India

Hello.

Currently i'm in Mysore, which is in the Karnataka region of India.

My flight to India with Air Asia was fairly bog standard, efficient and without any niceties, which is exactly what I expected for the price. I just read the whole time, so it passed fairly quickly. I only noticed 2 other non-asians on the flight, which the rest of the passengers seeming to be made up of Indians and South East Asians.

I'd decided to get a bus from the airport to Trichy Junction, which was the area with all the hotels. The guide told me which bus numbers to get, but not the direction, and as I approached the road a bus with one of the numbers was just leaving, so I jumped on it, found out it was in the wrong direction, and got off at the next stop. I found the hotel I wanted to stay in pretty easily, but the guy at reception said I could only stay one night as they were booked up the day after. I went to a bar that night, which was called "Nice Bar", and had a couple of beers with a guy who told me that he was black because he was a child of God, and I am white because of... and then just started laughing. I think he was only half joking. He also had a load of quotes in text messages in his mobile phone, which he showed me, for about 20 minutes. The quotes were from a range of people including Hitler and famous cricketers. He gave me his phone number before he left, which I unfortunately left in the bar...

The next day I'd planned to go to three temples mentioned in the guide book, but first I had to find another hotel that wasnt booked up. This turned out to be difficult, as all the scheaper hotels seemed to be full because of some kind of religious festival. While looking for a hotel I ran into one of the white people from my flight. We talked for a while. Ernesto, from Chile, South America, not near Mexico, as he had to explain to all but two Indians who asked where he was from. had two weeks in India and no plan at all. I told him of my problems in finding somewhere to stay and we went and tried his hotel, which was a bit more expensive, but he checked out of his room and we shared a double room which made it cheaper. The we both went to the temples. First was the Rock Fort temple, which, unsurprisingly, is inside a rock fort, and is on top of a big hill in the centre of Trichy. The views from the top were great. Next we went to Sri Ranganathaswamy temple, which was dissappointing, with a dissappointing "view point" and a dissappointing man that was obviously trying to con us. The third temple was maybe Sri Jambukeshwara, but I'm not too sure. There was an elephant there that was blessing people by putting its trunk on their heads, I bought some bananas and fed them to it. Getting back to the hotel area took ages, and we had to get 3 buses I think, which makes me think that the last temple wasn't the one that the guide said to go to, as it says you can just get the same bus round in a circle.

The next day we got the bus early to Tanjore. When we got there we found the cheapest hotel that was in the guide, left our stuff, then walked to the palace. It wasn't much, but it did have a good tower with good views from the top, the rest of the palace was a bit neglected and overgrown though. Then we went to Brihadishwara Temple and Fort. This is probably my favourite out of the temples that i've visited in India. In general Hindu temples are often quite similar, with multicoloured towers made from carvings of different gods and godesses, but this temple was made of sand stone and left unpainted. It also had an elephant, but I didn't give this one any bananas.

We stayed just one night in Tanjore, then headed for Madurai, where we stayed for 3 nights. While there we went to another palace, which was a bit better than the one in Tanjore, but still not amazing. We went to a Ghandi Memorial Museum, which was very blunt about the British, using phrases like "The Indians were spurred on by the English Mens bloodthirst" when it was talking about the battles that occured when India was fighting to gain independance. It was a good museum though, and it had the loin cloth that Ghandi was wearing when he was killed. We also went to another temple, my second favourite, which was huge. It's called Sri Meenakshi and has 12 of the big multicoloured god and goddess towers. It also had elephants, I was becoming less and less entertained by them.

We decided to get the train to our next destination, Kanyakumari, because it was a 6 hour journey and we didn't fancy doing it on a bus. The only problem was that the train left at 2:35 am, so we wasted time in an internet cafe, and then a bar, but everything around seemed to close at 11, so we had to sit in the train station.

We both slept well on the train, and slept a bit more when we got to a hotel. KanyaKumari is the most southernly point of India, and it has a massive Statue of a poet, and a memorial for a guy called Vivekananda, I don't know what he did, but you have to take a boat to get to them so it was pretty good. There was also a view point that we went to for sunset, along with loads of indian tourists, but it was too cloudy so everyone looked kind of dissappointed. We had a tv in our room, and it broke. Ernesto told the guy at reception, but he simply responded with "TV is off".

Next we went on the train to Thiruvananthapuram, which is called Trivandrum, for ease I assume. We only stayed there one night. I asked the guy at our hotel if there was a place nearby that did laundry, and he told me I could wash clothes in the bucket in the room, and then hang them on washing lines out in the back, I assumed this meant there wasn't a laundry place and so followed his advice. When we were walking around later we saw a laundry place just around the corner, plus it rained at about 7 in the morning the day after, so my clothes got wet. I put some wet clothes on, then put the rest in a plastic bag, as there wasn't much to do in Trivandrum, so we were heading to Varkala.

Varkala was pretty good, it was very touristy, you could wander around and hear English being spoken everywhere, which was a little strange. It's on the coast and has bars and hotels along a cliff edge, with the beach down below them. We only stayed there for one night, as Ernesto was running out of time before he had to fly out from Trichy. We went to a bar that promised live music, which we later saw comprised a flute and a man with a couple of drums, they were ok, but it got a little tiresome after a while, it wasn't interesting enough to be as loud as it was. The next day we went to the beach for a while, Ernesto befriended a woman that was trying to sell pineapples, the sea had massive waves, the kind that really throw you about, so that was fun.

Next was Alleppey, which is an area that has all the Backwaters, which were used as transport before they had roads, and so have all the villages and farms built along side them. We took a passenger boat from Alleppey to Kottayam, and then a train from Kottayam to Kochi. I kind of missed Kochi, as I spent a lot of the full day that we had there on the toilet or in bed, feeling very dodgy and not wanting to risk going to far from a toilet. I felt fine when I woke up, then it got worse into the early afternoon. Ernesto said I hadn't missed much anyway. The next day it was time for us to part ways, Ernesto was getting a night train to Trichy for his flight, and I got a bus to Kumily, which is close to a wildlife park with over 1000 elephants.

On the bus ride there was one point when a car was over taking a scooter, and the bus was trying to overtake both. I dont know if something came the other way or not, but the bus moved closer to the car, so the car moved closer to the scooter and nudged it. I looked away, but heard the scooter scrape along the floor, the guy on it was just in shorts, t shirt and sandles, so I imagine he was a bit of a mess. Both the car and bus stopped, the bus driver talked to a passenger that was sat close to him, and then carried on driving. I'm not sure if the car carried on driving, but i've heard the mob justice is similar here to what it is in Kenya, you don't want to wait around if you've been in an accident and are the least hurt person, whether it was your fault or not.

When I got to Kumily it was late and a guy approached me trying to take me to a hotel, enjoying being alone again and free to make snap decisions, i lowered his price a little and then followed him. His name was Roy, and he also did guided walks through the jungle. I decided that I would do one with him the following morning at 5:45 am. It was pretty good, although I was dissappointed we didn't see elephants, we did see a few different types of monkey, some bison and some giant squirrels. There were monkey noises from all over the place aswell. At the end I gave Roy a small tip, he took me to his house for coffee, and then he ruined it all by saying he needed money to go to hospital for his jaw. I asked him what was wrong with it and he said he didn't know, but it had been hurting all morning. There was nothing wrong with it... I said bluntly "I'm not giving you money to go to the hospital Roy" and then left.

After Kumily I headed north to Munnar, famous for tea plantations. Part way through the bus journey the driver took a phone call, then told the passengers that there had been a complaint about the bus, and everyone had to get off. I have no idea where we were, but I got another bus to somewhere else, where a man told me I had to get another bus to Pooparra, and then another bus to Munnar. I got on the bus that passed Pooparra, and then promptly forgot where i had to tell the conductor that I wanted to go, remembering only the "Poop" bit. When the conductor asked me where I was going I just said Poop and then mumbled. It worked. In pooptown I had to wait for the next bus, I chatted to the driver and conductor of the previous bus while they had a break and a chai. The driver was called Baby, I laughed and told him what a baby was in English, but he said he already knew, and didn't seem to find it as funny as i or the conductor did.

By the time I'd managed to work my way to Munnar, the tea museum had already closed, so I went the morning after, before continuing to Coimbatore, which was thankfully an uneventful bus ride. The guide says there's nothing to do in Coimbatore, so I only stayed there to break up the trip between Munnar and Mysore, which is where I am now.

Today I went to Mysore palace, the first legitimately impressive palace i've seen in India, then I went to a Train Museum. There are certain places a person shouldn't go alone, a train museum is one of them. I think if you go to a museum alone, you look like you're really into the subject of the museum, so this is fine in say, a Ghandi museum, as India's independance is a legitimately interesting thing to be interested in. But I felt like everyone was looking at me thinking I was a weirdo who's really interested in trains. It wasn't big, and just before I left a guy from North East India who is here to do some research in his phd turned up. I'd met him in the hostel the night before, so I walked around the museum again with him, hopeing that the people I saw again would think that I was meeting him there and had just arrived a little early.

Then I came here...

Next stops are I think Bangalore, then Hampi, and then possibly go and chill out in Goa for a while, see if I can find any more travellers on the same route as me.

Bye