March 20-23, 2013: Tirupati and Chennai

I left Puttaparthi on the morning of the 20th, taking a bus for more than 8 1/2 hours east to Tirupati.  The bus was uncrowded most of the way, though, and comfortable enough.  Indian buses usually do have adequate leg room, which is a little surprising as Indians are not very tall as a rule.  The bus left between 10:30 and 11 and at first headed northeast on a thin strip of asphalt through mostly barren country with rocky hills and lots of boulders.  We passed through a few very small towns and by some corn fields.  Eventually, we passed several big groves of mango trees, with green mangoes thick on the branches.  I've read in the newspapers that the harvest is in April and May.  After about 30 miles we reached a more substantial road and turned southeast on it towards the city of Madanapalle, about 65 miles away.  The terrain was still mostly barren and rocky, but with some agriculture.  Reaching Madanapalle about 3:30, the bus turned east towards Tirupati, another 80 miles away.  There was more rocky terrain to pass through.  All day we had generally traveled at elevations from 1500 to 2500 feet above sea level, but about 15 miles before Tirupati we dropped about 1000 feet in less than five miles through a dry but wooded canyon, coming down to under 1000 feet in elevation. The valley then opened up, with mountains to be seen both to the north and south.  Traffic got heavier as we approached Tirupati, a city of about 300,000 at an elevation, I think, of about 500 feet.  It got dark as we were on the outskirts.  I could see the lights marking the path to the hilltop temple on Tirumala Hill, though I have read it is closed at night because of leopard attacks.  It was almost 7:30 when I finally got off the bus.  I had trouble finding a hotel with vacancy, and finally settled for a not very good one.

I was ill that night and the next morning.  I guess it must have been my breakfast in Puttaparthi, though I had the same breakfast at the same restaurant as the day before.  After that big breakfast before leaving Puttaparthi, I had eaten nothing but cookies and potato chips on the bus.  I'm not complaining, though, as it is only the second time in four months on this trip that I've had stomach problems.  I spent the morning in my room.  About 2 in the afternoon my stomach had settled down and I took a bus something less than ten miles to the west to Chandagiri, where there are remnants of a fort.  There has been a fort in this location for a thousand years and around 1600, after the defeat of Vijayanagar at the hands of the Muslim sultanates in 1565, Chandragiri became their third and last capital.  There are remnants of walls and gates and temples, and two restored palaces, the Raja Mahal and the smaller Rani Mahal, with a museum in the former.  A high rocky hill rises just to the north, and was incorporated into the fort walls.  I walked around a bit, but there wasn't much to see.  The Raja Mahal is where the English negotiated the deal in 1639 that allowed them to build Fort St. George, the beginning of their possessions in south India at what later became the city of Madras, now renamed Chennai.  I walked back to the small town about a mile from the fort, passing the remains of small temples and fort gates, and caught a bus back about 4:30.  Once back in Tirupati, I changed hotels, to a much nicer one.  I was hungry at dinner time, but settled for a dinner of bananas.

I felt fine the next morning and about 9:30 took a bus up to Tirumala Hill, site of one of India's most visited temples.  The bus trip took about an hour to go about 15 miles, but a climb of almost 2500 feet.  We climbed through forest with good views of the city and valley below.  You can also take the pedestrian pilgrim path up the mountain, which is said to take four to six hours.  I saw the path and it is well built, with a roof to protect pilgrims from the sun and rain.  At the top is a huge temple complex, almost a city in itself.  I've read the temple gets an average of 40,000 pilgrims a day and it is not unusual for more than 100,000 to show up.  It took me a while to find the large main temple, with a wall around it and housing a two foot high idol of Venkateshwara, an avatar of Vishnu.  It is not much to see from the outside and to go inside requires getting in line and going through caged walkways.  The free line takes hours.  There is a 50 rupee line and a 300 rupee line, but you still have to spend time in the crowded caged walkways.  I inquired about the 300 rupee line, but even it seemed pretty busy and I never figured out where you bought the ticket, so I contented myself with just walking around the huge complex and watching the pilgrims.  Many get their heads shaved upon arrival and the temple apparently does a lucrative trade in selling hair.  Many of the fresh shaven, of both sexes, had a yellowish dried paste applied to their shaved heads.  I was able to see the activities of the priests before the idol in the sanctuary, which are televised on big screens around the temple compound.  The idol has blinders over his eyes, to protect worshipers from the intensity of his gaze.

It was a lot cooler up there at about 3000 feet than down in Tirupati, so I spent most of the day up there, having lunch and then sitting on a bench under a tree and reading a newspaper.  It was very interesting to watch the pilgrims, especially in the caged walkways.  They were pressed together very closely and it didn't look pleasant.  I hope it was worth it.  I saw one man collapse in the caged walkway.  Water was splashed on his face and hair (he hadn't had his head shaved) and eventually three or four men carried him through the crowded passage to a gate that was opened, where an ambulance picked him up.  The ambulance arrived fairly quickly.  I saw only three other westerners all day, and they were walking towards the bus stand.  I saw thousands of Indians, though.  I took the bus down about 4 on a different and much steeper road than I had come up.  They are both one way, and the one going down seemed like it had a hundred hairpin turns.

My stomach was again troublesome the next day, so rather than take a morning bus to Chennai, I spent the morning in my hotel room.  By early afternoon I felt it was safe enough to venture forth, and I boarded a bus to Chennai, about 80 miles southeast of Tirupati, that left shortly before 1 p.m.  The trip was hot and slow, over bad roads at first, as we passed some impressive looking rocky hills, including one that looked like a volcano plug.  The newspaper that morning had forecast a high of over 100 in a city near the coast to the northeast of Tirupati.  Eventually, we left the hills as we made our way through flat terrain towards the coast.  At one point, though, we encountered some sort of road block, which necessitated turning back to the town we had just left and taking an alternative, longer route.  We crossed the state border into Tamil Nadu, and the alphabet on all the signs along the road changed.  Traffic, of course, was heavy coming into Chennai, a city of over six million people, and we arrived more than four hours after leaving Tirupati.  I took a city bus from the central bus station that dropped me off near the huge Egmore Station, a red colonial era train station, and found a hotel nearby.

I had originally thought that I would spend my six months in India just in the south, and travel to Sri Lanka afterward.  However, for a month or more I've realized it would take more than six months to see all the places I wanted to visit in the south, so I've decided to leave India's two most southern states, Tamil Nadu and Kerala, and Sri Lanka till early next year, when the weather will be cooler.  Instead, I will go to the Andaman Islands and then to Calcutta and up to Darjeeling and Sikkim in the Himalayas.  I'd thought about taking a ship to the Andaman Islands, an Indian territory 700 or so miles east of Chennai, but I wanted to see the ship first, as I've read that the berths can be grim.  There is a ship scheduled to leave on the 25th, but tickets were apparently available only until 4 p.m., that is if any were left, on the 23rd, and my stomach troubles delayed my arrival until after 4 p.m.  So instead I booked a flight to the Andamans upon arrival in Chennai, at a little less than $150 one way.  I could have gotten it for $30 or maybe even $50 less if I had booked it a couple of weeks in advance, but I wasn't sure when I would arrive in Chennai and wanted to see about the ship.

March 15-19, 2013: Bangalore, Puttaparthi and Lepakshi

Before leaving Mysore on the morning of the 15th, I took an early morning walk, making a circuit around the palace.  I passed some grand old colonial era buildings on its west side, some in good repair and some not, including buildings that used to be used to provision the palace, a school, and the city corporation building.  I entered the palace's south gate and visited an old temple complex just inside the gate.  The main temple, just inside the tall gopuram (entry tower), was closed, but a smaller temple with beautifully painted walls with stories from the epics was open.  I wandered around a bit in the temple complex before leaving to complete the circuit around the palace and having breakfast.

About 10:30 I left on a bus heading northeast to Bangalore, about 80 miles away.  The rolling countryside had some sugar cane and lots of coconut palms.  The road was four lanes most of the way, except through the cities on the way.  Nearing Bangalore we passed some very impressive rocky hills.  I've read that David Lean filmed some of the cave scenes in his A Passage to India in this area, rather than do it where it is set in the book, in Bihar, which in the 1980's was notorious for crime.  The bus slowed down considerably as we approached Bangalore and became ensnarled in its traffic.  We arrived about 2 and it took me about a half hour of looking around the area near the bus station before I discovered I had not arrived at the central bus station, but an outlying but still large one.  I took a shuttle bus to the huge central station and then an auto rickshaw through more thick traffic to a hotel I had booked from Mysore.  Upon arrival I discovered it was three times as expensive as listed in my most recent guidebook, almost $30 a night.  I should have asked on the phone.  After all the trouble of getting there, I checked in and then took a walk.

Bangalore (renamed Bengaluru in 2006, though it seems almost everyone still calls it Bangalore) is India's IT capital, though some of the industry is shifting to other places, especially Hyderabad and Pune, and it is booming.  It had about 600,000 people at independence and around 4 million, I think, 20 years ago.  I've read it now has 8 million people, although a recent newspaper said the 2011 census counted 11 million.  With its many parks, it was and is known as the Garden City, but with the huge number of people and accompanying traffic and pollution, it is less of a garden than before.  It is at about 3000 feet elevation, so it has a pleasant climate, except for the smog.

I walked down the main street, MG Road (MG for Mahatma Gandhi; almost every city in India seems to have an MG Road), with traffic whizzing by.  The sidewalks were uneven and almost an obstacle course.  But there were some nice buildings, both colonial and new ones, and quite a few trees. One attractive old stone building, the 1912 Tract and Book Society Building, right next to the Bible Society of India, is now a Hard Rock Cafe.  The elevated metro line runs down the middle of MG Road, though only five stations are open now.  There is metro construction in several places in the city.  After more than a mile I passed the large St. Mark's Cathedral and entered Cubbon Park, a large park (something like 300 acres) right in the city center.  It's a beautiful park, full of big trees and lots of bamboo.  A 1906 statue of Queen Victoria stands at the entrance, dedicated by her grandson the Prince of Wales.  (A statue of Gandhi is across the street.)  Bangalore, despite changing its name to a precolonial name, doesn't seem to mind colonial statues and street names.  In most other Indian cities the statue of the queen would have been removed.  I walked through the park until almost dark.  The red High Court is on one side, with an equestrian statue of what appears to be a British general behind the gate.  The monumental Vidhana Soudha, built to house the state government in 1954, is across the street from the High Court and the park.  I also walked past a dilapidated bandstand and a colonial era library building in the park before making my way out and back to my hotel.

I changed hotels the next morning, taking an auto rickshaw to a ten dollar a night one near the bus station.  Then I took an auto rickshaw back to Cubbon Park, getting off near the Vidhana Soudha and the High Court.  It was a Saturday, so the traffic was not as bad as on a weekday.  I walked through the park, very nice in the morning.  I walked past Queen Victoria's statue again, and found one of Edward VII.  After an early lunch at a Subway (lots of American fast food outlets in Bangalore), I visited two museums on the periphery of the park, an extensive and very interesting industrial and technological museum, with all sorts of working models, and the old Government Museum, dating from the 1800's, with sculpture and paintings and the like.

In the mid afternoon I took an auto rickshaw to the Bangalore palace of the Maharaja of Mysore.  The palace was built in the 1870's in the style of Windsor Castle.  The current Maharaja apparently lives there.  (The palace in Mysore now belongs to the state, though I understand the Maharaja is appealing the court verdict that awarded it to the state.)  It cost a whopping 450 rupees to enter, though you did get an audio guide, oozing sycophancy.  The palace was interesting, though, with a magnificent staircase leading to a durbar hall. There were separate quarters for men and women, elephant foot stools (and a massive elephant head mounted in the entry), and lots of very interesting photographs of the maharajas and their families.  The current maharaja looks fairly disreputable, and looked even more so in his younger days, in what appear to be photographs from the 1970's.   There are also an awful lot of paintings of nude women, almost all western, on the walls.  As I left the palace for a short walk around the grounds, with dead grass and lots of litter, I noticed two automobiles, a Mercedes sedan and an SUV, both with the insignia of the Maharaja on the front.  There were many old carriages, all in very poor condition, and several cannons on the grounds, through which I wandered until about 6.

The next morning I took an auto rickshaw to the huge city market, very dirty but full of activity.  It is quite a contrast to the modern Bangalore of MG Road.  I wandered around and spent quite a bit of time watching the flower sellers.  Nearby is the large Jama Masjid, the city's main mosque, but it was closed.  Also nearby is what remains of the Bangalore Fort.  On the sidewalk outside its walls a woman was selling strands of long black human hair, and they weren't too expensive:  only about one to three dollars, depending on the length.  I walked through the fort's impressive three gateway entry, but that is about all there is left.  It was captured by Cornwallis in 1791 and returned to Tipu the next year after the peace settlement following the Third Anglo-Mysore War in which Tipu turned over two of this sons as hostages.  I read that in this peace settlement he also reimbursed the British for their expenses in the war and ceded them half of his territory.

A little further south is what remains of Tipu's Summer Palace.  Commenced by Haider Ali in 1781 and finished by Tipu in 1791, it is similar to the summer palace in Srirangapatna, but almost all the painting has been lost.  It was interesting to wander through, though, with many tall teak pillars and little rooms and verandas.

Next door is one of Bangalore's oldest Hindu temples and I went there next.   The temple itself is not that interesting, but I arrived during a long and fascinating ceremony in the courtyard that I watched for over an hour.  About eight priests were involved, conducting all sorts of ceremonies with flowers, coconuts, milk, water, oil and fire, and much else.  Music was provided by three musicians, one playing one of those long Indian horns, one a two sided drum, and one a clarinet.  The people watching the ceremony, a family group, were friendly and seemed happy to have me there.  I was photographed several times by their photographer.  I was told the ceremony was to provide good luck to a couple on their wedding anniversary.  To do so, the priests were reenacting the wedding of Vishnu and Lakshmi.  Near the end, a mixture of milk or perhaps yogurt mixed with chunks of coconut and pomegranate seeds was dispensed by spoonfuls by a priest into the hands of the family members.  After the ceremony, money, ten rupee notes and coins, was given out by the family.  I saw one old man reprimanded for getting in line more than once.

I was getting hungry and walked to a famous Bangalore restaurant, the Malvalli Tiffin Rooms, in business since 1924.  It has some interesting photos on the walls and provided a delicious lunch for 170 rupees.  You buy a ticket and stand in a queue for a table to open, but since I was by myself, I got seated right away with three others at a table for four.  The Brahmin vegetarian lunch had maybe ten different dishes, several vegetable dishes plus rice and dosas (a spongy pancake).  Also included were a deep fried section of a bell pepper, fruit juice, a sweet soup, curd rice, coconut flavored barfi (a dessert), plus ice cream with little chunks of fruit.  And they kept refilling portions, if you wished.

The restaurant is near the entrance for the Lal Bagh Botanical Garden, where I went next.  Started by Haider Ali in 1760, it was improved and expanded by Tipu and, later, by British experts from Kew Gardens in London.  It comprises 240 acres.  I walked around, trying to avoid the afternoon sun, and then sat for a while reading a newspaper until it cooled off a bit.  Inside, besides some majestic trees and a fenced, scraggly rose garden, are a bandstand and a glass house modeled on the Crystal Palace in London dating from the 1880's.  Some trees were  planted by notables, including Queen Elizabeth, Indira Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru and "Niktha Krushova, President (U.S.S.R.) Russia."  On a rocky outcrop is a small tower said to be one of the four built by the city's founder, Kempe Gowda, in the 16th century.  There were lots of people on that Sunday afternoon, but it wasn't overwhelmed with people, as there is a ten rupee entry fee.  I stayed until about 5:30 and then took an auto rickshaw back to my hotel. As always in Bangalore, it took a while to find one that would use his meter.

I left Bangalore the next morning soon after 9, on a luxury bus heading north to Puttaparthi, about 90 miles away.  I probably should have waited for a regular bus, but the luxury one was leaving right away.  It cost about twice as much as a regular bus would have cost, but still less than $6.  There were only about ten of us on it and it traveled non-stop, but for one 20 minute break half way there.  And it took only 3 hours to get to Puttaparthi, despite our slow progress getting out of Bangalore's heavy Monday morning traffic.  Once out of the city we passed some sugar cane and lots of coconut palms, and even some vineyards, but the landscape soon became dry and rocky as we headed north.  We past the Nandi Hills to our west.  These are large, rocky hills, some that seem to be solid slabs of granite.  One of them is Nandidurg, with a former fort atop it.  We reached the Karnataka-Andhra Pradesh border (I ended up spending more than two months in Karnataka all together) and the scenery continued fairly desolate as we turned off onto a back road to reach Puttaparthi.

Puttaparthi, at somewhere between 1500 and 2000 feet elevation, is the hometown and site of the ashram of Sai Baba, who claimed he was the reincarnation of the original Sai Baba, a still widely revered holy man from Shirdi in Maharashtra who died in 1918.  Puttaparthi's Sai Baba was born in 1926 and died just recently, in 2011, after predicting that his reincarnation would be born eight years after his death.  He started the ashram in 1950 and is said to have begun working miracles when he was 14.  His concerned parents took him to priests who concluded he was not possessed by devils but by a god.  During his ministry he is said to have deemphasized the miracle working aspect and focused on spreading a message of universal love.  There are all sorts of his sayings (and his photos) all over town.  Even on the backs of auto rickshaws there are his portraits and sayings such as "Love All.  Serve All." and "Help Ever.  Hurt Never."  He was an odd looking guy, about 5 feet tall with a gigantic afro haircut, and in fact a sort of drooping, collapsed afro.  (One of my guide books calls it a Jimi Hendrix afro.)  He had, and still has, millions of followers, though, both Indian and foreign.  He almost always wore an orange cassock and apparently staged some spectacular ceremonies (for example, with motorcycles).

I checked into a small hotel upon arrival for the surprising sum of 100 rupees, less than $2, a night and got a clean and comfortable, though small, room.  (I later talked to a French woman who stayed in the ashram and she paid only 25 a night.)  After lunch and resting a bit, I took a walk around town.  Puttaparthi is just a small place, but Sai Baba's presence gave it a fancy hospital and schools, besides the enormous ashram itself.  I walked through the ashram after going through security.  Inside are vast blocks of housing for devotees, canteens, shops (including a book store, with hundreds of books in many languages by and about Sai Baba and music videos, including one entitled "Sai Baba Sings"), and an enormous hall where Sai Baba used to minister to his flock.  About 4:30 an evening service began in the hall, decorated in light pinks, blues and yellows and with dozens of chandeliers, that lasted until 6, with music provided by white clad devotees singing and playing a harmonium, tablas and cymbals while an enormous crowd gathered.  I went into the hall, sat on the floor with the others and listened.  Towards 6 there was a fire aarti in front of an empty chair at the front next to a sort of altar marked with "Love All.  Serve All." and with a giant photo of Sai Baba behind it.  After the aarti the music ended and devotees lined up to kneel and then touch their heads to the floor in front of the altar after standing in long lines.  I watched for almost an hour and they still hadn't finished.  There were quite a few westerners present, but the overwhelming majority were Indians.  The majority wore white clothing, and you are not allowed in with shorts.  Security both to get in the ashram and into the hall involved going through an electronic door frame and then getting frisked by three guys.  The workers are all very polite, bowing with folded hands and greeting you with "Sai Ram."  As I came out of the hall I noticed hundreds of fruit bats in the sky, flying right overhead, as close as 30 or 40 feet above at times.  I watched them until it got too dark to see them.

The next morning I spent about an hour at the morning service, which lasts for an hour and a half and is the same as the evening service.  Fewer people were present, though.  Afterward I noticed dozens of fruit bats hanging from nearby trees.  Quite a few were chirping or flapping their wings and occasionally one would fly about a bit before returning to a tree.

At 11 I took a bus back along the way I had come the day before for about 30 miles and then took another bus west another ten miles to the little town of Lepakshi to see its temple.  The second bus was soon crammed to the rafters with schoolkids and others.  I noticed one little boy had a Barbie bag.  I suppose neither he nor, fortunately for him, his schoolmates know anything about Barbie.  The temple site is supposed to be the place where a big bird (named Jatayu, as opposed to Big Bird) tried to stop Ravanna's abduction of Sita.  Ravanna killed the bird and Rama is supposed to have said to the slain bird "Lepakshi," which means "Get up, bird."  The temple was built by a Vijayanagar king in 1538 atop a large granite outcrop.  It is a large temple, with excellent sculpture in its two halls.  The first hall has something like 60 pillars, and the ceiling is painted with very interesting scenes, from the Ramayana, I think.  Some are very well preserved.  The sanctuary has a black statue of Shiva largely encased in gold and silver and colorful fabric.  A garrulous priest (usually they are not so friendly) talked to me for quite a while, though he was a bit hard to understand.  He wanted my phone number so his brother in Alabama could call me and in fact called his brother on his cell phone.  The brother was sleeping as it was about 1 a.m. in Alabama but we reached voice mail. I eventually got him to understand that I have no phone, but then he wanted to give me his brother's three phone numbers so I could call him.

After spending quite a bit of time in the halls with their interesting sculpture and ceiling paintings, I took a walk around the temple compound, surrounded by arcades.  Behind the main temple is a 20 foot high naga (seven headed snake) shielding a linga.  I then walked to the Nandi (Shiva's bull) statue east of the temple.  It is something like 27 feet long and 15 feet high.  Made of yellowish stone, it is supposed to be India's largest Nandi statue.  It was a hot day.  The newspaper had forecast a high of about 102 for a town to the north.  But there was little humidity.  I headed back to Puttaparthi, which took me four buses and well over two hours, getting back at 7 just as it got dark.

March 9-14, 2013: Mysore, Somnathpur and Srirangapatnam

I climbed Vindyagiri Hill one more time on the morning of the 9th before leaving Sravanabelgola on the way to Mysore.  I started at 6:30 and watched the sun rise over the plains a few minutes after I started.  I reached the top about 7 and watched the ceremonies at the feet of Gomateshvara.  There were more people than the day before, but the ceremonies were the same, with the big one starting about 9.  A woman totally clad in white, including a shawl, and carrying a peacock feather whisk, sat at the feet of the statue and blessed devotees with her whisk.  She must be a white clad Jain.  The sky clad guy showed up just before 9 and stood at the feet of Gomateshvara during the ceremony just as he had the day before.  I started down about 9:30 and watched three older people in sedan chairs, called dholis, quickly carried down the steps, each carried by four men.  The chairs facs backwards during the descent.

After breakfast I took the bus the five miles or so back to Channarayapatna before 12 and immediately got on a bus heading to Mysore, 50 miles or more to the south.  We passed through rolling country, with coconut palms and sugar cane growing, and crossed the Cauvery River at Srirangapatna before arriving in Mysore about 2:30.  We passed the large 1805 British Residency, set in a park, on the way to the bus station.  Mysore, with about 800,000 people, is at about 2500 feet elevation.  It was the capital of the princely state of Mysore, which ruled most of what is now southern Karnataka until 1947.  Mysore then became a state until it was included in the new language based state of Karnataka in 1956.  The Maharaja of Mysore became Karnataka's first Governor.  The Wadiyars (also spelled Wodeyars) were the ruling family and ruled Mysore from 1399, first as feudatories under the Vijayanagar Empire and, after its collapse in the late 16th century, in their own right, until 1947, except for about 40 years in the late 18th century.

I walked around town a bit in the late afternoon, glimpsing the huge palace of the Maharaja from afar through the gates and walking past many fine old colonial era buildings, including the columned Town Hall, with a statue of Ambedkar now in front, and an impressive looking hospital.  I walked through the very crowded Devaraja Market, filled with flowers, fruit, vegetables, and lots of people.

About 7 the next morning, a Sunday, I walked through the quiet early morning streets to the market.  Mysore is famous for its flower sellers, along with silk and sandalwood, and they were out early both on the street in front of the market and inside.  They sell flowers strung together in long strands, the strands piled in loops.  There were strands of yellow, purple with a few white flowers, and white with a few orange-pink blossoms.  The white jasmine ones cost the most and smell absolutely wonderful.  I was told the different types cost from 10 to 50 rupees a meter.  I saw them being measured for sale by sellers who strung them out with extended arms once, twice, three times or more, depending on much the buyer wanted to buy, and then breaking off the length to be purchased.  One guy was sitting on the sidewalk meticulously but quickly threading jasmine flowers and a few pink petals together.  After watching the flower sellers on the sidewalk for a while, I walked into the market, much less crowded in the early morning than it had been the previous evening.  Besides more flowers, there were enormous amounts of bananas on sale, plus other fruit.  Brightly colored kumkum powder, the powder used for the bindis on foreheads, was on sale, heaped in conical piles.  I walked through the fruit and then the vegetable sections and exited near the colonial era hospital building.  Several men were sleeping on the unkempt grass in the little park fronting it.  I walked past more of the old colonial buildings before having breakfast about 9:30.

After breakfast I walked to a railroad museum near the train station.  Along the way I passed walls covered with some interesting murals of the sights in and around Mysore and among all these Indian scenes was one panel depicting Mount Rushmore.  I wonder what that is all about.  The railroad museum was interesting, with several old steam locomotives and passenger carriages.  You could climb into all of them but one.  The one you couldn't enter was the 1899 Maharani's carriage.  You could, however, peer through its windows and see the Maharani's bed and table and bathroom with a sit down toilet.  The servants quarters took up part of the carriage, with four bunks and a squat toilet.  The museum was outdoors, but mostly under big trees, so not too hot in the midday sun.

From there I walked to the 1862 Jaganmohan Palace.  The Maharaja lived there for about 15 years around the beginning of the 20th century after his old palace burned down and before his new one was completed.  It's now a museum with old photos and paintings of the royal family, along with some of their old furniture and other possessions.  There are also paintings of King Edward VII and Queen Alexandra, Arthur Wellesley (the future Duke of Wellington), and Gladstone (entitled "Rt. Hon. Gladstone"), along with paintings of durbars and etchings of the 1799 Battle of Srirangapatna.  And there is a very interesting 1808 British map showing Mysore as of 1799.    I spent quite a bit of time there before eating a late lunch or early dinner at about 4.

About 6:30 I walked to the Maharaja's Palace, built from 1898 to 1913.  It is a huge building, with a very large parade ground in front of it.  Every Sunday night it is illuminated with 97,000 light bulbs strung all over it.  A large crowd had gathered and just before 7 the lights all came on, quite a spectacle.  Not only the palace, but also the gates and temple towers surrounding the palace were strung with lights and illuminated.  With the lights, a military band struck up just in front of the palace and played . . . The Stars and Stripes Forever!  It continued to play as long as the lights were on, about 45 minutes.  No other Sousa marches were played, but they did play the march from The Bridge over the River Kwai.  I wandered around and enjoyed the sight of the palace from various angles and distances until the lights went out and I left with the rest of the crowd.

The next morning I went to the market early and then walked to the Maharaja's Palace before 10, when it opened.  It was built by a British architect in Indo-Saracenic style, a combination of Moghul, Hindu and Gothic Revival styles.  The top is covered with red Mughal domes.  It replaced a wooden palace that burned down in 1897.  You get an audio tour as part of the price of admission with a foreigner's ticket and I spent about three hours wandering around inside.  The exterior looks better from a distance, and illuminated at night, but the inside is beautiful.

At the entrance, I passed the large brass Elephant Gate, with elephants depicted on it, along with the Mysore crest of two lions with elephant heads, with a two headed eagle above.  I passed the Maharaja's howdah, for riding atop his elephant, covered with 84 kilograms (185 pounds) of gold.  It also has a red and a green light, battery operated, so the Maharaja could signal the mahout when to go and when to stop.  One of the first stops inside was the magnificent and cavernous Wedding Hall, with tall painted cast iron pillars, from Glasgow, leading up high above to a stained glass ceiling depicting peacocks.  The peacock motif is continued on the tiled floor.  Chandeliers hang from the arches.  Scenes from the Ramayana and Mahabharata and other Indian epics are carved on stone pillars further from the center of the room and on the walls are painted 26 scenes from the Dasara celebrations in the 1930's.

Dasara (usually called Dussehra elsewhere in India) is the Hindu festival of ten days in September or October celebrating the victory of good over evil.  In northern India they usually celebrate Rama's victory over the demon king Ravana, but in Mysore they celebrate the killing of the demon buffalo Mahishasura by Shiva's wife Parvati in her avatar as Durga, or Chamundi.  The story is that Mahishasura, after a period of evil doing, was punished by the gods.  He appeared penitent and a reward was told he could not be killed by a man.  He quickly resumed his evil ways and had to be dispatched, after a great battle in which he took the form of a water buffalo, by Chamundi.  Mysore was named after Mahishasura (kind of odd -- why would they name it after the bad guy?) and Chamundi was the favorite deity of the Wadiyar maharajas.  The ten days of Dasara are celebrated with great spectacle and splendor in Mysore and the paintings of the 1930's celebrations were very interesting, even depicting old advertisements, such as for Lipton Tea, and 1930's automobiles.  But the most interesting details were of the Maharaja, his elephants, the rest of his spectacularly costumed retinue, and the crowds.  Another room had paintings and photographs of the maharajas.  The ten day Dasara celebrations and final day of parade are still held, though with a statue of Chamundi replacing the Maharaja atop the golden howdah on the elephant.

Upstairs is the Public Durbar Hall, a large room, about 150 by 50 feet, filled with about 30 brightly painted columns and open to the east, facing the huge parade ground.  The Maharaja would sit on his golden throne in the center of the room, with ministers below and guests to the side, and look out to the parade ground.  The ceilings, made of copper plates, are painted with scenes of gods and goddesses in a blue sky with white clouds.  In the center are Brahma the Creator, Vishnu the Preserver, Shiva the Destroyer, and Chamundi.  Nearby is the Private Durbar Hall, even more beautiful.  It is smaller, though still fairly large, with columns and sculpture, incised windows, a teak ceiling on the sides and a stained glass ceiling in the center.  The doors are beautifully inlaid with ivory and there is one set of silver doors, apparently the only remnant of the old palace. Leaving the palace, I walked around a bit.  There are elephants and camels you can ride.  I walked out onto the parade ground, but it was hot there at midday.  It gets to about 95 now in the daytime, down to about 70 at night.  I walked back to my hotel and spent the rest of the afternoon reading a newspaper and in an internet cafe.

The next morning I got a later start than I had hoped and took a 9:30 bus to Chamundi Hill, southeast of the city. It is visible from the palace, rising almost a thousand feet above the city.  A sign said it is 3489 feet above sea level.  The bus drive up, on a scenic, curving road for about seven miles, gives you good views of the hazy Mysore plains and the city below.  Near the top are temples, the main one dedicated to Chamundi. A colorful statue of Mahishasura, with a sword and not yet transformed into a water buffalo, is near the bus stop.  In front of the gopuram (the tall entrance gateway) of Chamundi's temple, pilgrims were leaving offerings of kumkum powder, bananas, flowers and incense sticks on a small cement enclosure labeled "Coconut Breaking Place."  As I was photographing them, a guy threw a coconut against the inner wall of the enclosure, splattering me, and more importantly my camera lens, with coconut water.  I cleaned my lens as best as I could while a group of about 20 women sang nearby.  A procession arrived, a cart dragged by several men with a palanquin, a priest, and an idol on top.  The priest descended and the idol was carried into the temple on the palanquin.  I walked into the temple and arrived at the sanctuary, with a flower bedecked gold statue of Chamundi, about time an aarti was ending.  I could hear the playing of horns in the courtyard around the sanctuary.  Outside the sanctuary, in the courtyard, was another labeled "Coconut Breaking Place," with a priest standing there to break your coconut.  In another corner of the courtyard another priest sat ready to give pilgrims a spoonful of holy water.  I walked around several times, watching all the activity.  Right in front of the sanctuary entrance, near a silver pillar, pilgrims were prostrating before a small shelf with flowers and kumkum powder.

I walked outside and then around the temple and about 11:30 started down the 1000 or so stairs that lead to the bottom.  There are views of Mysore on the way down.  I couldn't pick out the palace, but I could pick out the two towers of the 1930's Church of St. Philomena.  About a third of the way down is a 16 foot high black statue of Nandi, dating from 1659.  It had its own priest dispensing spoonfuls of holy water.  Upon reaching the bottom, I walked for a short while until a guy on a motorcycle gave me a lift to the bus stop, where I got a bus back to Mysore.  I was back about 1 and spent the afternoon in an internet cafe and doing errands.

The next morning I caught a bus before 9 heading east to Bannur, about 15 miles away.  On the way we crossed the Cauvery River, one of India's seven holy rivers.  The use of its water is a matter of dispute, especially in this drought year, between Karnataka and Tamil Nadu to the south.   We had passed lots of barren rice paddies, but close to the river were fields of sugar cane and even a few green rice paddies.  From Bannur I took another bus south for about 5 miles to Somnathpur, arriving just before 10.

There's not much at Somnathpur but a 13th century Hoysala Temple, the latest and most complete of the great Hoysala temples.  It is situated in the middle of a compound, with an arcade on the inside with 64 cells.  The temple itself is on a plinth, as at Belur and Halebid, but unlike at Belur and Halebid it has a triple towered roof, each tower over a sanctuary, with the sanctuaries to the west, north and south.  The entrance is to the east.  As at Belur and Halebid, it is covered with soapstone sculpture, though not as well done, I think, as at Halebid.  Along the base are six rows of figures, with elephants at the bottom and horses and riders just above.  (No lions.)  A good number of the horsemen still have their heads, so the Muslims were less thorough here.  Next comes a floral scroll, then scenes from the Hindu epics, and above those a row of the mythical beasts called yalis and then a row of geese.  Higher are gods and goddesses, smaller than at Belur and Halebid, only maybe two feet tall.  I walked around the temple several times, enjoying the figures.  Inside are lathe turned columns, a very well carved ceiling, and large idols (all manifestations of Vishnu, I think) in the three sanctuaries, but there are none of those lovely bracket figures, either inside or outside, as at Belur and Halebid.  I walked through the arcade, where workers were restoring parts of it.  By noon the black stone of the plinth was getting hot on my feet and I left about 12:30.  I started walking down the road towards Bannur through pretty, though dry and hot, countryside, but a bus to Bannur came within minutes and I hopped on.  I had to stand on the bus from Bannur back to Mysore, which got back about 2.  In the late afternoon I walked to the market and the government arts and crafts emporium, but that was about it.

The next morning I took an 8:30 bus to Srirangapatna, about 10 miles north.  Srirangapatna is an island in the Cauvery about three miles in length and a little over a mile at its widest.  It is most famous as the site of the 1799 battle that the British called Seringapatam, in which Tipu Sultan, the Tiger of Mysore, was defeated and killed.  However, there has been an important Hindu temple on the  island since the tenth century. The Vijayanagar Empire built a fort on the island in the 15th century and the Wadiyars made Srirangapatna their capital in the early 17th century.  Haider Ali, a Muslim general in the Wadiyars' army, took power from the Hindu Maharaja in 1761 and fought the British while allying with the French.  Upon his death in 1784, his son Tipu Sultan took over.  There were four Mysore wars between the British and Haider and Tipu, the first about 1767.  In the second, Haider decisively defeated the British in 1780, capturing and imprisoning the colonel in charge of the British troops.  In 1791 the British, under Lord Cornwallis of Yorktown fame, besieged Srirangapatna and as part of the peace Tipu had to send his two sons as hostages to the British.  In 1799 the British again besieged Srirangapatna, and after a month conquered the fort, with Tipu Sultan dying in the fighting.  I've read that Colonel Arthur Wellesley (later the Duke of Wellington), younger brother of the Marquess of Wellesley, then Governor General of British India, commanded the troops, though an obelisk in the fort said a general was in charge.

The bus passed remnants of the fort walls just before arrival.  The British destroyed parts of the fort's triple ring of walls, but much remains.  The bus dropped me off at the gates of a temple in the town center and I went into that temple and then into the main one nearby.  The latter is quite large, with additions to the 10th century sanctuary built over the years by Vijayanagar, Wadiyars and even Haider Ali.  It's not particularly beautiful, though.  In fact, it's fairly plain.  The sanctuary contains a recumbent Vishnu.  The town fills most of the old fort, which is in the northwest corner of the island, with the Cauvery on its north and southwest.  The southeast and east sides, facing the rest of the island, had the thickest of the triple walls.  I walked along the northern walls to a 1907 obelisk set up by the Maharaja of Mysore commemorating the battle.  After the battle, the British restored the Wadiyars to power, installing a four year old as Maharaja who reigned until 1868.  I had read elsewhere that the British had 4000 European troops and either 6000 or 8000 Indian troops, along with 16,000 troops of their ally the Nizam of Hyderabad.  The monument lists more than 1000 European casualties, including over 200 dead and missing.  The Scottish brigades seemed especially hard hit.  The Indian troops ("Native" troops, as they are described) had fewer casualties, only about 600, with 200 dead and missing.  The Indian troops came from all over:  Madras, Bombay, Bengal, Punjab and included Marathas, Gurkhas and Coorgis.

From the obelisk I retraced my steps and stopped at the dungeon along the north wall that once held British officers, including Colonel Baillie, captured in 1780.  He apparently died in custody in 1782.  From the walls there are good views of the rock filled Cauvery River, with its water quite low.  The ruins of Tipu's palace are not far inland from the north wall.  A little further east along the northern wall of the fort is the water gate, where Tipu was killed, and still further east there is a monument marking the place where his body was discovered after the battle.  Further east is another dungeon and then the large mosque with two minarets built by Tipu.  East of the mosque is the large Bangalore Gate complex.

I exited the gate and walked about half a mile to Tipu's summer palace.  It is not impressive from the outside, but is wonderful inside.  Made of teak and brick, it is two stories high and has an arcade with columns all around it, with shades hanging between the columns.  Inside the arcade are several rooms and it seems every square inch is painted, mostly with Islamic floral and geometric patterns.  However, the east and west outside walls are covered with figures.  On the east wall are pictured dozens of Indian maharajas and other princes and even a few princesses.  On the west wall is a depiction of the 1780 Battle of Pollilore, with the British surrounded and Colonel Baillie wounded and in a palanquin.  Haider and Tipu are atop elephants directing the battle.  French troops are also shown.  Besides this battle scene, there are three other scenes, including processions of Haider and his army and Tipu and his army, and a procession of the Nizam of Hyderabad, which seems a little strange to me as he sided with the British (and, in contrast to Tipu, kept his throne).  The palace also has paintings and prints of engravings, plus swords, guns, and some of Tipu's clothes.  There are some famous early 19th century British engravings, of the storming of the fort, of Tipu's last fight, of the discovery of his body, and of the surrender of the two hostage princes in 1791.  Some of these prints were in the palace and I have seen the others elsewhere.  It seems the British respected Tipu.  He called himself the Tiger of Mysore and had tiger stripes on his flags and other regalia.  The British victory medal, on display in the palace, has a British lion overcoming a tiger.

I spent quite a while at the summer palace and then walked more than a mile further east, almost to the eastern end of the island, and arrived at the Gumbaz, the domed tomb Tipu built for his father and mother.  It is an attractive granite building, though the dome had scaffolding on it.  Inside are the tombs of Haider, in the center, with his wife on one side and Tipu on the other.  All three were covered with colorful fabrics and showered with piles of very sweet smelling jasmine.  I looked around for a while and then walked to the bus station near the Bangalore Gate.  I got back to Mysore about 5:30.

March 3-8, 2013: Belur, Halebid and Sravanabelgola

On the morning of the 3rd I spent about three hours at the Tibetan Namdroling Monastery in Bylakuppe before leaving.  About 7 I watched as the nuns made their way from their nunnery to the monastery for their morning prayers.  I followed.  The nuns and some of the monks, along with some Tibetan lay people, first circumambulated the central Zangdogpalri Temple several times.  About 7:30 the nuns all gathered in a hall to  hear a lecture.  Monks and lay people all hurried to another hall, some almost running (in order to get good seats, I suppose) and then quickly doffing their shoes or sandals at the entrance.  There was quite a pile of footwear outside after they all entered.  In one of the small temples just a small group of monks were chanting among smoky incense to the accompaniment of drums, cymbals, horns and conch shells.  I watched from outside before heading to the Golden Temple, which was deserted except for one young monk tidying up.  He soon left and I had that wonderful place to myself.  I left when the Indian tourists started arriving and had breakfast and then read the newspaper with the friendly Tibetans at the hotel.

About 11 I took an auto rickshaw to the bus station in Kushalnagar and almost immediately got on a bus heading north to Hassan, 40 or 45 miles away.  The trip started inauspiciously as two passengers got into a heated and loud argument, one of them eventually weakly hitting the other twice.  This started off a big commotion, with the women in the bus the loudest.  It lasted for maybe fifteen minutes.

The road north was thin and bumpy through the dry countryside.  Karnataka had a bad monsoon last year and there are water shortages.  Still, I enjoyed this back road, at about 3000 feet elevation, on the edge of the Mysore Plateau, the southernmost extension of the Deccan Plateau that comprises much of central and southern India.  There were lots of uncultivated rice paddies.  It took about two and a half hours to reach Hassan, where I quickly got a 2 p.m. bus northwest 20 or 25 miles to Belur, arriving about 3.  I've become a big fan of Indian buses.  They are rickety old things (in fact, rickety even if new), but usually have plenty of leg room and almost always you can get a seat.  You rarely have to wait and there are no movies or curtains so you can see the countryside go by.

In Belur I rested a bit, had a late lunch, and about 4:30 made my way to the Chennakeshava Temple in the middle of town.  It dates from the 12th century and was built by the Hoysala Kingdom which ruled this part of southern India from the 11th to the 14th centuries.  Belur was their first capital and the temple was built to celebrate a victory over the Chola Kingdom and the king's conversion from Jainism.  The temple is inside a compound entered through a seven story gopuram, or tower, of much later date I think.  The main temple, at the center of the walled enclosure, appears squat, and is without a shikara, or tower, but it is covered with amazing sculpture, both inside and outside.  The sculpture is of soapstone, which is very easy to carve when first quarried but then hardens with exposure to the air.  The sculpture is therefore very fine, like that of ivory or sandalwood.  On the outside are rows and rows of figures, elephants at the bottom (600 to 700 of them circling the temple), lions above them, and in higher rows dancing girls, scenes from Hindu literature and the gods themselves.  There are thousands of figures.  Particularly beautiful are brackets attached to the eaves featuring dancing girls.  Inside is more beautiful sculpture, including more of the brackets with dancing girls, polished to a very black shine.  There is a spot light that you can pay to light to see the sculpture on the ceiling and elsewhere that is otherwise impossible or difficult to see well.  Also, the pillars inside were made on lathes and thus have a remarkable symmetry.  No two are alike.  The temple is an active one, manned by several bare chested brahmin priests.  The deity (an avatar of Vishnu) in the sanctuary stands about ten feet high, a polished black statue bedecked with silver and flowers.

There are other temples in the compound, also adorned with sculpture.  I walked around looking at everything until dark.  There were quite a few pilgrims and tourists.  Most had left by dark, but there were still quite a few Indians, and me, around to see the aarti just after 7 and before the closing of the temples.  The priests waved candelabras and plates of fire in front of the idol in the sanctuary while we all watched.  A drum, a clanging bell, and, oddly, a saxophone, provided musical accompaniment. The priests brought out the plate of fire from the sanctuary so the crowd could bless themselves with it.  A priest had first pushed back the crowd with a sort of scepter before the priest with the plate of fire appeared.  Another priest came out with an urn of water and dispense small spoonfuls into the hands of the devotees, who drank a bit of it and spread the rest over their heads.  Next, a priest brought out a conical gold cap which he briefly held over the head of each devotee.  I left about 7:30 after the ceremony ended.

I walked back to the temple the next morning at about 7:30.  It was quiet and cool, with few people.  I looked at all the marvelous figures on the walls.  After some time the saxophone player appeared, leading three priests around the stone floor of the compound.  One priest carried a big urn, the second a scepter, and the third a fly whisk.  They circled the main temple and then went in the main entrance.  Just after 9 began the morning aarti, with only about fifteen of us watching and with the accompaniment of only the saxophone.  It was similar to the evening before, but with less pushing by the priest with the scepter.  Afterward, the saxophonist led the priests to the other temples in the compound to perform similar rites to open them up for the day.  I walked around some more taking in all the sculpture and left for breakfast about 10.  Two apparent sadhus, one clad in orange and the other in white, came in and walked around just before I left.

I spent the middle part of the day in an internet cafe, had a late lunch, and then went back to the temple about 5.  I enjoyed seeing all the sculpture again in the late afternoon cool.  Just before 7 the evening aarti commenced, followed by ceremonies closing up the other temples in the compound.  The saxophonist and a drum player, playing the two sided, hand held Indian drum called a dhole (I think), sound quite like a jazz duo, very strange for a Hindu ceremony.  The saxophone, of course, is hardly traditional, invented in Belgium in the early 1800's, if I remember correctly.  As I left the temple compound, there were scores of people clad mostly in orange preparing to spend the night on the platform in front of the temple compound.  Many others were walking up the street towards the compound.

The next morning I found out why.  I headed to the temple early in the morning, arriving just after the big doors were opened.  Many of the huge crowd of orange clad people entered, but most stayed outside, as did I.  It turned out they were on a ten day religious pilgrimage from Bangalore to Dharmastala, a temple town over the Ghats and inland from Mangalore, about 200 miles of walking all together.  Big groups lined up sitting in rows on the platform in front of the compound to have their breakfast served.  First, plates made of dry leaves stitched together were placed in front of them.  Then guys toting metal pails of a soupy rice and vegetable mixture, slightly orange in color, ladled big spoonfuls of the mixture onto the leaf plates.  A handful of something crispy was dropped on top of each portion and the people commenced to eat rapaciously, all with only their right hands, of course.  They must have been very hungry.  I walked around and watched and took photos of the friendly bunch.  Many invited me to partake, but I managed to restrain myself.  As one large group finished, another group took its place.  I was told there are 4000 or 5000 of them on their way to Dharmastala.  Most were gone by 9, on the road to Dharmastala, with the Western Ghats still ahead of them.  Before I left for quite a different breakfast of my own, I spotted some of the support trucks, one with a huge vat of the soupy mixture in the back.  Bucketfuls were poured out of it into a smaller vat on the platform, and the servers loaded up their bucketfuls from that.  Many other trucks seemed to be full of the bags containing the personal possessions of the pilgrims.

I had planned to go to Halebid, ten miles away, early that morning, but after spending so much time with the pilgrims, I decided to spend the middle part of the day in an internet cafe and then took a bus shortly after 2 northeast to Halebid.  Halebid was the second capital of the Hoysalas, until it was conquered and destroyed by the Delhi Sultanate in the early 14th century.  Fortunately, the magnificent 12th century Hoyasaleshvara Temple was not destroyed, although it was damaged by the Muslim iconoclasts.  It, too, appears rather squat, like the temple in Belur, with no shikara, or tower, and in fact it is incomplete.  But it is covered with exuberant sculpture, thousands of figures, similar but of better quality, it seems, than at Belur, and many more figures.  As at Belur, the figures are in rows, something like nine of them, and there are those beautiful bracket figures.  Again, there are elephants, then lions, then horses and riders rising in rows from the base.  Then rows of floral designs, mythical beasts called yalis, geese, and dancing girls and musicians (and a few copulating couples).  One row has scenes from the Hindu epics circling the building.  The Muslims seem to have been particularly determined to decapitate the horsemen.  While most of the figures are less than a foot in height, there are many, of gods and goddesses, that are about half human size, and these are wonderfully done.  Some are extraordinary:  Krishna holding up a mountain with trees and people and animals on the mountain, the demon Ravanna doing the same with Mount Kailash with Shiva and Parvati on top,  Shiva inside a demon elephant.  Inside the temple is more sculpture.  The temple has two sanctuaries, with linga, and two mandapa halls leading to the sanctuaries, the two mandapas linked by a corridor.  Inside are those lathed turned columns as at Belur.  To the east of the temple are two pavilions, each containing a huge Nandi, the bull that is Shiva's vehicle.

I spent almost four hours looking around, with the stone very hot on the sunny west side.  (You have to go barefoot on the stone platform upon which the temple sits.)  Fortunately, there were ropy fabrics on the stone, although they didn't cover the whole west and south sides.  The temple is in a grassy park, with purple blossoming trees, in the middle of a small town.  I got a van back to Belur about 7, a trip back in the dark.

The next morning there were still orange clad pilgrims heading up Belur's main street towards the temple.  A guy told me they do this every year, arriving over four days.  About 9 I took a bus back to Halebid and spent most of the day there.  I spent about an hour again at the Hoysaleshvara Temple.  Six very polite little kids, the girls beautifully dressed, asked to be photographed and I happily did so.  I walked a little south to the outskirts of the little town and explored three Jain temples, two much larger than the third.  They had little sculpture, though they did have those lathe turned columns of black soapstone inside and tall, erect, naked statues of tirthankars in the sanctuaries.  East, beyond a beautiful grove of coconut palms and next to a man winnowing some sort of grain, was another Hoysala temple, smaller and much more incomplete than the main one in town.  The sculpture was not as prolific, but still was very interesting and the site was deserted but for the caretaker and me.  I spent about an hour looking around.  The figures were similar to the main temple and more horsemen were preserved, though the Muslims still did a fairly thorough job.  There were several panels of a completely nude woman, except perhaps for a little jewelry, with  snakes entwined around her.  I hadn't seen that before.  I sat under a palm tree eating some raisins I had brought and then walked back to town and had a good lunch at the state tourist hotel.  Afterward, I went to the little museum, filled with great sculpture, next to the main temple and then back to the main temple itself to look around.  It was cloudy, so the stone platform on which the temple sits was not too hot on the feet.  I enjoyed looking all around again.  There is always something you didn't see before.  I took the bus back to Belur about 4:30.  There were orange clad pilgrims here and there along the road heading towards Belur.

The next morning at 8 I walked up to the temple in Belur.  There were only a few of the pilgrims in front of the compound.  Four musicians were sitting in front of the entrance and playing, attended by a small group of singing pilgrims also sitting on the stone platform.  A keyboardist using a bellows operated keyboard, a drummer with two tablas (small drums), and two guys with cymbals comprised the group.  They were a friendly bunch.  I listened for a while, until the pilgrims got up and set off on their journey to Dharmastala.  I went into the temple compound and looked around again, staying until after the completion of the aartis that begin about 9.  The priests move around from temple to temple, starting with the main one.  I left about 10 and had breakfast and then caught a bus about 11 southeast to Channarayapatna, about 45 or 50 miles away, passing through Hassan again on the way.  I saw small groups of orange clad pilgrims, some of them barefoot, along the road heading towards Belur.  There were many coconut palms and other trees along the way, but the land was brown.  After about two hours we reached Channarayapatna, where I immediately caught a bus heading southeast for another five miles or so to the little town of Sravanabelgola, with more big groves of coconut palms on the way.  Approaching the little town, at about 3000 feet elevation, I could see the giant granite statue of Gomateshvara on the 400 foot high rocky hill hovering above the town.  In fact, there are two rocky hills straddling  the town, Vindyagiri with the statue to the south and Chandragiri, about half as high, to the north.  A large tank lies between the two hills, with the town around it and between the hills.

Sravanabelgola is an important Jain pilgrimage site and I checked into the Jain pilgrim accommodation for 210 rupees, about $4, a night.  I rested a bit in my room. found a newspaper to read, and had an idli snack before exploring around the town.  I went into the small town's biggest temple and a smaller, much nicer one nearby, with some intricate wall painting and beautiful bronze statues of the tirthankars.  About 5 I started up Chandrgiri.  You can't wear shoes or sandals, but it was a cloudy afternoon so the steps cut into the rocky hill were not too hot.  It didn't take long to climb up about 150 feet in elevation up the sloping granite surface to a flat part of the hill a little below the rocky summit.  Here there is a compound with about fifteen Jain temples, none of them very large.  Inside the compound are also towers and inscriptions on the rock face and on stelae.  As I got up there the sun disappeared behind a big black cloud.  There were good views, south toward Vindyagiri and the huge statue of Gomateshvara, with the tank and town below, and north down to a small village set among coconut palms, with a Hoysala temple at one end of the village.

The hill is called Chandragiri because the Jains believe that Chandragupta Maurya, the 3rd century B.C. emperor that unified much of India, with an empire centered in what is now Bihar state in the Ganges Valley, became a Jain near the end of his life and came to this hill to meditate and die.  In the 10th century a Jain general (which seems a little odd, because Jains are supposed to practice complete non-violence, to the extent of wearing masks to avoid accidentally inhaling and killing insects) came here and supposedly shot an arrow across to Vindyagiri Hill, hitting a huge rock that was then carved into the statue of Gomateshvara.  I looked around the compound and in the temples until they closed at 6, and then made my way down the hill.  Power was out in the town from 7 to 8 and 9 to 10, a regularly scheduled outage, I was told.

The next morning about 7 I started the climb up Vindyagiri.  About 20 pilgrims were with me.  There are about 650 steps, most cut into the at times steeply sloping granite surface of the hill.  The sun was up, but it was cool in the early morning.  Again, we were walking in bare feet.  The views down to the town and tank and across to Chadragiri as we ascended were great.  Near the top we entered a walled compound, where there are temples, inscriptions carved onto the granite slope, and more great views.  There were also more steps up to another compound with several gates finally leading to a courtyard with the 58 foot high white granite statue of Gomateshvara.  The statue, carved out of a single block of granite about 980 A.D., is beautiful, but oddly proportioned, with the legs much too short for the body.  As with all Jain statues, Gomateshvara is naked, with his arms held rigidly at his sides.  The story is that the first Jain tirthankar renounced his kingly throne and split his kingdom between his two sons.  One son went out and conquered other kingdoms before coming back and demanding that his brother Bahubali submit to him.  Bahubali refused and challenged his brother to single combat, which apparently consisted of three feats of strength.  I'm not sure what the first one was, but the second, believe it or not, consisted of them both standing in chest deep water and splashing each other.  Sounds like something from Monty Python.  Bahubali won the first two matches and was on the verge of winning the third, a wrestling match, when he realized the futility of all earthly ambitions and renounced his throne.  He departed and meditated in the forest so intently that vines grew around his legs and arms and anthills and snakes gathered at his feet.  The statue of Gomateshvara is Bahubali in mediation, complete with vines around his legs and arms and anthills and snakes around his feet.

I had reached the statue ahead of the twenty or so who started out with me, but there were a few others at the feet of the statue praying, and an orange clad, white turbaned priest with buck teeth was conducting a ceremony at the feet with orange clad devotees.  Apparently, pilgrims come up the mountain and can take off their clothes and don orange robes, kept in a pile near the entrance to the courtyard.  Soon another ceremony began, with a family of five.  The orange clad father and maybe ten year old son, along with the sari clad wife, stood inside the fence at the bottom of the statue, while the two teenage daughters stood just outside taking photographs.  There was bell ringing and pouring of water on the huge feet of the statue.  Coconuts were offered and placed on the toes of the statue.

I walked around a bit, checking out the statues of the 24 tirthankars in a gallery behind the statue.  About 9 another, bigger, ceremony began.  The priest used a cordless microphone and tested it by intoning "hello, hello" several times.  Besides the priest, a guy in orange with a big gold watch and at least five gold rings was joined inside the little fence at Gomateshvara's feet by five other men in orange and one woman in a sari.  A drummer and a guy playing one of those long Indian horns began playing.  While I was watching the musicians on the porch around the courtyard, a pot bellied sky clad Jain had appeared and was now standing next to Gomateshvara's feet.  There are two schools of Jain, white clad, whose most intense devotees dress all in white, and sky clad, whose most intense devotees dress in nothing.  White clad are more prevalent in north India while sky clad are more prevalent in south India.  The ceremony, with the music playing throughout, was very interesting.  The devotees poured urns of water, milk and some orange liquid on a small gold statue of Gomateshvara and on one of the huge feet of the monolithic statue.  The sky clad guy stood nearby, occasionally dipping his fingers into the liquids poured onto the foot.  (Every 12 years there is a big ceremony here.  Scaffolding is built behind the statue and 108 pots of water, milk and other liquids are poured over the statue.)  Flowers were also dropped over both the small statue and the foot.  The priest also wielded a plate with fire on it.

Nearing the end of the ceremony the sky clad guy sat down, near the feet.  He carried only a short, bushy whisk made of peacock feathers, which he used to bless the devotees who prostrated before him.  Right after the ceremony ended the priest left the courtyard and conducted another short ceremony blessing an idol in a little tower shrine just outside the courtyard entrance.  By now I had been up there about two hours and started to walk down, visiting some of the temples in the compound and enjoying the views over the countryside.  Near the gate of the compound I paused to enjoy the view before heading down the rock cut steps in the granite slope.  A group of middle aged and older French tourists were just arriving.  Then the sky clad guy appeared, on his way back down.  He happily posed for photographs by foreigner and Indian alike, and blessed several of the Jains who prostrated at his feet.  I was sitting at the entrance gate watching it all, and taking photographs myself, when he came on down the last steps to the gate, sat down in front of me and asked me where I was from.  We had a short conversation and he said he was on his way down for a meal and asked me to visit him in town later in the day.  He hurried down while I walked down more leisurely, getting back about 10:30 for breakfast.

After breakfast I moved into a nice hotel above the friendly restaurant where I had been eating.  The Jain accommodation had had a lot of mosquitoes the night before, and the hotel had a generator.  And it was 10 rupees cheaper.  Quite a good deal.  I spent the hot part of the day at an internet cafe and about 3:30 or 4 went to look for the sky clad guy.  I couldn't find him, though.  Maybe I misunderstood his directions.  Instead, I visited some of the smaller, but also very old (almost a thousand years) temples in town and then followed a path that went around the east side of Chandragiri Hill before reaching the road that led to the village I had seem from Chandragiri the evening before.  The village had about 20 houses with red tile roofs.  It had electricity and water pumps, but seemed very dirty.  The people were friendly, though, as I walked through.  A man was using a wooden mallet to open brown pods containing black seeds.  He gave me part of the pod to taste and it tasted like tamarind.  He called it chinchi and said it sells for 60 rupees a kilo.  He had a fluffy little white dog (quite a surprising breed of dog for that village) next to him that he wanted me to include in the photograph when I took a photo of him.

There were four really quite pretty young women in that small village.  Two were washing clothes, one was sitting with some other woman checking out the wares, in a big basket, of an itinerant bangle saleswoman, and one was delousing her mother's hair.  The last one asked me my name, so I asked her hers and then asked if I could take a photograph.  She quickly jumped up and struck a pose like a model, with her hand positioned on her hip and her head tilted.  The bangle saleswoman told me a dozen bangles sold for 15 rupees.  Cattle roamed the village, including two seemingly new born calves.  Old women rested on verandas and carried firewood from the surrounding fields.  Nothing was planted in the paddy fields, because of the drought perhaps.  The village tank was pretty dry, with one woman washing clothes in it.  A fairly good size Hoysala Temple, with maybe 40 or 50 statutes sculpted on its walls, stood at one end of the village, but was locked up.

I walked further, to some railroad tracks, and then turned back.  I had good views of the two hills, including the statue of Gomateshvara.  The bangle seller walked towards me on her way to another village and again posed for a photograph.  Back at the village a grandmother opening up chinchi pods posed for me along with her grandson on a bicycle.  From the village I walked to a rocky area of smooth granite outcrops and boulders.  There were signs of quarrying, but whether it was recent or hundreds of years ago I couldn't tell.  I came to a Muslim graveyard (there is a mosque in town) with very crudely lettered granite headstones.  The place was covered with litter, including lots of little plastic straws.

Back at the outskirts of town at dusk, I had a good view of people coming down Vindyagiri Hill.  There was a lot of smoke near the top of the hill.  In town the drummer and horn player I'd seem in the morning atop Vindyagiri were playing just outside the Jain temple near the big one.  I went inside and a young priest was conducting a ceremony with a plate of fire next to an altar in the corner.  The sky clad guy was seated right in front, with maybe six other people behind him.  I sat behind them all and watched.  The priest later blessed them, and others who came in, with little spoonfuls of water on their heads.  A man came in dressed all it white, including a shawl, and sat down.  He, too, had a peacock whisk.  Perhaps he was a white clad Jain.  People were all quite friendly.  The lights were on so I could see the intricate wall paintings.  The sky clad guy left before I could talk to him.

March 1-2, 2013: Bylakuppe Tibetan Colony

I finally left Honey Valley in the hills of Coorg on the 1st of March, though not until mid afternoon.  It was hard to leave.  In the early morning I took a last walk up and down the road down the valley before breakfast.  I thought about taking the jeep down the valley in time for the 11 a.m bus to Madikeri, but instead spent the morning and early afternoon at the plantation.  I watched coffee berry pickers just up the hill from the plantation buildings.  A man and woman finished clearing berries from several bushes and I watched them pick out the leaves and then bag the berries.  They stopped for the simple lunch they had brought and chewed pan (betel nut) afterward before disappearing into the coffee bushes further up the steep slope in search of other bushes to pick.

I sat for a while enjoying the views and then had lunch before taking the jeep down the valley about 2:30 to catch a bus to Madikeri that passed by just after 3.  This was a very slow bus, at one point jammed with school children on their way home, with many stops.  Still, I enjoyed the trip.  I was now able to spot all the pepper vines growing on trees among the coffee bushes.  We arrived in Madikeri just after 5 and soon caught another bus heading east to Kushalnagar, only a forty minute trip.  Kushalnagar is downhill from Madikeri.  It is about 3000 feet in elevation and on the Cauvery, or Kaveri, River.  It is on the eastern edge of Coorg, the boundary being the river.  A French guy who had also stayed at Honey Valley and I took an auto rickshaw the three miles, crossing the river, to Bylakuppe, a Tibetan settlement.  There is a guesthouse just across from one of the monasteries, but foreigners are not allowed to stay there without a hard to get permit.  Nonetheless, the friendly monk in charge told us to leave our bags and come back after 7, the time the police apparently stop checking, to get rooms.

We did so and walked into the Namdroling Monastery across the street.  There are several temples in the large compound.  Tibetan monks and lay people were circumambulating the Zangdogpalri Temple at the center of the monastery and there were Indian tourists looking around.  It was getting dark as we looked around and entered two of the temples, including the Zangdogpalri.  Close to 7 I discovered the huge Golden Temple was open and went into that spectacular hall before the lights went out at 7, closing time.  I made my way back to the hotel and got a very nice room, with hot water, for only 350 rupees, about $6.50.  We had very good Tibetan vegetarian momos (dumplings) for dinner in the friendly restaurant below the hotel.  But for one other who apparently had a permit, we were the only westerners there.  I spent a very comfortable and quiet night there, though I did find a tick between my toes, which I managed to remove, and then crush with great satisfaction, without leaving its head embedded in my foot.  Probably a souvenir from Honey Valley.

The next morning about 7:30 I walked over to the monastery.  I have read that there are 18,000 Tibetan refugees settled in Bylakuppe.  Seven thousand are monks, in several monasteries.  I think they have been here since the 1960's, or maybe the '70's.  I asked and got both answers.  In the central prayer hall, the Zangdogpalri Temple, a senior monk was lecturing to a packed crowd of red robed monks and nuns.  Signs forbade entry during prayer time.  In two other smaller temples nearby just a few monks were chanting, aided by drums, those long Tibetan horns, and cymbals.  Again, entry was forbidden but you could watch from the doorways.  I wandered around, watching and listening to the goings on.  Few other people other than the monks, nuns and Tibetan lay people were around.  Eventually, I made my way into the cavernous Golden Temple, almost empty except for some early arriving Indian tourists.  It is a new building, finished and opened by the Dalai Lama in 2002.  It is beautiful inside and out, though seeing a Tibetan temple among palm trees seems a little odd at first.  Inside are spectacular paintings and three huge statues made of copper and covered with gold and jewels.  The central statue, of Buddha, is 60 feet high, while the other two are 58 feet high, one of the monk who brought Buddhism to Tibet and the other of an earlier Buddha.  The hall is very impressive and a strange mixture, at once very modern in construction while still very Tibetan.  In front of the central statue and all the other decoration are three thrones, the largest and most ornate with a large photo of a smiling Dalai Lama on it, the next and second largest with a photo of a Tibetan monk, possibly the leader of this sect of Tibetan Buddhism, and finally a third, empty.  The monk at the hotel had asked us to check out by 9, so I hurried back to the hotel and did so.  As I was leaving my room just before 9, I saw the red robed nuns, with shaved heads, walking back to their nunnery a little down the road after their morning prayers and lecture at the monastery.

I had breakfast and then returned to the monastery to look around.  Lots of weekend Indian tourists were arriving.  I found a model of the parent monastery of this one, located in the Kham region of eastern Tibet at about 11,000 feet elevation.  I checked out the three of four story buildings where the monks have their rooms.  There is also a large school, called a "Junior High School."  I followed a row of prayer wheels around about half of the compound and saw a row of maybe twenty large white stupas.  It was all very nice, but again seemed odd with Tibetan people and building among the palm trees.  Some of the monks in the heat of the day had abandoned their red shawls and wore their long red skirts with bright yellow undershirts.  I went back into the spectacular Golden Temple and looked around again and then sat on a cushion on the floor.  Lots of Indian tourists were coming in and out.  Signs admonish "Maintain Silence," but I am afraid Indians have difficulty with that.  At least there was no screaming to hear the echo, though some of the little kids were quite loud.

About 2 I had a momo lunch and then walked to the Sera Monastery maybe a mile and a half away, passing the nunnery, a Tibetan village that seemed mostly deserted, and a grove of trees filled with colorful prayer flags on the way.  There wasn't much agriculture along the way, perhaps because of the drought.  There are actually three monasteries in the area I walked to, two different Sera ones (Sera is a particularly important monastery just outside of Lhasa) and one other.  I think there are something like six monasteries all together in the Bylakuppe area.  I walked up to the huge hall of one of the two Sera monasteries and a friendly monk unlocked the big red doors, with golden fittings, and showed me around inside.  Built in the 1990's, it is beautifully decorated, with elaborate paintings and wall hangings.  I looked around and then sat outside on the steps with him.  He told me he was from Kangpo, near Lhasa.  An elderly monk joined us.  They were both very friendly.  Some very young monks, less than ten years old, came by, perhaps from school.

After a while I walked up through streets to the other Sera Monastery, this one much less elaborately decorated.  In fact, it seemed to be under renovation.  About 5 I took an auto rickshaw back to the Namdroling Monastery, but I should have stayed at Sera, as Namdroling was full of Indian tourists on that Saturday afternoon while there were none at Sera.  I did look around and sit in the Golden Temple and later just opposite the Zangdogpalri Temple to watch all the monks and other Tibetans circumambulating before dark.  After 7 I checked in again at the hotel and had another momo dinner before another quiet night.

February 18-28, 2013: Coorg (Kodagu)

February 18 dawned clear and cool in Mangalore, quite a contrast from the previous day's rain and clouds. After more than three weeks on India's Arabian Sea coast, I headed inland, taking a 10 o'clock bus east just north of the Netravati River, then crossing it after about 15 miles and heading southeast for about 80 miles to Madikeri.  I was heading to the hilly region formerly known as Coorg, but now as Kodagu, though most people still seem to call it Coorg..  The bus first passed through very scenic green, rolling hills, with coconut palms and many other trees, including groves of very tall areca palms, many of these thin trees 40 or 50 feet high, with groves of the much shorter banana trees underneath.  There were no mosques or women in black, but there were a few churches.  About 12:30 we arrived at the small town of Sullia, at only about 400-500 feet elevation, for a half hour lunch stop.  The next 30 miles were particularly beautiful as we ascended into the Western Ghats and the Coorg region.  We passed through dense jungle, with many great views.  We also passed more areca palm groves, with the palms in rows and columns maybe six or eight feet apart. Bananas grew underneath, and higher up, coffee grew underneath. Even higher up there was more coffee growing under jungle trees, and the coffee bushes were flowering, the white flowers emitting a powerful sweet smell that you could smell even from the bus.

A little after 2 we arrived in Madikeri, the main city of Coorg, at an elevation of about 3500-4000 feet and with about 30,000 people.  It is a hilly, pleasant town, with a small fort on a hill, and I walked around after getting a hotel.  The native people of Coorg, or Kodagu, are called Kodavas and are light skinned and thought to be perhaps of Kurdish or Persian ancestry, perhaps arriving in India's northwest when the Persian Empire conquered the region in the 6th century B.C. and subsequently making their way to south India.  Some speculate they may be descended from Alexander the Great's Greek troops.  They have a strong military tradition, having maintained their independence for centuries, including fighting off Tipu Sultan from Mysore in the late 1700's.  In 1834 the British established a protectorate following an appeal by nobles against a despotic ruler who was killing off his relatives, and others, apparently as a job protection program.  It failed, as the British deposed him.  The Kodavas make up only about one-sixth of the population now, with many immigrants from Kerala and other parts of south India.

I walked to the fort on a hill in the center of town.  Inside the former palace of the raja now houses district government offices.  There is also a church inside the fort, now a museum.  I walked around inside the fort and atop the walls and then walked to Raja's Seat on the west side of town, passing a couple of statues of military men, including one who was India's army chief of staff in the 1960's.  Raja's Seat is a little park looking out over the hills to the west.  I watched the sun set through the clouds about 6:30.  My cold water bucket bath was a little chilly that night.

The next morning I walked through town and then north for about three or four miles, along narrow roads, to Abbi Falls.  There were ups and downs, but the sky was cloudy for most of the morning and it wasn't too hot.  Coffee was blooming all along the route, emitting a wonderful odor.  Many other flowers, including poinsettias and bougainvillea, lined the route.  It took me about two hours, with a steep descent at the end, to reach the end of the road and the path through more blooming coffee bushes down to the base of the falls. They fall about 70 feet, but in steps with the last drop perhaps 40 feet.  I spent about three hours in that beautiful area, at the falls and wandering along the trail through the coffee.  I sat for a while and ate raisins and cashews I had brought from Madikeri.  Quite a few Indian tourists came through.  At one point a great cacophony of cicadas sprung up, for no apparent reason, and then subsided after maybe fifteen minutes.

Sometime after 2 I began the walk back to town.  The sun was out and it was hotter than in the morning, but I enjoyed the views and the smell of the coffee blossoms.  An elderly Kodava man along the way explained the names of some of the flowers.  Coffee berries were drying on a tarp in front of one house, and an elderly woman was shifting them around with her feet, so that they would dry evenly, I guess.  By about 5 I was back at the northern outskirts of town, where the tombs of the rajas are located.  Rain appeared to be imminent, but the black clouds passed without rain as I explored the tombs, dating from about 1800 and in Indo-Saracen style.  I got back to my hotel about 6.

The sky was clear the next morning and about 10:30 I left on a bus that traveled southwest for about 25 miles, through more coffee plantations and a few small towns and crossing over the Kaveri River, one of India's seven holy rivers, whose headwaters are in Coorg, to Kabbinakad, nothing more than a junction with a few shops.  Kabbinakad is perhaps 800 feet lower in elevation than Madikeri, but from the junction a jeep took me up a steep road for about two miles to Honey Valley Estate, a coffee, pepper and cardamom plantation with rooms for tourists.  It is located up a beautiful valley, with coffee growing under huge jungle trees.  I checked into one of their cheap (only 450 rupees, about $8, a night) but comfortable budget rooms and then had a delicious all-you-can-eat buffet vegetarian lunch for 150 rupees with a couple from Hyderabad, an architect and his wife, who had arrived that morning.

The plantation is at about 4000 feet elevation and was started as an apiary, a bee farm, in 1984.  By 1991 it was India's largest producer of honey, 6000 kilos, or 13,200 pounds, a year.  In 1994 a disease from Thailand that arrived overland through Burma killed off the bees and they switched to coffee and tourism. The Kodava couple, Suresh and Susheela Chengappa, who own the place, originally lived in a mud house with no electricity and no access road, just a trail.

The valley has has grass topped hills on either side, with jungle on the slopes, and about 3 I walked up to the pass only about 300 feet higher in elevation than the buildings and then up Manjamotte, the hill to the east of the valley.  I got back about 6 and was delighted to find that there was hot water for a bucket bath in the communal bath house for the cheapest rooms.  I had another great meal for dinner.  Breakfasts are 100 rupees, lunch and dinner 150, and if you want an egg it is 15 per egg.  So it was costing me only about $15 a day to stay at that beautiful place.

After a great night's sleep in the cool air, I got up before sunrise and walked for almost two hours before breakfast.  Birdsong filled the cool morning air as I walked among blooming coffee bushes, flowers and tall jungle trees.  I spent a quite a while at breakfast talking to the other guests, both Indian and foreign, before setting off a little before 11 to climb up the steep path to the ridge to the west of the valley.  It is more than a thousand foot climb in elevation to the top, where there are great views in all directions, including of the jungle filled valley below.  I could make out the red tile roof of one of the plantation buildings through the trees.  Clouds obscured Tadiyandamol, Coorg's highest peak at about 5800 feet, to the southwest.  I walked along the ridge, with some sun and some clouds, and made it back down in time for lunch, after about three hours' hiking altogether.

After another great lunch and reading the newspaper, I left a little after 3 on another hike, this one up to the pass above the valley and then along the side of a hill to a river that comes down a waterfall.  It started raining about half an hour after I left and rained for about 20 minutes, hard at times.  I pulled out my umbrella and continued along the path as the rain stopped.  Eventually I had a view of the thin waterfall ahead.  At the end of the trail, passing through a last section of very thick, beautiful jungle, I reached the rocky river bed, with thick trees and creepers all around.  A large, colorful wood fungus was attached to the rocks next to the river.  It started to rain again so I started back and the rain soon ceased.  But it started up again and rained quite hard the last half hour of the hike.  I got back a little after 6 and was particularly glad to be able to take a hot water bucket bath.  The sky was clear at night, with many stars and two planets visible through the trees.

The sky was cloudless the next morning and before breakfast I took an almost two hour walk back and forth on a mostly level path along the east side of the valley through jungle and coffee bushes.  As always, the morning air was filled with chirping birds.  About 10, after breakfast, I set off on a hike down the valley, on the road down passing coffee bushes and two elderly men using a huge, two man saw to cut a log into lumber.  I turned off on a road being paved, with men and women working with baskets of gravel and barrels of tar.  I took a few photos and they all posed.  A bit further on I met and talked to a young Kodava man who showed me pepper and cardamom growing among his coffee bushes.  He told me Kodavas need no licence for firearms (an exemption, I later read, dating from the 1860's) and that his family has an old matchlock gun.

Leaving the road and following a path that crossed a stream, I eventually reached my goal, the Nalakunad Palace, about 700 feet lower than the plantation buildings.  I arrived just as the 25 or so students at the little school next to it were saying their prayers before lunch.  They were all sitting lined up, with hands folded in prayer, under the veranda of the school building.  Their plates were full of rice as the teacher ladled a vegetable dish on the rice.  They ended their prayers with "Shanti, shanti, shanti" and then commenced to eat.  The teacher told me they are form 1 to 5, so about 5 to 10 years old.  After lunch some of the boys played soccer barefoot in the grassy and dusty little field next to the school.  They were very good.

I had brought a pack lunch prepared by the plantation kitchen and ate it on the veranda of the palace, really more of a hunting lodge, built in 1792.  It was here in 1834 that the Raja fled before he was captured and deposed.  The pack lunch consisted of about half a loaf of that awful Indian white bread, a boiled egg, a piece of cheese, a tomato, a cucumber, jam and a pack of oreos!  As I was finishing the security guard showed up, probably after his own lunch, and showed me around inside.  There are some interesting wall and ceiling paintings.  After the palace, I walked to some nearby coffee plantations that also take in tourists and sometime after 3 began my walk back, stopping to sit on the rocks next to the river.  In a pool of water along the river several large insects (an inch or more long) were on the surface, seeming anchored by their front two and back two legs, while the middle two moved back and forth like oars, quite vigorously at times. On the way back I passed the road workers again and made the steep ascent to the plantation buildings, arriving sometime after 5.  I had a good view of the ridge I had climbed the day before.  I sat and talked with some foreign yoga and meditation students up for a day from Mysore before taking a bath.  The moon rose over the hill to the east before dark.

The next morning I took the walk along the east side of the valley again before breakfast.  About 9:30 I set off with two other in hopes of reaching the top of Tadiyandamol.  The plantation gives you a hiking guide book, but it is dated and unclear at times.  We reached the ridge near the top of the waterfall, with great views of the jungle below and the next ridge, with views all the way to Kerala to the south and west.  Tadiyandamol was visible, but we had trouble finding the proper route.  Eventually, we found it and continued along the ridge, with great views, but lots of burrs clinging to my legs and feet.  Eventually, I put on my trouser extensions to protect my legs.  I should have worn shoes instead of sandals.  We stopped for lunch in a shady spot along the ridge and continued walking until about 2, when we decided that it would take too long to reach the top and get back before dark. We made our way back, finding an easier route where we had had trouble before.  Two of us sat for about an hour on the top of the ridge before making our way back down about 6.

The next morning I again took a walk, for about an hour and half, along the eastern side of the valley before breakfast.  I relaxed for most of the rest of the day, reading the newspaper, a book about the origins of the Coorgs, and several National Geographics.  A bull had been badly injured the day before, probably by a tiger, though perhaps by a leopard.  He had large scratches on his back and a big chunk of flesh taken out of his left foreleg, near the shoulder.  He apparently had been grazing on the grassy slopes of the ridge above the plantation.  The plantation has about 15 cattle and they are taken every morning from their sheds up to the ridge to graze.  About 4:30 I did take a walk, along the route to the river below the waterfall that I had taken two days before. The sky was clouding up, but there were great views over the jungle.  Birds and cicadas were making lots of noise as I made it back just before 7 and just before darkness set in.  An almost full moon rose over the hill to the east.

I took another early morning walk the next day, this time going down the road, passing fragrant coffee blossoms, flowers and huge jungle trees.  As always, the air was full of birdsong.  About 10:30 I set off with a pack lunch and made my way to the area near the top of the waterfall, the way we had come on our way to Tadiyandamol.  There is beautiful thick jungle just before you come to the stream that pours over the falls. I sat on rocks near the stream and had my lunch.  I had asked for an omelet for breakfast that morning at the same time I ordered my pack lunch and they mistakenly put the omelet, in foil, in my pack lunch.  It tasted quite good on the trail for lunch, filling several small sandwiches of that almost tasteless white bread.  After lunch I walked to the edge of the ridge for the views and then made my way to the top of the waterfall, with precipitous views down.  Not much water was flowing over the falls.  I sat for a while, enjoying the fantastic views of the jungle canopy treetops below.  Most were green, but there were some yellows and oranges, and some of the greens were flecked with white, as they were flowering.  I started back after 3, sitting in the thick forest for a while, and made it back about 4:30.  I rested and read the paper and for the hour before dark walked down the road among the flowering coffee bushes.  A full moon rose after dark.

It seemed colder the next morning.  I again walked down the road and was glad when I reached an area in sunlight where I could warm up.  I came back up the steep road and had a cup of tea before heading up the path above the plantation buildings, through more coffee bushes and jungle.  After breakfast, about 9:30 or 10, I started on another hike, first up to the pass just above the plantation buildings and then towards Kabbe Pass to the southeast.  From the first pass I had a steep descent to the river, passing more coffee grown on very steep hillsides.  This area is also owned by the Chengappas, who started out with just five acres in 1984, inherited from his father, and own 76 now.  I had some trouble finding the path on the other side of the river and eventually realized I was on a trail that would take me to a viewpoint called Raja's Seat on the ridge above.  So I decided to head to that instead of Kabbe Pass.  I climbed through dense jungle and reached the ridge, with great views down and to the south and west.  I walked along the ridge and eventually reached the rocky outcropping known as Raja's Seat.  I found a place where I could sit on a rock underneath a tree and ate my lunch.  The views were good, but it was hot, with little breeze that day.  I had a great view of Tadiyandamol.

I spent about an hour there, both eating and walking along the ridge after lunch, before starting down about 2:30.  There were lots of burrs along the ridge and I had been too stubborn, or perhaps "foolish" is a better word, to switch to shoes from sandals for hiking.  I took a different path down and crossed the river higher up than in the morning.  Still, it was a steep ascent from the river to the pass just above the plantation buildings.  On the way I saw a deer, a male sambar with a large set of horns.  I saw him before he saw me. When he did see me, he shot off.

I got back about 4:30 and sat and read the paper and talked to my fellow guests for a while.  About 6:30 I walked down to the cow sheds (near the cheap rooms) and watched Susheela tend the injured bull.  She told me he had 42 scratches in addition to the large gouge in his foreleg and a couple of smaller ones on his dewlap.  She told me that a veterinarian has been giving him two antibiotic shots every day and that they lose two or three cattle every year to tiger attacks, though she told me the tigers have never attacked people. (Yet.)  She put powdered, yellow turmeric on his wounds, followed by powdered charcoal, to keep flies away, she told me.  She also put some neem oil on the wounds.  She thinks he will survive.  He had trouble eating for the first few days, because of his throat wounds, and was hobbling on his left foreleg.

I took another early morning walk down the road before breakfast the next morning, the start of another clear day.  Soon after 9 I left on another hike to Kabbe Pass after having figured out an alternative route.  I passed coffee pickers on the steep sided coffee patch on the way down to the river.  They were shucking mostly dark red but some green coffee berries (the beans are inside) off the branches onto tarps on the ground before scooping up the berries and pouring them into big bags.  The pickers on the plantation all seem to be immigrants to Coorg.  The women don't wear saris, but long skirts, shirts and scarfs.  The men wear western clothing or long dhotis, usually the former.  I stopped and took some photos.  A little kid, maybe two or three years old, was among them, as his mother picked coffee.  They had their food and water in bags hanging on the bushes.

Once at the river, I crossed it and made my way to a little hamlet just downriver and took the steep but almost deserted road up to Kabbe Pass, arriving there about two hours after I had set off.  From the pass I climbed a further 300 feet in elevation to the top of the hill to the left (or east), with great views of the jungle on either side and of the rocky, steep hill west of the pass.  I found a shady spot with a good view of the valley and jungle to the north and had my lunch.  Tadiyandamol was just visible between closer hills.

After lunch I walked down to the pass and then started down the trail on the other side, an old salt route to Kerala.  There were steps carved into stone in places and stones stacked into steps in others, but for the most part it was a jungle path, through beautiful jungle, with only a few views out over the jungle.  The path was steep in places.  I descended about 800 feet in elevation over about 45 minutes before turning around and coming back up, which took a little over an  hour.  I walked back down the road and reached the river about 4:30, as the coffee pickers I had seen in the morning were cleaning up.  There were about ten of them washing up in the river.  It looked like three generations:  three or four old people, the rest younger, and the little kid.  One man mimed a camera, so I took photos of them, for which they happily posed, except for the little kid, who seemed quite bewildered and on the verge of crying.  His mother did her best to try to make him smile, but he was too scared.  After they left I sat on the rocks next to a pool, with all sorts of little bugs on the surface of the water, and ate the remnants of my pack lunch, cookies and a cucumber.  I started up the steep trail about 5, passing bags filled with coffee under the now berry less bushes and got back about 6. A giant moth, perhaps three or four inches wide, invaded my room that night.  I couldn't get it to fly out and eventually had to swat it, grab it by its wings and throw it out.  There were also lots of butterflies on the trails.

After another early morning walk up and down the road below the plantation buildings before breakfast, I spent most of the next day relaxing.  As on most days, I did check out the coffee berries and pepper drying in open areas around the buildings.  The workers spread them every morning after pushing them into piles and covering them with plastic tarps every afternoon.  Susheela told me coffee takes about eight days to dry, or around twelve if it is rainy, while pepper takes about five.  They sell the coffee to a broker about ten miles away.  The coffee plant is the robusta bush and the coffee fairly weak, the guests who are coffee drinkers have told me.

I had finally decided to leave Honey Valley, but wanted to spend one last day relaxing in that beautiful spot.  I sat and read and watched the birds.  There were just two of us for lunch.  I took a short walk about 4 and talked with Susheela afterwards.  She showed me pepper growing on vines clinging to a tree trunk and told me the bull is doing well.  It knocked over a fence getting to some plants near the cow sheds.  Below, at another farmhouse, a woman was dancing in the clearing before the house.  Susheela smilingly said she was drunk.  There had been a holiday the day before.  Susheela said, "One day holiday, one day hangover."  That night the sky was full of stars in the clear air before the moon rose.