Thursday, November 30, 2006
Medieval Europe = Modern India
It all started with wanting Mentos at the bus station in Udiapur...
But then suddenly our bus was leaving. This was no normal bus. The Indians have created this thing called a sleeper bus, that still has all the seats of a normal 2x2 greyhoud bus, but on top of them beds in little cubicles. Justina and I decided that for our 10 hour overnight ride we would opt for a cubicle of our own. Bad move. The bus was about 3m high, and had a very low centre of gravity, so all through the night we were moving and shaking and getting major air time thanks to the "paved" roads in India. 12h later, when I didn't think my cheeks would every stop jiggling, we arrived in Surat (pronounced SURREY-RAT). Surat is a big industrial and commerical city with no reason to vist. Oh ya and it had an outbreak of the plague in 1994.
THE PLAGUE?
THE BUBONIC PLAGUE?
1994?
Yes, you read that right. Medievil Europe AND 20th century India. Consult your grade 9 social studies notes for more about the Bubonic plague. As if that wasn't bad enough for Surat, they are also rated India's dirtiest city. And dirty in India has a whole new meaning. Maybe you should go down to Main & Hastings, roll around a bit, go to the bathroom sans toilet paper on the curb, rub some street oil in your hair, sit on a cow, then go eat dinner with your hands - for 4 days straight without having a shower. That is how dirty India is. But I digress, back to lovley Surat.
We got dropped off on the side of the road in the pitch black in a town where NO ONE SPOKE ENGLISH - not even "railway station". So off we go wandering in one direction to find...da da! The railway station. Our luck didn't exactly improve as we had to get train tickets - working our way Indian style through the "line ups" secured us two unreserved tickets on a local train. We ended up waiting and getting started at for 3 hours sitting on the betal-spit stained floor of Surat Junction for 3 hours until we caught the not-so-local train, but still local enough to take 7 hours to go 200km. The only thing that saved me from puking from exhaustion was the whallas who come up and down the isles selling 'CHAIIIIIII, and SAMOOOOOOOOSAS". We had some of the greatest Samosas ever, and at 10rs for 3, you can't go wrong. Another highlight was the performance of the local lady-boy, square jawed and decked out in a beautiful sari. He must have come straight from Thailand too.
Much later than we expected we arrived in Jalgon, another Indian city with no reason to visit. But it was the closest to the Ajanta caves, which we wanted to visit in the morning. We found a descent hotel, and were off to the train station to try to score tickets to Mumbai. It was that kind of day for us where there were 15 trains a day to Mumbai, but all sold out. So we were introduced to the Indian Railways waiting list. Knowing how these people can't even line up in a straight line, we were doubtful about any organized list system. Just when more things couldn't go wrong for us, we went to a restaurant who served us Mirinda (the other orange drink) instead of Fantas, and the power went off for 3 hours between 5pm-8pm - prime power using time. We killed time eating coconut candies and masala dosas (best food ever, i'll be devoting a whole blog to it soon) and then crashed - tired you could say.
Up at 6am to catch a local bus 60km south to Ajanta - site of the UNESCO World Heritage Ajanta Buddhits caves. The local bus was surprisingly fast, fair and not crowded - good start for the day. The caves are one of those see-to-believe places. About 30 caves that are built in into the rockface in a bend in a river. They're from 200BC, and tottally and completley awe-inspiring. Each one has carved buddha images and pillars with such detail you can't believe its stone you're looking at. There are lots of frescos still on the walls dipicting Buddha's life and whatnot. Really cool. And really worth every single of the 100million stares we got from Indian tourist there.
We ended up catching our overnight train to Mumbai - well a suburb of Mumbai. We caught the only time a train has ever been early in the history of India, which dropped us off in Dadar at 4am. What is there to do at a suburban train station at 4am you ask? Well we decided to check out the action in the local train terminal and set up camp on platform 2, right beside the gypsy women and her kids. A few glasses of 3 rupee chai later, we decided that we needed to get to Mumbai central station, wandering aimlessly in a train station when you're white and have huge backpacks on attracts a lot of attention and I don't really know what compells an Indian man to come up to us and offer to help us, but at the time I wasn't willing to bet on genuine kindness, so we declined the offers and preferred to get on an unmarked train heading in what we thought was the right direction. Luckly they enforce the "ladies only carriages" here, so we had a pleasant journey. Arriving at Victoria Terminus, THE railway station in the commonwealth, at 6am was no fun either. But a couple hours later, after we were unsuccessful at getting reserved train tickets to Goa, we finally got to see what Mumbai had to offer....
Its funny because these 3 days were a great example of what travelling is like. When things go bad, everything goes bad. Local busses, dirty cities, no food, no power.... but then just like that it all turns around. The lows are sure low here in India though - at least traveling to and from Surat was!
But then suddenly our bus was leaving. This was no normal bus. The Indians have created this thing called a sleeper bus, that still has all the seats of a normal 2x2 greyhoud bus, but on top of them beds in little cubicles. Justina and I decided that for our 10 hour overnight ride we would opt for a cubicle of our own. Bad move. The bus was about 3m high, and had a very low centre of gravity, so all through the night we were moving and shaking and getting major air time thanks to the "paved" roads in India. 12h later, when I didn't think my cheeks would every stop jiggling, we arrived in Surat (pronounced SURREY-RAT). Surat is a big industrial and commerical city with no reason to vist. Oh ya and it had an outbreak of the plague in 1994.
THE PLAGUE?
THE BUBONIC PLAGUE?
1994?
Yes, you read that right. Medievil Europe AND 20th century India. Consult your grade 9 social studies notes for more about the Bubonic plague. As if that wasn't bad enough for Surat, they are also rated India's dirtiest city. And dirty in India has a whole new meaning. Maybe you should go down to Main & Hastings, roll around a bit, go to the bathroom sans toilet paper on the curb, rub some street oil in your hair, sit on a cow, then go eat dinner with your hands - for 4 days straight without having a shower. That is how dirty India is. But I digress, back to lovley Surat.
We got dropped off on the side of the road in the pitch black in a town where NO ONE SPOKE ENGLISH - not even "railway station". So off we go wandering in one direction to find...da da! The railway station. Our luck didn't exactly improve as we had to get train tickets - working our way Indian style through the "line ups" secured us two unreserved tickets on a local train. We ended up waiting and getting started at for 3 hours sitting on the betal-spit stained floor of Surat Junction for 3 hours until we caught the not-so-local train, but still local enough to take 7 hours to go 200km. The only thing that saved me from puking from exhaustion was the whallas who come up and down the isles selling 'CHAIIIIIII, and SAMOOOOOOOOSAS". We had some of the greatest Samosas ever, and at 10rs for 3, you can't go wrong. Another highlight was the performance of the local lady-boy, square jawed and decked out in a beautiful sari. He must have come straight from Thailand too.
Much later than we expected we arrived in Jalgon, another Indian city with no reason to visit. But it was the closest to the Ajanta caves, which we wanted to visit in the morning. We found a descent hotel, and were off to the train station to try to score tickets to Mumbai. It was that kind of day for us where there were 15 trains a day to Mumbai, but all sold out. So we were introduced to the Indian Railways waiting list. Knowing how these people can't even line up in a straight line, we were doubtful about any organized list system. Just when more things couldn't go wrong for us, we went to a restaurant who served us Mirinda (the other orange drink) instead of Fantas, and the power went off for 3 hours between 5pm-8pm - prime power using time. We killed time eating coconut candies and masala dosas (best food ever, i'll be devoting a whole blog to it soon) and then crashed - tired you could say.
Up at 6am to catch a local bus 60km south to Ajanta - site of the UNESCO World Heritage Ajanta Buddhits caves. The local bus was surprisingly fast, fair and not crowded - good start for the day. The caves are one of those see-to-believe places. About 30 caves that are built in into the rockface in a bend in a river. They're from 200BC, and tottally and completley awe-inspiring. Each one has carved buddha images and pillars with such detail you can't believe its stone you're looking at. There are lots of frescos still on the walls dipicting Buddha's life and whatnot. Really cool. And really worth every single of the 100million stares we got from Indian tourist there.
We ended up catching our overnight train to Mumbai - well a suburb of Mumbai. We caught the only time a train has ever been early in the history of India, which dropped us off in Dadar at 4am. What is there to do at a suburban train station at 4am you ask? Well we decided to check out the action in the local train terminal and set up camp on platform 2, right beside the gypsy women and her kids. A few glasses of 3 rupee chai later, we decided that we needed to get to Mumbai central station, wandering aimlessly in a train station when you're white and have huge backpacks on attracts a lot of attention and I don't really know what compells an Indian man to come up to us and offer to help us, but at the time I wasn't willing to bet on genuine kindness, so we declined the offers and preferred to get on an unmarked train heading in what we thought was the right direction. Luckly they enforce the "ladies only carriages" here, so we had a pleasant journey. Arriving at Victoria Terminus, THE railway station in the commonwealth, at 6am was no fun either. But a couple hours later, after we were unsuccessful at getting reserved train tickets to Goa, we finally got to see what Mumbai had to offer....
Its funny because these 3 days were a great example of what travelling is like. When things go bad, everything goes bad. Local busses, dirty cities, no food, no power.... but then just like that it all turns around. The lows are sure low here in India though - at least traveling to and from Surat was!
# posted by Laura Davies : 4:10 PM
