We arrived first by airplane in Bangalore, the third largest city in India and Karnataka’s state capital. It once had a reputation for being the Florida of the Northeast; meaning that it’s where everyone wants to be once they retire but recent changes gave me mixed signals as to the current pride the locals take in their city. The weather is beautiful and of course there’s a lot of perks to living in a city including awesome culture, business, shopping and food which we took advantage of while we were there. We stayed at the Bangalore Club which reflecting back was one of my favorites from travel week. After arriving late at night on Friday, we all passed out on the extremely comfy beds pretty quickly. For the next two days we explored, hitting up an Infosys campus (the Microsoft of India), Karnataka’s state assembly building, Lalbagh gardens, Iskcon (international society for Krishna consciousness), a local BJP politician named Chandre Gowda, and then of course the band and dance floor back at the club.
Late Sunday night, after a wonderful dinner overlooking all of Bangalore, we caught an overnight train to Hampi, the land of ruins and temples galore. The highlight here for me was definitely exploring the untraveled path with Preston and Grantis on our rented bicycles. Although it was probably the hottest day of the whole trip (and the origin of my first Indian sunburn) I really enjoyed getting to be actively enjoying the vastness of the old Vijayanagara Empire we were exploring. The ruins were really cool and allowed you to really use your imagination and picture what it would be like when the elephant stables were full and the Kings palace consisted of more than just the stone walls and an Olympic size swimming pool. Being a UNESCO world heritage site, there were a significant amount of tourists there in Hampi, which in all cases causes its pros and cons. One rickshaw driver we had on the way back from dinner one night (who spoke 7 or 8 languages btw) referenced how the Karnataka state government recently shut down and destroyed over 70% of the shops around Hampi in an effort to clean up the town. While a clean-up was probably necessary, displacing all of those workers and their families will only do more harm than good in the long run.
Another overnight train ride and some masala dosas later, we checked in at the Paradise Hotel (I don’t know if I’d go that far but it was still very nice). This was one of the slower paced days with a visit to King Tipu’s summer palace and some browsing through all of the sandlewood products that Mysore is known for. We even indulged in some eye candy and picked through countless silk saris.
Kabini was next. My memories of its hammocks and sunshine are making me homesick for a place I stayed for only one night. Right outside the Rajivghandi National Park, Kabini is the place to go for a Safari. We actually went on two, one came with a 5:45 wake up call, and the other was just in the afternoon. Unfortunately we didn’t get to see a tiger or leopard but we did see lots of wild elephants, goar, spotted dear, monkeys, peacocks and other pretty birds.
8 hours after we left Kabini, we arrived in the hill station of Ooty in the state of Tamil Nadu. Ooty had my favorite hotel we stayed in by far. Since the nights got chilly up in the hills, a fire was lit in your room at night and the whole place had a cozy atmosphere that made you just want to snuggle up with a good book. During the day I got to put my one semester of ceramics 101 to good use when one of the tribal women we were visiting offered for me to try and make one after she just whipped one out in literally two minutes flat. I didn’t do half bad I don’t think but that didn’t stop the locals from laughing at me hysterically the whole time (the language barrier made it difficult to know whether it was at me or with me). Another highlight was getting to go to an NGO that worked with tribal women, teaching them how to sew the traditional patterns onto a variety of visitor-friendly items including place mats and shoulder bags.
The last exciting thing that happened on travel week could have ended badly but fortunately now its just a cool story. So, about 30 minutes before we reach the train station for our final train home, I notice our program directors getting a little worried. We pull over at a checkpoint where our driver was supposed to document our travel over a state border but instead we see him get back on the bus and quickly start maneuvering the bus out of the crowded checkpoint in a obviously illegal manner and start hightailing down the highway so that we wouldn’t miss our train (apparently he was sick of us by then). So 30 minutes go by and we pull up to the station 5 minutes late with our backpacks on ready to sprint, one of the girls has a hurt leg though so we couldn’t go that fast. And luckily we see the train still there…but our cabin isn’t until the very end. So we start booking down the terminal trying to get close to our cabin when the train starts to move. I look behind me and the others were bottlenecking into one door so I go to the one up ahead thinking it would be quicker, only to find it locked. So starting to panic a teensy bit, I sprint to the next one where a good Samaritan helps me hop on a moving train that had gained sufficient speed before I was left by myself in an Indian train station with a dead cell phone and the worst sense of direction God ever gave a human being.
Anyways that’s all. If you read all of it I really appreciate it but if you didn’t I completely understand. Today was Holi, I’ll probably post some pics of that soon as well as pics from the trip! But now its dinna time so ill get to that later. J
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