April 14-22. 2013: Port Blair and Little Andaman Island

On the 14th I was up just about sunrise and walked down the beach on Neil Island's north coast to the western tip of the island and then back to my hotel on a path through the trees.  I left Neil just before 9 on a ferry bound for Port Blair, a trip of almost two hours.  I checked into the hotel where I'd stayed before, had lunch and then spent the afternoon at what remains of Port Blair's Cellular Jail, built by the British around 1900 to house particularly dangerous political prisoners.  It originally had 693 cells in seven wings radiating from a guard tower, only three of which remain.  It is now a museum commemorating "freedom fighters" and was filled with Indian tourists.  I seemed to be the only westerner.  I spent about three hours there looking around.  Besides the cells, the guard tower and the gallows, there are photographic exhibits in some of the administrative halls.  Outside the jail there are statues honoring six prisoners who died on hunger strikes.  It seems the prisoners housed here were violent ones, the type India would classify as terrorists if they were fighting for the liberation of Kashmir as opposed to India.  The jail was shut down by the British in the 1930's, though the Japanese used it to imprison Indians during their occupation of the Andamans during World War II.  It seems they killed far more of their prisoners, Indians they suspected of loyalty to Britain, than the British did.  Subhas Chandra Bose, the leader of the Indian National Army, the army formed of Indian prisoners of war that fought alongside the Japanese in Burma along the border with India, raised an Indian flag here during the war.  He is now a national hero, commemorated especially in West Bengal, as he was a Bengali.  He called himself  "Netaji."  "Neta" means "leader" while "ji" is an honorific, so it sounds an awful lot like der Fuhrer or il Duce.  It was very hot and humid that afternoon, much hotter than it had been when I was in Port Blair in March.

The next morning I took a ferry at 8:30 to Ross Island, only about half a mile from Port Blair.  This small island was the British administrative center and is covered with derelict old buildings from the colonial era.  I spent the whole day there walking around and exploring the ruins, plus a very few restored buildings.  The atmospheric overgrown buildings included the arcaded "Subordinates' Club," the Presbyterian Church, the Commissioner's Bungalow, and many others, all covered in vines and roots.  Some of the ruined buildings have fig trees growing on them and are covered with masses of roots.  The island hosts many huge trees and many coconut palms, all of which have numbers, up to almost 2000, painted on them.  There are also relatively tame spotted deer, peacocks and peahens and squirrels.  A cemetery has graves from the 1860's. There are also some Japanese World War II bunkers and a small museum with interesting photos from the colonial era.

The day was sunny and hot, with great views through the forest towards the sea.  Lots of Indians were strolling around, but I seemed to be the only westerner.  Some very polite non-Indian looking children said hello and their parents told me they were tribal people, Nicobarese.  The father told me he works in Port Blair.  While there are less than 1000 tribal people, from four different tribes, left in the Andamans, there are about 30,000 in the Nicobars, almost all (there is one other tribe) Nicobaris who are Christian and have adapted well to modern life.  I took the last ferry back about 5 and had an okay fish dinner in an outdoor restaurant as darkness fell.  My room was hot that night at bedtime, with my thermometer registering 88 degrees inside the room.

I was up the next morning at first light, about 4:30, and headed to the port soon after 5 to buy a ticket for the ship leaving for Little Andaman Island south of Port Blair.  This ship was much larger than the other ferries I had taken, maybe 300 feet or more long, with several decks and even a helipad.  It left at 7, with tugs pulling it away from the dock.  I spent the almost seven hour voyage on the deck.  We rounded Ross Island and headed south along the east coast of South Andaman Island heading for Hut Bay on Little Andaman, about 75 miles south of Port Blair.  South of South Andaman we passed large Rutland Island, then the two small Cinque Islands and then the even smaller Sisters and Brothers Islands.  The long, low coastline of Little Andaman became visible and we cruised down its eastern coast with its long white beaches visible.  Little Andaman is the southernmost of the Andamans.  South of it is the Ten Degree Channel between Little Andaman and the northernmost of the Nicobars.  Little Andaman is the only island in the Andamans to suffer loss of life during the 2004 tsunami, with almost 100 killed.  At least that is the official toll; other estimates are higher.  The Nicobars suffered much more loss of life, with thousands killed.  In Kalipur in North Andaman the hotel owner had been on Havelock when the tsunami hit.  He said the sea first receded rapidly and the ensuing wave was chest high at his hotel on Havelock's east coast.

We docked at Hut Bay at 1:45 and the ship immediately refilled with passengers for the return trip to Port Blair.  There were only two other western tourists on the ship and the three of us took a crowded jeep to a little hotel about seven miles north from the dock at Hut Bay, near the little village of Netaji Nagar.  There are about 20,000 people living on Little Andaman, almost all migrants from the mainland.  About 100 tribal Onge people remain in reserves that you are not allowed to visit.  I checked into my comfortable hut, had a late lunch, and then walked across the road and through the trees for fewer than five minutes to the long beach, stretching all the way from the Hut Bay dock.  Little Andaman's beaches are known for their sand flies, so I quickly walked along the beach to its nearby northern headland, and then across that low but rocky headland to a much smaller beach lined with huge trees.  At its northern end is a pool fed by the tide backed by big black rocks.  Just beyond the pool is the headland between it and beautiful Butler Bay to the north.  I found a lookout over Butler Bay from the rocky headland and then a path through the big trees to the southern end of Butler Bay.  The tide was low.  It was getting late, so I headed back, but took a road inland from the small beach that led to Netaji Nagar village, with some very friendly people.  From there I took the main road back to my hotel, arriving just at 6 as darkness fell.  We had a delicious fish dinner that night, a grouper cooked in butter and garlic, with french fries and salad.  There were only four of us staying there, the Canadian-Argentine couple that had arrived on the ship with me, plus a young Norwegian guy who had been there for two weeks or more.

I was up the next morning about 5:30 and took a two hour walk, first along the beach, but the sand flies soon drove me off the beach into the trees and onto the road heading towards the dock. I enjoyed the morning walk along the quiet road, passing a school, three other small hotels, a few houses, and lots of areca palms, coconut palms and high padauk trees.  One stretch between the beach and the road was lined with casuarina (ironwood) trees.  I walked to a lagoon fed by the sea that is just alongside the road.  Salt water crocodiles are said to appear there, but I saw none.  I did see several birds.  Back at the hotel I had a leisurely breakfast and then went swimming in the very blue water off the beach near the hotel.  There were good waves, too.  In fact, Little Andaman is known for its surfing, particularly at the northern headland of Butler Bay.  Most of the very few tourists on the island seem to have come for the surfing.  Back at the hotel I read and had a late lunch before going for an afternoon swim.  From about 4 to 6 I took a walk, first along the road for over a mile to Butler Bay and then back along the beaches and headlands.

I slept late the next morning, until about 7:30.  I read, had breakfast, and took a swim.  I was going to rent a scooter to explore the island, but there was a gas shortage, so I rented a bicycle and biked south along the road and then inland to a waterfall about four miles away.  The waterfall was about 40 or 50 feet high, but not particularly scenic.  I took a path to the top and sat there for a while.  Very big flies, bigger than horse flies, bedeviled me both at the falls and on the bike trip into the forest on the way to the falls.  Swatting them didn't necessarily shoo them away;  you had to brush them away.  From the waterfall I biked an additional three miles to the town of Hut Bay, the island's largest village near the dock.  Uniformed men were playing cricket in the hot midday sun on a mostly grassy field, or perhaps I should say pitch.  A loudspeaker announced the action, but there didn't seem to be any spectators.  It took me a while to find the ferry ticket office, as it had no sign.  When I found it, I had a 40 minute wait as the one guy working there was out to lunch.  When he did arrive, he was not particularly helpful.  I biked back to the hotel, went swimming and then had something to eat.  From about 4:30 to 6 I took a walk on a road that head inland just north of our hotel.  It passed through an oil palm plantation and by an oil palm factory.  I met some very friendly little girls, living in the decrepit wooden housing near the factory.  There were lots of flies along the road.  In fact, insects were quite a problem on Little Andaman.  My legs had many sand fly and mosquito bites and flies were a problem during the day.

We had heard during the afternoon that the Norwegian guy had been in a motorcycle accident and was hospitalized.  It turned out it was quite serious. He required thirty plus stitches in his scalp and one arm and one leg were badly hurt.  Fortunately, he didn't seem to have any internal injuries.  He was evacuated by helicopter the next morning to Port Blair.

I was up the next morning about 5:30 and took a walk into the oil palm plantation for a little less than an hour.  Workers were arriving at the mill.  Back at the hotel I had breakfast, read and swam.  It was quite a lazy day, as we were all dispirited by the motorcycle accident.  From 4 to 6 I did take a walk to the pool at the little beach between the long Hut Bay Beach and Butler Bay.  I sat among the big trees there for a while and watched the sea grow dark.

The next morning I awoke about 4:30 and listened to the birds and the waves.  I got up about 6 and read for a while.  On Little Andaman I missed taking early morning walks along the beach, as the sand flies were particularly bad in the early morning.  After breakfast I caught a passing share jeep into Hut Bay and got off at the ferry ticket office.  There was a big crowd is a disorderly scrum at the little window, with men on one side and women on the other.  I pushed and shoved with everyone else for about an hour before I got my ticket for the next morning.  At the end, I reached my relatively long arm with my form requesting a ticket over others in front of me into the little ticket window, perhaps three inches square.  You could barely see the guys dispensing tickets inside.  After getting my ticket, I took a bus back to the hotel and went for a swim before spending most of the afternoon reading.  From about 4:30 to nightfall I walked among the big trees between the road and the beach.  Two of them had fallen, years ago.  Big waves crashed on the beach and a few cows were grazing below the big trees.  We had another very good fish dinner that night.  The previous two nights the dinners had not been particularly good, as the manager was dealing with the motorcycle accident.

The next morning I was up before 5 and caught a bus shortly after 5:30 to the port.  To my surprise, the ship listed on my ticket was not there, but a huge ship about 600 feet long had just arrived from Port Blair.  It disembarked its passengers, including only one western tourist.  About 200 of us boarded, with me the only westerner, and it turned out I could have avoided the scrum at the ticket office the day before and bought my ticket at the dock.  The ship, the Campbell Bay (named after a bay on Great Nicobar Island, the southernmost of the Nicobars), was brand new with a capacity for 1200 passengers.  It was almost 8 when we departed, almost an hour late.  I spent the first two hours on deck and watched Little Andaman go by.  I could see the big waves at the northern headland of Butler Bay.  The ship was air conditioned and I had a bunk in a room with ten or twenty beds.  I spent hardly any time in my room but sat in an empty lounge in a comfortable chair next to a big window.  I read and enjoyed the views.  About 2 we were off Ross Island, where we stopped dead in the water for a half hour or so, apparently waiting for the pilot to board.  It was a slow process getting to the dock and we finally docked at 3:30 not at the dock I had used for all other ferries, but at the dock used for the big ships to the mainland.  I took an auto rickshaw to my hotel and then checked about boats to Calcutta.  One was scheduled to leave in four days' time, but the previous ship had been delayed several days and my hotel owner was not very positive about the ship that was going to Calcutta, so I decided to fly.  It was very hot in Port Blair.

I bought my ticket to Calcutta the next morning for the next day.  It cost me $160, about four times the ship fare.  The day was another very hot one,  I walked to the anthropological museum and spent a couple of hours there.  It was very interesting, with some great tribal artifacts and photographs, including a photo of almost naked North Sentinelese standing just offshore the island and aiming bows and arrows at the photographer.  A signboard said the Andaman and Nicobar Islands had a population of 282,000 in 2001 (one of my guidebooks says 350,000 now, with over 100,000 in Port Blair), 23% speaking Bengali, 19% Tamil, 18% Hindi, 12% Telugu, 9% tribal languages, 9% Malayalam, 5% Ranchi languages, and 5% other languages.  The religious breakdown was 67% Hindu, 24% Christian, and 8% Muslim.  I didn't do much the rest of the day.  Internet connections were often very bad in the Andamans.  I did see a guy near the bus stand drinking from a cow.  He massaged the cow's udder and then put his mouth to it to drink.  I am certain that I have never seen that on a city street anywhere else.  In fact, I don't think I've seen that anywhere else, period.  Around 5 I walked to the esplanade fronting the sea before Ross Island.  Massive clouds filled the sky.  In the adjacent park were a tank, a missile, a warship gun and statues of Tagore and Bose.  A statue of Rajiv Gandhi stood on a dock out into the sea.  At 6 I went to the sound and light show at the Cellular Jail.  Hundreds of Indians attended and I didn't see any other westerners.  It wasn't very well done, I thought.  One of the heroes featured was Veer Savarkar, an extreme Hindu nationalist who was imprisoned in the jail for about ten years until 1921, when he renounced violence and was released from his life sentence.  He was a great opponent of Gandhi and gave his blessing to his assassin.  And he is now a national hero.  Port Blair's airport is named after him.

April 5-13, 2013: Long, Havelock and Neil Islands

On the 5th I left Mayabunder about 8 on a crowded bus heading south to Rangat, maybe 45 miles away.  We passed through hilly terrain, up to 500 feet in elevation, of forest and farms and several villages before traveling along Middle Andaman's rocky east coast.  I got off the bus at Rangat Bay, a few miles before the town of Rangat, about 10 to wait for the 1 p.m. ferry.  The ferry arrived soon after 12 and left at 1, sailing out of Rangat Bay and then south along the east coast of Long Island.  I could spot the white sand beaches along the coast of Long Island.  We docked near Long Island's southern tip about 2.  The ferry continued south, eventually to Port Blair, but I got off and walked along raised cement paths, past the remains of wooden buildings from the days there was a sawmill here, to the island's only guesthouse, where I got a mattress on the floor of a room.  I had lunch under the big tree in the center of the courtyard and then walked to a nearby small beach about 4.  There are about 1200 people on Long, mostly tribal people brought in from what is now Jarkhand (formerly southern Bihar) to work in the sawmill.  The sawmill is now closed but they have stayed on and now farm.  There are many beautiful big trees on the island, so I guess the sawmill didn't get them all.  There is a small temple just above the beach.  I watched the sunset and then walked back.  Three French tourists had gone out fishing and caught a big and delicious fish, which they shared with me for dinner.

I was up early the next morning and walked to the nearby village, full of wooden houses and other wooden buildings.  There are no cars and only a few motorcycles.  There are no real roads, just the raised cement paths, raised because of the torrential monsoon rains.  I explored a couple of very large boat houses, now derelict, and eventually reached the ferry landing.  It was hot and humid at breakfast in the courtyard and about 10 I set out to walk to Lalaji Beach, on the east coast.  It took me about 40 minutes through farmland, with a final descent through forest, to the first beach.  From there I couldn't find the inland path through the trees north to Lalaji, so I had to walk along the mostly rocky shore, which was scenic but a bit difficult.  I eventually reached the long sandy curve of Lalaji Beach and walked along it.  It is a beautiful beach with big trees backing it and a blue bay in front.  There is a coconut plantation at the northern end.  There were also sand flies, and after trying to find the inland path back, I started my walk back along the shore, not wanting to wait too late and have to deal with the incoming tide.  I reached the small beach and spent maybe a half hour there before heading up through the trees and through the farmland.  I spotted several trees with seed pods full of a cotton like material.  In fact, the trees looked full of cotton balls, and the ground underneath was white with the cotton like material.  I reached the guesthouse about 3 for a late lunch before heading to the nearby beach.  I walked through the ruins of the sawmill and found the 1963 foundation stone.  Later, just before dark, I walked into the village.  A group of both boys and girls were playing cricket.  This is the first time I've seen girls playing cricket.  And the best player among them was a girl.  Another group of boys were playing a game with a ball and several coconut halves.

It was hot on Long Island and I left the next morning, catching the small 7 a.m. ferry that travels through the mangroves on the way to the little port of Yeratta, a few miles from Rangat.  The mangroves were beautiful in the morning light.  We reached Yeratta about 8 and a bus took us to Rangat.  I wanted to take the bus from Rangat to Port Blair, to see the jungle scenery on the way.  I had an hour wait in that flyblown town before a bus to Port Blair arrived.  I boarded, but the conductor said foreigners weren't not allowed on the road to Port Blair, as it passes alongside the reserve for the tribal Jarawa people.  I had talked to people in Kalipur who just days before had taken the bus from Port Blair, so I didn't vacate my seat.  A guy near me encouraged me to stay.  Eventually, however, the conductor got the police and they made me get off.  Disappointed, I took a bus and then a shared jeep to Rangat Bay again and waited to the 1 p.m. ferry.  I boarded the ferry, which did not stop at Long Island but went directly to Havelock Island, a trip of two and a half hours.  There were only 30 passengers and it was a pleasant trip.  We passed Long and Strait Islands to the west and the three Button Islands and then the big islands of the Ritchie Archipelago to the east.  From the port I took an auto rickshaw to a hotel with huts on the east coast, on Beach 5.  (There is also a Beach 3 and a Beach 7, but I'm not sure about 1, 2, 4 and 6.)  The tide was high and the beach therefor thin, but I walked along it as far as I could south, which wasn't far, and then north before sitting until dark.  It is a pretty beach, with big trees and lots of hotels along it.  Havelock is the main tourist island of the Andamans.  Across the sea is John Lawrence Island.  Many little boats, for scuba diving mostly, were anchored just offshore.

I was up before 5 the next morning and watched the sunrise as I walked along the beach.  I lay in a hammock on the beach for a while and then took a short walk south along the road inland paralleling the beach.  After breakfast I spent about three hours lying in a hammock under the big trees along the beach and reading as the tide receded, leaving the reef exposed.  A ferry passed by.  Just past noon I walked south less than a mile to the little village called Main Bazaar and caught a bus about 1 heading across the northern part of the island for about five miles to Beach 7 on the west coast.  This beach is reputed to be the most beautiful in India, or even Asia, and it is indeed a beautiful beach, an arc of white sand for more than a mile backed by huge jungle trees.  A large group (more than a hundred, maybe a couple of hundred) Indian tourists were frolicking near the center of the beach, near where the road ends.  I walked through the big trees of the jungle on a path parallel to the beach towards its northwestern end (the beach faces generally southwest), a beautiful walk, and emerged on the beach near its end.  I walked to the deserted end of the beach and then back to a beautiful lagoon formed by a gap in the reef, with a sandy bottom.  A few western tourists, less than 20, were swimming or sitting on the beach.  I sat for a while and then walked back along the beach, with lots of crabs, big and small, scurrying across the sand back to their holes at my approach.  I sat here and there to watch them.  I walked to the far end of the beach and watched a spectacular sunset just before 5:30.  The day's last bus back to Main Bazaar left soon after 6.  I visited the still open air market in the village before walking back to my hotel.  I had a great fish dinner that night.  I finally found a place that knew how to cook fish.  Most Indian places overcook it, as they do almost everything else.

I spent a good part of the early morning the next day in a hammock on the beach and then after breakfast walked to Main Bazaar, rented a mask and snorkel, and caught the bus heading to Beach 7.  I got off a couple of miles before the Beach 7 and took a 45 minute walk through beautiful jungle to Elephant Beach, a white sand beach with lots of gnarly mangroves growing along it.  The white sand gleamed and even hurt my eyes as I came out of the jungle.  Unfortunately, there were hundreds of Indians there, having arrived by boat for a morning's excursion.  Most were swimming or snorkeling, but some were whizzing around on jetskis.  I avoided the crowded Indian portion of the beach and snorkeled with a Russian guy (there were only three of us foreigners on the beach) near a deserted portion of the beach.  There were some colorful fish and coral, but the water was murky.  After about 45 minutes of snorkeling, I walked back the way I had come and just missed a bus to Beach 7.  I walked along the road to the beach, passing an elephant tied up under a tree.  I believe it is used for rides for tourists, as I had spotted elephant dung the day before along the path paralleling the beach.  I had lunch and then walked along the forest path to the lagoon towards the northwestern end of the beach, where I swam and then sat on the beach.  There were no fish to be seen, but it was a beautiful spot, with very blue water and great views back toward the huge trees lining the beach.  The waves were good, too.  Back on the beach, I did see a big fish jump out of the water and wondered what was chasing it.  A few years ago a tourist was killed by a salt water crocodile in this lagoon, considered quite an unusual occurrence.  Towards the end of the afternoon I walked back along the beach to its other end and watched the sunset before taking the bus back at 6.  The sunset was much less of a spectacle than the evening before.

The next morning I spent some time in a hammock on the beach, had a long breakfast, and before 1 p.m. took an auto rickshaw to the port, where my ferry left for Neil Island, south of Havelock, at 2.  We cruised down Havelock's east coast, passing the beaches and guesthouses and then Havelock's deserted southern part of the island before reaching its southern tip and docking on Neil's northern coast about 3:15.  Neil is a small triangular shaped island and I took an auto rickshaw about two miles to a hotel on the north coast near Neil's western tip, where I checked into another fairly comfortable hut.  I sat on the beach with the low tide exposing the wide reef and with Havelock across the water.  Sometime after 4 I walked along the beach, backed by spectacular big trees, to Neil's western tip, with a nice, wide beach at low tide.  I rounded the point and continued along the beach, with more big trees along the beach.  Parrots and swiftlets filled the trees and sky and I spotted a kingfisher or two on the exposed coral rocks of the reef.  The tide was coming in as I walked along the reef to some mangroves.  Another spectacular sunset lit up the coral speckled water and the partly cloudy sky over South Andaman Island to the west.  I walked back to my hotel along the beach just before dark and then sat in the dark on the beach before dinner.  Besides me, there were only two other foreign tourists, both Russians.  The rest were Indians, who generally came for just one night.  A lot of them come on package tours of only four or five days, with maybe two nights on Havelock and one on Neil. Apparently, a lot of civil servants get subsidized air fares to the Andamans every few years.

I got up the next morning just after sunrise, though it was hidden behind clouds on the horizon.  I walked to the western tip of the island and then along the beach beyond.  I sat for a while on the low cliffs above the horizon and watched the sea.  A dugong regularly feeds in this area, but I didn't spot it.  A ferry from Port Blair on the way to Neil passed and then returned the way it had come.  I walked inland a short distance to another hotel and then back to the beach at the western tip, where a policeman with a rifle stood guard under a thatched hut.  I wonder why.  Back at my hotel, I had breakfast and then lay and sometimes slept in a hammock under the trees along the beach from about 11 until 2:30.  A wonderful breeze blew off the sea and I watched another ferry come and go.

After a late lunch I walked along the beach east to the port, a forty minute walk along a narrow beach littered with the trunks of giant trees.  Other trees had the soil beneath their now exposed roots eroded and looked ready to fall.  I reached the little port village sometime after 4, just as a religious procession was beginning.  I think most of the people on Neil are migrants from Bengal.  A man and several small boys at the head of the procession were dressed as tribal people, with grass skirts and bows and arrows, but the rest were in western or Indian (the women) dress, some carrying offerings, including one man  with a small boat on his head with part of a banana tree trunk as its hull.  There were drummers and a horn player.  Fireworks were set off and one person carried a pot of incense.  I never did find out the reason for the procession, but I followed it around for more than an hour.  Periodically, different women, one at a time, would dance, acting possessed.  Some of them had painted faces.  Other women would pour buckets of water on their heads and they would eventually quiet down.  Eventually leaving the procession, I walked back to my hotel on the road and then sat on the beach until dark.

The next morning I sat on the beach and watched the waves until breakfast.  I snorkeled around Neil's western tip from about 10 to 1, but the water was murky and there weren't that many fish.  The water over the sandy bottom was a beautiful blue, though.  I walked back on the beach to my hotel and then sat on the beach before and after lunch.  About 4 I walked again to the Neil's western tip.  I walked up and down the beach and then sat on the sand for the sunset.  The sky was cloudier than the evening before, making for an especially spectacular post sunset sky as the clouds changed colors before darkening.  A sliver of a moon was descending as I walked back just before dark.

I was up just after sunrise the next morning and sat on the beach before walking down to the west end of the island.  I hung around there until about 8, watching the sea as the tide came in.  A ferry and a dive boat passed by.  No dugong.  After breakfast I sat in the cool breeze on the beach in front of my hotel until lunch.  There was always a good breeze there.  It clouded up and after lunch the clouds blackened, the wind increased, and it eventually began to rain.  It rained hard for only about ten minutes, but that was enough to dissuade me from taking the 3:30 ferry to Port Blair.  However, it soon began to clear and about 4 I walked to the western tip of the island.  Dead leaves, blown by the strong wind before the rain, littered the beach.  I watched another beautiful sunset through the clouds.  South Andaman's profile was very clear after the rain.  As the night before, the sky was particularly spectacular after the sunset as the clouds changed colors with a crescent moon high above.  I stayed until dark and then walked back along the beach in the dark to my hotel.

 

March 24 - April 4, 2013: Andaman Islands - Port Blair and North Andaman

I flew to Port Blair, the main city of the Andaman Islands, from Chennai on the morning of the 24th, a less than two hour flight that arrived shortly after noon.  It was quite easy to get to Chennai's airport on a suburban train that took about half an hour from Chennai's old Egmont Station to the airport.  We flew over Chennai's long beach and then over the  Bay of Bengal for over 700 miles, passing over reef fringed North Sentinel Island, just before landing on South Andaman Island a few miles south of Port Blair.  There are a few hundred tribal people living on North Sentinel and so far they have resisted almost all contact with outsiders, usually greeting them with a hail of arrows.

I found a hotel in Port Blair, quiet on a Sunday afternoon, with well paved streets and not much traffic.  The temperature was pleasant, in the high 80's.  I took a walk around town starting about 4 and went to the port but not much else as I was tired and it was dark before 6.  Port Blair is named after a Lieutenant Archibald Blair, who surveyed the islands in 1788.  A settlement was founded and then moved to Port Cornwallis on North Andaman Island, but was abandoned after only a few years.  Port Blair was refounded in 1858 as a penal colony after the 1857 Indian Mutiny.  The islands at that time were populated by tribal people of what is called Negrito stock, similar to Africans but smaller.  Fewer than a thousand now remain, of four different tribes.  South of the Andamans are the Nicobar Islands, which have something like 30,000 tribal people, of Asian stock.  The Nicobars are closed to foreigners and almost all Indians.

I went to bed early and got up soon after 4 the next morning.  I would have like to spend a day or two in Port Blair, but there was a ferry leaving for Diglipur on North Andaman at 6, and I got to the port soon after 5 to get a ticket.  I got one without too much of a problem and we departed Port Blair in the morning sunshine and headed north along the east coast of jungle covered South Andaman Island, with hills rising to over 500 feet.  Other ferries were departing to the islands of Havelock and Neil in the Ritchie Archipelago to the northeast.  The ferry boat was about 130 feet long and 30 wide.  I stood out on the aft deck for the first two hours watching the coast go by, with ocassional sights of flying fish gliding for surprisingly long distances once distrurbed by our passage.

About 8 I walked about a bit and was invited onto the bridge, where I spent the rest of the ten hour voyage.  We were heading for the strait between Bharatang Island, just north of South Andaman, and Ritchie's Archipelago to the east, with the islands of Havelock and Neil and others with English names, many named after heroes of the Mutilny (British heroes, that is).  We passed by Strait Island, reserved for the last few Great Andamanese tribal people (50 or so, but once numbering in the thousands) and then along Long Island, just off the coast of Middle Andaman Island and about the mid point of the ferry ride.  I enjoyed it on the bridge.  The crew members were friendly and I could look at the instruments and the charts.  I could sit when I wanted and had a great view.   We saw only one other ship, a coast guard ship, and no villages along the coast.  A couple of dolphins swam just in front of our prow for a short while.

About 1 we reached the port of Mayabunder in a bay near the north end of Middle Andaman Island.  About 20 of our 100 or so passengers disembarked during our five minute stay.  Heading further north along North Andaman we passed Saddle Peak, actually two peaks with a wide saddle between them.  South Saddle Peak, slightly higher than North Saddle Peak, is the Andaman's highest, at over 2400 feet.  We reached the bay we were heading to on the northeast coast of North Andaman, passing a gleaming white sandbar beach that connects Smith Island to Ross Island to its east, and docked about 4 at Aerial Bay, the port for Diglipur, which is several miles inland.  This area is the Port Cornwallis (who became Governor General of India after his defeat at Yorktown) of old.  From Aerial Bay I headed not to Diglipur, but took an auto rickshaw down the coast a few miles to a guesthouse near the village of Kalipur.  I checked into quite a nice little hut, with a good bed, mosquito net, and an attached bath room, just a few hundred feet from the beach.  Having eaten nothing but cookies on the ferry, I was hungry, but took a walk on the beach before sunset.  A small island is just offshore, and there are mangroves along portions of the beach.  The tide was coming in.  An enclosed turtle hatchery sits along the beach, full of eggs transplanted after being laid on the beach. I walked to the south end of the beach, where a creek empties into the sea.  A sign warned of crocodiles.  An almost full moon was rising and it was dark before 6.  The Andamans are in the same time zone as the rest of India, though they are far to the east, forming a slight arc along with the Nicobars from south of Burma towards the northern tip of Sumatra.

I slept well, under the mosquito net with no fan necessary in the cool night air, and was awakended by the birds about 4:30 as it was getting light.  About 5 I walked to the beach.  I walked up and down but saw no turtle tracks.  I explored the  mangroves and then walked along the road a bit before coming back for breakfast.  About 10 I went back to the beach, walked across the wide rocky reef, coverered at high tide, and went snorkeling.  I swam across to Craggy Island, the small island across from the beach.  The current wasn't too strong, but it was longer than it looked.  The fish were more plentiful there, but the coral almost everywhere was bleached.  There were lots of clam of various sizes, some very big.  Most of them had beautiful dark blue mantles.  I swam along the island and enjoyed seeing all the colorful fish.  I got out onto the island's small sandy beach and then explored the interior, with big trees full of birds.  It was great while snorkeling along the island to come up and hear all the birds twittering in the island's trees.  The swim back was easier as the tide was lower and I got back to the hotel about 1:30 for lunch.  About 3 I went snorkeling again.  The walk across the reef was easier, as the tide was low and it was dry.  Among the fish I saw were a lion fish and a ray in the sand, plus a large and colorful crown of thorns starfish.  I got back about 5, took a shower and went back to the beach to watch the full moon rise over Craggy Island.  There was an interesting group of people staying at the guesthouse and I stayed up until about 10.

I got up about 6 the next morning and walked to the beach.  I watched the tide come in, the high water chasing the mudskippers towards the beach through the mangroves.  There were also birds and dragon flies in the mangroves.  I went to breakfast about 8 and returned to the beach about 9.  Thousands of hermit crabs were gathered along the high tide line, clinging to tree trunks in places.  I went back to the beach at around 11 and the hermit crabs was dispersed with the tide going out.  There were sand flies on the beach so I spent little time there.

This day was Holi, the Hindu festival of colors, when people pelt each other with colored powder and water.  One guy took a motorcycle into Diglipur and returned covered with several colors of powder.  It took days for the red to disappear from his head and hair.  Others covered with powder stopped by the restaurant.  Rather than get pelted by powder, I went snorkeling, from about 12:30 to 5.  I swam across to Craggy Island and swam up and down it, seeing all sorts of fish.  I swam along it to both its southern and northern ends.  I got close to a lion fish, with a poisonous sting, and swam along clouds of very small fish, less than an inch long, some of which would jump briefly out of the water.  The afternoon was beautiful and a couple of fishing boats motored through the channel.  After returning and showering, I came back to the beach.  The tide was very low, with the wide rocky reef completely exposed as the moon rose.

After staying up late, I slept until 7 the next morning.  About 11 another guy and I caught a bus that dropped us off at Aerial Bay, where we joined two others for a boat ride to the sand bar between Smith and Ross Islands.  It took only 15 minutes to get there and we spent about five hours there, from noon to 5.  The tide was high when we arrived and the sand bar narrow.  There was good snorkeling there and I snorkeled until 4 with one short break.  I saw lots of fish and several coral snakes.  I watched three of them near each other as they swam around the coral and then ascended to the surface for air.  Six times I saw them slowly surface for a gulp of air and then quickly descend.  I saw four or five lion fish, three of them swimming in a row.  There were several sea anemones, harboring their protective clown fish.  One of them had a very tiny baby clown fish.  At one point I saw two lion fish and a coral snake together.  There were swarms of little blue fish.  After 4 I sat on the beach and then walked along the now much wider sand bar.  We took the boat back just before sunset, and watched the sun set from the coast at Aerial Bay before taking an auto rickshaw back.

The next morning I was up early, at 5, and walked along the beach to watch the sunrise.  A little later fishermen were fishing with nets along the reef.  After a long breakfast, I snorkeled from about 10:30 to 12:30, along the reef without going over to Craggy Island.  I saw a puffer fish, among others.  After lunch, I snorkeled again along the reef from about 2 to 4:30, with lots of fish to be seen.  There were some big waves that afternoon.

The next day was another day of snorkeling, both in the morning and in the afternoon until about 5.  Schools of small fish would let me swim next to them.   One large school would look one color from one angle and different colors from different angles.

The next morning several of us had decided to climb Saddle Peak.  I got up shortly after 5, but decided not to leave early with the others without breakfast, but to have breakfast first, which didn't start until 7.  Instead, I walked to the beach and saw one of the turtle wardens, who sleep in a hut on the beach at night, carrying a bowl of turtle eggs that he reburied, about a foot and a half deep, inside the enclosed hatchery.  I spotted on the sand the wide tracks of the turtle that laid them during the night.  Breakfast took longer than I hoped and I got out on the road soon after 8 and walked a short distance, maybe 10 minutes, to the village center of Kalipur to wait for the bus to the end of the road at Lamiya Bay, about two and a half miles south of Kalipur, where the trek up to Saddle Peak's summit begins.  No bus came along until almost 9 and then it didn't go all the way to Lamiya Bay.  I had to walk more than a mile before I reached the start of the path.

I didn't get started on the path until after 9:30, later than I had hoped.  The first part of the hike was flat, through giant trees along the coast line.  The area was beautiful and the path easy to follow.  Many of the trees had large buttresses.  I came across some friendly people and even some cows grazing under the trees along the way.  It took me almost two hours before I began to climb.  About 11:30 I crossed a stream and began the climb.  A sign at the stream said five kilometers (three miles) to the summit, though I doubted the accuracy of the sign since a sign at the start of the hike said eight kikometers to the summit, and it was far more than three on the flat part of the hike.  The path was good, though steep, though I was bothered by bees on the way up, drawn by my perspiration, I think.  I certainly was sweating heavily.  I met the others coming down about 12:30.  At about 1000 feet the majestic tall trees disappeared and the forest became much less attractive. 

About 2 I stopped for lunch at a lookout over the forest and sea at about 2000 feet.  From the wooden watchtower here were good views of the coastline north.  I could see Craggy Island and Aerial Bay.  The lunch prepared by the guesthouse restaurant was pretty bad, rice with two very small soft boiled eggs.  From there it was only 400 feet in elevation to the summit, but there were several false summits and ups and downs on the way.  I reached the summit at 2417 feet just before 3 and climbed the wooden watchtower to see over the foliage at the summit.  I could see Craggy Island, Aerial Bay and even Smith and Ross Islands to the north and Sound Island and Mayabunder Bay to the south.  To my surprise I noticed I had climbed South Saddle Peak, the higher of the two.  I had thought the trek would be up North Saddle Peak as it is closer to Lamiya Bay.  North Saddle Peak was now visible to the north.  With the sun in the west I couldn't see the western coastline of North Andaman, but I could see out to sea to the east.

I had told myself that I needed to start down by 3 if I was to have any hope of getting back to the road before dark, so I spent only a few minutes at the summit before starting down.  There is a small shrine on the summit just below the lookout tower.  I walked down quickly, with a stop at the watchtower at about 2000 feet, which I thought had a better view than the one at the top.  The path had pegs holding the sticks designating steps and they posed the hazard of causing stumbles, especially if you are tired.  I suspect this path will be quite dangerous once it starts to deteriorate.  I suspect there won't be much, if any, maintenance.  Despite hurrying, I stumbled only once and crossed the creek and reached the flatlands just after 4:30.  I walked quickly through the flatlands of giant trees and noticed that now the tide was low.  I reached the road about ten minutes to six, just as it was getting dark.  There was no bus nor any other transportation, so I had to walk the two and a half miles on the road back to Kallipur.  I walked past the houses near Aerial Bay, of Bengali settlers, and soon it was very dark.  There was no moon and the electricity had gone out.  I reached the guest house at 6:40 and immediately ate dinner with a guy who had completed the hike earlier and was at the restaurant.  I think I drank a couple of liters of water.  I had taken four liters with me.  After dinner, I took a shower by flashlight as the power was still out and went to bed about 8.

I awoke the next morning about 6, but stayed in bed until almost 7.  I spent a relaxing mornning, except for washing my very dirty clothes.  I was tired, but not very sore.  I went snorkeling along the reef from about 2 to 5 and saw four sea turtles, including two at once.  Three were of one species and one of another, but I'm not sure which.  Maybe the first three were hawksbill and the other a green sea turtle.  They weren't the giant leatherbacks, which also inhabit the area.  I also saw a sting ray.  The sun was setting as I emerged. After showering I walked along the beach until dark and then rested in my hut.  I was tired and skipped dinner, falling asleep about 8.

The next morning I was up soon after 5 and went for a walk on the beach.  The tide was very low.  I saw the morning ferry on its way from Aerial Bay to Port Blair.  After breakfast I snorkeled from about 9:30 to 11, and then again from about 2:30 to 5 before another walk on the beach until dark.

I thought about leaving the next day, but decided to stay another day.  After a morning walk on the beach and a long breakfast, I took a bus to Lamiya Bay, arriving about noon.  I had decided to spend the afternoon walking among the big trees in the flatlands along the first part of the Saddle Peak trek.  I spent about five hours walking around, slowly.  A couple of times I sat on the sandy and rocky beaches to rest and enjoy the views.  One beach had shipwrecks of rafts.  There was a good breeze early in the afternoon, but it died down later.  The weather had become quite a bit hotter than when I had first arrived in Kalipur.  Emerging from the forest onto the road about 5, I walked along the road for about 20 minutes along the farmhouses until the day's last bus came by and was back at Kalipur before dark.

I did finally leave the next day.  After a final walk on the beach and breakfast, I got a ride into Diglipur, larger than I expected but still a small town, maybe ten miles away, arriving about 10:30.  There was a bus south to Mayabunder at 11, but I missed it as I wasn't told that it didn't leave from the bus station but from the fish market.  I found an internet cafe and waited for the 2:15 bus, which left, oddly enough, from the bus station.  The ricketty bus wasn't full and rumbled over the hilly terrain, rising to over 500 feet in elevation.  The drive was scenic despite a surprising large amount of people, all migrants from the mainland, living along the way.  It is about 50 miles from Diglipur to Mayabunder (it is 200 miles and 10 to 12  hours by road from Diglipur to Port Blair) and we arrived about 5 after crossing the bridge over Austin Strait between North and Middle Andaman.  Mayabunder is on a little peninsula and I got an okay hotel before taking a walk around town, with some nice views over the water.  The hotel was run by a Karen family, descendents of migrants from Burma, brought by the British to work lumber mills and other jobs. 

March 20-23, 2013: Tirupati and Chennai

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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