India: Varkala (1)

On my first night in Varkala I had a drink and some Momos (tasty Tibetan dumplings) with a couple of Spaniards at my guesthouse. If you recall, I'd arrived that morning after a mammoth 21 hour trip from Ooty, eyes almost sealed with tiredness and a feeling of lethargy that was compounded by the searing heat of Kerala.

So when the beer was drank and the Momos eaten, it was 11pm and I was ready to hit the sack. However, the Spaniards - Rachel and her best mate Allejo (a Jesus doppelganger) - had other ideas and gnawed away at me to join them for more drinks along the cliff.

Now when you're travelling alone, as I am, you can't really afford to pass up opportunities of social interaction - especially in a country like India that has no hostel 'scene' (with shared dormitories and communal areas). Meeting people can be difficult here.

Suppressing the yawns and the stinging eyes, I took a 20 minute walk with them to the North Cliff. Varkala has a town centre, approx 2 km inland, but the tourists and backpackers come here for the beach and clifftop views/restaurants/bars/shops that sit above it:

We headed to the Rock n Roll bar - as the others had been there the night before - and ended up having a great night. After my illness-induced period of alcohol abstinence, I seem to be making up for lost time in Varkala at the moment. And obviously bars = drink = social interaction = fun = making friends.

After a long night chatting to lots of people of various nationalities, including the likes of Lorenzo (Swiss/Italian) and Andreas (Swedish)...

...and some time on the dancefloor with Allejo/Jesus and a strange guy from Stoke....

...I finally crashed at 5am and slept through my checkout time of 10.30am. Oops.

My second day was spent moving to my new guesthouse - this one is perfectly located on the Cliff and is run by a brilliant Indian/Canadian duo - and nursing my hangover with a combination of lemon soda, sweet coffee and fried eggs on toast.

Yesterday I took a walk along the coast to Black Beach:

I spent most of my hour there having a verbal fight with a pack of dogs who wanted to use the shade from my umbrella to sleep. The little bastards puppies wouldn't take no for an answer, so I got frustrated and went back to the normal beach - which had better sand and water anyway.

Apart from that, my time has mainly been spent reading (finished The Girl Who Kicked The Hornets' Nest; started The Dice Man), lying on the beach, getting my haircut by an expert back street barber, drinking copious amounts of water (it's incredibly humid here) and eating the hottest curry of my trip so far.

While eating that curry last night - face dripping with sweat, eyes watering, mouth hotter than the depths of hell - a girl on a moped entered my vision from the left, lurched joltingly forward (as she applied the accelarator instead of the brake) and smashed into a tree on the right. Not something you normally see during a quiet meal out.

I jumped up - as did half the restaurant - and helped pulled the bike off her, put her into the recovery position and got her water. Luckily her boyfriend was there and after half an hour she gingerly got to her feet and walked away. She wasn't wearing a helmet (no-one does out here), so one lucky girl.

As if that wasn't enough excitement for one evening, I ended up having another great night at the Rock n Roll bar - and noticed that their dancefloor included a small area for pumping iron. And why not? Do a bit of dancing, some bench presses, maybe lift some dumbells in between sips of your Cuba Libre...



(apologies for blurred lens...)

So yes, another night on the tiles and another 5am finish meant today was mostly a write-off. But I still had time for a couple of hours on the beach with some Swedish folks I met here. And in a minute I'm off to go and have some grilled fresh fish. The life in Varkala is something I could get used to. 

Indian rail concessions

Killing time in the queue at Ooty railway station, I noticed a long list of 47 different categories of people who were eligible for some sort of discount on their train tickets in India. In among the usual stuff (students, OAPs etc) were a few unusual cases that we don't have in the UK. In no particular order, and using the exact wording...

-- kidney patients
-- persons transporting dead bodies
-- totally deaf and dumb patients (both afflictions together in the same person)
-- non-infectious leprosy patients
-- widows of policemen killed in action against terrorism or extremism
-- heart patients alone or with an escort from the station serving their place of residence to the station serving the hospital for heart surgery and return
-- widows of martyrs of Vianja in 1999

I'm not sure how some of these are proven (except for the dead body one - that would be fairly obvious). Maybe you get a special ID card saying 'I have leprosy, but don't worry - it's not infectious!' that you show to the guard.

In view of having no pictures to put in this blog post, I searched Google Images for 'dead body on train'. Lo and behold, the first image to come up was a picture from India (by the looks of it). For the easily offended, please look away now:

Fortunately I'm yet to encounter any dead bodies on trains. Yet.

Right. Back to normal, non-morbid stuff in the next post!

India: Ooty and to Varkala

India is steamy, dusty, noisy and busy. A few days in the mountains, and Ooty, came at just the right time for me. I wanted slightly cooler temparatures, a bit of chill time, and the opportunity to meet some fellow travellers - and I got them all.

On my second, and last, full day in the hill station I took an organised trek up into the mountains. There were about 20 of us on the trip - some Brits, a few Swiss, a couple of Germans, some Aussies. A good crowd.

We were taken by jeep 10 km down windy roads and began our day's walk. The morning route took us through small villages, eucalyptus forests and amazing tea plantations. I'd seen pictures of the tea plantations before - as most of us have (even if just on the packet of PG Tips) but to see them up close was something else. For as far as you could see there was what looked like thousands of green pin cushions bunched together on hillsides:

After 10km or so we stopped at a village for lunch. The village probably had ten or so buildings, and we were escorted to what was basically just a glorified shack. Appearances can deceive though, and the fantastic thali that the owner served up was one of the best feeds I've had so far in India. Lovely curry, spicy beetroot, a pakoda and moreish fluffy rice, accompanied by popadums and a good glass of chai. And all for about 60p. We got a nice little spot outside in the sunshine:

Lunch done, and we set out to tackle a mountain. A leisurely pace was set and we took a fun climb through bush and on rock to the summit, where the views were outstanding. A few dogs kept us company all the way up (including one with only three usable legs!) and became quite attached to me...

We chilled up there for a while before taking a slow walk back through more villages and plantations to our vehicles. Back in Ooty we arranged to meet up for beers in the evening, and I consumed my first drop of alcohol for about 2.5 weeks. Needless to say, it didn't take much to get a bit squiffy and we all had a good party in the garden of my guesthouse:

Yesterday was Mega Travel Day. I still had a waitlisted ticket for the Blue Mountain Railway and, fearing the worst (ie, it not turning into a confirmed ticket) I got to the station at midday to queue for an unreserved ticket. Two and a half hours later they opened the ticket counter and I was told my waitlisted ticket had become a confirmed ticket and I had a designated seat in First Class. Phew!

The route down through the mountains to Mettapuluyam was one of the few 'must do' plans I've had on this trip, and it didn't disappoint. Breathtaking scenery everywhere you looked, sheer drops below as we passed over rickety bridges and the chug-chug-chug of the steam engine up front made for one of the best train journeys I've ever been on.

There were farcical scenes at the end though. As darkness closed in, and the mozzies started to enter the carriages en masse, the steam engine conked out. We were 1km from our destination. It took another three aborted attempts to kick-start it before we finally crawled into Mettupuluyam about an hour late.

No harm done though, as we had plenty of time to hop across the tracks, buy a train ticket to Coimbatore and get the second train of the day. We bunched up nice and tight in cattle class for a thankfully speedy 45 minute journey south.

At Coimbatore, myself, a couple of gap year guys from Lincoln and a couple of Swedes went across the road from the station and had some dinner while we waited for the next train. One of the very few things I'll remember about Coimbatore was an incredibly insistent man selling those glow-in-the-dark magic stars that you put on bedroom ceilings. After the 15th time of saying 'no, I don't need a set of magic stars to decorate my guesthouse/train berth ceiling as I backpack through India', he gave up.

At 11pm my sleeper train to Trivandrum pulled in. I had a narrow 'bed' up by the ceiling with a flourescent light above my head and freezing A/C blasting in my face for 8 hours. Probably not the best night's sleep I've ever had.

Once in Trivandrum - in southern Kerala - I scuttled across the tracks again to (just) make my fourth and final train north to Varkala. The train was packed so I took a spot up in the luggage-rack-cum-bed thing:

By the time I got to Varkala I'd been on the go for 21 hours and was beginning to resemble Tom Hanks in Castaway. My white T-shirt had turned into a mixture of grey/orange and the rest of me wasn't faring much better! So the cold shower I had once I got to my guesthouse - a pleasant building tucked back away from the beach - was heavenly.

Varkala is absolutely steaming. I've been here a few hours and have probably lost half my body weight in sweat (he exaggerated), it's that hot. Because I plan to spend a few days here I wanted to find somewhere cheaper than my guesthouse I'm staying in tonight. I had a wander through the North Cliff area this afternoon and found a decent, if very basic, room for about 6 quid a night. I'll move there tomorrow. First impressions of the town are really good:

Tonight I'm going to have a long sleep and plan the next few days. The plan will probably consist of sitting on the beach, drinking coconut juice, reading and relaxing. It's a hard life!

There are more pics on Flickr (link in right-hand column).

India: Mysore and Ooty

I woke up in Bangalore on Saturday morning and was told by the owner of my hotel that I 'won't be leaving Bangalore today'.

He explained that a state-wide Bundh was underway across Karnataka. A Bundh is a general strike in India that occurs fairly rarely and paralyses state transport, shuts down shops and basically brings towns and cities to a standstill. This Bundh had been called because a politician had been banged up, and the rural population, in particular, weren't happy. There were reports of buses being stoned for breaking the picket line, and other outbreaks of violence and arson across the state.

I had a train ticket already booked to Mysore and, knowing my travel plans meant only 24hrs in Mysore, I decided to try my luck with the train. In the event, I saw nothing of the Bundh - and the fact that the roads were a bit more empty meant I got to the station in no time at all. Bundh schmundh.

The Shatabdi Express from Bangalore to Mysore was a fantastic train. Two hours of A/C comfort, with a free meal chucked in:

I arrived in Mysore, finally managed to locate the free driver sent by the hotel and checked in to the basic, but pleasant Suhashini Palace. Bags dumped, and I negotiated a price with a rickshaw driver to take me to a couple of sights. Knowing I had just one afternoon to 'do' Mysore, this was the best way of getting the most out of a fairly sizeable town.

First we went up Chamundhi Hill. Because of the Bundh, all the petrol stations were closed, so my driver explained to me in broken English that whether we made it up to the top of the hill or not was 'in God's hands' - as the fuel gauge showed us to be worringly empty.

We chugged along at about 5mph up 6-7km of bendy road and, praise the Lord for he doth provide petrol, made it to the top without conking out. At the top there was a spangly temple:

And a monkey chewing on a coconut:

One quick 'comedy' snap of me taking the rickshaw reins...

and we rolled back down the hill - stopping for a couple of pics on the way:

Once back in Mysore we passed the zoo, so I asked him to stop while I went and had a look. The poor guy had no petrol to run any more jobs so agreed to wait an hour and a half while I took a walk around the massive zoo. I made sure to tip him at the end of the day.

I'm not overly keen on zoos, and how the animals are cooped up in pens, but to be fair to Mysore Zoo they rescued all the animals from captivity and appeared to be treating them very well. As far as variety goes, the only big beast missing from my list was a polar bear. There were lions, tigers, giraffes, huge bison, crocodiles, hippos and more. Here are some pics:

It's a white tiger! Just like the book said...

Following the zoo, Mr Rickshaw was woken from his slumber to drive me to the palace. It's far and away Mysore's biggest tourist draw. I saw it in the daytime, then went and had a lovely Masala Dosa (pancake with potatoes) before returning to see it at night, all lit up with lightbulbs. This lighting-up ceremony only takes place on a Saturday and Sunday between 7-7.30pm so I was really glad my visit coincided with it:

Yesterday, Sunday, I made my way to the bus station to catch my coach to Ooty. Again, more rumours were spreading among locals and backpackers about the Bundh and the chaos it would cause - but we left an hour late, which is nothing in Indian terms.

I really enjoyed the 5hr coach trip, particularly the last couple of hours which was a meandering, sometimes scary, ascent up into the Nilgiri Mountains. We passed tea plantations, saw some incredible views over valleys, and got stuck once or twice negotiating hairpin bends in the face of oncoming traffic:

We arrived in one piece, and stepped out into the crisp air of Ooty at about 6pm.

I found my guesthouse, killed about 10 mosquitos in my room, had a quick bite to eat and a chat and went to bed. This morning I got a first proper look in the light at the guesthouse, and the fantastic view from my room/veranda over Ooty lake. It's a great spot.

I have two full days here so today was spent getting my bearings on a leisurely walk around town. My guidebook map is worse than useless, so I did a lot of getting lost, asking people for directions, and some aimless wandering. And why not.

Ooty was famously 'built' by and used by the British upper classes during the colonial era, and it was interesting to visit St Stephens church and see headstones and plaques in memorial of the British generals who lived and died in the town.

The Ooty of today would be unrecognisable to those generals, with its noisy and chaotic town centre full of chocolate shops, electrical goods emporiums and internet cafes. But away from the commercial centre I found quieter spots, and the fresh mountain air feels really good to breathe after the dust and dirt of Bangalore and Mysore.

Tomorrow I'm going trekking in the mountains, and on Wednesday I'm praying that my 'waitlisted' ticket for the Blue Mountain Railway turns into a 'confirmed' ticket so I can experience one of the most famous rail routes in the world. Fingers crossed!

Some more pics below, with yet more on Flickr at the usual place.

Ooty's commercial hub

Bull On Parade

Coconut time

Botanical gardens, Ooty

Reflections Guest House

India: Bangalore (2)

With fully functioning limbs, brain and other organs, my aim was to have a couple of days R n R in Bangalore before beginning the rest of my journey through southern India.

The R n R was provided by the relaxing seclusion of my amazing boutique hotel, with the comfiest pillows I've ever slept on, free Wifi for my iPhone, cable TV and the rest. That peace and quiet was a stark contrast to when I left the front door and stepped into the busy, dusty, frenetic Bangalore.

The city population has more than doubled in the last 15 years, an astonishing statistic. Every pavement, mall, cafe and shop is over-populated. A bit like how London has changed in the past decade or so (in my eyes). The fuel for the boom is the IT/online/call centre industry, leading to a young, upwardly mobile population who are quickly taking over the city.

And those teens/20s/30s want the best food, drink, clothes, gadgets to spend their new-found wealth on. I had lunch yesterday in a mega-mall called UB City, where Paul Smith, Louis Vuitton and Diesel have recently opened boutiques. Next door another mega tower was being built by workers in loincloths who slept on a small piece of wasteland in front of the new building, their privacy (from the outside world) only guarded by a flimsy tarpaulin fence. New and old India in a nutshell.

UB City

The reason I ended up at UB City was because I had a fruitless journey across town to go on a half-day sightseeing tour. After negotiating an enormous roundabout which, like all major roads and roundabouts in India had no subways, crossings or lights, I got to the tourist office and was told I was the only interested party and therefore the tour was cancelled. Bangalore cearly isn't famous for its sights!

I spent the afternoon walking slowly back to the city centre, through the (relatively) peaceful Cubbon Park:

Leafing through the hotel's copy of Lonely Planet this morning, I noticed that horse racing happens on Fridays at the Bangalore Turf Club. I went a bought some jeans, put on my best shirt (well, my only shirt) and got a rickshaw to the course.

I got there with four races to go and ended up picking three winners out of four! Beginners' luck. I also picked a few duds and actually finished minus 120 rupees (about two quid!) but it was a fun afternoon.

I seemed to be the only western/white person there so got several people coming up to me and asking the usual questions (where you from? you need hotel?), as well as sharing tips and advice on what horse was going to win the next race. Good fun.

I'm trying to maintain a sensible diet for the time being, and had spotted in Time Out Bangalore that the Spinach Au Gratin at Koshy's got a big thumbs up. Koshy's is a local institution: one large cavernous dining room, faded Gandhi pictures on the wall, waiters dressed in crisp white jackets. It was a successful way to spend my last day/night in Bangalore.

I'm off to Mysore tomorrow for a night, before heading further south to a hill station. After the noise, dust and non-stop hectic pace in Bangalore, I'm hoping to turn the volume level down a notch and get a better feel for the real India away from the city. In the meantime, here are some more pics from big, brash Bangalore:

Well I was going to upload more pics, but this slowest-of-the-slow internet connection is making me lose the will to live. I've posted most on my Flickr account already. Link on the right.

India: Bangalore (1)

And just when it was all going so swimmingly...

Well, in all honesty, for a while it hadn't been going swimmingly. I knew that my stomach, the constant fatigue and piercing headache wasn't right. I kept active in Hampi - and glad I did, or I would have missed some great sights - but I think by that stage my body was saying GO TO A DOCTOR. NOW.

So I did. I left Hampi by local bus to a place called Hospet. There I killed a few hours finishing off The Girl Who Played With Fire, periodically telling beggars to go away, and taking pictures of Indian film posters:

 Finally my sleeper train arrived to take me to Bangalore. It was the first sleeper train I'd got in India, and despite feeling like crap, it was all I'd hoped it would be.

I'd read a lot about trains in India before I came here, mainly on the excellent seat61.com website. Indian railways are a complex beast, from the different types of trains you can catch, to which class you can sit in and what tickets you can buy. I had what's known as a 'waitlisted' ticket, meaning you need X amount of people to cancel before you know you have a berth on the train. With a few hours to go, I found out I had a berth - with a coach and seat/bed number. Phew. Every single seat on every train in India is accounted for electronically (except cattle class, which is a free-for-all). It's an amazing system.

In my small compartment was the Indian version of Alan Sugar (rotund businessman speaking loudly into one of his many phones, getting more and more exasperated as the journey went on, presumably winning - but mainly losing - several business deals) and his lackey/servant boy. I exchanged pleasantries, made my bed, pulled the curtains across and slept.

Arrived in Bangalore at 6am, got a rickshaw to my hotel, dumped my bag, had a shower, got a rickshaw to the Mallya Hospital. Luckily it was a Saturday and the hospital was quiet. By this stage I had turned a shade of green/grey and did not look full of the joys of the world. The doctor eventually came, took one look at me, prodded my stomach a bit (ouch!!) and said I needed to come in for the night for tests.

So, back to hotel, checked out (300 rupees lighter, the unsympathetic gits!) and back to the hospital.

I got a pleasant room on the first floor, and was immediately speared with a needle in my right hand and put on a drip. The first three days were a bit of a daze, but I made sure I wrote down some observations. In no particular order:

-- fetching blue and white check gingham PJs
-- night nurses friendlier than day nurses
-- every piece of food or drink labelled with my room number
-- different staff members for room mopping, room sweeping, bell testing, water filler-upping, shower testing, bin emptying, etc
-- the 'dietary' hotline. The number you phone when you want anything to eat or drink, unsurprisingly. One flaw: no-one on the line could speak English. A daily game of me saying something down the phone ('omelette please') and them bringing me something else (corn bread, a fork, a bowl of curd...)
-- having a blood pressure check as I watched the Merseyside derby on TV. I tried to explain it might be a bit higher than normal
-- being woken up at 6am each morning, without fail, by the nurses for blood pressure and drug intake
-- discussing 'loose motions' about 20 times a day with various nurses. They could've written a book on my 'loose motions' by the end of my stay, they had that much information
-- an incredible amount of drugs being pumped into me each day, either via my hand or taken orally. Most of the time I had no idea what they were, and when I checked out I got an itemised bill of everything I'd taken - and am still none the wiser - but it's good to have a record I suppose!
-- having an ultrasound. Waiting downstairs among all the pregnant women, being led into a small room and then having the lubrication-on-stomach-and-swipey-machine-thing treatment. Quite a strange experience, for a man

Overall, I'm glad I chose the hospital I did. My guidebook recommended it, so that's one (major) thing they got right. I was diagnosed with Salmonellosis and Colitis and must have taken on the Salmonella bacteria via something I ate in Gokarna. Thinking back, there was a particularly unpleasant lunch of a chicken lafa (like a wrap) that I had one day shortly before getting ill. I think that was probably the culprit.

I was discharged yesterday with an overall bill of 250 pounds. Not bad - and hopefully will get some back on insurance. I checked into an amazing boutique hotel in Bangalore and am staying here for three nights to fully recover before moving on.

I can't ever remember spending one night in hospital, let alone four, so it wasn't something I could see coming. But glad I'm sorted now, and can hopefully get on with the rest of the trip in good health! Here are some more pics:

Hospet

Train at Hospet

Drip, drip, drip

My friendly team of nurses

Almost everything came in a Thermos

A draw of drugs

A protest to 'Save Oil!' outside my window

Hospital food

Laika Boutique Hotel. Spot on!