Joachim's Travel Blog
Saturday, December 27, 2003
On Danger
Well before I came here I got a lot of warnings. Don't eat, don't drink, stay out of the sun - lots of stuff. And I paid attention, too! I mean, I've never been much of a worrier but I thought it made sense to be prudent. Well it does, but I have to say that since I've been here I've felt very little sense of danger.
There's the food - really the water is the problem usually - which can make you sick. And I was sick once and may be again, but in the end it wasn't that bad. And since then I've had a lot of excellent food (and some not so excellent) that I would have missed had I been avoiding eating, for example, from roadside stalls or other low-hygiene establishments.
Then there's disease. I will admit I'm still taking my malaria medicine. It hasn't caused me any problems (including sun-sensitivity, strangely). Plus, since it's apparently some kind of antibiotic, it may be keeping food poisoning at bay. But generally I haven't been too worried about that kind of thing. I try not to pet dogs since a bunch of people in Varanasi thought they got their worms that way. Who knows?
Traffic is another potential source of danger. But, I mean, what are you going to do? You have to travel and Indians don't wear seat belts or helmets, or close bus or train doors. So there you are, you might as well enjoy it since you're along for the ride anyway. And there's something very relaxing about hanging out of the door of a moving train and feeling the wind in your face.
Lastly, the people. Frauds and thieves? Sure, most of the ones I meet. Dangerous? Not that I've been able to tell. I have never felt treatened with any kind of injury or harm by any Indian. And I've always felt they were happy taking my money by double-charging me, and didn't need to mug or rob me. Even at night I usually feel quite safe walking around.
Today is my third day in Mysore. It's a pretty nice city, once you find a hotel. I think I could spend a couple more days here but I'm going to head back into the mountains tomorrow, to Ooty.
There's a palace here. I guess the Maharajah of Mysore was (and is) a pretty wealthy guy, and he decided to throw up an impressive crib for himself and his family. I took the tour yesterday and I must say I was impressed. It's got its own style, very India, with lots of big collonaded rooms, overworked detail on ceilings, lintels and anywhere else they could fit it, marble floors throughout and a huge review stand that takes up most of the front of the building. Presumably the Maharajah used to stage events on the front lawn and watch from the stadium seating in his house. All in all, very cool.
Wednesday, December 24, 2003
I'm in Madikeri today. That's the capital of the wish-we-were autonomous region of Koorg, for the time being part of Karnataka. It's up in the hills, the "Western Ghats" as they're called, which are a range of low mountains that run along the southwestern coast of India. I gather they are in height quite similar to our own White Mountains in New England, although I'm not in the highest part here in Madikeri. While the entire region is elevated, the terrain here reminds me of Los Angeles, what with the palm trees and small hills and ravines everywhere. I guess it's a little hillier than that but if you've been there that might give you some idea of the scale. Everything looks far away on some distant mountain but actually it's pretty close by.
I guess I like Madikeri. It's a pleasant enough town, as Indian towns go - traffic is (relatively) light and even around my hotel across the street from the bus stand things quiet down after the bars close at eleven. There aren't a lot of tourists, which is a blessing and a curse. The good news is that you're roughing it, intrepidly exploring the hitherto unknown and uncharted regions of the globe. The bad news is, there's nothing to eat and, if there is, you can't get anybody to serve it to you because they have no idea what you're talking about. I did manage to get some "pork dry" by accident and it turns out it's really good and not dry at all - it's just not a stew like all other Indian food. The other downside is you get more bone than pork but that situation seems to have improved on my second visit to the restaurant.
I also got to try my first "Knock-Out" brand beer, on the enthusiastic recommendation of the waiter. Sure enough, it's pretty strong stuff. Alcohol in India is never about flavor and always about strength. Well, either that or British class. There are two kinds of booze: extra strong and extra classy. Something like 8PM brand whiskey is what you drink with your buddies - after all, 8PM is "a time for friends". On the other hand, something like "Royal Challenge" brand whiskey is what you drink when (apparently - I'm just going by what I see on tv) you've won some really important court case but you can't take the time to get excited about it because you haven't putted a golf ball into a glass in your hotel suite - a true "Royal Challenge". Obviously you drink that to impress your friends. Actually it doesn't taste that bad. But today I stuck with Knock-Out because there was no way I was about to impress any of these Kurgis who drink scotch and soda with every meal.
So today I went for a walk. The only nearby site of interest, at least according to my Lonely Planet, is "Abbi Falls", which in the local language apparently means "Waterfall Falls". I guess they only have one. Anyway I got up early enough this morning to have lukewarm water and after dousing myself with a measuring cup (I'm spending on an Indian budget at my hotel) I hoofed it up to the Rajas' Tombs, where yesterday I'd seen a sign for the falls. It said 8km but it felt like more. Who knows, though - km are more or less an arbitrary unit of measure, I'm convinced. So I started walking and travelled over hill and under dale, or whatever the line is but the point is I did a little walking, until I came to the falls.
Hey, it was a lot better than I expected. LP says it dries up one part of the year so I thought there might not be anything there at all. And when I got there, that seemed to be the case. Turns out the sign is in Kannada - at the last moment they stop giving you English signs - so I missed the gate. The sugar cane squeezer guy pointed it out with a smile. I guess he can read. Right, so it was pretty nice. You'll see in the pictures if I ever get them on the web. It was of the wide-rather-than-high variety, but really very pleasant. Some Indians were there but most of them left as I arrived. They had passed me in their jeeps and busses along the way, and they weren't interested in staying long. I spent a good forty-five minutes there but I think that's two or three times the average Indian tourist stay. Once they were gone things got much quieter, although the garbage was still there. We need to bring our crying Indian ad campaign out of mothballs and ship it over here. They really could use it and it already has an Indian in it so it's ready to go! But I digress.
Actually I think that's it for today. Tomorrow I will hike up to the Raja's Seat, then have breakfast and grab the next bus to Mysore, where hopefully I will manage to meet up with my buddy Amar again. I can give him his book back. It was the Da Vinci Code, which I found very readble but not quite as good as Foucault's Pendulum (which it closely resembles). Anyway he gave me a hardcover copy which is weighing down my bag. So right, Mysore. After that I think I'll come back up into the hills. I like it up here - it's clean (er) and quiet (er) and if you walk out of town, you see nice things. I could learn to like that.
Sunday, December 21, 2003
Oh, I completely forgot to mention that there are now new pictures available on my web page! These stretch from my arrival in India to my stay in Puri. As such they cover roughly the first half of my trip here.
On Service
Service is a little different in India. The main thing to understand is that staff in restaurants, hotels, shops etc. all want to serve you. They're quite eager to do that, actually. But they typically don't know how. Well, obviously I'm writing from a Western perspective here - I have to assume Indians want the kind of service they get here, more or less, because otherwise no one would provide it... right?
Walk down almost any Indian street and you will get at least the occasional "hello sir" or "yes sir". These are people trying to help you by selling you their service. Usually it's a taxi or a store. Usually you don't want whatever they're selling, which is why you didn't go into their store or taxi in the first place. They don't seem to know that though. So here you have uselessly proactive service.
Finish your dinner at a restaurant and the waiter will take your plate away... and never come back. I don't know where they go. Sometimes they hover at the back of the shop watching you - well that's at the more expensive places. At the cheaper ones they hover at the back of the shop chatting to their friends and facing in the opposite direction. The instant you stand up, however, and attempt to walk to the counter to get your bill, they race to the table with it. A key aspect of Indian restaurant service is that the customer is not allowed to do anything for himself except put food in his mouth. You're not allowed to pour your own beer and you're certainly not allowed to approach the staff to request a check. So why don't they ever bring it out?
One other point worth mentioning is that everything is always possible. Once someone has agreed to perform a task for you, that person will perform any task and usually won't say anything if the task is unusual. Well sometimes. I asked for a "mineral water" (Indian slang for bottled water) at a restaurant and was informed that I would have to travel upstairs to the hotel to receive it. I asked whether perhaps the waiter would like to travel upstairs instead and recieved hurried apologies and much scurrying from my several waiters. Did I mention there are always five people helping you at any one time? On another occasion my friend Andrew and I saw someone drinking a beer at a restaurant. We asked whether they had beer and the response was "oh yes sir". So we ordered one. Fifteen minutes later, long after we had finished our dinners, the beer arrived by bicycle courier from the liquor store across town.
Checking into or out of a hotel is similarly an ordeal. The guestbook, with spaces for information such as passport number, visa number, origin and next destination within India and purpose of visit. Once the room has been accepted (sometimes after some haggling over price) a porter will attempt to lift your heavy bag, almost keel over under the load, and then struggle up the stairs. It doesn't matter how hard you try to take the bag away - this is this guy's job and he's going to do it. At the room he will demonstrate how the light switches and doorknobs work and then leave without a tip (at least he will leave my room without a tip!). Tips never seem to be expected here.
So service in India is a strange mix. I've never met staff members so excited about doing their jobs, but I've also never met any so generally incompetent. This is a strange place.
Today I post from Hassan. It's a small town a couple of hundred kilometers from Bangalore, and fairly close to some famous temples and stuff, which I plan to visit over the next couple of days. I spent the last three days in Bangalore.
Bangalore is, by Indian standards, a pretty happening place. It's very westernized. I saw more cars there than I've seen in all the other parts of India put together, and I spotted quite a few real automobiles, including Honda Civics, a Toyota Corolla, a BMW and at least two Mercedes. The fanciest thing I'd seen prior to this was a Hyundai. To go along with the automobilization, Bangalore also has a lot of smog and incredibly difficult traffic. The smog didn't bother me (I've been here a month after all) except when I was in an autorickshaw and getting it force-fed into my mouth and eyes. The traffic worked against my friend Amar's plans to sightsee, however.
Amar is a friend of mine from the states, but he is from Bangalore and I made sure my schedule would bring me here while he was around so we could hang out. We spent some time together and I met his family (and got some excellent food from his mother). On Saturday we decided to do some sightseeing. On the agenda were: Bangalore Palace, the ISKCON Temple, a certain Shiva temple and the world's oldest or largest or something banyan tree.
Bangalore palace is apparently a semi-replica of Winsor palace in England. It sounds like it's a really interesting place to visit but unfortunately, due to an ownership dispute between the maharaja and the state, no one is allowed to go there. We found this out at the gate (after a lot of searching), and moved on.
The International Society of Krishna Consciousness is more colloquially known in the US as the "Hare Krishnas", due to the abbreviated mantra they believe is the path to... well, something, I don't know. They have a fantastic, Las Vegas style temple in Bangalore. After chanting their mantra myself one hundred and eight times on my way up the stairs, I was granted admittance. It's a pretty impressive place. I guess most of the people there are performing some kind of devout sightseeing trip, since everyone worshipped the images of Krishna and Radha but no one seemed to actually be a Hare Krishna personally. The viewing of the temple finished, we made for the exit. Ah, if only it were so simple! No, we had to spend about an hour winding our way through the maze of spaces below the temple, each one offering a different souvenir for our purchasing enjoyment. Krishnas, Ganeshas, books, paintings, jewelry, food, clothing - you name it, it was there. And people were buying! Needless to say, this money-hungry carnival atmosphere left a bad taste in my mouth, and Amar's as well, but I think his wife didn't mind. To her presumably more Indian outlook, ISKCON had provided a convenient opportunity for worship and shopping all under one air-conditioned roof.
The traffic had been so bad that it took us something like four hours to accomplish the one temple and lunch. So we decided to see one more sight, the banyan tree. Well I have to admit it is a very impressive tree. Like so many of these kinds of sights, though, it's hard to say whether it was worth the hour's drive. But it should have been half an hour's drive absent Bangalore traffic. It left more time for conversation with Amar, though, whom I haven't seen since he moved to Chicago.
So that was Bangalore. Oh, I forgot to mention on my second day there I had a draught beer in an actual pub, which even looked a lot like a pub although the music was just hopelessly too loud, and I got a pizza at Pizza Hut, where you get table service and a bottomless cup of Pepsi. I did not, however, manage to catch the screening of Kill Bill. I was considering going, in hopes that it might be the mysterious extra-violent "Asian edit" but I was too tired for a three hour movie.
