They say no good story ever started with a salad. They are wrong. “We are going to have salad with every meal from now on,” he declared one day before we were to go on a weekend trip to Chikmagalur. “He” refers to the autocratic, ambitious, ampractical (alliteration over accuracy) husband of mine. If we were going on a holiday and sustaining on salad, I had to do other drastic things to make up for it. I headed to the salon, and after a teary reunion, my stylist took it upon himself to change my look. “Blue hair”, he said. “Only if it takes less than an hour,” I said. “Of course,” he said and proceeded to hold me hostage for the next 4 hours. It was worth it, despite the size of the bill. The smurf look was gonna fit right into the hilly scene. I would have ideally liked to post a picture. Then again, the selfie collection of a person who is too embarrassed to freeze people mid task while posing for that perfect selfie, is just filled with blurry faces and missing limbs. The influencer life is clearly not for me. Anyway, we start off Friday afternoon with my blue hair, a blue suitcase, 3 umbrellas and a bottle of wine. We were headed to a homestay in a coffee estate. With instructions given ahead to the homestay that we needed salad for every meal. The brat is coached to be a good ‘travel buddy’, which mostly included tips on how to look out of the window in wondrous awe of the beauty around us, without asking for our mobile phones. The forecast was rain and heavy rain for the next 3 days. Lucky for us, we love the monsoon. We arrive at our destination in the midst of fog, clouds and rain, just as it is getting dark. We are greeted by the smell of coffee as soon as we enter the gates of heaven aka our very welcoming, very cosy, very green place of stay. The hosts rush us into our rooms and invite us to join them for a cup of coffee. Two things happened. The bub discovered what addiction means when he took the first sip of horlicks he was offered. I discovered that coffee actually tastes amazing, after all these years of ignorance. We got out our umbrellas and raincoats and went for a short walk just outside the estate. Stopped at the ‘Hill top canteen’ for some egg burji and the company of a black cat. We got back to our cosy room to enjoy the fantastic view of the foggy mountains. We had been experimenting with various board games. Catan and Ticket to Ride were the ones all three of us loved. Dungeons n Dragons was the one we were intimidated by. We finally got around to reading up the rules, watched a few hundred videos of the game and were all set to play it throughout the weekend. And then, we forgot to pack it in. Not one to be deterred by such impediments, the husband decided to do away with the multiple polyhedral dice and go with a simple coin toss. He was the dungeon master. Brat chose to be Gandalf. I chose to be Snoop Dogg. Yes, I am aware that I didn’t fit in. But I was determined to not let this game degenerate into an enactment of LOTR. The brat scoffed at my choice. “What is your power then, huh?” he challenged me. “I chill, severely,” I replied. We got into character. The DM put us in castles with assassins and beasts. I summoned dancers on my turn to solve every problem he threw at us. Meanwhile Gandalf was fighting Saruman (one sorry man, apparently) on his own, pouncing on Urukhai, mistaking Urukhai for Oorugai (the tam pickle), Uppuchek (the gult version of nippat) for Nunchuck and overall managing to put even the dancers to use. The game was interrupted with the arrival of deep fried chicken and french fries. If you ever wondered what there is to do when you go to a hill station with no ‘things to see’, here’s a comprehensive guide - you drink coffee/tea/wine and eat fried chicken. And when you are done, you realise that sunrise has turned into sunset. The next day we headed to the peak of Chikmagalur, Mullayanagiri. Our homestay was located quite close and a short trek got us there. We fortified ourselves with the maggi bowl that is a mandatory sighting on all hill tops. And then we started the 300 step trek up. The wind threatened to blow us away, the husband chickened out several times, but the little guy held our hands and dragged us to the top. The rest of the trip was spent heading out in different directions on walking trails. That is, when we were not gorging ourselves with the drool worthy food our hosts were dishing out. Last year for his birthday, we had gifted the bub a small canon camera. This might be the best investment we had ever made to maintain sanity during travel. He clicked pictures of the road, the bugs on the road, the fallen trees, the mist-covered houses, the umbrellas, us holding the umbrellas and just about everything else in sight. A trip to the western ghats is always amazing. The great scenic winding roads literally make you unwind. It was a very short trip, but we did manage to load ourselves with more coffee powder from the estate to relive Chikmaglur for a few more days at home.
PS. No salad or vegetables were harmed or touched during the trip or the writing of this blog.
0 Comments
Of late, travel has become a choice between spontaneous, unplanned trips or none at all. Managing a toddler and two start ups is not a good situation for travel. It is in fact, the opposite of good. It is the death of travel. But we take what we get. One of those rips in the work-work continuum occurred during our wedding anniversary. We had a weekend to get away. 2 days can be a lot or nothing at all, and we wanted to make it count. We always do a toss between a few options – go to a cool resort close by, save on driving time and do nothing; or go to a nearby tourist place which is a 3-4 hour drive away and do nothing; or take a flight some place, do nothing and get back. It is fairly obvious what the common theme is. More on the art of doing nothing later. This time though, we wanted to do something different. Given the limited time, we ruled out many places and were on the verge of giving up when we hit upon the most brilliant idea ever. One of those ideas that in hindsight seem so obvious that they make you wonder what took you so long. We were going to go on a road trip, with no particular place to go. Just be on the road and do nothing. Conforming to my status as a lazy researcher, I messaged a fellow traveler and asked him for some suggestions on scenic routes. He rattled off a host of choices and we decided on the most straight forward option. We would drive from Bangalore to Udupi and drive back. This was the route we were going to follow: Bangalore to Udupi via Shravanabelagola and Mangalore; Udupi to Bangalore via Agumbe and Chickmagaluru. Saturday started early at 7am. As soon as we crossed Bangalore, I wanted to make a pit stop to load up on the munchies and grab some breakfast. But the husband suggested we don't eat until we got really hungry. Like all his ideas, it sounded awesome at first. We decided to stop only at Shravanabelagola for breakfast. We had a long drive before us. He drove. I sat in silent contemplation, about this trip. The concept of traveling sure has come a long way. From our parents’ generation, where the aim was to cover as much ground as possible in a day, we now try to ‘experience’ more than just ‘see’. And yet, most of us hold the Lonely Planet closer to us than our passports. There’s an unspoken pressure of doing all sorts of things because you know YOLO, and FOMO, not to mention FOBTWMO (Fear of being told we missed out). We are always so caught up in trying to get the best out of the place we are in, that we forget to just soak it in. So what really did I want from travel? After much staring at the grey road ahead of me, I concluded, to me, traveling is about letting things happen to you. It’s about letting go and wading in to the unknown. It’s trying not to have a purpose. Traveling to a place different from yours has to mean that at the end of it, you look at things differently, at least a little bit. It has to have evoked some feelings, some emotions, some thoughts in you that give you a different perspective, however small. Else, you could have chosen the resort next door. Nothing wrong with that. It’s just not traveling. It’s merely holidaying. So that’s what we decided to do. Do nothing, let things unfold and see what happens. One of the quickest side effects when you decide to do nothing, is that you get terribly hungry and suddenly all the eateries on your way look unappealing. Luckily, I could blame the husband for this one. We reached Shravanabelagola around 10am. We could see the giant Mahavir statue from afar. We went to the parking lot and figured it’s quite a walk up the hill, and for all practical purposes, breakfast would leave us happier. We were pointed to a South Indian breakfast joint that was crowded with all the devotees from the temple. Standing next to the parking lot entrance was an old man asking people if they wanted to have Jain breakfast. We said yes to him, the least we could do is go to a Jain eatery if not the Jain temple. The shopkeeper who showed us the South Indian joint asked us not to go. We disregarded him and went anyway. Turned out it wasn’t even a hotel. It was a room in a house with a few steel benches and stools sprinkled about. He had a white sheet of paper on which he had printed the menu and stuck it next to the Bhagawan-wala calendar on the stained wall. We decided to order one masala parantha. When he finally brought it to our table, it turned out to be sattu ka parantha and the best one we had ever had. We ordered one more and then one more. Quite satisfied with our choices that morning, we set out for Sakhleshpur. After a short coffee break at Sakhleshpur, we drove all the way to Mangalore. The national highway was a beauty. There wasn’t a single stretch of bad road. It was the perfect day to look out the window and day dream. We reached Mangalore around 3pm. We had long ago made up our minds to eat crab and only crab. Roasted in ghee. So we went to the much recommended Gajili and polished off their crab collection for the day. We then headed to Pabbas, the insanely famous ice cream parlour. After stuffing our faces with the goodies, we set out for Udupi. There are many towns in the Udupi district where you can camp for the night. We passed by the Kapu town and decided to drive through the interior roads. We parked in someone’s drive way and walked over to the beach from their house. It was a beach front house which was unoccupied for the day. We took our cheesy beach photographs against the sunset. It was close to getting dark, but we decided to sit there for sometime anyway. Holding hands with someone and looking at the clear waters of the Arabian sea is quite the way to spend an evening. Here, there was the added excitement of a possible trespassing charge. We tried convincing the security guard to rent the place to us for the night and failed miserably. An hour later, with our hearts full of love and shorts full of sand, we walked back to our car and set off towards Malpe beach. We checked into the Paradise Isle resort, facing the Malpe beach. It was 7.30 in the evening already. We unpacked, hit the shower and then went out to grab some dinner at the food stalls by the beach. We ate Gobi Manchurian and watched a group of 50 guys dance in an open dancing area until we were asked to leave. The next morning, we took a leisurely walk by the Malpe beach and discovered how perfect it was. The beach wasn’t a favourite among the tourists yet, there were only the local couples and their dogs going on their morning walks. It was quite clear that this unassuming town by the beach is not going to be this peaceful in a couple of years. The resorts, the beach houses owned by Bangaloreans and the students from Manipal were all indications that the beaches here will be the next tourist destination! We started late the next morning and hit the road. We drove via Agumbe this time, a small hilly village in the Shimoga district. It’s a charming little place close to Shringeri and Kudremukh, where a lot of the Malgudi Days episodes were shot. A visit to the Kudremukh national park would have been nice, but this trip was only about being on the road. So, we drove past the beautiful, wet views and continued on to Chickmagalur. The smell of coffee is what marks your entry into the Chickmagalur district. It makes you stop involuntarily at all the small, cute coffee shops set up along the way and have a coffee. Being surrounded by greenery on all sides and sipping on coffee with not a thing to do, our lives suddenly seemed very rich. For what is wealth, if not the means to afford you leisure! After the fifth coffee, we agreed to quit the place and started driving towards Bangalore. We were back in town by 8pm. After two days on the road, we thought we would be exhausted. But something about the monotony of the long winding roads calmed us down, helped us be alone with our thoughts and think up random stuff to write about in blogs. More road trips are definitely in the offing. PS: At the beginning of this post, I promised to talk about the art of doing nothing later. I have nothing. I only said that because I had learnt early on at B School that it’s a good way to stop people from asking questions while I am talking. All this while, it was right there. Like a shoulder pad on the map. Quiet, innocuous, making its appearance in our legends, zooming in and out whenever we thought of the mountains, and patiently waiting for us. It took us a long time to get there and the time we spent there was nearly not enough, but it was the right choice. Just one month after our visit came the terrible earthquake, striking at the heart of the places that held us in awe. Place: Kathmandu. 3 days. The husband and I. A dreamlike retreat. The agenda: To connect over dal bhat and momos, walk aimlessly, gaze at the mountains and if time permitted, nirvana. The first evening, I was on my own and google told me Thamel was where I needed to be. It was the biggest shopping district that I had ever seen or hoped to see. I was lost within minutes. I was hungry and went in search of some local food. There were hundreds of shopkeepers telling me what I needed, viz. shawls made of cashmere, pullovers made of cashmere, bags made of cashmere, toys made of - you guessed it, lingerie made of felt (yes, this is a thing), scary masks and a trip to the Annapurna range. None of them offered any food. Finding local food in Thamel was not a trivial task. One, Nepalese cuisine could refer to Tibetian, Newari, Pahari or a dozen other local cuisines. Two, the streets of Thamel were filled with cafes that insisted on being European. I desperately wanted to try the Newari cuisine. Because that had the selroti which looked so like a kodubale! After an hour of walking, I found myself in front of a huge place located in an alley that was within an alley that was within an alley that was... Everything, from the name plate to the menu to the posters to the customers, was Chinese. No one spoke any of the two and half languages I spoke. I put aside my quest for Newari food and pointed at momos. They came steaming hot along with chop sticks. I asked for a fork. The waitress did not understand. I gave the sticks a try and the momo promptly disintegrated. A man who was sitting at the next table saw my struggle and came over. He gestured as if to ask if he could teach me. I nodded yes. He took another pair of chopsticks and showed me how to use them by popping a momo into his mouth. I caught on and managed to gobble down a few before he could attack my plate again. He laughed. Everyone else in the place laughed. I was forced to join in. By the time I paid for the momos, the streets outside had fallen deadly silent. Apart from a few stray cats and shop keepers hanging outside their shops, there was no activity. I hitched a ride back in a taxi, trying to give landmarks to a taxi driver who understood not a word of what I said. The similarity with India fast disappeared and in those dark lanes, I found the phoren country I was looking for. The next day, we visited the Durbar square. This square has the greatest density of Unesco world heritage sites. A guide convinced me into hiring him for a tour. The square is surrounded with stunning pagoda style temples, palaces and museums built by Newar craftsmen. We started with the Kumari Bahal, a three storeyed courtyard that is the residence of the living goddess. The living goddess is a 9 year old girl belonging to a particular clan, chosen as the goddess by the priests. Every day, for a couple of hours she makes an appearance from a window where tourists can get a glimpse of her face and pray to her; she is taken around on a chariot during festivals while the whole town waits on the sidelines for a fleeting look; her picture is put on fridge magnets and postcards. When she hits puberty a couple of years later, a new goddess is chosen, the picture on the post cards is updated and she is sent back to her previous, mortal life. And you thought Audrey Hepburn had it rough in My Fair Lady. The best part of the square was the mix of Hindu and Buddhist architectures. The guide took me to each of these and threw a lot of random information my way. A sample of the things I was told – The Jagannath temple that had erotic sculptures from the Kamasutra, was where children came along with their parents, to learn about sex before being married off at the age of 8. The Hanuman statue opposite this temple had its eyes covered, because he was a bachelor and looking at erotic poses is a no no. The police station is next to the Kalbhairav temple because he is the god of justice and keeps the police honest. The tall pillar inside one of the temples cured people of orthopedic problems, all they had to do was rub the joint that hurts against it; it will however not work for me because I had no faith. What made the visit to Durbar Street worthwhile, was the scores of pigeons and the souvenir shops. Thangka paintings were the hot item followed by meditation bowls and Dalai Lama’s original design of the meditation mandala slapped on all kinds of stationery. We bought a painting of the durbar street, as it was a few centuries ago. At the end of the tour, the guide earned his full fee by turning out to be a Newari. He took us to his favourite lunch corner in Indra Chowk where mouth watering mung bara, masu bara and spicy aloo were made in a corner tucked away from the touristy streets. We discovered the brilliance of spicy food and ice cold water. Some more walking and café hopping in Freak Street and the neighbouring markets rounded up the day for us. The next day was our last day. We went through our list of things to do. We skipped the Boudhnath stupa, the Pasupathi temple and the trip to Bhaktapur. There simply was no time to waste in commute. Instead we went to the monkey temple. The monkey temple, like the ones in Durbar square was a mixture of Buddhist and Hindu deities. Served with a liberal sprinkling of monkeys. The expansiveness and openness of this place was charming beyond words. It is perched on top of a small hill. Any direction you turned, you would have either a view of the Himalayan ranges or an alleyway selling paintings of the view of the ranges. Any temple that doesn’t require you to take off your shoes or force you to fold your hands and pray to a deity is a winner in my books. It was more a place to congregate. Locals and priests doing puja. Tourists clicking photos. Kids coaxing their parents to buy them coca cola during a break of hide and seek. Monkeys grooming each other. A communal place indeed. We spent the afternoon just loitering around. We heard the Tibetian chant ‘aum mane padme hum’ for so long that we were lulled into buying a cd. I have not been able to get it out of my head till date. We headed towards Thamel for some more of the Newari food. Our favoured place this time was a small nook in the basement of a house. It satisfied the husband’s need to go to some place vague and I was just happy to finally see food. We plonked ourselves there and ate our way through chatamari (flat bread made from rice flour topped with meat, vegetables and eggs), chura (beaten rice made like chat), alu tama, chuela (fried meat that’s like a cutlet) and dal bhaat. All for less than 200INR.
It had started to pour, but we continued. One hour later, weighed down by 5 shopping bags and an umbrella that did not keep us dry, we gave in to the lure of the Himalayan café. Accompanied by some hot chocolate and marshmallows, I finished reading Looking for Alaska, while the husband went in search of wifi. The rain eased and we walked around until we got to the Mandala Street in Thamel. This was the answer to everything we wanted at that moment. Cafes, pubs, live music and the smell of pastries mingled with the smell of rain. Ever noticed how when you have so much choice, you end up not choosing at all? That was us, for an hour. We eventually made our way through some pies at Pumpkin café, thukpa at the Yangling, noodles at Sam’s club and settled down for the night with some beer at Zibro resto bar. The live band played soft rock and reggae in front of a large painting of Bob Marley. The mountains visible through the window and the soft lights over our table provided the back drop. It’s amazing how a single Bob Marley painting sets the mood of a place. We flew back home the next day having made the acquaintance of a city that is real and unreal at the same time. The mountains, a constant reminder of all that was real; the shopping streets, of all that was made just for tourists. To us, Kathmandu will always be this heady juxtaposition of nature, culture and showmanship. We promised ourselves we will go back soon, this time closer to the mountains and do more than just hunt for good food. Visakhapatnam, my last stop for this trip. The city with the naval base. The city with the oldest shipyard on the east coast. The city that is home to a lot of friends. And to me, the city that is the gateway to Arakku. I had a one day stop here before I boarded the next train. Once I checked in, unpacked and finished eating the mini bar goodies, I went down into the street. I figured I would go to the beach and get a lunch with a view. The autowala took me to the famed beach road and together we found a place that served Chinese noodles to foreign tourists. I ordered a portion of egg noodles, ploughed through the mountain for half an hour and for the first time ever left a plate of noodles unfinished. The beach was the strangest thing I had ever seen. And not the nice kind of strange. There were giant statues of gorillas, fish and people. There was hardly anyone walking on the beach, given the heat. With a heavy heart and stomach, I gave up exploring the beach and flagged another auto down. I asked him to take me to the most happening area in town. He said he knew just the place. So it was that I ended up in Jagadamba center. It was happening, alright. It was the time of Sankranti and everyone was out shopping. He took me on a quick tour of the place. I decided against getting down and risk getting lost amid the throng of shoppers. I asked him to take me around town. I had read so much about the Kailasagiri hill, but he had other plans for me. The Three Hills is where we are going, he declared. He said it was the underdog of tourist places in Vizag. I have been following friendly advice throughout the trip, I saw no reason to give up now. So up we went. As we passed through the streets, he gave me a quick lowdown on all the streets, showed me the shops where he shopped for his kids and where he took them to movies. It was a pleasure hearing him talk. I realised just how much I missed talking in my mother tongue. Sure I talk to my family, but it’s not the same thing. Only when you bargain for rides, clothes and vegetables in a language does it count. The Three Hills was so named because of the three hills in the area, each housing a different place of worship. The Ross Hill church, the Dargah Konda and the Venkateshwara Konda. He rued the fact that not all of them are open these days. He dropped me at Ross church. And I saw this. Translated, it means “holy family”. I made a mental note to buy myself a spinning wheel. The lookout from the hill, on the other hand was amazing. I took the mandatory few bad photographs from my mobile phone. This was indeed a great location to see the expanse of the city. The port and the naval base were sprawled out, making the city look vast and deep. It made me realise why people from Vizag miss the place like they do. The rest of the evening was spent on a long walk, trying to find a book store. The Amitav Ghosh that I was reading was proving to be too serious for the train journey. Luckily there were some friends in town, willing to meet, and swap some books. We had a lovely dinner in one of the terrace restaurants with a view of the beach. Better still, I got to come away with ‘The Pricey Thakur Girls’ for the next day’s journey. 6.30 in the morning is just the right time to board a train. There’s something about the early morning sights and sounds that make you feel like the city is letting you in on its secrets. It was a lovely morning and I had not felt this safe in a city for a long time. This train journey was different for two reasons. One, I was making the return journey the same day. So this was purely about the means and not the end. The other, and this was unfortunate, was that it was a passenger train on which I had a second class ticket. It was a Saturday to boot and thousands of families were out with their kids to make the day trip to Bora caves and Arakku. Nothing like a bunch of Telugu and Bengali families on a train to make you feel like settling down in the mountains among yaks that can’t talk. One set of family was teaching their kids to take photographs of the valley outside. Another was crooning to 90s bollywood romantic songs playing on their mobile phone. Paul Theroux says in his book that the railways are like a bazaar. To understand the people of a country, all you need to do is get into a train and wait for the drama to unfold. Stories are told. Fears are disclosed. Territories are marked. Class lines are drawn. I have to agree with him. Arakku is 130 km away from Vizag on the rail route. But it takes 4 hours to get there. It is 15 stations away with a 10 minute stop at each station. It seemed interminable. The innumerable tunnels were both fun and a device of torture. People screeched their lungs out with each approaching tunnel. Sometimes the tunnels lasted 5 whole minutes. There was no place at all near any of the windows to peer out. Everyone was leaning against the window bars. It was drizzling and that made the valley outside stunning in its beauty. There were breathtaking sights of the valley on the one side and waterfalls on the other. Water trickling through lush green is a sight to behold. But I caught fewer and fewer glimpses of that and increasing glimpses of the rats scurrying across in the coupes. The train was the dirtiest of the lot in the trip. I opened my book to see what the Thakur girls were upto. We arrived at Arakku by noon. I had two and half hours to kill before it was time for the return train. I got into an auto and gave him the brief – lunch and a good view. We stopped at a street side vendor to pack some bamboo chicken and headed to a view point. We went up along a winding route paved among trees that hid the otherwise smouldering sun. The view point came upon us quite abruptly. There were a few people clicking photographs and moving on; no one was really stopping there. There was a man selling honey and another selling spices. I decided to eat my bamboo chicken on the ledge separating this platform from the valley below. The honey vendor lent me some paper and plastic to unpack the chicken. I repaid his generosity by buying a bottle of honey. The lunch was delicious, the monkeys were good company and the backdrop couldn’t have been better. I got back to the station half an hour early, only to find that the train was delayed. It was one of those stations with just one platform and one train passing through it. I was quite amazed that it had a waiting room at all. A spotless, clean one at that. I parked myself on one of the stone benches lined along the wall. I had long since finished the book. And had only the 20% battery on my mobile phone to keep me engaged. There were a few other people, the men mostly sleeping and the women swatting flies. An old man playing “gimme everything tonight” on his phone kept us entertained. The mandatory drunk in the railway station kept us up to date on when the train is expected, which now was 2.5 hours later. I contemplated taking a taxi back to Vizag. He advised me against it, saying the route was not safe. So I waited at the station, which was singularly gorgeous. But I was miffed, I had enough of this, I was homesick and I just wanted to sit in the rat infested train and get back home. I spent my time dipping my finger into the honey bottle and slurping it drop by drop. Just when my finger couldn’t reach the honey in the bottle any more, the train arrived. I enjoyed the alluring scene for about 2 hours before darkness fell. After that, each time the train passed through one of the dark tunnels, I held my breath and waited for the dementors from Azkaban to come for me. As I sat there by the window counting the number of stops to reach Vizag, I realised I would be home by this time tomorrow. I mulled over what my biggest discovery during the trip was. It was this – take advice from strangers, load up your phone with bollywood music and travel by autos. You might not end up doing what you would have liked, but you will end up with a good story.
My third train was the longest on this trip. Lasting 26 hours, it took me from the west coast all the way to Vizianagaram on the east coast. This was my gateway to Vizag and then to Arakku. This was also the journey that I did not have a confirmed ticket for. My 2nd AC ticket was waitlisted at ‘PWL1’. For over a month! The mysteries of the Indian railway ticket. I got to the station early and bought a ticket that enables unreserved travel in the general compartment. The train arrived at the station. I got into one of the second class compartments. I zeroed in on compartment S7 for my unauthorized travel. A young Australian couple going to Hampi for the cultural festival; a shopkeeper originally from Hampi with a nuts & fruits shop in Goa, going back home; a man travelling all the way to Howrah in what he cited as dire circumstances; these were my fellow travelers. In the next ten minutes, it was clear that all of them had only general tickets. Not one of them had a confirmed ticket. I began to feel at home. I wheeled in my suitcase that was so far hesitantly positioned in the aisle, and confidently shoved it under the seat. I was not too worried. I romanticised about getting down at some random station like Dharwad and finding inner peace, or at the very least good peda. The travelling ticket examiner [TTE] came in. He had no berths to offer in this class and suggested I check in the AC compartments. I went in search of the AC compartment TTE. He shooed me away and asked me to check with the new TTE at Hubli. I got back to S7 to the sympathy and ‘I told you so’s of my friends (Yes, we were thick by then). In the meantime, while I was going from compartment to compartment trying to get a seat, I had clean forgotten why I was on the train in the first place. I was to enjoy the breathtaking view of the Dudhsagar falls between Madgaon and Londa. The Dudhsagar falls are amongst India’s tallest falls and this train offered the best view of them. I asked the Hampi shopkeeper [HS] if he knew when the falls would make an appearance. He confidently told me it was half an hour later and I was to lean onto the right side. As he said this, I noticed everyone making their way to the door and leaning onto the left side. I decided to follow HS’s advice (friendship is nothing if there is no trust). Ten minutes later, amidst the excited cries of everyone around, I caught a glimpse of the falls from the left side. Apparently I missed the full view. So much for the long trip for the sake of the falls. Although, the fresh air, that lasted for almost 2 hours, was totally worth it. I returned to my seat, HS asked me if I got a good view, I replied in the negative, he opined I must be quite daft to miss such a huge thing, especially when the train stopped there for a few minutes. The Australian couple, on the other hand, saw the full thing. When they boarded the train, they did not even know of these falls. I am sure there’s a lesson in there for me. I am just not sure what. It turned out HS was a great conversationalist. He told the Australian couple that they were going to Hampi at the right time, marked out the places they could stay at and visit. All sweetness. After he was done with them, he turned to me and said “I don’t trust these Christians. They are always trying to convert people to their religion. So are Muslims for that matter. I don’t know what religion you belong to, but you can see that I am right.” “These Australian Christians did not try to convert you, did they?” “Oh you just wait, they will, by the end of the journey. Which is why, I say Hindus are the only good people left. For that matter, not even all Hindus. Only those who pray to Shiva, he is the only God worth anything. He grants your wishes. The rest of them are fake.” “I see. What did you wish for?” “I wanted a rich girlfriend and I got one. She is not very pretty but I am seeing her because of the money. I am going to the festival so I can take her around. During this season, you can get lost in the crowd, and the town people don’t talk about you afterwards. If everything goes well, I’ll marry her later this year” “You are dating her for the money. Why is she seeing you?” “Oh, I have a way with women. Btw, you know what, if you don’t get your berth, you should get down at Hospet and come to Hampi. I’ll show you around.” Stranded as I was, the offer was tempting. I called my husband to ask if I should just go to Hampi instead of Arakku. He suggested, in his usual helpful manner, that I should do what I really want to do. I got him to book a hotel room for me in Hampi, just in case, and went back to making a mental pros and cons list of Hampi vs Arakku. Before I made up my mind, the train arrived at Hubli. The new TTE was a congenial man with a fatherly attitude towards life. He was checking our tickets, when a young girl, about 20 years old, got into our compartment. She literally lifted me off my seat, asked everyone to scooch over, and put me down a few inches away. Given how none of us had a confirmed ticket, we meekly accepted the situation. The TTE asked to see her ticket. She took out a general ticket, similar to ours and gave it to him. One look at it, he rolled his eyes, and asked her where she needed to go. “Perambur.” “Please get off in the next station, go back and find the right train.” After much theatrics and hysteria, he got the girl to leave the compartment. He assured me he would find me a berth at Hospet. I told him it was alright if he did not, I would get off at Hospet and go to Hampi. This gave him a headache. He did not understand what I wanted and just asked me to talk to him at Hospet and until then I should know that I was travelling illegally in the train. I offered to pay the required fine to convert my ticket. He said he did not know how to calculate the fine for someone who had a general ticket till Vizianagaram, had travelled till Hubli and may or may not get off at Hospet. I realised it did not really matter whether I got to Vizianagaram or not. I was quite enjoying myself. The girl who boarded the wrong train. The two guys who shared a home meal and friendly banter, while peeling an onion in the compartment. The travel agent’s assistant who took the train just so he could sell hotel rooms in Hospet, to foreigners for 1000 rupees a night. The foreigners who thought that was too much. The TTE who cracked jokes with a couple, until he gave up in the face of their stoic refusal to laugh. This then, was what it was about. It was about catching up with life. Seeing what people had been up to. People I didn’t normally meet in my day to day life. People that I recognized from an earlier life. Thoughts that I remembered having long ago. When you travel in a train, you realise what a narrow circle of people you mingle with. It’s easy to believe that’s all there is to the world out there. With these thoughts in my mind, we came upon Hospet. The TTE told me he found a berth for me. So, I was to continue my journey after all. I moved to the AC compartment. The compartment with the closed curtains suddenly seemed lifeless. The elderly couple who were already there were quite snobbish and got cross with me for sitting on their white bedding. So, I decided to retire to the upper berth that was mine. Looking forward to nothing interesting for the rest of the evening, I went to bed. The next morning, the lady from the lower berth wished me good morning, said she wanted to take a chance. I did not quite get what she meant. She said that she had wished me earlier and I did not respond. She did not know if it was because I was a snob or if I did not hear her. Sometimes people think the exact same thing of you, as you think of them. Talk about irony. With this newly attained wisdom, I got off the train at Vizianagaram. I wanted to visit the Vizianagaram fort but the taxi drivers told me there was no fort around. I showed them the Wikipedia page but they categorically denied its existence. No point in arguing if they were that embarrassed by it, so I gave up, got into an ambassador taxi, wore my blue shades and set out for Vishakapatnam. Just a small town girl Living in a lonely world She took the midnight train Going anywhere So my world wasn’t lonely, my train was in the morning, and I knew exactly where it was going. But when you wake up at 5 in the morning and take off to the railway station in a strange town, it sure feels that way. When I started planning my trip, I was particular about one thing. I would try to take day trains and camp for the night at a hotel. None of those going without a shower for 2 days kinda trips for me. For future reference, I paid particular attention to the waiting rooms and the attached showers in the railway stations. The Ernakulam station was without doubt one of the cleanest stations. The waiting rooms made me think Indian railways has come a long long way. This would soon change. For now, I was happy to bask in my love for Kerala. I was taking the Ernakulam-Poona express that goes across the Konkan coastline. My stop was at Madgaon. This was the highlight of my itinerary. Or so I thought. That would change in a couple of days as well. My ticket was for a non AC second class compartment. No more comfort of the AC chair car. I wanted an uninterrupted view of the landscape. I found my seat, verified that the toilets do indeed stink, cleared away the dried orange peels from my side-lower berth, wiped off the grime of a few years with a wet wipe, confirmed that the train on the neighbouring track is cleaner, and settled down. To the stink of poop from the tracks. Having finally understood why people get in only at the very last minute, I decided to get off the train. Not caring if you lose your suitcase is the most liberating feeling during travel. It single-handedly determines how adventurous you’ll end up being. My suitcase had nothing apart from a few pairs of clothes, books and wet wipes. So I left it behind and went down to get some breakfast. After a plate of hot idli vada, and an early morning walk from one end of the station to the other, I climbed back in and we choo-chooed off. My pick for this journey was the appropriately named The Great Railway Bazaar by Paul Theroux. I did not have a chance to go beyond a few pages. The distractions were many this day. The first of them came in the form of the orange sun. The best part of watching the sun rise from a train is not the sunrise itself. It’s the backdrop of the horizontal window bars and the occasional zigzagging telephone lines. It’s like a complex can-you-count-the-triangles-in-this-picture puzzle. I closed my book and eased into a routine of gazing out of the window and staring at my fellow passengers alternately. I had written down the list of stations the train would stop at, on a piece of paper. I was expecting to be blown away at Mangalore. I didn’t have to wait till then. I was wide eyed at Shoranur. Fact time - There are 2000 bridges and 91 tunnels on the Konkan railway. A fair number of these were on the route I took, killing my ear drums a little bit each time we passed a tunnel. The other interesting fact about the Konkan railways is that all the stations are plastic free. Hence, it comes as even more of a disappointment to see a line of plastic bags outlining each view, in between the stations. Notwithstanding, the ride was mesmerizing. One moment the train was navigating the middle of the sea, and the other the insides of a mountain. I wish I had gone all the way to Pune along the coast, but my ticket was only till Madgaon. As I got off the train, my suitcase bumped into a foreigner sporting a beard and a lungi, paired with sneakers. The similarity to the Goa I was familiar with ended there, with him. I checked into a hotel close to the station. It was just 7.30 in the evening. I collapsed on the bed for a short nap and got up at 8.30 the next morning. I had a leisurely breakfast, admiring a couple of cute fellas who had come from Sikkim to play a football match. I had nowhere to go and nothing to do for the rest of the day. So I set out to explore the streets, with my cool blue shades and sunscreen. It was a hot morning but that was not going to stop me. I came across this quaint little store selling ceramic ware – platters, wall hangings and the like – hand painted by a local painter. At that moment, I fell in love with all things Goan. Baga and Candolim, memories from just the previous month, seemed like an age away. This vivacious, happy, creative place captured my heart. The golden heart emporium, now named Confidant library, was next on my mind. I chose the route via the old market. This is a Goa unlike any that I had seen before. Greasy shops, charming colourful houses and crumbling accountant offices characterised the Abade Faria road.
I trudged along to the library, a stuffy place that smelt of books. I picked up a book called Ferry Crossing, a collection of short stories from Goa. The compiler says this is his attempt to portray the real Goa, the one that the tourists don’t know of. It was worth a read. Here’s a travel tip – read a story set in the place you are travelling in. It makes the place come real like nothing else does! All in the comfort of your hotel, without having to step out into the hot sun. And that is exactly what I did for the rest of the day, accompanied by copious amounts of rice and fish curry. One year into motherhood, I decided it was time to pack my bags and leave. For a week. Anything more than that is code red. You can’t just check out, you know. Given all the travel books I had been reading during the hibernation, I was all pumped up to do some train travel. It has been such a long time since I traveled in a second class compartment. I missed eating the tomato rice packed by mom and the blue rexene seats. So it was decided. Tickets booked. Hotels booked. 5 nannies in the form of grandparents and husband arranged to take over the baby sitting at home. I sped off in a taxi, to catch the early morning Ernakulam express from Bangalore to Ernakulam. There was the welcoming nip in the air that I mistook for freedom from a diaper bag. Men with wind cheaters, making that ruffling noise and beanies covering their ears confirmed otherwise. I decided to warm myself with a cloyingly sweet orange coloured tea. It started perfectly. The train on time, the chair car amazingly clean and the TT very polite. A European who had got into the wrong coach was gently told off. My fellow passengers, a group of 6 people going back from a wedding made themselves comfortable. And by that I mean, started making their own coffee. They produced the whole set up out of a cloth bag that read “Sarath weds Sandhya”. Thick plastic coffee mugs with pink flowers on them, a Nescafe bottle, a Tupperware with sugar and a couple of steel tumblers to do the pouring and mixing. They smiled at me but I felt none of the bonhomie that I have come to expect of strangers on a train. However this gap in my experience was filled by the railway catering waiters. They were by my side every few minutes, offering me the choicest of them deep fried goodies. I briefly considered eating healthy. I quickly set the thought aside and polished off one plate pongal, one vada and 2 dosas. Train journeys make me ravenous. After all that was one of the reasons I was travelling. I took out the first book from the stack that I had stuffed into my small suitcase. Neti, Neti by Anjum Hasan. The catering guy decided I needed a helping of chilli bajji to go with it. As it started getting brighter, I stepped out of the cabin to stand near the door. Idly watching the world pass by, hanging out from the door. As the wind washed the traces of chutney off my face, I knew I was going to love this trip. I got back to my book and read through it as fast as the train, and for the first time in many months I got through a book in a single stretch. Pure joy, mingled with blurry purple spots floating in front of my eyes. As the train reached the final station, I had only one regret. I wish I had my neck pillow. I wasn’t yet comfortable dozing off on my fellow passenger’s shoulders. I stood behind the long line of people waiting for the pre-paid autos. Nothing was going to spoil my upbeat mood. The shy and honest auto drivers made the wait worthwhile. My plan for this trip was to relax at the hotel after the train journey and not go around town. That worked as well as the eating healthy bit. I unpacked and decided to visit the much talked about Princess Street. Only it was on the other side of the river. For 4 rupees on the local ferry, I was dropped off on the other side along with a bunch of other tourists. I walked my way up to princess street. A charming place filled with cafes, with people spilling on to the street. PhotoCredit: Babishvb It looked like another country altogether, with the throng of foreigners walking about like they’ve been living there all their life. My favourite place was the Idiom Book Store. For their collection of books by local authors. For the effort they took to tell people about their part of the world.
I walked awhile, nodding along to a background score of christmas carols. Mallu christmas carols. Now that needs a whole new post for itself. I retired soon after, the next day there was another early morning train to catch. |
Aishwarya KalakataThe loss of and search for individualism has never been felt more acutely. Everything changed after I had a kid. But this blog is not about me being a mom. It’s about the things I do when I want to stop being a mom. It’s about telling myself that it is possible and that it is ok. It’s about my little escapades. Mostly travel - sometimes physical, sometimes mental. A desperate bid to stop my identity from being rolled into a single word. CategoriesArchives
March 2021
|