December 27-29, 2012: Bidar

Just before 11 am on the 27th I left Hyderabad on a comfortable bus heading about 80 miles (a four hour trip) to Bidar, just over the Karnataka state line.  Karnataka is another one of India's four large southern states, with a population of over 60 million people.  It's main language is Kannada, another Dravidian language completely unrelated to the languages of north India.  The center of Hyderabad was clogged with traffic and it took us about an hour and a half just to clear the city and its suburbs.  We passed through the western suburbs, near Hi-tech City.  I saw some very high apartment buildings, maybe 30 stories or more, some built and some still being constructed.  The route to Bidar was flat at first and then hilly as we got closer to the city.  There were some crops, including cotton, corn and, later, sugar cane.  There probably was some rice, too, though I don't remember seeing it.  Most of the land was scrub, though, with yellow grass, but quite a few green trees.  About 15 miles south of Bidar we passed a big sugar factory, with dozens of trucks and bullock carts lined up to deposit their cane.

My first view of Bidar was quite dramatic, with an ancient minaret seen poking over the medieval city walls and with domed white tombs to the east of the city walls.  I got a room in a comfortable and friendly hotel just across from the bus station on the west side of town and after resting an hour or so in my room, went out about 4 to see some nearby domed tombs.  These tombs are not the ones I had seen on my arrival, but are of a successor dynasty.  The Bahmani (originally from Persia, I've read) Kingdom moved to Bidar from Gulbarga (west of Bidar) in 1424 as Bidar's fort was more defensible.  Their tombs are to the east while the tombs near the bus stand and my hotel are from the successor dynasty, the Barid Shahis, who apparently were at one time Turkish slaves to the Bahmanis and usurped the Bahmani's power about 1490, and later became kings in their own right. 

I went to two tombs set in a lovely grove of trees.  Quite a few people were out for a late afternoon walk around the tombs and the trees.  The largest tomb belongs to Ali Barid, with a smaller one for his son and successor Ibrahim.  Ali's is over 80 feet high and both are open, without walls, just high arches on all four sides.  They are nice and airy and Ali's has some remnants of blue and other colored tiles depicting flowers, geometric designs, and Arabic calligraphy.  People were quite friendly.  I don't think Bidar gets many tourists.  As I was walking through the grove of trees I stopped to hear a man in white robes and an Islamic skull cap singing away beneath the trees. He saw me, came over and sang two songs in front of me, occasionally pointing upwards with his index finger.  He was very friendly, but spoke little English.  He told me his songs were "God songs."  A full moon rose to the northwest just as the sun was setting in the southwest just before 6.  The air was a little chilly.  Bidar is at about 2200 feet elevation.  During the afternoon, air force fighter jets had roared through the sky.  An air force base is about a mile from my hotel and specializes in flight training.

The next morning about 8:30 I took an autorickshaw to the Bahmani tombs east of the city.  There are eleven of them, I think, in a rural area with lots of green parrots in the surrounding trees and on the domes of the tombs.  There are two very big square tombs with bulbous domes.  Unlike the Barid Shahi tombs, they are enclosed.  The tomb of Ahmad Shah I rises to about 115 feet and is beautifully decorated inside with designs and calligraphy, though the paint is streaked with pigeon droppings.  Next to his tomb is that of his son,  Allauddin Shah II, which was closed but had some beautiful tiles on its facade, though most of them disappeared long ago.  The next tomb, that of Himayun the Cruel, has a cracked, mostly collapsed dome, with only about a third of the dome surviving.   Serves him right for being cruel.  There are a few subsidiary tombs for wives and children, and the kings' tombs get progressively smaller and less decorated as the Bahmani's power declined.  The last four tombs are small and square, without domes.  A guy in a skull cap came up to me with a newspaper article saying he was the 12th generation descendent of one of the last Bahmani kings.  He showed me his family tree, an old coin, and invited me to come to his house to look at old coins.  I declined and he asked for money.

I had asked my auto rickshaw driver to wait for me and we drove next to the tomb of a Muslim saint just a few hundred yards away.  No one was there, but the grave was covered with green cloth and red rose petals.  There were many other graves, of family members the rickshaw driver said, nearby.  Two veiled women in long black robes showed up and asked the driver to place their offerings inside the tomb while they prayed just outside the doorway.  He lit the stick of incense they had brought, placed it near the grave, and picked up a peacock feather broom next to the grave and brushed their heads with it after sweeping it across the grave.  They asked me for money and then for a ride to town.  We all got in the autorickshaw and headed to the entrance to the fort at the northern end of the old walled town, where we got out just inside the old city gate and I walked to the fort.

The fort, built or rather rebuilt by the Bahmanis when they relocated to Bidar from Gulbarga in 1424, is very impressive.  It is entered through three gates and across a triple moat on the south side.  I've never seen a moat like this one, carved out of rock with two rock walls dividing it into three separate moats.  The last gate is domed and there were impressive views everywhere.  Inside the third gate, just to the left, is a small palace beautifully decorated.  This small, late 15th century palace, the Rangin Mahal, its size said to be an indication of the Bahmani's declining power, has wonderful colored tiles, plaster designs on the walls and intricately carved wooden beams and ceilings.  There are mother of pearl inlays in the wood and in the black basalt on the walls.  I think some of the decoration dates from the Barid era.  There were also some great views from the roofs.

Nearby is a huge mosque, which was closed, but you could look through the metal gates and see the thick columns inside.  A garden is in front of the mosque, well kept up with green lawns.  There are other palaces nearby, but they were locked up.  In fact, I had to ask at the little museum, in the former baths, to get let into the Rangin Mahal.  The area inside the fort is huge, with I don't know how many acres, mostly deserted now.  The Dwan-i-Am, the former Public Audience Hall, another huge building where the kings were crowned and received important visitors, is partially destroyed and, again, locked with metal grates.  Nearby is an equally huge palace, also in ruins and also locked. 

I sat for a while in the shade of another building against the southern walls and ate some cookies I had brought with me, and then spent another two and half hours or so walking along the walls.  I think I read that the circumference of the fort walls is over three miles.  There are two little villages inside the fort, with some agricultural plots, and a big tank of water.  I saw some water buffalo with very long horns, painted bright orange.  I went through one gate on the southwest that led outside the fort to an opening in the wall of one of the moats and then up to the other side.  I disturbed a couple of guys taking dumps in the old moat.  Back in the fort, I found huge old cannons on some of the bastions.  The north and east walls of the fort sit upon rocky cliffs maybe a couple of hundred feet high, with a couple of intricate gateways.  Off to the east I could see the Bahmani tombs, about two miles away, and the nearby shrine of the Muslim saint.  Fighter jets roared through the sky at intervals all during the afternoon.  Boys were playing cricket in the vast open areas of the fort as I headed back about 5:30 to the gates I had entered in the morning.

In the approaching dusk I headed south from the fort through the walled city (Bidar has something less than 200,000 people and extends now beyond the old city walls) to an old madrassa (school) built in 1472 by a chief minister of the Bahmanis.   Boys were playing cricket all around it and the mosque in the madrassa filled with men just after sunset.  I took a quick look around and then walked a bit longer through town before taking an auto rickshaw back to my hotel.

The next morning I walked to some more of the Barid Shahi tombs, about five or ten of them, including those of the first and last kings, near my hotel.  They were not as impressive as the two I had seen my first afternoon in Bidar, and were in an ugly, recently redeveloped  park with light poles obstructing views and lots of animal mannequins.  Indians certainly know how to uglify a beautiful spot.  The two other Barid Shahi tombs are in much nicer natural surroundings. 

A little after 10 I took an autorickshaw back to the madrassa and looked around.  It has one thick minaret left, perhaps close to a hundred feet high.  The other one and a good part of the building were apparently destroyed when gunpowder stored in the madrassa exploded in the late 17th century.  Even with the second minaret and about one third of the building missing, it seems a huge structure.  It is four stories high and has dozens of beautiful jali screen windows.  Some very curious schoolkids from a small city in Karnataka were visiting the madrassa on a school trip and I posed for several photos with them and their teachers.  From the madrassa I walked two blocks to a round, 75 foot high watchtower in a city intersection, and from there down a street with bidri hammersmiths banging away at their craft.  Bidri is a beautiful form of silver, with silver etchings on a black background on vases and other objects.  About noon I came back to my hotel and spent most of the afternoon in an internet cafe before leaving about 5 and going back to the two Badri Shahi tombs I had visited my first afternoon in Bidar.  I stayed until after sunset.

December 20-26, 2012: Hyderabad

I left Warangal on a train bound for Hyderabad, about 85 miles to the southwest, just before 10 on the morning of the 20th.  It was crowded and I sat on my backpack near an open door, with two young Indians sitting on the floor in front of me with their legs dangling out the doorway.  I had a good view of the countryside, with cotton growing and lots of outcrops of big boulders.  Those marauding transvestites came through again, snatching the glasses of one of the fellows sitting in front of me when he didn't give him as much as they wanted.  I snatched them back and returned them to the guy.  For some reason, the transvestites for the most part leave me alone. 

We passed a fort on a big, rocky hill on the way and arrived in Secunderabad about 12:30.  Hyderabad and Secunderabad are twin cities, the former mostly south of a large man-made lake and the latter north of the lake.  I think it's all now one large municipality, one of India's largest cities with something like five to ten million people.  From the railway station, I took an autorickshaw through the clogged, polluted streets to a good hotel in Hyderabad and about 2:30 began to walk south along the very busy streets to the Musi River.  Hyderabad was founded by the Qutb Shahi monarchy in 1591 along the Musi River.  It was conquered by Aurangzeb (or actually his son) in 1687, but in 1724 (soon after Aurangzeb's death in 1707), as the Moghul Empire began to fall apart, the Nizam (or Governor) of Hyderabad became independent for all intents and purposes.  The Nizam sided with the British in their struggles in the late 18th century with the French and Mysore in south India and became a faithful ally of the British.  Hyderabad was the largest (about the size of France or  Italy) and highest ranking of the princely states under the British Raj.

Along the now dirty, polluted Musi River are three huge building built around the 1920's.  The first is the very run down Osmania Hospital, which was first rate when built.  It is white, with many impressive domes.  On the opposite (south) side of the river is the High Court, with red domes.  It is in much better shape.  I walked along the filthy river and crossed it near the third of these buildings, the City College, where boys were playing cricket in the yard and a student showed me around inside.  Passing the heavily secured High Court, I turned south along a clogged thoroughfare, passing all sorts of shops and street side vendors, and eventually reached the Charminar, built at the city's founding.  It is a four sided arch, about 100 feet wide on each side, with two stories perched high above the street and four minarets rising to more than 180 feet above the ground.  It is beautifully decorated and the area was full of people.  You can climb up narrow staircases to the first floor for the view, but it was near closing time, so I left that till later.  The story above is a mosque, now closed.  I watched the big crowds and talked for a while with a friendly English speaking guy.  Hyderabad is largely Muslim and a very large proportion of the women were veiled and dressed in black robes.  Nearby are the bazaars, which were also clogged with people.  About 6, as it was getting dark, I took an auto rickshaw back to my hotel.  For dinner I had an "Andhra Meal," with lots of rice and four vegetable dishes served on a banana leaf, with a banana and pan (a betel nut concoction) for dessert.

The next morning about 9 I took an autorickshaw to the Golconda Fort, which used to be west of Hyderabad but now is surrounded by the city.  This is quite a fine fort, perched on a rocky hill about 400 feet high.  (Hyderabad is at about 1600 feet elevation, I think.)  There had been forts here previously, but it was the Qutb Shahis in the 16th century who made the fort what it is.  They established their independence from the Bahmani Empirre in 1518 and Golconda was always their main fortification, even after Hyderabad was built in 1591 because of disease arising from water scarcity at Golconda.  There were three rings of defensive walls, and I passed the middle one, perhaps a little less than a mile, from the citadel on my arrival.  I wandered around inside for almost five hours.  Lots of people were arriving when I arrived at 9, but by late morning they were pouring in.  I wandered around the gardens and palaces and then climbed up the rocky hill to the durbar hall on the summit, where there were great views, despite the ever present Indian haze, of the lower walls and the countryside.  You could see the domed Qutb Shahi tombs to the north, just beyond the second set of walls.  This set of walls has eight gates and 87 bastions.  The weather was really very nice, warm and sunny (in the mid or high 80's), but not too hot, and in fact cool in the shade.  It is supposed to be very hot here in April and May.  I walked down to the extensive palaces at the foot of the hill.  There were bats in part of the harem.  There are big water tanks and the remains of terracotta pipes.  Water wheels used to help transfer water up to the summit.  Golconda was fabulously rich, famous for its diamonds, from the diamond mines south along the Krishna River.  In fact, the Koh-i-Noor, the huge diamond now a part of the British royal crown, came from Golconda. 

I planned to walk to the Qutb Shahi tombs, but was told they were closed that day, a Friday, so after a small lunch just outside the citadel walls, I walked through the streets to the Naya Qila, or New Fort, dating from the 17th century (I think) and adjacent to the second set of walls.  A golf course has been created inside the fort walls in the last couple of years, with smelly waste water used to water the grass.  In places I saw the water foaming into a thick lather, quite odd and unappealing.  I stopped to see a giant baobab, brought from Africa and more than 80 feet in diameter, near a small mosque, and then climbed a couple of the bastions of the fort.  A huge cannon, maybe 20 feet long, was on top of one, in part covered with weeds.  A friendly security guard, who had worked as a truck driver in Saudi Arabia for years, showed me around and I sat and chatted with him next to an old mosque.  The developer of the golf course came along, playing golf with his grandson and an American guy who I think was perhaps his son-in-law, and introduced himself, telling me about the golf course.  I walked around some more and eventually through the town to the Fateh Darwaza, one of the big gates in the second set of walls, before getting an auto rickshaw back.

The next morning I took an auto rickshaw to the Mecca Masjid, just south of the Charminar.  It is India's second biggest mosque, begun by the Qutb Shahis but finished by Aurangzeb, with room for 10,000 people in the courtyard and minarets rising to 75 feet.  It is not particularly beautiful, though.  There were many pigeon droppings and large nets to keep the pigeons from entering the enclosed areas of the mosque.  Nearby are the graves of most of the Nizams, five of the seven, I think.  A bomb went off at the mosque in 2007, so there is enhanced security.  Leaving the mosque, I walked over and entered the Charminar.  There isn't much to see inside after you climb up the narrow staircase, but the views are interesting.  A couple of guys selling very pink cotton candy below spotted me, and happily posed for photos.  It was crowded there, but somewhat less crowded that morning than it had been my first late afternoon there.

From the Charminar I walked over to the Chowmahalla Palace, built for the Nizams from about 1750 until the 1800's.  It is actually four palaces, plus a beautiful durbar hall where the Nizams were crowned.  The Durbar Hall had many spectacular chandeliers and a marble pedestal for the throne of the Nizam.  In the 1930's and 1940's the Nizam was considered the world's richest man, with gold, silver and jewels stored in trucks in his palaces.  The seventh and last Nizam, who ruled from 1911 to 1948 and died in 1967, was, however, an eccentric and miserly man who is said to have worn the same shabby clothes every day.  He was a Muslim and wanted to unite with Pakistan in 1947.  The Princely State of Hyderabad was surrounded by India and its population was overwhelmingly Hindu, although the city of Hyderabad was largely Muslim and there many Muslim villages.  In 1948 the Nizam declared his independence and India invaded, crushing his army quickly, with much murder and rape following.  You read nothing of this in the background history at the palaces and other places.  The Nizam later became a sort of ceremonial governor of Hyderabad state until it was dissolved in 1956. 

There were many very interesting photos in the palace, especially those of the daughter-in-law of the last Nizam.  She and her sister, both daughters of the last Turkish Caliph, were married to sons of the Nizam in 1931 (in Nice, of all places).  She was a beautiful woman.  The captions say she was the most beautiful woman of her time, and she certainly married well, or at least financially well.  Her son is the current, powerless, Nizam.

There was lots of other interesting stuff in the palaces, including paintings and ceramics, furniture and old automobiles, including a 1920's Fiat and Wolseley (which I have never heard of), both with starter cranks in front) and a 1950's Packard and Buick convertible, and even motorcycles, including a clunky looking Harley Davidson and one with a logo of a winged "W."  I spent about four hours wandering through these palaces and then walked through the bazaars before making my way back to my hotel.  Before independence, Hyderabad is supposed to have been full of wonderful palaces of the Nizam and his nobles, but most have been pulled down and replaced by ugly concrete buildings. 

The next morning I took an autorickshaw back to the Golconda Fort, and then walked to the Qutb Shahi tombs, passing another gateway of the second set of walls along the way, with a stagnant moat along the walls to one side.  I spent almost four hours wandering around the tombs of the seven Qutb Shahi monarchs, dating from the 16th and 17th centuries.  The tomb of the last monarch is unfinished, as he was deposed by Aurangzeb in 1687 and died imprisoned in the fort at Daulatabad to the north, near Aurangabad..  The tombs have bulbous domes, said to be three-fourths of a sphere, set on square, usually multi-storied bases with the graves inside.  In one tomb, the caretaker took me down below to the real grave of the king, using matches and my flashlight to guide our way.  The tombs became increasingly large and elaborate as time went by.  Besides the kings, there are tombs for at least one queen, a couple of hakims (doctors) and at least two dancers/courtesans.  There is also a large bath building where the royal bodies were bathed before burial.  The whole complex is a pleasant places, with lots of trees.  Some of the tombs are in ruins, and others well kept up.  There were big crowds there by midday.

I took an autorickshaw back to the city center and visited the State Museum in an old British era building.  It contains some relics of the Buddha and copies of the Ajanta frescoes.  (Ajanta was in the Nizam's domains.)  There is also a very high, perhaps 20 or 30 feet, wooden cart for religious processions.  Nearby is the Health Museum, which seems little changed since it was established about 1950.  There is a photo of Nehru visiting in 1953.  Despite its age, and in some way because of its age, it was interesting, with exhibits on diet and diseases and pregnancy, among other things.  Formaldehyde bottles contained human fetuses from one to nine months old, plus several Siamese twins.  Also nearby are the Public Gardens and the Legislative Chamber, formerly the Town Hall, with a very large statue in front of Gandhi sitting cross legged.  I walked up to the 1970's Birla Mandir, a temple on  a hill overlooking the lake, but didn't go in because of the long lines.  I did talk with a engineer who moved here from New Delhi to work in the "Hitech City" that was built in the western suburbs starting in the late '90's.  Hyderabad, nicknamed Cyberabad, is now India's leading IT center.  He told me there are 350 businesses in Hitech City, which is solely commercial and not residential, and that you can't enter without ID and clearance.  

The next morning I walked to Osmania Woman's College, centered on the crumbling former British Residency, built about 1800.  It was built by the first British Resident, James Achilles Kirkpatrick, who dressed in Moghul style, married a Muslim princess, and was rumored to have converted to Islam.  The huge building, however, is quite Western, with columns in front flanked by two British lions.  Inside the dusty rooms of the cavernous, almost empty building are chandeliers, large mirrors, a few old portraits and a winding staircase to the second floor.  It is a shame it is so dusty and deserted.  Around it are newer buildings of the college, with lots of women students around when I was there, probably wondering what I was doing there.  I was escorted by a cranky, old security guard.

From there I went to the Salar Jung Museum, a collection of a nobleman during the Nizam's time.  The modern museum building was filled with people, which made viewing the contents difficult.  I later read that the museum was averaging 13,000 people a day in this Christmas-New Year's holiday period, when many Indians travel, compared to an average of 4,000 on a typical weekday.  And I was disappointed by the contents.  The European stuff was somewhat interesting, if not particularly high quality, including a lot of paintings and sculpture by now obscure 19th and early 20th century painters and sculptors.  Highlighted is the "Veiled Rebecca," said to be considered a masterpiece at one time.  There is a photo of the Nizam gazing at it.

Nearby is the H.E.H. Nizam's Museum in an old dilapidated palace.  (The H.E.H. stands for "His Exalted Highness," the only such title given to any Indian prince by the British.)  A large part of the collection consisted of gaudy silver objects presented to the Seventh Nizam at the time of his Silver Jubilee in 1937.  But there were also some interesting historical displays and one long room that contained, on both sides of the room, teak wardrobes two levels high and each about 230 feet long.  Apparently, the Sixth Nizam, quite unlike the Seventh, never wore the same clothes twice.  Some of his clothes are on display.  In the museum compound are a couple of other very large palace buildings, one in very derelict condition, with broken windows, peeling paint and even some collapsing walls.  I had an early mutton biryani dinner a little after 5 near the bazaars and then walked back to my hotel through the thick early evening traffic.

The next day was Christmas and I decided to take a tour and visit Ramoji Film City, which proudly describes itself (on a sign maybe 30 feet high) as the Guinness Book of Records holder of the title of world's biggest film studio, with 1666 acres and 47 sound stages, where not only Telegu (the language of Andhra Pradesh) movies, but movies in Hindi and other Indian languages, are made.  It also is a big tourist attraction.  It's about 15 miles from the city, in a hilly area, and it took our bus about an hour and a half to get there.  The entrance fee is quite steep for India at 700 rupees (about $13), but there were thousands of people there.  We arrived about 11 and stayed until 7, a lot more time than I would have preferred.  (And yet an Indian lady, from Calcutta, told me at the end of the day that there just wasn't time to see it all.)  There are dance shows and a weird stunt show on a Wild West set, including Deadwood Saloon, but where both the good guys and the bad guys arrive on motorcycles.  They played to huge, appreciative audiences.  I guess it's a little bit like a cut rate Disneyland, including a Wild West section (with a Gunsmoke Restaurant), a Hollywood section (with statues of Stallone as Rambo, Schwarzeneggar as the Terminator, Jim Carrey as the Mask and Angelina Jolie as Lara Croft, Tomb Raider, all with many people posing happily next to them), and a "Fundustan" with rides. 

I took a bus tour with several stops that passed by sound stages and sets, including one area said to be London, an airport entrance and a train station, among other places.  We stopped by an enclosed area with hundreds of butterflies, large ones with magenta bodies and black wings, and I spent a while in there.  A bonsai area was interesting, with even bonsai baobab and peepul trees.  There was a fake cave with colored lights and a mock battle between a moving giant cobra and giant rat.  I got back to my hotel about 8:30, had a late dinner and watched India and Pakistan play cricket on television.

I spent most of the next day at an internet cafe, with a couple of forays to a camera service shop conveniently close to my hotel to have a black fuzzy spot (apparently dust) removed from the inside of my camera.  I had bought this camera just last March in Bombay, so it was still under warranty.

December 16-19, 2012: Taboda-Andhari National Park and Warangal

On the morning of the 16th, I left Warangal, taking an autorickshaw to the neighboring town of Kazipet and arriving at the railway station just in time to catch the train heading north to Chandrapur, about 150 miles away in the state of Maharashtra.  This train was a "Super Fast Express" heading from Hyderabad to New Delhi and was crowded.  I didn't have a reserved seat, but eventually got a place to sit.  The fast train passed through increasingly drier, but still green, terrain, with rice and cotton and other crops, but also lots of scrub.  We crossed the Godavari and other rivers and reached Chandrapur just before 1 p.m., a little over four hours from Kazipet.  About 2:30 I caught a very crowded bus, though I did get a seat (saved for me by a guy who instructed an old woman sitting next to him to move to another seat) on the bumpy road further north to the village of Moharli.  We passed a huge open pit coal mine on the way, with mountains of tailings on the other side of the road. 

It took only about an hour to get to Moharli, a small village at the southern edge of Tadoba-Andhari National Park, a tiger reserve.  I got off near the interesting village market.  There were a lot of police around and I had seen a helicopter on the way into the village.  I walked through the village looking for a place to stay and arrived at the gates of the park, where I noticed two other westerners.  They were Australians who were visiting India for the wedding of an Indian friend from Chandrapur who now lives and works in Australia.  They were hoping to enter the park that afternoon, but it turned out that the Chief Minister of Maharashtra was touring the park (hence the helicopter and police) and all others were forbidden entry till he left.  We chatted and waited for the Chief Minister, as did the District Collector and other dignitaries, some with bouquets of flowers.  I had asked about sharing a gypsy (a jeep-like vehicle) with them for touring the park and they agreed.  Sometime after 5, with the Chief Minister nowhere to be seen, they gave up on being able to enter the park and decided to go to another area nearby and try again in the morning.  They were staying in Chandrapur and I decided to go with them and stay there after checking out one very expensive, though not very nice, hotel in Moharli.  We took off in their vehicle with a driver and their newly-wed friend.  We did drive into a bit of the forest in the dusk and saw some sambar deer.  On the way back to Chandrapur in the dark we spotted some of the spotted chital deer in our headlights.  The hotel in Chandrapur was expensive, almost 1000 rupees, but was fairly decent.

I was up the next morning before 4:30 and we left at 5 for Moharli.  Along the road outside of the city numerous people were defecating in the dark along the road.  One of the Australians exclaimed in surprise, "They are all dumping!"  A large proportion were women.  I've been told, or read, that it is immodest for women to defecate in public during daylight hours, so perhaps that explains the large proportion of women.  Last year I read that a higher proportion of households in India have telephones than have toilets of any kind. 

We got to Moharli and the gate shortly after 5:30.  Our entry was arranged and we entered about 6:30, with it getting light about 6.  Tadoba is at about 600 feet elevation and it was chilly in the early morning.  We heard a sambar warning call and waited, but without luck.  The guide said there was a tigress with four cubs in the area.  We drove north through the teak forest (there was also lots of bamboo, more than I've ever seen anywhere else) and spotted sambar and chital, but no tigers.  The two Australians had to drive to Nagpur, three hours away, in time to catch a 1:30 flight, so we left the park about 8:15 so they could get back to Chandrapur by 9.  We could have stayed until 10:30, so that was disappointing.  On the other hand, it turned out that the safari was paid for by their friend, so I got it free, too, much to my surprise.  Tadoba doesn't charge foreigners more than Indians, unlike the other tiger parks I've been to, but it still is somewhat expensive:  2700 rupees ($50) per safari in total, with the gypsy at 1500, the guide at 200 and entry at 1000.

I drove back to the hotel in Chandrapur with them and had breakfast at the hotel while deciding whether to try other safaris.  Eventually, I decided against it, as I was told it was very unlikely I could share with others and that tiger spotting was much harder in December than in the hot months.  I had such good luck last April in Kanha and Bandhavgarh that I was pretty well satisfied with tiger spottings. 

I got to the railway station about noon and my train back to Warangal arrived about 45 minutes later.  A digital temperature display at the station registered 35 degrees Celsius (95 Farenheit), but it didn't feel that warm.  Most of the temperatures I've seen in the newspapers have shown highs in the upper 80's and lows around 60.  The train was the return from Delhi of the same "Super Fast Express" I'd taken the day before.  With just a general, unreserved ticket, you are not supposed to travel in the carriages with reserved seats, though it seems that people always do so, and generally people make way for them, sitting four or five to a bench supposedly for three.  On the previous day's train the conductor had told me I should be in the general seating carriage and that I would have to pay extra.  I gave him an uncomprehending look (which I've perfected, perhaps because it comes naturally) and he decided I wasn't worth the trouble, sighed and turned away. 

The general seating carriages are at the beginning and end of each train, and as the train entered the station the general seating carriage at the front didn't look crowded, so I hurried forward to board it.  Once I got there, I saw I was badly mistaken and it was packed.  Nonetheless, I hopped aboard and jammed myself in, and others jammed in behind me as the train started up.  A big guy saw me being pushed and motioned me forward and then pulled me and my pack towards him, motioning me to put my backpack on the rack above (where another guy used it as a pillow) while he squeezed me onto a spot on the bench with him and five others, a bench made for four people.  They were a very friendly bunch and did their best to make me comfortable.  The seats and aisles were jammed.  The guy who had found me a seat gave me his card.  His name was Md. (for Mohammed) Shakeel Khan of M.P. Repairing Works, "Holemaker Specialist in Marble and Granite, Demolition Work Undertaken, Hard Concrete Breaker." 

Despite the cramped conditions, I enjoyed the trip with these friendly people, all men.  One very talkative guy spoke pretty good English, offered me tea when a tea wallah came by, and when I declined said, "Please let me buy you tea."  He bought tea for about eight of us.  Feet dangled down from the guys sitting on the luggage racks and people could barely move through the aisles.  Still, a singing, begging family of a mother and two children came through, as did two or three transvestites together who apparently demanded money from people, most of whom seemed to meekly hand it over to them.  I'll have to remember to ask someone about that.  The talkative English speaker sitting near me didn't explain it to me to my satisfaction.  We arrived in Kazipet soon after 5, and soon after 6 I got a train to Warangal, less than ten miles away.  I checked into the same nice hotel I'd stayed in before.

The next morning I had the hotel's complimentary breakfast, two idli (a sponging, rice bun) and a vada (a sort of mildly spicy donut), served with a coconut yogurt based sauce and a tomato based sauce.  About 9 I headed to the old Warangal Fort area south of the city.  Warangal was founded by the Hindu Kakatiya Kingdom in the late 12th century, and the Kakatiyas ruled the area until conquered by the Delhi Sultanate in 1323.  At the center are the ruins of a temple, with four restored gates and a lot of interesting scattered sculpture.  I roamed around there for a while and then walked to a nearby large hall built about 1500.  Four roads radiate from the temple and I walked the one to the west and reached the intact inner wall of stone, 20 feet high, with an impressive gate.  I walked further to the second line of earthen walls, but with another impressive stone gate.  There is a third line of walls further out. People were friendly, surprised, I guess, to see a foreigner walking about.  I took an autorickshaw back to the city center and came across a labor demonstration, with red flags bearing hammers and sickles, blocking an intersection.  I was told by a fellow bystander that they were only going to do if for fifteen minutes. 

About 2:30 in the afternoon I took an autorickshaw north to the Kakatiya "Thousand Pillar Temple" built in 1163.  It seems about 990 pillars short.  But it had some interesting sculpture and a massive Nandi (Shiva's vehicle, a bull) statue in front.  People were very friendly and I was much photographed.  I met an Indian couple from Cincinnati and an English couple from Yorkshire as I spent most of the afternoon there watching the goings on.  Back at the hotel I climbed up a little more than a hundred feet to the temple under construction on top of the pile of boulders next to my  hotel.  There was a fairly good view over the city at sunset from the top.

The next morning I watched a woman as she made a rangoli, a design in chalk drawn each morning in front of doorways to deter evil spirits.  I've seen a lot of these in Andhra Pradesh.  Dick and Chris, the English couple I had met the day before, and I had decided to hire a car to visit the Ramappa Temple at Palampet, about 40 miles northeast of Warangal.  We set off after 9 through flat terrain with hills in the distance.  Rice was in abundance, as was cotton and palm trees.  We passed many bullock carts, often laden with rice.  We reached the 13th century temple about 11 and spent almost two hours there.  The sculpture was particularly beautiful.  The temple is made of a yellow sandstone, with some white streaks, but much of the sculpture is of a shiny black basalt.  Many of the female figures, dancers and musicians, are much taller and thinner than other Indian sculpture.  Some of them were placed as brackets, maybe six feet or more long, along the roof of the temple.  They were quite striking.  One had her sari being pulled off by a monkey.  It was all quite interesting.  Inside was more black basalt sculpture on the walls, pillars, roof and entrance to the inner sanctum.  There were hundreds of figures.  A Nandi lay in front of the temple, and another temple nearby had a Nandi in its center.  A third temple was being pulled apart by heavy machinery, with the numbered pieces placed nearby, presumably for later reconstruction.

After the temple, we drove to nearby Ramappa Lake, a reservoir built by the Kakatiya.  An old, very dilapidated temple is next to the lake and I explored inside, with many of the stones in a jumble.  It gives you an idea of what the much larger Ramappa Temple was like before restoration.  Nearby you could also see the sluice where water leaves the reservoir, presumably to irrigate farmland.  We headed back towards Warangal and stopped where a bullock cart was being emptied of burlap sacks of rice, to be later picked up by trucks.  We were taking photos when a journalist stopped by (his motorcycle said "Press") and took photos of us.  He had me climb onto the bullock cart, where I took the reins and was given a stick to pretend I was driving the cart.  He said it would be in the next day's newspaper.  A bunch of local people gathered around and seemed quite amused with us.  I looked for the photograph in the newspaper the next morning before I left Warangal, but didn't see it.  Dick later emailed me that he got a copy and will scan and email it to me.

December 11-15, 2012: From Jagdalpur to Andhra Pradesh

In Jagdalpur on the morning of the 11th I was looking forward to the leisurely and scenic train ride through the Eastern Ghats back towards Visakhapatmnam and the coast, but when I got to the train station I was told the train had been cancelled and that it wasn't certain for the next day.  There is only one train each way per day, as this line appears to service primarily a huge iron ore mine at Kirandul in southern Chattisgarh.  I had seen many freight trains on my way from the coast, each with more than fifty open top freight cars, full of iron ore on the way to the coast and empty on the return trip.

I made my way to the bus station and was told there was a bus at 10:30, arriving in Visakhapatnam at 9, which didn't sound appealing.  Two Indian guys at the bus station approached me and suggested hiring a car to take us to Visakhapatnam.  We were charged seven rupees a kilometer for the 644 kilometer round trip, so a little over 4500 rupees, over $80, a lot more expensive than the train fare of less than $2.  But I decided to do it and enjoyed the trip.  After making the arrangements, we left soon after 10, crossing flat terrain at first and reaching the Chattisgarh-Odisha state line after about half an hour.  Some of the roads in Odisha were terrible, but it was by and large a comfortable and interesting ride.  We passed many bullock carts, often filled with rice.  A few hills appeared as we neared Jeypore and we had a steep climb on a terrible road through the jungle covered hills on the way to Koraput.  From Koraput we did not follow the train route through the Araku Valley, but headed southeast through other scenic hills on a road rising to 3500 feet on the way to Andhra Pradesh.  We made a lunch stop near Salur just after crossing the Andhra Pradesh state line and reaching the coastal plain.  We reached Visakhapatnam soon after 5, but with the rush hour traffic we didn't reach my hotel until about 6.  I tried for a room at another one than the one I had stayed in before, but no rooms were available, so I ended up where I had been before, but with no bedbugs. 

The next morning about 10 I left on a train heading about 125 miles southwest to Rajahmudry on the Godavari Delta, arriving about 2.  The train was crowded, but I got a seat with some engineering students headed from Ranchi to Bangalore and opposite a family from Kerala.  The Eastern Ghats were visible to the west as we passed rice fields and palm trees.  In Rajahmundry I checked into a good hotel at 800 rupees per night just across from the train station.  There wasn't much to see in town, but I did look around the train station, where a long freight train full of coal was waiting.  For dinner I had a south Indian "Full Meal" for about a dollar that included lots of rice, plus dhal, three vegetables, curd, papadam and a banana for dessert.  Andhra Pradesh is one of the four large southern states of India, all four organized on a language basis.  The languages of the south are Dravidian, not Indo-European like those of the north, and have different alphabets, too, with very curly letters.  (Odisha, though it speaks an Indo-European language, also uses a different alphabet than the north, and it, too is very roundish and curly.)  The people of Andhra Pradesh are generally much darker than those of the north, too.  The state is huge, with over 80 million people, though there is a movement to break it into two states. 

The next morning I headed to the banks of the very wide Godavari about 7 and about 8 headed north along the east bank of the river on a bus for about an hour and a half on a narrow road through many little villages, with Christmas stars and even posters of Mary and Jesus here and there in celebration of Christmas.  I saw a few small churches, too.  We got out of the bus along the river and about 10 left on a tourist boat headed up the river to the gorges of the Papi Hills.  This was a scenic journey through lovely, green, forested hills, with some rocky banks here and there, and sandy ones, too.  We passed thatched roofed villages and a few canoes.  Lots of herons flew along the river and I saw large numbers of bats in several riverside trees.  But the boat was packed and noisy, with very load music and an annoying emcee.  I was the only westerner.  We made several stops along the way and had both a breakfast and a lunch on board.  At about 2 we reached a spot called Papikonda, with a temple and very small waterfall, and spent maybe 45 minutes there.  The trip downstream was better, quieter and with fewer passengers (as some were spending the night along the river).  We disembarked about 6, just as it was getting dark, and took the bus back to Rajahmundry, passing lit up Christmas stars along the way.  There were also large numbers of very overloaded sugar cane trucks, moving very slowly. 

I didn't leave Rajahmundry until about 11:30 the next morning, on a train bound for Vijayawada, further southwest, traveling through the rich green farmland of the Godavari and Krishna Deltas.  These two major rivers of southern India rise far inland, near Bombay.  The train wasn't crowded, but the scheduled three hour journey took five hours, with a very long delay just before reaching Vijayawada.  We passed lots of stacks of rice, lots of water and lots of palm trees.  The terrain was flat, except for a few hills near Vijayawada, which is on the banks of the Krishna.  I had trouble getting a hotel, and finally ended up in a not so good one for 850 rupees, far overpriced.  It was on a quiet street, though.  The street had several shoe stores on it.  I've seen this before in India:  streets that have store after store all selling the same thing. 

I thought I might spend two nights in Vijayawada, but couldn't get a room in a better hotel the next morning, so decided to skip a trip to the ancient Buddhist site at Amaravathi, 30 or 40 miles away.  Amaravathi had India's largest stupa, though it is now only a pile of dirt with a nearby museum.  Before leaving Vijayawada, a city of more than a million people, I did pay a visit to Victoria Jubilee Museum, a very small building built to commemorate her 50 years on the throne in 1887.  Inside was a massive portrait of her, maybe ten feet by six feet.  Below that, oddly, was a much smaller portrait of Napoleon, and surrounding it were copies of paintings by Raphael, Rubens and Rembrandt.  The building had a frieze of elephants, camels and dogs, and a statue of a turbaned guy out front.  In the garden were Hindu sculpture and massive Dutch gravestones from the 17th century, some of the gravestones seven feet high.  At a 1921 meeting of the Congress Party here, the tricolor Indian flag was adopted, with the wheel in the center added by Gandhi. 

Soon after noon I left the city on a crowded train heading away from the coast and into the Deccan towards Warangal, about 125 miles away.  We passed through green countryside with hills to the east before the terrain flattened out.  We rose from about 40 feet above sea level to almost 900.  The countryside, though still green, became drier, and while there was still rice growing, there were other crops, notably lots of cotton and some corn.  I began to see outcrops of giant boulders.  The train arrived in Warangal about 3:30 and I got a nice, but relatively expensive (840 rupees, about $15-16) hotel near the station and right next to an outcrop of giant boulders that towered over the three or four story hotel.  After checking in, I walked around the train station and found an interesting notice on a bulletin board put up by the All India OBC Railway Employees Association.  It contain three demands:  Reservations in Promotions for OBCs; Abolish Creamy Layer; and Enhance OBC Reservation as per Population Ratio of OBCs (27-52).  OBCs are "Other Backward Castes."  The 1950 Indian Constitution made special protections for certain "Scheduled Castes and Tribes" and years later other low castes (the OBCs) claimed that they, too, need protections.  A big issue in India now is whether a certain proportion of promotions should be guaranteed to SCs and STs, and even OBCs.  There already exist hiring quotas for SCs, STs, and OBCs.  I find it interesting that they described themselves as "backward."  And I liked the "Abolish Creamy Layer," whatever that refers to.

December 6 - 10, 2012: Jagdalpur and the Bastar Region

Disappointed that I couldn't visit the weekly Onkadelli market, I walked to Jeypore's bus station the morning of the 6th to see about buses west to Jagdalpur, in Chhattisgarh state.  My hotel had told me there was a bus every hour or half hour, but at the station they said the next one would be at 1 in the afternoon.  I spent a leisurely morning at the hotel and then walked to the bus station before 1.  There was no bus at 1, but I was told there would be one at 2 or 2:30.  I think perhaps the Naxalites were still threatening buses.  Rather than wait any more at that fly-blown bus station, I made my way to the railway station and bought a ten rupee (less than twenty cents) ticket to Jagdalpur.  The train arrived about 3, only 35 minutes late (it had been two hours late the day before), and I hopped on and enjoyed the pleasant late afternoon journey past more rice fields, most already harvested, and reapers and threshers.  Arriving in Jagdalpur, at somwhat under 2000 feet elevation, at 4:30, I was asked by an Indian guy also getting off the train, "Are you going to the Rainbow Hotel?  Are you traveling with the Lonely Planet?"  We headed to the hotel together.  Rahul, from Pune, is a medical doctor who later studied anthropology and now works as a consultant in advertising.

Early the next morning, I walked to the whitewashed, blue trimmed former local palace that now seems to be a school, passing a multi-story statue of the monkey god Hanuman along the way.  I also saw a huge, derelict wooden cart, with wooden wheels maybe three or four feet in diameter.  Perhaps it has been used for religious processions.  After breakfast, Rahul and I went to a crafts emporium, with some very fine, and quite inexpensive, tribal crafts.  At 11 we caught a small bus headed west to Chitrakote Falls, about 25 miles to the west, on the Indravati River, a tributary of the Godavari.  The trip took about an hour and a half through flat, dry landscape, much of it harvested rice fields.  The bus dropped us right at the falls, India's broadest, about 1000 feet wide (at least during and just after the monsoon), in a semicircular curve.  They are said to be two thirds the size of Niagara.  The falls are much diminished from their monsoon breadth, but still are very impressive.  An immense amount of water crashes down more than 100 feet over the steep semicircular cliffs.  Now there are two separate plunges of water, side by side.  From photographs, I can see that there are at least two more (now dry) at the height of the monsoon.  You can walk right up to the top of the falls.  The Indian tourists there were friendly and I was photographed quite a lot.  I walked down to the river at the base of the falls, passing soldiers with rifles on the way, no doubt protecting us from Naxalites.  You can take a boat ride and get immersed in the mist at the base of the falls.  I walked all over and sat here and there and enjoyed the views before boarding the bus for the very crowded trip back to town at 4.  (Rahul had arranged to spend the night at a hotel near the falls.)

The next morning I tried without success to get a bus to one of the weekly tribal markets, or haats, at Mardum, near Jagdalpur.  I had no success and eventually gave up and spent most of the afternoon at an internet cafe.  Later, sitting in my hotel lobby reading newspapers about 6, I heard music and drumming and went to investigate.  A wedding procession was forming, setting out from a men's wear shop.  The white horse and about ten large light standards were waiting on the road off to the side, and several older men, some in colorful turbans with long tails, were sitting and standing in front of the shop.  Sweets were being passed out to them.  After a short while, the horse was brought up to the shop (where it proceeded to deposit a large pile of manure), women placed the light standards on their heads, and the turbaned groom emerged from the shop and mounted the horse via a plastic chair.  Some of the wedding party pulled me out from the crowd to get a good vantage point for photographing the groom on his horse, and then I was photographed with the groom and horse.  Finally, I was pulled into the knot of dancing men in the procession, where I participated briefly, no doubt to great amusement, before melting back into the crowd.

Rahul was back in town the next morning and about 9:30 the next morning he and I left on a chartered autorickshaw and headed generally southeast from Jagdalpur about 25 miles towards Kanger National Park and the Kutumsar Cave.  We left the plains surrounding Jagdalpur and entered hilly terrain covered with sal forest in the park.  At one spot we had a view across the jungle to Tirathghar Falls, another hundred foot or so waterfall.  We passed a tribal village surrounded by mustard fields in the park not too far from the cave.  The cave has a very narrow entrance, only discovered by the local people by the presence of bats.  The limestone cave reaches about 70 feet below the surface and is quite long, about 1000 feet.  We had a guide with a strong light who guided up through.  I think I enjoyed the ride through the forest more than the cave.  The only animals we saw were macaques. 

On the way back to Jagdalpur, we stopped about 1 o'clock at the weekly Pamela haat about six miles from town.  At these haats, held weekly in various spots, the tribal people come from their villages to trade and socialize.  Chhattisgarh is, by percentage, the most heavily tribal state in India, with 42 different tribes.  This haat is held in a lovely grove of sal trees beside the road and was filled with cattle and water buffalo for sale.  We were told a big cow would go for about $500.  Besides the livestock area tended by men, there was a produce and fried food section tended mainly by women, most of them with interesting nose rings.  People were friendly and didn't seem to mind being photographed.  We were the only tourists there.  Palm toddy, called salfi, and a stronger liquor called mahwa made from the flowers of the tree of the same name were on sale, dispensed from plastic jugs and old beer bottles.  I had a sip or so of each.  The milky palm toddy was not very alcoholic and tasted good.  The clear mahwa was stronger, but not all that strong, and without as pleasant a taste.  (When I declined to drink more, Rahul told me one of the men asked him about me, "What does he do for enjoyment in life?")  We wandered around, watching all the activity and trying to avoid the tipsy guy who tried to latch onto us.  Quite a few men were holding their prize fighting cocks, preparing for the cock fights to take place later in the afternoon in a circular area limited by barbed wire. 

We watched several of the cockfights, attended by large numbers of men pressed against the outside of the barbed wire.  Many were betting on them.  I saw hundred rupee notes being waved around.  In the center of the ring, two men would hold their cocks opposite each other, spurring them to confront each other.  Each cock had a sharp blade, maybe two inches long, attached to one leg.  Finally, the two cocks were put on the ground and went at each other.  Sometimes the fights were intense, with flapping wings and a lot of action.  Other times it seemed to be over rather quickly, with one cock making a decisive, quick attack.  The first drawing of blood ends the fight.  One or two of the cocks died rather quickly after being wounded, but others seemed to survive and were taken away.  The dead ones were left on the floor of the ring.  We were told there might be 25 cockfights in all, but we left after maybe five of them.  We headed back to town soon after 3, as Rahul had a bus to catch to Raipur, on his way back to Pune.  After he left I looked around the weekly Jagdalpur market, near the hotel.  It was quite large, with tribal women also, but not nearly as atmospheric as the Pamela market.

The next day I chartered another autorickshaw to take me to another weekly haat, this one at Tokapal, about 11 miles from Jagdalpur.  I got there about 1 and it was much larger than the Pamela haat.  There were thousands of tribal people, a very colorful affair.  There were no livestock (other than chickens and ducks) and no cock fighting that I saw.  On sale were all sorts of produce, including mahwa flowers and the sticks used for brushing teeth.  I wandered all around in the sun, seeking shade when I could find it.  I noticed that almost all the older women were tattooed (usually just dots) while almost all the younger women were not.  Again, there were lots of elaborate nose rings.  Few of the older women wore the short upper garment, called a choli, I think, that Indian women usually wear under their sari. 

Among the many things on sale were huge baskets, maybe six feet high, clay pots (I saw one sold for ten rupees), and the bell-metal objects made through the lost wax process by the Ghadawa people.  There were bells, cows, elephants and other figures and I would have liked to have bought some if I didn't have to carry them for months.  I watched people bringing sacks or even shopping bags full of unhusked rice to be weighed on a large scale.  A man with a handfull of cash paid them after the weighing, and then the rice was dumped onto a large pile behind the scales while the sellers would go off to spend their new cash.  Nearby, chickens were being sold, 70 rupees (about $1.30) a chicken.  Purchasers would pick them out of their baskets by their legs or wings and examine them before buying. 

I walked all around, but spent most of my time near the women selling palm toddy and mahwa at one end of the market.  The sellers that I saw were all women, selling the stuff from plastic jugs, metal pots, and old beer bottles.  Most of it was poured into green leafs pinched at one end to make a cup, the leaves discarded after drinking.  Another woman was selling slices of potato, dipped into batter, and then deep fried.  A field of rice stubble nearby was filled with people, almost all women, drinking.  Towards 3 o'clock I noticed that streams of people, mostly women, were leaving the market, but many of them stopped off to drink toddy or mahwa before going.  I even saw one mother give some mahwa to her maybe ten or twelve year old son.  It was all quite a scene and I enjoyed it.  People were friendly, though mostly shy.  There were no other tourists there.  In fact, I haven't seen any western tourists here in Jagdalpur.  My driver came and got me around 3:30 and we left about 4.  These haats are said to end about nightfall.  As we headed back to town, we passed groups of mostly barefoot women walking along the highway, returning to their villages after the haat.

November 29 - December 5, 2012: Visakhapatnam, Araku, Koraput, and Jeypore

On the 29th, my last morning in Puri, I walked out to the beach fronting the fishing village soon after sunrise to watch all the activity.  The waves were smaller, so the boats had an easier time coming and going.  I saw the shell and remnants of the carcass of an olive ridley turtle on the sand.  The head was gone, as was most of the body.  The two front flippers remained.  A few crows picked at it until a dog shooed them away and pulled out some viscera to eat.  Olive ridley turtles nest along the coast here in the thousands, usually during the full moon in February, I think.  Back on the beach closer to my hotel, some women and girls were holding some sort of ceremony, with lots of marigolds and incense.  They were making mounds and designs in the sand.  After they finished, I noticed the mound was a representation of a woman delivering a baby.

I left Puri on an uncrowded train about 12:30 that first traveled about 25 miles inland to reach the main east coast line, and then headed southwest a hundred miles or so, passing the large, scenic, salt water Lake Chilika and lots and lots of rice fields, some being harvested and some already harvested.  It was all very scenic, in the late afternoon sun, with little hills here and there.  We reached the town of Brahmapur about 4:30, where I broke my journey and got a dirty, but friendly, hotel near the station.

I slept okay despite a thin mattress and the next morning ate a huge paper dosa for what the restaurant called "tiffin."  A paper dosa is a particularly large, thin, crispy rice pancake (maybe two feet long), that you break into pieces and dip into little bowls of vegetables, yoghurt, and so forth.  It was very good, and filling.  My train for Visakhapatnam left about 11:45 and we soon left Odisha and entered the northeast arm of the state of Andhra Pradesh.  We passed more rice fields, plus lots of palm trees and other trees, through a very scenic countryside.  The Eastern Ghats rose to the west inland, and we passed lots of roundish, low hills.  The sea, unseen, was to the east.  The train was not too crowded, with the usual assortment of hawkers and beggars coming through the aisles.  We reached Visakhapatnam, a city of well over a million people, about 4:15.  I had great difficulty finding a hotel, and finally settled for a none too clean one near the station.  I had trouble getting to sleep, finally felt a bite, and turned on the light to discover my sheets were full of bedbugs and other, larger bugs.  I squished a few and they bled red blood:  mine, I imagine.  I changed rooms but it took a while to fall asleep as I kept turning on the light to check for bugs.

There is not much to see in Visakhapatnam and what there is is somewhat dispersed, so I decided to take a city tour offered by the local tourist office.  It lasted from about 9 to 4 and wasn't too bad.  We first visited a Hindu temple on a forested hill surrounded by other forested hills outside of town.  As always, the crowds of pilgrims were interesting.  There was a spot that appeared to be a place for the blessing of cows and calves, some of which appeared to have black eye liner around their eyes.  I also saw what appeared to be a guru-mobile:  a bus outfitted to look like a mobile temple, with a yellow clad guru in the back dispensing blessings.  We visited a hill overlooking the city and the sea, the remains of a 2000 year old Buddhist monastery on a hill up the coast, a not so attractive beach (where we had a good lunch), a city museum and a Soviet built submarine used by the Indian Navy from 1969 to 2001.  Our last stop was the very smelly fishing harbor.

I was at the railway station the next morning at 6 standing in a long, but relatively quick moving line, to get a ticket on the daily train that heads up into the Eastern Ghats.  It cost me all of 20 rupees (37 cents) for an unreserved ticket to go all the way to Araku, a trip of about 80 miles.  The platform was jammed with waiting passengers, and, following others, I leapt onto the still moving train as it reached the platform.  Still, I had to fight for a seat.  The train was packed, with little boys climbing up onto the luggage racks for a place to sleep.  It was a Sunday and I figured most of the passengers were day trippers headed to the hills before coming back on the returning afternoon train, though another passenger told me there were also people returning from a festival in a town near Visakhapatnam.  The train left about 7.  I had some friendly women and girls in the seats facing mine and enjoyed the rolling green hills as we headed to the Eastern Ghats.  Unfortunately, as we began to climb, all the views were on the opposite side of the train, and the aisles were so packed that you couldn't see out the opposite side windows.  My views were mainly of the cliff along which the track ran.  We climbed to over 2000 feet and reached the stop for the Borra Caves, where lots of people got off.  Continuing, we were on a green, hilly plateau for another hour or so until reaching Araku, at about 3000 feet (917.803 meters, according to the wondrously precise sign at the station), about 11:30.

Araku isn't much of a town, and I found a hotel about 15 minutes walk from the station.  Unfortunately, Araku and its surroundings were full of noisy Sunday tourists, with all the attendant speeding and honking.  Lots of garbage, too.  Not the pleasant hill retreat I had been led to believe.  I had lunch and walked around a bit.  I put on long trousers and wore my fleece for dinner.

It was somewhat quieter the next morning, but I left on the train at 11:30 and had a pleasant, uncrowded trip further up the line into the Eastern Ghats.  We continued on the plateau, at about 3000 feet for the most part, following a river for a while and passing lots of rice fields, with people reaping and threshing the rice.  We crossed into the southwestern part of Odisha state and reached the small town of Koraput about 2.  Koraput is a pleasant little town surrounded by hills, and with quite a few hills in the town.  It took me more than an hour to get a hotel and I ended up at the expensive one I had stopped at first.  A room was 900 rupees ($16), but the other hotels were either full or the rooms terrible.  I had a late lunch and then walked to a somewhat interesting tribal museum, with what may have been a century old poster of the world's three races:  Negroid, Mongoloid, and "Europeanoid," with a drawing of a bearded European man.  At dusk I walked to the hilltop Jagannath Temple, a smaller, newer version of the great temple at Puri.  It was almost empty.  A friendly young priest clad in yellow cracked young cocoanuts given him by pilgrims and then returned a half cocoanut with a small marigold inside it, for ten rupees a pop, it seemed.

The next morning I walked around town a bit and again climbed up to the Jagannath Temple.  There were adivasi (tribal) women selling produce along the town's streets.  Almost all seemed to have three nose rings, one through the septum and one other on each side.  Most were barefoot.  At about 11 I walked to the bus stand to catch a bus for Jeypore, 13 miles away, but was told that most buses weren't running because the Maoist Naxalites guerrillas in the hills had ordered them to stop service.  Apparently, the Odisha state government has an ongoing operation to find the Naxalite leader in Odisha and the Naxalites are threatening the buses to pressure the government to stop the search.  (They are called Naxalites because the movement started in the West Bengal village of Naxalbari, in the 1960's or 70's, I think.)  Two young guys told me a bus from Andhra Pradesh would be coming through at noon bound for Jeypore.  I guess the Andhra Pradesh buses either weren't targeted or weren't intimidated by the Naxalites.  It arrived, but was far too packed to board.  I gave up on buses and took an autorickshaw to the railway station.  The uncrowded train arrived sometime after 2.  My ticket for the short trip to Jeypore was seven rupees, about thirteen cents.  It took almost two hours, though, as the rail route is longer than the road route and we had a couple of long stops waiting for trains coming in the opposite direction.  We passed through very hilly terrain before dropping down to plains about 2000 feet in elevation.  The station is about four miles from the town, so I took an autorickshaw on a bumpy road and then walked about fifteen minutes to reach a pretty good hotel.  I wasn't feeling well, so I skipped dinner.

My stomach was still upset the next morning, but not too bad.  I was very tired, though, and rested and slept most of the day, with a short walk in the early afternoon to the local high-walled fort, with a derelict palace inside.  As in Koraput, there were tribal women on the streets selling produce.  I felt better in the evening and had a very good dinner with four Americans living in Hong Kong who had just arrived with their own car, driver and guide.  As I, they were hoping to go to the weekly Onkadelli tribal market about 40 miles from Jeypore the next day, but were unable to get permits to go there.  Two Italians were kidnapped last February by the Naxalites, who style themselves protectors of the tribal people, and since then the state government has made it a lot harder to visit tribal areas. 

November 21- 28, 2012: Bhubaneshwar - Konark - Puri

At 5 a.m on the morning of the 21st I took a taxi in the dark through the mostly deserted streets of Calcutta from my hotel to Howrah Railway Station.  I noticed my driver treated the traffic lights as no more than suggestive.  There was considerably more traffic on the approach to and on the massive Howrah Bridge over the Hooghly River.  It took only about 10 minutes to reach the station, a trip that cost me more than the fare for my almost eight hour upcoming train trip.  In the cavernous station, already crammed with people, many of them sleeping on the floor, at that early hour, I eventually found my train.  The crowded train left shortly after 6, with the sun rising shortly before 6.  The train headed southwest, paralleling the coast, through West Bengal and Odisha (renamed from Orissa in 2010) states to Bhubaneshwar, about 275 miles away.  We passed lots of rice fields, many green, many already brown, with some of the latter being harvested by men and women both, all under the typically hazy Indian sky.  I saw a line of men carrying big bundles of rice straw on their heads.  The air was cool in the morning and there were lots of trees along the way, and many ponds, one filled with scores of purple lotus flowers.  I also saw many birds, mostly egrets.  The terrain was flat until we passed some hills towards the end of the trip, and there were some huge steel mills off in the distance.  We crossed several rivers, including the very wide Mahanadi just before we reached the city of Cuttack.  I talked with a friendly man from Calcutta for a while and we arrived shortly before 2, about an hour late.  It took me about an hour to get a hotel and that was pretty much it for the day.  I went to bed about 8.

I was up early the next day and about 6:30 was at Lingaraj Mandir, Bhubaneshwar's tallest temple at about 180 feet.  Non-Hindus are not allowed inside this thousand year old stone temple, a policy dating from the Moslem depredations of the city's temples, but you can get a look over the walls of the compound from a viewing platform on the north side.  I enjoyed just walking around the area and seeing the pilgrims, the beggars, the cows, the commercial stands, and all the other temple area activity.  I went to several other temples in the area.  At one the priests were preparing food, with cut up vegetables placed in clay pots and ready for the smoky fires.  There was also a group of chanting, parading pilgrims in that temple.  Another temple, a small one dating from the 8th century, had a friendly priest who showed me how he washed and dressed the resident deity.  I passed by the local water tank, the Bindu Sagar, said to contain nectar, wine and water from holy rivers all over India (and from the look of it, many other less salubrious ingredients) and visited three other stone temples, two of them beautifully decorated with sculpture.  Odishan temples have a standard form, with a tall sanctuary tower called a deul and a lower entry hall called a jagamohana.  Sometime after noon I made a lunch stop and had an Odishan thali, which was very good, and then visited another two well decorated ancient temples after lunch before heading back to the hotel.

I was up early again the next morning and after breakfast at the train station took an autorickshaw to the Udaigiri and Kandagiri Caves about six miles away.  These man-made caves, carved out by Jains over 2000 years ago, are situated on two small hills separated by a road.  There must be about 30 caves in all, most fairly simple but some with interesting sculpture.  The low cells are sloped up from the openings, supposedly so the monks who slept in them had a sort of pillow at the far end.  In one cave there is a long inscription in Brahmi script, dating from the 2nd century B.C.  I spent about two and a half hours there and then took an autorickshaw to the Tribal Museum back in town.  Odisha's population of over 40 million people is almost one quarter tribal (62 different tribes), in the inland hills and jungles. This is a terrific museum, the best tribal museum I've been to by far, with clothing, ornaments, tools, weapons, musical instruments and much else on display.  I spent about four hours there.  There were some wonderful audio-visual displays.  For over an hour in the museum I was followed around by a guy until I realized he was the driver who had brought me and was hoping for an additional fare.  I finally told him to go.

I was up again before dawn the next morning and after breakfast took an autorickshaw out of town to Dhauli, with a long Ashoka inscription on a big rock.  This is near the battlefield where Ashoka defeated the Kalingas in 261 B.C., a bloodbath so terrible it is said to have caused Ashoka's conversion to Buddhism.  (His remorse apparently did not extend to restoring the Kalinga's independence from his empire.)  The rock with the inscription is now protected by an ugly building.  On the hill nearby is a gleaming white stupa built by the Japanese in the 1970's.  I went back to town, packed my bag and walked to the State Museum, which opened at 10.  It was fairly interesting. Oddly, it had a "Special Toilet for Foreigners," with a combination lock opened by a code given to me at the ticket window.

About 12:30 I caught a crowded bus to Konark, a small town on the coast about 40 miles away.  Arriving about two hours later, I got a hotel and then spent the rest of the afternoon wandering around the enclosure of the 13th century Sun Temple.  There are great views of this giant temple as you walked around it.  It was once on the coast, but the coast has receded about two miles, and was visible out to sea, known to sailors as the Black Pagoda.  At some point it was sacked and then abandoned.  The deul, the main tower, thought to have been 200-230 feet high, collapsed and much of the rest was buried in sand.  The British began restoration soon after 1900.  It's no longer a working temple, but there were lots of visitors until it closed at 8 p.m.  It was lit up at night, an impressive sight.

I entered the Sun Temple compound soon after it opened at 6 the next morning and spent about four hours there.  There were already lots of people there and within half an hour on that Sunday morning they were pouring in by the hundreds, almost all Indian.  I think I saw about five other Westerners.  The surviving jagomohana, the entry hall in front of the wrecked deul, is itself 130 feet high and covered with sculpture.  The stone platform upon which the jagomohana and deul rest is maybe 400 or 500 feet long and maybe ten fight high and sculpted to resemble the chariot of Surya the Sun God, with twelve wheels (maybe seven feet in diameter) carved on each side.  There were seven horses in front.  Now only one remains.  The sculpture on the platform, jagamohana and deul is very interesting, much of it erotic, but also with musicians and gods and animals.  A procession of something like 1700 elephants decorates the lowest band of sculpture ringing the base of the platform.  The place was packed, but I enjoyed it.  I must have refused 20 or 30 photo requests, though I did agree to a few.

I had a late breakfast, checked out of my hotel, and then visited the museum (with some interesting photos of the temple at the time of restoration in the early 1900's) before catching a very crowded bus along the coast to Puri, 20 miles away.  I had to stand and couldn't stand up straight because of the low bus ceiling.  Needless to say, I was happy to reach Puri after an hour or so and get off that bus.  Puri is right on the beach, a wide beach with big waves, and I got a room in a somewhat run-down but still clean and comfortable hotel that once was the mansion of the Raja of Serampore, with windows facing the Bay of Bengal.  I had a great fish dinner with a British couple and slept well on a comfortable bed under a mosquito net to the sound of the waves.  With the ocean breezes, it is cool here at night, in the low 60's, I think.

I was out on the beach the next morning just after six, in time to see the sun rise through the haze over the sea.  There is a fishing village just up the beach and fishing boats were leaving and returning.  It was interesting to see them navigating the big waves while launching or returning.  The beach was crowded with boats, boatmen and villagers, and of course with men and boys having their morning craps along the ocean.  You really had to be very careful where you stepped.  Pretty disgusting.  Nonetheless, I stayed and watched all the fisherman activity for an hour and a half.  Fish were off loaded onto the sand and then apparently sold and carted off by women in metal basins.  I saw several types of fish, including hammerhead sharks but only about three or four feet in length, and even crabs and lots of eels.  Primitive winches operated by eight to ten men hauled up the boats after they had ridden the waves onto the beach.  The village itself was filthy, with paper and plastic garbage everywhere.  The houses were both brick structures and grass huts.

I came back and had a big fruit salad and curd for breakfast and ended up spending most of the day in a little restaurant.  I met, among others, a 73 year old man there named Hamish Kane who was born in Calcutta (his father was in the colonial service and after independence with the British High Commission) and lived there until he was 16.  He comes back to India every year now, spending much time in Puri.  He had great stories of Calcutta, Darjeeling (where he went to school starting at age 11) and Puri in the '40's and early '50's.  He remembers the horrific Hindu-Moslem carnage of 1947, having seen people killed from the veranda of his home.  An interesting guy, he later became a disc jockey for radio stations in the U.K., eventually making it from pirate radio stations to the BBC.

In the late afternoon, I walked down the road to the restored, old railroad hotel, where Hamish remembers staying with his parents in the late '40's.  It has photos of Jackie Kennedy from her tour of India in 1962 and Leonid Brezhnev from his tour in 1961.  Neither visited Puri.  I walked to the "Bengali Beach," the nicer stretch of the wide beach fronted by many hotels, some quite big, catering to people from Calcutta.  There were some Bengalis in the surf, the women fully clothed.  I got back just after dark.

I slept in a bit later the next morning, had breakfast, and then took a cycle richshaw about 8:30 to the Jagannath Temple, one of the holiest sites in India.  In fact, Puri is one of the four holy abodes of India.  It is the easternmost, with the others being Badrinath in the north (which I visited in November 2010), Dwarka in the west (which I visited in February of 2012), and Rameshwaram in the south.

An incarnation of Vishnu, Jagannath means "Lord of the Universe," and abides in the temple with his brother Balabhandra and his sister Subandhra.  Non-Hindus are not allowed into the large temple compound, with the 215 foot high temple, dating from about 1200, in the center.  You can get a glimpse into the compound and a good view of the deul, jagamohana and other buildings from a roof top just east of the compound.  The deul was once whitewashed, but has now been restored to its natural stone color.  I walked around, observing all the temple activity.  The three temple deities are pictured everywhere and are quite distinctive looking, with short bodies, big round heads and big round white eyes.  In fact, they remind me of the South Park characters.  Cartman as a god.  Each June or July, the three deities are taken in huge wooden carts (Lord Jagannath's is the largest, 42 feet tall with sixteen wheels seven feet in diameter), on a procession about two miles in length, each cart pulled by about 4000 men.  The English word "juggernaut" comes from this procession, as devotees apparently used to throw themselves under the wheels, an auspicious death.  Some still do die, apparently, perhaps from accident.  Highly decorated elephants and the Raja of Puri also make up the procession, attended by maybe a half million people.

From the temple I walked through the narrow lanes to a water tank flanked by more temples, then walked back to the Jagannath Temple in part along the very wide street taken by the deities on their yearly progression.  I then walked to the cremation grounds near the sea.  There were only two burning piles of wood and a few smouldering remains of fires.  I didn't see any bodies.  I walked along the wide beach full of Bengalis for a while and then took a cycle rickshaw back to my hotel and had lunch before spending the rest of the afternoon in an internet cafe.

I spent a good part of the next day trying to decide on my route for the next part of my journey, as I am heading to the tribal areas of Odisha and Chhattisgarh and want to time my visits to see weekly markets.  I didn't do much else that day, though just before sunset I went down to the beach and watched the sun set over the sea down the coast.  Puri is on India's east coast, but because of the curve of the coast here, in the winter the sun both rises and sets over the ocean.  I've enjoyed Puri, with its sea breezes and congenial fellow travelers, quite a few who are spending a lot of time here. 

November 18 -20, 2012: Saipan to Bangkok to Calcutta

I'm off for up to another six months in India, this time in the south of the country.  I was supposed to leave Saipan on the 17th, but my scheduled early morning flight to Guam, the first leg of the trip, was cancelled because of mechanical difficulties and I couldn't arrive in time for my connecting flights with a later plane that day.  I also had to book another flight from Bangkok to Calcutta, because my already scheduled flight on the 18th was non-changeable within 48 hours of departure and non-refundable.  So that cost me an extra $210 or so.

I did finally fly from Saipan to Guam on the 18th, with a 4:30 a.m. departure.  Next was a flight to Narita in Japan only to find upon arrival that I was not booked on the 10:50 flight onward to Bangkok that United Airlines had told me I was booked on.  After about four hours and speaking to five or six different persons, I finally did get a boarding pass for a flight to Bangkok for 5:30 in the evening.  So I had a layover in Narita of about eight hours instead of one hour.  I slept off and on for maybe four of the seven hours on the flight and arrived in Bangkok just before 11 at night.  I got to my hotel a little before 1 a.m. and was happy to take a shower and go to bed.  I'm not sure I slept at all, but it was great to lie down after the cramped sleep on the plane.

I got up on the 19th about 6, had breakfast and took a taxi to Bangkok's old airport about 7.  It was a Monday morning and I was worried about the commute, but it took only an hour.  The news on the radio was mostly about President Obama's trip to Thailand.  The Air Asia flight to Calcutta was at 11, so I milled about the old, now mostly unused airport and noticed a group of people looking out a window onto the tarmac.  I walked over and saw Air Force One and an apparently identical Boeing 747 (the back up Air Force One, I guess), along with a smaller plane with "United States of America" on it.  A red carpet lined with an honor guard led to the stairs up to the entrance of Air Force One, with Thai officials, including a woman in a bright yellow dress, lined up just below the stairs.  Several Secret Service-looking guys surrounded the plane.  After maybe 20 minutes, a motorcade of about 40 vehicles approached, with a couple of Presidential-looking limousines, the first one flying Thai and U.S. flags, near the front.  I had my binoculars and saw President Obama get out, shake hands and bound up the stairs, with perhaps a couple of others, probably including Secretary of State Clinton.  He waved from the top of the stairs before entering the plane.  Everyone else was relegated to the stairs at the back of the plane.  Air Force One fairly quickly taxied to the runway and then took off, followed by the back up 747, on the way to Rangoon.  He had spent just a day in Bangkok, meeting the king and prime minister and visiting Wat Pho, with its giant reclining Buddha.

I slept a bit on the flight to Calcutta.  We landed a little after noon, Indian time, with great views of the Sunderbans, the mangrove swamps of the Ganges Delta, before we landed.  I took a bus into town and checked into the hotel where I've stayed before.  I was a little surprised that the main clerk remembered me. The weather was relatively cool, in the 80's, and after resting in my room, I took a short walk and got a haircut before an early dinner.  I had planned to get a haircut in Bangkok, but arrived too late.  So I asked the guy at the hotel to recommend a place for me and he directed me to a somewhat upmarket place called Awesome that charged 150 rupees (less than $3) for a haircut, twice as much as I have paid anywhere else in India and three to five times the usual price.  The older man who seemed to be the proprietor of the place took over from the younger man who had started cutting my hair.  The younger man was relegated to standing by and brushing away loose hair with a little brush as the older man did the cutting.  The older man did allow the younger one to finish the haircut and he gave me quite a good head massage at the end.  First two person haircut I have had.  After dinner, I was tired and went to bed just after 7, sleeping well until about 3:30 the next morning.  I looked out my window and saw about five men sleeping on rope beds in the little alley below.

I got up around 4:30 and went out for a walk about 6, soon after dawn.  I walked for about three hours before breakfast and enjoyed all the sights in the early morning cool.  The streets were comparatively deserted, but there was still a lot to see.  A few rickshaws.  (Calcutta has the world's last man-pulled ones.)  A pot bellied street sweeper.  People asleep on the sidewalks, some next to their rickshaws.  People conducing their mornings ablutions at curbside.  A man delivering long sugar cane stalks, depositing them next to a lamppost  on a corner.  Several men on bicycles carting scores of chickens tied to their bikes.  A small parade with drums came along, centering on a transvestite dressed in a blue belly dancer outfit.  He was followed by maybe 50 people, men and women, and danced with both men and women as the parade proceeded.  Quite a few people stopped and watched in the predominately Moslem neighborhood.  He was quite the performer and seemed to revel in the attention.  I passed by him walking toward me on the sidewalk later in the day and he said something like, "You took my photograph!"

Eventually, following the parade, I reached the street side poultry market , with thousands of chickens in big wicker baskets.  Men were binding their legs and selling them, to be taken away in big clumps on bicycles for the most part.  One guy told me a chicken sold for 120 rupees (a little over $2) a kilo and that a chicken usually weighs a minimum of one kilo, 800 grams.  A little further on was a street side fish market.  Bengalis love fish.  It was quite interesting to see the expert way they eviscerated the larger fish before selling them.  There were several different kinds of fish, plus shrimp and crayfish, on sale.  People were friendly and I very much enjoyed it.  There is always so much to see on the streets of Calcutta, and often beneath once handsome and now derelict old colonial ear buildings.

After breakfast I booked a train ticket south for the next day and then spent the rest of the day doing errands and walking around the always interesting streets of this city..

My plan this year is to spend my time in the south of India, which I think will probably take the full six months allowed by my visa, and then go to Sri Lanka.  That's the plan, anyway.

May 10-15: Calcutta to Bangkok to Saipan

My train from Bolpur to Calcutta didn't leave until the afternoon of the 10th, so in the morning I took a cycle rickshaw to Shantiniketan.  I walked around the campus a bit, seeing several groups of yellow and white clad students attending classes under the trees.  I had read a newspaper the evening before reporting a special exhibition celebrating Tagore's 151st birthday, so I went to that when it opened at 10:30.  It wasn't much, but it did have some interesting photos and translations of a few of his poems.  It also had some of his paintings, which are quite interesting.  He started painting late in his life, in his 70's, I think.  After that, I walked around the campus a bit more, went to a bookstore, and took a cycle rickshaw back to the hotel about 11:30 in time for a last Bengali fish and rice lunch at the hotel.

My train left soon after 1 and was uncrowded.  It made good time through the flat Bengali countryside, with only two stops and covering the 90 miles to Calcutta in two and a half hours.  We passed lots of rice fields on the way, with a great many of them freshly harvested, and quite a few huts with the typical sloped Bengali grass roofs.  From the huge Howrah train station I walked across the road and caught a ferry across the wide Hooghly River, with views of the massive Howrah Bridge just upriver.  Reaching the east bank, I was right downtown.  I had planned to take a taxi once there, but they wouldn't use their meters or charge a reasonable rate, so I ended up walking to the hotel where I had stayed last November.  It took about 45 minutes, but I enjoyed walking past all the old colonial buildings and seeing all the street activity.  I relaxed and read a newspaper at the hotel before dinner.  It said Calcutta gets about six big rainstorms between early April and the middle of May, which is why West Bengal is so much greener and more humid now than points further west.  It took me a while to get to sleep that night as my room was hot.

The next morning my room still was hot, 88 degrees when I got up.  The day was a little cooler than previous days, though, with a high of only 95, but very high humidity.  After breakfast I walked around the city center, past many of the old colonial buildings as far north as the Writers' Building, former headquarters of the East India Company (the company's clerks were called writers) and now the seat of the West Bengal state government.  There is lots to be seen just walking along the crowded streets:  vendors selling just about anything, people cooking and selling food, barbers shaving customers.  I saw a guy on the street cleaning another guy's eye, scraping the white of the eye with a little metal utensil.

I stopped in at St. Andrew's Church, next to the Writers' Building,  and later at St. John's Church, the latter a few blocks away and completed in 1787.  Arriving at St. John's I was hot, sweaty, and thirsty and sat under ceiling fans in the vast nave drinking a liter of water I had just bought.  I checked out the plaques on the walls in both churches and the graveyard around St. John's before heading to a restaurant near my hotel for a late lunch. At St. John's there is a tombstone for a woman born in 1725, married first in 1738, remarried to a second husband who died of smallpox within a few days of the marriage, married a third time to a man with whom she had four children, and married a fourth time in 1774.  All this is on the tombstone, along with the names and marriages of the three of her children who survived until adulthood.  All her husbands held distinguished positions.  She died at 87 in 1812, the oldest British resident of Bengal, the tombstone said.  In the late afternoon I ventured out to a bookstore, but that was about it.

I left Calcutta, and India, the next day, the 178th of the 180 days allowed by my visa.  A big cricket match was to be played in Calcutta that afternoon, the Kolkata Knight Riders versus the Mumbai Indians, and the newspapers and television were full of news about it.  My flight left about 1 in the afternoon (on Air Asia and booked about ten days before for something less than $150) and arrived in Bangkok just before 5, local time.  I got to my hotel about 6:30.  It is as hot in Bangkok as it was in Calcutta, but after India Bangkok seems so clean and orderly and quiet.

I didn't do much the next day, another hot day, in the high 90's.  After breakfast I read the Bangkok English language newspapers, and spent most of the day reading and relaxing, with a few short walks.  I spent some time in the very nice Buddhist temple located between Khao San Road and my hotel.   Despite the heat, there are still a lot of tourists in Bangkok, though nowhere near as many as when I was last here in November.

The first of my flights home left the next morning about 11 from Bangkok.  I had booked the flights only a few days earlier, costing me only 15,000 reward miles and a little over $100. The very comfortable Thai Airlines flight to Osaka took about five and a half hours, arriving in Osaka about 6:30 Japan time.  On the way I had some great views of the Vietnamese coast just north of Danang, the southern tip of Taiwan and some of islands between Taiwan and Japan.  It was cloudy over southern Japan, so I saw little of it until just before we landed, when I got some good views of Kobe and Osaka and the mountains behind them before we landed.   My  next flight left Osaka about 9, arriving in Guam after about three hours, at 1 in the morning local time on May 15.  Because of mechanical problems, my flight from Guam to Saipan was delayed about an hour and a half, but we finally took off soon after 4 and arrived in Saipan about 5.  I got home just before 6, just after sunrise.

May 4-9, 2012: Bishnupur, Shantiniketan, Tarapith

It felt cool in Ranchi on the morning of the 4th when I walked over to the train station to buy my ticket to Bishnupur.  I had breakfast at the station and later read a newspaper in the lobby of a nearby hundred year old railroad hotel recently refurbished into a luxury hotel.  The temperature the day before in Ranchi, it reported, had been 97 degrees, a break from the 100 plus degrees weather I'd been having.  About 9:30 I left on the train to Bishnupur, about 150 miles to the east.  My ticket cost me all of 34 rupees, about 65 cents.  The train was all unreserved seating, but was uncrowded.  I sat in the last car and at times had it almost to myself.

The train made many stops as we passed through the scenic hilly and forested area of eastern Jharkhand (a state created only in 2000 out of the southern portion of Bihar), a sparsely populated area.  I enjoyed the trip.  We crossed into West Bengal and the terrain became flatter, but with big stone hills rising over the dry landscape.  A teacher boarded the train at the first stop in West Bengal.  He told me school runs from 6:30 to 11 in the morning in the summer and he was on his way home, in the city of Puruliya.  I talked with him for the hour and a half it took us to reach Puruliya.  He pointed out hills about twelve miles to the north and said there were wild elephants and Maoist Naxalite guerrillas there.  The land flattened as we headed east and became greener, though not as green as when I took a train west through West Bengal last November.  The rains start earlier in West Bengal than further west.  I spotted a few very green rice paddies and even the dry grass had a bit of green in it.  Further west, it had all been brown.  The train filled up a bit here and there, but was never overly crowded.  It clouded up and I saw lots of oil palms dotting the landscape.

We arrived in Bishnupur, at only 220 feet elevation, about 4, only ten minutes late, which is pretty good considering Bishnupur was the 32nd stop from Ranchi.  I took a cycle rickshaw to a hotel about two and a half miles from the station, and enjoyed the ride through the streets of that small city, with a population of around 60,000.  It is much more humid and green here.  I walked around a bit before dark and watched lots of cricket being played by boys in dusty fields.  It gets dark here about 6:30.  That evening there was quite a bit of thunder and lightning, but only a little rain.  I slept well under a fast moving ceiling fan.

The next morning after breakfast at the hotel I hired a cycle rickshaw to take me to the temples around the town.  These temples date from the Malla Dynasty of the 16th to 18th centuries.  My guidebooks don't explain who the Mallas were and how they managed to thrive at a time of Muslim dominance in Bengal.  The temples are made of either brick or laterite, the latter a rough, pockmarked red stone.  The brick temples are covered with terra cotta sculpture while the laterite ones are plastered, although much of the plaster has worn off.  They often have roofs modelled after the sloped straw roofs of Bengali style huts.  I enjoyed moving through Bishnupur's narrow lanes in a cycle rickshaw, with views of small town life everywhere:  men and women washing at water pumps or in small ponds, repair shops, food shops, school kids in uniform. People were very friendly.  There were quite a few hammer and sickle emblems painted on the sides of buildlings.  The Communist Party governed West Bengal from 1977 until just last year, when they were finally ousted in elections. 

Over the morning we must have stopped at between fifteen and twenty of these temples.  Some were covered with spectacular terra cotta tiles depicting scenes from daily life and from stories about Krishna and others.  I think all the temples are Vishnu temples.  Some of the brick temples had hundreds of panels and thousands of figures, and I very much enjoyed picking out all the details, often very fine, though it was hot standing in front of the temples in the midday sun.  At one temple my feet began to sting and I noticed that I had stepped among many very tiny, stinging ants.  We also passed the two remaining gates and the dry remnants of a moat from an old fort.  Flame trees, like those from Africa and Saipan (brought from Africa during the German era), grew around town.

After a lunch break from about 1 to 3, we headed to seven laterite temples just north of town and explored those until about 4:30.  The laterite temples are not as well decorated as the brick and terra cotta temples. The sculpture is carved into the rough laterite blocks and then plastered.  In the late afternoon I walked back to some of the finest temples and watched boys playing cricket in the nearby dusty open spaces.  The townspeople were friendly and curious.  It was sunny all day, with no clouds.  Hot and humid, but not unbearable, and really not bad at all in the shade.

The next morning I walked to the Shyamarai Temple, dating from 1643 and the finest of the lot, with hundreds of panels.  I watched a lizard crawl along the panels and just generally enjoyed the site in the morning sun.  It was hot in the sun, but pleasant in the shade.  In the sun I photographed a dung beetle rolling a ball of dung perhaps thrice his size and soon noticed I was dripping with sweat.  The morning's newspaper had said the high was only 93 the day before, but humidity about 85%.  

I had lunch at the hotel and caught a bus at 1 heading north, then west, then north again to Durgapur.  The bus was slow, with lots of stops, but passed through a scenic area of small villages and bounteous rice fields.  Some of the golden rice was being harvested.  The bus became much more crowded and the countryside much drier as we approached Durgapur, which we reached a little before 4.  I hopped on another bus, this one heading to Bolpur, which left at 4.  This was another small bus, which eventually got very crowded.  Fortunately, I had a window seat so no standees were leaning against me.  The aisles were packed, like the bus I took from Umaria to Tala.  I did have a mother and her screaming child seated next to me for a while.  The mother appeared to think that screaming back at the child might stop her. 

Durgapur seems to be a city of big factories and I remember seeing them before as I  passed through the city by train headed west last November.  Our bus headed east, then north, then east again to Bolpur, arriving at 6:30, at dark. The road was wet from rain in places and we passed through a forested area, in flat terrain, for a few miles, a surprise to me in densely populated Bengal.  Bolpur is only a little more than 50 miles from Bishnupur, but with the slow buses and indirect route, it took me five and a half hours to get there.  I took a cycle rickshaw to a hotel, with a few drops of rain and some impressive lightning on the way.  The hotel turned out to be a good one and I had a very good dinner at the hotel of Bengali style fish (a river fish; Bengalis are famous for their fish dishes), vegetables and rice.

The next morning I walked up the road about a mile north to Shantiniketan, the location of a university founded by Rabindranath Tagore, India's Nobel Prize winning (in 1913) poet.  His father, Debendranath Tagore, considered a great maharishi of a 19th century reformist Hindu sect, bought a farmhouse here in the 1860's, soon after Rabindranath (his fourteenth child) was born in 1861.  Rabindranath spent a lot of time here and moved here from Calcutta in 1901 to start a school, with five pupils taught under the trees.  It became a university in 1921.  Indira Gandhi (then Indira Nehru), among other notables, attended.  I visited several buildings, including the farmhouse expanded into a two story mansion and some other interesting smaller houses where Tagore lived off and on until his death at 80 in 1941.  The houses have some of the original furnishings and lots of photos.  Gandhi visited several times, as early as 1915 and as late as 1940.  There are photos of him and Tagore:  Tagore tall, dressed in a long white robe, with a flowing long white beard and hair and Gandhi, small, his head shaved, wearing only a white dhoti not falling below his knees.  There is also a museum, but I was told it is closed for renovation.

I walked through the campus, mercifully under shady trees, including some huge banyan trees, and saw some of the students walking around and attending classes under the trees.  Under one tree surrounded by students seated on the ground stood a blackboard permanently fixed onto the ground.  The students wear very stylish yellow and white uniforms:  the boys in white trousers with almost knee-length yellow shirts; the girls in white trousers and yellow blouses with white scarfs or else yellow saris with white top garments.  There were quite a few tourists and I met an architect from Bangladesh and walked around with him for a while.  The sky clouded up around 2 and that made it seem cooler.  I got back to the hotel about 3:30 and spent most of the rest of the afternoon there.

The next morning I took a cycle rickshaw to Santiniketan about 7:30, reaching the small glass-walled temple near the mansion just after a prayer service commemorating Tagore's 151st birthday had ended.  He was born on May 7, 1861, but this year his birthday under the Bengali calendar falls on May 8.  I walked to the Uttarayan complex, with all the small houses where he lived, and sat under an awning in front of one of the houses to await a birthday ceremony.  It was hot, though ocassionally a very welcome cool breeze blew. 

The program started at 8:30, with songs by choirs and individuals, interspersed with readings from Tagore's poetry.  It was all very nice.  Of course, I didn't understand the Bengali poetry, but it sounded lovely when read by the various readers.  One of the poems recited was in English and quite beautiful.  I think the songs also were Tagore poems set to music.  There was quite a crowd for the ceremony, with many men in traditional Indian dress and many women in beautiful saris.  I seemed to be the only westerner.  The ceremony ended after an hour and I hung around watching the colorful crowd disperse and talking to the Bangladeshi architect and others.  I walked back through campus, bought a ticket from the small Shantiniketan train ticket office for Calcutta in two days' time, and in the hot sun took a cycle rickshaw back to my hotel about 11.

I spent the afternoon trying to avoid the heat at an internet cafe and in the air conditioned lobby of my hotel.  Hilary Clinton had visited Calcutta the previous day and I found a Bengali newspaper with seven or eight photos of her, mostly with West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee.  It didn't seem to cool down much after dark.  Sunset is just after 6 and it gets dark about 6:30.  Sunrise is very early, about 5.  India is one big time zone, despite the country covering almost 28 degrees of longitude from west to east.  Time zones ordinarily cover about 15 degrees of longitude.

It was hot and very humid when I woke up the next morning.  My thermometer registered 88 degrees in my room.  The morning newspaper said it had reached between 98 and 99 degrees the day before in Calcutta, with a low between 81 and 82.  A little before 10 I boarded a crowded train heading north to Rampurhat, about 35 miles away.  I had to stand in the crowded aisle, but the train was an express, making only two stops and reaching Rampurhat in about an hour.  I stood near the open door and enjoyed watching the scenery go by.  Rice was growing in places and being reaped by sickle here and there.  Other rice paddies were still fallow, to be planted in the coming monsoon, I guess.  A Baul singer, one of Bengal's traditional wandering minstrels, came through the car singing and beating his small drum.

Alighting at the station in Rampurhat, I hopped on a shared, large-size autorickshaw that took me about five miles south to Tarapith, a small town with a tantric Hindu temple honoring Tara, one of the many avatars of Shiva's consort Parvati/Uma/Durga/Kali.  A guy from Calcutta named Rahul had been on the train and autorickshaw and he showed me around.  It was hot and humid as we walked to the temple through a pedestrian lane full of shops catering to pilgrims.  There were some spectacularly beautiful garlands on sale.  The red hibiscus ones, he told me, were Tara's favorite, but there were also ones of yellow flowers, blue flowers, small white flowers, and giant lavender lotuses.  The temple wasn't much, but the pilgrims were interesting.  It was relatively uncrowded.  Rahul, who told me he comes here every three months or so, said it is packed on weekends.  I didn't join the line to enter the temple, but I could pick out the central idol from the outside.  I looked around while Rahul was praying and with him after he finished.  Small stones are tied with red and yellow string to a fence near the main temple.  Rahul told me you leave one when you have a prayer for Tara to grant, and if she does you come back and remove one of the hanging stones.  There were also many bells, of different sizes, hanging near the stones, donated by persons whose prayers had been granted.  Rahul showed me the spot where goats are sacrificed to Tara.  He told me a small goat costs about $100.

We next walked to the cremation area along the river near the temple.  A body on a pyre was burning, with men beating it with bamboo poles.  Rahul told me that is done to break the legs, so the body doesn't sit up while burning.  Another group had just brought the body of an old woman, with long gray hair, to the area.  Unlike at Varanasi, where the bodies are covered in cloth, this dead woman was clad only in a piece of cloth reaching from her waist to her knees.  She was rather unceremoniously lifted off the stretcher and dropped face down onto a small pile of wood, which was quickly set on fire without any of the ceremony seen at Varanasi.  Rahul told me these were poor people who couldn't afford the quantity of wood necessary for a full cremation.  He said they would be only partially burned, with the remnants buried nearby.  He pointed to the many dirt mounds nearby.  I asked if the body remnants might be washed away when the rains come, but he said they are buried six feet and more down.

While we were there, an uncovered body of a man was brought on a stretcher to be cremated, again on a small pile of wood.  Unlike at Varanasi, you are allowed to take photos and I saw some Indians taking photos with their cell phones.  People at the temple and cremation ground were quite friendly, even the sadhus.  Nobody seemed to mind having his or her photo taken, and some requested it.  I don't think they get many westerners at this place.

We found a small, hot restaurant and had a small lunch before I took an autorickshaw back to Rampurhat and caught a train back to Bolpur about 2.  I easily found a seat for the hour trip back on another express.  It was overcast and humid and I spent the rest of the afternoon at the hotel.