Day 24-25 Kochi-Mangalore-Madgaon 02-03/09/2012

I woke early as I needed to go across the water to find a way to Goa and back before checkout at midday, as I did not know if I would be spending another night in fort Cochin. I wondered down to the jetty and got a ferry to the mainland and once there walked to the train station. Only when I arrived at the station did I discover that Kochi has two stations and I was at the wrong one, this meant getting the train was all but out of the equation. This being the case I set off to find the bus stand, on the way I ran afoul of a bog cum building site and arrived into the bus station clad in mud drawing some strange looks. I didn’t have much luck at the bus station either as there was not a single bus that went to Goa, instead I booked a bus to go half way to a city called Mangalore where I would hopefully find a way to Goa. When that was done I made my way back across the water to check out and get some food. On the way I bumped into the rickshaw driver who had helped me out the night before and he offered to take me around the sights around fort Cochin in return for going to some galleries where he got commission, this struck me as a winning scenario. So we set out after I checked out and over the course of the day I saw various; spice markets, temples, palaces, churches and synagogues not to mention a fair few galleries. When I had seen most of the sites my guide dropped me back where I had been staying and from there I went to the sea front for couple of hours to check out the fish market and relax before heading to get the bus. Being off season the fish market was a shadow of what I could be however there was still a lot on offer from gigantic prawn/lobsters to catfish and a lot in-between that I wouldn’t know the names of. I got some popcorn and watched some street performers for a bit and sat in an internet café until the time came to once more head across the water in order to get my bus.

The bus I was to get was not what I had expected, it certainly wasn’t built for comfort and it was obvious from the get go it was not a direct express route, the next 12 hours were bound to be interesting. It seemed I had drawn the short straw with the seats as the pair I was designated too were not reclined and had less leg room than the rest of the bus due to being crammed in behind a door. The bus was crammed to capacity when we eventually set off for Mangalore, as the bus had no windows it was at least comfortably cool if it wasn’t comfortable. I spent most of the journey staring out of the window. After a couple of hours there was a long stop due to an issue with the bus, then the journey continued. After a few more hours, around midnight, I started to get drowsy however whenever I nodded off I would accidentally head-but this poor old lady next to me so after the second time, where I nearly knocked her out, I decided I had to stay awake. The rest of the journey was a blur of opening and closing windows depending on the weather and attempting without success to sleep in various possessions.

The hours dragged on but we eventually pulled into Mangalore just after dawn, I was sorely tempted to kiss the ground after I bundled off the bus thought better of it after seeing the state of the ground. Fed up of buses I decided if I was getting to Goa it was going to be by train so I sought out a taxi driver and headed over to the central train station. Once I got there I had to wait for the booking office to open so I got some breakfast at the station while I waited. When the office opened I enquired into the situation of the trains, they were still pretty fully booked but eventually I managed to book a train to Goa that would depart that afternoon from a train station on the other side of Mangalore. I promptly got a rickshaw there as I was not up to doing much that day and settled in there to wait. I managed to find a plug so I spent the hours watching TV. The train arrived and I sought out my birth and assumed my usual ritual of locking up my bag and getting set up to read the hours away. Due to the hour of my train I would be arriving into Madgaon at around eleven o’Clock in the evening which I was not looking forward to. When I eventually got to Goa I found that I was still a fair way off from the area I was to rendezvous with Naomi Jade and Kerry so I enquired into how I might get there. The people occupying the enquiry office were of no help, all I got was a few Indian head shakes and confused looks. The taxi office wanted and arm and a leg to get there and I was told there was nowhere cheap to stay near by. So by this point I had decided there was no option but to sleep on the station floor along with the other hundred or so people doing the same. By this point I was so sleep deprived it was as easily said as done....

Day 24-25 Kochi-Mangalore-Madgaon 02-03/09/2012

I woke early as I needed to go across the water to find a way to Goa and back before checkout at midday, as I did not know if I would be spending another night in fort Cochin. I wondered down to the jetty and got a ferry to the mainland and once there walked to the train station. Only when I arrived at the station did I discover that Kochi has two stations and I was at the wrong one, this meant getting the train was all but out of the equation. This being the case I set off to find the bus stand, on the way I ran afoul of a bog cum building site and arrived into the bus station clad in mud drawing some strange looks. I didn’t have much luck at the bus station either as there was not a single bus that went to Goa, instead I booked a bus to go half way to a city called Mangalore where I would hopefully find a way to Goa. When that was done I made my way back across the water to check out and get some food. On the way I bumped into the rickshaw driver who had helped me out the night before and he offered to take me around the sights around fort Cochin in return for going to some galleries where he got commission, this struck me as a winning scenario. So we set out after I checked out and over the course of the day I saw various; spice markets, temples, palaces, churches and synagogues not to mention a fair few galleries. When I had seen most of the sites my guide dropped me back where I had been staying and from there I went to the sea front for couple of hours to check out the fish market and relax before heading to get the bus. Being off season the fish market was a shadow of what I could be however there was still a lot on offer from gigantic prawn/lobsters to catfish and a lot in-between that I wouldn’t know the names of. I got some popcorn and watched some street performers for a bit and sat in an internet café until the time came to once more head across the water in order to get my bus.

The bus I was to get was not what I had expected, it certainly wasn’t built for comfort and it was obvious from the get go it was not a direct express route, the next 12 hours were bound to be interesting. It seemed I had drawn the short straw with the seats as the pair I was designated too were not reclined and had less leg room than the rest of the bus due to being crammed in behind a door. The bus was crammed to capacity when we eventually set off for Mangalore, as the bus had no windows it was at least comfortably cool if it wasn’t comfortable. I spent most of the journey staring out of the window. After a couple of hours there was a long stop due to an issue with the bus, then the journey continued. After a few more hours, around midnight, I started to get drowsy however whenever I nodded off I would accidentally head-but this poor old lady next to me so after the second time, where I nearly knocked her out, I decided I had to stay awake. The rest of the journey was a blur of opening and closing windows depending on the weather and attempting without success to sleep in various possessions.

The hours dragged on but we eventually pulled into Mangalore just after dawn, I was sorely tempted to kiss the ground after I bundled off the bus thought better of it after seeing the state of the ground. Fed up of buses I decided if I was getting to Goa it was going to be by train so I sought out a taxi driver and headed over to the central train station. Once I got there I had to wait for the booking office to open so I got some breakfast at the station while I waited. When the office opened I enquired into the situation of the trains, they were still pretty fully booked but eventually I managed to book a train to Goa that would depart that afternoon from a train station on the other side of Mangalore. I promptly got a rickshaw there as I was not up to doing much that day and settled in there to wait. I managed to find a plug so I spent the hours watching TV. The train arrived and I sought out my birth and assumed my usual ritual of locking up my bag and getting set up to read the hours away. Due to the hour of my train I would be arriving into Madgaon at around eleven o’Clock in the evening which I was not looking forward to. When I eventually got to Goa I found that I was still a fair way off from the area I was to rendezvous with Naomi Jade and Kerry so I enquired into how I might get there. The people occupying the enquiry office were of no help, all I got was a few Indian head shakes and confused looks. The taxi office wanted and arm and a leg to get there and I was told there was nowhere cheap to stay near by. So by this point I had decided there was no option but to sleep on the station floor along with the other hundred or so people doing the same. By this point I was so sleep deprived it was as easily said as done....

Day 21-23 Udaipur-Mumbai-Kollam 30/08/2012-01/09/2012

I must say my first experience of long distance train journeys in India was not as bad as I had expected, my uncertainty was based around the fact I was only one class up from the general seating class which is grim. I got on the train at Udaipur and found my birth easily enough and settled in, chaining my bag up and climbing to my bed the top of three. I read for a short time before drifting into a slumber dogged with calls of “chai”,”samosa”,”coffee” and other such chants. I think my previous experience of long journeys put me in good stead for the journeys ahead as I knew exactly how to lye and read for 12 hours at a time. I woke early in the morning with the rest of the trains occupants and set to reading. I took a cup of chai for breakfast and a few hours later had some lunch courtesy of the endless stream of refreshment vendors. The train arrived into Mumbai at one of its northern terminus stations called Bandra after the first fifteen hours at around one o’Clock.

At this point I had two hours to cross the city to the station my next thirty six hours was departing from. This was easier said than done. I quickly found the near by local train station and got a ticket to the station I thought my train was departing from. The local train system is more confusing than the national one, mainly as the trains only list their final destination as well but there are less people who can tell you which train is which. Once on the right train I had my first encounter, with what I now know to be a transvestite beggar, but at the time I just thought them normal,albeit ugly, beggars who clapped loudly and expected money. Once I arrived at the first station my flip flop broke and I was left to waddle a hundred meters with one bare foot to a place I could stop and change my shoes. Once the switch was made I found a police officer to ask where I might find my train. He looked at me in a sympathetic way and told me I would find it across town at the train station I was meant to be at. By this point I was down to 45 minutes so I quickly found a taxi and asked if he knew the station I needed, It turned out he did, and after haggling him down to a reasonable price we set off to what I hoped was the right station. The driver, and his two mates in the back, were nice enough and we talked a bit on the way, “no I’m not married”, “yes I’m only 23” and “yes I’m monogamous” seems to get me through most taxi journeys. I got to the station and managed to find my train with minutes to spare.

This leg of my journey to Kollam was much the same as the trip to Mumbai but longer, two nights an afternoon and a morning. I was on the middle bunk this time however my seat was booked among a group of people and one of them was in a different birth and wanted to swap so he could sit with his friends so I obliged. The top bunk is preferable as you have the option of lying down or sitting as your bunk is always down but when the rest are up you also have a seat below. I spent the 36 hours either; sleeping, reading or eating with the odd doodling in my moleskin. The food on the long distance trains varies in quality however the price is always phenomenal and I didn’t once get a upset stomach from it. Once you have experienced a few trips on the sleeper trains they are the only way to travel around if you have the time, if you were among others it would be even better. Including the food and transfer in Mumbai it cost me the equivalent of under £15 and that’s three nights of accommodation and just under 2,500km, I would recommend it to anyone.

I arrived in Kollam at seven in the morning groggy and filthy. Once out of the station I had decided to go to the tourist office for the area to get some idea of what to do. I finally managed to get a rickshaw driver who knew the place which was only down the road and after getting there it only took a couple of minutes to book myself onto a backwaters tour that I had come for. I had twenty minutes to get some breakfast in before the tour started, which I just managed, and after only being in Kollam for two hours I was heading out on a tour of its backwaters. The tour would take place around one of the islands on the huge lake Kollam boarders, to get there was a 25km taxi ride. We were only in the taxi for five minutes before I witnessed two cars touch for the first time, a bus pulled out in front of our car and in doing so scraped the front left flank of the car. Our driver pursued the offending bus and eventually stopped it in the middle of the road to confront the driver who seemed to be having none of it. This chase continued a couple of blocks before we ended up and a police station of virtue and corruption where the matter seemed to be settled. We were soon on our way again into the countryside. The drive would have been pleasant if not for our drivers addiction to the sound of his own horn, I kid you no for 25km he would use his horn at least 3 blasts normally together every nine seconds. I counted. To get to the islands we got a small ferry over a 100m stretch of water which was built out of two boats lashed together but worked pretty well. Another short drive on the other side saw us to a small village where our guide was waiting with his hefty canoe. The five of us got into the canoe; a Spanish couple, an Estonian woman, an Indian couple and I. Our guide punted the canoe around the backwaters deftly, as he knew them like the back of his hand, and pointed things out along the way such as; fish farms, pepper plants, cashew trees, nutmeg trees, bananas, chillies, snakes, coconuts and a plethora of other little interesting things. The couple of hours we spent on the boat were a peaceful contrast to the trip that took us to them, we even stopped for tea in a little village where next door they were making rope out of coconut fibres. The trip back to Kollam was much the same as the trip out, I took the opportunity to ask the others on the tour if there was much else to do in Kollam. After finding out there wasn’t much else to do I decided to try and get another train back up the coast as I was planning to be back up in Goa in a couple of days.

My next stop was a city called Kochi which apparently is renowned for its fishing and has deep running Portuguese and Dutch influences of its older suburbs. The train I took there was grim, sleeper class turned into second class and for 3 hours I was a sardine, the only reprieves were when I managed to wrestle my way to hang out of the door of the train between stations. The relief of alighting the train was close to the feeling of relieving yourself after having needed for a wee for a similar amount of time. Before heading to the fort Cochin area over the water, which I had decided would be the ideal place to stay, I attempted to book my train out of Kochi to avoid a repeat journey of the one I had just been on. I was out of luck it seemed as all the trains out of Kochi towards Goa were booked for the days ahead, this was a problem to deal with another day so I took a rickshaw to the jetty. By the time I boarded the ferry to fort Cochin the sun was setting, over a far more industrial dockland than I had expected from my briefing by the lonely planet, though if there is a time to look at a dock you cant do much better than dusk. I arrived in fort Cochin after dark and began to wonder in the vague direction of the town centre, I hadn’t got far when a rickshaw driver offered to take me somewhere in my price range and tired as I was I took the easy way out....

Day 19-20 Udaipur 28-29/08/20112

My last morning in Jaipur was a relaxed affair as my train was mid afternoon so I had a leisurely breakfast and checked out in my own time. Being situated close to the train station I went for a wonder and found it on foot. After my few days of staying in one place and sightseeing I had almost forgotten the joys of the Indian railway station. After walking around questioning various innocent bystanders I eventually found the platform my train would be arriving on, what I didn’t anticipate was that it was connected to a second train with a different name. Stations in India like to keep you on your toes like that, I found my train just in time and settled into my seat. Laptop out, Breaking Bad on, set for the next 7 hours. I was a bit disappointed as the train I had booked had seemed to be similar to my first train, express air conditioned chair train, however it was not quite as fancy and lacked all the lashings of food so I was looking to go hungry. However the couple next to me had brought their dinner with them and asked me to join them so not to be rude, and enticed by the amazing smells the food was giving off, I deigned to oblige. The highlight of the rest of the trip was a 2 hour delay which saw me getting into Udaipur much later than I had expected. Not having anything planned this wouldn’t be such an issue if not for the fact that the delay made the difference of finding a place for as cheap as I would hope. However I bumped into an American girl on the way out of the station and we shared a rickshaw into the main town area and in the end I found somewhere to stay, albeit for more than I would have hoped as I expected.

The next morning I woke well before check out to go out looking for some accommodation near by that was more affordable. On my wondering I ended up getting chatting to a local artist who invited me into his gallery, hoping I would buy something, but he showed me how a lot of the art was done all the same. I found a place that suited my needs, had breakfast there and then set about moving my affects over. Once that was done I went for a wonder around the town proper which is filled with shrines and boasts a huge Hindu temple in the middle along with a couple other smaller one scattered through the town. Pretty much all were in the style of the old Raman temples, a huge stone monolith covered with intricate carvings of people and animals with a couple including an interior with a shrine or space for ceremonies. In the largest of the temples as well as a few of the smaller ones there were ceremonies taking place which were interesting to observe despite having no idea what was taking place. After having a look around the temples I carried on up the hill to the main sight of the town that takes the form of a huge palace. The palace was pretty impressive; it was built and expanded over around 300 years and its building was influenced, as you would expect, by the differing styles of the rulers that rose and fell over the encompassing time. I spent a couple of hours wondering around the palace's innards which after a while started looking much the same from room to room. The highlights would be the third story garden that boast a pool and trees and just the sheer size of the building. The palace was impressive but with its size and my attention span for Indian history it was never going to be one of my more thrilling days. After leaving the palace I spent the rest of the afternoon wondering around the streets of the town looking into shops and just taking in the dynamics of Udaipur. I spent the evening relaxing and taking advantage of the hotels internet to Skype and upload my blogs so far.

On my second day in Udaipur I spent the day getting organised. My first job was to obtain a charger for my camera as by this point my disposable camera had run out of film and my phone had broken so I was in need of a pictorial device. After enquiring at a couple of stores I came across a man who had a brother who owned a shop that sold cameras 'not far down the road'. So I follow him out the shop and start walking ahead down the road getting a short way before he pulls up next to me on a 500cc motor bike and insists we must ride there, I considered briefly and thought why not. His brothers shop was a 10 minute ride away but I found what I needed there and managed to get it for a fairly decent price, once our business was done my friend with the bike drove me back to town. I thanked him and set off to find some breakfast. I took my breakfast at a small restaurant by the river than runs through Udaipur between the two lakes that the town straddles. I took the chance to charge my camera's battery with my new gizmo and prayed that it wasn’t knackered. I managed to get it to work after some technical 'lens pulling' and 'camera tapping'. After breakfast I spent the afternoon looking around the various shops and stalls in the town to get a present for my fathers birthday. This took a fair time which I broke up with stops at some tea shops which also coincided with the flash deluges. I came out of the afternoon with a couple of choice items and set to finding somewhere to base myself to have my dinner and while away the hours before my late night train. I found a likely place and when the time came I collected my affects and made my way to the train station to get the first train of my three day voyage...