india part 7

after hyderabad we visited bengaluru...the name was only officially changed from bangalore in 2006, so people still use the old name quite a bit...it's more of a business destination than a tourist destination...this ended up working in our favor...since the economy is based on business and IT, that means leisure tourism isn't so important, and therefore there are no touts...AWESOME!!! it was great not to be hassled...we found the city market, and enjoyed walking around it...just like so many other markets in india, if you want it, you'll find it at the city market...toys, clothes, silverware, kitchen supplies, spices, food, chai, etc...everything...we were able to buy fresh produce at local prices, and layna even bought a spoon for a whopping 3 rupees...we were also able to take a lot of people pictures inside the market, and received the bindi mark from a guy selling all the powder used for those marks...
i like to visit gardens, and there were some mentioned in the guidebook, so one morning we set off to find those...they ended up not being all that great, but we enjoyed our walk to get there...we passed a sports arena, and in an effort to find a women's bathroom somewhere in the facilities ran into a guy who offered us chai...he just held it out on a tray, with no spoken words...when we finished he showed us where to put the rubbish, then let us go...strange, but awesome...next to the arena we saw a volleyball tournament...according to the sign, it was sponsored by an indian company, and involved teams from all over india...the first time i've seen tall indians...i didn't even know they existed!!! anywho, one of layna's sisters used to play volleyball, and my roomie as a frosh at uni was a volleyball player (we want mudge!!!!) so we were both curious to watch...we stood outside the fence, figuring only people involved in the tourney should go inside...but rather quickly we were motioned in, to seats at one end of one of the courts...then we were left alone to watch and enjoy...AWESOME!!!
i loved bengaluru...a friendly city without any of the hassle we've experienced in other cities...talking to locals was a joy...
our last day there, we reconnected with ben, though only for four hours...he had gotten distracted in hyderabad...hee hee...we were moving on, but agreed to meet up again later...
after bengaluru we headed for a destination that hadn't been on our originally itinerary...goa...the beaches of goa are known worldwide...well, some people think so...goa is a very small indian state, and not like any of the others...it's one of the richest states...(tourists, farming, and fishing are the major sources of income)...we spent 5 days relaxing on a beach...we picked a VERY QUIET beach...ours was populated mostly by older, mostly upper class europeans...there was no night life at all, and very few other backpackers...unfortunately, layna was rather sick for a couple days, so she didn't enjoy it as much as i did...(you all know how i love to soak up sun)...i did wear suncream though, and even covered my face...i guess i've picked up a few habits over the years...lol...on the train to goa layna was bit by mosquitoes again, this time around her feet and ankles...they didn't bite me at all...strange...her bites ended up getting infected, causing her feet to swell a bit, and cause quite a bit of pain...(they looked gross too!)...one day layna rented a bike and went riding down the beach...she stopped for lunch at a random restaurant a ways up, on a totally different beach...she ended up talking to the owner for quite a while, and he wouldn't let her pay for her meal at the end, telling her she could pay when she returned for dinner later that night...so for dinner we walked back to that restaurant...a measly hour and a half walk at a pretty quick pace...(it did feel pretty good though even though it's such a cliche...a long walk on a beach)...dinner was absolutely fantastic, and again the owner sat down with us...not surprisingly, there is a lot of seafood in goa...YUM...and i had the best mango juice i've ever had...in the end, he wouldn't let us pay for our meal!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! i still feel guilty for that...it was fantastic, and he was a great guy...layna repaid him our last afternoon in goa by calling him up and inviting him down for lunch...he's entirely self made, and helps other people in the community...very very cool...we both want to go back to goa...(yet another idea of what to do after we finish the major portion of this trip...not that either of us knows when or where that will be)...
goa is a part of the country that was formerly ruled by the portuguese...so it seemed that most locals have "Christian" names...they are also Catholic...

india part 6

we took a night train from mumbai to aurangabad...the town is named for aurangzeb, one of the formal mughal rulers...there are three reasons to go to aurangabad...one, bibi qa maqbara is located there...(otherwise known as the poor man's taj)...two, the caves at ellora are only an hour away...and three, the caves at ajanta are only 2-3 hours away...our first day we arrived in the early morning, so the three of us (ben joined us) slept in our hotel room for a few hours...nothing is open at 6am anywho...in the afternoon we walked to bibi qa maqbara...apparently no one else walks in this town, because we got a lot of strange looks...then again, we are three foreigners, two with long hair...(ben's got long blond hair...i'd kill to have his hair)...the poor man's taj is quite a lot like the better known taj mahal in agra...but it's cheaper, and smaller...as has happened several times previously, many of the indian tourists there asked to take pictures with us...
the second day we arranged to go to ellora to see the caves...since the caves at elephanta island were my idea (i'm the one of the three of us that always reads the guidebook) and those weren't all that great, ben and layna weren't super keen to see these caves...i myself wasn't too confident...but these caves were AWESOME...there are 34 of them at ellora...the first 12 are buddhist, the next bunch hindu, and the last 5 are jain...i should explain that none of these are actual caves...they're all man made excavations generally in a line...the entrance ticket booth is perpendicular to cave 16, you have to walk to one end to see the buddhist ones, then come back to the middle and walk all the way to the other end to see the jain caves...cave 16 receives the most attention of all of them...it's HUGE...according to lonely planet, it's twice the space of the parthenon in athens, and 1.5 times as high...the temple in the middle is still an active temple...there were a LOT of people there, and it was by far the loudest cave...yet again, we took pictures with more random people...ben and i were invited to take a picture with a school group that had arranged itself on some steps...after a while of feeling like celebrities, we finally had to just walk out...we ended up spending 3.5 hours at the caves, and even skipped a number of them...maybe it sounds rude, but after a while, all buddhas look the same...so do shivas, and every other god...we were caved out...
the third city to which we traveled with ben is called hyderabad...layna and i hadn't originally planned to go that far south...but back in the states, ben worked with a guy who had lived in india for 3 yrs (is that right?) and had a lot of friends, and he passed on a lot of contact info to ben...ben convinced us to go to hyderabad with the promise of meeting upper class indians...hyderabad is also sometimes called cyberabad...together, hyderabad and bengaluru make up the IT center of india...hyderabad definitely doesn't have a lot of tourist sights, and there weren't any touts in front of the train station...the first night there ben called up one of his contacts, he and layna went out and joined a birthday party...i'm not going to repeat their stories...hee hee...
the second day those two slept in...when we left the hotel room to do our normal walking around the city, i aimed toward the one landmark that sounded slightly worth seeing...charminar...it's not all that exciting, but oh well...along the way, an indian guy fell in with us, and kept trying to talk to us...he hardly spoke any english, and after a while, we tried to lose him...but as soon as one of us would get away, he'd fall in with one of the other two...as we walked into the charminar area, he tried to walk in with us...but the security guys stopped him...then he tried to get layna to pay for him...but she didn't...charminar is a big tower of sorts, and as we got up, we looked down and saw the guy waiting for us!!! he waited for quite a while...so we hatched a plan...whoeva went down first was going to take him on a wild goose chase, and we'd all meet up on the steps of a mosque (men's only mosque, said to be able to hold 10,000 people)...but the guy didn't follow ben when he went down first!!! when layna and i walked out, i walked in one direction, she walked in the other...he followed her...it took her half an hour to get rid of him...and even so, she had to tell him directly to go away...which he did, finally...or so we thought...after finding each other on the steps, we started walking back...and the guy showed up again!!! we told him again that he needed to go away, and he said that he would, or at least indicated that, but he wanted to shake the hands of layna and i first...fine...after shaking my hand he poked me in the boob, hard!!! he knew he had done wrong, because he took off, fast...argh...
hyderabad is known for one other thing besides it's IT world...a food called biryani...biryani is steamed, spiced, fragrant rice...apparently hyderabad has the best in india...from both ben's friend and another random indian we met in mumbai, we were told about a certain restaurant...our last evening in hyderabad, we decided to see what it was all about...after trying three different rickshaw drivers (one of whom thought we wanted to go somewhere else then couldn't even get us back to where he picked us up) we finally found the restaurant...HUGE portions...and good...but it's rice, and i've never gotten that excited about rice...tasty, but rice...
one more thing to see in hyderabad is a buddha statue in the middle of the lake...i've again forgotten the specifics of the story, but after it was carved, as it was being transported, the boat sank, along with the buddha..."miraculously" when it was raised a number of years later, there was reputedly no damage...so a small island was built in the middle of the lake, and that's where it has stayed...you can take a boat out to get a little closer...
the tourist quota on the night train from hyderabad to bengaluru is 2...only 2 tourists per class on the entire train!! which was a bit of a problem, since there were three of us...howeva, ben wanted to go out again, and volunteered to stay in hyderabad an extra evening, and meet up with us later...

india part 5

mumbai is probably more in the news these days than any other indian city...first because of bollywood, and 2nd because of 26 november...we arrived in mumbai the morning of 22 jan...there are no rickshaws in central mumbai, which means we had to take a taxi from the train station...the first offer we got was for 270 rupees...we got it down to 80...(though the other taxi drivers weren't too pleased with our driver)...mumbai has some of the most expensive accomodation in india...we paid more there than anywhere else!!!
the daily average income in mumbai is three times the national average...yet more than half the city lives in slums...some of you have probably heard of slumdog millionaire, the movie that has won several awards...much of it was filmed in mumbai, a couple of the child actors in the movie still live in the slums...our first day there, layna and i walked through a very small area of slums...surprisingly, it was one of the friendliest places we've been...the streets are small, and everything is crowded, but the people were really friendly, and eager to talk...the movie opened in india quite a bit later than in the states...(it had already won several golden globes before opening in india)...we went to see it opening night...though it has it's share of complainers, we enjoyed the movie...i wonder if we enjoyed it more because we are currently in the middle of everything it shows?
at the end of the day, ben arrived in mumbai...he's another american, 31yrs old...i know some of you think i've done a lot of traveling...but compared to ben, i've never left my couch...his travelogue gets 5000 hits a month!!! anywho, this is his first time in india, so we introduced him a bit...he just had surgery on his acl a couple months ago, and has only been mobile for 2-3 weeks...he wanted to strengthen the muscles, and reverse some of the atrophy...so we walked...a lot...he said that in the past he's always been the one to want to walk more, but that we put him to shame...hee hee...most of our days in mumbai we walked at least 15K, sometimes as much as 20K...mumbai was our first warm city, so we went from being cold much of the time to sweating much of the time...
asia's busiest train station is in mumbai...it used to be called victoria terminus, and now has a long indian name...people still call it victoria terminus, or vt for short...it's shown several times in slumdog millionaire...we saw the oldest english building in mumbai as well, a church...there are a lot of memorials in the church, and it was interesting to see the differences...some described entire careers, some said how the person died, and some seemed to place more emphasis on who built the memorial...there are lots of colonial style buildings all over mumbai...it's easy to imagine the british there...very very easy...
one of the british influences in mumbai are three different maidans...(think big empty field)...the oval maidan is probably the most well known...the only organized activity allowed on the maidan is cricket...there were LOTS of different games going on...with bowlers coming from every which direction, and balls flying everywhere, it was amazing people weren't being knocked down left and right...the last time we walked through this maidan was republic day, one of only three national holidays...(yup, the entire country only celebrates three holidays together...each state has plenty of it's own holidays and festivals though, and they're awesome)...republic day was very very very security conscious over the whole country...because of additional terrorist threats and a foiled terrorist plot in delhi just the day before, delhi was practically on lockdown, and there was a lot more security in general...during the republic day parade in delhi, the airport wasn't allowing flights in or out...because of what happened in mumbai in november, there was also a lot of additional security...
one activity that ben has become involved in during all of his travels is hashing...it's a running club, much of the time with a drinking problem...it's international, with different kennels in every city and country imaginable...anywho, ben found a hash for us to run, or so we thought...after arriving at the proper place, we realized we were 2.5 yrs late...the owner of the house had even passed away!! note to the mumbai hash club: update your website!!!!!!!! instead of going back to our hotel, we went to the biggest laundry area i've ever seen in my life...HUGE...they do laundry in india by beating the dirt out of your clothes...they slam it against stone again and again and again, in between soakings...it's rather impressive...nearly all the laundry done in the city is done in this one area...i wonder how it doesnt get all confused and returned to the wrong people...
that afternoon we took the ferry out to elephanta island...the guidebook talked about caves with buddhist carvings, and i thought they sounded interesting...as this was only ben's second day in india, and he's got the world's most sensitive stomach (after all his traveling you'd think it wouldn't be that way anymore...when he was in turkey he lost 25lbs in one month!!) he had to run back to the hotel, so he ended up on a different ferry...hee hee...the caves didn't end up being all that great...we liked the ferry ride better than the caves!!
our last day in mumbai we walked to chowpatty beach...it's a reasonable beach, but the water is NOT CLEAN...toxic maybe?...so people just stand around a bit, but don't go in the water much...after the beach we continued walking, all the way to malabar hill, which is supposed to be the ritzy area of town...it's definitely nicer than other areas, but maybe we missed the best spots, because it didn't seem that fabulous...layna and i have developed a love for curd, and when we saw buffalo curd advertised, we couldn't resist...we devoured a half kilo of the stuff, in record time...i don't think ben was very impressed...he loved his lassi though...
in keeping with habits layna and i have developed, we stuck to local places to eat...we rarely eat in places mentioned in the guidebook...we've found that places crowded with locals offer better (and cheaper) food...YUM!!!