Journal
Friday, October 29, 2004
India.....then home!
With thoughts of rabies, malaria and general disease swimming around our heads we arrived in Mumbai feeling a little apprehensive. We travelled from the airport to downtown Mumbai in relative silence, pretty much stunned by the obvious signs of poverty. After a fews days and a quick tour around Mumbai we got our sleeper train to Goa. Despite my bed swarming with little cockroaches I managed to get quite a bit of sleep and arrived in Goa feeling quite revived. Our first stop in Goa was Baga which was deserted as the charter airlines hadn't started operating yet so we moved on. Palolem, a backpackers hotspot, was where we found ourselves. We spent our days like the other travellers, lounging on the beach, evenings in the bars and during sunsets sat looking pensively out to sea...
Time came to move on so we got a bus bound for Margoa. After getting a sense of the claustrophobia felt by a sardine in a can we managed to extricate ourselves from the bus. We located a hotel, the only hotel and fortunatley near Domino's pizza, which after days and days and days of eating curry morning, noon and night certainly came as a welcome change.
Our next stop was the ancient pilgrimage site of Hampi, home to whitewashed hilltop temples and beautiful sunsets. We took a tour of the historic sites and happened upon a state film star filming a movie. After a few photos with our guide (who was starstruck) he mentioned the fact that a certain Mr Jackie Chan was filming in a temple near our lodge. After calling a halt to our tour we rushed to the temple. Luckily due to complete security incompetence we were able to walk directly into the filmset, see Jackie Chan and have a good old natter to the movie director.
Unable to get a lift with Jackie Chan and Stanley Tong in their private jet we had to get an overnight train to Bangalore. Unimpressed with Bangalore we headed on to Mysore and spent a few days relaxing. Then we got a bus to Ooty. 37 hairpin turns later we'd arrived and were noticably colder due to the altitude. We signed up for the mandatory tour and spent the day appearing in random peoples photos, visiting various viewpoints looking into mist imagining how amazing the scenery would be were it a clear day.
We travelled on to Kochi via the Nilgiri Blue Mountain Railway - a stunning ride that passes through some of the most amazing scenery in southern India although some of the journey was at little more than walking speed. After another tour, this time the backwaters of Kerala we had a few days left before we had to return to the UK. Our last touristy event was some Keralan ritual theatre called Kathakali. The actors wear magnificent costumes and incredible make-up and communicate solely with a variety of sign language and facial expressions (which tend to look similar to the uninitiated). The whole affair is augmented with pounding drums and can last for 7 hours. Thank god for the abridged tourist version... although after 2.5 hrs we still had to sneak out when our heads started to spin.
We caught a flight to Mumbai, waited around for hours in one of the dullest airports on Earth then finally boarded our flight to London contemplating the coming months of cold rainy weather and office life...
