February 12-17, 2013: Jog Falls, Udupi, Mangalore and Bekal

I  left Gokarna on the morning of the 12th, but first went to the beach early in the morning to watch the pilgrims.  There were more people than on the day before, including one large group with the men all in long white dhotis, white shirts and Gandhi topis (the white hats Nehru almost always wore) and the women in very colorful saris and elaborate jewelry, including big nose rings.  (Almost every woman in India has a nose ornament, but usually just a small, simple one.)  The men gathered together for a photograph, and then all the women gathered for a separate photograph, while I tried to be discreet as I photographed them from a distance.  Besides the colorful saris and elaborate nose rings, the women wore long shawls, hanging down to their ankles, with coins sewn into the part around their faces.  They also had very elaborate jewelry tied to their hair on either side of their faces.  I am fairly sure they were tribal women.  After the group photograph several of the women, to my great surprise, came up to me and another tourist photographing them from a distance to let us take photos of them up close.  Some of the men posed also.  I tried to ask one where they were from.  He didn't speak any English, but I think I understood him to say from Karnataka near the border with Maharashtra.

After a big breakfast, probably my last chance for a while to have muesli, fruit and curd and almost certainly my last chance for a while to have garlic cream cheese on toast, I left on a bus about 10:30 heading south to Kumta, about 20 miles away.  It took less than an hour to get there, passing through the rolling coastal countryside.  I had almost an hour and a half wait there before catching a bus for Jog Falls.  The bus first headed south for about half an hour to the town of Honavar, where we had a lunch stop, and then turned inland and headed up into the Western Ghats.  Jog Falls is about 40 miles from the coast by road.  The first half was up and down, but never very high in elevation, not more than 200 feet.  Then we began a very steep climb, eventually rising to over 1800 feet.  I think we may have climbed more than a thousand feet in about five miles, on a narrow strip of asphalt through beautiful dense jungle.  There were a few good views across the forested hills, but mostly the views were of the thick jungle on either side of the road.  We finally reached some farm houses, with a few very green rice paddies and groves of areca palms (which produce betel nuts).  I saw one stand of sugar cane.  We descended a bit and crossed the Sharavati River (which we had been traveling along, to the north of it) just above Jog Falls.  I was let off at the gate of the government tourist area about 3:30.  There is no town, just a government tourist complex.  The cheapest room in the government hotel was well over $30, so I found a homestay maybe a bit more than half a mile from the gate.  The guy had come up to me when I got off the bus.  It was a nice place, one of four brand new rooms right next to a little house where the family stayed.  I was the only guest.

It was almost 4:30 by the time I got settled and back to the falls.  They are India's highest, but are much diminished, both because the monsoon is long past and because a dam upriver impedes the flow of the river. Still, they are impressive, and you get a great view of them from the rim of the government tourist area.  I think the rim is at about 1500-1600 feet elevation.  At least, that is what my altimeter registered.  There are four falls, the highest somewhere between an 800 and a 1000 foot drop (my guidebooks had two different heights -- 250 and 293 meters).  I could see only two and a half of them.  One has completely dried up now in the dry season and the top half of one is so thin you can't see the water from a distance.  I've seen photos of them at full force, with a lot more water, but you need to get here just after the monsoon to see them like that.  I've read that during the monsoon itself they are hard to see with all the mist and rain.  There are 1400 steps down to the base, but since it was late in the afternoon I put walking down until morning and satisfied myself with walking along the rim for the views.  It is a very scenic area, with the waterfalls shooting down the almost sheer red brown sandstone cliffs.  The cliffs away from the falls are topped with jungle and there are two pools below the falls, one said to be over a hundred feet deep.  I walked around and sat here and there until past sunset.  There were few other tourists around.  For dinner I had few choices at the little restaurant near the gate and ate what is called in India a bread omelet, an omelet with slices of bread cooked into it.  It actually was very good.  Because Indian sliced white bread is so sweet, it tasted a bit like french toast, but with tomatoes and onions.  (I asked her to omit the green chilies.)  I walked back to the homestay in the dark under a crescent moon, lots of stars and at least two planets and slept well in my comfortable room.

The next morning I got up early and walked to the falls before the sun had arisen over the tops of the trees along the road.  I had another bread omelet for breakfast and shortly after 8 began the walk down the steps to the base of the falls.  The air was cool and it took me less than half an hour to walk down the steps, with great views along the way, though the falls were all still in shadow.  The steps come down through beautiful jungle, though, as this is India, littered with all sorts of garbage.  Once down the steps, it took me another 20 minutes to make my way over the stream and rocks and boulders to the pool at the base of the falls.  By then I could clearly see the long thin mist of the top half of the waterfall I couldn't see from the rim.  The three waterfalls are in sort of rock amphitheater carved out by the falls over the millennia.  I explored a bit over the boulders and eventually found a good place to sit at the edge of the pool.  The area was cool and in shadow until just after noon.  It is a beautiful place to sit and watch the water continuously fall.  An Indian couple showed up shortly after my arrival.  Later about ten Tibetan looking guys, except that they were all wearing shorts and tee shirts, showed up.  They all posed together for a photograph on a boulder with one holding a Tibetan flag.  Several also posed with me.  I asked one where they came from.  He said "Tibetan" and didn't speak any English.  While they certainly are Tibetan, I doubt they come from Tibet.  There is a Tibetan refugee settlement in southern Karnataka and perhaps that is where they come from.  Later, several monks showed up in their burgundy robes, which they took off, stripping down to their bright yellow under shirts.  Several groups of young Indian men showed up, too, all, of course, screaming to hear the echo.

After the sun hit shortly after noon, I found a few places in the shade of boulders to sit before I started to get hungry.  I started back before 3, first picking my way over the boulders to the steps and then climbing the 1400 steps themselves.  With many rest stops both to catch my breath and enjoy the views, it took me about an hour to climb the steps.  The rise in elevation is about 800 feet, according to my altimeter.  I passed a few Indian groups heading down on my way up.  They were already practicing their screaming on the way down.  At the top a group of about six or seven Tibetan monks in their red robes were playing cards under a little pavilion.  I was hungry and had another bread omelet before walking along the rim and finding several nice places to sit and enjoy the views.  I had dinner when it got dark, about 7.  Another bread omelet.

I had my last bread omelet the next morning for breakfast and then waited for the bus down to Honavar on the coast.  It finally arrived about 10, with all the seats full.  I stood for a brief while and then sat on my backpack in the aisle as we swerved back and forth down that narrow mountain road.  I didn't get very good views of the jungle.  After almost an hour I got a seat and we arrived in Honavar before noon.  I almost immediately hopped on a bus heading south along the coast.  It, too, was full, but the conductor made two little boys and their mother scrunch together on two seats while I got a seat next to them, with seven of us on six seats at the back of the bus.  I was headed to Udupi, about 80 miles south.  The coastal terrain was not as hilly as further north, but it still was a bumpy ride at times at the back of the bus.  Later the bus passengers thinned out a bit.  On the more than three hour trip we passed over several wide estuaries and smaller rivers.  We passed mosques and churches and thousands of coconut palms.  There were some big groves of casaurinas along the coast.  At one point we drove right along the sea and a long, narrow beach.  I remember taking this road in 1979 from Mangalore to Karwar and it seemed to take forever.  In fact, it took all day.  Needless to say, the road is much improved now, and there is now a train line paralleling the road.

Arriving in Udupi, a temple town of about 100,000 people just a few miles inland from the coast, about 3, I found a hotel, had lunch, and then walked to the temple area.  The main temple, devoted to Krishna, one of the avatars of Vishnu, was founded by a Hindu holy man in the 13th century.  I'm not sure how much of that temple remains.  It all looks fairly modern.  In fact, the gopura (tower) was built in the 20th century and is covered with brightly painted statues of Vishnu, Krishna, Hanuman, Garuda, and others associated with Vishnu.  There didn't seem to be a lot of pilgrims around.  The temple, plus two others, are in a large area with shops and surrounded by eight maths, or monasteries, each taking a two year turn to care for the Krishna image in the inner sanctuary.  The image is said to have been discovered encased in a block of ballast by the Hindu holy man. When he saved a ship during a storm the captain offered him his cargo as a reward.  Instead, he asked for the block of ballast and found the idol.

Just outside the temple were three large wooden chariots, the largest maybe 40 to 50 feet high.  They were all bulbous domed, with carved wooden bases resting on huge wooden wheels, a compartment to hold idols and priests above the base, and above the compartment a bulbous wooden framework festooned with hundreds of red and white little flags.  At the very top of each is an umbrella.  There were strings of light bulbs all over the chariots.  I walked around a bit and was approached by a local man who talked to me for quite a while.  He told me there would be a procession at 7:15 that evening and at 9:30 the next morning, paid for by someone who wanted to thank Krishna for some bounty or answer to a prayer.  He said the benefactor had paid for seven days of processions, six nights and one day.  I walked into the Krishna Temple, with guards at the door.  No photographs are allowed.  The uniformed guard at the doorway to the inner sanctum had me cut in line to see the idol.  In my brief glance it seemed quite bejeweled, with silver, gold and jewels all around it.  I walked around through the complex and came out by the water tank just to the east.  It is said the Ganges flows into this tank every ten years.  Near the tank is the enclosure of the temple elephant, with a uniformed attendant.  No photographs are allowed, but, as at Hampi, if you offer the elephant some money she takes it with her trunk and then places her trunk briefly on your head as a blessing.  I watched the attendant dress the elephant, placing a colorful garment over her back and another atop her head, hanging down part of her trunk.  I went into the two other temples, both dedicated to Shiva, not Vishnu.  One was fairly quiet, but in the larger one a scholar was lecturing to a crowd in the courtyard.  I walked around the courtyard and sat here and there to watch the pilgrims coming and going.  The man I met before came up and I talked with him again.

Right about 7:15 the ceremony began with music and a lot of banging of drums and clanging of bells in the main temple complex.  Eventually, the procession appeared on the steps of the tank, led by a mini brass band, with a big bass drum, a trumpet and even a saxophone.  There were also about ten men in dhotis beating drums and clashing cymbals.  Priests brought out an idol (not the main one, I think) and placed it on a small boat on the tank.  The boat was paddled around the tank twice, circumventing a pavilion in the center of the lake, the pavilion lighted with electric lights and oil lamps.  Then the image was brought out of the temple and carried up wooden steps to the compartment of the largest chariot.  Several priests sat with it inside.  Apparently, idols from the two other temples were similarly placed in the compartments of the other two chariots.

A procession began, led by the temple elephant, who had been brought out of her enclosure, and several guys with banners and long spears.  Two giant temple guardian figures, ten or more feet high with men inside, were also part of the lead procession.  The two smaller chariots, one by one, followed, pulled by pilgrims lined up pulling the two long, thick (two or three inches) ropes attached to the fronts of the chariots.  They were pulled along a circuit south of the main temple and stopped about halfway around the circuit in the middle of the wide thoroughfare.  Next, the main chariot was pulled along the same course and stopped between the other two.  All three chariots were covered with electric lights, with a portable generator, pulled by several men, attached to the rear of each.

While music played, fireworks were set off in front of the procession while it was stopped, first ground level ones and then several shot up into the air by rocket.  I was standing next to the rocket ones when first set off and quickly moved further away.  It was quite a spectacle.  After the fireworks the chariots were pulled one by one further along the circuit and finally back to near the main temple.  The second one got stuck at one point.  At the rear of each chariot is a long horizontal pole which several men strain to move from side to side, thus helping steer the chariot.  I walked back and forth to see as much as I could.  The crowds got a little daunting at times, especially when getting out of the way of the elephant or the chariots.  While the chariots were being moved, the elephant had returned to where it started the procession.  I watched as it cracked two coconuts, one after the other, with one of its feet and then ate each one whole.

I had missed the arrival of the first chariot back at the starting point, but when the second arrived, wooden steps leading up to the compartment were placed before it and the idol inside carried down the steps by a priest and then rushed into the larger of the two Shiva temples.  Similarly, when the third and largest of the chariots arrived at the entrance to the Krishna Temple, wooden steps were placed before it and several priests came down, the last carrying the idol, which was placed inside a small, covered palanquin and quickly carried into the temple.  And that was that.  The ropes were wound up and the steps put away.  The whole thing had lasted about an hour and a half.  There are three other chariots, not of wood but of gold and silver and encrusted with jewels, kept in locked sheds near the temples.  You can see them in part through the bars of the doors, especially with a flashlight.  They are used instead of the wooden ones for important ceremonies, or if someone really pays a lot.  I walked back and had a late dinner, a "meal," as thalis are called here.

The next morning I got to the temple area about 9 and it was fairly quiet.  I looked over the carvings on the largest of the modern wooden chariots and some were quite explicit, with sex acts and male and female genitalia quite clear.  That surprised me, as modern Indian culture is so prudish.  There is even no kissing in Indian movies.  Soon at the main temple a ceremony must have begun inside.  A line of bare chested men in dhotis were waiting to get inside the temple while next to the entrance a man beat a drum while another played a long horn, maybe four feet in length.  I watched and listened to them for a while.  The line to get inside wasn't moving.  The temple must have been full of people inside.  Eventually, whatever was happening inside ended, the drummer and horn player stopped, and the bare chested men and everyone else in line got inside.

No ceremony began at 9:30, so eventually I went into the larger of the Shiva temples to watch the activity.  In one corner a four foot high fire lamp had dozens of little wicks burning, fueled by oil.  Pilgrims would bring in a wick and a little vial of oil, soak the wick, light it and place it on one of the four levels of the lamp before pouring their vial of oil onto the lamp.  Some poured it onto the Nandi (Shiva's bull) figure on top of the lamp.  On the raised platform under the arcade on one side of the temple were several designs made of powder, with offerings all around them.  A young  priest, who must have been in his early 20's, wearing a long red dhoti and bare chested except for his sacred thread, started talking to me, as did a more senior monk, maybe in his 50's.  (Other priests were conducting pujas, religious ceremonies, with pilgrims.)  They explained the designs on the floor.  One was a representation of Shiva, a linga, while the other, with a round face in the center surrounded by symbols, was  a representation of the sun and planets.  The sun and each planet had a separate little bowl of seeds next to it, different seeds for each.  I tasted two of the varieties.  A small black seed, they told me, was used to make the oil used for burning the wicks.  The powders, they told me, came from trees, with colors added, except for the white, which came from a stone.  The designs had been made that morning, taking about an hour to make the one with the sun and planets, and would be swept away in the afternoon after the pujas were finished.  The young priest told me it takes 12 years to become a full fledged priest and he had been studying for five years.

I heard a lot of noise outside and so went out to investigate.  While I had been talking to the priests, the morning procession had started.  Only the largest chariot participated this time and by the time I got to it, it had already been pulled more than half the circuit, but was stuck, apparently wedged against a building and an electricity pole.  Waiting at the front of the procession were the temple elephant, the two large guardian figures, the men with banners and spears, the drummers and a red dhoti clad priest sheltered under an umbrella held by a guy in western clothing.  Temple officials and pilgrims tried without success to get the chariot free, eventually summoning the elephant back to lend a hand, or rather a forehead.  They had it push against a front wheel so that the chariot moved backwards a short distance.  Meanwhile, the two thick ropes had been dragged under the chariot and pilgrims pulled from the back side.  Once pushed back a short distance, the chariot continued its course, though I noticed the electrical pole swaying as the chariot brushed it again while passing by.  The sky was overcast that morning, one of the very few overcast days I have had in India, so it wasn't too hot in the sun.  (It has become warmer, though.  Highs generally are in the mid to high 90's and lows in the low 70's.  And it is humid, with relative humidity reported to be 90 per cent in the newspapers)  Finally, the chariot reached the Krishna Temple, the steps were pushed up to the enclosure, and priests descended, the last one holding the idol.  Again, it was hustled onto the palanquin and carried into the temple, while several pilgrims prostrated on the street before it.

I walked back into the Shiva temple where I had talked to the two priests and watched the pujas going on.  There seemed to be two rather elaborate ones, both going on since I had first arrived in the morning.  I watched as priests chanted while adding various things to fires in little pits on the raised areas under the arcades.  Oil, little sticks, balls of cooked white rice, milk and other stuff were continuously added to the fires while the chanting went on.  Several priests took part, as did the pilgrims.  It was fascinating to watch, though smoky at times.  Hairy coconuts topped with flowers were placed nearby, as were flowers and other offerings.  Meanwhile, many pilgrims were coming and going, lighting wicks and dropping oil onto the fire lamp.  I left some time after noon and the elaborate pujas were still going on.  Two apparently bored little children from one of the families making the puja had sat next to me for a while as I watched.

After lunch I spent most of the afternoon at an internet cafe before getting something to eat and returning to the temple area just after 5.  It was fairly quiet at first as I walked around.  The designs and all other evidence of the morning's pujas at the Shiva temple had been swept away.  Soon, a scholar began a lecture under the arcade of the temple, attracting a fairly large audience seated under the arcades and in the courtyard.  I walked around and sat here and there until almost 7:30 before heading back to my hotel.

I left Udupi the next morning at 11:30 on an express bus to Mangalore, about 35 miles and an hour and a half south.  The sky was mostly cloudy and we never saw the sea, but there were thousands of coconut palms along the way.  I don't think I've ever seen so many coconut palms as I have along the coast here in Karnataka.  Mangalore, with about half a million people, is a big port city and has been since the 6th century, exporting pepper then and coffee, cocoa and cashews now.  The Portuguese captured it in 1529 and held it for some time, though I'm not sure how long.  It was under the control of Haider Ali, the Sultan of Mysore in the late 18th century.  As a result of the long Portuguese era there are lots of Catholics in the city, something like 15 to 20 per cent.

I got a good hotel room in the center, rested a while and had lunch before venturing out for sightseeing soon after 4.  There's not a lot to see, but Mangalore seems a pleasant city, a little hilly, with lots of trees.  I walked to St. Aloysius College Chapel, with an interior covered with frescoes painted by an Italian Jesuit over two and a half years from 1899 to 1901.  The guy who showed me around inside compared it to the Sistine Chapel.  The painting wasn't exactly Michelangelesque, but it was interesting.  I noticed most of the names on the plaques on the walls of the chapel were Portuguese and the guy who showed me around was named Pereira.  The campus grounds were nice and I sat for a while before going to a nearby park with a view of the sea and with a round tower with a square room on top that is said to be a lighthouse from the time of Tipu Sultan (late 18th century.)  The sea seemed to be a bit too far away for the lighthouse to be of much use, though I could see four large cargo ships out to sea.  Mangalore is not on the sea itself.  It is on a river a bit inland and that river flows into a larger river just before it flows into the sea.

From the park I took an auto rickshaw to a Hindu Temple at the base of a small hill in the northern part of the city.  An older priest showed me around.  Inside is a particularly beautiful statue of Lokeshwara, an avatar of Shiva, dating from 968.  Steps led up the hill, but there wasn't much to see but a giant blue statue of Hanuman, the monkey god.  It must have been 20 feet high.  The sun set while I was there and I took an auto rickshaw back to my hotel, arriving just as it got dark at 7.  Sunset here is just after 6:30 at this time of year, with sunrise just before 7.  Later that night, around 10, there was a very heavy rainstorm for about half an hour.  I watched it from my sixth story hotel room.  About an hour after it ended, as I was falling asleep, I heard boom after boom, looked out my window, and saw fireworks to the west.  They must have been set off from somewhere along the seashore.

The next morning it rained heavily again, for about an hour starting sometime after 8.  There was a bit of flooding in the street below.  I went out for breakfast after it stopped and the air was cool.  From the newspapers I see that the clouds and rain brought highs down to the mid 80's.  I had decided to take a day trip south to see a coastal fort and the scenery en route and left at 10:30 on a bus for Kasaragod, 30 miles away.  It took an hour and a half to get there.  We crossed the wide Netravati River south of Mangalore and reached the Karnataka-Kerala state border in a little over a half hour.  The language and the alphabet changed on all the signs south of the border.

As usual on this coast, there was a profusion of coconut palms, plus many other fine trees.  Everything was very green along what is called in Kerala the Malabar Coast.  We passed over rivers and estuaries, also lined with palm trees.  There were also lots of mosques, women completely garbed in black and other evidence of the Islamic character of this part of the coast.  The Muslims here are called Moplahs and trace their Islam back to the earliest Muslim Arab traders to arrive on this coast in the 7th century.  There are still ties with Arabia and the Moplahs are said to be very conservative.  There certainly were a lot of women in black.  Many even had black veils along with their black hoods.

We had a few glimpses of the sea on our way south and it rained for a short while and remained mostly cloudy after the rain stopped.  From Kasaragod I took another bus the final ten miles to the fort, just south of the small town of Bekal.  This bus was quite slow, taking more than an hour, but the scenery was beautiful with all the palms and other greenery.  We passed many newly built large houses, built by Keralans who made it big in the Gulf states, where many of them work.  It rained again on the way.  The bus had no glass in its side windows.  When the rain came, plastic shades were pulled down.  They kept out the rain, but you couldn't see through them.  It didn't rain long, though.

I got to the fort about 1:30 and spent about two hours walking around.  First, I walked along its north wall to the beach and entered the fort from its beach side entrance.  The fort, made of those reddish pockmarked laterite blocks used in so much building along this coast, is on a bluff just above the beach, less than a hundred feet above the beach.  Waves were crashing on rocks just below the fort, with a bastion right on the rocks and beaches on either side.  From the bastion I walked up to the fort gate and went inside.  It was sunny and hot and very humid, but clouds eventually covered the sun and that helped.  I walked all around the fort walls inside.  There are about 12 bastions along the walls and three towers inside the fort.  There has been a lot of reconstruction of the walls, bastions and towers.  There isn't much else inside the fort, which is pretty large, covering several acres, I think.  There are some great views from the walls and bastions, of the sea, the beaches (with fishing boats lined up on the long beach to the south) and seemingly endless coconut palms inland and along the beaches.  The fort was built in the mid 17th century by the Kadambas and later taken by Tipu Sultan and eventually the East India Company.

There were quite a few people there on that Sunday afternoon.  I left the way I had come in, out the beach side gate, and walked around the southern side of the fort, with some great views up to the walls.  I  would have liked to spend more time there, but wasn't sure how long it would take to get back to Mangalore, so I got back to the road soon after 3:30 and soon got a bus back to Kasaragod and then back to Mangalore, arriving about 6.  I enjoyed the ride back through the beautiful scenery.  The sky was full of clouds, but no rain.

Back in Mangalore, after dinner I went into what appears to be a brand new five story mall near my hotel.  It was filled with people, including lots of Muslim women in black.  The place had an open, five story atrium, a movie complex and even a bowling alley, along with dozens of shops.  It was interesting to watch the bowlers.  I have to say they weren't very good.  A big sign promoted Valentine's Day, which is controversial in India.  Right wing Hindu nationalist groups decry it as foreign to Indian culture and regularly burn Valentine's Day cards and intimidate restaurants and bar from having Valentine's Day celebrations.  I saw a photo in the newspaper of several men burning Valentine's Day cards as foreign to Indian culture.  They all were in western clothing.

February 7-11, 2013: Gokarna

I left Goa, and Palolem Beach, on the morning of the 7th and headed south along the coast to Gokarna in Karnataka.  I took another walk along the beach and had breakfast before leaving, taking a 10:30 bus to nearby Chaudi.  It took me another three buses to get to Gokarna, only about 60 miles away.  From Chaudi a bus made a loop inland and then along the coast, crossing the Goa-Karnataka state border and a wide  estuary before reaching the city of Karwar.  I remember a long wait for a ferry across that estuary on my way to Goa in 1979.  Now you can cross it in about a minute by bridge.  From Karwar another bus took me south to Ankoli along the hilly coast, and the last bus continued south, crossing another estuary and then headed west onto the little peninsula where Gokarna sits on the coast.  We arrived about 2 and I walked through the little temple town and got a nice hotel.

After lunch I walked through the small town.  Gokarna mean's "cow's ear" and is supposed to be where Shiva was reborn from a cow's ear after a period of penance.  It also has one of India's most powerful linga, dropped here by Ravanna after he had stolen it from Shiva's abode on Mount Kailash.  He was tricked into dropping it and it was too heavy for him to lift.  That's the story anyway.  It is housed in a temple that attracts lots of pilgrims.  Non-Hindus are not allowed in, supposedly because of the misbehavior of some tourists.  Nearby the main temple is another, dedicated to Shiva's elephant headed son, Ganpati, also known as Ganesh.  I watched the activity at the entrances, with bare chested men and sari clad women going in and out.  Near the temples are two large raths, or chariots, used for temple celebrations, with interesting carved figures on them.  I walked to the large tank, filled with lotus pads, to the east, and then a little bit further through the town's narrow streets.  

About 5 I started walking over the low (something over a hundred feet high), rocky headland to the south of town to Kudlee Beach, about a twenty minute walk.  This is a beautiful beach set between two headlands and facing west.  It is maybe a bit more than half a mile long, with several guesthouses and restaurants along it.  It attracts lots of western tourists, many who stay for weeks or months.  I walked to the far end of the beach, with big waves crashing on the shore, and then walked back to town the way I had come.  I got to the dirty town beach just before sunset. 

The next morning I walked about town a bit, watching the pilgrims and old, tribal women selling flowers at the entrance to the Mahaganpati and Mahabaleshwar Temples.  I walked to the Rama Temple at the base of the headland at the south end of the town beach and from there could see pilgrims further north along the beach taking a dip in the sea before making their pujas at the temples.  I walked out a bit closer to the far end of the headland, passing a giant face carved into a rock.  Back at the Rama Temple, I climbed the stairs up to the headland plateau and took a path to Kudlee Beach, a different path than I had taken the day before.  I walked along Kudlee Beach and climbed another low headland at its southern end to Om Beach, so named because its two little coves resemble the auspicious symbol for Om.  These beaches face south and I walked along them to a far end, arriving about 10:30 and stopping at a little restaurant for breakfast.  I sat there eating and then reading until past 1, with a great view of the beach and a nice breeze off the sea.  There are only a few guesthouses and restaurants, but there is a fancy and expensive resort situated behind the beach.

It took me about an hour and a half to walk back to town, with a few brief stops on the way.  There was a cool breeze on the beaches, so that helped, but otherwise it was hot.  I had lunch in town at a great little restaurant often jammed with foreigners where I had garlic cream cheese on toasted rolls with tomatoes and onions, a chocolate ice cream lassi with bits of chocolate in it, and a dessert called gadbag, three scoops of ice cream with candied dried fruit, fresh fruit and cashews.  Quite a surprising lunch.  Just before sunset I walked along the city beach, crowded with Indians just west of the town.  The sun set not into haze, but into the sea a little after 6:30.

The next morning I walked through town again and then to the town beach, where I watched a group of about ten pot bellied men strip to their shorts and go into the ocean as the first step in their visit to the temples.  They splashed each other, sat in the surf, and posed for photos.  An old, bare chested Brahmin priest, with his sacred thread over one shoulder, was in charge and did not go in the water.  One guy had a plate of flowers, coconuts and some other stuff that he offered to the sea.  Right among the bathers fishermen were pulling a long net from the sea, which took some time.  When they finally got the net all pulled in and onto the beach, they plucked out the fish entangled in it, mostly small ones of one or two inches in length, but others that measured four to six inches.

I walked further north along the long beach, passing fishing boats on the beach and wooden winches used to pull them up onto the beach from the sea.  On my way back I watched one boat get winched up and then unloaded, the small (maybe six inches in length) fish scooped up from the bottom of the boat and dropped into a big, rubber lined basket, a heavy load which a woman carried off on her head.  I also passed two Tibetan monks that I had seen before cavorting in the sea in their burgundy robes.  Now they had shed their robes, which were piled on the beach, and were in the water in their underwear.  There was little breeze and it was hot.  I got back for breakfast about 10:30.

After spending  the hot part of the day in an internet cafe and reading, I took another walk in the late afternoon, first around town.  I watched a man make an offering on the steps of the large town tank, then bathe in and even drink the dirty tank water, with hundreds of lotus pads floating on the surface.  I went into one of the temples that permit the entry of non-Hindus and passed by some langur monkeys munching some kind of fruit in trees.  They made some spectacular leaps from tree to tree and then onto the roof of a house. Making my way to the town beach, crowded on a Saturday, I walked north and noticed that there were a few backpacker guest houses and restaurants in that direction, too.  Boys were playing cricket on the sand here and there.  I sat and watched the sun set into the haze over the Arabian Sea and then made my way back to town.

The next morning I was out before 8, making a quick stop at the temples before heading to the beach and spending almost two hours there watching all the activity.  It was a Sunday morning and I guess there are a lot more pilgrims on the weekends than on weekdays.  There were several family groups, including old women in their saris and jewelry, praying and frolicking in the surf.  They seemed to be having a lot of fun.  Some pilgrims carried plates of offerings, including coconuts, flowers and balls of rice, that they cast into the sea.  Sometimes they tossed the coconuts backwards over their heads into the sea.  A man and two woman made a small sand lingam and then covered it with red and yellow powder before dripping water over it just before a wave washed it away.  Another group, a friendly bunch from Pune, made a much bigger sand lingam on top of a yoni (the lingam signifying Shiva's penis and the yoni a vagina).  They sprinkled red and yellow powder on it and placed coins on it.  They prayed around it and later posed for photos behind it.  The coins were later given to a Brahmin priest. With all the flower offerings there was soon a thin strand of flower petals on the sand along the highest reach of the waves.  A cow came along, eating some of the flowers.  Crows also descended to eat among the flowers.  An old man came up and asked me to take his photo.  Others did, too.

After breakfast in town, I walked to Kudlee Beach about 11, found a nice restaurant on the beach and had a second breakfast, this time an omelet as the town restaurants are strictly vegetarian.  I sat there until about 3, reading and watching the activity on the beach and enjoying the sea view and breeze.  Bob Marley was on the restaurant's sound system and it could have been 35 years ago, except Gokarna wasn't discovered by backpackers until the '90's.  I had a very good fish sandwich for lunch, on good bread, with french fries and salad, for just over $2.  I walked back towards town over the mostly barren plateau and sat for about an hour just above the steps down to the Rama Temple and the town beach.  I sat in the shade on the steps of another small temple and enjoyed the view of the beach and all its activity, along with the view of the town backed by coconut palms.  The beach sweeps a long way to the north.  Pilgrims were on the beach below and I also watched two little outrigger fishing boats, without motors, being rowed to the beach and then dragged up well beyond the reach of the waves.

About 4:30 I walked down to the beach and checked out the fishing boats I had watched.  They were unloading fish, hundreds of thin silver fish about six inches long with spikes on their noses of an additional  two inches or so.   I walked quite a ways north along the beach, for about 45 minutes.  The tide was low, very low, and there was large expanse of hard sand to walk on, with drier, looser sand higher up.  Eventually, I reached a fishing village with about 40 outrigger fishing boats on the beach.  These boats were larger than the ones I had seen in Gokarna and Palolem, maybe 20 feet long and five feet high.  Also, they were unpainted and had inboard rather than outboard motors.  About ten were being launched for a night of fishing.  They were dragged down from the high sandbanks to the sea over greased and grooved pieces of lumber about five feet long before being turned around in the surf, their smoky motors started up, and heading out to sea.  On some of the boats still on the beach men were slowly and patiently winding long fishing nets into the boats.  The village seemed very simple, with grass huts.  Perhaps there were more substantial buildings further inland.  It did have electricity poles and wires.

A little further down the beach I spotted a dead dolphin on the beach in the surf.  It must have been about eight feet long.  Its smelled, its skin was beginning to peel off, and it had something between the teeth of its jaw.  Whatever was in its mouth was gray, the color of the dolphin.  Perhaps it was its tongue or some of its innards thrust out.  The dolphin was on its back, though it rolled when hit by waves, and had one open eye staring out.  I headed back to town, stopping and sitting for a while on the way back to watch the sunset and getting back to town about 7, just as it got dark.

The next morning I walked to the beach, but it was fairly uncrowded on that Monday morning, nothing like the weekend.  The same old short, grumpy looking Brahmin priest was there to direct the pilgrims.  I walked around town, to the tank and back, and watched the activity at the temples before breakfast.   Near the temples three men were moving big laterite blocks, the kind used for building walls, from a pile on the street into a building and out the back door.  They transferred the blocks from head to head, each man covering about a third of the route.  I didn't do much for most of the day, though in the late afternoon I took a walk through town and then east of town into the country, and then came back through town to the beach for sunset.

January 28 - February 6, 2013: Goa

Soon after 9 on the morning of the 28th I left Belgaum on a bus bound for Panaji, the capital and principal city of Goa.  The bus first headed south for a little over 30 miles, passing lots of trees and some agriculture, all at elevations over 2000 feet.  At the little town of Londa we turned west and made a lunch stop about noon before making the steep drop on a curvy road with great, though hazy, views of the densely forested hills below  We descended over 1500 feet in maybe five miles.  The Goa state line was near the top of the steep descent.  I can see why Goa was usually cut off from the rest of India.  After the descent we traveled through forested, hilly countryside and small towns before arriving at Panaji, Goa's state capital and principal city a little after 2.  Panaji is on the south bank of the wide Mandovi River and on our approach we passed the former capital of Goa, now called Old Goa, about five miles upriver from Panaji.  (It seems almost everybody calls Panaji by its old Portuguese colonial name, Panjim.)  I walked to an hotel in an old colonial era building in Panaji's Fontainhas district, full of old colonial buildings, some decaying but others kept up, and got a very comfortable large room with a high ceiling and shutters on the glassless windows.  The owner told me it was built in 1880 by his great grandfather, who was a lawyer.  There is a photo of him with his wife and children.

Goa was ruled by a Hindu dynasty for centuries before conquest by Muslims from the north in the early 1300's.  Later that century, the Vijayanagar Empire conquered the area and ruled it for about a century, followed by the Bahmanis about 1470 and later Bijapur.  The Portuguese, under Afonso de Albuquerque, arrived in 1510, defeated Bijapur, and made Goa the center of their Asian empire.  Despite attacks by Bijapur and later the Marathas, and threats from the Dutch, they held on to Goa until 1961, when India invaded and took it over.

After resting in my room for a while I walked down the street, the Rua 31 de Janeiro (the date Panaji became capital), to the Hotel Venite, where I stayed in 1979.  (I have an old aerogram with its name and street name.)  It is now just a restaurant, with small balconies with tables over the narrow street below.  I spent the rest of the afternoon walking around the town.  Panaji was made the capital only in 1833, after Old Goa became inhabitable because of malaria and cholera epidemics.  The Viceroy had moved his residence to Panaji earlier, in 1759, when he took up residence in a palace along the river built on the site of a Bijapuri palace.  The building, which was the Viceroy's residence until 1918, is still there and now used as government offices.  I walked past it and past other old colonial buildings, with many Portuguese names on shops.  In front of the former viceroy's palace is an unusual statue of a priest, Abbe Faria with a hypnotized woman at his feet.  He was a Goan born priest who made quite a sensation hypnotizing people in France around 1800.   There are great views across the wide river, with forested hills on the north bank.  I remember leaving Goa by ship on that river in 1979 on a 24 hour journey to Bombay, which included sleeping on the deck on a chilly night at sea.  Panaji is India's smallest capital city and a very pleasant one, with only about 100,000 people.

I walked away from the river up the slight slope to the Largo da Igreja, the central plaza, with a forty foot column in the center that until 1968 had a statue of Vasco da Gama on the top, now replaced by the four lions national symbol of India.  Nearby is the bright white Church of the Immaculate Conception, originally built in 1541, but rebuilt and considerably enlarged in 1619.  It was very large at the time considering that Panaji was just a village, but Panaji was the first stop for ships from Europe before heading upriver to the capital and those on board are said to have rushed to the church to give thanks for a safe journey.   The church has two baroque towers and a baroque interior, with beautiful gilded wooden altars.  The Indians entering removed their footwear, but when I asked the attendant if I needed to do so, he shook his head no.

From the church I walked uphill past a mosque and a Hindu temple, the latter dating from 1819 when Hindu temples were allowed after three centuries of repression by the Inquisition.  I took winding streets up Altinho Hill and then steps down the other side to get back to the Fontainhas neighborhood.  I walked past Fontainhas' whitewashed San Sebastian Church and many old colonial buildings back to my hotel.  For dinner I went to a restaurant just in front of the Immaculate Conception Church and had shark in butter and garlic, which was very good.  Back at the hotel I had a hot shower, the first one I have had on this trip to India.  I almost always wash with bucket baths, and I haven't had hot water for a while.  Hot water is not really necessary here on the coast and wasn't inland on the plateau either.  Goa's highs seem to be about 90-95, with lows in the high 60's.  I had a comfortable bed in that lovely high ceilinged room and slept well.

The next morning I walked around the Fontainhas neighborhood in the early morning to look at all the old buildings.  Many are colorful:  red, yellow, blue, green.  It was the law during the colonial era that you had to paint your house after the monsoon every year.  The old houses are built of laterite, a pockmarked red stone, and then plastered.  I had a late breakfast at the Venite, an omelet with very good, chewy bread served with lots of butter, and read the newspapers at the restaurant, The Times of India (which I just read is India's most popular English newspaper with seven million daily readers) and Goa's Herald.  I spent the early afternoon in an internet cafe and in the late afternoon walked along the wide Mandovi River, which is an estuary and tidal. I took the ferry that goes to the other side back and forth without getting off.  There are several huge casino boats anchored in the river, plus Goa's fishing boats are all anchored in the river near the bridge upstream from the city center.  They were striking because they wanted their fuel to receive a higher subsidy.  Towards the west there is a nice walkway along the river and a large colonial building, built in 1871, I think.  In colonial days it was the Vasco da Gama Institute, but now has a new name.  In the entry hall are beautifully painted blue and white tiles, from the 1930's I think, illustrating passages from Camoes' Os Lusiades, Portugal's 16th century national epic.  I walked along the river to the park on the west side of town with views of the mouth of the wide Mandovi.  Sunset was at 6:30 over a big ship far away out to sea, with the high cliffs of the north bank of the Mandovi to the right, site of the old Portuguese Reis Magos Fort.

The next morning after a leisurely breakfast at the Venite I took the bus east along the river to Old Goa, five miles away.  It is quite a large site.  There was a city here, an important port for importing Arabian horses and for Mecca bound travelers on the haj, before the Portuguese conquered it from Bijapur.  At its height during the Portuguese era, about 1600, the city is supposed to have been as large as Lisbon, with estimates of 70,000 to 200,000 inhabitants.  Its golden age was the end of the 16th century, when Portugal ruled the Indian Ocean.  In the next century the Dutch largely displaced the Portuguese, and malaria and epidemics of cholera depleted the city.  It was all but abandoned by the 19th century.  At the center are several big churches, all but one whitewashed.  I went into the unwhitewashed one, the Basilica of Bom Jesus, first.  It is made of laterite stone blocks for the most part.  In fact, all the churches are made of laterite stone blocks, but most are then plastered and then whitewashed.  Bom Jesus, raised to a basilica in 1946, was finished in 1605, with an impressive Renaissance stone facade.  Inside it is mostly fairly simple, painted white, but with beautiful gilded altars with twisting columns and a large gilded pulpit.  The main altar has a huge figure of St. Ignatius Loyola hovering over the baby Jesus.

Off to the right from the main altar is the elaborate tomb of St. Francis Xavier.  Born in 1506, he came to Goa first in 1542, spending only a few months here, and then heading off to evangelize in Ceylon, the Moluccas, Japan and China, with short returns to Goa.  He died of dysentery on an island off China in 1552, was buried there, but the body eventually dug up and brought back to Goa.  It was said to be in a perfect state of preservation.  The corpse is now in a tomb built near the end of the 17th century and paid for by Cosimo III, the Medici Grand Duke of Tuscany.  The tomb has three levels and is made of marble and jasper, with a crystal enclosure on top with the body.  I think it is covered with cloth, but there are photos of the body in a room nearby.  The corpse is taken out every ten or twelve years and brought to the nearby Cathedral for display.  There are some great stories about the corpse.  One is that its right arm was taken to Rome to show the Pope, where it wrote its name with a pen.  Another is that once while on display, a woman bit off its little toe, but was found out when blood began gushing from her mouth.  The saint is venerated not just by Catholics, but by Hindus, too, and there were plenty of them that morning in the church, many more Indians than western tourists.  Piles of shoes were left outside the doors of the Basilica. 

I walked through the adjacent cloisters, and then to the huge Cathedral across a wide expanse from the Basilica.  In fact, adjacent to the Cathedral is the Archbishop's Palace, and adjacent to that is the Church and Convent of St. Francis of Assisi.  The Cathedral, dedicated to St. Catherine of Alexandria because the battle that won Goa for Portugal was fought on her day,  November 25, is said to be the largest church in Asia and larger than any church in Portugal, about 260 feet long and 170 feet wide.  Its facade, unlike Bom Jesus, faces east and is said to be of Tuscan design.  One bell tower collapsed in the 19th century, but the other remains.  The Cathedral and other churches were much less crowded than Bom Jesus.  Inside the Cathedral is white and fairly plain, but with huge aisles and very high ceilings.  Construction was started in 1562, but the constant running out of funds delayed completion for 90 years.  It has a gilded altar with scenes from St. Catherine's life, including her beheading, and several side altars.  Apparently under the whitewashed interior are painted walls.  I heard a guide say that because the laterite stone is so porous, moisture seeps in and it would be far too costly to maintain the painted surfaces, so they were whitewashed over.  A portion of the paintings is still visible, though, in one of the side altars.  On the floor are many interesting tombstones, some badly eroded and some not, and I could read quite a few.  Nearby the Cathedral are the ruins of the Palace of the Inquisition.  Apparently, it was St. Francis Xavier, upset by the immorality of Goa's populace, who brought the Inquisition to Goa.  The Portuguese rather brutally suppressed Hinduism and many autos de fe were held just outside the Cathedral.  

From the Cathedral I went into the Archeological Museum and Portrait Gallery in the former Convent of St. Francis.  It has quite a bit of interesting stuff, both Hindu and Christian.  On its walls are about 70 life size portraits of Viceroys and Governors painted on wooden boards dating from the early 1500's to the 1950's.  A Viceroy who arrived in the 1540's had portraits painted of all his predecessors and himself and started the tradition.  They are very interesting, showing the changes of dress over more than four centuries, with many very stern, tough looking guys in the early years.  A chart showed something like 180 viceroys and governors and governing councils all together, so some portraits are missing.

Next, I went into the adjacent Church of St. Francis, dating from the 1660's and replacing an earlier church.  It, too has a gilded altar, with St. Francis stationed next to Jesus on the cross, and a gilded pulpit.  The floor is covered with tombstones, more than a hundred of them.  Just to the west is the small chapel of St. Catherine, built at the old city gate by Afonso de Albequerque in thanks for his victory, but redone since.  By the time I got there, it was 4:30 and I sat in its shade and ate some peanuts I had brought.

I realized I wouldn't be able to see everything I wanted in one day.  I walked back to Bon Jesus and then the Cathedral and on to the large, whitewashed 1651 Church and Convent of San Cayetan, east of the Cathedral.  It is domed and was deserted in the late afternoon.  It, too, has a beautiful wooden altar and pulpit set against the whitewashed interior walls.  Close by is a ruined archway said to date from the Adil Shah Bijapuri era.

On the way to the river landing is another arch, a ceremonial one that the Viceroys used to pass through on their arrival by river to the city.  One the side facing the river is a statue of Vasco da Gama while on the other side is a figure with his foot upon a recumbent figure.  The former is said to be Portuguese and the latter Indian.  I walked through the arch and down to the river, where a ferry crosses to the other side.  The river is lined with coconut palms, mangroves and other vegetation.  Finally, I walked back to Bom Jesus, where a poorly attended church service (maybe 30 people) was going on.  I caught the bus back to Panaji about 6 and was back before dark.

The next morning after breakfast at Venite I took the bus back to Old Goa.  It was already late in the morning, about 11, but I walked through the center and then east up a road to Our Lady of the Mount, a small church on a 200 foot high hill with great views.  I could see St. Cayetan with its towers and dome, and beyond it the Cathedral, the Church of St. Francis, and other whitewashed buildings.  Bom Jesus was hidden behind a little hill.  Further were several churches west of the center.  The whitewashed churches seemed to be rising out of a sea of coconut palms.  I could also see down the river to Panaji and upriver to a bridge, with jungle all around.  It was quite a view and I spent more than half an hour enjoying it before walking back to the center.

I went back through the Cathedral and revisited the Archeological Museum and Portrait Gallery and then climbed up Holy Hill, the small hill west of the center.  I passed the renovated Church of John of God and the Convent of Santa Monica, with large buttresses holding up the high walls, and went into the Museum of Christian Art located in part of the old Church of Santa Monica, adjacent to the convent.  This museum had a very interesting collection, all from Goa, and its pieces were very well presented.  They are still renovating part of the large church, with the museum occupying perhaps a third of it.  A man at the museum told me there were about 100 nuns in the convent.  He also told me Goa's Governor was coming to the museum that afternoon.

I walked further up the hill to the crest and the Church of Our Lady of the Rosary.  From this hill Albuquerque is said to have watched his troops conquer the city from the Bijapuris.  The church is Goa's oldest church, dating from 1526 in a style called Manueline, after Portugal's king at the start of the 16th century, the century when Portugal reached the peak of its power.  It is simple and whitewashed, with turrets flanking the undecorated facade.  Inside is the interesting tomb, of Gujarati design, of a woman said to be the first European woman in Goa. 

I walked down, past the museum, and noticed by all the security that the Governor had arrived.  On another part of the hill are the ruins of the Church and Monastery of St. Augustine.  The complex, built in the mid 17th century, was huge, but was abandoned when the monasteries were closed in 1835.  It fell into ruin, with its roof collapsing soon thereafter, though apparently the walls and facade were intact until the 1930's.  Now remaining is a five story, 150 foot high portion of a bell tower.  Less than half of it remains, towering over the other ruins of the complex.  I walked all around inside.  There are many gravestones on the floor and a few tiles remaining on the remaining walls.  From there I walked up a bit to the Church of St. Anthony, with a locked gate.  Young women were watering the flower garden next to the church with pots of water drawn from a well.  I walked down to Bom Jesus ( the Governor's entourage, about six cars, passed me on the way) and watched the mass going on for a while.  There must have been 200 to 300 in attendance.  The mass was in Konkani, the local language.  I took the bus back to Panaji about 6.

The next morning, after my usual breakfast at Venite, I took the ferry across the Mandovi River from downtown Panaji to Betim on the opposite bank and from there hopped on a bus heading west along the river for only a few miles to the village of Verem.  From there I walked for about 15 minutes along the river to the Church and Fort of Reis Magos.  The big whitewashed church was closed, but the 16th century fort has recently been restored and was open.  Its walls climb from the riverbank up to the crest of the hill.  The site is very interesting, with great views back to Panaji and out to sea and along the coast to the north and south.  It's not a big fort, but it withstood a two year siege by the Marathas from 1739 to 1741.  On the opposite of the river was another fort on a lowland position that has disappeared.  I enjoyed both the views and the displays inside the fort, including one on a Goan cartoonist famous throughout India who died recently.  His cartoons on his life at a young man in Goa in the early 1950's were funny and interesting.

I walked back and caught a bus heading to the beaches north of Panaji, getting off at a beach town called Candolim and walking south along the very crowded beach, full of westerners, many on chaise lounges, to the southern end, where there are the remains of another fort, Fort Aguada.  This beach runs for something like five miles along the coast from Fort Aguada, ending at the Baga River.  I looked around the seashore ruins and then climbed the hill to the massive upper fort, built in 1612 and once supplied with 200 cannons, to protect the Mandovi estuary from attacks by the Dutch.  The fort is on the northern headland of the estuary, 200 feet or more above the water, with a moat cut into the rock below the walls, similar to the Portuguese fort at Diu, though that fort was at sea level, not 200 feet or more above sea level.  On the north side, facing the estuary, which is miles wide at this point, the walls run all the way down to a lower fort, now a very scenic prison, on the shore.  There's not much left inside the upper fort, though they are restoring it.  Underground is supposed to be a water tank with a capacity of over two million gallons.  Needless to say, there were great views from the fort.  After walking along the walls, inside and out, I walked down the way I had come, down a scenic path rather than the paved road.

At the base I boarded a bus and took it north, paralleling the beach, a few miles to Calangute.  There is almost continuous development along this route, the heart of Goa's package tourist industry, fueled by charter flights from Europe.  It's all shops, restaurants and hotels.  The signs are all in English, except for some, mostly menus, in Russian.  On the bus I got to talking to an English guy who has been coming here for 20 years and he told me that 20 years ago the road was dirt and there were few facilities.  I remember taking the bus from Panaji to Calangute in 1979 for a day on the beach.  It was nothing then like it is now.  These beaches 50 years ago hosted only fishing villages, with some beach homes from the upper classes from Panaji.  Goa was discovered by backpackers in the late 1960's and became a sort of hippie haven.  Mass tourism, with charters from Europe, followed in the 1980's and after.  And Goa is now very popular with Indian tourists.  The development is really fairly ugly.  I got off briefly in Calungute, where I'd been in 1979 and now the preferred Goan destination for Indian tourists and it is a mess.  I took a brief look at the beach after braving the traffic on the way to the beach, and then caught a bus back to Panaji, a trip of less than an hour.  On the way back, I did spot several old Goan homes, with red tile roofs and columned verandas.  Some were in considerable disrepair.  They are lovely old buildings.  The bus crossed the long bridge over the Mandovi and arrived in Panaji just at dark, at 7.

I headed north again the next morning on a bus to Mapusa, the main town of northern Goa, less than ten miles from Panaji and set in a little valley.  From there I took another of Goa's ubiquitous little buses west to Vagator on the coast.  Vagator has several beaches set in scenic coves.  The village seemed a nice place, especially compared to the development further south, and I walked through it to the northernmost beach, with Chapora Fort on the mostly barren hill above it.  I walked along the not too crowded beach, with a cool breeze from the sea, and made the steep 200 foot climb to the large fort, built in 1617.  The walls are mostly intact, but there is almost nothing inside the fort.  Still, the fort ruins are much more atmospheric than the restored forts at Reis Magos and Aguada.  I walked all around, in the noonday sun, but with a cool wind.  There are fantastic views.  You can see Vagator's beaches to the south; to the north is the wide mouth of the Chapora River, with beaches and palm groves on the far side.  I could see quite a ways up the coast.  One section of beach a little north of the river was filled with sunbathers, at a village called Morjim and nicknamed Morjimograd as it is almost completely monopolized by Russian tourists and supposedly controlled by the Russian mafia.  The wide river narrows going inland, though with a wide sweep below the fort with the fishing village of Chapora just below on the river.  Further up the coast is the northernmost of Goa's forts, Terekhol, just south of the Maharashtra state border.

I spent a couple of hours wandering around the fort and the hills around it before walking down and walking the short distance to Chapora.  In the little village I walked along the palm lined riverbank, with fishing boats out on the water.  The center of the village was busy, with several dozen actual hippies, or clever disguised imposters, sitting at two juice bars near a banyan tree.  I guess the package tourists have pushed them his far north.  There were also quite a few Indian tourists around, mostly on noisy motorcycles.  I stopped in a little restaurant and had a cheese and avocado toasted sandwich and a banana lassi and then walked back to Vagator, where I caught a bus to Anjuna, the next village a short distance south.  I got off and looked around.  Anjuna was famous as a hippie resort, but is badly overbuilt and ugly now.  The beach appears to have been eroded in part, too.  I didn't spend long there before catching a bus back to Mapusa and then to Panaji, getting back about 5.

The next day I spent sightseeing south of Panaji.  I took an express bus about 20 miles south to Margao, Goa's second city with about 100,000 people.  (There are only 1.5 million people in the state.  Goa became a state only in 1987.  It was a territory before that.  It is a small state by Indian standards.)  About halfway there we crossed the very wide estuary of the Zuari River.  These Goan rivers rise in the Western Ghats, no more than 30 miles from the ocean, although with their twists and turns their lengths are greater than that.  Apparently at high tide the Zuari and the Mandovi are linked by an inland watercourse.  This made Old Goa even more defensible.

I got to Margao shortly before 10 and walked to its Largo da Igreja, with the large and whitewashed Holy Spirit Church at its eastern end.  People were pouring out of the church after Sunday mass and at 10 another mass began, with the pews full and people standing outside.  I took a brief look inside, but with the mass starting didn't want to stay long.  I walked around the neighborhood, full of old colonial buildings, including the large da Silva Palace, dating from 1790 with three of its original seven peaked sections remaining.

From Margao I took one of Goa's little buses further inland, to the east, to the little village of Chandor, less than ten miles from Margao.  I got off by its whitewashed church and walked to the nearby Braganza Palace.  This two story palace, with 28 large windows lining the front, dates in part from the 16th century.  It was built for two brothers, half for each one.  It has remained in their families ever since.  The Menezes-Braganza (at one point there was only a daughter to inherit) west wing was closed.  It used to be open on Sundays, but the 95 year old lady who lived there died last year.  No one lives there now, but a lady opens the wing for visitors every day but Sunday.  The Perreira-Braganza (again, no son to inherit) east wing was open, and I was shown around by a young woman.  This wing is not supposed to be as beautiful as the west wing, but it still was pretty impressive, particularly the ball room, 350 years old.  It has marble floors and a painted zinc ceiling, the ceiling now in great disrepair.  The furniture is old, too, but not that old.  I was shown two chairs given to an ancestor by the King of Portugal as a reward for his service as  a consul in Spain and a wooden toilet near the old four poster bed in a bedroom.  There is a chapel with a relic in a monstrance, the fingernail of St. Francis Xavier.

The family lives in the wing and my guide introduced me to her mother-in-law, who speaks Portuguese.  I spoke briefly with her.  The guide told me the family is Indian, with no Portuguese ancestors, and was given the Braganza name when they converted in the 16th century.  That seems a little odd to me, as Braganza was the family name of the Portuguese royal family.  The areas of Goa closest to Panaji are called the Old Conquests and are more heavily Christian than the New Conquests, which Portugal acquired after the fervor of the Inquisition had passed.  I think Goa's population is about 20 or 25 percent Christian.  It's about 70 percent Hindu and there are Muslims, too.

Leaving the Braganza Palace, I walked past the village church again and headed east out of town, passing rice paddies fringed by coconut palms, about a mile to the Fernandes Palace, part of which is about 500 years old but most of which dates from 1821.  It is not as large or as magnificent as the Braganza Palace, but still was very interesting.  I was shown around by a young man who introduced me to his mother, with whom I had a pretty interesting conversation in Portuguese.  Goanese pronunciation is much closer to the pronunciation in Portugal than in Brazil.  The guy showed me gunholes in the oldest part of the house, in one part of the ground floor, for firing at intruders.  He said there used to be an escape tunnel to the river 100 feet away, but it has collapsed now.  He also let me wield an old sword, which was heavy. 

He was a friendly guy and gave me directions to my next stop, the little town of Quepem.  While waiting for a bus to come along I walked further east, passing more beautiful rice paddies and a decrepit colonial building with stone lions on the gateways.  A little bus came along and I took it further east, passing over the here narrow Zuari River, hemmed in with jungle on either side, to the town of Sanvordem, where I hopped on another little bus southwest to Quepem.  In Quepem I walked to the Palacio do Deao (which I think means Palace of the Dean, as in Dean of the Cathedral in Old Goa) on the river.  It was built in 1780 by a Portuguese priest who arrived in Goa in 1779 at age 18.  He stayed until his death in 1835 and is buried in the Cathedral in Old Goa, where he was Deao (again, Dean, I think).  It was in ruins, but an Indian couple have restored it, are living in it, but allow visitors to look around.  I walked through the house, full of old furniture, and the lovely gardens.

I had a small snack in a little cafe on the town square before taking the bus back to Margao, where I walked again to the Church of the Holy Spirit.  A wedding was about to start at 5, but I looked around inside before it started.  The original church was built in 1564 and sacked by Muslims in 1589.  It was rebuilt in 1675 and is beautiful inside, with a large gilded altar and a splendid gilded pulpit, with painted figures on it.  The church filled up while I was looking around.  I noticed several women wore saris while most wore western dress, some of the young women in short skirts.  All were dressed very well, the men in suits and ties.  The bride wore a white wedding dress and proceeded down the center aisle.  The service was in English.   I sat and watched for a while, then took a walk around the neighborhood again to see the colonial era buildings before coming back to the church and catching the end of the sermon, the vows and the beginning of a song.  I left before the end and caught a bus back to Panaji soon after 6. 

I finally left Panaji the next morning, but only after a walk around the Fontainhas neighborhood and breakfast at Venite.  About 10:30 I took an express bus to Margao.  Unlike almost all other buses I've taken in India, for this bus you have to buy your ticket from a little window before boarding and, much to my surprise, there was a long, orderly queue that morning for tickets.  None of the usual Indian scrum of cutting in line and pushing and shoving.  From Margao I took a slower bus further south, crossing over some beautiful green hills rising to over 500 feet elevation before arriving at Palolem on the coast, about 20 miles south of Margao.  The bus arrived a little before 1 and I got a room in a comfortable and friendly hotel.

Palolem, a fishing village undiscovered by tourism until less than 20 years ago, has a long crescent shaped beach backed by coconut palms.  The beach is still beautiful, and the palms are still there, some reaching out over the wide expanse of sand towards the sea, but all along the perhaps mile long beach, under the palms, there is now commercial development.  Fortunately, it is of the beach shack type and fits in well with the beach and palm trees.  There are no big resorts.  In fact, before the monsoon every year the proprietors of the small hotels, restaurants and shops along the beach are required by law, I've been told, to dismantle them until the beginning of the next season.  (I can remember the Nepali guys who ran I restaurant I liked in Leh, in Ladahk, in India's far north, when I was there in September 2010 getting ready to close up the restaurant and head to Goa for the winter.)

There were lots of tourists in Palolem, almost all westerners, though some Indians.  Soon after arrival I had a delicious lunch, a feta cheese and fried eggplant sandwich on good bread with a salad with balsamic vinegar dressing.  Food and accommodation here are very good.  I can see why people come and stay a long time.

About 3 I walked through the village to its northern end and then to the river to the north.  The beach runs generally from the northwest to the southeast, and I made my way through the palm trees to the northwest end of the beach where a rickety wooden bridge crosses the little river to a set of huts on the other side.  Then I walked back along the beach to the village center and then inland through the village to the the southeast end of the beach and climbed the rocky headland beyond.  I came back to my hotel along the long, fairly wide beach, stopping to sit near two overhanging palm trees and watch the sunset about 6:30.  The sun disappeared into the haze over the ocean.  Outriggered fishing boats were beaching before sunset, but some still were out on the water.

The next morning I took about a two hour walk up and down the beach.  My hotel is nearer the northwestern end and I walked first to the southeastern end, with the sun rising over the palms.  Men were working on their fishing boats on the beach and tourists were out strolling or jogging.  It was cool in the morning.  I reached the headland and turned back, walking to the northwestern end.  The tide was out and I could wade the little river at less than knee deep to get to the rocky headland on the other side.  I came back, spotting a kingfisher first on the sand and then on a big rock at the river's edge and seeing lots of little crabs and their holes in the sand.  Many of the holes had perfectly round little balls of sand next to them, excavated by the tiny crabs.  The crabs generally would scurry to their holes at my approach.  One, however, did not, but ran all around.  I followed him and eventually he let me get within inches of him.  Quite brave, or foolish.   About 10:30 I had a great breakfast, an English Breakfast, as the menu had it, of scrambled eggs, grilled tomatoes, mushrooms, and potatoes, baked beans, bacon, sausage, pineapple juice and very good bread with butter and jam, all for 225 rupees (something over $4), quite expensive for an Indian breakfast but a great deal for what you got.  I spent the middle part of the day in an internet cafe and reading in my room before taking another walk up and down the beach from about 5 to after sunset.

I thought about heading further south the next day, but couldn't quite make myself leave.  In the early morning I spent another couple of hours or so walking up and down the beach.  It was a bit cloudy early in the morning.  There must have been over fifty outriggered fishing boats along the beach.  I watched one come in, pushed up the beach from the water's edge by perhaps a dozen men.  I then watched as about eight of them slowly unwound a long green net, pulling off shrimp and some small fish as they did so and tossing them into piles.  Crows, dogs and even a few hawks watched, the crows diving for some of the small fish tossed to the sand.  I didn't see the hawks do the same, but they were circling.  The dogs ate some of the cast off fish, too.  When I came back after walking up and down the beach they were finished and the shrimp had been divided into more or less equal piles, one for each of the fishermen perhaps.  From the beach I walked into a group of very nice hut accommodations for tourists just behind the beach and read a newspaper while sitting on a comfortable chair under the palms before heading to a late breakfast.

In the afternoon I spent some time talking to a guy from Kazakhstan staying at my hotel.  He is ethnically Russian and works on the Caspian Sea, doing environmental studies for the oil industry.  He showed me photos of Kazakhstan on his laptop.  I walked up and down the beach again before and after sundown.  A fleet of about fifteen fishing boats had anchored in the little bay earlier in the afternoon.  As I was leaving the beach in the twilight to walk through the coconut palms to my hotel, I noticed a guy high up in the fronds of a palm tree at the edge of the beach.  Another guy came by and said he was placing a pot for toddy, and would have a liter by morning.  For dinner that evening I went to an open air restaurant where a cow had situated itself just inside the entry.  She sat there calmly all through dinner.

January 24-27, 2013: Ratnagiri, Malwan and Belgaum

It was hazy in Kolhapur on the morning of the 24th as I left on a 10:30 bus heading to Ratnagiri on the coast, about 85 miles away.  The bus traveled northwest, then west, through the Western Ghats, the mountains that parallel India's west coast.  From Kolhapur at about 2000 feet elevation, we didn't rise much, maybe to about 2500 feet, but about halfway to the coast we descended rapidly on a very curvy road that plunged about 1500 feet in a very few miles.  There were good, but hazy, views on the way down over the forested hills below.  Once we reached the coastal strip, the landscape was still hilly.  It was greener, but the grass was still brown.  We reached Ratnagiri about 2 and I got a hotel near the bus station before taking an auto rickshaw to King Thibaw's Palace.  Thibaw was the last king of Burma, deposed in 1885 when the British conquered his country and exiled to Ratnagiri from 1886 until his death in 1916.  The palace was built in 1906-1910 and is now dilapidated in places and restored in others.  I walked around inside and out, going up some massive wooden staircases.  Workers seemed to be preparing for some sort of event and there was a sign welcoming the President of Burma (officially Myanmar now) about a month earlier.  There is a view of the ocean, or rather the Arabian Sea, from the heights upon which the palace sits.  From those heights I walked down steps through the trees on the slope to a very nice, almost rural, neighborhood.  I walked a bit more before catching an auto rickshaw back to my hotel.  I began a walk to the port, but gave it up.  It is rarely pleasant to walk in Indian cities, with all the chaotic traffic.

It got light about 7 the next morning (Ratnagiri is the furthest west I will get in India this year) and I left at 8 on a bus heading south to Malwan, something over 100 miles to the south.  This part of the coast, the Konkan Coast, is hilly with many rivers forming estuaries, so the road does not go along the coast.  There are too many wide estuaries to be bridged.  We headed inland and then south through hilly countryside, though probably never over 500 feet in elevation.  The hills were forested, but there was some agriculture (sugar cane, rice, mango trees and other crops) and several little towns and villages.  The bus was very slow, stopping everywhere, but never too crowded.  I was comfortable enough and enjoyed the trip.  Along the way I saw, as I'd seen in Kolhapur and Ratnagiri, memorial posters depicting Bal Thackeray, dressed in orange with big black sunglasses, the recently deceased (November, just before I arrived in India) leader of Shiv Sena, a violent Hindu and Marathi nationalist Maharashtrian political party.

Arriving in Malwan, a small town on the coast, about 2, I encountered two Ukrainian tourists, Marina and Maxim, while looking for a hotel.  They led me to a very nice small one, and then we had lunch and walked around the town and the surrounding area.  We walked along roads and lanes lined by palm trees to a rocky point sticking into the sea.  It was low tide and I watched a woman using a sharp tool to break open mollusks attached to the rocks, extracting the very small bodies, and then dropping them into a small vase.  It was going to hundreds, in fact thousands of them, to fill that vase.  We retraced our steps in part and ended up at Malwan's dirty town beach, with scores of fishing boats anchored in the bay and a view of Sindhudurg fort, built by Shivaji on a low lying island a thousand feet or more offshore.  I watch several men use oiled, roundish pieces of wood to roll a large outrigger from the beach into the sea.

About 5:30 Maxim and I took one of the crowded (50 or so passengers) boats from the jetty to the fort, about a ten or fifteen minute journey.  We were given an hour to look around before out boat returned.  There is isn't much inside other than a few temples that look modern, two watchtowers, and a few village houses, plus hundreds of Indian tourists on that late afternoon.  The walls, however, are fantastic, making a sinuous circuit of the island.  I didn't really appreciate the fort's size and shape until I saw an aerial photograph of it.  We made our way to the far west side and walked along a portion of the walls, with great views of the sea and the walls themselves and the setting sun beyond, before climbing down steep steps and making our way back to the fort's sole, east facing gate for our boat back to town.  We got back after sunset, with a full or nearly full moon rising above the palm trees.  This fort is larger than the the one at Janjira, further north on the Konkan coast, which I visited last March.

Early the next morning I walked through the quiet and cool town to the beach and soon after 8 took the first boat to the fort.  This time I walked along the walls starting at the entry gate and heading south and then west before returning to the gate and going in the opposite direction.  It was nice there in the early morning, with few tourists (although there were 50 or so on my boat).  By the time I left on the boat back to town, there were hundreds of tourists in the fort, and we passed two or three boatloads headed to the fort on our way back. This was a holiday weekend, for Republic Day, commemorating the day in 1950 that the Indian constitution came into effect, and there were hordes of Indian tourists in Malwan.  I went back to my hotel room and watched the televised parade in New Delhi, which I had watched for the first time last year in Ahmedabad.  The King of Bhutan, dressed in white and yellow robes, was the guest of honor, seated next to India's new President, Pranab Mukherjee.  The spectacularly beautiful new Queen of Bhutan sat next to the President's wife.  I think the cameras focused on her more than any other dignitary.  The commentary was in both English and Hindi and, as last year, I enjoyed the spectacle.

The parade ended about noon and I had lunch and then retreated to my room to escape the midday heat and, more importantly, the Indian tourists in SUVs and motorcycles all over town.  It is a interesting to see how many people Indians can stuff into a vehicle, with their luggage tied on top.  About 4:30 I did venture out and eventually reached a secluded spot on a rocky point facing the fort.  The cool breeze off the ocean felt good.  Nearby, and fortunately downwind, was a dumping ground for piles of small fish, later raked flat by women.  Hundreds of egrets were eating them when not disturbed by people.  From the point I watched about a dozen fishing boats come into the harbor past the fort before sunset.  The sun disappeared into the clouds or haze on the horizon just before 6:30 as a full moon was rising in the east.  I met Marina and Maxim for dinner.  Including them, I don't think I saw more than a half dozen western tourists in Malwan.

Malwan is just north of Goa, and I could have been in Goa in a couple of hours, but the next morning I headed to Belgaum in the interior instead of going directly to Goa.  One of my guidebooks stated that the train journey from Belgaum to Goa, passing the Dudsagar Falls, India's second highest, was spectacular.  I left at 9 on a bus headed inland just 15 or 20 miles to the small town of Kudal, where I picked up another bus for another 12 miles to Sawantwadi.  From there I left on a bus before noon heading east over the Western Ghats to Belgaum, 50 miles away.  The bus made a very slow climb up the steep western slopes of the Ghats through beautiful forest, including a section of bamboo, with great, wide views of the hills and forest below.  Finally, we reached the crest and the small town of Amboli, at about 2300 feet elevation.  From Amboli we continued east through rolling hills, with some sugar cane and other crops.  We crossed the Maharashtra-Karnataka state border (I noticed the alphabet change) and arrived in Belgaum, at a little less than 2500 feet elevation, about 3, passing the walls of a fort in the town.  I got a hotel across from the bus stand and checked the train for Goa.  The only train to Goa these days leaves at midnight, a rather inopportune time to enjoy the views on the way.

January 18 - 23, 2013: Bijapur and Kolhapur

I headed north from Badami to Bijapur on the morning of the 18th, but not before taking an early morning walk through the narrow streets of Badami's whitewashed old town.  I strolled around for more than an hour, passing women washing clothes and pots in front of their houses, children getting ready for school, monkeys fighting on rooftops.  Cows, dogs and pigs were also to be seen.  There are a lot of pigs in Badami, which was a bit of a surprise.  Not too much bacon on the menus.  I came across a sow feeding her obviously voracious three piglets.  A fourth one nosed his or her way in and drank just as vigorously as the others until the mother decided that they, or perhaps she, had had enough. I walked by the cave temples under the south fort and along the lake, where only one woman was washing clothes on the ghats.  The air was cool in the early morning and there were great views of the north cliffs and their temples.

After breakfast, I left on a bus about 10:30 heading northwest on a narrow country road to the very small town of Kerur, only about 12 or 15 miles away.  In Kerur I almost immediately got on a passing bus headed to Bijapur, about 60 miles north.  The uncrowded bus passed many seemingly parched corn fields while driving through grain piled on the road here and there. I saw a lot of bullock carts.  Further north yellow grass grew on the rolling landscape as we approached and crossed the long bridge over the reservoir created by the damming of the Krishna River. Approaching Bijapur there was again a lot more agriculture.  The trip was all at about 2000 feet elevation.

We passed through remnants of Bijapur's walls, made of a dark brown stone compared with the lighter, yellow-red sandstone of Badami, and arrived in the city center about 1:30.  Badami's city walls are mostly intact and are about six miles in circumference, with most of Bijapur's 200,000 or so people within the old city walls.  Bijapur was one of the Muslim Deccan sultanates that fought against and finally vanquished the Hindu Vijayanagar Empire to the south.  With the defeat of Vijayanagar in 1565, Bijapur used the proceeds of the sacking of the capital to build many fine monuments.  It also returned to fighting the other sultanates that arose after the fall of the Bahmanis, and later Shrivaji's Hindu Maratha state to the north, but it had a century or so of magnificence until it was conquered by the Mughul Emperor Aurangzeb's armies in 1686.  The city was originally part of the later Chalukya Kingdom.  Muslims of the Delhi Sultanate first arrived in the Deccan in the early 14th century, and Bijapur was part of the Bahmani Kingdom established in 1347.  It Turkish governors, the Adil Shahis, broke away from the Bahmanis in 1489.  All the sights in town seem to be from the Bijapur Sultanate era.

I had caught a slight cold in Badami, so spent the afternoon resting in my hotel room, with a brief foray to get cold medication.  I had a delicious south Indian thali in the hotel restaurant for dinner.

The next morning I slept until almost 8, had breakfast, and about 9:30 or 10 walked to the Jama Masjid, the great mosque built by the Sultan Ali Adil Shah with the spoils of the sacking of Vijayanagar.  It is large and domed, with a high colonnaded prayer hall, but simply decorated except for the very elaborate mihrab (the niche in the center of the wall facing Mecca), which was covered with designs and Arabic calligraphy in gold leaf.  Aurangzeb, after his conquest of the city, added a grand entrance to the south.  I wandered around inside.  It was very quiet, almost deserted.  It has capacity for 2250 worshipers.  Four men were using very long poles with brooms attached to sweep the inside of the colonnaded hall's many domes high above the floor.  One guy was on top of a rolling piece of movable scaffolding.  I noticed the inside of the main dome,  much higher than the side domes, was noticeably dirtier.  I guess they don't have poles long enough for that one.

I walked out the eastern entrance to some domed tombs in an old neighborhood (surprisingly, with lots of pigs, next to a mosque) and then walked west towards the city center.   I passed an elaborate three story doorway, with minarets and balconies, that led to a small mosque.  Further west I could see the walls of the citadel, the royal enclosure at the center of the city.  The walls are mostly intact, but the palace buildings are in ruins.  Before entering the citadel I stopped in at a large building that served as an open fronted hall of justice, built in the mid 17th century.  It is an ugly building with teak columns painted yellowish white that rise maybe 30 feet.  Two hairs of the Mohammed's beard are supposed to have been housed here once.  No information on what happened to them.

I walked along the citadel's walls and then went inside and explored the ruins.  Huge arches remain from Ali Adil Shah's Heavenly Palace.  Later it was made into a durbar hall, open to the north, so the public could see the Sultan seated upon a platform.  I stopped for a snack at a roadside eatery next to the ruins and ordered what are called "finger chips" here -- french fries.  I watched the guy cut up a potato, first cleaning the stone he used for a cutting board with a dirty wet rag.  (Indian cleaning, of a table in a restaurant, or a floor in a restaurant or hotel, always seems to involved wiping a dirty wet rag over what is to be cleaned.)  The finger chips were very red when cooked up, but not too hot.  Nearby were the ruins of a five story palace building and, in front of it, an ornate little pavilion in a now empty tank, made to be filled with water.

I walked out of the citadel and headed further west, past the bus station, and reached the Jod Gumbaj, four domed tombs, the two largest for a general and his spiritual adviser.  One had a mirrored interior.  There were a few pilgrims there and, again surprisingly, quite a few pigs. I walked around and a very old lady beckoned me over.  The somewhat younger woman next to her gestured to me that the old woman wanted her photo taken, so I took several.  She removed her old fashioned round glasses first.  I showed her the photographs and she sort of cackled.  I guess she got quite a kick out of seeing her photograph.

I then walked to the west gate in the city walls (the gate is mostly gone, with just a gap in the walls with the city's main east-west street passing through) and climbed the bastion topped with a huge cannon.  The cannon is called the Malik-e-Maidan, the "Lord of the Plains."  It is said to have been cast in Ahmednagar (one of the other sultanates, to the north) in 1551 and to have come to Bijapur as spoils of war.  It weighs 55 tons and is almost fifteen feet long with a five foot diameter.  Supposedly, it was pulled to Bijapur from Ahmednagar by 400 bullocks, ten elephants and hundreds of men.  On its sides, near it open end, is relief of a lion's head with an elephant in its jaws.

From there I walked east a short distance to a nearby watchtower, inside the city walls, that rises to 80 feet. There were a couple of very long cannons on top and great views in all directions.  To the east I could see the Gol Gumbaz, the giant domed tomb of Mohammed Adil Shah and to the west I could see the domes and minarets of the Ibrahim Rauzi, the tomb and accompanying mosque of Ibrahim Adil Shah.  From there I walked to and then through the bazaars in the city center, filled with people just before sunset.  I took a photo of a cart on the side of the street filled with colorful sweets and a guy with a similar cart called me over to take a photo of his cart, and of him.  He then bought me tea.  I reached the Bara Kaman, intended to be the mausoleum of another Adil Shah sultan.  He died before it was finished and it was never completed.  It would have been huge.  It has a very large one story high base covered by high, often unfinished arches.  Supposedly, it was to be twelve stories high.  There is a tomb at the center of the platform.  The guards shooed us out at 6 and I took an auto rickshaw back to my hotel.

The next morning after breakfast I walked to the Gol Gumbaz, Bijapur's signature attraction, about 8:30.  This is the 1659 mausoleum of Mohammed Adil Shah, his two wives, a son and a daughter, and his favorite courtesan, the dancer Rambha.  There tombs are lined up under the dome of the cavernous building.  The Gol Gumbaz is huge, topped by the world's second largest dome, with a diameter only fifteen feet less than St. Peter's Basilica in Rome, of which it is roughly contemporary.  I have to say that St. Peter's is a lot more beautiful.  The dome is about 375 feet in diameter, and rests on a square base seven stories high, supported by eight arches built into the walls of the base.  I walked around the outside of it in the early morning and could almost constantly hear Indians screaming inside to hear the echo.  I had hoped to get there early enough to miss most of that.

I went inside the huge interior, very simply decorated.  There is a metal canopy over the sultan's tomb, with the others on either side of him.  Up above, reached by seven stories of stairs in each corner, is a ten foot wide gallery, called the Whispering Gallery.  It is said that a sound made up there will echo ten to twelve times through the building, lasting for 26 seconds.  Of course, there was no whispering going on up there, just constant screaming.  I walked around below and then ascended the stairs.  On the seventh level, you come out onto the exterior of the base of the dome, with great views all around.  A small set of steps leads into the dome and the Whispering Gallery inside.  I walked around the outside first, enjoying the views and hoping for a break in the screaming when groups left.  I had great views of the city walls and bastions to the north and east (the Gol Gumbaz is just inside the walls near the eastern end of the city) and the Jama Masjid to the south.  I could even make out the buildings of the citadel.  There are four minarets towering above the walkway, one at each corner, and a mosque just below and to the west of the Gol Gumbaz.  Hawks or falcons or kestrels or some other birds of prey were circling in the morning sun over the mosque.

The screaming never let up and eventually I went inside.  The gallery has only about a three foot wall at its edge, making the view down a little daunting.  It's a long way down.  The screaming and screeching and whistling was annoying, but the echoes were amazing.  I would hear something coming from one direction, look in that direction, and no one was there.  I ducked out a couple of times when big groups of kids came into the gallery.  They are particularly noisy.

About 10:30 or 11 I came down and went into the museum in what was the gatehouse to the Gol Gumbaz.  It is a very good museum, with sculpture, Chinese porcelain, carpets, paintings, weapons, Korans and other stuff, all with very good explanatory texts.  I got back to my hotel restaurant about 1:30 for lunch.

About 3 I took an auto rickshaw to the Ibrahim Rauzi, maybe half a mile outside the western walls of the city.  It is the tomb of Ibrahim Adil Shah, who ruled from 1580 to 1626, his wife, and several others.  The walled enclosure, with a gateway decorated with minarets, contains the tomb on the east side facing a mosque to the west across a pool once filled with water.  There are domes and minarets on both, and this tomb complex is much more beautiful than the huge Gol Gumbaz.  The mosque is almost without decoration inside but has intricate designs on its exterior, facing the tomb.   The tomb has a columned veranda and its decorations are almost all on the exterior walls of the inner chamber containing the graves (although the actual graves are in fact deep below in the crypt).  These walls are covered with designs and Arabic calligraphy.  Originally, there were eight jali windows made of Arabic calligraphy.  Two of them are still substantially intact, and one about half intact, while the other five are destroyed.

I spent the rest of the afternoon there, trying to avoid the school groups which came and went.  Green parrots fluttered about, landing on the mosque and tomb.  It was peaceful there towards 6, with few people.  I left when it closed and before taking an auto rickshaw back to my hotel spent a little time at the entrance talking to a busload of white robed, skull capped madrassa students on tour from northern Kerala who arrived just as the Ibrahim Rauzi was closing.   I got a much needed haircut when I got back.  As usual here in India, the barber cut it very short.  I may not need another haircut until 2014.

The next morning after breakfast and reading the newspaper I left on a bus heading west to Kolhapur about 10:30.  The 110 mile trip took more than five and a half hours, at about 2000 feet elevation the whole way across the Deccan plains.  At first we traveled through the rolling countryside on a very narrow road, past fields of corn and of something with a similar stalk but a fluffy head at the top of the stalk.  There were also vineyards, which wasn't that much of a surprise as I had seen lots of grapes on sale in Bijapur.  Later, there was lots of sugar cane, and lots of trucks and bullock carts transporting it to sugar mills.  It did seem a little strange to see in one view sugar cane, coconut palms, banana trees . . . and grape vines.  Many of vines had big bunches of ripening light green grapes.

We eventually reached and crossed the Karnataka-Maharashtra state line.  I noticed the alphabet used on signs changed.  The road was much more congested in Maharashtra and we reached Kolhapur, a city of about half a million people, after 4.  I asked at several hotels near the bus station before I found one with a reasonably priced room, though it wasn't a great room.  Still, it had a television, as do almost all hotel rooms in India.  Later that evening I checked through the more than 100 channels and eventually found one that carried the inaugural ceremony in Washington.  The commentary was all in Hindi and there were lots of commercials.  I watched it  for more than an hour.  They did show Obama's speech in its entirety, starting at just before 10:30 at night here, but with a slightly delayed translation in Hindi, which made it a little difficult to follow.  They ended coverage soon after his speech.

I spent the next day exploring Kolhapur.  Mid morning I took an auto rickshaw to the New Palace, built in 1884 for the Maharajah of Kolhapur by an English officer named Charles Mant, with the worrisome nickname of "Mad" Mant.  I believe he also designed the palace of the Gaekwad of Baroda in southern Gujarat, further north.  It is quite a building, an Indo-Saracenic combination of Jain and Hindu styles with a Victorian clock tower on top.  The ground floor is now a museum while the descendants of the Maharajah are said to still live on the higher floors.  It was quite a museum, too, with interesting old furniture and photos, a massive weapons gallery, and lots of stuffed animals.  The museum is named after the corpulent maharajah, born in 1874, who reigned from 1894 till his death in 1922.  There are many photos of him and his successor, a much thinner man, his nephew I was told, who reigned from 1922 till his death in, I believe, 1970..  I think they may have been descendants of Shivaji, but I'm not sure.

They both were avid hunters and the museum has a remarkable collection of animal trophies, including lots of stuffed heads and whole animals.  In one room there is a diorama with ten tigers, four of them cubs.  Four other tiger heads are on the wall above the diorama and the room contains all sorts of other stuffed animals including sloth bears and other bears, deer, a lion, a rhinoceros and several others.  And in other rooms of the palace there are mounted animal heads and bear and tiger skin rugs, in addition to rugs of the skins of other animals.  There is stuff made of animal parts, such as ashtrays and lamps mounted on the feet of elephants, tigers, water buffalo, ostriches, and some hoofed animal with stripes on its legs.  A pan box (for betel nut) is mounted on the skull of a tiger.  The teeth of wild boar are made into handles on drinking glasses.  There is even a line of attached leopard vertebrae with a silver tip said to be a walking stick.

The palace also contains a beautiful durbar hall two or three stories high, with a mosaic floor and a throne at one end.  No chandeliers, though.  I wandered around outside and inside the palace for a couple of hours and then had a very good thali lunch for less than a dollar and a half at a little outdoor cafe on the palace grounds.

After lunch I took an auto rickshaw to the Mahalaxmi Temple in the center of town.  I've read these temples, to Amba Bai or the Mother Goddess, are rare in India.  Before entering I walked to the nearby Rajwada, the old palace.  Part of it is now a school and I looked around, both inside and out, despite school being in session.  Nobody seemed to mind and in fact the people I talked to were quite friendly.  One woman had me take her photo and then I took another photo of her next to a drawing of Abraham Lincoln, next to a long text in the Devanagari script, on a corridor wall.  She then summoned several other women to have their photos taken.  They all seemed amused when showed their photos. I walked through the big square at the center of the old palace, now thronged with parked motorcycles and food stalls, with corridors left for traffic, to the temple in the old palace, where most people were just lounging around while a few were making offerings to the deity.  Just to the side of the deity was a colorful statue of the corpulent maharajah next to several stuffed tigers and a stuffed leopard, all in very poor condition.

I then made my way into the Mahalaxmi temple, leaving my shoes and day pack outside.  Its foundations are said to be 10th century, but the towers, painted white, are from the 18th century. It wasn't very crowded, so I followed the queue to see the deity.  It was hot and humid in the sanctuary, tended by several shirtless Brahmin priests.  Outside the temple compound a woman seated on the pavement was apparently telling fortunes by rolling cowrie shells, as two other women looked on intently.

Soon after 4 I walked to the training center for Kolhapur's famous wrestlers.  They train every day from 6 to 9 in the morning and 4 to 6 in the afternoon.  There were more than 30 of them exercising on a concrete floor next to a dirt wrestling pit.  They wear only a sort of loin cloth and some were as young as about 10.  Many were doing a sort of yogic push-up.  Others were doing squats.  Some of the older guys were extremely muscular.  There were others beside me watching, though I was the only foreigner.  I watched for about 20 minutes and then went to the big square again to sit and watch the crowds.  I came back after 5 and two skinny little boys were wrestling in the dirt pit.  Later one of the bigger guys and a very strong looking little kid wrestled, the older guy obviously training the younger one.  The young guy got thrown several times very hard, but always came up with a smile on his face, and there was a lot of joking between the two and from onlookers.  They get very dirty wrestling in that pit, in part because they oil their skin, which makes it easier for the dirt to cling to it.  Outside the pit, in the adjacent courtyard, others took turns pulling a heavy bag, filled perhaps with sand or dirt, by a rope attached to a pulley on a tree branch, while others climbed up another rope.  Towards 6, many were washing off in the courtyard, using buckets of water drawn from a tank.  I left before 6, walked around the temple and square a bit more, and then took an auto rickshaw back to my hotel.

I spent most of the next morning in my room, as I was tired.  I had woken up with a very bad sinus infection the morning before and either it or the medication I was taking, or both, had tired me out.  I did go out for breakfast, and about 11:30 took a bus heading to the little town of Panhala, about 12 miles northwest in the Western Ghats.  It took us more than an hour to get there as we rose to over 3000 feet in elevation.  I could see some of the ramparts of the Panhala fort as we approached the town.  From the bus stop I walked up to the fort.  The walls reportedly run for more than four miles, with several gates.  One ruined gate appeared to be at the entrance to the town and there were several old buildings, including a stepped tank and a temple, in the town.  I walked to two gate complexes and remnants of a wall, with views out over the lower areas stretching to the southwest, and explored the area.  One gate complex had three different gates, with two ninety degree turns between the first two and a guard house between the second and third.  Shivaji is supposed to have spent a lot of time at this fort.  There were Indian tourists there, though not massive amounts.  I walked to another area with now ruined ramparts and views toward the northeast before coming back to the town to look around and catch a bus back to Kolhapur about 4.