Mysore, Karnataka, India

A five hour bus journey from the Nilgiri mountains down onto the plain and through the wild elephant and tiger country of Mudumalai ends in the city of Mysore, famous for its regal heritage.

Our first task when we arrived in Mysore on Monday was to secure onward travel tickets as the next leg will be longer.  We took an auto to the railway station and were pleasantly surprised that the three ticket boxes were not overwhelmed with customers, only then to discover we had to take a chit from a machine and wait with the nearby crowd until our number was called.  The counter display showed that Customer 119 was currently being served – we were dismayed to see that our number was 201!  We waited and waited and waited and still the queue had progressed to only 122.  What were they doing over there?

We’d read about a railway museum behind the station and figured that at this rate we’d have time to see it and still be back before 201 was called.  Following the advice of a local, we scampered across the railway tracks keeping a wary eye on the three trains in the station and found the museum nearby.  For non-train buffs like us, it was mildly interesting; the best exhibit was the 1899 Maharini’s (wife of the Maharaja’s) private saloon car.  The signboard describes it thus:

Fitted with an ornate balcony and a lavishly furnished bedroom with delicately gilded ceilings replete with chandeliers and fans and provided with comforts like an attached bathroom and an exclusive kitchen-cum-dining unit, I rolled along with broad gauge and meter gauge tracks with equal ease and poise – the cynosure of all eyes.  I am now a grand old lady ageing gracefully.  Of course, I do miss my partner “The Maharaja’s Saloon” housed in the distant National Rail Museum, Delhi as I fondly recall the good old times – Those Were the Days.

We stopped for a roadside fresh coconut on the way back to the station and there I had the uneasy thought of Number 203 being called as we re-entered the ticket hall.  But there was no need to worry – customers 192,193 & 194 were being served and within a few more minutes we had our own tickets for the train we wanted.  The business of the day complete, we took an auto to the Maharaja’s Palace on Victor Albert Road back in the city centre.  Entrance fee was 20 Rupees for Indians, 200 for foreigners.  And an additional one half of one Rupee for storage of shoes that had to be left at the entrance when going inside the Palace.  This fantastic building was the former seat of the Wodeyar maharajas.  Built in 1912, it replaced the earlier one gutted by fire in 1897. Unfortunately cameras are not allowed inside – there were great pictures in every direction.  Reputedly one of India’s grandest royal buildings, the interior features imposing painted columns, soaring stained glass, mirrors, mosaic, murals, carved teak and silver doors.  Very impressive, if over-the-top.          

The Palace inspected, we moved on to the nearby mesmerizing Devaraja Market – a delicious assault on the senses.  At every turn of the head there were new colours, sights, sounds and smells to savour.  The crowded market was stuffed with fresh flowers, many arranged into ornate garlands, and several stalls sold brightly coloured kumkum powder, displayed in attractive contrasting conical piles, used to make the forehead bindi dots worn by Hindus.  We’ve seen some great markets before but this one is up there with the very best.  It alone would be reason enough to come to Mysore.

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Ooty, Tamil Nadu, India

An early-morning 30 minute ferry ride across Cochin Harbour brought us near to the mainland railway station where we boarded our first Indian train, the 9.10 am Bangalore Express.  We got off four hours down the line at the inland city of Coimbatore back in Tamil Nadu state, there transferring to a local bus for the final leg of our day’s journey.  Although the latter was only 65 km, it took nearly five hours.  This was because the bus had to climb a steep section of the Western Ghats through a multiplicity of hairpin bends with plunging drop-offs.  But we arrived safely at our destination of Udhagamandalam (mercifully known as Ooty) just before dark.

South India’s most famous hill station located in the centre of the Nilgiri Mountains, Ooty was established by the British in the early 1800s as the summer headquarters of the then Madras government, quickly becoming known as “Snooty Ooty”.  In the mid 1840s the Marquis of Tweedale converted a local vegetable patch into a public garden, enlisting the help of the Royal Botanical Garden at Kew in 1848.  The legacy today is the beautiful 22 hectare high-altitude Ooty Botanical Garden.  Also in town is the artificial Reflections Lake created in 1824.  Add to that the encircling pine and tea plantations and some crisp mountain air and you have the makings of a very pleasant town with many opportunities to escape to nature when you reach sensory overload in the bustling malange that lies at Ooty’s heart.

Nearby Doddabetta Lookout is the highest point of the Nilgiri’s at 8,640 feet above sea level.  The surrounding ranges are home to bison, panther, wild boar and barking deer, not that we saw any of these when we were at Doddabetta yesterday morning.  We admired the panoramic view with a rapidly growing crowd of Indian tourists in high Sunday spirits.  Lee Tuan’s Asian face seemed to be a novelty and several men asked if she would have her photo taken with them.  We clambered over the rocks at the summit and wandered for awhile in the surrounding forest before returning to Ooty in our auto-rickshaw, calling in at a tea factory on the way where we sampled a cup or two of Nilgiri’s finest.

Our hotel was the comfortable Mountview, an old converted colonial bungalow built on a slope overlooking Ooty and only a 10 minute walk to the colourful town centre.  A section of the path we took at the bottom of the slope was partly shaded and bordered by a long curved wall adorned with Kingfisher Soda advertisements.  Apparently it made a handy men’s public urinal and being next to the bus station, was heavily used for that purpose.  The result was a particularly acrid amalgam of petrol fumes and stale urine – passersby didn’t tarry along that stretch I can tell you.

Our guidebook was right – Ooty’s a lively pine-clad retreat that rapidly grows on you.  One helpful man in a nut and spice shop we visited was passionate about his town, noting how harmonious its residents were and proclaiming that “Ooty’s perfect”.  We mightn't go quite that far in our praise but certainly the town has a lot going for it and is well worth visiting for a few days.

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Kochi (Cochin), Kerala, India

Cochin on India’s south-west coast is a gaggle of islands and peninsulas lapped by the waters of the Arabian Sea.  For over 600 years traders and explorers have been coming here to buy (and in some cases pillage) a share of the riches of the region like tea, spices and timber.  In the process Cochin was transformed from an obscure fishing village into the first European township in India, described by our guidebook as an “unlikely blend of medieval Portugal, Holland and an English village grafted onto the tropical Malabar coast.”

We ourselves came to Cochin not by boat but by yet another bouncing, lurching westerly bus ride.  Passing through one small village, we made way to allow a farmer riding his elephant to pass.  With our arrival in Cochin, we had crossed the width of South India, coast to coast from Tranquebar, for a total bus fare of less than AUD$10, and seen life and landscape up close and personal in a way that would not have been possible by any other means.  The slight discomfort was a small price to pay.

We checked into the Four Seasons Guesthouse on the tip of Fort Cochin peninsula in the midst of the major historical sites and ventured out in the mornings and late afternoons when the sun and humidity were less bothersome. There’s plenty to see, including:

• The giant cantilevered Chinese fishing nets first installed by traders from the 1400 AD court of Kublai Khan.  We saw the nets being lowered and raised in the early morning – it took five men on each to operate the stone counterweights dangling from ropes, and yet the result of each cycle appeared to be only a handful of sardine-size fish.
• St Francis Church, India’s oldest European church, built by the Portuguese in the early 16th century.  Several of the earliest European residents were buried here, including the Portuguese navigator and adventurer Vasco da Gama who died in Cochin on Christmas Eve, 1524.  Although his remains were removed to Lisbon 14 years later, his simple headstone remains in the church floor.  Other more clearly marked headstones are mounted on the northern and southern interior walls.
• The striking, pale yellow Catholic Santa Cruz Basilica dating from 1506.
• Mattancherry (“Dutch”) Palace built by the Portuguese in 1555 as a gift to the Raja of Kochi, Veera Varma, to lubricate trade deals and to provide compensation for a temple they had pillaged in the vicinity.  The Dutch renovated the Palace in 1663 – hence the alternative name.
• Pardesi Synagogue in nearby Jew Town (not sure whether such a geographical descriptor would be pc elsewhere but that’s its name here), a legacy of the early Jewish settlement in the area.      

Along the way we dipped our toes in the waters of the Arabian Sea, inspected a musty old timber warehouse with rickety staircases used to dry ginger and store spices, whiffed a headful of essential oils and flower waters before choosing a vial of simple lime to add to our bottle of massage oil, dined on a spicy chunky curry of tuna plucked from the ocean that very morning, and attended an evening sitar and tabla concert. Lee Tuan also went to a morning Indian cooking class while I blogged in a hot internet cafe.

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Cruisin’ the Kerala Backwaters, Kerala, India

We’d scarcely left Kumily early Saturday morning when Lee Tuan proclaimed this the maddest bus we’d ever been on.  The uncaring driver drove at breakneck speed along narrow winding roads through pretty tea and rubber country, throwing the bus around each tight bend like a go cart.  The saris of the standing passengers billowed out as though in a wind tunnel.  A road sign warned that “Danger lurks around corners”.  We were it.  The journey was scheduled to take four hours – we did it in three and a quarter.  Enough said.

Our destination was Kumarakom on Vembanad Lake in Kerala Backwater country.  The Backwaters are a 900 km maze of shady channels, rivers and lakes bordered by rice paddies, coconut groves and bucolic villages in south-west Kerala state sandwiched between the Western Ghats and the Arabian Sea.  We took an auto-rickshaw a few kilometres out of town and checked into Cruise ‘N Lake excellently located on the tip of a quiet headland amongst traditional villages.  Beautiful wooden and thatch houseboats in the shape of old rice barges glided slowly along the channel in front of us while behind we could hear the pounding of fresh spices to go into the gravy shortly to be spooned over the roasted backwater fish we had ordered along with rice, fresh coconuts and lime sodas.

On Sunday morning we were up early to admire the water views and later to check out the houseboat situation with the local operators back in Kumarakom.  The villagers we met were friendly and we chatted with them as we walked along the dirt tracks winding between the village houses.  One man walking home from church showed us the thick scars down his chest, the legacy of five heart operations he told us, and yet despite this he looked a remarkably fit and young for his age 67 year old.  He pointed out his 4 acre coconut plantation and explained that the rice paddy fields here double as fish farms in the off season.  All the children we spoke to are studying English at school and they were happy to receive the pens we gave them; we came with many dozens and still have a lot to distribute, along with fluffy koala bears and boomerang key rings.  They also make good gifts in return for permission to take photos.

At noon on Monday our own houseboat tied up at the landing 10 metres from our door and we clambered aboard to begin a 24 hour cruise through the channels and on Vembanad Lake.  The boat had a crew of three including a cook to prepare meals, the first one of which was served an hour after we cast off.  The mildly spiced Keralan food was excellent and the trip serene.  We spent the night tied up (the boat, not us) in a channel on the edge of a large paddy field that was also home to an enormous flock of farm ducks.  We saw many fishermen out on the water including whole fishing families amazingly working out of small circular boats that were essentially just large wicker baskets.

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Kumily, The Western Ghats, Kerala, India

The outside air cooled noticeably when our bus climbed the steep hills of The Western Ghats about 4 hours west of Madurai. Stretching all the way from here to Mumbai 600 km to the north-west, The Ghats rise to several thousand feet and contain 30% of all India’s flowering plants and 60% of its medicinal plants. In the colonial era the British built their summer houses in these hills; these days The Ghats are home to leafy, slightly quirky hill retreats popular with Indian and overseas visitors alike.

Our bus reached the end of its route at the small village of Kumily near the Thekkady entrance to Periyar Wildlife Sanctuary just on the Kerala side of the border with Tamil Nadu. The Sanctuary encompasses 777 square kilometres and is home to bison, wild boar, over 1,000 elephants (Indian) and an estimated 50 wild tigers. In Kumily we decided to follow a tout who approached us at the bus station and he led us to the home stay owned and operated by Mr Mohammed Salim. Mr Salim and his family live on the ground floor while upstairs are four rooms, each with their own bathroom, hired out to visitors. We liked what we saw and checked in for two nights. As it turned out we had the whole top floor to ourselves.

From our balcony we looked out over Mr Salim’s leafy sub tropical fruit garden and the village centre just a minute’s walk away. For the equivalent of AUD$11 a night it was excellent value. While on the subject of prices, we’ve found travel by local bus to be great value too with the ticket price for a 4 to 5 hour journey around the equivalent of AUD$1. An excellent dinner for two comprising, say, a half tandoori chicken or lamb Hyderabad, a vegetable curry, Indian spiced rice, naan bread, condiments and lime drinks costs around $3.50 each. And the best plump samosas you’re ever likely to taste, serenely spiced including a heavenly hint of star anise, can be had from street stalls for the equivalent of 10 cents each. Two of them make a more than adequate lunch.

As well as the Wildlife Sanctuary, Kumily is close to tea, coffee and cashew nut plantations and spice gardens. We saw many overseas visitors ambling along Kumily’s footpaths and yet it still seemed there was about one delightfully aromatic spice and saffron shop for each visitor. Other shops, strangely, were stocked with Kashmiri goods from the far north of India. We asked a shop owner why; he replied that quite a few Kashmiris have moved to Kumily to leave behind the troubles in Kashmir, sovereignty over which is hotly and occasionally violently disputed between India and Pakistan.

We were up at dawn for an early morning three hour hike in the Sanctuary, along the marsh country between the forest and the lake. We saw plenty of evidence on the ground of elephants and bison but sighted no actual animals apart from many singing marsh birds and large black monkeys foraging in the forest canopy. It was a pleasant enough place but probably not worth visiting unless another reason is bringing you through this region. More interesting are the spice plantations in the hills north of Kumily. Highrange Spices for example has several hectares of pepper, coffee and cardamom, and a myriad of other spice and medicinal plants. When we were there the season’s cardamom harvesting and drying had just been completed and peppercorn picking was underway.  As for us, we were ready for another curry.

Madurai, Tamil Nadu, India

Yet another bus trip, this one of five hours, brought us from Tanjore to Madurai in the south of Tamil Nadu.  Madurai is an ancient city, its existence recorded in the 4^th century BC in both Tamil and Greek documents.  An early spice trading centre, it was controlled by a succession of different rulers over the centuries, including the Nayaks in the 16th and 17th centuries when Madurai became the cultural centre of the Tamil people and the Sri Meenakshi Temple was built.

Our guidebook describes this colossus towering over the city skyline as the “high point of South Indian temple architecture, as vital to the aesthetic heritage of this region as the Taj Mahal is to North India.” It covers an area of 15 acres enclosed by 12 gopurams, the highest of which is 170 feet, all carved with a huge array of gods, goddesses, demons and heroes. It’s still a functioning temple attracting Hindu pilgrims from all over the world, and a large number of western tourists. The interior is photogenic and atmospheric, and very exotic.

We took an auto-rickshaw a few kilometers from the town centre to visit the Gandhi Memorial Museum that provides a moving account from an Indian perspective of India’s 200 year struggle for independence from foreign occupiers, and the central role played by Mahatma Gandhi in the years before India finally achieved independence in 1947. On display is the blood-stained dhoti (large loin cloth) Gandhi was wearing when he was assassinated in Delhi by a Hindu zealot just months after independence. The loin cloth is displayed in Madurai because it was here in 1921 where Gandhi first began to wear the dhoti as a sign of native pride.

Earlier today we inspected the Tirumalai Nayak Palace built in the early 1600s. Some of it has been impressively restored and provides a glimpse into the opulent existence of the Nayak rulers of the time. And as proof that you can never have too much of a good thing, the signboard in the Natakasal (Dance Hall) records that “it was from here the King used to watch along with his wives dances performed by beautiful damsels in the evening.”  Those Nayaks really knew how to enjoy life.

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Thanjavur (Tanjore), Tamil Nadu, India

From Tranquebar we largely retraced our steps to the inland city of Thanjavur (Tanjore).  Sitting next to us on the bus was a young man from Chennai (Madras), the capital city of Tamil Nadu further up the coast.  He was returning to his home region on a short break from his job as an IT engineer with the English clothing company Marks & Spencer that manages its worldwide computer networks and financial systems from Madras.  We chatted with him for awhile and he told us he’d been to London twice with his job and was a very keen cricketer – an all-rounder.

In Tanjore we caught an auto-rickshaw into the town centre and after finding the Hotel Gnanam full, pounded the footpath for a few more hot and bothering minutes before finding a room at the Ramnath.  As elsewhere the streets here are narrow strips of bitumen with dirt footpaths – a rope pinned to the edge of the road delineates the two.  Again all the available surface was shared by a noisy, slightly dusty, melee of people, vehicles and animals.

By now a few common themes were beginning to emerge for us from our initial time in India.  The people are friendly and welcoming, the culture is rich, the food is excellent (the hotels much less so), and from our observation of TV ads and street billboards it seems that the major preoccupations of Indians are the education of young people, politics and shampoo, not necessarily in that order.

And then there’s the public urination.  Any slightly shaded walkways off the main shopping streets, particularly ones bordered with a wall, are used by many (not all) men as public urinals.  While this doesn’t particularly bother us, the stench is sometimes very bad, causing people to have to walk out on the road with the buses rather than use the walking path provided.  And speaking of buses, they all have a large Armageddon-heralding air horn fitted that the driver uses constantly to clear a path.  They work to incredibly small tolerances in avoiding collisions, making no allowance for any unexpected movement by other vehicle, person or beast.  Several times we were totally mystified how what seemed to be a looming inevitable pedestrian fatality resolved itself at the last microsecond into a mere harmless puff of dust, the uninjured though shaken ped receding rapidly in the the bus’ rear vision mirror.  Of course it doesn’t always end as harmlessly as this – I read there are 85,000 road accident deaths annually in India.

The aforementioned are not the only drawcards that lure so many foreign visitors to Tanjore.  The major attraction is the fabulous Brihadishwara temple and fort, the crowning glory of Chola temple architecture commissioned in 1010 AD by Rajaraja.  It’s a grand sandstone edifice adorned with colourful murals and fine sculptures that erupt into a red glow at sunset.   This temple, along with the Airatesvara we saw in Dharasuram and one other, are jointly listed on the World Heritage Register – the Great Living Chola Temples.  While walking around, surveying the different garb of people of different faiths, I wondered whether some muslim women clothed in all black sometimes envy their Hindu sisters dressed in their colourful saris and sporting garlands of jasmine in their hair. "Why do Hindus have all the fun?" might be the unmouthed question.

Nearby and also worth a visit is the crumbling, pigeon-infested Thanjavur Royal Palace & Museums.  Although much of the complex is decayed, a few sections still convey the sense of opulence in which the ancient South Indian royalty lived.  The complex also houses an extensive collection of fabulous Chola bronzes – there was one in particular that practicalities aside, we would loved to have taken home with us.

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Tranquebar, Tamil Nadu, India

Two hours by bus through attractive rice fields and coconut groves east of Kumbakonam on the coast of the Bay of Bengal is the small town of Tranquebar.  Its history is quite unlike that of other towns in the region.  In the early 1600s the Danish government, with the approval of the local Indian rulers, established a trading settlement here and consolidated their presence in 1620 with the imposing beachside Dansborg Fort that still stands today, now housing an interesting museum that tells the warts and all story of the Danish occupation.

In its heyday the settlement grew to a population of 5,000 and survived for two centuries before being sold to the British in the mid 1800s. We stayed a night in Tranquebar at the characterful Gatehouse, part of the Bungalow on the Beach property, and just about the only tourist accommodation in the town.  After inspecting the Fort we strolled around the streets to admire the mix of architectural styles, from Danish and British colonial to modern day Tamil houses to traditional Tamil stone huts with thatched roofs.

We met a woman in a lane carrying several large tree branches on her head while her young daughter struggled with a large tree root.  We offered to help drag the root back to her hut.  She was grateful for the assistance and we were glad to help, and especially relieved when we finally dropped it outside her hut, not having realized just how far away it was.  How her daughter could have moved the root that distance is beyond us.

Later we passed by several old Christian churches and children’s hostels, the current day legacy of early missionary activity in the area.  At one hostel, these days supported financially by a German charitable organization, teenage boys were playing cricket in the yard and when they asked "Where are you coming from?" and we replied Australia, they erupted into shrieks of “Ricky Ponting”.  We bathed in Ricky’s reflected glory for a few minutes before continuing down the street where younger boys from the same hostel were sitting on the ground happily playing a board game.

Tranquebar means “the place of waves”, no doubt named after the rough ocean here.  But the name was particularly apposite on 26 December 2004 when a giant sea wave generated by the Indian Ocean Tsunami crashed ashore and then just as quickly swept back out to sea. taking with it men, women, children, animals and buildings, and leaving behind a decimated town flooded with seawater.  Almost 10,000 people along the coast here were killed and tens of thousands were made homeless.  Quite possibly some of the boys at the hostel are Tsunami orphans.

After the day’s sights and experiences we felt privileged when we snuggled between crisp sheets at the Gatehouse later that night.