The last time I talk about India

So this will be the last time I talk about India before diving into my Thailand adventures. I might even be able to catch up.

After Palolem, the three of us headed to Hampi. Of everywhere in India, Hampi is known as one of the more quiet and possibly spiritual cities. Also known as Vijayanagar, Hampi was founded on an ancient Hindu holy site. Even now, with the temples in somewhat of a state of disrepair, it is easy to see how glorious of a city it once was.

Unfortunately, the city still has quite a few problems. On our first night there, while at dinner, we saw one of the owners of the restaurant start toying around with live electrical wiring. While walking around the city, we saw children drawing designs in chalk around piles of cow dung. I did not have my camera with me at the time, but it was just one of those jaw-dropping moments when I realized just how many issues India is still having.

The city is completely vegetarian; because it is a holy site, there are no restaurants in town that will serve any meat. Luckily we were only here for a couple of days, because a meatatarian like myself needs to get plenty of protein.

While we were walking around the city, which is really just a large temple complex (this is the main temple), we were able to see all of the various temples. The Lotus Temple and the Vitthala Temple were the most hyped attractions, but we found plenty of amazing natural rock formations as well. This one was smiling at us. On our way back, we decided to take a less explored route and ended up on a long, circuitous route back to the city that we agreed actually proved to be the most interesting part of the trip. Away from all of the people, surrounded by nothing but banana tree groves and perilous rock formations, it was a very peaceful experience.

Leaving Hampi I had the aforementioned terrible train experience, which I will spend the next few months trying to block out of my memory.

When our train arrived in Bangalore, which is supposed to be the booming city in India due to all of the IT call centers there, we had a few issues as well. The train station did not have any signs detailing where to buy our connecting tickets to Mysore, where we were headed next. After seeing feces and vomit in the main station, we were starting to lose our patience. The people at the ticket counter proved to be less than helpful, eventually saying we had to wait until 10am (it was 8:30) and buy them at the other counter. Sam and I walked almost a quarter mile down track number 8 looking for this secondary ticket counter once it was time. The tracks at the station, like most other busy train stations we had encountered, looked and smelled like shit. Dogs and cows would move onto the tracks and relieve themselves, while the toilets from the trains drained straight onto the tracks as well. All in all it made for a great experience.

Luckily we were able to get onto our train and got to Mysore with no other problems. Mysore was an interesting city, but it was actually the quirky experiences we had there that made it a good experience, more than the actual sites. There is the Mysore Palace, which really left an impression on Sam, but given that it was about 100 years old, I thought it was just average. We did have to bribe a police officer to let us out of the palace grounds. We had walked inside the ground toward the main gate. When we got there, the police officer told us that foreigners could not exit the gate, but he could make an exception for a small price. Paying 10 rupees ($.20) or walking 2 km around was an easy choice. Seeing a man sleeping out on the street, with nothing but a mosquito net and a bicycle was a new sight for all of us. St. Philomena's Church is supposed to be the "Most beautiful church" in Karnataka, but despite the interesting gothic architecture, the lack of maintenance and notably missing stained glass windows (there were normal glass windows with colored paint over them instead) did not impress me much. We also went up Chamundi Hill, where there was a fifteen foot cartoonesque statue of Nandi, which was quite surreal. Walking around on the street, we had our first taste of Jack Fruit (the edible parts on the left are picked out of the whole fruit, on the right). It has a taste and consistency somewhere between pineapple and apple. Once painted cows were added to the mix, we officially had the most random two day experiences while in Mysore.

After Mysore, we headed to Alleppey, a nice, quiet town on close to the beach, where we heard we would be able to take a back-water boat tour. The boat tour was indeed a fascinating experience. The backwaters were originally swamps that were connected so they now form a system of canals connecting various rice plantations in a huge area. With the water, the house boats on tour, the palm trees growing on the edge of the water, and the rice patties everywhere, it was a truly unique experience.

We also stayed at a very nice, air conditioned room that was run by a man with some clear western business training. He had suggestions for where we could find internet cafes, served dinner at the guest house, and directed us to the Secret Beach. I guess it was not really that much of a secret because he told everyone how to get there, but even so, there were not very many tourists there at all.

At this point, we were getting ready to wrap up our travels. But we still had to move across the country from Alleppey to Chennai to get our flight out, so we decided to stop in Madurai. Madurai is known for their unique collection of extremely colorful temples, called the Meenakshi Sundareswarar Temple. Given that Madurai is directly between Alleppey and Chennai, it seemed like a great idea. The temple was actually featured on the cover of the South India Rough Guide, which we were using as a guide for our journey.

Unfortunately, when we got there, we found out that the temples were completely covered for repainting. Even though they were 65% done, they had not removed any of the scaffolding. Unfortunately, there was no real way to know about the construction, since information does not really make its way to the internet in India. Our next plan of attack was to take a tour of the secondary temples, palaces, and other noteworthy sites in the city. Unfortunately, the tour was basically a scam to take us to various dilapidated "palaces" and "temples" where they tried to charge us exorbitant fees to enter and see the "monuments." There was a Ghandi Museum on the tour that advertised that they had the clothes Ghandi was wearing while he died. Unfortunately, the museum was in complete disrepair and the cloth Ghandi had been wearing as not even well displayed, showing disrespect for one of the most influential leaders to have ever come out of India. Also unfortunate was the fact that most of the museum was simply government propaganda, blaming the British for all of the country's problems and taking credit for any of its successes. There was one open temple we were able to see on the tour, which was nice. Unfortunately we had to drive forty five minutes outside of the city to see it, instead of seeing the massive complex in the city, but we were willing to take what we could get. We were excited about the last stop as well, which was supposed to be another vibrant temple, but unfortunately it was not lit at night and again we were being asked to pay 250 rupees for a temple that Indians could visit for free. So, overall our tour was supposed to cost 200 rupees per person, including entrance fees, but unfortunately they lied to us. If we had gone into all of the attractions we were taken to, we would have paid 1050 rupees for 15 minutes in each one. The whole entire city seemed like it would be interesting to see, but unfortunately it just did not work out that way.

Before leaving India for good, our last stop was Mammallapuram. It is a quiet beach city just two hours away from Chennai, a little bit touristy, but overall it had some appeal for us. We would just relax and spend our last few days eating fresh seafood curries and reading on the beach. We were able to check out Shiva's Butterball, the Shore Temple, see a crocodile preserve, (including this one that is 30 years old, 4.85 meters long, and weights 575 kg), and see the incredible amount of marble sculptors everywhere in the city, making everything from necklaces to 6 foot high statues.

In the end, however, we got just a little bit too much culture. While hanging out on the beach one day, Mike had put his wallet into a shirt on the beach. Even with Sam and I sitting near it, some gypsies managed to steal it, which had all of his ATM and credit cards, along with our room key. We had been using our own lock with three keys, but both of the other keys were in the room. I managed to sneak in through the window and grab another key, but Mike still did not have his wallet. The police were also unwilling to take a report from him, simply telling him to come back at a later, specified time. This was, of course, because there were no officers there who could take the report, despite five officers clearly sitting there without anything to do. Mike was not able to get a new debit card until we were in Bangkok. Until then, Sam and I loaned him money as he needed it.

Upon initally checking into our hotel, we agreed on 700 rupees a night for a room that included air conditioning and breakfast. We had the clerk (who actually was running the hotel) write us a receipt including all of the details of our arrangement. Everything seemed to be falling in place, but it did not take long for things to go sour. The next morning, after we had finished eating breakfast, our waiter brought a bill. We told him that we had breakfast included with the room, at which point he told us that only two breakfasts were included, not three. We told him we would straighten it out with the owner when he returned. Later on that afternoon, when we returned to the hotel and tried to turn on our air conditioning, I found out that it did not work. Going down to the desk, I found the man with whom we had made the original agreement. He told me that only two breakfasts were included with the room and that the room did not come with air conditioning (both lies). 700 rupees was just simply too cheap for that. I went back upstairs and talked with Mike and Sam. Mike decided to go down and give it a shot. A few minutes later he came back upstairs to report that the man had threatened to rip Mike's teeth out of his skull. The conversation had started innocently enough, but it escalated as the hotel operator realized that we were not just going to deal with his bullshit. Mike, who had already had his wallet stolen that day, was furious. Not only was this completely unprofessional from a hotel operator, but the last thing we wanted to deal with was feeling unsafe in our own hotel. We suffered through the hot night with no air conditioning.

The third day, I found the fuse box outside of our room that had a fuse marked "Room 15 AC." I turned the switch, and suddenly the air conditioner turned on. Not wanting to arouse their attention, we turned it back off, only turning it on at night while we were in the room so that we could sleep. We also decided not to eat our breakfast there, since it was not that good and we were growing spiteful of the hotel staff.

The fourth morning, our last day, I woke up early and was having breakfast with a friend I had met the previous day when I was approached by a hotel staff member. "You need to move rooms," he told me. After inquiring why we needed to change rooms, he told me that the room we were in had been reserved a month in advance, and, even though they knew we were planning to stay for four days, had still given us the room. We would be moved to another room without air conditioning. Irritated by this fact but also by the rudeness of interrupting my breakfast, I told him that I would talk to my friends and deal with the issue later. When I started walking back to the room, I saw that the outside door leading up to our room had been taken down and there were two men putting cement down on the ground in order to put down a tile floor on the balcony outside our room. Despite our need to get in and out of the room, they had chosen that day as the day when the tile floor needed to be put in.

After a fairly long discussion about what to do, we decided that we had had enough. This hotel dilemma had already cost us hours of time as we had to discuss what to do before and accomodate our dishonest hotel operator. Trying to find another hotel would be simply another hassle. As I have documented, we had been recipients of mistreatment on a number of occasions, but this was by far the most extreme. As this malicious behavior could not go unpunished, we hatched a plan. We decided to move into the other room, and the next morning, instead of checking out and paying our balance, we would simply leave out the back door without paying. The room that we were moved to was not nearly as nice as the first room; aside from the lack of air conditioning, it was smaller, had a bad smell in the bathroom, and had quite a few holes in the screens to let mosquitos into the room. We suffered through the night, and in the morning, at 8 am we packed all of our things and went out the back door of the hotel compound and to our prearranged taxi.

Instead of leaving from Mammallapurm and heading straight to the airport as planned, we were forced to spend the day in Chennai after fleeing from our hotel. Despite being somewhat of an inconvenience, we were able to read a little bit and catch a Tamil movie. The movie was a cross between The Matrix, Memento, and a romantic comedy, all in Tamil. After a quick dinner, we were off to the airport, ready to leave India forever, with no regrets.

Of course our red-eye flight to Bangkok was delayed, but no one could tell us how long it was going to be. We eventually took off around 2:30 am.

Good-bye India!