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Published: February 1st 2009
So far we have since leaving Cardiff. . .
Visited 7 countries,
Flown on 8 flights,
Taken 30 long bus rides,
Dozens more shorter rides,
Jumped on 14 ferry rides,
Stayed at approximately 50 hotels,
Been away for 160(ish) days,
Had about a million mosquito bites,
And travelled ????? miles,
Now its time for INDIA...
Where do we start? MEGA & LOUD is the best words!
Landing at Bangalore’s new second airport half hour out from the city we were surprised to find a very impressive building with all the mod cons and surprisingly a very straight forward routine of exiting the airport. Heading down and grabbing our bags to catch a cab in to the city. Taking the regrettable advice of the stewards we used an airport taxi service which turned out to be very expensive.
BANGALORE Half hour later we were in Bangalore City. Couldn’t quite see what it was like as it was late and quite dark so we headed to a few cheap hotels. Price of the hotels was very expensive compared to what we were led to believe and what was in the book. Around double at 860 Rupees (?12)
and the hotels themselves are crap, but with massive rooms, and good location. So we found a place and settled in ready for the next day.
Following morning we headed out to check the city. We were approached by a Rickshaw driver offering a tour of the city for 20 Rps (30p). Bargain we thought so off we went. He had a small mini van rather than a rickshaw but either way for 20 Rps we couldn’t say no. Off we went to see the parliament buildings, palace, gardens etc… soon after the first stop he said would we like to stop at a shop. Well what a surprise. Same scam as Thailand. We go to one or two of shops and he gets a litre of fuel in return. The problem is its never just one or two shops. It’s more like five or six. So we went to one and then got dropped off at the central market area where we conveniently lost him!
After an hour of so of wondering the chaotic streets with all the madness you expect from an Indian city and a bit of local grub we jumped on another rickshaw for
a second attempt of a tour of the city. We went to a Shiva temple, Botanical gardens and the main palace. Not all that impressive to be honest and after the attempt at them trying to make us pay 500/Rupees (?7) to take one photo which got our backs up we decided to head back to he hotel to chill and get our stuff together ready to head out the following day.
FIRST TRAIN RIDE We had planned, or rather Liane had planned, to go to the East coast to Chennai, but we had heard that it was a bit naff so on some advice from a fellow traveller who had been on our flight and the same hotel indecently, so we set out to Mysore instead… We headed off early to the main train station to head for Mysore which was around 3 hours south of the Bangalore. After a bit of banter with several taxi and rickshaw drivers we managed to get a ride to the station for around 100/Rupees (?1.20). Arriving at the station it was slight chaos. Not really having a clue on where to go or how to buy a ticket as nothing
is sign posted in India, well not where signs should be…!! So we eventually got a couple of tickets to Mysore for 50/Rupees each (65p, not bad when you think a train ride in the UK for the same distance is about ?65!!). Then we made a quick dash to the platform as there were only a couple of minutes to spare. Typically our train was on the platform furthest away! Jumped on the train and found a seat luckily enough.
The journey was pleasant enough, there are a constant stream of work men selling tea, coffee, nibbles etc which is nice, and we were very lucky to have a train so sparse (as we’ve now been on another train that was very very full!). We arrived in Mysore and the girl who had told us advised us not to bother with Chennai had also got the same train there with her boyfriend, so we all went on the hunt for a hotel. We found one that was the cheapest in our trusty bible not far from the train station, but everywhere seems a lifetime when you’re carrying more than 25+ Kilos on your back! (25 Kilos Liane and
a whopping 35+ Kilos for Gareth). The hotel was still pretty expensive 420 Rps (?6) - still no where near what we thought it would be, but a dam sight cheaper than Bangalore!
MYSORE We spent the next day with the couple from the flight, Steph and Tom, and went up to Chamundi hill which overlooks the city. This place has a sacred temple on the top and luckily enough there was also a festival at the time for cows or something, so all the cows had been painted in bright colours, even their horns, and we even spotted a dog painted too!! (check the pics!) After an hour of wondering through the crowds we walked down the (numbered) 1000 steps and walked the 2 kilometres back to town. Back in the town we had a look through the old central market where they sell the powder to make the ritual bindis and what they had used to paint the cows, and we got taken to go see how incense is made, which was nice, a great day.
The following day we went to the very grand Bangalore Maharaja’s Palace and Gareth was horrified (as usual) to
find that we got charged 10 times more than Indians to get into the palace! You’d think he’d be used to being ripped off by now! But anyhow we paid it reluctantly and had a walk around the large very ornate palace and then around the grounds and met some elephants, which was Liane’s favourite part!
We hadn’t realised how far west we had come, by coming to Mysore, looking back at our itinerary we had planned to do Mysore on the way to Goa and not on the first leg at all! Typical… but no big deal, we’ve got time to spare here and in no rush which is nice for a change…
SNOOTY OOTY So we decided to go to India’s most famous hill station called Ooty (or Snooty Ooty while we brits had it!) again on the advice from Steph. It took 5 hours on the bus travelling through the plains of South India and luckily through one of the many national parks. On route we saw loads of monkeys (around 4 different breeds), wild hogs, wild deer and the best bit seen a group of wild elephants bathing in the river, one of
which being a baby. Down side is we did not manage to get any pictures (plenty of time for that!). After leaving the plains we headed up in to the hills.... MOUNTAINS to be exact, up VERY VERY HIGH through tea plantations with nice views over the valley below. We eventually arrived and it was already dark and ridiculously cold! We were not at all prepared for the massive change in climate, and unfortunately when we’re in this state we give in too easily when it comes to hotels etc, but we were no mood for searching, we wanted a hotel now! We got done yet again, paying 500 Rps instead of the usual 300 due to there being a ‘festival’ on in town which hiked the prices up, apparently! Pretty sure that is tourist price not Indian price!
We put on a millions layers of clothes on and went to the town for some food and found loads of little street stalls selling tea, cakes, samossas etc, we had about 5 cups, we needed that many to warm us back up! Everything on the stall was 4 rupees (6p), the tea, the potato dumplings, the samosas, everything! So
for 40 Rps (57p) we were well fed on little snacks!
We spent a very cold night (at around 2?C) in the hotel, with a window that wouldn’t shut, no heating and slept in all our clothes, sleeping bags and two blankets, we were so cold that we decided the next day to get the hell out of there and back down to the warmth. The town itself was nice, quaint, had a lot of character and the temperature was much cooler. It was more like something you would expect in the Alps of Switzerland than in India. Quite strange but nice. Had a bit of a walk around and met a guy from OZ and had a few teas where we tried talking ourselves in to staying longer but with no luck.
We had heard that the train going up to Ooty is World Heritage listed with beautiful scenery so we tried to get a ticket to go down on it, but the system of booking tickets boggled our brains too much to even try to attempt this simple task of taking a train to the bottom of the hill, and after 3 hours of trying to
get to grips with the booking system and waiting for any cancellations we gave up and got the bus instead!
(We would try to explain the train ticket fiasco but it is too stupid for words, and we’d rather forget about the whole episode!)
COIMBATORE So we went to Coimbatore which is the next big town from Ooty and went straight to the train station to figure out what to do and where to go, but it was late in the day and the trains to the places we were considering were not arriving until late, so we had some dinner and decided to stay the night and try to recover from the ridiculousness of Ooty and we would set out the next day either back to Chennai or to Pondicherry or to Trichy!!
We found a hotel with a single room that only charged us 50 Rps extra because there were two of us so 270 Rps (?3.80) in total, not bad, much better than previous stays!
So we attempted to tackle the trains in Coimbatore and had decided on Trichy and when the train finally came it was so full you wouldn’t fit a midget
on, let alone two backpackers with loads of kit! So that plan failed miserably and we checked back into the hotel to try again the next day, which being a Monday we assumed would be less busy!
We cut our losses with the Trichy idea and decided to get back on the original route and this time we managed to get a train to Chennai, the journey there took a lot longer than expected, 10 hours instead of the 7/8 we had been told, and we didn’t get a seat, but had to make do in the walk through and sit on our bags, but we did meet a lovely Indian man who was so elated to meet travellers and gave us and itinerary for the whole state of Tamil Nadu, with loads of places we hadn’t even heard of, which was so great of him!
CHENNAI formerly MADRAS
In Chennai we did absolutely nothing but have a night in with Dominos Pizza and a few beers watching the Obama inauguration! We did try to go to the city but when we got off the metro it really was as bad as we had been told and
that was that, so off we went again! (Anyone thinking about going to Chennai, we seriously advise not to bother. Over priced and the people there are not nice).
MAMALLAPURAM We took the advice of the nice Indian man and went to a small town called Mamallapuram which is on the way from Chennai to Pondicherry, and it has very old (7th century) stone carved temples and cave temples etc. We arrived and were greeted by a local man who had a home stay for 150 Rps (?2.10) per night, and 100 Rps (?1.40) if we stayed for a week, that’s more like it! We checked it out and we think it was more the dogs they had that settled the deal rather than the price, as they had two mutts, one who looked like Stella but blonde (male version of Stella, perfect match for her we think yet obviously Stella would where the pants in that relationship!!!), and a tiny miniscule 3(ish) week old black puppy, who was adorable and spent 3 nights in bed with us!! DON’T TELL STELLA!
The town is very small and the stone temples are dotted all over, but everything is
walking distance. So we spent the next few days taking in a temple or two a day, nice and relaxed, and happy to be seeing some proper history.
There was also a festival on here too (seems they always have festivals for one thing or another in India) this one was a Dance festival, with traditional Indian dance (like what you did in Kenya Mum - was thinking of you!) preformed in front of one of the stone carved rocks which made a fantastic backdrop. Great couple of days kicking back and chilling and really enjoying the cheap life. Average spend was about ?3 per day and that included place to stay, 2 meals each and our drinking water. Happy days! Over all we had a great time here and would recommend this place to anyone travelling in the area. Loads of stalls, shops and things to see which is unlike other towns in the region.
AUROVILLE & PONDICHERRY After 6 days here we were starting to get a little bored of the place and we had seen on the internet about doing volunteering in a town near Pondicherry so that was next on the agenda. We took
a short bus to Auroville to check out this volunteer thing and landed straight into Hippy Central! We got taken by a rickshaw to the farm we had seen on the web and went to have a mooch around and ask some questions. The camp was very basic, palm leaf elevated communal dorms, but it wasn’t a farm it was actually a tree farm. All traveller types, and no meat allowed! So we found a guest house near to the beach about 8Km from Auroville to try to figure out if we were ready for the volunteer place… turns out we weren’t!
So as we write this we are currently somewhere about 5Km from Pondi and 8km from Auroville, not quite sure where but we’re near the beach so that’s all that matters!
Yesterday we spent on the beach but Liane got hassled by Indian guys who couldn’t quite handle a girl in a bikini (even though there were plenty other tourist doing the same) sneaky, slimy men tried to take sly pictures of her, and then she got told to cover up by one of the life guards! Not happy!
We spent today bumbling around Pondi,
looking at the beautiful old French colonial houses, but there is not much apart from that there so tomorrow is a beach day (hopefully it will be better!) then I think we will finally go to Trichy!
Stay tuned….
TIPS FOR BLOGGERS BUDGET For a couple 700 Rps per day is ample. Sometimes as little as 300 Rps.
Obviously if you are in a large city you will spend more.
PLACES Avoid the cities as for what we have seen so far they are really not worth the time. Unless obviously there is something there worth seeing.
TRAVEL Try and use the trains as much as possible as they are easier to use and are slightly more enjoyable plus they are far cheaper than busses. Also avoid Rickshaws as they will eat up your budget very quickly. Flying is generally a no no unless your minted!
SLEEPING In the cities your are pretty much screwed as everywhere is expensive. When out of the city try for home stays as these are always around 100Rps to 200Rps per night for a couple.
EATING If you are after cheap food try a dish called THALI.
Average price is around 20 to 30 Rps and sometimes less. It’s basically as much as you can eat rice served with about 5 to 7 different types of veg curries on a banana leaf, sometimes if you’re lucky with popadoms and chapattis. Great value and its served all over as it’s the main day time meal. If not that try Massalla Dosa, Roti and most other veg dishes. ALL VERY CHEAP. If you’re a meat head expect to pay 4 or 5 times more for a dish. It’s worth it but you will eat through your budget very quickly.
THE PEOPLE You will need patience. A LOT OF IT! Things are slow and very simple things are made very difficult because of the way things work here. However after a while you should (we are hoping!!) get use to it!
Message us if you have any queries or advice for the West coast! G&L
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anonymous
non-member comment
thanks for the tips