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.