For years I have looked forward to going to India, usually with thoughts of getting to know a ancient and esoteric culture. Why do I always let myself think in such generalizations? As usual what I found in India were a lot of ordinary people trying to make a life for themselves and trying to make sense of the advantages and disadvantages that life has given them. In other words I found the same people that live everywhere. They all speak different languages, look a little different, do things a little differently (we call this culture), and are either richer or poorer, but other than that they are all just plain, or not so plain, human beings. Some of them are good, some bad; some industrious, some lazy: some big, some small: some smart, some not so smart, you get the idea, there are differences from individual to individual but we are all basically the same in our humanity. So that was my strongest impression of India, as it has been of every other country I've ever visited, but there were plenty of other impressions that India and this trip made on me which I will now try to summarize.
As a disclaimer I would like to note that at this point, after two months in India, what I observed, what I read and what I learned from conversations with Indians and others have all run together and formed the impressions I will be writing about. Where I remember specifically where the thought came from I will mention it but one thing I can tell you for sure they didn't all come full formed from just my observations. Most of my impressions are at this point a combination of all these sources of information which my mind as formed into what I now call "my" impressions. They are mine only in the sense that it was my mind that made the connections.
India is huge! Even today when I look at it on a map, there hanging off the bottom of Asia, it doesn't look that huge, but it is. Part of my impression of its size definitely comes from the slowness of travel in India. If you don't fly, you end up traveling by train and bus, the roads aren't so good so the buses are slow, and they sometimes break down; and the trains, especially the local lines, don't travel much faster than the buses, but they are a whole lot more comfortable, we usually took the lowest price sleeper class. As an example, our train from Delhi to Bangalore, which was one of the fastest trains in India, took 30 hours and there is a lot of India still north of Delhi and south of Bangalore.
India is ancient! To visit a historical site with 1000 year old buildings is nothing, things only really get old in this part of the world when you go back 2000 years. Buddhism and the Jain religion were started by men who were born about 640 BCE, and they were born into a culture that was already fully formed, in fact Hinduism looks upon both religions as simple reform movements with the Hindu religion. The exact dates are debatable but it is generally agreed that clearly Indian history goes back to around 3000 BCE. Buildings like the Taj Mahal and Akbar's fort are almost modern in comparison.
India is full! Especially in the north,twice we traveled by train and a little by jeep and bus across the middle of Northern India, Uddar Pradesch and Bihar, and it was just full of people. I had, of course, always read about the great population density of India but to see it out the window is another thing. In this part of India you never saw one person, it was always 30 or 40 people, no matter how seemingly small the town you were going through. Interestingly, this was brought home most clearly to me when, during the last two weeks of our trip, we traveled south. You could literally see at a glance that there were fewer people around, despite the fact that by most other measures even the south of India is pretty densely populated.
India is full of religions! Lets start with the main ones, Hinduism, Islam, Jain, Sikh, Zoroastrian, Christian, Buddhism, Judaism, and I am sure that I am leaving out a few. This doesn't even mention the long philosophical history of agnosticism and atheism in India, atheism is even one of the accepted schools of Hinduism. Religion in India is very public, it is not unusual to see religious practices in progress on almost any street. Unlike the USA, where we generally confine our religious practices to one day of the week and it all happens indoors, the Hindu's, for example, have small shrines or temples seemingly everywhere and most often you will see one, a few or many praying or worshiping at these holy places. In fact we saw places where roads were routed around small local shrine, in one place where the most direct path of the road would have been through the temple the road split with one lane going around each side leaving the temple in an island in the middle of the road. At least externally religion is an integral part of the lives of India's citizens. There seems to be among most Indians a great deal of tolerance of other religions, life in a country with so many religions would be impossible without this tolerance. This doesn't mean that intolerance is non existent, recent and past history proves that it exists, but it is most often confined to fringe groups, and/or politicians looking for an advantage. It appeared to me that religion came in two flavors in India, as it does in most other places. There is the intellectual brand and the everyday brand. The intellectual brand goes back three or four millennia and is one of the most complete and deep found anywhere in the world, this brand is found in the universities, the monasteries and especially the bookshops of India, but not very much on the streets. The everyday brands of religion in India is found on the streets of the big cities and in the shrines and temples of every village in the country and it is an emotional and visceral form of religion. It is worship rather than thinking, faith rather than understanding. Both forms are important to each other while at the same time being separate from each other in every day life.
India is rich and poor - all at once. India, especially in the south, is building high tech office parks by the hundreds and the people who work in these buildings are making very good salaries for the local economy. At the same time India has a very low literacy rate, much lower in the north, and the illiterate live much as there forefathers did 500 or a thousand years ago. I found it often difficult to think of India as one country, because these people live such different lives both economically, socially and intellectually.
India is bureaucratic. Boy is it ever!! We sometimes complain about the bureaucracy in the U.S., but all it takes is a few weeks in India to realize how good we have it here in respect to bureaucracy. We could see this very clearly and as travellers we had very little interaction with government agencies, mainly the trains and the post office. But we would often here Indians talk about how long it took them to get this or that paper and how much it cost them to grease the wheels to get the paper at all.
I'm sure that in a few weeks I will have many more thoughts that I could have added to this post, and I will add posts as new conclusions come to mind, but for now the necessity to get my life up and running again in the states is dominating my mind and time. Adam's mom, Shiela, sent me this link to an article about culture shock by the travel writer Rick Steves which I'd like to pass on to everyone. He explains it very well I think.
Sunday, February 15, 2009
Tuesday, February 10, 2009
Pictures from our trip.
Below is a list of albums from our trip. Each album name indicates the place where the pictures were taken, as much as possible these will be in the order in which we visited these places. To get started single click on the album name (for example "Jaipur"), this will take you to a page in Google's Picasa which will show you thumbnails of the album you selected. All you have to do then is click on thumbnail picture to get a large picture, once you are viewing one large picture you can navigate to the next and previous using the arrows above the large picture.v If you have trouble with this you can post a comment or email me at jimneidert@yahoo.com.
Philippine Pictures
Cavite
Ilocos
Ifugao
Tagaytay and Lake Taal
Hong Kong Islands
India Pictures
Delhi
The Way to Pokhara
Pokhara
Trail to Anapurna Base Camp
Boudanath - Kathmandu Valley
Kathmandu
Airplane Views of the Himalayas
Darjeeling
Bodhgaya
Varavassi
The Taj Mahal
Fatehpur Sikri
Jaipur
Udaipur
Bundi
Mysore
Shravana Belagola
Madikari and Rainforest Retreat
Philippine Pictures
Cavite
Ilocos
Ifugao
Tagaytay and Lake Taal
Hong Kong Islands
India Pictures
Delhi
The Way to Pokhara
Pokhara
Trail to Anapurna Base Camp
Boudanath - Kathmandu Valley
Kathmandu
Airplane Views of the Himalayas
Darjeeling
Bodhgaya
Varavassi
The Taj Mahal
Fatehpur Sikri
Jaipur
Udaipur
Bundi
Mysore
Shravana Belagola
Madikari and Rainforest Retreat
Saturday, January 31, 2009
How I like to Travel - jim
To get he most out of traveling you have to let yourself be a little uncomfortable. This may seem an odd statement, but after many years of travel, and even more of life, I've come to believe that it is the secret to having a great life and learning experience while visiting those parts of the world that we don't call home. I believe being a little uncomfortable is useful in almost any life experience where your goal is to learn and grow more insightful.
In no way do I intend to demean other ways of spending free time away from home. I have taken trips where I was essentially a tourist, adhering to a tight schedule, staying in good hotels, and eating in fine restaurants, and have had a great time, as well as learning from the places I visited. I have also had great vacations, times for me to kick back, rest and recharge in comfortable places away from schedules and responsibilities. These are also great choices and, depending on the circumstances, some times the best choices in allocating free time.
But for me, when I have the time and energy, nothing beats the kind of travel that pushes my comfort zone. It provides the kind of experience from which I not only learn the most about the places through which I am traveling but also learn the most about myself and this life I've been given to live.
A fair question at this point is why I would possibly want to give my valuable free time over to being uncomfortable. Actually its is not only a fair question, but also an important one. So, by way of explanation, here are a few thoughts that might put this idea of mine into better perspective. First of all, when I say uncomfortable I do not mean miserable, being miserable only puts the attention back on the traveler and that doesn't help one learn. I mean that style of traveling that forces you to have interactions with the people and cultures of the places you are visiting. Simple things, like getting guesthouse reservations, ordering a meal in a local restaurant, traveling by locally used transport, bus, train, or rickshaw, not always contrasting how things are done where you are to how they are done at home, or getting to know the people in your sleeping compartment on a train, can introduce a bit of discomfort into travel. Not enough discomfort that one is miserable but just enough to focus attention. I know, for myself, that when I'm in familiar surroundings, whether at home or away, I am often on autopilot. Autopilot will get me through situations that I have been through a million times before but, because attention is not focused, it isn't conducive to learning.
To say it another way, allowing myself the opportunity to be a little uncomfortable when I travel focuses my attention, like a little pebble in my shoe. Because of the uniqueness of interacting with local people in new places I have to pay attention, and learning, as my teachers always used to tell me, only happens when I am paying attention.
I would be the first to admit that putting up with even this moderate discomfort would not be worth it if there was no return on the investment. Needless to say, I believe there is a great return on the time, focus and energy invested in this kind of traveling. When I start to live within a culture, even a little bit, around the edges, I start to understand the mechanisms of that new culture, and I also begin to realize that there are more ways than just those of my home culture to do things, and maybe even sometimes they are as good or better.
When, while traveling, I open myself up to the people around me I give them and myself the chance to experience something different, and though this isn't always pleasant, sometimes, actually many times in my experience, I get the chance to see helpfulness, friendship and human compassion, and that definitely makes it worthwhile.
Traveling in this style, with more focused attention, opens the way for me to observe and question myself more than in my everyday, more predictable life. I find myself questioning why some interactions make me irritable, why I'm uncomfortable in other situations, and why my mind fights acceptance of the way things are where I am. All of these situations help me to better understand who I am and why I am the way I am, and these understandings, especially when they are as conscious as they are when I travel, never fail to help me grow as a person.
This trip, for reasons that I do not yet understand, has motivated me to think about these ideas in more detail than I ever have before and since, for me, this was an important part of my trip I thought I would share them with those of you who have been faithful readers. I hope you will feel free to comment on this or anything else I've gotten on my soapbox about in the past three months if the mood strikes you.
Next, in a few days, my impressions of India and Nepal.
Next, in a few days, my impressions of India and Nepal.
Thursday, January 29, 2009
Back to the States
Just to let you know, we did get back to the states right on schedule and both of us are back home, Adam in Massachusetts and me in Ohio.
The trip home went right on schedule, though that does not mean it was much fun. We arrived at the Chennai Airport at 11 PM, arrival four hours ahead of flight time was required for "augmented security", and got through security and check in about an hour. So we waited and read for the next three hours until our plane left for Hong Kong on time at 3:15 AM. Hong Kong was about 5 hours away and the flight was pleasant, but once we got there we had to figure out how to kill the 6 hours until our flight to New York left. Now Hong Kong has a beautiful new airport with lots of stores and restaurants to explore but six hours is still a long time in an airport. We were flying on Cathay Pacific Airlines and they have more comfortable new seats in the coach section of their long haul planes, but no matter how comfortable coach seats are 14+ hours is still a long time. And after being up all day and all night in Chennai, on the flight to Hong Kong and in the Hong Kong airport, the fourteen hour flight to New York City was not much fun, even with the 30 odd movies they offered. But we finally got to Kennedy, picked up our luggage, went through Immigration and Customs and exited back into the USA. Kennedy now has a convenient connection to the NYC subway system which we each took to catch trains to where we were sleeping that night. Adam went to his sisters and I went into Manhattan to stay with my friends Shannon and Jaime. We both spent Friday in the city, mostly resting, and, as it turned out, taking in a movie. By chance we both saw the same film, the Indian based film "Slumdog Millionaire", I guess we hadn't had enough of India yet. Adam and I and his sister Becky had lunch Saturday and then Adam caught a train back to Massachusetts, I spent Sunday in NYC and flew back to Ohio Monday AM.
So our trip wound down quietly as we both returned to pick up where we left off before our three month adventure, the same but not quite the same as we were before.
Stay tuned, we will both be summing up our experiences and we have an absolute ton of pictures that we will be working on getting on line over the next few weeks.
The trip home went right on schedule, though that does not mean it was much fun. We arrived at the Chennai Airport at 11 PM, arrival four hours ahead of flight time was required for "augmented security", and got through security and check in about an hour. So we waited and read for the next three hours until our plane left for Hong Kong on time at 3:15 AM. Hong Kong was about 5 hours away and the flight was pleasant, but once we got there we had to figure out how to kill the 6 hours until our flight to New York left. Now Hong Kong has a beautiful new airport with lots of stores and restaurants to explore but six hours is still a long time in an airport. We were flying on Cathay Pacific Airlines and they have more comfortable new seats in the coach section of their long haul planes, but no matter how comfortable coach seats are 14+ hours is still a long time. And after being up all day and all night in Chennai, on the flight to Hong Kong and in the Hong Kong airport, the fourteen hour flight to New York City was not much fun, even with the 30 odd movies they offered. But we finally got to Kennedy, picked up our luggage, went through Immigration and Customs and exited back into the USA. Kennedy now has a convenient connection to the NYC subway system which we each took to catch trains to where we were sleeping that night. Adam went to his sisters and I went into Manhattan to stay with my friends Shannon and Jaime. We both spent Friday in the city, mostly resting, and, as it turned out, taking in a movie. By chance we both saw the same film, the Indian based film "Slumdog Millionaire", I guess we hadn't had enough of India yet. Adam and I and his sister Becky had lunch Saturday and then Adam caught a train back to Massachusetts, I spent Sunday in NYC and flew back to Ohio Monday AM.
So our trip wound down quietly as we both returned to pick up where we left off before our three month adventure, the same but not quite the same as we were before.
Stay tuned, we will both be summing up our experiences and we have an absolute ton of pictures that we will be working on getting on line over the next few weeks.
Wednesday, January 28, 2009
Last Days in India
It is the afternoon of Wednesday the 28Th of January, we leave for the airport to fly back to the US in about seven hours, our plane leaves Chennai Airport at 3:15 AM, so I thought I'd better get caught up before the trip back takes over and I never get around to it. As it turns out the hotel we spent a night in in Chennai was worse than we thought, Adam was the favorite food of some local bedbugs - we will send an update on this place to the guidebook publishers. After getting packed up and out of that bug trap we caught a city bus to the bus park from where buses left for surrounding towns. After asking a few times we found our bus, a brand new air conditioned model, and within a few minutes were on our way 55 K south to Mamallapuram, a beach town with a several thousand year history of stone carving. One thing about India, time lines are never short. In Mamallapuram we ran into the beach resort overbooking problem, the hotel where we thought we had a reservation said they were full but took us to a second hotel that would have room for us in a few hours, so we went for a walk around town and the beach for a few hours and returned to find that the room availability was again postponed. After an hour or so we asked more questions and got the impression we were getting a real run around, finally they told us the truth. Friends of the owner were in a room and the staff couldn't throw them out and they wouldn't leave. We were fed up and started looking for another place that had rooms, which we found just across the street, and for about the same price; it felt good to move in and get settled. Adam laid down to rest while did a bit of Internet stuff, when I got back to the room Adam was still exhausted, not like him at all. At this point we had been fasting for over a day, we had eaten way to much at Rainforest Retreat, it hadn't bothered me at all but I guess my metabolism has slowed a bit, but Adam was dragging way to much for someone that my friend Paul calls the energizer bunny. We talked about it and agreed to go get some fruit juice and see it that helped; we had the juice and an hour later Adam wasn't feeling much better. This situation called for quick action, so we went to a restaurant a few door from our hotel run by a Frenchman for an excellent dinner. By the next morning Adam was feeling more energetic.
The next morning just after breakfast we went to the beach for a swim, neither of us can sit on the beach for very long. So after a long swim and a little walk on the beach we went back to our hotel, all or two or three blocks away to change. After lunch we walked around parts of the town we hadn't seen the previous day. There is a beautiful old temple very near the beach and many examples of the carvers skill in a rock quarry a few blocks inland. Specialists believe many of the carvings in the quarry were done as examples for prospective customers of what the local carvers could do. A lot of stone carving is still done in the town, both large statues for temples around India and lots of small pieces for the tourist trade. The south of India, by this time of the year starts getting hot again and by the time we got back to the hotel we were hot and ready to hit the beach again, so off we went for a cooling dip in the ocean. Later that evening we went to another excellent restaurant for dinner, really fresh fish, and then ambled back to our room. Except for a night in a fancy guest house near the airport in Chennai this was to be our last night in India and it was hard for us to believe that it had been two months. After we both get back to the states we have promised ourselves and each other to right some reflections of our experiences during these two months, so stay tuned. We will probably also update our 30 hour trip back to New York City, which includes a 6 hour lay over in Hong Kong.
The next day Adam was up before sunrise, he is feeling his old self again, to go to the beach for early morning pictures; I slept in till he got back. Then it was breakfast, a swim, packing and catching the bus back to Chennai. We had a bit of an adventure finding our guest house, but nothing awful. We have a beautiful room in the owners house in a place called the Pleasant Stay guest house. The owner and his family are very nice and the name of the place says it all. So, in a few hours we will eat a bit, pack up and head for the airport to leave India behind but we will be bringing with us a boatload of memories and impressions that will take months or years to sort out.
Friday, January 23, 2009
Madikeri, the Rainforest Retreat and back to Mysore - jim
The next morning in Madikeri we had breakfast, visited a park with a beautiful outlook over the surrounding hills, and then went back into the center of town to look for a hotel a bit more in our price range. We had another night in Madikeri before going on to the Rainforest retreat. One of the budget hotels listed in our guide book had a room available, so we checked in and settled into our room. After a bit we went out for a walk to aquaint ourselves with the town. Madikeri is a modest sized hill station but because it is the market town for a large surrounding area of farms and plantations it has many more businesses and facilities than a town its size would generally have. We had a pleasant walk through town and a bit out into the countryside, stopping along the way at a Hindu temple, and on the way back at a few of the businesses selling spices. This is a spice, coffee and tea growing region. The spices most commonly grown in the area are cardamon, pepper, both black and white, cloves, cinnamon and vanilla, they all really smelled great and we bought a few things to bring home with us. After lunch I updated this blog and caught up on email while Adam caught up on his email. It was a quiet day, which was nice, I, at least, was a bit tired from all our travelling, especially the bus ride. The next morning we packed up, checked out of our hotel, called the rickshaw driver who was recommended to us for the ride to Rainforest Retreat, and when he showed up, a bit late, we loaded up the rickshaw with our backpacks and headed about 12K out of town.
Rainforest Reareat, or more precisely, Mojo Rainforest Retreat, is a twenty five acre organic plantation that grows a wide variety of crops, but specializes in cardamon, coffee, vanilla and pepper. It is run by an enthusiastic and friendly Indian couple who moved there 15 years ago after a first career as research biochemists at high powered lab in Delhi. They decided that someone needed to really try out in the field the things they were learning in their lab. A few years later they started the guest house part of the farm partly to augment the income of the farm but also because they had had to build several guest houses to accommodate the constant stream of old Delhi friends who were always coming to visit.
Our stay at Rainforest was a dream after all the hard travelling we had done in the last almost two months. The food was great, think hard to stop going back for more, the staff, mostly Indian with a few westerners were incredibly helpful and friendly, the room, in our case a large wall tent with two beds etc., was roomy and very pleasant and the location, peaceful and yet full of purpose, was just what we needed. The almost four days we spent there were a joy, it was just the kind of place we needed, no hustles, much beauty and time to walk, talk and begin to digest what we had seen, heard and learned over the previous six weeks. Our days fell into a pattern; up in time to get to an 8:30 AM breakfast and socializing with the other guests and staff, a walk from 10 AM till about 1 PM usually guided by one of the Indian staff who not only knew the countryside but also the trees, animals, birds and flowers of the area, lunch about 1:30, rest and reading till 4 PM tea and then another, shorter walk until about 6:30 PM. Generally after the walk we would clean up and after a bit stroll down to the eating area where by about 7:30 a campfire had been built and we would sit around it and socialize with the other guests, with maybe a beer or two before dinner a 8:30. Most nights we would be back in our tents by 10:30 or so for a nights sleep. After having to figure out every next move, every day for a few months it was nice to settle into this routine. Our fellow guests were great, there was particle physicists who worked at the CERN particle accelerator in Geneva, a woman who wrote about walks in rural France, a British wood worker, a recently retired doctor, a hospital manager, a Indian woman who was writing a review of the retreat for an upcoming book on the 100 best escapes in India and the list goes on, it was a great mix which made for very interesting conversation. All I can say is that at the end of our stay we really weren't sure we wanted to leave, but it was time to move on and we reluctantly did. All this and we didn't even break our $25 per day budget, though we did come closer to this limit than we did on most other days.
After bidding everyone farewell we rode back into Madikeri where we quickly found and boarded a bus to Mysore, where we were spending the night. We arrived in Mysore earlier than we had planned which gave me time to pick up the eyeglasses and shirts I had ordered and check my email. Adam went off to the bank to change some $$$ and also spent some time online. We met for dinner at a restaurant we had liked our last time in Mysore and after a filling meal went back to our hotel. The next morning we slept in a bit a had a laid back day killing time until our 2:30PM train to Chennai. It was a pleasant trip, which we shared as far as Bangalore with some European friends we had met at Rainforest. Our train pulled into Chennai, on time at 9:30 PM. Chennai, formerly called Madras, is, to my surprise, the forth largest city in India, at almost 7 million people, it is crowded and it is busy, we weren't at Rainforest Retreat any more. We managed to readjust to the big city and find our hotel for the night after a 20 minute auto rickshaw ride through the city. The hotel, which was listed, but not highly touted, in our guidebook was just on the edge of acceptable, no screens and lots of mosquitoes, but we made it through the night with the help of a fan and were up in the morning for our last excursion before leaving from Chennai in four days, hard to believe this three month dream trip is about to come to an end. That's it for now but I hope to get back to a computer before we leave to let you know how our days at the beach were spent.
Sunday, January 18, 2009
Leaving Delhi for the Last Time & More - jim
Today, the 18Th of January, find us in the beautiful mountains of south western India, west of Mysore. It having been a week since my last update, here I am updating the blog. Better late than never!
Our thirty two hour train trip from Delhi to Bangalore went smoothly, and we arrived within a few minutes of the scheduled arrival time. For me the time went by quickly, between reading, talking, eating, watching India go by out the window, and sleeping, we slept two nights on the train, the trip was over before I knew it. The most interesting part was watching India go by out the window, because it changed a lot as we traveled south. Moving south from Delhi we left the huge plain of northern India behind during the night and in the morning we were riding through upland valleys surrounded by hills, if not mountains, and from what I could tell the population, which was almost overwhelming in the north, seemed to thin. As we continued our trip we moved up and down the hills, sometimes surrounded by hills with little agriculture and sometimes in large valleys with loads of agriculture. In some of the hill areas we even went through areas of forest, not dense forest but forest non the less. Then another night closed in on us and early in the morning we were in Bangalore and loading ourselves and our packs out of the train. We weren't staying in Bangalore, it is a big city and high tech center but, we were told, not very interesting, so we headed to the bus station to catch a bus for the three hour trip to the much smaller and traveller friendly Mysore. We arrived in Mysore in late morning , found our hotel, checked in, got a shower rested a little, got some lunch and headed out to see the city. The hotel arranged for an auto rickshaw driver to take us to some of the spots to see around the city, or at least that is what he said, it turned out most of the stops were shops of people trying desperately to sell us something. The first stop was the exception, the spice market, most of you must have seen the pictures of Indian markets, think National Geographic, that feature dyes piled high and shaped into cones, well this was the place, and they really did sell the dyes as well as many of the spices we think of as coming from India, especially the south, They also sold plenty of local fruits there and we bought some for later consumption, some delicious red bananas, a mystery fruit that was OK, but both of us have forgotten what it was called, and some tamarind, as sour fruit that both of us like a lot. From that market we went to a place that made incense and also sold essential oils, the base for the scents that are in so many perfumes, foods etc., where we got to smell all kinds of oils and hear a pitch about how we really needed these things. Then it was on to a wood carving and furniture maker, the furniture was all the mother of pearl inlaid kind and didn't appeal at all, and the wood carvings, many of which were very well done, but was wildly overpriced. We didn't stay long there and so we soon found ourselves in a shop selling silk and all kinds of fabric. I decided to try to get a few shirts made, they make them up in a day to your measurements and are a lot cheaper than in the states, even at the tourist trade stores, so we were there a while while I picked out material and had myself measured. I would go back the next day to check them out before they were finished. Our last stop on the motor rickshaw trip was a drop off at Mysore's most famous site, the Maharajah's Palace. Many of you have probably also seen pictures of this building, it is the building most off pictured in books when they talk of the great and ostentatious palaces of the raga's of India. Anyway it is huge and it dominates the center of the city and so we paid the admission price and entered the grounds. The building is sited on a huge lawn and is picture perfect, and we took a few pictures to prove that we to could make it look perfect. The surprise, to me at least, was learning that the palace was only built in the early 20Th century. I have always thought of these places as hundreds of years old and drenched in history, not here. It was worth the tour, a huge building with beautiful formal rooms, lots of stained glass, and tile work and even a throne or two scattered around. These people sure had a lot of money and/or free labor with which to fulfill there wildest imaginings. After we left the building we spent a while just wandering the grounds which were very pleasant and well laid out. Then we went off to find an Internet cafe to check in with email and catch up on world and U.S. news. After that we found a place near the palace to eat dinner as we wanted to return to the palace after dark when it would be illuminated. They light it with 100,000 light bulbs attached to the buildings and it is reported, even by the locals to be amazing, and they usually only do it on Sundays, however they were doing it today because it was a Hindu feast day, something about both a Hindu calender New Years and a feast celebrating sacred cows, who were all painted up for the occasion, mostly in yellow. Tell me it isn't something to walk down the street and see a few yellow and black cows wander out of a cross street, you begin to wonder what the tea at lunch was spiked with. Dinner was good but service was a bit slow and we sat and talked for a while, so, to our chagrin, by the time we got back to the palace they had already turned out the lights, we didn't know this at the time but the electric draw is so much that they only keep the lights on for an hour between 7 and 8 PM. Having missed that we walked back to the hotel and went to bed, tired from a long day of travelling and touring.
Our second and last day in Mysore started with a splurge. We went to a very fancy hotel, $100 a night, for their breakfast buffet and it was all we expected. We left stuffed! We went back to the hotel where Adam stayed while I went out to check on the shirts I had ordered. The shirts were OK and done so I picked them up and started back to the hotel, I planned to take an auto rickshaw but just before I hailed one I realized that I didn't remember the name of the hotel, isn't age wonderful, so, being pretty sure I could find it on foot I set out walking, and sure enough after a few missteps I turned a corner and there it was. Adam was in the room and we decided to go out. I wanted to check on some of the eyeglass shops in town, prescription lenses and especially frames are about half the price they are in the states, and Adam wanted to see if he could find any less expensive backpacking sun glass' than he could find in the states. After a few stops I became convinced that they could make me prescription glasses that were as good as those I got in the states and ordered a backup pair for myself. Adam couldn't find the kind of sunglasses he wanted so he put it off until his return to the states. For lunch we stopped in a coffee shop, real coffee, this is coffee growing country, for a drink and a snack. Revitalized we decided to check out the larger general public marked and wandered there for a couple of hours before heading back to the hotel for some rest and reading. That evening we walked a ways to another restaurant and then back fairly early for bed. Tomorrow we had to pack up, check out and catch an early bus, we were going on the road again.
When we arrived at the bus stand about 8:30 AM we lucked out, the first of three buses we were taking that day was just leaving, we jumped aboard and settled in for the first ride of the day. We were heading for a small town northeast of Mysore that had famous hilltop Jain Temples. The Jain's are another of India's ancient religions, they were founded about the time Buddhism was founded in the 6Th century BCE. We got to the second bus station and after a lot of asking around we found the bus that would take us to our next bus station. We were going to be a ways out in the country and travel away from the main areas is always a little more challenging but usually more rewarding. Mysore is in the Indian state of Karnataka and riding through the Karnatakan countryside was fascinating. This part of the south appears to be much richer and much less thinly populated than the north, one certainly influencing the other. The land is well and diversely farmed, rice, coconuts, sugarcane, vegetables, corn etc, and large parts of it are irrigated. It is also physically beautiful, we were travelling through wide valleys with some hills in the distance and round volcanic domes spotted throughout the valleys. After one last bus ride and a slightly poorer road, the roads this day were all quite good when measured against what we had seen for roads earlier, we were at our destination Sravana Belagoia, a smallish town built between two volcanic domes which were topped by temples and it was only about noon. We checked in the Jain guesthouse, at 135 Rupees for a nice double with attached bathroom the best housing deal of the trip. After getting settled in we walked down the road to a restaurant to have lunch, after lunch I headed back for the room for an afternoon of bed and reading, my gout was acting up and there was to be no hill climbing for me that day, and Adam went off for a walk to see the temples on the smaller of the two hill. About 5 PM Adam returned having enjoyed the walk and what he saw, we hung out a bit and then walked down the street for dinner at the same place we had lunch, not a lot of choice in town and it was close and that was definitely an advantage for me. Afterward back to the room for a little more reading and sleep.
Adam wanted to get up before dawn the next day to be able to see the sun rise from the larger of the two domes and I woke up at the same time but didn't get out of the room till about 15 minutes after he was already on his way. My gout was much improved and I was determined to get up to the top of at least one of the domes but I didn't want Adam to wait for me, he is a hugely stronger hiker than I am even when I dont have gout. As I walked up to the gated entrance to the steps, 620 of them to be exact, that went up to the top of the larger dome I realized that the gates still weren't open and then I looked around and there sat Adam waiting. It was about a half hour later when they finally let us in, we checked our shoes, no shoes on the mountain, and started up, Adam going ahead to try to capture in pictures the sunrise. My foot was much better so the walk up wasn't to bad, but it certainly got my blood circulating. The views from the way up and from the top of the stairs were magnificent and peaceful, a huge fertile valley with hills scattered around and a few mountains, large hills, in the distance. There were a number of Jain temples on the top of the dome but the main attraction was a 10th century nearly 60 foot sculpture of a naked man carved out of a single piece of stone. This sculpture was standing in the open air but was located in the courtyard of a large temple, a setting that made it seem even larger and more dominating than it was. One of the ideas behind the naked sculpture was to remind Jains of the relative unimportance of the material world, but I believe it was also to remind them that salvation, or nirvanna, was each persons responsibility. Adam and I met up on top and walked down together and had breakfast, he went back to the room and I decided to walk up the smaller dome before we left, scheduled for late morning. I set off up far fewer steps to the top of the smaller dome, when I arrived I was one of only two people on top, not including guards etc. The tall naked man pulled in a much bigger crowd. The smaller dome had a series of Jain temples, mostly from the 10th to the 12th century which were architecturally beautiful and the setting, esp. with so few people around was magic. I greatly enjoyed my time wandering through and around this beautiful spot. I walked down, claimed my shoes and went back to the room where I met Adam packed and was ready to leave in a few minutes. We checked out and walked the 100 yards to the bus station to catch a bus to Hassan our first transfer point on todays trip to the mountain town, or as they say here, hill station, of Madikeri. We arrived in Hassan and after some confusion found our bus to Madikeri, some of the problem stemmed from me continually misprouncing it Madiriki. This bus ride went through some of the most beautiful countryside we have seen on the trip, not as spectacular as the bus trip into Nepal, but just as beautiful. As we slowly climbed through bigger to smaller valleys the agriculture changed and more and more of the land became forested, before we knew it we were in coffee plantation country, the coffee being planted under the forest trees for protection. Four hours later we stopped in Madikeri, got off the bus and went looking for the hotels recomended in our guide books, most of them turned out to be full and the only one that had room was quite a bit above our budget, but not having much of a choice, and me being tired, we took it, ate dinner in it's restaurant and went to sleep.
Our thirty two hour train trip from Delhi to Bangalore went smoothly, and we arrived within a few minutes of the scheduled arrival time. For me the time went by quickly, between reading, talking, eating, watching India go by out the window, and sleeping, we slept two nights on the train, the trip was over before I knew it. The most interesting part was watching India go by out the window, because it changed a lot as we traveled south. Moving south from Delhi we left the huge plain of northern India behind during the night and in the morning we were riding through upland valleys surrounded by hills, if not mountains, and from what I could tell the population, which was almost overwhelming in the north, seemed to thin. As we continued our trip we moved up and down the hills, sometimes surrounded by hills with little agriculture and sometimes in large valleys with loads of agriculture. In some of the hill areas we even went through areas of forest, not dense forest but forest non the less. Then another night closed in on us and early in the morning we were in Bangalore and loading ourselves and our packs out of the train. We weren't staying in Bangalore, it is a big city and high tech center but, we were told, not very interesting, so we headed to the bus station to catch a bus for the three hour trip to the much smaller and traveller friendly Mysore. We arrived in Mysore in late morning , found our hotel, checked in, got a shower rested a little, got some lunch and headed out to see the city. The hotel arranged for an auto rickshaw driver to take us to some of the spots to see around the city, or at least that is what he said, it turned out most of the stops were shops of people trying desperately to sell us something. The first stop was the exception, the spice market, most of you must have seen the pictures of Indian markets, think National Geographic, that feature dyes piled high and shaped into cones, well this was the place, and they really did sell the dyes as well as many of the spices we think of as coming from India, especially the south, They also sold plenty of local fruits there and we bought some for later consumption, some delicious red bananas, a mystery fruit that was OK, but both of us have forgotten what it was called, and some tamarind, as sour fruit that both of us like a lot. From that market we went to a place that made incense and also sold essential oils, the base for the scents that are in so many perfumes, foods etc., where we got to smell all kinds of oils and hear a pitch about how we really needed these things. Then it was on to a wood carving and furniture maker, the furniture was all the mother of pearl inlaid kind and didn't appeal at all, and the wood carvings, many of which were very well done, but was wildly overpriced. We didn't stay long there and so we soon found ourselves in a shop selling silk and all kinds of fabric. I decided to try to get a few shirts made, they make them up in a day to your measurements and are a lot cheaper than in the states, even at the tourist trade stores, so we were there a while while I picked out material and had myself measured. I would go back the next day to check them out before they were finished. Our last stop on the motor rickshaw trip was a drop off at Mysore's most famous site, the Maharajah's Palace. Many of you have probably also seen pictures of this building, it is the building most off pictured in books when they talk of the great and ostentatious palaces of the raga's of India. Anyway it is huge and it dominates the center of the city and so we paid the admission price and entered the grounds. The building is sited on a huge lawn and is picture perfect, and we took a few pictures to prove that we to could make it look perfect. The surprise, to me at least, was learning that the palace was only built in the early 20Th century. I have always thought of these places as hundreds of years old and drenched in history, not here. It was worth the tour, a huge building with beautiful formal rooms, lots of stained glass, and tile work and even a throne or two scattered around. These people sure had a lot of money and/or free labor with which to fulfill there wildest imaginings. After we left the building we spent a while just wandering the grounds which were very pleasant and well laid out. Then we went off to find an Internet cafe to check in with email and catch up on world and U.S. news. After that we found a place near the palace to eat dinner as we wanted to return to the palace after dark when it would be illuminated. They light it with 100,000 light bulbs attached to the buildings and it is reported, even by the locals to be amazing, and they usually only do it on Sundays, however they were doing it today because it was a Hindu feast day, something about both a Hindu calender New Years and a feast celebrating sacred cows, who were all painted up for the occasion, mostly in yellow. Tell me it isn't something to walk down the street and see a few yellow and black cows wander out of a cross street, you begin to wonder what the tea at lunch was spiked with. Dinner was good but service was a bit slow and we sat and talked for a while, so, to our chagrin, by the time we got back to the palace they had already turned out the lights, we didn't know this at the time but the electric draw is so much that they only keep the lights on for an hour between 7 and 8 PM. Having missed that we walked back to the hotel and went to bed, tired from a long day of travelling and touring.
Our second and last day in Mysore started with a splurge. We went to a very fancy hotel, $100 a night, for their breakfast buffet and it was all we expected. We left stuffed! We went back to the hotel where Adam stayed while I went out to check on the shirts I had ordered. The shirts were OK and done so I picked them up and started back to the hotel, I planned to take an auto rickshaw but just before I hailed one I realized that I didn't remember the name of the hotel, isn't age wonderful, so, being pretty sure I could find it on foot I set out walking, and sure enough after a few missteps I turned a corner and there it was. Adam was in the room and we decided to go out. I wanted to check on some of the eyeglass shops in town, prescription lenses and especially frames are about half the price they are in the states, and Adam wanted to see if he could find any less expensive backpacking sun glass' than he could find in the states. After a few stops I became convinced that they could make me prescription glasses that were as good as those I got in the states and ordered a backup pair for myself. Adam couldn't find the kind of sunglasses he wanted so he put it off until his return to the states. For lunch we stopped in a coffee shop, real coffee, this is coffee growing country, for a drink and a snack. Revitalized we decided to check out the larger general public marked and wandered there for a couple of hours before heading back to the hotel for some rest and reading. That evening we walked a ways to another restaurant and then back fairly early for bed. Tomorrow we had to pack up, check out and catch an early bus, we were going on the road again.
When we arrived at the bus stand about 8:30 AM we lucked out, the first of three buses we were taking that day was just leaving, we jumped aboard and settled in for the first ride of the day. We were heading for a small town northeast of Mysore that had famous hilltop Jain Temples. The Jain's are another of India's ancient religions, they were founded about the time Buddhism was founded in the 6Th century BCE. We got to the second bus station and after a lot of asking around we found the bus that would take us to our next bus station. We were going to be a ways out in the country and travel away from the main areas is always a little more challenging but usually more rewarding. Mysore is in the Indian state of Karnataka and riding through the Karnatakan countryside was fascinating. This part of the south appears to be much richer and much less thinly populated than the north, one certainly influencing the other. The land is well and diversely farmed, rice, coconuts, sugarcane, vegetables, corn etc, and large parts of it are irrigated. It is also physically beautiful, we were travelling through wide valleys with some hills in the distance and round volcanic domes spotted throughout the valleys. After one last bus ride and a slightly poorer road, the roads this day were all quite good when measured against what we had seen for roads earlier, we were at our destination Sravana Belagoia, a smallish town built between two volcanic domes which were topped by temples and it was only about noon. We checked in the Jain guesthouse, at 135 Rupees for a nice double with attached bathroom the best housing deal of the trip. After getting settled in we walked down the road to a restaurant to have lunch, after lunch I headed back for the room for an afternoon of bed and reading, my gout was acting up and there was to be no hill climbing for me that day, and Adam went off for a walk to see the temples on the smaller of the two hill. About 5 PM Adam returned having enjoyed the walk and what he saw, we hung out a bit and then walked down the street for dinner at the same place we had lunch, not a lot of choice in town and it was close and that was definitely an advantage for me. Afterward back to the room for a little more reading and sleep.
Adam wanted to get up before dawn the next day to be able to see the sun rise from the larger of the two domes and I woke up at the same time but didn't get out of the room till about 15 minutes after he was already on his way. My gout was much improved and I was determined to get up to the top of at least one of the domes but I didn't want Adam to wait for me, he is a hugely stronger hiker than I am even when I dont have gout. As I walked up to the gated entrance to the steps, 620 of them to be exact, that went up to the top of the larger dome I realized that the gates still weren't open and then I looked around and there sat Adam waiting. It was about a half hour later when they finally let us in, we checked our shoes, no shoes on the mountain, and started up, Adam going ahead to try to capture in pictures the sunrise. My foot was much better so the walk up wasn't to bad, but it certainly got my blood circulating. The views from the way up and from the top of the stairs were magnificent and peaceful, a huge fertile valley with hills scattered around and a few mountains, large hills, in the distance. There were a number of Jain temples on the top of the dome but the main attraction was a 10th century nearly 60 foot sculpture of a naked man carved out of a single piece of stone. This sculpture was standing in the open air but was located in the courtyard of a large temple, a setting that made it seem even larger and more dominating than it was. One of the ideas behind the naked sculpture was to remind Jains of the relative unimportance of the material world, but I believe it was also to remind them that salvation, or nirvanna, was each persons responsibility. Adam and I met up on top and walked down together and had breakfast, he went back to the room and I decided to walk up the smaller dome before we left, scheduled for late morning. I set off up far fewer steps to the top of the smaller dome, when I arrived I was one of only two people on top, not including guards etc. The tall naked man pulled in a much bigger crowd. The smaller dome had a series of Jain temples, mostly from the 10th to the 12th century which were architecturally beautiful and the setting, esp. with so few people around was magic. I greatly enjoyed my time wandering through and around this beautiful spot. I walked down, claimed my shoes and went back to the room where I met Adam packed and was ready to leave in a few minutes. We checked out and walked the 100 yards to the bus station to catch a bus to Hassan our first transfer point on todays trip to the mountain town, or as they say here, hill station, of Madikeri. We arrived in Hassan and after some confusion found our bus to Madikeri, some of the problem stemmed from me continually misprouncing it Madiriki. This bus ride went through some of the most beautiful countryside we have seen on the trip, not as spectacular as the bus trip into Nepal, but just as beautiful. As we slowly climbed through bigger to smaller valleys the agriculture changed and more and more of the land became forested, before we knew it we were in coffee plantation country, the coffee being planted under the forest trees for protection. Four hours later we stopped in Madikeri, got off the bus and went looking for the hotels recomended in our guide books, most of them turned out to be full and the only one that had room was quite a bit above our budget, but not having much of a choice, and me being tired, we took it, ate dinner in it's restaurant and went to sleep.
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