We arrived in India at 10am on June 28th and it's been quite the experience ever since the cab ride from the airport.
In the customs line we had our first taste of an Indian queue, which means you don't line up at all, but got through suprisingly quickly. Inside the airport we bought 'prepaid' taxi tickets to the hotel and when we got out to the car it looked like it'd driven out here from the 1930's. It was a big old car, can't tell you what kind, but I think it was the same one that Ward Cleaver had on Leave It to Beaver. Hope and start it up and an odd statue on the dashboard starts flashing violently in blue and red. The driving is back to the Chinese style and we both just look out the window rather than at what's coming toward us. Makes me laugh when I think of the guy in the airport ushering me over to the rent a car counter.
The next day we make out way down to a coffee/breakfast cafe we've read about in the LP. The walk it quite long as the sidewalks (well not really sidewalks but where a sidewalk would go if there was one) are a little crowded with people selling things or people laying on them. At one point we walk past the driveway and are able to see around the 6' high walls where a dozen people have envelopes and packages in their hands and are walking around piles of the same. We stop and both say to each other at the same time after looking at the sign on the building, 'they're sorting the mail'.
After breakfast it's over to the art gallery and the national museum. I personally enjoy the art collection a little more than the one we saw in Singapore. The collection is small but there are a lot more local and national artists hung. The gallery is also in one of the nicest pieces of architecture that I've seen all trip. We look at the carving collection in the main building and talk about how much history there is here after looking at some pieces from 700AD. From here it's a little walk downtown which wears us out pretty quickly with all the traffic and noise. That evening we arrange train tickets and order in what has become the staple manner for a couple of days, 'can't you recommend something?'. Every time we've done this the waiter has been great and gets us something that isn't to spicy and gives us a knife and fork as well.
The next day in Chennai we toured the AMD movie studios and watched the filming of a Bollywood musical called 'Powerful Man'. From here we went across town to the beach for lunch and talked to the owner about how far the tsunami had come up here. After that we toured a Theosopical Society where all relgions are accepted and live together in a compound that contains a church, a mosque, a Buddhist shrine and a Hindu temple.
The next day we're off on our first train trip in India. At first we're a little trepidatious we've seen the pictures of hundreds of people hanging on to the train and sitting on the top. After waiting around the station with hundreds of others we board the air-con seats car and it's actually very relaxing. The windows are a little tinted, which makes it a hard to see the scenery, but the trip is very pleasant. The landscape is bone dry and brown. Every once and a while there's a palm tree that sticks out because it is the only thing with colour. Later we met a fellow that tells us there has been very little rain in this area for the last three years and we see huge riverbeds, which the train takes three minutes to pass over on a bridge, that are completely dried up.
We arrive in Tirupathi about 4pm and get into our standard routine when arriving somewhere new....figure out how we're going to leave. After arranging the train tickets and getting a hotel we head out to a sound and light show at Chandragiri Fort which was built in the 15th century. The sound is in Hindi but we have a great time and the tuk tuk ride there is like being at Canada's Wonderland.
The next day we head up the sacrad mountain of Tirumala which bosts more pilgrims than Jerusalem, Rome or Mecca. Haven't been to any of these three but I'd have to say this is no false claim. We watched hundreds of pilgrims work there way to the front of lines to crack coconuts over metal angles and pour the milk over gods along with the flowers they'd bought. The line to pass through the temple, which we didn't do, was five hours long and this was after you'd got your ticket the night before. Walking through the gardens a number of locals wanted to have their photo taken with us. A couple were too shy to ask but we know the inquisitive look while holding the camera from China and invited them over. That evening I was more than happy to find the local sports network was carrying the opening stage of the Tour De France.
The next day we spent on our way to Vijayawada. Which was chosen for no other reason than is was a reasonable about of time on the train heading in the general direction we were going. Well this kinda backfired on us. True to our usual MO we arrived and immediately went to get train tickets for the next day. Just after we found out that there were no seats out of Vijayawada for 3 days the ticket counter closed. the sign said open until 8pm but apparently that doesn't apply on a Sunday. Feeling a little stuck we got a room, had dinner and decided we were not going to take a bus after visiting the bus terminal.
Back to the train station the next morning at 7:30am. At 8am we're able to arrange foreign tourist tickets on the wait list. We're told to take these over to the rail masters office. Walk the two blocks over there, up to the second floor, ask a third person if they know where the rail masters office is and find he's not in 'till 10:30am. OK it's 8:30am so back to the hotel for breakfast. 10:00am make our way back to the rail masters office. He has us fill in the same form we did to buy the tickets and says go back to the window where we bought the tickets at noon. Back to the hotel to check-out, hoping that we're actually going to get tickets and not tempting fate by taking our bags as we still just have wait list tickets. back to the train station at 11:30am. Kathryn gets in the 'Ladies, seniors, handicapped and freedom fighters' line and is able to get to the front for twelve on the dot. I'm not making any plans to get on a train 'till we have the tickets in hand as I've thought we'd have tickets three times now and it still hasn't happened. She gets them. We spend a couple hours in a coffee shop and the train pulls in at 3:40pm.
Twenty-one hours later we're in Kolkata. The landscape slowly changed as we traveled North and become more green and much like the rice fields we saw in Thailand. We arrived at the train station about 4:30pm and the traffic on the way to the hotel makes New York traffic look like a small town weekend festival. We've read Kolkata is the centre of the arts in India and this does appear to be the case. We visit the Modern Art museum and look into seeing a play but on the night we want to go they're holding a dicussion, in English, about one of the Hindi gods. We decided to exercise our brains a little differently and go out to see War of the Worlds. If someone talking softly during a movie upsets you...don't see a movie in India. The movie starts and then people start to show-up and sit down. Then the yelling and hollering starts. Which OK this is a blockbuster premier so in a way it's kinda fun. Then forty-five minutes into the movie there's an abrupt stop between sceens and a twenty minute intermission. You'd think this is when people would be using their cell phones but they've been talking on them at full volume since the movie began. There's three commercials and two movie trailers and the movie starts abruptly again. Different and fun in the end. plus we find our favourite Indian restaurant next door...Domino's pizza. Spend five nights in Kolkata and decide it's time to go when the waiters at the Blue Sky Cafe, the place we go for breakfast, starts putting down our coffee and OJ before we've even ordered.
Next we're off to Bodhgaya where Buddha completed achieved enlightenment. The bodhi tree that stand there today is related to the one he sat under. sister seed maybe? The temple that has been built there is one of the most impressive pieces of architecture we've seen in India and there's a real peaceful feeling within the temple grounds. On the day we arrive we're invited to watch as a half-dozen monks from Thailand are being ordained. Quietly at the back we watch as the new monks are given their robes by emotional family members. The evening before we leave we watch a procession in the street of about 100 people dancing under lights that are powered by a generator on wheels. The group consists of men in the middle dancing like they're young punk rockers pushing each other back and forth while the women look on from outside the circle. There's a Dr. Seuss style bike at the back of the group which has four large speakers that blast a two minute song. Once the song has played through the group moves about 15 feet down the road, the song starts up again, the dancing mosh pit ensues until the song is done and then the whole thing starts over again. It takes about half an hour to move past our window.
Next stop in Varanasi which is the most sacred city in India and where Hindi's travel to wash themselves in the Ganges river and, if they can afford it when they die, be cremated beside the river and then dumped into it. We stay at a hotel that has a balcony that overlooks the river and both Kathryn and I comment that there is an air of awe here. While walking around the small 4 foot wide lanes in the old city I come across a cremation ceramony and watch as the body, wrapped in bright yellow fabric, is dipped into the water and carried up to the incineration room. The cost is determined by the weight of the wood it takes to cremate the body and this amounts to about 300 rupees or 10 dollars Canadian.
Next we'd like to go to Agra, to see the Taj Mahal, but we can't get train tickets till a day before we're to fly out of New Delhi. The train ride is also fifteen hours and we've already done 2 overnight train journeys. so we decide to fly to New Dehli and take a day trip to Agra. In Delhi we stay in the second worst hotel of the trip but pass the time reasonablely easily. One day we walk around the southern part of the city and visit the museum of Modern Art. The next day we visit a mosque with a courtyard that'll hold 25,000 people and by far the largest in India. After that it's over to the Red Fort which is built of red sandstone which we return to in the evening for the sound and light show. The next day we take our day trip to Agra and meet an Indian couple that are about our age and are visiting the Taj with their two sons. The Taj is one of the few sights in the world that really lives up to the billing. You can see if from a distance but you can't see it when you enter the gates. Security is heavy and you enter a large courtyard that is enclosed by large red sandstone walls. Walking down the path when you turn right you see through the archway in the wall the classic image of the fountains and the ponds that lead up the white marble palace. Kathryn and I both picked this as our favourite experience in India.
We leave today and are just spending the day relaxing and awaiting to head up to the airport for our 2:30am flight. India has not been what we expected it to be but as a fellow we met on a train said "most people do come with one idea of India and leave with another". We've decided to spend a couple of days in Frankfurt before starting the final leg of our travels in Africa.
