SOUTH INDIA (1st July-15 August 2007)
It is from the hill area of Chiang Mai in the north of Thailand that I finally feel inspired to put pen to paper (or so to speak) and to retrace - in a very summarised version - the last 6 months of my travelling life.
Yes, it is already more than 6 months that I left Sydney (on 1st of July2007) when the cold temperatures finally hit my head quarter of Bondi beach.
The first step of this last trip was to be south India, landing in Mumbai (new name for Bombay), for a 6 weeks sojourn totally unplanned with just the final week booked at a resort on Goa. The culture shock I was anticipating, arriving in India for the first time did not in fact happen. It is true however that the south of India is supposedly radically different from the north. The south is less populated, less oppressive and yes, the people are poor, very poor but even in Mumbai, a city with sprawling slums (very visible from the plan at take off), it is not really much worse than many of the countries where I have spent time such as Cambodia. The sad conclusion I must draw from this experience is that I am no longer the “softy: I used to be, I have, sadly, matured and in doing I toughened up, letting my pragmatic side taking over my compassionate side…..Travelling mostly by train night and day train are excellent and so cheap!), we crossed the south part of India from Mumbai – on the west coast - to Pondicherry (ex French trading “comptoir”) on the east coast.
We stop over on the way at a tiny village of Hampi, a very untouched place which is surrounded by dozen of temples, some in very good state of preservation and others in ruins, with only columns left and scattered on the top of a hill, so reminiscent of Greek temples in Greece and Sicily. 
The life in the village and along side the large river remain quite oblivious to the few tourists wandering through and the women still go washing and drying their saris on the banks, while the sacred elephant get his daily morning bath and scrub to the delight of the westerner and local kids.
We then had a couple of days “recovery” in downtown ex French “comptoir” of Pondicherry, where the “passagiata” each evening on the beach promenade brings the millions out to frolic on the rocks (no sand here unfortunately and a no swimming sign), to eat the many snacks available and savour the cooler evening air.
The heat was so oppressive that we had and to restrict our activities to the wee hours of the morning and the late afternoons. The daytime was so hot we had to take siesta after lunch! 
Food continued to be delicious as we work our way through the menu and sweet lassis were part of our daily intake. We stayed in a sort of “delux” ashram” kind of place, right on the water front (with no beach unfortunately nor swimming pool). 
We hired a motorbike to head south to find beaches to swim at and north to see Auroville, the planned city of “the Mother” and “Sri Aurobindo”, 2 friendly gurus who founded the Ashram empire here. The Mother had this visiona of a utopian new town built around a monstruous speric building in middle of the countryside outside Pondicherry. This town was originally planed to welcome 50,000 people but indeed nowadays hosts barely 3000. Most its inhabitants are reasonably wealthy western disciples who were able to purchase a house in the complex that will at the death or departure be left to the town. Pondicherry was not as I expected this place to be. I anticipated it to be in some way similar to Hanoi, having both been cities submitted to French Colonialism. But in fact the remnants of the French Quarter are minimal and Pondicherry certainly do not hold for me the charm that brings me back year after year to Hanoi. We left Pondicherry during an evening of total chaos as the monsoon finally caught up with us. The sky opened that evening and a terrific thunderstorm fell down a few huge trees throughout the city, thus paralysing the traffic. Somehow we made it just on time with her motorised rickshaw to the train station and the night train delivered us the morning after at the very southern tip of India.
From that geographical position we made a point to stop at all the most appealing beach places but unfortunately our timing to visit this part of India was totally wrong: the monsoon season had rendered the beaches unsafe and very wet!!! We went up the western coast by train and sometimes buses always extremely crowded – after all this is India! - all the way up the western coast taking us through the state of Kerralla and its back waters canals and further north to the other Indian French outpost of Fort Cochin. We spent a few days in this charming town, with its many churches and buildings reminiscent of the Portuguese colonisation as well as the French one. There is even an old Jewish quarter and a disused synagogue and of course the odd Buddhist temples are around, so that any one can chose according to their faith!
Overall India appears to be a fairly tolerant nation when it comes to faith and various religious groups seems to cohabit peacefully. Indian people are very friendly, easy to interact with in English and we certainly did not get into any kind of trouble as we travelled as isolated western tourists. The food is great, not as spicy as I was anticipating (but then again 20 years of exposure to south east Asian cuisine have toughened my palate too), but also not so varied. We essentially ate street food anywhere and any kind and we never got sick at all. Are we that though or are tourists so conditioned at the idea that they are going to be sick in India that they eventually do get sick?
We spent the last 2 weeks of our trip in the state of Goa. By that stage we are fleeing the monsoon rains of Kerralla but they caught up with us in Goa too. We spent one week in the city of Panjim. This charming little town is filled with Portugese churches - nothing more convincing that a few century of heavy Inquisition practice to convert a whole population to catholicism, hey! – From this posting we hired a motorbike to go and explore the world famous beaches of Goa but here again the monsoon rains are destroyed all the “picture perfect” beaches and being the wrong season for tourism - we did not know this!- they were deserted not only by the tourists but also by all its merchants and stall keepers. Any way when it comes to picture perfect beaches very few countries can rival with Australia (and No, I am not biased!). We finished in style spending the last week of our Indian sojourn in a resort in Goa. Yes it was on the beach, but we spent our time enjoying the clean side of the swimming pool - swimming in the rain is lovely and the pool temperature was approximately 30 degrees - the luxury of clean bedlinen (not very common in our previous budget hotel experience) and the indulgence of cooking meals at home and watching stupid HBO movie on our television…. No comments please!
A train ride back to Mumbai to catch our plane to Europe and that was the end of 6 weeks of enjoyable Indian holiday but as far as I am concerned not a particularly culturally challenging experience. It probably would have been very different should we have travel through the north of India. I probably will not return to India as I remained much more attracted by south East Asian countries.
From that geographical position we made a point to stop at all the most appealing beach places but unfortunately our timing to visit this part of India was totally wrong: the monsoon season had rendered the beaches unsafe and very wet!!! We went up the western coast by train and sometimes buses always extremely crowded – after all this is India! - all the way up the western coast taking us through the state of Kerralla and its back waters canals and further north to the other Indian French outpost of Fort Cochin. We spent a few days in this charming town, with its many churches and buildings reminiscent of the Portuguese colonisation as well as the French one. There is even an old Jewish quarter and a disused synagogue and of course the odd Buddhist temples are around, so that any one can chose according to their faith!
Overall India appears to be a fairly tolerant nation when it comes to faith and various religious groups seems to cohabit peacefully. Indian people are very friendly, easy to interact with in English and we certainly did not get into any kind of trouble as we travelled as isolated western tourists. The food is great, not as spicy as I was anticipating (but then again 20 years of exposure to south east Asian cuisine have toughened my palate too), but also not so varied. We essentially ate street food anywhere and any kind and we never got sick at all. Are we that though or are tourists so conditioned at the idea that they are going to be sick in India that they eventually do get sick?
We spent the last 2 weeks of our trip in the state of Goa. By that stage we are fleeing the monsoon rains of Kerralla but they caught up with us in Goa too. We spent one week in the city of Panjim. This charming little town is filled with Portugese churches - nothing more convincing that a few century of heavy Inquisition practice to convert a whole population to catholicism, hey! – From this posting we hired a motorbike to go and explore the world famous beaches of Goa but here again the monsoon rains are destroyed all the “picture perfect” beaches and being the wrong season for tourism - we did not know this!- they were deserted not only by the tourists but also by all its merchants and stall keepers. Any way when it comes to picture perfect beaches very few countries can rival with Australia (and No, I am not biased!). We finished in style spending the last week of our Indian sojourn in a resort in Goa. Yes it was on the beach, but we spent our time enjoying the clean side of the swimming pool - swimming in the rain is lovely and the pool temperature was approximately 30 degrees - the luxury of clean bedlinen (not very common in our previous budget hotel experience) and the indulgence of cooking meals at home and watching stupid HBO movie on our television…. No comments please!
A train ride back to Mumbai to catch our plane to Europe and that was the end of 6 weeks of enjoyable Indian holiday but as far as I am concerned not a particularly culturally challenging experience. It probably would have been very different should we have travel through the north of India. I probably will not return to India as I remained much more attracted by south East Asian countries.
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