Hampi Festival last day

My mobile was stolen today. On the quaiside, waiting for a boat to go across the river to meet my friends on the other side.

The decca Herald reported today that the Belary ministers who are organising the festival decided to solve the problem of poor attendance by busing in large numbers of people from the surrounding towns, offering them a free lunch and busing them back in the evening. All the buses had large posters with photos of the BJP ministers who had ordered the free buses pasted on them. So first they make a mess of the publicity and then they make political capital out of creating a crowd.

My two friends decided that they did not want to move, so we spent the day sitting in cafes, watching the rice grow, while Lupus played and sung Leonard Cohen songs. At six I decided to go back, but the crowd at the river bank was enormous and I retreated. An hour later the crowd was even worse and no boats seemed to be going. Then I met a couple of women who offered me a bed with a mosquito net outside their chalet, so I am going to sleep there.

Yesterday evening I went into the temple, where I saw local musicians playing traditional music. Galloping horse tabla rythms, delicious harmonies and melifluous interweaving flute and singer held me entranced. I had hoped to hear some more music today but it seems like it's impossible to get back across the river.

Festival in Hampi

This has to be the worst organised festival I have ever experienced. Those respnsible for organising it didn't advertise it at all, or invite any dignitaries or famous people. There are no programmes and no one knows what is going on.

But the trees lining the wide avenue leading out of Hampi have been festooned with coloured lights. Millions of rupees have been spent on creating a son e lumiere show with  laser beams, in a town near to Hampi, but no transport has been organised to take people there from Hampi or to bring them back after the show. Apparently there are several gigantic stages outside Hampi.. So far I have found one.

Last night I went to see some traditional dancing and music. Some bright spark had put some banana trees in the middle of the front row of seating, so that half the audience couldn't see the stage. So everyone had to sit down the sides in order to see. Most of the seats were empty. The music was ramped up to full volume, so if you wanted to see the dancers you were deafened. I watched, fingers in my ears, for an hour or so, then I went to bed, where the music wafted over me until late into the night.

Hampi

Hampi is a beautiful village by a river, with an enormous temple, with high pyramidal towers, intricately carved in sandstone. In the temple carved, pillared collonades overlook wide coutyards. Low granite inner temples are carved with kings or gods in high headdresses, dancing girls, palm trees and elephants. Monkeys climb all over the buildings, jumping from rooftop to rooftop. One building has a ceiling covered with pictures from ancient Hindu texts. The part of the temple furthest from the entrane is carved into the rock, a labyrynth of dark rooms with pillars, connected by stairs and passageways. There are little temples within the temple, devoted to various gods. places where people light candels, put red dye on their foreheads, make obeissance to multiheaded snake gods, turtles, the elephant god and many others.

Looking down on Hampi from one of the nearby temples, behind the village is a band of lush palm tree forest and behind that heaps of huge boulders piled onto a long ridge. A long line of stone pillars lead out of Hampi towards ruined temples amoungst the palm trees and boulders. The crowds are beginning to gather for the festival.

When I arrived yesterday, all the cheap rooms were full. I ended up sleeping on the roof of a guest house.
The cafe in the building next door was playing a CD by Prem Joshua, a flute player - sweet, gentle music with a hypnotic tabla beat. Someone was playing a Spanish guitar in the cafe, along with the music, blending in perfectly. I lay under my mosquito net lulled by the music, drifting in and out of sleep until finally sleep took over. I was woken this morning by the bleating of flocks of goats. When I looked over the edge of the roof, I saw a field full of goats, waiting to be milked.

Now I have a room with a bed and a mosquito net. All the guest houses in Hampi have hiked their prices because of the festival. I got the cheapest room I could get for 300 rupees.

Walking along pathways beside the river with the palm forest on the other side of the river and piles of round boulders behind the trees, eventually you reach more temples. At intervals there are beautiful riverside cafes under the trees, sometimes set out on stone terraces.

I met two young men, a lawyer and a musician, who invited me to come across the river with them to a bar where we could get a beer - the only one in Hampi. The bar was surrounded by brilliant green rice fields. We sat on mats and cushions at low tables and watched the sun go down. Then I had to catch the last boat back.

Indian Trains

There are five classes on Indian trains: First class (two people to a compartment), air conditioned two tier (four people to a compartment) air conditioned three tier (six people to a compartment), sleeper (six people to a compartment without air conditioning) and Second class. In order to get a seat in any of the first four classes, you have to book well ahead. If you want to buy a ticket on the day you travel you can only travel second class. This means, of course, that the second class compartments are hopelessly overcrowded a lot of the time. There are other, local trains, where everyone travels second class, but these are frustratingly slow for long journeys.

I took a local train to Margao, where I was obliged to buy a second class ticket, since I didn't want to hang about there any longer than I had to. At the entrance to the second class carriage people told me that there was nowhere to sit, but I squeezed in. Six people were sitting on a seat designed for three, on both sides of the compartment. Piles of luggage and people occupied ever inch of the floor in the corridor. One man managed to lie across the doorway to the toilet and go to sleep. I found a sack with some hard, lumpy things in it to sit on. A young man reading the Bible gave me a cotton cloth to cover my legs. He thought my skirt was too short.

We chugged through thickly forested hills.

After three hours I got a luggage rack shared with an old man to sit on. He got off at the next station, leaving me in full possession. Covering my legs, I lay down with my face to the wall. Soon I heard loud shouting. I heard the words baggage rack several times and decided to lie low. Eventually the shouting died down. When I turned over I saw that the Bible-reading youn man was sleeping in the luggage rack opposite mine, snoring loudly. Eventually we ended up with two people on each luggage rack. I had a young man sitting on the end of mine, being careful not to touch me. I clung to my rack all the way to Hubli. When you manage to acquire a luggage rack you resist the disire to go to the toilet or get down for any other reason. The minute you move you've lost it.

When we reached Hubli at half past ten, the crowd of desparate travellers started to board the train before it stopped. When it did stop the hord pushed us back and scrambled in. We couldn't get out. Eventually a big man in front of me pushed the next man trying the climb up back and climbed down. Using him as a shield I climbed down too but my luggage was trapped by immovable people. I pulled, tugged, shouted and rammed it against their legs. They seemed impervious to pain. Eventually I managed to extricate it.

Not wanting to leave the station at that late hour, I took a room in the station, a huge, palatial room with an enormous bathroom and two beds. The floors were marble and the bathroom walls were tiled. The cheap price - two hundred and fifty rupees - was reflected in the dirty state of the room.

I was woken several times during the night by trains coming through the station, blarring their claxons at top volume. At five thirty I gave up trying to sleep. The whole town already seemed to be in full swing, taxis and rikshaws adding to the loud hum of people shouting. At six the muezzin began his chant. At seven I got up and went in search of breakfast. The trains that continued to shunt through the station were goods trains, carrying minerals, including coal.

I managed to book a ticket from Hospet to Hubli and one from Hubli to Madgao for the 31 Jan in AC 3tier. The only trouble was that the only train from Hospet to Hubli left at six thirty in the morning, arriving at ten thirty am and the only train from Hubli to Madgao left at eleven at night, leaving a very big gap in between, to be spent in a very boring town.

Then I bought another second class ticket to Hospet for the same day and got into another sardine squash carriage. This time I had a window seat. The countryside from Hubli to Hospet is flat with miserable looking crops, fields of maize with most of the plants missing, stunted crops of beans and sunflowers and a few little trees. Two young men were playing music on their mobile phones. I played them a few tracks on my mobile phone that they liked. But they wanted to watch a video and I didn't have any videos on my phone. Then they gave up their seats for a couple of old ladies. Later, when a few people left the train I got into a luggage rack and slept soundly the rest of the way. The other passengers woke me at Hospet, where I had the usual struggle to get out of the train.

A rikshaw driver met me on the station platform and persuaded me to let him take me all the way to Hampi.  I was going to get the bus, but he took me right into the town and traipsed round all the low cost hotels looking for a room for me so I was glad I was persuaded.

I have ended up sleeping on the roof. But tomorrow I get a room.

Holy Cows

Everyone knows about the Holy cows of India, cows that wander the length and breadth of the subcontinent, feeding mainly on vegetable waste from the markets, along with paper and cardboard and the occasional piece of plastic. Even in the countryside the cows gather at places where rubbish is dumped. Cows stop the traffic, crossing the road, even lying in the middle of the road, so that the traffic has to go round them.

I began to realise that the cows were a nuisance when I saw a cow approach a table at a cafe in Gokarna where tourists sat. A cow leaned over and tried to take food off a tourist's plate. She swiftly removed the plate. They tried to shoo the cow away but it wouldn't move. One of the tourists took a spoonful of yogurt and tried to tempt the cow away from the table. The cow was not fooled. I didn't stay to see how this ended. But the restaurant owner probably came out with a big stick and chased the cow away.

Next day on the beach two beautiful Norwegian women lay stretched out on their towels, reading their books. A cow approached, leaned down, tore a page out of one the the books and ate it. Outraged, she snatched up the book and beat the cow off. It wandeered over to another group of tourists, knocked over their drinks and thrust its nose into someone's bag, looking for food. A man waved a stick at the cow, which put its head down threateningly.

The two Nowegian women went for a swim, leaving their books on their towels. The cow walked over, tore a mouthful of pages out of the same book, then wandered on munching happily. "I hadn't read those pages yet" complained the woman when she came back to her mutilated book.

Gokarna town

I'm still in Gokarna. My excuse is a severely bruised toe. I bashed my little toe a couple of days ago on a stone, walking over the hill to a nearby beach. It hurt too much to go walking in shoes or sandals. But it's fine walking on the beach with bare feet.

Gokarna is a small town with lots of little temples and lots of lovely bookshops. I have found a second hand copy of Shantaram, so I could just stay here until I have read it, then trade it in for another book.

The walk over the hill from Om beach to Gokarna is beautiful. Wooded hills roll softly all around with the sea in the distance. Maximum temperatures are thirty one degrees at the moment, with cool breezes from the sea. There are westerners here who have been living in bamboo huts for months and months.

Gokarna

Gokarna is in Karnataka, beyond Goa. It is quieter than Goa, with fewer tourists. It is, they say, how Goa used to be forty years ago. There are little places to stay on the edges of the beaches.

Namaste is a wide, spacious cafe surrounded by trees. Sun shines through the leaves illuminating them. Behind the cafe are rows of single story rooms, scattered about, with cobblestone pathways linking them and tropical vegetation in the spaces between. A room here costs 250 rupees a night, sharing the toilets and showers. At night the pathways are illuminated by low level lights so there's no problem finding your way to the toilet.

Customers sit in the cafe for hours on end, waiting for the heat to abate.
Yesterday we were invaded by hordes of Russians. They don't mix with the other foreigners.
And this weekend is some kind of religious festival, so it's an Indian holiday. They have come from the big city to have a look at the seaside. A few of them splash about in the sea in their vests and pants. The rest wander about dipping their toes in the water. Then they sit under the trees, together with the cows, chewing slowly in the shade.

Madgoan

There was a train at 11pm from Madgoan to Gokarna. But it arrives at 2am. Not a good time to arrive. On the other hand, there was a train to Kumta at 7am. Kumta is 26 km from Gokarna. I took a motorbike taxi to a fairly dirty hotel, the taxi driver holding my luggage on his handlebars. There were centipedes in the bathroom of the hotel. Upstairs was a restaurant/drinking den, where I tried to order fish, but it was all finished. They brought me some miniature crabs instead. The men at the next table were drinking whiskey with their meal. They had bought a whole bottle of it and one of them stuffed the remains of the bottle in his pocket when they left.

Next day I caught the train to Kumta, travelling with a young Norwegian man who had spent the night in the station. He had been accompanying his mother to Delhi for an operation which you cannot get in Norway, to alleviate the symptoms of her MS. It helped a little bit but not much.

At Kumta we saw a train headed to Gokarna road, so we jumped on it, squeezing in beside women and children sitting on the floor of the corridoor and hung on for dear life, as the train hurtled through tunnels. We had no tickets for this train, but nor had most of the other passengers, I suspect.

At Gokarna Road the usual touts tried to get us into rickshaws and taxis but we all headed for the mini bus, which somehow managed to squash us all in. I had half one buttock on the seat. We then took a rikshaw to Om beach, dragged my luggage down a steep path to the beach and checked into a cheap beach hotel called Namaste.

A wild goose chase continued

I lay on another bench and slept some more. It was hot. When I woke up a series of buses arrived and departed, with a few passengers, a gaggle of school girls stared at me, the sugar cane machine went round and round with it's jingling bells but I never saw anyone drink the juice. Crows cawed. The sun set.


At last my bus arrived. The driver got down and dissappeared.

Jaitapur

The road to Jaitapur deteriorated. There were whole stretches without tarmac, bumpy earth. Dust billowed up as we drove and everything that overtook us enveloped us in a huge cloud of dust. As we progressed, the bus gradually emptied. The bus stopped. Smiling, the conductor told me to get out. Jaitapur. It was completely dark. Jaitaupur? I asked. The waved their hands in a general direction, also dark, and so I walked. I came to a house with a light on. No one spoke English. I gestured sleep. A girl cme out and told me kuchni - nothing. They took me a little further on to a rickshaw, who took me up the coast to a bar. They seemed reluctant to give me a room, but they did. Just that. A room with a bed. The toilet was outside, down two flights of stairs, in the dark.

Next day I tried to wash my hair with soap and a bucket of water, because I had forgotten to bring shampoo. The soap seemed to act like glue. In the bar they shook my hand, attempted conversation and told me when the next bus was going to Rajapur. The night before a couple of businessmen told me that Ritwik's telephone number was not local to there. There was no public telephone in this place and no one wanted to let me use their mobile. Anyway it seems that I had come all this way to meet someone who doesn't live here and nobody in this place spoke English. They barely spoke Hindi. So I decided to beat a retreat.

It turns out that the bar was a drinking den, where men come to drink whiskey, from seven o'clock in the morning. Rows of bottles of Indian whiskey on glass shelves. That might explain their reluctance to let me stay the night before.

I made the mistake of catching a bus to Rajapur, thinking that I could get a train from there. But the train station was 26km from the bus station and there was no transport to get there. The birds nest was still scattered all over the floor of the bus station. The jingling sugar cane juice machine was still turning. The crows still cawed. I got on the next bus to Ratnagiri (I could have got a bus direct to Ratnagiri from where I was.) The Ratnagiri bus went back to Rajapur town, got stuck in a traffic jam, then came back to Rajapur bus station. Then on to Ratnagiri, grinding up and down the wooded hills for three and a half hours.

In Ratnagiri I got on a local train to Goa , in the ladies carriage again, until it emptied. Then I went into the general carriage, where two delightful Saddhus invited me to sit with them. They wore orange robes and orange turbans, and had long locks and long, soft, white beards. They perused my map with the aid of a pair of broken glasses and a torch and advised me to go all the way to Madgoan, the last stop, not to try to get across country to a beach in the night because I wouldn't find any buses. They gave me a beautiful wool shawl to wrap round my shoulders to keep me warm. When we arrived they wanted to give it to me as a present, but I refused. How could I take something from a pair of wandering Saddhus. They had nothing but the clothes on their backs and relied on the generosity of the public to survive.

A Wild Goose chase

I ran away from the cold in Mumbai on the Rajdhani Express train to Mumbai.
I had a comfortable bunk ina carriage with a clean floor, central heating, a bottle of water and food.
sharing the compartment were two Afghans, a Nigerian woman and a couple from beijing -he American and she Chinese. The older of the Afghans was going to India to visit a hospital for a checkup. There are no hospitals in Afghanistan, they told me. not even any doctors. The Nigerian woman was married to an Indian, who lived and worked in Delhi, while she lived in Nigeria with their two children. The couple from Beijing lived and worked there. They had been trekking in Nepal in December, a brave thing to do, but they'd been lucky and there hadn't been any snow. Maybe we got all their snow in England!

About half an hour into the journey they brought us trays with half a cheese sandwick, a tiny square of halva, three miniature dried samosas and a packet of apple juice. "strange supper," I thought, giving away my sandwich. Then they came round with hot water in small thermos flasks for tea and coffee. We had a convivial supper and half an hour later I retired to my bunk.

Just as I was dozing off, the food walla thumped my bunk and shouted "soup", passing me a tray with a paper cup of soup and a packet of bread sticks. I climbed down and joined my fellow passengers for soup. Half an hour later they brought us a meal - rice and chicken for the meat eaters and rice and cheese in a strange sauce for the veggies. They also brought some dahl, yogurt, chapattis and pickles. We finished eating at ten pm. I retired once more to my bunk. The food walla thumped my bunk again and shouted "ice cream".

They woke us up with a news bulletin about an airoplane somewhere that had crashed and shattered into pieces. Then the food walla came round, thumped my bunk and shouted "veg breakfast".

We arrived around midday in Mumbai. I want to buy a ticket to Rajapur. I was told to go to a different station - CTS. So i tried to catch a local train. i was told to go to the end of the line, then catch a taxi, which I did. I had to crouch down in the taxi to see out, since the window was sl low and we were going past historic colonial buildings. At CTS station I bought a tkcket to Rajapur. when I went to look for the platform I was told I had to go to Dadar station on another local train. I could have gone straight to Dadar station from Delhi central!

At Dadar station I was told the train was eleven hours late. It would leave at four pm.
The train to Rajapur was called the Ratnagiri Express. it took nine hours to reach Ratnagiri, which is not even as far as Rajapur. I got into the ladies compartment, with a gang of young women, who chatted and laughted in high pitched voices. One young school girl decided to take me under her wing. she told me that the train was so slow that if I went all the way to Rajapur I would not find anywhere to sleep. There are no hotels there, she said. At about ten oclock the ladies carriage started to empty. The three young women engineers, who were also university lecturers, dressed in jeans and t-shirts, left. My young friend took me to the family carriage, where she introduced me to a family man, who, she said would look after me.
When we arrived in Ratnagiri at one a.m. he took me to a hotel with expensive rooms. I threw up my hands in horror. Then the hotel offered me a place in a dormitory for three hundred and fifty rupees. The dormitory was a huge room with a marble floor and a pile of mattresses in one corner. They laid out a matress for me with a not too clean sheet and a pillow and switched on a fan. I slept like a log, dreaming of teaching herbs, double booking myself, letting my students down and getting late for my other students. i was glad to wake up and see the sunshine and the blue sky. The dust hasn't risen yet.

The family man who said he would come at ten and put me on the right bus hadn't turned up at twenty past, so I left. The bus stand is in front of the station. This is also a taxi and rickshaw stand so, as expected, they tried to get me into a taxi to Rajapur for seven hundred rupees. As usual I threw up my hands in horror and said i wanted a bus. Then an Indian couple called me over. "We're waiting for the bus too." So we went in a rickety bus to the bus station, where I caught the bus to Rajapur for fifty seven rupees. It took three hours, grinding up and down thickly wooded hills, stopping to pick up passengers every few minutes and stopping to deposit passengers with equal frequency. Many of the passengers were reluctant to sit too near me, whether out of respect or whether they didn't want to be contaminated by my foreigness, i don't know.

Rajapur bus station is tiny, in the middle of a forest, with very few buses. The next bus to jaitapur, they told me, goes at six. Formica topped tables in the canteen. I went to eat the usual rice and dahl. then I lay down on the long stone bench and went to sleep. I was woken an hour later by a cleaning lady who came with a filthy mop and a bucket of black, evil smelling water, which she proceeded to spread around wetly. When she had finished, a bird scrathed a nest out of the rafters, which fell, scattering all over the floor and one of the seats.

I have to go now and catch a train. Will continue at the next opportunity!

Delhi

The air is thick like soup, the sky grey and people are burning broken up packing cases in the street to try to keep warm. Madan cafe is still here with a big smiling Bunty, helpful as ever. As soon as I arrived he phoned my friend and sent me to see her in her hotel, where a room was waiting for me. We are down the narrowest alleyway on the second floor. The hotel porter was surprised when I remonstrated with him about the footprint on the sheet, but he changed it for another sheet, marginally cleaner but with a hole in it. Oh well, we are only paying 350 rupees a night.


Last night we went to dinner with a very generous man who paid for the whole table. He is running a free hospital in Bihar for lepers and he told me that he had been involved with this hospital for forty years. Today he is helping a man from the carribean who's grandfather was stolen out of India as a slave. There are many of these x-slaves, who want to claim their Indian citizenship, but it is proving very difficult. It seems they need DNA tests.

I am going to try to go to Jaitapur by train. A lot of the trains are held up by strikes and protests.

A lot of friends in Delhi, some leaving tomorrow, some arriving today. A pity the air is so unbreathable.

Preparations

Not off for a couple of days. Hoping that the metro has got as far as the airport by now, which would make life a lot easier.