I've uploaded a few new pics, but Hampi is not exactly on the information superhighway - more like a lay-by - so not too many pics yet as it takes forever! This one is of filming of a new movie at the AVM studios, Chennai - Tamil Nadu has its own center of film-making to rival Mumbai.
India teaches you to say no, that's what I've learnt through extensive practise so far:
No, no sandals thanks.
No, no rickshaw. Thank you.
No, no postcards.
No, no, no, I will not pay you 150 rupees for a rickshaw just down the road.
No, I don't need a tour guide, thanks.
No, sorry, I have no foreign coins.
Or Indian ones.
No, I have no school pens. Sorry.
No, I really don't need a rickshaw.
No, no passion fruit, papaya, mango or pineapple needed thank you.
Saturday, February 26, 2005
Wednesday, February 23, 2005
Noises and movie stars
I almost forgot. Something very strange happened to me at Kovalam. The sea there is clear and clean - you can be in it up to your neck, and see your feet through the blue-green water. The sand under your feet is pristine. I went out swimming most mornings when I was at Kovalam, and usually lay on my back in the water with my ears under, just relaxing.
One morning, however, I heard a weird noise. I listened, kept my head under, thought it was creaking wood - but there was no driftwood, or structure protruding into the water. Then I listened for longer, and the sound was unmistakable - I'd heard it before on a new-agey CD or TV documentary - it was whalesong. Deep, like the mooing of a cow slowed down, occasionally rising in pitch to a sad-sounding noise. If you're only about twenty yards out from shore, up to your neck in water, you don't expect to hear this, surely - nevertheless, at one stage, the sound was so pronounced, I rushed to get my feet onto the floor as I thought whatever it was was about to swim under me.
I kept quiet about this - who'd believe you'd hear whalesong swimming in shallow water? That afternoon, however, I was walking along the seafront at Kovalam, and saw dozens of people running down to the shore, grabbing binoculars - surely enough, out to sea, just below the horizon, a water spout shot into the air, and a large tail splashed down into the water. A fishing boat nearby was getting rocked about by the disturbances in the water.
Did I hear that whale, or am I going potty?!
Anyway, speaking of noise - Chennai has plenty of it. Car horns blow deep, motorbike horns blow harsh and loud, and auto-rickshaw horns sound like someone strangling a puppet. On top of all this is the sound of rickshaw drivers yelling abuse at each other.
Yesterday, I took a rickshaw to the excellently appropriately named Tamilnadu Tourism Development Corporation (TTDC), to go on a tour of Chennai. The TTDC office had on the wall the following message:
"Tonsuring in Tirumala is permitted from Monday - Thursday.
We will serve you 24 hours a day throughout the year".
The tour was presented by a very friendly lady who whisked us around Chennai at breakneck speed, taking in the Government Museum, a temple, a memorial to a poet, the beach, and passing briefly over the smelliest body of water I have ever smelt. The best thing about this was meeting some great people. We all ended up going out for dinner and beers last night, so my recommendation here is that even if the tour isn't up to much, the opportunities to meet people make it well worth it!
A few of us from the tour yesterday went to AVM Film Studios today - Chennai is the second biggest producer of movies in India after Mumbai, and probably still produces more movies than Hollywood every year on its own. Tamil Nadu's films have always been quite political, as well as featuring the obligatory dance numbers and romance, so depict low-caste heroes defying the odds, and Robin-Hood style stars standing up for the oppressed. Entry was free and we were allowed free access to wander around the sets.
We saw a song-and-dance number being filmed, I managed to exchange grins with a very beautiful actress (think I pulled), and we got to play around in a set that was a cross between a game show and Barbarella's boudoir! It was fantastic! At one point, a young chap came up to Nilesh (chap I met yesterday) and started chatting - it turned out he was the star of the movie we were watching being filmed. You don't get to do all this in Hollywood, I'll bet!
Anyway - as always, pictures follow - this time, because I forgot my little cable.
One morning, however, I heard a weird noise. I listened, kept my head under, thought it was creaking wood - but there was no driftwood, or structure protruding into the water. Then I listened for longer, and the sound was unmistakable - I'd heard it before on a new-agey CD or TV documentary - it was whalesong. Deep, like the mooing of a cow slowed down, occasionally rising in pitch to a sad-sounding noise. If you're only about twenty yards out from shore, up to your neck in water, you don't expect to hear this, surely - nevertheless, at one stage, the sound was so pronounced, I rushed to get my feet onto the floor as I thought whatever it was was about to swim under me.
I kept quiet about this - who'd believe you'd hear whalesong swimming in shallow water? That afternoon, however, I was walking along the seafront at Kovalam, and saw dozens of people running down to the shore, grabbing binoculars - surely enough, out to sea, just below the horizon, a water spout shot into the air, and a large tail splashed down into the water. A fishing boat nearby was getting rocked about by the disturbances in the water.
Did I hear that whale, or am I going potty?!
Anyway, speaking of noise - Chennai has plenty of it. Car horns blow deep, motorbike horns blow harsh and loud, and auto-rickshaw horns sound like someone strangling a puppet. On top of all this is the sound of rickshaw drivers yelling abuse at each other.
Yesterday, I took a rickshaw to the excellently appropriately named Tamilnadu Tourism Development Corporation (TTDC), to go on a tour of Chennai. The TTDC office had on the wall the following message:
"Tonsuring in Tirumala is permitted from Monday - Thursday.
We will serve you 24 hours a day throughout the year".
The tour was presented by a very friendly lady who whisked us around Chennai at breakneck speed, taking in the Government Museum, a temple, a memorial to a poet, the beach, and passing briefly over the smelliest body of water I have ever smelt. The best thing about this was meeting some great people. We all ended up going out for dinner and beers last night, so my recommendation here is that even if the tour isn't up to much, the opportunities to meet people make it well worth it!
A few of us from the tour yesterday went to AVM Film Studios today - Chennai is the second biggest producer of movies in India after Mumbai, and probably still produces more movies than Hollywood every year on its own. Tamil Nadu's films have always been quite political, as well as featuring the obligatory dance numbers and romance, so depict low-caste heroes defying the odds, and Robin-Hood style stars standing up for the oppressed. Entry was free and we were allowed free access to wander around the sets.
We saw a song-and-dance number being filmed, I managed to exchange grins with a very beautiful actress (think I pulled), and we got to play around in a set that was a cross between a game show and Barbarella's boudoir! It was fantastic! At one point, a young chap came up to Nilesh (chap I met yesterday) and started chatting - it turned out he was the star of the movie we were watching being filmed. You don't get to do all this in Hollywood, I'll bet!
Anyway - as always, pictures follow - this time, because I forgot my little cable.
Monday, February 21, 2005
Stone heffalumps and homesickness
The train journey from Trivandrum to Chennai went smoothly enough, in fact I'd go so far as to say that it was ball-achingly tedious (as my economics teacher used to say). I travelled in a 3-tier A/C sleeper - this means 6 people sleeping in each pod or compartment of the train, on fold-down beds that went up the walls, 3 on each side, in an air-conditioned carriage. After the small narrow-guage train the Aidcamps team took across the Western Ghats to Tamil Nadu from Trivandrum after my arrival in India, I was expecting maybe more of the same - friendly, curious people up for a chat. What I got was three irritating medical students that giggled like eight-year-olds for the entire journey and looked in their textbooks for diagrams of boobs and willies, and a bunch of other Indians that just kept themselves to themselves. The journey was 16 and a half hours, overnight, over a distance of approaching 1000km - at the bargain price of Rs 1113, or about GBP14. Beat that, One Anglia.
With the quietness and isolation I felt on the train, I got to feeling homesick, and the book I was reading, the God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy (set in Kerala) didn't help, so I got pretty cheesed off. I was thinking about family, mates, the Aidcamp and the people I met, my animals, home comforts, and good English food and drink. The journey as a whole brought to mind Nick's comment, "you're going to have to get accustomed to new levels of discomfort" - he's right, but it's not just about being crammed into a train carriage, it's about missing home. I hadn't been homesick before I came away since I was about twelve, and I don't know why it should have come as such a surprise to feel it now!
This is another reason why it was such a relief to see Rachel. She's a friend from London who I met at London Underground, and has been working on a voluntary basis in Chennai for five months, for HEPI - Health Education and Promotion International. Rach was pretty glad to see me as well, as I was her first mate from the UK to come here. Rach has been looking after me fantastically since I got here - I'm in a fairly nice hotel across the road from her in the Mylapore area of Chennai, a fairly nice area - and we've been getting together to eat and chill out - I just taught her how to play sh*t head (for those unaware it is a card game - and a great game at that - where the loser is crowned sh*t head).
Yesterday, as my birthday present, we went to Mamallapuram, a fishing and stone-carving center 58km down the East coast of India from Chennai. Mamallapuram is home to a series of impressive carved stone temples, bas-reliefs, caves and rathas (carved chariots - one like a massive elephant), some hewn out of the side of gigantic rocks, reminding me of the set of some Indiana Jones movie. Goats and monkeys laze about, beggars beg on every corner, and hawkers are so aggresive they make the ones at Kovalam look easy going, often starting their hawking before you've even got out of the car properly. There is also a mass of stone-carving workshops, so walking around the small town, you constantly hear the chipping of chisels on rock. I'll upload some pics soon. Rach and I were melting after a while in the heat, so retreated to the Tina Blue Lodge, one of several very chilled-out and traveller-oriented eateries, for lunch - chilli prawns and the best banana honey pancake I've had yet (certainly better than the weird pancake I had in Thekkady that I swear had carrot in it).
I have a few days left in Chennai, and some more sights to see, and will then be heading up to Hampi in Karnataka (on Ian's recommendation), before checking out Gokarn, on the coast just south of Goa, and possibly Goa itself. With the current situation in Nepal looking a bit uncertain (even though I believe Aidcamps are still running their camp there), I hope to try and get to Himachal Pradesh, to see some big hills there, and maybe drop in for tea with the Dalai Lama (he and I are old mates). I've got six-ish full weeks left in India - any other recommendations for places to see anyone?
With the quietness and isolation I felt on the train, I got to feeling homesick, and the book I was reading, the God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy (set in Kerala) didn't help, so I got pretty cheesed off. I was thinking about family, mates, the Aidcamp and the people I met, my animals, home comforts, and good English food and drink. The journey as a whole brought to mind Nick's comment, "you're going to have to get accustomed to new levels of discomfort" - he's right, but it's not just about being crammed into a train carriage, it's about missing home. I hadn't been homesick before I came away since I was about twelve, and I don't know why it should have come as such a surprise to feel it now!
This is another reason why it was such a relief to see Rachel. She's a friend from London who I met at London Underground, and has been working on a voluntary basis in Chennai for five months, for HEPI - Health Education and Promotion International. Rach was pretty glad to see me as well, as I was her first mate from the UK to come here. Rach has been looking after me fantastically since I got here - I'm in a fairly nice hotel across the road from her in the Mylapore area of Chennai, a fairly nice area - and we've been getting together to eat and chill out - I just taught her how to play sh*t head (for those unaware it is a card game - and a great game at that - where the loser is crowned sh*t head).
Yesterday, as my birthday present, we went to Mamallapuram, a fishing and stone-carving center 58km down the East coast of India from Chennai. Mamallapuram is home to a series of impressive carved stone temples, bas-reliefs, caves and rathas (carved chariots - one like a massive elephant), some hewn out of the side of gigantic rocks, reminding me of the set of some Indiana Jones movie. Goats and monkeys laze about, beggars beg on every corner, and hawkers are so aggresive they make the ones at Kovalam look easy going, often starting their hawking before you've even got out of the car properly. There is also a mass of stone-carving workshops, so walking around the small town, you constantly hear the chipping of chisels on rock. I'll upload some pics soon. Rach and I were melting after a while in the heat, so retreated to the Tina Blue Lodge, one of several very chilled-out and traveller-oriented eateries, for lunch - chilli prawns and the best banana honey pancake I've had yet (certainly better than the weird pancake I had in Thekkady that I swear had carrot in it).
I have a few days left in Chennai, and some more sights to see, and will then be heading up to Hampi in Karnataka (on Ian's recommendation), before checking out Gokarn, on the coast just south of Goa, and possibly Goa itself. With the current situation in Nepal looking a bit uncertain (even though I believe Aidcamps are still running their camp there), I hope to try and get to Himachal Pradesh, to see some big hills there, and maybe drop in for tea with the Dalai Lama (he and I are old mates). I've got six-ish full weeks left in India - any other recommendations for places to see anyone?
Wednesday, February 16, 2005
More pics
Some more pics on Flickr for your delectation, just none of my sunburnt nose.
I was walking about today and got offered shark and barracuda for my dinner. What is this thing about eating things that sound hard? Do people need to feel the satisfaction of eating something they could get into a fight with? "Yeah, last night I ate a shark, a bear, a crocodile, and a Tottenham supporter".
I'm leaving Kovalam this Friday (to be honest I was getting a little bored, and the beach touts do your head in) and heading to Chennai (Madras), back in Tamil Nadu. After Chennai it's Hampi, Goa if I feel like it, and then north, to Agra and Rajasthan...
I was walking about today and got offered shark and barracuda for my dinner. What is this thing about eating things that sound hard? Do people need to feel the satisfaction of eating something they could get into a fight with? "Yeah, last night I ate a shark, a bear, a crocodile, and a Tottenham supporter".
I'm leaving Kovalam this Friday (to be honest I was getting a little bored, and the beach touts do your head in) and heading to Chennai (Madras), back in Tamil Nadu. After Chennai it's Hampi, Goa if I feel like it, and then north, to Agra and Rajasthan...
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