Let me go on! I swore to myself I would spread the wise words that I learned on my trip, well really not so wise, but if we did say something wise I will inform you!
So after the Rotary Conference we headed back to Hyderabad! One of the major benefits of Hyderabad was that the exchange students from Hyderabad were going to be joining us on our adventure! The City of Hyderabad is really really big! There is a lot of land, and just from seeing some of it and then hearing about the rest, land wise I think it is around double the size of Pune, but just a few more people (two million more, which sounds really funny, but well in India that is nothing!). So Josh (from Canada), Emma (from USA), and Manny (from Belgium), joined us, and that is it for the city of Hyderabad.
Our first official tours stop! Golkanda Fort and Palace
The Fort and Palace were built for some Muslim rulers a long time ago, don’t really remember how long but probably in the ball park of around 1000 years! The fort itself is really lovely! Huge wall fortress and just sprawling passages and hidden paths and odd amenities (such as whisper walls, where you can talk to people by talking into the wall, along with Clapping Chambers, which people would clap in and that would signal other people to clap so someone would send some kind of messenger to get the message, I would imagine it would be an elephant, but that is my imagination it tends to run wild, and so I am guessing it was slave labor and a 9 year old kid running up and down the hill). At the palace we got to see a lights show (the first of many, this one though was defiantly the coolest, well if I could pay attention long enough to understand what was going on). So this lights show told the history of everything that the palace went though, it was really interesting, but I did not get a word of it! Not because it was in another language, actually it was in English narrated by the best Indian orator out there, but it was just it was really hard to understand and then follow! It was not created for people who need to see images or be able to read along! But it was really neat to see the art of it all! The palace was just amazing when they added all the lights to light it up at night! Brilliant!
After that it was Ari’s (from Mexico) Birthday! So we went to our first hotel, and were very surprised by the very nice accommodations! It was nice; because we got an AC that my room mates and I (Lauren, Eli, and me) set to 16 c, and turned the room into an ice box… hehe. So it was a party that night, cake and ice cream we had a good beginning to our trip!
The next day we went to several famous Hyderabad place!
The World’s Largest Private Collection Museum: A big museum that is owned all by one man. Don’t remember the name of it, it sounded like a mix of Japanese and Muslim. I like museums, but this one really had nothing of major importance in it. The three famous exhibits were a big Musical Clock; it was an oversized coo-koo clock with dancing people, not a big deal. Then two no name artist statues, one was called Rebecca, it was an Italian statue of a veiled women. Then another which I think was Spanish and it was a traditional man, looking all proud and then on the back of him there is a women hunched over, it was very Indian if you ask me even though it was from Spain. There was nothing of note.
Sudhara Cars Museum: It took us about 17 minutes flat to see the entire thing. It was a bunch of rooms that had wacky moving what looked like parade cars like moving floats and cameras and odd bikes and things, also the worlds largest working bike, it was pretty big. The most famous thing there was a moving condom (yes, a moving condom) that was used for the creation of world aids day and Nelson Mandela drove it, something like that, I have pictures. In the end a few kids got lost and ended up in the studio of Mr. Sadhara himself, and well he was making a new care to look like a stiletto and a purse, for that perfect date. We ended up getting to met him, he was a very odd man.
Snow World: Well what can I say about this, the name really says it all! Snow World. They created artificial snow and let Indians who have never seen snow loose! Which in my mind there really need to be some rules? I walk in and all of a sudden I was HIT, I WAS DOWN! And well I wanted to hurt the Indian that did that! Obviously they did not learn ANY snow rules! You don’t just beam someone in the head with a snow ball, when you have no idea who they are! But it was pretty fun, reminded me of home! The room is one big fridge, and well I did not find it to be very cold, I was surprised! The other kids did not find it cold either and we were walking around without mittens and hoods up. Everyone, even people who we did not know would come up to us and ask us if we were cold, and we would just look at them and probably pretend not to speak English.
Laser Lights Show (2): Well we went to Lumbini Park, which was as we were later told the sight of the huge bombings in India in August. To see a laser light and water show. It would have been better under many conditions. It told the history of the city to some very catchy tunes (Hyderabad: Our City!) displayed on a huge water screen, told the same story as the fort, but with pictures so I understood! Also made for number two of the lights shows!
Birla Temple: The Birla family is one of the big families in India. They own A LOT of stuff, such as this brilliant white marble temple! They also own things like my cell phone company, a cement company, a building company, and have holdings all over India (not really a fan). But the temple is on a hill that looks over the old city, it is huge and made of pure white marble, and actually kept really clean versus many other temples which are not kept up.
Boat Ride (1) and Giant Buddha: We took a boat to the middle of a lake to see a Giant Buddha, self explanatory.
Char Minahar (not spelled right at all): This big famous structure that has four pillars (char) and it is what the old part of the city is built around. Around it there are a bunch of bazaars, which mean shopping! Hyderabad is famous for bangles and pearls! I got Pearls, I am obsessed.
Next Stop! Hyderabad to Bangalore (by nicer train, it had AC) then Bus to Mysore (going through Mangalore (we did not stop, I just like the name, it makes me giggle).
Mysore!
Palace: Mysore is famous for its palace. There is just a big palace really built in the middle of no where! When it was built really it must have been amazing! I would have loved to have seen it new. It was built in 1904, so 104 years ago, and it mirrors the styles of old Europen palace, and it does not compare to palaces like Windsor, because it is sadly not well up kept. The real shocker about the entire palace is that it was built for $110,000, about $4 million today. Well this place is huge, and really elaborate! But really think about it a house for four million in the USA… what would it look like. I am thinking you could get a house on like lakeshore drive in Chicago for around four million, that would be about the size of well a townhouse. In Wisconsin you could also get a house on the lake that would be a mansion, but in India you can have a PALACE! AN ENTIRE PALCE, for FOUR MILLION DOLLARS! Alright I am not over the shock, and if I have the chance to go back in time and tell my ancestors to do something, I am bringing them yellow fever vaccines and sending them to India to build me a palace!
We did have a nice tour, and learned some strange facts, about the palace, which is still lived in. Our tour guide was an old Muslim man, who had a crazy accent, very traditional Indian, and almost impossible to understand. The funniest part was that people would randomly come up and join our tour and he would get really angry with them, and ask them for the money that the tour cost, or ask them if they even spoke English. Because we were a tour full of white kids the villagers who were visiting the palace would try and join our group, pretty much to stare at the white kids, and both our palace tour guide and our trip tour guide would tell them “you came here to see the palace; not the white kids.” The palace also is home to about 7 temples and a museum. There is more to the palace that is situated all over the city of Mysore, such as two guest houses (one that is modeled after what our guide claimed to be the white house, but I think it looked more like a mini-capitol building). There were a few other buildings that all belong to the palace, not really sure what all they were used for.
Mysore Zoo: The oldest, and possibly the biggest zoo in India. It has the only gorilla, and home to an exhibit on squirrels. Ellie, Lauren and I, camped out at the coke station for the most part of the time spent there. We decided to become our own exhibit involuntarily, by sitting down for an hour and a half we became a zoo exhibit. People came by and poked and prodded at us, and abused us in Hindi. Indian Boys would come by and try to talk to us, we would pretend to speak a mix of French, Latin, and Spanish. They would yell at us in Hindi, and then we would proudly announce that we spoke Hindi, I have never seen someone run away as fast as that moment. We also could not get out of their fast enough.
Musical Gardens: Gardens build bellow a dam, famous for musical fountains. The musical fountains were really well indescribably stupid, and all the Indians were in awe! It was more of two streams of water coming out with a Bollywood song that was famous ten years ago blasting for five minutes, when all the foreign were getting eaten alive by mosquitoes. We took a vote and decided that under special circumstances it would probably have been much better.
Giant Bull Temple: On a hill in the middle of no where, there was a giant bull, that doubled as a temple to the giant bull god (I think, not to sure?).
Temples: We were off to a few temples outside the city; they looked all the same as al the rest of the temples, in India. Elaborate Carved Roofs, a lot of cows wandering around outside, really dirty, and monkeys trying to steal your things.
Bird Sanctuary: There was a big river where all of the migratory birds in India land up. Much like the Midwest an the Canada goose, except these birds are much bigger and much prettier then the stupid Canada goose. We boarded the real Jungle Cruise to see them, it was pretty wild, you would get out farther and you would see a ton of birds, there were thousands of big bird sized birds! And then the occasional crocodile would sneak up on the boat, or a tree of bats would be rustled. It was a really neat experience.
OOTY: A town as creepy as it sounds.
We took the bus from Mysore up to Ooty, it was a pretty wild drive, winding around mountains, hills, tea gardens, 1000 foot drops, and almost crashing into elephants. On the way to Ooty we passed through a national park that is home to tigers, elephants, and barking deer. You would be staring out the window and all of a sudden there would be an elephant running at the bus, which was cool. At one point we stopped in the middle of the hills only to find out that an accident that happened three days ago from a truck running off the cliff getting cleaned up, it was one of those moments where you were glad that this was not you. As we went up the mountains to Ooty, you could feel it getting colder, it turns out Ooty is a cold place. Ooty was the coldest I have been in India, which is sad. It was about 10 c, the entire time we were there, and I was freezing my butt off! It was so cold! I had on two sweaters, a scarf, and normally shorts under pants, to try and stay warm, it was so cold.
What was seen in Ooty:
Tea: All the tea you want, Tea Factory, Tea Gardens, Tea Plantations, Tea Shops, Tea Stalls, Tea Tasting Places, Tea, Tea, and more Tea.
Wax Museum: Had Indian people in it.
Thread Garden: A garden of fake flowers made out of embroidery floss…someone had way to much time on their hands.
Mountains: The highest point in South India, along with some other mountains, that all seamed to look like things such as “Sleeping Beauty,” “Lambs Point,” and “Dolphin Nose.”
Dam: Go figure we went on a boat ride
Botanical Gardens: We were too cold to go into them and ended up in the nice heated Café Coffee Day. Also there apparently no flowers in bloom, so it was a waste of time.
The oddest part about Ooty, was that we found it to be the strangest place we have ever been. It’s a hill station, that people go to in the summer, and it is more of the off season where we were visiting, and it was down right creepy. We were staying at this hotel that was huge, and we were the only guest at. It was a very touristy city, but there were no tourist other then us. It always seamed like something was oddly wrong and was really errie.
Leaving Ooty instead of winding down the mountains in a bus we took a “toy train.” Which really meant a train that was packed like clown car, stuffing ten people into a little tiny carriage and taking them down the mountains, which is downright mean. Not to mention there was no AC or fans, and going down the mountains means it was progressively getting hotter. The train was full of really loud Indians, which was odd because we were convinced we were the only ones in Ooty for a long time. These Indians liked to hoot and holler, and sing. By the end of the train ride, well lets just say murder would have been justified.
After the “toy train,” we had to catch a train from Combatiore to Trivandium. We ended up arriving in Combatiore a bit early and we planed to wait in the waiting room, but because India is such a lovely place, when you want to commit murder the waiting room was closed, and we had to wait on the tracks. This is and was and will always be a personal hell. Waiting on the tracks of an Indian train station is one of the worst experiences ever. You really cannot be in a worse place. It is hell. First of all there are beggars and stray dogs, not to mention performing beggars who do odd things, there are transvestites and eunuchs, there are dead things, and there are chai sellers. Village people come up and stare at you, creepy people come up to you and start talking to you in a language that you have never heard of, you are accosted by nut jobs, you luggage is almost stolen by robbers. You are surrounded by rats and bids, the stench of feces and urine mixed with chlorine is so overwhelming that you want to pass out and die altogether. We were there for three hours, it was not cool.
Kanayakumari: The End of India.
This is it, the end of India, the end of the world as old folk lore states. It is the southern most tip of India, and home to well the end of India. This begins the better part of our trip because we began to chill out and stop the super hectic tourist regimen for the laid back times of communist Kerela, and a hotel with a pool. Not to mention it was crazy staying here because of the weather, it was a big change from going from Ooty which was about 10 c to Kanayakumari which was 45 c. (for all of you who cannot convert, 10 c is around 50 f and 45 c is about 110 f).
What did we see in Kanayakumari:
Rock Memorials: A big temple that signifies the end of India. You can see where the three bodies of water meet (the Bay of Bengal, The Indian Ocean, and the Arabian Sea). There is a meditation room where you meditate to “OM.” You take a boat to the memorials and there are many tourist and school groups. We had fun fending off people trying to take pictures of us. There is also a new memorial island build dedicated to an Indian poet.
Gandhi Memorial: When Gandhi was cremated his ashes were rested here. And the memorial came afterwards. It was completely untouched but should have been destroyed in the big south Asian tsunami a few years back.
Fort: Sea fort look out build in the late 1600s, now no one visits the fort, but we had a chance to go visit it. It was just a big stone structure. But it had a big court with walls that looked out onto the sea, and we ended up sitting on the walls of the fort watching the sea for about two hours. It was beautiful, it was so calm and quite, it was just a great place to sit and think. It seamed to be untouched and just perfect. We all could have sat there all night long, but they kicked us out and made us go home.
Topless Temple: Not sure of the real name of the temple, but I nicknamed it the topless temple, because men are not allowed to wear shits inside the temple. The temple is for the creation of the Hindu Trinity, which is the combination of three gods. Also this particular temple is famous for musical pillars. These huge stone pillars could churn out musical notes, our song chosen to play: Eye of the Tiger. We had a good laugh at this temple.
Kovalam: Paradise
Welcome to Paradise. This was the best stop on our trip. Kovalam is a city in the state of Kerela that is famous for its Aryuvedic remedies and beaches. We stayed at an amazing private beach resort, and we all had our own private bungalows built into a hill side overlooking the beach. It is possibly one of the most beautiful places in the world. During the night the sea turned into a fishing city, and the sea would light up with fishing boats in the dark like a city on water. It was amazing. Our hotel was also an Aryuvedic medicine treatment facility, which means massages or Indian oily body rubdowns. The massage was really amazing the rooms were at the top of the hill and looked on to the sea, paradise. The only major problem and also why we got the hotel for a good rate is there is a temple right next door and it was their biggest festival going on. For this festival they played loud music and well crazy festival celebrations were clearly audible at all hours of the day, meaning from four in the morning to 2 am, you begin to turn it out after a while, because the area is really too perfect to let any crazy Indian celebrations ruin paradise.
Trivandrium:
We took a quick day trip to go see an Old Palace. The Palace was over 200 years old and owned at one point by someone who loved weapons, it began to get really ridiculous. The palace itself was a bit crazy, it had over 80 rooms and was created with a model of ancient Rome. Of the 80 rooms none of the rooms were the same, every room was a different size and shape and had different boarders and carvings.
Allapy House Boat:
Sadly we had to leave Paradise for to board a House Boat, to cruise down the Kerela back waters. The house boat was a blast! We cruised all day and then docked for the night, we had a chance to go swimming, but were not warned about how disgusting the water was going to be. The water turned out to be gross! It was really murky, with a lot of dirt which got mixed up and ended up sticking to you. That night we spent the night under the stars, until we got kicked into the ac cabins. It was amazing.
Cochin or Kochi: The Last stop on our trip.
This is where we were told would have the best shopping on the trip, and we were to hold out. It had the worst shopping and we were all kicking ourselves that we did not shop before on our other tour stops.
Last Hurrah of site seeing:
Katakalai Dancing: The traditional dance of Kerela, it has mad amounts of costuming and makeup and still only open to men.
Chinese Fishing Nets: A southern Indian way of fishing, that looks really pretty at sunset.
Oldest Church in India: Dirty and falling apart
Jew Street: Expensive Shopping
Old Dutch Palace: It only cost two rupees to go inside and famous for its hidden passages ways that hide old art work that was only for the owners to see. The old art work is painted on the walls and is of the gods. But the catch is the gods are engaging in well pornographic acts, we were not warned and had to do a double take, and it was a “what, this is INIDIA!” moment, quiet a shocker.
Elephant Baths: There is an elephant sanctuary where on certin days the elephants are all called down and locals give the elephants baths in the river. We got to get up close and personal (though we could not wash the elephants) with the baby elephants and watch them getting baths and playing in the water.
Well all in all the south tour was amazing, and hopefully the north tour will be just as fun as the south tour turned out to be. We ended up finding out in Cochin that after our return to Pune we had been invited up to Gujarat a north state to go to Rann Ustav, a desert celebration by the government, so that would be my next adventure.
Back in Pune
Well after being back in Pune for about two days, the riots began. When I was away it turned out some nutty politian originally from Pune, said that all Malawaids (northerns) should get the hell out of Maharashtra, and that is not a good thing to say, because the Malawaids are now days pretty much everyone, also the most influential people in the area. Because of this the media ended up calling for the nut jobs arrest and they did end up arresting him, but not without serious problems. Namely RIOTS. The riots got to be really crazy. All over Pune, the transportation was either stoned and some bombed (no one was killed, just seriously injured), stores were taken out. It is crazy the amount of damage the riots ended up doing on the city. The riots were the people for the arrest of the nut job and then the people rioting for what he said rioting against each other. The city instated emergency curfews and shut off the city by turning off the power and water, it got to be really quite crazy. It is a good thing we were leaving in a few days. Being in Pune just seamed like another tour stop, it was very strange because you knew you where just going to pack up and leave again, which is more or less going to be the rest of my time in India.
Gujarat Days and Desert Nights
So the Rotary was invited by the Government of Gujarat to take all the Rotary students up to the desert for free. And we found out many things, as all economics principals go there is no such thing as a free lunch well there is no such think as a free trip. First of all we had to pay for the train, which we ended up opting for the cheep route non-ac 2nd class. Which means packed trains with tons of people. It was more crowed then normal, because of the riots thousands of people are fleeing the cities and going back to the north (it is said that over 350,000 people have fled Pune and Nashik, to go north because of violence). So the trains were packed! What people do on 2nd class trains is they only get one birth and stuff their entire family into it, so two adults and three kids are all in one bed, and then your birth almost always almost gets taken by some crazy Indian mother who wants their eldest child to sleep, then you have to fight her off, which is not fun. So we go to a city called Buhj about 24 hours later. It was nice after the capitol city of Gujarat we more or less had the train to ourselves, except for this one Italian girl who was on her was to spiritual enlightenment in India (I am going to have an entire blog entry about spiritual enlightenment in India, coming soon, more or less it will be a long rant about how crazy it is, and what a bad name it gives for other cultures). So Buhj, other then having a funny name, it is in the middle of NO WHERE! There is nothing around and well it is a very traditional Indian city in the middle of no where. The Government put us up in a crack house hotel (one step above Shantidoot), where most of the hotel was falling apart, and well was reeking asbestos from the walls, and open air was a nice description, also said to be the nicest hotel in town! We all had a nice laugh, when they took us to our rooms and lead us to this room that was well very much open to nature and the slums that the hotel faced, and then they at least took us to a room with four walls. We did get one English TV channel and we did find a nice fruit market with cheep street pineapple, so all was well. The next morning all the kids from the other Indian Exchange districts came to meet up with us, which was really exciting, and made the whole trip worth it! Seeing all of our friends from the Nashik and Nagpur district along with meeting the kids who ended up in Gujarat, was definitely fun. Later on they put us on AC busses and took us into the desert! Well first we became show ponies, for the Chief Minister of Gujarat. The took us to this park which found the bones of a blue whale in a excavation and they glued the bones together and they brought us for the pooja, and for us to meet the chief minister of Gujarat (really see, we are not that important to meet him). We ended up waiting around for about three hours in the hot desert for him to come and then we had to wait for his security men to come and search the area, and then for his security to set up and then for the media to come, and then he finally came and then they had us yell the equivalent of “Viva India, long Live Gujarat” (which turned out to be something we really should not have been supporting, more one this in a sec.), and then that was about 4 minutes worth of him being there and he got back in his motorcade and left!
So as for the Chief Minister of Gujarat, we were recently updated as to who he is, and what he has done. He was reelected in October and he really should not have been reelected. He said some bad things and then ended up creating some riots over his reelections calling for the killings of Muslims in the state of Gujarat, and the people of Gujarat killed thousands of Muslims under his words, and also his military took violence against them too, then he in turn blamed the violence on the Muslims, saying they caused all the problem and he would not let this happen, so he, himself, killed three Muslims blaming them for all the violence. Today he is comparted to Hitler, and is not a very good person. The statement they were having us yell, turned out to more or less be his call, and similer to “Hail” for Hitler, really no one told us, it was not cool.
Back to the desert. After the whale fiasco, the took us to the opening ceremony of the Rann Ustav (the program we were going to). This was a carnival like parade and they had a few speeches by the Chief Minister and his henchmen, along with a parade of local school children and various dance troupes and things. It was pretty cool. My favorite performance was the boarder guard orchestra. These boarder guards that played rock music when dancing around on a tank, looking as if they were drunk (but that would be impossible because Gujarat is a dry state). The parade went on for hours, we ended up ditching out to find dinner (who knew that dinner would be more of less the last meal of our trip, yeah they did not really feed us). After that we made our way to “Tant City” meaning Tent City, they just spelled it wrong everywhere! So we finally made it to tent city, which was truly the desert, the sand was everywhere, and it was all you could see. It was amazing because the moonlight would reflect off the sand and it would light up the desert even in the middle of the night. Our tents turned out to be more like five star hotel tents then tent camping. There were nice! The cots were the most amazing and comphy cots even. We even had western toilets and running (but very dirty) water, right inside the tent, no need to hike it to communal toilets or water stations! You only had to share the tent with on other person, and the tent was huge! Big military style tents, with a whole table and bathroom, with mirror and vanity, it was luxury camping.
So after waking up for a very nice night in Tant City, we took off to a day of winding around in the desert. We found out one thing for sure that day, there is one thing most diffidently more unorganized then the Rotary of India, The Government of India. Though this entire trip was kind of sketchy and we were pretty sure they were going to take us to Pakistan to chill with Osama Kaka (meaning Osama Uncle, if you don’t get the joke, just laugh it is really funny for the India Exchange Kids). So we went through the desert all day long, we spent around ten hours on a bus going through the desert, we made one stop, where an armed guard hiked us up to the top of a hill and goes Pakistan five km. We just looked at him like he was crazy, until we realized that’s where he was probably going to take us next and sell us into white kid slavery or something. So relizeing there is only so much sand one can take, you really begin to see mirages in the desert. When you are really hugery, and well in the desert for a very long time you begin to see things, which are very strange. Mirages are not for the faint, because you really see strange things, whether it be water or skyscrapers, everyone seams to see very different things. But it is very turn you see strange things where you are lost in the desert.
Full Moon White Sands Night.
This is what everyone came for. The full moon night, India has this tradition of worshiping full moons. So we first met up on camel carts to race on camel carts out into the white sands desert. Which could possibly be the biggest disaster since well coming to India. It was ridiculous. The white sands desert is really a semi-dried up salt fields. So it is all salt, and looks just like snow and ice. Like you are on a big frozen lake, but sweating because it is so hot. One of the major pluses was the most beautiful sunset over the sand dunes, before I made it to the salt dunes. So the salt dunes like ice on a lake have points where they are not as thick as other parts of the ice. And under the salt is black clay. So you would find sink holes in the salt and you would fall though. IT WAS A DISASTER! It is similar to quicksand, you would fall in and sink, sometimes as far up to your knees you would fall into the salt clay, it was horrible! It ruined everything, clothes, shoes, and it hurt really bad! The salt was sharp and caused you to cut open your feet, and then the salt would burn your cuts! It was a total disaster! Then on top of it the security for the chief minister was crazy! The armed military officers were everywhere! I have lived on military bases most of my life and I have ever seen this many armed guards for anything! It was ridiculous! There was also no food for us to eat, they made kitchere (which is GROSS!!!!!!). And did not let us eat until the chief minister was delivered his food, let us say we all skipped dinner. Quote of the Night: We were making doughnuts in the salt because we were so hungry, and Fredrick going, “I’d eat that one, Oh! I’d defiantly eat that one, does that one have sprinkles?” We had to catch camel carts back, and well it was a disaster.
The next day, the last day, we went to a bird less bird sanctuary, and when we asked where the birds where they told us the vultures were coming in a few hours… that’s when we decided it was time to go back to Pune.
No comments:
Post a Comment