I, AM, in India

Wrapping Up

2008-04-20T18:16:00.003+02:00

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).

Popcorn?

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

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.

Bundi

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).

Cycling in Mandu

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).

Approaching the Narmada

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.

Kailash Temple at Ellora

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.

Feeling at home in Vadodara

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

Caves n' Beaches

2008-03-31T21:45:00.000+02:00

View Across to the North Fort, Badami

Just a short update this time, though quite a few photos.

From Hampi I headed on to Badami. The town isn't much fun but the intricately carved Cave Temples blew my mind - amazing how Hampi is such a backpackers enclave yet this place attracts so little in the way of tourists.

After that, Gokarna, where I stayed at Om beach. Beautiful place and far from overcrowded.

But the beach life leaves me restless and there's still so much I want to see before I head back to Sweden. So I'm only staying until early morning Thursday here in Palolem (South Goa) where I'm at now.

Slightly frustrated at the lack of communication from my professors back in Sweden - it'd be nice to get some sort of confirmation that they've received the stuff I've worked so hard on (for the Philosophy of Mind course, I sent everything in over a week ago). No word on what I should be doing for the Philosophy of Science course either so I'm guessing - read thru the book I had with me rather quickly and am now focusing on writing summaries of the printed papers I've got - here's hoping it won't turn out to be wasted work.

Photos
Panoramas

Happy Holi!

2008-03-22T19:30:00.004+01:00

Happy Holi!

It's been a while since the last blog update, mainly because all my time in front of a computer has been spent on University work (finally done with the Philosophy of Mind course! Yay!).

Anyway, so what's happened since Mamallapuram?
First off Tiruvanammalai; city of Fire. Nice temple but way more pollution than what ought to be the case for such a small town.

Crossed the state border into Karnataka going to Bangalore; which really feels like a big city (more so than Delhi) with the gleaming glass fascades of commercial buildings and traffic jams. Basically I just got off the bus and decided "I can't deal with all this right now" and simply hopped aboard the next bus to Mysore. Ended up staying there for four nights as it turned out to be a pretty good place to study.

Just got to Hampi early this morning after taking the night bus from Mysore, and man am I exhausted! (terribly bumpy roads make for no sleep) I really should have got some rest before setting out to explore the temples and partaking in the Holi celebrations. (BTW, that color really is hard to get off! My back is still blue and my hair has a slightly pinkish tone)

Anyways, high time for a few more photo uploads:
Photos
Panoramas

Note To Self

2008-03-14T14:30:00.003+01:00

Do NOT, repeat NOT, put large quantities of dehydration formula powder into a two litre bottle of Coca-Cola; the reaction is quite explosive and mopping the floor was not really included on my India todo-list...

Time to Focus

2008-03-10T16:28:00.002+01:00

Mamallapuram

Been kickin' back in the little beach village of Mammalapuram for the last few days. It's a pretty nice and quiet (well not quiet the first two days; there was a festival for the opening of a new temple with loud music blasting day and night) so I think I'll settle in for a while and try to focus on writing up something worthwhile based on my multitude of scattered notes on the Philosophy of Mind papers that are my course work.

Before getting here I spent one night in Chidambaram, noisy little place where the main attraction is the Nataraja temple and then a few days strolling up and down the boulevards in French-colonial Pondicherry (Pondy, Puducherry, Pudhucherry; Make up your minds already!!)

Photos
Panoramas

More of Tamil Nadu

2008-03-04T19:03:00.000+01:00

Banana and Coffee Plantations

Ok, so I stayed a couple of days chillin' in cool Kodai, then headed 12km northeast and 500 metres down to Bodhizendo (a Zen temple-thingy). Wonderfully calm, though I was feeling a bit feverish so didn't take part much in the Zen meditation session stuff.

Headed East to Trichy, where getting a room was a nightmare and the pace was a little bit too high for my tastes (the walk up to the Rock Fort was worth it though). Was originally planning to stay in Trichy for a couple of days to rest up but cut that short and am instead loving life in laid-back (well, compared to Trichy) Tanjore (Thanjavur).

Gonna head on tomorrow, not exactly sure where to though. We'll see, I'm taking the day as it comes...

Photos
Panoramas

Run to the Hills

2008-02-26T11:08:00.005+01:00

Oh No We're Sinking!

So I was weighing my options for travel from Kochi, originally I was leaning towards Varkala to cool off in the ocean. But then I thought, what else keeps you cool? Altitude. So here I am up at around 2100 meters altitude in Kodaikanal. I'll likely stay here a while to see if I can get some more studying done.

Anyhow, a quick recap of what's happened since Kochi:

Bus to Alleppey, pretty much eventless.
Local ferry to Kottayam, pinball-style (stopping at pretty much every solitary house stranded twixt water and rice-fields with anything resembling a jetty). Met some cool people; a Chinese family (only the daughter speaking English) that set off from Shanghai early January and travelling only by land had covered an amazing amount of distance and seen countless places, and a Bostonian that could top that visited 148 countries counting. Ended up at a surprisingly inexpensive Ayurveda resort with quiet beautiful surroundings (no treatments though).
Bus to Kumily and the Periyar Wildlife Sanctuary with it's Tiger Reserve. (The "Tiger" part should be taken by a grain of salt, apparently there are only two very shy tigers in the surrounding area and the locals laugh when they ask if you've seen the tiger yet). Stayed the night and early in the morning joined an guided nature trek through The Sanctuary (saw very few animals I haven't seen elsewhere in India but the place is truly quite beautiful).
Headed on to Kodaikanal, thinking it shouldn't take long to get there, it's not that far off. That was a bit of a miscalculation, the roads are twisty and I ended up missing a connecting bus at Badhalakundu as it was full (to see just how full check out the photos linked to at the end of this post).

I'm sure I've forgot stuff, this is the third time I write this up (power keeps cutting out or connection is lost etc at these internet places).

Photos Uploaded Today
Panoramas

A Correction and a Request

2008-02-22T09:11:00.002+01:00

For those of who got my Indian mobile phone number from my Facebook profile, please check back their for the corrected number (part of it was accidentally left out).

And secondly, a request:
Does anyone know of a good photo hosting service apart from Flickr? It appears Flickr is imposing a maximum image width/height of 1024 pixels, and seeing that it turns out I'm shooting just as many panoramas as ordinary single photos this limitation is rather annoying...

Kochi Day 2

2008-02-21T16:08:00.001+01:00

Chinise Fishing Thingy and Warship at Sunset

Different internet cafe, same me - minus the fatigue (hours upon hours of travel first by plane, then in a small car smushed together with a French family, however friendly, will do that to you), minus an inch of hair off the top of my head, plus a better mood and a Rudolphesque nose courtesy of our good friend Helios.

Today was productive, plenty of walking (albeit much of it was being lost looking for familiar places), seeing historical sights, several hours of trouble getting an Indian SIM-card (those of you with Facebook can see my new phone number listed on my profile) and even quite a bit of school work (reading and taking notes).

Tomorrow I'll see if I can figure out the best way to get to Alleppey (fellow backpackers were complaining it was difficult to get out of here with trains and buses being full for days ahead, I'm hoping it will be less troublesome southbound than reported northbound).

Todays uploaded photo batch.

Livstecken från Kochi

2008-02-20T14:39:00.002+01:00

Ja, då sitter man så på ett internetcafé i Fort Cochin (där vi idag haft 33+ graders värme). Trött är man, såpass trött att man låter updates och foton med mera komma vid senare tillfälle.

Hade tänkt skaffa indiskt kontantkort idag, men väntar lite med det också. Killen i affären verkade inte ha så mycket koll på prisplanerna. Enligt honom var det dessutom inte möjligt att ha fast pris för utlands-SMS oavsett var man befinner sig i Indien, vilket är en serious bummer.

Nu ska jag sooova... Zzzzzzz....

Hej svejs,
Andreas (err... ok, it seems I started out this blog in English, but apparently it will henceforth be intermittently bilingual)

Travel Blog Resurrected

2008-02-13T17:53:00.003+01:00

Hiya folks!

So, my India travel blog has now been resurrected (with a shiny new look). Why? Because I'm heading back! (will arrive in Kochi on the 20th of February).

Once again the travels will incorporate philosophy studies, this time around as part of my studies at the Consciousness Studies Program at the University of Skövde.

The old travel blog is archived and available here.

See you on the other side!
/ Andreas

Test Post w/ Photo

2008-02-13T17:49:00.004+01:00

Colosseum (tone-mapped)

Trying out the layout of blog posts with photos...

Here's a shot from Rome two weeks ago, stitched from six individual photos and with added tone-mapping (fake-HDR effect).