On To Goa

From the Nilgiri mountains it was off to the where the river Mandovi flows into the Arabian Sea. The tiny state of Goa (at 914,000 acres or twice the size of the Green Mountain Common allotment) was a Portuguese colony within India for 450 years until India finally got rid of the Portuguese in 1961.

The earliest records put the first recorded events in Goa to around 12,500 BC, but most of Goa that we see now has been built over the last 450 years.The Portuguese influence is quite strong and many buildings look straight out of Portugal, Spain or Italy. While Portuguese is no longer the official language, it still permeates the culture.

Unlike the rest of India, the diet has been strongly influences by the former Portuguese masters, so there are relatively few vegetarians and a wide array of animals are eaten regularly especially those from the ocean. So while in the rest of the nation "pure veg" restaurants as they are called ('non veg' being the term on the sign for those that cook animals) are the rule, here in Goa it is not as easy to find "pure veg" restaurants.

While temperatures are similar to the Thar Desert (mid 90's), the difference between 15% humidity and 95%  humidity is very noticeable. I definitely would not want to try to summer in India (outside a few hill stations or the Himalayas) 

While the world knows Goa for its beaches I may not even make it to the beaches, my purpose here is different.

Going to Visit Murugan

I thought since I had the cycle for 2 days to go and visit Murugan who has one of his residences not far off, some 25 km to the south west of Ooty. I left right after lunch but made a few wrong turns which took some time. The road was not terrible great.

But interesting views of the tea terraces.

As you can see, this road does not have a lot of room to move about on

Some of the delightful flowers while finding the right road.

By 4pm I had made it to within about 4-5 km of Murugan's house, but sunset is around 5:30 and it was starting to get rather cold, so I decided I would have to visit Murugan another time and headed back to Ooty. Now knowing the road I made better time on the way back and made the 25km in 1.5 hours, making it back to Ooty just at sun set.

The road road would be a delight for mountain Italians, nothing but banked turns and hairpin turns. They actually number the hairpin turns so by the time I turned around I was on turn 39 of 48.

On the way there I did stop fairly frequently as the plants, flowers and views were quite delightful.

The Automobile

Throughout India I have been seeing billboards for new cars. Stunningly most of these vehicles (4 door sedans) are rated at 20-25 km/liter or up to 60 miles per gallon. For perspective, a US Prius gets a pathetic 42 MPG.

While there are not big cars by US standards they are about European compact size.

What are we doing wrong?

By the way gas (petrol) here is about Rs 75 per liter or $6.00 per gallon

Doddabetta Peak

Again, I found a small motorcycle to rent ($6/day) and took it up to the top of Doddabetta, the highest point in the country south of the Himalayas at around 8,605'.

While it appears the mountain has been logged as there were few trees over about 100 years old, there were lots of interesting plants, shrubs and trees along with some views.

Again, I made it through town, up the hairpin turns and back with no incident. I am clearly not a skilled motorcycle driver yet, but so far so good. Out in the desert everything was fairly flat but here nothing is flat so there is the added issues which come from negotiating very steep, partially paved, partially gullied roads. But it beats a rickshaw.

The Ooty Botanical Garden

Yesterday I walked into town and then to the other side to see the Botanical Garden, started by the British back in the mid 1800's its had a stunning array of trees and smaller plants from the area, the Himalayas and from similar climates around the world.

Because of the unique and very stable climate of the Nilgiri mountains about 70% of the medicinal herbs are grown and processed here and surrounding towns. Ooty has a very big pharmacology university (which I strayed into looking for the right path and was, after wandering around a bit looking for the way out, escorted back out. I had missed the right path by a few feet) and there are dozens of stands and shops selling local essential oils and herbal preparations of all sorts along with honey as it seems that bees can survive fairly well here compared to the rest of the subcontinent.

It was bustling as it was a Sunday so not many pics.

For scale the above tree is about 6' in diameter at about mid way up the photo.

The Road To Ooty (Udagamandalam)

I scheduled an excellent state government bus from Bangalore to Ooty (English bastardization of the Tamil name Udagamandalam) which is a former British Raj hillstation. Elevation of Ooty is 7,300' and is just below the highest peak south of the Himalayas, Doddabetta, which tops at 8,605'.

The state government of each state runs a wide array of operations such as bus transport in various categories, hotels and the like. While the hotels tend to be somewhat run down (generally most were built in the late 60's early 70's) the bus system is very well run with web based ticketing, etc. I took one of the Airavat (Volvo) buses. As the crow flies it is 122 miles between Bangalore and Ooty. Bus trip took 10 hours with two 20 minute stops. Its not hard to calculate average speed but its around 12 miles an hour.

It was actually better than that because the road once you hit the mountains is very far from a straight line. Also making matter worse is the fact that there are two roads from Mysore (the nearest big city and one of the stops) to Ooty. The more direct way and the other which doubles the distance. The short, direct road has hair pin turns that cannot accommodate buses and large trucks. Even the long route just barely does so. Stopping for whoever is biggest  and farther into the curve is standard practice as the road is only about one and half lanes wide in most places. Its often narrower where erosion for the 40+ inches of rain per year washes large chunks of pavement over the edge. Fortunately, we only fell into one of these gullies on one occasion.

After much spinning and burning of rubber, all were requested to exit the bus in order to reduce weight and with much rocking back and forth the driver extricated the vehicle and we got back on and continued.

Despite the very smooth ride of the very fancy bus, there was much upper digestive tract distress from the rear half of the bus. Fortunately I, through the excellent website had reserved the front seat with an excellent view out the front so no issues here.

I did no poll of the individuals who experienced distress but it appears many had taken part of the apparently delightful fried goodies at the two stops we made. I stuck with a few kela (incredibly delicious (far more than those available here) ) small bananas and some mango juice. But by the time we pulled into Ooty at 7pm I was ready for dinner. Unfortunately, because of the altitude (and thus temperatures) the incredibly delicious dosas, idlis and uthapam (which require grinding soaked rice and urad dalh (a tiny yellow split pea) and then letting them sit overnight like sourdough) are harder to come by here despite that they are staples of all south Indian food.

I did get one uthapam for lunch yesterday which was excellent. It was a tomato uthapam where they thinly slice the tomatoes and put them on top of the uthapam in a sort of pizza like fashion.

I should have scheduled more time in Ooty as its very delightful. Nights are cold, the elevation gets you above about 1/2 (the densest) of the continent wide smog, and its quiet at night.

Due to the high elevation tea is cultivated here (in addition to the Himalayas). The Nilgiri's (the Blue Hills) main export is tea cultivated on terraces on the hillsides.

Here are some of the tea plantations next to where I am staying.

I went to the main market yesterday which was the traditional type of stalls in tight formation with shredded traps overhead for shade (overhead for the average Indian but closer to eye height for someone at 6' tall.

With the exception of the Muslim section with its dead and alive animals of all sorts (and the ensuing intensely odoriferous atmosphere all those unrefrigerated animals create) the market, like the one in the little town I worked in in Madhya Pradesh is pure sensory overload with stalls of everything you can imagine from fruits and vegetables of varied and interesting forms all painstakingly stacked in geometric arrangements that are simply gorgeous, to candies and sweets, to rope and buckets, coconuts, spices, flowers, etc. Most stalls are segregated so most of the spice stalls are in one area, flower stalls in another, some stalls with just bananas of various varieties, so when you pass by the flower area you get the INTENSE aroma of jasmine, by the ginger stalls, intense ginger or cardamom.

It is overwhelming. This is not the sanitized, sealed and wrapped world we live in.

Here is a view of some of the hillside houses of Ooty.

 

Bangalore

Arrived at Bangalore last night. It is huge. And much cooler than the north.

Around lunch time I attempted to find the restaurant I was looking for. This entails getting to within 1 to 200 yards and asking repeatedly and applying the 1/2 second test to weed out utter rubbish, so after asking and walking around for 45 minutes I finally get decent directions and find the location (about 100 yards from where Google Maps has it.

I walk it and its fancier than the usual place I would have lunch at but hope its not too expensive as the guidebook says this is very cheap but it does not look cheap.

I order a thali (big tray with a dozen dishes laid out in a circle. Each one is excellent. Some of the best restaurant Indian I have had yet. Restaurant food tends not to be nearly as good as home food but....

Eggplant like a cloud, little veggies like tiny cucumbers sauteed with channa dahl. Sambar, Rasam, coconut chutney, mango pickle, fresh yogurt, fluffy rice, etc etc.

All quite delightful, but I finish all these and turn to the little sweet. It is one of the usual milk sweets where they slowly boil milk for hours until it thickens, but this one has sugar crystals in a parallel formation and is overwhelmingly delicious. So overwhelming all the other senses shut down in order to just focus on the intense deliciousness.

Now that is food!!  And total bill was under $3

I go back for a simple dinner of uttapam (thick pancake of fermented rice and urad dahl)  with some rasam and veggies and for desert a gulab jamun (a little cloud in hot sugar, cardamon, rose water syrup) also stunningly delicious. and all this for under $2

Jodhpur - At the southern end of the Thar Desert

Now in Jodhpur and staying at an old, small, tall place next to Gulab Sagar "Rose Ocean" or Lake but is actually a 6 or so acre stone water tank.

The city is filled with massive forts on all the hills, such as this one just north west of the tank.

The Imams seem not to coordinate their Adhan (call to prayer) as the loudspeakers will blare out the call from one mosque and then 5 minutes later from another and 5 minutes late another, etc. But despite the generally low fidelity sound system the sound coursing over the city sets off an almost trace-like stillness.

And a few stealth photos of people:

Now, I do the luxury of air travel (quite cheap here by US standards) to hop 2000 miles south, from Mughal cuisine with its strong middle eastern influence with naan and thick gravies to the south with its massive, paper thin dosa (rice and dahl crepe) and uttapam (same batter as dosa but in the evening so it is thicker, which is spread out like pizza crust and topped with veggies)

Your Petro-Dollars At Work

When I lived here in 1996, mostly in Madhya Pradesh but 1 month traveling around to Mumbai, Pune, Chennai, Madurai, Tirupati, Delhi, I don't remember seeing any covered women but the last two trips here, while not common I am seeing more and more.

Most are not in full burka but in these full head wraps with just slits for the eyes and shoulder length gloves.

While Muslims are a small minority (about 10% of the pop) in India, there are more Muslims in India than Iraq, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Yemen, and Jordon combined.

Over the last 2 decades, the Saudis and other petro-dollar middle east countries have funded thousands of madrasas across nearly all countries with a significant Muslim population, this has allowed the massive expansion of the Wahabi sect's rather extreme interpretation.

With this rise in funding for this far right material has come an increase in terrorist activity. Delhi had an amazing level of security. The wonderful Metro system has the same level of security screening as at US airports and even the chaotic train stations had metal detectors, luggage screening and pat downs. The fancier shops and restaurants had metal detectors at the doors.

There are, of course, other repercussions of our oil addiction but this is one that also shapes lives.

Certified Insanity

Where do I start?

I have only driven a motorcycle once in my life. It was in Khandwa (in Madhya Pradesh), when I was working there in the mid 1990's and it didnt go all that well. A supporter has let us the use of one of his motorcycles for a few days but the teacher I was working with (a young fellow from Orissa) was too scared to drive it, so when we needed to get somewhere I volunteered. Things went OK the first few hundred yards until this fellow was coming straight for us and seemed confused. It was not until we passed each other in the midst of much horn blowing and arm waving that I realized I had not factored in the obvious fact that I was in a former British colony so instead of staying right you are supposed to stay left.

Bikaner contains one of the few places in India where you can can rent motorcycles. I did so and kept firmly to the left.

The goal was to get out of Bikaner via the shortest possible route and do a big loop to the west through the desert and south and make it back BEFORE dark.

I had wanted to go north west but when quizzed where I was headed, the owner said that was no-man's land from 1 km from town to the Pakistani border, military personnel only. I am glad he asked.

Streets in Indian cities tend to be a bit chaotic.

So I filled up with 3 liters petrol and headed west towards Jaisalmer. It took about 45 minutes to make the 5 km to the western edge of the city and stunningly no crash.

A few kilometers further I came to the first burned out overturned truck (see previous post)(sorry no pictures).

As the traffic thinned out I was able to look around and was stunned by the number of windshields laying about. Literally every 100-200 feet there was another pile of windshield, sometimes accompanied by gashes in the pavement where one of the two vehicles moved for some time in an upside down position.

India has a highway mortality rate in a day that equals about the US's mortality rate in a year, despite having about 1/40th the vehicles.

Its not that Indian drivers are bad (even though with the explosion of private cars over the last 10 years the quality has declined), they are for the most part very skilled, far more skilled than US drivers. When you can meet oncoming traffic with a few inches of spaces or pass other vehicles and miss oncoming traffic by an inch or two, that requires great skill. The problem being that at those tolerances there is little room for miscalculations. 

Once out of the city I could do a few photos:

Centuries (or tens of) of severe livestock grazing has eliminated most of the vegetation. Grasses still occur in robust condition within shrub protection (just as in the US). Accessible forage was grazed to close to 100% 

Typical house in the scattered villages

Taking a break after a long stretch of sand covered, one lane road which was VERY difficult on a motorcycle

One interesting grass seed head, probably some grama family

Gajner Palace

More Gajner Palace out in the sands. It was built just a a winter hunting lodge.

Cattle and pigs grazing on Gajner Palace garbage

Typical wind erosion - and sampling of the tough, unpalatable species that remain

grass species surviving within spiky shrub protection

So I made it back just as the sun was setting after about 140 km (on 2 liters of gas)