Stressed?

My skin’s getting pale

My bum’s getting fat

My razor’s gone blunt

But who will see that?

South Indian Dosa¹

and multi-cuisine

always a Thali²

But nothing that’s lean



Its too bright to read

Its too hot to walk

Its OK for drinking

But nothing here’s corked



A shalwar cameez³

or t-shirt and pants

my skin craves the sun

But men more than glance



Cheaper by sleeper

and quicker by train

none of it bothers

my super-chilled brain.

¹Pancake made from rice flour

²A regional all-you-can-eat set meal

³Tunic and trouser suit …normally with matching shawl/scarf

Both ends of the candle burnt...

Here lies the recipe for ending up in bed with "the belly" and chronic lactic acid burn on the very day of the big Shiva festival you came here to be part of...

• Overnight in a non AC carriage (first class though) on the Kollam-Madurai Passer
• Check into the Madurai Railway Retiring rooms (0530)
• Scrub off train dirt with new ayurvedic exfoliating pad

• Eat Dosa by South tower of Sri Meenakshi temple
• Visit Temple (Tamil Nadu's temple-architecture highlight)
• Take loads of quite psychadelic photos (displayed throughout this post)

Get very bitten trying to meditate in temple

Flee from mosquitos

Buy and eat a few indian sweets

 

Feel guilty about eating so many Indian sweets

Eat Idly near the bus stand

Shower again

Check out of Railway retiring rooms

Take the 1230 bus to the mountains

Eat thali at the lunch stop just because it looked so good

Arrive Kodaikanal and check into the Methodist Church (great value with tartan blankets)

Walk to youth hostel and and enquire about trekking

Meet with trekking guide and a French chap looking for more trekkers

Agree to trek with them to Munnar starting at 0830 the next morning

Eat locally grown and made chocolate whilst looking at the light fade over the lake

Decide to eat more chocolate in the morning - especially the butterscotch flavour

Eat tomato and onion uttapam for dinner (almost a wheat-free pizza!)

Repack for the trek and onward luggage

Go to bed

Wake up regularly noting that one tartan blanket is insufficient at 2500m!

Trek at lightning speed with two aerobically fit men for two days (see following post)

Grab a shower in French Chap's hotel (thank you Jean Luc)

Jump on the 4pm connection bus

Eat egg dosa at very busy street stall (AMAZINGLY GOOD)

Change to the nightbus at 9pm

Climb off the bus at 0415 godknowswhere (near Vellore apparently)

Get overcharged for a 500m auto ride to the bus depot

Take first bus to Tiruvanamalai at 0430

• Try not to cry when the autodriver takes you to the wrong place and tries to hike his fee
• Find a room before everywhere opens without an auto
• Accidentally drink a cup of tap water because you're so tired

  

"being present" with you in Trichy

I have been thinking a lot since I finished my job and gave myself the time and space to do so, but I have thought particularly about "being present"" in the Buddhist sense which is that; nothing is permanent (ref "anicca" in the vipassana blogs) so living in the past or the future leads to avoidable misery.  The most misery-free way of living is to remain aware and in the present.  I have known of this philosophy for years but I have now begun to really understand it.  It also happens to be the way in which I naturally and most comfortably operate, but I have always felt it was in some was wrong because it has been hard for the people around me to deal with ...because its not "the way" of future-wrought west.  This said, and in terms of knowing myself, I now understand how this all works for me and that its not wrong, its just different.  I will not beat myself up about it anymore and will just accept this philosophy as my way of being.

All of that said, I have decided to take notes as the day goes by today so that you too could be present with me in Trichy, the heart of Tamil Nadu which has another very long name that I can't get my mind around let alone try to spell!

7.40 - I am on the bus going through a red onion wholesale market, a man is sitting cross legged on top of sacks of onions laughing as he conducts his business with the ladies and Gents of this happy little town (well population 866K!!).  There are trucks laden with garlic bulbs and it smells rather appetising.  As the onions fade the motor repair quarter abruptly begins and men are shortening their sarongs as the day warms up.  There are some huge gardens behind the typically Indian shop houses here.

8.00 - I am walking through the waking town centre streets to the Rock Fort temple which is a temple perched upon an almighty boulder which stands alone on these plains.  There are hundreds of stone steps ahead so I am pleased that I am full of Idly (delicious, fluffy, steamed fermented rice cakes served with 2 sauces) which was only half of the breakfast I could have eaten.

8.10 - I handed in my shoes to a shop keeper and began the climb then at a shrine of Ganesha I just spontaneously gave a Hindu blessing gesture.  I do like Ganesha, he represents opportunity and frankly if they believe that he represents something so wonderful then that is well worth paying my respects to!

9.25 - When I was almost at the top, I met Adish Jain, an interesting textile salesman cum respected artist cum travel writer who cleverly manages to combine touring India's magnificent sights with his business meetings!  Adish is from Mumbai/Bombay and has offered his wife and son as escorts for me in all things shopping when I visit the city at the end of my trip ...so very kind and I look forward to reading his articles online and in the Times of India.  Before shooting back to his first meeting, we walked down for a quick peek at the the flamboyant, hinduesque "Our Lady of Lourdes" catholic church which was a cool and silent abyss.  I am now back on bus route number 1 on a bus which has an excellent sound system (featuring bass frequencies and moderate volume) heading over the dreamy looking Cauvery River to what is rumoured to be India's biggest Hindu temple.

9.40 - I am now in the temple, I walked from the bus with Maylie who was sat next to me in her bright yellow sari making the most of the chance to practise her English.  I do love the way that women travelling alone only sit with women on Indian buses, its so reassuring and creates a sense of immediate solidarity.  I took me a while to work this out but I am so a front-of-the-bus-girlie these days.  Our western equality does to some extent diminish our femininity but there lies a whole other blog!!  Anyway here in the present there are motorbikes and homes in the outer rings of this temple and i a, stood in a gently bustling shopping street buffeted by pilgrims and the overwhelming smell of fresh coffee!?  I think I will indulge ...oh "only powder, no drinks" said the shop keeper who was chuffed to bits when I said how wonderful his shop smelt!

9.50 - Off the beaten track, this temple has true tranquillity and absolutely zero hassle!  I am going to buy a wooden bracelet with a Hindu god on each segment ...once I have established that 25p is indeed the going rate.  People are quietly busy all around me, preparing their offerings and bossing their families around.  The pavements are decorated in the same way here as they are outside homes all over Andra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu and even the squat loos here are fresh clean and pleasant.  I have also noticed how dark skinned people are here compared to further north, its a stark contrast ...hmm there's that Indian cliche again!

10.10 - Ohhhh I really like it here, a group pf Sadhu's (Holy Men) have just started chanting somewhere and I have sat down amongst the stone pillars to soak it all up without any approaches ...mind you its still early and there is plenty of time for camera wielding teenage boys to arrive!

10.20 - Wow I am up on the temple viewpoint, regretting leaving my camera in the hotel room and trying to get some decent shots on my phone.  There are still 11 more huge temple towers stretched out ahead of me.  The arches behind me are almost freakishly embellished with fairytale gods and goddesses of Hindu and animist descent.  It is believed that some of the now Hindu gods were once tribal deities and a recruitment process took place along the lines of,  "hey that half human god of yours is actually just an incarnation of one of our gods so you'll be fine with Hinduism".  That takes me right back to a quote from Adish earlier. "In India the water, language and Gods change every 20 miles!!"

10.25 -I was just feeling all content and fortunate to be here when a German tour group arrived reflecting sun from their pallor ...thats probably what I looked like when I arrived in Delhi!!  I have found a quiet spot just above the chanting I heard earlier where I can bask and revel in the fact that I have no agenda until check-out at 3pm.  I might well just hang here until 1pm when it closes.

11.15 - Hmmm, meditating in my windowless but clean hotel room has become more attractive! Foreign tourist groups (god knows where they stayed or came from) suddenly started to cram in alongside some serious swathes of pilgrims, the temperature began to soar and well I am glad I saw the sights early!  In fact that should teach me not to go planning the future and to remain present ...nothing is permanent ...anicca anicca anicca!

The shaven headed two toothed lady next to me on the bus is prodding me with her work-worn fingers, she looks 90 but could well only be a well seasoned 45.  She speaks Tamil and seems insistent that I must too but I only know the meditation instructions and the the fact that they say "ningle" in between most phrases and I have no idea what "ningle" actually means!  She is wearing yellow too, I think that is the colour to wear at the temple as it was worm by all the winners in today's sari stakes.

11.25 - the bus conductor who randomly is the same one I had on the way to the temple just gave me his number on the back of the ticket ...hilarious!!!!!

11.35 - the bus conductor asked me if I wanted to have lunch with him, I gently told him I had to meditate ...but nevertheless, even more hilarious!!!!!

1.00- Unlike the wheaty North, a South Indian Veg Thali consists of three veg dishes, 5 sauces in little pots, pickle, rice and a fried poppadom all served on a huge piece of banana leaf with endless refills of any of the above.  It comes with drinking water for about 58p and thankfully without a bus conductor!

14.48 - OK I have written up these notes which I hope allow you to feel present with me as you read and now I have some checking out to do, some skyping to arrange and a train to the Cape to catch ...room with a 3 oceans balcony view here I come!!!!

ps 16.45 - just came back passed the onion market about 35% of the bulk has sold and I just had my pc blessed by the girl in the internet shop!

Posh Curries and Ranting in Andra Pradesh

In the highlights section for each Indian state, the Lonely Planet reccomends its top five places to eat. This is the third night in a row that I have eaten in one of them. When you have no company, the place that you eat becomes of much greater importance and I can only salute the best places to eat in Andra Pradesh as they beat the sightseeing handsdown!

In both restaurants I have been hanging out in I have been able to drink beer from a glass, something that I have done rather more to celebrate that I can than because I actually wanted a beer, but it feels nice to be a westerner sometimes! Sandy Lane Restaurant in Vishakapatnam was at the opposite end of the long promenade from where I was staying so eating there gave my evening stroll delightful purpose and for the first time in India I had fish! For the record I am not eating meat and I vowed not to eat fish until I reached the coast because Mother India's waterways, despite looking all majestic and being called things as evocative as Ganges and Krishna ...are plain grim!


Sunset Blogging at Lotus Food City

"Lotus Food City" in Vijayawada is another gem of a restaurant which does a mean cashew and tomato curry. Excellent service is administered to tables set outdoors on platforms beside the vast, western facing estuary of the Krishna making it sunset dining heaven. It fails miserably on the name front and it almost put me off yesterday, however, it was supposed to be the best ...and I really needed the best after the day I had just had. Not only was I living in the railway station retiring rooms with a lone rat for company but I had also been harrassed to the point of waffling on like a mad woman about "how respectful I am of their culture and couldn't they just extend a bit of respect back".



Sight Seeing Should have been so reflective

I really do do everything I can not to attract unecessary attention. When I go out here, especially to a Hindu temple, I wear Indian clothes (not traveller indianesque outfits but nice respectable tunic, trousers and scarf sets), I even put my bloody hair up with no dangly bits but I still get chased by mobile phone weilding teenage boys and never get to experience the peace that these beautiful places are supposed to be suffuesed with.

Hoardes of young men would never ruin the peace for overseas visitors to Canterbury Cathedral because they have other places to go and be moronic in the west, sadly india's Tourism is still dominated by religious sites so they are rarely the peaceful havens that they should be.

Sight Seeing Should have been so tranquil

Strolling along the Prom Prom Prom

One thing I find myself doing as a blond in India is keeping moving.  If I stop it always ends in a small croud of teeneage/twenty something boys staring and taking it in turns to stand vaguely near me while their friend snaps them on a mobile phone.  I am proably as old as some of their mothers and it is pushes my newly developed sublime patience to the hilt.  As such, Vishakapatnam's 2 mile promenade was perfect for keeping walking and came as sweet relief.  I did the promenade in the early morning before tuk-tukking off to some buddhist hill monastries, at one of which I was harassed by a group of young males so hell-bent on stalking and jeering at me that the guard called the police!  Dejected, I scuttled away but thankfully the second monastry was as peaceful as a pembokeshire dawn and a gentle sea breeze swayed the grass as I dealt with my contempt for the young men at the previous place through meditation!

My evening promenade was marvellous and I felt a part of the fun that everyone was clearly having by simply wandering, eating something, wandering, pausing and wandering some more.  Most of the food stalls that set themselves up for sunset at around 4.30pm had attractively arranged fresh ingredients around a chopping block and huge containers of a kind of puffed rice that I had tried at the Haats in Chattisgarh.  Everyone seemed to be happily filling themselves with the output of these stalls from a paper cone with the same gusto as a portion of chips goes down in Blackpool, so ever on the hunt for the next taste bud hit, I found a popular looking stall and when I reached the front was delighted that the waller spoke to me in English

"Ah lady you want Muri Mix sweet and little bit spicy" to which I added

"yes please and big lemon" pointing cheerfully at the pyramid of little lime shaped lemons

What ensued was healthy, delicious, wheat free, pure food genius ...given that I am so obsessed with chopping up veg at the best of times you should watch out friends because you will be trying this next time you visit me at home!! (Ellie's without the tomato centres though!)

Muri Mix (1 cone)

Mix the following by hand in a large bowl:

0.25 of a red onion finely chopped

0.5 of a tomato finely chopped

A small handful of corriander leaf and stalk

Half the amount above of finely chopped mint

A few cooked chickpeas

A few shelled peanuts

Several handfuls of puffed white rice

A spoon of masala

Some chilli powder to taste

Salt to taste (although a lot seemed to go in!)

Lemon juice to taste and to spreas the ingredients 

From Varanasi to Classy, Hotel Isabell Palace

Guesthouse touts at 6am after a night on the train are never a welcome reality, but over the years I have learned that sometimes they do bear fruit. What seemed nice here was that they actually let each other speak and did not treat you as their prize the moment they had made eye contact. I agreed to follow the chap from the place I was going to stay anyway and jumped into an auto for the trip to town. Immediately outside the station, all of the departing traffic ground to a halt at the level crossing, engines puttered out and the friendly guesthouse banter began again. This time I was shown a brochure for a hotel that looked new, clean, cosy, high tech; this was somewhere you might chose to stay in real life. The pictures depicted, dazzling white walls, tall ceilings, teak furniture, fairy-lit balconies, and he told me ..."very cheap, just come look madam". I asked my driver to take me there for a "look". The rooms were as described, marble balconies billowed from every window and a garden with green grass and beautiful flowers lay beneath them but, oh dear, no, not very cheap. 
"This room is 900 rupees madam"

"oh I am so sad my friend, I travel long time in India, I have budget, not possible for me to stay" I looked sad.

"Maybe 600 then madam?"

I cast my eyes back onto the white balcony and the rising sun beyond it and looked sad again.

"what you pay then madam?"

"my budget 300"

"Ok 400"

"Not OK 400, my budget 300"

"Oh madam make hard for me this good hotel very cleanly"

I looked sad

"OK madam for you nice madam 350"

I brightened my face "Oh very kind my friend for nice hotel 350 is good price for me thank you my friend"

It is almost wrong what I am paying. I mean its so classy that the plug sockets snugly fit your appliances, there is no need to build a tower of stuff to support the phone charger, the floors are cleaned several times a day and they make food exactly how you ask for it (they even let me teach them how to do poached eggs because they had never heard of cooking eggs without oil!). The obligatory team of twenty something house boys are a bit in your face but so damn lovely and smiley its great. I unfortunately threw up the lovely lunch I had in town yesterday, but because I came back to this little gem of a place I was able to cuddle up in bed watching Nicholas Cage and Sean Connerey in English on a flat screen, in fact I was enjoying it all so much that I asked if I could stay on for New Year but unfortunately unless I paid 1000 I couldn't stay any more than the two nights I had agreed upon. Fair enough, peak season and all that. I have seen the Karma Sutra orgy carvings that I came here for anyway so to Orccha I go, which is apprently even more laid back!

Delly in Delhi with Delhi-Belly

I can only think that it is good to be ill so quickly after arriving because it will help me build a stronger Indian constitution. I spent the night being violently sick and the small hours losing whatever was left the other way. I was so thirsty it was awful because I threw up everything I tried to drink. By 9am I was sucking haribo to try and get sugar inisde me and I have been in bed all day. A very kind fellow traveller brought me bananas and Guava juice which I have now managed to keep down so this afternoon its all feeling much better.

Over 2300 people are added to Delhi's streets everyday, and with a population equivalent to 21% of the UK's total population, its no wonder that this mega city is a breeding ground for super-strong bugs. So yes, this must be good for me, depite feelng awful and the non-stop noise and pollution pervading every orrifice, this is actually a great opportunity for my immune system ...lucky me!!