Mon 12th December, 2005 Arrived in
Bhubaneshwar after a reasonable 8 hour train ride from
Kolkata. We don't like arriving in a town after dark,
always give the wrong impression, but this town seemed alright,
quite friendly in fact. Still very busy roads, and I must
say, the motorcyclists seemed very unsteady, two almost crashed
into me within the space of a couple of minutes. Might
have been something to do with me not having any lights on, but
then again no cyclist have lights in India! We headed for
and found the Hotel Sahara, recommended in out guide book, and
negotiated a nice big room for 450 rupees a night. That's
more like it. They said they had a restaurant in the hotel
as well, but it was dark and dingy, as usual, so we had dinner
in our spacious room. Even managed to persuade one of the
lads to nip out and get me a couple of bottles of beer.
I'm never quite sure if they will be offended by someone
drinking alcohol in the hotel, but I've found even in hotels
with signs everywhere saying strictly no alcohol in the
rooms/hotel, that without me asking they've offered to get me
some beer. So now I figure, if they mind, they'll tell
me. Back
to Itinerary Tue
13th to December, 2005
The hotel is set back about 50 metres from one of the city's
main roads, just far enough for the noise of the traffic to not
get too annoying, and so we also weren't woken too much by the
early morning rush hour. Potato curry and roti for
breakfast, yummy. Bhubaneshwar is famous for
its temples, there were over 7000 in its hey-day, about a
thousand years ago. Today, and I'm fairly sure probably
yesterday and tomorrow, there are about 500 remaining.
That should keep us going for a while. Looking
at the city map, there are a big batch of temples in the south
of the city, not too far from out hotel, but we decided to take
our bikes so we could more easily get around, and it stops the
leagues of cycle rickshaw riders asking if you want a ride to
the temples. Not all of them, though, even when riding
along, we still get asked by some if we need a ride, and when we
point out we're okay because we have bicycle ourselves, they get
laughed at by their compatriots. The first
temple we found turned out to be probably the most interesting
we saw,. Actually, we weren't allowed into the biggest
one, Hindus only, but we saw some of it from a viewing platform
erected especially for non-Hindus to cop an eye-full. I
still thought the first temple we saw was best. The
Muktesvara dates from the 10th century, and is beautifully
decorated with outstanding carvings, and a gateway arch in front
of it, which is apparently an unusual feature, dating from the
9th. Around the back of the temple is a tank. No,
silly, not a battle tank, a sort of swimming pool with ghats,
which in this case means steps. Ghats is a versatile word
in India, it can also mean hills, a road on a hill, or a landing
place on a river bank. The tank is supposed to be for
priests and devotees to bathe in, but there were a number of
young men diving in to it when we were there. Amazingly,
there was no entrance fee to go into this temple, but after a
while we were approached by several people carrying visitors
books and asking for donations. I put some in the
big donations box at the door of the temple, not sure who would
empty it but I figured it had a better chance of going towards
the maintenance of the temple. The
other temples we were allowed to visit, as I said before, were
not quite as interesting, so we cycled around a large area,
stopping to take the occasional photo when something caught our
eye. There were a lot of sadhus and other
devotees hanging around the temples, but we weren't pestered too
much for donations. There are only so many temples you can look
at and visit, so after a couple of hours, we had had enough and
made for a SouthIndian restaurant called Venus, between the
temple area and our hotel. Lovely masala dosa, and quite a
nice restaurant while they had the window shutter open, letting
in some lovely sunlight. When the restaurant got busy with
locals, they had to close the shutter, at the request of the
locals, and we were plunged into the gloomy dimness of a 20 watt
bulb. Nice. Brief summary of the
following days: Wed
- Posh hotel for lunch across road - very nice meal and
excellent service, huge bill of nearly 1000 rupees. Only
drawback is it made Rita un-well in the evening. Thu -
rest/shopping day - Rita not feeling brilliant, I went shopping
for some essentials. Took me 5 hours to get hold of some
blank DVDs. They allegedly have four technology parks in
Bhunaneshwar, but I struggled to find any shop that sold
computer related stuff. I think the technology is kept
firmly within the guarded gates of the technology parks. Fri -
Visited the Udayagiri and Khandargiri Caves, just outside the
city. Some of the earliest caves in India, (I presume they
mean earliest caves that have been carved out by man, not
natural ones, of which I'm sure there are many examples any
thousands of years old!) these caves date from a around 2000+
years ago and were carved out and lived in by the Jains at that
time. They were quite interesting and worth the effort of
getting there, the most impressive looking is cave number 1 in
Udayagiri caves, The Ranhi Gumpa, a double storeyed monastery
cut on three sides of a quadrangle with some very detailed wall
friezes. Sat
- Dossing. Back
to Itinerary Sun
18th to December, 2005
We're going to cycle to Puri, had considered catching a bus,
but we enjoy cycling too much to miss this opportunity, even if
it is the last thing we do! The first 10km out of
Bhubaneshwar were busy and noisy, but there was a lot of local
cyclists on the road and not too many buses and
trucks. There were a number of buses with sheets hanging
from the back saying "picnic" of some description or
other, either a company, family or religious groups day outing,
probably to Puri. Puri is one of the four holy places on the
Hindu "must do" list, and is especially popular as
they can combine a trip to one of the holy places and a trip to
the beach. The next 40km were a
little quieter, the best thing being that we weren't run off the
road by any oncoming vehicles in the whole of that time.
This must be a holy place, as I think that was a miracle, never
have we cycled for so long without one brainless moron charging
at us on the wrong side of the road with murder on their
mind. I do go on about that, don't I, well it preys on
your
mind after a while, but I'll try and stop. The
Grand Road in the centre of Puri is one of the widest roads I've
seen , anywhere. It must be 100 metres from side to side,
but of course has been encroached upon from either side by
mobile market stalls and parked vehicles. Still, a
pleasant change from the normally packed, narrow streets that
seem to form the heart of most Indian towns and cities. Found
CT Road with no problem, most foreign tourists stay there, so
when you ask for directions, they assume that's where you want
to go. We spent quite a bit of time checking out a number
of hotels, deciding on an room at the Gandhara Hotel. The
hotel is quite interesting, the front part is quite old and has
a rooftop restaurant (which we never saw anybody use, for some
reason), and a the back of the property in a four storey new
block, but the room we had was too dark and small for us to stay
in for a week or so, and it also had a lot of mosquitoes hanging
around the windows. But it will do while we find something
bigger and brighter. Being a foreign tourist
area of town means that the local restaurants serve up a lot of
international favourites, such as pancakes, cornflakes and
spaghetti (not all together of course) so there might be a
chance we will be able to get a roast dinner for Christmas after
all. There are also a number of open-air garden
restaurants here as well, a welcome change from the usual
black-hole-of-Calcutta type as the usual
offering. Back
to Itinerary
Mon 19th to December, 2005
First thing, well, after breakfast
anyway, is to find another hotel room. We'll have to stay
here for another night anyway as we'd missed the check out time
of 8am. Yes, you heard correctly, check out time is
8am! There's a nice looking old rambling place nearby
called the Z Hotel, but they didn't have a room that was
available for the whole of the next week, and were fully booked
for the Christmas weekend. We found an available room at
the City Plaza, available over the Christmas weekend as well,
but the price went up from Rs400 a night for the first three
nights to Rs1000 for the following week, although the official
rate was 1400 a night. The room was a good size, and south
facing with a large balcony, but it was on the top floor and the
kitchen didn't seem very good so we would have to eat out all
the time. SO we said we'd think about it and went to look at
other options. A pattern quickly formed with
all the hotels we checked out subsequently. At the first,
they said they were empty and we could have a choice of
rooms. The south facing (and lightest) were too small, but
the north facing were light enough and bigger. The price
was also very attractive at Rs400 a night. With the rate
at the City Plaza rising suddenly on the 23rd, we asked how much
their rate was for Christmas, thinking perhaps if they're so
quiet, they might no raise it so much. But no such
luck. "I'm sorry, we're fully booked for Christmas
and the following week". This was the same story at
every hotel we visited after that, we didn't get around to
seeing any more rooms, there' wasn't any point if they were
fully booked. So, after trying a dozen more
hotels, in fact most of the hotels on CT Road, we hot-footed it
back to the City Plaza and said we'd take the room from the
following day. Luckily it was still available. We even put
down a deposit of Rs1000 to make sure nobody else could gazump
us. The manager back at our current hotel was a little
upset that we were moving to another hotel, he had assumed we
would be staying over Christmas, but he had failed to tell us
the rate would be going up to Rs950 a night shortly, and the
room was too depressing for us long term anyway. On
the Tuesday, we cycled around Puri for several hours. We
found the Jagganath temple with little problem, well it's
enormous and quite difficult to miss. Only Hindu's are allowed
inside, so we had to view from outside the perimeter wall,
which, being 10 metres tall, was a little too high to jump up to
get a peek over. The library building opposite the main
entrance to the temple allows foreigners to go to their top
floor to have a look for a small consideration, but apparently
the consideration rises rapidly with each floor you go up, and
we got so pestered by touts at the bottom that we gave up and
cycled off around the perimeter wall. I found another
building at the back that offered a temple view for Rs20, but
when I got to the top, there wasn't much of a view. Back
at the bottom, I found the price had gone up to Rs40. Why?
"You took two photographs, 20 and 20, 40
rupees". No chance, I gave him 20 and told him it
wasn't worth that, but thats what we'd agreed. He saw my
point of view eventually. We
spent an hour or so cycling through the back streets of the
town, between the temple and the coast, a myriad of narrow
streets and pathways, occasionally coming across water tanks and
smaller temples. Very interesting, but also depressingly
filthy in most places. When we finally emerged on the sea
front road, we found a large number of tourist shops, but not
selling the usual foreign tourist trash like kiss-me-quick hats,
but bags, lamp-shades and bangles. Its the Indian equivalent of
Blackpool, I suppose. On the sea front we saw several
roped off areas with people busily at work on large piles of
sand This must be Puri Sand Sculpture Festival we'd read
about. The pictures we'd seen of earlier festivals looked
quite impressive, but they didn't quite seem to be up to that
standard yet. Still, there are several more days to go of
this festival, so I'll give them a chance. On the 21st we cycled around the city
of Puri on our bikes to see some of the sites and how the locals
fill their days! It is one huge pilgrimage centre with little
shrines at every corner and temples scattered throughout. The
buildings are ramshackle and tatty in the main and streets a
hive of activity with vendors, cows, dogs, rickshaw cyclists,
sadhus, kids, ice cream sellers, candy floss sellers and
pilgrims.
The huge main street is called the
Grand and is inundated with literally thousands of people at
this time of year, since this place is the fourth most holy city
in the Hindu religion and on the coast is a great place for
relaxation too.
We made our way through the back
streets and quite by accident came across the huge temple of
Lord Jagannath, lord of the universe. Non believers are not
allowed to enter, but it is around 60 meters tall and with a
little negotiating Paul organised a trip up to a nearby rooftop
for the classic shot!.
Outside the temple are many stalls
selling religious bits and pieces, including marigold garlands,
coral and pearl garlands, incense, marble and wooden carvings of
hindu deities and all sorts of Indian sweet meats - some of
which are simply mouth-watering and others just too sweet .
As usual our bikes draw a lot of
attention and we are soon surrounded by young and old wanting to
practice their English as well as many begging hands.
During the evening we went to the food
festival called Bhojon, held in the garden of one of the larger
hotels. The trees surrounding the garden were decorated with
huge orissan lanterns and lights and as ever the kids section
had large models of deer and frogs and such like. The local
traders were all there with stalls flogging, very cheaply, their
delights for us to sample. We carefully watched as they prepared
their tasty assortments and eventually decided on our choices,
aloo channa for me and Chicken masala for Paul. The dessert
section however was the most enjoyable as the chefs on this
stall let us try bits and pieces of the dishes for just a couple
of rupees per portion and were delighted to have pictures taken
of their produce.
We caught a cycle rickshaw took us back
to our area of town where most of the foreign tourists hang out.
Our cyclist was speedy and overtook most others on the way.
When we reached our entrance, I had the
pleasure of meeting a lovely cycle rickshaw driver of 63 years.
He told me he had been working as such in Puri for 45 years. He
has 3 daughters and 2 sons and is about 5ft 6 inches and
probably no more that 6 stone soaking wet. He had a piece of
cloth plonked on his head and when I asked what it was for he
said He was cold. The next evening I gave him a furry hat which
I had bought in Darjeeeling - it suited him and I was delighted
to see he was wearing it when we saw him again last night. It is
hot for us but much colder for the locals who enjoy temperatures
of 32 degrees most of the year.
On the 22nd we planned to take a coach
up the road to Konark, another religious place with huge temple
to Surya the Sun god. As we were getting ready, we thought we
could manage the distance there and back on our bikes - and
since the weather was so great we decided to cycle. We always
prefer to do that than go to the fuss of buses, not to mention
the discomfort of those rides with tiny seats, cloying heat and
stilted conversations.
We started around 9 ish and after a few
watering holes along the road finally arrived at midday, very
thirsty and pretty hungry. We hadn't prepared properly for this
trip and had no re-hydration sachets with us. The temple is
again a huge tourist attraction - the locals from Kolkota mostly
do the circuit of here, Puri and the temples at Bhubaneshwar on
their pilgrimage. The local officials have chosen in their
ultimate wisdom to place a toilet block to the right and front
of the temple and felt it necessary to plaster it with LADIES
TOILET signs. We were greeted with officious government guards
who directed us to leave our bikes in the bike park which we
completely ignored. We are very precious about them and rarely
leave them unattended. The temple was clearly visible from the
row of vendor stalls and I stayed with the bikes while Paul did
the tour. 10 rupees for locals and 250 for foreign tourists. I
sat under a tree and drank some sprite and chai and was soon
joined by the temple priest in dhoti and sporting a cream
coloured lines across his forehead and down the centre of his
nose. His English was pretty good and we discussed the stupidity
of the government, the danger on the roads, meditation and yoga
and inevitably religion.
Later when Paul returned he took us to
his friends restaurant where he and Paul shared a couple of
beers and when we left he took our address promising to write to
us twice every year. He offered ganga as we left but we
declined.
It was exceedingly hot and fortunately
the head wind we had encountered on the way up was now at our
backs, so we made good time completing the cycle in about 2
hours. En route there and back we followed the coastline and saw
many beautiful butterflies, one in particular much like a red
admiral but larger and more magnificent. Unfortunately the
butterfly section in our guide is limited and we don't know the
name yet. We also saw a deal of bird life just outside Puri
including drongo birds, kites, bulbuls and shedfuls of
Kingfishers as usual, mynah birds and cattle egrets (the ones
that always hang around the zebus, near or on their backs).
We finished off the day with a clean,
safe meal from the Achha restaurant which is run by a Swedish
woman!!
Thursday and Friday I spent most of the time
worrying about just where I was going to get a roast dinner on
xmas day. I was beginning to think that perhaps I
shouldn't even attempt to get a roast dinner, as from what I
could see I was most likely to end up severely
disappointed. But then we got chatting to the Swedish part
owner of the Achha restaurant, and after telling her what a
typical English roast dinner consisted of, she said she would
give it a go. The most surprising thing was that she
didn't know what roast potatoes were, I thought everybody in
Europe ate roasties! Never mind, we gave her a list of our
requirements, and a recipe for making roast potatoes, and booked
a table for lunchtime on Sunday. Christmas
eve was surprisingly quiet. With all the hotels being
fully booked, I was expecting the place to be heaving, but the
restaurants were fairly quiet. The only "bar"
near our hotel is a dark and dingy place, so we haven't stayed
in there longer than the time it takes to buy some carry-out, so
we had a few drinks in the restaurants. They are not
legally allowed to sell beer, but they're keen to keep their
punters happy, so they wrap the beer bottles in napkins and put
them on the floor next to the table. Apparently, there are
some special "alcohol police", but they're based in
Cuttack and dont make it down to Puri very often, and even when
they do, everybody knows they're coming anyway and makes sure
they dont have any alcohol on their premises. Must be some
baksheesh involved in that, somewhere. Christmas
Day! A fabulously sunny day with lovely clear skies.
Perhaps a bit too warm, really. (There's no pleasing some
people!)
Christmas dinner at the Achhu was
fabulous. We had a small roast chicken stuffed with
apples, bread and some herbs, excellent roast potatoes, gravy
made with the chicken stock, cauliflower cheese and some mixed
steamed vegetables. Not a hint of curry anywhere.
Actually, we did have some brinjal pakora as a starter, but the
main course was spice free. We couldn't believe our luck,
and after all those weeks of fretting! And to top it all,
even with several bottle of beer, the bill came to less than 500
rupees, about £6.50. Bargain!
The rest of christmas day was spent eating
Dundee cake and toffees washed down with the occasional
beer. We even managed to contact several family and
friends through various methods, but being five and a half hours
ahead of Britain, we had a good head start on most people, and
were quite worn out by the evening. Must be getting
old.
Boxing Day. Determined to go down to the
beach and maybe in the sea for a quick dip. Made it to the
edge of the sea, but the beach was none too appealing, and there
was a stream of jet black water rushing into the sea from a
stream only 50 metres away from where everyone else was messing
about in the sea. Perhaps not, then
The week flew by in Puri, not that we did
anything special, just chilled out really, and planned our
escape. We wanted to go to Chilka Lake, the second largest
brackish water lake in the world, to see some of the wild birds
that winter over there. We had an option to do a round
trip from Puri, but it sounded like the best place to get a boat
to see the birds was on the other side of the lake, making it a
long 200km round trip. So we ended up booking a taxi to take us
to lake, wait for us while we did the twitching, then drive us
on down to Gopalpur-on-Sea. All in, it would take about 10
hours, and we had to pay for the taxi driver to return to Puri,
so the total bill for the taxi came to 2000 rupees, after Rita
had negotiated for a while. Back
to Itinerary
Fri 30th December, 2005
On the morning of the 30th, we checked out of
the City Plaza just before the official check out time of 7am,
yeah, crazy isn't it, and were picked up outside by our drive,
Jaggar, in his gleaming white Ambassador car.
(Rita takes over the narration)
.
It was an awful last night for me anyway, the last in the city
plaza hotel at Puri b4 moving on. The family on the landing
below us were having an argument with the family opposite and
this meant very loud voices - I went out to give them a long
ssssshhhhhhhhhhhhhand later about 9.30 Paul gave them a
Paddington hard stare - but this din went on and on. Paul went
to sleep no probs but at around 00.40 (that's twenty to one) I
was getting very pissed, off as you might imagine and went out
give them a real telling. They were about to come to blows and
the hotel guard wearing a gun had stick out and raised at one of
the parties involved. I thought perhaps this isn't the time to
start complaining and fortunately the racket ceased shortly
after this.
We lavishly took a black and yellow
taxi to Goralpur on sea - (the brits used to love the place
apparently) and en route we stopped for 3 hours at a bird
sanctuary in a lake, which is famous for it's host of migratory
birds which arrive at this time of year.
The taxi trip was around £10 each for
a couple hundred miles so good value for money (although very
expensive for India) - but mostly convenient to get to the lake
at Belugan town where the hotels are a bit crappy, even below
our standard (some of you may not believe that) We stopped after
about 15 kms to get some chai as we had no brekkies leaving
early at 7am. The road side stall was delighted to serve us,
especially when I gave them some Christmas dates I had bought
earlier, as we thought about the feet that had pounded them and
couldn't bring ourselves to eat them after that.
Our driver was a sweetie, very polite
and respectful and genuinely kind. He offered to stop every
second minute when we spotted something and wanted to take
photos. He also took us through some lovely Orissan villages. We
passed an extremely flamboyantly dressed female leaning against
a post - (how can she afford such a fabulous Saree, I thought )
and it wasn't til I saw a second similarly dressed female also
leaning on a fence, at the next village that I realised they
both were working !!!!!!!!!!!! The route was rough for the first
50 kms but we turned on to national highway 5 which was a great
road and newly tarred. The traffic, more remarkably still, was
travelling in two different lanes in both directions very much
like any road in England - we couldn't believe our eyes. But not
for long - alas, as soon as we reached a garage on our left hand
side we realised there were no island breaks in the centre - so
vehicles coming from the garage wanting to turn right could not.
You guessed correctly, here, they can of
course, and on this brilliant, new, most modern dual carriageway
these vehicles turn right in to the main flow of traffic, which
by the way is travelling at about 50 mph - Incredible India!!!
At around 11ish we arrived at Chilka
lake and we were looking forward to a spot of bird watching from
a boat. We negotiated a boat after various comings and goings
and any amount of middle men - par for the course, bought some
fruit and were off.
Two crew, nice chappies; and very
friendly, very interested in Paul's camera and quick and keen to
point out some dolphins which they spotted less than 30 yards
ahead of us, swimming in pair formation!!!!!(On cue) There were
lots of fishermen in boats on the lake and we managed some great
shots of them before arriving at the boundary of the barr. At
this point we were about 150 yards from the birds, which were as
SPECKS in the distance even with binos. Just then the lake
police arrived on the scene and threatened our crew with arrest
if they took our boat any nearer the barr. Naturally, the crew
don't argue with these chappies, so sadly we didn't get to see
any birdies after all (flamingos and all)- cost of trip was 750
rupees - much disappointment also much confusion! If you cant
see them when they are on the barr and you cant see them anyway
when they are not there - when do you get to see the birds in
the sanctuary which we paid steeply for ? A con.
Our crew were also very disappointed
for us - if we don't get to see anything they don't get a tip is
probably the thinking. However, on our homeward trip we spotted
a Sea Eagle heading towards the boat which was magic. We saw a
fishing boat hauling its drift net in and asked the crew to pull
over for a closer look. They pulled up alongside and we had a
great laugh with the fishermen and the kids on board, They
offered us some sprats! Many Fish eagles were soaring over head
and Paul got some priceless shots needless to say.
Our driver was asleep in the car
guarding our luggage when we returned. We made off to a
restaurant (I use the description very loosely) to feed him and
us. He declined food but went for a Coca Cola, what bad taste!
We tried veggie curry and roti - It was good stuff but we
couldn't bare to look at the prep area.
We continued for another 3 hours
arriving at Goralpur -on-Sea before sunset to a large family
reception. This was because for once, with it being New Years or
thereabouts, we thought it better to book ahead. They all looked
us over to make sure we could afford to pay and were most amused
when our bikes came out the boot. They also gave us a room with
balcony overlooking the beach approx 20 yards away. Great stuff.
The manager and two others helped us with our bags to the room.
(all expecting tips!)
It turned out to be quite a good spot
for New Years. Although the sea looked tempting, we declined to
go for a dip as we noticed a couple of other Europeans get the
zoo spectator treatment when they went in. We
had fireworks displays along the Coast on NY eve, for fireworks
read homemade explosives, not quite "Standard" and
were more like bombs going off.
New years day the beach gradually
became packed with tourists as the day went on and by evening
the main street was seething with hundreds of folk who had
turned up on their motorbikes etc.. Many went for dips during
the day, only a few Europeans in swimsuits, Indian women wear
sarees in the water! And they never sit down on the beach - they
all stand in family groups nattering - it is an unusual scene.
On the 1st we had got a rickshaw into
Berkhampur and booked a train ticket from Berkhampur to
Vishakrapatnam - also on the coast but a big hub of industrial
activity and a progressive town with many facilities. The
station at Berkhampur is great, the Brits built it, we could
tell. I particularly like the 1st class and 2nd class ladies
waiting rooms - but couldn't work out which I should use! As the
train wasn't due to leave until 10:50am, we cycled the 16km from
Gopalpur to Berkhampur on the morning of the 2nd, stopping at a
South Indian restaurant near the station for an excellent masala
dosa. There was no easy way to get our bikes over to
platform 2 so we dragged them across the rails. We packed them
this journey for ease of carriage and so we didn't get
questioned for a ticket etc….We got a huge audience as ever
for this task on the platform, and the inevitable questions
"how much?" and "which country?"
Our carriage companions were a female
with child opposite and another mother and child on the side
seat. The child opposite was eyeing my fruit so I offered him a
banana and some moments later the woman offered us some
delicious milk sweets and sundried mango. She spoke with a
beautiful English and by her size I would say she was relatively
wealthy. All very friendly and the journey was a delight. It is
a good idea to go on one of these long slow train journeys in
India to remind yourself how lovely the countryside and villages
are - especially after visiting the city areas which can be
depressing. The journey was regularly punctuated by junctions
where vendors get on and off. The chai is great and I have never
had a cold one. Milky coffee is also a good buy at 4 or 5
rupees. The transvestite beggar (Eunuch as they call them here)
who appeared as soon as we took off was over 6ft tall, had a
very low voice and huge feet. HE chanted some curse on us when
we gave HER no money and strutted off.
Just before arriving at Vishakra I
chatted to another young woman near the carriage door. She was
also getting off and had got on two or three stops earlier. She
was delightful, told me she was lucky to meet us and be able to
speak English, she also said she had just earned 3000 rupees for
some work she had been doing as a staff manager at a catering
function. Not bad money I thought considering most rural workers
earn less than 100 rupees per day.
We left our bikes in left luggage
overnight and caught a rickshaw to the Apsara hotel, a D grade
in our guide book. So when we ended up at the hotel Green Park
which allegedly used to be called Apsara, and when the doorman
came out sporting a beautiful white jacket with gold buttons and
red turban, we thought this smacks of an Indian five star. Sure
enough, I choked on the tariff and we made off to another C-D
grade hotel nearby. Surprisingly this one also smelt a bit
pricey, but with a train ticket out the following day we thought
we would splurge for a night. On check in the hotel instructor
invited us to use the gym, but he let himself down when he
pointed out that they had a machine for Abs, who was he looking
at? But I did use it, as it happens and spent 40 minutes there
while Paul checked out the bar. (Well, somebody
had to do it! Paul)
We met up in the Dimple restaurant bar
later on. It was pitch as usual and Paul had got stuck behind a
smoking drunk. We cleared off to another table where I asked for
the lights to be turned up and Paul spotted a rat running down
an electric cable. I told him about my unfortunate incident in
the shower when I stubbed my toe on the bathroom door which
springs closed, when you open it, because the toilet is smack up
behind it. Before we finished our meal we were handed our bill
and plunged into darkness by an over zealous waiter who thought
the bar should be pitch dark. No, this is a smart hotel!!!!!
Incredible India!!!
(Paul continues)
(Note: The pedantic amongst you may well
have noticed that Visakhapatnam is in fact in Andhra Pradesh and
we should have started a new page. Well, tough. We
return to Orissa today and will be back in Andhra Pradesh next
week, that's when I'll start a new page. Cheers, P)
We had to leave the hotel by 7am to get the 7:45
train to Jeypore, so we had to skip breakfast, which was a shame
as it was complimentary, but didn't start until 7.
Arriving at the station at 7:15, we had plenty of time to
collect our bags from the cloakroom, as it was called, and hire
a porter (Rita's idea) for 30 rupees to carry them across to
platform 2. Rita thought the porter looked a bit too old
to carry both of our bags, but I explained he'd been doing it
all his life and would have no problems. Mind you, he did
take his time going up the stairs I then realised that we
were wait-listed for seat allocations, so I nipped back to the
reservations office to find out what seats we'd been
given. I was none too pleased to find out we were still
wait-listed, which meant we would have to fight our way into the
general carriage and probably stand all the way until the guard
found us an empty seat somewhere along the way, not a thought I
relished, especially with our bikes. As a last resort, I
asked him was there any tourist quota left for the train.
Apparently, all mainline trains have a tourist allocation of 6
seats. After a minute or so of rustling papers, he
suddenly grabbed my ticket and wrote S1 42 43 on it, meaning we
were in sleeper carriage 1 seats 42 and 43. I felt a bit
guilt about jumping the waiting list, but hey, why do they have
tourist allocations if we cant use them!
When I got back to platform 2 and gave Rita the
good news, the porter set off up the platform towards the far
end of the train. The carriages are normally clearly labeled,
but I couldn't see which one was S1, so after we'd gone passed 4
sleeper carriages and the porter was still plodding on ahead, I
found a guard and he said our carriage was the first one we'd
passed. It took a while to persuade the porter to turn
around, and then Rita felt sorry for him and ended up carrying
one of the bike bags herself. What are we paying him
for? There were several people already sitting in our
seats when I found them, but luckily there was a large area by
the carriage door to leave our bikes for a while, until we could
get settled and see where we could store them for the
journey. There was a lot of debate going on about which
seat was whose, but after 10 minutes the old woman and young
girl who had been sat in our seats moved off to pastures new and
we plonked ourselves down. As the train pulled out, we
realised that the porter hadn't returned with the change from
the 100 rupee note we'd given him. Oh well, the price we
pay for taking our eyes off of him I suppose.
There were 8 people in our cubicle, designed to
seat 6, so we soon realised we were not going to be able to
bring our bikes in to keep our eye on them, we would have to go
out watch at every stop. We've never had a problem
with our luggage on trains in India, but they have a bad
reputation for bag snatchers. So much so, that one of the
most frequently seen vendors peddling his wares along the
carriages of a train is a guy selling chains and padlocks, so
you can chain up your baggage to your seat. The doors on
the trains are often left open, no such thing as central locking
or anything fancy here, lucky to have doors, really! So
there is also a chance that someone might throw your bags out of
a moving train as well, either to a waiting accomplice or
jumping out after them, but I didn't want to spend the whole
scheduled eight hours of the journey standing watching over our
bike bags, and as there were quite a few people stood in that
area, I figured we'd take our
chances.
When we left Berkhampur yesterday morning, we
could have opted for a bus directly from Berkhampur to Jeypore,
but we had chosen the longer route by two trains in as many days
so that we could particularly travel on this train, train number
1VK, which climbs slowly up the slopes of the Eastern Ghats to
the highest broad gauge rail station in India at Shimiliguda,
at a little over 996 metres. Actually, according to
the sign at the station, the "little" is 326.8
cetimetres, that's what I call precise. As a comparison,
that's 18 metres (roughly) higher than the highest point in
England, Scafell Pike. The views on the way up the ghats
were quite good, spoilt slightly by the heat haze coming
from the planes. The train wound its way around the hills,
following the contours and going though numerous tunnels.
The gradient was not too steep, so we were not exactly crawling
along, but somewhere along the way we managed to get behind
schedule, ending up an hour and a half late at Jeypore. We
were also fairly hungry by the time we arrived, there had not
been the usual array of vendors on this train and we had only
managed to get some sun-dried mango and a small chocolate bar
each all day. There had only been one chai-wallah on the
whole trip, and he only came around half an hour before we
arrived at Jeypore station. You just can't get the service
these days. The sun was setting as we arrived, so instead
of cycling the 10km to our hotel on the other side of town as we
had initially planned, we got a auto-rickshaw for 100 rupees.
As Rita mentioned earlier, we don't normally
book in advance, but because a lot of hotels seem to have been
fully booked around the festive season, we had also phoned ahead
to the Hello Jeypore to book up for tonight. They had told
us then that they only had a room for one night, they had
several tour groups arriving tomorrow and were fully
booked. But when we checked in, we were so nice to
them (as indeed we are to everyone!) that they said they
would try and fit us in for the next few nights as
well. Tonight's room was a little pricey at 900
rupees, but we as it was getting on, we didn't have much option,
and it was a nice, large, airy room. We dropped our
bags in our rooms and repaired to the dining room for a well
deserved dinner and a few beers. The food was quite good,
but a little bland. We hadn't asked for it spicy, so, as
with a lot of restaurants, they assumed that being tourists, we
wouldn't want it spicy. How wrong could they be!
Back
to Itinerary
Wed 4th January 2006
After two days of travel, we felt we deserved a
rest. I think we're getting lazy. Had a relaxed
breakfast in the sunny garden, maybe a bit too sunny, we had to
move or table into the shade after 5 minutes. And the locals
have been complaining about the recent cold spell! How hot do
they want it?! We were also told that they had managed to
find a room for us for the next few days, not quite as plush as
the room we had last night, but only 500 rupees a night.
It turned out the only difference was it didn't have a carpet
(something we prefer), it was a floor higher (no lift! but we
need the exercise) and there were no tissues in the
bathroom! How are we going to survive? Oh, and there
were plastic garden chairs in place of the comfy armchairs we'd
enjoyed last night.
Later in the morning we cycled into the town
centre, where, we were informed, there is a palace and a
fort. They turned out to be one and the same, in a very
dilapidated state, but apparently still occupied by the local
rani, or queen. Not quite sure what she is queen of,
nobody could explain, but I guess it may be a hangover from the
bad old days of the British Raj, when large areas of what is now
called India came under the title of princely states.
There is also a temple dedicated to Lord Jaggernath, denoted by
the red pennants flying from the mast atop the deul (day-ool),
the tall tower part of an Orissan temple. Unfortunately
for us sightseers, the deul was covered in bamboo scaffolding
for maintenance, something that seems to be on-going at just
about every temple we've seen. We cycled around the back
roads of the town for an hour or so, stopping for the occasional
limited conversation with the friendly locals.
Back at the hotel for a late lunch in the
garden, we booked a car and guide to take us to Ankadeli, a
small town 70km south west of Jeypore, which has a market every
Thursday, frequented not only by most foreign tourists within
100km, but also the local tribes. Well, it is their market
I suppose, so why shouldn't they be allowed to go? They
are, after all, the reason for the tourist being here in the
first place. This explains why Hello Jeypore is full up
tonight, all of the tours that pass this way time it to arrive
here on a Wednesday night so they can be at the market early on
Thursday morning. When we went down for dinner at
7pm, the place was full of foreigners, with several groups of
Dutch, Italians, and a large contingency of Aussies. And
guess what the Aussies did, they had a barbie in the
garden. No surprise there then. Back to Itinerary
Thu 5th January 2006
Thought for the day: Why do we still call
it a building when it's finished?
Up and out in the road by 6:30, no time to pause
for breakfast, this is a race and we're some of the last to
leave the hotel. Not sure what all the rush is about
really, the market doesn't get going until after nine and
carries on until mid afternoon. But it seems the guides
like to take you to the edge of the town so you can watch the
tribal people walking into town for the market. Perhaps we
could give some of them a lift, or maybe that would be breaking
some rule or other about contact with the tribal people. Do you
think I'm getting a little cynical. Rita does.
The journey started badly. Our driver was
well versed in the rules of using the horn on Indian roads, i.e.
blow your horn for every possible reason, and if you cant think
of a reason, blow it just in case there's one you don't know
about. During the first five minutes he was giving a
double toot every 5 seconds. I was watching from my back
seat, and could see that to facilitate ease of access, at some
time in the past he had removed the steering wheel and rotated
it by 45 degrees so that the small horn button on the arm of the
steering wheel was positioned directly under his left thumb when
his hands were in the ten to two driving position. This
meant that the parts of the steering wheel with the hand grips
on were now no where near where his hands normally are, but,
more important than the steering wheel not slipping through your
hands, he did have immediate access to the horn! His left
thumb was kept permanently extended and ready for action over
the horn button.
Fairly soon Rita asked our guide to ask our
non-English speaking driver to refrain from using the horn,
except in occasions that really deserved it. Or words to
that effect. The driver seemed sceptical, as he explained
through the interpreter, the people on the road were stupid and
if he didn't blow his horn there would be an accident. Try
it, we said. We continued our journey with no horn,
although I could sense he was getting twitchy, with his left
thumb shaking over the horn button. We soon came across a
large group of pedestrians walking down the road. The driver
looked at us nervously in the mirror, but managed to restrain
his horn thumb and instead slowed down a little, and to his
great surprise, the pedestrians parted to either side of the
road and we passed safely. I think he though it was just a
fluke, but after this had been repeated several more times with
no casualties, he seemed to resign himself to not using the
horn. There were a few occasions when he rightly did use
the horn, but in a far more restrained manner than before.
A convert, maybe? I think not. I bet, the moment this
journey's over.......!
We arrived in Ankadeli at around 8.30, drove
through the village, out the other side and promptly got
lost. Or so it seemed, as we stopped to ask directions
several times and each time turned around to go back the way we
had come and try another route. It seems our guide is a
little rusty. Finally we pulled up on a mud track and were
told "We're here". I've always thought that a
particularly pointless phrase, wherever you are, you're always
here!
Rita's version of events:
We arrived at Jeypore about 5 days ago
and since have visited Ankadeli village and were lucky enough to
visit the Thursday market where the beaded Bondo women trading
their veg and artesanal wares e.g. beads, necklaces, pottery,
metal objects, cane baskets, fine woven grass wrist and head
bands, toe rings and anklets, and woven pieces which are used to
cover the bare necessities. Otherwise the Bondo women wear only
rows and rows of well positioned beads. It was a colourful
market and I found I was constantly buying toffees and rice
balls for kids who come and hang on your arm, I can buy about a
dozen rice balls for 2 rupees and these can feed a few mouths,
plus they are a bit of a luxury. Noticeably the male folk are
absent from these market activities and as our taxi driver told
us the women have a very domineering manner. In this matriarchal
society not only are the women the bosses but do all the
agriculture work, artesanal work and housework. The men used to
be hunters and fishermen according to the museum at Koraput, but
nowadays, since the arrival of tourism they only hunt and fish
on festival days spending most of their time drinking the local
Moet called Moa, which is a strong brew and can be lethal. Women
doing all the work – sounds about right!! Fortunately in
India in some areas women are really taking over the reins of
power and becoming local leaders of their village committees.
One such woman in the Tamil Nadu region got toilets installed in
every house in her village to stop the use of stinking latrines
and open drains. No one can really talk about the prosperity of
India without also including information re the state of the
roads and rural communities which is about 70% of the countries
work force.
Hand to Mouth, Keep the wolf from
the door, Make ends meet, are all phrases that spring to
mind when you see all the many and diverse entrepreneurial ways
in which people make a living. Of course I don’t mean just
adults here and I don’t mean earning enough to buy clothes and
houses and holidays. I am talking about filling the burning
hunger in the stomach that is a daily focus.
Info ; Human development Report 2005
One billion people 1/6th of the global population still live on
a level of poverty so abject that it threatens survival. A
further 1.5 billion live on 1- 2 dollars per day i.e. 40% of the
world population are faced daily with the reality or threat of
extreme poverty.
Coconut Slice vendors, shoe shine boys,
pan vendors, peanut sellers, vendors selling onions, tomatoes,
caulis, chai, stone splitters, train vendors including eunuchs
selling curses if you don’t tip them, Oryan dancers strutting
their stuff to entertain you, laden with nose, ear, hair, ankle
and wrist trinkets. Normally there are usually so many vendors
on the average train that its not more than 10 minutes b4 you
are cajoled into checking out something to eat or drink or
watch. The exception on this occasion being our train from Vizakhapatnam
to Jeypore. Just 2 vendors in 9 hours, but no one tells you this
b4 boarding!! It’s a locals train and they all bring their
food with them. We were unprepared but survived thanks to a
generous Oryan sharing here paneer sweets and sundried mango
with us – both delicious. We were also offered raw sugar cane
sticks but declined – they are so tuff they wreck your teeth.
We reached Jeypore famished and thirsty and were grateful that
the Hotel hello Jeypore had a good recommended restaurant –
Course that doesn’t mean the food is any good!!
On the 9th Jan we cycled some 20 kms to
the town of Koraput to the tribal museum, with limited resources
it was very informative and well maintained. We waved to the
children at the gates of the school for the blind on the way
from the museum and shouted lots of hellos. Sadly it looked like
a prison rather than a school and not a patch on Guide Dog
premises in UK that I have seen (Paul)
The sight of the children as well as
reading about the advasi, tribal, highlander peoples in the
museum made me think about the big divide between the have and
the have nots in India.
Koraput is a scruffy dirty town but I
couldn’t pass a chai stall where I saw a charming smiling boy
selling tiny glasses of chai and so happy in his work.
The cycle back to Jeypore was a delight
as it was mostly down hill (damned hard work all the way there I
might add). As well as being interviewed on the way by Discovery
channel TV by a couple of opportunist reporters about the local
eco tourism, I saw some fine specimens of flora and fauna.
Papaya, Mast, Mango and Fig Trees to name but a few. Cacti 20
feet tall which reminded me of the one I grew on my window sil
and sitting on one of these monster plants was a brilliant green
bird which I later found was a coppersmith, rarely seen but
often heard calling kutroo, kutroo. Lucky me! They feed on bees
and swoop beautifully to catch them. I also saw numerous egrets,
mynah birds, with yellow ringed eyes, black drongo birds with
split tails and thousands of crows! This route is a special area
of eco interest and there are different species of flora all
along the route including vivid orange Gul mohar, Ashoka trees,
Poinsettia, rain trees covered in hairy white flowers, temple
trees and acacias, banyans and with a huge fruit a giant jack
fruit tree. And our bikes are still going well!!!
For Rita's birthday on the 10th, January we
decided to stay in Jeypore, our escape plans were not going
well, Jeypore is not the easiest of places to travel from.
Adopting that well know Irish saying, if you want to go
anywhere, you wouldn't want to start from Jeypore.
Actually, that's probably a little unfair, there are buses to
several places in Orissa, and there is one daily bus to
Bhadrachamal in Andhra Pradesh, our next intended destination,
but it leaves at 5am and takes 12 hours (or so) to travel the
300km. I felt it wasn't fair to attempt this journey on
Rita's birthday, so here we stay for another day, or maybe
two. We had a nice relaxed day around the hotel, on the
sunny lawn out back of the hotel. We had hoped for a
fabulous meal in the evening, but although it tasted ok, yet
again the food was served only luke warm, even though we had
specifically asked for it to be served piping hot. We had
had to wait for over half an hour for the food to arrive, not
that we mind waiting, at least, we thought , its freshly cooked
and should be nice and hot. But not one of the dishes was
hot, I think they had finished cooking all the dishes twenty
minutes before and had forgotten to bring them out. Worse
still, a few hours after the meal, Rita developed food poisoning
symptons and was quite unwell for the following 24 hours,
without going into too much detail!
So our departure was delayed another day, and
having seen the state of the bus going to Bhadrachamal, we
booked a car and driver to take us instead. The car and
driver were only 500 rupees for a day, but the fuel worked out
at about 4 rupees a km, and as the round trip was 600km the
total would be 2880 rupees, almost 40 quid! I think I'll
have to get a job! (Shudders at the thought)
I settled the hotel bill on the night before we
departed, they always seem to take so long to get the bill
together in the morning, especially when you've stayed for
several days, even when you tell them you'll be checking out at
a certain time and can they have the bill ready. And when
you roll up at the desk in the morning, they seemed surprised to
see you. Anyway, as I was saying, I got them to
prepare the bill while I was having my evening meal (Rita was
still recovering from last nights meal). I though the
total looked a bit lower than what I'd calculated it, so I
queried the number of days, not being able to remember exactly
how many days we'd been there, but the manager assured me it was
correct, so I paid up. 20 minutes later, back in our room,
I got a phone call from the manager saying he'd undercharged us
by one night. When I went back down to reception, he
seemed to make out I had been trying to rip them off. But
I told you I thought it was wrong! He then blamed it on a
computer error. Computer error? I hate it when
people blame spurious output on computer error. In
99.99999% of cases, the computer has only done exactly what it
was programmed to do, and if the result is not what you wanted
it will invariably be down to one of two things; wrong
expectations or a bug in the programming, or, as we in the
programming fraternity prefer to call it, an undocumented design
feature.
Back to Itinerary
Thu 12th January 2006
We were packed and ready outside the hotel by
7am, the time we had been told our car would turn up. After
several phone calls it arrived at 7:40. Off to a good
start then. The car was a small hatchback, so our bikes
had to go on the roof rack, but the boot was big enough to fit
our other luggage in comfortably. The driver had brought a
mate along with him, so we had the back seat, but at least it
had rear doors so we didn't have to clamber in through the
front. Our driver spoke very little English, so we asked
the hotel security guard, who had kindly helped us load our
bikes onto the roof, to ask the driver to refrain from using the
horn in the usual manner, e.g. one blast a maximum of 5 seconds
from the previous, and maybe keep it down to to a minimum, say
one blast every twenty seconds, especially as Rita was not fully
recovered from the dodgy food the other night. I could see
the driver almost go into shock. Not use the horn?
He started to twitch a lttle, but he recovered well, and off we
jolly well went.
The suspension in the car seemed a little better
than in the Ambassador we had driven to Ankadeli village in, but
with us two and our luggage and bikes, it bounced around quite a
bit on the rough part of the road, which were many and
frequent. We had to remind the driver several times about
not using the horn too much, but he soon got used to it and was
quite surprised that everybody moved off the road without the
aid of the horn. Another convert maybe? I dont think
so.
We had not had any breakfast before we left, so
we suggested he stop at a roadside stall for a snack and some
chai, but it was 3 hours before the driver stopped at a
place. We didn't fancy the grim seating area and the
grimmer cooking area, so I opted for a Pepsi and Rita a glass of
chai while the driver and his mate tucked into their late
breakfast of eggs and something. They seemed to be
expecting us to pay for their food, and as the whole lot only
came to 50 rupees I wasn't too bothered, but it hadn't been
mentioned as part of the deal when we booked the trip.
Perhaps its normal practice.
The road deteriorated after breakfast, not that
it had been particularly good before, but now it seemed more
like a country track, so much so that we wondered if we were on
the right road. The driver didn't seem too sure either,
pausing at length at junctions and discussing it with his
mate. We tried to help out as best we could, pointing out
road signs in a script we couldn't even recognise let alone
read, and which the driver seemed to take little heed of.
Maybe he couldn't read them either? His driving abilities
were limited as well, limited, that is, to accelerating and then
braking hard at the last moment before hitting an obstacle in
the road, be that a mobile obstacle such as a cow or pedestrian,
or a immovable obstacle such as a huge pot hole or a missing
bridge! Speaking of bridges, we crossed many bridges of varying
size at frequent intervals, mostly small ones over gulleys, but
just about all bridges are at a different level from the road
either side, lower or higher. So you would think that
after hitting 20 of these bridges at speed and crashing the
suspension each time, not to mention throwing us around the back
of the car, he would have spotted a pattern starting to
form. i.e. lots of pained noise from the car and lots of
shouts and screams from the back of the car every time we
crossed a bridge. Perhaps he's a slow learner, but after a
while we had to ask him if he would consider slowing down
whenever he came to a bridge. We could see from his
puzzled expression that he didn't understand why, he'd been
driving this way for years with no problem.
After another hour of very rough road and
rougher bridges, Rita was feeling quite unwell again, so she
swapped places with the drivers mate and sat in the front.
At least this way she could try and make him stick to a
reasonable speed as we crossed the rougher parts of the road and
bridges. But even then he still didn't seem to grasp the
problem. We gave up trying.
At 1:30 the driver and his mate were looking
hungry again, so we stopped at a small but busy village for them
to have lunch, which again they expected us to pay for. I
didn't fancy the look of what was on offer so had a packet of my
favourite Kurkuris, a spicy corn chip snack, and Rita certainly
wasn't up to the offered fayre. Only about another 60 km
to go , hope road improves from here, I think we've crossed the
border into Andhra Pradesh now, so that about wraps it up for
Orissa. See you on our Andhra
page. . .
Back to Itinerary
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