But a shed load of buses recently to get us out of Mysore (before James got any grumpier) and down to Kerala. The journey between Mysore and Kochi was 14 hours by bus which did not fill us with joy, so we decided to have a pit stop in Ootacamund, playground of the British Colonials (snooker was invented in the Ooty club while Lloyd George was getting smashed on gin and shouted ’snooker’ at a local). Before we even got there the detour was worthwhile thanks to a truly beautiful ride through the Nilgiri mountains – the little road ascended through mile after mile of tall bamboo forest before the landscape opened out to reveal steep, rolling mountains faces covered by acres of tea bushes. No wonder the British liked it up there, it’s 10 degrees cooler and there’s enough tea to sink an army of elephants.  We aso learnt an intersting fact: 30 seater buses with 48 people on board can overtake Land Rovers, in second gear, on hair pin bends.

Ooty itself seems to have gone to the dogs a bit recently (what ho, old chap) although we found a great curry house full of middle class Indians on their holidays and stayed at a very cheap hostel. The following morning we decided it didn’t have much else to offer and hopped on a 3 hour bus through equally beautiful scenery to Coimbatore. I have nothing to say about Combiatiore except that it made Ooty look like Florence, so we swiftly hopped on another bus which took us out of Tamil Nadu and into Kerala. 

Kerala is very different from most of the other states we’ve passed through. To begin with,  the elected state goverment is communist and there are Soviet hammer and sickles everywhere you look. Secondly, there seems to be less poverty, more employment and a higher literacy rate than anywhere else we’ve been (no doubt the diehard  Reds amongst you (mother) would attribute this to the Communist goverance, but the tourist attractions can’t hurt its economy either). Thirdly, and best of all, they serve beer out of tea pots into china cups. The state goverment places very tight restrictions on alcohol but they also know that a beer helps to loosen tourist purse strings so, in true communist style, they turn a blind eye as long as a) it doesn’t appear on menus and b) comes out of teapots.

We spent two days in Kochi, which is my favourite city so far: a network of cheap and regular ferries link the various parts of the city which meant we could stay in the industrial, commercial (kind to the budget) area of Ernakulem, then hop over to Fort Kochi where the Portugese and Dutch made everything pretty, before heading to the brilliantly named Jew Town, where all the expensive shops are.  Here’s a conversation I heard in a bookshop:

Shopkeeper (to a group of earnest Americans): “Here we have a section on Kerala’s History – I would recommend this book about Kochin’s Jewish population. It is very controversial.”

American: “Why is it controversial?’

Shopkeeper (long pause): “Because it is about Jews”

American (knowingly): “I see…how much?”

All in all Kochin is great, but it does share one feature with every other urban area we’ve been to – it smells.  Sweat, diesel fumes, sandal wood, spicey fried street food, cardamon, cow dung, raw (sometime rotting) fish, varnish, shampoo, jasmine flowers, human effluence, scorched tyre rubber, woodsmoke, vomit, sulphur, sugar, ghee: I smelled every one of these things on the way from Kochin down the coast yesterday…not all bad smells (although the effluence and diesel fumes are probably the most common in the cities) but put them together and they can result in complete sensory overload even if you keep your eyes and ears closed for the day (impossible unless you want to fall under a bus/train/cow/rickshaw/motorbike).  It keeps taking me by surprise – I feel totally acclimatised then get another weird moment of India-induced disorientation.

 Since Kochin we have survived 4 more buses got us to Karvala, a lovely little village in South Kerala, to recuperate from a week of sweaty travel. In other news, over the past few days I have managed to get a cold (how? HOW?), a hangover (I know how – stupid tea pots) and a sharp dose of Delhi Belly (I have a few suspects). James is as fit as a fiddle, which has put me into a black, black mood. I intend to poison his Masala tonight.

N.B. James has temporarily suspended camera duties as we are revisiting Kochin and Karvala with Matt.

We’ve just spent a couple of days in Mysore – a town in the state of Karnataka, which happens to be a very popular tourist destination for Indias on account of it’s palace, the hill top temple and scores of sweet shops.  The guidebook said we’d fall in love with it’s charm.  I want a refund.

Ok, perhaps I’m been harsh – compared to Delhi it’s wonderful – wide open spaces, trees, it’s got a lovely temple and doesn’t smell like a toilet.  But it’s got rickshaws, by the thousands.  Rickshaws driven by the most persistent drivers with highly tuned tourist radars.  They can smell a bead of english tourist sweat from 6 blocks away, at which point they honk their hooters  to rally fellow drivers into an elite hunting pack to descend on said tourists.  I’ve become a very rude man after spending two days in Mysore.

We went to the Maharajahs Palace – a huge building crammed with self indulgent opulence, and tourists.  We wondered around the palace (after bribing and official to let me take my precious camera in) reading information from the guide book.  Here’s how the conversation went:

(we enter a grand room, the wedding room)

James: wow, look at that!

Jeannie: yes, you’re leaning against a solid cast iron pillar that was forged in Glasgow, and the stained glass ceiling was made in Belgium

James: wow.  It’s beautiful.  How old is it?

Jeannie: it was built in 1912.

James: what?

Jeannie: 1912

James: what a con.  It’s not even a hundred years old.  Buckingham palace is of prehistoric construction compare to this place, hell even the statue of liberty is older.  Even my parent’s house is older.  What a con.  Grumble, grumble, grumble.  Etc

I think I was just pissed that I had to pay RS200 to get in.

The following day we paid 15p for the bus ride up to the top of Chamundi Hill to see Mysore’s famous temple.  This was more like it – it was busy, but worth the trip.  A man showed us around, gave us colours kumkum powder to offer to the gods and furnished us with a couple of Bhindis to bring us luck.  Then he wanted his own blessing in the form of hard cash for his kindness.  Cheeky!  We descended down 1000 steps from the temple, passing various idols on the way, including a giant statue of Nandi, carved from a solid granite block.  At the end of the road we stumbled across a small icon of Ganesh, sorry Lord Ganesh, tended by a very kind Sadhu.  We chatted, he shared some sweets with us (which young Ivanov lunged for with her left hand – a big no no in India, as that’s your poo hand) and blessed us before we tottered back into town.

Today we’re leaving Mysore, we’re off to Kerala on a 14 hour bus drive.  I’ve been reassured by the locals that it’s a luxurious bus, however it’s only costing three quid so we shall see.

 

We managed to tear ourselves away from Goa but not without train-themed fun and games. We arrived, bright eyed and expectant, ticket in hand, at 7.40am for the 8am train to Hospet. Six hours later we were still on the platform – we never did find out what caused the delay but I suspect the driver slept in because it was only coming from 50km up the road. Anyway, the long wait was brightened up by two Poles drinking rum from a child’s bottle at 11am and a friendly little American man. The train showed up at 2pm and cattle class was better than anticipated, except for a family of cockroaches who took an interest in James’ dinner.

Hampi and Vijayanagar, a ruined 16th century Hindu stronghold which was pillaged by the Muslims and now exists only as a ghost city, are both fabulous.  Hampi Bazaar (the nearest village to Vijayanagar) is made up of a few dusty streets, lots of ramshackle stalls and stores, a sprinkling of paddy fields and a long, meandering river.  It is relatively traffic-free and, best of all, flanked on all sides by a vast landscape of boulders standing in massive hills and crags, dotted with dozens and dozens of ruined stone temples. We got up super-early this morning and followed the river up past many of the ruins with only a few Indians and over-friendly monkeys for company. The photos, for once, do the landscape some justice but its hard to believe how far the it stretches, temple after temple, rock after rock.

A couple of the temples are still used for worship - I am getting to like the way Hindus, and Indians in general, approach religion. They don’t force their belief on anyone but they are incredibly devout and enthusiastic themselves. There’s also no feeling of sanctity or grandeur in the temples and all the praying is done in a very ordinary, matter-of-fact way, I suppose because God is a way of life. They are keen to reassure visitors to the temples that Shiva will bless them, even if the visitors are lardy Americans who wave their Nikons at the sacred elephant. That is proper religious tolerance – I would have them beheaded.

This being a holy city we are on an enforced beer and meat detox for the next 3 nights, then on to Mysore (what a great names for a place).

 

We left Delhi on the express sleeper train to Goa.  Within 30 minutes of leaving the city we were surrounded by the lush green Indian countryside. As we travelled further south we watched ladies in saries working in the fields, men hurding cows, goats and even camels, whole families on motorbikes and people walking between villages.  The service on the train was great – we got fed five times a day – curries, dahls, chipatis, curd, tea, cakes, yum :)  At night our seats folded down into two double bunks, allowing us to sleep for much of the journey.

26 hours after leaving Delhi we pulled into the heat of Goa.  We got a cab to our digs – the Blue Corner, a small enclave of coconut huts by the side of the lush beach and warm waters of the Arbian Sea.

We spent a few days in Goa, and didn’t really do much – our plan was always to use this time to relax.  We walked into town a couple of times, but mainly hung out, reading, sunbathing, swimming and eating.  Food was amazing – very fresh, really tasty and as expected, a bargain.  You had to try really hard to spend more than a couple of quid on dinner.  There’s quite a few ex-pats here in Goa and a good mix of nationalities – we think a few people escape from the resorts up the road to come to our little place in the sun.  Including Manu, our new friend from Rajastan who despite never seeing a pool table before managed to ace me after I potted the black.  Git.

I really enjoyed our stint in Goa, it’s been a great wind down from the build up and stress of getting this far, I now feel ready to take on the rest of India.  We’ve planned the next leg of our trip – we’re off to the holy town of Hampi further south (7 hour train, £3), then onto Mysore and Kochin.

 

Wow, this place is chaotic.  We arrived into Delhi airport at 4am this morning, the entire city was covered in thick fog, so thick even the driver looked nervous.  After a white knuckle ride into the centre (during which I’m sure the driver kept falling asleep) we arrived at our fifth-floor guest house.  We’ve been for a stroll around the town of a million car horns, where we’ve been harassed by countless ricksaw drivers, chatted with scores of locals who just love to fire questions at you and been ushered into one phony tourist office where they tried to re-book our train tickets to Goa.  We battled with the metro to go to the Red Fort, only to discover half of Delhi is shut on Mondays.  Other than that all is good, if a little smelly.  Our initial encounter with Delhi is brief, for tomorrow we leave for Goa on the Rajastan Express.

We went on a 4×4 trip into the desert yesterday with some of the Vodafone Qatar crew.  15 people, three jeeps and a lot of sand and speed, loads of fun.  The drivers were pretty crazy – shooting up and down sand dunes at speed, catching some air (yes, in a Toyota Landcruiser, take a look at the photo) and generally having a riot.  We made it down to the inland sea (Khor al Daid) where the sea juts into the desert – you can see Saudi Aribia on the other side – before heading off to a camp for tasty middle eastern food, yummy.

PS – Leigh, thanks for the travel sickness tablets, very handy :)

 

Hello folks,

This is my first blog so be gentle with me.

Arrived in Doha on Thursday – imagine a large construction site in the middle of the desert which is gradually being transformed into a millionaire’s playground, where Western ex-pats and migrant workers from the sub-continent outnumber the natives 5-1, and you’re getting the picture.

Qatar has a population of 1 million (85% in Doha) and the highest average GDP in the world. I’ve seen no crime, no begging (but labour is extremely cheap), 4,000 beautiful hotels and 6 million massive Jeeps plus the odd Jag. Just like Delhi, then.

Stelios and Hee-Jong are looking after us very well – we had a tour of Doha and its COWS (cell cites on wheels, silly) yesterday, lunch in a mall built to look like the place that looks like Venice that’s in Las Vegas, and a lovely night out with booze and everything in an open air sky bar. Only £14 for a glass of wine. We also visited the museum of Islamic art, which was fascinating and beautiful.

Oh, and did I mention the pool and sauna on the top floor of the apartment building? That’s fascinating and beautiful too.

We’re off for a 4×4 tour of the desert this afternoon and we fly out to Delhi tomorrow for some proper luxury. I can’t sing off though, without mentioning that Qatar has an IRISH BAR. Is nowhere safe?

Toilets – 8/10 (marked down for lack of amusing trademarks like shower hose etc)  Food – 9/10 (amazing Sri Lankan buffet last night)

 

The day has finally arrived – we’re here in the office for the last time.  I’m trying my hardest to kill time and Jeannie looks like she’s actually doing some work.  A few sore heads this morning thanks to last night’s attempt to drink Newbury dry.  Photos have just gone up on FB: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=207240&l=c0c67&id=614690061

Saying goodbyes all day to loads of really great friends here, now that sucks.  I’ll miss these crazy kids.

Here’s select few photos of the fun we’ve got up to over the last five years at Vodafone.  Don’t worry shareholders, your investments are in safe hands :-S