Eeep! Has three weeks passed by already!? Trust me, for once it wasn't my lazyness responsible for not blogging; I really have been quite busy (Squeezing four new states into the time since the last post. Besides that I've been finishing up my Philosophy of Science assignments and studying for the exam).
So what else have I been up to lately you ask? Well, left Goa from Margao and spent 24hrs on a train to Ahmedabad. I arrived at 9AM had a ticket booked on a night train leaving 11PM so I didn't think there'd be much point getting a room. So what I did instead was hike about for 14 hours (first through searing heat and then in the afternoon there was a sudden thunderstorm) in a city with about 1-2 hours worth of interesting things to see. I did find one funny place though - in the basement of some swanky shopping complex there was restaurant professing to be the "genuine American experience". The decor and menu could've been stolen from Applebee's, but on a few points they were a little off - like who's great idea was it to serve a bowl of popcorn as a free starter? Not to mention that the chicken fajitas weren't even remotely tex-mex-ish. Spent the night travelling in a series of tin cans on wheels (up until then I hadn't noticed much variation on the quality of sleeper trains) to Udaipur.
Udaipur palace is pretty awesome, and the lake is lovely. The place is a bit touristy though; good thing I was there in the low season. This is where much of the Bond flick Octopussy was shot, a fact that is honored by all the restaurants showing the movie every single night at 7PM. Hindu new year's celebrations (big fair, fireworks, the whole thing, although it appears no foreigners were told where it all went down - I managed to find it though!) coincided with my birthday here, and late at night me and some American dude managed to crash a wedding (thinking it was just a continuation of the new year's stuff), though the grooms' (plural, both brothers getting married) father seemed pretty delighted to have the good fortune of having white people attending the wedding reception.
A quick stop over the day at El Grande fort in Chittor and then onto Bundi - which was a really pleasant surprise. The manager of the food grain market took it onto himself to show me around on his motorbike (proudly pointing out that he was rich so he didn't charge as a guide - it was just his hobby to talk to foreigners). I got invited to the home of the pride of Bundi (well, at least this neighbourhood); Mr. Om Prakash Sharma, a self-tought archaeologist who single-handedly discovered most of the ancient (some over twenty thousand years hold) rock paintings in the Bundi area. The man himself was out in the field at the time (neglecting his duties of manning the little family-owned hole-in-the-wall corner store, to his wife's lament). His son however took great pride in showing me the collection of newspaper clippings about his father, as well as all the items in the little private museum (under a blanket on a rickety wooden table).
Leaving Rajasthan for Madhya Pradesh I was off for Indore, where I spent a lot more time than I would have liked to (communication difficulties made getting train tickets a drawn-out and tiresome process). The single redeeming factor of that place as far as I was concerned was an excellent bakery with even more excellent brownies (a little boost to fuel my chocolate addiction). MP is famous for its lousy roads and I soon discovered why as I headed by bus to Mandu. This, my friends, was a lovely place - in part no doubt because I was the only foreigner for miles ("no, don't go there! not favourable season!"). I rented a bicycle and spent a lot of time cruising around the country-side, waving at excited kids, getting invited into little mud and straw huts for chai, and occasionally ducking into one of the many mosque and tomb ruins for shade (although lovely, they did all seem a bit the same after the first 20 or so). More atrocious roads brought me to Maheshwar, a quaint little pilgrimage town along the Narmada river, slightly reminiscent of Varanasi.
Getting more than my filling of bad roads the bus got a flat tire on the way to Khandwa, where I went by train into Maharashrtra and Jalgaon - my primary base for visiting the cave temple sites of Ajanta and Ellora. The earlier buddhist caves of Ajanta were better preserved (having been forgotten for centuries until a British hunting party stumbled upon it) than those in Ellora, with remarkable paintings). This led me to be slightly disappointed initially at Ellora ("I went all the way here for this?") - feelings that were completely blown away once I wandered into the courtyard of the mighty (Hindu) Kailasa Temple. OMFG! Nearly 1500 years old, covering twice the area of Parthenon (and much taller) - this place is absolutely covered by huge and intricately carved sculptures. But what really blows you away (I kept having to remind myself of it constantly because it's just so unbelievable) is that it's all monolithic - carved from one single solid piece of the mountain! (they started from the top down, chipping away 2 hundred thousand tonnes of rock over hundreds of years before the place was finished).
More lengthy train rides brought me to where I am now, in Vadodara (finding myself in Gujarat for the second time) - takin' it easy in my mom's cousin's house. The sudden shock of luxury (what is this you say? A/C? me like) after 9 weeks of backpacking combined with the total lack of plans for stuff to do has left me snoozing away much of the last few days. I'm hoping this means I'll be dealing with less of the usual getting-back-home-tiredness once I'm back in Sweden (can't afford to sleep, gotta cram for the exam).
Tomorrow will be mostly spent travelling (train to Mumbai), and the next morning I'll be on a flight heading for Stockholm (via Helsinki). As was the case two years ago, I have found myself already planning the next trip to India.
Photos A'plenty
Panorama Galore |
