Fiji, Singapore and Malaysia have all helped to gain this impression, but then suddenly you do something truly Indian, like visit the train station.
Originally
we had wanted to make our next move (to Trivandrum in Kerela) by plane, thus saving at least 12 hours) but the domestic airline we had chosen does not take international credit cards online so we waited until we arrived in Bangalore to book it and the price of the flight had doubled, overnight. So off we went to one of Bangalores three train stations. The city is a transport hub for the whole of south India so things get a little lively. It seems at first to be the most bizarrely organized place in the world, but I suspect (and so tom tells me) that it is very typical. Firstly instead of joining the queue marked 'Current Reservations' or 'Tickets' inside the station you must go outside to a separate building marked 'Reservations'. Join the scrum for a piece of paper on which to write your desired train times and seat allocations and fight your way to one of two computers to find out train times and number. Take said piece of paper and decide between a number of different ticket windows variously labeled as 'Reservations', 'Group Reservations' 'Women' 'Refunds' or our personal choice 'Senior Citizens, Foreign Tourists, Freedom Fighters and the Physically Disabled'. It was in this cue that we wrestled with old age pensioners and men with only one leg to keep our place in the “queue” before finally getting to the front and being told that our desired train was full thus we could only go on the 'waitlist'. This appears to mean (and I might be wrong here) that we could pay our money for the most basic ticket and come back to the train station for an 'interview' (that’s what the ticket man called it) and possibly get a ticket for that evening, or of course possibly not. With images running through our mind of Asterix trying to find Permit A-38 in "The Place That Sends You Mad" we decided to cut our losses and booked a bus ticket to Kerala for the next afternoon, surely one more overnight bus journey can't hurt...
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