Joachim's Travel Blog
Wednesday, December 17, 2003
On Sounds
India is a very noisy place. There are all kinds of noises in the air - engines, honking, animals, music, prayers, chants, shouting. Indians are pretty loud, so there's a lot of yelling. Also a lot of coughing, hacking and spitting, especially in the morning. Sometimes the sounds are really ugly, like cars backfiring, or clashing loud musics from neighboring stores. Other times you hear wonderful sounds like a call to prayer from a mosque or two girls singing a favorite song together quietly on the train.
I think I'm starting to get used to some of the music here. There is at least one kind of music - I think it's prayer music - that I enjoy. You hear it sometimes on the radio in the morning and it's very relaxing and soothing. A lot of the stuff is too upbeat for my tastes but a surprising amount of the music you hear on the street is soothing. I think I will miss all the noise when I get home. I may have to start honking my horn a lot more.
Hampi was great. Ok, it was a little touristy but I spent most of the daytime out of the village so I didn't really see anybody at all. After Hyderabad, it was nice being somewhere where people weren't really freaked out by the fact that I come from a different country. And actually I met a bunch of nice fellow travellers in Hampi.
I guess I've already described the bizarre landscape. What I started to notice more and more as I stayed there was how the village is really built right into the ruins of this ancient city. Almost everywhere you go there are ruins, even right in the middle of town, and many of them are still being used. You find working temples in the middle of ruined ancient temples, and the coracle boatmen at the river crossing rest in the shade of a 500-year old stone arcade. It's pretty weird. Overall it feels a lot like what I always imagined central Mexico would be like, with Mayan ruins peeping out of the jungle unexpectedly.
Today I am in Bangalore. I arrived this morning and despite the fact that the city reminds me in many ways of Hyderabad, I am definitely in a better mood this time around. I took a room at the first hotel I went to, because it was clean and could have cost a lot more. I may look into others today but I'm not going to trudge around with my 500 kg backpack on all morning like I did in Hyderabad. Then I called my friend Amar, and we're going to meet this afternoon. Next I had some breakfast and now I've found an internet place that charges Rs 10 per hour. It doesn't get any better than this! I wish I had an Old Milwaukee.
Monday, December 15, 2003
What a difference a day makes. After one more somewhat bad Hyderabad experience (mosquitos on the train ride) I arrived early AM in Hampi. Today I walked through a bizarre landscape (if you've seen Galaxy Quest you may have some idea what I'm talking about), saw a bunch of cool temples, climbed to the top of a mountain and saw the plan of the village from above. I also had lunch with some nice people from Scotland and saw my first airplane since my arrival in India about a month ago.
I think things are looking up. I certainly feel better now that I'm here. My hotel room is nothing to brag about but it should serve my purposes. Tomorrow I plan to rent a bicycle and go out to see some of the more distant ruins. I will also start looking into transportation out of here - I'll go either to Chitradurga if I have an extra day, or straight to Bangalore by train if I don't.
Sunday, December 14, 2003
Thanks to those who have suggested improvements to my blog, images page or both. I'm sorry about the month-long delay for some of these repairs but I've finally found an internet cafe that doesn't have telnet turned off and hopefully I've fixed things. The blog is now archiving weekly, which means after Saturday, which means one of the posts I just typed in today is already in the archive!
Thanks to those who have suggested improvements to my blog, images page or both. I'm sorry about the month-long delay for some of these repairs but I've finally found an internet cafe that doesn't have telnet turned off and hopefully I've fixed things. The blog is now archiving weekly, which means after Saturday, which means one of the posts I just typed in today is already in the archive!
I left Gopalpur with high hopes for my next stop, Hyderabad. Gopalpur was totally dead - you couldn't even get a decent meal there, which at least you could do in Puri. Hyderabad is a big city, a center of culture with lots to do. But when I got here I quickly realized that for a traveller (at least for this traveller) it's not a very good place to be. The city is huge, with all the traffic and noise you might expect from any huge Indian city. To be fair, some parts of the city look relatively nice (compared with the streets of Varanasi, for example). They have trees, curbs and sidewalks and occasionally they even use the sidewalks. But it's still very congested. After being in the country, I get a real bad vibe from this place. My hotel has no shower (Rs 300 will get you a hotel on the beach in Puri!). There's nothing good to eat. I always feel like I'm being ripped off by the cab drivers so I take the bus when I can, despite the crowd.
Like in Dehli, I only feel comfortable when I'm away from the crowds - in this case at Golconda Fort. I went there this morning, but only after booking a train out of here tonight. I am now writing my blog to kill time until the train leaves. I am going to Hampi, which I've heard really good things about from some travellers I met in Puri. I plan to spend a couple of nights there and I hope that plan works out better than my plan to spend three days in Hyderabad.
Actually, now that there don't seem to be any more activities between the present and my departure time, I feel a little less stressed. I'm really glad I managed to find an internet place (they're surprisingly rare here, maybe because there are no tourists), where I can while away a lot of time typing and at the same time feel somehow a little connected to the outside world. If I get really lucky, I'll be able to find a restaurant, too. I can't go back to the one I ate at yesterday, even though the food was good, because the manager got fixated on the idea that I would give him my pen, or some other expensive piece of American hardware that he can show his friends while he brags about his worldliness. No, thank you.
