The Ganges at Varanasi

It is easy to get lost in this most ancient of cities. Varanasi is built around it’s ghats, concrete steps and jetties that lead down to the Ganges. The area around the ghats is a confusion of nameless alleys, gaily painted with advertisements like Victorian London, thick with flies and incense, pebbledashed with cow pats, and often thronging with people. It took a few moments of staring at the river from the rooftop of our ghat-side guest house before we realised that this was the Ganges, the most holy of rivers, flowing from its source high on the Tibetan plateau to the Bay of Bengal where it opens up into the largest delta in the world.

The ghats.

Varanasi has a magic all of its own. A morbid, unsanitary magic, but a magic all the same. Often you’ll hear a rhythmic masculine (always men) chant floating down the alleyway from behind. This is a cue to step aside and watch as a procession of solemn men come bounding past carrying a corpse wrapped in bright yellow and red, on their way to the ghats to arrange a flaming pyre and float the body out onto the holy river.

The ghats by night.

Our last night in India was an emotional affair. We spent the last few hours being rowed along the Ganges in a skiff, watching the Indians at play on the ghats; bathing, swimming, splashing and, of course, playing cricket; watched as herds of buffalow came down to drink; saw the bodies being consumed in the perenially aflame ‘burning’ ghats. Eventually we joined a flotilla of skiffs and row-boats around the main ghat to watch a nightly ceremony so old that nobody knows how or when it started. We said barely a word to eachother, each lost in our own thoughts. We’d been living and breathing this country for the last three and a half months and couldn’t have planned for a more perfect and apposite ending.

More than a country, India is an experience. It hangs like a ripe fruit, dangling from the Himalayas, the embodiment of Asia. It exudes a kind of sweaty fecundity and smoky mysticism and the sheer weight of humanity, the dogs, cars, rickshaws, cows, elephants, camels has to be seen to be believed. Religion seeps into the everyday: Hindu luminosity, Muslim opulence, Buddhist austerity, Sikh openness, Catholic stateliness, and the result is a magic unlike anywhere on the planet. Thanks to the variagated landscape and the ghostly impressions of empires past it can feel at times like you’re in the Mediterranean, the Caribbean, Tibet, Marrakesh or England.

Train travel in India.

The people too; it should come as no shock to anybody whose lived in England in the last 50 years or so, but Indian people are wonderful. V.S. Naipul says that the Indian is the last true English gentleman, and its true. They have an exagerrated courteousness and a kind of misplaced chivalry (for instance Amy will often be offered a seat on a packed train, but not by the person occupying it!). Everyone is an entrepneur, and will cheerfully rip you off for whatever they can. This is a downside. Even when caught red-handed, they don’t have the grace to look abashed, you’ll just get one of those damned infectious ambiguous head-wobbles (does it mean yes or does it mean no?) But on the other hand we’ve never felt threatened and have heard no tales of anyone having anything stolen.

The food will be very much missed.

In Varanasi I saw 2 children playing, a boy and a girl. They were tussling and laughing, the boy trying to escape the clutches of the little girl. A passing dog provided a distraction and he made good his escape, running off up the alley. The girl set off after him but as she gave chase I noticed she had ricketts and waddled off with a bow-legged gait. Therein lies the tragedy of India. A country with one of the largest economies in the world, some of the most expensive real estate on the planet and a $1.3 billion space program, yet they have no sanitation, no waste disposal, and still have kids running around with ricketts.

I could go on forever. You could write a book about India, and many have. So to sum up I’ll just say we are going to miss this filthy, fractious hell-hole very, very much.

We floated these flaming lotus flowers off down the Ganges. Good karma apparently.

Farewell India, and thanks for all the curry.

But the next day we did get a ticket for the boat, and off we sailed to Havelock. We arrived at night and the very next day was the annual Hindu festival of Holi. For weeks we’d been asked by other backpackers “so, where are you spending Holi?” in a manner that inferred their new found Hindu devoutness. “I dunno,” we’d shrug. “What is it?” What it is, is a wonderful, colourful celebration of something-or-other that involves covering one another in different coloured powder paints. The streets were lined with Indians, some with water guns filled with pre-mixed paint, some with tubs of powder, others with vats of narcotic milkshake. People would approach, paint your face, dump or fling handfuls of powder, shoot the paint guns at you, give you a hug and shout “Happy Holi!” Nobody was exempt. Eventually everybody congregated in the town where there was a speaker pumping out music and yet more of the riotous explosions of colour. Everybody was covered head-to-toe, clothes ruined, laughing, dancing, throwing paint. Absolutely magical, and one of the defining moments of our time in India.

Holi paintballs.

With Holi over we settled into island life. I can’t really stress just how mind-blowingly beautiful Havelock Island is. Initially we were aghast at the fact there was no Internet access, no hot water, and only one place that sells alcohol but soon came to realise that this sleepy seclusion is precisely the charm of the Andaman Islands. The calm ocean is a bright turquoise colour and laps at pristine beaches whose silky white sand creeps beneath overhanging jungle canopy. There is a single narrow road on the island and the main town is a dozen or so tin-roofed shacks with a covered fruit market. We stayed in a garden of wooden huts amidst bow-trunked coconut trees and their perpendicular betel-nut cousins and rented a little moped to get us into town or to the other beaches. Contentment settled on us like a disease.

First of all we bought some Marmite – a palliative to home-sickness – off of a West Country lad we befriended. And then we bought the only thing you really need on this island – a hammock. Because the beaches are completely deserted – no hotels, no sun loungers, no hawkers, no umbrellas – and the boughs of the trees have grown horizontally over the sea, all you do is find a suitable branch from which to string up your hammock, and then climb in. Often the tide will come in and you’ll find yourself swinging in the breeze with nothing but the crystal water gurgling beneath. Hours were spent just gazing out to sea. As the tide receded we’d lay in warm shallow pools left between the coral until our skin wrinkled.

Hammock Life.

It would be dark by 6pm so we’d stroll to one of 2 nearby restaurants that sold some of the best food we’ve had in India. By the time we’d eaten there’d normally be some sort of gathering around one or the other of our huts, and then perhaps we’d hear whispers of a party in a different resort so we’d all decamp, enormous bottles of rum in hand. It’s what you’d describe as a quiet social scene, in keeping with the environs.

Havelock is completely unlike anywhere else in India. It’s peaceful, becalming, heavenly, unspoiled, and it’s a marvel that destinations like this still exist in the world. Back in the hubbub of New Delhi, staring through a subway window we wonder if it happened at all. The only proof we have is a suntan and a well-worn hammock strapped to my rucksack. The Marmite, like our allotted time in paradise, is gone.

The moonset over Havelock.

Covered.

Even the beach wasn’t safe.

Home is where you hang your hammock.

Needs no caption.

Words won’t convey the sense of peaceful perfection and solemn serenity, the wonderful symmetry or the subtle shifts in colour throughout the day; it seems almost alive, and there definitely seems a mournful sadness about it – you can see where the tear-drop analogies come from. There’s nothing like a tragedy to add some pathos either: In 1631 emperor Shah Jahan’s heart was shattered when his third wife, Mumtaz Mahal, died during childbirth. Clearly he loved her more than his first two wives and, through gritted teeth and a river of tears (one imagines), he announced that he would build her the best darn tomb to ever grace the surface of the planet. Construction began a year later and took 22 years and once he finished old Shah must’ve sighed aloud and known that he’d done his Mumtaz proud. He would’ve, I’m sure, loved nothing more than to live out the rest of his days safe in this knowledge but this was not to be. His bloody ungrateful son Aurangzeb usurped him and imprisoned him in Agra fort from where he could only gaze upon his masterpiece from afar. When he died they finally buried him next to his beloved Mumtaz beneath the Taj Mahal.

The Taj and Us.

“A blemish on the arse cheek of eternity” is how I’d describe Agra, the city surrounding the Taj. Actually it’s not that bad, not as bad as people would have you believe – it’s just the same as most other North Indian cities – but perhaps, juxtaposed against the Taj, anything would look abject. We spent an afternoon in the fort, awoke the next morning at dawn to see sunrise at the Taj Mahal, and then left the following day. The best thing about Agra are the rooftop restaurants where you can stare like a lovesick teenager at the Taj, like a resplendent, reclining octopus with dozens of large birds of prey circling it’s onion cupola. Further entertainment is provided by gangs of street monkeys running amok on the rooftops of Taj Ganj.

Sunrise at the Taj.

From Agra it is just a quick 4-hour standing-next-to-the-toilet train journey to Delhi where we had to fight to alight. I fell under the train but luckily it remained stationary. We tried not to let that colour our opinion of the place but still came to the conclusion that it is a little underwhelming. We stayed in Pahar Ganj, a neon-lit backpacker enclave where the clamour for custom reaches its zenith, and did enjoy riding the spotlessly clean subway (although it inevitably leads to more fights to alight!) It’s not that we particularly disliked Delhi, it’s just, well, Mumbai it ain’t.

Pahar Ganj.

Anyway, we’ve had enough of cities and forts and buildings for now so we decided to head to paradise – the Andaman Islands.

Agra Fort. In any city without the Taj Mahal, this would be the star attraction.

Arty.

English buildings, English churches, English shops, a promenade, a giant statue of a monkey-god (that one probably wasn’t the English), even the samosas tasted a bit like Cornish pasties. It was a little unnerving. But a picturesque town, and a nice place to spend a few days before plunging back into India proper.

Shimla. Great camera work.

And so we started on our whistle-stop tour of Rajasthan, the Land of the Kings, India’s most colourful state.

Immediately we stepped off the train in Rajasthan it was like someone had cranked up the India. Cars, bikes, rickshaws, people, dogs, cows all multiplied; sound, heat, smell amplified; people haranguing and hassling at every turn, tuk-tuks stalking for custom, wiry saddhus swinging alms boxes in your face, or trying to foist flowers on you, gruesome beggar women thrusting demanding hands. The noise is deafening. You quickly become hardened, learn to shun any proffered handshakes or gifts, and ignore any shouted exhortations or salutations.

The Jantar Mantar…or something like that.

First stop was Jaipur, the capital of the state, and so loud, busy and hot that its hard to describe it as anything else. The old city, known as the Pink City (because its painted orange), is only marginally better, but the real gems are the Maharaja-built enclaves: the Jantar Matar, a collection of giant angular structures, astronomically aligned to measure the positions, azimuths and angles of the stars. The Hawa Mahal, built so the ladies of the Maharaja’s court could daintily spy on the comings-and-goings of the city and now used by the likes of us to escape it. And the Amber Fort, the pick of the bunch, a sandstone palace standing majestically atop a hill, it’s interior carved out of cool marble with traces of Islamic opulence here and there.

The Hawar Mahal…or something like that.

Pushkar next – part tourist town, part pilgrimage town. Here someone also cranked up the Hippy, walking round namaste-ing each other, carrying things on their head (just like real Indians), and just generally playing Hindu. To be fair to them you can see why: to watch the sun set over the holy lake and see the pastel buildings turn a chalky shade against the distant mountains, to the sound of bongo drums and sitars is, well, its good for the soul. We stayed in a hotel with a swimming pool – the first of this trip – so spent many hours just relaxing our socks off before heading to Jodhpur.

Gooning in Pushkar.

We liked Jodhpur. The focal point is the Marangargh Fort, rising formidable and impregnable from a sandy cliff; a jamboree of blue cuboids fall away far beneath it (giving it it’s name, the Blue City), creating twisting medieval streets that are alive with cheerfully mischievous children who would always, upon seeing us, drop what they were doing (filling water balloons, tormenting goats), straighten up and belt out a few words in English. A favourite of Amy’s was a rendition of a song that starts “Hey honey-bunny, something-something funny!”

Jodhpur. The Blue City.

From Jodhpur we bussed it to Jaisalmer, a city seemingly sprouted out of the desert itself with every building a sand-coloured carved-rock masterpiece. Another fort, but this one still active so people live, eat and sell tourist-tat within it’s narrow, shaded alleyways. We struck out into the surrounding desert on a 2-day Camel Safari, an unforgettable experience. There was something almost biblical about riding those ancient ungainly beasts through the desert plains. We made camp amidst some sand dunes where our guides immediately built a campfire to whip up some hearty veg curry, dal and chapati, before we slept under the myriad stars in what must be the only place in India without the sound of barking dogs.

‘Night Ames. ‘Night John-boy. ‘Night camels.

Finally, Udaipur. The Venice of the East, and the jewel in Rajasthan’s kingly crown. The city is built around a cluster of lakes and peaks and the centre of attention is the magisterial City Palace complex. It’s slight elevation above most of Rajasthan means a refreshing breeze pervades, and the European coffee shops and cafes leaves it feeling almost Mediterranean. At night you can sit in one of the many rooftop restaurants and see the rippling reflection of the city in the lake. Incidentally, Udaipur is where they filmed Octopussy and eventually we succumbed to the luxurious allure and started drinking lunch-time G+Ts and paying to use the swimming pool in the posh hotels. Also, we took a cable car to Sunset Peak where the incredible sunset – rivaled only by that of Santorini – left us decreeing Udaipur our favourite Indian city.

The view from one side of Sunset Peak…

…and none-too-shabby from the other.

Rajasthan has romanced us, well and truly. The mystical spirituality of India seeps through into the everyday, in the coloured cities, many temples, the holy choruses and the burning incense. The dusty aridity and the Islamic influence lend it an Arabian air, and the impressive forts and palaces provide welcome respite from the hectic cities. It can at times leave you cradling your head in your hands, dreaming of a place with road laws and rubbish bins, and beef. But other times it’ll lead one or the other of us to proclaim, with a deep sigh, “Ah, I love India.”

Just taking the camel for a walk.

Us at a plush Udaipur hotel.

Each of those G+Ts cost more than our room for the night. But look how happy we are!

That was until we got to Kangra, where we were supposed to catch a taxi for the final 25km to Mcleodganj. It was dark when we arrived and there was an alarming lack of taxis. Caught in a discombobulated moment, they pounced: two drunken, fly-by-night con artists who offered to take us to our destination for ‘just’ 1200 rupees (twice the going rate). In the absence of any other options we agreed. They bundled all four of us, backpacks ‘n’ all, into a beaten up Nissan Micra before both jumping in themselves and commencing to argue loudly in Hindi. We smiled fatalistically at each other. Then one of them, bemoaning the broken stereo, started to sing us his favourite song. Loudly. We started laughing hysterically; it helped to take our mind off the treacherous mountain road and the breathy smell of alcohol permeating the tiny car.

Anyway, we did finally get to Mcelod Ganj, and in one piece. It wasn’t quite the introduction to backpacking I’d hoped to give my parents, but they certainly earned their stripes! We had a few well earned beers and de-briefed.

Breakfast with a view.

The next morning we realised what a marvellous place we were actually at. Mcleodganj is a fantastic little tourist town built into the side of a steep slope. A minituare city of colourful town-houses strung with prayer flags and facing onto a rugged mountain-side with a snowy crest, from behind which peers a snowy white Himalayan peak. Each day we’d breakfast on the roof-top terrace against this dramatic backdrop, with eagles floating about not 6 feet above our heads.

Prayer flags and Mcleodganj below.

We did a day-trek up a nearby mountain, Triund. The sun was shining; the sky was blue when we set off. We started up a rocky path shaded with tall fir trees that slowly gave way onto a winding mountain path with terrific views of the Kangra Valley. Patches of snow began to litter our path until eventually the snow became the path and we were trenching through 3 feet of snow. The peak, once we reached it, was covered in an untouched blanket of white and we huddled round a fire whilst eating a noodle lunch.

This was halfway up to Triund…

…and this was at the top. A bit colder up there.

Another day we went off to explore the surrounding area. We stumbled across an incongruous British church with a shaded terraced graveyard cut into the hillside, into a village where we found slate-roofed huts, women carrying rocks on their head, goat-herds, and little boys with home-made bows and arrows. The little Indians mistook us for cowboys and one of them shot Amy. She lived though, and made them all pose for photos in retribution.

Those darn pesky Injuns.

Mcleodganj is the home-in-exile of the leader of Tibetan Buddhism, the Dalai Lama. And by a fortuitous clash of calendars, he happened to be preaching there at the same time we were visiting. Everybody is welcome, and for 2 days before the event the town started filling with purple-robed monks and European hippies. We awoke at 7am and joined the throng of people making their way to the Dalai Lama Temple. Unfortunately Amy and Dad were turned away for blatantly flouting the No Cameras rule. Mum and I managed to find a cramped square foot or so of concrete at the back of the courtyard and we could, if we sort of leaned to the left and squinted a bit, just see His be-spectacled Holiness delivering his sermon in Tibetan. Now, I’ve nothing but respect for the 14^th incarnation of the Dalai Lama, I think he is a truly great person and a real character to boot, but we soon came to the conclusion that we were bored stiff so we pushed our way out and went for breakfast on our roof-top terrace instead.

The Dalai Lama is not the only Tibetan exile resident at Mcleodganj, the whole town has a decidedly Tibetan feel, with Tibetan street food and handicrafts for sale, and everywhere political posters of Tibetans self-immolating (setting themselves on fire) in protest of the Chinese occupation of their country. We visited the Tibetan museum to find out why.

Free Tibet. Previously I had looked on it as a jingoistic saying, the preserve of hippies and students (a bit like Che Guevara posters), but this harrowing little exhibition changed all that. To occupy a country is one thing – the rapacious Chinese do need things to burn, and Tibet is rich in natural resources – but the systematic eradication of 2000 years of Tibetan culture is a little hard to swallow. Ancient ruins destroyed, relics defecated on, people tortured and killed, religious leaders kidnapped; all because the idea of a Tibetan identity is an effrontery to the mono-ethnic communist state. The peaceful Tibetans are being consigned to the history books and are fighting back in the form of non-violent protests and self-immolation. We all left with a disturbing sense of the wrong-doing on the part of the Chinese, and sadly the futility of peaceful protest on the part of the Tibetans.

Anyway, rant over. We have had a great 2 weeks with Mad and Steve but have now gone our separate ways. Gladly, they loved India as we do: they took a cab back to Amritsar, already plotting their next visit. For us, our visit is not yet over; we took the bus to Shimla.

Who’d a thought it? The Best Chai in Asia right here in Mcleodganj.

Oh yeah – we also did a cooking class. Delicious AND educational.

We stayed in an upmarket hotel – a Christmas present from Ma and Pa – which was a welcome dose of luxury (hot showers, air-con, mini-bar, fresh linen – we couldn’t believe our luck, especially given that the night before we stayed somewhere which neglected to give us even pillows!) The first day we spent just catching up in the hotel bar, and the second we went to see the Golden Temple.

Inside the Golden Temple.

Entrance to the Golden Temple is free, free on condition that you remove your shoes and socks, and don a ridiculous orange bandana; a small price to pay, we felt, even with freezing rainwater underfoot. The whole thing is constructed out of white marble, inlaid here and there with gold inscription. You enter through a clocktower onto the focal area, a rectangular marble walkway around a still reservoir – the holy water of the Amrit Sarovar. A temple, purportedly gilded with 750 kilos of gold, floats resplendent and serene in the centre, and is reached by a bridge full of shuffling Sikhs and orange-headed tourists like us.

One of the most endearing aspects of the Sikh faith is a welcoming inclusiveness; everybody is welcome to visit the Golden Temple, irrespective of religion, to enjoy the place, stay the night and – I reckon the best part – eat a free lunch. You grab a stainless steel thali plate and take your place sitting on the floor of the dining hall. Vegetable curries, chapatis and dal are cooked in enormous cauldrons by volunteers (the whole place is staffed by volunteers, every Sikh should volunteer at least once in their lifetime) and a guy comes round to dish out the food to between 60 and 80 thousand people each day! Not only is it suprisingly delicious but, as an advert for Sikkhism, a masterstroke: no evangelising, no preaching, the only thing rammed down your throat is more chapatis, and yet you leave with a wonderful impression of what their religion is all about. Sikhs are now my new favourite.

Bwaaahaaaahaa! – look at those two.

We also went to see the Wagah Border Ceremony, that is the daily – daily, mind you – ceremony to mark the closing of the border between India and Pakistan. None of us knew what we were expecting, but it definitely wasn’t what we got.

A flag waving patriot.

On either side of the border a large brickwork gateway, one was hung with a picture of Ghandi, the other adorned with minarets and a picture of a famous Pakistani (presumably). Each led onto a large ampitheatre filled with perhaps 3000 flag-waving people. Dancing girls and an MC whipped the crowd of each nation into a patriotic fervour. Ostentatiously clothed guards enacted an elaborate fandango full of stomps, high-kicks, posturing and cross-border gesturing, whilst the two crowds exchanged football-type chants. Us foreigners were sat in our own pen and generally not encouraged to join in, rather just sit there gaping at this audacious spectacle unfolding below. It was brilliant! A bugle sounded the end of the ceremony as the flags of both countries were slowly lowered.

The Wagah Border Ceremony. Indian side.

Amritsar itself was a bit of a disappointment. It probably didn’t help that it rained solidly for the first day and all the filth of the city coagulated into a toxic sludge, but actually there really is not much to do there, so we were happy to be leaving for Mcleod Ganj.

Steve-O and Mad’s first tuk-tuk ride.

We could’ve taken a 6 hour bus to Mcelod Ganj, but I thought it might be a bit much for the ‘rents, so we opted for a train and taxi ride instead. Had I known what a nightmare the journey would be, I would’ve gone for the bus. Twice over.

The annual family day out at the Pakistani border. My 2 brothers were busy so we took some Chinese girls instead.

The University of Mumbai in the background there.

They warned us, the other travelers we met on the way, they warned us about Mumbai. It’s too crowded, too expensive, too difficult, two days is too much they said. Nary a soul had a good word to say. But what is wrong with these people? Of course its crowded, manic, chaotic, but this is India, not the outer Hebrides. We were close to cutting our time short here, such was the negativity, but so glad we didn’t.

Riding the suburban train network…not so crowded as you might think.

We stayed at the optimistically named Delight Guest House. In not so much a room as partition of a larger room, where the partition walls don’t quite reach the ceiling, and the voices of the unexplained multitudes of African tenants and inevitable Israeli travelers drift in through the gaps. But it was clean, had room service and, inexplicably even to us, we loved it.

If you have any washing done in Mumbai, it goes here – Mahalaxmi.

The Delight is in Colaba, on the southern-most tip of the city. We could see the Gateway to India and the Taj Mahal Hotel from our window. Each day we would stroll through Colaba and the Fort district, which is home to most of the architectural delights of the city. Now, what the both of us know about architecture you could fit on the back of a stamp, but here it is so prepossessing: a blend of Colonial Gothic, Islamic, Hindu, Mughal, Catholic and art-deco styles, often all in one building! Most if not all were built by the British, but with a nod towards those other styles they found already here, remnants of empires past; a fitting metaphor for the city – and the country – itself really.

Prince of Wales Museum…or should that be Wows…har har.

Almost immediately north of Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus (Victoria Station to you or I, and the crown jewel of those aforementioned buildings), the streets coalesce into tumultuous bazaars and markets, the people seem to multiply and the volume turns up a few notches. This is the Mumbai we imagined, and it feels like any other Indian city we’ve been to.

Just another building.

We took a guided tour of the Dharavi slum which was fascinating, a real eye-opener. The largest slum in Asia, Dharavi is home to upwards of a million people. It is shaped somewhat like a heart and by dint of that poetic Indian symbolism, is known as the heart of Mumbai. Although it is undoubtedly a slum, the people who live there don’t just mope around swatting flies all day. It’s industriousness is famous – plastic recycling, pottery, poppadoms, ironware, cardboard – the slum generates $650 million per annum; people also live in the slum and commute to the city.

Dharavi Slum. Welcome.

Although it’s a little disheartening to see kids playing in the refuse heaps or toying with dead vermin, they honestly seem like they’re having a whale of a time! No matter what they’re doing they’ll drop it the minute they see a white face to scream “HELLO-HOW-ARE-YOU?” and descend into fits of giggles. The company running the tour – Reality Travels – pump a large amount of cash back into Dharavi to provide schools, sports programmes and more.

Indian man cooking Pav Bhaji.

Finally, the Mumbai street food is delectable. Bhelpuris, pav bhajis, samosas, wadas, dosas, iddli and numerous other delicacies that we didn’t quite catch the name of; and refreshing lime juice or sugar-cane juice stalls every 50 metres or so. There was one place near our hotel where, one night, we got a thali (rice, 2 curry dishes, popadom, lime chutney), 2 wadas (like a veg-burger sandwich), about 8 onion bhajis and a bottle of water for 87 rupees (about £1). They knew us by sight in the end and we daren’t walk past without gulping down a quick snack.

Our mate – King of Street Food.

Amy chowing down on a samosa for breakfast.

And now for something completely different: we leave South India and fly out to Amritsar tomorrow, where we’ll be meeting up with my parents and embarking on a little Himalayan adventure.

Chowpatty Beach at night.

Palolem by day.

Staying in Palolem was a little like floating through a dream. It’s a white, sandy crescent bay tossed at either end with a handful of boulders. A palm-tree grove follows the curve of the beach, part-camouflaging temporary beach-front bars and coco-huts, most of which are dismantled each year during the monsoon and re-assembled. At night the whole bay turns a deep orange and the softly lit bars softly waft music, barely audible over the rolling waves.

Palolem by night…and us.

Sometimes it felt more like a farm than a beach: beach dogs continuously comb the beach for scraps; cows sunbathe smug and unmolested while their porcine cousins trot about terrified, lest someone should order a Pork Vindaloo from one of the beach side restaurants. Chickens, roosters, crows, frogs, lizards, even the odd monkey join the fighting, howling dogs and the fighting, squealing pigs in a nighttime cacophony so loud that, were it at home, you’d be banging bleary-eyed at next door.

Holy beach cow!

So how do you sleep at night? Why, you get drunk of course.
Goa, in it’s hippy hey-dey, was a place for hippies to come, take drugs, and dance to trance music ’til the sun came up (often naked apparently?). This, it seems, was fine until the Indians started joining in, then it became anathema to Indian conservatism; a place for Indians to come and behave in a decidedly un-Indian way. Laws were passed to curb the reveler’s enthusiasm, one of which was to ban loud music after 10pm. In Palolem they get round this law – brilliantly I feel – by running Silent Discos each night, where they hand out a set of head-phones as you walk in.

Partying in Palolem. Our last night with travelling pals Olly and Mel.

The only thing of note we actually did in Palolem was to hire out a 500cc Enfield Bullet (the classic Indian ride, yaar) and set out to find a local beauty spot, Cola Beach, which was 20km outside of town. Anyway, 40km down the road the guy we rented the bike from pulled up in a jeep and shouted “Where are you going?”.
“Cola Beach,” we replied.
“Well what the bloody hell are you doing out here then!?”

What a machine! And the bike’s not bad either.

We eventually backtracked and found Cola Beach, which was nice enough. But the real treat was gliding on the Enfield along winding forested Indian roads, Amy even enjoyed riding pillion. A funny thing – blind corners are irrelevant to Indians. In fact, it seems preferable to overake on a blind corner or the crest of a hill. So it’s quite common to round a corner and find a bus overtaking a lorry and only an Enfield sized gap to squeeze through.
We came to Palolem for a few nights. Eleven nights we later we left for Panjim.
Panjim is a cute little town whose Portuguese heritage shines through the centuries in it’s pastel painted houses with white-arched window frames, streets named after Catholic saints and its alabaster Catholic churches. This, coupled with the tropical setting, makes it feel like a South American city. We wandered about for a couple of days, took a trip to Old Goa (more of the same really) and then took a ridiculously packed bus – picture school children hanging from the outside – to Arambol, a beach in the North of Goa.

Amy in Panjim.

Arambol is like a bigger, dirtier, louder Palolem with no such qualms about playing music late at night. Almost immediately we arrived we fell in with a gang who we got to know so well in the 3 days we were with them that it felt a bit empty when they all left.

Arambol Beach.

Some of our new pals in Arambol.

Our beach holiday – a holiday from a holiday – is coming to an end. We need to rouse ourselves from our sea-side indolence and get on with the serious business of travelling. We get the sleeper bus to Mumbai on Saturday.

English clock-tower. Indian city.

San had had be-friended us on the streets of Mysore. This is not so strange, Indians be-friend us all the time. What was different about San was that he didn’t seem to want anything in return. He had a strange, Frank Spencer English accent and an endearing buck-toothed grin and used words like ‘naff’ and ‘non-sensical’. He helped us find a hotel room (took no commission) and then paid for a rickshaw to take us to bar. It took us some time to get over the natural traveler’s suspicion but it turned out that San was a massive Anglophile, just a ‘nice bloke’ (his words) with an almost tragic longing to see England. Unfortunately we were the closest he was ever likely to get.

We got roped into buying some incense sticks.

Mysore is a terrific little city. Alongside the standard fare of advertising hoardings, wandering cows, rickshaw-wallahs and grim buses are to be found overblown Raj-era palaces, pastel coloured colonial mansions and ancient Dravidian temples. We were also – having eaten nothing but curry for some weeks – ashamedly excited to see a McDonald’s there! After wolfing down a McChicken sarnie (beef is off the menu obviously) we strolled round Mysore, then left for Hampi after a couple of days.

Yep, that’s our room and, yep, that’s a temple.

Hampi, wow. This place really has to be seen to be believed. Basically a vast concentration of half-millenia-old temples and ruins, dotted haphazardly around a landcsape made up of sandy boulders, some enormous, stacked in improbable formations, juxtaposed against green banana plantations, rice paddies and coconut trees. You stay in amongst the temples, in Hampi Bazaar, and can rent push-bikes to get round and see as many as you can before getting bored (commonly known as being ‘templed out’).

Great photography from Amy. Regrettably I dropped her camera in a rock pool shortly after this.

Across the river from Hampi Bazaar, and accessible only by boat, a surreal proliferation of bungalows and restaurants, shops and bike rentals has sprung up to service the needs of the ever-growing hippy population. Vying, along with the hippies, for the title of ethnic majority, are Israelis. Some inter-breeding has inevitably caused a number of Israeli hippies. They all hang around getting stoned, juggling sticks, banging bongos, juggling sticks, getting stoned; we even caught the Israelis doing some weird Yiddish hokey-cokey type dance. A great place to people-watch and we stayed on this side of the river for a few nights.

This is the ‘other side’.

After seven nights in Hampi we are off to Goa, back to the beach.

I call this one ‘Some boulders and a woman’.

Railway Managers everywhere – take heed.

In truth, the trains look a whole lot worse than they are actually are. Even in the lowest class (2nd Class Unreserved) the toilets are comparitively clean, there are ceiling fans bolted on at random angles and – the best bit – a 3 hour journey cost us about 40 pence each!
Anyway, we had come to Allepey to explore the backwaters of Kerala, a must-see when in this part of the world. Hundreds of miles of serene lakes and waterways, busy with fishing canoes and luxury tourist boats. The banks are lined with villages, huts, the odd school, the ubiquitous Keralan coconut trees and rice paddies stretching backwards; dark women in bright saris cooking, cleaning, bathing and washing; friendly children splashing and waving. A wide array of birds swoop all around – eagles, cormorants, kingfishers, geese, duck, crows and many other iridescent and strange unidentified creatures.

The tranquil backwaters.

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We took two excursions onto the backwaters: still with our new travelling companions we chartered a houseboat. A double-decker bamboo-effect luxury boat with 3 double bedrooms. We had our own on-board chefs and were waited on hand-and-foot for one extravagant night. They let us hook up the boat’s speakers to our iPods so we had our own private party, and sat up drinking rum and coke and playing cards. One of the stand-out experiences so far.

Chillaxin’ on the houseboat.

The next day we hired a smaller vessel which was able to take us into the nooks and crannies of the backwaters that were inaccessible to the large houseboat, where we got to see people going about their daily lives along the canals.

Partyin’ on the houseboat.

We next headed to Fort Cochin, a town which promised so much but delivered so little – we scurried out after a couple of nights. After that it was a train, bus, rickshaw journey to Wayanad National Park where we – after a good night’s kip – embarked on a, none-too-easy it transpired, 2000+ metre climb up nearby Chembra Peak.

Tea fields.

A tuk-tuk-took us to the starting point, then we continued on foot, above the bustling towns, above the pristine tesselated tea-fields punctured with perfectly perpendicular trees, up seven consecutive peaks, each stacked atop the previous, above even the wheeling black eagles, until we were afforded an expansive verdant panorama of the Wayanad area from the tip of the seventh peak.

Climbing. Shattered by this point.

View from Chembra Peak.

The next day we were up at 5am to go elephant spotting.
We saw our first wild elephant just as the sun was beginning to peer through the forest of Muthanga Wildlife Reserve. A fully grown bull, it observed us for some time, tail swishing. He must’ve seen something he didn’t like as, with an almighty visceral trumpeting, he decided to charge our jeep. Luckily the driver was on the ball, and we were in no danger. But what a fantastic sight!

Watching…

Charging!

After that all we saw were the backs of a couple more elephants shouldering through the forest and some tantalisingly fresh tiger footprints but alas, no tiger.

The next stop on our journey is our first outside Kerala, we head to the state of Karnataka…

More of the backwaters.

Holy cow.

Another one from the Chembra Peak trek.

Amy, Mel, and some goats.