Jodpur

I caught the night train from Jaisalmer to Jodpur with the same two German girls who travelled with me from Delhi to Jaisalmer. When we reached Jodpur at 5.15 in the morning (or should I say night) we decided to walk from the station into town. We were followed by a posse of rikshaws, who simply refused to believe that we actually wanted to walk. A hotel owner grabbed the girls and persuaded them to come to his hotel, only to find, when we got there that the room he wanted to let to us was currently occupied, until 10am. So we went up onto the roof to watch the sun rise and admire the fort, a formidable looking structure that dominates the town below. 

Jaisalmer

Four intensely social days in Delhi, including a trip to a market to buy old saris with Bunty. Bunty is the proprietor of Madan cafe in Pahar Ganj, a little cafe where you can eat a thali for forty rupees and live to tell the tale. It is a popular meeting place/hangout/gossip shop for a whole variety of people who spend part of the year in Delhi. Three dogs, a few saffron robed sadhus and a variety of lame, blind and deaf people also frequent the place for the scraps of food (in the case of the dogs) and the free cups of chai (in the case of all the others) that are liberally handed out.

Bunty is the most helpful person I have ever met. He always inspects everyone's train ticket, to make sure that they go to the right train station (Delhi has eight main train stations), that they catch their train at the right time (I almost missed mine yesterday because I thought it went at 11.30 but actually it left at 5.30). He has all the train time tables in his head. He knows how much the rikshaws should charge. He knows where everything is in Delhi, where to get permits to visit Nagaland and Manipur, where to find a good doctor, an eye specialist, a dentist. . .the list goes on and on.

A couple of days ago we had a thunderstorm and torrential rain, which filled up the drains in a few minutes, after which they burst out of their drain covers and squirted like fountains into the middle of the street, so that in places the water was soon ankle deep. Most Delhiites  hid indoors, or in doorways until it was over. I imagine that the station was packed, though I didn't go and see.

I caught the 5.30 afternoon train from Delhi to Jaisalmer, sharing a compartment with three German women, an Indian man who had been to a wedding and a Korean man who hardly spoke a word. The train stopped at every station on the way out of Delhi and since it was rush hour, commuters piled in to the sleeper carriage and stood in the corridoor. A few attempted to sit on our seats but were forcefully evicted by the very fierce German women. The ticket collector kept away until the commuters had all finished commuting, then appeared to check our tickets.

I woke from time to time during the night and listened to the magnificent chorus of snores from a hundred people, then went back to sleep again. Early in the morning the soundscape changed as the snorers became chatterers, card players and telephoners.
I came down from my bunk to look out of the window at a flat, desert landscape, speckled with small trees and thorn bushes. Fine sand blew in through the windows. Most of the passengers kept their windows open, so the seats were soon covered with sand, as were we - sandy hair, sandy clothes, sandy lungs.

I am staying in the Artist's Hotel, a little hotel run by an Austrian, who encourages musicians to come and play in his rooftop restaurant in the evening. Several musicians are staying in the hotel. The rooftop restaurant has views of the fort - a great sandcastle fort on a hill in the middle of Jaisalmer. It was too hot to go anywhere this afternoon, so we cowered in a small bit of shade on the rooftop, admiring the fort, drinking tea and chatting.

The Fort

The fort rises up out of the town of Jaisalmer, hewn out of golden sandstone, with palaces, intricately carved Jain temples and narrow, winding lanes where shop keepers have hung their brightly coloured embroideries, patchworks and carpets.

Jaisalmer has a medieaval feel to it. When you look down you see open drains and cow dung mixed with of rubbish piled in the malodorous streets. Every cow I see appears to be enormously pregnant. They are doing a good job of covering the streets with manure. When you look up you see exquisitely carved golden sandstone haveli - large houses, hotels and palaces, with balconies and roof top restaurants.

Back to Delhi

My train arrived at 5.15am. I don't know why, but in India the passengers in the sleeper class compartments wake up and get up an hour before the arrival time of the train, even when they are going to get off at the train's final destination. I see no point in this so lie doggo until the train finally stops, while the other passengers step on me climbing out of their bunks, switch on the lights, move their luggage around, talk loudly and sit on my feet.

The train arrived at a station I have never heard of. I thought it was old Delhi so kept asking everyone where the metro was. People sent me up and down the stairways, dragging my luggage behind me until finally I met a lovely Sikh, who told me there was no metro here, but I could catch a local train to New Delhi station for 2 rupees. He took me to the ticket office and bought me a ticket, then sent me off to catch the train. I finally arrived at Sky View Hotel at 7.15, where everyone in reception was asleep on the floor, blocking the entrance. A bleary eyed receptionist took a little while to register that I had a room booked but eventually checked me in to the room where I stayed last time, opposite to my friend's room.

I have come here to meet up with my Tibetan student but so far we have not met. I've also come to see some other friends and perhaps to buy some more saris. This is the best season in Delhi, not too hot and not too cold, but the air is still polluted.

I have to go back to Italy on the 10th March, three weeks early, because I am going to interpret at a medical conference in Cremona. A friend has bought me a ticket to Milano from Mumbai. So I am cutting short my stay in India. From there we will be going to London a few days later. Being adequately compos mentus after a ten hour flight will be a bit of a challenge!

Pushkar

It is not possible to sleep on a train when you have to get off at 3.30 in the morning and my train arrived at Ajmer at 3.36am. Retiring rooms were not available so I went to the first class ladies waiting room, stashed my luggage in a corner out of sight from the door, climbed into my sleeping bag and lay down on the floor and went instantly to sleep. At 5.30 I was rudely awakened by a railway official who was clearing out the waiting rooms. As I began to emerge from the station I was beseiged by crowds of touts. I ran back into the station and sat down on the floor amongst all the sleeping bodies (who for some reason the railway official was not clearing out). I sat there for a bit then thought this is silly. I'll have to just brave the touts (in the dark). So I marched out, batting them away like mosquitoes, leaving them shrieking with laughter, and made my way to the main road where a crowd of men looked like they were waiting for a bus. They directed me to the other side of the road and I got a rikshaw to the bus station.

It was very cold. In the bus station groups of men were huddled round little fires burning rubbish (including plastic that glowed eerily in the dark), shawls wrapped tightly about them, faces covered with scarves and wooly hats on their heads. I dug out my winter coat and put that on. The bus reached Pushkar before dawn, where I had to contend with another swarm of touts. I managed to shake them off and walked into town.

I have a very small, very cheap room in an old lodging house built round a central courtyard, with twisting staircases leading up to the roof restaurant that overlooks the lake, where women are washing clothes, throwing flower petals into the water and washing themselves in the holy water.

The lake in Pushkar is small, with wide steps leading down to the water. Behind the steps there are several temples, their white domes rising up in the sky. Palm trees and broad leaved trees surround the temples. Pushkar is in a small valley, surrounded by steep, soft brown, dry hills, speckled with scrubby bushes and small trees. It is a pilgrimage town, visited by a constant stream of Indian pilgrims, who visit the temples, walking round them and performing ceremonies, then dipping their hands in the lake while they say prayers to their favourite god. I got caught by a Brahmin priest, who wanted me to shower him with twenty pound notes. "You don't have to give me rupees" he said "foreign money will do". Needless to say I was not a willing customer.

For some reason Pushkar attracts a huge crowd of hippies, with baggy trowsers and dreadlocks. Maybe it's the cheap accommodation.

Udaipur - beyond the lake

Talking to an Indian miniature painting shopkeeper, it occurred to me that Udaipur might be the place to find watercolour paper, so I asked him. 'Yes madam' he said 'you can get it from Kapoor's stationary shop in Bapu Bazaar.' So I set off on a long trek through what seemed like an endless succession of bazaars, starting with the gold and silver bazaar. Square door openings led into shops only as wide as the door, where shop keeper and customer sat cross legged on white cushions on the floor either side of low glass cabinets. These narrow jewellery shops opened into the walls of the street, like holes in the wall, one after another, occasionally interspersed by equally tiny shops selling jewelled wedding turbans or brightly coloured fabrics. The gold and silver traders were buying and selling, weighing objects brought to them on old scales, using little brass weights. Further on the shopkeepers were trading in old jewellery: intricate gold plated necklaces, exquisite strings of old seed pearls, semiprecious stones and dusty old silver ornaments.

At some point the next bazaar began, a bazaar selling wedding saris and veils. Various other bazaars followed and then I came to a vegetable market, where women sat on the ground, wicker baskets of brightly coloured vegetables in front of them. More bazaas followed, selling everything from plastic buckets and cooking pots to batteries and spare parts. After a long time the tiny streets of the bazaar opened out into a main street, Bapu Bazaar, where I did, indeed find water colour paper.

On the way back I somehow found myself in different streets from the ones I had taken to reach Bapu Bazaar. I ended up near a clock tower where groups of Muslim men, dressed in white, wearing white skull caps, were gathered around, as very loud music blared out of some giant loudspeakers. They were celebrating Mohammed's birthday. Out of a narrow side street appeared a line of white horses, brilliantly caparisoned, with men and boys dressed in bright costumes sitting astride, two to each horse. In the middle of the line of horses a camel appeared, wearing a beautiful bright woven camel cloth, studded with jewels, its rider dressed in costume similar to that worn by the horse riders.

Still Udaipur

The palaces and hotels in Udaipur are built right at the water's edge, just like in Venice. At intervals there are stone stairways leading down to the lake. Most of the hotels on the water's edge are expensive, but anyone can go there for a drink or some food, in their rooftop restaurants. I have been climbing up and down stairs, exploring some of these beautiful old hotels and their restaurants, having a drink here, a snack there while I drink in the view of palaces on the other side of the lake and in the middle of the lake. In between times I have been looking at Indian miniatures, painted in the ancient tradition by young artists.

The Mughals created the most exquisite miniature paintings on ivory, using gold leaf and painting with ground up semi precious stones mixed with glue. They used squirrel hair paint brushes, sometimes just one hair thick, to paint in the minutest details. Now it is forbidden to paint on ivory, but the tradition has been kept alive, passed down from old masters to their students, generation after generation. The best paintings still use semi-precious stone pigments: lapis lazuli, turquoise and coral, but today they paint on camel bone, silk and paper. Every other shop in Udaipur is filled with miniatures of varying quality. The prices are high today. In one of these shops the salesman told me that he was part of a cooperative of fifty seven artists, who had learned their craft from an eighty year old miniature painter. Most of them lived and worked in the surrounding villages. He, on the other hand, lived in Sweden, where he said he sold more paintings than here in Udaipur.

In the afternoon I went to the most beautiful restaurant, in a courtyard shaded by trees, right on the edge of the lake. I stayed there all afternoon, watching the palaces on the other side of the lake change as the sun moved across the sky, chatting with an American woman who had come to India for her friend's wedding and had stayed on to see a little of India.

Udaipur

Udaipur - what a fabulous place! Way back in the seventeenth century the ruling Raja of the area decided to create some lakes. For the first time in the world, rivers were diverted to create seven lakes, all connected, so that the water flowed from one to the next, to the next. Then he built palaces by the lakeside and the city of Udaipur. The palaces are big, imposing and look out over the lake graciously. The old city of Udaipur, the part nearest to the lake has steep, narrow tiwisting roads, temples and beautiful old hotels. Wherever you look there are domes, spires and minarets, round, scalloped doorways and windows, rooftop restaurants and mosaics.

I caught the overnight train from Aurangabad to Mumbai. A lot of passengers had tickets but no booked seats. In India if you have a ticket but no booked seat you have two choices: sit on the floor of the corridor or charm some passengers with booked seats to let you sit in their compartment. One of these charmers had hit on the young couple in my compartment and sat with them (thus preventing them from setting up their middle bunk and getting some sleep) and chatted until four in the morning, when he arrived at his stop. This effectively put a stop to me sleeping too. Then at six am the rest of the people in the compartment woke up and started chatting and laughing at the tops of their voices.

In Mumbai I discovered that my train to Jodpur would not stop at Udaipur and I could not get a train from Jodpur to Udaipur. But I could get out at Ahmedabad, spend the night there and get a train to Udaipur from there. So that is what I decided to do. But. . .on the way to Ahmedabad, in an incredibly full train, with several charmers in our compartment, my boots disappeared. All the passengers in my compartment searched under the seats, up and down the corridor but to no avail. I complained bitterly. They told me that I should not leave my boots on the floor. People steal things of value, they said. But my boots are twenty years old, I said. They can still sell them, they said. And you should lock your luggage to the bottom seat, they said. Then they gave me food to eat and offered me water.

After a few hours someone came into the compartment saying that there were boots in the toilet. They were my boots. They all congratulated me on this lucky turn of events.

In Ahmedabad I rented a room in the station and slept like a log until six am. But when I came down to the station entrance the station police told me that my train had been cancelled. Standing right there, beside the station police was a rikshaw driver, who told me that my only solution was to get a 'luxury' bus to Udaipur. He told me there were no local buses. I didn't believe him but couldn't be bothered to go to the local bus station and find out. So I ended up paying 300 rupees for a bus, and at this point he said OK I didn't have to pay for the ride to the bus booking place. I could just give him my train ticket and he would reclaim some of the money for it. So I reckon this guy got money for my ticket and money from the bus booking place.

However there was a dual carriageway most of the way, so the journey was fast and we were in Udaipur by eleven o'clock. I booked into a little old hotel with a winding stairway, few rooms on each floor but many floors - narrow and tall. Then I went off to explore. After a short while I found myself at the entrance to a palace. So I went in.The palace was huge, many storied and imposing but beautiful. The interior of the palace was surprising, with narrow, winding stairways and passages opening out into little intimate courtyards with trees and fountains, covered walkways, scalloped archways and carved marble pillars. Everywhere I looked there were hand painted blue and white tiles, pictures created out of inset semi precious stones and sparkling glass and mirrorwork mosaics. Later I met some tourists who said this was not their favourite palace. But it was everything I had hoped for.

Ajanta

Ajanta. What a fabulous place. Worth coming all this way to see; worth that sleepless night on the train (because I had to get off at four in the morning) to Aurangabad; worth the smoke, dust and pollution of Aurangabad; worth the three hour ride in a rattley bus along potholed roads; worth the climb up hundreds of steps in the midday heat (because the bus took so long).

As I reached the top of the steps my first sight of the caves at Ajanta took my breath away. Twenty six Buddhist monasteries and temples had been carved into the side of a sheer rockface, over a period of seven hundred years. The rockface is shaped like a giant horseshoe, overlooking a small forest. The temples and monasteries which appear half way up the rockface have beautifully sculpted pillars at their entrances. The position of these caves reminded me of the ancient cave dwellings of New Mexico, and they were made at aproximately the same time. But there the similarity ends. The caves at Ajanta are elegantly sculpted monasteries and temples, with rows of pillars inside and vaulted roofs. The walls, ceilings and pillars were originally covered with paintings in glowing colours. In one of the caves, carved in the fifth century AD, the paintings on the walls and ceilings have miraculously remained, so that you can begin to imagine how all the other caves would have been. For seven hundred years or more, Buddhist monks were inspired to excavate the rock to create these temples, carving and painting them with great skill and devotion. Here in this secluded place they found peace and tranquility. They were surrounded by nature and at night they had a clear view of the starry sky.

In one monastery a group of Buddhist monks from Thailand, sitting in front of a great stone Buddhist statue, were chanting a Buddhist prayer. The sound reverberated around the cave. A guardian sat at the entrance to each cave, making sure that everyone took their shoes off before entering and no one used flash photography. Although hundreds of tourists, mostly Indian, had come to visit Ajanta, it was supremely peaceful. I was deeply moved.

Elora

Next day I went to see the caves at Elora. These did not move me in the same way as those at Ajanta. The Hindu Kailasha temple was hewn out of the rock between 733 and 773 and is a great monolithic structure, caved in one piece, isolated from the surrounding rock, a truly miraculous feat. It is not quite finished and some of the pillars are emerging from the rock, statues of dancing girls just beginning to appear.It's as though the sulptors could see the shape of the temple within the rock and had only to chip away to uncover it. The temples and monasteries at Elora are scattered about the landscape and some are Buddhist, some are Jain and some are Hindu. Many of them are very large, but austere, unlike the intricately carved caves of Ajanta. I spent the morning in the company of an old American hippy who had been travelling around India on the cheap since December, despite two very bad hips. He walked very slowly with the help of two sticks and took rikshaws from one temple to the next. By the end of the morning he was exhausted and went back to his hotel. I on the other hand, caught one of those shared taxis (five people in the front seat - I was sitting on the door knob) to Daulatabad.

Daulatabad

Daulatabad was a hill fort. The evil ruler of Delhi forced the entire city to leave and walk to Daulatabad, where they built a new city for him around the fort, increasing the fortifications with moats, walls, ramparts, secret tunnels and all manner of ingenious measures to prevent attack. Most of the people from Delhi died during the forced march. But those who survived did a marvelous job, creating this enormous fortification. The outer walls stretch for miles and miles.

More Hyderabad

I caught a bus to Charminar, a huge fortress with domes on top, an austere, forbidding landmark in the middle of a Muslim area of a city with a very large Muslim population. At half past nine the Chowmahalla Palace was not yet open and nor were any of the shops. A retired policeman invited me to sit on a plastic chair outside his house, to wait for the palace to open. A couple of cocks were fighting. They had already pecked out all the feathers from each others necks. Flocks of black-robed college girls walked by.

The Chowmanahalla Palace

Right in the middle of this traffic-infested city the Chowmanahalla Palace is an oasis of calm. As you walk through the entrance you find yourself in a large square garden, with a pool of water with fountains in the middle and the palace in front of you. All round the gardens are a kind of Islamic cloisters with mysterious doorways and sculpted archways. The entrance hall of the palace is filled with a sea of crystal chandeliers and white marble pillars.

Archways take you to other rooms full of photos, many of which show the city as it was before the advent of the internal combustion engine: a beautiful city of wide streets and few people.

Hyderabad

On my last evening in Belur I found a drinking den, otherwise known as a large hotel with a restaurant. Two tourist couples had migrated here, drawn by the cold beer. The food was almost as bad as it was in Vishnu Residency. I joined an English couple for a beer. They, like all the other westerners I had so far met in Belur, were travelling by car, with a driver. "Oh our driver doesn't speak English, but he finds wonderful places for us, right off the beaten track" they enthused. Six Indian men were getting drunk at another table, on whiskey, laughing more and more loudly.

Next day I left Belur in a bus full of school children, travelling back to Hassan, where I intended to get the train to Mangalore. But. . be careful who you ask about the destinations of trains. The people I asked nodded. I got in the train. It stopped at Arsikere. No more trains to Mangalore. So I crossed over the bridge, dragging my luggage behind me and got on a train to Bangalore. There were more people on the platform at Bangalore than I have ever seen. It took a long time for them to leave, up a staircase that would only take about five abreast. I went straight to the reservation office, a Darwinian experience - only the fittest actually get a ticekt. But by a miracle, and a lot of pushing and shoving, I got a sleeper reservation for the same day to Hyderabad.

I shared a compartment with five young Indian women, all business management students, returning from a college trip. We shared biscuits and crisps and chatted amiably. I was kept awake a long time by the ticket inspectors, who chose to use our compartment to do their books, with the light on and talking loudly. The train arrived in Secunderabad, from where I caught a local train to Hyderabad, stopping at stations with names like James Street and Necklace Road, past a big lake with gardens.

Looking for a room in Hyderabad proved difficult. All the places I tried were full. Catching a rikshaw in Hyderabad is not a good idea. For one thing you are right in the middle of the traffic and exposed to the fumes of the traffic around you, including the buses, whose exhaust pipes are exactly level with your face. For another thing the rikshaw drivers don't speak a word of English and don't take you where you want to go, even when you give them an address and point to it written down. I eventually gave up on the rikshaw and searched for a room on foot. I found a suitably dingy room for 300 rupees, then set off to the Nizam's museum. Yet again the rikshaw driver took me somewhere else - to the Salar Jung museum this time. Fed up with arguing with rikshaw drivers, I went to see this museum, although I knew it would not really interest me. And I was right. Salar Jung, one of the latterday Nizams (feudal lords who ruled Hyderabad) seemed to have believed in quantity, rather than quality and travelled round the world for many years, buying up everything he could find.

One very disappointing room in the museum was full of Indian miniatures, half of which were at waist level, so forcing you to bend down and so poorly lit that it was difficult to see anything. Even so I do not think many of the miniatures were very good. But I did see one beautiful thing in this museum: a Japanese ivory statue of an old man wearing a piece of cloth, with a woven design that covered his head and body. His soft long beard disappeared into his robe. He was smiling serenely. The statue was small, smoothly polished and perfect. I wanted to take it home with me in my pocket. No photos were allowed in the museum.

After I left the museum I walked along the road to the bridge over the dribble that remains of the river, where I took photos of the high court, a wonderful building with many domes. Then I asked someone the way to Nampali and they pointed to a bus. No more rikshaws for me. Buses from now on.

Shravanabelgola

I caught two buses to Shravanabelgola, passing through dry, scrubby, uninspiring countryside. During the last part of the journey a young man from Chennai sat with me and lectured me on the chakras. He also told me the story behind the statue that we were going to see. It involved a lot of fighting between two brothers, both of whom now have temples dedicated to them on the tops of two hills facing each other. The statue we went to see is enormous, a naked standing man, seventeen and a half metres high, carved out of a single piece of rock at the top of a huge round rocky hill. Vines grow up the legs and arms of the statue, to show how long he has been standing, meditating, for he was a Jain, and Jains always meditated naked and standing. There are small jain statues all round the cloister that encircles the central courtyard, where the big statue is. Many of these small statues have very narrow waists, broad hips and thighs and broad shoulders, suggestive of hermaphroditism.

To reach the statue you must climb six hundred and fourteen steps up a steep hill, with bare feet. Porters carry the unfit and the fat in sedan chairs up to the top. Hundreds of Indian pilgrims climb the steps, a few sit and meditate around the enclosure at the top. Others make offerings. Priests ring bells and perform ceremonies continuously. I guess they are paid to do this. This statue is sacred to Hindus although it is a Jain statue.

As I came down the steps the sun was heating up the stone and I was glad to put my sandals back on. I enjoyed a nice thali in a pure vegetarian hotel (as they call restaurants in India), then walked along the road watching the pilgrims climb the steep slope, like a line of ants crawling over a boulder. I was happy that I had made the climb in the morning.

Halebeedu

The Hoysaleswara Temple

The bus from Belur to Halebeedu goes along a quiet country road with the minimum of potholes, shaded by avenues of trees. Halebeedu, or Halebid, once the capital of the Hoysala empire, is bucolic in the extreme: a small country town by a lake, which provides water for fields of maise, potatoes, cabbages, forests of coconut palms, date palms and all kinds of other trees. Buffalo laze in the fields, children play by their mud brick houses and all around there are these wonderful temples. The main temple, created by Ketamalla, commander of King Vishnuvardhana in 1121AD, is a great, grey stone structure, intricately carved. On the outside of the temple there are carvings of every kind of sexual practice, dancing girls, musicians, horsemen, hippos, mythical beasts, elephants, warriors with round, ear-expanding earrings, some finely carved, some unfinished. The other side of the temple is decorated with very fine carvings of Hindu gods. The roof of the temple is crenelated, which might have looked different when the towers were still on the temple, but now this gives the temple a spiky, defensive look. Every inch of the temple walls is intricately carved. Behind this temple there is another unfinished temple. Lawns and trees surround the whole complex, which overlooks a lake. Someone in their infinite wisdom has seen fit to burn a pile of rubbish today, so smoke drifts across the lawns.

Parshvanatha and Shantimatha Basadis

I walked from the main temple down the road to these other temples. Parshvanatha basadi (temple) was built by Boppadeva, son of Gangaraja, a Hoysala minister, in 1133 AD. Shantinatha basadi was built in 1196. Both of these temples are unfinished but set in a walled enclosure with lawns and palm trees. Shantinatha basadi has a magnificent Jain statue of a naked standing man, whose extremely slender waist suggests that he might be of indeterminate sex.

Kahareshwara

I walked on another kilometre through lush farmland to this temple, similarly carved and sculpted, surrounded by lawns and palm trees, with the mountains in the distance.

Hulikere Tank

I had a ride in a very full rikshaw, perched on the side of the driver's seat, hanging on for dear life, to Hulikere, where a gang of children asked for pens, but settled for having their photo taken instead. They begged me to photograph the fish in the tank, but the photo didn't come out, as I had expected.

I am planning a return trip by train via Mangalore. I don't think I can face that bus trip over that terrible road again.

Journey to Belur

The night watchman woke me at 5.15. He carried my bag up the steep path on his head, from Namaste to the rikshaw stand, where my rikshaw driver was waiting to take me to the bus station in Gokarna. I caught the bus to Mangalore, which, I discovered, went all the way to Hassan, the nearest town to Belur. So I got a ticket to Hassan. We travelled through thick forest, interspersed by the odd village and small town, from Gokarna to Mangalore. The road used to be shaded by beautiful old baobab trees, but all along the way the trees had been cut down and uprooted, to make way for road widening.

From Mangalore the road twisted and turned up the mountains. Thick forested hills rose up on all sides and from time to time I glimpsed mountain peaks. The road deteriorated into a dirt track with deep craters, which the poor bus drivers had to navigate, their buses creaking and groaning alarmingly. They had also to contend with lorries carrying gas and flammable liqids, slower buses, rikshaws, cars and motor bikes. Somehow our valient driver managed to pass everything going slower, take the poor bus rattling and clanking down the steep sides of the craters and up the other sides, using his claxson the minimum amount any decent bus driver can possibly get away with. We arrived in Hassan in the evening. I took one look at the place and decided to catch a bus to Belur.

We arrived in Belur in a huge cloud of dust. It was just another little scruffy town, and I wondered why I had come all this way and hadn't stayed on the beautiful beach at Gokarna. But hauling my luggage after me, I went off in seach of lodgings and found the cheapest and cleanest room of all the rooms I have stayed in, in India. Then I headed for the Vishnu Regency Hotel for a bite to eat and ended up drinking gin and lemon juice with two very well informed French tourists. They told me about the twelve temples in the area, a few of which they had seen, and took me to see photos of these temples on the walls of the hotel lobby. The hotel will provide a taxi to take people round all the temples for a fee of 2,500 rupees (nearly forty pounds), way beyond my budget.

A third French tourist had booked a car and a driver to take him round India for three months. He booked from France through a tourist agency and paid five thousand dollars in advance. When he arrived in Calcutta he discovered that his driver did not speak a word of English, had never been out of Bengal and could not read a map. After a month and a half he was stopped in Mumbai by a policeman who asked his driver for his tourist permit. He didn't have one. The policeman said that both driver and tourist would have to go to jail. The driver bribed the policeman and he let them go. The Frenchman says he will never go back to India again! I'm glad I am travelling by public transport.

This morning I woke early. The town was smokey in the dawn light, as people burned rubbish. The sweepers were already stirring up te dust. At the end of the road, rising out of the smoke and dust, the temple appeared. As the sun rose, the temple glowed in golden light. The part of the temple that I was looking at was the pyramidal structure over the entrance, carved with figures, many of whom are naked, in various different forms of sexual congress. From the entrance a great wall extends on both sides, forming a large square. Inside the temple walls there are several small temples, built at different times. Most have finely carved black pillars inside and carvings of Hindu gods round the outside.

Behind the temple and on one side are rows of single story old houses, many of which are derelict. Those which are still in use are charming. The rest of the town has fallen victim to the great god concrete.

I'm going to catch a bus to Halebid now, to see another one of the Hoysala temples.

Last Day in Hampi

On the last night of the festival there were elephant parades with dancing girls, fireworks, music and massive crowds, all of which I missed because I was stuck o the other side of the river. Lying on my swinging bed outside my new found friend's room, I could hear the music and the shouts of thousands of people. I drifted in and out of sleep for some time, eventually waking up with a start as the fireworks began with a series of explosions like machine gun fire. As soon as they stopped I was asleep.

I woke the next morning before dawn, cold. When I went down to the river there were still crowds on the other side waiting to go across to get back to their villages on the other side.They must have spent the night in the open, probably sleeping o the ground. By midday Hampi was back to its quiet, sleepy self. I spent a frustating hour trying to contact someone on couch surfing.org and gave up in the end.

At Mango Tree restaurant I met two Canadians and we went in a rikwhaw together round the area, admiring the big granite boulders, stopping at temples from time to time. There are over four thousand temples, mostly unfinished, around Hampi. Many of the boulders have been cut or bear marks where they have started to split them. It would appear that they were stll building teples when the empire fell. Hampi was the capital of the Vijaayanagar Kingdom, which rose to power in 1336 and fell in 1565. They seem to have believed in quantity, not quality, for very few of these temples were ever finished and even in those the quality of the workmanship is poor. The carvings are rough, maybe partly because they were carving in granite, but they were using local stone and the boulders around the area are granite.

I left Hampi and caught a train to Hubli, then an overnight train from Hubli to Madgao, this time with a booked ticket in three tier airconditioned carriage. They heated the carriage all night and it was really a bit too hot. Then I got another train to Kumta and from there a rattly old bus to Gokarna.

I went back to Om beach, Gokarna because I had left my watercolours there by mistake. They had kept my watercolours but thrown away the watercolour paper!!! Maybe for them all paper is the same - watercolour paper, newspaper, toilet paper . . .