Pondicherry (Feb 6-9)

Pondicherry you may have heard of through "Life of Pi" fame. For us it was a 3 hr bus ride further south along the coast and is not a typical Indian town. Having been the domain of the French up until a few decades ago, it has a nice waterfront area with a walking promenade, a number of colonial buildings, some big catholic churches, bakeries with croissants and a few other holdovers from the French. This all takes place in the first 4-5 blocks set back from the sea front. Then you cross a 'canal' which is more like a sewer and suddenly you are in India again!. The number of people, vehicles, shops, etc increases (easily) by a factor of 10 and you are in a whole different world.

But first a few words about our bus ride. We were told to just walk a km up the road to the highway and buses would come every 10 minutes and to flag one down. Well 10 minutes was more like 20 between buses and the first 3 were so full we couldn't get on them. So about an hour later we finally got onto a standing room only bus that is the most rickety thing you can imagine. How many kms must be on those buses?!?. Mind you for the 2 hr , 120km ride it only cost us 50 cents each. It is truly remarkable how cheap it is for buses and food here.

We ended up finding - after strolling around for 30 minutes in blazing sun - a most wonderful place to stay...perhaps one of the nicest so far on our trip. A small building, 4 stories high with 1 or 2 rooms per floor and a common roof top deck with a beautiful view over the ocean and perfect parisian croissants provided for breakfast.

The place was tended by a young (Age 22) Indian boy, Ramu, who was a long way from his hometown (Hydrabad) and who was starved for social interaction, being required to basically be on premises nearly 24x7. He talked our ear off about growing up in his home town and showed off his new mobile phone that took a year to save up for!

Overall there isn't a lot to do in Pondi (now called Puducherry). Walk around and look at a few decaying french buildings a 'sort of' museum, go into the Indian part of town to browse some shops, tour a Hindu temple to the god Ganesh, and get blessed by the resident elephant, Laksmi (via a touch of the trunk to the head...after you deposit a coin in his trunk).

The seafront promenade explodes into life each evening and especially on Sun eve,when there must have been tens of thousands of locals strolling around, buying food off vendors, some Indian dancing going on, etc....All in all a real festive atmosphere. This is probably quite unique to India...thx to the french perhaps for setting aside the waterfront.

We also rented bicycles one day and rode 6km north of town to some beach areas. They were nice beaches, wide, surf coming in, and long...many kms and with virtually no development. But also with lots of trash, both on the beach and in the water. The ride itself was pretty hair raising. We were on the street competing with motos, tuk-tuks, cars, trucks, buses, pedestrians, and an unbelievable cacaphony of horn blowing. We survived. Oh yes, also, the chain popped off Lori's bike and because they have chain covers over the whole chain I was having a hard time figuring out how to get the cover off to get at the chain. Fortunately some Indian fellow watched us struggling and came over to show how its done. He didn't know English and he wouldn't accept any money as thanks...such a contrast from the rest of your time in India where you are constantly harassed by people who want money for nothing. Good people are everywhere...but I guess you have to be off the tourist track to find them!

At our guesthouse there was also another Cdn couple who had been cycling around south India for the last couple of months...They said they had some days where they rolled into pretty small towns with pretty dodgy accomodations....I can just imagine! They were headed to Auroraville to spend 2 weeks helping with reforestation. They gave us their blodsite address so we can check into their experiences.

Mamallapuram, Tamil Nadu (Feb 4-6)

Well getting to India itself turned out to be an adventure! We bought a couple of tickets on Air India Express over the internet a couple of days before the flight. So it turned out they thought it was kind of suspicious that someone from Canada would be buying flights from Kuala Lumpur to Trichy in India so they sent some email asking for a scanned copy of the credit card. Well of course since we don't see the internet everyday, we dutifully showed up at the airport only to be told our ticket had been cancelled!

Have you ever wondered what it would be like to show up at an airport and say...hey we could go anywhere today where should we go? Eeny Meeny Miny Moe. That's what it was like. Since we had no hotels or anything booked we could choose anything! Luckily there was a flight to Chennai in an hour that still had seats available so off we went and on the flight read our Lonely Planet guide for India to decide what to do once we got there.

There didn't seem to be a lot about Chennai that really stood out so instead we headed straight from the airport to a small town on the coast 1.5 hrs to the south...called Mamallapuram. We got there in cab which looked like it was out of the 1950's and got a sampling of the crazy driving and crowds so typical of India on the way out of the big town.

At about 15,000 people Mamallapuram is pretty small by Indian standards....perhaps a good place for us to get our feet wet. There's a nice wide and long (2-3km) beach here, crowded with fishing boats (not western sunbathers). Nets and garbage are everywhere with a good dose of cows, dogs and goats wandering around too.... Here is a view looking down the beach...sorry the fishing boats aren't too clear but if you 'click' on the picture you'll get the bigger version which might give a better view).

Here we have a photo of Lori, having her Muesli, fruit and yogurt in a place by the beach. (You can see how excited she is in having yet another photo).



The main draw of this place is 7th century Hindu temples carved out of huge blocks of granite. One of them is built on a point out into the ocean and it's towers significantly broken down as the ocean was beginning to lap around it. So a few decades ago the gov't built a breakwater to protect it. Then 4 yrs ago the Tsunami washed a whole pile of sand away and it was discovered there was a lot more around than people had known.



This is also the case for another set of granite temples from the 7th c, carved out of large hill/boulder of granite...the 5 Rathas (or chariots). These are in really good shape because somehow they had been covered in sand and forgotten about for who knows how long, until the Tsunami revealed their presence....One of the 5 Ratha's below:




There are also some other temples/shrines carved out of the granite rock further inland...these had always been known.

While touring the temples, this monkey came up and sat beside us and we were told he was interested in our bottle of water. So we drank it down and then handed the rest over to him and he quickly grabbed it in his hands and started to quaff it back. Amazing to have a monkey literally sitting patiently right beside you!


The town has a couple of blocks which are backpacker havens (cafes, small guesthouses, travel agencies, etc) and the rest is pretty grubby looking compared to what we've been used to in SE Asia. Garbage everywhere, garbage being burned along city streets, cows wandering, beggars, the odd Sadhu (holy man) wandering around 1/2 naked, beggars, and people harassing you to no end to buy trinkets. After a few hours you feel like you need to retreat to your hotel room to recover. Lori is finding the garbagi-ness of everything and the begging a bit tough. Here we have the view looking down the street from our hotel (with Holy Cow, helping himself to the ample supply of garbage)...Note...not all the streets are this bad!




Well, we'll have to see how this is going to go for us....and we haven't even hit a big city or tried to navigate any form of bus/train adventures yet.

This is India.

PS, I should also add that Lori is a big hit with the Indian boys. They keep asking if they can have their picture taken with her....so she is getting a taste of what it might feel like to be a star!

Melaka

We've been 4 days now in Melaka, 2 hrs southwest of KL and on the coast and are gaining a new appreciation for the colonial history here in the eastern part of the world. Like we wrote earlier on the blog about Penang, Melaka was here because it was the turning point/meeting point of ships from Europe/India/Arabia and those from China where all the goods were exchanged and traded. This was due to the combination of being roughly the 1/2 way point and also where the trade winds reverse direction in Apr and Nov of each year. Below are the ruins of the old Portuguese built church....



In the early 1500s, when the Portuguese found out about these characteristics peculiar to Melaka, they decided they needed to control it and extort the wealth. As per usual for Portugal at the time, it wasnt too hard for them to take over the city and build a fort that withstood counterattacks for 130 odd years, however a large amount of the traders decided they'd find other places in the straits of Malacca to meet and trade and there wasn't much the Portuguese could do about that.... the gate of the old fort can be seen below.






The legend as written on the displays here is that in the zenith of the early 1500s there would be up to 2000 ships from all over berthed or anchored in the port and dozens of languages being spoken.

By 1641 the Dutch deafeated the Portuguese and had their go at making money off the east-west trade and they received a bit less hassle from the local sultans because the Dutch helped them beat off the Portuguese and then controlled things with a bit less of an iron grip.



Finally the Dutch succumbed to the British who soon after decided they would focus more on Singapore and Penang thereby contributing further to the decline of Melaka.

...So what about the Melaka of today. There remains but a single gate of the old Portuguese fort, the ruins of a Portuguese church and a few govt and church buildings from the Dutch era. Really the biggest distinguishing feature of today is a fairly large Chinatown in narrow streets and colonial style buildings which was just packed for the Chinese New Year celebrations. The city is jammed with tourists mostly from Singapore and is therefore acquiring a bit of a fishbowl-like touristy feel to it. Lots of amuzement style attractions and buildings being built and it probably will look very different in 5 yrs. The old chinese section all decked out for the New Year....




An over the top decked out tri-shaw drivers with stereos blaring all manner of types of music feeding the kitchy side of mass tourism.... (they have flashing lights at night which have not somehow convinced John to take Lori for a spin.....something about being embarassed?!?)

Like Penang it is a cool place in the sense of the mix of Malay, Chinese, and Indian with their respective places of worship and types of restaurants mixed all in together side-by-side which makes it kind of interesting and exotic to wander around!....old Chinese temples and mosques like the ones below abound.

Lori has managed to shake off the fever, aches, and sore throat of the past 3 days and we are staying in a small-ish hotel just on the edge of Chinatown, experimenting with various foods (such as Otak-Otak which is a spiced fish paste cooked in banana leaf....I - John - thought it was quite good). All in all though, it is hard to favour the Chinese food more than the Indian.

Well that's good because in a couple of days we'll be heading that way from Kuala Lumpur. After reflecting on what to do next, it just seemed like going to Indonesia (which is so close) just didn't seem different enough from our past couple of months... and whereas India just seems different enough to inspire us to pack our bags and hit the road again. NZ and OZ would be nice and we are going to miss that somewhat, but to go there for some time first would mean that India would be just too hot by the time we would get there so they are going to have to wait for another time...so look for our next post from Trichy in south India and here's to hoping we can cope with the culture shock!