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Published: January 11th 2013
Murshidabad
'Palace of 1000 Doors' It took around 2 months for us to travel from the Indo-Chinese border in Sikkim (or near as dammit) to the Southern tip of India.
We left the majesty of the Indian Himalayas and ventured down to the plains at Siliguri. This is a major transition from pure, clean air to diesel exhaust; from coats and jumpers to sweaty T-shirts; from friendly Nepalese and Tibetan folk to the more reserved, but staring, Hindu majority; from aging and overcrowded jeeps to, er, ancient and overcrowded buses. Somehow they seem much worse in the heat.
My plan was to travel to Kolkata in 4 easy steps, by bus.
The first step was to the town of Malda, chosen simply because it was on the way. Unfortunately our bus caught fire one hour out of Siliguri and we had to evacuate to the side of the road. A friendly fellow passenger took us under his wing and helped chuck our luggage on board as we joined the scrum for subsequent buses.
Malda seems a fairly typical Indian city. Big, loud, chaotic, plenty of cow dung. Adequate, but uninspiring hotels and
Kolkata
Victoria Memorial restaurants. It grew on me a little as I wandered the streets away from the highway, where I bought a few essentials.
After another stressful and sweaty bus journey we were chucked off at the side of the road in Berhampore. The town looked ok, but we were disconcerted to find the bicycle rickshaw man taking us on a 45 minute trip down the hectic highway to get us to the recommended hotel. This hotel was nothing special, although the restaurant was good, located in a rotten area amongst the tyre changing and auto repair shops. There was nowhere to go for a walk without getting an unwanted lungful of diesel fumes.
We wanted to go to the nearby town of Murshidabad, which was supposedly rural and pleasant but after 20 minutes of standing by the roadside we realized that we were never going to be able to squeeze on any of the passing buses.
We returned to the hotel and hired a taxi for the day.
This turned out to be a good move because Murshidabad was rural, pleasant and spread out. We could not have got
Kolkata
Victoria Memorial around it on foot.
There were a few things to see, the main one being the 'Palace of 1000 Doors' which was free to get in as ticket office was closed for Diwali.
At this point our general feeling was that the places we were visiting were not worth the effort required to get there, so we got up early to catch the 6am commuter train to Kolkata.
We had to stand for about half of the 3 hour trip, but at a ticket price of about 60p I still felt this was a bargain.
Despite being Indias second biggest city, Kolkata feels surprisingly un-chaotic and civilised compared to most Indian cities. There is enough room on the pavements and the hassle factor is much lower than expected.
For many this is a palpable relief after the rigours of the road and so Kolkata is generally proclaimed as the favourite of the big four cities amongst travellers.
In fact there is not a great deal to see.
The Victoria Memorial is a splendid white marble palace built in the
dog days of the Raj. It houses a decent collection of paintings and statues and access to a internal balcony high in the domed chamber, if you can find the stairs.
In contrast, the Calcutta Museum houses a threadbare collection that has not been updated since the 1960's. It shows that napthelene alone cannot quell the ravages of time upon the taxidermists art.
We rode the newly installed (ie - since I was last here) metro to the BBD Bagh area ostensably to look at the colonial era architecture, but primarily to pass a few hours in the foreigners railway ticket booking office.
The taxi ride to Howrah train station was not far, but was unexpectedly expensive as the driver created an argument and then drove off without giving me my change.
We took the
overnight train to Puri. I always seem to make the same mistake on overnight trains, which is to have a good meal before boarding so that I don't need to carry any food. I invariably end up in a compartment with a friendly family who are loaded with snacks that they insist on sharing, while I have nothing to offer in return. On this occasion there was copious peanut brittle and a peelable fruit that I have not seen before or since.
We got a decent nights sleep, arrived at about 7.30 am and headed straight for the Z Hotel.
I had been looking forward to this.
The Z Hotel is a former maharaja's mansion which has functioned a a backpackers favorite for many years. The high ceilings, thick walls and spacious communal area create a special atmosphere rarely found amongst budget accommodation. In 1990, I stayed in their dormitory of 4-poster beds and it has remained in my memory ever since. That cannot be said for many places.
So, we turned up and got a nice whitewashed room for 500 rupees (still cheap). At that point I
Puri
Fisherman's beach did not realise how lucky we were because they were turning people away all the time. Talking to the staff, it turned out that they had all been working there for 25 or 30 years so I would have met them when I came here before.
I have to report that all is not well in Backpackistan. The Z Hotel have realised that if they install thick mattresses and air conditioning they can attract domestic tourists at 2500 - 3000 rupees a night. The conversion is currently underway.
The Z Hotel is away from the main area of Puri, close to a fishermans village. After breakfast we walked along the beach to see what was going on. Not a great idea at that time in the morning. The fishermans village is not endowed with a sanitation system so the population pop down to the high tide line to evacuate their bowels of a morning. This is routine so they are not shy about foreign tourists paddling by. A glorious collection of turds lies under the boat eaves waiting for high tide to come and collect them.
Passing the poo parade seemed
Puri
Fisherman's beach like a perfect moment to cut my toe open on a random piece of wire, so I did.
I am not criticising this waste disposal method. It is provided by nature and has been going on since time immemorial. However, why the people choose to live amongst huge piles of their own domestic refuse was a bit of a puzzler.
From then on we walked along the beach in the opposite direction. It was about half an hour to the main town which has a really good beach.
Puri has an important Hindu temple and many come on pilgrimage. There is a long string of hotels along the seafront and hundreds of Indian tourists and pilgrims cluster along the waters edge. It is interesting to watch those who have never before seen the sea. To many it is a holy experience.
Every Indian crowd leaves its own litter signature. Walking along the seas edge in the afternoon there was always a plethora of cups and packets. In the morning the shore was nice and clean. I was never sure if this was the waves sweeping away the evidence
Puri
Lifeguards Headgear or a secret army of litter pickers coming along and scavenging a few rupees from the recycling overlords.
A few steps along the crowds thin out considerably and I judged the waters clean enough to go surf diving a few times.
While we were there the Puri Dance Festival was taking place. We ventured forth one evening but found it difficult to get enthused about the entertainment. I think Indian dance culture has to be absorbed from an early age to be appreciated.
We eventually made our way to the temple, the Jagannath Mandir. It is in a large compound, closed to non-Hindus, so we could only walk around the outside. The perimeter is a combination of vegetable sellers, piles of vegetable waste and innumerable feral cows working their way through said waste. I have visited a lot of temples and this was the smelliest.
A few km's along the coast lies the small town of Konark, famous as the location of the Sun Temple. Built in the 13th Century the temple is a representation a huge stone chariot from a distance. Beautiful and impressive. From close up
one finds a striking array of erotic carvings of people involved in all sorts of activities. Many of the carvings remain in excellent condition. The ladies represented are both busty and gymnastic. A worthy day out.
The Konark International Dance Festival was taking place. 'World class, world class', enthused a local. Yeah, but it's still dance.
There was a friendly Indian guy named Rana also staying at the Z Hotel. He had a big car and one day gave a group of us a lift into Bhubaneswar, the major town a couple of hours away. This is one of India's Temple Cities, and we spent the day wandering around a number of temples from the 8th Century onwards.
We then spent a couple of hours trying to find a 'don't miss' restaurant which, it turned out, had been subsumed by a new mall development.
[News item: The Government is introducing fingerprint based bank accounts to enable the illiterate poor access to their welfare money. Unfortunately the fingerprint readers are unable to recognise about 50%!o(MISSING)f users due to the condition of their digits. Users are advised to apply
Puri
Main beach Vaseline to their fingertips before going to bed on the day before they intend to visit the bank].
It transpired that Rana ran his own travel business and was travelling around India in a hiatus between clients. He had a two week period in which he planned to travel southwards and, yes, he would be happy to give us a lift. Cushti!
Actually, the forward planning between Puri and Chennai had been vexing me somewhat as it is a very large distance to cover with little of apparent interest on the way. Rana's offer was a Godsend.
Before heading South he wanted to head North. He has been all over India, but never to the Similipal National Park. We drove 8 hours to the adjacent town of Baripada and checked into a hotel. A park guide appeared, looking for business and things started to go downhill as I discerned the word 'problem' appearing with some regularity in the conversation.
It turns out that some Italian tourists had been kidnapped in the Park and held for a week by Moaist rebels. Foreigners were not now allowed in.
Puri
Main beach 'Don't worry', said Rana, 'we'll go to the Mayor'.
There is a feeling that anything is possible in India, so long as you talk to the right person.
We made our way to the local civic offices.
'You do the talking', said Rana.
'Tell him how much trouble you have gone to to get here, how keen you are to see the Park and how grateful you would be if he could see his way clear to helping us. Make him feel important and want to show his authority by letting you into the Park', he said.
Amazingly, we were ushered into the Mayors office. A flunky stood behind his shoulder passing endless documents to be signed off as he spoke and listened.
I couldn't get a word in edgeways as Rana launched into a spiel in their common language. There was some discussion before the Mayor finally turned to me.
'I am sorry I cannot allow you into the Park', he said. 'The rules have been made, it is not for me to change them'.
Puri
Beach procession Having come up to speed on the Maoist situation I was not too disappointed.
'Come on' said Rana, as we exited the compound,' lets give The Governor a try. You do the talking this time'.
So we found ourselves standing outside the Gubernatorial mansion trying to get an audience through the intercom security system.
The Governor declined to see us.
The next day Rana and the guide went to the Park while we acquainted ourselves with the town (which didn't take long). He returned at 4pm having not seen a single animal.
'It's great if you like trees' he said.
We spent the night in the small seaside town of Chandipur. The sea here recedes 4km at low tide so there is either a
Konark
Sun Temple huge beach and no sea or a high tide and no beach. We witnessed both conditions.
The Chandipur Dance Festival was taking place. A young group of gymnasts were getting changed in some rooms adjacent to our dinner table. We had our photos taken with them doing handstands and then watched them doing their routine on the big stage by the beach.
The next day was a long drive south to Gopalpur-on-sea. This is an Indian version of the fading seaside town you can find all over England. We took a sea facing room close to the waters edge, within earshot of the waves breaking on the beach. Linda killed the Worlds Biggest Cockroach in our room.
We sat on the veranda drinking beer as the waves crashed in.
I woke up early and took a long walk along the best beach of the trip.
We could have stayed there a couple of days but Rana wanted to move on.
Next stop Visakhapatnam, helpfully known as Vizag. This accommodation in this city has a reputation for being either cheap and nasty in
Konark
Sun Temple the city centre, or high-class and expensive along the beach road. Arriving by car gave us a distinct advantage here, as we approached along the aptly named Beach Road and never got to see the city centre. The first few hotels we tried were either full or expensive, but we soon found a nice place about 3 streets back from the promenade.
The Young Ghandi Festival was taking place. Thousands of kids were dressed up as the old Ghandi, with glasses, false moustache and walking stick and then walked around for a bit. It was the first time that I've noticed a similarity between Mahatma Ghandi and Charlie Chaplain.
It was Saturday night and the promenade was teeming with people creating quite a vibrant atmosphere.
We could have stayed there a couple of days but Rana wanted to move on.
Rana asked us to come up with a list of our top 5 all time songs for a play list he is creating.
For the record, the 5 songs I provided were:
White Wedding by Billy Idol
Brickbat by Billy Bragg
I Live In The City by The Humans
As Long As I Have You by Elvis Presley
Sunshine On Neath by The Proclaimers
Bet you don't know all five.
The next day was a long drive to Ongole. We stopped for a KFC at Vijayawada, where an overenthusiastic elderly lady beggar drove me into a low wall, cutting my leg. I've needed plenty of antiseptic cream on this trip.
Finally we drove down to Chennai. By now we had decided to bypass the city itself and Rana dropped us in the resort town of Mamallapuram a little further down the coast.
We had been in the car with Rana for 6 days and covered over 1500 kilometres, yet he refused to take a single rupee from us for fuel expenses. We had bought him dinner a couple of times but he was not even comfortable with that. Beer he would accept.
He runs a successful company providing adventure travel to sports enthusiasts from around the world:
www.goadventuresports.com.
The least I could do is
to post a link.
Driving at car level on the Indian highways was an experience in itself. I could write a whole post about some of the mad behaviour we saw. Behaviour that would be shown on the 6 O'Clock News at home is routine here. A lack of Road Sense and Common Sense combine to often lethal effect.
Rana loved driving. I think it was because it was like playing a video game in real life, pitting your wits against the random and unexpected.
Mamallapuram is a pleasant enough seaside town. The beach is nothing special but the town has developed its holiday niche mainly through being a short drive from Chennai. We didn't expect to spend 2 weeks there but the days slipped by and suddenly it was too near to Christmas to move on. We had a nice room with a balcony and an array of decent restaurants within a stone's throw.
This is another place with a collection of ancient temples. We only bothered with the free ones which are in a parkland area behind the main road. Also in this park
Puri
Z Hotel is the Butterball, a strangely named giant stone sitting at a precarious angle on a slope. It looks like it should roll away but of course it has been there for millennia.
Christmas came and I was disappointed to note that none of the restaurants within a stones throw were offering a Christmas dinner, although there were plenty of Westerners around. Thankfully a posh restaurant on the edge of town was doing a turkey dinner at a not extortionate price, so we treated ourselves on Christmas Day.
The restaurant was full - with Indians eating curry. We were the only white people there and the only ones having turkey.
We spoke with the owner. She was wondering what to do with all the turkeys she was going to have left over.
At least we got big portions, and it was only mildly currified.
The Mamallapuram dance festival was taking place. At least it was supposed to be. The posters said it started on the 25th December, but when we and a few thousand other people turned up in the evening it turned out that a mistake had
been made and it actually started on the 26th.
We missed this festival because on Boxing Day we were travelling to Pondicherry.
Pondicherry is a big Indian town with a beachfront promenade and a small French Quarter, a reminder that even our cross-channel cousins once had a toehold in this land.
It only took a couple of hours to walk along the promenade and inspect the French Quarter and I thought that was it. Knowing that accommodation was tight I had booked a few nights in advance, so we were going to have to stick around.
However, Pondicherry was a town that reveals its treasures piece by piece and we found that each day we liked it a little more. I can't specifically say why. Nice soup and bread in one place. Excellent coffee in another. Tasty pizza with free garlic bread and chocolate brownie somewhere else. Hmm, it's starting to add up now. Throw in some functioning wifi and we are all set up for a week.
[News item: Following the national uproar about rape and the treatment of women in society, the authorities
in Pondicherry have made it compulsory for female students to wear overcoats.]
Suddenly it was 2013.
We were back on the buses. That was ok though coz buses in Southern India are a whole different ball game to buses in Northern India.
For a start there are enough of them to cope with demand so we are not crammed in; they are not so ancient so as to be about to die at any minute; the drivers don't think they should be representing their country at a Grand Prix; and the roads are made of smooth tarmac with upward rising speed humps rather than downward dropping pot holes (sample size = 3 journeys).
We got off the bus in Trichy station after a 5 hour bus ride. The station is surrounded by hotels, one of which fitted the bill.
Despite its size, Trichy is an easy city to navigate as bus number 1 passes the main places of interest.
The first of these is the Sri Ranganathaswamy Temple. Claiming to be the biggest temple in India, the main entrance gate is 73
metres high and can be seen from afar. It is difficult to tell where the town ends and the temple begins as there are streets and shops inside the temple compound.
The town is centred around the Rock Fort Temple, an 83 metre high outcrop of rock thought to be one of the oldest on the planet. It has been geologically dated as older then the Himalayas. Humans have used it as both a fort and a temple, hence the name. We climbed the steps to the temple at the summit, providing views across the rooftops of the whole city.
We didn't plan to stay long in Madurai, so we took a room near to the out-of-town bus station and nipped in to visit the Sri Meenakshi temple on an autorickshaw.
This is one of India's most famous temples. It is housed in a large square compound that has a magnificent tower at each point of the compass. Each tower holds a mass of carved and gaudily painted figures of Hindu Gods and mythical characters. It is mighty impressive.
Finally we arrive at Kanyakumari, the town sitting on
the Southern tip of India. The point is billed as the confluence of 3 seas: the Arabian sea, the Indian Ocean and the Bay of Bengal. Astute readers may note that only one of these is actually a sea, that's marketing for you.
This is also said to be the only place in the world where you can witness sunset and moonrise on the same horizon.
There is a large rock (or small island) 400 metres out to sea where a revered Swami sat in meditation for 3 days in the 1870's. They built a temple on it in the 1970's which is serviced by continual ferries. Such is its popularity that the queues regularly stretch a couple of hundred metres into the thoroughfare.
On an outcrop nearby there is a 133 ft statues of Tamil Nadu's premier poet. One foot in height for every chapter of his master work.
A pink building surrounds the plinth where Mahatma Ghandi's ashes were held before being spread into the sea at this significant point. A strategically placed hole in the roof allows the sun to shine on the plinth only
once a year, on his birthday.
There are a number of other religious buildings and a bustling tourist market selling all sorts if nik-naks to the multitude of pilgrims and tourists that descend on the town.
Several churches and Christian shrines are dotted around. St. Thomas the Apostle landed here in AD52, though the ball didn't really get rolling until the arrival of St.Francis Xavier in 1542. The church bell ringers need a lot more practice though.
We experienced the variable climate from a 4th floor room with a balcony overlooking the Cathedral sized church and the sweeping coast receding towards the wind farm and nuclear power plant. Still lots of power cuts though.
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