Fry the fish, hold the sunblock

Danika and I returned to Bangalore yesterday after 6 glorious days at the Mangalore beach. My Uncle Gerard celebrated his 50th birthday in style by inviting everyone he knew to the Mangalore coast for a two day weekend celebration (we over-stayed our welcome I think). Neeks and I only landed up on the second day because we had to finish our crazy tour of Northern India. The whole weekend was made that much better because we had almost all of our family together in one place. Even my grandparents had a ball, donning their beachwear and joining in the festivities. A few noteworthy hilights: Having coconut juice and vodka cocktails IN tender coconuts! Going swimming in the ocean after breakfast, lunch and dinner (who says you have to wait 1 hour?). Listening to my tone deaf Aunt Monica and Uncle Gerard wail to music they don't know the lyrics to. Having fried fish for breakfast everyday!
Of course my impending return to Toronto's freezing weather made me a complete sun monger. I have turned a new shade of brown, and will probably pay heavily with premature wrinkles one day. But for the time being it was well worth it! We listened to the waves crashing as we fell asleep, we watched orange, pink and red sunsets, and feasted on seafood that was caught fresh every day, it was true paradise. Thank you Gerard for an awesome party, one shouldn't turn 50 any other way!

I (heart) Calcutta

After a tumultuous couple of days once our Darjeeling leg was cancelled, Danika and I wound up with one whole day to spend in Calcutta. To make matters worse, our train was late getting into Howrah station by 4 hours. Our initially pleasant impression of the Indian Railway has since faded to disappointment, much like our impression of air travel and bus travel-- but that's a cynical road I don't want to venture onto right now. We fortunately had a private taxi to take us around Calcutta, so we could make the most of our day. Where Delhi is challenging to navigate because of it's great area, Calcutta has the most incredible traffic you have ever seen. And considering things in Bangalore and Delhi are bad, just try to imagine what could be worse than bad?! We began our adventure at the highly recommended Victoria Memorial. It's a beautiful marble building surrounded by manicured gardens and canals. The memorial was built as a tribute to Queen Victoria who was the first Empress of British India. Besides the giant marble statues and standard floral gardens often found at these memorials, the Victoria memorial also housed an impressive collection of oil paintings depicting the days when the British East India Trading Company were in charge. There is an adjacent gallery that maps the timeline of Calcutta from the days of the British East India Company to the present day. It was probably the most informative thing i've read while travelling up north. The gallery explained in great detail the legacy of Calcutta, the stigmas that the rest of the world has about them and the various reasons for it's notorious poverty. Among all the cities I visited up north, Calcutta was my favourite. Maybe it had to do with all the old yellow cabs driving around, circa New York City in the 1970's (no autos anywhere!) but whatever it was, it had a certain je ne c'est quoi about it.
After the Victoria Memorial we visited the Marble Palace, which is an old abandoned mansion with beautiful marble structures among it's garden and zoo. Like a lot of places recommended it the Lonely Planet, you expect that as a tourist some information will be offered to you about what you are seeing, but this seems to be the exception rather than the rule.
We drove by BBD Bagh, aka Dalhousie Square which was the headquarters of the British East India Administration. There is a lot of colonial architecture in Calcutta, especially in this area, you can always sense Calcutta's British past in this way.
For lunch we stopped off on Park St. for the legendary Kathi Rolls, which is simply a paratha with egg, chicken, onions and some chilli sauce. It's divine, and the paper napkin they wrap it in turns transluscent instantly, which is always an indicator of GOOD street food! We also had a lemon tart at the famous Flury's bakery, which has been around for over 40 years.
Among our other stops was St.Paul's Cathedral, NOT even close to as impressive as our Notre Dame, and Motherhouse, the final resting place of Mother Theresa. Considering how famous she was, her tomb is a humble white marble stone, covered with flowers. And the sisters of the Mission of Charity are very warm and welcoming, any one of them is pleased to sit down and talk to you about the life of Mother and the work they do at the mission. They take volunteers into their missions on a daily basis even. If you are ever visiting Calcutta, you can drop in for a day and help them in their orphanage or infirmary homes, they welcome all helping hands.

Our last stop in Calcutta was an authentic Hakka Chinese dinner at the Tangra district of Calcutta. It's where the original Hakka Chinese population in India immigrated to. My father's family once lived here, and we were lucky to have one of his friends in the Hakka community bring us here for a true Hakka meal. The area was once full of leather tanneries, and since the tannery business hasn't been doing well over the past few years, many of the tanneries have been converted into huge Chinese restuarants. We had the BEST Hakka Chinese meal, the food was so much better than the stuff you get in Toronto, or in the Indian/Chinese restaurants in Bangalore. It's sort of hard to describe, but it still has that basic character of spicy Chinese food, but more authentic because we had it in Calcutta!

Our flight from Calcutta back to Bangalore was delayed by 4 hours (thus the comment above), but the prospect of not having to take another train in this country made the hours fly by!

The Jaipur Conspiracy

In the early stages of planning our trip to the North of India, our list of cities included, Delhi, Agra, Jaipur, Lucknow, Darjeeling and Calcutta. For lack of time, and the vast distances between these cities, we eliminated Jaipur and Lucknow with the intention of visiting these places the next time we returned to India of course. Darjeeling was a bit of a stretch since it is in a remote area of West Bengal and would require about 40 hours of trains and taxis to get there from Delhi. But the thought of waking up to sights of Everest and the three other tallest mountains in the world, was too good to pass up.
Unfortunately, our luck ran out the other night, when we arrived at the Old Delhi train station to catch our 11pm train to Darjeeling, only to find out that it had been delayed by 9 hours. Which meant that we would miss the toy train that takes us to the heart of Darjeeling city, which only runs once a day. Which would also mean that we would end up travelling for 3 days and only get 1 night in Darjeeling. In the end we decided we would be nuts to travel all that way and only get a few hours to enjoy the place. So we cancelled all our connecting trains and our hostel bookings to Darjeeling and decided instead to visit Jaipur. It's like we were meant to come here or something! To make things worse, we wanted to leave Jaipur on Jan 30th so we could get to Calcutta by Feb 1st and spend 2 whole days there. Calcutta is much larger than Jaipur and therefore would warrant more time spent seeing all the sights. But when we went to the train station, there were absolutely no trains available to Calcutta until the 31st. Which meant we would spend not 2, but three days in Jaipur, the city we didn't even plan to visit! In the end, I think Jaipur had us in her sights, even though we didn't have her. And the "pink city" has offered much more than we anticipated. Neeks and I have officially found the best katchories in India, and got to hang out with a cool New Brunswick couple who were staying at our hostel-- our first interaction with fluent English speakers in a long while!
Jaipur has a lot of sights and relics from the days of the early Mughal Empire. There are many beautiful forts which sit atop the hilly areas around Jaipur that garner a gorgeous view of the sprawling city below. As well as the characteristic rose coloured facades within the old city walls, which is what makes Jaipur knows as the "pink city". The roads are always crowded, but at least you can opt for a more eco-friendly cycle rickshaw as they are everywhere. And I mentioned earlier our discovery of the best katchories we've ever tasted-- well we've decided they alone were worth the trip!

Kelly's post

I promised you a shout out! Wish that You, Trace and Amunder had joined us here. It would be so much better travelling in a big group of girls instead of our two man show! And at least with you, the people here might have believed we were actually Indian, eventhough you are the least Indian Indian I know! Miss our all night chats! See you in 3 weeks kiddo!

Agra et al.

After a very fun and busy 2 days in Delhi. Danika and I are now safely in Agra, India. Our two days Delhi began at the Colonial inspired Connaught Place, which is at the heart of Delhi proper. It is an extravagant traffic circle, consisting of 7 roads that spoke out from the centre (much like the Arche de Triomphe in Paris). The traffic is absolute madness regardless of the time of day. The building facades are reminiscent of the days of British Colonial rule, as they all have soaring pillars and are all painted a uniform white (now somewhat blackened by all the pollution). It's apparently the "uspscale" area of Delhi, in that all the boutique stores have their flagships here. But of course you still have your basic Indian sewage smell, tonnes of garbage and beggars. The food in Delhi has not disappointed, as Danika and I have fulfilled our desire for biryani, chaat and Mughali curries on a daily basis, I hope all your mouths are watering! We also visited the Palike bazar, an underground shopping area right under the Connaught traffic circle, and visited a unique outdoor observatory, built in the 1600's, and with large concrete and marble instruments that you can climb. Day two in Delhi consisted of visiting the famous Red Fort, it's really cool. And even cooler that we only paid 11 rupees each to get in (compared to the tourist rate of 100 rupees), because we convinced the ticket agent we were Indian, and flashed the "born in Bangalore" portion of our Canadian passports! We also ventured into Chandi Chowk and the spice market, which is a crazy, crowded, dirty, market area. But we quickly ventured out when we realized that there were only men everywhere, and of course that lovely sewage smell. After Chandi Chowk we went to the Jama Masjid, India's largest Mosque, which is gorgeous and very crowded. We weren't allowed to go inside as we arrived just in time for evening prayers, but still managed a few good snaps. And then lastly to the Gandhi Darshan, where India's beloved Mahatma Gandhi was cremated. It's a beautifully maintained garden area, and the place of his cremation is marked with a simple black marble stone. I felt very touched being there, and found myself wondering what the Great man would think of the state of India today. It is interesting that there exists such a pristine tribute to a man, who cared little for personal glory and more for the common people. It would seem the money spent for the perfectly pruned bushes would be better served on the poor and uneducated, as he might have wanted.
Today-- Friday, is Republic Day, and basically all of Delhi was on holiday. Neeks and I spent a relaxing morning waking up late, watching the Republic Day parade on tv, and then going to our Aunt's house for lunch. We caught a 6 pm train to Agra, and arrived safely at our hotel a few short hours ago. Tomorrow morning we see the Taj Mahal at sunrise, which I think I can speak for Danika and I and say is the highlight of our trip. Will definitely be posting pics of that. Only 3 weeks left in India, how time flies!

Delhi is how far away!!!???

36 hours. Yes folks, you read it correctly. It takes 36 hours by TRAIN to get to Delhi from Bangalore. For you clever people who thoroughly research your travels, you probably already knew that. But Danika and I were under the distinct impression that you could get anywhere in India in like 6 hours. Inspite of knowing this we booked a train to Delhi anyways (we're leaving tomorrow night!) they've promised us an A/C sleeper, but we'll see about the A/C and we'll see about the sleep. I've learned among other things, that things are never quite how they are described by the Indians. "Luxury", "delux" and "fancy" have all taken on completely alternative meanings for me since i've been here. Hence my cynicism about this train ride. In any case, we have decided to visit Delhi, Agra, Darjeeling and Calcutta (I refuse to use the new Indianized names because they just sound bad). And out of the 10 days we will be away from Bangalore, 5 of those days will be spent on trains and buses just getting from one place to another. Flying around India is incredibly expensive, which is both surprising and annoying since the quality of airline service is dismal and the demand is really high. And apparently the rail system in India is one of the best, minus the fact the toilets empty onto the tracks. They also say the mailpost system is top notch, but out of the 10 letters I have mailed to Toronto, only 3 have arrived, and one of them was torn in half and placed in a plastic bag saying "we regret the incovenience", so we'll just have to wait and see. But I will say that the trains are very smooth, and it's a no-brainer compared to taking chartered buses with crazy drivers. It's definitely safer to travel by train.
What will we do for 36 hours? Well, Danika and I are HUGE fans of playing war (so is Paul, he just doesn't know it yet!). I was also gifted a very apt book called "Chindia", about the growth of the Chinese and Indian economies, from my capitalist-loving boyfriend, (thank you Ray). And if all else fails I have a healthy stash of sleeping pills to snore the time away!

I'm tired of writing

Okay, that's not true, I'm not tired of writing, I don't think I ever could be. But, I realized that India is better enjoyed with all the senses. And since ya'll can't be here to smell it (not missing much), taste it (too bad!), feel it, or hear it (I hear stray dogs barking right now) I could at least help you see it! Enjoy.

Things you can't get used to...

It has been almost 3 months since I have arrived in Bangalore. I think I have been very good at adapting to the way of life here. But inspite of all things I have gotten used to, there are still some things that I just don't understand.

1. Indian people do not understand the concept of a queue. They see you standing there, they know you were there before they were, but still, it makes sense to stand in front of you and demand they get served first.

2. There are signs everywhere literally begging people not to spit and urinate in public spaces. And onto the sign, they spit and urinate, as if the street is their private bathroom.

3. NO ONE, is EVER on time, NOT EVER. It's playfully been nicknamed IST=Indian Standard Time, but it is so frustrating. When someone invites you over for dinner at 8pm, they only serve you food at 11pm. When they tell you that they'll be serving dinner "early" they mean it will be served at 10:45 instead of 11. I remember one New Year's when they served us dinner after midnight--who does that!??

4. The autorickshaw drivers are like communist dictators. You don't tell them where you want to go, they tell you where they are going. You don't pay them what the meter says, you pay them what they tell you to pay them. In the middle of the day, it is impossible to get a rickshaw anywhere. If only the government had that kind of power, there wouldn't be people spitting and urinating on walls, because they could actually find an autoricksaw to take them to a toilet.

5. All bars and clubs close at 11pm. No joke.

6. As Paul pointed out, no where else in the world can you spend rs-8 on a full breakfast and then turn around and buy a rs-20,000 cellphone on the same day. The discrepancy in what things cost here is bizarre.

7. Where have all the women gone? On any given street, as far as you can see, the ratio of women to men is usually about 1:100. Which I guess has normalized the behaviour of men holding hands as they walk down the street. There are guys holding hands everywhere. If there are three guys walking, two hold hands, and the other holds their shoulders.

8. When you try to jaywalk through traffic you get honked at and berated by the drivers, but when a cow stands in the middle of the road and stops traffic, everyone sits and waits patiently for it to move.

It's Better in Goa

I had this t-shirt when I was a child of a neon green, pink and orange sunset of Goa, and the caption was "It's better in Goa". I have always thought of Goa exactly like that t-shirt-- exotic, balmy, a calm paradise destination. Our New Year's trip to Goa was like that nice simple t-shirt spray painted with a tag that said "Daytona is better"! As you near the beach (we went to Baga beach), the traffic becomes menacing, there are no sidwalks for people to walk, it's dirty, there are open sewage drains, and the Goa police just block off random streets as they please. The main attraction of course is the beach, the sand was packed down, there were boats moored about 20 feet from the shore so you had to be careful not to get caught in someone's propeller, and the sand was littered with beer bottles and garbage from tourists and locals. Oh, and the most traumatizing part were the select Indian men who decided that white chuddies would make suitable swimming trunks and would come out of the water dripping wet and stand right infront of your beach chair. It gives a whole new meaning to "beach balls"! Needless to say, the whole experience was very disappointing, especially since it was so perfect in my imagination. But there were some things worth noting. For one, you can get served anything but the kitchen sink while lounging on the beach. Breakfast, lunch, dinner, beer, tattoos, massages, coconuts, sarongs, you can even get your ears cleaned as you lie there soaking up the sun! And the sunset, although marred by dozens of rows of beach chairs and umbrellas, is certainly worth waiting all day for. Ken liked them so much he kept hoping for two sunsets in one day! Another pleasant memory of Goa is that we got to spend time with Ryan who should be re-named the Australian Party Animal! We had the pleasure of meeting all of his cousins and it made our time there so much more fun. The hilight of the trip was New Year's Eve and in Goa you either go hard or go home it seemed. So we started the evening at Ryan's guesthouse, having drinks on the terrace. We laughed so hard we almost peed our pants! We had dinner and then ventured to the beach. I can't even describe how crowded it was. The beach itself was huge, and there were people on every square inch of it! The creepy part was they were mostly men, and the girls had to literally have the guys make a fence around them when we walked just so we wouldn't get groped. (Relevant the end of my last blog). We, in typical Indian Standard Time, only arrived at the beach at like 11:30. So we had to scramble to get drinks and decided to just stay on the beach for New Year's. With so many shacks around, and blasting music, there was no really definitive countdown, so we just created our own. I really believe the only way to spend New Year's is with lots of people in a really loud place, it's the best feeling. All of the beach shacks had fireworks shows, so we watched fireworks for about 20 minutes. After fireworks we had to join the mobs of people that seemed to be just roaming around aimlessly to find some outdoor club that Ryan's cousin had found. We had to pay a whopping Rs-1000 per person, but it was all-you-could-drink-and-eat. Needless to say I didn't really take advantage what with my 3 drink limit. But it was really fun. We all took over the stage and jammed to house music, which I always say you can only tolerate when you've had a few. The deejay was really annoying and wouldn't shut up. It's funny hearing these guys try to sound cool when they speak English with a really thick Indian accent. It would have been better if he just spoke Hindi or something. Kudos to Ken for outlasting us all on New Year's (he didn't get home til 10am). New Year's in Goa was certainly worth the experience. Though I will say the Goa beaches don't even deserve a mention compared to the white sand beaches of Mangalore or Thailand. I guess you could call me a beach snob.