Nicole and I decided to take a trip to the theatre the other day. The show was pegged to be a Kathakali performance, which is the classic Kerelan dance theatre that has been performed for centuries. Intrigued as to what was on offer we ended up in a small building tucked down a back street, sat alongside about ten locals who had also turned up for the show.

What followed was pretty amazing and certainly not what I had in mind. See below for some video I took of the performance.

Afterwards we looked into other shows and booked ourselves into a traditional martial arts show for the following night when we were due to move to Fort Cochin on the west of the city.

The road rose sharply and wound its way up the mountain-side. As the car navigated around a sharp bend, the road seemed to disappear, as if we were riding on air. Two thousand meters below us the town of Mettupalayam sparkled in the noon sun. The buildings looked small and inconsequential next to the impressive mountain vista. Then, with a sideways pull, we were swinging back into the ascent and the car ploughed onwards and upwards into the dense, green foliage that covered the steep climb. Up ahead a waterfall cascaded down a cliff face, the spray catching the light that filtered down through the trees, refraction spilling rainbow beams in our path. The road twisted round and once again we found ourselves peering out over the grand drop. The journey carried on this way for another hour, and steadily we rose through the layers of cloud which sat around us for a time; as thick fog. All of a sudden we emerged into the light, strong sunshine chasing away the remaining tendrils of mist. Before us was the plateau of the mountain, ridges rising on both sides, and there in front of us stood Ooty.

Our journey had started eighteen hours before. We climbed onto the train from Mangalore and slowly passed through the rich countryside. The track rose above the many rivers that criss-crossed our path and elevated on the trellised track we could see for miles around. This leg of the journey was particularly remarkable, for we were the only two people on our carriage for quite some time. The sensation was both a little unsettling and deeply relaxing, for trains had so far, been microcosms of the outside world. Hot, noisy and packed with people.

Mangalore led onto through the lowlands of Kerala and into the state of Tamil Nadu, the land undulating and rising up as we navigated the Western Ghats. Eventually, and in the pitch black of a late evening we arrived at Coimbatore, the largest city in Tamil Nadu. We changed here for Mettupalayam and the new train pushed up higher into the hills. As dawn broke, the silhouettes of large mountains became clear on the horizon. Mettupalayam was a small station with a single platform for handling traffic on the broad-gauge lines. On the other side of the station a second platform was flanked by meter-gauge tracks and there at the end of the track sat a small steam engine which was being prepared to take a miniature set of carriages up through the mountains and onto our final stop.

As much as I wanted to ride the train to the top, practicality took a foot forward and we debated the other choices for a minute. The miniature train would take four hours, whereas a taxi would take half that time. Travel weary, we decided to go for the taxi, resolving to take the steam engine another time.

Ooty formed an abrupt first impression as we climbed out of the car in front of our hotel. Having left the muggy, thirty degree heat at the bottom of the mountain, we were startled to find the air both very thin and incredibly chilly. Stood in our shorts and tee-shirts, we decided that a change of wardrobe would be required before we emerged from our hotel room and scoured our bags for more layers to wear to dinner that evening.

Looking about the town we were quickly taken by its charm. It was the first place in India we had been that took a little pride in the appearance of its store-fronts and roads. Everywhere you looked there were notices promoting the reduction of litter and again for the first time so far, actual public bins, spaced both numerously and intelligently enough to be of public service. Indeed it looked like all the locals were on-board with the motion, as wherever we looked the town was both clean and tidy.

A sense of Britishness also permeated this community. Ancient popcorn machines – like the ones you would see in the old small-town cinemas of days past – stood in the doorways of shops, men stood ready to serve up the treat in clear bags. Outside restaurants you could find the menus atop wooden plinths, and you were given the time and privacy to peruse without an overzealous waiter haranguing you to take a seat. Even the design of the town reminded me of home, with a central road focussing the town’s supply of services and goods rather than a more spread out manner; of which other Indian towns seem to adopt. Overall though it was probably the cold, autumnal weather that made us think most dearly of home.

Having been away for a couple of months already and also having had left before it got cold in the UK, it seemed to me that summer had not really ended. So arriving at the top of this mountain, shivering in my shorts, my body went into a sort of natural lockdown, an urge to hibernate came over me, just as a bad cold took hold, and I retreated to the hotel room for forty hours, till the boredom of sitting in one room drove me back out into the fresh air despite still being a little too ill to really appreciate what was going on around me. None-the-less we took a rickshaw up above the town, through the tea plantations laid out in tiered rows across the ridge, up past the workers busy laying a new mountain road, to a giant white building with the words ’TEA FACTORY’ stamped on the side.

Inside we had a five rupee tour of the working factory, getting to see the machinery at work on the raw leaves that had been bought in from the plantations. The further we walked into the factory, the finer the leaved were chopped and tumbled, and then chopped again. They moved on to conveyor belts which dried out the moisture and then an oxidisation took place which turned them brown from green. Finally the produce was sifted into large sacks and taken away for sale. At the end of the line, a gent stood by with a tray of tea for us to taste and refresh our senses with.

The tea factory was a great move, and gave us chance to see the town from the higher elevation. The peak rose further above the town however, and we resolved to come back and hike to the summit which we did a couple of days later. The climb was long and we had the added competition of fast jeeps charging up the trail behind us, requiring us to stop and move aside so they could push past. Finally we made it to the top with a couple hours of daylight to spare. Unfortunately for us a large cloud had smothered the peak in a thick blanket of mist which for a time limited our vision to a handful of feet in front of us. We bought some lemon tea from a vendor set up at the peak and waited it out. Sure enough a small break came in the clouds and we had a partial view of the plateau below. After a while we had to turn and retreat down the mountain before darkness set in. Luckily at the end of the peak trail a large bus came swinging round the corner which we hailed and rode back into town.

We had now been in Ooty for about a week and really enjoyed the diverse attractions on offer. There was a boating lake which we spent a few hours leisurely floating on before heading across the road to a museum called the ‘Thread Garden’. This large shed charged a nominal fee to come in and look at the ‘world miracle of plants recreated with just thread’. These ‘plants’ had been constructed by fifty specially trained ladies over the last twelve years and then put on display for all to bask in their magnificence. The rhetoric and hyperbole was through the roof on this attraction, and we stayed just long enough to get some photos before moving swiftly on. We visited the ‘Botanical Gardens’ which was really an arboretum and spent an afternoon lazing around its grounds before retreating to one of the many local tea shops and a pot of the Nilgiri special.

Finally we decided we should move on and caught a taxi back down the mountain to the train station. Our plan is to head into Kochin in Kerela, and navigate the backwaters on a house boat. Stay tuned for more adventure!

The last week has seen us leave the sun-dappled sands of Om Beach and resume our journey into India. The beaches at Gokarna were,  for me, particularly idyllic and whilst I was at first reluctant to consider moving on with much of the coast still unexplored, it began to feel like we were treading water a little, and so we set our sights once again further south and onwards into neighbouring states.

One poignant problem with India is that it is so vast, and even with a six-month tourist visa granted, it seems unlikely we will get chance to visit everything we have earmarked so far. Logistically, we have had a few conundrums, especially with respect to train travel. For instance, it can often be incredibly hard to secure tickets out of places, and several times we have been effectively stuck till a reservation becomes available. We could get around this by ordering a couple of weeks ahead each time, but then you have no real idea of how long a particular place requires your attention to get the most out of it… very frustrating.

Our next halt was in Mangalore to the very south of Karnataka. This small port city was chosen to help break up the travel to Kerala and weirdly I was feeling the urge to get back into the thick of it (which is very unlike me as I get rather twitchy in large populations). This feeling did not last long though as our first foray into the city took us into the strangest neighbourhood I have ever encountered. The entire district was full of scrap metal and broken cars. Piles and rows of rusting parts lay stacked aside houses and small garages. From the windows unfriendly faces stared out, confused by our presence. It was like an industrialised western movie, a ball of barbed wire tumbled listlessly along the dusty road. Even the rickshaws seemed to know enough to stay out and for the first time in any Indian city I encountered a very real silence, free of the incessant blaring and barking of horns.

After a while, we made our way free of the strange district and found ourselves coming back into civilisation. We grabbed the first rickshaw driver we came across and had him take us to the chapel of St. Aloysius which had frescos and paintings adorning every wall and ceiling. Antonio Moscheni – the Italian Jesuit who painted it – had worked wonders and both Nicole and I stood slack-jawed looking at the stories each wall told.

Leaving the chapel we were back into the traffic, the people and the pollution. We decided that rather than tarry any longer in Mangalore, we should move on. Unfortunately there were no trains available for another two days so we searched around for something to do. Luckily we found a cinema, and as we were both feeling a little like India had swallowed us whole, felt that watching an English language film might be just the ointment. We bought two tickets to see Gravity. I was expecting the experience to mellow out the experience of the city a little, to take our minds off the fact that we were immersed in such a different culture. Well the film sure took my mind off of everything but what was on screen. The move was a roller-coaster ride and I left the cinema with my heart still pounding.

We found a few nice places to eat, including an ice cream parlour which Nicole didn’t want to leave. Finally however our time was up, and we made our way back down to the station.

We are on the train at the moment, we have crossed the border into Kerala, but the train will take us out east into Tamil Nadu. We change at Coimbatore for Mettupalayam, and then again for our destination of Ooty. Colloquially named Snooty Ooty, this hill fort settlement was once the retreat of the British gentry who would seek refuge from the summer heat in the cities. Elevated high up in mountainous terrain there are many hill walks and a leisurely pace of life to be found from all accounts. After Mangalore, I cant wait.

We spent two days in Gokarna, and whilst our guest house was very nice, the village was fairly spartan. It didn’t help that as non-hindus; we were not allowed in the temples, of which the village has many.

So for a couple of days we wondered around the area, exploring what we could.

The village itself had a wall of gravestones down one street. The wall was over six feet high and had small alcoves cut into it, each containing a small gravestone.

In the middle of the village was a ‘temple tank’ which looked fairly filthy to be honest. This large pond was to be used for various dunking ceremonies, I suppose like baptisms, yet several women were busy cleaning their pots and pans at the bottom of the ghats.

A lot of travellers we had bumped into spoke highly of some nearby beaches. Firstly Kudle beach just over the first headland, and then if you keep going Om beach just over the second headland. We chose to hike over to both beaches and take a look for ourselves. Both beaches were fantastic, with clean sands and shallow bays inviting swimmers and small boats. Om beach clearly took the lead though with its distinctive shape formed by three small coves within one larger bay.

We arrived just at sundown and all of a sudden, almost magically, the light changed to a soft magenta, reflecting off the water, ephemerally giving the entire scene a sense of being transported to an alien world.

Stunned, I took some photos and decided right there and then this was where we should stay for the next few days.

 

 

 

 

 

The next morning we packed out bags, hopped into a rickshaw and checked into a small cottage right on the beach.

That evening we set up at the very south end of the beach to catch the sunset again. Unfortunately the light from the previous night was absent, but the image of the sun- a blurry fireball dropping behind an outcropping of rocks adorned with a small shrine, was still a fantastic show.

Internet in Gokarna is tricky to get a hold of, and I have been relying almost solely on a 2G connection from my phone. As a result, I have just had the chance to upload some of the photos from Hampi on our final day there. The pictures chronicle our visit to the Vitthala Temple some two miles or so, outside of the town, to the east.

The temple was built in the Vijayanagara style and period in 1422, and is dedicated to Vishnu in his many aspects. The temple itself features some slender pillars, which if struck with your hands produce musical notes that can be heard half a mile away. Unfortunately these are now off limits as tourism has begun to wear them down.

In front of the temple is the ‘Stone Chariot’, one of three in the whole of India still intact.

Yesterday we chose to leave Hampi. It can be easy to spend a long time in such a peaceful place and we both wanted to maintain a sense of momentum with our journey. Looking online for train tickets that could accommodate our escape was fruitless, all tickets were on waitlist, meaning that the chances of us getting a ticket were slim to none. So with this option behind us we resigned to catch a coach and so paid a visit to the nearest travel agency.

We had heard from other travellers that Gokarna was a pleasant coastal town with some beautiful beaches and a progressive attitude towards women’s independence, and thought that it would suit our schedule to head there next. The town is south of Goa and so would continue our trend of heading towards Kerala and give us chance to explore more of Karnataka.

The travel agent assured us that we could take a bus from Hampi direct to Gokarna, embarking at 6.30pm and arriving at 4.30am. So far so good.

Our journey started well, with the only problem being the general state of India’s road network, which shook and jostled the bus hour after hour. We had been assigned a double berth which was a fairly large bed behind a sliding door. We had a window which opened and amused ourselves watching some of the weird and wonderful Indian traffic go past. At one point, a tractor covered in tinsel and fairy lights steamed past playing bhangra music at top volume.

The staff on the bus had a faint grasp of English and tried to collect our tickets from us three times throughout the journey despite already having collected them at the door. This required some stern reasoning and we weren’t the only ones struggling to communicate. A Hollander was caught short and had to cajole the driver to pull over for respite; a conversation that got very animated.

Finally we drifted off to sleep, seemingly woken moments later with shouts of ‘Gokarna’ from the front. Stepping blearily off the bus, we waited to collect our bags and I flipped open my phone to check our current location. I waited a moment for the GPS to fix and took stock of our surroundings. It was 2am and we had been dropped in a service layby. A few shops and a grotty toilet block stood to one side, a road busy with heavy freight to the other. Looking back to my phone, I saw that we were only outside of Ankola, a town about ten miles to the north of our destination.

I turned to the driver who was busy unloading bags and demanded to know how we were to get on to Gokarna from here. He made a vague wave towards the shops and said ‘Bus’.

At this point other travellers were disembarking and word soon got around as to where we stood. Heated arguments started up as to the fact we were promised transit directly to Gokarna but the bus driver was not entertaining any of it. With the last of our bags removed from the back of the bus, he vaulted through the front door and the bus tore off into the distance leaving sixteen of us standing there aghast.

We looked around for a shuttle bus that *may* have been dispatched to collect us and take us onwards, but this notion quickly became dispelled and we realised we were all stuck.

I began talking to the only Indian traveller in our group who seemed quite resigned to what had just happened and suggested we find some different form of travel to take us onwards. Luckily he knew some of the local language and was able to negotiate a price to hire a minibus which would complete our journey. The next hurdle was getting everyone to agree on the RS160 per head, a task which I took on. Most of our group were Israeli and seemed quite content to sit on the side of the road till dawn when they assumed a bus would arrive to collect them. Eventually however everyone grew bored of standing around and consensus was reached. Ten minutes later the oldest, rustiest minibus I have ever seen lurched into view and we all clambered aboard apprehensively.

With our bags strapped to the top of the small bus and all sixteen of us crammed in like sardines we began the final leg of our journey down sandy and bumpy roads. As we pulled in to the final stop a cheer went up and we spilled out into the cool night’s air.

I’ve been sorting through some of the media from the last few days and have had chance to upload a couple of videos.

The first is a glimpse of what is is like to travel on an Indian train in sleeper class, and the second some footage of the monkeys up at the temple in Hampi.

Enjoy 🙂

 

Today Nicole received a blessing from a very important Hindu.

Hampi is just insane!

The landscape is like something out of an original series Star Trek, with huge boulders strewn across a rocky landscape. In some places they lay piled up atop each other like giant rock monsters that dominate the surroundings.

 

 

 

 

Between the rocky hills sits a river valley with a small settlement perched on its banks. The village is littered with temples which rise majestically into the sky. In the centre of the village sits a bazaar where local townsfolk stand aside Hindu holy men, and monkeys charge down alleyways, leaping over the usual complement of stray dogs and kittens.

On the north side of the river, a collection of guesthouses aimed at the tourists enjoy a slightly more relaxed approach to the dogmatic rules which govern the village itself.

We decided to stay on the north side of the river and found that the only way across is by motor boat or coracle, the latter of which is a small circular boat that is propelled through the whirlpools and currents of the river by a man with a single paddle.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Our first venture out took us up a hill to the north of the bazaar. Sat atop was a small temple with columns hewn from rough rock. Behind the columns was an entrance leading into a dark room. Inching forward into the darkness we were amazed to see the massive shape of Ganesh the elephant god appear out of the darkness in front of us. The idol had been carved from a single large boulder and the temple erected around it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Today I went to hire another scooter but could only find bikes available. I chose the least powerful one and Nicole and I set out to what is colloquially called the ‘Monkey Temple’.

The temple was raised to worship Hanuman, a child born to a woman called Anjana.

Anjana was originally cursed to be part human, part monkey. Legend has it that the only way this curse could be lifted was for her to have a baby. Anjana prayed to Shiva till he saw fit to give her a child which in turn lifted the curse. This half-god child was called Hanuman and retained the features of an ape. Hanuman later went on to use his god-strength to leap across the ocean and rescue a lady who had been kidnapped.

The road to the temple was pitted and steep in places. It soon became apparent that the diminutive motorcycle had no power to it and we slowed to a crawl climbing the hill. I found that I could scoot the machine forward with a few pushes of my leg keeping it going on the more difficult climbs. Eventually though the machine got us to the base of the cliff and we parked up and surveyed the climb ahead of us.

Nicole purchased some bananas from a vendor who had ingeniously set up shop at the bottom of the cliff, advertising his goods as essential for keeping the monkeys in ‘good spirits’. With bananas in hand we set off up the stairway which was rumoured to have anywhere between 580 and 780 steps.

As we began our climb simian shouts went up as we were spotted by the scouts and soon we were surrounded by monkeys of all shapes and sizes. They danced around reaching out with grubby paws. One particularly mischievous one tugged at Nicole’s bag and she shooed him away. With our offerings depleted, they soon ran on to the next group coming up the stairs behind us. Suddenly there was a shout and a monkey sped past with an entire bag of fruit that he had managed to tear from their grasp. He vaulted over the wall and sat astride a high rock stuffing his face as his victims looked on in horror.

 

 

 

 

Eventually we made it to the top, just as our legs were beginning to give up in the brutal heat of the early afternoon. There in front of us stood a white tiled temple with the sounds of prayers singing out from within.

Nicole and I removed our shoes and entered the temple where a young devotee painted a red streak down our foreheads. I asked if I could photograph inside, but my request was declined. I settled instead on taking an audio recording of the prayers which you can hear below.

 

After some time sat in the temple, recovering from the arduous climb and relaxing to the monotony of the songs, we made our way back outside to take some panoramic shots of the stunning scenery.

 

 

 

 

 

Finally reinvigorated, we began our march back down to our bike and a cold drink waiting at the bottom.

The next stop was a tranquil lake just a few miles away. They lake had a small peninsula running into it. Covered in large boulders we made our way onto it and relaxed in the shade of one of the larger rocks, enjoying for a while the silence and peace that surrounded us with the still waters.

Finally we returned to the huts, tired from our journey we resolved to get an early night in order to make the most of the large festival Diwali that begins tomorrow.

Our last day in Panjim was spent visiting Old Goa. This ancient settlement was a few miles to the east of Panjim and was formerly the capital city of Goa. According to our cab driver, who was full of local lore, the city was home to hundreds of thousands of people till a plague struck and wiped out anyone who did not cross the river.

With the city deserted, the survivors founded Panjim to the west. Today all that is left standing in Old Goa are the grand churches that catered for the old inhabitants. Whilst the Goans kept the churches in order they let the old settlement fall to ruin.

We visited two of the churches whilst we were there. The first was a basilica and contained the mummified remains of Saint Francis Xavier in a gilt laden coffin with a glass side.

 

 

 

 

 

The second was the cathedral which was the only church I have ever been into which had a chandelier hanging up in the main aisle.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Next stop was Margao and the train station. We had decided to catch a train to Hampi in the Karnataka region to the east. This ancient settlement has profuse religious meaning to the Hindus as it was the site that several of their deities were born, including the Monkey God.

We stayed in a nasty little hotel next to the station as our train was at 8AM and we affectionately called it Chez Grub. It did the job for a single night though and before we knew it, we were on the train to Hospet Junction near Hampi.

This time we took a ride in Sleeper Class as it has windows you can actually see out of.

The main differences between this and AC2 was a distinctly thinner cushion on the berths (This had the result of forcing me up every hour or so to stretch my legs). Not only this, but the carriage was much more noisy, with a large makeup of Indian families with their children. Every time the train entered a tunnel a chorus of young screams filled the carriage.

Hawkers would come bowling down the aisle noisily, almost all the time and we even had a eunuch come by begging for money. When no one handed any over, the eunuch would clap loudly in way of delivering a curse. Luckily, we were left out of these interactions and escaped from the eight hour journey curse free!