Thu 12th January 2006 The final 60 km of
our ride from Jeypore looked like it was going to improve
when we stopped for the driver and his mate to have lunch at a
village where the road widened and was quite reasonable. Well,
relatively, anyway. But soon after setting off again it
narrowed to a single track road and the pot holes returned with
a vengeance. After another hour and a half of neck breaking
jolting, we arrived in Bhadrachelam, our destination for the
day, and where our driver would drop us and return to
Jeypore. The town of Bhadrachelam
seemed quite lively, mainly consisting of a wide main road
through the centre, with the usual array of small stalls
crowding the edges. and behind them the multi storey buildings
of hotels, shops and other businesses. One of the first
things I noted whilst we looked for somewhere to stay was that
the hotels are all called "lodgings". We've noticed in
India that a lot of places with "hotel" in their title
are actually just a basic restaurant, but "hotel" also
used by hotels as we know them. But here, it seems the
name is reserved exclusively for restaurants. Maybe that's a
good thing, stops confusion. There are half a
dozen .lodging places in the town centre, we drove along to look
for the prettiest (well, you've got to have some criteria for
selecting somewhere to stay) and decided on the Sri Srinivasa
Palace. Yes, a palace, but only in name. It had a
small garden display in front with the initials SSP spelled out
in flowers. Nice. I checked out the rooms and
prices, the room looked quite good, a nice clean sheet over the
stained mattress would improve it greatly, and the price was on
295 rupees. Great. I was so surprised I even forgot to ask
for a discount, a compulsory part of acquiring a hotel, sorry,
lodging room. Unloaded our bags and bikes
from the car, the bikes survived the journey intact but were now
covered in a fine red dust, and I paid the driver the balance of
agreed rate. But he wanted us to pay for they're evening
meal as well, even though we'd already paid for breakfast and
lunch. That's another 50 rupees! When will it end?
Will he come back in the morning and expect us to buy them
breakfast? Settled into our
room nicely, like we normally do, bags explode and within 10
minutes it looks like we've been living there for 2 weeks.
Rita wasn't hungry, must have been the bouncy journey, but I
soon got over that and was starving. 5 minutes walk up the
road I found the a family a/c restaurant in the Geetajali Lodge
which looked clean and tidy. Andhra Pradesh has the
reputation of having some of the spiciest food in India, and I
was keen to sample some. I had the Geetajali special
vegetable curry, and what a delight it was too. It didn't
seem too spicy when I started, but it was the sort of hotness
that creeps up on you, so that by halfway through I was really
feeling the effect, and by the end I could safely say it was one
of the spiciest meals I'd had in India in this visit. Back
to Itinerary
Fri 13th to Sat 14th January 2006 Bit
of a slow start today, no need to rush though. Hot water is only
available by the bucket, and it took half an hour to turn
up. The day outside started with quite a mist, nice and
cool, though not too bad at around 18C. By 11am the sun
had burnt its way through and it turned into a bit of a
scorcher, around 30C. Of course, the locals thought there
was a bit of a nip in the air. Had a great lunch at the
Geetajali restaurant, then kept out of the sun for the rest of
the day. Saturday, we were up early and went
for a walk to look for the Sri Rama temple, which I had seen a
picture of on the internet when I'd been trying to find some
information about the town. It was misty again and a nice
temperature for a walk. We walked down to the river
Godavari, which, although it looked like only a trickle at this
time of year, cut a huge swathe through the countryside.
The river banks have been built up to a height of maybe 50 feet,
testament to the vast flow of water that must course down the
river during the monsoon season. The main road through the
town crossed the river over a long, high bridge, maybe a quarter
of a mile across. There are a number of small temples
around the edge of town near the bridge, but we were directed
along a road following the river bank to find the
"big" temple. We followed a well laid out
footpath along the top of the river bank for a kilometre or so,
passed a number of interesting statues depicting various
religious figures, in what are probably well known scenes to
people in the know, but that doesn't include us. Still
interesting to look at, though. (I'll put some pictures on
the AP photos page when I get time) Built
on the side of a hill, the Sri Rama temple has massive
supporting wall on the lower east side, which looks more like a
fortress wall. On the roads surrounding the temple were
the usual array of stalls selling gifts, trinkets and temple
offerings. It was shoes off time at the foot of the long
staircase on the south side, Rita wasn't fussed about going in
so she looked after my shoes (they cost more than some people
earn in a year round here! not that they're expensive, either)
and I climbed the 60 to 70 steps into a courtyard within the
temple. There were a lot of people in the courtyard,
mostly queuing up at several windows, it looked like to buy
tickets or something. I couldn't see what for so I just
carried on to the main entrance into the temple itself.
Inside, it was very noisy with people chatting loudly and even
shouting at each other, all very strange for someone brought up
to believe that inside a church you only spoke in hushed tones,
if at all, except, of course, as part of a service. Outside
again I found Rita had gone window shopping up the street, with
my shoes. I hopped around for a while until she returned,
then we walked around to the east side to try and find a
better view of the temple. On the hill behind the Sri Rama
is another, much small, temple, with a good view over the
surrounding area. I felt a bit cheeky going into this
temple just to get a view of the Sri Rama, but I left a small
donation in the collection box. On the way back down we
met a couple of girls who invited us into their garden for a cup
of chai and a chat. Soon the whole family were out in the
garden with us, and we were treated to some special food
prepared especially for this festival day. Festival day?
What festival is that? Apparently, today is one of the
most important festivals of the Hindu year, and we knew nothing
about it. Unlike Diwali, which you see coming for weeks
before, this festival seems to creep up unannounced. Makar
Sankranti marks the end of winter (but it only started 3 weeks
ago!) and is celebrated in different ways around the
country. Here, they also call it Pongol, which is the rice
harvest festival. They also gave us some goa fruit, a bit
like a round pear, from their own tree in the back garden. Very
nice too. Thanks to the girls, Keerthi, Spooti and Kranthi,
and their family, for a very pleasant hour of chat in their
garden. The mist had been burnt off by the
sun by now, and it was getting uncomfortably warm in direct
sunshine for us, so we wandered back towards the town centre
along the back street, trying to keep in the shade when we
could. We noticed a lot of the houses had white chalk
drawings on the ground in front of the doors, some had been
colourfully filled in. We also saw some cow dung cakes
(no, not for eating) which are placed in front of the house for
Pongal and set light to. Sounds like great fun to me.
Another tradition., we were told about but didn't see, is to
decorate your cattle with flowers and paint (water based I
presume) and take them round to your neighbours houses to wish
them a happy Pongal. Back in the
town we made plans for our escape to Warangal, tomorrow would be
the day. The road here had been pretty rough, so assuming
it would continue to be as rough, we planned to catch a regular
bus to the nearest train station at Kottagudem, 25km away, then
get a train to Warangal, a further 100 km on. Having made
our plan, we returned to the Geetajali for another great Andhra
meal. Back
to Itinerary Sun 15th January 2006 Checked
out of the Sri Srinivasa Palace by 9am, not a lot to pay as we'd
paid 500 rupees in advance and it was only 290 a night.
Bargain. Cycled the 200 meters to the bus station and Rita
tried to find a bus to Kottagudem while I watched the
bikes. I could hear snatches of the conversation, and it
went something like: "When is the next bus to
Kottagudem?"
"Kottagudem? Kottagudem?"
"Yes, Kottagudem, when is the next bus"
"Bus has already gone"
"When is the next bus?"
"Bus has already gone"
"Are there no more buses to Kottagudem today"
"That bus there is going at 9:30"
Incredible India! At
last, a straight answer. We double checked with the
conductor on the bus, who concurred, so we loaded our bikes onto
the roof rack and boarded the bus. Only 20 minutes to go,
we thought, until the driver seemed to get bored of waiting,
started up the engine and we were off. Most unusual to leave
early. It turned out that this bus was going
all the way to Warangal, taking about 6 hours to cover the
120km. We soon decided that bus seemed fairly comfortable
(relatively, anyway) and it would probably make sense to go all
the way instead of getting off at the train station and hoping
to find space for us and our bikes and bags on a train.
Weighing up the pros and cons, we decided to stay on the
bus. The time passed fairly quickly, and we even persuaded
the bus driver to cut down on the use of the horn, something he
found highly amusing at first, but he took it in good spirit and
we had a relatively horn free journey, quite relaxing really,
and not half as bumpy as our car ride to Bhadrachelam. The
bus arrived on time in Warangal mid afternoon. Warangal is
in our guide book and we had already decided to head for the
best sounding hotel in town, the Ashoka. Unfortunately,
there was no map of the town in the book, neither did it give an
address, so we stopped frequently and asked directions to the
hotel. Strangely enough, everyone we asked seemed to know
where it was, but we seemed to be going a long way from the town
centre, so when one person told us it was another 4 or 5 km, we
turned around and went back to try some of the hotels near the
station. The best we had seen so far was the Surhya,
nearest the station, they had space and a non-a/c room was only
400 rupees a night. Great room too, with windows on two
sides it was nice and bright, maybe a little on the small side
but very comfortable. The
hotels restaurant is on the ground floor, it looked quite nice
as we went in, but it was so dark, just a small very low wattage
bulb in the ceiling above each table. We sat down and were
handed menus, but it was too dark to read them. I got out
my mini-maglight to read the menu, and looking round saw other
customer were using the glow from their mobile phones and
lighters to do the same. We asked if they could turn the
lights on, but they said there were no other lights to turn on.
The meal itself was quite good, and the restaurant filled up
while we were there, so it was obviously a popular place,
although we hadn't noticed any other restaurants around when we
were cycling earlier except for a couple of basic
dhabas. Back
to Itinerary Mon
16th to Wed 18th January 2006 The
menu in our room had a variety of South Indian specialities in
the breakfast section, including our favourite masala dosa, and
even better, it said it was complimentary to hotel guests.
Unfortunately, most of the items had been withdrawn 2 years ago,
we were told by room service, and now we could only have idlees
and sambar. Idlees are a boring, tasteless little cake
sort of thing made from rice flour, which I have never taken to,
so we passed on the offer, we'd get some fruit from s street
stall instead. We planned to visit the
Warangal Fort this morning, and maybe the 1000 Pillar Temple
later on. I asked for a map of the area at reception, and
was proudly shown an outline map of Warangal region with 4
little stars arranged on it, denoting the relative positions of
the areas main attractions. Unfortunately, there was no
other detail that you would expect to find on any normal map,
such as roads, railways, rivers and lakes. Not much use
really, but we were assured by the receptionist that this was
the best map of the area available. So we set off towards
(hopefully) the fort with the detailed route given to us by the
receptionist, its 4km that way, sort of. With the advice
of several helpful people on the way, we found the fort without
to much difficulty. Well, it turns out to be almost a mile
across, so it would have been a little embarrassing to have
missed it. The fort dates from
the 11th and 12th centuries, and consists of three concentric
defensive walls. The outer two walls are made of mud and
badly eroded, but the gateways and inner wall made of large
granite blocks are still largely intact. The approach
roads to the gates were surrounded by high granite walls for 50
metres before the actual gate, with a ninety degree turn half
way along, to make a direct attack on the gate more
difficult. Today, within the walls of the fort, a lot of
the land has been given over to farming, and small houses line
the roads though the fort. We passed many smiling friendly
people on the way to the centre, through tree massive gateways,
before arriving at the restored palace. Didn't seem too
big for a palace to me, but apparently most of the building
within the fort had been destroyed in various assaults over the
centuries. Maybe they had only partially restored this
building, we could only guess as there was nobody to ask and the
signs were only in Telegu and Hindi. A few
hundred metres further on were the most impressive remains of
the fort, not so much a building as a collection of intricately
carved stonework, mostly in black basalt, which are all that
remains of the Siva temple that was here. There is a 100
rupee entry charge into the compound for foreigners, 5 rupees
for Indians, and as we could see most of it from the perimeter
fence, Rita decided to sit in the shade by a tea stall, chatting
to the locals while I went in for a closer look. I paid
the entrance fee and was handed a special foreigners entry
ticket, which I put in my wallet and was about to walk on in
when the same guy who had given me the ticket, asked for it back
so he could check it. Obviously the official ticket checker was
not on duty at this time so the official ticket seller had to
perform both duties, but why he couldn't have checked the ticket
before he handed it over is beyond me. One of
the first things I spotted was a map of the fort area on a
notice board, and it was in English. One great use of
digital cameras is taking pictures of maps at places such as
this to refer to as you go round, especially when there are no
other maps available. I could see now from this map that
we had covered all the important sites on the way
in. The stonework in the compound was quite amazing
to see, and as most of it was carved in basalt, it had survived
the weather very well. A lot of the pieces had been
reassembled to form walls and archways, but they had obviously
not be put back in the same original order, so the overall
appearance was rather haphazard, but that didn't really detract
from the intricate carvings of animals, people and gods.
I'll leave the description to the photos, they'll do a far
better job than I could ever do with words. Next
to the compound is a children's play garden, with the added
attraction of small temple atop a massive granite boulder. I
paid the 5 rupees entrance fee and 10 rupees extra for taking in
a camera (at least it was the same price as for Indians), walked
through the surprisingly lush and pleasant gardens, and
clambered 50 metres up the steps cut into the side of the
rock. The temple wasn't very interesting, to me anyway,
but there was a small stone tower which had a good view of the
surrounding area from the top. I could see the big granite
rock in the centre of the town, just behind our hotel, which
also had a temple on top of it. That's a feature of the
landscape around here, mostly flat plains but with the
occasional outcrop of weathered granite popping out of the
ground occasionally. After a few hours in the
fort, we decided to head to the Ashoka Hotel for lunch, it
allegedly had a good restaurant or two, and it was somewhere
near the thousand pillar temple. We retraced our route back to
the town centre, then headed north west for about 8 km until we
found the hotel. The bar/restaurant was ok, fairly good
menu, and we even persuaded them to let us open a curtain and
let the sunlight in on our little corner of the
restaurant. They looked at us like we'd gone mad, but let
us getaway with it. It's the little victories that matter
most. Outside, the sun was beating down now, so we took
our time over the meal and had a few drinks as well, something
I'm sure they found annoying, as every time we ordered something
they would bring the bill out again with the latest item
scribbled on the end. Why can't they just wait until we
ask for the bill, but that's not the way it works around here,
we often get the bill plonked down on the table as we're
finishing our main course.. Finally
we stopped annoying them, paid up and cycled back towards our
hotel, stopping at the thousand pillar temple on the way.
Bit of a misnomer, I think, I counted a maximum of 10 pillars in
the whole place! Perhaps it not finished yet, I'll give them the
benefit of the doubt. Arrived back at our hotel hot and
tired, retired to our room for a well deserved
rest. On Tuesday we had
planned to go to Pakhal lake, some 50km from Warangal, but we
didn't get our act together in time, so we ended up having a
quiet day in and around the hotel, and doing our chores,
laundry, etc Wednesday we got it together
finally, booked train tickets for tomorrow to Secunderabad, then
caught a bus to Narsampet and hired a auto-rickshaw for the 10km
trip out to the lake. Pakhal Lake is man made and was created in
the 12th century as part of a water management scheme. It forms
part of a wildlife sanctuary, and is, apparently, one of
the richest areas in the state for wildlife, including tiger,
panther, hyena and many others. The lake is also the
winter home of a large number of migratory birds. So we
were a little disappointed to arrive at the lake to find little
evidence of migratory birds, but a lot of evidence of picnicking
Indians. The shoreline was littered with paper plates,
plastic bags, and stones gathered in circles to make a fire
place. The fire places invariably had a patch of bird
feathers next to them, perhaps the locals have eaten all the
lake birds? We did spot a few birds on a distant shore,
and as it was 2pm I guess it could have been too warm for them
to be too active. There were a few parakeets flying
around, disappearing into their nests in holes in tree trunks,
but little else. Our rickshaw driver had brought a mate
along with him, and just to completely spoil our day, he
insisted on shouting at us from a distance every 5 minutes or
so, just to let us know they were still waiting for us.
Not that it would have changed things that much if he had kept
quiet, there were so many comings and goings and people making
unnecessary noise, that no bird would ever consider this part of
the lake for a winter vacation. Disappointed, we returned to
Warangal by rickshaw and bus. Had
our meal of the day in the hotel restaurant, where we quizzed
the staff about the lighting situation, just for a spot of light
relief! Pardon the pun. After we'd finished our
meal, accompanied by much use of our torches, just to emphasise
the point, and after we'd all had a good laugh about it, they
bought us a customer's suggestions leaflet. Rita had a
field day and filled up both sides of the page, then made sure
they could read it. I dont think they took it to
heart. Back
to Itinerary Thu
19th January 2006 Our train was due
at 9am, so to give us some time to spare we were packed and
checking out by just after 8. The station is only across
the road, but we needed to find the right platform and get ready
to board the train in a rush and find our carriage and
seats. Rita settles the bill while I loaded up the bikes
with our bags. But it was only when we had got to the
station that I double checked with Rita that they had knocked
off the deposit of 1000 rupees I had paid at check-in. No,
they hadn't mentioned that. I found the receipt and Rita
raced back to the hotel, where they acted as if all was in order
and just handed back the extra money. Surely they must
have thought a thousand tip on a 1600 bill was a bit
excessive? The train was half an hour
late, which gave us extra time to try and find which point on
the platform our carriage should pull up at. We got it
fairly close, only a coach or so out, but the doors were pretty
crowded, and after I had pushed my way on with my folded bike
and bags, about 6 people pushed in front of Rita and
piled in after me, causing the blockage in the doorway. The
whistle blew and the train started to move out, barely 30
seconds after it had arrived, with Rita still struggling to get
in through the door, and me trapped the other side of the wall
of people screaming for them to get out of the way.
Luckily, an off duty railway worker grabbed her bike and pulled
it and Rita up into the carriage, just as the train gathered
speed. That was a close one, although there is another
train an hour after this one, Rita has our tickets.
Strangely enough, I had been looking at a sign on the platform
earlier, saying that travelling without a ticket could incur a
300 rupee fine, and/or a 6 months prison sentence! It seemed a
bit disproportionate to me, but who am I to argue. I could
certainly afford the fine, but didn't fancy the
time. It was about this time,
when people started to settle down, that I realised the carriage
was not a sleeper, as I had earlier assumed it would be because
of the coach designation S2, and just had rows of seats with a
small luggage rack above. So there was nowhere for us to
stash our bikes. Well, not near our allocated seats anyway,
which I could see had already been taken by someone
else. We ended up stacking them up behind the door, with
one of them resting on top of the sink. The guy that had helped
Rita on to the train said it would be ok as the train would not
be stopping at any more stations before Secunderabad. When
the coffee wallah came round, Rita bought him a cup to say
thanks for the help. He was well chuffed, his head didn't
stop shaking from side to side for several minutes.
Soon after, an awkward fat woman who was sitting on the floor
near us and blocking the way for everyone, indicated she wanted
some water and that our bike was in the way. So we washed
out a paper coffee cup and gave her some mineral water from our
bottle, she didn't know what to say after that. Another
passenger, stood near us, whose name turned out to be Ashok, was
on his way to see his sister in Hyderabad. He was
fascinated to talk to us, he had never spoken to a foreigner
before, and spent the rest of the journey practising his
English, which was quite good but the accent was a little
difficult to understand sometimes. When
we arrived in Secunderabad, the final destination of the train,
we had plenty of time so we stood back and let everyone else get
off first, before we retrieved our bikes and bags.
Struggled over the foot bridge with bike and bags, well, I did,
Rita hired a porter. I'm too tight, 40 rupees for 5
minutes work is far too much I think! (Complaints on a
postcard to the usual address) Outside in the blazing sunshine,
we bypassed the crowds of touts insisting on knowing where we
were going ("There and back to see how far it is" is
my favourite retort) we peddled off to look for the Karan hotel,
seemed to be the best option in our guide book. Took us
some time to find it, it wasn't where the guide book was and we
were fed a lot of duff directions by the locals, and when
we did locate it, we found it full. Must be something to
do with the Congress Party All India Plenary session, their name
for a part conference, which is taking place this weekend in a
stadium in Hyderabad. We found the next half dozen hotels
we tried were also full, and were just starting to wonder if the
whole town was full when we found a room in the Ambassador, but
only for two nights. "Please Madam, you must promise to
leave after two days, we are fully booked after that". Much
shaking of the head. Well, its a start, and it gives us a
couple of days to find somewhere else. The
room was bright and airy, and at the back of the hotel as well,
so not too much noise from the street. No air-con, which
we dont much like anyway because it makes too much noise, but a
lovely marble floor and a comfy bed. Satellite TV of
course, I'm just trying to remember the last hotel where we
didn't have satellite TV in our room, it was quite some time
ago. That's one thing that has changed since we came to
India in '96, just about every hotel room above a couple of
hundred rupees a night has sat tv, back then, I dont think we
had it once in 3 months. We went back to reception to hand
over our passports for them to make a photocopy, probably extra
security for the plenary, and the guy on reception said we might
be able to stay longer than 2 days, he'd let us know. Across
the road is a big restaurant complex called Paradise, which has
restaurants on several floors and an open air section as
well. No complaints about the lighting here, well, during
the daytime anyway. We had our late lunch/early dinner,
Indian dishes only. There were a few Chinese dishes on the
menu, but no international dishes, quite surprising for a big
restaurant in a big city, I thought. It was all very good
though, and not as expensive as we might have thought from the
look of the place. In the evening we took a
walk down Mahatma Gandhi Road, or MG Road as it's know to it's
mates. The range of shops seemed quite different from the
normal mix in other towns we've been to in recent months, there
were no general stores, or "daily needs" stores and
they are often referred to, and there were a few posh looking
shops selling gold and diamonds, and clothes and shoe
shops. They were shops that you actually went into,
instead of standing at the counter at the entrance pointing at
things you want. We stocked up with a few essentials in a
well supplied chemist, found some decent toilet roll (couldn't
find any at all in Warangal) and some deodorant. Bet you
wondered what that smell was that started last week when I ran
out! Back
to Itinerary Fri
20th to Thu 26th January 2006 Cycled
into Hyderabad from our hotel in Secunderabad, about 8km, down
MG Road and along the Tank Bund, running alongside the large man
made Husain Sagar Lake, which is not only the main water supply
for the city, but also the destination for a lot of the cities
sewage and industrial waste. It didn't smell too bad
as we went past, but I certainly wouldn't like to drink it. There
was a light mist this morning, making it a bit cooler, just
right for a nice cycle. The traffic was quite heavy, but
strangely enough, that makes city cycling safer than cycling out
of town, in some ways. In heavy traffic in town, all of
the traffic on our side of the road is travelling in the same
direction (well, ok, almost all) and because of the volume of
traffic, it travels at a relatively slow speed, about our normal
cycling speed. So we are not confronted with the main
problem of out of town cycling, which is oncoming traffic on our
side of the road intent on forcing us off the road. Of
course, there are a lot more chances of collisions with so much
traffic, and we did witness one poor cyclist get squished in
between two small trucks, who just closed in together with him
in between. He got away quite lightly, no visible signs of
injury, which is more than we could say for his mangled
bike. Ah, the joys of cycling in India. We
cycled up a short, steep hill to the Burla Temple and the Burla
Science museum and planetarium, on top of a hill to the south of
the Husain Sagar. The temple is brilliant white and quite
impressive to look at, but we didn't go inside. The
planetarium is one of the most modern in India, so we booked in
for the first show of the day at 11:30, 17 rupees each, which,
luckily, was in English. Climbed up the long stone
stairway to the planetarium building, and were glad to find it
had air conditioning. Inside, we found a large number of
schoolchildren with a few teachers. This could be a noisy
experience, we thought, but actually they turned outto be fairly
well behaved and didn't make too much noise. The show was fairly
interesting, although the presenter used the phrase "Can
you imagine" far to many times, I thought what you see at a
planetarium should be based on fact, not imagination! Outside
the sun had reached its zenith and it was baking hot, so we went
into the in the Science museum, for an extra 15 rupees
each. On the entrance floor there are some interactive
exhibits to demonstrate physical science, they were well worn
and mostly purely mechanical, although a few had buttons to
press that lit up sections of the exhibit. There were
quite a few playing with the contraptions and they seemed to be
having a lot of fun, judging by the level of noise being
generated. Upstairs there was supposed to be a space
exhibit, but it turned out to have been temporarily replaced by
a saree sale. I suppose you've got to get your priorities
in order. By 2pm we had seen enough of the museum and its
exhibits, and, more importantly, missed the hottest part of the
day, although we find its sometime after 3pm when it starts to
get noticeably cooler, or should I say less hot! Set off
on our bikes south to the Char Minar, built at the end of the
16th century as the grand entrance to the Royal Palace complex,
a square building with a tall minaret at each corner and huge
arches on each side, it now stands at a crossroads in the old
town. Best seen at night, apparently, when it is well lit
up, it is still quite an impressive sight during the
day. The area is very busy, being at the entrance to
the main bazaar, and while we were there, a large Muslim funeral
procession went past, blocking the road for some
time. Cycled back up north
to Secunderabad, managing to take a wrong turning on the way and
then taking 20 minutes and much asking of directions to find our
way back onto the right road. The roads were well blocked
up at some places, mainly die to the Congress Plenary, which
starts tomorrow. We were held up at some traffic lights
for 10 minutes while they cleared the path for a motorcade to
pass through, though we couldn't see through the tinted windows
of the cars to see who was being transported around. Evening
meal at the Paradise Garden. Biryani is the local specialty,
so I felt obliged to have a chicken version, which was quite
nice if a little too much rice, but that's the way they like it
around here. It's served with a spicy yoghurt and a sort of mild
curry sauce. I was hoping it would have been a bit
spicier, especially with the reputation Andhra has, but I guess
they tame it down a bit for us namby-pamby
foreigners. Saturday - the first
day of Congress plenary, after our tiring day cycling around in
the sun yesterday, had a quiet day in and around the
hotel. Sunday - A day at the
races. Yes, Hyderabad race course is well known amongst
race goers in India, and deservedly so, its one of the finest
race course in the country. We got an auto-rickshaw down
to the track, only 80 rupees for the half hour trip. This
was the first time we had persuaded the driver to use the meter
instead of asking for a price at the start. Usually they just
say the meters not working and ask as much as they dare, so it
was a welcome change from the norm. We went
in through the members gate, buying a day visitors ticket for
170 rupees, a bit expensive but it gave us access to the members
stands. The buildings are very clean and quite well
laid out, the paddock is nicely kept grass, with two large
viewing stands either side. The main stand is a massive
structure, with two levels of seating, and a large grassy area
in front leading up to the track itself. We
weren't sure of the betting procedure, so we went to one of the
Tote windows and asked if they used betting slips, a question
which drew a complete blank. Obviously not then. Do
you do each way bets. Another blank. Ok, 100 rupees
on horse number five to win. That seemed to work, I was
given a small receipt with a code, race 1, number 5, 100
rupees. Simple, but effective. Rita followed the
same procedure and went for horse number 2. We
watched the horses being paraded around the paddock, number 5
looked lively and I thought I had made a good choice.
Above the paddock, next to the results board is a list of the
prices offered by the bookies, and my horse had stated out at 7
to 2, but had shortened to 3 to 1 while the horses were paraded
around the paddock. I said to Rita that perhaps I should
have taken the odds when I placed the bet, but then considered
what a fuss that could have created. Probably best not to
have asked. The first race was due to start a
1:15, so we made our way to the upper floor of the big stand to
watch. I'm not a big race-goer, but all the races I've
been to I seem to remember the horses went around the track in
an anti-clockwise direction. However, here, they seem to be set
up to go around clockwise. Unless, of course, they are
going to come out of the stalls backwards, something I pondered
for only a second or two before dismissing as being too
ridiculous, even for India. Shortly after 1:15, the
starters flag was dropped (or is it raised? I'm never
sure) and the gates flew open. But horse number five
was incredibly slow off the mark, so slow that I thought it must
have been a false start and they were all being recalled.
But no, the rest of the field charged on, with my horse (ok, not
my horse, the horse I bet on) chasing behind. All
credit to my horse, it did very well, not only catching up, but
overtaking the rest of the field and won the race by two
lengths! Just imagine what it could do if it could work
out its problems at the start! Rita's horse came in last,
ten lengths behind the next to last horse. thought I'd
better mention that. So, 100 rupees at the
starting price of 3 to 1, that meant I should get back 400
rupees. Right? So why did they only give me
240? I protested that I'd been short changed, so they
kindly explained the process, which was all very well but they
only spoke Hindi, so I didn't quite grasp it. Eventually,
another punter (there are signs at the race course calling the
customer punters, so its official) explained that the odds
displayed on the bookies-odds board were not related to the Tote
in any way, the Tote was run on a dividend basis, and for this
race, the winnings were 12 rupees for every 5 rupees
placed. So that explained the 240 rupees, and you dont
even get your stake back. I felt cheated. Incredible
India. Next race, we tried the bookies,
which we found out the back of the big stand, but it was such a
struggle getting there and back to the main stand that we
decided to stick with the Tote for the rest of the races.
We didn't come to try and make our fortune, just for a bit of
fun. I always assume that whatever money I take to a
racecourse, I should expect to loose. That way, I
shouldn't go away disappointed. Today, I was glad I
was sticking to my usual philosophy, as after getting the winner
on the first race, my luck changed and I didn't get any
more. Rita, however, did manage two or three winners, and
ended up less down on the day than me, Having said
that, I only spent the equivalent of 12 quid, which included the
entrance ticket, a flutter on each race and some food and
drink. Cant be bad. Of course, it might have been
quite a bit more if there had been a bar, but the strongest
thing on sale was a bottle of 7up or a strong cup of
coffee. Can you imagine a race track in England without a
bar? Monday
- another hot day. Had breakfast in a South Indian
restaurant, a lovely masala dosa. Rita went to the
Salanjung museum in Hyderabad while I chilled out in the
hotel. The museum had on display amongst many other
things some fabulous south Indian carved wooden furniture,
a complete set of 6 dining chairs made entirely of ivory, a
magnificent musical clock made from 350 pieces with
a little woman popping out a minute before the hour and a little
man beating out the seconds on a anvil, apparently made in
England and accredited as one of the best exhibits in the
museum. There was also a special jewelry exhibition,
10 rupees entry for Indians, 500 rupees for foreigners, so
needles to say, Rita didn't go in despite her love of all that
glitters!!!!. Tuesday. Cycled to
the other side of Hyderabad to Golconda Fort, about 15 to 20 km
from our hotel. My bike speedo has packed up, so I'm
having to guess distances now. The journey wasn't too bad,
traffic wise, and it took us just over an hour, with several
stops to ask directions. There are quite a few very large
direction signs on gantries above the road, but unfortunately,
someone saw fit to cover them with huge banners for the Congress
Party Plenary. I suppose that's more important than people
finding their way around the city. There's
been a fort on the site since the 12th century, but it has been
rebuilt several times. Most of the stone walls date from
the 15th to 16th centuries, and a lot of the building were
rebuilt since then. It's quite an impressive fort, though, with
big stone gateways, and various inner sections, rising up to the
top of the granite outcrop in the middle, on which stands the
Durbar Hall, a more recent addition. From the top there
are fine views across the surrounding area, including the Qutb
Shahi Tombs, a couple of kilometres to the North. That
save us going there, then. It was midday by the time
we reached the top, so, finding the sun a little too hot on the
way back down, we sheltered in the shade of a wall on the steps
back down, where we chatted to an Australian couple, Tina and
Joe. They had just come back from several weeks in Sri
Lanka, where we had been thinking about possibly visiting while
we were in India, but they said the situation was declining, and
although most of the country would be ok, the international
airport tended to be a prime target for the Tamil Tigers, to
create maximum effect. We'd already decided not to go to
Sri Lanka this time, we've seen quite a bit about the rising
problems on the Indian news programs. Another time. Cycled
back to our hotel along the same route, managing not to get lost
this time, like we did the other day. It was almost 5pm
when we got back, fairly hot and suntanned, but we had managed
to keep drinking plenty of fluids so we were just about ok when
we reached the hotel. Wednesday
25th. Cooler start to the day this morning, quite a
pleasant temperature. After an easy morning having
breakfast and chilling, we got an auto to the train station to
book our escape. At the information counter in the
station, we were told there is a train at 7:30am to Yesvantpur,
which is on the outskirts of Bangalore, and that the
reservations office is ten minutes walk east of the station,
next to the bus station. That's convenient
then. The queue for the Ladies Only counter was a
lot short than the rest, so Rita went in armed with our booking
request form. Twenty minutes later, when She finally got
served, the clerk at first said there was no such train, then,
when he had found the train, said there were no seats.
What about tourist quota? You must see the supervisor, window
36, we were told. More queuing, we assumed, but no, there
was nobody waiting to see the supervisor. This shouldn't
take long, we thought. But the supervisor insisted there
was no train from Secunderabad to Yesvantpur in the morning,
there were only evening trains! It took ten minutes
before she admitted there was actually a train to Yesvantpur,
departing Secunderabad at 8:10am. She said the problem had been
that we said the train went from Secunderabad, but the train
started from New Delhi! We don't care where it starts
from, we just want to get on it here! Aaaaaggggghhhh!
Incredible India! Because we wanted tourist quota
seats, we had to pay using either pounds sterling or US dollars,
or produce an encashment receipt to prove we had brought rupees
with foreign currency notes. Does anybody do that these days?
What a palaver! And the tickets only came to 568 rupees.
Still, we had completed our escape plan, and had a 12 hour train
ride to look forward to on Friday. Back
at the hotel, I went round to my local "wine" shop to
buy some takeouts. I'd become quite a regular customer
over the last few days, not quite on first name terms but they
knew what I wanted when my smiling face appeared at the
counter. Today, though, there was a more serious air about
the place, Tomorrow, they warned, we are closed, you must but
beer today. Persuaded me! Tomorrow is Republic Day,
and apparently, the "wine" shops will be closed. Thursday
26th - Republic Day, one of the 4 public holidays in
India. We watched a number of programs on an Indian news
channel on tv, trying to find out more about what this day means
to Indians. There was some guy in the studio talking to
various rporters around the country, mostly at schools, and the
guy in the studio would ask a question of the children at the
schools, such as "Why is Republic Day celebrated on 26th
January", to which we heard various answers, but we were
never given a specific correct answer. So we were left to try
and work out which sounded the best answer. Wanting
to know for certain, I looked it up on the internet and found
that 26/01/30 was the day that the Congress part passed its Purna Swaraj
(“Complete Self-Rule”) resolution, and they started
celebrating it as Republic Day in 1950. Could be wrong,
though, I'm sure some of Indian friends will let me know if I
am. The biggest parade is held at
Rajpath in New Delhi, a big military affair, and also floats
presented by each of the states. Rita watched it all, and
was very impressed, especially a fantastic display of dancing by
people of the Meghalaya and Nagaland states. There was
also an interview with the president, Abdul Kalam, which also
impressed Rita, so much so that she went out and bought his
autobiography, Wings of Fire. Back
to Itinerary Fri
27th January 2006
Up at 6, packed up and checked out by 7am.
Cycled to the station, nice and quiet on the roads.
Arrived at the station with an hour to spare, that gave us
plenty of time to try and find the platform our train would
arrive on. A very helpful policeman went off and found out
that our train should be on platform 4. We have yet to
find an Indian station with a lift to get to the walkways
between the platforms, and this was no exception, so we carried
our bikes and bags up the crowded stairs to the walkway, and
along to platform 4. There, we folded up our bikes
and put them in their bags, makes things easier on the train and
raises less questions.
We had 40 minutes to kill, so we tool it in
turns to wander around the platforms, seeking out any suitable
supplies for the 12 hour journey. I went to the
information desk to double check what platform we should be on,
and whether the train was on time, but the only information I
could glean was that the train had not been allocated a platform
yet, and there would be an announcement when it came in.
8:10 came and went with no announcements for our train, and the
train that up until then had been blocking platform 4
departed. Hopefully, our train would come in on platform 4
now.
All the announcements up until now had been in
several languages, with English first. But then there was
one announcement in only one language, dont ask me which,
it wasn't English. We asked everyone we could where our
train was, and were told by several people that there were no
trains to Bangalore in the mornings, only in the evenings.
Aaaagggghhh. Here we go again. Finally, one helpful
person said our train was standing on platform 10. So off
we went, as fast as we could, me carrying the bagged up bikes,
one on each shoulder, and one of my panniers on my back, and
Rita carrying the rest of the luggage. Sure enough, there,
on platform 10, was the 2650 service to Yesvantpur. Now,
to find coach S3. The coaches normally have there designation
displayed on the side, but no sign of them on this train.
We asked someone on the platform, he pointed at the coach next
to us. Oh, yeah, I'm not falling for that one. I
asked someone else, they pointed at the same carriage. How
do you know? Where does it say this is carriage S3?
Perhaps it's written in special ink on the side of the carriage
and if you got ultra violet vision, you can see it That must
be it! Incredible India.
The train pulled out soon after we jumped on,
still no announcements had been made, in English anyway, about
its arrival and departure on platform 10. It's almost as
if the whole of Secunderabad are in denial about the existence
of this train, right from the the reservation office supervisor
through to the station announcer. Perhaps its a ghost
train? Maybe platform 10 doesn't really exist, and we only
found it by slipping into a different space/time continuum? We
could be in for an interesting ride.
Found our seat with no problem, and, most
surprisingly, there was no one sat in them. Now there's a
first. Put our bikes and bags up on the top bunk, luckily
allocated to us, and sat down for the ride to Bangalore. Sorry,
Yesvantpur. The train wasn't too busy, there were the occasional
empty seats, and there was a steady flow of chai-wallahs and
various food vendors crusing the corrdors of the train to keep
up topped up. We had bought several newspapers ,
English language of course, and I had saved up a few Sudoku
puzzles from the last few days. Oh no, I cant believe I
let that slip. My secret is out. My name is Paul, I am a
Sudoku freak! It all started in New Zealand in May last
year, I was .........zzzzzzz zzzzzzzz
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