Goa, going, gone

Last stop on our "South India Unplugged" was the tiny province of Goa. There is no actual town of Goa which is confusing since everyone talks about it as if it were a city. Goa was the base for Portuguese India and so has a legacy of churches and colonial style buildings and christian sounding names. Our hotel was the Hotel Santiago. In a place called Baga Beach which we were shocked to discover was completely unlike any other part of India we had been. This was package holiday land, and so was populated by groups of overweight, burnt or leatherskinned, western sun-worshippers, hanging out on lounge chairs by the pool in the intense and dangerous heat and rays. The majority of tourists were English or Russian and all the shops and restaurants catered to this with menus in those two languages and reflecting those "cuisines". One place offered Sunday lunch of 'roast beef, and potatoes, Yorkshire pudding and boiled vegetables, Colemans mustard, horseradish and Oxo gravy'!!


The beach was a lovely long stretch of warm Arabian sea water with big strong waves and a serious undertow. Great for bodysurfing but scary when you get caught unawares and wrung out and flushed. The whole length of the beach were restaurants and bars, and deckchairs with umbrellas to rent so it was like being on the Mediterranean, or the coast of Mexico. We felt a strange sense of displacement being in a place we would not normally choose to be, and I have to admit a bit critical and "superior" which are ugly attitudes. The whole place felt false though and i for one was sorry that we ended here for our finale. I know other parts of Goa would not have felt like this and wish we had been elsewhere, somewhere more Indian.

Gradually over the next day our group split us as we headed home or onward as the case may be. It is strange and hard to say goodbye to people you have been living with through ups and downs and laughs and coughs and bellyaches and miraculous sunsets and sleeper trains and crazy drivers and stunning temples and magnificent palaces and markets full of bananas as far as the eye can see. It was a lot to share and special because for most of us each experience was new and unique. We made good friends and promises to keep in touch which in our hearts we know will only happen with a few.

Our journey home was long....40 hours. The first flight was great. A domestic flight on a new airline with new planes from a new airport, then along wait in Mumbai. Mumbai airport is amazing. Like Gaudi's Sagrada Familia it is supported on huge columns like the stems of a lotus and is efficient, clean and comfortable. Maybe the nicest airport we have been in. Luckily because we were there for 8 hours in the middle of the night when we found our entire itinerary had been changed while we were away. Why couldn't they have told us??

Home now, tired and happy and cold. Snow on the ground and chunks of sea-ice on the beach, the bees are still happily clustering despite the worst winter ever. we chose a good time to be away!

So until our next big trip......
Mary and Bernie

Humps of rock in Hampi

 Overnight train to Hospet, this time the AC in the section we were in was less than adequate, very less...The beds are arranged three tier each side across the train and two tier across the aisle along the length. They supply reliably clean sheets in brown paper bags, clean pillow cases and blankets. Usually the blankets are not required which is ok as they may not be so reliably clean. Certainly they weren't this time, it  was a hot and sweaty night. So we arrived as usual sticky and dishevelled especially compared to our fellow Indian passengers looking cool and gorgeous as always in their fabulous sarees, and the men in their well pressed shirts and tidy hair.

Hospet is the nearest station to Hampi. Like platform 9 3/4, Hospet is the entrance to parallel universe.
 First is the crossing of the river, a slowly meandering boulder strewn river. The temple elephant was having his daily bath and scrub in the river so the "ferry" had to wait. Choice of ferries was a small launch with outboard or a corracle. These are woven from coconut palms covered in canvas and tarred. Perfectly circular they are about 4 foot diameter and a foot deep. Either way took the same length of time but the spinning motion of the corracle looked sickening.

Hampi-across-the-river is almost an island and really at this stage just a hippie hangout. Lots of dreadlocks and people sitting around in lotus pose looking medatitive, or perhaps medicated. It was a very relaxing place for all that and though it was entirely populated by tourists it was lovely to be out in the country for two days. Our bedroom was a circular adobe hut with palm roof and swinging bed on the porch.

The landscape is absolutely extraordinary. Huge boulder clumps not apparently made of a single piece of rock but of random jumbles of giant house sized and bigger rocks. These huge rock piles, hundreds of feet high are scattered like by a furious child amid the intense green of rice paddies.

We all took off on bicycles for a circumnavigation of one of these hills. Thankfully it was largely flat in the lowlands as we are spoilt with gears on our bikes at home. On top of the highest of these humps is, predictably, a temple. So having refreshed ourselves with coconut juice we climbed the hundreds of steps to watch the sunset.
In Mysore we had climbed the 1000 steps to the temple there at sunrise and been horrified at how out of shape we were after 6 weeks of virtually no exertion at all. It felt like this was another 1000 steps at least and our fitness level was still pathetic , but all the puffing and panting was well rewarded by the amazing panoramic views from the top and the glorious sunset. The temple monkeys were abundant as usual and these ones were a bit aggressive too, they stole one of our sunglasses to add to their stash.....

The glory of the sunset was worth the fact that we now had to negotiate the descent in semi-darkness and find our way back to the hotel without falling off the bikes on the rough and pot-holey road. A good supply of Kingfisher Beer and good food soon calmed us. As did the new moon. Unlike the new moon at our more northern latitudes which looks like this ) the new moon closer to the equator looks like the bottom of a circle or a bowl. At first we thought we were seeing things....

Hampi was once a thriving city state of 500,000 people until it was razed in 1565. What remain now are the most extraordinary ruins spread out over a very large area now a UNESCO world heritage site. There was a huge aquaduct the remains of which appear at various places for miles around and which finally emptied into a stepped well/cistern. But the oddest part was that many of the ruins, built directly without foundation onto (sloping) bedrock looked like they had been transported straight from Athens.
Like a series of Acropolis. Despite the fact that elsewhere on the site the buildings were obviously of modern design built in the 14th century mainly, these "Acropolis" are architecturally ancient and lacking any of the magnificent ornamentation found all over the site. The contrast is bizarre.

To see the various parts of the site we travelled between them in tuktuks. Our driver was the skinniest man I have ever seen. Lots of Indians are thin but, unusually, this guy seemed weak too. The people are beautiful, they are flexible and fit and have amazing posture. Admittedly it is very difficult to guess their ages and many of them, women especially are tiny, reaching barely as high as a 10yr old Canadian. Yet they move so gracefully, carry huge loads on their heads (women often do all the moving labour, rocks, cement, water etc in baskets on their heads), sweep the floor with brooms that have no handles ( would kill our backs), and sit crossed legged for most of the time, and they all have good, if often crooked, teeth. The colours of the clothing were always glorious and made us feel so drab.

Such colourful beverages

our bedroom hut

Acropolis

The Polychrome Pantheon 

Madurai is home to the Meenakshi Amman Temple which covers 16 acres and has 12 gopurams. These are towers up to 8 or 9 stories high. May not sound impressive but when you consider that one of these gopurams has 1511 sculptures of gods all different and all brightly painted and doing all sorts of things not to mention flowers and snakes and elephant trunks and multiple arms well it certainly is a sight to see. Photos are not allowed inside but five of the towers are actually gates in the outer wall and so can be seen for miles around. Inside is a labyrinth of sculptures, carvings, gods and altars with people strewing flowers all over and incense burning and the faithful who have made a pilgrimage to here prostrating themselves.....it is riotous, colourful, joyful and mad.

As non-Hindus we were unable to enter the holy of holies but it was enough sensory overload for one day anyway. I was 'blessed' by the temple elephant who laid his heavy trunk on my head and breathed hot air in my ear. Luckily he is only allowed work 4 hours a day at dawn and dusk so there was no need to feel he was being abused, despite our western sensibilities.

Outside in another amazingly ornate 'marketplace' where a fantastically carved roof and ceiling and columns covered a warren of a market with the alleys so narrow you couldn't turn around. The beautiful carvings all draped with dust and articles for sale and wiring, and lightbulbs insanely trying to illuminate this market from the most chaotic bazaar scene you have ever seen in the movies.

Madurai's other place of interest is the Ghandi Museum. Mainly photos and some rather too long explanatory panels it was nonetheless very interesting and a change from museums featuring nothing but statues of gods.

Religion in India is a heady mix of gods who do not seem to bear any responsibility for the way things are, unlike the Christian God who is believed to control everything. They do however periodically change things in the universe though this is not at all clear to me. The hindu pantheon comprises three main "gods", Brahma the Creator, Shiva the Destroyer and Vishnu the Preserver each has a wife or consort. These are in charge of wisdom, wealth and social order among other things. But, along with these six are a myriad other manifestations including Ganesh the elephant and Hanuman the monkey just for starters. Shrines and temples are everywhere and represent all the gods and especially in the south also christian and orthodox shrines, mosques and Sikkh gurudwaras abound cheek by jowl. Some can be as simple as a bodhi tree (the tree of enlightenment) or a small grotto to a huge and elaborate temple complex. One shrine was to a sacred motorcycle another was a glistening white marble extravaganza of a Pieta.

Motorcycle Shrine

Worship is a daily and integral part of life and everywhere are flowers for sale and outside many shops are strings of 7 chillis and a lime and every Saturday these are thrown on the ground to be trampled and replace with fresh. Holy men, both genuine and bogus, are very keen to receive alms either for their temples of for their dinners.....the Sikkh temples provide free meals to all comers everyday, this is a huge undertaking in the big cities especially but does not seem to be abused.

Oh holy wheels

Visited a jewellery shop. Wow. The amount of gold and the complex and ornate settings for neck ornament especially was stunning. As, naturally, were the prices. At the current price of gold, even a simple small item is expensive , then add in the gems, design and labour involved and it becomes astounding to consider that such jewellery is a commonplace part of a woman's share of the family wealth. Dowry is no longer a legally permitted requirement for marriage but this is still the time in her life that a woman inherits from her parents. So wedding gifts come in the form of jewellery, cars, homes etc. Even the obviously poorer women all wear their wealth. In the shop there were three floors, gold, diamonds and silver etc on the top floor - we headed there to get some little rings. All but the gold floor were deserted. There there was a family obviously buying for an upcoming wedding. First they chose 4 bangles, a process that involved much discussion of design and pattern but no mention of price. Next on to the neck ornaments at which point we left but can only imagine.......Making a purchase involved, after the choosing of course, another five or six steps and so many staff before we could escape from the shop with 8 little rings each in its own box and all for a tiny outlay, such a fuss. It certainly makes you think twice about what is valued in different cultures.