Trippin'

City Market

2010-08-24T18:45:00.000-07:00

If you are a little depressed about the cards life has dealt you and you've managed to build a little whining tower with them (like I have), City Market at 5 AM will bring it crashing down. However, that was not the stated purpose when my friend and I plotted to drive down to City Market at 4.30 AM one Friday morning. We just wanted to do something random. It was a bit of bad timing though - the morning of Varalakshmi Puja meant that prices and the crowd had as much as quadrupled overnight.

Our bleary eyes turned wide when we stepped out of the car. Why were so many people up and about at 5 in the morning? The only protective armor we had was a cloth bag A had brought along. And our elbows. I've often wondered how people get trampled to death in festival melas, and I got my answer here. In all the melee, we couldn't really figure out what we were stepping on. It could have been anything from rotten vegetables to a human head, I could not have told the difference. It took a lot of elbowing and jostling and all the power of our 5'2" frames to push through the crowd and get into the market.

The early morning light and the orange sodium vapor lamps reflect off the reams and reams of marigold and chrysanthemum laid out in tall coils like some unending Hanuman's tail. No way to stand and stare though. There is every possible color of roses stacked around. There are tens of flowers I do not even know the names of. We jostled and elbowed some more and found that it was only the entrance to the market that was so crowded. Once we are through the entrance, I make the mistake of looking down. In the orange glow, I see that we had been stepping through ankle-high muck all along. Perhaps a foot-high in places. I do not go in for a closer look, it must simply be a rich mix of every possible waste you could imagine. Hmm. I have had enough discomfort. This is not my playground.

A hundred bodies pressed against each other. The stench of survival. Flowers in the millions,

but the fragrance long gone. Here a young man struggles with a huge stack of flowers over his head, a bundle much bigger than he should try to carry. Flowers - a burden for him, a blessing for me. Two sides, as always. As everything else. An old lady stacks up shriveled jacket potatoes, remains of the previous day perhaps. A couple of nuns stand by the side, a little taken aback by the crowd. We make eye contact and smile. Fish out of the water.

We buy a few bunches of flowers. We do not haggle. Maybe it is guilt that did not allow us to even try. We wiggle our way out again. I turn to take a photo, just to say we were here too. After a few more unspoken resolutions to count our blessings, we leave. A gives me a warm hug when she drops me off. I reciprocate with extra warmth; I suppose I just want to share my joy over the cards I've been dealt.

What's to love about Coorg?

2010-06-11T09:49:00.000-07:00

I think I have been to Coorg district about 53 times so far. Ok, maybe not, maybe just about 5 times. Rafting in the Barrapole, some lame homestays, some lovely ones, a few more somewhere in between. Hospitality, lacking in class perhaps, but compensated by the warmth and sincerity of the homestay owners.

I have been to Kabbe Cottages, one of the most delightful homestays I've had the fortune to stay in. And the only one with class, let me add. So good that I went there a second time, and sent my Dad and Mom and their gang along with a jackfruit to experience their hospitality and the lovely environs. Yes, Kabbe's display of those ten million fireflies jamming on the trees in absolute symphony remains undefeated as one of the top sights I have encountered. That image can hold its own against even the mighty mountain - desert - valley views of Leh.

Kushalnagar - one visit isn't good enough for this lovely Tibetan settlement. It is difficult to imagine how it would be if I had to leave my hometown and settle 2000 kilometers away. Humans can take a lot of adversity indeed. The air is different. The guys are cuter; the women hotter; the temples different; the food curious. Namdroling enthralls with colorful wall paintings and golden towers and touristy stores. In spite of the crowds and the kids and the wailing babies, the place is peaceful. It's perhaps the prayers of a thousand displaced souls that makes this place so powerful and peaceful.

Namdroling might be crowded, but Kagyu is still undiscovered. Perhaps because the parking lot is still not cleared of grass, or maybe the anthills still stand undisturbed. Perhaps they couldn't rustle up enough money to break them down to make the circular garden, the plan of which is obvious from the pathway that leads up to the monastery. Even the imposing steps that lead up are incomplete - lines zigzag across the un-tiled steps. Inside, blue Bhutanese currency is pressed into the offering bowl alongside the incense sticks that have burned out now. Kagyu and its bee colonies stand atop a little hillock, inviting and intimidating at the same time. I want it to stay my secret sanctuary in Kushalnagar - for some more time at least.

Madikeri - that cute little town, oh! The elevation of St. Michael's church lifts you up along with it as you walk in. The prayer service - Mass - is underway inside. There is a little girl, perhaps 7 walking outside the church along with her elder brother. She smiles back at me, her eyes brighten. Playing truant, no doubt. Their sister walks out after a while, wagging her finger in disapproval. No way to get into the good books of Daddy or God.

Madikeri town is normal - we wander around its narrow lanes. I love the way the roads go up and down and up again. There is the drunk by the corner; his friends are trying to revive him. Wait, going by the way they are shoving him around, maybe they aren't friends. There is the old coffee estate owner ('one in Sunticoppa and the other here in Madikeri') who sweet-talks me into buying instant coffee and bay leaves. It's not much, he says. It's a lot, considering I never intended to buy from you, I reply. I look around. He sells estate coffee, Coorg spices and electronic printing. We wave goodbye. There is of course, your Malalyalee chai shop, selling pazham pori. We tuck into oily pazham pori and masala tea. Our search for bamboo shoot pickle continues. We end up buying 'malai vaazha pazham' - that roughly translates to mountain banana. The taste is as complicated as a single malt - plain banana in the beginning, honey in the middle and a coconut cream flavor finish.

My experience with Coorgi style pork curry has grown better with every trip to Coorg. Perhaps I am learning to appreciate it more; perhaps the taste is actually better. But a gushing Reena aunty happily shares her recipe, which I have forgotten now. Like every other recipe I earnestly asked for in Coorg.

As the clouds rush at touching distance, I am told that November and December are good months for stargazing. Gotta go back then, I make a note in my head. My binoculars hang useless around my neck.

Back to Bangalore, pleasantly awakened to the fact that the weather was absolutely comparable to Madikeri itself. Well, I couldn't touch the clouds and the roads aren't all that up and down, but that's alright.

The fragrance of the big, green, healthy elaichi takes me right back to Madikeri. Cloves and Marathi Mokku form an irreplaceable part of my spice box now. All from Coorg, of course. The cinnamon in my coffee and the honey in my masala chai will keep Coorg alive in my head for a while... until I go back.

Chikmagalur – Time-lapsing in a coffee forest a.k.a. “Write short notes on your weekend trip to Chikmagalur(5 marks)”

2010-02-13T00:35:00.000-08:00

Amidst the craggy mountainscapes of the Sahyadri range of the Western Ghats is nestled the average everyday Indian town of Chikmagalur. The town and the entire district wear a small-town calm; the shops are small, the buildings are sleepy, the signboards are only in Kannada and the people have an air of of small-town innocence. Wikipedia rather ungenerously describes Chikmagaluru district as “not known for well maintained roads”. There’s a lot of other things about this place that make up for that part, though.

Like coffee. Coffee invigorates. Coffee energizes. So we made sure we stayed away from it for two lazy days in the coffee estates of Chikmagalur! Actually, ‘coffee forests’ would be a more fitting term to describe the acres of plantations in Chikmagalur. Reams of rich deep green carpet the landscape. The coffee berries are out in full force now; some are a resplendent red agaisnt the deep green – it’s a sight for the sore soul. Others await the merry sunshine to blush into that shade of red that warms the coffee-planter’s heart.

The jeep safari to our camping site rattles us down to our bone marrow. ‘It’s daily business’; our driver nonchalantly brushes off our observation on the difficulty of driving on a road on its last lap of existence.

The brooding clouds add generously to the magical eerieness of the campsite. We walk to the sunset/sunrise view point – it is splendid. We are at the very edge of the cliff and there is a sheer drop to the valley below. We sit down on the bare rocks. On closer inspection, we see that the ‘bare rocks’ are of course, teeming with life that’s very capable of crawling up our legs. Ants and a variety of bugs make themselves confortable in the damp mossy forest floor. Bright red spore capsules, all of a centimetre tall, provide a contrast to the moss’ glass green (Darn, should have gotten Kiwi to take a close-up snap!)

There’s all kinds of food – delicious Nutella-Banana sandwiches which overnight turned into Ant-ella sandwiches with some insistent ants drowning in the Nutella. (I wonder how it would be to drown in a Nutella river, or pond if you like?) There’s a big citrusy fruit we do not know the name of and the largest cucumber I have ever seen generously donated by the caretaker Ranganna. We also manage to pull together something that remotely resembles sambar rice and veggies.

It’s time to pitch tents – never knew it was so much fun. And time-lapse photography takes grip. You can see the very funny results here.

Engineering brains are put to good use as the guys build a tripod that supports an umbrella to protect the camera while capturing the clouds at a rate of 1 shot a minute… results here! I quietly rue the lack of a chicken that could have roasted gently over a warm fire ably aided by the tripod. Yeah, good roast wild chicken would have done marvellous justice to that tripod! I know atleast one other member of the group felt the same way too!

Some unnecessary brain exercise follows – for the record, I hereby state that the longest game in the history of ‘bluff’ lasting 3.5 hours was played in a 4-person Wildcraft tent under stormy conditions on a remote hilltop in a coffee plantation somewhere near the town of Aldur which is around 12 km from Chikmagalur. Needless to say, the nuances of faking things was lost on yours truly. Indeed, I was the richest player with the thickest stack of cards through most of the game!

Time blinks by. Time to return, the townsfolk looking at us quizzically, wondering why we city-folk want to be there anyway. A change of scene and scenery? To get away… from what? The trick, as we city-folk know, is to get out of there before the inconveniences get to us.

Chikmagalur – Camping, time-lapse photography, building tripods, cooking and chopping and cleaning! And cards! Hey, this wasn’t such a lazy trip after all, was it?

Credits: Photo and Videos – Kiwi

1. Ooh Leh Leh!

2009-09-06T05:43:00.000-07:00

It’s possible and quite alright to die on a trip to Leh. God knows, the landscape presents you with enough opportunities. One misplaced wheel on a loose stone could send you tumbling over an obliging cliff. Spend too long atop a high mountain pass and you can die of AMS. Or if its your time to go, you could be hit by a well-timed stone shooting down the mountains in one of those specially laid out ‘Shooting Stone Zones’. However, all this is not deterrent enough to the scores who flock to this cosy city ensconced deep within the Trans-Himalaya.

A trip to this kind of place is hard to blog about. You are forced to take constant refuge in superlatives to describe the experience and you run out of them long before you are finished. Over 8 days, all my two friends and I could do was collectively gape, gasp, sip tea and take it all in as we crossed the highest, second highest and most difficult motorable passes in the world, rode Bactrian camels on sand dunes at 10000 ft, bit into the juiciest apricots just like travellers on the Silk route did a 1000 years ago and camped on the shores of a salt water lake at 14000 feet. We even encountered some angels diguised as Ladakhis. Now that you kinda get the picture, let me try and tell you a little more.

A flight to Delhi and an overnight bus to Manali later, our real journey begins. Now, any good trip requires that the journey itself be half the destination. The Manali-Leh highway pretty much tops the list of good trips by this requirement. The landscape is pure drama: laughing streams, smiling valleys, chilling passes and cheeky lakes, frowning deserts and an occasional rainbow to light up the spirit. Stay within your vehicle, and you are left breathless by all you see. Step out of the protective cover; you are left in no doubt whatsoever of your littleness and vulnerability. You can’t help but wonder what excuse human beings have to be in this kind of place anyway. Apart from the present-day obvious reason – this is en route to the much-disputed border between India and China – it’s the other usual suspect – money.

No one has to tell you that money goes very far. It always has. For thousands of years now. Through recorded history, commerce and trade have cut across deserts and mountains and valleys, including these mighty ranges. And Leh apparently was an important stopover for the traders of yore. Goods ranging from silk yarn and salt, Banaras brocade and cannabis were transported through the mountains and into the city. As you drive on the Manali-Leh highway, it’s difficult to comprehend how long lines of mules and men ever made it across this treacherous terrain thousands of years ago.

Money takes you quite far in present-day Leh as far as comfortable travel goes. A dramatic jeep ride with a one night stop-over costs 10-15K depending on the type of vehicle. Our TATA Sumo came with the dependable Tashi who steered us through some heart-stopping mountain roads over the course of 32 hours. Patiently stopping at every point for our trip photographer, Tashi was the best we could have asked for. His taciturnity hid a controlled aggression that you definitely need to take on the twists, turns, gravel and rocks that the Manali-Leh highway throws at you.

We slowly get acclimatized to the mountains and to each other as we make our way to the promise of snow and Rohtang La, the first pass one hits on the road to Leh. The winding road plays host to some whacked out weekend traffic. We encounter a triad of young Punjabis driving a Santro with two of the passengers seated on the bonnet of the car. This road is also where you find the last of the ‘normal’ toilets attached to little shacks meant for ‘customers only’. Thankfully, the tourist madness dies away as soon as you cross the Rohtang La, and the drama begins. We were treated to some spectacular action; after a double rainbow over a valley, tall and mighty mountain streams and pretty conifers, we wheel into Keylong. The little town does not appear very friendly by night; however the sight of the beautiful women of Himachal may encourage you to take a short walk around town. Tashi chose some interesting accommodation, the sheer splendor of which was revealed to us the next morning. (I realized eventually that waking up to brilliant views was part of the standard package in this part of the country.) What can you say when you can open up your window to welcome a cloud into your bedroom: I certainly felt as light as an angel for a few precious moments?

The second day took us through La-La land, in order, Baralacha La, Naki La, Lachlung La, Tanglang La. Tanglang La is the highest point one hits on this road. It’s also where mountain sickness hits high and hard. The spine-tingling Ghata loops do not help your cause, but the sheer discomfort that you experience when you step out into the slicing wind at any of these La’s is in a class of its own and worth all the trouble!

If mountain passes are not your thing, the Morre plains are sure to floor you. Its a thrilling white expanse of sand at 15000 feet that stretches out impressively for about 40 kms. The drama element is joyfully contributed by cunning sand-drifts that trap many an unsuspecting vehicle with predictable regularity. The journey is mostly downhill from here, or atleast its at heights that relieve your mountain sickness.

We glide through towns with exotic names like Gya, Upshi, Karu and soon land in Leh. We arrive haggard and zapped, tired out of our wits by mild mountain sickness – well, atleast I was. Our first angel of the trip was in the form of Rimchen, erstwhile member of the Indian national ice hockey team and owner of the exquisite and aptly named Shanti guest house where you really are treated like part of the family. A little research reveals that ice hockey is a popular sport in Ladakh, Kashmir and Shimla and we do in fact have a team that is all set to make its first ever international appearance. For my suspicious Hyderabadi friend Rimchen’s niceness was too much to take. He waited for the catch; I am glad to say he is still waiting. We gratefully accepted the rooms allotted to us. And I am still grateful to our gracious host who lofted my bag up two flights of stairs! My luck only got better – I got the best room in the house with huge French windows and a cute little balcony. The expense: a queenly 500 rupees a night. The view next morning was worth a million bucks and just what I expected – the sun half-heartedly fiddling with the snow-clad mountain tops, more sky-blue skies and ah…cauliflower patches! Ooh, the simple life!

Now I could have wallowed in that room until the second coming of our Lord but my uncooperative travel companions had places to do, things to see and permits to get. After a dash to the DCs office, we had our magic passports to the forbidden areas of Leh, Nubra Valley and Pangong Tso.

Leh – Part Deux – Nubra Valley

2009-09-06T05:41:00.000-07:00

The journey to Nubra valley follows in a similar vein; the vehicle – a Safari DiCor, our driver – a slight, younger, teen punk version of Tashi who brought to light our deep-seated love for Ladakhi music. More superlatives adorn the mountain-scape without any fuss.

The BRO plays a huge role in ensuring the presence of a nearly-motorable road all around Ladakh with scant regard to what the landscape has to say about it. Founded in 1960, it is THE premier and most prestigious road construction agency in the country. Their warning boards keep you constant company on the roads in and around Leh. The Deepak unit of our mighty BRO has built, constantly rebuilds and maintains the road between Manali and Sarchu. The Himank unit takes over after this and their whacky safety slogans ranging from the simply inane to pure genius spread many a grin all around Ladakh. A sampling of some of the best ones on the road for your reading pleasure:

“Be gentle on my curves”

“Speed is the knife that cuts life”

“This is a Highway, not a runway”

“Don’t gossip, let him drive”

“Safety on road is Safe Tea at home”

“If you are married, divorce speed”

and the winner

“Love thy neighbour, but not while driving”

Amen.

The brothers of BRO-Himank certainly deserve to be called the Mountain Tamers. This is serious business – many a life has been laid down to keep this road up and usable by the military, even through the year sometimes.

Dark, big, bushy-tailed yaks dot the landscape. Patches of fertile green valley play hide-and-seek with the mountains as we wind down. The road to Nubra Valley (geography lesson here) cuts across a dramatic flat plain that shimmers in the heat. As our DiCor zooms across, I can’t help but imagine that we are in one of those fancy 4-wheel drive ads with a matching Springsteen-esque rock’n'roll beat to boot. Our ever-pleasant driver informs us that all that glitters on that river bed is indeed, gold. I believe him.

First stop, the Diskit monastery. The road up to the precariously wedged monastery gives us a premonition of the fabulous view awaiting us at the top. The Gompa itself seems unassuming at first. There’s your standard hole-in-the-floor Ladakhi loo. There are the prayer wheels, big, medium, small. And then there are steps that lead up, up and away. It’s a slightly arduous climb to the higher levels of the monastery and well worth the effort. The view is superlative. The monks are peaceful. I sit beside a friendly-looking monk, make some small talk and then drift into silence.

Something gently, surely overwhelms you. The view? The clouds casting deep shadows that glide grimly across the distant plain? The Gompa? The wind moans, tone in tune to what I imagine the monks deep throat chants would sound like. The inevitable question – could I sit in silent contemplation for a lifetime? A slight tingling. Is it the mountains talking? Questions sit heavy on the head as you leave Diskit monastery.

Hunder’s famous sand dunes stick out like a sore thumb in the otherwise picture-perfect, fecund Nubra valley. The two-humped Bactrian camel is a novel sight. They are stinky, good-humored and cute. Unfortunately, less than a 1000 of these creatures are left in the wild and they are on the Critically Endangered list. Very soon, only the domesticated species will remain. We end up doing the very-touristy, very-cliched and very-fun camel ride seated between the two humps which I understand from my friends can be very disconcerting for the male of our species! I watch, slightly taken back as one of the camels rubs him/herself contentedly against my jeans.

The sand dunes get to us; we turn 14. We skim down the dunes, breathless. The guys fall into the sand, breaking the dunes and narrowly avoiding camel poo. We get some modeling shots against the blue sky and white sand. We sit on top of a dune. God is playing with the clouds, now we can see His fingers (it’s a he, the fingers don’t have nail polish you see, my friend spouts). We settle down on top of a dune just in time for the magic show hosted by no less than the sun. To our left, it’s definitely dusk; the sun has just angled below the cliff. We turn right to see the rest of the valley still drenched in sunlight. Now, slowly, the scene dissolves in a mystic haze right before our eyes.

Silver, shimmering silk and smoke. ’Even the valley is smoking’, another wisecrack.

Another superlative awaits us at the moderately commercialized, picture-perfect Snow Leopard guest house – fresh apricots straight from the tree! Now it might look like I am going overboard over a fruit, but let me explain. Before this encounter, I already was a fan of anything apricot – this after tasting just the dried variety and various treats made out of it. (Kurbani ka Meetha, anyone?) And I had no idea what the fresh variety would be like. So after biting into the ripe, juicy, orange, finger-licking awesome treat that a fresh apricot is, I could not help but scream Hallelujah, for here indeed I had found the perfect fruit. Appealing to the eye, cool to the touch, no skin to peel, small enough to fit the palm of your hand, hard enough to withstand a fall to the earth, soft enough for a toothless 80-year old to plunge their gums into, no irritating seeds to break the softness of the flesh (just one comfortably placed seed in the center) and a taste so unique it could compete with the royal mango. My version of heaven definitely has fresh apricots in it. Do I hear you say Amen too?

Oh, I almost forgot the mighty Khardung La! At 18,000+ feet, its status as the highest motorable pass may be disputed. But it really doesn’t matter beyond a point – the pass is still awesome and 5500 m will probably be the highest point I hit in my lifetime! Possibly, the cleanest AND nicest AND highest ‘VIPs only’ loo in India sits atop the Khardung La. Happy are they who get to step inside its hallowed walls.

In a 30-40 km radius, the pretty little towns of Sumur, Diskit and Hunder along with Panamik have a lot to offer – hot springs, contemplative monasteries with old, esoteric Buddhist art, clear mountain streams you can drink from, sand dunes you could slide down on, the sun and the mountains and the valley and clouds that create shows so scintillating it will shut you up, and how can I not mention the fresh apricots!

After over 4 days spent in the comfort of a 4-wheeler, it was decided that we should bike to our next destination – the Pangong Tso lake via Karu, Shakthi, Chang La and Tangtsey. All about that dear little adventure in Part Three!

Leh 3 – Thunderbirds and Pangong Tso

2009-09-06T05:37:00.000-07:00

Pangong Tso – Tso means lake, Pangong means, well, Pangong. It’s an interesting endorheic lake; it stretches an unbelievable 134 kilometers, yet it is only 5 kms at its broadest point. Sitting at a cool 14,000 feet, it stares back defiantly as you try to understand how it got there. 2/3rds of the lake is Chinese territory, 1/3rd is Indian, the ducks and geese on the lake however didn’t know the difference when we checked.

You have to work hard to get to Pangong Tso; we certainly had to. The route from Leh passes through the military town of Karu, the mighty Chang La (superlatives attached: second highest, steepest, toughest, mightiest, most difficult to ride on pass in Ladakh), Tangtsey and reaches Lukung and Spangmik, the two primary human settlements along the Indian side of the lake.

Now we didn’t really know about all those superlatives that describe Chang La when it was decided that we were to bike to Pangong. Thanks to a sleepy motorbike rental guy, a leaky petrol can and some inefficient decision-making, we left Leh in our two freshly-hired Thunderbirds at 10 AM against the original plan of 6 AM. Good start, I breathe to myself. The road is peaceful at first. It is cool to be fitted out in protective gear and helmets thundering away – you know, the wind in your hair and the insects in your eyes kinda stuff? There’s a lot to take in and I am glad to play the contented pillion rider. The freshly-laid black tarmac is inviting, the boys want to open up the engines and zoom. A convoy of army trucks put paid to that idea, instead they provide a good initial test to the riding and overtaking skills of my two inexperienced-on-heavy-motorbike friends.

Worse, though, is yet to come. We halt for a break. We wonder aloud what the crazy stream – the Paagal naala before Pangong holds in store for us. We’ve been specifically advised to cross it before 11 AM when the water levels are low. Looking back, and considering the sheer elan with which my friends handled it, the stream was probably the last thing we should have worried about. These roads are everything that a road is generally not supposed to be; multiply that by factors varying from 10 to 100 and you get an idea of the various degrees of ‘road’ along the way. It gets worse as you go higher and closer to the Chang La. Your respect for the BRO increases manifold when you see how difficult the terrain is. This is the real deal – man’s morale and sheer numbers taking on brutal nature. We are mostly stuck on first gear with the occasional, short-lived visit to second gear. The bike has to pull a lot, there’s me and Kiwi and there’s our big rucksack and the 10 litres of petrol, all under low oxygen conditions. Looking back on how graciously she discharged her duties, the Thunderbird has earned my respect forever.

All the boulders, little rocks, big rocks and sand lying around meant that I had to disembark from the bike (swinging my cramped leg painfully above the rucksack) every time the road got nasty. And walking at that high altitude, especially when you are unprepared for it is extremely uncomfortable unless you are moving at the pace of a snail. To put it shortly, every short walk was also an exercise in self-control by way of having to restrain myself from kicking the two guys who were putting me through this misery! (Alright alright you two, I can hear you say it’s part of the experience blah blah, but if I am going with you next time, we better have a rucksack that can walk! )

Once you cross Chang La, you are greeted by slightly better roads which eventually smoothen out into runway-like black tarmac roads, albeit slightly narrow. However, we weren’t complaining. The scenery is striking and straight out of the picture books; wild horses grazing on green meadows while the stream gurgles by, wild horses galloping against a striking mountain backdrop, little friendly marmots that look like a cross between a meerkat and a giant squirrel, large, graceful birds, yaks, wild asses(?) and the occasional shepherds. The road ends abruptly at one point and a dirt track twists downwards. We’ve hit The stream. Ok, no big deal, we’ve just got to wind down to the stream and figure out a way and a place to cross it, right? Well, almost. The only difficulty is that you simply can’t see anything that looks even remotely like a road on the other bank. Road or no road, I realize I have to get my feet wet (The water is so cold it cuts through your flesh and makes your bone go numb) and wade across it. Shoot!

We stood there, slightly nonplussed when the voice of an angel hailed us from the mountains. An angel in the form of a Ladakhi road builder drifted down, guided us to the exact point where the two bikes could cross the stream, carried our rucksack across and helped me flit over the stones with minimal difficulty as well! I wanted to give him a hug and a 100 bucks; but considering how shy these people are, we settled for just a 100 bucks. Stream crossing and high-fives done, we continue on our ride and happen upon Pangong Tso. Somewhere just before Pangong lies the dirt track diversion to Marsimik La, the real highest motorable mountain pass maintained in a rough-and-tumble state by the Indo-Tebatan border police. Its questionable whether a road exists, but the specially fitted out army vehicles do make their laborious way up this pass.

The first settlement by the lake is Lukung – a collection of little tents and off-white stone buildings. There is an army settlement not far from the huts which also hosts a souvenir shop and a visitor’s centre of some kind. We walk down to the shores of the lake, triumphant and tired. For some reason that I can’t remember, we decide to ride further and find accommodation in the next town, Spangmik. The road beyond Lukung is just dirt track and after some distance forks into two, one road leading up in to the mountains and another winding down across the plain. For some reason, we choose to go uphill.

Progress is excruciatingly slow. The road has pretty much given up and stopped existing. Dusk falls quickly. And the wind turns extremely cold as the sun sinks. The road seems to lead to nowhere at all. We realize we might have taken the wrong route. Suddenly the hostility of our surroundings engulf us, it is a tiny bit unnerving and we decide to turn back. Enough adventure for the day, I think. The ‘luxury tents’ in Lukung cost more than the off-white rooms. We settle for a room for the night and crash gratefully, but not before a stomach-filling dinner of dal-roti-sabzi and a soul-filling view of the Milky Way.

The lake is stunning, but our ride back beckons. The boys are more comfortable on their bikes and the ride promises to be better as we know what to expect. The stream crossing is actually fun (it was, right guys?) and I graciously cross over with the heavy camera to take photos of the heroics!

We stop at the Peace Hotel to meet the marmots and a big black-necked crane and have a bowl of the yummiest Maggi noodles ever.

Soon its back to boulders and little rocks, medium rocks and big rocks! This time we halt at Chang La to have some of the free mint chai, buy an ‘army’ sunglass, take some photos. We chat up with an ex-army man who had visited here with Rajiv Gandhi. He informs us that he’s visiting here again with his wife and son who is posted around here. The son puts an abrupt end to the conversation, ‘Papa, chalo’. We wind our way down the steep roads and reach Leh just as my spine and I were beginning to get sore again.

It’s fun to ride a big motorbike around this place. Fellow motor-bikers behave like brothers; they smile through their helmets, wave, flash a thumbs-up there, a V-sign here and stop to help you if you seem to be in trouble. People who travel in 4-wheelers throw admiring glances at you and want to take photos of themselves on your bikes (not you though!). They speak to you and want to know how it’s been riding around. You can’t help but say, ’twas ok, pretty good’ and mean it in spite of however miserably your back ached because of that stupid backpack! And I am not quite sure why, but a Thunderbird thud-thudding away against the backdrop of those rough, untamed mountains is among the most appealing sights I’ve ever seen.

It’s time to leave. Bags packed. Bills settled. We reach the airport just as the Jet Airways flights comes in for a landing at the Leh airport. It’s inclined at such a precarious angle on the approach to the airport that I am half-sure it’s going to crash. But that’s normal at Leh – every thing is a little extreme in this place. I gratefully accept the window seat offered to me (thanks buddy!) and as our flight takes off, I sit tight as the plane’s wing gets dramatically close to the mountain ranges. The views of the Trans-Himalaya are needless to say, super awesome. The mountains stretch across forever. There are great sheets of snow that hardly a living soul has stepped on, deep gorges eroded by water and glaciers over the millenia. Serenity and mystery. The whine of the engines is distracting and I recite my goodbyes in my head…

Good bye Rimchen and Shanti guest house and huge French windows and little balcony
and apricots and snow-capped peaks and fresh mountain air and clear streams
and big bad passes and bleak mountain roads and galloping horses and bar-headed geese
and friendly marmots and white snow and cutting wind and cold desert
and sand dunes and two-humped camels and seabuckthorn and friendly taxi-drivers
and generous angels and contented people and herbed maggi noodles and thunderbirds!

Au revoir! We’ll be back!

LEH

2009-07-27T09:48:00.000-07:00

Theorem: Don't count your chickens before they hatch.
Corollary: Don't write your travelogue before you travel.

However, I am led to understand that Leh calls for a celebratory post way before you actually get on to that jetplane for Delhi. So here goes nothing! Mountain sickness, absent loos, sleet and ice, lack of oxygen, higher fluid retention in the brain and lungs, nausea, dizziness - all promise to create a supercalifragilisticexpialidocious experience! I await Leh, breathless already!

Wayanad: How to spot a Yakshi

2009-05-28T10:51:00.003-07:00

The ghwirrr of the generator downstairs ascends in pitch interfering with my silent reverie. I drift away again, with some effort.

Wayanad - picture perfect. For a few moments, let me overlook the slightly defaced hilltops, the tea gardens competing with verdant green natural forests, the coffee staking its claim on the lower slopes. Been a while since I saw such thickly-carpeted hills. Been some time since I felt that sharp, cool slice of wind that sends a shiver down one’s back... the kind that you get only around the mountains.

The woods, they are lovely, dark and deep. We pull over, parking the trusty Fiesta just off the road. Tall bamboo, crackling in the wind, birds, crickets, cicadas - the forest racket reigns. We spot fresh elephant poo. A honeycomb hovers above, threatening. A tall ant hill - what’s the probability there’s a snake inside? We’re near a water hole, we discover. Don’t animals frequent waterholes? Oh. Is there a leopard watching us from that bamboo thicket?

The roads are a driver’s delight - not too narrow, not too broad, just enough room to maneuver gracefully, maybe a little dangerously. Curved, if ever roads could be sensuous, these roads would be it. The Fiesta took ‘em all smooth and nice in the expert hands of our good friend Kiwi. Yeah, that’s only his nickname. He’s not from New Zealand nor does he bear any resemblance to the bird that shares his name.

Wayanad district is big; I am grateful for that. Home-stays are dime-a-dozen. The place isn’t too commercialized, yet. Hoardings advertising home-stays have giggle-inducing captions. They have a charm of their own though. Wherever you go in India, you can’t escape the thronging masses in various colors, shapes, sizes. Types. Families, honeymooners, the young in big, rowdy Matadors. The not-so-young lecherous male crowd in their cheap cars. But it’s possible to flip on that ‘space out’ button and ease yourself into a cosy aloneness. The ghats from the viewpoint crowd in on one another. Seeming almost endless. It is breathtaking. We drive ahead, hoping to find a place where there aren’t too many people. We happen on a quaint chai shop with a blue plastic sheet for a roof; dusk falls; cars whiz by. Kiwi’s camera captures light in motion as they zoom on.

We were intent on meeting the legendary yakshis; these mythical temptresses take joy in sitting atop betel nut trees demanding chunnambu from men who walk by. Lured to respond by their beauty, they would invariably end up as the yakshis’ dinner! Suitably warned not to heed any smooth voices demanding chunnambu, armed with flashlights and a stick, we crept down the road swapping ghost stories. For reasons yet un-understood, walking with flashlights turned off on a potholed road makes one giggle and laugh a lot. I don’t know if we traumatized the yakshis, but we sure did scare off a few dogs! The heroes of the night were the ethereal glow worms.

Why are flickers of golden light so glorious on a dark, moonless night? Uplifting.

Kiwi sets up his camera, again. We sigh. We couldn’t beat him. We joined him. How hard is it to capture a betel nut tree in starlight? Is an exposure time of 300 seconds enough? It almost was, with lovely effect.

A chirpy morning breaks. It’s time to leave, almost. But wait. You can't miss the mandatory plantation walk. Never knew dried eucalyptus leaves were so potent. We are ceremoniously introduced to ‘odomos’ eucalyptus, mangoes, cinnamon, elaichi, all spice leaves. We graciously accept the all spice leaves we are offered. We walk around sniffing, touching, tasting. Gooseberries, plucked fresh, quickly washed in a little lotus pond is offered. I gingerly take a bite, and stop. We’ve just been cheerfully informed that the lotus pond is known to have lotuses, snails, frogs, fish as well as a number of other unknown creatures.

The hospitality in our home-stay may have been of the intrusive kind, but I quit complaining after we were allowed to go bonkers with an air rifle and an endless supply of little bullets. There was no mercy shown to the unfortunate Bisleri bottle that was our target. A Coconut followed in the bottle’s footsteps.

Kerala has good bakeries by default. Intriguing.

Kerala has good everything by default. Lucky.

Too bad most of them Keralites aren’t around to enjoy it.

Oh, by the way, if you are still wondering how to spot a yakshi, know this. She only has a front, she doesn’t have a back. You say ‘What? How?’ Go figure.

When you go to Wayanad, maybe she’ll spot you before you spot her!

Prelude

2009-03-08T08:59:00.000-07:00

There’s a woman in the seat in front of mine. She is heavily decked; a bright yellow veil lined with 25-paise coins, broad off-white bangles around her wrist, up her arms that disappear under the veil, ear lobe and nostrils pierced with a zillion dull red and gold trinkets. I itch for my camera, but I cringe to be the ‘tourist’. It’s hot. The van we are in somewhere in north-west Karnataka inches along at a snail’s pace. The driver is a young hot-blooded adolescent of 16; his cell phone is smartly wired into a cheap but very effective amp and speakers. He obviously enjoys being in control; he drives at less than walking pace while treating us to ear-splitting Kannada film numbers. The speakers are right above my ears and suddenly I want to shriek. He smirks as my friend and I first plead with him and then scream at him to reduce the volume. Thankfully, the others in the van join us and he tries to stare us down as he first reduces, increases and then pretends to reduce the volume again. Deliverance, we hit the next little town, as dusty and backward-looking as every other town we’ve encountered so far where a more adult-looking driver takes over and our young friend joins us in the cabin of the van, only to intermittently throw “I’d-burn-you-if-I-could” looks towards us. I am sure you would not want to hear much more of the unpleasantness that formed a significant part of my trip, but somewhere I take solace in the commonly held belief that traveling with all its discomforts and surprises is what differentiates a traveler from a mere tourist. I, dear reader, finally was a traveler, sometimes longing for tourist comforts like reasonably decent food, a reasonably priced room, umm… reasonably decent food and people who did not look at my friend and I as cash on two legs. Over the course of four days, I figured I was in this, as in most other things, something in between; neither a tourist nor a traveler!

The modified Matador grey-green van picks up speed; we move along a dusty road lined by brown, red, black dusty fields, past dusty towns leaving a trail of angry brown-red dust in our wake. The road could be better, but the potholes are not too bad; it’s the speed that’s making my teeth rattle.

Presently, the soundtrack grows better; a smile finds its way to my lips. Peace. Everything is as it should be. I am happy. A host of sunflowers breaks the monotony of red, black and brown soil framed through the window. I realize I am happy. And the long moment fades away leaving a pleasant aftertaste.

Stunning fields of sunflower garnish this land that seems loath to yield much of its wealth to anyone. I racked my brain to remember my Geography lessons – were we in the sunflower belt of India? Got to look that one up! As a matter of fact got to look up a lot of things! Indian history, for instance. I know we studied a specific period of Indian history in each year, culminating in the glories of our freedom struggle in tenth grade. Apart from some famous names and random dates, I realize I do not know much now.

Alright, before you lose patience and click away to the next glossy hyperlink, let me tell you what this is all about. Oh man, what is this about? Well, it’s about this four-day trip that a friend and I embarked on with some very inadequate scheduling and planning to somewhere in north-west Karnataka? Actually, it’s a history/archaeology/architecture lesson stretching from 500AD to the 17th century? Maybe an account of a 4-day escape from our clichéd city lives that had stabbed and wounded us a little too much as we made our way around some sharp corners? Wait, let me wrestle that drama queen bit of me to the ground…&%&*)&_)*&^^$^$(*)… uggh, done! I am glad you did not have to see that. Oh well, it’s just a little bit of this and a little bit of that, but mostly an excuse to write something that I hope will stand the ravages of time and stand out as one lone woman’s quest to find the truth in a world gone awry, a world lost in filth and depravity!! :-) You get the drift, no?

Change is good. Changing jobs is better. A two-week break between jobs is the best of all. It started as a trip to Singapore, wait, was it Italy? Well, I am not sure yet, but I zeroed in on Badami-Aihole-Pattadakkal with Hampi thrown in as an after-thought. After all, what could be more fun than being slow-toasted to a nice brown crunchy consistency in the North Kanara sun? The summer had started earlier than usual and my companion on this trip, let’s call her L, and I made some unhurried last minute preparations for the trip. We were headed to Badami via Hubli, with Days 1 and 2 spent at Badami-Aihole-Pattadakkal. We would then head down south and east to spend Day 3 and 4 at Hampi to take in the ruined splendor that Vijayanagara is today, thus fulfilling a promise made to myself in July’08 to return to this place that at first sight, robbed me of adjectives to describe it. Apparently I was not the first person in history to be dumbstruck by Vijayanagara and hence ended up writing really long sentences! A whole number of famous old travellers mention the sheer magnificience and splendour of this place. Vijayanagar’s riches continue to support a tourist-centric economy and a number of well meaning researchers, including a certain John and George who have made their living studying this place, writing a few authoritative books on the subject in the process. It was with their book in hand that we would set out to explore Hampi, but I am getting ahead of myself. That story for later.

First stop, Bengaluru railway station to catch the Rani Channamma Express to Kolhapur. Our destination, the city of Hubli, known for pretty much nothing major I guess. Well, a little research tells me it has a number of small industries. Our coupe companions on the ‘express train’ were mostly 55+ and aggressive-looking. There was fierce-looking North Indian with a spare thumb on his left hand, his well-maintained wife (pedicured, manicured, polished fingernails in place), an old guy who could have only been a file-pushing bureaucrat, another boring old South Indian couple, and a young boy in his late teens. Predictably, extra-finger man wanted to pull down the middle berth immediately after dinner as the train was pulling out of the railway station. Predictably, L didn’t take to this too kindly, especially since she has a thing against aggressive North Indians (surprising coming from her since she was almost North Indian herself). A hot exchange of words followed with Extra Thumb storming off to find the TT among rants around, predictably again, “disrespectful and unreasonable youngsters these days” and I silently despaired – our trip was off to a very promising start indeed. Nothing irritates me more than people who demand respect rather than command it. We stood near the train door for a while as more people stepped out to talk to us less out of concern and more out of curiosity! Ah, we Indians!! Our berths were near the door, this meant that we had to listen to the groan of the door opening and closing about 1052 times!

Almost there

2009-03-08T08:57:00.000-07:00

Red-eyed but thrilled, the unpleasant events of the previous night forgotten, we landed in Hubli at sunrise. Before the trip, I vowed to survive with just my pidgin Kannada through these four days. So I unleashed a stream of disconnected Kannada phrases on a friendly-looking, unsuspecting auto driver. The idea was to figure out how, when and where we could get a bus to Badami from Hubli. This must have been very disorienting for him at 5.30 in the morning; however, he was gracious enough to take us all the way to the new bus stand at Hubli where a squat old time-keeper with glasses delicately balanced at the tip of his nose told us that we’d have to wait till 9.00 AM. A little more prodding, pidgin Kannada firmly in place with L’s Hindi to help, and we figured that we had to catch a bus to Bijapur and get a connecting bus to Badami from Kozhdigeri cross. L and I idly practiced the name a little, swirling and twirling our tongues around the ‘dzhi’ in Kozhdigeri as we waited for the 6.45 to Bijapur. The bus swirled into the station as a violet horizon gave way to mundane blue. Accompanied by one more old man in a Nehru cap, the driver and the conductor, we made our way to the old bus stand closer to the railway station where the crowds slowly poured in. Soon we were chugging our way to Kozhdigeri cross. The cool morning air gave way to a hot summer sun, mercifully, the breeze stayed cool and comforting. We made our way through a number of similar-looking little village bus stands. The NWKRTC is good fun if you believe that the journey matters more than the destination. Or if money matters to you. Bus tickets are relatively cheap; the land passes by your window at a dignifying pace that masks the poverty and want, allowing you to take a comforting and romanticized view of what many of us would classify as the ‘old’ way of life.

It was tremendous fun to be figuring out our way as we went along, more so since none of my trips had ever been so unplanned. We reached K cross in 2.5 hours and were immediately confronted by a small maxi-cab like vehicle – a tam-tam – that was on its way to Badami, almost fully loaded. Momentary hesitation, but in the spirit of doing something different we clambered in. We chose to sit at the back and the supremely thrilled ‘conductor’ cleared out the place for us. We stuck out like sore thumbs and enjoyed being the cynosure of all eyes for a short while. The local women of these parts seem to be pretty feisty – oh wait, there I go committing the folly that all travel-bloggers do – generalizing from just one isolated experience! At least the woman who shared the back compartment with us was very feisty. She demanded to know what two young women like us were doing all alone, and responded with an ‘aiyyya’ when we told her we were headed to Badami, alone. Bad people there, she told us in Marathi. Find someone good and stick to them, she said. We nodded and smiled our thanks. She grew a little shy as we clicked a picture of her but was positively thrilled with the results when I showed her the digicam preview.

We were in north-west Karnataka, pretty close to the border of Maharashtra. And as you move along the borders of the Indian states, it’s fascinating to see languages get mixed up, evolve and transition to something else with a life of its own. I had encountered a lilting dialect of Kannada-Tamil-Malayalam at Masinagudi, a little town situated at the border of Kerala, Tamilnadu and Karnataka. Now, in the sunflower farmlands near Badami, a neat cocktail of Marathi, Konkani, Kannada…and was that a hint of Tulu? It makes me wonder again whether its sheer ignorance of our differences that keeps this country together.

Almonds and Badami

2009-03-08T08:56:00.000-07:00

Almonds and Badami have little in common. We are in another dusty little town with horse-drawn Tongas thundering alongside Enfield Bullets. It’s the typical one-bank Indian town, and it seems to have immunized itself to the changes that usually accompany tourism. The effect tourism has had on this town is limited to Badami’s children, auto drivers and hotels. The children are extremely curious - redeemed only by the fact that their curiosity is mostly innocent and very rarely intrusive. They all want to know your name, where you are from, guide you to the temples or take you to their school. Very few want chocolates or your money, a contrast to what we were to see in Hampi. The auto drivers and hotel owners mostly want your money in return for poor service. Anyway, freshly laundered sheets and a working toilet is what we needed and we got that.

The famous Badami caves are a short auto ride from the town’s bus stand.

Picture huge, vertical sandstone cliffs, more pillars than cliffs actually. Wait, no… bigger, much bigger. Photos on the Internet do not prepare you for the sheer enormity of the red sandstone formations you encounter as you walk in to the gated compound. Strange geology again – mysteries of the Deccan plateau. The enormous sandstone formations in Badami, the boulders of Hampi, the smaller boulders of Gingee further south, all created due to water erosion over millions of years? The first three caves are dedicated to Vishnu/Siva and a fourth is dedicated to the Jain saints. While religious intolerance and the resulting wars ravaged the Holy Land, the Chalukyas, after a few successful conquests, had realized that there was little use for war. There was no ‘tolerance’; there was peaceful co-existence and acceptance. I am free to speculate since I am blissfully unaware of anyone’s Ph.D. thesis on this.

Back to the caves! There are Gods, Goddesses, there are forms of Siva and Vishnu together – Harihara, there is man and woman together – Ardhanareeswara, there is the fearsome all-powerful Goddess – Mahishasuramardhini. Acrobatic poses, generously endowed, women with graceful curves and gravity-defying bosoms that would give any woman a complex. Maybe there are a million stories around, but to my untrained eye, they are just mute stone witnesses to a rich era that we in India have stolidly left behind. For a huge section of the visiting noisy schoolchildren, the monkeys and we are more interesting than the sculptures and caves. They watch us as they watch the monkeys too; eyes and mouths wide open in wonder. At least the monkeys seem to elicit some laughter among them.

Distance lends enchantment to the view; it certainly doles out generous doses of it to the Agastya Theertha tank far below. It is beautiful, emerald like. From the fourth Jaina cave right on top, the green waters are inviting; buffaloes, naked kids and women washing laundry surround it and I definitely did not feel like touching the water once I had gone down to the pond. Tipu Sultan was quite enamored too; he visited here and then promptly built an imposing fort right on top of the rock face. It’s beyond me how these people had the energy and desire to scale sheer vertical faces to build more sheer vertical walls on top.

Badami bears the imposing weight of history resting on its sandstone shoulders - the Chalukyas, Hoysalas, Rashtrakutas, Marathas, the Deccan Sultans, Vijayanagaras, the British all controlled this little city and its surrounding black soil over the course of 1400 years. The Chalukyas held court for somewhere between 200 and 300 years – only once around 630 AD was Badami or Vatapi, as it was known then, ravaged by the Pallavas of Mahabalipuram from down South. A grand love story revolving around this is immortalized by Kalki in his “Sivagamiyin Sabadham”.

The monkeys here are naughty. We sit back at the first cave and watch them. The cool stones are tempting – we lie back. A big stone snake with a human head stares back at us from the ceiling – Adisesha. It’s quiet now – all our noisy and nosy friends have wandered up to the other caves. There’s no one around. It’s one of those ‘golden daffodils’ moments – we’ll return to it in many a ‘vacant or pensive mood’. The security guard disturbs our silent reverie. “Don’t sleep here”, he screams. We say we just want to look at the ceiling. I sit up. I watch a lone monkey clamber up the rocks towards us, eyeing us carefully. He makes his way around the stone pillars, circling in closer. Finally, he sits about 3 feet away from me. He makes a lunge for my bag just a nanosecond after I tighten my grip on it. A threatening growl, L shouts, the monkey retreats. I swear I heard it say ‘you big goddamn monkey’ to me! :-) The monkey incident makes us clear out to where we would not be so alone.

We puzzled over some of the postures, weaponry, instruments that the Gods were portrayed with, I wonder what their Gods would have looked like if they had had weapons of today - no need for 16 hands, just one hand holding a nuke warhead maybe? More awesomely endowed women with their handsome looking men surround us. Forget the controversy over Barbie’s proportions; if Chalukyan women had to aspire to these impossible standards set by these temple beauties, eating disorders must have been dime a dozen in 600 AD. And did they actually go about topless and such minimal clothing, we wonder? At the fourth cave, finally overcome by the happenings of the day, we lie back on the stones again. The sky was much bluer than I thought it could be; green, red, blue, white hot sun, colors and patterns merge as I fall into peaceful slumber for 30 minutes.

I woke up to see L asleep a couple of feet away. We headed around to the tank down below, encountered some more sweet curious school kids, and visited the museum – fascinating history lessons for Rs.2 only. It houses a lot of interesting artifacts predating the time of the Chalukyas. Ancient stone tools, pottery shards, photos of age-old cave paintings around Badami are a must-see. One more interesting display is a lovely sculpture of Lajja Gauri – as much a sexual symbol as of fertility. L and I are amazed at the openly sexual nature of this deity, who is still revered in a few temples in the area. Further research reveals that the worship of Lajja Gauri is most probably Hinduism’s way of assimilating the Mother Goddess cults that existed in these areas before the rise of Hinduism.
The Bhootanatha temple stands at the end of the tank - much smaller as if built for people whose average height was 4 feet. My Ray-Bans could not handle the heat; the right lens inexplicably fell off its frame, hitting the stone floor with an interesting musical twang. Hmm. We headed back, hungry and sun burnt. We took the inside route through the poorer quarter of Badami – I do not want to call it a slum. Women gossiping, a naked kid going into head-to-head battle with a goat, someone filling water into green and red plastic pots - what a city dweller would picture as typical hot afternoon small town activities.  The thali meal served at the hotel was atrocious. We were famished and we wolfed it down nevertheless. The hotel guy offered us a taxi for 800 bucks for the whole of next day to cover Aihole and Pattadakkal. We ran into a bunch of friendly Malayalee men at the Bangalore Bakery opposite our hotel. After some conversation in English, we detected the Mallu twang in their speech. Our roots came in handy as we enquired in Malayalam on taxi rates; of course Rs.800 was atrocious. We decided to stick to the tam-tams and vans and buses that we were told run through these places very frequently. It took us till the next afternoon to realize that ‘frequently’ is a very relative term.

Ah, Malaprabha!

2009-03-08T03:55:00.000-07:00

7.30 AM on Day 2 found us all up and about looking for a bus to Pattadakkal. Pattadakkal is one street big – at the end of this street, on the left side is the temple complex. A few houses are carelessly strewn around. Agriculture is big – the tractors are as well decorated as cows are during their harvest festivals. The Malaprabha adds a much needed dose of character to the town. The only food you get is sweaty Dairy Milk chocolate, (it’s melted, frozen, re-melted and re-re-melted and re-frozen in the heat) Krackjack biscuits, tender coconut water and chai-coffee. Ali’s little blue shop at the corner of the bus-stop serves upma in the afternoons. We helped ourselves to some excellent tea and reasonably good coffee at Ali’s. Fresh from the stove, served in big glasses. Very, very good tea. Not so bad coffee!

Pattadakkal, a guide in Aihole told us, was like the ‘university’ for sculpture and architecture. As we step into the immaculately maintained lawns of the temple complex – entry Rs.2 – I catch my breath. I’ve seen some of the great temples of Tamilnadu, and the unabashed black stone beauty of the Belur and Halebid temples. I’d seen some of the wonderful Vijayanagara temples. This place is a different ball game altogether. Never have I seen a whole cluster of beautiful temples, so pleasing to the eye, so inviting, all heaped together within such a small radius. All crowded together, each with its distinctive style. Experimentation? A school of sculpture? The remains of a centuries old temple-building competition

Lingams and Nandis are all over the place – you have to watch out so you don’t accidentally step on one. Two beautiful, curvilinear structures stand out in the crowd. They are dimly reminiscent of the towers of Angkor Wat, the Vishnu temple in Cambodia built in the 11th Century by Suryavarman the Second.

The Pattadakkal temples, I read later was testing ground for most of the temple architecture in Karnataka in the hundreds of years to come. More amorous couples, magnificent sculptures of Vishnu, Surya, stories of the Puranas later, we come across a cute grinning God at the entrance way to one of the temples. He is guarding the entrance to this temple – and he is oh-so-cute! We click a picture of me grinning back at him. Here's a picture for your viewing pleasure! Doesn't he make you wanna grin back?

Most of the temples have Vishnu’s vehicle Garuda carved in the doorway, but inside the temples were lingas – proof that as Saivism slowly replaced Vaishnavism, Vishnu idols gave way to enormous lingams. We walk down to the banks of the Malaprabha to another temple adjacent to the complex. There are black-faced monkeys here with a lone security guard from SIS to keep them company. As the family grooms each other on the temple top, we make small talk with the guard. He is part of the same “International” private security company headquartered at Hospet. Oh yes, he used to work as a guard at our hotel in Badami before this. It’s not season yet, he says. Badami is not as popular as Hampi is on the international tourist/traveler map. It is however, firmly placed in the ‘summer vacation’ circuit. March-April-May are hot months for tourism here, he informs us. We rest on the cool stones for a while and make our way back to Ali’s blue shop to find our way to Aihole. The bus stop that was so crowded in the morning is almost deserted. The tam-tam driver wants to know if we want a ‘besal’ (special) service to Aihole – the price: 150 bucks. We choose to wait along side a healthy-looking black dog for more passengers to join us. An exhausting 40 minutes later, we are on our way in another tam-tam to Aihole, 13 kms from Patadakkal. Before you rush away, here's one more detail from a Pattadakkal pillar for you to admire!

The legends of Aihole

2009-03-08T03:37:00.000-07:00

Carb-deprived, almost faint, we struggled on amidst sunflower fields and rocky land to Aihole. Getting around is difficult here, or maybe it is just slow. I remind myself that life is genuinely not in too much of a hurry in these parts; it is about 80kmph slower around here. Aihole was the first capital of the Chalukyas until they built so many temples that there was no place left for new houses. :-) Seriously. An old woman and her grand mom flag down our already full auto. The auto driver gestures to L to make room for her. L looks back bewildered. The old lady makes her way to the other side and sits on the floor of the auto. For those of you know what an auto-rickshaw is like, it’s easy to grasp what I mean when I say that every available and not-so-available inch of space in our tam-tam was utilized. The auto driver drops us off at the central temple complex. Once again, we see a cluster of temples housed within an ASI compound. Aihole, the ASI guide tells us in his accented English, was the primary school for sculptures. The place is simply littered with temples. I am serious. This small little town hosts anywhere between 120-130 temples in an approximately 7 km radius in addition to two cave temples in the hills around. The KSTDC property here has a neat loo complex a few feet away from its Mayura hotel, bar-attached. Too many men were enjoying their afternoon drink there and we quietly make our way back rather than step in and take the stares. The museum building inside the main temple complex of Aihole houses a clean but monkey-infested washroom too. None of them lunge for our bag this time, though one inquisitive creature did express interest in joining us inside the washroom.

Now, for the temples. The Durga temple is simply put, different. It is ‘apsidal’ in shape. I think they mean its kinda oval in shape. The guide we hire after a lot of haggling (Rs.100) tells us that the British-built Indian Parliament building is inspired by this temple. It seems plausible as we take in the unusually high base, the columns that encircle the temple and rise to the roof. He clarifies the reasons for the rather lame names of the temples around us. No Durga worship happened in this temple, he says. The British who surveyed the area gave it some convenient names. This temple, for instance, was near the durg or the fort wall, hence the ‘Durg or Durga’ temple; where they found an old mendicant by name Lad Khan is the Lad Khan temple; the Gowdas were found either living in or patronizing one called the Gowda temple now. The guide points to us iron bar reinforcements that hold the stones together, purportedly done by the Chalukyas. I am not completely convinced. Some of the temples are crumbling down and have been fenced off completely. Look closely at the roof of the temple in the picture - a style completely of its own unlike any other that you would have seen. The Gowda temple (or was it some other) has an imaginatively carved stone ladder. Rather precarious, but effective to get one up through a hole to the roof. We spot Hiranyakashyapa – another recurring theme, or maybe so because it’s one of the few things we ignorant ones easily recognize.

Search for food was definitely one of the overwhelming themes of our trip. Aihole offers very few options apart from potato chips and sweatier Dairy Milk. It offers even fewer options to get back to Badami. Unless you have your own private car, that is. We were even tempted to see if we could get some firangs to give us a ride back. An ASI parking supervisor took pity on us and we negotiated a fair 70 rupee trip back to Pattadakkal. Very fair, at 7 bucks a kilometer just like in Bangalore! We made the crazy cripple van tout at Pattadakkal very happy by getting into his van. And a noisy ride later we were back in Badami. Our search for food took us to Badami Court – the food is nothing to write home about. After a lesson on the dangers of ordering caramel custard in a pretentious Badami restaurant, we returned to some much needed sleep at our hotel. Badami has its fair share of restaurants, but every one has a bar attached. These are a male preserve and day or night, it’s intimidating to have to walk through one to the ‘family room’ that most of the restaurants have.

Badami to Hampi and beyond

2009-03-08T03:32:00.000-07:00

There are two early morning buses to Hospet from Badami leaving at 6.45 AM and 7.30 AM. The 6.45 bus finally left at 7.30, leading us to believe both buses were one and the same. The bus took an interminable four hours and a half to cover the 160 kms to Hospet. At the end of it, nothing was going to push us into another 30 minute bus ride to Hampi, so we haggled a little and some more for 100 rupees to cover the 12 odd kms to Hampi.

Ah, Hampi. This place holds some once-pleasant associations and now, I secretly dreaded taking that downward curve around the Hemakuta hill. I took a deep breath, and sat back to watch what feelings would grip me as we inched closer and closer. I mentioned Mango Tree, that oft-quoted restaurant made popular by Lonely Planet to L and her enthusiasm at the thought of good food spiraled up and caught on to me as well. As we went down around the bend, it was a pleasant feeling that filled me up, not unlike that when you meet an old friend. Not a bad start. We tumbled tummy-first into Mango Tree and loaded up on some well-deserved mango lassi and good food.

Now Mango Tree is not a gourmet’s delight, neither is it abnormally clean for an eatery – spiders web down to rest on your appalam as you gobble down your thali, you can smell the sewer from some corner seats. It’s just a decent eatery under a mango tree like millions of others across the country or the scores in Hampi. But it’s that kind of place that’s (maybe unintentionally) gained fame by making discomfort seem a tad stylish.

My determination to find Gopi Guest house (where I had stayed on my earlier trip) led us down a few wrong lanes. But Hampi’s guest house area is so small and I knew even I would not miss anything easily. Nevertheless, I silently exulted at the sight of ‘Prince Hotel’ where we’d enjoyed some wonderful pancakes and parathas. A right turn, and there was Gopi! Unfortunately, there were no rooms left, so we milled about a little and let the guest house owners court us. A little haggling, and we agreed to shell out 1100 rupees for two days and a night for a little room at Archana Guest house, with cable TV, hot water (10 rupees extra) cozily perched at the edge of a banana plantation so ubiquitous around Hampi. It was still tourist season in Hampi and prices can get exorbitant at this time.

L took to calling me her ‘little guide’, I took it rather seriously as I loaded her with some heavy duty history lessons at the Virupaksha temple. John and George’s guidebook came in very handy as we stood in a huge hall trying to locate Krishna Devaraya’s coronation mandapa. It took us a while to figure out we were standing in it! I duly pointed out the erotic sculptures that are located on the mandapa to the right of the main Virupaksha shrine. The overturned lotus bud style on the pillars, yalis, the inscriptions all highlighted, we made our way to the Hemakuta shrines next. The sun was much kinder to us in Hampi than in Badami, but a third day out in the sun was taking a huge toll on us, well, on me at least.

“You need auto, madam?”

“Not today”, I reply.

“Maybe tomorrow then madam?” I turn to see a smiling young man. Now I do not claim to be a great judge of people – I usually trust everyone I meet and hope for the best. But what I noticed about this guy was that he did not have that look which I had seen in all guest house owners and auto/taxi guys I’d met across Hampi or Goa. That smug all-knowing ‘commercial’ look that makes you sure these guys are out to rip you! We bargained with Shekhar for an all-day trip around the ruins the next day – 700 rupees. That settled we walked up to pay our respects to Kadalekalu Ganesha. KK Ganesha is big, black and big. We theorize on how they would have had to sit on his trunk to carve out his eyes. The mukha mantapam is very pretty too – slender pillars supporting an impressively high roof.

I do not know what it is with us Indians, but we have a terribly self-deprecatory attitude when it comes to people with white skin. An old-ish uncle, part of a group of 4 men, asked L to click their picture in front of Ganesh-ji. She duly passed the camera to me professing ignorance on how to take photos. Uncle invited a foreigner who was waiting for them to get done with the picture, and then invited his friend as well and I clicked a picture of 6 old men who promised to look like the Ganesha behind them in a few years. Now why did he want to click pictures along side people with white skin? We wouldn’t find many Indians dying to click pictures with black people. These white guys could have been trash-pickers back in Arizona (I have nothing against trash pickers in Arizona) but they are heroes worth including in our pictures just because their skin is white. Uggh. And then we have all this talk about how dumb Americans cannot write code without us and how America would grind to a standstill if the Indians there decided to stop work for a day! These things get to me in a way very few things do. Let’s not diverge anyway. I just remembered this clicking incident happened on Day 4 in front of Sasivekalu Ganesha whose temple has crashed and has just a ramshackle stone shed to protect him.

Hemakuta hill. The setting is impressive – a wide granite slope with about 30 shrines dedicated to a wide variety of Gods in the Hindu pantheon. We come upon a European in tattered clothes and dreadlocks talking to a boy – most probably trading weed we theorize. More familiar faces – you run into the same tourists again and again in Hampi. Hemakuta is super-cool, and L is already amazed. But there are a zillion more delightful things in Hampi, I know. I play guide again and we discover that these shrines were erected across many years by various rich traders, merchants and nobles all of them, I presume, trying to book a berth on the train to heaven.

A short walk across the main Hampi Bazaar takes us to the big monolithic Nandi. I love its Tanjore counterpart better – it has its tongue playfully stuck out! We puff up the hill and descend into the Atchutaraya temple complex. I point out some more interesting carvings to a very piqued L who excitedly took a number of pictures. There’s a huge bazaar in front of it and the next day Shekhar embarrassedly told us that it was the ‘Colgar’ bazaar. We didn’t get it – he blushed a gentle red as he murmured ‘veshi bazaar’. Oh, ‘call girl’ or the courtesans’ bazaar! Hampi had 4, or was it 5 bazaars? The vegetable market in front of the Krishna temple, the gold, silk and pearls bazaar in front of the Virupaksha temple, the courtesans’ bazaar in front of the Atchutaraya complex, the gold bazaar in front of the Vitthala complex and the pan-supaari bazaar outside the main royal enclosure. Oh that makes it five I suppose.

I am tiring of this travelogue now. What? You are too? Ok, that’s peace. Let me pack present day Hampi in a paragraph for you.

Now this Vijayanagara kingdom, it was big, alright? Consider present day Hampi as the very centre of a thriving city which extended over a radius of 60 miles according to some travel texts of yore. The wealth of this kingdom is truly legendary. Every traveler who passed through the city has attested to this. So does the fact that the Deccan Sultans put aside their differences to build one huge army with the sole aim of razing Vijayanagara to the ground. It was simply too awesome to be true, so they destroyed it. (Once done, they picked up on all their older feuds.) Now depending on what part of the world you are from, you’ve seen your share of temples, forts, castles, harems, mosques, palaces, stadiums, man-made islands, big walls, coliseums etc. right? So multiply that grandeur a few tens to a few hundred times and you’d get a picture of what Hampi must have been like. The king was called Deva Raya – connected to God on a 24-hour hotline. So he spared no expense/effort in building luxurious palaces, bathing tanks, harems, bathing tanks for the queen(s), noble men’s quarters, elephant stables and of course temples to prove his point to anyone who cared to notice. Of course, these kings also ensured their subjects were happy – canals, irrigation ditches, public baths, huge halls where they could offer their respects to the Devarayan, aqueducts, temples, bazaars, fort walls were all built. The King placed himself in the middle of all this, inside 7 layers of walls. Feel free to imagine the luxuries that must have been the order of the day within the 7^th wall. Now send in an army of deranged, blood-thirsty Homo sapiens and watch death and destruction rain upon this land – what withstood this and the ravages of 400 years is what stands now.

As you zoom across the tarred roads through the ruins, it hits home that this was all just about 500 years ago. It’s at touching distance, yet most of what created a city like Hampi is lost, left behind as our generation of tech coolies takes India into an interesting future. The Vijayanagara kings were secular – they had Muslim soldiers in their armies. The Lotus Mahal is a beautiful blend of Hindu and Muslim architecture. The symmetry and perfection of its arches is stunning. The stepped tank – Pushkarani, the imposing Mahanavami Dibba, the Hazara Rama temple with its neat depiction of the Ramayana are all worth braving the sun for. Above all, current day Hampi has an indescribable attractive quality to it. Maybe it’s the boulders stacked around in impossible ways, maybe it’s the remnants of the weed joints that drifts from across the river, maybe it’s the allure of all the wealth that it held – I do not know. Hampi is a place you would want to return to.

What I am saying is, go to Hampi. It’s tourist friendly. Have the Nutela Banana Coconut pancake. Engage a 15-year old coracle guy called Siva (“I’ve been doing this since I was 12”) to take you down the river. Watch him sing and spin you around at awesome speeds on the Tungabadhra. Let him take you to where a thousand lingams stand – imagine some bored sculptor carving this on an idle afternoon. Is this what people did on their days off then? Marvel at the Nandi placed on the opposite bank of the river. Make friends with trustworthy auto drivers called Shekhar. Have pranks played on you by his bosom buddy and fellow auto driver Siva. :-) Watch a glorious Hampi sunset from Malayavantha or Matanga hill – satisfaction guaranteed. Listen and wonder at its associations with the Ramayana. Did Hanuman, Sugriva and Vaali play and fight amongst these boulders and banana trees? Did Rama really meet Hanuman and Sugriva there? Was it in this cave that he waited after dispatching Hanuman to find Sita in far off Lanka?

Tired, but feeling absolutely glorious, we landed in Bangalore the next morning. The End.

PS: You know, we should just take off on more random trips like this, I tell L. She nods her agreement. How about crossing India, west to east by train? From Mumbai to Kohima? Wanna join in?