Bangalore excursion

On Saturday 8th of July, my supposed lat day in Bangalore, I had lunch at Dominos Pizza with Rojan and two of his friends, then back to my hotel, packed and left with my 5 new friends to one of their;'s friend cottage just outside Madiker. They had decided to leave the city for a small break with fresh rural air and because their friend's house there was a huge TV projector to watch the world cup finals, and lucky me they invited me along.
We left in tour cars, the first was carrying two couples and the second was all the bags Ullas and me. We had a good time talking about all and nothing at the time, struggling to find a wine shop along the road.
About half way through our trip we had arrived in Mysore and they decided to stop for a break and a couple drinks in a club called Hookah in Planet X.
In that club I waited for last songs to finally go and dance with a stranger. Luckily I was not to drunk and I manged to find a group of beautiful girls studying dentistry in Mysore. I picked a cute Tibetan girl and danced with her one song in half before the music stopped. I then went at this girl's table for a little chat and pick up phone numbers of her and her friends but we soon all had to empty the club.
The friends with whom I came had organized with some friends they had met in the club to go after party on Chamundi hill where we had a beautiful landscape of the city. I met a lot of cool people and had a great chat with many people.
We must of been altogether 15 people but we were making enough noise for a reve party.
After that, we drove to the cottage house near Madiker anoyher 3h drive. In the cars most people sleped, I think I was the only one who was not a driver and still boosted up. But by the time we got to Madiker, we all were definitely happy to hit the sack. The next day, we decided to for some white water rafting, so we drove in a Jeep to the departure of our rafting journey, and there I got explained that I was no more in civilized India, but I was from now on in the jungle India. In the river, there were signs all over to be aware of crocodiles, and on the other side of the river, there was all kind of animals living, from elephants to monkeys. Dangerous adventure to go out there on your own, because in the wild life humans are not the king of animals anymore.
The elephants are the most dangerous I have been told because they move in large groups and ravage anything standing thing on there way. This frightens a lot of agriculturers who see they crops ravaged by the elephant march.
Anyway we went down the river for a trip of 20km through some waterfalls of up to 4 feet high, so not much but a great adrenaline shot.
After the 4h of rafting through the jungle, my friends were to tyred to stay up for the Federer vs Nadal final of Wimbledon. Anyway I watched it with the gardeners of the cottage as they served me several glasses of whisky.
Of course on grass Federer still has the lead and won the match in 4 sets.
So this was a promising start of the evening, I then have been taught how to play a new card game because I was quite curious to understand how they can all stay and play cards together for 24h in a row. Anyway, at 11:30pm the World Cup final was starting and this did not give much time to en joy the game.
So I sat down in front of the huge projection they had of the ESPN channel.
I listened to both the national anthems and I must say that the french national anthem made me feel a very special vibe this time. I decided to take bets with two of my friends, I bet on the french with Ulass for five straight shots and still on the same wining team with Vikas for a hundred push ups in series of 12.
At 11:37pm, I felt a little to confident after Zidane struck the first goal into the back of the net after a penalty shot, but my confidence was deceived 12 minutes later when they left a breach to in the defence which went straight to Materazzi's head. But in the second half, France had taken the lead again and everything was back in order.... no, not really. France was ruling the field but not reaching the back of the net, and this is the only detail in football which makes a difference. As everybody knows I ended up loosing both of my bets and didn't find energy to do more than 82 push ups, but just this already gave me cramps for the next few days. After the match, there was nothing much to do, so I just digested that alcohol around a table where we were all chatting together. After a while, I was asked why was I happy to go back home?
The first thing that came to my head was that I was happy to go back to what I consider as civilisation. This comment of mine was very badly interpreted by the people I was with. They were upset to hear my state such a thing, saying that in India you can do all you can do in Western countries and even much more and that it was because of people like me spreading a bad word on India, that India was considered abroad as an underdeveloped country. Waou, I didn't expect this at all, but it seemed like the people I was with were totally forgetting where they were coming from and couldn't see anymore just outside their own lawn.
On the next morning, I woke up and decided to hang out with the gardeners for a little while in the neighboring home, they welcomed me arms wide open as they were still carrying on with the same card game. I started speaking about my trip and as soon as I mentioned Dubai, they all became very excited and wanted to see some pictures of my journey. So one gardener took his computer out and I showed them all I had done in Dubai. They seemed really amazed by the cult of money there was in that city and the amount of ideas that they had come out with so far. They then hooked the computer to the wire-less network and showed me funny adverts gloaming around the internet.
Later on that day on our way back to Bangalore, we stopped to visit a Tibetan temple named Bylakuppe. This temple definitely was one of the most beautiful temples I had seen so far in India, first because it was very lively, a lot of monks were living around and in the temple, secondly because this sacred place was amazingly well entertained, thirdly because the architecture and the sculptures on and in the buildings were beautiful peaces of art and finally because there in the temple's campus it really felt like were living somewhere in Tibet, it's a little paradise in the middle of Karnataka.
After this visit I decided to stay in Mysore overnight to see the city of Palaces, so I called my friend I had met on in the Hookah club and told my other friend s that I was glad to have met them, but I am leaving now.
They dropped me on the road where I picked up a bus to Mysore. I had my huge backpacking bag and the bus was full, so I had to stay up for 30' minutes and sat down only for the last 15' minutes of drive inside the city. Dava, my new girlfriend came to pick me up at the train station. I quickly found a hostel to drop my bag, we had a fast diner together, and off we were together on her motorbike driving around the city, I visited a couple places including the Palace. We decided to go up on Chamundi hill look at the stars from closer. But because of little attitude up there it was a little foggy and very windy. So after a couple hours of talk and after I got my first proper kiss, we got back down the hill and travelled the city on her scooter looking for somewhere we could have a nice Indian tea. Unfortunately everything was closed and we ended up at the train station sipping our tea.Then, around 5am, Dava came over to my place to sleep as she could not get into her campus after 10pm. In the morning she woke up and went back to home to change and came back soon after with her friend Lobo who wanted to share the tourist attractions we had planned to attend.
We started with an in depth visit of the beautiful Palace, then the fruit market, the oil shops, the Mysore cathedral and the beautiful parks all around the city.
At night walked after a tyring day, we walked to a delicious Chinese restaurant for diner and then went for a good night sleep.
The next day we just went for a long walk around the city before I took my bus back to Bangalore.

Bangalore

On my birthday, I decided to leave Kottayam and continue my visits across Kerala, but this birthday had been so bad I decided to change my plans and I took a bus to Bangalore and rest for a wee while. At night of my 16hour trip in the bus, when most people were asleep, we had a bad accident with a lorry, the front of our bus was slightly smashed and several windows on the right side of the truck had broke.
In my bus there had been many injured by the glass, not the shock of the accident itself.
We had to step out of the truck walk away to the neighboring city and there our bus caught back up with us, they screwed a couple new windows back onto the bus and then we were ready to kick off the rest of the journey.
In Bangalore, for the first couple of days, I didn't do much apart form read, watch the news and all the world cup matches.
But then I decided it was time for a little change. I didn't want any more sight seeing, I was fed up with that instead I decided to go the animated areas of the city and meet up with people, share local people experiences and if possible find a girl friend. I quickly realized that even in Bangalore it was an impossible mission to just find a girlfriend. I had first to meet people to get introduced to girls. So I headed to the MG road and had dinner at Pizza Hut. There I met up with a girl called Veronica and her boyfriend Vikas. I got along quite well and quite quick with them, so as I told them I had to leave to go watch the football match Ecuador vs.England they offered me to come along with them and watch it in a hotel with a couple friends and on a big display. Appealing idea, so without hesitation I agreed. We went to some classy hotel where they had booked a table, met up with 3 others boy friends of this couple, and got drunk together while watching good football.
For the first time of my trip in India I had bacon for munchies, and I shouldn't of eaten any of that because me and Varjun who nearly split the whole portion for ourselves felt very bad food poisoning the next day.

So the next day I stayed locked in my hotel room praying for my stomach acke to leave ASAP, and it did within a day, lucky me.
So I bounced out again and met new people, amongst which Rojan. He was sitting in front of a hotel as I was lloking for a new place to stay, supposd he was looking for a job in Bangalore as he recently graduated with an Elec. and Tel. Eng. diploma. We had a good chat together and he seemed very willing to keep as a friend. So, I invited him for lunch on the next day and he advised me a steak house. First peace of beef I have had in India and even though it was not the best one I had ever eaten, but it just felt so delicious. I then have been looking alaround with my friend for some bookshop who would sell me an old book which I could add to my dad's collection, but it just was impossible to find.
In the evenning I met up with my other group of new friends for another football match, Ger-Ita. So, I had diner with two late 20s couple, we drunk a litlle for diner luckily because when we were finaly done with our meal there was no more alcohol serving in the beautiful hotel we were in, and in Bangalore the rules are very strict. So we watched the match with a cup of coffee because people with me were nackered by their work day and the idea of the next day at work. By the end of the match which ended after additional time, Vikas and Victoria took me back to my hotel. When I got from the car to the front door of my hotel to realize that they had loocked, Vikas and Victoria were already gone. So I decided to reed a book accross the road underneath a street lamp post. I know, I could have knocked on the door and make noise, but to be honest I didn't really mind being outside at night, not only because it was a first experience to stay up at night watch the street animation but also because I had to read more, my book was just too good, The Google Story.
Two hours later a policemen drove by on a motorbike, and stopped by me.
He started telling me that I was not allowed to stay out at night, so he wanted to see my ID which was in my bag, then he asked me what I was carrying in my bag. So I first took ou a couple books, my usual black hand bag which had nothing inside it but pens and paper, then I had my camera, so instead I told him "and my birthday present from my family, the camera I have been using for my trip in India". To that he replied " so I caanot ask you for your camera". Of course not, that was a stupid question. So he asked me what I was carrying in my purse. Luckily it was the end of the night and most people who know me will know that whatever the amount of money I leave with at night, I will come back home with empty pockets. Only IRN 237, which is about 5 dollars. He asked me if I was not carrying any currency from home, but I didn't or so did I let him believe, I just started to speak to him about the beautiful country he had and I started inventing stories, telling him that I had been wotking for 8 months in Calcutta to help the power distribution network develop, and I wxplained him how this was a very valuable cause for the country's prosperity. He directly changed approach and starting asking where was the place I was staying at, so I pointed him accross the road, he parked his bike in the middle of the road and brought me to my hotel and he made noise until someone finally came down to let me in.
The next next day, when I woke u, I met up with Rojan who was watching TV in his hotel and continued the book seek but no luck once again, but I saw something else of interest. There was a fight involving 5 teenagers in a street, the policemen came to intervien in the conflict not because they were fighting as such, but because they were fighting on his street so with a couple hits with his stick, he chassed them out his street to the neighboring street where they continued the fist fight.

Kottayam

I then went to Kottayam for Arun and Tanya's wedding, unfortunately for everyone but especially for me I got sick food poisoning and after dipping my lips in fermented coco milk, I vomited as soon as my first night with my friend Arjun, then bad soar throat followed by horrible fever. I used all my daily energy attending the wedding ceremonies.
The first one I attended was the "official public" ceremony that several hundreds of people attended. It was very beautiful, women were wearing beautiful dresses of all kinds OK colors, they were wearing very raffinated Indian jewelery by the pound, men were wearing the traditional mundus, just as I was.
The wedding was kind of surprising because although so many people had come to see Arjun and Tanya's wedding, you could only see the back of the photographers that were on stage nearly fighting to take the best possible picture from the new couple. Anyhow the little I could see was great cause it was beautiful in colors, rich in traditions and another new experience of mine in India.
The second ceremony was organized the same day in the evenning at home, under Arun's father's roof where I was as well staying. There was a small buffet and cocktail drinks where provided, unfortunately that day I felt so badly sick that I didn't even attend the ceremony, even though it only was behind my door room.

Vodarevu

Travelling to Chirala already has been a memorable experience
Firstly because I had no clue where I was going, I just wanted to travel
East and reach the coast to rest for a couple days on Eastern India's
beaches before going to Cochin for Arun's wedding.
So I took the bus and decided to head East from Hyderabad to Vijayawada to
Chirala and then to Vodarevu, a tiny beach resort. I sat on the back seat of
the bus because there was nowhere else I could fit my fat bum and my heavy
bag together, but as the bus went along it was slowly emptying of its
passengers, and for the last couple tens of km, I had the back seat for
myself. So I layed down, but the road became bumpy and I was literally
jumping off my seat.
Once I got in Bapatla, on my way to Chirala, there was no more bus
connection because of the late hours of my travelling, so I had to find a
place to sleep in the middle of nowhere. I found a shitty little hotel who
had one of his clients away that night so he hosted for a modest amount.
But he wakes me up at six in the morning to bring me some tea and then at 7
and 8 for a tip, what is more annoying than someone waking you up for some
money? Seriously I don't know.
So here I am up and ready to finish my journey. I get to Vodarevu but I
struggle to find a place to stay, I finally find a little hotel 100m away
from the beach which probably was the only hotel in the neighborhood, hotel
staff (2 people) were very welcoming and very excited to have a foreigner
amongst them. I had a little nap and then went to the beach were I met up
with a couple locals who sold me some fruits.
The next day I took the bus back to Chirala to check my mails and on the way
I bought some rubber balls to play around in the sea or even to play cricket
on the Vodarevu "playground". When I got back to Vodarevu, I grabbed a ball
and went to the sea shore. As I walked through the village many children
gathered around me, just by curiosity as I am a foreigner. So I offered to
play ball games and for a couple hours we threw the ball around. I got
hammered to the ground by a wave and injured myself at the level of the
waiste(hips), this really was a pain because I could not carry my heavy bag around
for long anymore. Anyway I met loads of children from the village and they
were worth it. They took me to the "playground" and I met up with loads of
cricket players who were brothers, oncles and friends of the kids.
I met up with a lot of locals, who one after the other were delighted to
introduce themselves to me. I then was invited to play along. I played three
consecutive matches of cricket, which every time has been won by my team.
The locals then invited me for a wedding celebration which is taking place
the day after tomorrow.
So the next day, same routine. I went to the beach in the morning, played ball with the kids and in the afternoon after a good chicken lunch, I went to the "playground" to play some cricket.
The day of the wedding, I walked to the village when a young kid I had played with grabbed my hand to take me around the village, very quickly a whole crowd of people had gathered around me and they wanted to show me the village lighthouse, so we walked to the lighthouse, but once we got there a couple of big dogs started barking at us from the other side of the fence. This quite clearly meant NO ENTRY, never mind I was close enough.
Then I just tried to kill some time waiting for the wedding to start, and as the whole village had gathered around the husband's place because the couple getting married was offering food to the entire village, I had a lot of people to talk to in order to get entertained.
The wedding was only going to start once every one had taken his share of food, so it actually didn't start before 11pm and by that time there was very few people still here to attend the wedding, most people have already gone back home, they just came for eating or so did it appear to be.
The wedding ceremony lasted for about an hour, husband and wife threw a lot of food to each other, they fought to find the wedding rings in a big saucer filled with juice and fruit pieces, they had there feat kiss one another in a very weird way, ... The whole ceremony was just traditions one after the other that had to be explained to me.
The thing that chocked me most just was that the invited people were offering money to the married couple, no presents, just money. And so the newly married couple was playing around with money during the ceremony.
The next day was my departure day.
For lunch before my departure the villagers had invited me to share a meal, I thought the idea was great and accepted without any hesitation, but that was a bad mistake. These people as I mentioned were fishermen and for lunch they had like all Indians a bole of rice but accompanying this fad dish was fish and not any fish.
Let me give you the recipe: you fish the fish some early morning and then, you let it dry in the sun for a day or so. That's it! The easiest recipe ever, it is now ready to be eaten. It stinks and it's smell is just the beginning, once you have the taste in the mouth you realize that the smell exactly corresponds to the smell only you cannot wash the smell out anymore, it stays stuck to your tongue even with a good mouth wash. To be honest I think it just striked my mind and couldn't get erased.
Luckily for dinner a whole new experience that I will as well remember for the rest of my life.
A villager callled,..., was very sad of seing me leave so soon. So instead of letting me go like most people would he insisted to take me over to Chirala and invited me and his cousin for dinner and a good one too. This meant a lot to me, not only was he ready to take a half an hour bus ride with me to the neighbouring city just to spend more time together before I left, but also he was ready to spend a week worth of his savings to invite me for dinner.
There was no way he would let me pay what so ever, I was the guest and so he was "honored" to pay for everything. He just told me, humoring me, that when he would come to Switzerland he would expect the same treatment.
It is unbelievable to see how people in poor countries deal with money.

Hyderabad

In the plane to Hyderabad, I met up with a film director who wanted me to play in one of his movies, but (un)fortunately I did not have a long stay in Hyderabad and had lots to do. I went for a couple touristy visits, including Qutub Shahi Tombs which is a beautiful grave yard with 7 outstanding mausoleums in memory of the 7 Qutub Shahi kings who ruled in the 16 and 17th century in the region.
Then I went to high-tech city in Hyderabad suburbs to enquire for a Masters internship. So I went to Nokia and Microsoft offices, but what a struggle to get in. They would not let me into the buildings unless I had a personal invitation from some one working in the buildings. S o shit I had to work this out and I did. I went to one complex of company offices which had a ground floor restaurant and from there I sneaked in the upper offices of Nokia and Microsoft and at the reception I simulated wanting to talk to some Indian named person, so they looked into the personnel list and hinted me the similar names that I might be making allusion to. So, now I had the names and even some phone numbers, but I still needed to get into the main company buildings and that was still a huge struggle. For two reasons, first I didn't know who I was going to talk to and secondly once I got to the Microsoft building, the security guards called my contact on the mobile number I provided them. Unfortunately, my "contact" was on vacation. But I insisted that I had to talk to his colleague or at least some one at the reception, that I was coming from Switzerland only to talk to this person, that I was leaving the next(this was not a lie though) but there was no way the guards would let me in.
So I kind of threatened them, as I said I was coming for employment, I asked for there names and there ID number and I told them that I would not forget about them. Luckily none dared giving me his ID and let me in to the reception of the building were I had to struggle once again in order to meet someone and finally the doors were opened, drinks offered to me and the colleague of the contact I had came down to me and had a small half an hour talk and explained me the procedure I should follow if I wanted an internship here at Microsoft R&D offices.

Back in Delhi for a day

I got back in Delhi, visited my travel agent, Zahoor, and he offered me to stay over and sleep with him and a couple others for the night. So I accepted without hesitation.
We had a great time speaking of all kind of things. Zahoor cooked for me the most delicious meal I have eaten since I have come to India. For once I ate with pleasure and not only to recharge my body batteries, OK there still was rice but Zahoor made such a tasty curry sauce to accompany the lamb that I served myself many times and finished by scraping the cooking pot.
The next day we woke up, went to one of the hotels the agency had contacts with to take a shower and freshen ourselves and then when we got back to the travel agency they wanted me to have a look to Google Earth as they had problems installing the software, so I did. In a couple minutes I had the software ready for usage and for the whole rest of the day all the office employees were gathered around the two computers which had Google Earth and browsed the world. It was really funny because usually people get excited about the software maybe for a couple hours but they were just excited the whole day.
So I stayed with them and chilled with them in the office until I had to leave to the airport to go to Hyderabad.

Guwahati, North East India

What a big mic mac since I am here, no one off the streets speaks sufficient English to have any conversation. In my hotel, no one speaks any English at all, communication is a nightmare. When you ask for something they always pretend understanding you, but they never provide the service you ask for. After a while it really gets annoying and after a longer while you get used to it and do not rely on any service what so ever, you do every thing by your own.
People here are very kind and quite educated, but the city is a total wreck.
Here in Guwahati, the city center is filled with a nauseous smell, homes do not have any bathrooms and people do what they need to do on the roads. Bins do not exist, there only is some times three brick walls of ~ 1m high in which people sometimes dump there trash.
I suppose there is only three walls and not for so that the bin will never be fulled up.
Around those rare bins, breathing has become unbearable.
This city is really poor, you can see on the railways a lot of different commerces and people walk on the railway leading to the train station as if it were a normal path.
Guwahati really did not have much to do, so I decided to leave for Shillong, known as the Scotland of the East because of its very green landscapes and its similarities with the Scottish highlands.
So I took a Sumo car (4x4) that I shared with s3 other Indian people, it was a ride that lasted three in a half hours. Luckily the roads were OK and this ride was more fun than anything else, even though nobody in the car with me would speak English, they all had a shot to talk to me. Where are you from? What is your good name? ...?
This beautiful city of Shillong is slightly in altitude and from there you can see beautiful and huge waterfalls when there is the monsoon.
In Shillong I met up with a French exchange student studying at the IIT of Guwahati for a semester. We decided to travel together for a couple of days as he was on vacation travelling around the North Eastern states.
So we travelled together in another shared sumo to Cherrapunji, the world's rainiest location where it may rain 1.5m a day for several days in a row. We found a charming little hotel in the middle of the jungle.
From this location we had a magnificent view on the marshy land of Bangladesh.
In the hotel we met up with two people from Tcheque Republic who were here to collect insects and they told us that it was not the first time that they come and that in this region of the world they would discover about 10 news species every month. Unbelievable!
The next day we decided to go for a hike in the neighborhood, it was a nine hour hike up and down many hills and really tiring especially that we had forgotten our lunch pack and that there was no place to stop for lunch. Luckily we had enough Coke, so we were burning this sugar. Anyway, this hike was one of the most beautiful one I have ever done.
On our way there was many waterfalls, amongst which was the highest one in Asia, there were root bridges which I must explain to you.
These are bridges that are mad strictly out of living trees. Roots grow and they, thanks to little human help, cross over streams and rivers which may reach up to 20m wide.
One of the root bridge is even a double decker and you can walk on the two levels.
These bridges take approximately 35 years to grow because nature takes time.
At night when we got back to the hotel, we were starving and we both ate so first thing, before even washing the liters of sweat we were carrying on our skin, we ate like pigs and stuffed food so quickly up our mouth that it only took us a couple seconds to be full. But we needed it.
At night a group of 5 singers with one guitar player came to our hotel to play local songs. The Indian tourists started to dance on the least rhythmic songs I have heard in a while and dragged me in the dance. It was really fun because they introduced me to a couple Indian moves.

Keywords

Buddhism
Cury, spice particularly used in South Indian cooking
Dharma, way to Enlightenment
Hinduism, religion practised by over 80% ot the population
Nirvana, Budhist term for heaven on earth
Mahatma Gandhi, Father of the Indian nation
Yoga

The organisation of the trip

Slightly less than a month before my departure, I have programmed this:
4th May Paris - London -> Dubai or Geneva -> Abu Dhabi and train or bus to Dubai
11-12th of May Dubai -> New delhi
10-17th of June Calcutta or even better Patna -> Cochin I think it would be much better evoiding Calcutta, but maybe still flying from Patna via Calcutta (or other) to Kochi
13-18th of July Chennai -> Mumbai
29-31st July Mumbai -> Bordeaux
I would prefer leaving from Paris 1st or Geneva 2nd, but if London really makes a difference in price, I will go to London.

I still haven't done any of my vaccins nor do I have any visa yet, but before I leave I still have to pass my final exams, book my flights tickets so I do not think this blog will be much updated before I leave for Dubai.

Worse of all, I just realized that I have lost my ID card.
I am now stuck in Edinburgh with no ID card whatsoever to go back to home.
This kind of stuff only happens to me, and I know why? I provoke it!